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As AI becomes increasingly integrated into public sector services, identifying the professional profiles and competencies necessary for its responsible implementation has become a critical priority. This study investigates the specific skills, knowledge areas, and professional attributes required for the ethical and effective deployment of AI in public services. Drawing on empirical insights from an expert workshop and follow-up interviews, we propose a competency framework that emphasizes not only technical expertise but also policy, legal, and ethical dimensions. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates on workforce preparedness and educational program design for AI governance in both the public and private sectors.

During a national crisis, longstanding subsidiaries' roles are placed under considerable pressure. At the same time, the connotation of longstanding subsidiaries implies that they have existed for a significant period of time, during which they would have developed legacies and identities related to these roles. However, there is limited understanding on how longstanding subsidiaries work with their legacies and identities to influence their roles in the MNE or in the local environment. This study examines how longstanding subsidiaries of Swedish MNEs in Brazil engage in identity work during an economic crisis. Drawing on a comparative case study of 16 competence-exploring and competence-exploiting subsidiaries, the findings reveal three distinct foci of identity work: reinforcing, preserving, and reconstructing. The study contributes to the emerging literature on subsidiary identity work by demonstrating how identity work relates to subsidiary roles over time. It also contributes to subsidiary evolution research by revealing how longstanding subsidiaries manage legacy in response to environmental turbulence.

The importance of previous firm-specific human capital (FSHC) is heightened during technological change as developing new innovations requires varied sources of knowledge (e.g., from other sectors). So far, research has not explained the effect of the intensity and breadth of inventors’ previously accumulated knowledge on innovation outputs at the current employer. In this paper, we study how 1144 inventors working with autonomous vehicle technologies in Sweden used their prior work experience at their current employer. Our findings reveal previous work experience increases the use of inventors' intensity and breadth of prior technological knowledge (i.e. backward patent citations) that leads to valuable new technologies (i.e. forward patent citations). This paper provides insights into the indirect effect of inventors’ work experience, which results from the intensity of knowledge and not the direct work experience per se. This paper bridges the human capital and innovation literatures by demonstrating the value of employees with prior work experience.

Research demonstrates that digital technologies stimulate industrial transformation by enabling new interdependencies with firms outside and across firm and industry boundaries. However, we know little about the degree of novelty and breadth of digital technologies that have the potential to transform industries. Understanding the degree of novelty (spanning from radical to incremental) and breadth (spanning from one sector to multiple sectors) of digital technologies is important for measuring their impact on industrial transformation. Through a topic modelling research approach on autonomous vehicle technology patents from firms operating in Sweden and a confirmatory survey with the inventors of those patents, this paper reveals 26 digital technology topics that are transforming the automotive industry. The digital technology topics are distributed across four ideal-typical technology categories for transformation: augmenting, spanning, transforming, and disrupting. This study illustrates the value of studying digital technologies’ transformative nature using an integrating framework; it reveals that digital technologies in the automotive industry have mainly incremental characteristics but that these characteristics provide necessary preconditions for the few more radical technologies to achieve their potential in transforming the industry.

Existing literature on ecosystem leadership tends to focus on how single firms orchestrate constellations of other actors to jointly develop a value proposition. By contrast, this paper explores an important but understudied kind of innovation orchestration, when the orchestrator is not a single firm but rather a multi-actor-led organisation. The paper explores this question through an empirical qualitative study of Drive Sweden, a successful ecosystem deliberately set up by incumbents with the support of governmental institutions in Sweden in order to promote innovation to sustain market leadership in the face of global digital transformation of the automotive sector. We identify the structure and the processes of operation of the orchestrator organisation as it evolved between 2012 and 2022. We also analyse how this orchestrator was instrumental in developing what we call an “ecosystemlevel innovation capability”, which is a kind of dynamic capability, and which to our knowledge has not been identified or conceptualized in the literature. We identify three sets of activities that form the ecosystem-level innovation capability: (1) collaborative framing, (2) coordinated experimentation, and (3) collaborative knowledge creation and dissemination. We contribute to the ecosystem literature on ecosystem leadership and on dynamic capabilities by extending the concept of ecosystem leadership which is usually conceptualised as a dynamic capability at the firm-level, to the ecosystem-level. We develop managerial implications. 

Research Summary: This article explores EMNEs' innovation capability building in emerging markets. The paper provides a longitudinal account of how the Brazilian cosmetics firm Natura transitioned from scant to ample innovation resources and processes. Building on the institution-based view and the resource-based view, we explain how EMNEs' innovation capability building is anchored in open innovation and collaborative nonmarket strategies. The paper reveals a unique pattern of innovation capability building based on a combination of local and global open innovation processes and harnessing the country characteristics over time. It is shown how combining open innovation and collaborative nonmarket strategies can help mitigate weak formal and informal institutions in emerging markets. The study offers an integrated framework explaining innovation capability building and the effects on the institutional setting.

Managerial Summary: The increase of well-known EMNEs has raised interest in understanding how these firms build sustainable innovation capabilities. Based on a longitudinal study of the Brazilian-based cosmetics firm Natura, this paper shows how an open innovation strategy can be used to tap into home-market natural resources and connect to the global setting. This innovation capability process involves traditional market-based strategies like inter-organizational collaborations but also nonmarket strategies, such as developing local relationships, supporting socio-biodiversity, and contributing to local society. The findings point at the importance of developing an overall innovation strategy, directing attention to innovation processes, engaging in recursive practice in innovation projects, responding to the market and nonmarket environments, and linking the emerging market institutional setting and the global market context.

Consider an interorganizational open innovation project, in which different organizations cooperate to generate value for clients or to solve a technological problem. In this setting, both the focal firm and the partners face uncertainties over time (e.g., technological uncertainties, market uncertainties) and, therefore, the performance of the focal firm and the overall interorganizational project depend on that firm's ability to assess potential uncertainties. The process of diffusion of a particular uncertainty throughout an inter-organizational project can be defined as uncertainty propagation. Assessment of uncertainty propagation can be employed to mitigate its detrimental impact. This paper connects previous studies of open innovation, uncertainty management and project management by providing a comprehensive, but structured, framework to assess uncertainty propagation. First, we propose the underlying causes of uncertainty propagation. Then, we present the three different approaches to its assessment, based on causes, effects and protection.

This paper investigates technology strategy in subsidiaries of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in emerging markets and suggests implications for subsidiary upgrading in Global Value Chains (GVCs). Technology strategy is delineated by the MNE subsidiary's manufacturing orientation (local or global) and knowledge transfer type (uni-directional or multi-directional). Drawing upon a multiple case study of seven of the largest Brazilian subsidiaries of Swedish MNEs, the study identifies four different MNE technology strategy types: 1) technical; 2) improvement; 3) development; and 4) creation. The findings suggest that technology strategy influences subsidiary upgrading through development of operational and dynamic capabilities.