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- Havemo, Emelie, 1987-
(författare)
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Den visuella bilden av organisationen : Perspektiv på visualitet i accounting
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Organisations play a crucial role as actors that shape material action and societal discourse; therefore, it is important to understand the ways in which they gain legitimacy and how they shape society. The power of accounting representations to construct the accounting object – the organisation – is therefore a key concern in the accounting literature. Accounting is widely treated as a numbers-based ‘language of business’ through which ‘paper world’ representations shape outcomes in the material world. At present, visuality (the presence of visual images and visual thinking) is gaining influence as a means to represent organisations and construct accounting objects visually. As visuality continues to expand into the realm of accounting, questions emerge about its role and the possibilities of combining the two ‘languages’ during a time when management research is facing a “visual turn”.The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the nature of visuality in accounting. The dissertation is based on five essays that contribute to the visual turn through semiotic analysis of visual texts and qualitative case studies. Paper I explores how business model diagrams – an example of a corporate self-representation – can be designed, and proposes a typology of four main logics for illustrating value creation: classification, circularity, processes and transactions. Paper II describes the development of visuals use in the annual report, finding that visuals are used in greater numbers overall, and that diagrams are a relatively new visual resource in financial reporting. The paper also outlines the trend of a materiality, that is, that visuals increasingly refer to a non-specific and symbol-based idea of the organisation. In Paper III, internal and external representations of a business model are compared, and I conclude that self-representations can be based on parallel but conflicting interpretations of an idea. Paper IV proposes a new visual method for analysing combinations of graphs and texts, and shows that the ‘rhythm’ of graph use in the annual report increasingly integrates visuality in accounting narratives so that accounting and visuality overlap. Finally, Paper V explores challenges and opportunities of a digitalisation of visual artefacts based on the experiences of three organisations that used visual management before the transition.The theoretical contribution of this dissertation is framed in terms of two perspectives. First, a developmental perspective highlights that the nature of visuality has become more prominent in accounting settings, and that the nature of visuality has changed from materiality-based to a material practices that favour conceptual visualisations like diagrams and visual symbols. Second, visuality is explored from an ‘overlaps’ perspective. Three explanations for the role of visuality in accounting are synthesised from the literature: separation, convergence and multilingualism. The contribution is to conceptualise these ‘overlap models’ and thereby deepen the understanding of the role played by visuality in accounting. I also propose a fourth model – bridging – to extend the range of explanations for the meaning of a visual form of accounting.Based on the findings that visuality is more prominent and that the role of visuality is changing, it is proposed visual literacy is an important skill for practitioners who use visual images in accounting. The dissertation presents two frameworks that can contribute to visual literacy. The ‘transformationality framework’ shows how to analyse underlying ideas in corporate diagrams, and the ‘rhythm framework’ illustrates how to shape, use and analyse accounting texts in terms of how combinations of visuals form different rhythms in the annual report.
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| 2. |
- Lozano, Rafael, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring progress from 1990 to 2017 and projecting attainment to 2030 of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals for 195 countries and territories: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017
- 2018
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Ingår i: The Lancet. - : Elsevier. - 1474-547X .- 0140-6736. ; 392:10159, s. 2091-2138
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Efforts to establish the 2015 baseline and monitor early implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight both great potential for and threats to improving health by 2030. To fully deliver on the SDG aim of “leaving no one behind”, it is increasingly important to examine the health-related SDGs beyond national-level estimates. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017), we measured progress on 41 of 52 health-related SDG indicators and estimated the health-related SDG index for 195 countries and territories for the period 1990–2017, projected indicators to 2030, and analysed global attainment. Methods: We measured progress on 41 health-related SDG indicators from 1990 to 2017, an increase of four indicators since GBD 2016 (new indicators were health worker density, sexual violence by non-intimate partners, population census status, and prevalence of physical and sexual violence [reported separately]). We also improved the measurement of several previously reported indicators. We constructed national-level estimates and, for a subset of health-related SDGs, examined indicator-level differences by sex and Socio-demographic Index (SDI) quintile. We also did subnational assessments of performance for selected countries. To construct the health-related SDG