Kent Eriksson | KTH Royal Institute of Technology (original) (raw)

Papers by Kent Eriksson

Routledge eBooks, Nov 21, 2019

Sustainability

Sustainability involves multiple environmental, technical, social and economic factors, and such ... more Sustainability involves multiple environmental, technical, social and economic factors, and such complex analysis requires systemic solutions. Delivery models are key to achieving system benefits and enhancing sustainable development in infrastructure investments. They define the phases of a project, incentive structures, risk sharing and the relationships among the actors in it. They are usually developed early in the project and determine the project dynamics and outcomes. We compared traditional delivery models with systemic ones. We identified and illustrated elements that differ between them through two cases. The contribution is an increased understanding of how systemic infrastructure delivery models can adapt to changes in their environment. We also found that sustainability is vastly under-researched in systemic infrastructure delivery, but that its potential to deliver benefits to PPP infrastructures is substantial.

Facilities, 2022

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase the knowledge of real estate firms’ capabilities... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase the knowledge of real estate firms’ capabilities to innovate and, consequently, their capacity to absorb new innovations and benefit from digital technologies in an ecosystem context. Design/methodology/approach The results are based on 32 interviews with representatives of Swedish real estate owners, real estate owner industry associations and suppliers of digital technology to real estate owners. The data are interpreted using theories on absorptive capacity (i.e. the capacity to absorb new innovations), innovation capabilities and innovation ecosystems. Findings The real estate owners, technology suppliers and real estate owner industry associations have expanded their innovation capabilities and reshaped their innovation ecosystem by initiating a number of different digitalization activities; for example, the development of new IT systems, digital platforms, services and business models. The absorptive capacity has been improved a...

Investments in large projects in infrastructure, logistics, or energy often fail to generate thei... more Investments in large projects in infrastructure, logistics, or energy often fail to generate their intended value. There is a need to develop alternative models for analyzing large industrial investments where their ability to deliver maximum value in a sustainable business ecosystem for users and stakeholders is the main success criterion for their functionality. Maximizing stakeholder value across the business ecosystem will often require purposefully reconfiguring the way ecosystem actors collectively create value across industry sectors and over project development phases. This requires coordinating workflows among the actors involved in delivering and operating the investment over its lifecycle in the business ecosystem. In this paper, we show how such an analysis can be made. We analyze workflow interdependence in a project aiming to invest in a vessel for short sea shipping. We consider both the lifecycle of the investment and its embeddedness in the larger business ecosystem...

The Internet has emerged as one of the most important distribution channels for financial service... more The Internet has emerged as one of the most important distribution channels for financial services firms. However, there is still a need to more fully understand the antecedents to customer use of banking via the Internet. The purpose of this article is to study technology acceptance of Internet banking in Estonia, an emerging east European economy. The present paper modifies the technology acceptance model and applies it to bank customers in Estonia, because Estonia, a country with a developing economy, has focused on Internet banking as an important distribution channel. The findings suggest that Internet bank use increases insofar as customers perceive it as useful. The perceived usefulness is central because it determines whether the perceived ease of Internet bank use will lead to increased use of the internet bank. Put differently, a well-designed and easy to use internet bank may not be used if it is not perceived as useful. We thus conclude that the perceived usefulness of I...

Sustainability, 2021

This article identifies how project life cycle characteristics and automation and robotic technol... more This article identifies how project life cycle characteristics and automation and robotic technologies influence the sustainability of public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects. The result of the article is a model of how public and private collaborations can leverage technology and project organization to make infrastructure more sustainable. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the model subdivides sustainability into engineering, project management, environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Engineering sustainability concerns the applicability of technologies to infrastructure PPP sustainability. The project management sustainability is decisive for ultimately creating environmental, social and economic sustainability within and beyond infrastructure PPP projects. The model identifies that the procurement phase is of particular importance for sustainable infrastructure PPPs. Successful sustainable infrastructure procurement likely includes such factors...

Volume 8, 2019

This article contributes to engineering project research by studying how projects relate to their... more This article contributes to engineering project research by studying how projects relate to their surrounding context. The article presents a framework for the analysis of workflow interdependencies in a project that is situated in a business ecosystem. The analysis is used to reduce costly conflicts in the business ecosystem, and the framework shows how the project is positively impacted by the resolution of those conflicts. The framework elaborates James Thompson’s notion of pooled, sequential and reciprocal interdependence and distinguishes between compatible-reciprocal and contentious-reciprocal interdependencies. The relationship between interdependence types and their corresponding coordination and governance mechanisms, originally posited for interdependence between tasks and groups within a single organization, applies equally well to interdependence types and governance mechanisms across firm boundaries within a business ecosystem. We analyze a cargo vessel development proj...

