Safety management is a central management activity in high-risk industries. We propose a new way of thinking about safety management by exploring the role of safety communication for safety culture, as opposed to understanding safety communication merely as an artifact of safety culture. Applying an in-depth qualitative interview study approach with 39 participants from a Swedish pulp- and paper mill, the study identifies enabling and hindering factors of safety communication for safety culture. Enabling factors include leadership commitment, employee engagement and involvement, knowledge sharing, psychosocial wellbeing, and effective reporting and risk management. Hindering factors involve organizational fragmentation, neglect of psychosocial aspects, lack of mentoring and training, dysfunctional reporting systems, and a culture of silence regarding safety. Theoretically, the study contributes with shedding light on the role of safety communication for shaping and aligning safety culture dimensions and processes throughout an organization via targeted, engaging and holistic safety management. Further, we advance theory by observing a greater role of psychosocial aspects in safety communication than previously recognized. Practical implications manifest in the need to incorporate psychosocial aspects in safety management as well as actively leveraging the aligning power of safety communication. Further research can depart from this study and can further deepen our understanding of mechanisms through which safety communication influences safety culture. Managers, policy makers and practitioners are equipped with insights on how to strengthen enabling factors and improve hindering factors to foster safety culture via safety communication.

Agricultural water management is vital for ecological resilience, yet the reintroduction of water-related landscape features (WLFs), such as wetlands, riparian buffers and hedgerows, remains limited in intensive farming systems. A bibliometric analysis of 433 Scopus-indexed articles shows that this field is currently dominated by biophysical and technical studies, with only an emerging body of research linking water management to circular economy and business-model innovation. Although the ecological benefits of WLFs are well documented, adoption is constrained by missing value-capture mechanisms, as most benefits occur beyond the farm. Drawing on value intention, the analysis shows how business managers’ motivations shape whether WLFs are seen as risks or opportunities. Thus, we argue that key drivers to shift perceptions include risk reduction, improved soil and water management and new circular-economy revenue streams. Advancing circular transitions requires research on value capture, differentiated business models, monetising resilience, resource recovery, landscape governance and behavioural barriers to adoption. © 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.

Purpose - The aim of this research paper is to identify and explore paradoxical tensions during sustainable transitions toward a circular economy. This is operationalized through the identification of paradoxical tensions and their occurrence within organizations, a process that is essential for advancing the understanding of sustainable transitions toward a circular economy. Such insights contribute to the development of the research field and open new opportunities for value creation within entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative action design research was conducted using five case studies of small and medium-sized enterprises, enabling observations, interviews and exploratory studies at the business premises. The action design research methodology consisted of four different stages: (i) problem formulation, (ii) building, intervention and evaluation, (iii) reflection and learning and (iv) formalization of learning.

Findings - The findings indicate that sustainable transitions toward a circular economy are enabled through dynamic multilevel interactions between different actors and roles, where various paradoxical tensions occur over time. This is made possible by identifying and relieving paradoxical tensions in the business, where an intermediary position is identified, which manages and relaxes tensions when strains occur in the sustainable transitions toward a circular economy.

Originality/value - The novelty and originality in this research paper can be found in the intermediary, which this study have labeled as the dynamic role, where individuals are identifying and relieving paradoxical tensions during sustainable transitions toward a circular economy.

© 2026 Senad Osmanovic, Henrik Barth and Pia Ulvenblad

Sustainability actions have the potential to exert a lasting impact on higher education didactics. Universities are often regarded as key actors in educating the next generation of decision-makers who are capable of making more informed choices from a sustainability perspective. However, significant challenges remain regarding the understanding about how sustainability can be integrated into higher education, and disciplines differ considerably in how they engage with the topic. To address these issues, we employ collaborative auto-ethnographic approach to examine how eight lecturers from different disciplinary backgrounds approached sustainability education, and what affordances and tensions they encountered during and after a joint international course on Higher Education Didactics for Sustainability organized by Karlstad University in Sweden. The findings indicate that substantial challenges persist, despite participants’ high levels of motivation and transdisciplinary mindsets. These challenges appear to be linked to disciplinary differences in approaches and emphasis regarding which aspects of sustainability education are considered applicable to the participants’ teaching practices. Copyright © 2026 Nordén, Ulvenblad, Mäenpää, Vogopoulou, Dourado, Merkisz-Guranowska, Lundberg and Schiöth.

Denna skrift bygger på ett projekt genomfört i samverkan mellan Högskolan i Halmstad, Centralfonden samt tre företag i skogsindustrin; Aspa Pulp, Billerud Skärblacka och Vida. Det är skrift nummer två i en trilogi som fokuserar på arbetsmiljö- och säkerhetsarbete i skogsindustrin. Den första skriften behandlade hur olika parter arbetar ”Säkert tillsammans i skogsindustrin” och finns publicerad via Centralfondens hemsida (https://centralfonden.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ Sa%CC%88kert-tillsammans.pdf).