index, we transformed the value for each indicator on a scale of 0–100, with 0 as the 2·5th percentile and 100 as the 97·5th percentile of 1000 draws calculated from 1990 to 2030, and took the geometric mean of the scaled indicators by target. To generate projections through 2030, we used a forecasting framework that drew estimates from the broader GBD study and used weighted averages of indicator-specific and country-specific annualised rates of change from 1990 to 2017 to inform future estimates. We assessed attainment of indicators with defined targets in two ways: first, using mean values projected for 2030, and then using the probability of attainment in 2030 calculated from 1000 draws. We also did a global attainment analysis of the feasibility of attaining SDG targets on the basis of past trends. Using 2015 global averages of indicators with defined SDG targets, we calculated the global annualised rates of change required from 2015 to 2030 to meet these targets, and then identified in what percentiles the required global annualised rates of change fell in the distribution of country-level rates of change from 1990 to 2015. We took the mean of these global percentile values across indicators and applied the past rate of change at this mean global percentile to all health-related SDG indicators, irrespective of target definition, to estimate the equivalent 2030 global average value and percentage change from 2015 to 2030 for each indicator. Findings: The global median health-related SDG index in 2017 was 59·4 (IQR 35·4–67·3), ranging from a low of 11·6 (95% uncertainty interval 9·6–14·0) to a high of 84·9 (83·1–86·7). SDG index values in countries assessed at the subnational level varied substantially, particularly in China and India, although scores in Japan and the UK were more homogeneous. Indicators also varied by SDI quintile and sex, with males having worse outcomes than females for non-communicable disease (NCD) mortality, alcohol use, and smoking, among others. Most countries were projected to have a higher health-related SDG index in 2030 than in 2017, while country-level probabilities of attainment by 2030 varied widely by indicator. Under-5 mortality, neonatal mortality, maternal mortality ratio, and malaria indicators had the most countries with at least 95% probability of target attainment. Other indicators, including NCD mortality and suicide mortality, had no countries projected to meet corresponding SDG targets on the basis of projected mean values for 2030 but showed some probability of attainment by 2030. For some indicators, including child malnutrition, several infectious diseases, and most violence measures, the annualised rates of change required to meet SDG targets far exceeded the pace of progress achieved by any country in the recent past. We found that applying the mean global annualised rate of change to indicators without defined targets would equate to about 19% and 22% reductions in global smoking and alcohol consumption, respectively; a 47% decline in adolescent birth rates; and a more than 85% increase in health worker density per 1000 population by 2030. Interpretation: The GBD study offers a unique, robust platform for monitoring the health-related SDGs across demographic and geographic dimensions. Our findings underscore the importance of increased collection and analysis of disaggregated data and highlight where more deliberate design or targeting of interventions could accelerate progress in attaining the SDGs. Current projections show that many health-related SDG indicators, NCDs, NCD-related risks, and violence-related indicators will require a concerted shift away from what might have driven past gains—curative interventions in the case of NCDs—towards multisectoral, prevention-oriented policy action and investments to achieve SDG aims. Notably, several targets, if they are to be met by 2030, demand a pace of progress that no country has achieved in the recent past. The future is fundamentally uncertain, and no model can fully predict what breakthroughs or events might alter the course of the SDGs. What is clear is that our actions—or inaction—today will ultimately dictate how close the world, collectively, can get to leaving no one behind by 2030.
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| 4. |
- Cöster, Mathias, et al.
(författare)
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Influence of insight and manoeuvre inertia on information technology investments and strategic change
- 2014
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Ingår i: International Journal of Management and Decision Making. - : InderScience Publishers. - 1462-4621 .- 1741-5187. ; 13:3, s. 250-265
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- IT is transforming the global economy. The technology may inspireas well as hinder the development of business strategies. The concept oforganisational inertia highlights factors that prevent organisations from makingchanges necessary to realise such strategies. In this article, writings on theinertia concept are summarised and used as a framework to analyse howorganisational inertia influences decisions on IT investments and strategicchange. The empirical data consists of minutes from board meetings regardinginvestments in information technology (IT) in a Swedish newspaper andprinting company during the years 1971–1989. The analysis shows that it wasvarious aspects of manoeuvre inertia that postponed the necessary changes totake place and furthermore that the frame of reference used still is valid in orderto analyse and understand organisational inertia. To a manager in a businessworld that is in a state of constant change (often spurred by various ITinnovations), the inertia concept can contribute to deepening the analysis offactors that may influence the change necessary to realise the full potential ofan IT investment.
