| 1. |
- Cano-Viktorsson, Carlos, 1977-
(författare)
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From Vision to Transition : Exploring the Potential for Public Information Services to Facilitate Sustainable Urban Transport
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Policy initiatives to promote sustainable travel through the use of Internet based public information systems have increased during the last decade. Stockholm, in being one of the first cities in Europe to implement an Internet based service for facilitating sustainable travel is believed to be a good candidate for an analysis of key issues for developing sustainable travel planning services to the public.Aim: This thesis investigates the past development of two Stockholm based public information systems and their services in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning through information and communications technology. The overall goal of the thesis is to contribute to an understanding on how to better design and manage current and future attempts at facilitating sustainable travel planning services based on historical case studies.Approach: The thesis draws ideas from the concept of organizational responsiveness – an organization’s ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its internal and external stakeholders – in order to depict how well or not the two public information systems and their owners have adapted to established norms and values of their surroundings.Results: Overall, the findings from the historical case studies suggest that organizations attempting to provide sustainable travel planning to the public need to design and manage their systems in such a way that it responds to shifting demands on how to provide for information. Implementing and embedding new technologies involves complex processes of change both at the micro level – for users and practitioners of the service – and at the meso level for the involved public service organizations themselves. This condition requires a contextualist framework to analyze and understand organizational, contextual and cultural issues involved in the adoption of new technologies and procedures.Conclusions: The thesis concludes with a discussion on how the findings from the historical case studies may provide lessons for both current and future attempts at providing public information systems geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning to the public. Historical examples and issues concerning collective intelligence and peer to peer based forms of designing, producing and supervising public information services identified throughout the study are looked upon and discussed in terms of their possible role in increasing the potential for public information services to facilitate sustainable urban transport.
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| 2. |
- Sõmersalu, Liisa, 1983-
(författare)
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Civic Cultures in Eastern Europe : Communication spaces and media practices of Estonian civil society organizations
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What kind of routine media and communication practices do Estonian civil society organizations enact in their everyday work? What sort of symbolic and physical spaces are used, created, and accessed by Estonian civil society organizations and informal citizen groups when engaging internally and with their target groups? How do these spaces and practices evolve over time? These are the questions this dissertation addresses, with the aim of understanding the ways in which already-established and evolving civil society organizations navigate the highly-mediated everyday through their routine media practices and the spaces in which these practices are situated.Theoretically, this study takes a cultural approach to political participation with the concept of ‘civic cultures’ (Dahlgren 2009, p. 103) in the centrum. In this dissertation, the civic cultures framework is concentrated into a focus on the everyday, on media practices, and on communicative spaces. The concepts of ‘everyday’ and ‘spaces’ are empirically accessed through a practice approach. To distill and explore the role of media in the everyday work of civil society organizations, this thesis borrows from “activist media practices” (Mattoni 2012, p. 159) framework.The empirical study is grounded in the wider geopolitical context of Eastern Europe and in the historical context of post-Soviet Europe, and more specifically in Estonian civil society. Using a multi-methods approach based on media ethnography, this study includes a nationally-representative survey, in-depth interviews with civil society organizations, and a longitudinal study of the Estonian Forest Aid movement.This study found that parallel to striving towards episodic visibility in physical spaces, in mainstream media, and in decision making, civil society organizations worked on constant visibility in the social media space. The most used social media platform, Facebook, proved to be an important space for developing civic cultures on an everyday level: it was used for campaigns, opinion shaping, for disseminating news, and for civic talk. Everyday communication within the organizations was done using a mix of different media technologies and face-to-face meetings. Each media technology and communicative space had their own role and function in the everyday work of Estonian civil society organizations.
