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- Johansson, Gun-Britt, 1956-
(author)
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Synderskan och lagen: Barnamord i tre Norrlandslän 1830-1870
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- ABSTRACTMany studies have been conducted on infanticide and child homicide. Researchers have approached the subject with different theoretical frameworks and explored it from different dimensions, geographical areas, and time periods. As much as the questions have varied so have the answers. This study contributes to greater clarity on the causes of infanticide. Despite numerous studies on the subject, there is still no consensus its causes. My aim has been to combine different strategies for understanding the subject. I have used material both from an aggregated level and from an individual level. The main question I sought to answer was whether social causes rather than individual factors force or trigger women to kill their newborn child? Court material also provides for an in-depth understanding of our history. The social sciences have frequently drawn sketches of the social world with big lines. These lines have been necessary and useful to point at large-scale transformations of civilisation and modernisation but, in terms of understanding real life, they can provide us with a foggy and even mistaken picture. When social scientists enter the historical archives and similar sources, we often blunder in its richness and variation. Society may, in any case, have always been complicated and the every day life for each person as well.My findings show that infanticide signals low tolerance. In general, the women did not want to kill their own children. Moreover, my findings, like the results of other studies before mine, demonstrate that women who carry out infanticide represent normal women. To my knowledge, there isn’t one study on infanticide that claims the women were not normal. Women who committed infanticide did so out of fear: fear of losing their social bonds. They killed their children if the existence of the bonds was endangered or threatened. Often social bonds were related to their work situation as maids in farming households. If they couldn’t stay in the household after having the baby, many women had no where else to go. Their parents – poor, elderly or deceased – were unable to help. Sometimes the social bonds were threatened by other factors, often related to the child’s father. If he was already married or had a close relation with the woman’s family, their relationship could in fact, break her bonds to her own family and other relatives. Some women already had an illegitimate child. With a child out of wedlock, they had a difficult time getting work and housing. If they got pregnant again and the father to the new child refused to marry her or to support the child, she could in fact lack any resources for handling the situation.Finally: the findings talk about honour and infanticide. It was always shameful to get a child out of wedlock. But demographic research from North of Sweden has shown that these children had almost the same chances of survival during their first year as legitimate children. Sexuality outside marriage was not respected but much discussion around honour was more related to how the women would manage with the child. In my findings, shame seems to be related to having no support. Extramarital relations were not accepted but people probably didn’t care to much about it as far as they managed on their own. Being rejected, helpless, not able to work and not able to take care of the child that was what shame was about.Keywords: Infanticide, child homicide, illegitimacy, social bonds, shame
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| 2. |
- Simonsson, Johan, 1971-
(author)
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Towards Digital Product-Service Platforms in Manufacturing Firms : Exploring Organizational and Managerial Aspects
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is positioned at the intersection of product and service development and enabling digital technologies in the context of incumbent manufacturing firms. When these concepts are blended together into digital product-service systems, value growth and business model innovation may be achieved. However, incumbents may face a number of technical, managerial, and organizational challenges, which they must deal with in order to reap the full benefits of such a digital transformation. This research area has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, but many research gaps still exist. Research addressing these gaps may support incumbent firms in their transformation towards fruitful digital product-service systems.This thesis explores three research questions: “How does the development of digital product-service systems take place in incumbent manufacturing firms?”, “What managerial and organizational challenges and opportunities are encountered in the digitalization of product-service systems?”, and “How does the use of a platform approach influence the innovation of digital product-service systems in incumbent manufacturing firms?”. The results build on the findings of five studies, all of which included at least one incumbent manufacturing firm. These firms were selected based on their histories as successful suppliers of physical goods and on the basis of their recent strategies to develop product-service systems facilitated by different digital technologies.The empirical findings suggest that digital transformation evolves in clear stages: an entrepreneurial phase, a platform-establishment phase, and an acceleration phase. The entrepreneurial spirit of a few individuals is important for initiating the first phase and for building the internal competences needed for continuous movement through the subsequent phases. The transition also includes a shift from integrated digital product-service systems to the use of a platform across several digital product-service offerings as a means to, for example, manage complexity and scale business-model portfolios. An additional finding is that the transformation into digital product-service systems involves the addition of new business models rather than the transformation of existing models. The transformation into digital product-service systems is associated with a number of managerial challenges and opportunities. The empirical findings presented here underline the importance of a holistic customer-value approach for the evaluation of the opportunities offered by a digital transformation. However, they also reveal that developing an understanding of the value dimensions of a new digital service offering may be difficult. While a platform stands out as a fruitful way to manage a number of challenges in the design of digital product-service offerings and to avoid a service paradox with underperforming business models, it may be difficult to govern and manage across firm structures. More specifically, the challenges relate to: (1) platform governance, (2) ownership of various activities, (3) deriving an overview of related product and service development, and (4) the budgeting of product-service bundles.A platform approach to digital servitization may positively affect the digital transformation of incumbent manufacturing firms by serving as a resource that can allow for business-model portfolios based on shared resources and capabilities. A platform is also a suitable resource for innovation and the prototyping of new potential offerings, as it can facilitate new combinations of existing modules and resources, which can be developed more rapidly than if they had to be developed from scratch for each proof of concept. Platforms can also be used for scaling fruitful product-service offerings.
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