Lars Lindbergh

Financial Management in Public Housing Companies as Related to the Negotiating Process in Sweden

Social programmes tend to have some element of housing in their structure, and recent downward global trends have made studies popular that compare programmes or analyse changes. Within this context, the Swedish system has received attention because of its apparent long-term viability. Rents in this system are set through a negotiation process with tenant organisations, and this paper describes the process because it affects the financial condition of the housing. An ordinary least squares analysis of financial information has been made with regard to revenue generation capabilities, and the first difference results are discussed in terms of the negotiation process in the system. Those numbers suggest the system is improving revenue generation, but not operating profit.

Strategic Management in Swedish Municipal Housing: Indications of Change in Owner Directives

Purpose: Present directives in municipal housing have been imposed by the Public Municipal Housing Companies Act (PMCHA), put into force on January 2011 in Sweden. The Act, states that Public Munic ...

Swedish Sustainability through a Zhang and London Lens.

Purpose: To describe how sustainable development has been initiated in a country (Sweden) in which sustainable development has priority and has produced observable results – essentially the definit ...

A Comparative Study of Industrial Services in the U.S. and Sweden : Profitability, Productivity and Pricing

Abstract Industrialized countries now depend on the service sector, especially industrial services, for a significant portion of employment and GDP. Despite this importance, there has been little attention given to comparative studies in this area. Cross-sectional, financial data from Swedish and U.S. industrial service sectors were used to assess the dependence of profitability on four strategic factors-relative market share, revenue/employee, investment intensity, and segment growth rate. Both market share and revenue/employee were statistically significant in U.S. performance. Swedish results suggested that market share was not a significant contributor to a profitable strategy. Investment intensity and revenue/ employee, however, were significant contributions to profitability. These results, coupled with structural observations on production sectors, suggest that significant differences may indeed occur in both productivity and pricing in the two systems.

Reflections on sustainable Ålidhem: A case study in Swedish municipal public housing refurbishment

Purpose This work is initiated under the premise that reliable evaluation methods are necessary to ensure investments in energy conservation, and the purpose of this paper is to contribute to that literature. It describes some pilot changes and their impact in an actual field study oriented toward upgrading municipal public housing (MPH) units. Design/methodology/approach The research for this paper was connected to an MPH refurbishment project situated in northern Sweden. The overall energy efficiency goal within the project was a 40-50 percent reduction in the supplied energy for central electricity, domestic hot water and space heating. In order to evaluate if these goals were feasible, a measurement system was installed in a pilot building and in a neighboring building used as a reference. The evaluation was conducted by comparing the post-retrofit performance of the pilot building with the performance of the reference building when it was kept in its initial state (a comparison possible because both buildings had initial similarities). Findings Impacts could be quantified insofar as a reference (control) building in the same environment was sustained for comparison purposes. A 43 percent improvement was observed in energy utilization in the pilot building compared to its reference companion (99.8 vs 174.5 kWh/m2 per year). When the approach described herein was applied to new construction, the present goal of 65 kWh/m2 was approached as measured by Swedish standards. Practical implications Results should be of interest to academics in the housing field, professionals involved in refurbishment and residents themselves, renting MPH flats. Originality/value This study is unique in the following ways: first, it really was a field experiment with a control, thus it did not have any exogenous interference in interpreting results. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind. The second interesting characteristic was that results were subsequently used in the refurbishment of other buildings in the complex and in the construction of others. The major value of the paper may be associated with its timing. It comes at a time when the Kyoto agreement has raised concerns about sustainability, but also at a time when many buildings are facing a need for refurbishment.

Sweden : Bank of Year Recognition a Performance

Swedish banking has been recognized for financial prudence, innovations, and service provision. Bank of the Year winners are characterized in terms of their prize-winning performance. This article details and then generalizes items that led to awards and quantifies the financial rewards that come from providing superior performance. In most cases, growth slowed, but winners still tended to attain above-average performance. It would appear that (a) service really is the foundation for recognition; (b) more recently, sound management, innovation, and financial performance have come into play; and (c) it is easier to be recognized if the organization is small.