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- Reitsma, Ewout
(författare)
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Sourcing strategising in the new product development process : Insights from the strategy-as-practice lens and engineer-to-order context
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In many cases, manufacturers have changed from sourcing only a few, simple, and separate components from local suppliers to sourcing a high variety of modules from globally dispersed suppliers. This has resulted in the implementation of a wide variety of sourcing strategies, including, for example, multiple sourcing and supplier integration. All these and other sourcing strategies are aimed at achieving a certain level of supply chain (SC) responsiveness. The level of SC responsiveness ideally matches the characteristics of a product. For example, highly innovative products typically require highly responsive SCs.In order to match products with their SCs, manufacturers are advised to engage in sourcing strategy in their new product development (NPD) process. However, there are at least two knowledge gaps in the literature on this topic: (1) the lack of a widely accepted, comprehensive conceptualisation of how manufacturers can engage in sourcing strategy in NPD, and (2) the lack of empirical insights into manufacturers operating in the engineer-to-order (ETO) context. This dissertation focuses on filling these knowledge gaps.Addressing the first gap, the dissertation uses the theoretical lens of ‘strategy-as-practice’ (SAP) and the literature to conceptualise the ‘doing of sourcing strategy’ in NPD as three interrelated dimensions: (1) practitioners, (2) activities, and (3) practices. Through discussing these dimensions and their potential interplay throughout NPD, the dissertation demonstrates the potential of the SAP lens in providing a common framework and reducing the fragmented nature of the literature. By using the SAP lens, the dissertation also contributes to practice. Despite not being ‘actionable’ in the sense of constituting detailed guidelines for acting, the SAP lens produces insights that can help practitioners to become more reflective. For example, they can learn to see sourcing strategising as a multidimensional, dynamic concept and the place it can occupy in the NPD process.The second knowledge gap in the literature regards the lack of empirical research focusing on the ETO context. Therefore, the dissertation includes a case study focusing on practitioners’ sourcing strategising activities and practices in this context. First, five approaches to performing sourcing strategising activities in NPD are explored in terms of their conditions and intended outcomes. Secondly, four practices that can support sourcing strategising in NPD are identified. These practices – referred to as ‘Design for Supply Chain’ (DFSC) practices – are also examined in terms of their interrelations. Practitioners can use the case study findings to compare the advantages of the five sourcing strategising approaches when sourcing items or services. Furthermore, the findings allow practitioners to assess how the four interrelated DFSC practices can support their sourcing strategising efforts in NPD.
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| 2. |
- Mohammadi, Mohammad
(författare)
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Probabilistic time estimation in tunnel projects
- 2021
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Transport infrastructure projects, including tunneling, suffer from timedelays and cost overrun. A literature review shows that the effect ofuncertainty has been neglected in explaining time and cost overrunmeaning that technical explanations matter. Probabilistic estimations oftime and cost can be employed for dealing with uncertainty in transportinfrastructure projects.In this licentiate thesis, KTH’s probabilistic time and cost estimationmodel for tunneling projects (Isaksson and Stille, 2005, Rock Mech. RockEng., 38, 373-398) was improved. The improvements include breakingdown the production activities into their sub-activities, which form thebasis for assessing times (or costs) for tunnel construction. In addition, theexceptional time and the length of model’s geotechnical zones aredescribed as stochastic variables instead of deterministic values used in theoriginal model. Given its hierarchical structure, the model can be used fortime and cost estimation of all types of tunnels and all constructionmethods in various geological condition.The improved version of the model uses three types of input parametersthat are probabilities of occurrences of different geological condition andidentified undesirable events, production effort of sub-activities (i.e. timespent for performing the sub-activity per unit length of tunnel) andadditive delay time that is imposed as a result of occurrence of undesirableevents. The important issues in modeling the uncertainty in the productionefforts of sub-activities are also explained.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Hanna, 1991-
(författare)
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Tradeoffs between self and environment in environmental judgment and decision making
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the greatest challenges of today is to change our behavior to act more pro-environmentally to reduce global warming. We need to make sacrifices for the environment, e.g., use a means of transportation that take a longer time but causes less CO2 emission. The present thesis aims to study different factors (intrinsic, extrinsic motivational, and extrinsic motivational-neutral information) that influence us when making tradeoffs between self and environment. Paper I examined how an anchor (a reference price) and an ecolabel influence price judgments. It was found that both a judgment of an objective fact (product price) and a subjective preference (willingness to pay for the product) were affected by an anchor. An eco-label resulted in higher judgments of objective facts. People with higher environmental concern were more affected by an anchor when stating their willingness to pay than their low concern counterparts. In Paper II and Paper III, an interaction between a high anchor and a normative message that put the emissions into context was found when making a tradeoff between CO2 emissions and travel time for a flight (Paper II) or a car journey (Paper III). People with higher concern for the environment gave a longer travel time when they received a high anchor (Paper II and Paper III) or no anchor (Paper III). Paper IV investigated how a survey measuring environmental concern can be divided to different indices and how they predict answers in a tradeoff task. The result suggests that a two-factor structure divided into ecocentric and anthropocentric concern is a possible alternative and that people scoring higher on any of the environmental concern indices were willing to travel for a longer time. Taken together, the results show that normative messages, anchors, and concern for the environment are factors that can influence and interact when people make tradeoffs between self and environment in environmental judgment and decision making.
