Performance In Sweden Research Articles

Impact of Digital Technologies on Enhancing Supplier Collaboration and Performance in Sweden

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine the Impact of Digital Technologies on Enhancing Supplier Collaboration and Performance in Sweden. Methodology: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: The study that impact of digital technologies on enhancing supplier collaboration and performance in Sweden has been transformative, driving significant improvements in efficiency, transparency, and strategic alignment. The adoption of digital tools such as cloud-based platforms, blockchain, and advanced data analytics has enabled Swedish businesses to foster stronger, more collaborative relationships with their suppliers. Digital technologies have streamlined communication and information sharing, allowing for real-time data exchange and more effective coordination across the supply chain. This enhanced transparency has reduced the risk of errors, improved order accuracy, and facilitated more agile and responsive supply chain operations. Consequently, businesses have been able to reduce lead times, optimize inventory levels, and enhance overall supply chain resilience. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Resource Dependence Theory, Transaction Cost Economics & Social Exchange Theory may be used to anchor future studies on Impact of Digital Technologies on Enhancing Supplier Collaboration and Performance in Sweden. Organizations should prioritize investment in robust digital platforms and tools that facilitate real-time communication, transparency, and data-driven decision-making across supply chains. This includes adopting cloud-based collaboration tools, implementing AI-driven analytics for predictive insights, and integrating IoT for enhanced visibility. Implementing structured SRM strategies that leverage digital technologies can improve supplier engagement, trust, and performance. This involves establishing clear communication channels, setting performance benchmarks based on data analytics, and fostering collaborative partnerships through shared platforms. Policymakers should collaborate with industry stakeholders to develop regulatory frameworks that support digital transformation in supply chains. Clear guidelines and standards can promote adoption while ensuring data security, interoperability, and ethical use of emerging technologies like blockchain and big data analytics.

Does ecologization matter for technical efficiency in crop production? A case of Swedish agriculture

The effect of ecologisation on crop production performance in Sweden, measured as technical efficiency, was investigated by incorporating ecologisation into the production function and technical inefficiency determinant model. An unbalanced panel of data from the Swedish Farm Accounting Data Network (FADN), comprising 1944 observations on 346 crop farms 2009–2019, was used in stochastic frontier analysis. Ecologisation indicators considered were crop diversity index, organic farming, and environmental subsidies. The results showed that ecologisation affected the technical efficiency of crop production. Crop diversity index for the current year and the two preceding years had a positive effect on performance, with crop diversity index for current year in particular being positively associated with production performance of crop production. Organic farming was estimated to be negatively significantly associated with production performance. Rural subsidies were positively associated with production performance, but no association was found between environmental subsidies and production performance. Mean technical efficiency was 0.715, with higher values in southern Sweden than northern Sweden. These findings on the impact of ecologisation on arable farming can be useful when designing policies to encourage farmers to adopt ecologisation approaches.

Designing an Optimal Pattern of Assessing Native and Non-Native Managers’ Performance in Sweden

Nowadays, the issue of public sector managers’ responsiveness to their actions in the new governance environment will be addressed more intensely. Therefore, in the modern attitude, assessing managers’ performance as a framework for implementing strategies and policies, achieving organizational goals, and their responsiveness to beneficiaries and the society is considered. This study aims to develop an optimal pattern to assess native and non-native managers’ performance in terms of four aspects of human, perceptual, and technical skills as well as personal traits and measure their performance through the combination of 360 –degree feedback and analytic network process. The statistical population consists of two groups of native and non-native managers in key posts in Stockholm province who were selected through proportional stratified random sampling. The required samples for the groups of native and non-native managers are respectively estimated to be 31 and 23. The indices of performance assessment are extracted through the meta-synthesis method and validated using the Delphi technique and experts’ opinions. By combining 360-degree feedback and analytic network process, native and non-native managers were appropriately ranked, which this ranking can be applied to administrative agencies.

Integrating educational quality and educational equality into a model of mathematics performance

Using data from TIMSS 2015, this study investigated determinants of inequality between classrooms in mathematics performance in Sweden. Applying multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance frameworks to identify latent constructs with which to build a two-level structural equation model, this study integrated teacher certification, teacher preparedness and school emphasis on academic success into a model of inequality of outcomes and opportunities. The study found evidence that more socioeconomically advantaged classes had better prepared mathematics teachers. School culture towards academic achievement was not associated with mathematics achievement. Finally, the analyses indicated that substantial inequalities exist for students taught by specialist and non-specialist teachers.

