Evolving culinary ideology, Passion för Mat 2014

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Anders Arnell

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, with Anders Arnell.
Anders is a culinary edutainer who has a summer restaurant, “Arnell på Kajen” in Marstrand. His new book, MAT-ematikerna co-authored with Jan Tern is now out in the bookstands.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Ongoing, a part bantering of ideas, part negotiation, of a large block of crystallised Porcelana cocoa bean chocolate dating almost thirty years back, that after tempering, would render the silkiest textured chocolate. Not being able to overcome the initial realisation that I have been eating decades old chocolate, I finally got around to the main thread of talk at the table. The idea was how to keep a consistent standard of quality that at the same time, made the signature of your culinary work. Service was a given, they were all artists and experts in their own culinary field of choice, there could be no other way in this business otherwise. But in the ever increasing modularisation of the individual’s niche knowledge and skills, there came the question of the paraph that made it just that notch more exclusive for the customer:

“How would you propose I do that?”
“I told you, get this block of chocolate!”

And so it is, all part of this year’s Passion för Mat 2014 theme, Ärlig mat or True food. Food that leaves a lesser carbon footprint, a non-kitsch understanding of sustainable living and a redefining of what is luxury and exclusivity, without a mention of those words. It’s all very practical and all very Swedish.

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Reflections on a visit to Shanghai 2013

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After Shanghai.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

It was in November 2013 when we paid a study visit to Shanghai, China. But it was only on the eve of the Lunar New Year 2014 that all colleagues had a chance to gather in an early spring kick-off session to share and compare some reflections, insights and lessons learnt from that visit.

The afternoon was spent in a lecture hall, numbering altogether about thirty persons, somewhat amused that this might be the first time ever that we met as a group. Located in the same administrative building, at most a few floors apart from each other and some even sharing the same corridor, it took a joint visit to Shanghai in order for us all to get together face to face.

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As a point in case, it was interesting to note that this group in itself demonstrated the workings of a self-organizing system, forming project-based teams of which this almost non-elected leader would smoothly arrange the important meetings, and the events would seamlessly evolve into optimal activities.

While it could be argued that the workings of an academic specialist group cannot be all too comparable to how private corporations are managed, still this method of self-organization differed from the vertical hierarchy system often prevalent in Asia.

This difference in how we organized ourselves had some concrete repercussions when meeting with other research teams in China on several counts, some of which were based on formalities such as rank and hierarchy – who would the Chinese look at as ‘leader’ of the Swedish team? What practical resources and expertise could we provide if we were to begin collaborative work? And lastly, what immediate ideas and data could we share, and if so, when – preferably in the next month – could we begin?

The responsive views on the Chinese side were positive, though it brought home another poignant difference, that what is often called the ‘Swedish management style’ works with a long process of contemplation and maturing of ideas until some consensus is reached. Of the Chinese, it could be said that they would work towards a longterm relationship building and then be ready to act in a different style of (academic) management.

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Schrödinger’s Cat.

One of the lasting impressions from the day’s reflections was the way in which we could observe our various individual-in-group behaviour and our preferred management styles in practice, while discussing a variety of issues of mutual interest.

China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre – the platform to cars couture

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Quayside, Lindholmen Science Park, Gothenburg.
Lindholmen Science Park is a part of the Norra Älvstranden region, located between the two bridges, Älvsborgsbron (Älvborgs Bridge) in the west and Götaälvbron (Göta River Bridge) in the east. The area has been important since the Viking Age and before, where the Göta river outlet acted as a trade center, uniting the prosperous inland regions and the sea.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Situated in the collaborative environment for knowledge intensive companies at the Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg, the China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre was established on 20 February 2013 as a joint Volvo Cars and Geely platform for advancing the partnership in product development and strategy between the two companies, owned by Geely Holding. Today it has about 200 resident engineers that will be increased according to plans, to 400. They are to focus on the innovations of the basic modular architecture platform for the next generation of leading C-segment cars, that includes hatchback, sedan and estate models.

The 22nd of January is just a few months short of ten years, when on 3 September 2004, the naming ceremony of the Swedish East Indiaman Götheborg was performed by Her Majesty Queen Silvia, at the Opera House at Lilla Bommen, just on the opposite side of the Göta river. The purpose of the Gotheborg III project was very long term, aimed at building upon old good relations bringing the two countries of Sweden and China once again closer to each other. It was an idea that took hold and to some extent might have contributed to the events leading up to this centre being located here and now.

