Simon Neby

This study examines how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) manage reputational threats related to morally controversial issues. Analyzing three Norwegian SOEs—Norsk Tipping, Equinor, and Kongsberg Gruppen—over 2002–2023, we identify three distinct reputation management approaches: mitigation, translation, and symbolism. The findings show that the SOEs adopt reputation management approaches aligned with norms of appropriateness. Specifically, they show that Norsk Tipping emphasizes mitigation to address concerns about gambling harms, while Equinor and Kongsberg Gruppen use symbolic and translational approaches to manage broader, evolving controversies related to fossil energy production and defense industry activities. Contrary to expectations, the approaches do not become more complex over time but remain stable and refined. We explain these patterns through the Logic of Appropriateness and discuss implications for reputation management theory and government ownership policy.

This study explores the evolving, however also “messy”, role of communication professionals in higher education institutions (HEIs), who are involved in organizational science communication. Despite substantial growth and professionalization within HEIs' communication departments, limited research delves into these professionals' own perspectives and their self-understanding. Our investigation employs a metaphors-in-use perspective, through 26 interviews in ten Scandinavian HEIs. The paper contributes to the research on organizational science communication by unraveling the metaphors used by communication professionals: the salesman, the marketplace-facilitator, the police, the missionary, the storyteller, and the overhead-cost, gaining an understanding of how communication professionals perceive their own role.

Governments engage in corporatization by creating corporate entities or reorganizing existing ones. These corporatization activities reflect an interplay between political agency and environmental pressures, including (changing) notions of state-market relations. This paper discusses two ideal-typed organizational models of corporatization: the state as a marketizer and the marketization of the state. Whereas the first emphasizes the role of political design and agency in corporatization, the second emphasizes the role of (actors in) the environment for corporatization. Both models are assessed across five corporatization episodes in Norway and Sweden, where we also demonstrate the interplay between political agency and environmental pressure.

Climate change is recognized today not just as a pressing and prominent issue on government agendas but also one that has been increasingly ‘securitized’ in a variety of national and global settings. We know little, however, if climate change adaptation, as a subset of climate action, has followed a similarly securitized path. This article addresses that question, exploring not only if climate change adaptation has been securitized but also what type of securitization – threat-oriented or risk-oriented – has emerged. Turning our empirical focus to three national settings of Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands, we look for signs of securitization as well as whether securitization has been facilitated, shaped, or even blocked by existing governance features in each setting. We use this study to link the securitization literature with environmental governance approaches by building a novel analytical framework. Our findings show some intriguing and unexpected patterns, including evidence of risk-oriented securitization couched nevertheless as ‘business as usual’. We contribute to the growing debate on securitization in environmental governance while also casting new light on national climate change adaptation processes.

Through the lenses of “wicked policy problems” this article compares how Norway and Sweden organize for climate policies and analyzes the coordination challenges encountered by the two countries. Both countries’ policy fields display characteristics of complexity, divergence, fragmentation and uncertainty, indicating a substantial degree of organizational wickedness. The conditions for dealing with such wickedness is affected by contextual factors such as ministerial rule and the petroleum industry’s pivotal role in Norway, enhancing the role of administrative silos; and Swedish traditions to delegate responsibility in the governance system and prohibition of ministerial rule allows a slightly more unified approach to policies.