Project information
Project manager at Linnaeus University
Ermal Hetemi
Other project members
Anna Jerbrant, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Jonas Söderlund, Linköping University, Sofia Pemsel, Copenhagen Business School
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Copenhagen Business School
Financier
Linnaeus University
Timetable
2022-
Subject
Leadership and organisation (Department of Management, School of Business and Economics)
More about the project
To address national and complex problems, cooperation between actors in both business and the public sector is required. Our project highlights how different actors must cooperate to achieve climate-related goals while simultaneously managing tensions between different interests. This project investigates how new forms of organising across firms, public agencies, and academia tackle societal challenges, such as climate change, and sustainability transition. Drawing on qualitative, longitudinal studies of collaborative initiatives, the project explores how actors create temporary structures, build legitimacy, and reconfigure value without centralized control (see Hetemi et al., 2025).
The project case is the Swedish High-Capacity Transport (HCT) program, which aims to reduce CO₂ emissions from freight transport through novel vehicle/ trucks configurations. Despite lacking a central mandate, the HCT mobilized actors, and advanced through shared experimentation, evolving roles, and flexible coordination mechanisms. The results are published in California Management Review and highlight the concept of value pathways—how value creation, delivery, and organizing shift over time in emergent programs (see Hetemi et al., 2025).
The broader research agenda contributes to leadership and organisation studies by theorising meta-organising practices in multi-stakeholder contexts. It sheds light on how leadership and change is organized at the field level, where traditional hierarchies fall short.
More about the HCT project website: https://closer.lindholmen.se/projekt/high-capacity-transport-hct
Project related publication
Hetemi, E., Söderlund, J., Pemsel, S. (2025). Value Pathways in Emergent Programs: Tackling Grand Challenges in the Swedish Context. California Management Review.
🔗 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00081256251324272
🔗 https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/current/news/2025/new-article-in-california-management-review/
The project is part of the research in Leadership and organisation
