Spotlight on new research publications in March

Which role does cross-sectoral collaboration play in the transition from linear to circular production systems? Does human reflexivity disappear as datafication and automation expand, and machines take over decision-making? What influence does the quality of the public transport system have on our quality of life? Find the answer to these questions along with many others in this month’s spotlight on new research publications from CBS.

03/01/2022

Bjarke MacCarthy
Photo: Bjarke MacCarthy

Are you a journalist, researcher or simply interested in academic articles on business and culture?
Sign up for this newsletter to receive a monthly update on the latest research publications at CBS.

The following is a rough list. If you need more information, please contact the researcher.

The academic articles have been peer-reviewed, which means they have been judged by other researchers within the same area.

THE FOLLOWING IS THIS MONTH’S PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH – ENJOY YOUR READING:
Find the abstracts under each heading...

 

Betwixt and Between: Trends in Transparency and Secrecy Research
Abstract: This essay identifies common themes in research on transparency and secrecy and interrogates the intertwined relationship between transparency and secrecy. In this essay, I review four books situated at the intersection of organizational communication (and its related sub-disciplines of information and communication technology and alternative organizing), sociology and cultural studies. These books address different ways of thinking about transparency and secrecy and examine their implications for organizations, institutions and societies. Taken together, these books describe and problematize the dichotomy between transparency and secrecy and their arguments can be used to stimulate a reassessment of secrecy and transparency as ideas, practices and resources in future research. To this end, I discuss in the following some overarching themes of transparency and secrecy, and I conclude with future research directions aimed at understanding the challenges introduced by the transparency secrecy nexus in the present datafied social landscapes.

Journal: Management Communication Quarterly
Published: Febuary 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Oana Brindusa Albu

Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics: Party Organization in State-owned Enterprises
Abstract: This article analyses the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the corporate governance of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including
a case study of a central-level SOE holding group. Relying on official documents, secondary literature and interviews with enterprise managers, government officials and academics, the article documents how the CCP has actively formalized its role in Chinese business by embedding itself in the corporate governance structure of SOEs. Through the application of Chinese indigenous administrative corporate governance concepts such as “bidirectional entry, cross appointment” and “three majors, one big,” the CCP has consolidated its dominance of enterprise decision-making procedures and personnel appointment and created a hybrid, Party-led model of corporate governance. While this hybrid model can secure enterprise compliance, communication with higher state and Party organs, as well as long-term development planning, it is unlikely to help solve SOE efficiency problems and may even undermine other SOE reforms.

Journal: China Quarterly
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kasper Ingeman Beck, Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard

Framing Sustainable Development Challenges: Accounting for SDG-15 in the UK
Abstract: Pending

Journal: Social and Environmental Accountability Journal
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Justyna Bekie

A Context- and Trajectory-based Destination Prediction of Public Transportation Users
Abstract: Location prediction based on contextual information is the core of a plethora of personalized locationbased services (LBSs). Several applications require the use of techniques for predicting travel destinations based on human movement. Network analyses of human behavioral data show how the spatial-temporal regularity of human movement can be harnessed for inferring human mobility patterns. However, techniques are often based on a limited number of contextual features, which may limit prediction accuracy, especially if only historical location data are used. Using movement data obtained from public transportation users, we investigate the utility of contextual features derived via the installation of Bluetooth beacons in transportation vehicles and software tools in end-users’ travel applications. Using a multiclass random forest classifier, we show that contextual information of a user’s past travel history and at journey onset goes beyond spatial information and boosts destination prediction accuracy. The likely destination and travel-path length obtained at journey onset can then serve as the input for a stochastic-based model to predict a destination based on acquired trajectory information. Here we show that previously predicted destinations boost the performance of a Markov chain network. Thus, various contextual information at the start of a journey provides information beyond the location information acquired during a journey’s progression that can be employed for destination prediction. These findings have strong implications for LBSs as they require accurate destination prediction at early stages of a journey while at the same time mitigating the privacy concerns associated with collection of location data

Journal: IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Raghava Rao Mukkamala

Learning Through Disruptions: Equipping Students to Cope With Challenging Contexts Through a Field-based Course in Africa
Abstract: Students wishing to pursue careers in international business, notably in the developing world, must be prepared for complex, unpredictable, uncomfortable, and messy realities, and to collaborate with others very different from themselves. Mainstream business school learning environments are generally highly structured, cognitively oriented, predictable and hence not particularly conducive to orchestrating the disruptive experiences that can develop such abilities. In this article, we show how a field-based course in an East African country can support such learning. Based on data gathered from students over several iterations of the field course, we draw on experiential learning theory (ELT) in showing how the top-down orchestration of the course constituted a learning space that produced three main types of disruption to students’ taken-for-granted habits and assumptions, namely: intense sensory impressions and sensations, loss of predictability and control, and learning interdependency on others. Students had to “bottom-up” manage these disruptions while conducting a group assignment with local students, to a tight deadline, producing “dissonances”—feelings of discomfort—that triggered the ELT cycle. Our findings show that such disruptions can foster learning of the abovementioned abilities; and we suggest ways in which such learning spaces might be created closer to home than East Africa

Journal: Journal of Management Education
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Maribel Blasco, Thilde Langevang, Søren Jeppesen

Balancing Information Rents and Service Differentiation in Utility Regulation
Abstract: In the regulation of natural monopolies such as regional utilities, several goals must be balanced. In this paper, we focus on the trade-off between information rents and service differentiation. Consumers in different regions may prefer different service levels and service mixes. The services provided should therefore ideally be aligned with the preferences of regional consumers. The utilities, however, have superior information about the cost of different services. This allows them to extract information rents by claiming high costs for the provided services. A relative performance evaluation in the form of benchmarking is typically used to limit information rents, but benchmarking is less efficient when service profiles are heterogenous. Hence, there is a trade-off between minimizing information rents and maximizing the adjustment to consumer preferences via service differentiation. In this paper, we study this trade-off in a simple principal–agent model and discuss how it may limit the usefulness of recent regulatory frameworks based on dialog and negotiations with utilities about which services to provide.