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| 4. |
- Oscarsson, Olof
(författare)
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Crisis as practice : Non-emergency organizations’ coping with crises
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Exerted from the top down, organizational crisis management is a concept with strong connections to rational and normative approaches. While acknowledging that these approaches form a solid foundation for crisis management, this thesis formulates a critique of this conceptualization. A primary critique rests in the fact that this perspective has rendered invisible the capabilities of actors on the fringes of crisis management. In addition, it rarely acknowledges that coping with crisis consists of more than is typically associated with rational attributes. This thesis aims to increase theoretical and empirical knowledge in two areas based on this research gap. This research seeks to contribute empirically by studying non-emergency organizations and their operational level’s coping with crises that affect their core operations. Theoretically, it aims to highlight the role of social practices in our understanding of crisis management. The main objective is to move beyond rational, normative, and top-down approaches in order to provide in-depth knowledge regarding the role of everyday work practices in understanding organizational crisis management. This approach means looking at how existing work practices and their constituent resources assist in forming crisis responses. The thesis consists of four individual studies (papers I-IV) that relate differently to the main objective of the thesis. To varying extents, all four studies take theories of practice as points of departure, allowing for various examinations of how non-emergency organizations manage crises in practice. The first three studies are qualitative, using interviews as their primary methodology. In study I, the interviews are complemented by accompanied tours of workplaces and internal organizational documents. The fourth study is conceptual, aiming at theory development. The first and second study focus on how a social services unit in Sweden coped with the large influx of unaccompanied children during the 2015 refugee situation. The first study shows how the staff, through their experience and professional competence, continually adjusted their operations to suit the prevailing situation, thus managing the new conditions successfully. The study explains the results by offering a model of crisis management as dispersed practices, telling us that crisis management is, to various degrees, interwoven within the performance of everyday work practices. Building on the first study’s results, the second study highlights three crisis management practices: improvisation, prioritization, and the creation of alternatives. These practices played a significant part in creating new routines or adjusting existing ones, eventuallyxcontributing to normalizing the situation. The study also shows that operational staff received inadequate support from higher management, having to rely on their own ability to solve problems. The third study complements interviews of non-emergency organization staff with interviews of emergency personnel. The study examines the interaction between non-emergency organizations and emergency services. It considers a situation in which a non-emergency organization suffers an emergency, and emergency services temporarily deploy their workplace inside the affected workplace to address the situation. Theories of boundary work and boundary practices demonstrate how cooperation between the parties allows for a mutually accomplished form of boundary work, enabling both parties to strive for business as usual. The fourth study is a theoretical discussion and argumentation of practice theory in research on crisis management. The study offers a theoretical framework of crisis-as-practice that complements existing research’s focus on crisis management based on rational and structural starting points. The framework provides tools for studying crisis management in light of the ordinary resources that organizations possess when performing their everyday work; this approach allows for a more comprehensive view of crisis management and understanding of whom can become a crisis manager. The overall findings in the thesis indicate that the social and material resources that organizations possess through performing their everyday work contribute to the coping and management of various disruptions and adversities posed by crises—despite the fact that these resources seldom have been defined as capacities during crises. The findings also show that these resources allow crisis normalization by enabling adaptations of the organizing mode. Based on these findings, this thesis concludes that, even though non-emergency organizations might seem unprepared according to the prevailing institutionalized norms of crisis management, they perform practices relevant to crisis management and maintain their core activities despite both disruptive and emergency events.
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