Longevity is at the core of what makes family businesses special. Unlike most attempts to explain longevity that have focused primarily on the factors within a family business that lead to longevity or the factors outside of an organization’s environment, we adopt a business-history perspective that enables us to show how the interplay between the organization and its environment can help to explain family business longevity. Building on the category literature, we trace the interaction of a small Swedish fourth-generation high-quality furniture manufacturer with its category over a period of more than 120 years. We identify the internal mechanisms driving family business longevity, the external mechanisms driving category development as well as the mechanisms underlying their interaction. Specifically, we provide new insights into how agency exercised by the family business contributes to the shaping of the category they are a member of, thereby nurturing their business longevity.

Today, the world faces grand challenges that are both daunting and urgent to address. The decarbonization challenge in particular requires states to mobilize a range of actors to achieve structural changes. In this context, there has been a proliferation of orchestration attempts by states, whereby they use soft or indirect forms of steering to coordinate and engage intermediaries to achieve policy objectives. This type of steering raises a number of questions: How can such forms of steering gain legitimacy among the targeted actors and how can this legitimacy be maintained in the face of competing interests? This paper uses the case of the Fossil Free Sweden Initiative to highlight key factors and considerations in establishing and maintaining legitimacy in the orchestration of a varied set of non-state actors with differing interests. Specifically, the paper makes two core contributions to existing literature. Theoretically, it highlights how institutional legitimacy is obtained through a balancing act of stakeholder demands at different levels. Empirically, it examines how Sweden, considered a climate leader, governs toward decarbonization through national orchestration as an important tool. The paper thereby offers new insights into the legitimacy of orchestration with significant implications for how to understand rule-making and governance with the use of intermediaries. It particularly highlights how power and agency can create a governance dilemma for the orchestrator that may undermine legitimacy in the long term.

The Paris Agreement marks a significant milestone in international climate politics. With its adoption, Parties call for non- and sub-state actors to contribute to the global climate agenda and close the emissions gap left by states. Such a facilitative setting embraces non-state climate action through joint efforts, synergies, and different modes of collaboration. At the same time, non-state actors have always played a critical and confrontational role in international climate governance. Based on a systematic literature review, we identify and critically assess the role of non-state climate action in a facilitative post-Paris climate governance regime. We thereby highlight three constitutive themes, namely different state-non-state relations, competing level of ambition, and a variety of knowledge foundations. We substantiate these themes, derived from an inductive analysis of existing literature, with illustrative examples and propose three paradigmatic non-state actor roles in post-Paris climate governance on a continuum between compliance and critique. We thereby highlight four particular threats of a facilitative setting, namely substitution of state action, co-optation, tokenism, and depoliticization. Future research should not limit itself to an effective integration of NSSAs into a facilitative climate regime, but also engage with the merits of contestation. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance.

This case study is set in mid-November 2020. The setting is Jesus College, one of Cambridge University's oldest and most prominent colleges. The protagonist is the [unnamed] College Bursar, effectively the CFO, who reports to the College Council, its governance body. Among the Bursar's responsibilities is advising the Council on the management of the college's endowment fund of GBP178 million, 20% of which is invested in the centrally managed University Endowment Fund. There is growing pressure both within the college and the university to divest from both direct and indirect investments in energy companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction and supply. The Bursar has been tasked with providing guidance on the choices available to the college and the likely consequences which such choices would entail. 

Teaching and learning

This item is suitable for undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education courses.

Public and investor expectations about corporate sustainability performance and disclosure are growing rapidly and extending into company supply chains. Companies are increasingly recognising that their supply chain holds both substantial risk and opportunity. As a result, many companies have started to engage creatively and proactively with their diverse supply chains to leverage their collective capacity to address sustainability challenges.

Existing supplier engagement frameworks typically promote progressive steps towards collaboration as the ideal form of supplier engagement, but our research shows that this insufficiently captures the complexity of actual company-supplier relations. Instead, there are a variety of suitable engagement approaches that can be positioned along a spectrum between more coordinated and more collaborative. This spectrum of approaches applies to individual companies working with single suppliers, as well as to multiple companies partnering across industries and with other stakeholders to address wider supply chain challenges.

Supply chain sustainability outcomes depend on your company’s ability to find the approach or combination of approaches that best align with current circumstances. Key considerations include your company’s desired objectives, supply chain characteristics, and the readiness of both your company and your suppliers.

This guide aims to help corporate procurement and supply chain professionals to:

• Reflect on their existing supplier engagement approach(es)
• Identify the approach(es) most suited to addressing relevant sustainability issues
• Learn how to leverage appropriate portions of the engagement spectrum for supply chain sustainability

This case deals primarily with the issues of managing an innovative collaboration at Cambridge's Addenbrooke's hospital, in response to the urgent demand for Personal Protection Equipment (short: PPE) created by the COVID-19 crisis in the UK in 2020. It relates to study domains within the fields of innovation, strategy, and leadership in organisations. The case highlights the challenges of open innovation (i.e., innovation which requires a third-party intervention) in general, and specific challenges which are amplified during an emergency. The two organisations featured are at opposite ends of the managerial spectrum: one is a very large hospital, run on traditional, established hierarchical lines, the other a small, informal entrepreneurial membership-based entity. The organisational cultures are also opposites: the hospital is focused on eliminating/minimising risk through well-defined protocols and processes; its potential supplier actively encourages experimentation and exploration. The central issues are whether, in the wider public interest, these two very dissimilar entities can find a meeting-point to work together, and what is the role of the protagonist, who has a foot in both camps, in brokering such a collaboration.

Teaching and learning

This item is suitable for postgraduate courses.

Introductory paragraph: It is Sweden’s goal to become one of the world’s first fossil fuel free welfare states, and many Swedish companies are voluntarily working to reduce their climate impact. The reasons for this are manifold; they primarily involve risk management, a sense of responsibility, management of reputation, and addressing the demands of various stakeholders, many of which are increasingly expressing concerns. Even though taking action often involves significant costs, some businesses have suggested that action is taken because of the high environmental awareness amongst the Swedish public, favorable conditions for taking climate action (such as high availability of renewable energy), and good cooperation between the state and non-state actors—factors which are arguably present in the other Nordic countries. While effective climate action still requires both states and non-state actors to show leadership and focus on speeding up implementation, Nordic companies have the potential to also be a driver for change abroad.

Today the world faces a number of grand challenges that are both daunting and urgent to address. States have historically employed legislative and executive powers to direct societal actors toward common goals. Yet, the scale of the grand challenges that are to be addressed e.g. by the UN?s Sustainable Development Goals include climate change and require significant changes to business as usual. The decarbonisation challenge in particular requires states to mobilise a range of actors in order to achieve structural changes in a legitimate manner. Consequently, we have seen the emergence of orchestration attempts by states, whereby they use soft or indirect forms of steering to coordinate and engage non-state actors in order to achieve policy objectives. This type of steering raises a number of pertinent questions: How can such an initiative gain legitimacy amongst the actors that it seeks to orchestrate and how can it maintain this legitimacy in the face of competing interests? Building on recent literature on legitimacy and the role of non-state actors in the fields of international relations and organisational studies, this paper uses the case of the Fossil Free Sweden initiative that the Swedish government launched ahead of the UN climate change conference in Paris in 2015 to highlight key factors and considerations in establishing and maintaining legitimacy in the orchestration of a varied set of non-state actors. Drawing on interviews with the organisers of the initiative, as well as with members and non-members, this paper offers new insights into the legitimacy of orchestration with significant implications for how to understand rule-making and governance with the use of intermediaries."