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The aim of this article is to contribute to research on responsible management by developing knowledge on how managing responsibly together in a Top Management Team (TMT) may be accomplished, thus complementing research in the area that focuses on the work of individual managers. To this end, we mobilize the concept of obligation to characterize what emerges as what a TMT needs to respond to. Having followed the TMT for a municipal company working together in meetings over time, we propose that three accomplishments (making the obligation present, making the obligation enable action and accounting for the obligation) shape how an obligation is made to matter. This is no linear process, but rather it unfolds in a series of materializations of the obligation in text and talk, as the TMT goes about its work. The article thus provides a contribution to research on responsible management but also has practical consequences for developing how a TMT works in order to address the urgent demands for change related to sustainable development.MAD statementIn this article, we develop knowledge on how managing responsibly together may be accomplished in a Top Management Team (TMT). Besides adding to the responsible management literature, we also provide theoretical tools that may be mobilized in order to develop the work practices of TMTs that want to contribute to sustainable development.

Using long panels of industry-specific offshoring information and subjectively reported well-being datasets mainly from Germany, which is also supported by datasets from the UK and Australia, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between offshoring and workers' subjective well-being in the source country. We employ panel data fixed-effects models with time-variant personality measures and industry-specific measures to alleviate the bias stemming from the non-random sorting of individuals in industries. Our findings suggest that offshoring negatively relates to workers' subjective well-being. The result is unexceptionally consistent across Germany, the UK, and Australia, and the effect is larger in business services and among high-skilled workers. We extensively discuss how contextual "fear-factors" prevailing in the source countries interact with the angst generated by the negative framing of offshoring. To single out such angst, we first show that objective and subjective job security concerns, job characteristics, and labor market conditions only marginally relate to the well-being effect of offshoring. Then, we investigate how the effect of offshoring on well-being is amplified by a larger set of contextual factors pertaining to temporary economic shocks, negative narratives about offshoring during electoral cycles, partisan political preferences, and high immigration rates. Finally, we show that a recent skill upgrade significantly diminishes the negative effect of offshoring on well-being.

This study investigates how the different political opportunity structures (POS) are related to NGO mobilization in two Chinese cities, Guangzhou and Hangzhou. Based on 48 interviews from 2016–2019, the study finds that variance in NGO mobilization is related to differences such as rules for NGO registration, more or less open-minded local leaders, and a relatively more independent media. NGO governance in Hangzhou is characterized as coopted participation. A few NGOs are allowed some influence in policy making, but in order to be allowed to mobilize, NGOs must accept a certain degree of cooptation. NGO governance in Guangzhou is characterized as constrained autonomy as the government plays a less active role in mobilizing NGOs, and more initiative for policy influence comes from the NGOs themselves. 

This paper addresses the need for further developing an understanding of leadership as practice in its multimodality by means of theoretically motivated qualitative methods, allowing researchers to come close to the doing of leadership. Empirical studies of this kind are still relatively rare. By articulating a microethnographic approach, we encourage short-term-focused engagements in empirical work and the writing of closed vignettes. Through this, current theoretical developments are connected to recommendations for fieldwork and for writing practices. We thereby articulate one possible coherent and consistent position from which to study the multimodality of leadership and to understand leadership as an accomplishment of direction.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses is how to engage and build long-lasting and deep connections with their customers and other partners (Wiersema, 2013). In recognition of this challenge, the concept of engagement has received growing attention and has gradually gained its momentum within marketing and service literature. Actors’ engagement – i.e., non-transactional actor behaviour that includes active collaboration and genuine interest in a relationship – imply that engaged actors have an active role in the integration of resources (e.g. goods, services, knowledge) and the perceived service outcomes (i.e. the perceived value) (Vargo & Lusch, 2011). The purpose of this qualitative study (including interview data from twenty customer firms and eight provider firms) is to explore the process of actor engagement in B2B relationships. This study thus explores business-to-business (B2B) collaboration in sustainability initiatives, and more specifically follows green leases as a type of a VEPs with aspirations to collaboratively reduce facilities’ impact on the environment, developed as a value proposition from the provider firms towards their B2B customers. Although there is plenty of research that focuses on actor engagement conceptualization (Alexander et al., 2018; Storbacka et al., 2016; Storbacka, 2019), as well as its antecedents and outcomes (Brodie et al., 2019; Hollebeek et al., 2018), the process of engagement has far gone largely unexplored (Ekman et a., 2021; Fehrer et al., 2018) because engagement has been viewed, although iterative, as a relatively static concept. Likewise, research on engagement in and between organizations has established the importance of engagement for successful relationships, but it has not fully explicated how engagement unfolds which thus limits potential insights both for theory and practice. Existing research has also largely assumed that engagement takes place naturally when a contract is in place connecting two or more parties. Moreover, given the complexity of engagement in contemporary knowledge intensive organizations, customers may need to interact with a single provider in long periods of time due to formal contracts, balancing different business logics, value understandings and perspectives over time, making engagement more complex than described in existing literature. Our study highlights that engagement fluctuates substantially and there are differences between surficial engagement (contractual relationship, formal interactions) and substantial engagement (active relationships). The study revealed that the process of B2B customer firms’ engagement with their provider firms could be viewed in three phases in relation to the sustainability value proposition (green lease): (i) initiation, (ii) emergence, and (iii) management offering both theoretical and managerial insights.

