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The purpose of this study is to explore how cognitive dissonance influences organizational decision-making within highly competitive markets, thus broadening the understanding of organizational decision-making. By adopting an interpretative tradition we employ a qualitative single-case study methodology with an abductive approach in our research. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers within a company operating in the highly competitive market of the streaming industry. The theoretical background covers literature concerning organizational decision-making and cognitive dissonance. Additionally it involves literature regarding the streaming industry, providing insights into highly competitive markets. Our research contributes to a broader understanding of organizational decision-making within high competitive markets by looking at the influence on cognitive dissonances and how to deal with them, thus enhancing the quality of decision-making. The study emphasizes that cognitive dissonance, despite its short term negative consequences, can in longer terms serve as a catalyst fostering creativity and innovation within organizations.

This study is to investigate how acquiring firms within the Swedish construction industry work towards successful post-acquisition integration during the early stages of post-acquisition and which factors they consider when doing so. When researching the five cases, the study adopted a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with five managers from acquiring firms to gather in-depth, first-hand data for thematic analysis. The empirical findings highlight the significance of corporate culture, organizational structure, and leadership structure in the integration process. Acquiring firms prioritize cultural compatibility, recognizing that differences can hinder successful integration. They also emphasize the positive impact of similar business models and the creation of new leadership groups combining resources and capabilities. Supportive leadership plays a crucial role in smoothening the integration process. To achieve a successful post-acquisition integration, firms in the Swedish construction industry focus on assessing corporate culture compatibility, restructuring leadership, and effective integration planning. They aim to integrate cultures, develop thorough integration plans, and ensure employee satisfaction and financial success. The studied cases challenges theories that emphasize organizational structure as the main obstacle in acquisitions, suggesting that cultural factors are more critical. Similarly, it contradicts theories highlighting directive leadership, emphasizing the importance of supportive leadership instead. The study contributes to the understanding of integrating human resources, cultural factors, and clear integration plans as essential elements for acquisition success.

Over the past decades, the divestiture market has steadily been growing but there are signals that indicate that a large portion of these transactions can be seen as unsuccessful. To improve the number of successful divestitures, the purpose of the study is to identify key success factors that can help firms to succeed with their divestitures in the Nordic market. Since this topic is not as widely researched as closely related fields, such as Mergers and Acquisitions, and the research that has been conducted has focused on the U.S. market, without a strategic focus, the contributions of this study are academically relevant. This study is conducted in a qualitative and abductive manner with a focus on two theoretical frameworks, Resource-Based View and Business Model Innovation. These theoretical frameworks have been used to create an analytical model together with theory and previous studies of divestitures. The analytical model was then applied to analyze the empirical data which was collected by interviewing professionals within the deal advisory industry at KPMG. Finally, conclusions were drawn based on the analysis. The conclusions drawn in this study are that the most common reason to divest is to refocus on the firm's core business which is done by divesting business units that spread the firm too thin and that are seen as unprofitable. To define what a successful divestiture is, firms can use five different categories of measurements which are (i) the selling price \& share price, (ii) the transaction speed \& completion of the deal, (iii) the speed of negotiations \& following the plan, (iv) having comprehensive transitional service agreements \& relationships, and (v) retention rates. The key success factors that contribute to a more successful divestiture in the Nordics are (i) planning the divestiture process, (ii) providing adequate resources, (iii) innovating the business model, (iv) managing key employees, and (v) stakeholder communicat

Fungal metabarcoding of substrates such as soil, wood, and water is uncovering an unprecedented number of fungal species that do not seem to produce tangible morphological structures and that defy our best attempts at cultivation, thus falling outside the scope of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. The present study uses the new, ninth release of the species hypotheses of the UNITE database to show that species discovery through environmental sequencing vastly outpaces traditional, Sanger sequencing-based efforts in a strongly increasing trend over the last five years. Our findings chal-lenge the present stance of some in the mycological community - that the current situation is satisfactory and that no change is needed to "the code" - and suggest that we should be discussing not whether to allow DNA-based descriptions (typifications) of species and by extension higher ranks of fungi, but what the precise requirements for such DNA-based typifications should be. We submit a tentative list of such criteria for further discussion. The present authors hope for a revitalized and deepened discussion on DNA-based typification, because to us it seems harmful and counter-productive to intentionally deny the overwhelming majority of extant fungi a formal standing under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.

UNITE (https://unite.ut.ee) is a web-based database and sequence management environment for molecular identification of eukaryotes. It targets the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and offers nearly 10 million such sequences for reference. These are clustered into ∼2.4M species hypotheses (SHs), each assigned a unique digital object identifier (DOI) to promote unambiguous referencing across studies. UNITE users have contributed over 600 000 third-party sequence annotations, which are shared with a range of databases and other community resources. Recent improvements facilitate the detection of cross-kingdom biological associations and the integration of undescribed groups of organisms into everyday biological pursuits. Serving as a digital twin for eukaryotic biodiversity and communities worldwide, the latest release of UNITE offers improved avenues for biodiversity discovery, precise taxonomic communication and integration of biological knowledge across platforms.