Journal: Energy Economics
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Peter Bogetoft

Substitutions- og præferenceskade: En alternativ forståelse af tabsposterne afsætningstab og markedsforstyrrelse
Abstract: Pending

Journal: N I R
Published: 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Rasmus Arler Bogetoft

Alternative Data and Sentiment Analysis: Prospecting Non-standard Data in Machine Learning-driven Finance
Abstract: Social media commentary, satellite imagery and GPS data are a part of ‘alternative data’, that is, data that originate outside of the standard repertoire of market data but are considered useful for predicting stock prices, detecting different risk exposures and discovering new price movement indicators. With the availability of sophisticated machine-learning analytics tools, alternative data are gaining traction within the investment management and algorithmic trading industries. Drawing on interviews with people working in investment management and algorithmic trading firms utilizing alternative data, as well as firms providing and sourcing such data, we emphasize social media-based sentiment analytics as one manifestation of how alternative data are deployed for stock price prediction purposes. This demonstrates both how sentiment analytics are developed and subsequently utilized by investment management firms. We argue that ‘alternative data’ are an open-ended placeholder for every data source potentially relevant for investment management purposes and harnessing these disparate data sources requires certain standardization efforts by different market participants. Besides showing how market participants understand and use alternative data, we demonstrate that alternative data often undergo processes of (a) prospecting (i.e. rendering such data amenable to processing with the aid of analytics tools) and (b) assetization (i.e. the transformation of data into tradable assets). We further contend that the widespread embracement of alternative data in investment management and trading encourages a financialization process at the data level which raises new governance issues.

Journal: Big Data & Society
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kristian Bondo Hansen, Christian Borch

Machine Learning, Knowledge Risk, and Principal-agent Problems in Automated Trading
Abstract: Present-day securities trading is dominated by fully automated algorithms. These algorithmic systems are characterized by particular forms of knowledge risk (adverse effects relating to the use or absence of certain forms of knowledge) and principal-agent problems (goal conflicts and information asymmetries arising from the delegation of decision-making authority). Where automated trading systems used to be based on human-defined rules, increasingly, machine-learning (ML) techniques are being adopted to produce machine-generated strategies. Drawing on 213 interviews with market participants involved in automated trading, this study compares the forms of knowledge risk and principal-agent relations characterizing both human-defined and ML-based automated trading systems. It demonstrates that certain forms of ML-based automated trading lead to a change in knowledge risks, particularly concerning dramatically changing market settings, and that they are characterized by a lack of insight into how and why trading rules are being produced by the ML systems. This not only intensifies but also reconfigures principal-agent problems in financial markets.

Journal: Technology in Society
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Christian Borch

Accelerating Business-to-Business Contract Negotiations: Moving from One-Sided to Balanced Standard Contract Terms
Abstract: Many businesses adopt one-sided boilerplate contract terms and conditions that lead to protracted negotiations. Often, the parties ultimately reach a compromise that could have been reached sooner if they had put forward more balanced contract terms at the outset. We ask why this seemingly irrational behavior persists and suggest a different approach. A dominant theory suggests that putting forward balanced terms may be seen as a sign of a weak bargaining position. We argue, however, that agency conflicts and cognitive biases often better explain such behavior. Moreover, we advocate a speed-to-contract strategy where the parties elect to use more balanced (value-maximizing) terms from the outset, and thereby avoid costly negotiations as well as delays in realizing the benefits of a transaction.

Journal: Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Henrik Lando

Capital Mobility and Taxation: State–business Collusion in China
Abstract: Do more mobile firms pay lower taxes? Conventional wisdom argues that capital mobility creates downward pressure on corporate taxes, as firms can threaten to exit. Nevertheless, empirical findings are highly mixed and hard to reconcile, partly due to a lack of data at the microlevel. Using two comprehensive panel data sets with more than 780,000 Chinese firms over two decades, we find that firms with higher shares of mobile capital pay higher effective tax rates. We contend that this counterintuitive finding results from the strategic interaction between firms and governments. Knowing their vulnerability and sunk cost, firms with more fixed assets were more active in protecting themselves by bribing and colluding with local officials. Meanwhile, officials were more willing to seek bribes from these firms in exchange for tax cuts. In contrast, mobile firms were disadvantaged. Although capital mobility may provide additional bargaining power, firms with fixed assets can overcome this advantage through state–business collusion. Our quantitative and qualitative evidence show that fixed firms paid lower taxes in cities with cozy government–business relations. However, such advantages decreased after the launch of anti-corruption campaigns and in cities with higher fiscal transparency.

Journal: International Studies Quarterly
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Florian M. Hollenbach

ABCanDroid: A Cloud Integrated Android App for Noninvasive Early Breast Cancer Detection Using Transfer Learning
Abstract: Many patients affected by breast cancer die every year because of improper diagnosis and treatment. In recent years, applications of deep learning algorithms in the field of breast cancer detection have proved to be quite efficient. However, the application of such techniques has a lot of scope for improvement. Major works have been done in this field, however it can be made more efficient by the use of transfer learning to get impressive results. In the proposed approach, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is complemented with Transfer Learning for increasing the efficiency and accuracy of early detection of breast cancer for better diagnosis. The thought process involved using a pre-trained model, which already had some weights assigned rather than building the complete model from scratch. This paper mainly focuses on ResNet101 based Transfer Learning Model paired with the ImageNet dataset. The proposed framework provided us with an accuracy of 99.58%. Extensive experiments and tuning of hyperparameters have been performed to acquire the best possible results in terms of classification. The proposed frameworks aims to be an efficient tool for all doctors and society as a whole and help the user in early detection of breast cancer.

Journal: Sensors
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi, Raghava Rao Mukkamala

FN's globale bæredygtighedsmål: Hvordan bidrager virksomheden og forsyningskæden?
Abstract: I denne artikel diskuterer vi, hvordan virksomheder kan arbejde med at oversætte FN’s 17 globale bæredygtighedsmål til konkrete performancemål for virksomheden og forsyningskædens processer. Artiklen viser, hvordan de 17 bæredygtighedsmål kan sorteres, konkretiseres og opstilles i et balanced scorecard, der kan anvendes i virksomheden som et styringsredskab til at sikre fokus, bidrag og forbedringer i forhold til de vigtige FN-bæredygtighedsmål.

Journal: DILFaktuelt
Published: October 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kim Sundtoft Hald

The Rise of China and Contestation in Global Tax Governance
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between China’s changing economy and its global business tax diplomacy. Three trends dominate: China is becoming a net capital exporter, emerging as a major consumer market, and is home to digital giant firms including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. The resulting drive to promote both ‘going out’ and ‘bringing in’ foreign direct investment has led China to engage selectively and strategically with Western-led institutions. We show how China variously challenges, defends, and develops alternatives to global tax standards in three cases: global efforts to tackle corporate tax avoidance, bilateral tax treaty negotiations, and administrative tax cooperation.

Journal: Asia Pacific Business Review
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Rasmus Corlin Christensen

Markedsstyring indenfor statens mure: Statsgarantimodellen som en markedsbaseret styringsform i dansk transportinfrastruktur
Abstract: The article contributes to the Danish literature on public governance by presenting, analyzing and conceptualizing a widespread yet overlooked governance mode that will become even more influential in the future infrastructure policy. The article explores: How has the state guarantee model (SGM) developed into a market-based governance mode in the Danish infrastructure governance in the transport area, which is dominated by a hierarchal governance paradigm? The article is based on a qualitative case study of all infrastructure projects with SGM using the concept of governance paradigms adapted to the area of infrastructure. The article shows that SGM is invented to realize mega-projects outside the bureaucratic governance mode. The development from governance model to governance mode takes place as new public companies emerge and contribute with expertise and funding to the existing infrastructure network based on a bureaucratic governance mode. Over time, the model is further developed for public transport and medium-sized infrastructure projects in hybrid models that lead to changes in the norms for user charges in the hierarchal governance paradigm. Over time, the SGM reduces political control over existing and new SGM projects.