Purpose: This study aims to offer a mid-range theory conceptualization of factors central to understanding and facilitating business actor engagement (BAE). Reports on a study of real estate companies and their sustainable development goal (SDG) driven business initiatives. The aim is to identify the factors that need to be in place to facilitate positive engagement amongst actors in business-to-business (B2B) settings. Design/methodology/approach: A case study of real estate companies (landlords of business premises) and their business customers (tenants of offices and warehouses) – comprising interviews and workshops – offer insights related to the factors that need to be in place to facilitate BAE types and outcomes. Findings: The identified central factors of BAE – needed to understand and facilitate positive engagement to unfold – are the actors’ perception of: willingness (to act), resourcefulness (to contribute and solve issues) and influence (to affect decisions) regarding solutions related to the business initiative at hand. Failing to facilitate these factors may result in negative outcomes of BAE where “engagement” merely constitutes perceived obligations and responsibilities. Research limitations/implications: The study offers theoretical and managerial insights on how to manage the factors needed for BAE. It also sheds light on how actors can use SDG-driven business initiatives to achieve sustainability goals. Originality/value: It contributes to the concept of BAE, by emphasizing the dynamics of engagement, from the motivational and behavioral dimensions specific to B2B settings. It offers insights how to managerially cogovern rather than control BAE. It presents central factors needed to include and capacitate customers, facilitating successful implementations of SDG-driven business initiatives to reduce absent or negative outcomes. 

This thesis is an examination of how digital automation of administrative work unfolds in practice. It sets out to understand how administrative work changes as it is digitally automated and how such changes have wider consequences beyond the performance of specific work tasks. A case study design is used, focusing on digital automation through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) at a Swedish municipality, and the methods to produce data include interviews, observations, and document analysis. The thesis contributes to the body of literature that understands work as practices performed by diverse configurations of social and material elements, a body of literature that spans the fields of organization studies and information systems research. It comprises five papers:Paper I builds a foundation for the thesis by examining the automation process and conceptualizing it as configuring work. This is a dynamic process of mutual reconfiguration of work practice, digital technology, and organizational arrangements through which a new agentive configuration of work is approached. Paper II explores the ways in which a new dichotomy of human and digital coworkers emerges and the role of social responsibility and context for work as a new division of labor emerges. Paper III takes a broader look at the effects of digital technology on the organizing of work and proposes the conceptualization of hyper-taylorization as a way of understanding how the rationale of digital automation technology comes to enhance Taylorism in terms of making work digitally legible, predictable, and controllable. Paper IV shifts the focus again to the ethics of digital automation, utilizing an example from the case study to explore ethical and managerial implications when digitally automating. Paper V is a conceptual paper that aims to conceptualize the thesis's core theoretical contribution, which is to understand digital automation of administrative work as not just a change in how work is performed but a change regarding how knowledge about work is created and the conditions of knowledge creation. Within this framework, “work” is understood as performing an epistemic machineryrelated to the materiality of the configuration that performs work. Thus, The paper concludes that digital automation, at least in technological history, implies an epistemological shift of administrative work towards a more strictly rationalistic way of understanding the world at the expense of a pluralistic set of ways of creating knowledge and understanding the world.The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of this shift and how the political terrain of administrative work comes to be abandoned as it is digitally automated.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual understanding of the epistemic effects on work of digital automation. It does so by developing a performative understanding of an epistemic machinery, a material-discursive configuration which enacts epistemic and ontological boundaries in work. It goes on to conceptualize how the materiality of digital automation, mainly in the form of algorithmic representation, comes to prefigure certain epistemological and ontological boundaries. It then discusses the second order effects of this reconfigured epistemic machinery that is displacement of professional values and the political implications of that. It contributes to organizational theory by providing a conceptualization of how digital technology can change knowledge in work. It also contributes to discussions about the political implications of digital automation and use of algorithmic technologies in organizations.

