| 1. |
- Linde, Stefan
(author)
-
Communication and Cooperation : A Study of the Relationship Between Political Communication and Large-scale Collective Action
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis investigates the importance of communication for individual cooperation in large-scale collective action dilemmas. In small-scale collective action, where participants have the possibility to meet face-to-face, communication has been shown to drastically increase levels of cooperation. These positive effects are generally believed to be related to the possibilities of exchanging mutual commitments, sharing strategic information, creating and enforcing shared norms, developing trust, and creating a common group identity that communication offers. In large-scale dilemmas, involving thousands or even millions of participants, possibilities for communication are highly restricted beyond the immediate social vicinity of individuals. Participants are therefore unable to reap the positive benefits of communication that are available at the small-scale. Furthermore, as the public goods on which individuals cooperate in large-scale dilemmas often are both distant and abstract in nature (climate change, ozone depletion, overpopulation), the role of communication as an informational-shortcut might be even greater in large-scale dilemmas. That is, individuals need information about the characteristics of the resource in question, the relevant set of other actors participating, and the individual costs and benefits of cooperation.To compensate for the lack of communication and first-hand information, individuals in large-scale dilemmas are generally assumed to rely on different forms of judgmental and behavioral ‘heuristics’ (e.g. generalized trust and internalized norms) to make cooperative decisions. In this thesis I focus on one type of heuristic that generally has been overlooked in research on collective action; the individual reliance on information from trusted elite sources. Specifically, I study the extent to which individuals use communications from political parties when making cooperative decisions. The aim of the thesis is thus to investigate the relationship between political communication and large-scale collective action, and how this relationship varies with individual and contextual factors. This is studied in the context of climate change mitigation, which is a typical case of large-scale collective action, characterized by the large number of anonymous actors, the negligible impacts and high costs of individual cooperation, and a general lack of face-to-face communication and first-hand information.Using a country comparative approach, and cross-sectional survey data, the results show that: 1) political communications both directly and indirectly (by shaping perceptions of collective efficacy and collective benefits) influences individuals’ cooperative/non-cooperative decisions, and that this effect goes beyond other individual level factors, e.g. ideology, income, education; 2) not only specific communications, but also perceptions of the overall political climate (degree of polarization and the average party stance) affects attitudes both directly and indirectly; 3) these effects are not isolated to certain environments, but (to varying degree) can be found across political contexts and parties. The results have important implications both practically for policy makers, by creating a deeper understanding of the formation of individual climate change attitudes, and theoretically, by creating a better understanding of how individuals make decisions in large-scale collective action dilemmas. Future research should both validate the results from this study using other research designs (e.g. longitudinal or multilevel data, experimental designs), and expand on them, for example by exploring how different sources of communication and different types of information interact and influence the reception of communication content.
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| 2. |
- Poelzer, Gregory A
(author)
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Extracting Legitimacy : Input, Throughput, and Output Legitimacy in the Mining Industry
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Legitimacy affects questions on constitutional design, international political regimes, and specific policy sectors. Although it permeates society at various levels, legitimacy becomes particularly crucial when decisions hold long-term or permanent consequences. In democratic societies, decisions on electoral reform or constitutional amendments typically include various checks and balances to increase the legitimacy of the outcome and similarly, on a smaller scale, resource development also undergoes of series of checks and balances to improve legitimacy. I investigate one such resource development, mineral extraction, to look at key factors of input, throughput, and output legitimacy in a policy sector with long-term or permanent outcomes.If the strength of the input legitimacy (democratic, participatory quality) is high, then a deficit of output legitimacy (decisions, outcomes) can be overlooked –and vice-versa. This interpretation of legitimacy focuses on the decision-making process and the outcomes, but with the active role companies take in mining operations it becomes critical to consider the non-state actors involved in the process. To address this additional piece of this equation, throughput legitimacy is utilized to analyze the effect of relationships in policy decisions. By looking at the quality of interaction, this thesis investigates where throughput fits within the three dimensions of legitimacy in the mining sector.Using interview and survey data from Sweden and Canada, this research in this thesis addresses both theoretical and empirical issues. Theoretically, the effect of multiple actors on the policy process legitimacy of policy processes are explored. Using the input, throughput, and output legitimacy trichotomy provides a basis through which to investigate the changes engendered by different governance arrangements and their effect on legitimacy. When support for policy also depends on activity outside the formal processes of government, the implications for legitimacy change –creating a new theoretical criterion. Empirically, the qualities and factors that affect the legitimacy of a process are identified. The findings of this thesis provide insight on future process designs; understanding the relationship between participation, interaction, and outcomes inresource development processes and the factors critical to legitimacy emerges and endures.
