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| 2. |
- Netz, Johan, 1984-
(författare)
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First things first - think before you decide : The how, what and who of idea screening
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates decision-making activities leading to the initial selection of which new ideas should be selected for further development or rejected. This process, often referred to as idea screening, is described as being one of the most important, but also challenging, tasks to master during the entire innovation process. There are two main reasons for this: Firstly, not all ideas are good and secondly no firm has the resources to develop every single idea proposed to it. Thus, it is important to be careful when initially deciding which ideas are to be selected and developed into future possible innovations in order to eliminate weak ideas and retain those that have a substantial chance of becoming successful. Two alternative decision-making approaches are explored in the thesis (the intuitive and rational approaches). In the thesis, the concept of intuition during the screening of product and service ideas is demystified. The empirical findings show that decision-makers utilize five main underlying criteria when intuitively assessing ideas. Of these, the findings indicate user-value to be the most important one, or at least the criterion that most assessors emphasize when making intuitive decisions. The findings presented in the thesis increase our understanding of the use of rational and holistic intuitive decision-making when screening ideas during the Front End Innovation phase, as well as questioning the traditional view of intuition, as a decision-making tool that is only reliable if applied by those with a vast amount of experience and expertise. The reported findings indicate that, for example, users with an understanding of the idea context are able to intuitively identify the ideas that decision-making experts identify as the top (best) ones. Hence, managers faced with a situation where they are being inundated with new ideas can turn to non-experts for help.
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- Omer-Salim, Amal, 1964-
(författare)
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Mothers’ Agency in Managing Breastfeeding and Other Work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and New Delhi, India
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Combining breastfeeding and other forms of work is desirable from both public health and labour productivity perspectives. This is often challenging, especially in low- or middle-income fast-growing urban settings. The aim of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding of mothers’ perspectives on combining breastfeeding and other work in the urban contexts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and New Delhi, India. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with community mothers (n=8) and health worker mothers (n=12) in Dar es Salaam, and mothers working in the health (n=10) and education sectors (n=10) in New Delhi. The methods of analysis were: qualitative content analysis, grounded theory approach, and directed and general inductive content analyses. Mothers’ agency manifested in several ways. Striving to integrate or segment the competing domains of home and work was a goal of these mothers to reduce conflicts in managing breastfeeding and other work. Spatial and time constraints led mothers to engage in an array of carefully planned actions and troubleshooting tactics that included ways of ensuring proximity between them and their baby and efficient time managing. The timing of these strategic actions spanned from pregnancy, over maternity leave, to the return to employment. Managing breastfeeding and work triggered emotions such as stress, frustration and guilt, but also satisfaction and joy. Mothers negotiated with family, employers, colleagues and informal networks to gain support for their strategies, displaying both individual, collective and proxy agency. Changing family structures and roles highlight the potentially greater supportive role of the partner/husband. Work/Family Border Theory and Bandura’s agency constructs provided frameworks for a deeper understanding of mothers’ perspectives, but using existing family relationship constructs would better diffentiate between various modes of agency. Workplaces and maternity protection conditions were generally inadequate. Interventions are required: to strengthen the breastfeeding mother’s own agential capacity using an individual approach; to provide information to families and communities; to improve regulatory, structural and attitudinal conditions at workplaces, and to strengthen health and social services to adequately support mothers in managing breastfeeding and other work.
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- Bohman, Hannes
(författare)
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Adolescents with Depression Followed up : Prognostic Significance of Somatic Symptoms and Their Need of In-Patient Care
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A dualist approach that distinguishes between mind and body is still the norm in Western medicine. Although we now know that physical and mental health are related in adults, little is known about if, or with what mechanisms, mental illnesses or depression early in life, will affect future physical and psychological health. In-between mental and somatic disorders there are somatic symptoms without medical explanation. These are symptoms that cause much suffering and impairment which are costly for society. Still little is known what they are, how they should be treated and what consequences they have for adolescents when they grow up. This study aims to investigate the long-term relationship between mental and somatic disease and the outcome of adolescents with functional somatic symptoms.The thesis is based on a 15-year follow-up study of a population-based investigation of adolescent depression. In 1991–1993 first year students in upper secondary school (age 16–17) in Uppsala, Sweden, were screened for depression (n=2300). Adolescents with positive screening and selected peers with negative screening (n=631) were assessed regarding mental health and somatic symptoms. At around age 31, the participants were followed-up in personal interviews (n=369) and national registers (n=609). Outcomes regarding mental DSM-IV diagnosis, in-patient ICD-10 disease diagnosis from the patient register, and blood vessel wall thickness were assessed.The most important finding is the unexpected poor short and long-term outcome in adolescents with somatic symptoms. The result proves the need for better treatment. The strong prediction of functional somatic symptoms for mental disorder, independent of adolescent depression, suggests that somatic symptoms and depression symptoms are different expressions of a common disorder. Female adolescents with depression need more psychiatric and somatic in-patient care but the males do not. Instead, they have considerably more in-patient stays due to alcohol and drug abuse. The males might be taken care of outside the health care system and seem to need special attention. In women with adolescent and recurrent adult depression there is an association with premature aging of the carotid wall. These women are at risk of developing early cardio-vascular disease and need early interventions.