Workplace technologies today not only support work but also perform it. Whereas the general debate often focuses on quantitative effect in terms of possible jobs lost, what is still largely missing is how workplace technologies impact the quality of employee’s work-life, in particular for office and administrative work. By mobilizing the literature conceptualizing work as accomplished in digital/human configurations, in this article we aim at unpacking how introducing digital automation technologies may lead to repositioning the human worker at work. We study the very start of introducing an RPA in a Swedish municipality with an ethnographic sensibility. Building on close readings of three episodes, we discuss how such the human/digital emergent configuration produced a re-distribution of categories of tasks and responsibilities and, consequently, a dichotomous distinction between human and digital co-workers. This means also a changing fabric of relationships supporting work, which could be characterized in terms of asymmetrical co-workership. 

This chapter makes the case for a processual approach to understanding ethical change leadership in order to develop a more fine-grained understanding of how leadership matters. It starts with a vignette taken from current empirical studies on digitalization, leadership, and organizing. This vignette is utilthere isized as an illustration of the theoretical argument made. The argument is presented in three steps. First, the vignette is reread and some critical questions as posed. Second, it delves deeper into the perspective that leadership may be understood as a process, and what this means for understanding leadership for change. Third, a processual conceptualization of ethics that is not centered on individuals, but focused on what is produced, re-produced, and not-produced in the doing of leadership for organizational change, is presented. This leads to the introduction of the concept of care, and propose the idea of care-ful co-directing change.

The MNE’s proficiency sourcing knowledge across borders is its raison-d’être. The broad knowledge sourcing overcomes the liability of foreignness and facilitates competitive advantage. Understanding the processes of subsidiary learning in local environments and alliance partners and then sharing within the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) is of immense importance to MNE management. This commentary summarizes and critically reflects on two chapters dealing with these issues, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8. The chapters nicely complement each other, one taking a subsidiary perspective and the other a headquarters perspective. Together they span ways of learning through captive, alliance, and market modes from foreign locations. Although there are exciting areas that are not investigated here the two chapters surface many matters for further research and pave the way for a range of urgent projects. MNE innovation performance through foreign knowledge sourcing and cross-border sharing continues to be a vibrant research area and subsidiaries’ roles in innovation processes remain at the centre of contemporary research.

The recommender system has become an intergral part of any online experience. Previous research on recommender systems effects have focused on the user as the single stakeholder by evaluating the utility of the system for end users in a short term perspective. This thesis is building on the current research on recommender systems by expanding the number of stakeholders with the business as an explicit stakeholder and by evaluating the long-term effects of recommender systems on both the business and the customers.

Subscription-based business models are increasing in popularity, outgrowing nonsubscription-based businesses. Many companies want to explain themselves as “a Spotify for X” focusing on highlighting the similarity to the well-known music streaming service. We arguethat there are distinct differences between subscription businesses that need to be articulatedand aim at providing a common language to use when talking about subscription-basedbusiness models. Supported by business model theory, with a specific focus on profitability,we explore and exemplify how customer activity relates to variability in revenues and costs.The subscription typology illustrates meaningful differences between subscription businessesin their variance in customer activity, and to what degree customer activity is linked torevenue and cost. Through the profit equation, customer activity is linked to profitability.Profit variability is shaped by volume- or choice-driven cost variability and upgrade- orinvestment-driven revenue variability. In this study, the expectation that the customerinteract with the product is seen as key for a subscription business. We define subscriptionsas recurring, advance payments for a product or service with which the customer activelyengages, highlighting the customer behavior aspect.