Volume 8, 2018

Globally, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have increased in popularity as an alternative procu... more Globally, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have increased in popularity as an alternative procurement model for infrastructure development projects. While PPPs have been widely researched and remain subject to extensive debate, the process of PPP institutionalization has been largely overlooked. To address this knowledge gap, we utilize a combination of both Johnson et al.’s (2006) four phases of institutionalization—innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation—and Mrak’s (2014) three models of PPP institutionalization—centralized, decentralized, and mixed—to examine the current state of the U.S. PPP market. Using data on 368 U.S. PPP projects from Inframation’s global transactions database, our case analysis indicates America’s PPP institutionalization process is strongly decentralized and currently in a state of diffusion. Our analysis also suggests general validation of PPPs in the U.S. will likely be predicated on shifting to a mixed PPP institutionalization...

Journal of Organization Design, 2016

Public-private partnership (PPP) concession agreements are awarded by National, State and local p... more Public-private partnership (PPP) concession agreements are awarded by National, State and local public agencies that contract with private companies to finance and deliver infrastructure as a long term service to governments and their citizens, rather than having the private firms design and build infrastructure assets to be financed, operated-and, hopefully, maintained-by government. PPPs are similar to the emerging model of selling business or personal software as a cloud-based service (SaaS) rather than as a product licensed by the user-a model that that has transformed and disrupted the enterprise software industry. Australia is a world leader in PPP infrastructure delivery, and has had over two decades of experience in delivering civil and social infrastructure services to its citizens via PPP concessions. Along the way, the public and private participants in infrastructure PPPs have developed practices and a mature institutional framework necessary for this kind of long-term, risky public-private commercial partnership. This study reports the findings from in-depth interviews with 25 senior executives of public and private participants in PPP infrastructure projects from the three Eastern Australian States with the longest history of PPP delivery. Based on the results of those interviews, we develop a governance model for infrastructure service delivery: the government selects infrastructure projects, guided by a nonpartisan, expert infrastructure prioritization panel, and contracts for the delivery of these prioritized infrastructure services with a private concessionaire financed by long-term institutional investment capital. The concessionaire is a private entity in charge of financing, designing, constructing, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure service. The government supervises the infrastructure service, to safeguard public interest. The government also provides an institutional framework, with contracts and authorities necessary for the interaction between the public and private actors.

International Studies of Management & Organization, 2000

This article examines the effect of variation-in the geographical operations-of international bus... more This article examines the effect of variation-in the geographical operations-of international business operations on experiential knowledge development in the internationalization of the firm. Based on learning theory, this article develops five hypotheses on the effects of variation on three interrelated components of international experiential knowledge: internationalization knowledge, business knowledge and institutional knowledge. The LISREL analysis indicates that variation has a positive effect on the accumulation of experiential knowledge in internationalizing firms. In particular, it demonstrates that internationalization knowledge is a key variable which mediates the effect of variation on the other two knowledge variables. The last few years have seen a resurgence of research interest in the internationalization process of firms. Several models and theories have been suggested some of them based on behavioral theories which describe the internationalization of firms as a process of trial and error in an uncertain and unknown future. Learning about the opportunities and problems that exist abroad is important. This holds true for the learning-based model by Johanson and Vahlne (the Uppsala

Retail bank operations have in the light of recent developments in technology, deregulation and m... more Retail bank operations have in the light of recent developments in technology, deregulation and market become more complex. Banks need to handle both standardized and unstandardized services which leads to differentiation between units. This paper presents a framework for analysis of technologies and work flows in banks.

