Drawing on board-member surveys and stage-specific text analyses of annual reports from 150 Stockholm-listed firms, this study distinguishes three stages of digital transformation (DT)—digitization, digitalization, and digital maturity—to examine how board roles and ownership structures shape firms' DT ambitions. Cross-sectional and two-year lag regressions show that boards emphasizing strategic resource provision consistently promote broader DT, whereas monitoring-oriented boards dampen it, with these effects strengthening over time. Ownership dispersion further amplifies DT, while dominant or highly concentrated blocks dampen it. Stage-specific analyses reveal that governance matters most during digitalization: strategic boards and dispersed ownership accelerate progress, while monitoring boards and concentrated ownership slow it down. In contrast, early-stage digitization appears largely insensitive to governance, while late-stage digital maturity depends more on board size and firm capabilities. This study advances corporate governance and technology strategy research by clarifying when and how governance mechanisms enable or constrain DT and by introducing a replicable, stage-specific DT metric for future studies.

To disentangle the complexities of business scaling, this chapter systematically reviews existing literature to differentiate scaling from traditional notions of high growth, focusing on strategic, operational, and environmental considerations. We identify dominant themes in the literature and highlight how scaling involves more than expanding operations, requiring a deliberate approach to resource allocation, market adaptation, and sustainable practices—in other words, a scaling orientation. By exploring various high-growth and scaling strategies, this chapter offers insights into the prerequisites for successful scaling, including the ability to navigate the challenges of digital transformation and internationalization. Based on the review conducted, we emphasize the necessity of treating scaling as a comprehensive, dynamic process that is influenced by a broad range of factors. The findings contribute to the literature on business scaling by outlining a foundation for future research and practice in fostering growth that is both impactful and responsible. 

A substantial body of research has emerged on the conditions that impact how and when industry stakeholders adopt digital platforms. However, in the construction industry in general-and the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in particular-to date, this research remains fragmented, which hampers our understanding of how digital platforms can enhance productivity and value creation. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the benefits and challenges of adopting digital platforms and integrating them into the AEC industry. We conduct a systematic literature review on digital platform integration to identify themes that are relevant to the AEC industry. Based on our findings, we develop an integrative model that captures the phases of digital platform adoption and integration and outlines where different industry stakeholders tend to face challenges in this process, and we pinpoint where benefits can be derived. We employ this model to derive a research agenda that will fill the identified knowledge gaps currently existing in our understanding of construction industry stakeholders' integration within the digital platform space.

This chapter explores individual and organizational dimensions of remote and hybrid work with a particular emphasis on IT and media organizations. Working from home enables creating an adaptive space and relates to the processes of continuous change and adaptive learning. However, the level of influence of working from home on developing and leveraging critical capabilities and activities for sustained value varies, depending on a combination of internal and external factors. We identify benefits and challenges of remote working from home and identify as especially relevant factors organizational culture and communication climate on the organizational side and the degree of autonomy and control on the individual side. We also look at both positive and negative examples of socialization into the organization while “working from home” as well as project collaboration and employee engagement tools for remote and hybrid work.

One of the main characteristics of family businesses lies in their owners' pursuit of financial and non-financial utility. One core dimension of non-financial utility is emotional attachment. However, we know little about the role of emotional attachment in shaping the owners' divestment or reinvestment decisions in volatile, uncertain and ambiguous environments. Based on an in-depth case study of a displaced agricultural family that lost its business in Colombia, we investigate the role of family members' perceived emotional attachment and financial utility in shaping their strategic decisions. Our findings broaden the notion of emotional attachment to comprise the family, the former family business, and the land, identifying six utility patterns. These patterns capture combinations of perceived emotional attachment and financial utility. We label these patterns hybrid family, family control, family splitting, entrepreneurial family, family safety and accommodating family utility, and find that they play a crucial role in each family member's preference for divestment and/or reinvestment decisions. The experience of trauma influenced two utility patterns favoured by women. This article contributes to the family business literature by advancing our knowledge of utility combinations transcending generations and ownership statuses in their preferred divestment and reinvestment decisions.

In this paper we draw attention to the relevance of informal training in entrepreneurship for advancing sustainable and inclusive rural development. Adopting a perspective inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we explore how the informal training facilitated by CARE International’s village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) impacts the lives and livelihoods of members of these associations in a rural region of Rwanda. Based on our findings from a qualitative interview study of multiple stakeholders, we show how this informal training is facilitated through CARE’s train-the-trainer methodology and through regular dialogue, peer feedback and reflection at weekly group meetings. Our analysis highlights how such training emancipates and empowers participants, enabling them to act more reflectively and make more informed decisions in their efforts to improve their socioeconomic circumstances through entrepreneurial activities. Whereas prior research has tended to measure the impacts of membership in VSLAs on financial outcomes quantitatively, our qualitative study explores how VSLAs also contribute to the creation not only of economic but socio-cultural value in rural settings.

Recent research on entrepreneurial failure has started to investigate the impact of failure on entrepreneurs and how this influences their motivation and willingness to engage in subsequent entrepreneurial ventures. We approach this topic from an alternative perspective, focusing on former entrepreneurs seeking to return to paid work and exploring how their experience of venture failure is perceived and appraised by employers in the recruitment process. Such perceptions matter because employers are gatekeepers to the employment market and thus their appraisals influence how easily former entrepreneurs can re-integrate themselves in the paid workforce. We conducted 30 interviews with employers in growing human-capital intensive companies in Sweden, asking these recruiters about their perceptions of former entrepreneurs and how their evaluations affected their hiring decisions. Conceptually, we frame our study using a process model of stigmatization by nuancing this model with fine-grained analyses of employers’ perceptions and appraisals of applicants’ entrepreneurial failure experiences in the recruitment process. This analysis identifies some of the key conditions that lead employers either to value or devalue an applicant’s experience of entrepreneurial failure, further indicating the implications of this finding for entrepreneurs’ careers and prospects of gaining paid employment.

Industry 4.0 digital technologies are becoming indispensable for firms striving to enhance their supply chain capabilities and financial performance, but how these relationships play out in practice remains unclear. To address this issue, this study assesses the relationship between supply chain integration, supply chain agility, and financial performance from a dynamic capability perspective. Further analyses are conducted to establish whether Industry 4.0 digital technologies moderate the association between (a) supply chain integration and supply chain agility and (b) supply chain agility and financial performance. Findings based on the data pertaining to a sample of 274 Swedish manufacturing firms indicate that supply chain agility fully mediates the link between supply chain integration and financial performance. However, while Industry 4.0 digital technologies strengthen the effect of supply chain agility on financial performance, they do not moderate the relationship between supply chain integration and supply chain agility. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate regarding how digital technologies play a role in achieving competitive advantage in interplay with dynamic capabilities related to the supply chain. These findings are relevant for decision-makers, as they address the need for organisational adjustments beyond the mere introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies to fully reap their benefits.

Sweden is known to be one of the most gender-equal societies in the world. Thus, it remains as an enigma why a large discrepancy continues to exist regarding the gender balance in career choice and progression in many professions. Drawing on Hirdman's (1988) theory of gendered systems, in this paper, we explore the role of career resilience in the career progression of women who choose to work in the male-dominated IT sector. We draw attention to how the day-to-day process of practicing career resilience in a gendered workplace tends to evolve as women progress in their careers. Based on an interview study with 50 female IT professionals as well as a discourse analysis of 502 newspaper articles on women in this sector, we develop a process model of career resilience in gendered professions, outlining different coping strategies that allow women to develop and enhance such resilience over time. We conclude the paper by providing some practical recommendations.