The purpose of this study was to investigate the decision-making processes of real estate organisations in the built environment with respect to sustainable operations, as well as how they relate to management systems and building certifications. In the study, we utilised the proposed framework by Schrettle et al. (2014) after examining the relevant literature on operations management in general and built environment-specific research, as well as acquiring insights from multiple studies. The framework included areas regarding sustainability decision motivators, mediators, approaches, and actions, as well as their impact on sustainability performance andfirm performance. Therefore, we conducted a comparative case study of six Swedish real estate organisations responding to calls for more in-depth research on these topics.Our findings support the applicability of Schrettle et al.'s (2014) conceptual framework to conceptualise and examine sustainable operations decision-making processes in the built environment. This study's results underlined the impact of stakeholder expectations and organisational capabilities influence on the strategic approaches and actions of an organisation's sustainability transition. According to the findings, active engagement from all key stakeholders is required to provide economic value as well as social and environmental achievements. It also described how real estate companies could comply with regulations, attract tenants, and prepare for the future by adopting sustainable practises at all levels of decision-making. Aligning sustainable practises with business performance is advantageous for all parties involved, resulting in cost savings, enhanced quality, and growth opportunities. Through empirical evidence, qualitative case studies, and insights into strategies, methods, andactions employed by real estate operators, this study contributes to the fields of sustainable operations management and the built environment. Additionally, linking concepts from the field of management system theory to these fields by demonstrating how management systems and certification act as green labels that increase resource efficiency, make it easier to create sustainable products, and contribute to improving firm and sustainability performance.

2020 är ett speciellt år på många sätt. En konsekvens av den pågående pandemin är en lavinartad tillväxt i e-handeln. Enligt PostNords ehandelsbarometer ökade e-handeln med 49 % i Sverige under det andra kvartalet 2020, jämfört med Q2 2019. Det mesta tyder på att utvecklingen kommer att fortsätta åt samma håll vilket innebär en utmaning för detaljhandeln.  

Organizational performance in the healthcare field is of great interest for many stakeholders. Efficient use of resources and delivery of high quality of care should be relevant to any taxpayer hoping to live healthily and grow old in Sweden. Simultaneously, the working conditions for the employees need to be sustainable if the impending lack of 170 000 workers in the healthcare sector by the year of 2030 is to be mitigated (Statistiska centralbyrån, 2012). The scope of this study is to examine how the quality management systems applied to ensure and improve the aforementioned objectives are perceived by the individual employees. Specifically, practitioners in the nursing professions are enquired about the design principles of enabling control as described by Adler and Borys (1996). The study has utilized a quantitative methodology and an online survey to collect personal perceptions and experiences from 400 individuals in the nursing professions on this topic. Major findings are that the majority of the respondents state that they perceive three out of four of the design principles of an enabling system to be present in the quality management system at their workplace. In addition, there is a strong association between the perception of the enabling characteristics flexibility and repair and general job satisfaction. Further studies with larger samples would increase the statistical power of these correlations. In addition, a large proportion of the respondents perceive that the quality management processes is negatively affected by financial constraints. Only a minority of the respondents perceive the workload constituted by tasks connected to quality management as reasonable.

Retail companies constantly needs to evolve to meet customer needs. In conjunction with the digitalization omni operations have been developed where mainly e-commerce and stores are integrated to offer the customers a seamless shopping experience. With the omnichannel's previously explored advantages, there are also disadvantages such as channel conflicts. How do omni operations proactively manage and counter channel conflicts? The issue has been studied from a newly introduced managerial perspective, which has a major impact on the design of an omnichannel. To answer the question, the causes of channel conflicts have also been studied for a more comprehensive and in-depth study. Hence, our study and our analysis tool have been formed after three main themes; goals, internal coordination and internal communication, three areas that frequently recur in previous research on channel conflicts and channel conflict management. Furthermore, the study is of a qualitative nature, where the study's empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with managers in omni operations.

The study's results show that channel conflicts are proactively countered in several ways. Overall overarching goals have been of great importance for companies' proactive work on channel conflicts. Segmentation and integration are two strategies that companies have used primarily to streamline internal coordination. Digital communication platforms for each affected channel within the omnichannel have been shown to streamline internal communication.

The study contributes both theoretically and practically by confirming and supplementing previous research, as well as contributing new knowledge on the subject to both retail operations and other companies and organizations in various industries.

In addition to internal R&D, external knowledge is widely considered as an essential lever for innovative performance. This paper analyzes knowledge spillovers in supply chain networks. Specifically, we investigate how supplier innovation is impacted by buyer innovation. Financial accounting data is combined with supply chain relationship data and patent data for U.S. firms in high tech industries. Our econometric analysis shows that buyer innovation has a positive and significant impact on supplier innovation. We find that the duration of the buyer-supplier relationship positively moderates this effect, but that the technological proximity between the two firms does not have a significant effect on spillovers.

Fragmentation in healthcare has led to a desire to align and integrate care processes horizontally. The concept of value-based healthcare has been introduced, suggesting a maximized value creation to occur when optimal conditions are created for selected patient segments, integrating all activities that jointly determine the success in meeting a set of patient needs. While targeting specialized segments has been shown to be beneficial, theories of diversification suggests that an increased scope may be an even more efficient approach to improve performance. By sharing resources and capabilities across several specialized units, coordination and knowledge sharing of a hospital’s ancillary services becomes important.  

