It might seem an odd thing to try to commoditize and market, but there is a very serious movement, backed up by government agencies, to achieve this. On one level this makes a lot of sense. Sweden still has a good overall brand in the world as a country that stands for equality, sustainability and a sensible work-life balance. Sweden has a history of underdog companies that go on to becoming global powerhouses — like IKEA and Hennes&Mauritz.; And due to this, Sweden has had its fair share of world-class leaders.

Still, the leap from this to claiming that there is a particular “Swedish management” that might even be exported, which The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems has done, is enormous. Most people will agree that better leadership would be a good thing, but that a general model could be traced to a specific culture and socio-economic context seems like a strange thing to say in this fluid, post-industrial age. Still, the claim makes a lot more sense if we see it in the context of the radical economic changes that Sweden is undergoing.

Like many countries, this one needs to come to grips with a sweeping change in its economic infrastructure, further complicated by a difficult-to-manage tradition of an exceptional social support system, universal health care and all the other bonuses of the Swedish welfare model. In such a situation, it is quite natural to grasp at the things that are at hand, such as the model of management, and through a show of faith hope that something spectacularly new can be salvaged out of the mess of the old. Whether it will succeed, in Sweden or elsewhere, only time will tell.

Oh and yes, Sweden does have such a weird, wonderful and worrying thing as a governmental agency for innovation, however insane that might seem… But we’ll look at that in another column.

Alf Rehn
Chair of Management and Organization (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
and Free Agent of Alfrigg Inc. alfrehn.com