1.
Jonsson, Katrin, 1978-, et al.
(author)
Organizational dimensions of e-maintenance : a multi-contextual perspective
2011
In: International Journal of Systems Assurance Engineering and Management. - : Springer. - 0975-6809 .- 0976-4348. ; 1:3, s. 210-218
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
A key objective for e-maintenance efforts is to align maintenance processes with business- and operational processes in order to reach organizational objectives. In the context of the process- and manufacturing industry a key objective for firms is to avoid downtime and to make sure all critical production equipment is up and running. To this end, e-maintenance has become increasingly important for the process- and manufacturing industry. Successful e-maintenance is realized by the organizational use of advanced information technology-solutions which aims at moving maintenance work from being primarily reactive (e.g. to react and respond to equipment breakdowns) to predictive (e.g. to predict when equipment are in need of maintenance before it breaks down). Building on a collaborative project with industrial organizations in the pulp and paper and the mining industry this paper explores organizational opportunities and challenges associated with the design and implementation of IT-based services for remote diagnostics of industrial equipment. We observe opportunities and challenges related to organizational innovation and learning. The paper introduces a multi-contextual perspective to better understand the opportunities and challenges associated with organizational learning and innovation. We argue that in order for e-maintenance services to be successful it must not only build on leading-edge technological solutions but also be built on an explicit model for how the maintenance work is organized and how e-maintenance efforts are aligned with overall organizational objectives.
2.
3.
Arvidsson, Viktor, 1984-
(author)
Digital transformation : the material roles of IT resources and their political uses
2015
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
As IT became ubiquitous, we recognized that IT was everywhere but in our theories. Despite significant efforts, Information System (IS) research is still in desperate search for the IT artifact. Recent reviews show that IS research first and foremost considers IT resources as a socio-technical and managerial concern. Analyses of inertia are restricted to cognitive limitations or technical challenges of IT development and use as separate activities. Hence, IS research assumes that more development resources, extended training, and better management could turn most failures into success. In this thesis, I posit that IS strategy research often treats normal failure as unexpected to maintain the rational idea that managers are in control and that IT does not matter in and of itself. I argue that planned and convergent views of change work well under stable and unitary conditions but in this way fail to account for the complexity of current IS strategy practice. To substantiate this claim, I demonstrate how IS research routinely neglects the material IT use story in the context of digital transformation (DT) studies and social informatics. Political conflict is a constant theme in IS strategy implementation research, yet few studies provided explanation for the apprehension that managers and workers display during the introduction of new IT resources; even as most managers remain men I found also no study that theorized gender politics as related to IS strategy outcomes. I argue in particular that the IS fields routine adherence to borrowed assumptions about the pace, linearity, and sequence of radical change have limited IS scholars to marginally improve on received DT narratives in which IT plays little or no part as IT appears as an agent mostly before and after DT. Though much is said about how IT triggers and enables organizational change, the actual processes and mechanisms that underlies IS strategy change enactments are thus poorly understood. To examine how the material roles of IT resources and their political use can be captured and explained, I summarize and synthesize insights grounded in empirics from four appended research papers. In this way, I chart avenues for material theorizing of micro-affordances and institutions, and develop an IS strategy-as-practice lens that attends IT use as a material practice. After developing this lens, I discuss how material practice perspectives afford deep understanding of the materialities through which actors create, sustain, and transform organizational practice with digital material, and highlight some opportunities to observe the social consequences of IT use in the context of critical studies on men and masculinities and digital gender.
4.
5.
Arvidsson, Viktor, 1984-, et al.
(author)
Outflanking with information technology : a dialectic model of organizational transformation
Other publication (other academic/artistic) abstract
The information systems (IS) literature conveys two opposing narratives of how to create radical organizational transformation (OT) with information technology (IT): “Iron fist” scholars argue that such OT is best achieved by resolute leaders capable of driving episodic change by fiat, while “velvet glove” scholars posit that OT is best induced incrementally by compassionate leaders who nurture shared vision and minimize conflict. These narratives portray implicitly gendered management stereotypes and promote accounts of heroism. Built to celebrate deliberate managerial action, they also brush aside back-stage work necessary for successful IS strategy implementation and cast IT in the marginal role of a trigger for or enabler of OT. To address these shortcomings, we advance a dialectic model of OT that views IT as a material change agent. To synthesize insights from these opposing narratives of change, our dialectic model also interrogates dominant assumptions in received OT theory. The model is motivated by an unexpected and intriguing case of OT in a Swedish municipality where initially peripheral actors used IT to gradually bring about a much-contested radical change to the organization’s service logics. These actions resembled the military tactics founded on stealth and surprise that military leaders use to overcome overwhelming enemies; therefore, we term the new OT narrative “outflanking.” The narrative foregrounds three tactical IT uses—shielding, priming, and enrolling—that the actors deployed to overcome the opposition. As a result, we theorize that the role of novel IT uses is a necessary component of contemporary OT. Following a call for analyses of OT that recognize material effects of IT, the article concludes with a discussion of how managers can strike alliances with peripheral actors to render their organizations more dynamic, and how researchers need better articulate the complexity of the current IT-based OT.
