Swedish Industrial Companies Research Articles

Instantly upgrading a foreign subsidiary’s value-adding scope: impact on growth

Purpose Drawing on the knowledge-based theory, the purpose of this paper is to extend the current understanding of a company’s upgrading of a foreign subsidiary’s value-adding scope and its impact on growth. Design/methodology/approach This study applies a longitudinal approach and analyses the value-adding scopes of the subsidiaries of two Swedish industrial companies in the USA, resulting in a proposed model. Findings Greater adaptation of the corporate competitive strategy is linked to a greater likelihood of upgrading the subsidiary’s scope to include R&D and production activities. Also, market experience of the subsidiary is positively associated with this likelihood. The greater the coherence between the scope and knowledge originating from the local adaptation of the corporate competitive strategy and the subsidiary’s market experience, the greater the growth of the subsidiary. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the literature on international business and strategy in several ways. Future studies may turn the propositions into hypotheses for statistical tests. Practical implications An industrial company striving for the growth of a foreign subsidiary must assess subsidiary knowledge pertaining to value-adding. To achieve high growth, the subsidiary’s value-adding scope must be aligned with knowledge stemming from the corporate competitive strategy and market experience. Originality/value This is the first study explicitly explaining the crucial upgrading of a foreign subsidiary’s value-adding scope to include R&D and production. Coherence between an upgraded scope and crucial knowledge explains the subsidiary’s growth.

Designing and providing integrated product-service systems – challenges, opportunities and solutions resulting from prescriptive approaches in two industrial companies

Due to customer pressure and growing competition, industrial companies are increasingly moving towards providing integrated offerings of products and services (PSS). Despite this trend, literature providing a deep understanding of the challenges associated with this transition is limited, while publications discussing approaches that focus on overcoming these challenges are particularly lacking. This article is based on a multi-case study of two Swedish industrial companies undergoing the transition to designing and providing PSS. It reports on the challenges identified at the case companies as well as opportunities arising from and solutions to these challenges. Subsequent to initial research on the challenges, prescriptive approaches such as a life cycle costing method and a PSS design method were applied in the case companies over an extended time frame. On the one hand, these prescriptive approaches provided both a deeper understanding of the challenges, which include a persistent product centred mindset, a lack of adjustment to changed incentive structures and the separation of product and service design. On the other hand, they also led to effective solutions such as focusing on customer value and introducing a PSS transition facilitator for the design team. These solutions were adapted to the situations in the respective companies and they partly went beyond the prescriptive measures first introduced. Therefore, the article shows the applicability of prescriptive approaches and methods to detect, understand and alleviate the challenges of PSS design and provision. Further, the article provides broadly applicable learning for industrial companies undergoing this process.

Sustainable strategy formation at a Swedish industrial company: bridging the strategy-as-practice and sustainability gap

Scholars stress that firms need to integrate sustainability into their strategies, calling for more research into how sustainable strategies are formed in practice. This has led to convergence of the fields of sustainability and strategic management, though sustainability scholars have so far neglected the influential strategy-as-practice (s-as-p) movement that has shaped the strategic management field over the last decade. Based on a detailed longitudinal case study of a Swedish industrial company, we are starting to rectify this neglect. In doing so, we are contributing to the s-as-p literature by challenging its top-management bias and identifying previously overlooked strategic activities and practitioners. We are also contributing to the sustainability literature by outlining a novel theoretical framework for studying sustainable strategy formation and demonstrating that certain activities, and their associated practitioners, are particularly likely to shape sustainable (versus “regular”) strategies. Finally, the paper outlines the managerial implications of these findings.

Accelerating and braking in times of economic crisis

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to present the results of a study of an industrial company's top management team (TMT) that fought to survive an economic crisis. Specifically, the article seeks to focus on describing the TMT's composition, group processes, and work during a period of high external pressure; analysing the TMT's work in terms of an organisational learning process; and discussing factors that may have enabled the TMT to make appropriate strategic decisions during the crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical foundation of this article is a longitudinal case study of a Swedish industrial company during the economic recession of the late 2000s. Data were collected through observations of meetings involving the TMT from 2009 to 2011 and through semi‐structured interviews with TMT managers.FindingsTwo empirical themes – “accelerating” and “braking” – illustrate actions taken by the TMT during the crisis. Accelerating involves activities aimed at accelerating the company out of the downturn, whereas braking involves activities aimed at reducing costs. The findings suggest that the TMT exhibited the ability to handle processes of exploration and exploitation during the crisis and that learning occurred at the individual, group, and organisational levels.Practical implicationsA practical implication of this study is the importance for TMTs to work simultaneously with processes of exploration and exploitation when fighting to survive an economic crisis and to designate time for learning processes in daily work.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the field by empirically showing the processes of organisational learning in practice and by highlighting the relevance of organisational learning research to understanding the performance and work of top management teams in organisations.