Journal: Politica - Tidsskrift for politisk videnskab
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lene Tolstrup Christensen

University Admission and the Similarity of Fields of Study: Effects on Earnings and Skill Usage
Abstract: Using discontinuities from the Danish college enrollment system, we find that students who are marginally accepted into their preferred program in a broad field that is different from their next-best choice (e.g., business rather than science) experience significant and long-lasting rewards as a result. In contrast, students whose preferred and next-best programs lie within the same broad field do not. Exploiting data from online job postings, we find that the estimated effects on skill usage similarly vary according to the degree of similarity between preferred and next-best choices.

Journal: Labour Economics
Published: April 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Moira K. Daly

National Shrines and Women’s Power: The History of Sophia of Minsk, Queen of Denmark
Abstract: This article compares two national shrines, the Cross of Dagmar (Denmark) and the Cross of St. Euphrosyne (Belarus), providing novel evidence that both crosses could have been made by the same master. It has long been contended that the Cross of Dagmar allegedly belonged to Queen Dagmar from Bohemia, the first wife of the Danish king Valdemar II, son of Sophia of Minsk and Valdemar the Great. A former director of the Danish National Museum, Fritze Lindahl, was the first to propose a hypothesis that the Cross of Dagmar could have come to Denmark together with Sophia via Minsk, Belarus. The purpose of this article is to verify Lindahl’s hypothesis, combining the Belarusian and Danish sources for the first time. The paper also contributes to queenship studies, taking out of oblivion Queen Sophia—a “forgotten queen” of Danish politics and the Baltic Sea region in the 12th century.

Journal: The Journal of Belarusian Studies
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lizaveta Dubinka-Hushcha

Dogmatic, Instrumental and Paradoxical Frames: A Pragmatic Research Framework for Studying Organizational Sustainability
Abstract: Our purpose is to develop a comprehensive categorization of organizational sustainability frames. This is necessary because a unified approach that considers the organizational sustainability frames of different organizations (FPOs, NPOs and hybrids) is absent in the extant research. Towards this end, we undertake an integrative review of 158 articles and identify seven frames based on three objective functions: maximization of economic capital, maintaining natural capital and creating social impact. Of the seven, three are dogmatic, each accepting only one objective function as legitimate: economic, natural and social capital; three are instrumental, with one objective function as the ultimate goal and the others as necessary means; and the last one is paradoxical, where tensions between objective functions are accommodated simultaneously rather than eliminated. We contribute to the literature by introducing the ‘dogmatic frame’ category to the ongoing conversation on organizational sustainability frames. We also contribute by demonstrating that instrumental frames exist not only at for-profit organizations but also at non-profits and hybrid organizations. Consequently, we link the conversation in these areas with that of organizational sustainability frames. Finally, we problematize the growing attention on the paradoxical frame by discussing its suitability in different contexts and situations.

Journal: International Journal of Management Reviews
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kai Hockerts

Theory-based Learning and Experimentation: How Strategists Can Systematically Generate Knowledge at the Edge between the Known and the Unknown
Abstract: Research summary
We present a framework for theory-based learning and experimentation under uncertainty. Strategists' assumptions about how an envisioned future can be reached are likely incomplete and possibly wrong, for instance, if critical contingencies have been overlooked. We explain how strategists can learn from thinking about and testing necessary conditions for an envisioned future to materialize. By logically linking assumptions to consequences our framework allows drawing inferences from experiments with testable assumptions about elements of a strategy that cannot be tested without major investments. Our framework contains the first formal model of learning from arguments in the strategy literature. By using our framework, strategists can maintain focus on an envisioned future while at the same time systematically seeking out reasons and evidence for why they are wrong.

Managerial summary
We develop a framework that helps strategists to learn and understand what it takes to reach ambitious goals when there is substantial uncertainty. We ask strategists to formulate their assumptions as a theory: what needs to be true for their goal to materialize. Our framework enables strategists to scrutinize and improve their assumptions by raising objections against their theory and by pointing them to critical experiments to learn whether their assumptions hold. Using our results, strategists can in particular identify overlooked critical contingencies. Overall, we suggest how strategists should revise their beliefs about what it takes to be successful in the light of evidence and arguments for and against their strategy.

Journal: Strategic Management Journal
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Timo Ehrig

Adaptive Rationality in Strategic Interaction: Do Emotions Regulate Thinking About Others?
Abstract: Forming beliefs or expectations about others’ behavior is fundamental to strategy as it codetermines the outcomes of interactions in and across organizations. In the game-theoretic conception of rationality, agents reason iteratively about each other to form expectations about behavior. According to prior scholarship, actual strategists fall short of this ideal, and attempts to understand the underlying cognitive processes of forming expectations about others are in their infancy. We propose that emotions help regulate iterative reasoning, that is, their tendency to not only reflect on what others think, but also on what others think about their thinking. Drawing on a controlled experiment, we find that a negative emotion (fear) deepens the tendency to engage in iterative reasoning compared with a positive emotion (amusement). Moreover, neutral emotions yield even deeper levels of iterative reasoning. We tentatively interpret these early findings and speculate about the broader link of emotions and expectations in the context of strategic management. Extending the view of emotional regulation as a capability, emotions may be building blocks of rational heuristics for strategic interaction and enable interactive decision making when strategists have little experience with the environment.

Journal: Strategy Science
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Timo Ehrig

Incentives for Non-participation: Absence in the United Kingdom House of Commons, 1997–2015
Abstract: The ability to hold MPs accountable for their actions is one of the cornerstones of modern representative democracy. While it is important for MPs to send signals to both their constituents and to their party, a large number of MPs remain absent from votes. Those absences are an important part of the MP’s toolbox, but absences carry limitations, rooted in electoral and political constraints. We investigate how—conditional on the electoral cycle—some well-established political constraints along the government and opposition lines vary in strength. We examine the absence probabilities of MPs in the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2015, and find that as the next elections are approaching, political constraints somewhat weaken and electoral ones take over, but marked differences emerge between parliamentary sessions.

