This chapter studies the internationalization of the Swedish–Danish dairy corporation Arla. During a period of 100 years the dairy sector went from being at the focus of national and regional interest, the industry has become global. In some geographical markets, or in particular market areas, these transnationals – corporations as well as cooperatives – may compete fiercely, and their growth strategy is often to merge with or acquire local producers. However, these multinational firms also actively cooperate in other areas (e.g. in branding or distribution) or on other geographical markets. This may take the form of strategic alliances, such as joint ventures. Thus, coopetition – cooperation and competition – has been a common recent strategy. In the case at focus in this study, Arla Foods a.m.b.a. mergers are conducted with cooperatives in European countries, while businesses that are located further away are taken care of through exports and joint ventures. The main contribution of this article is that it employs internationalization theory and places the globalization of cooperatives in the middle of the academic discussion about internationalization. A recommendation for further studies is to both dig deeper into the changing nature of cooperatives historically, but also to look closer at the strategic deals that global expansion of cooperatives is based on. 

Finanskriser i sverige 

Den 15 september 2008 tvingades Lehman Brothers ställa in sina betalningar, vilket startade den mest omfattande internationella finansiella krisen sedan depressionen på 1930-talet. Krisens orsaker, bankernas agerade och statens roll i det finansiella systemet har diskuterats livligt. Men finansiella kriser är inte unika för vår tid utan har varit en del av ekonomins utveckling under de senaste århundradena. 

Denna bok fokuserar främst på de finansiella kriser som drabbat Sverige under de senaste 150 åren, det vill säga sedan landet började industrialiseras och den ekonomiska tillväxten ta fart. Finansiella kriser har ofta inträffat i samband med perioder med snabb tillväxt och ändrade förutsättningar för näringsliv och finansmarknad. I framställningen analyseras krisernas bakgrundsfaktorer, utveckling hur kriserna har lösts och framför allt vilken roll staten har spelat i denna process. Interaktionen mellan stat, marknad och aktörer har varit viktiga för framväxten men även för att lösa finansiella kriser. Boken ger en överblick över svenska finanskrisers drivkrafter, utveckling, räddningsaktioner och konsekvenser. 

Skandia har stått i centrum för försäkringsbranschens utveckling sedan bolaget bildades 1855. Dessutom har bolaget omvandlat sig själv vid upprepade tillfällen – inte minst under 1900-talets slut. Den här boken handlar främst om de senaste 30 åren i Skandias historia. En tid då omvandlingarna varit större än tidigare. Skandia gick in i 1990-talet som ett starkt inhemskt bolag med omfattande verksamhet på den nordiska marknaden och en bred närvaro internationellt. Under de följande decennierna genomgick Skandia flera grundläggande förändringar som omvandlade bolagets produkter, ägande, kundkrets och ekonomiska situation. Det är denna historia som författarna Mats Larsson och Mikael Lönnborg berättar, med utgångspunkt i ett omfattande och unikt arkivmaterial på Centrum för Näringslivshistoria och ett stort antal intervjuer med de personer som spelat en betydande roll i omvandlingarna.

The purpose of the reinsurance industry is to provide insurance for primary insurers. Primary insurers have fairly standardised policies, whereas those of reinsurers are often less so, more internationally oriented and likely to cover very large risks. There is little doubt that primary insurance policies, as well as an insurance market based on fixed premiums, would be difficult to sustain over the long run without reinsurance. Reinsurance enables portfolio diversification by the primary insurer in order to avoid the kinds of devastating losses that could threaten its survival (Kopf 1929; Golding 1930; Doherty & Smetters 2005; James et al. 2014; Borsheid & Haueter 2012).

This paper discusses the emergency of the Swedish life reinsurance market from the mid 19^th century and describe the development until the 2010s. In the wake of the founding of the first joint stock corporations in the middle of the 1850s, insurers set rather limited risk maximums and signed reciprocal treaties with mainly foreign insurers to limit their risks. During the following six decades the life reinsurance was handled by individual corporations but in 1914 a commonly owned life reinsurance company was organised to deal with the issue for reinsurance for the entire market. This continued until the end of the 1980s when most of the individual insurers preferred to set up their own corporations for dealing with the issue of life reinsurance and Sweden Re was transformed into a completely different organisation. 

For more than a century, mutual insurers have dominated the Swedish insurance market. Independent of the historical roots and traditions, companies that sell life and other (non-life) forms of insurance have chosen the mutual organizational form. We focus on two different mutual insurers—Folksam and Länsförsäkringar—in decoding their historical roots, governance and management structure. Our focus is on the differences and similarities with special attention to customer’s participation in governance. The chapter shows that it is indeed possible to organize successful hybrid organizations with longevity and that the state’s role in the process is vital but not always a precondition for successful development of hybrid firms. In addition, the chapter also shows that it is difficult to include customers/owners in the governance of these firms and that there exist many different options for creating such systems.

