| 2421. |
- Abrahamsson, Sten, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Adding requirements on customers to current quality models toimprove quality : development of a customer ‐ vendor interaction
- 2010
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Ingår i: 13<sup>th</sup> QMOD conference on Quality and Service Sciences ICQSS 2010. - Visby : Gotland University. ; , s. 1-9
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In most descriptions of business development and models for Corporate Governance, contacts between supplier and customer are for the most part focused on the supplier’s responsibility to identify and document customer requirements in order to enable the organization to meet customer requirements (stated and unstated). In the actual contact between customer and supplier it has been observed in several cases that there are aspects of the interaction not described in traditional theoretical quality models. What seems to be missing is a more explicit requirement for customers and for customers' actions. The logic is that a qualified customer performing based on supplier instructions will result in a better performing product. The apparent lack of theoretical models describing this aspect indicates that this is an interesting area for research and development. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a seemingly "forgotten" area within quality management, which is the lack of requirements put on customers in quality models. The first objective is to review existing quality models to explore the extent of requirement on customers included. The second objective is to propose additions to current models that include requirements placed on customers. A limited review of the award criteria and the most common models for quality and improvement techniques shows that there is no explicit and documented way to set requirements for customers. Our interpretation is that EFQM is the model closest to our description of “demands on customer” due to their clauses connected to “partnership”. The ISO/DIS 26000 is moving the requirements further against the customer for the social responsibility than the quality standards are doing. Further research could focus on how requirements on customer will affect the performance of the entire supply chain both from a quality and social point of view.
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| 2422. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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An actor network analysis of constipation and agency: : Shit happens
- 2014
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Ingår i: Subjectivity. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1755-6341 .- 1755-635X. ; 7:2, s. 111-130
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As of late, claims have been made in social and political theory that agency is neither a property of subjects nor of objects, but is instead an emergent effect of constellations or assemblages – that agency takes place ‘between’ various things. The question that follows is how to then account for what happens and what to make of the ‘betweenness’ of agency. The answer offered by this article is to trace and situate agency empirically through practices. Exploring the happening and non-happening of a particular object – shit – I show that for things to happen, a lot of work has to be done. By evoking three examples of constipated bodies, I show that while the work that has to be done is different, and that the actors involved are diverse, agency is located in practices.
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| 2423. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Becoming stronger by becoming weaker : the hunger strike as a mode of doing politics
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 22:4, s. 882-898
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drawing on Judith Butler’s work and a series of studies associated with actor–network theory (ANT), this paper engages with political agency through the concept of performativity. Based on the empirical analysis of a hunger strike that took place in Brussels in 2012 and involved 23 illegal immigrants, we aim to achieve three things. First, we foreground physical bodies as political entities caught up in multiple modes of doing politics. Second, we show how such modes relate to one another, reinforcing citizenship, activism and party politics as specific performances of agency associated with liberal democracy. Finally, we argue that the Brussels hunger strike also challenges these performances by failing to meet certain expectations about what it is to be political/act politically. As the European refugee crisis is generating louder and louder voices, hunger strikes sensitise us to modes of doing that work by becoming passive, silent, weak and vulnerable. Such processes, we suggest, expand the standard repertoire of modes of doing and may refigure our understanding of the interaction between transnational and liberal democratic politics—in International Relations, ANT and beyond.
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| 2424. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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Compost politics: : experimenting with togetherness in vermicomposting
- 2014
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Ingår i: Environmental Humanities. - : Duke University Press. - 2201-1919. ; :1, s. 125-148
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Emerging from the question of how to live together with our planet, more-than-human approaches to interspecies relations have often presented ‘cozy’ versions of conviviality (Whatmore 2002; Haraway 2008; Hinchliffe 2010). This was usually set against a (supposedly) exclusionary politics of nature, in a move that betrayed a still largely humanist ethics. From the focus on friendly companions, to the attention to practices of care or living-together, the notion of companion species and their entanglements with humans has been polarized towards a pleasant and ‘nice’ version of coexistence. But, dealing with composting, it becomes clear that relations with the environment are never so neat and clean. What are, then, the modes of being together with the ‘dirty’ side of the ‘green’? What practices emerge at the mundane interstices of the ‘big picture’ of a functional ecology? Wasting, eating, rotting, consuming, transforming and becoming-with are brought together in a variety of ways in practices of composting-with earthworms. Reporting on our own and others' attempts to ‘live-together’ with earthworms, this paper tracks the non-relations and asymmetries of the transformations of more-than-human materialities inside (and outside) domestic composting bins. We argue that the example of living-together with dung earthworms sheds light on the interplays between attachment and detachment (Candea 2010), shifting the notion of conviviality from a green and comfortable ‘democratic collective’ (Latour 2004) to a messy, yet constantly productive and on-going coexistence.
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| 2425. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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Cooking, eating and digesting: : Notes on the emergent normativities of food and speeds
- 2014
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Ingår i: Time & Society. - 0961-463X .- 1461-7463. ; 23:3, s. 287-308
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses conflicting versions of speed and temporal work that are involved in engaging with food. The dominant discourses around fast and slow food are challenged and extended by juxtaposing three kinds of food-related activities: cooking, eating, and digesting. Drawing on a wide range of empirical and theoretical examples and dietary advice, I illustrate how modes of engaging with foods also produce and come with specific “goods” and “bads.” Problematizing these normativities, I use the Swedish word ‘lagom’ to denote a temporal and spatial normativity that is always located in a specific situation.