Den här boken är resultat av åtta studenters arbete under en uppsatsperiod på tio veckor. Vi började träffas i mars 2008 och i april satte arbetet igång på allvar. Under perioden gjorde studenterna en enkät, samlade in data och analyserade för att komma fram till hur småbarnsföräldrar funderar kring inköp av artiklar åt sina barn. I slutet av maj var arbetet klart! Det har varit ett nöje att få handleda arbetet och jag känner mig stolt att som handledare få presentera den här boken, vars innehåll är väldigt rikt med tanke på under vilken kort period den skapats. Jag hoppas att den kommer att läsas av studenter i marknadsföring som vill ha inspiration till hur undersökningar om konsumentbeteende kan genomföras, eller som helt enkelt bara vill läsa sig mer om ämnet. Vi vill alla tacka några personer som engagerat sig i att hjälpa till med arbetet, genom att låta sig intervjuas, släppa in oss i sällskap av konsumerande föräldrar eller givit synpunkter på arbetet som helhet. Tack till Linn Söderlund, Nicolaus Eberhardt och Maria Hedlund. Cecilia Lindh, Maj 2008

Existing theorizations on how the proliferation of market-based technologies within universities come to foster so-called academic performer subjectivities have mainly drawn attention to their coercive and seductive powers. However, while these theorizations help explain why researchers either unwillingly adapt to, or identify with and cherish, their neoliberal ideals, they are less useful to explain recent empirical results showing that many researchers willingly comply yet are very critical of the very same ideals. Drawing upon an interview study of Swedish researchers, we address this theoretical gap in the literature by analytically disentangling three important qualities of the technologies per se, in terms of them producing performance numbers characterized by Specificness, Ongoingness, and Emptiness (SOE). These three qualities do not only have the dual power to interchangeably provoke bitter and sweet feelings, but also to foster the adoption of an academic performer subjectivity. In fact, it is precisely by provoking bittersweet feelings that these qualities break the sharp edges of pure coercion and seduction, thereby fostering a type of low-affective, yet highly persuasive form of reasoning about pros and cons of market-based technologies, which make their neoliberal ideals seem acceptable and reasonable at the end of the day.

There is a growing pressure for innovation in the public sector. Research on innovation suggests a new role for organizations, from a producer of predefined goods and services to a facilitator of co-creation and new forms of network-based governance. Previous research is mostly focused on the need for organizations to collaborate across sectors (inter-organizational) to promote innovation, less on the need for collaboration across local governments different departments (intra-organizational) but also across smaller units (inter-departmental). The aim is to explore how internal conditions affect a municipality’s innovation capability. 

This is done through a study based on interviews with departmental managers. The study reveals a heterogenic organizational environment where managing is situated and intra-departmental on the expense of inter-departmental and intra-organizational collaborations. The study also reveals that the situation is created by established practices, processes and structures which do not promote inter-departmental collaborations and thus does not build intra-organizational innovation capabilities.

The contribution of this book lies in the historical comparison of infrastructural systems that are normally dealt with separately. The synthesis has been achieved by an extensive literature review of research from a wide range of various fields and by using prime sources. The comparative and long-term perspective allows the discovery of similarities and differences in the development of arrangements around streets, water and sanitation. Using the analytical lens of publicness, the author challenges the common belief that these three areas have always been public concerns or obligations, an assumption based on the fact that presently they are indeed public infrastructural systems. Furthermore, the evolution of municipal streets, water and sanitation has left a historical legacy which is still affecting the way these infrastructural systems are managed today.

The first contribution of this report lies in the historical comparison of infrastructural systems that normally are dealt with separately. The synthesis has been achieved mainly by an extensive literature review of research from a wide range of various fields and by using prime sources to some extent. I have reinterpreted earlier results and brought together research areas that not so often communicate. The comparative and long-term perspective allows me to discover similarities and differences in the development of arrangements around streets, water, and sanitation. By using the analytical lens of publicness I can challenge the common belief that these three areas have always been public concerns or obligations. An assumption that relies on the fact that presently they indeed are public infrastructural systems. The second contribution is that I connect the historical development of these three sectors with research in medical, social, cultural, economic, and political history highlighting the most important contextual factors in society at large that has profoundly affected streets, water, and sanitation. I show how their respective evolution into public infrastructural systems has been strongly influenced by the strong Swedish tradition of local independence, by urbanization, demography, and industrialization, the municipal reform of 1862, and specifically for water and sanitation, the conflict between the private and the public; the social issue (concern for, and fear of, the working class and the poor); high mortality, Cholera epidemics and new perceptions of health and sickness; the Sanitary movement; the national health act of 1874. Finally, using theoretical concepts from the research traditions of Large Technical Systems (LTS, Hughes) I show how the evolution in municipal streets, water, and sanitation has left a historical legacy still affecting the way these infrasystems are managed today.