I denna skrift tittar vi istället lite extra på vad var och en av oss kan göra för att arbetet skall bli ännu säkrare. Texten innehåller forskningens sammanfattning av de processer och resultat som har utvecklats under projektets gång. Projektet har genomförts under perioden 2023-2025. AFA Försäkring har finansierat forskarnas arbete och Centralfonden har finansierat behovsdrivna partsgemensamma processer med fokus på utveckling av arbetsmiljön i de medverkande företagen. Även i denna skrift låter vi flera röster berätta om säkerhetsarbetet. Kunskapen som har vuxit fram bygger på forskarnas datainsamling och analys av drygt 200 dialoger (inklusive intervjuer och utbildningar med workshops) i de tre medverkande företagen.

The digitalization of cattle husbandry has increased the cattle health- and welfare-related data creation and collection into multiple information systems (IS). We describe nationally the widely used cattle health and welfare data-containing IS in Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Sweden by studying their ownership and the funding, developmental views, data access, data ownership, and data integration between other IS. In addition, we describe the IS with experts and stakeholders in interviews and living labs (LLs). There are two statutory IS in each study country, while there is one non-statutory IS in Estonia and Sweden and four in Finland and Germany. The IS providers and the data integration possibilities between systems differed by study countries, while the type of data collected and the IS funding policies remained similar. In LLs, congruent views about the importance of the standardization of the collected data and the usability of these data for farm decision-making and improvement in management practices were mentioned as the main challenges for future development. To gain full benefit from the collected data, data from automatic milking systems should be integrable with the data collected into other IS. In the future, data integration should be improved for a more user-friendly approach of cattle health- and welfare-related IS, and utilization of the collected data for animal health and welfare improvement should be implemented within the cattle value chain to ensure the sustainability of the industry. Common will between public and private operators, as well as cross-border multidisciplinary cooperation, is required to fulfill these goals. © 2025 Kallio, Timonen, Tamm, Põder, Kukk, Schlereth, Ulvenblad, Ulvenblad, Tikkanen, Kilpeläinen, Barth, Abate Kassa and Viira.

Globally, the commitment of companies to Circular Economy (CE) is still limited. Mapping the circular practices performed by companies is a challenging and complex task and few empirical papers have explored CE implementation in companies. Based on interviews and analysis of company reports, we addressed in-depth the implementation of practices, targets, and assessment tools related to CE in ten Swedish companies. Only 10 circular practices out of 21 are implemented in at least 50% of the companies, indicating that the companies have just begun their transition to CE. The most common practices relate to waste reduction and resource efficiency (mainly energy). Barriers to collaboration are competition, keep confidentiality, small company size, lack of interest of other stakeholders, among others. So, there is a potential for increasing collaboration, especially with the municipality. The priority has been emissions reduction targets and the use of climate-focused tools (i.e., carbon footprint) while social aspects and circularity are less explored. We conclude that the monitoring of environmental performance is limited mainly to the use of resources and emissions. The low use of circularity tools is caused mainly by internal barriers such as lack of knowledge and shortage of resources. So, the companies should get more knowledge on CE assessment tools, include social indicators related to circular practices, and set targets for societal impact. © 2025 The Authors

The COVID 19 crisis has underlined how important it is for companies to drive digitalization and adopt new technologies in order to be and remain competitive in the ever-changing and uncertain business environment. The adoption of disruptive technologies that can accelerate digital transformation has also increased during this period. The main objective of this study is to identify and develop a potential use case of blockchain technology in the pre-adoption phase of blockchain for improving the management of optimal distribution of solar energy electricity through a microgrid in the south of Sweden enabling a small business to enhance consumer behavior monitoring and therefore, incentivizing consumers on consumption of solar energy. Based on a qualitative research approach involving data collected through a variety of methods, this paper proposes and evaluates a potential use case of blockchain technology adoption in a smaller Swedish organization operating in solar energy distribution industry focusing on the pre-adoption phase.

This paper explores the application of the 3MI innovation management framework in a hackathon-based academic project focused on sustainable student housing in Halmstad, Sweden. Six interdisciplinary student teams addressed real-world challenges related to sustainable mobility and social interaction in urban settings, proposing innovative solutions ranging from kinetic energy-harvesting pathways and smart infrastructure to adaptive social spaces and shared mobility platforms. The findings highlight the potential of early-stage, participatory innovation processes to produce scalable, environmentally responsible housing models. At the same time, limitations of the 3MI framework became evident, particularly its rigidity in dynamic design contexts and its limited guidance for end-user engagement and long-term impact evaluation. The paper concludes with recommendations for integrating more agile and user-centred tools to enhance innovation outcomes in urban development. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025.