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| 3. |
- de Petris, Linus
(författare)
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Om glappen vi skapar och de märken som blir – materiell-diskursiva praktiker i kommunkontext
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Utgångspunkten för min forskning är ett upplevt glapp i IT- och e-förvaltningsutveckling. Policys och strategier har långtgående visioner om hur IT kan och kommer att förändra allt ifrån vårt vardagliga arbete och privatliv till att förändra samhällsstrukturer och maktordningar. För att möta detta görs stora investeringar varje år inom kommunal IT. Ändå är upplevelsen att ”det händer inget”. Syftet med forskningen är att presentera förståelser för abstrakta och komplexa ting som e-förvaltning, innovation (förändringsarbete), design och infrastruktur. Forskningen presenterar olika perspektiv för dessa ting och utmanar normerade förståelser för dem. Ett exempel på detta är hur infrastruktur med en normativ förståelse som abstrakt och passiv också visar sig vara påtagligt konkret och performativt. Målsättningen är sedan att dessa förståelser skall ligga till grund för att praktisera en IT- och e-förvaltningsutveckling, som inte känns ”glappande” eller stagnerad. Den forskning, som presenteras och prövas i denna avhandling, är situerad i en kommunkontext och bygger på deltagande aktionsforskning. Deltagande aktionsforskning innebär, att jag har försökt att reflexivt praktisera forskning i syfte att skapa kunskap och förändring tillsammans med andra och direkt i de samanhang jag har verkat. Aktionsforskningen innebär, att jag inte forskar om utan med olika kommunala praktiker. Denna typ av forskning är inte knuten till en specifik metod utan behöver anpassas och utvecklas i sitt sammanhang. I detta ingår en återkommande utmaning av befintlig verksamhetspraktik och förgivettaganden, inte minst mina egna. Licentiatavhandlingen, som är ”ett steg på vägen”, handlar mer om förståelser än om förklaringar. Avhandlingen är skriven som en form av sammanläggningsavhandling, som bygger på fyra artiklar och en delvis fristående kappa. Mitt skrivande och därmed den text, som utgör avhandlingen är ”essäistisk”. Essäformen har gjort det möjligt för mig att använda avhandlingsskrivandet som en fortsatt prövning av de olika perspektiv, som artiklarna presenterar.
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| 4. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(författare)
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Heterogeneous hybrids : Information Technology in Texts and Practices
- 2001
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How could one understand and interpret the phenomenon of information technology, is the overall research question of this licentiate dissertation. The point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology. It is possible to identify two dominating discourses; the technical and the social. In the first paper, empirical material from the Women Writing on the Net-project is mirrored against these dominating discourses. In the second paper, the focus is on how the dominating discourses are translated into librarians´ work practices and how librarians shape and transform information technology. How could one understand librarians´ ways of talking about information technology where the two separate discourses of information technology identified in the official texts do not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? Feminist theories, feminist technoscientific studies and ´actor-network theory´ offer epistemological and analytical frames and screens necessary to understand information technology as a hybrid involving numerous heterogeneous elements. Introduction to the Papers Paper One, Discourses and Cracks - A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context, is the first paper where empirical material from a local IT project is used and discussed and where it is mirrored against the dominating discourses of information technology. The first part of this paper discusses information technology as a political and practical discourse which is in part shaped by the repetition of an exalted rhetoric. This repetitive discursive model can be distinguished in global, regional and local contexts and reflects an optimistic belief in technology as an independent power that automatically furthers democratic development. Is it really this simple? The analysis includes a discussion of the concept of ´universal citizenship´ in a context of women's experiences in Sweden. The second part of the paper presents empirical material and experiences from the Women Writing on the Net-project (this is included in the framework of the DIALOGUE project, which was partly funded by ISPO/EU). The aim was to create a virtual space for women on the Internet and to explore the writing process in terms of aim, tool and method. The method of approach incorporated reflections and discussions about empowerment, democracy and representation of women. This created a more complex understanding of the values of the predominant IT discourses, and revealed the "cracks" in, and possibilities of feminist redefinitions of these values. In Paper Two, Translating and Negotiating Information Technology: Discourses and Practices, I continue exploration of my overall research question "What is information technology?" I study the dominating discourses of information technology; these I call "the technical suit" and the "social suit." In my empirical field studies among librarians in southeast Sweden I explore