| 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. |
- 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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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- Crusoe, Jonathan, 1991-
(författare)
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Why is it so challenging to cultivate open government data? : Understanding impediments from an ecosystem perspective
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Introduction: This compilation licentiate thesis focuses on open government data (OGD). The thesis is based on three papers. OGD is a system that is organized when publishers collect and share data with users, who can unrestrictedly reuse the data. In my research, I have explored why it can be challenging to cultivate OGD. Cultivation is human activities that change, encourage, or guide human organizations towards a higher purpose by changing, introducing, managing, or removing conditions. Here, the higher purpose is OGD to realize believed benefits. Thus, OGD cultivation is an attempt to stimulate actors into organizing as OGD.Problem and Purpose: OGD is believed to lead to several benefits. However, the worldwide OGD movement has slowed down, and researchers have noted a lack of use. Publishers and users are experiencing a set of different impediments that are challenging to solve. In previous research, there is a need for more knowledge about what can impede the OGD organization, cause non-valuable organizing, or even collapse the organization. At the same time, there is a lack of knowledge about how impediments shape the organization of OGD. This gap can make it hard to solve and overcome the impediments experienced by publishers and users. The sought-after knowledge can bring some understanding of the current situation of OGD. In this research, I have viewed the organization of OGD as an ecosystem. The purpose of this thesis is to draw lessons about why it can be challenging to cultivate OGD ecosystems by understanding OGD impediments from an ecosystem perspective.Research Design: I set out to explore OGD through qualitative research from 2016 to 2018. My research started with a pilot case study that led to three studies. The studies are each reported in a paper and the papers form the base of this thesis. The first paper aims to stimulate the conceptually oriented discussion about actors’ roles in OGD by developing a framework that was tested on a Swedish public agency. The second paper has the purpose of expanding the scope surrounding impediments and was based in a review and systematization of previous research about OGD impediments. The third paper presents an exploration of impediments experienced by publishers, users, and cultivators in the Swedish national OGD ecosystem to identify faults. From the three papers, lessons were drawn in turn and together, that are presented in this thesis.Findings: Cultivators when cultivating OGD ecosystems are facing towering challenges. The following three main challenges are identified in this thesis: (1) to cultivate a system that can manage stability by itself without constant involvement, (2) to cultivate a system that is capable of evolving towards a “greater good” by itself, and (3) to have an up-to-date precise vocabulary for a self-evolving system that enables inter-subjective understand for coordinating problem-solving.Contribution: The theoretical contribution of this thesis is that OGD ecosystems can be viewed as a public utility. Moreover, I recommend that researchers approach the organizing of OGD as the cultivation of evolution, rather than the construction of a structure; to consider the stability of the system in growth, value, and participation; and to be cautious with how they label and describe OGD actors. For actors that are cultivating OGD, I recommend that they guide the OGD actors to help them organize; view OGD cultivation as the management of evolution (growth) towards a purpose; and view cultivation as a collaborative effort where they can supply ideas, technologies, practices, and expertise.
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| 6. |
- Viklund Tallgren, Mikael, 1983
(författare)
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Developing a collaborative planning tool for construction - A Building Information Model-enhanced planning and scheduling tool for production.
- 2018
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Construction projects are becoming increasingly complex with a higher degree of specialization, resulting in more sub-contractors as well as in more information needed in the project. This results in a bigger project organization with an increased need for information exchange, an area where construction has been criticized by academics. The increasing specialization is related to an increase in more technically advanced buildings. The amount of information created and managed in construction projects has been recognized as hard to manage at the construction site. This is problem since the site-management uses this information in the scheduling and planning of the production. One way to address this is to utilize the sub-contractors in the planning of the production, thus drawing upon their work-experience for their specific tasks. This creates a collaborative planning approach that somewhat addresses parts of the problem, however, the amount of information is still hard to manage, especially since it has to be coordinated between disciplines to get the full picture. Information and communication technologies, (ICT), have attempted to solve this, with potential found in building information modelling (BIM). However, most use of BIM is seen in the design phase of construction projects, with some BIM visualization appearing at the construction site. The lack of adoption at the construction site is partly attributed to lack of time to alter processes to new tools. This thesis addresses this potential for BIM tools aligned to a collaborative planning process. Furthermore, it recognizes that prior literature lacks a focus on both the people and the social context the technology is used in as well as the development of the technology itself. Thus, a sociotechnical systems view is adopted. Design Science is used as the method to observe the current collaborative planning process, develop a BIM-system supporting the collaborative planning approach and document the research process. This is done with a strong focus on the user, using people, processes and technology as dimension to analyze the requirements of the BIM system developed. Thus, the research’s contribution is threefold; the thesis contributes with a documentation of an existing collaborative planning process, a BIM-enabled collaborative planning tool enhancing a current work practice and an example of how Design Science can be used as a method to support ICT development in construction.