What is currently in process between Volvo Cars and the Geely organization is groundbreaking in many ways. It is industrial and knowledge management history in the making. This has naturally attracted the attention of the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS), headed by Professor Alvstam at the School of Business, Economics and and Law at the University of Gothenburg, where I am affiliate, that has followed China’s entry into the global automobile industry with great interest.

It was thus an evolutionary progression of things that we today found ourselves visiting the CEVT R&D centre at Lindholmen. Continue reading “China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre – the platform to cars couture” →

Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery

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Gotheborg III

The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III Ship.
The city of Gothenburg has been home of the Swedish East India Company since the 1700s till today.
Photo: Ulrik Hasemann for SOIC.
Text © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Abstracts from a presentation for Carthage College, Kenosha Wisconsin, USA. 20 Jan. 2014.
Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS)
School of Business, Economics and Law
University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

1. Introduction

This presentation is entitled “Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery”, where I will share some insights into Sweden and Swedish management characteristics. Here, you will need to take the word “Nordic” as a broadly defined term because even within the Nordic countries grouping, Sweden pretty much has a niche of its own.

Inglehart Welzel Values Map

World Values Survey, Inglehart-Welzel map.
Ref: Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005: page 63.

2. Sweden – the most secular country on the globe

Sweden for example, ranks as the world’s most secular country with a Gallup poll of 88% indicating they are non-religious. At the same time, it is also a country that seems to allow greatest self-expression and individual autonomy.

The reason for the country’s high secularism could be explained by its history. Continue reading “Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery” →

Complexity theory and autopoesis, contemplations on the eve of 2014

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Outlining my New Year’s resolutions of sorts.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Through the year, I’ve looked to study and understand the complexity of social organizations and the concept of culture from a systems evolutionary perspective, which is something other than the dichotomous, dimensional construct that had been grounded in academic literature since the early 1960s. The basic assumption comes from the context of nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory, where as noted by Engels (1982), that the more complex generic type includes but cannot be reduced to an aggregation of the simpler types. Continue reading “Complexity theory and autopoesis, contemplations on the eve of 2014” →

Reflections on black, white and gold

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Christmas advertising for Metro, ca. 1981.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

When I was young my mother worked in the advertising industry. Between the ages of five till about twelve and then again at around sixteen I got to model in several Singapore print adverts that included Metro, McDonald’s and Nintendo.

In one photoshoot, several girls were lined up neatly in a row, the purpose of which was to get us to take a hop forward and land on one foot, looking excited and into the camera. Out of twenty odd takes I looked up only once, much to the exasperation of the photographer, “Why can’t you look forward? There’s nothing on the ground! Look forward! Look forward!”

Even at the age of six, I found myself curious as to why it was that I just could not look up when I jumped. I simply had to see (and thus know) where I was going! I concluded that it was due to the rules of hop-scotch, a game that I played almost everyday when growing up at the Convent that I could only look down whilst hopping. You always watched where you hopped because stepping on a line would get your turn forfeited in the game, plus, that you had to re-draw the rubbed off area of the squares in the sand once you had stepped on the lines and recess time was only that brief.

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For one photo shoot a large number of fluffy small yellow chickens was brought in.
Featured in the picture above is just about a third of the feathered little things. My mother brought home two little darlings from this shoot, one each for my brother and I to care for.

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Gothenburg in jultide, 2013

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Sjömagasinet
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Since being in Sweden from the early 2000s and with a little variation in weather conditions from cold and windy to very cold and windy, December in Gothenburg has always been a medley of small events that come together to form what I would today associate with the Swedish jultide season. The shortening of days gives every household here good reason, some as early as late October, to hang in place their Christmas lights on their windows that in turn make festive the walking paths of surrounding neighborhoods. Continue reading “Gothenburg in jultide, 2013” →

A Christmas dinner 2013

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JE Nilsson, who has researched and written about 1700s Swedish food,
was happy to play Santa ‘Chef de Cuisine’.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

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Selecting first class produce is the key to all good cooking.
Here, we were planning a new orange and honey glazed spare ribs dish,
looking at blood oranges flown in from Italy.

By December every year as the days grow shorter and shorter, it is fun to spend time in the kitchen, planning and cooking Scandinavian classics, trying to recreate inherited recipes from days long gone past. The old fashioned dishes and the manners in which they are prepared, usually involve a lot of time consuming manual work, but nonetheless worth the effort in terms of rediscovering what has been and making it current again.

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Gravad lax is maybe one of the oldest dishes on the traditional Swedish Christmas table.
Today it is pickled with a mixture of salt, sugar, pepper and a generous helping of freshly cut dill.