Swedish School Results, Student Background, Competition and Efficiency

Sweden’s declining results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15-year olds and other international tests between 2000 and 2012 have raised concern about the efficiency of the Swedish school system, even though results improved recently. Furthermore, inequality in educational outcomes between socio-economic groups have widened. A specificity of the Swedish school system is that it allows free choice between public and private schools. This has triggered a lively debate on the implications of competition for school results and educational inequality. Against this backdrop, this paper presents an econometric analysis of lower secondary school performance in Sweden, using a panel covering most schools in the country over the period 2013–17. We find that for-profit private schools underperform non-profit and public schools on average, although with large heterogeneity. School competition is associated with lower results in schools with a high share of pupils from weaker socio-economic backgrounds, which is consistent with negative peer effects in left-behind schools. Panel Stochastic Frontier Analysis points to a relatively narrow distribution of inefficiency across schools, with relatively few schools performing very poorly after controlling for their resources and the socio-economic background of their pupils. These results call for better targeting resources towards supporting the pupils most in need and steering competition and school choice so that they benefit pupils from all socio-economic groups equally.

The re-emergence of educational inequality during a period of reforms: A study of Swedish school leavers 1991–2012

Against the background of a liberalization of Swedish compulsory education, this paper analyses post-1991 shifts in the way compulsory education performance in Sweden has been shaped by parental background, residential context and school context. We can document increasing school and residential segregation of foreign background students and, after 2008, increasing segregation by income, employment status and social allowance reception. Over time, educational performance has become increasingly linked to family, neighbourhood and school context. The greatest change has been for parental background, but the importance of school context and neighbourhood context has also increased. A noteworthy finding is that residential context consistently has a stronger effect on student performance than school context. Student grades were found to be most strongly influenced by the closest (12 or 25) residential peers of the school leavers as compared to larger peer groups. The increase in the influence of family, neighbourhood and residential context has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the between-school variation (intra-class correlation) in student performance, but it was not until after 2005 that this increased variability became clearly linked to the social composition of the schools. This study’s results suggest that the restructuring of Swedish compulsory education has had consequences for equality, possibly because disadvantaged social groups have not been as able as advantaged groups to navigate and benefit from the educational landscape created by the school reforms.

Herd and environmental determinants of reproductive performance in Swedish dairy herds, 2001–2009

This was a retrospective cohort study of Swedish dairy herds. Summary measures of production and reproductive performance, details of soil, moss mineral concentrations, and temperature and rainfall measurements at each herd location were available for the period September 2001 to August 2009. A Bayesian mixed-effects regression model including spatial and non-spatial heterogeneity terms was developed to quantify associations between hypothesised explanatory variables and mean herd breeding interval, defined as the difference between mean calving to last service interval and mean calving to first service interval for each fiscal year.Mean herd breeding intervals were shorter in herds with greater than 80% Swedish Red Cattle, herds with lower mean age at first calving, herds comprised of older cows and in larger herds. None of the soil composition or moss mineral concentration estimates were associated with mean herd breeding interval and the effect of temperature and rainfall on mean herd breeding interval was small. We conclude that environmental conditions (soil composition, moss mineral concentrations, environmental temperature and rainfall) had relatively minor effects on dairy herd reproductive performance in Sweden between 2001 and 2009.

Perforations and bleeding in a population-based cohort of all registered colonoscopies in Sweden from 2001 to 2013.

The rates of perforation and bleeding are important quality measures of colonoscopy performance. The objective of this article is to assess the frequency of colonoscopy-related bleeding and perforation in Swedish counties and to relate these findings to patient characteristics. Data on 593,308 colonoscopies performed on adults from 2001 to 2013 were retrieved from Swedish inpatient and outpatient registers. Covariates were assessed in a multivariate Poisson regression model. The correlation between perforation and bleeding was calculated with Pearson's bivariate correlation formula. The relative frequency of bleeding and perforation vary across counties (bleeding: 0.02%-0.27%; perforation: 0.02%-0.27%). There were significant positive correlations between the relative frequency of bleeding and perforation at the county level, both including (r = 0.792, p < 0.001) and excluding polypectomies r = 0.814 (p < 0.001). The relative risks of these conditions in the counties ranged from 0.12, p < 0.001, to 1.53, p = 0.05 (bleeding) and from 0.17, p = 0.002, to 2.42, p < 0.001 (perforation). There are substantial differences in colonoscopy performance in Sweden. These differences do not seem to be explained by patient characteristics.