Water and sewage (WS) systems are, like most grid based infrastructural systems, often centralised and hierarchical and the end user has almost no possibility to influence the technical standards, business models or system architecture. The preferred method for connecting new areas to the grid are underground water pipes and gravity flow for sewage. Thus, the WS system is “tightly coupled”. It is hard to change and conservative in its system culture, exhibiting a strong “momentum” or “path dependence”.

In this article we investigate an unusual case in the development of WS-systems. As a rule, WS-systems, as most infrastructural systems, develop gradually through incremental innovations, and system owners/utilities traditionally build their systems “from the inside out”. In our case, we investigate a situation where the end users took the initiative to connect a residential area, Aspvik, part of the municipality of Värmdö, outside Stockholm, Sweden, to the municipal grid and thus expand the WS-system, not from the inside out, but from the outside in.

Furthermore, we highlight another unusual feature: the role of a resident that acted as the “entrepreneur” in this process of WS-system expansion. The entrepreneur had unique trust building abilities in the local community, which the regime actor (the WS utility), could not match. Historically, inventor-entrepreneurs have been common, acting as “system builders” in the establishment phase of new infrastructural systems. However, entrepreneurs outside the regime are not common in the WS sector.

Although atypical in mature WS systems in developed countries, these types of local initiatives or hybrid solutions are common in developing countries. In this article, we argue that there are lessons to be learnt from our case, when dealing with system expansion processes both inside and outside the Global North.

Firms are increasingly using forms of AI to serve stakeholders across various business functions, resulting in both positive and negative outcomes. Stakeholder theory explains how firms create and destroy value via their stakeholder encounters, making it an ideal foundation for understanding AI deployment on firm-level perfor-mance. As AI continues to evolve, both when it comes to the activities and roles it takes and the stakeholders it affects, the AI-stakeholder framework developed herein identifies and situates key managerial decisions related to the adoption and deployment of AI that drive the firm's likelihood of creating or destroying value through stakeholder encounters. The AI-stakeholder framework focuses on stakeholder justice and is supported by testable propositions about the conditions most likely to affect the outcomes of incorporating AI into business processes. The framework also supports future research and practical managerial guidance by articulating the challenges and potential of AI for managing stakeholder encounters.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the drivers of political embeddedness and the possible outcome in terms of autonomy and subsidiary unique competences.

Design/methodology/approach: This study draws on resource dependence theory and applies structural equation modeling on a sample of 193 subsidiaries.

Findings: Political embeddedness is confirmed as a source of potential autonomy and the development of competences and is usually boosted by previous existing networks at the internal and external levels.

Originality/value: The authors investigate and discuss how multinational corporations can leverage political resources in host-country political arenas, extending their understanding of the interplay between political activities and market strategies.

Welfare technologies (WT) for older people is a rapidly expanding sector that offers a way to tackle the challenge of an aging population. Despite their promise in terms of advances in care services and financial savings, their use is still limited. Their design and implementation remain problematic, as they require changes in working practices through coordination among a multiplicity of actors. In order to address these challenges, the need for change is often expressed in terms of a lack of working methods appropriate to their scope. This has led to a proliferation of different toolkits, guidelines, models, etc.; however, these methods often imply a linear understanding of an implementation project and thus fail to take into consideration the emergent and situated character of the processes that lead up to the adoption of welfare. The aim of this article is to propose an alternative means of providing support for the introduction of these technologies by initiating a process for organizational change. The term "change" is understood here as something that is produced by practitioners-in collaboration with researchers-and not brought by researchers to practitioners. To this end, using the tradition of intervention research as inspiration, a learning process at the crossroads of different practices and objects was initiated. The center of attention of this article' is the sociomaterial process by which different communities of practitioners interact on the co-creation of a checklist. This is a new working method in which the focus is not the artifact in itself but how it emerges through successive interactions and iterations among different objects, practitioners and researchers, resulting in a joint sociomaterial process that reconfigures power relations and the work objective associated with WT. In other words, a new working method artifact is developed in a process in which practitioners, researchers and contextual objects interact and become one with each another.

