Viewing the Arctic as a key region for global development in the 21st century, this book offers a cross-disciplinary conceptual framework for understanding what international cooperation is, why it ...is difficult and what kind of alternative views can apply in the Arctic. Written by Arctic experts, the book presents major trends and scenarios for international cooperation in the Arctic up to 2035 and future prospects for international cooperation in the Arctic in various sectors: energy, business and economy, transportation and logistics, climate change, diplomacy and security, culture, innovations, higher education and research. Implications of the scenarios for global development are discussed in the light of the United Nations Agenda for Global Development and Sustainable Development Goals. The book offers a cross-disciplinary conceptual framework of international cooperation in the Arctic and discusses implications of this framework for global development. Filling the gap in analytical understanding of international cooperation, this book will be of interest to academics, students and professionals concerned with global development and the Arctic region.
This paper explores how the smart city idea unfolds in the bureaucratic context. Applying a qualitative approach and the Scandinavian stream of translation theory, we investigate the case of cities’ ...‘smartification’ in Russia during 2017–2020. Tracking mechanisms and outcomes of translation, we see the encounter of the smart city idea and bureaucracy as context entanglement, with smartocracy as an epilogue. Context entanglement refers to the mutual co-translation of the smart city idea and bureaucracy by means of formal and informal mechanisms, implying that what happens with bureaucracy or the smart city cannot be fully described without considering what happens with the other. Smart city vagueness and complexity appear to be both strengths and weaknesses that can be compensated for by bureaucracy as the smart city assemblage point. Smartocracy appears as a new way to organize cities whereby bureaucracy deals with smart city creatively: it keeps the core of bureaucracy while simultaneously reinforcing it and isolating some complex idea elements for later translation. This approach helps keep bureaucracy as a rational form of city modernization while maintaining smart cities’ promise to improve urban futures.
Creativity, proactivity, and foresight Bourmistrov, Anatoli; Åmo, Bjørn Willy
Technological forecasting & social change,
January 2022, 2022-01-00, 20220101, Volume:
174
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
•We test how foresight can translate creativity into proactive behavior.•We report results from a scenario-building exercise with 172 master's students.•Links between creativity and proactivity are ...conditioned by individual foresight styles.•Creativity mostly aids proactivity through “Actor”, “Tester”, and “Adapter” individual foresight styles.
This study addresses how foresight interventions can translate creativity into proactive behavior and, in this sense, foster anticipatory strategic management. We develop a theoretical model, linking creativity and proactivity with known discrete individual foresight cognitive styles, namely “Reactor”, “Tester”, “Adapter”, and “Framer”, but also add a new “Actor” dimension. The theoretical model is tested by analyzing quantitative data from 172 students attending two scenario-building workshops. Our SEM model allows us to formulate three conclusions. First, creativity is not directly linked to proactivity without considering individual foresight cognitive styles. Second, we confirm the presence of four components of foresight as discrete foresight cognitive styles but also demonstrate the importance of a fifth component, the “Actor”. Third, it is only through the “Tester”, “Adapter”, and “Actor” components that creative energy most significantly aids proactivity. This means that creativity most significantly aids proactivity when individuals are either able to experiment with alternative courses of action or change the conditions for how their respective futures may unfold. We contribute to the foresight literature by demonstrating how foresight, as a process of intervention, can foster discrete foresight cognitive styles at the individual level and moderate relationships between creativity and proactivity.
•Beyond budgeting intends to move decision-makers from “comfort” to “stretch” zones.•“Discomfort” with the “comfort” role of budget triggers MCS change in multinationals.•Moving decision-makers to a ...“stretch” zone is about changes in mindset and behavior.•It requires new processes of target setting, forecasting, and resource allocation.•Better decisions in situations requiring negotiation and learning follow.
This paper explores how change in the design principles of management control systems (MCSs) based on implementing the beyond budgeting (BB) ideas has influenced the transition of decision-makers from “comfort” to “stretch” zones and how this transition changed the supply of and demand for managerial information. This paper's starting point is based on the research evidence showing that there are many organizational problems associated with using budgets. Thus, this paper puts forth a previously neglected research context of companies that claim to have abandoned budgeting. In two cases, we illustrate how changes in the design of the MCS can create new management practices based on new ideas of information needed for decision-making. In particular, this paper illustrates how the use of new information provided by the MCS design, which is based on new principles, move decision-makers into the “stretch zone” characterized by new characteristics of decision-makers’ mindset and behavior. We also demonstrate how unbundling target setting, forecasting, and dynamic resource allocation enables better forward-looking and strategy-oriented decisions in situations requiring negotiation and learning.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how participatory budgeting (PB), as a form of dialogic accounting, is produced in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative case ...study of PB development for the period 2013-2016 in one Russian municipality. Based on triangulation of in-depth semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis, videotape data and netnographic observation, the authors employ ideas of dialogic accounting and institutional work.
