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Action research (AR) has become increasingly established as a methodology in operations management (OM), yet limited attention has been paid to the competence required to perform AR skilfully. This paper examines the qualities of OM action researchers' competence-in-use in terms of how they are enacted and represented in published AR studies within top-ranked OM journals. Drawing on a literature review of 28 empirical AR papers, and a competence-theoretical framework, the study analyses researchers' working practices, self-understanding, and understandings of work. The findings show that AR in OM is predominantly characterised by task-oriented competence, reflected in instrumental use of established AR models and tools. In contrast, ideological-normative and development-oriented competences-such as reflexivity, ethical sensitivity, and methodological innovation-are less visible. The paper contributes by shifting the discussion from methodological design to researcher capability, highlighting how the quality and impact of AR depend on competence-in-use. Implications are discussed for developing AR capability, reviewer practices, and future research on collaborative methodologies in OM.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the long-term, deeper transformations occurring in thewider energy transition to anticipate emerging issues through collective anticipatory intelligence.

Design/methodology/approach – Through a co-productive research design, the authors collectivelyscanned and discussed contemporary developments in the Swedish energy transition. The acquiredinsight was used in a causal layered analysis over three horizons to separate between views anddevelopments in time and space.

Findings – Findings of this study present current, transitionary and emerging issues and how theyemerge from deeper levels such as values and worldviews. These issues are discussed around howunderlying changes may change to mitigate them, suggesting three strategies.

Practical implications – The framed and anticipated issues enable monitoring and proactive response,and the discussion contributes insight to ongoing political debates, as well as implications for managingsimilar initiatives.

Social implications – Insights are provided into the changing cultures and values required in a futureenergy system, showing, e.g. how demand-side response may either come through relinquishing controlover consumption or through increased flexibility and change.

Originality/value – Studying issues of growing concern and novel approaches, this paper should be ofinterest to practitioners in the energy sector and foresight professionals. It provides a critique and framingof issues to be monitored, adding to the growing library of energy futures studies.

Energy systems around the world are undergoing immense transformations through many parallel developments. These changes across the energy landscape are introducing new security threats which require a degree of foresight to anticipate and subsequently mitigate the effects of. Therefore, through a systematic 3-round Delphi methodology, this study explores emerging threats to energy security from the political, economic, technological, socio-cultural, and environmental domains. Findings contribute with a broad picture of the emerging threat landscape in an increasingly renewable, integrated, and electrified post-modern energy system. Threats are ranked by the experts in terms of the most critical issues to non-issues, thereby offering insight for policy development. Political short-termism and tunnel vision and polarization are viewed as the most significant threats with a high degree of consensus amongst participating experts, followed by unambitious climate goals which increase environmental threats to energy security in the long-term. Based on these results, policy implications are derived throughout the reviewed domains to bolster long-term energy system resilience. Through its focus on Sweden, this study contributes with insights into the emerging context of countries at the forefront of energy transitions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding about exploratory practices in the fuzzy front end (FFE) of production innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical findings are based on a longitudinal single-case study conducted at a multinational manufacturing company in the automotive industry. By using an ethnographic approach, our study analyzes the work of the production system development engineers. The unit of analysis is production system development in the FFE of production innovation.FindingsThe results reveal that little of exploration of new opportunities is taking place - i.e. limited time is spent by the engineers in the FFE - even within the development department, which was assigned the formal responsibility for elaborating concepts about what the future factory should look like. Whilst the exploration work in the FFE that do take place is individually carried "under the radar" by a few enthusiastic engineers, it is simultaneously being disregarded by an organization heavily favoring exploitation of the current practices.Research limitations/implicationsThe research complements existing production innovation approaches with new insights on the production innovation process and how to manage exploration in the FFE.Practical implicationsThe findings are particularly relevant for production engineers and plant managers interested in enabling and achieving more innovative and radical change.Originality/valueThis paper extends research on how to manage the early phases of production system development and, specifically, how to enable exploratory practices to emerge in this setting, thereby contributing to the theoretical discourse on managing exploration in manufacturing.

Universities’ roles in helix settings are increasingly complex, partly due to universities’ multiple missions, one of which is to create social value. To narrow this gap and clarify how universities navigate helix settings, our paper focuses on the ways universities might engage with diverse stakeholders in their ecosystem in order to co-create social value and further aims to grasp which challenges as well as facilitating factors are present in such endeavours. Our empirical settings focus on how a Swedish university interacts and co-operates with external stakeholders, focusing on two collaboration projects initiated by said university. We do so by building on the framework of antecedents for reaching a common nexus in multiple helix settings. Our findings point to both antecedents and challenges to reaching a common nexus in the investigated projects, thereby hinting to the complexity of helix settings projects and the need for balancing antecedents and challenges in order to meet societal goals.

