This study investigates how digital transformation unfolds over time within a multi-business manufacturing firm. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of SweX—a global industrial firm—we trace the dynamics of digital transformation across three empirically derived phases: experimentation, consolidation, and acceleration. Five interrelated patterns shape the process: (1) digital transformation unfolds recursively rather than linearly; (2) tensions arise between corporate strategy and business unit adaptation; (3) monetizing digital innovation remains challenging; (4) structural adjustments are needed to balance stability and change; and (5) temporal asymmetry—misalignments between technology deployment and customer readiness—can hinder digital transformation. We organize these insights around three overarching themes—organizational tension, structural adjustment, and organizational adaptation—developed through iterative analysis across corporate and business unit levels. The study advances process-oriented perspectives on strategy by showing how recursive patterns of tension, structural change, and organizational adaptation drive digital transformation in complex, multi-level firms. 

The global economy has entered a decade of deep transformation driven by the confluence of geopolitical conflicts, climate pressures and accelerating technological rivalry. What began as a sequence of shocks in the early 2020s— pandemic disruption, war in Europe, and rising strategic tensions in East Asia—has evolved into a structural reorientation of globalization, security policies, alliance formation and industrial development. Fragmented globalisation has replaced the efficiency-driven integration of previous decades, as states and firms reorganise supply chains along political and security lines. Climate-related shocks further reshape macroeconomic conditions, fiscal priorities and long-term productivity trajectories. These forces interact with rapid technological change, including advances in artificial intelligence, new national armament priorities, and transformations of organisational practices.

Sectoral developments in defense, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and energy illustrate how geopolitical pressures and technological imperatives are reshaping industrial capabilities and strategic policy choices. At the firm level, AI adoption reconfigures decision-making, skill requirements and capability development, underscoring the role of national learning systems in sustaining long-term competitiveness. In this editorial we outline a research agenda that highlights the analytical and empirical challenges for the fields of applied economics, business studies and policy analysis. The editorial concludes by discussing future research directions related to supply chain fragmentation, institutional adaptation and the evolving climate–security–technology nexus.

While the critics of nuclear power previously focused on safety risks, they now point to how modern nuclear power plant constructions are plagued by cost increases and excruciating delays, most recently in Finland's new Olkiluoto 3-plant, which was finally commissioned in early 2023. These problems are avoidable, however. In the 1970s and 1980s, Sweden and Finland managed to build 14 new reactors without any costly delays. Stepwise, sequential expansion, continuous improvements, and knowledge transfer based on long-term partnerships were the crucial parts of this forgotten achievement.

Starting with a discussion of the contradictory trends shaping the global economy in the 2020s, this essay focuses on three technology-intensive sectors: defense, pharmaceuticals, and energy. In the defense sector, the Russian-Ukraine war and the tensions in East Asia ended a long period of slow growth with a ´call to arms´ and rearmament across OECD. The challenge of the Western industries now is to accelerate output and capacity in a broad range of sub-sectors and support the safe supply of weapons and spare parts to the Ukrainian army. Thus, RUW is also a battle between different skills in management, logistics, leadership, and training systems, which offers a rich arena for future research in these fields. 

In the pharmaceutical sector, the Covid-19 outbreak initiated another call to arms, and the industry was quick to respond by rapidly delivering new, effective vaccines. This coincided with a breakthrough for new approaches to cancer treatment, with a potential for major public health benefits, if the industry can handle the side effects and policymakers design cost-effective delivery systems with wide coverage. Again, this calls for focused research in the fields of management, innovation studies, and economics. 

The third sector discussed in this essay, electricity production, was caught in a perfect storm by the outbreak of the new war. However, the net effect seems to be a major increase in investments in renewables. This creates new challenges regarding, for example, system stability, combinations of flexible and nuclear-based power sources, and the cost-effective diffusion of renewables to emerging economies, thus another arena for important future research. 

Extant literature has extensively studied innovation-capability building in emerging economy firms (EEFs) from South Korea and China, but tends to neglect EEFs in somewhat less successful emerging economies, like Brazil and Turkey. Compared to the Asian countries, Brazil and Turkey liberalized and opened up their markets to global competition and the investments of multinational enterprises (MNEs) earlier, which implied other opportunities as well as restrictions for innovation-capability building in local firms. By analyzing different ways of catching-up in two Turkish firms, this study reveals that, unlike the East Asian cases, national factors such as state support did not significantly promote the innovation activities. Instead, sectoral and firm-level factors, such as competition, learning trajectories, and technological dynamics were the key ones affecting the studied firms’ processes of innovation-capability building. These factors, particularly the learning trajectories, were heavily influenced by ownership characteristics. In one of the cases, the involvement of a Turkish diversified business group played a vital role in a locally engineered and independent learning process; in the other case, the technological and organizational learning process exploited the advantages of being a joint venture between a foreign multinational and a Turkish owner group. 