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| 2426. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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Empiricist interventions: : Strategy and tactics on the ontopolitical battlefield
- 2012
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Ingår i: Science & Technology Studies. - 2243-4690. ; 25:1, s. 52-70
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent papers by prominent scholars in science and technology studies (notably John Law and Bruno Latour) have crystallized a fundamental disagreement about the scope and purpose of intervention in actor-network theory or what we here choose to bracket as empirical philosophy. While the precept of agnostic description is taken as a given, the desired eff ects of such descriptions are highly debated: Is the goal to interfere with the singularity of the real through the enactment of multiple and possibly confl icting ontologies? Or is it (also) to craft new and comprehensive common worlds supported by notions of due process and parliamentary procedure? In this paper we think about this disagreement as a question of research strategy (a normative discord about the desirable outcome of an intervention) in order to assess its implications for research tactics (a descriptive accord about the practical crafting of an adequate account). A key point here is to challenge the impermeability of such a division and show how the strategic dispute, if to be taken seriously, invariably spills over to swamp the level of tactics. To illustrate this point, we draw upon materials from our recent doctoral research projects and to facilitate the discussion we make two deliberate caricatures: Firstly, we operate with a simplifi ed history of actor-network theory in which a strategy of epistemological critique has been replaced by two contending agendas for ontological intervention. Secondly, we address these two contending agendas as distinct options which map on to the positions of our two main interlocutors. In doing so, it becomes possible to compare their respective tactical implications as we work through two examples of what might constitute an empiricist intervention.
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| 2427. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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Food repair : An analysis of the tensions between preventing waste and assuring safety
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ephemera. - 2052-1499 .- 1473-2866. ; 19:2, s. 283-301
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research into food waste has shown that around one third of the food that is produced for human consumption ends up going to waste. The reasons for this are many but in reports and campaigns the role of the consumer, their careless behavior and anxieties related to food are often raised as two of the main causes for food going to waste. By way of contrast, this article asks what practices of saving, experimenting with, growing and eating food – what is here conceptualized as ‘food repair’ – may tell us in terms of the specific materialities of foods, and the work involved in repairing it. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with dumpster divers, a studio for the experimental arts, and urban gardeners, I suggest firstly that the actual work of food repair is mundane, small-scale and often remains largely invisible. Secondly, food repair is caught in the tension between avoiding waste and assuring safety. This tension, and the work of living with it in practice, is analyzed in terms of caring: caring for the food, for sustainable consumption, for the eater. As such, this text articulates the concept of food repair as a conceptual contrast to the notion of careless consumers and throw-away societies in order to map alternative stories and practices. Rather than offering a critique of known food wasting practices, then, this text is intended both to articulate and strengthen marginal food repair practices.
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| 2428. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-
(författare)
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Foods
- 2014
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Ingår i: The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. - London : Routledge. - 9781315857572
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In a book that explores global transportations and mobilities, food definitely deserves to be included.1 Over the last few decades, the total mileage that food travels across the globe – difficult to imagine, let alone calculate – has not just risen, but also become increasingly contested ( Jackson et al., 2006). Many decry that all in all food travels far too far. But how does it do so? How does it move across the globe? The answer is: in many different ways. It moves out and it moves in. It moves fresh and it moves cooked. It moves as ingredients and as a recipe. The implication is that, more often than not, on any single plate many places come together. Here, we will illustrate the topological complexity of ordinary meals by presenting a mundane but intricate case: that of Pizza Hawaii.
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| 2429. |
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| 2430. |
- Abrahamsson, Sten, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Implementing Lean : Discussing Standardization Versus Customization with Focus on National Cultural Dimensions
- 2012
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Ingår i: Management and Production Engineering Review. - Opole : Polish Association for Production Management. - 2082-1344. ; 3:4, s. 4-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Lean or Toyota Production System (TPS) has more or less successfully been implemented in the Western world’s businesses and organizations for the past 20 years. Several authors have discussed what it is that creates a successful implementation, and several studies have been presented where strategies for implementations have been studied. Culture’s impact and possible mitigation for Western companies have been studied and described by for example Womak & Jones. Proponents of the concept of Lean argue that culture is not a constraint for implementation of Lean. Lean Management is called a philosophy but it is often used as a change strategy in the sense that it is implemented with the view of improving performance. A change strategy could be seen as a product that might have to be customized with the view of improving the effectiveness of the implementation. On the other hand abandoning a standardized approach comes with the risk of severely altering the change strategy, possibly to its detriment. Implementing Lean will have an effect on the company culture. Does it make any sense customizing the implementation to culture if the issue is changing the culture? The purpose of this paper is to highlight and discuss the balance between a customized implementation and a standardized implementation. Which are the main arguments for standardization and customization and how could these be reconciled? A literature study of Lean implementation has been carried out and compared with Lean principles and theories from change management with focus on change drivers and change barriers. Main drivers of Hofstede’s national cultural dimensions are compared with Lean principles to identify possible drivers and barriers in different cultures. The theory synthesis on drivers and barriers is subjected to a first test in a case study on Lean implementation according to a standardized approach. The implementation is made in a small Swedish factory belonging to a worldwide industrial company. Results from the literature review and the case study indicate that both customization and standardization are needed.
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