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| 3. |
- Gama, Fabio, 1980-
(author)
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Managing the Collaborative Front End of Innovation in Manufacturing Firms : Requirements, Capabilities, and Conditions
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The front end of innovation is critical to innovative efforts in firms yet it remains to be poorly understood. This especially important since innovation efforts in the front end are becoming increasingly open in line with the era of open innovation. Although the literature on the front end of innovation is well developed, prior studies have largely focused on bilateral agreements and have overlooked conditions for collaborations with science-based partners (universities and research institutes). This is especially true for manufacturing firms, for which a continuous stream of new product ideas are a key source of competitiveness. To make things worse, the front end of innovation in this setting is often characterized by incongruent practices by partners, different magnitudes of fuzziness, and high risks in revealing new ideas. Developing new product definitions with different partners is thus a risky endeavor that may seriously compromise competitive advantages if mishandled. Therefore, there is a need for greater knowledge to facilitate the collaborative front end with different types of partners. Accordingly, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand how to manage the collaborative front end in manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on requirements, capabilities, and conditions.To fulfill this research purpose, data on manufacturing firms were collected through four case studies and one survey. In total, this dissertation is based on empirical data from 81 interviews with R&D members across 10 medium-sized and large manufacturing firms, as well as a survey of 146 small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. Respondents were based in Brazil or Sweden. The key theories and literatures covered in this dissertation include coordination modes, control mechanisms, organizational routines, the resource-based view, and appropriability mechanisms.This dissertation makes numerous theoretical contributions to the front-end literature. First, it extends the front-end literature by presenting the concepts of systematic idea generation and fuzziness assessment as a prerequisite for improving front-end performance. Second, this dissertation extends the front-end literature by listing the collaboration conditions that help firms cooperate with science-based partners. By collaborating with science-based partners, firms can access (unpublished) codified and tacit scientific knowledge, enabling them to rapidly build on the latest research findings. The findings suggest particular practices that can be applied to reduce cultural differences and diminish goal divergence among project members. Third, the findings in this dissertation enrich the front-end literature by describing a set of detailed practices to streamline the involvement of different types of partners using diverse protective practices. Fourth, it suggests a theoretical framework that describes how to manage the collaborative front end of innovation. The theoretical framework explains how manufacturing firms can use their organizational capabilities to develop new product ideas efficiently and safely. In particular, the framework discerns the capabilities that are necessary to explore mechanisms, practices, and routines in terms of divergent thinking, external expertise, and multiple opinions. Altogether, these contributions assist firms to better manage collaborative front end.
