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- Westin, Jonas, 1980-
(author)
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Welfare Effects of Transport Policies : an analysis of congestion pricing and infrastructure investments
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Interactions between the transport market and other distorted markets, such as the labor market, can have a large impact on the overall welfare effect of a road pricing policy or a congestion charge. Many road pricing studies therefore try to incorporate effects from other distorted markets in the analysis. A difficulty when assessing the welfare effect of a future transport policy is also that many factors and parameters needed for the analysis is uncertain. This thesis contains three papers all studying different methodological approaches to analyzing the welfare effects of transport policies. The first two papers analyze the welfare effect of congestion pricing in distorted economies. The main contribution of the first paper is to analyze how the welfare effect of a congestion charge in a distorted economy depends on what assumptions we make regarding the tax system in the initial no-toll situation. A critical assumption in many cost-benefit analyses of congestion charges is that the whole population has a single value of time. The second paper studies the effect of a congestion charge in a population of commuters with a continuously distributed value of time. The main contribution of the paper, compared to previous literature, is that it studies the welfare effect and distributional impact of a congestion charge in a population with endogenous labor supply and heterogeneous value of time where mode-choice self-selection plays an important role. The third paper studies the climate benefit of an investment in high speed rail by calculating the magnitude of annual traffic emission reduction required to compensate for the annualized embedded emissions from the construction of the line. To account for uncertainties in underlying assumptions, a Monte Carlo simulation framework is used in the analysis. The paper finds that to be able to balance the annualized emissions from the construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required, and most of the traffic diverted from other transport modes must come from aviation.
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- Eklinder Frick, Jens, 1980-
(author)
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Building Bridges and Breaking Bonds : Aspects of social capital in a regional strategic network
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Investing in cluster formation or encouraging companies to network in regional strategic networks is a common strategy used by municipalities to promote regional growth in peripheral regions. Previous research has investigated the significance of creating regional advantages by building clusters and regional networks, but researchers have not provided much insight into the problems facing the project management trying to implement such collaboration. In my thesis I describe and analyze a network project in order to shed light upon some of the complications that such a collaboration project might entail. My theoretical framework of analysis rests upon the concept of social capital, a concept that investigates the value that social contacts might incur. I have studied a designed network situated in the Swedish municipality of Söderhamn called Firsam. After the closure of the telecommunications factory of Ericsson/Emerson and the military airbase F15 Söderhamn lost 10 % of its local employment in 2004.The need for regional growth programmes therefore became dire. The companies that prior to the closure worked in close collaboration with the Ericsson/Emerson factory were also looking for new revenue streams to compensate for their loss of business. Collaboration with the local manufacturing companies to create innovative projects and to take on joint tenders seemed to be a perfect solution to the problems facing them and the municipality. In this spirit a regional strategic network called Firsam (Företag i regional samverkan) was initiated. I analyze the Firsam project using two different aspects of the concept social capital:”bonding” and”bridging”. The bonding form of social capital is associated with small and homogeneous groups that build prerequisites for long-term collaboration by forming close contacts and building trust. The bridging form of social capital creates an open stance towards social relations that enables new contacts to be formed outside one’s own socially established context. The bonding form of social capital provides prerequisites for close collaboration but can also result in close-mindedness and over-embeddedness in one’s own social context. Building bridging connections outside one’s own social context might encourage innovative thinking and spur entrepreneurship. The somewhat fleeting connections that are associated with the bridging form of social capital might on the other hand make it difficult to cultivate a common sense of trust within an existing group. These different manifestations of social capital create a paradox that might be hard to handle in the design of a regional strategic network. Is it best to support already existing network structures and impose the risk of creating a less innovative environment, or should members from outside the established social context be included in the network design to encourage innovative thinking? There are both positive and negative effects associated with either strategy. I shed light upon this paradox by analyzing the regional strategic network of Firsam.
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- Gullberg, Cecilia
(author)
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Puzzle or Mosaic? : On Managerial Information Patterns
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Managers and information are key components in most management control literature, and a range of tools and concepts have been developed to better accommodate the information needs of managers so as to ensure efficient action and intelligent decisions. At the same time, the managerial work is often described as highly fragmented, unstructured and interpersonal, with little time for planning and isolated reflection. It is therefore relevant to explore how and to what extent new technologies come into play in managerial information patterns. Furthermore, new management concepts and tools could potentially give rise to new control practices, resulting from e.g. novel relations between managers and other actors, new influential roles, and alternative forms of information flows.These issues are addressed in three papers. The first paper examines the portfolio of information that managers use in their daily work, thereby putting formal information systems into the context of less formal sources. The study is based on interviews with a variety of managers in different organisations. The second paper discusses the interplay between formally designed information-based practices, and the individual perceptions and habits that emerge in relation to the formalised. People at different levels in two public-sector organisations form the basis of the second paper. The third paper explores how various control practices operate together in a government agency, thereby providing new perspectives on how management control is exercised in a knowledge-intensive organisation.It is suggested that managerial information patterns evolve slowly compared to the technological development. Obtaining an overview of one’s area of responsibility is mainly achieved through dialogue and interaction with others. However, new technologies have influenced the more routine exchange of information, thereby causing increased dispersion among users and creating new roles. Subordinates constitute a vital influence on the managerial role and on how managers reason concerning their use of information. This people-oriented type of management results in the use of a multitude of pieces of information that is sometimes very subtle and retrieved in spontaneous interaction. The multidimensional and emerging nature of information provides insight into both the strengths and the limitations of formalising managerial information patterns. Furthermore, various information patterns are interrelated, e.g., they complement each other, substitute each other, or serve different purposes at different times. In total, managerial information patterns resemble a mosaic rather than a puzzle that can be solved by specific pieces. Management information should therefore be viewed from a broader perspective in order to better understand managers’ information needs, how control practices emerge and how information systems come into play.