(1) Background: The World Health Organization recommends active commuting as a source of physical activity. Active commuting is determined by various factors, including the socioeconomic status (SES) of families and neighborhoods, distance to schools, perceived neighborhood safety, lifestyles, and availability of walkways and biking paths. This study aimed to assess factors associated with modes of transportation to and from school among adolescents aged 16–19 living in a middle-sized city in Sweden. (2) Method: Three hundred and fourteen students, of whom 55% were females, from schools in the city of Västerås participated in the study. Printed as well as web-based self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data. (3) Results: Adolescents living in high SES neighborhoods were 80% more likely to bike or walk to school (OR = 1.80; CI: 1.01, 3.20) than adolescents living in low SES neighborhoods. Furthermore, active commuting was associated with higher consumption of fruits and vegetables (OR = 1.77; CI: 1.05, 2.97) and less consumption of junk foods (OR = 0.43; CI: 0.26, 0.71), as compared to passive commuting. (4) Conclusions: Active commuting is a cost-effective and sustainable source of regular physical activity and should be encouraged at a societal level. 

I rapporten ”AI-utvecklingen i Kina – påverkan på svensk tjänstemannasektor” beskriver statsvetaren Mattias Burell och Kina-experten Kristina Sandklef hur både den kinesiska staten och olika företag använt sig av den nya tekniken. Rapporten visar även hur statsapparaten och det styrande kommunistpartiet använder AI  och annan teknik för att kontrollera medborgarna. Genom övervakningssystem är det möjligt att kontrollera en stor del av all mänsklig aktivitet – både online och i det fysiska livet – och med AI och maskininlärning blir det även möjligt för den kinesiska staten att förutsäga vilka medborgare som kan antas vara illojala mot det politiska systemet.

Each of the chapters in this volume, from the introduction to this end(ing), engaged in a conversation about producing knowledge in, about, with "organization studies" at a time when we (us, the human inhabitants of this Earth) are facing calamitous conditions, probably leading to our/its destruction, and (some more than others) are wondering what is to be done. As members of the management and organization studies (MOS) scholarly community, all the authors in this project are deeply concerned about the "knowledge" our common field is producing as "legitimate", for it seems not only inadequate for addressing those calamitous conditions but also that this kind of knowledge may be implicated in reproducing the harms we all decry. The aim here has not been to critique the field on the basis of what it produces but to acknowledge conditions perpetuating the production of those forms of knowledge more generally, and to offer positive alternatives which may make a difference in what is produced, perhaps contributing to a better world‚ over and over again. The message this chapter and all other chapters hope to convey is the possibility of "thinking, saying and doing otherwise". But can we truly question the very notion of "the human" supporting "legitimate knowledge"? Can we truly focus on producing processual knowledge with indefinite aims? In other words, is the becoming of an organization studies produced with feminist new materialisms possible? Responding to those questions, and following the original proposal for this volume, this chapter is the voice of the collectivity articulating 'the-world-and-beyond' as envisioned in each of the prior chapters. Taking this approach resonates as well with new materialisms: "'a doing with' which cannot be a 'doing alone' -more like a world of on-going assembling".

By collecting and analysing survey data from newly employed audit assistants at the largest accounting firms in Sweden, this chapter aims to analyse key aspects of becoming an auditor. The study investigates the characteristics of these audit assistants and to what extent their opinions coincide with the opinions of other highly educated citizens. It also investigates to what extent four value commitments of the new recruits coincide with these of senior auditors. The results show that the ones recruited today are more diverse than their older peers with respect to educational, socio-economical, and geographical backgrounds. While sharing high confidence in the universities, the legal system, and the police, the audit recruits' opinions (i.e. trust in societal institutions like the media) deviate from other citizens with higher education. The similar opinions related to auditing (e.g. professional and client commitments) indicate that the newly recruited auditors seem to already closely reflect the identity of authorised and approved auditors when being employed. They also believe that the reason for their being hired is more related to ‘soft’ skills than to ‘hard’ accounting and auditing knowledge.