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| 4. |
- Leijonhufvud, Susanna, 1972-
(author)
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Liquid Streaming : The Spotify Way To Music
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis accounts for the liquid affordances of musicking via streamed music from the perspective of the end-user. The study is particularly analysing the case of Spotify, which has gained an extraordinary prominent position within the Swedish market. The point of departure is that music streaming has emerged in a time where there seems to be an increased space and need for a musical presence in everyday human life. This circumstance is then related to the phenomenon that music has an exceptional position for human beings.Music may affect the human body, empower physical activity as well as regulate moods and feelings. Whatever the musical experience might be, it is affected by previous musical socialisation including formal as well as informal music learning situations. These experiences per se found the base of future musical awareness and advancement. Moreover, as musical involvement, to such a large extent currently are given via streaming, it is most crucial to understand what kind of affordances streaming brings to a lifelong learning and its more or less organized arenas, of music. To investigate music streaming from the user’s point of view, Norman’s concept of affordance has been applied to numerous public sources that in different ways houses the Spotify way to music. Here, the concept of affordance reveals the idea of the user as the user is inscribed in the design. The Spotify software program, materials from Spotify employees, newspaper articles, statistics and reports concerning music streaming have been analysed according to actor-network theory (ANT) situated in, what Bauman regards contemporary society as, an interregnum of liquid time. The thesis initially accounts for the constitution of music streaming as a feature, revealing an intrinsic network of a company with its core of employees, its agile management and playful culture, but also necessary networked actors such as Internet Service Providers, manufactures of digital devices, software algorithms and music formats to mention a few. Economic Maecenas and legislators also constitute the streaming service intertwined with the main players of users and music. This multifaceted picture shows that to comprehend a music streaming actor, its whole network needs to be accounted for as its constitutes the actor. Also, as condition changes, actor changes, why also music streaming, as a feature, changes. Consequently, any music educator at various levels within the society, e.g. public radio, artists, teachers, peers, the user herself, or even the Spotify company need to consider the liquid situation as it has become fundamental for musical experiences and learning through this kind of media. The affordances of musicking are further analysed on the level of the service’s interface, e.g. the visual display of the music service by addressing a multimodal analysis of the social semiotics used to network users to music. This cross-section also shows to be liquid as the service both continuously updates as well as being customised which means that one view is not alike the other. This protean state and the liquid affordances it brings with it needs to be related and responded to by music educators. Finally, the thesis covers the affordance of musicking on behalf of the one who streams. Based on the fact that music is available in a plethora, the central feature of streaming services is to aid and guide users to music. In this realm, intelligent algorithms have started to be employed as cicerone. Algorithmic cicerone based on usergenerated data blend humans and machines into a hybrid lifeform when musicking. User-generated data is currently being refined via an increased human embodiment by the Internet of Things starting to close up on the one who streams. Technological embodiment of the human is starting to increase to also embrace a sensuous embodiment of the musicking human. A detected human heartbeat can consequently co-constitute musical recommendation for the streamer, a recommendation that in turn can affect the heartbeat. This evolution calls for a turn toward a renewed coalition between music and human. Music streaming has the affordances to constitute an advent of something newborn - a musical cyborg.
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| 5. |
- Nilsson, Jens, Doktor, 1982-
(author)
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What logics drive the choices of public decision-makers?
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis explores what logics drive the decisions of public decision-makers. More specifically, and drawing on new institutional theory, this topic is investigated from the perspective of how institutions, i.e. the formal and informal patterns of rules and practices, influence public decision-makers. New institutionalism has a variety of ideas on how this decision-making occurs and recent research in this tradition emphasizes the importance that context has for the empirical support of these ideas. At the same time, studies exploring, contrasting and converging new institutional ideas, and how these vary depending on context i.e. their conditionality, are lacking. In this thesis, I set out to address this knowledge gap and, moreover, to examine the role of personal values for the new institutional ideas on how institutions affect the public decision-makers. Personal values have not been emphasized in new institutional studies but successfully explained decision-making from other perspectives. By adding this dimension, I seek to explore whether individual factors, in this case the personal values the public decision-makers bring with them into the institutional context, affect the way they make decisions. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to explore what decision-making logics that are at play among public-decision-makers and how this varies depending on context and personal values. This exploration is conducted by deriving and testing hypotheses on decision-making, from rational choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism, in two different contexts, parliaments and collaborative management, within the same national arena. Parliaments have a homogenous composition of actors, i.e. politicians, whereas collaborative management arenas are constituted by the inclusion of both public and private actors in decision-making, resulting in a more heterogeneous composition. Through a study of local parliaments and wildlife conservation committees (a form of collaborative management on the regional level) in Sweden, the aim of the thesis is fulfilled by survey and interview analyses of decision-making in regards to different policy issues. The results show that there are different decision-making logics at play in the parliamentary case compared with the collaborative management case. Further, personal values influence the decision-making logics among the public decision-makers. The implications of these results are, firstly, that the conditionality of new institutionalism, as suggested in earlier research, is empirically prevalent in the studied cases and, secondly, that personal values play a role for what decision-making logics that are at play. Further research is encouraged to delve deeper into the results, preferably through qualitative studies that could complement the primarily quantitative focus of this thesis, and through studies of other national contexts than Sweden.