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- Holgersson, Marcus, 1983
(author)
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Intellectual Property Strategies and Innovation: Causes and Consequences for Firms and Nations
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- New and useful ideas and knowledge, commonly denoted innovations after coming into use, are of decisive importance for economic growth and welfare. To promote the generation and diffusion of innovations, most, if not all, industrialized and industrializing societies rely on some form of an intellectual property rights (IPRs) system. As technological diversification, technological convergence, and open innovation become increasingly important, proper management of and strategies for IPRs and intellectual property (IP) becomes ever more central for the competitiveness of firms and nations. The general purpose of this thesis it to explore and explain the causes and consequences of IP strategies and policies at firm, national, and international levels in different industrial contexts with different types and degrees of openness in innovation. With focus on technological innovations and technology-related IP, various methods are employed to fulfill the purpose. The results show that, due to IP policy developments at national and international level, large firms have increasingly developed various IP strategies, especially patent strategies, to appropriate returns from innovations. As an example, large firms were found to in a first step increase their patenting (in terms of quantity), and in a second step focus more on selective and quality-oriented patenting in which the IP-related work is also internationalized. This internationalization of IP heavily impacts the patent offices and IP policies, especially in small countries where the national patenting tend to decrease as a result. Small firms on the other hand cannot gain the same benefits as large firms from an IPR system, especially from the patent system as currently designed, since they do not have enough resources for monitoring and enforcing their rights, which in turn limits the protective function of patents. Instead, small firms use patents to attract customers and investors. Patents then provide a governance mechanism for early stage financing of innovations. A new measure based on statistics at the national level indicates that the preferred markets for patenting from firms and inventors in various countries become increasingly similar. In addition, there is a convergence of national legal IPR systems around the world. Developing and industrializing nations in this convergence process typically switch from a weak to a strong IP regime in their national innovation systems, at a point in time when the mainly innovative benefits of a strong regime outweigh the mainly imitative benefits of a weak regime for the nation and its firms. A similar switch from a weak to a strong IP regime can be seen in various innovation systems, e.g. in mobile telecommunications. The openness of innovation in such a corporate innovation system is closely related to the IP strategies of the involved firms, and the results show that the openness in a system is directly and strongly affected by changes in the IP strategies of its firms.The thesis shows the importance of the interaction between IP strategies of large and small firms, between different large and small nations’ IP policies, and between IP strategies of firms and IP policies of nations. Such interactions are essential to consider for future research, as are the roles of IPRs and IP management in innovation systems with various degrees of openness.
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- Fazl Mashhadi, Azadeh, 1980
(author)
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The Influence of Learning on Naturalization of New Practices -The Case of Robust Design in Product Development
- 2010
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Influence of Learning on Naturalization of New Practices– the Case of Robust Design in Product DevelopmentAzadeh Fazl MashhadiDepartment of Technology Management and EconomicsDivision of Quality SciencesChalmers University of TechnologyABSTRACTCustomers appreciate a robust product which performs its desired function consistently and independently of the sources of variation during its life cycle. In order to deliver a robust design to customers, the upstream activities during the product development process should proactively support such a result. Even though there have been methods and methodologies developed for robust design in product development, such as Taguchi Methods, Robust Design Methodology, Design For Six Sigma, and robust design practices, companies are still struggling with the application of robust design in practice. Volvo 3P is one such company that has begun to apply robust design in the product development processes since 2004. Volvo 3P has recognized that in order to utilize robust design to its full potential, there is a need for cultivation and local growing of the concept in the organization’s context. Through this approach robust design can also achieve its continuous application. This is referred to as naturalization of robust design in the present thesis.This thesis firstly elaborates on Volvo 3P learning from a previous unsuccessful initiative for introducing robust design through an external consultant. The obstacles in the organization and weaknesses in the initiative are discussed. Secondly, it describes the influence of learning on the individuals at Volvo 3P experiencing what lies in the robust design concept for them in practice and therefore changing their way of working. And finally it elaborates on how Volvo 3P has utilized a learning alliance with the Division of Quality Sciences at Chalmers University of Technology as a means to create a learning environment in which robust design is cultivated in the organizational context and grows into the practices in a natural way. In this thesis also the key attributes to achieve learning alliances are identified as a learning relationship, reflection-in-action, mutual learning, and sharing of knowledge and experiences on the organizational level.The thesis identifies four contributions to the research community based on practice which are also valuable for industry. These contributions can be summarized as a broader view of the robust design concept, development of a concrete view for robust design practices in an organizational context, the positive influence of learning for naturalization of robust design, and the learning alliance as a method to create such learning.Keywords: robust design, naturalization, learning, robust design practices, learning alliance, action research
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