Journal: Public Choice
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Zoltán Fazekas

Organizing Tekhnē: Configuring Processes and Politics through Crafts
Abstract: In this paper we investigate how craft as tekhnē configures organizations and their politics by exploring the relations of technology and organization. Through a two-year ethnographic study of remote craft villages in Vietnam, we consider how political concerns are mobilized, distributed and materialized through craft. Defining craft as a process of organizing that often involves mundane objects, but also sits at the centre of political concerns, we are interested in understanding how craft as tekhnē is realized in organizations and suggest two key features: craft as a location for politics and as a basis for mobilizing politics of scale. We provide three main contributions. First, we show that tekhnē can hold steady a focus on organizing through mundane objects. Second, we demonstrate that attending to the mundane reveals distinct relationships between technology and forms of organizing, that mobilize political concerns. Third, we explore the ways mundane objects of tekhnē are not only involved in representing and preserving cultural heritage, but also in challenging the marginalized status of these communities.

Journal: Organization Studies
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Marta Gasparin

Unintended Signals: Why Companies with a History of Offshoring Have to Pay Wage Penalties for New Hires
Abstract: We explore how companies with a history of offshoring attract their future employees. We reason that offshoring decisions send unintended signals about job insecurity to companies’ onshore labor markets. This signaling effect implies that offshoring companies must pay higher salaries for new hires than non-offshoring companies. We tested our predictions on a sample of 7971 matched managers and professionals recently hired by offshoring and non-offshoring companies. Our results indicate a 3–7% wage penalty for offshoring companies. Thus, we conclude that not only is offshoring challenging to implement, but it can also entail a number of general ramifications for the domestic labor market.

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Alina Grecu, Wolfgang Sofka, Marcus Møller Larsen, Torben Pedersen

Associations of Sleep Duration and Screen Time with Incidence of Overweight in European Children: The IDEFICS/I.Family Cohort
Abstract: Introduction: Over the past decades, children have been increasingly using screen devices, while at the same time their sleep duration has decreased. Both behaviors have been associated with excess weight, and it is possible they act as mutually reinforcing behaviors for weight gain. The aim of the study was to explore independent, prospective associations of screen time and sleep duration with incident overweight in a sample of European children. Methods: Data from 4,285 children of the IDEFICS/I.Family cohort who were followed up from 2009/2010 to 2013/2014 were analyzed. Hours per day of screen time and of sleep duration were reported by parents at baseline. Logistic regression analyses were carried out in separate and mutually adjusted models controlled for sex, age, European country region, parental level of education, and baseline BMI z-scores. Results: Among normal weight children at baseline (N = 3,734), separate models suggest that every hour increase in screen time and every hour decrease in sleep duration were associated with higher odds of the child becoming overweight or obese at follow-up (OR = 1.16, 95% CI: 1.02–1.32 and OR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.05–1.43, respectively). In the mutually adjusted model, both associations were attenuated slightly ( screen time OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.99–1.28; sleep duration OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.03–1.40), being consistently somewhat stronger for sleep duration. Discussion/Conclusion: Both screen time and sleep duration increased the incidence of overweight or obesity by 13–20%. Interventions that include an emphasis on adequate sleep and minimal screen time are needed to establish their causal role in the prevention of overweight and obesity among European children.

Journal: Obesity Facts
Published: November 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lucia A. Reisch

Navigating Norms and Invisible Rules: Explaining the Case of Business influence in International Shipping Regulation
Abstract: This article develops a micro-level theoretical perspective of business influence in international negotiations. By drawing on organizational institutional theory, the article proposes that site-specific institutionalized norms can structure the nature and extent of business power. The article illustrates the value of this perspective through an illustrative case study of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) through interviews and participant observation of on-site dynamics during negotiations on environmental shipping regulation. The article shows how, in the case of the IMO, specific institutionalized norms and beliefs structure private actors’ possible influence and their claims to authority. In particular, strongly held beliefs about the nature of political deliberation in the IMO both constrain and enable business interests, sometimes overriding the general structural power of the shipping industry. This research implies that future scholarship of business power and lobbying should be attentive to specific institutionalized ideas structuring business actors’ range of legitimate activities, in particular in international institutions where individual negotiation sites can develop idiosyncratic norms and beliefs about the legitimacy of private actor participation.

Journal: Business and Politics
Published: March 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Christian Hendriksen

Organizational and Institutional Entrepreneuring: Introduction to the Special Issue
Abstract: In our Introduction to this Special Issue on Organizational and Institutional Entrepreneuring, we draw attention to the importance of recognizing how processes and practices of entrepreneuring take place in the context of an already organized world. We particularly draw attention to how such entrepreneuring processes, as imaginative-poetic extensions beyond the present, can occur in a variety of societal, institutional and organizational contexts. Overall we focus on entrepreneuring as the process of creating organization. As a result, we believe that important insights arise by drawing attention to ways of ‘starting’ and ‘actualizing’, rather than conceptualizing entrepreneurship as something that was already ‘started’ in the past. This Special Issue thus helps to provide much-needed scholarship that expands our knowledge base and provides a foundation for future research. We conclude our Introduction with a summary of the articles making up this Special Issue, noting the ways that each article helps to advance our knowledge base about the processes of entrepreneuring.

Journal: Organization Studies
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Daniel Hjorth

Transportation and Quality of Life: Evidence from Denmark
Abstract: This paper investigates the importance of transportation for quality of life in Denmark. We first calibrate a simple general equilibrium model to analyse how local wage levels, housing costs, and commuting costs vary across urban areas as well as to construct a quality of life index that measures a representative household’s willingness to pay for local amenities. We find that the quality of life is high in large cities. Wages and rents are also substantially higher in urban areas. We then regress the quality of life index on observed amenities to infer how quality of life is associated with transportation. Our empirical results suggest that the quality of the public transport system is particularly important for the quality of life.

Journal: Transportation Research. Part A: Policy & Practice
Published: March 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Ismir Mulalic

Who Gets Labour Market Training? Access Biases of Social Investment in Finland
Abstract: Policy access biases worry social policy scholars because they generate Matthew effects that exacerbate socioeconomic divides. Yet, access biases in many social investment policies, like training during unemployment, remain under-researched. Such access biases may be detrimental to a critical objective of social investment: to improve and uplift workers with precarious economic prospects. We focus here on access bias in training provided by public employment services against lower-educated workers. They are vulnerable to unemployment and fractured employment and should thus be targeted for training. While there is burgeoning attention on access biases in training against disadvantaged youths and non-citizens, fewer studies have focused on similar access bias against
lower-educated workers. We highlight that access bias against such workers may stem from their lower willingness and demand for training, as well as policy design, informal eligibility criteria and caseworkers’ creaming practices.
We suggest, however, that greater availability of training opportunities may ease this access bias against lower educated workers. Using the Finnish Income Distribution survey data (2007–2012), we find evidence of training access bias: primary-educated workers are significantly less likely to participate in training than upper secondary andvocationally educated workers. Concurrently, our results show that availability of training is not significantly associated with the extent of training access bias against primary-educated workers. With a Nordic welfare model that prioritizes training to remedy labour market vulnerability and stresses that access to benefits and services is based on need, Finland represents a least likely case to find such access bias in training.We therefore consider these results worrying: if it is found here, it may be prevalent in countries with other welfare models.

