An important share of the huge economic burden caused by natural disasters is carried by the insurance industry. This chapter examines the impact on international insurance of one of the greatest disasters in American history: the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. It has three aims: first, to explore the response of foreign fire insurers to the catastrophe, and their decisions to stay or quit the Californian market; second, to examine whether modern theory helps explain those decisions; third, to explore how the experience of insurers operating in San Francisco illuminates one of the central themes of this book—the particularity of American responses to natural disasters. We identify four factors—economic, market, company-specific, and institutional—whose interplay determined the effect of this disaster on the multinational insurance companies operating in California in 1906 and their post-disaster strategic decisions. In particular, powerful informal institutional pressures generated by the singular American approach to natural disasters narrowed the scope for reducing costs by those insurers who wished to remain in the market and drove other foreign insurance companies to quit the market altogether.

The two topics highlighted in this volume, entrepreneurship and co-operatives, and education within these fields, may be regarded as essentially disparate themes. However, looking more closely it is apparent that these have some interesting intersections. The main focus relates to innovation and entrepreneurship among co-operatives, the public sector, and the private sector

This work is a product of the collaboration between Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, and Moshi Co-operative University in Moshi, Tanzania. In both countries we aim to understand, how enterprises with different ownership forms and other kinds of state and private organizations contribute to economic growth or decline. The volume is an overview of research about entrepreneurship and co-operatives but also of education in these areas. The intention is to contribute to the promotion of research on these topics in both countries and enhance future collaboration between the two Universities.

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. 

This chapter analyses the long term transformation of the dairy industry in Sweden from its establishement in the early 20th Century until 2015. The emphasis of the study was put on the the underlying causes behind the process of collectivisation and de-collectivisation and how such structural industrial transformation was fueled by an interaction between crisis and structural change.  Theoretically the article uses concepts and approaches development by the French annales school and by institutional theory. By adding the process of de-collectivisation to the analysis, this chapter offers a previously unknown view of the long term industrial development and transformation in Sweden and sheds light on societal change from an industrialising society to a post-industrial society.

The chapter discusses the emergence, development and fall of the Swedish reinsurance industry in the non-life sector. The focus is on major events that changed the circumstances and conditions for conducting reinsurance and how the business was organized. The reinsurance business became an important part of expanding on foreign markets during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite improved international circumstances during the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the domestic market became increasingly important for almost every Swedish insurer. Shortage of venture capital, fierce competition and severe losses made the wisdom of retaining worldwide operations doubtful. In addition, the deregulated Swedish financial market made it more urgent than ever to consolidate positions in the domestic market, and the international reinsurance operations were entirely dismantled after one and half centuries.

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.