Entrepreneurship is often understood as an individualistic endeavour. This article investigates how cultural communities shape entrepreneurial activity through the process of envisioning competing imagined futures. By deploying a microhistorical approach, it explores a public debate about the transition from sail to steam in a late nineteenth-century Danish maritime community. In the debate, local actors evaluated and negotiated future entrepreneurial actions as embedded in existing norms, interpretations of the past, and socio-technical systems rather than independent, non-conformist ventures. The article demonstrates the potential role of community when we attempt to understand better how entrepreneurs construct and dispute over imagined futures.
Containerfartens historiske udvikling bliver i litteraturen beskrevet som en revolution og en transformation af den internationale shippingbranche. De teknologiske og organisatoriske forandringer af livet til søs som fulgte med containerfarten har tilsvarende medført en forandring af maritime kulturer og en udfordring af de søfarendes identiteter.
Denne afhandling handler om danske containersøfolks erindringer, fortidsbrug og identitetskonstruktioner og undersøger, hvordan søfolkene fortæller sig selv i relation til deres levede erfaringer i containerfarten. Jeg analyserer i afhandlingen søfolkenes retrospektive fortidsfortolkninger som en måde at nærme mig en forståelse af de forandrede sømandsidentiteter.
Analytisk anlægger afhandlingen et subjektperspektiv, som anser fortiden for nærværende og åben i de mundtlige fortællingers fortolkninger og meningsforhandlinger af fortidens erfaringer. Jeg anskuer den narrative konstruktion af den personlige, autobiografiske, historie som identitetsdannende fortidsbrug, der udtrykker fortællerens subjektivitet. Med en erindringshistorisk tilgang til søfolkenes mundtlige fortællinger undersøger jeg, hvordan vi mennesker forstår os selv gennem de historier, vi fortæller om os selv.
Afhandlingen bygger empirisk på en række dybdegående oral history interviews med danske søfolk, der alle har erfaring inden for den internationale containerfart.
I afhandlingens analyser, viser jeg, hvordan søfolkene retfærdiggør og legitimerer deres valg om i første omgang at blive søfolk og senere at arbejde ombord på containerskibe. Jeg viser, hvordan søfolkene narrativt forhandler forskellige former for erfaret meningstab og aktivt tilskriver arbejdet og fællesskabet ombord på skibene en ny og brugbar mening. Jeg viser samtidig, hvordan den personlige historie konstrueres i dialog med kulturelt dominerende forestillinger og fortællinger. Sådanne forestillinger og fortællinger tilbyder den enkelte fortæller et tilgængeligt sprog at udtrykke sine personlige erfaringer i, men kan også virke begrænsende, hvis fortællerens erfaringer og forståelser ikke passer ind i de dominerende billeder. I sådanne tilfælde kan der opstå, hvad afhandlingen kalder en form for narrativt ubehag (discomposure), der kommer til udtryk som frustration og brud i fortællingens narrative sammenhæng.
Som en gennemgående metodisk pointe viser afhandlingen, hvordan interviewets intersubjektivitet er med til at forme den historie, som fortælles. Det personlige møde mellem fortæller og historiker og interviewets kulturelle kontekster indvirker på forskellig vis på den konstruerede historie. Fremfor at hævde en neutral og objektiv interviewsituation, tager afhandlingen i stedet konsekvensen af denne intersubjektivitet og skriver det konkrete møde mellem søfolkene som fortællere og mig som interviewer ind som en integreret del af den historiske fremstilling. Dette er både et narrativt greb og et metodisk valg, der skal sikre transparens ved at give læseren indblik i, hvordan historierne og mine tolkninger er blevet til.
Afhandlingen yder med sin tilgang og sine analyser flere bidrag til den eksisterende litteratur. Gennem de personlige fortællinger får vi større indsigt i søfolkenes levede liv og deres erfaringer med containerfartens historiske udvikling. Afhandlingen giver et menneskeligt perspektiv på historien om den internationale containerfart, der bidrager til vores viden om udviklingens identitetsmæssige betydning for de mænd og kvinder, som gennemlevede de historiske forandringer ude ombord på skibene.
Afhandlingen er en virksomhedshistorie, der tager oral history alvorligt både som forskningsfelt, metode og genre. Afhandlingen bidrager med sin erindringshistoriske tilgang til oral history til den fornyede samtale mellem forskningsfelterne oral history og virksomhedshistorie. Afhandlingen bringer metodiske og teoretiske indsigter fra den erindringshistoriske tradition ind i virksomhedshistorie og viser gennem sin egen narrative stil potentialet i en historieformidling, der sætter subjektivitet og erindring i centrum af sin analyse. Dermed bidrager afhandlingen også til den narrative vending inden for virksomhedshistorie ved ikke kun at anlægge et narrativt blik på de danske søfolks fortællinger men ved også at tage sig selv alvorligt som narrativ konstruktion.
The agenda of objectual International Relations has shown why object matters, how they arise and with what effects. Far less attention has been paid to how objects are maintained and stabilized over time and how their coherence is achieved. To add this dimension to the debate, we suggest turning to the infrastructures of object maintenance. Infrastructures are social material arrangements that maintain objects and enable their use. We introduce a framework for the study of object infrastructures and illustrate it by drawing on the case of "maritime piracy". Providing a historical reconstruction of the infrastructures that produce piracy as an international object, we show that the growing proliferation of these infrastructures does not lead to an internal coherence of the object over time, but rather objectual fracturing and instability. We reveal how objects are often multiple rather than unitary. The article adds an important new dimension to the study of objects in International Relations.