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- Hammare, Ulf, 1961-
(författare)
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Mellan löften om särart och krav på evidens : En studie av kunskap och kunskapssyn i socialt inriktade ideella, privata och offentliga organisationer
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Between the Promise of Specificity and the Demand for Evidence – A study of knowledge and the approach to knowledge in socially oriented non-profit, private and public sector organizationsIn the social work field it is possible to identify two parallel processes in time. On the one hand a qualitative developmental process―even towards a form of standardization―where central concepts are academisation, professionalization, scientifically produced knowledge, expertise and evidence based methods. Simultaneously, there is a drive to create the conditions for increased diversity, where hopes are especially being pinned on the non-profit sector. In spite of representations and expectations concerning the non-profit sector and its so-called specificity, however, much of existing research lacks a comparative perspective, i.e., studies where non-profit organizations are related to comparable activities in the private and public sector.The aim of the study―with special focus on issues concerning evidence based knowledge in social work―is to compare and analyse whether and in that case how employee conceptions differ between the sectors, and whether and in what way non-profit employees and their activities can be said to fulfil the expectations of contributing to increased diversity. Data is from a questionnaire directed to about 1300 social work employees.The results show a greater interest in research and more marked efforts at professionalization in the public sector, while above all in the non-profit sector there was skepticism about science paired with reservations about work carried out in a professional way. In the non-profit, but also in the private sector, issues of ethics, views of humanity and values were paid greater attention. Also stressed here was the importance of creating relationships, the unique human encounter, genuine commitment, and human kindness. However, there was significant uniformity across all sectors in the use of methods, where three dominated: solution focused measures, network support/therapy, and psychosocial work.
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| 7. |
- Olsson, Mikael, 1966-
(författare)
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Ownership reform and corporate governance : The Slovak privatisation process in 1990-1996
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since 1989, there has been a period of rapid change of the economies of the former Eastern bloc. Within a few years, the majority of the formerly centrally administered economies had begun restructuring their economic systems, including the privatisation. of formerly state-owned enterprises. This process developed differently in different countries, depending among other things on their historical traditions and the momentum of their social, political and economic transformations. This doctoral dissertation examines the privatisation of large-scale industrial enterprises in Slovakia prior to 1997. In particular the thesis analyses the changing political and institutional framework governing the process and method of privatisation; and how the governance of firms was affected by the new markets and ownership- and control-structures that were established. Special attention is paid to the role played by investment funds andinvestment-companies established as a consequence of voucher privatisation. The research problem is approached both from an aggregate national level and from the enterprise level. The thesis includes a number of case studies of enterprises in Slovakia that underwent privatisation, and of investment funds that emerged to take part in the process. In addition, two panel-data sets were constructed for the sake of statistical analysis. The study points to the drastic changes in privatisation policy and its enactment, under different governments. It leads to the conclusion that privatisation is a highly political process, whose economic effects cannot be separated from its distributional effects. This politicised nature of ownership reform is shown to have some negative side-effects with regard to the development of well-functioning governance structures. It is, for example, pointed to that the capital market, as it developed during the period of study, was highly non-transparent,characterised by high transaction costs and insider-trading. The study also documents an increasingly concentrated ownership structure of the Slovak industry and relates it to the changes in privatisation policy. In the final analysis attention is drawn to a recurring theme in the study, namely the issues related to the relative stability and durability of the institutional set-up. In many cases an insecurity about "the rules of the game" led to short-term incentives and opportunism on behalf of the economic and political agents.