how the two faces of information technology - the technical and the social - are translated into librarians´ work practices. I study a project which was defined by the librarians themselves as an information technology project. I investigate how this project complies with the social/societal definitions of information technology, and how it complies with the technical definitions of information technology. In my second empirical study, I use two case studies with librarians involved in constructing web sites on the Internet. The Internet and the web are often seen in part as an open and undefined landscape in which new actors can move freely and build new partnerships, and partly as a shadow landscape of existing structures and relationships which can close up new openings. In the concluding discussion, I state that information technology seems to be both an amoeba and a chameleon. One minute it is a very pure and complicated technical story told by technicians. The next minute, it changes and turns into a financial story told by business people. It subsequently turns out to be an educational story told by teachers. It is also, however, a household story told by computer people. I suggest that information technology is impure. It is a hybrid. Inspired by Donna Haraways´s technoscientific metaphor of cyborg I claim that information technology is a cyborg in itself. In the third paper, From Networks to Fluids and Fires - A Prelude to Actor-Network Theory, I discuss a method of analysis I have tried to apply to my empirical material. I explore the notions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). My point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology by stressing the technical aspects of IT; at the same time they present information technology as a motor and a driving force for many sectors of society. In my research, I have discussed with librarians how they shape and transform information technology in their own work practices. The problems of analysing this empirical material started when the librarians started to talk about people, machines and money all in one breath. How could one understand their way of talking about information technology where the two separate lines of information technology identified in the official texts did not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? How was it possible to understand the concept of information technology as it was used by the librarians, who seemed to involve all kinds of different heterogeneous elements which at first sight were very far away from information technology? It was when asking these questions that I discovered ANT and ANTA. In this paper, I present some basic ideas about these two research approaches by reading and analysing articles published between 1980 and the year 2000. In addition to the ANT and ANTA perspectives, I also introduce my own research questions: story telling and epistemological problematisations closely connected with feminist theories are, for example, closely intertwined in this paper.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Borg, Josefin, 1985
(författare)
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Collaborating for Energy Efficient Shipping - An Ethnographic Study
- 2018
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to better understand the emergent organising of an inter-organisational collaboration for energy efficiency in shipping, from a practice-oriented perspective. Interorganisational collaboration is often pointed to as a means towards sustainable development, and research on energy efficiency collaboration has emerged over the last decade. However, the number of studies on the topic remains low, and there is a lack of knowledge about how such arrangements are accomplished in practice. Previous research has indicated that collaboration can be a successful means in order to increase energy efficiency performances and efforts. However, studies on other types of inter-organisational collaboration have shown that despite all the good intentions, establishing and sustaining such endeavours can be difficult in practice. The exploration of energy efficiency collaboration from a practice-oriented perspective can thus allow for a better understanding about what makes such arrangements thrive or struggle. The thesis presents an ethnographic study of Sweship Energy; an interorganisational collaboration aiming for increased energy efficiency in the Swedish shipping sector. The execution of an in-depth, longitudinal study enabled for a close-up exploration of aspects like practices and experienced challenges within the initiative, and how these shifted over time. The research explores three aspects in particular: 1) how challenges experienced by the practitioners can be understood; 2) the development of collaborative practices; and 3) how the emergent organising of the collaboration can be characterised. The thesis contributes witha more nuanced understanding of the complexities in establishing and maintaining energy efficiency collaboration, and for the tasks of achieving positive outcomes from such endeavours. The study also contributes with relevant insights to practitioners participating in such initiatives. By extending the knowledge about experienced challenges and practices, the study can improve the awareness and reflections about practitioners’ actions in the collaborative setting. Thus, hopefully, the thesis also contributes to a greater chance for energy efficiency collaborations to succeed and survive by decreasing the risk of collaborative inertia.