This article provides an overview of the discussion animating the track “Doing research in technoscience as affective engagement” organised at the VIII STS Italia Conference. By acknowledging the inheritance of feminist STS scholars in expanding the theoretical scope of care beyond its traditional sites, this session was devoted to exploring knowledge production as a matter of care as well as a form of affective engagement and entanglement with multiple Others while doing research. Two contributions were presented. The first ethnographically investigates Canadian blood donation practices by drawing on Haraway’s SF figure to develop what the speaker calls ‘Sanguine Figuration’. The second presentation relies on research of women’s animist practices amongst horses in Swiss Alps through a filmmaking practice influenced by Haraway’s work on the natureculture continuum and situated knowledge. Both studies embody efforts to develop non-representational research practices and experimental approaches showing the affective entanglement between researchers and researched, subject and object. Further, these contributions have highlighted the importance of conceptual creativity and imagination in building an apparatus that enables accounting for affective engagements in doing research in STS.

Demographic changes associated with contemporary society are often framed as a 'care crisis' where the aging population is portrayed as threatening the financial security and the future of younger generations. To rationally intervene in these issues, welfare states - particularly in Nordic countries - increasingly rely on digital technology as a 'remedy' and 'promise' of more effective and efficient public governance operating through technopolitical care practices and logics. Technological solutions such as AI, algorithms, apps and robotics are incorporated into elderly care and aligned with care work where the digitization of processes accompanies an intensification of datafication of elderly welfare care. This analysis is aimed at identifying and discussing how the welfare state is transformed through a practice of classification and its logic of standardization, a practice of taskification grounded on time-paced service logic, and a practice of categorization relying on a logic of prioritization. These three practices and logics embody tensions emerging where caring intersects with data sourcing, that is, where the datafication of elderly welfare care lies. Feminist posthumanism allows approaching them by resisting both techno-utopian and techno-dystopian claims about the datafication of elderly welfare care.

This article is a critical interdisciplinary study of biohacking as a specific case of transhumanism and its goals of enhancement and age intervention. It focuses on the organising principles underlying the biohacking movement's relationship to ageing and technoscience. The argument traces how the historical and scientific body technologies of molecularisation, functional age, optimisation, and quantification made possible the biohacking vision of the ageing body as amenable to modification, enhancement and improvement beyond its natural limits. Conclusions consider the wider implications of biohacking by pointing out four important issues that frame our cultural ambivalence about ageing: the tension between biohacking's supposedly liberating enhancement technologies and their obeisance to a tyranny of self-disciplinary practices and the authority of bio-data; the social meaning of biohacking hierarchies of human value, based on modifiable fitness and enhanceable performance; the implications of the biohacking program for gendered ageism; and the ethical limits of biohacking, not only in terms of potential harms to a person but what it can mean to exceed the natural limits of life.

In this chapter, by metaphorically extending the meaning of the word "manspreading", on one hand we describe how the term "feminist" in "new feminist materialism" has been placed "under erasure". On the other hand, we show how the feminism has been always already all set for disturbing the discursive male order of new materialism. We foreground three main feminist ethico-onto-epistemological assumptions: decentering the subject, (re)materializing all bodies; intra-acting responsibly. Correspondingly, we articulate three alternative forms of politics - a politics of location, a politics of re-materialization, and an ethical politics of response-ability - which, we deem, embody the generative and affirmative posture of new feminist materialism and pave the way for a different knowledge production practice in Management and Organization Studies.

This paper grounds in a research experience for engaging older people as co-designers of several wearable and in-house technologies. We start by describing a case study that is a pre-commercial procurement aimed at developing innovative services for the welfare of citizens, with a focus on older people. We present and discuss the qualitative data gathered on the occasion of a bodystorming with two groups of participants. The analysis led to the identification of the “aesthetic appropriateness”, the “social sensitivity”, and the “gender awareness” as three different dimensions that affected the acceptability of the technological devices. This approach created the conditions for instantiating the subversive power of participation. At the same time, such a subversion proved the authenticity of the participatory process. By drawing on this project, the purpose of the paper is to further our understanding of the conditions for Participatory Design.

