Atle Midttun

New Political Economy Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1657078

In one of the most influential contributions to modern political economy, Hall and Soskice have launched a distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘coordinated’ market economies, placing the Nordic countries firmly in the latter category. We argue that, while the H&S distinction may serve classificatory purposes, seeing the Nordic model in terms of ‘coordinated capitalism’ blurs the distinctive features of the Nordic countries’ success as productive and fair economies. We contend that the central formula behind this success lies in what we call the Nordic model’s ambidexterity – the capacity to combine collaborative and competitive elements and skilfully navigate between them. Using an interdisciplinary perspective (inspired by organisation theory, cultural semiotics and evolutionary analysis), we provide a conceptual basis for reinterpreting the Nordic Model as an ambidextrous combination of culturally rooted, collaborative strategies that are subsequently competitively exposed. The article illustrates the workings of this ambidexterity in three societal domains: work life (including female participation), resource management – illustrated by the Norwegian petro-economy – and international business management and regulation with a focus on CSR. In each case we will show how collaboration is intertwined with pragmatic competitive exposure, yielding high productivity, high welfare, as well as fair income and wealth distribution.

Energies 12(14) Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/en12142740

The article explores the interplay between policy, technological innovation and market dynamics. It highlights the challenges of combining biofuel policies for ‘greening’ transport with reviving the Nordic forestry industry. We find that strong policy initiatives have triggered a transition to biofuel in the three Nordic countries but have so far given little stimulus to forest-industrial revival. Instead, biofuel has created dynamic change in the petroleum sector, where retailers and refineries have adopted cheap imported biofuel to diversify out of an exclusive reliance on petroleum, leaving forest-based biofuel unable to compete. However, this does not mean that the forestry industry has remained stagnant. We find that parts of the Nordic forestry industry have staged an impressive revival, though one based predominantly on high value products, such as hygiene products and labels, and not on biofuel. We conclude that, while public policy may influence commercial conditions, it does not—in a market economy—dictate the industrial strategy, which is hard to predict, especially when it moves beyond existing sector-boundaries. However, the recent adjustment in biofuel policy, in part a response to ecological critique, may represent a more promising opportunity for forest-industrial participation in the future.

Cliodynamics 9(2) p. 124-139 Doi: https://doi.org/10.21237/C7clio9242078

Recent years have seen major political crises throughout the world, and foreign policy analysts nearly universally expect to see rising tensions within (and between) countries in the next 5–20 years. Being able to predict future crises and to assess the resilience of different countries to various shocks is of foremost importance in averting the potentially huge human costs of state collapse and civil war. The premise of this paper is that a transdisciplinary approach to forecasting social breakdown, recovery, and resilience is entirely feasible, as a result of recent breakthroughs in statistical analysis of large-scale historical data, the qualitative insights of historical and semiotic investigations, and agent-based models that translate between micro-dynamics of interacting individuals and the collective macro-level events emerging from these interactions. Our goal is to construct a series of probabilistic scenarios of social breakdown and recovery, based on historical crises and outcomes, which can aid the analysis of potential outcomes of future crises. We call this approach—similar in spirit to ensemble forecasting in weather prediction—multipath forecasting (MPF). This paper aims to set out the methodological premises and basic stages envisaged to realize this goal within a transdisciplinary research collaboration: first, the statistical analysis of a massive database of past instances of crisis to determine how actual outcomes (the severity of disruption and violence, the speed of resolution) depend on inputs (economic, political, and cultural factors); second, the encoding of these analytical insights into probabilistic, empirically informed computational models of societal breakdown and recovery—the MPF engine; third, testing the MPF engine to “predict” the trajectories and outcomes of another set of past social upheavals, which were not used in building the model. This “historical retrodiction” is an innovation that will allow us to further refine the MPF technology. Ultimately our vision is to use MPF to help write what we call “a history of possible futures,” in which the near- and medium-term paths of societies are probabilistically forecast.

Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond p. 2004-228 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315195964-11

Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond p. 139-160 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315195964-8

Routledge

Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond p. 1-18 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315195964-1

Global Modernization Review (II):Modernity and Diversity in New Era p. 241-259

Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond p. 187-204 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315195964-10

Energy Policy 108 p. 330-343 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.05.046

This article contributes to the understanding of the current transformation of the energy industry in Europe and the interplay between greening policies and digital technological innovation. It shows how, since the financial crisis, core players in the European energy industry ended up in a dualist limbo, between conventional and emerging business models. It documents how strategies and business models that delivered extraordinary financial performance in the first decade of the 21st century often failed dramatically after the 2008 financial crisis. Yet it finds that incumbents with 1) a greener energy mix, 2) smaller scale and, quite naturally, 3) better financial performance fared better than others The study explores the emergence of new business models and finds that most of the emerging business models circle around the customer interface where digital solutions allow more flexible interplay between consumption and production of energy, and/or between several service alternatives to fulfill basic needs for customer home comfort. The article also discusses important policy implications: For competition policy, it indicates a shift from challenges of scale and scope towards challenges of regulating networks and dominant platforms. Furthermore, it highlights new policy dilemmas concerning balancing and energy storage to accommodate intermittent supply from renewables.

Energy and Transport in Green Transition: Perspectives on Ecomodernity p. 18-61 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315761138-2

Routledge

Energy and Transport in Green Transition: Perspectives on Ecomodernity p. 174-198 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315761138-8

Energy and Transport in Green Transition: Perspectives on Ecomodernity p. 103-130

Energy and Transport in Green Transition: Perspectives on Ecomodernity p. 1-18-1-18 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315761138-1

Energy & Environment 26(8) p. 1271-1292 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1260/0958-305X.26.8.1271

Business & Society 54(4) p. 464-500 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650312450848

Im Hürdenlauf zur Energiewende: Von Transformationen, Reformen und Innovationen p. 165-186 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-06788-5_11

Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy p. 289-309 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/14720701011021148

Cappelen Damm Akademisk

CSR and beyond: A Nordic perspective p. 17-44

CSR and beyond: A Nordic perspective p. 305-329

Energy Policy 48(Sept.) p. 1-4 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.04.048

Over the last four or five years the world has seen a dramatic change in the international climate negotiations, from an upbeat vision of an agreement on emission reduction targets and burden sharing launched on Bali in 2007, followed by a search for new strategies to ensure more success in Rio in 2012. One of the emerging outcomes has been a 'green growth' strategy which seems more likely to succeed as a central climate mitigation approach, insofar as it can more easily be aligned with aspirations across national divides. Against the backdrop of the financial and sovereign debt crises, there are great hopes that green innovation and industrial engagement, triggered by innovative policies, can save the climate at the same time as boosting sluggish economies. A separate and parallel development is a move from international climate negotiations towards multilevel engagements by national governments. In spite of failures in reaching international climate consensus, both informal and formalized networks and coalitions have been formed between cities, regions and states take climate action nevertheless. And there is a growing awareness that environmental governance, in order to be effective, not only needs a multi-level but also multi-actor through the engagement of civil society alongside the state and market.

Energy Policy 48(September) p. 22-35 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.04.049

Europe has played the role of a green hegemon on the global arena for several decades. By exploring its green transition in the electricity industry, the article discusses whether Europe is on track with regard to delivering sustainable development in a core sector at home. The article finds that the greening of European electricity industry has been highly dynamic and can best be represented in terms of competing modernities; where carbon, nuclear, renewables and demand side management challenge each other in the race for sustainable energy solutions. The article describes the Greening European electricity industry as a complex institutional game which resembles a relay race where various factors have driven innovation at different stages. Change may be initially have been politically driven, while the baton is later taken by markets, technology or civic mobilization. The article shows how strong greening policies may lead to blockage, whereas softer and less confrontational policies with triggering effects may have a better chance of success. The article also argues that a central factor in the apparent European success in greening electricity has been an advantageous blend of technology push and market pull approaches, which has merged out of national rivalry rather than coordinated planning.