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| 7. |
- Jensen, Mikael, 1969
(författare)
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Lärande och låtsaslek - ett kognitionsvetenskapligt utvecklingsperspektiv
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna licentiatuppsats är en tvärvetenskaplig undersökning kring lärandets relation till låtsaslek. Ur ett kognitionsvetenskapligt perspektiv är förmågan att låtsas något av en gåta. Därför är det särskilt intressant att undersöka hur barnet kan nå denna förmåga. Sker det genom lärande? Resulterar låtsasleken i något lärande? Fyller låtsasleken någon avgörande funktion för barnets framtid som kulturell medlem? Detta är de frågor som driver undersökningen. Forskningsprocessen vilar i grunden på tidigare forskningsresultat inom kognitionsvetenskap eller fält som är direkt relevanta för kognitionsforskning. Uppsatsen innehåller också ny empiri som används i två specifika syften: (1) att exemplifiera och förtydliga de teoretiska resonemangen, (2) att visa på förekomsten av visst lärande och viss låtsaslek från autentiska lekmiljöer. Den empiriska studien är utförd som deltagande observationer vid fyra förskoleavdelningar. Barnen i studien var från 20 månader gamla till drygt sex år. De resultat som denna uppsats särskilt bidrar med består i att skapa en teori som integrerar kognition, emotion och kommunikation. Därtill handlar det om tre särskilda perspektiv på lärande och låtsaslek: (1) Människan är utrustad med fem regulatorer som (a) märker av den emotionella statusen i närmiljön; om hot förekommer saknas förutsättningar för lek, (b) reglerar individens uppmärksamhet; vid låtsassituationer behöver individen vara särskilt uppmärksam på små skillnader, (c) transformerar andras handlingar till egna handlingar genom ett spegelsystem som möjliggör imitation, (d) bidrar till lärande av kulturella normer och regler, (e) förhindrar vissa kulturellt oacceptabla handlingar. (2) Människan tar del i sociala aktiviteter och låtsasleken kan ses som en sådan. Låtsasleken som en social aktivitet bygger på kommunikation av två specifika slag: (a) lekhandlingar som är innehållet i leken; varje handling för leken framåt, (b) leksignaler som hela tiden påminner deltagarna om vilken typ av social aktivitet det rör sig om. Ibland kan lekhandling och leksignal sammanfalla men det kräver inte metakommunikation som andra lekforskare har föreslagit. (3) Genom att betrakta lärande och lek som transfer blir det tydligt vad barnet behöver lära sig för att kunna låtsasleka. Det blir också tydligt vad i leken som utgör ett lärande för framtida situationer. Ett sätt att kunna utföra transfer till och från leken är att lära sig särskilda principer. Åtta sådana föreslås och särskilt en princip, principen om funktionell frihet är sammanflätad med leken och lekutvecklingen. Att utveckla principen om funktionell frihet innebär för barnet att det bättre kan förstå den kultur i vilken det växer upp. Vad som föreslås i denna uppsats är att låtsasleken bidrar till kulturellt lärande och att leken har en potential att utveckla kulturen på sikt.
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| 8. |
- Ljung Aust, Mikael, 1973
(författare)
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Developing Theoretical and Empirical Definitions of Safety Problems in Driving Suitable for Active Safety Function Evaluation
- 2009
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In passive safety, the requirement specifications used for evaluation of protective functions are both standardised and specified at a high level of detail regarding evaluation scenario definition, performance metrics and pass/fail criteria. For active safety, while several propositions for evaluation scenarios have been made, neither these, nor performance metrics and pass/fail criteria have yet reached a similar level of detail and standardisation. The objective of this thesis is to address two underlying reasons for this difference. One is theoretical in nature. On a general level, a set of principles and concepts which capture the fundamental ideas of a field of science can be called a conceptual framework. For active safety function evaluation, such a framework is currently lacking. To address this issue, a conceptual framework called Situational control was developed. The framework integrates fundamental ideas relevant for active safety function evaluation into a holistic and practically applicable picture. Its applicability was demonstrated by applying it in the context of writing and implementing requirement specifications for active safety function evaluation.The second reason is of empirical character. To evaluate the extent to which active safety functions prevent and/or mitigate crashes, it is essential to characterize the sequence of events which leads to collisions in a way which includes information on causal factors. To do this, data from official databases (macroscopic data), and in-depth case studies is often used. Macroscopic data is usually statistically representative but has limited information on why crashes happen, while the opposite is true of case studies. Using the two in combination would therefore seem ideal. However, the principles for connecting them are far from clear and current approaches suffer inherent weaknesses. To address this issue, a generalization methodology which links information in case studies to macroscopic crash types, in a way which covers not only context but also causation similarity, was developed. The feasibility of the methodology was tested through application on three sets of intersection crash data. Results indicate that the methodology was sufficiently successful to warrant further exploration with larger data sets.