Group initiative and self-organizational activities in industrial work groups

Autonomous work groups are involved in goal setting and planning and hence can define their jobs and the outcome idiosyncratically. Our interest lies in how job design restricts or creates possibilities for groups to redefine their work and thus go beyond formal requirements. The aim was to test a model of the relationships between dimensions of job design, group processes, group initiative, and self-organizational activities. The results are based on work task analyses and questionnaires administered to 31 work groups at four Swedish industrial companies. The theoretical input–process–output model received substantial support. Dimensions of job design affect whether a group, through collective reflexivity, can redefine work and proactively create conditions and organize work so that uncertainty can be handled and new tasks mastered. Group processes such as cooperation and social support enhance group initiative to achieve such meaningful change. In this study, reflexivity does not impact on group initiative, but does explain the major amount of variance in self-organizational activities. Work task analyses can be a useful tool for providing groups with the prerequisites for self-organizational activities. We believe these to be essential for the groups' capacity to be involved in the innovation process from idea to finished product.

The good work – A Swedish trade union vision in the shadow of lean production

“The Good Work” ( Det goda arbetet) was established as a highly praised and established concept in the Swedish working life debate in the middle of the 1980s. In this paper, we are going to discuss the concept in relation to the massive introduction of lean production in Swedish industry. The aim of this paper is to restore the theory of the good work into the industrial society of today. We will search for a model for ‘good work’ in balance between the demands from production and good conditions for a learning environment. The theoretical base for this paper will be found in both organisational research and research on production technology systems. We identify three strong trends in Swedish industrial companies giving both pitfalls and possibilities for the good work; the learning focus as a way to increase productivity and improve working conditions; Lean Production in most cases imply narrow short-cyclic work tasks; and the global market that reduces national discretion. As a result, we formulate a new set of criteria for “the good work”.

Leadership, organization and health at work: a case study of a Swedish industrial company

The application of knowledge on organization and leadership is important for the promotion of health at workplace. The purpose of this article is to analyse the leadership and organization, including the organizational culture, of a Swedish industrial company in relation to the health of the employees. The leadership in this company has been oriented towards developing and actively promoting a culture and a structure of organization where the employees have a high degree of control over their work situation. According to the employees, this means extensive possibilities for personal development and responsibility, as well as good companionship, which makes them feel well at work. This is also supported by the low sickness rate of the company. The results indicate that the leadership and organization of this company may have been conducive to the health of the employees interviewed. However, the culture of personal responsibility and the structure of self-managed teams seemed to suit only those who were able to manage the demands of the company and adapt to that kind of organization. Therefore, the findings indicate that the specific context of the technology, the environment and the professional level of the employees need to be taken into consideration when analysing the relation between leadership, organization and health at work.

Leadership behaviours as predictors of cost and change effectiveness

In this study it is assumed that different leadership behaviours affect organisational outcomes in different ways. Leadership has been measured using the CPE model, which embraces three types of leadership centring on change production and employees, respectively. Scales were constructed to measure effectiveness with respect to change and cost. The study was carried out in an international Swedish industrial company. A total of 49 departments were included representing 363 respondents. The data were collected at the individual level. However, all the data were aggregated and analysed at the organisational level. The main results are twofold. First, relation-orientated management is significantly related to both outcomes. Second, there are various combinations of behaviours for specific outcomes. The regression analyses revealed that the best combination for cost effectiveness consists of behaviour orientated towards relations and production. The best combination for effectiveness in dealing with change is an orientation towards relations and change behaviour. These two combinations explain about 30% of the variance in the respective criteria of effectiveness.

Ergonomic Change Processes in the Production of an Industrial Company

A change process in a Swedish industrial company has been followed during five years. In order to decrease the negative effects of the repetitive manual work, the objective of the change was to achieve more variation in the work activities. A detailed investigation of the work activities and of the musculoskeletal load during work activities was performed. The results were presented for the operators and discussed together in the team. The operators presented many suggestions for improvements. It was decided that a team of three operators should work with a project aimed at designing a new workplace in which one operator could perform all assembly work. Observations, questionnaires and interviews evaluated the change process.

Evaluation of suppliers: how to consider the environment

Industry in general, and Swedish private companies in particular, are working today within increasing environmental considerations. Environmental strategies, policies, and work programmes in varying forms are necessary in a market which increasingly focuses on environmental factors. An environmental process must include a product’s full life‐cycle, its supply, production, use and waste handling. It must also include economic calculations and be well established within a company’s leadership. A part of a company’s environmental analysis is to evaluate its suppliers and their effect on the environment. The Ishikawa diagram (Ishikawa, 1990) has been used in a project as a diagnostics tool to evaluate suppliers. In conjunction with this evaluation, tables in the computer program Excel have been produced. The work has been done in conjunction with Swedish industrial companies.

Total quality management and work organization: Relationship between quality management strategies and work organization in Swedish industrial companies

This article examines the relationship between quality management strategies and changes of work and work organization in industrial companies. Nine case studies in Sweden show that companies whose ...