| 1. |
- Arshad, Nadia
(författare)
-
Backers’ crowdfunding journey – An engagement perspective
- 2021
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Crowdfunding refers to accumulating small sums of money from the general public through the Internet for a collective larger amount to fund small or medium-sized ventures in exchange for some benefit. The contribution can be as a donation (for no material reward), a purchase (for getting a reward in return), debt (to get money returned), or equity (for sharing future profit). The three main actors in crowdfunding are the initiators (the venturers), the backers (the crowd members who fund), and the crowdfunding platforms (the intermediaries). The crowdfunding campaign’s survival and success depends on engagement from the crowd. Using a qualitative research method, this dissertation aimed to understand the backers’ engagement with four crowdfunding campaigns selected from the leading crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, through processual analysis. Buildingon the integrative framework of service-dominant logic, engagement, and customer journey, the underlying mechanism of the backers’ engagement at the personal (micro) and interpersonal (meso) levels were explored. Based on the motivation and contribution pattern, the backers were segmented into four engagement roles: benefactors, patrons, shoppers, and utilisers. A deeper analysis showed how the engagement intensity, duration, valence, and engagement properties shaped over time across these roles. The insights from the findings in the dissertation carry managerial and policy implications.
|
|
| 2. |
- Caccamo, Marta
(författare)
-
Cross-boundary knowledge work in innovation : Understanding the role of space and objects
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies the topic of cross-boundary knowledge work from the perspective of sociomateriality. Cross-boundary knowledge work refers to the collaboration of actors belonging to different social worlds to achieve shared knowledge outcomes. Sociomateriality is a theoretical perspective that acknowledges the role of objects and spaces in organizational life. The empirical field of collaborative innovation provides a context for this dissertation.Cross-boundary knowledge work is an important topic given the emergence of novel challenges that require collaboration across disciplines and organizations. Innovating across social and organizational boundaries is a demanding task that calls for new ways of working. Working in new ways refers to using new organizational models and engaging in new organizational practices. To address the increasing need for cross-boundary knowledge work, this dissertation turns to the design of objects and spaces as a defining aspect of organizational life.The overarching goal of the dissertation is to understand what role spaces and objects (physical and digital) play within cross-boundary knowledge work. The dissertation is structured into four papers. Paper 1 builds the foundation of the dissertation by providing an extensive literature review about boundary objects—a theoretical construct that denotes objects that enable knowledge-based collaboration across diverse social worlds. The subsequent empirical papers study cross-boundary knowledge dynamics in three different collaborative innovation contexts. Paper 2 addresses how boundary objects can be designed to enable knowledge integration during interdisciplinary corporate hackathons. Paper 3 shows how innovation spaces and the objects that are part of them support collaborative innovation through knowledge integration and the development of new practices. Paper 4 conceptualizes startup accelerators as boundary spaces that lead to the creation of different types of knowledge communities.This study makes important contributions to the fields of cross-boundary knowledge work, sociomateriality, and collaborative innovation. First, the four papers show that cross-boundary knowledge work needs to consider other dynamics happening at the boundaries within interdisciplinary and interorganizational contexts. For instance, the creation of a shared identity appears to be a fundamental aspect to consider in order to achieve knowledge goals. Second, this dissertation deepens our understanding of the actual practices afforded by objects and spaces within collaborative settings. Each paper strives to provide an in-depth account of how individual objects, systems of objects, and spaces support knowledge work. Third, this dissertation offers a relevant theoretical perspective to illustrate the challenges involved in collaborative innovation, at the same time suggesting how material infrastructure may help collaborating actors achieve shared knowledge outcomes. Finally, innovation managers can find relevant advice on how to leverage the built environment to enhance their practice.
|
|
| 3. |
- Giovacchini, Elia, 1982-
(författare)
-
Weaving the symbiotic relationship : A longitudinal study of the maintenance of a firm-sponsored open source community
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The phenomenon of firm sponsored open source software (OSS) projects has become an established and widely used approach to develop and release new products in the software industry. In this arrangement, a sponsoring firm and a community establish a relationship to create a common project. When a firm fully commits to this type of development, it enters into a symbiotic relationship with its OSS community. This implies their mutual dependence and the presence of competing demands, both for openness – so that everyone can contribute to the common project and appropriate value from it, and for control – to affect the project content and direction. Although earlier studies have recognized the paradoxical nature of these competing and interrelated demands, so far there have been only limited attempts to understand its implications for maintaining such a symbiotic relationship.Hence, the aim of this thesis is to deepen our understanding of the symbiotic relationship by answering the following question: How is a symbiotic firm-community relationship maintained?To address this question, a qualitative research design is adopted through a single in depth longitudinal case study of the relationship between a Nordic European firm and its OSS community throughout their 13 plus years of history, from 2002 till 2015, by combining archival resources, observations and interviews. Recognizing the nature of these competing demands, a paradox lens is introduced as a way to frame the firm-community relationship.This allows identification of six paradoxical tensions that affect the relationship and five responses used to address the paradoxical tensions as they manifest. Building on these different insights a conceptual model of the firm-community relationship is developed. The model highlights that responses in many instances become the cause of subsequent paradoxical tensions. This insight underpinned the search for an alternative understanding of maintenance beyond instances of single tensions and response, by suggesting three different approaches to maintaining the firm-community relationship, namely, improvising, separating and weaving. This study contributes to extant literature by giving prominence to the relationship as a conduit of interaction in which both the firm and community should be able to extend their influence while also being subject to the influence of each other. In particular, based on the insights of the weaving approach, I suggest understanding maintenance as a process of creation, where quite apart from the design of the relationship, there is a need to reconsider the features of key actors, not solely in terms of motivation, but also including their knowledge, skill and ways of thinking.
