The long-term outcomes of reform processes in the public sector remain understudied inthe literature. This study investigates the Swedish Transport Administration (STA)employees’ and managers’ translation and internalization of their new role as societaldevelopers. Since the STA’s founding in 2010 and until 2018, the STA head officeneither guided nor centrally determined how to define and understand the STA’s role as asocietal developer. We examine this internalization process through the lens ofCzarniawska’s translation model of the distribution of ideas as a collective creationthrough local translation and adaptation. The study shows that the ongoing friction thatoccurs when the concept and role of a societal developer are discussed and disseminatedwithin an organization is influenced by prevailing identities and local action nets. It alsoshows that the translation of this new role eventually failed, due to either it beingsubmerged within already-existing concepts or it having a perceived lack of relevance.We conducted this mixed-method study over six years (2016–2021) using documentaryanalysis, workshop participation, interviews and a survey.

A vision of cleantech has been implemented on an international scale with financial assistance, new organizations and programmes. Given the wider contexts of political and commercial promotion, this article investigates management and governance of eight cleantech networks operating in different regions in Sweden. The aim of this article is to explore how an integrated approach based on network theories of economic sociology and a regional development perspective can contribute to the study of network intermediaries. What roles do intermediaries play in triple-helix networks? A suggested answer to this question is a typology of three intermediaries: a brokerage function for business agreements, a facilitation function whereby actors facilitate various processes and co-ordinate arrangements and a legitimizing function involving activities conducted in the political and wider societal realms. The legitimiser role of regional cleantech networks has important feedback effects on the wider discourses of environmental development, of which cleantech is a particular and influential vision.

I samband med att Trafikverket bildades 2010 angavs i interna styrdokument att verkets identitet skulle betona rollen som samhällsutvecklare. Denna rapport undersöker hur medarbetare och chefer i Trafikverkets fem verksamhetsområden skapar förståelse för uppdraget som samhällsutvecklare. Studien baseras på dokumentanalys, deltagande vid workshops, intervjuer med tio medarbetare runt om i Sverige samt en enkätundersökning som fick 765 svar av chefer och medarbetare inom Trafikverkets fem olika verksamhetsområden.

Införandet av rollen som samhällsutvecklare syftar till att betona att Trafikverkets uppdrag inte kan reduceras till planering, byggande och underhåll av infrastruktur. Uppdraget är direkt kopplat till de transportpolitiska målen som berör transportsystemet i sin helhet vilket utgör en väsentlig del i samhällsutvecklingen. Ett proaktivt arbetssätt tillsammans med andra aktörer framstår då som nödvändigt för att kunna skapa ett tillgängligt, jämställt och säkert transportsystem med god miljökvalitet. Huvudfrågan i detta forskningsprojekt är hur styrningen kan utformas för att ge samhällsutvecklarrollen önskat genomslag.

Resultaten från denna första delstudie visar att begreppet samhällsutvecklare som sådant är otydligt och skapar utrymme för olika tolkningar och missförstånd. Det finns olika vägar att gå för att undvika missförstånd.

En tänkbar huvudriktning är att ge de olika verksamhetsområdena möjlighet att internalisera begreppet samhällsutvecklare genom att koppla Trafikverkets sex befintliga leveranskvaliteter – Punktlighet, Kapacitet, Robusthet, Användbarhet, Säkerhet samt Miljö och hälsa – till rollen som samhällsutvecklare. På så sätt kan begreppet och rollen som samhällsutvecklare fyllas med ett innehåll som både är konkret och meningsfullt för medarbetarna. Ett problem med denna väg är att leveranskvaliteterna har implementerats i Trafikverkets styrning som ett medel för att kunna vara tydligare i rapporteringen gentemot uppdragsgivaren, d.v.s. vertikalt i relation till regeringen. Risken finns att det horisontellt orienterade tjänsteperspektivet kommer i skymundan, d.v.s. att användarna av transportsystemet inte får tillräcklig uppmärksamhet. 

En annan huvudinriktning är därför att bejaka att både begreppet och rollen som samhällsutvecklare ger olika tolkningsmöjligheter. På den vägen skulle det vidgade perspektivet av Trafikverkets uppdrag, att bidra till samhällsutveckling som sker genom att inta rollen som samhällsutvecklare, kunna leva utan begränsning. Det skulle ge incitament att tänka nytt, att fortsätta föra dialoger såväl internt som externt utan att ”lägga locket på” när transportsystemets funktion kan anses vara god nog enligt leveranskvaliteterna.