Journal: Journal of European Social Policy
Published: January 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Zhen Jie Im

Leveraging Participation in Apparel Global Supply Chains through Green Industrialization Strategies: Implications for Low-income Countries
Abstract: The global apparel industry has been a gateway to industrialization, but changes in the global economy have eroded the benefits from participating in apparel global supply chains, leading to thin industrialization in low-income countries where suppliers firms are squeezed between low prices and high requirements. More recently, buyers added improved environmental performance as a new requirement for their suppliers, seeking to avoid brand risks in their supply chains due to consumer awareness. This environmental upgrading focused on eco-efficiency gains, which increased productivity among suppliers while using fewer resources, but buyers captured most of the benefits in terms of maintaining low prices due to market power imbalances. This article aims to shift the debate on the limits of participating in global supply chains by conceptualizing the opportunities available to late industrializing countries from embedding the environmental upgrading of individual supplier firms within a broader green industrialization process, which offers more opportunities for value capture and inter-industry linkages through circular industrial economies. We use this conceptual approach to examine the newest apparel sourcing location, Ethiopia, and the government's green industrial policy that aimed to spur industrialization through apparel specific eco-industrial parks.

Journal: Ecological Economics
Published: April 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Federico Jensen, Lindsay Whitfield

Towards a Collaboration Framework for Circular Economy: The Role of Dynamic Capabilities and Open Innovation
Abstract: Transitioning from linear to circular production systems requires interactions that include cross-sectoral collaboration in networks. Understanding the role of collaboration within these networks can support the transition to a circular economy. To understand cross-sectoral collaborative endeavors, this paper develops a collaboration framework for circular economy by combining and interlinking three theories: the relational view, open innovation, and dynamic capabilities. The framework is applied to the Circle-House-Project, a cross-sectoral collaborative project aimed at scaling circular economy in the Danish construction sector. The explorative data included desk research and 15 semistructured interviews with expert project partners. The findings were transcribed, structured, coded, condensed, and categorized to provide an illustrative case based on a lighthouse project in the construction sector, affording a novel understanding of how cross-sectoral collaboration can support advancing circular economy practices by developing knowledge-sharing routines and ecocentric dynamic capabilities. The paper provides insights for academics and practitioners from a broad field by combining diverse interdisciplinary perspectives to unlock the potential of cross-sectoral collaboration for advancing circular economy.

Journal: Business Strategy and the Environment
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Sönnich Sönnichsen, Philip Beske-Janssen

Advancing Universal Health Coverage in the COVID-19 Era: An Assessment of Public Health Services Technical Efficiency and Applied Cost Allocation in Cambodia
Abstract: Background:
Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is a global priority and a keystone element of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, COVID-19 is causing serious impacts on tax revenue and many countries are facing constraints to new investment in health. To advance UHC progress, countries can also focus on improving health system technical efficiency to maximize the service outputs given the current health financing levels.
Methods:
This study assesses Cambodia’s public health services technical efficiency, unit costs, and utilization rates to quantify the extent to which current health financing can accommodate the expansion of social health protection coverage. This study employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), truncated regression, and pioneers the application of DEA Aumann-Shapley applied cost allocation to the health sector, enabling unit cost estimation for the major social health insurance payment categories.
Results:
Overall, for the public health system to be fully efficient output would need to increase by 34 and 73% for hospitals and health centers, respectively. We find public sector service quality, private sector providers, and non-discretionary financing to be statistically significant factors affecting technical efficiency. We estimate there is potential supply-side ‘service space’ to expand population coverage to an additional 4.69 million social health insurance beneficiaries with existing financing if the public health system were fully efficient.
Conclusions:
Public health service efficiency in Cambodia can be improved by increasing utilization of cost-effective services. This can be achieved by enrolling more beneficiaries into the social health insurance schemes with current supply-side financing levels. Other factors that can lead to increased efficiency are improving health service quality, regulating private sector providers, focusing on discretionary health financing, and incentivizing a referral system.

Journal: Health Economics Review
Published: 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Peter Bogetoft

Saving Migrants’ Lives at Sea: Improving Search and Rescue Operations
Abstract: The present study focuses on the Mediterranean Sea migration crisis and investigates the effectiveness of search and rescue (SAR) operations alongside measures to reduce the number of deaths of migrants at sea. It also describes the stakeholders involved in SAR activities. The paper first analyzes secondary data and the results of 24 in-depth interviews in order to develop an analytical framework, which is then complemented by a system dynamics model to explore the complexity and interactions among stakeholders in SAR operations. The study shows that the death toll at sea can be reduced by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, by providing legal migration pathways under certain conditions, and by engaging in more effective migrant detection and interception at sea. Lastly, raising potential migrants’ awareness about the risk of death during the sea crossing should be seen as an additional measure, while SAR activities should be maintained to prevent loss of life at sea.

Journal: Production and Operations Management
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Michele Acciaro

Valuation Ecologies and Academic Governance
Abstract: University managers are forced to assume responsibility for more and more aspects of academic life. This essay focuses on academic publishing and how deans and department heads attempt to manage the volume and quality of publications at their university because others, including politicians and scholars, rate the quality and effectiveness of the university on their publication output. How managers assume and practice this responsibility for academic publishing may seem self-evident but proves to hide both paradoxes and loopholes. Reflections build on an empirical illustration derived from the adoption of a conventional publication strategy. The implementation of this strategy is fueled by a large dose of strategic expediency. However, such expediency incurs costs related to impression management when managers need to show a sense of command in response to a disappointing performance. Both material costs (time and money) and symbolic costs (demonstrating allegiance to an embarrassingly naive conception of academia) are incurred. Exactly because management is exercised on the premise of an embarrassingly naive conception of academia, the presumed coercive forces are exceedingly loose and ineffective. The room for value judgment at all levels of the university organization is not closed but rather enshrined (for good or bad) behind a façade of objectivity and factuality.