|
|
| 4. |
- von Schantz, Hanna, 1974-
(författare)
-
Well, that makes sense! : Investigating opportunity development in a technology start-up
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digital technologies have profoundly reshaped many industries in the past years and we are continuously witnessing the creation of new ventures designing and serving entirely new markets. At the heart of these initiatives lies decisions to act, take risk and pursue ideas in the form of entrepreneurial opportunities. Much of the research on the journey from ideas to market has advanced from the idea that entrepreneurial agency emerges at the nexus of individuals and opportunities. In most academic work, opportunities are either assumed to be exogenous to the individual or socially constructed. Despite many valuable contributions in the field, the construct as it has traditionally been used only accounts for and explains opportunities once they have been realized. Hence, the established perspectives fall short in informing our understanding of how individuals actually act and make decisions that lead up to the identification and exploitation of opportunities that lack tangible premises. The question is therefore, how do we define and understand entrepreneurial opportunities before they have been realized and how do we make the construct empirically operable? The present study challenges and extends the conventional views of entrepreneurial opportunities by investigating what they are and how they emerge and evolve over time. By drawing upon in-depth qualitative data from a longitudinal study of the new venture creation process of a digital TV and film production firm, the thesis provides a reconceptualization of the opportunity construct. External enablers, a new venture idea, a business model and opportunity confidence are suggested as components that clarify what aspiring entrepreneurs actually mean when they talk about opportunities. Departing from these components, the thesis provides a framework describing opportunity development as an iterative process evolving through modes of sensemaking, sensegiving and sensebreaking. This framework adds to entrepreneurial process studies by extending the individual-opportunity nexus to include the actions and interactions between the entrepreneurs and the external environment in which they operate. The results lay a foundation for future theorizing and empirical inquiry into the early stages of new venture creation.
|
|
| 5. |
- Geissinger, Andrea, 1987-
(författare)
-
Platforms in Liquid Modernity : Essays about the Sharing Economy, Digital Platforms, and Institutions
- 2021
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The year 2020 feels like the beginning of a crescendo of change. As environmental and social challenges reach an all-time high, the organization of our societies is coming under scrutiny. We, as a society, turn to technology to reinvent the organization of social life after disruptive episodes. Inspired by Bauman's theorizing to describe the cultural and societal zeitgeist, this thesis explains the institutionalization of one of the most promising alternative forms of organization of the past decade: the sharing economy.Comprised of nine essays centered around three focal areas: (1) Organizational change, (2) Market change, and (3) Societal change, this thesis aims to explain the institutionalization of digital sharing platforms in liquid modern society.This thesis finds that digital sharing platforms act as societal organizers on several dimensions of “in-betweenness.” As this moment in time can also be characterized as a period of “interregnum”—another moment of in-betweenness—where old structures are continuously disrupted but no clear new path has emerged, digital platform providers fill a structural void in our highly individualized society. Digital platform providers use community as an anchor, a belief, and sets of practices to create an emerging (intermediary) institution around which different forms of organization manifest.Digital sharing platforms have, however, remained a grace note on systemic change: ornamental and practically non-essential. Still, digital platforms are setting new norms in all areas of organizational, market, and societal life. By evoking both elements of community and market, digital platforms are playing an important part in creating a symphony of our future societal order.
|
|
| 6. |
- Lippert, Marcus, 1974-
(författare)
-
Communities in the Digital Age : Towards a Theoretical Model of Communities of Practice and Information Technology
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The global change towards a knowledge economy forces organizations to seek new and better ways to manage knowledge work and learning. Organizations have recognized that dfferent information technologies can play an important role in their quest to make the desired changes take place. Along with this increasing interest in information technologies we have also noticed a growing interest in a specific type of community, referred to as communities of practice (CoP). A considerable body of research that studies communities of practice in relation to IT continues to grow. Despite this we are far from a theoretical model of the relation between communities of practice and IT that may guide future research and understanding in a fruitful way.The basis for this thesis are the lack of a theoretical model to describe a dialectical relation between communities of practice and information technologies and how these relations come into being. The purpose of this thesis and research study is to contribute to existing theories of communities of practice by developing a theoretical model of a dialectical relation between information technology and communities of practice. In line with this, the study addresses the following research question How do a community of practice and information technology constitute and shape each other? Furthermore, the research study adheres to an interpretative philosophy, a qualitative research design, and longitudinal research case study conducted at Siemens Sweden.This research study was divided in two parts. Part One presented the theoretical chapters and a theoretical working model, referred to as the CoPIT model (Community of Practice model of Information Technology). In Part Two the initial CoPIT model was confronted with empirical data and used to analyze and illustrate the relation between CoP and IT. The main conclusion drawn from the research study is that the CoPIT model makes sense and is relevant, and also that the general principles upon which it is founded hold true. Furthermore, from the empirical confrontation of the CoPIT model we can draw the conclusion that relations exist both between IT in general and the CoP component’s specific constructs and between CoP in general and the IT component’s specific constructs. These key findings validate the point of departure of this study that there is a dialectical relation between CoP and IT, and that they mutually constitute each other over time.
|
|
