Lund Studies in Economics and Management – serie

Clarissa Sia-Ljungström completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden. As part of her involvement in an European Union Framework 7 project, she has co-authored a number of publications that have been presented to academic audiences at conferences in Europe, Australia and China. Her research interests are in the areas of international and industrial marketing, inter-organizational business relations, and business networks with a focus on innovation and small-andmedium sized enterprises. Her expertise in customer relations and education, sales, and marketing communication are drawn from over ten years of working experience in Asia in the logistics, telecommunication and publishing industries. She holds a Masters in Managing People, Knowledge and Change from Lund University and a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the National University of Singapore.

In modern business, standards are too important to be ignored. But what is the rationale for active engagement in long and costly standardization processes when most of those standards will be openly available for a much lower price once they are finalized? What are the strategic motives for engaging in such processes? And even when the motives are clear, how is corporate standardization managed, both inside and outside of the organization? Prior standardization and strategic management literatures have not explored these inquiries, leading to a limited understanding of corporate standardization management and its drivers, complexities, and potential. An in-depth comparative case study of two heavy-truck manufacturers, Scania AB and Volvo Group, provides insights into organizations’ varied choices, rationales and desired outcomes in regard to corporate standardization management. Depending on the organizations’ corporate strategies and particular needs, different standardization approaches may serve them most effectively. The findings from this qualitative study provide empirical evidence for at least two standardization approaches emerging in the context of voluntary consensus-driven standardization settings, namely the assertive approach and the vigilant one. The choice of standardization approach should comprise a deliberate and informed managerial decision, while the findings indicate that active engagement in standardization work could function as an effective way for managing organizations’ resource dependence and environmental uncertainties and hence shall be catalogued as such, advancing Resource Dependence theory. Finally, this study highlights corporate standardization management from a co-opetitive angle, which to some degree appears to resolve inter-organizational tensions within standardization settings, by demonstrating the possibilities of “win-win strategies”. In other words, this thesis manifests the theoretical relevance of co-opetitive stances in the contemporary, increasingly complex business environments, where old-school competitive viewpoints might prove insufficient for success or even survival.

This theoretical study analyzes the consequences of outsourcing and insourcing when organizational routines cross the boundaries of the business organization. Three different conventional industry cases illustrate the phenomenon of organizational routines and how boundaries of time and space are challenged both within and between organizations.

In this thesis, I critically explore the ways in which people consume extraordinary experiences and what this can tell us about contemporary society. My findings question the idea that extraordinary experiences are an escape from the demands of everyday life. I show instead that social (especially neoliberal) discourses discipline endurance runners and shape the ways in which they understand and account for their extraordinary experiences. As a research context for this qualitative study, I chose endurance running, which includes triathlon, obstacle adventure racing and ultra-distance running. Endurance running is an extreme but popular experience in contemporary consumer culture. If we don’t consume branded endurance running events, such as Ironman or Tough Mudder, ourselves, we might have sponsored a colleague or friend to run up Mont Blanc or across the Sahara desert. Few of us can have escaped the sight of people pounding the pavements or running laps in the local park, building up their stamina to compete in the increasing number of endurance running events that now take place worldwide. In this thesis, I use vocabularies of motive and Foucault’s theory of governmentality to critically examine the ways in which endurance runners talk about running. A critical perspsective allows us to see beyond their glossy surface of extraordinary experiences. It allows us to see beyond the romantic idea that people consume extraordinary experiences in order to escape the demands of everyday life; that extraordinary experiences are spaces of freedom. A critical perspective reveals extraordinary experiences to be spaces of discipline and productivity as well as freedom and escape and it allows us to see that neoliberal discourses influence extraordinary experiences, just as they influence other area of social life. They influence how and why we take part in extraordinary experiences, how we talk about them and how we use those experiences to sell ourselves. We might understand extraordinary experiences as freedom, but we also feel compelled to take part in them. We might describe them as spaces where we are free from expectations, but we also quantify, objectify, and brand them so that they become productive and useful. We might think that extraordinary experiences are untouched by the competitive nature of contemporary consumer culture but somehow the urge to compete infiltrates, even there.