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| 6. |
- George, Nerine Mary
(author)
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Entrepreneurial Opportunity Exploitation for New Venture Performance
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- New ventures drive innovation and economic growththrough commercializingideas, products and businesses when the market has a need for it and create the market need to bring about socioeconomic development. However, most new ventures struggle with survival and achieving early stage financial performance. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the influencing factors related to entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation for new venture performance. Specifically, the overarching purpose of this dissertation is addressed through five unique studies with the following focus:Paper I Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition: A Review.This paper addresses the status of the existing research on the prominent factors that influence entrepreneurial opportunity recognition toward successful exploitation of opportunities and discusses what can be anticipated from future research in this domain.Paper II Moderating effect of subjective strategic perceptions of environmental conditions. This paper investigates the way in which an entrepreneur’s subjective interpretation of strategically relevant cues in the venture environment affects the likelihood of applying causation or effectuation to influence initial venture sales.Paper III Moderating effect of entrepreneurial alertness. This paper investigates the influence of entrepreneurial alertness on new venture performance in relation to causation and effectuation approaches.Paper IV Information Processing Capability. This paper examines how founders engage in strategic diagnosis in lower development stages of venture information processing structures.Paper V Strategic Alliances.This studyinvestigates the effect of imitative opportunities on technological advancement experienced by industry incumbents.This dissertation is based upon a systematic literature review and two empirical studies. First, a survey study was conducted with 1,000 Swedish new ventures. The data for this study came from two sources: 1) perceptual data from a survey of founders (2012)and 2) objective first-sale performance data from an archival source (2012–2014). Second, the study compiled a dataset of public companies across 26 different industries that varied in terms of their technological prowess and strategies employed to exploit imitation opportunities between 1998 and 2001. Most variables were gathered from Compustat. The information on partnerships between incumbents and startups as well as the information on connections between incumbents that could facilitate imitation was accessed via the SDC Platinum dataset and the directories published by Asset Alternatives.These studies make numerous contributions to the entrepreneurship literature. First, this research emphasizes the factors that influence opportunity exploitation processes for new venture performance. For example, decision-making approachesin relation to capability and environmental conditions t are important for new ventureperformance. The capability of the founding entrepreneur to consider strategic challenges asopportunities increases the odds of commercialization.We also find that those entrepreneurs who interpret the environment as having potential gain also prefer and benefit from effectuation more than those who interpret the environment as having potentialloss.Second, this study explores influencing role of entrepreneurial alertness in new venture performance. When an entrepreneur with greater alertness follows a causation approach, this has a higher effecton performance than following an effectuation approach. Third, this study shows that strategic alliances exert a direct impact on new venture performance. This means that the new venture’s ability to connect to the right ally boosts performance; otherwise, the choice of ally can cost the new venture itsposition in the market and affect its performance. Hence, entering into a new market with the right entrepreneurial action enables a new venture to enhance performance.The dissertation is a compilation dissertation consisting of five articles. Each individual paper offers deep insight into each entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation factor related to new venture performance.