Magma forskning og viten 15(7) p. 41-51

Norsk petroleumssektor har vært en storstilt arena for innovasjon. Næringen har gått løs på en kontinuerlig strøm av utfordringer; fra utvikling av felt i grunne farvann med lett tilgjengelig olje og gass, til kompliserte reservoarer, langt fra land i dype havområder, og med store klimatiske utfordringer. Utfordringene har vært løst gjennom et omfattende samarbeid mellom operatørselskap (store petroleumsselskap), deres leverandører og underleverandører. Keynes påviste i sin tid muligheter for å utnytte positive ringvirkninger av offentlige investeringer og forbruk for å få fart på økonomien (Keynes 1936). Effekten var langt større enn den offentlige innsatsen skulle tilsi, takket være omfattende ringvirkninger eller den såkalte 'multiplikatoreffekten'. Vi argumenterer for at det kan skapes en tilsvarende multiplikatoreffekt for innovasjon som ikke bare utløser leverandørbedriftenes kreativitet, men også høster erfaringer fra nyskapning i egne utallige øvrige nettverk og kunderelasjoner. Denne effekten er illustrert gjennom tre case, nemlig utviklingen av den ubemannede og tråløse undervannsfarkosten, HUGIN, havbunnsgravemaskinen SPIDER og et havbunns-gasskomperasjonsanlegg. Casene illustrerer også operatørselskapenes evne til å mobilisere og koordinere sitt leverandørnettverk. Med deres sterke ressursbase og betydelige insentiver, klarer de å forene behovet for samarbeid, mot behovet for konkurranse. Petroleumselskapene konkurrerer med hverandre om å få operatøransvaret for nye felt (lisenser). Straks lisensen er utdelt, samarbeider de om utbygging og drift av det samme feltet. De mobiliserer så sitt leverandørnettverk i en åpen invasjonsarena. Premien for leverandørene er kompetanseoppbygging og utvikling av nye immaterielle verdier, som igjen kan brukes for å erobre nye prosjekter og kunder.

Magma forskning og viten 15(7) p. 20-22

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management 18(1) p. 25-38 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.237

Przegląd Europejski

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 10(1) p. 6-17

Governance of Innovation: Firms, Clusters and Institutions in a Changing Setting

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 10(1) p. 97-109

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 8(4) p. 406-418

Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds), Rule Systems Theory. Applications and Explorations

Magma forskning og viten 11(5) p. 75-86

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 7(2) p. 194-208

Green Power Markets: Support Schemes, Case Studies and Perspectives, Lutz Mez (ed)

Innovasjonsprosesser: Om Innovasjoners Odysée, Hernes og Koefoed (red) p. 173-196

Magma forskning og viten 10(3) p. 57-71

Energy Policy 35(3) p. 1419-1422

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 7(4) p. 401-413

Magma forskning og viten

Kunneke et al, Institutional Reform, Regulation And Privatization: Process And Outcomes in Infrastructure Industries

Matthias Weber & Jens Hemmelskamp (eds): Innovation, sustainability and policy

Jan Gronewegen and Rolf Kunneke (eds) :Reform of infrastructure industries

Corporate Governance : The international journal of business in society 5(3)

Jens Hemmelskamp(ed): Innovation, sustainability and policy

Energy & Environment 15(4) p. 633-656

Energy Policy 32(12) p. 1355-1362

Jean-Michel Glachant and Dominique Finon (eds.): Competition in European Electricity Markets. A Cross-country Comparison

Marie-Laure Djelic and Sigrid Quack (eds.): Globalization and Institutions

Energy Policy 31(7) p. 677-687

Journal of Network Industries 2(1) p. 25-68

European energy industry business strategies / Atle Midttun (ed.)

International Journal of Regulation and Governance 1(1) p. 79-111

Environmental Politics

Energi og miljø ved et tidsskille - samfunnsfaglige perspektiver fra forskningsprogrammet SAMRAM / Aarne O. Røvik (red.) p. 71-89

Public Administration 77(4) p. 873-895

Innovation. The European Journal of Social Sciences 12(2)

Energy Policy 26(2)

Energy Policy 26(13)

Globalisering - drivkrefter og konsekvenser

Energy Policy 26(3)

BI Business Review

BI Business Review

The 2nd International Modernization Forum, China Center for Modernization Research, Bejing 20-22 May 2016

The Third WINIR Conference on Institutions and Human Behaviour 2-5 September 2016, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Dagsavisen