Findings
The study shows that the PB experiment, which began with dialogic rhetoric, in reality, had very limited dialogic effects. However, the authors also observed that the PB dynamics over time made the practice neither inherently monologic nor dialogic. The authors explained such transformations by the way in which the individual reflexivity of actors altered when carrying out institutional work. Curiosity reflexivity was the most essential, triggering different patterns of institutional work to set up the PB experiment. However, further, the authors demonstrated that, over the course of the experiment’s development, the institutional work was trapped by various actors’ individual reflexivity forms and in this way limited PB’s dialogic potential.
Originality/value
The study shows the importance of understanding and managing individuals’ reflexivity, as it shapes the institutional work performed by different actors and, therefore, influences the direction of both the design and materialization of dialogic accounting experiments such as PB. In a broader sense, this also influences the way in which democratic governance is developed, losing democratization potential.
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to examine whether public servants as users of accounting information are responsive to changes in the content of an accounting report and, if so, how responsive ...they are.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies a theoretical framework, linking accounting information and accounting use by focusing on users’ “mental models”. The empirical context for the study is a municipality located in Northwest Russia. Three public servants were followed over several days for the purpose of studying their use of a formal accounting report. Later, those users were also presented with a different version of the same accounting report that was re-constructed by the researcher based on normative accounting theory. The study documents the responses of public servants and presents those in a narrative form.
Findings
The study reveals that though the original formal financial accounting report is extensively used, the public servants mostly reject the usefulness of the modified version of the report. The modified accounting report puts public servants in a “discomfort” zone, where the users’ mental models come in conflict with the information in the modified report. Following that, the study uncovers that the use of the traditional accounting report is based on three different mental models developed by users over time and guiding the use of accounting. Those mental models are described by three metaphors: “balanced matrix”, “water tank” and “fair rules”.
Originality/value
There is an unreasonable expectation that change in the public sector accounting system from cash toward accrual information will improve the quality of decision-making by public servants. The claim needs evidence that change in the accounting information supply will actually lead to change in information use. The paper demonstrates that change in use requires more substantial change in the users’ mental models. This change is difficult, time-demanding and requires the development of tailor-made training programs. The paper is also a response to van Helden’s (2016) call for more observational studies that can give a more accurate picture of use.
The major public sector accounting reform in Russia began in 2004 envisaging ideas of ‘top‐down’ modernization through adoption of international accounting ideas from GFS/IPSASs. However, there is a ...decoupling between accounting practices and declared accounting norms. This is explained by ideas of accrual accounting reform fitting very well into the top political context aiming to achieve the international legitimization of Russia as a modern state, but contradicting the Russian public sector accounting tradition. Successful accounting reform, so far very much a ‘top‐down’ push process, requires strong ‘context ambassadors’ to stimulate ‘accounting curiosity’ and the processes of ‘bottom up’ accounting modernization.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how in a situation of a crisis can Management Accounting Systems (MAS) create tensions in attention to information between top and line managers.
...Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a field study.
Findings
The findings based on an attention-based view on organizations demonstrate how change to an MAS introduced to handle the crisis failed to integrate top and line managers’ attention toward the common issues. Tightening of budget control was an expected response in such a situation. However, this change produced rather the opposite result – attention to information articulated by the top and line managers became even more disintegrated. This was visible in terms of different interpretations of both the reasons and the strategy of how to get out of the crisis – this is what we call a tension in attention.
Research limitations/implications
The study is subject to the usual limitations of case-based research.
Practical implications
Implications from the study is that there is a need for caution about how managers move in the beginning of the crisis because the initial response sets a tone and trajectory of the crisis. In practice, this means that sense making processes are important in an early stage of a crisis to avoid tensions in attention between different groups in the organization.
Originality/value
The authors argued that little research has been conducted so far regarding what information managers focus their attention on in organizations under financial distress conditions. The originality is the use of an attention-based view together with organizational psychology to understand this area.
The Arctic region contains large amounts of natural resources considered necessary to sustain global economic growth, so it is unsurprising that it is increasingly susceptible to political, economic, ...environmental, and even military conflicts. This book looks in detail at the preconditions and outlook for international cooperation on the development of Arctic petroleum resources, focusing on Norwegian-Russian cooperation in the Barents Sea towards 2025.
The authors provide a cross-disciplinary approach including geopolitical, institutional, technological, corporate and environmental perspectives to analyse the underlying factors that shape the future development of the region. Three future scenarios are developed, exploring various levels of cooperation and development influenced by and resulting from potential political, commercial and environmental circumstances. Through these scenarios, the book improves understanding of the challenges and opportunities for Arctic petroleum resource development and promotes further consideration of the possible outcomes of future cooperation.
The book should be of interest to students, scholars and policy-makers working in the areas of Arctic studies, oil and gas studies, energy security, global environmental governance, environmental politics and environmental technology.
Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138783263_oachapter1.pdf
Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138783263_oachapter2.pdf
Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a
PDF