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| 7. |
- Karlsson, Bo, 1977-
(author)
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Controller Work in Strategic Capital Investment Projects : Case Studies in a Swedish Mining Company
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- There is a tendency in the management accounting literature to emphasize systems, procedures, models and techniques, designed to improve planning, and control of business activities. This tendency is also visible in the more specific stream of literature that concerns capital investment decision making. This thesis argues that controllers are important actors involved in the practice of handling the uncertainties that arise during the course of capital investment projects. If a rational decision-oriented view of management accounting is overemphasized, there is a risk that we overlook the controllers as agents, thereby obtaining an insufficient understanding of actual practice. The research question addressed in this thesis is how and why do controllers intervene in, and influence strategic capital investment projects (SCIPs)? The overall purpose is thus to empirically and theoretically develop an understanding of controller agency in SCIPs with a particular emphasis on a mining context. The study was conducted in LKAB, a Swedish multinational mining corporation. The company was considered suitable because of its SCIPs and because of a change program concerning the controller role. The literature study in paper I, explores the current state of controller research and identify three streams of literature and promising methodological and theoretical approaches for the study of controller agency. In paper II, the findings illustrate the social reality of the controller role, and the suitability of the pragmatic constructivist framework for understanding and studying controller agency. Paper III, explores the controller role from an individual perspective guided by institutional theory. The paper reveals prerequisites for becoming a business partner. Paper IV focuses on controllers using calculations for mining strategic capital investment projects. Drawing on the use of calculation framework, the paper provides insights into controller practice in relation to contexts and temporal aspects concerning management accounting work in mining. The conclusions of the thesis suggest that controller agency in mining SCIPs means more than being a provider of rational financial information to top-level managers. Controller agency involves making value based judgments concerning information. Controller agency also means dialogues with operational and top-level managers, where controllers discuss ideas and calculations regarding mining SCIPs. This means that the controllers interact with managers to develop insights about operations. When they combine financial expertise with operational knowledge, the controllers influence mining SCIPs. The conclusions suggest ways in which expectations, project properties, rules, norms and individual characteristics influence controller agency.
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| 8. |
- Padyab, Ali
(author)
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Exploring Impacts of Secondary Information Use on Individual Privacy
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Information collected from individuals via online social networks and Internet of things devices can be used by institutions and service providers for different business purposes to tailor and customize their services, which is defined as secondary use of information. Although the literature on secondary use is well developed, prior studies have largely focused on direct use of information such as those instances of information use that do not stem from data mining. Advances in data mining and information-processing techniques facilitate discovery of customers’ and users’ behaviors and needs. Research shows that individuals’ behavior can be inferred with high accuracy from their shared information, which may in turn jeopardize privacy. A recent scandal of Cambridge Analytica using about 87 million Facebook profiles to target those users with customized micro-targeted political ads has created public outrage and raised criticisms of secondary use. Given this background, the purpose of this thesis is to explore impacts of organizations’ and service providers’ secondary use of personal information in order to draw conclusions related to how individuals’ attitudes are formed and what role secondary use plays in managing privacy.This research investigates user awareness and attitudes towards potential secondary uses of information. To pursue this, a multi-method qualitative approach using a descriptive questionnaire with 1000 European citizens and a total of 10 focus groups with 43 participants was employed. A qualitative content analysis using both inductive and deductive approaches was conducted to analyze the results. The conceptual framework employed in this thesis was genres of disclosure.The research results suggest that user awareness of the potential for indirect personal information disclosure was relatively low. It was consequently found that participant attitudes toward privacy and disclosure shifted from affective to cognitive when they experienced firsthand the potential inferences that could be made from their own data. Generally, the participant users only considered their direct disclosure of information; through observing potential indirect inferences about their own shared contents and information, however, the participants became more aware of potential infringements on their privacy.The study contributes to information privacy and information systems literature by raising understanding of the impacts of secondary use, in particular its effects on individual privacy management. In addition, this thesis suggests that information privacy is affected differently by direct and indirect uses. Its contribution to information privacy research is to complement previous methodological approaches by suggesting that if users are made aware of indirect inferences that can be made from their content, negative affective responses decrease while cognitive reactions increase through the processing of information related to their disclosure genres. The reason is that indirect use of information inhibits the negotiation of information privacy boundaries and creating unresolved tensions within those boundaries. Cognitive awareness of inferences made to individual information significantly affects the privacy decision-making process. The implication is that there is a need for more dynamic privacy awareness mechanisms that can empower users by providing them with increased awareness of the indirect information they are sharing.
