Nykvist, R. (2015). “The creation of a global firm: L.M. Ericsson and character virtues put into context”. In Karlson, N., Norek M. & K. Wennberg (Eds.), Virtues in Entrepreneurship (pp. 184–211). Stockholm: Ratio.
2022
Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2022, No. 1, p. 16116). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
We present an analytically structured history approach using a relational database to bridge the methodological divide between history and management and organizational research. Extensive digitized archival sets with rich metadata and analytical structures form the core of the database. The approach provides multiple methodological strengths. First, source transparency is established by linking all steps of the coding and analysis to the sources in the database. Second, the approach enables real-time research collaboration and constant comparison of the coding and analysis of sources. Third, the always available and searchable database enables the researcher to easily move back and forth from sources to narrative construction and theorizing. Due to this efficiency gain, research can be based on extensive archival datasets enabling rigorous conceptual development. The approach responds to the call for methodological openness and disclosure when conducting historical analyses. Additionally, the approach enables the development of contextually grounded explanations and theories that respond to the criticism that management and organizational research is ahistorical. Thus, the approach fulfills the requirement for the dual integrity of historical veracity and conceptual rigor.
2022
Questioning the Entrepreneurial State, 219.
This chapter investigates Chinese wind power development and concludes that innovation cannot be pushed by the efforts of many, and that when the state clarifies directions and objectives, these can be achieved but with severe and unexpected side effects. Two topics are explored: wind curtailment and low technological development, both examples of unproductive entrepreneurship induced by government policies. The goal of wind power capacity expansion leads to construction (i.e., generation capacity) but little electricity. Examples of failures include low grid connectivity with, some years averaging 15% of generation capacity broken or unconnected to the grid. A key lesson for Europe is that forced innovation often amounts to little and that the old saying holds up: “no plan survives contact with reality.”
The book can be downloaded here.
2022
Building on a historical case study on the first two stock exchanges to adopt the now globally dominant for-profit organizational form, the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1993 and the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1995, we argue that interaction among socially proximate peers contributes to pioneering organizational form adoption within an industry, particularly when such forms are introduced by established organizations. Peer interaction can induce a search for technically efficient organizational forms through the sharing of collective experiences, the establishment of collective assumptions, and a joint search for solutions. Together, these factors contribute to the legitimization of novel organizational forms in the local setting before the adoption of the first instantiation of those forms. We propose a context-sensitive multilevel model of peer-interaction-induced pioneering organizational form adoption that considers shared macro environmental drivers, idiosyncratic local environmental drivers, and peer interaction as central social mediators between the two.