In this study, we examine how an ancillary service function, providing resources and capabilities that are shared across specialized units, can be organized to ensure contribution to the overarching goal of maximizing value for patients. This is done through a qualitative case study of the Karolinska University Laboratory – an ancillary service function of the Karolinska University Hospital.

It is concluded that an ancillary service function can, in a diversified context, facilitate and support the value creation around medical conditions by developing a comprehensive structure for knowledge management and sharing, both externally towards medical conditions and internally within the ancillary service function. If structured properly, clear benefits, such as economies of scale, scope and knowledge spillovers, can be achieved by separating sharable resources from the patient flows.

Ensuring the long-term survival and competitiveness of the company is of paramount importance. As a company, adapting to Industry 4.0 (4IR) brings many new opportunities through new technologies that are developing exponentially. In logistics, companies will be able to achieve shorter lead times, fewer errors and greater flexibility. This study is about how retail operations create a successful implementation of automated warehousing to adapt to survive the era of Industry 4.0. The research question is:

- How do retail operations implement automated warehouses within the Industry 4.0 framework?

The collection of empirical data was done through 11 interviews with respondents from Swedish retail companies that are in the implementation process, or have completed the implementation of an automated warehouse. The respondents have a position in the company that includes knowledge about the implementation of the automated warehouse. Results show four important themes: Identification, Realization, Adaptation & Valuation to create a successful implementation where companies manage to adapt to 4IR. The study shows that it is not enough for companies to follow a process description. It turned out to be more complicated than that as it requires a mental adaptation in the company itself over a long period of time and that this is really permeated in the culture and in the employees. This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. The main contribution to theory realized in this thesis is that companies that want to succeed in implementing 4IR even before the actual practical process begins need to adapt the whole company, including the visions, ways of thinking, culture, etc. to make the actual transition towards 4IR as easy as possible. From a practical point of view, this study contributes both from a societal, consumer and business perspective.

Despite the fact that over the past decades the IT productivity paradox became a significant theme in management research, there are still many open questions in the scientific literature of the 2000s regarding this phenomenon. This article makes a contribution to the theoretical background of the IT productivity paradox. The purpose of this paper is to consider a conceptual framework of IT and IT business value, discuss predictors of the IT productivity paradox, synthesize and classify recent research on IT investment and its influence on firm performance. Priority is given to literature based on firm-level analysis and published during the last decade. The results of this paper indicate that the productivity paradox of IT still plays an important role in current research. But whereas in the past business and research communities considered its influence on firm performance directly, recent research shows that before assessing the benefits from IT investment, it is necessary to understand what occurs in the “black box” of operations processes and how actual IT usage makes impact on one of the major business success indicators – productivity.

The bullwhip has captured headlines during the pandemic, but the problem has been wreaking havoc on supply chains for decades. Traditional strategies to crack the bullwhip have largely failed. Now, a new approach to fix incentives, improve transparency and communications between companies has emerged.

Agentteorin menar att det existerar en intressekonflikt mellan de som kontrollerar och styr företaget samt de som äger företaget. Aktiebaserade incitament är ett styrmedel som ur ett agentteoretiskt perspektiv ska sammanföra agentens och principalens intressen vilket förväntas leda till ökad prestation. Tidigare forskning har främst fokuserat på amerikanska företag och uppvisar inte en enig bild kring de empiriska sambanden mellan aktiebaserade incitament och prestation. Aktiebaserade incitament används frekvent av svenska börsnoterade företag, trots att tidigare forskning inte studerat sambandet mellan aktiebaserade incitament och prestation i en svensk kontext. Studien använder en kvantitativ metod för att analysera tre verksamhetsår inhämtade från 60 börsnoterade svenska industriföretag. En regressionsmodell tillämpades för att analysera sambandet mellan användandet av aktiebaserade incitamentsprogram och prestation mätt i termer av avkastning på totalt kapital och totalavkastning till aktieägarna. Studiens resultat och slutsats var att användandet av aktiebaserade incitamentsprogram inte leder till ökad prestation bland svenska företag. Studiens huvudsakliga kunskapsbidrag är empiriska bevis kring avsaknaden av samband mellan aktiebaserade incitament och prestation i en svensk kontext. Aktieägare i svenska företag bör därför ifrågasätta om de aktiebaserade incitamentsprogram som idag blivit en naturlig del av ersättningen till många företagsledare är nödvändiga i praktiken.

The lead times of suppliers vary considerably, causing manufacturers to suffer from low service levels and also to accumulate material and product inventories. Although various inventory control and production planning models have been studied in the operations management literature, there is scant research on the behavioral aspects of purchasing decisions beyond the ordering quantity. Drawing on transaction-level purchasing data from a large European manufacturer, we investigate the purchasers' ordering behavior under variable lead times. We examine the learning of the purchasers from their experiences with the suppliers, in terms of both how many encounters they had with the suppliers and how the experiences went. We apply two-part regression models with fixed effects to estimate the effects of purchaser experience and past supplier performance. Our analysis reveals insights into the purchasers' learning process, indicating that they rely on their prior encounters with suppliers and change their ordering behavior as they gain experience. We show that the decision to add positive safety time is driven mainly by supplier performance. With experience, purchasers become more eager to use safety time as a buffering strategy, while simultaneously learning not to overreact to past supplier performance. Furthermore, purchasers give higher weights to the normalized lateness/tardiness of their most recent encounters than to earlier ones. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the behavioral aspects that impact purchasing operations, due to which employees might have objectives that are misaligned with the company goals. This finding also points to a need for further automation of ordering tasks as well as the incorporation of behavioral factors to decision support systems.