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| 9. |
- Reim, Wiebke
(author)
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Towards a framework for product-service system business model implementation
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Manufacturing companies are increasingly focused on service-led growth to gain new revenue streams and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. In this regard, offering product-service systems (PSS) is proposed as an attractive solution for manufacturing companies to achieve economic, environmental, and social benefits. More specifically, through the integration of provider and customer operations, efficiency is increased because each party focuses on its core competencies, and operations are optimized. For example, prolonged product lifetimes and increased resource utilization are part of the sustainability achievements that can be achieved through successful PSS implementation.Still, successful implementation of PSS is rare. The business model has become acommon unit of analysis in PSS and the crucial factor that may differentiate successful and unsuccessful PSS companies. Revising business models toward PSS provision and the implementation of the PSS business model is a challenging process that constitutes a major reason why companies struggle to increase the service degree of their offerings. This thesis suggests that a better understanding of tactics, risk management, service network adjustment, and activity alignment is associated with PSS business model implementation. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to advance the understanding of PSS business model implementation.Comprised of a cover story and five separate but interrelated articles, this dissertation explores the implementation of product-service systems business models. The results are based on a systematic literature review and four case studies with Swedish manufacturing companies. The thesis is empirical based on 107 interviews with employees from four different manufacturing companies and eight distributers of one of the case companies.This thesis contributes to the PSS literature by proposing a four-phase PSS business model implementation framework. The framework goes beyond selecting a PSS business model to also include the configuration of related tactical sets, risk identification and management, and adjustment of the delivery practices, along with activity alignment. All phases are crucial for PSS business model implementation and therefore make specific contributions by themselves. Furthermore, by applying agency theory to mitigate adverse customer behavior, this thesis contributes to the increased legitimacy of the PSS research field.
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| 10. |
- Spegel, Elin, 1982-
(author)
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Essays on the economic impacts of floods and landslides
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis consists of an introduction and four self-contained papers addressing aspects that are important for how the negative societal effects of natural disasters can be handled, using floods and landslides in the Gothenburg region in Sweden as examples. In paper I the valuation of the benefits of reducing the negative effects of floods, namely, property damage, traffic disturbances and water supply security, were analysed, using a choice experiment. To understand what motivates individuals to contribute towards reducing the negative effects of floods, the impact of individual differences in personality traits were also analysed. Data was collected via a web panel, the final sample consisted of 809 responses. The results showed that individuals’ were willing to pay to reduce the societal costs of floods, and that personality traits helped to explain heterogeneity in preferences. People scoring high on the personality trait including empathic and altruistic characteristics increased the individuals’ probability to support policies aimed at reducing the negative impacts of floods. These results indicate that further investments in flood risk reducing measures should be taken and that public support might increase if policy makers emphasize the welfare gained by society as whole, when designing flood management policies. In paper II the preferences for reducing the negative effects of floods, elicited in paper I, were compared to the preferences of public officials involved in flood risk management. Citizens will have to bear the consequences in the future, of decisions made by governments today. Therefore, it can be argued that decisions should reflect citizens’ preferences. By asking citizens and public officials to respond to identical choice-experiment surveys, it was possible to analyse whether priorities and monetary valuations of the negative effects of floods, namely, property damage, traffic disturbances and water supply security, differed. The overall finding was that public officials and citizens preferences were quite similar, and that both citizens and public officials were willing to pay to reduce the negative effects of floods. The results imply that decisions made within the public sector will likely not differ substantially from citizens’ preferences. In paper III the trade-offs between the distributional aspects and aspects of economic efficiency in in four selected European countries compensation systems for damages caused by floods, namely Sweden, England, France and the Netherlands, were analysed. These countries differ in terms of the level of flood risk, influenced by the physical conditions, as well as in philosophical standpoint of what constitutes a just distribution of compensation following a flood. These aspects has come to affect the costs and benefits of the trade-off between availability and affordability on the one hand and incentives to promote economically efficient behaviour on the other. Finally, in paper IV individuals’ valuation of reducing the negative impacts of landslides, namely, impacts on life, impacts on the environment, impacts on infrastructure, and impacts on important societal services, were analysed, using the choice experiment method. We also evaluated whether individuals valuations were sensitive to the level of risk of landslides. Data was collected via a web panel, the final data sample consisted of 504 responses. We found that reducing the risk of landslides had an overall a positive impact on individuals’ utility. The results also showed that individuals’ valuations were sensitive to risk: individuals’ willingness to contribute financially to policy programs aimed at reducing the risk of landslides increased when the probability of landslides increased.
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