In this article, the author describes how the creation of the Danish maritime museums in 1915 and 2013 – both generously funded by maritime foundations and actors – was perceived by the shipping industry as initiatives that would help market the industry in the eyes of the public. He argues more generally that national maritime museums constitute focal points for disseminating narratives that legitimate maritime activities and establish these activities as symbols of national identities. It is suggested that maritime historians, curators and scholars reflect on the relationship between maritime industry actors and museum exhibition narratives, and consider the interests and capital that potentially underpin museums’ and curators’ decisions.
The waterways and high seas in and around Denmark have been more or less systematically mapped since the renaissance. However, old naval and maritime charts are rarely the precise instruments of navigation and orientation we are used to, and often many other aspects of the coastline are included in the maps. These old maps also do not concur to contemporary navigational grids and coordinate systems which makes comparisons with modern information difficult.
In this video, Associate Professor Thomas T. Nielsen (Roskilde University) will explain about a project where the Maritime Museum of Denmark, The Royal Danish Library and RUC collaborated on scanning, geometrically rectifying and finally publishing old naval charts at historiskatlas.dk.
The session was developed in collaboration with MARLOG.
The Danish shipping company Norden celebrated its 150th anniversary in February 2021. Norden is today the second largest Danish shipping company operating app. 375 vessels within the dry bulk and the product tanker segments.
How and why was Norden able to exploit the global growth opportunities, and which internal and external challenges did Norden face on this dramatic voyage?
In this video, Associate Professor Martin Jes Iversen (Copenhagen Business School) will present and analyze the recent development of Norden from around year 2000 to the present days. The video was developed in collaboration with MARLOG.
In 2021 DS Norden celebrated its 150 years anniversary. In this book Martin Jes Iversen is analyzing the history of the shipping company which is one of the oldest in Denmark. In the first 50 years after being founded in 1871, Norden was a pioneer firm in Danish shipping. This period was followed by five decades of financial stability and gradual stagnation. But in the early 1990s the firm started its journey to become one of the leading firms in the global dry-bulk market. As the world experienced technological, economical and political changes, Norden would also change. Some of these changes were incremental. Others were more abrupt. But they were never predictable.
The report is organized as follows. The introduction will lay out the current state-of-play of eco-efficiency and the zeitgeist of the current situation on maritime that we find ourselves in, in 2020. The next section will provide some historical context looking back to 2010 and 2000 to trace the trajectory and developmental course that we are on. The core contribution of this report is the Shipyard 4.0 Roadmap, that can be found in Figure 1 on page 9. This illustration plots the expectations for technological capabilities and policy from 2020 to 2030. The descriptions of the elements of the roadmap are provided in Appendix 1.
Med inspiration i Schumpeters teorier om kreativ destruktion undersøger denne artikel centrale aspekter af omstillingerne i dansk erhvervsliv i forbindelse med 1980'ernes og 1990'ernes fire største danske værftslukninger. Det drejer sig om B&W i 1980, Nakskov Skibsværft i 1986, Aalborg Værft i 1987-88 og endelig Danyard Frederikshavn, der lukkede i 1999. Artiklen identificerer 27 spin-off virksomheder, som videreførte forskellige aktiviteter fra de lukkede værfter, og følger deres udvikling frem til 2013. Artiklen dokumenterer, at gruppen af spinn-off virksomheder i årene omkring 2013 havde en omsætning svarende til de gamle værfters omkring 1975. Mens nogle spin-offs ophørte efter få år, formåede de tilbageværende 12 virksomheder at generere langt højere overskud end de værfter, de opstod fra. Artiklen kaster dermed nyt lys på centrale omstillings- og fornyelsesprocesser i dansk erhvervsliv igennem de sidste tre årtier.
Global marine shipping annually accounts for about one billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power propulsion may be an option to de-carbonise some niches of the merchant ocean fleet. This paper considers the three experimental nuclear-powered merchant ships launched and operated in the world so far; the iconic Savannah (USA), Otto Hahn (West Germany) and Mutsu (Japan). They were independently developed and operated in the 1960s and 1970s for technology demonstration and learning. A fourth ship, Sevmorput (Soviet Union/Russia, 1988–to date), is a pioneer in respect of its logistics functions and propulsion system. This paper develops a theoretical framework for the sustainability assessment of nuclear propulsion in ocean merchant shipping and presents a method for exploring nuclear propulsion, relative to flag state, ports, shipping resources and ocean transport services. The experimental ships’ transport efficiency is discussed and related to contemporary oil-fired shipping of general cargo, and to recent literature presenting possible future applications of merchant nuclear propulsion in some market niches. Insights provided include: (1) the experiments demonstrate that merchant nuclear propulsion may be technically feasible; (2) port and canal access for merchant nuclear-powered ships may be difficult and restricted; (3) the up-front costs, refuelling and end-of-life decommissioning costs of nuclear-powered ships are vast and uncertain against conventionally-powered ships; (4) because nuclear fuel is comparatively low-cost, the conventional oil-fired ship cost implications of high-speed operations do not apply.