Journal: Valuation Studies
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kristian Kreiner

Firms' Potential for Economic Sustainability and Firm Value: The Moderating Role of Blockholders
Abstract: Firms that strive to innovate (i.e., firms that invest in research and development—R&D) have high potential for economic sustainability due to the possibility of generating new platforms of growth and future revenue. However, it is little understood whether financial markets incorporate (if at all) information on firms' potential for economic sustainability. After all, firms' information on R&D investments is very opaque. This poses a challenge to investors to incorporate into firm value any economic sustainability emanating from such information. We investigate whether blockholders, owners with at least a 5% shareholding in a firm, help reflect in firm value the firms' potential for economic sustainability. We find that active blockholders, rather than passive blockholders, help incorporate in firm value the potential for economic sustainability. Thus, active blockholders help mitigate agency problems in firms and help financial markets digest firms' potential for economic sustainability

Journal: Sustainable Development
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Steen Thomsen

Pandemic Preparedness Systems and Diverging COVID-19 Responses within Similar Public Health Regimes: A Comparative Study of Expert Perceptions of Pandemic Response in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
Abstract: Background
National responses to the COVID-19 pandemic depend on national preparedness systems that must be understood as components of global public health emergency preparedness systems, governed and coordinated through the World Health Organization’s 2005 International Health Regulations. The pandemic has raised the question of why countries belonging to similar public health regimes, coordinated through the same global system, responded differently to the same threat. Comparing the responses of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, countries with similar public health regimes, the paper investigates to what degree national differences in COVID-19 policy response reflect significant differences in the policy preferences of national expert groups.

Results
We employ a structured case comparison of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to analyze their’ politico-administrative pandemic preparedness systems and policy responses during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use the results of an interdisciplinary expert survey completed in 2020 to analyze expert perceptions in two ways. First, we analyze expert perceptions of COVID-19 responses while controlling for national COVID-19 trajectories and experts’ characteristics. Second, we analyze the distribution and effect of dominant global expert-held ideas across countries, showing the importance of dominant ideas for experts’ perceptions and preferences for COVID-19 response.

Conclusion
The study finds no evidence indicating that COVID-19 policy variation between the most similar cases of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are the result of differences in the policy preferences of national expert groups. Instead, our study highlights the importance of other factors than cross-national expert dissensus for explaining variation in pandemic response such as the politico-administrative organization of pandemic preparedness systems. Further, we find that expert support for dominant ideas such as a ‘focused protection strategy’ is associated with consistent policy preferences across locational, disciplinary, and geographic affiliations. Recognition of the latter should be a part of future discussions about how global ideas of pandemic preparedness are diffused transnationally and embedded in national politico-administrative systems.

Journal: Globalization and Health
Published: 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jakob Laage-Thomsen, Søren Lund Frandsen

Solving Paradox by Increasing Technological Capacity: A Critique of the Concept of Business Model Innovation at TikTok
Abstract: This paper comments on Yulun Ma and Yue Hu's (2021) recent article ‘Business Model Innovation and Experimentation in Transforming Economies: ByteDance and TikTok’. It argues that TikTok's international success is not due to so-called business model innovation; instead, it is because ByteDance has overcome three major hurdles facing emerging market firms pursuing internationalization. It also posits that the case of TikTok offers inspiration for theorizing paradox, namely, individuals and organizations can solve paradoxical tensions by increasing capacity through the use of advanced technologies.

Journal: Management and Organization Review
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Xin Li

Producing History, (Re)Branding the Nation: The Case of an Exhibition on the Danish Golden Age
Abstract: This article examines how national museums, which are key actors in nation-building and nation-branding, participate in the production and circulation of national myths for present contexts. Through a case study of a travelling exhibition on the Danish Golden Age, we analyse how the exhibition and myth of the Danish Golden Age change and transform as they are circulated in the national contexts of Denmark and Sweden, and how the changes are linked to variations and differences in nation-building and nation-branding in the two national contexts. Our theoretical framework combines nationalism studies with the concept of nation-branding, and uses an institutional perspective to explore how rule-like myths about a golden age are transformed in the face of differing national-identity and nation-branding needs.

Journal: Scandinavian Journal of History
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Ida Lunde Jørgensen, Mads Mordhorst

Occupations and Sickness-Related Absences during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract: Pandemic frontline occupations consist of disproportionately low socioeconomic status and racial minority workers. Documenting occupational health disparities is therefore crucial for understanding COVID-19-related health inequalities in the United States. This study uses Current Population Survey microdata to estimate occupational differences in sickness-related absences (SAs) from work in March through June 2020 and their contribution to educational, racial-ethnic, and nativity health disparities. We find that there has been an unprecedented rise in SAs concentrated in transportation, food-related, and personal care and service occupations. SA rates were 6 times higher in these occupations than in non-health-care professions. The greatest increases were in occupations that are unsuitable for remote work, require workers to work close to others, pay low wages, and rarely provide health insurance. Workers in these occupations are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, indigenous, and immigrants. Occupation contributes 41% of the total of Black/white differences and 54% of educational differences in SAs.

Journal: Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Thomas Lyttelton

Ventriloqual Reflexivity: Exploring the Communicative Relationality of the ‘I’ and the ‘It’
Abstract: Can an exploration of managers’ real-time organizational talk make way for a profoundly revised theory of reflexivity? Indeed, our analysis of the reflexivity literature reveals four significant points of contestation – the subject/object distinction, temporality, representation and agency – all of which revolve around the interplay of an ‘I’ (at least one reflexive agent) and an ‘it’ (something to be reflexive about). The focus of this inquiry lies in how the ‘I’ and the ‘it’ are constituted communicatively and what generates, sustains and animates them in interaction. Such interactions are sourced from a post-experience master programme for practising managers, thus providing naturally occurring data amendable to a ventriloqual analysis. We identify and demonstrate three types of reflexive moments: conflating, bifurcating and animating. We subsequently theorize these as instances of ventriloqual reflexivity, using the terms conflating, bifurcating and animating to express the different moments in which speakers co-orient to the communicative constitution of the ‘I’ and the ‘it’. Ventriloqual reflexivity allows us to explore reflexivity as an interactional and situated accomplishment, thus further pointing to how reflexive practices can be understood and enhanced.

Journal: Human Relations
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Frank Meier

The Entwinement of Policy, Design and Care Scripts: Providing Alternative Choice‐dependency Situations with Care Robots
Abstract: The use of robots to assist feeding has become important for people with an impaired arm function. Yet, despite large-scale dissemination strategies, it has proven difficult to sustain the use of this technology. This ethnographic study draws on the script approach to discuss the use of robots to assist feeding. The empirical work was done at locations in Denmark and Sweden. Drawing on document studies, interviews, observation of meals and video footage, we discuss (1) policy strategies promoting ideas such as self-reliance; (2) design visions promoting ideas such as empowerment; (3) and three scripts of care: (a) the script of choice, (b) the script of eating alone and (c) the script of eating together. We argue that scripts entwine and give rise to and prevent the use of robots. The study contributes to the script literature and the care robot literature by substantiating that care robots may generate choice-dependency situations for users. Rather than the somewhat overflowing ‘self-reliance’ and ‘empowerment’, alternative configurations of choice and dependency emerge, in which some situations fit users better than others. We conclude that although sustaining the use of feeding robots is difficult, in some cases, useful choices arise for both end-users and care providers.