Background: Supplier involvement in product development has proven beneficial for companies and is a phenomenon researched in various domains. The definitions of supplier involvement represent points of origin and dimensions addressed in research. Still, there is no overview of these definitions and dimensions. This study reviews current definitions of the phenomenon of supplier involvement in product development and develops a conceptual model outlining its main dimensions. Methods: A systematic literature review is conducted to provide an overview of explicit definitions of supplier involvement in product development. By identifying the elements of these definitions, a conceptual model is developed to demonstrate how the phenomenon has been conceptualized in literature. Results: The results include an overview of 47 explicit definitions of supplier involvement in product development, a conceptual model including the identified dimensions, research gaps, and questions for future research. Conclusions: Supplier involvement in product development is a complex phenomenon with interdependencies between its key dimensions. A conceptual model of supplier involvement is presented, which is useful for categorizing research to identify research gaps and avenues for future research.

This study bridges occupational health and innovation management by proposing  psychosocial safety climate (PSC) as a key precondition for employee-driven innovation(EDI). EDI emphasises employees’ unique potential to generate and implement innovative ideas, with conducive working conditions, particularly those supporting psychological health,being crucial. Using a mixed-method explanatory design, the research draws on survey data from 19 work teams (n = 317) and five in-depth interviews with managers to explore the relationship between PSC and EDI. Findings show that all four PSC domains; support and commitment, priority, communication, and involvement significantly influence EDI. The study highlights how PSC leadership and communication about worker welfare play a criticalrole, offering groundbreaking empirical evidence linking PSC and EDI.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing lean-based production systems (LPSs), with the aim of achieving synergies and fostering the development of production systems.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a collaborative management research (CMR) approach to identify patterns of organisational tensions and paradoxes and explore management strategies to overcome them. The data were collected through interviews and focus group interviews with experts on lean and/or digital technologies from the companies, from documents and from workshops with the in-case researchers.FindingsThe findings of this paper provide insights into the salient organisational paradoxes embraced in the integration of digital technologies in LPS by identifying different aspects of the performing, organising, learning and belonging paradoxes. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the intricacies and relatedness between different paradoxes and their resolutions, and more specifically, how a resolution strategy adopted to manage one paradox might unintentionally generate new tensions. This, in turn, calls for either re-contextualising actions to counteract the drift or the adoption of new resolution strategies.Originality/valueThis paper adds perspective to operations management (OM) research through the use of paradox theory, and we (1) provide a fine-grained perspective on why integration sometimes "fails" and label the forces of internal drift as mechanisms of imbalances and (2) provide detailed insights into how different management and resolution strategies are adopted, especially by identifying re-contextualising actions as a key to rebalancing organisational paradoxes in favour of the integration of digital technologies in LPSs.

 Employee-driven innovation involves all employees at all levels in improvement work in the organisation. Rather than only accessing the capabilities of research and development employees – the unique competence, insights and ideas of all staff can be activated. We use a longitudinal design to test the impact of leader training on third-level EDI as part of a psychosocial risk assessment process. Leaders are trained to listen to employees and work together to solve work environment problems. We found that idea generation and time to take a break to test new ideas increases after only six months, and this increase is sustained at 18 months compared to a control group. However, 'keenness to share ideas' and 'being listened to' were not significant compared to the control group. These findings and their implications for future research are discussed.

This paper aims to generate new insights to the complex issue of developing dynamic capabilities ( DC) for digital transformation (DT )in healthcare, and addressing the RQ: How are the microfoundations of DCs enabled or constrained in the context of DT initiatives in healthcare? In the findings, three levels of DC are identified: Ad hoc capabilities(AC), Micro-context and Shared DC. Further, the analysis identified enablers and constraints for AC, micro-context DC and shared DC. In some situations, the factors that act as constraints at shared DC level were also identified as enablers for AC and micro-context. This indicates that some of the very things that lay the grounds for microfoundations of DC may also hamper organisationally shared DC. This points to a continuous dynamic between the AC, micro-context and shared DC levels, where calibration at all levels is necessary in order to obtain and maintain DC on all organisational levels