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| 9. |
- Polesie, Pim, 1982
(författare)
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Improving productivity in construction: a contractor perspective
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Improving productivity in construction has been a lengthy battle. Several debates, articles, reports and books have acknowledged that productivity in construction must be improved. Numerous theoretical and practical solutions to improve productivity have been developed over time both in academia and in practise. A problem with developing theories on how to improve productivity is that there is no generally accepted definition of the term. Productivity has different meanings for different individuals, dependent on context, background and profession. It is therefore likely that suggestions on how to improve productivity will be interpreted differently. In order to improve productivity in construction, the concept itself must first be explored from a context specific perspective. Throughout this thesis it is the production managers’ views that are under scrutiny.The aim of this thesis is to identify factors that influence productivity in construction and to explore the production managers’ views on potential improvements of productivity. Various aspects of productivity are presented and synthesised into a model where inputs are related to outputs through a transformation process. Resources, costs for the use of resources, and the value added in the process are factors in this model.The thesis is based on three papers, each focusing on its own research question. Paper I presents the difficulties of evaluating productivity by exploring the multiple usages of the term in construction. Paper II further examines productivity by analysing what views production managers have concerning their firms’ productivity improvements by reducing the unnecessary use of resources. Paper III explores what views production managers have concerning their roles when productivity is improved through increasing standardisation by exploring the relationship between the production managers’ need for freedom in their construction projects and the firms’ need for standards that improve productivity. The main findings confirm that resources, costs for the use of resources, and the value added are terms that need to be considered when productivity is to be improved from a production manager perspective. Conclusions are drawn that production managers are not averse to implementing standards or reducing the use of resources to improve productivity. Instead, the short-term cost focused approach prevailing in the construction industry hinders the managers from finding and establishing standards that can improve project productivity in their project organisations. Keywords: construction industry, contractor organisations, production manager perspective, productivity, transformation process, use of resources, value added
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| 10. |
- Florin, Ulrika, 1964-
(författare)
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Från idé till gestaltningsförslag : fallstudie från Projekt Konstpaus
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Populär sammanfattning I vårt samhälle finns många offentliga konstverk. Dessa verk har kommit till på olika sätt men gemensamt är att konstverken i de allra flesta fall upphandlats med utgångspunkt i någon form av skiss. Skissen föregår det kommande konstverket och tjänar som underlag för beslut om upphandling av verket i full skala. Kunskapen om hur skisser kan tydas varierar och dessutom förekommer flera typer av skisser som var för sig fordrar olika sorters insikter av betraktaren (beslutsfattaren) för att kunna tolkas. Det övergripande temat för avhandlingen är kommunikationsprocesserna i relation till utvecklingen av 12 konstnärers gestaltningsförslag, tävlingsbidrag, samt hur juryns bedömning av dessa ser ut. Studien är baserad på material insamlat från de deltagande konstnärernas processer i Projekt Konstpaus, ett projekt delfinansierat av EU. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för hur konstnärer utformar sina gestaltningsförslag, samt hur dessa förslag används och värderas. För att göra detta har tävlingsbidragen analyserats och konstnärerna intervjuats. Konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser har synliggjorts liksom kommunikationen mellan beställare och konstnär.Bland annat har det framkommit att det finns en större potential att förmedla ett komplext gestaltningsinnehåll till en jury med stöd av digitala skisser, än vid användande av traditionella skisser. Det har visat sig att det kommande konstverkets kvaliteter blir synliga, men också att de brister som finns i gestaltningen tydliggörs i 3D- skisserna. Liksom teknologier tidigare i historien haft sin påverkan på bildutvecklingen, tolkningen och seendet har också övergången till digitala skisstekniker denna inverkan. Det har också visat sig att den text som tillhör respektive tävlingsbidrag haft avgörande betydelse för utfallet av jurybedömningen. Muntliga och skriftliga presentationer, bilagor och brev har påverkat juryn i sina beslut.Studien har också visat hur konstnärer kan tolka och förmedla resultat av en inventering och genom sina skisser förmedla dessa tolkningar. Konsten som tolkare av miljö, tid och tanke, kan gestalta information om en plats och i och med detta också fungera värnande för ett samhälles identitet i olika faser av en utveckling.Studien har bidragit med en djupare inblick i konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser och hur de kan beskrivas samt i och med detta också en fördjupad förståelse i allmänhet av kreativa processer.
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