Journal: Sociology of Health and Illness
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Johan Simonsen Abildgaard

A Port Attractiveness Assessment Framework: Chittagong Port's Attractiveness from the Users’ Perspective
Abstract: This study evaluates the attractiveness of the Chittagong Port of Bangladesh from the port users’ perspective. Existing maritime literature is focused on major ports of Europe, East Asia and North America, but many secondary ports of the mainline maritime network, which play a crucial role in their countries, are overlooked. Chittagong Port is such a port having an enormous impact on the economy of Bangladesh. The perceived attractiveness of this port to its users is assessed in this study based on six factors: port connectivity, facilities, costs, service quality, policy and management, and green port management practices. Data are collected on a 7-point Likert scale for 25 measurement items, and the port attractiveness measurement model is validated using Confirmatory Composite Analysis (CCA). The results indicate that the port users’ find the port’s connectivity most attractive and green port management practices least attractive. We also observe that port users with a high frequency of port usage find Chittagong Port less attractive compared to less frequent users. These findings have significant policy implications for the port authority and policymakers to enhance the port’s attractiveness, which is in a monopolistic position handling more than 90% of international trade for Bangladesh. Further, a validation of the port attractiveness assessment framework enables researchers and practitioners to use it as a standard instrument for assessing the attractiveness of ports having similar characteristics globally.

Journal: Case Studies on Transport Policy
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Hans-Joachim Schramm

Pleasure through Pain: An Empirical Examination of Benign Masochism in Tourism
Abstract: Paradoxical at first sight, some tourists engage in activities involving negative emotions and even physical pain. Tourism scholars have begun investigating this phenomenon and have called for more of such research. Against this background, the authors introduce to tourism the notion of benign masochism, defining it as a trait describing a person’s tendency to embrace and seek pleasure through safely playing with a stimulating level of physical pain and negative emotions. In doing so, the authors root benign masochism in the notion of play from evolutionary psychology and develop a benign masochism scale that is able to predict various tourism outcomes, including willingness to visit a haunted house, to go on a challenging adventure holiday, and to visit a nuclear disaster site. The authors conclude by discussing theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and future opportunities for research.

Journal: Journal of Travel Research
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Florian Kock, Alexander Josiassen

How do R&D Networks Change? The Upgrading of Innovation Capabilities in Emerging Market Firms. Insights from China’s Wind Energy Sector
Abstract: Innovative activities are increasingly decentralized and globally dispersed, which provides new upgrading opportunities for emerging market firms. However, little is known about how latecomer firms (re-)organize their research and development (R&D) over time as conditions for upgrading change. This paper systematically maps the R&D networks of China’s lead firms in the wind turbine industry. The empirical findings reveal that latecomer firms not only exploit but increasingly co-create vanguard knowledge in global R&D networks through organizational diversification. Taking an evolutionary perspective, the paper extends our understanding of the changing nature of upgrading mechanisms and provides new insights into the reorganization of innovation processes in an era of technological change.

Journal: Innovation and Development
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lars Oehler

“Islands of Qualities in an Ocean of Quantification”: A Conversation with Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder
Abstract: In this interview, Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder both reflect on their work on rankings, reactivity and commensuration, and think about the implication their sociological work could have on the practices of those dealing with rankings and their reactive effects.

Journal: Valuation Studies
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: José Ossandón

(University) Management after Valuation Studies: Carving a Practice between the Offended Native, the Anxious Scholar, and the Useless Practitioner
Abstract: This text introduces this issues’ symposium: “A correspondence on (University) Management after Valuation Studies”. The text has two parts. The first introduces the dilemma, the question of whether valuation studies could, besides studying valuation in practice, inform better practices of valuation, and the method of the correspondence, to use situations in which researchers of valuation are also practitioners, namely, the management of quality in higher education, as the starting point to think the correspondence’s problem. In the second part, the author reflects on his own experience in a situation of valuation at work, and proposes three different personae for the student of valuation: the offended native, the anxious scholar, and the useless practitioner.

Journal: Valuation Studies
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: José Ossandón

Explaining the Foundations of Global English: A Review Article on Global English and Political Economy, by John O’Regan (Routledge 2021)
Abstract: Pending

Journal: Language and History
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Robert Phillipson

Gender and Choice of Pension Product
Abstract: We use individual-investor data from Denmark to study whether women prefer pension schemes with lower financial risk due to a guaranteed return over those offering more uncertain market-based return. Guaranteed-return schemes provide less risky but also lower expected returns. We study both the extensive (whether women have lower tendency to invest in market-based schemes) and the intensive margin (how much more women invest in schemes with guaranteed return). We find women less likely to invest in riskier pension schemes, and those women who do, invest lower amounts compared to men. This contributes to inequality between men and women during retirement.

Journal: Finance Research Letters
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Linda Sandris Larsen, Ulf Nielsson, Jesper Rangvid

Cognitive Consequences of Iodine Deficiency in Adolescence: Evidence from Salt Iodization in Denmark
Abstract: Over the past three decades, many countries have introduced iodized salt policies to eradicate iodine deficiency. Iodine deficiency in utero is detrimental to cognitive ability, but little is known about the consequences of iodine deficiencies after birth. This paper examines the impact of iodine deficiency in adolescence on school performance. I exploit the introduction of iodized salt in Denmark during 1998-2001 as a natural experiment. Combining administrative records on high school grades over a thirty-year period with geographic variation in initial iodine deficiency, I find that salt iodization increases the GPA of students by 6-9 percent of a standard deviation.

Journal: Scandinavian Journal of Economics
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Benjamin Ly Serena

My Self-reflection on the Importance of Michael Power’s Book The Audit Society to My Research and Interest in Auditing
Abstract: Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications that Power’s book had to the author’s research in public sector auditing.

Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the author reflects and debates the inspiration that Michael Power’s book The Audit Society had on the author’s own research.

Findings
The author finds that this book had a significant influence on how he succeeded theorizing his studies on auditing, and how he could contribute to the audit literature. It is stunning how the book succeeded in synthesizing audit research, encouraging scholars to understand auditing as a social practice, i.e. how auditing can be theorized using various social science theories and how the book also appealed to broader social science.

Research limitations/implications
This paper is a reflection that covers around a 20-year period with potential mis-representations of how exactly sequences of actions and thoughts were.

Practical implications
This paper helps to clarify how it is that audit operates and influences everyday life of persons involved with auditing.

Social implications
This paper casts doubts as to what actions are carried out in the name of audit and that audit is not just a value free activity but involved with political agendas.

Originality/value
The originality of this paper is that it fleshes out how a seminal book can have significant implications on how research is carried out.
 