Praktisk Økonomi & Finans 30(3) p. 202-211

CSR and beyond: A Nordic perspective p. 420-423

Governance of Natural Resources

Ledernytt 1

Carbonundrums

Stanford Lunch Workshop

NFR Research Project

NIFU Nordisk institutt for studier av innovasjon, forskning og utdanning

Tema for analysen som presenteres i denne rapporten er innovasjons- og kommersialiseringsstrategier og –aktiviteter i åtte Forskningssentre for Miljøvennlig Energi (FME). Rapporten er en samfunnsfaglig analyse, der vi skal belyse ”hvordan FMEenes forskningsresultater skal kunne maksimere sitt potensial for å bli realisert”, slik dette er formulert i oppdragsbeskrivelsen fra Norges forskningsråd. I analysen har vi operasjonaliserte dette som FMEenes innovasjons- og kommersialiseringsstrategier og –aktiviteter. Sentralt i dette oppdraget er å analysere hva som er forutsetningene for at FMEene skal realisere sitt potensial, med vekt på å analysere dette i forhold til relevante markedsforhold og politiske rammebetingelser og virkemidler.

Reclaiming Ecological Wisdom for the Crisis of Our Time

Salzburg Energy Conference

Forskningskonferanse om CSR

Research Conference

Cranfield Seminar

Handelshøyskolen BI

Handelshøyskolen BI

Handelshøyskolen BI

This report explores the challenges and opportunities of strategic CSR, and is primarily based on three cases of CSR-driven innovation in Norway. The study has been undertaken within the framework of a project on CSR-driven innovation organised and partially financed by the Nordic Innovation Centre and carried out by the business schools in the four Nordic capitals. Copenhagen Business School; BI – Norwegian School of Management, Helsinki School of Economics, Reykjavik Business University, Stockholm School of Economics. Some of the central insights emerging from this explorative study are that CSR-driven innovation entails a number of specific possibilities and constraints: 1) It allows a move beyond defensive and proactive CSR into a more rewarding synthesis between social and commercial concerns. 2) It introduces the paradigm of serving both societal and individual needs, thereby transcending the division between public and private goods. 3) It necessitates an alignment between micro-level business strategy and macro-level societal needs. 4) It creates new opportunities for finance, organisation, marketing and regulation, and allows new dynamic alignments to drive learning investments, niche markets and product differentiation. Chapter 1 discusses the core possibilities and constraints of CR-driven innovation, based on the three Norwegian cases that are presented in the following chapters 2 to 4. Chapter 5 provides some brief concluding remarks.

Florence conference on Civil society

Praktisk Økonomi & Finans

International Journal of Corporate Governance 6(4) p. 369-385

Handelshøyskolen BI

Bærum kommune /Frivillighetssentralen har gjennom en fireårsperiode gjort forsøk med å engasjere private bedrifter i partnerskap med kommunen. De to første årene var prosjektet underlagt Frivillighetssentralen i Bærum kom­mune. Fokus var rettet mot næringslivet for å motivere utvalgte bedrifter til samfunnsengasjement i et sosialt eller offentlig-privat partnerskap Sosialt partnerskap ble definert som et samarbeid mellom et offentlig tjenestested og en bedrift som forplikter seg til å utføre et nærmere definert ”frivillig arbeid” utført av bedriften i den betalte arbeidstiden. Vi bruker i det følgende sosiale partnerskap synonymt med offentlige-private partnerskap med offentlig og frivillig sektor. Prosjektet ble etter hvert sterkere forankret på politisk og administrativt nivå i Bærum kommune, som videreførte prosjektet. Bærum kommunes initiativ kommer på en tid da sosiale partnerskap i stigende grad lanseres internasjonalt, både på nasjonalt og overnasjonalt nivå. Særlig har Storbritannia satset sterkt i denne retning, men også FN har engasjert seg i å fremme partnerskap omkring de store utfordringene i den globale utvikling. Denne rapporten presenterer noen refleksjoner omkring prinsipielle sider ved sosiale eller offentlig-private partnerskap og foretar, mot denne bakgrunn, en evaluering av Bærum kommunes forsøk med sosiale partner­skap mellom bedrifter og kommunal forvaltning. Avslutningsvis drøftes generelle fordeler og ulemper ved ”Bærums­modellen” så langt, og på grunnlag av evalueringen presenteres tiltak for å styrke det sosiale eller offentlig-private partnerskapsarbeidet. Som del av prosjektet har Bærum kommune også utarbeidet en egen manual for sosialt partnerskapsarbeid.