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| 7. |
- Wassrin, Siri, 1987-
(författare)
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Why is it difficult to design innovative IT? : An agential realist study of designing IT for healthcare innovation
- 2018
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It may seem strange to claim that it is difficult to design innovative information technology (IT) in a time when the technological progress leaps forward like never before. However, despite the numerous opportunities that this rapid progress provides, we often design IT that is similar to existing artifacts, making IT design incremental rather than radical. At the same time, IT innovations are pointed out as crucial to meet the societal challenges we are facing, not least in the public sector, including a growing and older population, increasing demands from citizens and reduced tax revenues. This calls for us to better understand why it is difficult to design innovative IT. Previous research on this topic have mainly focused on human and social aspects, not paying close attention to IT. In this thesis, it is suggested that the sociomaterial theory agential realism can help shed light on the role of IT in innovative IT design, acknowledging the sociomateriality of IT. Thus, the overarching aim of this thesis is to apply agential realism on an empirical case in order to explore and explain why it is difficult to design innovative IT. To fulfill the aim, a qualitative case study was conducted in publicly funded healthcare. The empirical case is an example of an attempt to design innovative IT in a healthcare context. The empirical material was generated through participant observations, including video recordings, and semi-structured interviews. The material was analyzed in several rounds, with and without a theoretical lens. In the agential realist analysis, IT has been viewed as entangled with the world. The analysis focused on what boundaries IT produced and how these boundaries were consequential for what was possible and impossible to design. The thesis illustrates how IT is produced and productive in terms of both matter and meaning, and thus, is agential – IT makes differences in the world. What is possible to design is not only constrained by social structures but by the materiality of IT, what boundaries IT helps produce and the material-discursive practices that enact IT. Innovative IT design means to design material configurations that produce boundaries that are different from what have been enacted before and, thus, deviate from existing material-discursive practices. However, it is difficult to deviate from these since material-discursive practices are agential and define what boundaries are meaningful and legitimate. Hence, it is difficult to design innovative IT since innovative IT design has to both enact boundaries that deviate from agential material-discursive practices and also gain legitimacy. Through this explanation, the thesis makes an explanatory knowledge contribution which differs from and adds to earlier explanations. It also makes a contribution to conceptualizing the IT artifact by emphasizing IT as sociomaterial and providing examples of how IT can be understood as produced, productive, agential and entangled. Finally, the thesis also makes an empirical and methodological contribution in the sense that it demonstrates how an agential realist case study can be conducted in the field of Information Systems.
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| 8. |
- Nyblom, Åsa
(författare)
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Making travel sustainable with ICT? : The social practice of travel planning and travel information use in everyday life
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Adopting the perspective of the traveller, this thesis examines how travel plans are actually made in the everyday situation and how information is used and drawn on when planning the many, often unremarkable, trips of ordinary urban life. Ethnographical field studies in southern Stockholm, Sweden, employing a practice theory perspective showed that people use a vast mixture of different types of information when planning and making trips. Therefore, the concept of travel information should be defined broadly enough to encompass informal, formal, analogue and digital types of travel information. Then, and only then, is it possible to perceive the interactions between these and see their potential as a change factor for sustainable city travel. In relation to this, situations when travel information was not used, were also identified in the qualitative data and are acknowledged and discussed in the thesis.Travel planning is in everyday practice undertaken little by little, squeezed in between other activities of daily life. It is a process more extended in time, space and content than the limited search for information about the best way to get from A to B, assumed and facilitated in many existing travel information services. Travel planning is closely connected to the overall scheduling of activities (planning of life) and thus spans much larger time frames than the single trip. Planning travel also includes consideration of issues such as preparations needed (things to be done before departure/brought on the trip); managing vehicles and equipment in time and space (getting the bicycle/car home again or safely parked); the weather (current and forecast); social relations (the potential of different travel options for relationship building or conflict triggering); social norms (e.g. of 'good parenting' or 'proper behaviour on public transport'); and health issues (wanting exercise or inability to manage stairs/luggage).The qualitative data revealed that travel information is sometimes perceived and used as a security blanket, i.e. something to hold on to and give the traveller courage on the trip until they are safe at their destination. It also showed that travel planning, depending on life situation, can be experienced as either a house of cards, i.e. if anything changes the whole house collapses and has to be rebuilt to a different layout, or a prefab building, i.e. the same prefabricated pieces are joined together in more or less the same pattern every time.Recent decades have seen rapid growth in ICT services relating to transportation. Different types of travel information services have been proposed as a means to decrease the environmental impacts of transportation through effecting behavioural change. Taking the empirical 4 insights provided by this thesis into travel planning and travel information use in practice, it is clear that travel information services of tomorrow, if connected to other ICT systems in everyday life, could be designed in a way that broadens their horizon of assistance in supporting travel planning processes in everyday life. Although, as this thesis demonstrates, the role and potential of travel information services and ICT in the work of achieving sustainable mobility should be discussed from a perspective critical of overly linear perceptions and instrumental starting points.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Chowdhury, Shamsul I., 1949-
(författare)
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Statistical expert systems : a special application area for knowledge-based computer methodology
- 1987
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study investigates the purposes, functions and requirements of statistical expert systems and focuses attention on some unique characteristics of this subcategory of knowledge-based systems. Statistical expert systems have been considered in this thesis as one approach to improve statistical software and extend their safe usability to a broad category of users in different phases of a statistical investigation. Some prototype applications in which the author has been involved are presented and discussed. A special chapter is devoted to the question whether this methodology might be a rare example of an advanced technology that is suitable for application in non-advanced environments, such as in developing countries.
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