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| 5. |
- Cöster, Mathias, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Strategic and innovative pricing : price models for a digital economy
- 2020
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book provides a concrete guide on how to execute strategic pricing to excel in an increasingly dynamic and digitised business environment, while developing and deepening relations with contract partners. The secret lies in crafting innovative price models that reward joint value creation in accordance with the business model, rather than engaging in confrontative zero-sum pricing reasoning.Strategic and Innovative Pricing: Price Models for a Digital Economy provides hands-on tools that are applied on three interconnected levels of analysis. It illustrates how to explore the business ecology to understand its dynamics and how digitisation enables it to prosper and demonstrates how to construct a viable business model that enables an organisation to navigate in its vibrant ecology. Finally, and most importantly, it shows how to use innovative price models to realize and monetise the business model and its value offering, making the organisation and its partnerships sustainable.Models pertaining to the three levels of analyses are applied in rich case studies and examples from different countries, and the book includes guidelines on how to use them. Special attention is paid to digitisation as an underlying theme, making this book of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of strategic management and technology & innovation management.
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| 7. |
- Eriksson, Emelie, 1987-
(författare)
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Patterns of corporate visual selfrepresentation in accounting narratives
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with firms’ visual and pre-visual self-representations in accounting narratives. Self-representations are those descriptions about the company that firms include in accounting narratives to convey the current standings and their identity. External stakeholders increasingly expect non-numerical information about firms to be disclosed, and accounting narratives are a key medium for firms to account for their activities and maintain legitimacy as social actors. The question of which reporting conventions exist for legitimating selfrepresentations, especially from a visual perspective, remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore the empirical phenomenon of self-representations in accounting narratives in relation to legitimation rhetoric.The study is based on three research papers dealing with different patterns of self-representations in accounting-related narratives, including corporate reporting and business model diagrams. The examples are viewed through the theoretical lenses of semiotics and institutional theory, particularly legitimation theory. The study combines visual methods (visual content analysis and visual taxonomy) with other methods (interviews, text analysis) to conceptualize and exemplify what is meant by self-representations in accounting narratives. The study finds that there may be multiple parallel pre-visual self-representations at play to influence representations of the self, that visual self-representations are becoming more common in accounting narratives, and that several rhetorical strategies for legitimation are observable in these representations. By showing how diagrams can serve a legitimating purpose in accounting narratives, it is argued that diagrams should be considered on par with graphs and photographs as visual rhetorical devices in accounting narratives, and that they could be used as key communicative elements in the accounting process.Second, based on the longitudinal and comparative examples of self-representations, it is suggested that self-representations increasingly refer to abstract rather than concrete referents. This change is discussed in terms of the increasingly digital and service-based knowledge economy, where material referents give way to “amaterial” values. The contribution of this study is to describe selfrepresentations through several empirical examples, and to thereby increase awareness among practitioners and researchers of how visuals serve as communicative resources with legitimating functions in accounting narratives. Four concepts are proposed as tools for explaining the observed developments, and for improving visual literacy with regard to accounting narratives: inclusive perspective on accounting narratives, amateriality, self-representation, and diagrams.
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| 9. |
- Imre, Özgün, 1985-
(författare)
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Adopting Information Systems Perspectives from Small Organizations
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Why do organizations adopt information systems? Is it just because of financial reasons, of concerns for efficiency? Or is it due to external pressures, such as competitor pressure, that an organization adopts an information system?And, how does the adoption take place? Is it a linear process, or is the process one of conflicts? Does a specific person govern this process, or do we have multiple parties involved? What happens if these conflicts occur among those involved? How does the organization move on and achieve a successful information system adoption?By investigating two organizations, one international academic journal and one South American manufacturing company, this thesis aims to investigate the whys and hows of information system adoption, and aims to contribute to the discourse on information system adoptions in small organizations – an often underrepresented segment in information system adoption literature.By adopting different theoretical lenses throughout the five research papers included, this body of work suggests that even when seemingly simple, information system adoptions can become rather complex. The cases reveal that the role of information systems and issues related to information system adoptions are often not well thought-out in the early days of the organization. The actors’ understandings of adoption and consequences mature and the information systems become more intertwined.Common use of stakeholder theory introduces general stakeholders and their interaction with the focal organization. The cases reveal that the adoption process involves multiple actors, even within what would initially appear as a stakeholder, and that those actors can be in conflict with each other. These conflicts often lead to negotiations, and the cases reveal that these negotiations are opportunities of learning; the actors engage with the information system and with each other, gaining new knowledge about the issues at hand.The dissertation argues that there are various social worlds in information system adoptions, and various factors – ranging from organizational structure to social norms – that often affect why and how the organization undergoes an adoption process. The multiple power relations and divergent interests of stakeholders in these adoption processes, and how information systems affect other parts of the organization, reinforce the need for a well thought-out, flexible and reflexive approach to information system adoptions.
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