Time and Generation: Parents\u2019 Integration and Children\u2019s School Performance in Sweden, 1989\u20132011

A central element of assimilation theory is that increasing time and number of previous immigrant generations in a host country leaves immigrants and their children more integrated and capable of navigating the host society. However, the underperformance of some immigrant groups in Sweden calls into question this relationship. Additionally, many studies regard intermarriage as an outcome of immigrant integration and rarely investigate whether integration continues after intermarriage. Using population level data from the Swedish interdisciplinary panel on 22 cohorts of ninth-grade students born between 1973 and 1995, we examine the effect of parents’ time in Sweden on their children’s grade point average using family fixed effects. Additionally, we investigate whether this relationship differs between “2.0” and “2.5” generation children. We find, generally, that parents’ time in Sweden increases their children’s educational performance, though some variation by parents’ region of origin exists. This supports the idea that integration experiences in immigrant families can be transmitted across generations. Further, this generally holds for both the 2.0 and 2.5 generation children. This relationship among the 2.5 generation is notable as previous studies using a family-based approach looking at the intergenerational transmission of integration have largely focused on the children of two foreign-born parents.

The State of Innovation in Sweden and its Regions

The Northern Review 45 (2017): 57–75 https://doi.org/10.22584/nr45.2017.004This article focuses on the successful Swedish tradition in the field of innovation, but also discusses the flip side of an innovation culture that honours only radical innovation. Related to this tradition is a preference to measure innovativeness through patent data. Both these traditions imply a disadvantageous position for regions and companies located outside our large metropolitan areas. One problem relates to the interest in understanding how different degrees of innovativeness relate to different degrees of economic and social effects—a challenge that patent data, only to a very limited degree, addresses. This means that patent data disregards the fact that also incremental innovations “new to the region” or “new to the firm” might be powerful routes to a more dynamic development path, especially in more peripheral regions. To overcome such shortcomings, other measures and approaches are needed. One such approach developed and presented in this article is based upon Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist productivity index—employing Swedish longitudinal data, the article illustrates how they may be utilized to assess and make sense of regional technological innovation. Besides offering an unconventional picture of the regional innovation performance in Sweden, this methodological approach also identifies the northernmost part of Sweden (the Norrbotten region) as a region with its own path-breaking development trajectory. The article is concluded by discussing the region of Norrbotten as an example of a region that has traditionally capitalized on the exploitation and processing of natural resources and how such a region may diversify into new sectors using concepts such as related variety and smart specialization.

Job-related mobility and plant performance in Sweden

This paper uses a Swedish micro-dataset containing 2,696,909 hires during the period 2002–2006 to assess the impact of job-related mobility on plant-level performance. The analysis classifies new recruits according to their work experience and level of formal qualification, as well as by the region of origin and of destination. New hires are divided into graduates and experienced workers and between high- and low-educated. The results point towards the importance of acknowledging both the experience and the skills of new recruits. The greatest benefits are related to hiring new workers from outside the region where the plant is located. The analysis also stresses the importance of geography, with plants in metropolitan regions gaining the most from labour mobility, while the benefits of mobility for plants in smaller, more peripheral regions are more diverse and dependent on both the type and origin of new workers.

Evaluating indoor environment of a retrofitted multi-family building with improved energy performance in Sweden

The building sector within both the EU and Sweden accounts for about 40% of total energy use. It is therefore important to introduce energy efficiency measures in this sector in order to meet the national implementation of the Building Performance Directive. Retrofits that result in improved energy performance are important in order to meet national energy targets, but the impact on the indoor environment has to be considered. Properly chosen energy efficiency measures may affect the indoor environment positively. One retrofitted multi-family building, located in the city of Linköping, Sweden, was chosen as the study object. The building represents a common type of construction in Sweden. This study presents an evaluation of both the indoor environment and energy use of the retrofitted building in comparison with a similar non-retrofitted building from the same area. The results show that the building has potential to reach a 39% reduction of space heating demand. The indoor environment has been improved compared to the non-retrofitted building. Adding external blinds from 15 May to 15 September between 10am–12pm on the east side and 12pm–3pm on the west side seems to be the best option for improving the indoor climate during summer.

On the interaction between government spending and economic performance in Sweden: an asymmetric approach

This article applies newly developed asymmetric impulse response functions and asymmetric variance decompositions to investigate the dynamic relationship between government spending and the GDP at constant prices in Sweden. The estimated results show that an innovation in the government spending does not lead to a significant response in the GDP regardless of whether or not the asymmetric property is taken into account in the estimation of the impulses. The asymmetric variance decompositions also provide support for this conclusion. This might support the view that the Ricardo equivalence theorem is valid in the case of Sweden.

The impact of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic on economic performance in Sweden: An investigation into the consequences of an extraordinary mortality shock

We study the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on short- and medium-term economic performance in Sweden. The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it has hitherto received only scant attention in the economic literature – despite representing an unparalleled labour supply shock. In this paper, we exploit seemingly exogenous variation in incidence rates between Swedish regions to estimate the impact of the pandemic. The pandemic led to a significant increase in poorhouse rates. There is also evidence that capital returns were negatively affected by the pandemic. However, contrary to predictions, we find no discernible effect on earnings.