The study suggests that technological catch-up alone is insufficient for emerging economy firms. To build an enduring competitive advantage, they also need to develop organizational and international marketing capabilities. Thus, the alignment among technology innovation, marketing, and organizational capabilities is vital for a firm catch-up in competitive market environments. 

Medan kärnkraftens kritiker tidigare lyfte fram säkerhetsrisker pekar de idag på hur nutida kärnkraftsbyggen plågas av kostnadsökningar och förseningar, senast i finska Olkiluoto. Men dagens politiker kan lära av hur Sverige och Finland lyckades anlägga 14 nya reaktorer på 1970- och 80-talen utan dyra förseningar. Stegvis utbyggnad och långsiktigt partnerskap var delar av hemligheten, skriver Christian Berggren, professor emeritus och Solmaz Filiz Karabag, tillförordnad professor, båda i industriell organisation, Linköpings universitet. 

Nordic cooperation played an important role for Sweden’s economic and social success in the years after WWII. In the 1970s, however, Sweden started to turn away from its Nordic neighbors and in the following decades, the country embarked on a Sonderweg within key policy areas such as education, immigration, law enforcement, and, most recently, COVID-19 mitigation strategy. This essay compares Sweden with the surrounding Nordic countries and seeks to explain her divergent policy choices in terms of two factors: the erosion of the all-inclusive organizational structure that characterized Sweden during the heyday of “Model Suedois,” and the emergence of a fragmented complex of narrow interest groups without the previous ethics of responsibility.

A recurring theme in the analysis is Sweden´s reluctance to engage in constructivestudies of her Nordic neighbors. According to the World Happiness Index, the Nordic area ranks as the “happiest region in the world,” with Finland in a leading position. If Sweden can equip herself with a positive curiosity and willingness to learn, there may still be an opportunity to close the gap to her most successful Nordic neighbors. 

Det nordiska samarbetet spelade en viktig roll under Sveriges framgångsår efter andra världskriget. Men på 70- och 80-talen vände sig Sverige bort från Norden och Europa och slog in på en Sonderweg med en alltmer avvikande politik inom skola, invandringspolitik och brottsbekämpning, och nu senast coronastrategi.

Christian Berggren, professor emeritus i industriell organisation vid Linköpings universitet, jämför länderna och ser en förklaring till Sveriges tidigare framgångar i en korporativ styrning av samhället, där organisationer på arbetsmarknaden tvingades ta ansvar för den förda politiken. Men den modellen övergavs och blev ersatt med en global och idealistisk agenda. Intressegrupperna behövde inte längre stå för konsekvenserna av sina krav. Arvet efter framgångsåren märks i dag mest i en svensk ovilja att lära av övriga Norden. Men Sverige har fortfarande en möjlighet att finna vägen tillbaka till toppen i ”världens lyckligaste” region, menar Berggren.

Tvärtemot vad tongivande kriminologer som professor Jerzy Sarnecki hävdar så tyder mycket forskning på att skärpta straff kan vara både bra och lönsamt för samhället och även sänka brottsligheten. Under vissa förutsättningar kan fängelsetid leda till bättre möjligheter för kriminella att återanpassa sig till samhället. Christian Berggren, som är skribent och professor emeritus i industriell organisation vid Linköpings universitet, har granskat forskningen och förespråkar en uppgörelse med den kriminalpolitiska ideologi som länge skymt sikten, både för vad som hänt i Sverige och vad som kan och bör göras. 

In innovation and project management studies incremental development projects are perceived as theoreticlly and organisationallyuninteresting. By means of a longitudinal study of product improvement projects at an automobile firm, this paper challenges such views andshows how the cumulative impact of the studied sequence resulted in a competitive repositioning of the company's product portfolio during afinancially difficult period. Project managers achieved this by transcending the separation between exploration and exploitation projects; they notonly adhered to time, cost and quality goals but also tried out new ways of testing and experimenting with controversial technical ideas. The paperanalyzes the intensive inter project learning that generated these ambidextrous capabilities and emphasizes that practices at the project-level need tobe buttressed by expanded management learning and capability development also at the sequence level.