The realization of relationship marketing requires cooperative exchange between buyers and seller... more The realization of relationship marketing requires cooperative exchange between buyers and sellers. A key determinant of cooperative exchange is uncertainty perceived by the cooperating parties. This study investigates how cooperation is affected by decision makers’ perception of uncertainties in the environmental context, in relationships, and in decision-making routines. A sample of 135 branch managers from banks is used in a

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2013

Differences in institutional contexts create obstacles, which we in this paper label institutiona... more Differences in institutional contexts create obstacles, which we in this paper label institutional impediments that affect firm performance on foreign markets. International expansion can be discussed in terms of developing international business relationships, thus we investigate these impediments on a relationship level as well as on a network level, as relationships are connected into networks. We argue that the negative effects of institutional impediments on international performance can be managed by making relationship specific investments and through network dependency. Two different parts of a network are investigated; the local institutional net and the local business net. To examine these effects we develop five hypotheses, which are tested on a sample of 251 internationalizing SMEs by using structural equation modeling and linear regression analysis. The results show that relation specific investments have a mediating positive effect on performance, whereas the institutional net only have an i...

Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2014

The nature of service business is always closely associated with service quality and satisfaction... more The nature of service business is always closely associated with service quality and satisfaction. This study intends to measure the stakeholders response about the internationalization of KLIA services as one of the best airport in the world. With the intention of having a good generalization, out of approximately 106,000 populations, 456 respondents were selected from three main subgroups: namely passengers, airport personnel and airport tenants by using quota sampling. Relying on three constructs concerning airport facilities, service environment and service personnel demonstrated that all of them correlate well each other. Similar constructs individually indicated that they are significant towards developing the relationship with internationalization of service quality at the airport. Further testing on the hypotheses revealed that the identifiable constructs are able to explain 61.3% on the perceived service quality. The outcome of the study is useful in providing the direction towards sustaining and improving whatever associated dimensions so that the popularity of the airport as one of the gatekeeper able to help the nation in building its international image.

International Business Review, 2014

Drawing on internationalization process theory, we develop a new model for firm-specific internat... more Drawing on internationalization process theory, we develop a new model for firm-specific internationalization risk assessment. The model shows that firm-specific internationalization risks can be determined from a firm's experiences and from current business activities in a firm's network. Experiential risks are categorized as international, country market, network, or relationship experience risks. Risk assessment in current network activities can be determined from a firm's dependency on a network and from the network's performance and evolution. We apply our model to credit risk assessment by banks and other credit institutions. This article adds to research on financial institutions' credit risk assessment by focusing on firm-specific internationalization risk assessment, an area that has previously received little attention in the literature. In addition, this article provides a better understanding of risk assessment in the internationalization process, shedding light not only on the risks involved in firms' commitment to internationalization but also on the risks that banks and other institutions take when they commit by lending to internationalizing firms.

Technovation, 2007

This study focuses on buyers' continued use of self-service technology (SST). This area is often ... more This study focuses on buyers' continued use of self-service technology (SST). This area is often neglected because most studies focus on buyers' adoption or acceptance of SST. In comparison to new buyer acquisition, continued use is a cost-effective market strategy aimed at retaining buyers. Based on a sample of 1831 Estonian Internet banking customers, we find that continued use of SST is positively affected by buyers' perceived usefulness. We also find that continued use of SST is negatively affected by multichannel satisfaction. As our results show, two important issues are facing developers of SSTs and sellers using SSTs: First, continued use of SST is achieved when the buyer finds the SST useful. Second, SSTs need to be considered in the context of all channels in the buyer-seller interface because the buyer does not separate the service offering of an SST from other channels. The benefits associated with using SSTs will increase if these strategic issues are taken into account.

Journal of International Management, 2004

Because networks are a growing mode of doing business, internationalizing firms need to understan... more Because networks are a growing mode of doing business, internationalizing firms need to understand how they can use experiential knowledge of networks. In the context of organizational learning theory, we discuss in this article the perceived usefulness of network experiential knowledge, its antecedents, and its performance effects in the internationalization process of firms. A LISREL analysis of 256 firms found that more perceived usefulness of network experiential knowledge has a performance enhancing effect. Preceding the perceived usefulness of network experiential knowledge is internationalization experiential knowledge. In-depth study of interaction effects found that firms that have diverse market experiences and that are in a new foreign expansion situation particularly find their network experiential knowledge useful. This implies that the internationalizing firm builds routines from diverse market experiences for the development of networks in the early stages of a specific new international business expansion.

Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 2010

Inga-Lill S ö derberg is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Banking and Finance at Royal Inst... more Inga-Lill S ö derberg is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Banking and Finance at Royal Institute of Technology. Her thesis focuses on the ways customers and service providers create new routines to handle the uncertainties entailed in the intersubjectivity of business interactions at bank branches.