This study demonstrates that the presence of diversified corporate forms within the insurance industry does not always lead to the dominance of what is, according to theory, the most efficient business form, the joint-stock corporation. Swedish mutual insurance companies have often been connected to various popular movements, and have thus obtained quasi-monopoly rights for writing certain kinds of insurance. This has been important as a means of obtaining economies of scale and creating efficient organisations, and has allowed them to compete with their joint-stock rivals. Mutuals have also remained important players in the insurance market by keeping policyholders’ interests in focus through creative product diversification and by expanding nationally to reach customers outside of their original base. Mutuality also protected them against hostile take-overs that weakened the stock corporations. Mutual insurers not only survived as independent companies but also were a success. 

The Swedish insurance companies developed – in line with other Scandinavian countries – an unique kind of distribution system for selling insurance products. The origin of the Swedish insurance market was built on inspiration from in particular from United Kingdom and Germany when the first joint-stock company Skandia was founded in the 1850s. Swedish insurers copied among other things, insurance contracts, premium calculation schemes and organising agent networks. In line with these corporations, each insurance company established regionally based networks of agents with a general agent and a large number of subordinated agents. However, in the Scandinavian setting, the emergency of independent brokers was haltered by an interesting dilemma. Early on, agents used something called ‘returned commission’ where they offered potential customers to get a portion of the agents’s commission. This often led to that customers signed life insurance contracts with higher insurance sums and after some time the could not keep on paying the premium and had to cancel the contract. Due to the social element of life insurance, and the existence of so-called returned commission, cancelled contracts could jeopardize the legitimacy of the entire market. The only measure – according to the trade organizations – to control the agentswas to keep the system with that each insurers had their own employed agents. Thereby, the emergency of independent brokers did not developed on the Swedish insurance market.

In this paper we will follow the distribution system for the insurance industry during the 19th and 20th centuries until today and describe how the system was relative stable until the 1980s through legislation but also supported by formal cartelization and gentlemen’s agreement on the market. In particular one cartel agreement, that was implemented in the 1910s that focused on the agent system that changed repeatedly until the 1980s – and fundament of the entire distribution system – will be discussed. The paper will focus on the major changes that occurred from the 1980s and onwards, in particular in connection of the accession to the European Union in the 1990s that entirely changed the distribution system on the market.

Sedan den moderna försäkringsbranschen började utvecklas vid mitten av 1800-talet har den ömsesidiga bolagsformen haft en stark position i Sverige. I dag dominerar ömsesidiga företag på såväl liv- som skadeförsäkringsmarknaden, och under de senaste decennierna har de dessutom stärkt sin position.I boken diskuteras skillnaderna mellan ömsesidiga och aktiebolagsgrundade bolag, liksom orsakerna till den ömsesidiga bolags formens framgångar i Sverige. Har det att göra med nationell tradition, lagstiftning eller konkurrenstryck?Boken är uppdelad i tematiska kapitel som behandlar olika aspekter av försäkring i allmänhet och ömsesidig försäkring i synnerhet. Bland dessa teman finns frågor om regelverk och marknad, men också kundernas medbestämmande och lojalitet.

Grunden för modern försäkring återfinns hos de ömsesidiga försäkringsbolagen, som redan under medeltiden – i form av brandstoden – hanterade byarnas brandrisker. Ömsesidig försäkring har sedan dess haft en mer eller mindre stark position på den svenska försäkringsmarknaden. I dag dominerar ömsesidiga försäkringsbolag på såväl liv- som skadeförsäkringsmarknaden i Sverige. Under de senaste decennierna har dessutom dessa bolag stärkt sin position. I denna skrift sätter vi den ömsesidiga försäkringen i Sverige i fokus. Framför allt diskuteras orsakerna till den ömsesidiga försäkringens framgångar, men också vad som skiljer dessa bolag från aktiebolagsgrundade bolag. Vår utgångspunkt är utvecklingen efter andra världskriget, och vi ställer oss frågorna: Varför har ömsesidig försäkring varit så framgångsrik i Sverige? Har det att göra med den nationella traditionen, lagstiftningen eller kundernas önskemål? Boken Ömsesidig försäkring. Bolag, kunder och marknad som skriften utgår från utgör en sammanfattning på ett forskningsprojekt om ömsesidig försäkring som finansierats gemensamt av de tre försäkringsbolagen Folksam, Länsförsäkringar och Skandia.

Innovationer och entreprenörer betraktas ofta som nödvändiga faktorer för att skapa nya företag och marknader. Varumärken har med tiden fått en allt större betydelse i näringslivet, eller kanske är det mer rättvist att säga att vi blivit mer medvetna om deras ekonomiska värde för producenter och sociala värde för konsumenter. Denna bok illustrerar att det finns många intressanta forskningsfrågor i skärningspunkten mellan entreprenöriella aktiviteter och uppbyggnaden och vidmakthållandet av välkända varumärken.