This special issue contributes to the new academic field known as Socio-gerontechnology, which has emerged at the cross-section of STS and Age Studies. All contributions published in the following pages explore what happens when theories meet practice in the relation between ageing and technology, by pointing out the role of design(ers) in configuring and reconfiguring such a relation. In line with the so-called "engaged program" in STS, these articles address different topics of political importance and pragmatic relevance. Indeed, they share the critique of ageist images that underlie public and specialist discourses around ageing and technology. By combining the emancipatory thrive of critical studies of age and ageing and the nuanced STS approach to the study of the entanglements of ageing and technology, this special issue offers a collection of theoretical elaborations and methodological considerations developed along with empirical analyses. Overall, they explore the practical politics of technology, within the growing field of Socio-gerontechnology.

In this chapter, we describe how leadership studies have benefitted by (re)attending to practice theories. We elaborate on how these theories have offered the possibility to develop new understandings of leadership by reimagining the study of this phenomenon. 

The first section of the chapter presents an introduction to practice theories and their entrance in leadership studies. Then, in the second section, we illustrate what studies mobilizing practice theories have contributed to. In the third section we dig into a discussion of the different positionings that researchers drawing on practice theories have taken, in order to provide the reader with the possibility to navigate the sensitizing framework that these theories provide. The chapter ends with a discussion of criticalities and possibilities, including the possible need to advance our methodological tools. 

Privilege is ubiquitous but seldom discussed in organization studies. However, its analysis may enable us to explore those unrecognized advantages that systematically confer power on certain groups and individuals in specific contexts. In this chapter, we focus on the organizing agential properties of space and their power effects in terms of privilege. Building on Massey’s work on space and place, we discuss privilege as an aspect of spatial agencing by illustrating how this is meshed into contemporary workplaces promoting new ways of working. This allows us to expand on spatial agencing by unpacking how, in the new workplace, the performative effects of assemblages can place some humans and nonhumans into privileged positions in terms of center-periphery, natural presence and otherness. Since such achievements are not only local but also related to other achievements in different times and places, we can also discuss how ‘power-geometries’ travel in time and space.

Sweden has been recognised as one of the most generous countries in terms of the governance of migration and asylum. The 2015 “refugee crisis” placed the Swedish migration and asylum system under extreme pressure when more than 163,000 refugees arrived in 2015. Like other EU members, Swedish migration policies have become gradually more restrictive, legitimised by the discourse of securitisation, whereby migration is addressed as a threat. By taking “securitisation” as a conceptual point of departure, the aim of this chapter is to analyse the official statements and non-official motives behind the securitisation turn of Sweden’s post-2015 migration policy and relate them to the vulnerable situation unaccompanied immigrants experienced when they came to Sweden in 2015 as refugees and asylum seekers. However, even if some of the interviewees had experienced racism and other negative attitudes and felt ill at ease waiting for their residency permit, unaccompanied immigrants are not necessarily vulnerable victims without the capacity and will to learn a new language, educate themselves and find a job.

To realize a sustainable future, a different paradigm for management and governance of the businesses and new sets of managerial competencies and practices are required. In this regard, business and management education's role is vital and should adjust to the new needs. Management education itself should go through a sustainable transition. Business and management educators worldwide increasingly try to integrate ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainability into their programs. This inclusion is called responsible management education (RME). RME is a broad concept and is still partly undefined. To identify pedagogical approaches and competencies targeted by RME, quantitative thematic analysis through conducting textual data mining is used. The texts subject to quantitative thematic analysis include RME reports made by Nordic Universities. University members of PRME (over 800 business schools and management departments) provide self-written reports about their RME plans and activities and regularly share information on their progress in implementing RME. The reports are publicly available via https://www.unprme.org and information-rich texts that define the direction and strategies of RME and provide a concise and comprehensive overall picture of RME-related activities at the university level. Reports of 28 Nordic business schools and management departments (11 from Sweden, 8 from Finland, 3 from Norway, and 2 from Denmark and Iceland each) were analyzed. The themes identified include gender equality, environmental economic value, co-producing sustainable knowledge, responsible management competencies, and impact are themes identified. The core concept of each theme, theoretical contribution to sustainability and education research, and practical implications for management and business educators are discussed.