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| 8. |
- Olsson, Simon
(författare)
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Approximant Phases in Quasicrystalline AlCuFe Thin Films
- 2012
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Quasicrystalline materials exhibit properties that are very different from conventional metallic materials. They are mostly metallic alloys, and show high hardness and stiffness but low electrical and thermal conductivity. The coefficient of friction and surface energy of the quasicrystalline materials are also very low. Approximants are a family of phases that are related to the quasicrystals. These phases share the local atomic arrangement of quasicrystals and have as a result many similar physical properties. Bulk quasicrystals are too brittle for many of the suggested applications, instead the most important area of applications concerns that of surface coatings. In this work, quasicrystalline and approximant phases have been synthesized in thin films. Multilayered Al/Cu/Fe thin films, with a nominal global composition corresponding to the quasicrystalline phase, have been deposited by magnetron sputtering onto Si and Al2O3 substrates. During isothermal annealing at temperatures up to 700 °C homogeneous thin films were formed. It is found that when using Si as substrate a film-substrate reaction occurs already below 390 °C, where Si diffuses into the film. This changes the composition, promoting the formation of the cubic α-approximant phase. Annealing at 600 °C for 4 h the cubic a-approximant phase forms in a polycrystalline state, with a small amount of a second phase, τ7-Al3Fe2Si3. The film is within 1.5 at.% of the ideal composition of the a-approximant phase, and contains 8 at.% Si. Continued annealing for 64 h provides for more diffusion of Si to 12 at.%, which result in an increase of the t7-phase. The rate of Si in-diffusion was observed to decrease with annealing time, and the lattice parameter of the a-phase was continuously decreasing as diffused Si substituted for Al. No degradation of the crystal quality of the remaining α-phase was observed even after as much as 150 h of treatment. When annealing the same Al/Cu/Fe thin film grown on non-reactant Al2O3 substrates the icosahedral Al62.5Cu25Fe12.5 quasicrystalline phase is formed.
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| 9. |
- Sandström, Agneta, 1959-
(författare)
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Neurocognitive and endocrine dysfunction in women with exhaustion syndrome
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Stress has emerged as one of the most important factors to consider in psychiatric diagnoses and has become a common reason for long-term sick leave (LTSL). Roughly 50% of LTSL due to psychiatric diseases are thought to be associated with work-related stress. The demarcation towards major depression is disputed, and no international consensus exists for how to diagnose and rehabilitate these individuals. The Swedish National Board of Health has suggested the term “exhaustion syndrome” to integrate these individuals into stress-related disorders. Prominent features of this syndrome are fatigue, sleeping disorders, and cognitive dysfunction. The cognitive dysfunction may be due to an interaction between personality features, environmental factors, the biological effects of stress hormones, and dysfunction in key brain areas, notably the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. A consistent feature of chronic stress is activation of the cortisol, or hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, axis, which may be linked to cognitive dysfunction. Increased glucocorticoid levels, mainly cortisol in humans, are known to impair memory performance. The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether patients with exhaustion syndrome exhibit specific alterations in an extensive set of biological, psychological and immunological variables. Patients in Study 1 had significant cognitive impairment for specific tasks assumed to tap frontal lobe functioning. In Study 2 anxiety prone, worrying, pessimistic individuals with low executive drive and a persistent personality type were more likely to develop exhaustion syndrome. Decreased reactivity was found on the pituitary level after corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) in exhaustion syndrome patients. The cortisol/adrenocorticotropic hormone response to CRH was slightly higher in patients compared to controls, indicating increased sensitivity at the adrenal cortex level. No differences were found in hippocampal volume. In Study 3, functional imaging revealed a different pattern of brain activation in working memory tests in patients with exhaustion syndrome compared to healthy individuals and patients with depression. In summary, our data suggests an intimate link between personality and wellbeing, cognitive performance and neuroendocrine dysfunction, in exhaustion syndrome. We thus find similarities with major depression but also distinct differences between the exhaustion syndrome and major depression.
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| 10. |
- Sundström, Johan, Professor, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Risk factors for subarachnoid haemorrhage : a nationwide cohort of 950 000 adults
- 2019
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Ingår i: International Journal of Epidemiology. - : Oxford University Press. - 0300-5771 .- 1464-3685. ; 48:6, s. 2018-2025
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is a devastating disease, with high mortality rate and substantial disability among survivors. Its causes are poorly understood. We aimed to investigate risk factors for SAH using a novel nationwide cohort consortium.METHODS: We obtained individual participant data of 949 683 persons (330 334 women) between 25 and 90 years old, with no history of SAH at baseline, from 21 population-based cohorts. Outcomes were obtained from the Swedish Patient and Causes of Death Registries.RESULTS: During 13 704 959 person-years of follow-up, 2659 cases of first-ever fatal or non-fatal SAH occurred, with an age-standardized incidence rate of 9.0 [95% confidence interval (CI) (7.4-10.6)/100 000 person-years] in men and 13.8 [(11.4-16.2)/100 000 person-years] in women. The incidence rate increased exponentially with higher age. In multivariable-adjusted Poisson models, marked sex interactions for current smoking and body mass index (BMI) were observed. Current smoking conferred a rate ratio (RR) of 2.24 (95% CI 1.95-2.57) in women and 1.62 (1.47-1.79) in men. One standard deviation higher BMI was associated with an RR of 0.86 (0.81-0.92) in women and 1.02 (0.96-1.08) in men. Higher blood pressure and lower education level were also associated with higher risk of SAH.CONCLUSIONS: The risk of SAH is 45% higher in women than in men, with substantial sex differences in risk factor strengths. In particular, a markedly stronger adverse effect of smoking in women may motivate targeted public health initiatives.
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