6.
Arvidsson, Viktor, 1984-, et al.
(author)
To make or fake sense of information technology? : strategic ambiguity as a source of radical change
Other publication (other academic/artistic) abstract
While Information Technology (IT) resources signal different meanings to different actors, strategy scholarship advocates the establishing of tight links between the functional role and strategic purpose of IT resources. Particularly, the “interpretative flexibility” of IT resources is depicted as an obstacle for effective strategy implementation that needs to be overcome through planned deployment, training, and control. We challenge this conventional assumption. Through applying a practice lens in a qualitative multi-site case study, we identify four types of IT resource configurations, theorizing IT resource ambiguity as a source for radical change. Ultimately, we observe how, when, and why ambiguous uses of IT can form critical elements of new IT strategy practices, and suggest several implications of the observed IT resource ambiguity for strategy and management research.
7.
Augustsson, Nils-Petter, 1972-, et al.
(author)
From Technological Transitions to Service Transitions : A Study of Attenuation Effects in IT Service Provisioning
2015
In: Journal of Information Technology Services. - 1975-4256. ; 14:2, s. 337-354
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
In a day and age when contemporary businesses are transformed, driven by a service-dominance logic and dependent upon IT, we need to understand how firms cope with technological adaptations and how such technological adaptations can lead to service adaptations. Drawing on a framework on technological transitions and an interpretive longitudinal case study of the services provided by a team within a large public IT firm, this article addresses the following questions：How do service transitions come about? Can we distinguish particular patterns in service transition processes? This research unveils how technological and social dimensions mutually constitute each other within development and implementation of service provisioning. The findings show how：(a) IT plays a fundamental role in service provisioning; (b) technological transitions are the necessary but insufficient preconditions for service transitions; and (c) there are attenuation effects when it comes to the move from technology transition to service transition.
8.
Augustsson, Nils-Petter, 1972-, et al.
(author)
Living on the edge : balancing rigor and relevance within an action research context
2010
In: Industrial informatics design use and innovation. - Hershey : IGI Global. - 9781615206926 - 9781616923143 - 9781615206933 ; , s. 102-109
Book chapter (other academic/artistic) abstract
This paper describes the efforts in ensuring research relevance by means of an industrial PhD project. The project is aiming at strengthening the relevance of research and development by educating scientists with an insight into the practical aspects of research and development and by developing networks in which knowledge can be effectively disseminated between industry and university. The project is taking its stand with an empirical and industrial centre with a technical solution called Dynamo, which is delivered by the company Logica. Dynamo, an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects systems, user information, roles and rule sets, and its context will provide a rich and useful empirical source from which to launch the action research process. The project contains two distinct stakeholders – industry and academy – jointly guiding the project and making sure that both worlds get a result that is in line with and contributes to their business. To this end two key stakeholders that have taken on the role as gatekeepers of rigor and relevance respectively. Taking position in the middle of the action is the PhD student who, by living the life of both researcher and consultant, will take on the role of balancing rigor and relevance. The chosen research approach together with the complex implementation context together with makes it crucial to take on an open minded selection.
9.
Holmström, Jonny
(author)
File sharing beyond grabbing and running : Exploring the sense of community in a peer-to-peer file sharing network
2015
In: Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. - : SAGE Publications. - 1354-8565 .- 1748-7382. ; 21:4, s. 437-449
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
This study examines how a file sharing system affects its users’ sense of community (SOC). It was expected that the file sharing system would increase members’ knowledge about and participation in the file sharing network which, in turn, would increase their SOC. The aim of this study was to identify the barriers that hinder community building in file sharing networks, by examining how use of a specific network – Direct Connect++ (DC++) – affects its users’ SOC. It was our hypothesis and expectation that extended use of file sharing system would increase members’ knowledge about, and participation in, the file sharing network, and this in turn would increase their SOC. However, although DC++ was found to have a number of properties that coincide with the theories of SOC, two barriers were found that hindered DC++ from working as a genuine community. These barriers were related to anonymity and elitism among community members. The findings challenge previous idealistic theories about the development of an SOC but nonetheless demonstrate the positive effects of network membership.
10.
Holmström, Jonny
(author)
From AI to digital transformation : the AI readiness framework
2022
In: Business Horizons. - : Elsevier. - 0007-6813 .- 1873-6068. ; 65:3, s. 329-339
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
Strategies and means for selecting and implementing digital technologies that realize firms' goals in digital transformation have been extensively investigated. The recent surge in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has amplified the need for such investigation, as they are being increasingly used in diverse organizational practices, creating not only new opportunities for digital transformation but also new challenges for managers of digital transformation processes. In this article, I present a framework intended to assist efforts to address one of the first of these challenges: assessment of organizational AI readiness—that is, an organization's ability to deploy AI technologies to enable digital transformation, in four key dimensions: technologies, activities, boundaries, and goals. I show that this framework can facilitate analysis both of an organization's current sociotechnical AI status and of the prospects for the technology's fuller value-adding, sociotechnical deployment. The AI readiness framework invites fuller theorizing of the roles that AI can—and will—play in digital transformation.