Many different social contexts are embedded in, and mediated by, visual practices, so too in corporate communication. The specific aim of this paper is to use the concept of scopic regimes as a means of understanding pictorial representations of time and temporality in online corporate communication. It is argued in this paper that the temporal reference has changed direction, from pointing backward to forward. What has been a matter of predominantly portraying important corporate achievements to posterity has increasingly become a matter of appearing for impatient online viewers today as responsible for the future. Three illustrative examples of time and temporality in online corporate pictorials are included and discussed, representing movement, moment, and the allegory of time.

In this paper, the authors examine how senior managers, as professional workers, in a leading ICT company use smartphones, according to new configurations of time and space. Of special interest is how smartphones act as comforting handheld consoles without being rooted in physical location. Three non-physical places, as spatial nodes, are presented: pause in the temporal current, place as a function of the intensity of communication, and place in terms of becoming rooted by felt value. The authors argue that highlighting non-physical places as structures emanating from the use of smartphones is an important variable to account for when studying how professionals use smartphones, both in instrumental and non-instrumental terms.

Entrepreneurial Imaginationinnovatively focuses on entrepreneurial and economic action in time, timing, space and place. Schedules and places of production, working times and working places, are no longer fixed due to the effects of the contemporary economy. The authors expertly bring together a focused and themed book that deals wholly with the subjects of time and space in a phenomenological understanding of entrepreneurial ventures and related business action. They discuss theories and thinking of human action, space, place, timing and time in various entrepreneurial and business arenas, including social entrepreneuring, environmental and corporate social responsibility, network forms of entrepreneuring, urban governance and regional development.Taking a phenomenological approach to enable readers to understand entrepreneurship and related economic action clearly will prove to be inspiring for students, academics and practitioners interested in all areas of entrepreneurship and similar issues.

Contents: 1. Entrepreneuring - When and Where?; 2. A Phenomenology of Entrepreneurial Action; 3. Our Entrepreneuring Society; 4. Various Kinds of Social Entrepreneuring, Networking and Social Capital; 5. On the Importance of Social Entrepreneuring to Local Government; 6. Entrepreneuring and Regional Development; 7. Entrepreneurial Action and Environment; 8. Entrepreneuring and ICT-Based Networking; 9. Summary and Conclusions; References ; Index

Aspects of phronetic social science and phronetic organization research have been much debated over the recent years. So far, the visual aspects of communicating phronesis have gained little attention. Still organizations try to convey a desirable image of respectability and success, both internally and externally to the public. A channel for such information is corporate reporting, and particularly CSR reporting embrace values like fairness, goodness and sustainability This paper explores how visual portrayals of supposedly wise and discerning values (phronesis) are used to reinforce the verbal features of CSR reporting. The two propositions underlying this study is (1) that phronetic action in organizations is subjected not only to textual documentation but also to visual expressions, and (2) that visual images form some of the major parts of the structures of contemporary corporate reporting (particularly CSR reporting). The paper also discusses how the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can be linked to contemporary concerns about responsibility, and how this is visually represented in CSR reporting. Finally, the paper addresses the symbolic and contextual signification of images in corporate accounts of wisdom and responsibility.

Three different areas of management study: modelling, quantitative and qualitative are discussed in conjunction with three Greek philosophical notions of human action, namely: theoria/episteme, poiesis/techne and praxis/phronesis; together with three Kantian forms of scientific knowledge: exact knowledge, experience and experimental knowledge and knowledge in humanities. Balancing the pendulum between abstract, mathematical modelling (theoria/episteme), empirically oriented explanatory applications (poiesis/techne) and reflective understanding of wisdom and judgement (praxis/phronesis) has been conducted over the years with an emphasis on modelling and empirical problem solving; whereas aspects of discerning managerial decision-making and decorum have been more remotely addressed. Pressing management concerns surrounding, e.g., accountability, environment and ethics do however embrace the understanding aspects of praxis and phronesis, rather than more elaborate mathematical sophistication from the field of theoria and episteme.

Based on extensive studies on the new working conditions for senior managers in a leading telecommunication company, and a previously unstudied form of mobile management practice by the use of mobile handheld smartphones (handling calls, data, emails, sms), this paper focuses on unexpected time-saving limitations and other constraints that result from the implementation and internalization of the mobile devices. Aspects of independence that were initially anticipated from the use of mobile smartphones are increasingly offset, not only by the well-known time pressure of swiftly filtering, replying and being online, but also by some less known and unexpected limiting and constraining factors of temporal freedom.