Journal: Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Peter Skærbæk

The Continuous Translation of the Idea of Integrated Reporting (IR): The Travel of IR to a Public Sector Entity
Abstract: This study explores the travel of integrated reporting (IR) from a global private sector reporting idea into a local public sector entity. Drawing on the Scandinavian institutionalist notion of translation, a case study approach is adopted to analyse the continuous transformation of the idea of IR. The case study unfolds the process as IR became dis-embedded from the corporate reporting context, packaged as an adaptable accounting technology to be unpacked, and re-embedded in a public sector entity. This study extends the current literature in three areas. First, it contributes to how IR moves across context. By recognising the importance of both the macro-trends and the idiosyncrasies of the micro context, it provides a holistic perspective on the continuous adaptions of IR as it travels, thereby contributing to our understanding of the diversity inherent in IR practice. Second, it provides empirical insights into the challenges of adapting IR in a public sector context. Third, it reveals the idea carrier's instrumental role in connecting different contexts and in editing and giving meaning to the continuous translations of IR.

Journal: Accounting Forum
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Caroline Aggestam Pontoppidan

Explaining Persistent Ineffectiveness in Professional Online Communities: Multilevel Tensions and Misguided Coping Strategies
Abstract: Online communities (OCs) have become an increasingly prevalent way for organizations to bring people together to collaborate and create value. However, despite the abundance of extant literature, many studies still point to the lack of long-term sustainability of OCs. We contend that communities become dormant or obsolete over time because of manifestations of ineffectiveness—a state of the community that hinders the attainment of individual and collective desired outcomes. While ineffectiveness in OCs is common, it is less apparent why such ineffectiveness persists. Two knowledge gaps are particularly significant here. First, while the multilevel nature of OCs is acknowledged, corresponding difficulties in aligning individual and collective interests and behaviors have often been neglected in past studies. Second, rare longitudinal studies have revealed that community members respond to ineffectiveness with various coping behaviors. However, the impact of these coping behaviors may not turn out as desired. Consequently, we investigate the persistence of ineffectiveness from the perspective of multilevel and coping effects, addressing the following research question: How and why does ineffectiveness persist in online communities? Our critical realist case study offers a three-step explanatory framework: (1) underlying multilevel tensions in the community contribute to usage ineffectiveness (i.e., members are unable to use the OC effectively); (2) misguided coping behaviors contribute to ineffective adaptation (i.e., members are unable to cope with not being able to use the OC effectively); and (3) ineffectiveness persists due to the interaction between usage and adaptation ineffectiveness.

Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems
Published: 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Mari-Klara Stein, Chee-Wee Tan

From Bilbao to Bodø: How Cultural Flagships Are Transforming Local Cultural Life
Abstract: In recent years, we have seen large investments in spectacular buildings hosting cultural institutions, with the dual aim of facilitating culture and generating economic growth. This article raises the question of whether the investments have shifted the priorities of cultural policy, and sets out to investigate the effect of the establishment of 52 culture houses in Norwegian municipalities using panel data and a difference-in-difference approach. The results confirm an increased prioritization of the sector in the years following the opening of the culture houses, indicated by a large increase in the municipal expenses for culture. The results further support that there has been a shift in priority, as there seems to be a stronger support for professional arts and a lower support for activities directed toward amateur organizations and children/youth. There are also strong indications of growth in “new” arenas of art and culture, indicated by a significant increase in the number of cinema displays and theater performances, in addition to a significant growth of jobs related to art and entertainment.

Journal: Journal of Cultural Economics
Published: January 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Hanna Nyborg Storm

Algorithmic Governmentality and the Space of Ethics: Examples from 'People Analytics'
Abstract: Does human reflexivity disappear as datafication and automation expand and machines take over decision-making? In trying to find answers to this question, we take our lead from recent debates about People Analytics and analyze how the use of algorithmically driven digital technologies like facial recognition and drones in work-organizations and societies at large shape the conditions of ethical conduct. Linking the concepts of algorithmic governmentality and space of ethics, we analyze how such technologies come to form part of governing practices in specific contexts. We conclude that datafication and automation have huge implications for human reflexivity and the capacity to enact responsibility in decision-making. But that itself does not mean that the space for ethical conduct disappears, which is the impression left in some literatures, but rather that is modified and (re) constituted in the interplay of mechanisms of closure (like automating decision-making, black-boxing and circumventing reflexivity), and opening (such as dis-closing contingent values and interests in processes of problematization, contestation and resistance). We suggest that future research investigates in more detail the dynamics of closure and opening in empirical studies of the use and effects of algorithmically driven digital technologies in organizations and societies.

Journal: Human Relations
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Hans Krause Hansen

Tab af arbejdspladser ved konkurser?
Abstract: I denne artikel undersøges de beskæftigelsesmæssige omkostninger af konkurser, ligesom det undersøges, om antallet af konkurser er en god indikator for konjunkturudviklingen. Data er et datamateriale, der består af kombinering af en række registre hos Danmarks Statistik. Undersøgelsen viser nok lidt overraskende, at der kun er relativt få medarbejdere, der direkte påvirkes af konkursen. Undersøgelsen viser også, at de ansatte ikke mærkes i deres videre jobsøgning af at have været ansat i en virksomhed, der går konkurs, formentlig fordi mange berørte medarbejdere bliver ansat i virksomheder, som viderefører en del af aktiviteterne fra den konkursramte virksomhed. Samtidig viser analyserne, at antallet af konkurser ikke varierer særligt tæt med konjunkturudviklingen. Antallet af konkurser er således ikke nogen god indikator for, hvordan det går for dansk erhvervsliv.

Journal: Erhvervsjuridisk Tidsskrift
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Niels Westergård-Nielsen

Rejsen mod bæredygtigt indkøb – Hvorfor er det så udfordrende og komplekst?
Abstract: Implementering af bæredygtige indkøb er kompleks og medfører en række udfordringer, som det er nødvendigt, at virksomheder tager stilling til og håndterer. Men tiden er knap, så derfor mål virksomheder tage beslutninger i uvished. Vi forsøger i denne artikel at belyse, hvordan virksomheder kan navigere i uvished for
at opnå en højere grad af bæredygtige indkøb i komplekse forsyningskæder.

Journal: Effektivitet
Published: 2021
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kim Sundtoft Hald

Precise Marketing Data Mining Method of E-Commerce Platform Based on Association Rules
Abstract: The current marketing data management method cannot analyze and mine the correlation between marketing data, which leads to the confusion of the attributes of marketing data mining results and the inability to realize efficient data scheduling. This paper introduces improved association rules into precision marketing data mining of e-commerce platform. Optimize the background hardware of the e-commerce platform, collect and analyze the multi-source data. Information fusion method is used to optimize association rules, and combined with distributed similarity, accurate mining of marketing data of e-commerce platform is completed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can realize precision marketing data mining and has high robustness.

Journal: Mobile Networks and Applications
Published: February 2022
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi

The page was last edited by: Sekretariat for Ledelse og Kommunikation // 07/11/2023