| 1. |
- Hansson, Anna M., 1984-
(författare)
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Get it off the ground – Facilitating water-related environmental measures to support agricultural managers in business model innovation processes for sustainability
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Agricultural businesses, which currently maintain, manage, create, and capture economic value from natural resources on farmland, play an important role in creating sustainable economic, environmental, and social value through maintaining and utilising a variety of ecosystem services in addition to traditional food production. This thesis focuses on ecosystem services that derive from water-related environmental measures (WREMs). This focus is motivated by a growing awareness of WREMs in the agricultural landscape, and of their connection to climate effects and water quantity and quality issues, which have substantial societal impact. Even though many agricultural business managers have a genuine interest in sustainability concerns, they tend to favour food production at the cost of providing other ecosystem services. Part of the explanation is that ecosystem services’ ability to provide social and environmental value for the public good often lacks full-cost accounting and clear market demand. This results in uncertainties among agricultural business managers about how to capture economic value from WREMs and associated ecosystem services, leading to their benefits and value being only partly known or only indirectly connected to the main agricultural production, and therefore not included in current business models to any great extent.Business models can be developed to enable value capture from WREMs through the business model innovation process for sustainability (BMIpfS). The BMIpfS identifies changes of current activities and adapts existing business models to support sustainable development and produce positive (or reduce negative) environmental effects on society, while producing long-term prosperity for businesses and their stakeholders. Due to the wide range of activities and stakeholders, the BMIpfS is complex and needs to be incentivised and facilitated. To provide sufficient facilitation for the BMIpfS initiation, underlying barriers and drivers for business managers’ value intention (their business motives) for the BMIpfS need to be explored. Facilitation based on the value intention of business managers can ease the process and be used to support identification of value not yet captured in business models, as well as provide expertise to identify marketable sustainable products and services beyond existing markets. Facilitation can be managed through government-affiliated intermediaries who are in a favourable position to assess local conditions, identify needs and resources, and develop partnerships with stakeholders that align with current agri-environmental programmes. To facilitate sustainable business commitments in agriculture, a better understanding is needed of how government-affiliated intermediaries can support implementation of WREMs and promote the BMIpfS initiation by aligning agricultural business managers’ value intention with societal sustainability goals. Consequently, the overarching aim of this thesis is to explore how the facilitation of WREMs can support the BMIpfS through an improved understanding of (i) the value intention of agricultural business managers and (ii) how government-affiliated intermediaries can facilitate the process initiation.This thesis builds on four sequential studies, all conducted within external research projects. The first two are qualitative interview studies that build on each other to inductively explore agricultural business mangers’ incentives for taking on more long-term and high-effort WREMs and committing to value capture of sustainability-related measures. They identify barriers and drivers as part of the agricultural business managers’ value intention and analyse its connection to the BMIpfS initiation. The third study is quantitative and was conducted through a survey that more deductively explores how opportunities for sustainable value creation and business model innovation through WREMs can be facilitated to align with the managers’ value intention that emerged in the first two studies. Finally, the fourth study is a qualitative interview study that takes an evaluative approach to further clarify how the facilitation of WREMs can be structured and organised to promote BMIpfS initiation in agriculture. The results of this research show that business change incentives for sustainability activities are part of pre-initiation conditions of the BMIpfS through the value intention of business managers. The value intention is clarified as business managers’ (i) identification as producers of value, (ii) difficulties identifying uncaptured sustainability value, and (iii) prioritisation of profitability and practical benefits. Adding value intention to a pre-initiation process phase contributes to the BMIpfS literature by providing a better understanding of how to support the BMIpfS initiation and promote more long-term and high-effort sustainability commitments, and value creating and capturing activities, among business managers. The results also show how WREM commitments and initiation of the BMIpfS can be facilitated through government-affiliated intermediaries. The government-affiliated intermediation is explained as comprising structures and activities to promote: (i) WREMs that include synergy between environmental and business aspects from a long-term perspective on value creating and capturing activities; (ii) flexible approaches adapted to business managers’ needs, that promote autonomy, trust, and sense of control; and (iii) structured collaboration and networks for knowledge exchange between stakeholders on different societal levels. With the value intention of business managers as a foundation, these results complement previous research on government-affiliated intermediaries and show how they can be structured to facilitate sustainable agricultural business activities and promote the BMIpfS initiation in line with societal sustainability targets. To integrate its results, this thesis develops a framework that advances the understanding of how to facilitate business model innovation towards sustainability and capture a wider range of value from ecosystem services. Through facilitation, innovation of business models towards sustainability can be promoted to realise currently uncaptured value that could benefit business revenues and societal goals. In this way, agriculture could continue to provide the world’s population with food, in line with the goals of sustainable development, but with an expanded approach so that food production becomes a basis on which to build business activities that also improve the conditions for several other goals, such as protection of ecosystems and water resources.
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| 2. |
- Pedersen, Jenny M.
(författare)
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ATP-Binding-Cassette Transporters in Biliary Efflux and Drug-Induced Liver Injury
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Membrane transport proteins are known to influence the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) of drugs. At the onset of this thesis work, only a few structure-activity models, in general describing P-glycoprotein (Pgp/ABCB1) interactions, were developed using small datasets with little structural diversity. In this thesis, drug-transport protein interactions were explored using large, diverse datasets representing the chemical space of orally administered registered drugs. Focus was set on the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transport proteins expressed in the canalicular membrane of human hepatocytes.The inhibition of the ABC transport proteins multidrug-resistance associated protein 2 (MRP2/ABCC2) and bile salt export pump (BSEP/ABCB11) was experimentally investigated using membrane vesicles from cells overexpressing the investigated proteins and sandwich cultured human hepatocytes (SCHH). Several previously unknown inhibitors were identified for both of the proteins and predictive in silico models were developed. Furthermore, a clear association between BSEP inhibition and clinically reported drug induced liver injuries (DILI) was identified. For the first time, an in silico model that described combined inhibition of Pgp, MRP2 and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP/ABCG2) was developed using a large, structurally diverse dataset. Lipophilic weak bases were more often found to be general ABC inhibitors in comparison to other drugs. In early drug discovery, in silico models can be used as predictive filters in the drug candidate selection process and membrane vesicles as a first experimental screening tool to investigate protein interactions.In summary, the present work has led to an increased understanding of molecular properties important in ABC inhibition as well as the potential influence of ABC proteins in adverse drug reactions. A number of previously unknown ABC inhibitors were identified and predictive computational models were developed.
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