Developing a place into ‘a good place to live’ for people of all ages is a prioritized issue in many municipalities in Sweden, as well as around the world. But what do we really mean by ‘a good place to live’? How do the residents themselves comprehend and perceive ‘a good place to live’? And how do municipalities view their place and what they offer to their residents? This thesis explores how ‘a good place to live’ can be understood, conceptualized and studied, and the roles co-creation and the residents themselves play in this context. Taking the resident as a starting point and using the service-based logic as a theoretical foundation, this thesis connects the stream of research within place marketing focusing on co-creation and the users’ role with the stream of research dealing with success measurements and place satisfaction. Lisa Källström is a lecturer and researcher in Business Administration, mainly within the field of marketing and place management. Her research interests lie within value co-creation in the place context, stakeholder involvement in the work of government and participatory place branding.

In this thesis, I develop our understanding of the destigmatization process to include product destigmatization. Previous research on destigmatization has primarily focused on that of individuals, groups, organizations, and industries. However, there is an abundance of empirical evidence showing that a product stigma has a significant bearing on market logics, including legal classification of products, marketing challenges, as well as a lack of innovation and entrepreneurship. Around 300 million people menstruate on any given day around the world, yet the market for menstrual products consists predominantly of homogeneous products that have been around since the late 1800s or early 1900s. Simultaneously, there is a surprising lack of regulations and standards, in particular on a global level, ensuring a widespread safety for so many users around the world. Other products used on or intimately with the body are generally heavily regulated and/or standardized. In a pilot study investigating these seemingly contradicting notions, I found that one of the most fundamental reasons for the status quo is grounded in the stigma on menstruation and menstrual products. Through a multi-method approach, combining aspects of case research, action research, and document studies, I examined the menstrual product field from a synthesis of theory including stigma, destigmatization, and neo-institutional. I developed a framework through which product destigmatization can be understood. Therein, I emphasize three primary mechanisms driving product destigmatization, and how they act on all three levels of society. The mechanisms comprise reclassifying, framing, and claiming agency. My main contributions are threefold. First, I deliver a comprehensive study on destigmatization that includes different dynamics and levels, which has not been done previously, in particular regarding menstrual products. Secondly, I find that in contrast to what previous research demonstrates, destigmatization processes do not only occur from the top-down, but also through bottom-up initiatives. Finally, I advance our understanding of the role of organizations, including entrepreneurs, and their innovative capacities to affect institutional change.

The notion that strong brands may constitute valuable assets and resources is now generally accepted, not only in business but also in the public and non- profit sectors. At the same time, branding is more challenging than ever. In our connected and relational world, brand building is increasingly conducted in networks – where the organisation is only one of several stakeholders setting the agenda. How are organisations in such an environment to work systematically to create the most favorable conditions possible for brand building? This thesis examines how brand orientation can help build strong brands and ultimately strengthen organisational competitiveness and performance. By means of mixed methods action research, successful as well as less successful examples are studied and the downsides of brand orientation are exposed. Furthermore, the brand-oriented learning process is analysed to highlight what is required to successfully change an organisation’s strategic orientation. The thesis develops a new, relational conceptualisation of brand orientation, where the focus is on the co-creation of brands between internal and external stakeholders. Research on the concept of brand orientation was initiated in the mid-1990s at the Lund University School of Economics and Management. The concept has ever since fascinated researchers and practitioners around the world, and research into brand orientation is now highly international and constitutes a vibrant research area. Several works in brand orientation are now very well-cited and published in the most reputable journals. This thesis, containing four different papers and a kappa, contributes to the emerging relational and co-creative approach within brand orientation and strategic brand management. Constantly seeking to combine theory and practice in his work, Johan Gromark has been active as a brand consultant since the end of the 1990s, 20 years of which within the agency network BBDO Worldwide. His research interest lie within strategic orientations, brand orientation, brand co-creation, transformational learning and corporate branding.