BI Norwegian School of Management

Handelshøyskolen BI

This report explores some of the drivers behind this development and describes and analyses experiences in the Dutch, UK and Swedish green electricity markets. The report points out that the recursion to market based greening is demanding, as political authorities thereby engage extensively not only in market regulation, but also in market construction, even to the extent of taking responsibility for creating demand and balancing it with sufficient supply. Because of the design challenge and the goal complexity, green electricity market development therefore appears to involve considerable policy learning and regulation and market construction itself, thus, contains strong elements of innovation. The report, therefore, shows how policy innovation comes to interplay with the technological and commercial innovation of market actors, that it is supposed to bring about.

Handelshøyskolen BI

Focusing on greening of electricity industry (GEI), this report explores the positions and outlook of various units within the EU system with mandates in the greening of electricity industry process. The study takes a knowledge-based perspective on administrative decision-making, where administrative units are seen as carriers of cognitive models and as specialized competency networks. Embedded in the EU’s administrative management of GEI, the study finds positions that can be referred to as four underlying conceptual models: 1) The market efficiency model, which is typically found in units handling internal market policy, competition policy and de-regulation policy of the EU. The core focus of this model is on efficient allocation of economic resources between alternative deployments in an economy where both economic resources and technologies are given and scarce. 2) The innovation/exploration model, which relates to the innovation policy dimension of GEI. Environmental reorientation of the energy system is here seen as a question not only of efficiency, but also of technological change. The core focus of this model is new industrial development and growth as a function of innovation. 3) The eco-efficiency model, which relates specifically to the environmental policy dimension of GEI. The greening challenge is here transformed into economic incentives. The core focus of this model is on internalisation of costs of environmental damage and negative external effects into the business model and into the regulatory market design. 4) As a major input factor in the economy GEI also raises important industrial policy concerns. The core focus of the industrial policy model is on building up and maintaining industrial capabilities within the territorial domain in focus, in this case the EU. The final part of the report develops an outlook on future European GEI policy, drawing on each of the perspectives and relating the policy alternatives also to the interests of the European Parliament and member countries. It is argued that the market efficiency model, with its eco-efficiency extension, is hard to defend politically when seen from the perspective of the EU Parliament or when related to the distributive interests of member countries. In comparison, the innovation/exploration approach has many strong sides as far as EU policy-making is concerned. With a niche market strategy, and/or project based financing, the innovation perspective creates the possibility for partnerships rather than confrontation with existing member state and industrial interests. The flexible tools in the innovation approach also allow for tradeoffs between different fractions in Parliamentary decision-making. A disputed weakness of the innovation model, if applied as a dominant strategy for greening of electricity, however, is its debateable efficiency and high costs. The outlook on greening of electricity industry coming out of the industrial policy model is ambiguous in so far as this model can be applied at different levels - from the individual nation state to the EU level. With a dominant focus on low input energy prices as part of a European industrial competitiveness strategy, this model has a credibility problem as far as GEI is concerned. While in a static perspective the policy outlooks derived from the different cognitive frameworks may conflict, a dynamic perspective could show them to be more complementary. As a final point, the report notes that irrespective of the production side solution to GEI in Europe, European energy policy is conspicuously under-developed when it comes to initiatives to reduce energy consumption.

Elsevier

Handelshøyskolen BI

Handelshøyskolen BI

With a comparative focus on policy similarity and diversity, this report comes out of the project named “The Energy- related Environmental Policy Game” financed by Norwegian Research Council , Industry and Energy and the Norwegian Energy Association (EBL). The project gives an overview of the main elements of electricityrelated environmental policy in the Nordic countries, following the launching of a common electricity market in the 1990s. The report points out that the electricity related environmental policy positions of the Nordic countries showed a noticeable lack of coordination in the 1990s. Nordic divergence is observed both in terms of general policy orientations and at the instrument and incentive levels, in spite of the pioneering development of a common integrated electricity market and ambitious environmental policy goals.

Handelshøyskolen BI

This report examines the potential for- and institutional framing of green electricity trade in the Nordic region in general and for trade in standardised green products on a commodity exchange in particular. The discussion includes both mandatory, politically initiated trade as well as commercially and idealistically motivated trade. Rather than focusing on equilibrium and price formation within given institutional constraints, institutional analysis focuses on the institutional framework itself and how different institutional elements are constituted and affect market outcomes.

Elsevier Science

Kraftjournalen 6(1)

Palgrave

Senter for elektrisitetsstudier, Handelshøyskolen Bi

Handelshøyskolen BI