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Once done, it is ideally eaten with a honey mustard sauce.

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The strategy of ‘Twin Faces’ in state governance and positioning

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Raffles Place, Singapore.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

A number of years ago, I decided to focus my doctoral thesis on cross-cultural leadership in Swedish led organizations in Singapore. The idea was to identify elements of the Swedish management style and how this in that case would work out in Asian organizations. The study led to numerous interesting observations of which a selection of ideas were developed into my thesis.

For some time now I have come to look into Sweden’s positioning within the European Union (EU), and in a comparative study, Singapore’s positioning within the Association of Southeast-Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The issue of Sweden’s overall positioning towards European integration has been much considered and debated in the Swedish political arena and by interested members in academia.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro by JE Nilsson, Raffles Place, Singapore

Studying modern business architecture in Singapore’s Central Business District, in 2013.

“Sweden: the Twin Faces of a Euro-Outsider”

In an article that appeared in the peer reviewed Journal of European Integration entitled “Sweden: the Twin Faces of a Euro-Outsider” in 2005, authors Rutger Lindahl and Daniel Naurin, postulated that Sweden, about ten years after full accession and a few years after the public rejection of Swedish proposed membership of the Euro currency in a referendum in 2003, had developed ‘twin faces’ as regards to their participation in European integration (Miles 2011).

Duo-levelled positioning

The authors explicitly outlined Sweden’s duo-levelled positioning towards issues of European integration, that was (i) the internal / domestic establishing of a firm national position towards the EU in general, which proved a challenge for the Swedish government, due to a general skeptical Swedish public who were wary of the implications of further European integration, and (ii) the external / regional (thus international) politics of positioning Sweden’s ‘euro-outsider’ status within the EU, where Sweden would want to be perceived as a country pursuing a ‘mixed’ policy portfolio.

The general skepticism towards deeper European integration from the Swedish public distinctly constrained the movements of the Swedish government. Further intra- and inter-political party division, also meant that a consensus across the Swedish party system regarding participation in the euro remained elusive.

But in brief, the ‘twin-faces’ of Sweden, its duo-levelled strategy of state governance and maneuvering of its internal, largely euro-skeptical political arena, was not to be confused with its primarily pro-EU yet anti-euro, external positioning towards the EU (Lindahl and Naurin 2005:66).

Two broad strategies

In reconciling and managing Sweden’s anti-euro, but pro-EU position, the Swedish government apparently followed two broad strategies.

The first was to adopt the politics of low visibility, where Swedish officials engaged in quiet networking with a ‘best in class’ behavior in Brussels combined with a low degree of Europeanization of the domestic political debate.

The second was to advocate conscious outsidership as regards to the euro, combined with a determined effort to be an ‘insider’ in EU decision-making. These strategies were managed in large by putting as priority, the country’s EU membership status in both elite/public discourse whilst backgrounding (playing down), to a limited extent, the question of Swedish euro-adoption, so that it would give time for the majority of the Swedes to come to terms with the country’s pro-EU position.
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Coming home to Valentino’s 2013

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At Ristorante Da Valentino.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Already when we last met, the Valtulina family hinted at that they were preparing a move to a new location. It would be a great improvement they told me, since they had seriously outgrown their family living room sized premises in the Bukit Timah area. Because of this, it was with great expectation we went to take a look at the new restaurant, Valentino’s, at Turf Club Road.

Greeted in family tradition with a warm hurricane of emotions at their door, we were whisked almost immediately, into the kitchen, where Valentino stood at the heart of it all.

I had certainly missed the Valtulina Family!

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Gianpiero Valtulina, setting up the private dining quarters of the restaurant. Gianpiero, or ‘Papa’, has been a guiding hand in the process of the building of the new place. His influence and finishing touches can be seen in the beautiful decorations furnishing the home and restaurant.

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The private room here can seat about forty-five persons. Perfect for that larger family or corporate event.

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With so much movement in the place, I couldn’t help wanting to capture all details on camera, from the rustic brick enclaves in the main dining hall to the stash of deliciously piled ripened tomatoes and garlic that sat in proximity to various cheeses all carefully stored.

It took about a half hour to orientate myself in the new expansive place, from walk-in freezers to the various bakery and kitchens, the main dining hall and the Valentino Garden outdoors that already housed a healthy citrus tree, to finally sit down and come to process the information and impression of their new restaurant. Continue reading “Coming home to Valentino’s 2013” →