Applying GRI reports for the investigation of environmental management practices and company performance in Sweden, China and India

The relationship between environmental management practices (EMPs) and company performance has recently been debated in literature and is of interest for both industrial managers and political decision-makers. This paper investigates the relationship between EMPs and firm performance in manufacturing companies in Sweden, China and India. With the content analysis of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reports and financial reports of sample companies, the levels of EMPs and the companies' financial performances were coded. Further statistical assessment was conducted in order to identify patterns and correlations. The results indicate that only selected EMPs have been employed differently in three different countries. Most EMPs clearly do not have a positive correlation with the financial performance; i.e. employing EMPs does not necessarily improve the economic consequence of companies. Nevertheless, a number of EMPs do have a strong correlation with improving innovation performance in various companies. It is also interesting to note that a negative correlation exists between the Environmental standard for suppliers and Sales growth. This is possibly due to increasing operational costs and a delay in market acceptance. This research illustrates the possibility of using standard environmental data from GRI reports as a resource for future studies of EMPs. In order to improve long-term financial performance, this study also suggests that innovation should gain a substantial amount of attention when EMPs are employed.

Director Experience and the Performance of IPOs: Evidence from Sweden

An initial public offering (IPO) represents one of the final stages in the life of a small firm as it transitions from private to public. In this paper the experience of directors is examined to determine the extent of the role they play in ensuring a successful listing. Unique data from 122 IPOs on the Swedish Stock Exchange have been examined in a search for the effect of director experience on aftermarket performance. Specific aspects of director experience within a board, such as interlocking directorships and average tenure, are connected to the underpricing of Swedish IPOs. Contrary to expectations, no statistically significant relationship was found between long-run aftermarket performance and director experience at the time of an IPO. This suggests that the previous experience of directors, as measured in earlier studies, is less relevant to long-term aftermarket performance in Sweden compared to other countries studied in the literature review. This emphasises the importance of examining different institutional contexts.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger? The Impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic on Economic Performance in Sweden

We study the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on economic performance in Sweden. The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it has hitherto received only scant attention in the economic literature – despite important implications for modern-day pandemics. In this paper, we exploit seemingly exogenous variation in incidence rates between Swedish regions to estimate the impact of the pandemic. Using difference-in-differences and high-quality administrative data from Sweden, we estimate the effects on earnings, capital returns and poverty. We find that the pandemic led to a significant increase in poverty rates. There is also relatively strong evidence that capital returns were negatively affected by the pandemic. On the other hand, we find robust evidence that the influenza had no discernible effect on earnings. This finding is surprising since it goes against most previous empirical studies as well as theoretical predictions.

A PERFORMATIVITY Of NORDIC SPACE The Tension between Ritual and Sincerity Re-Embodied through Each Performance of Sweden’s Allsång på Skansen

Drawing on Richard Schechner’s ideas of performance, modern ritual theory (especially the work of Seligman, Weller, Puett and Simon), and Butler’s considerations of performativity, this article considers that the performativity of Nordic Space is located in the tension between ritual and sincerity. Using examples from the 150th televised installment of Allsång på Skansen (a Swedish community sing-along event) I examine how repetition affords us the opportunity to create and re-create a sense of what Nordic could mean in a variety of arenas. Repeating Nordic Space as a blend of memory and re-creation continually reestablishes the refreshing tension between ritual and sincerity.

Interaction Between Participants in Focus Groups With Older Patients and General Practitioners

Group interaction is put forward as the principal advantage for focus group research, although rarely reported on. The aim of the article is to contribute to the methodological knowledge regarding focus group research by providing an empirical example of the application of the Lehoux, Poland, and Daudelin template suggested for analysis of the interaction in focus groups. The data source was 18 focus groups' performance in Sweden: 12 with older patients and 6 with general practitioners (GPs). GPs found common ground in belonging to the same profession, whereas the older patients, instead of constituting a group in the word's real sense, started just sharing a common focus. We found the template easy to understand and use, except for identifying participants' explicit and implicit purposes for participating. Furthermore, adding an interaction analysis to the content analysis helped us appreciate and clarify the contexts from which these data were created.

A comparative study of advanced manufacturing technology and manufacturing infrastructure investments in Singapore and Sweden

This empirical study compares the advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) investment, the manufacturing infrastructure investment, and the interaction effect between these two types of investments using data from a sample of firms in Singapore and Sweden. The results suggest that the interaction of AMT investment and manufacturing infrastructure investment has a positive impact on the firm profit and growth in Sweden, but does not have a positive impact on firm profit and growth in Singapore. In addition, this study shows that the AMT investment has significant positive correlation with infrastructure investment and firm performance in Sweden but not in Singapore.