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- Lindeberg, Fredrik, 1987-
(författare)
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Coordinating the Internet : Thought styles, technology and coordination
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Internet is often mentioned as a driver for digitization or a democratizing tool for societies. However, the Internet is seldom explained, conceptualized or defined. This dissertation elaborates upon and conceptualizes the Internet through three lenses, or thought styles, referred to as the interoperability, the bureaucratic and the market thought styles in an effort to provide an overarching or holistic view of the concept that is the Internet. The Internet, as captured and conceptualized in this dissertation, is separate from services on top, such as the web, by explicit design for an interoperable network which decouples the use of the network from the network itself. A thought style can be considered a set of guiding values or principles of one’s thoughts. This dissertation focuses on different views of technology and coordination depending on thought style, that is conflicts and compatibilities between thought styles rather than conflicts and compatibilities between technology and coordination. This dissertation proposes that the Internet was, and is to a lesser extent, primarily mediated through norms in what I denote the interoperability thought style, which aims and strives for interoperability of both technology and coordination. In modern times the norms of the interoperable Internet, through principles such as separation of concerns, are challenged by market actors striving for profits and bureaucracies wanting to subject the Internet to laws and regulations. As core Internet standards were formulated with explicit intention of open-endedness, the vertical integration native to value capture by market actors and control by bureaucracies provides an arena for conflict and misunderstanding. In a sense, the purpose of the interoperability thought style is to limit path dependency, that is to keep all options open for as long as possible. This is contrary to market logic, where an actor might gain an advantage by shaping and therefore premeditating future market decisions. There are discussions concerning both what the Internet is, and concerning what the Internet should be. This dissertation illustrates these issues through thought styles, even if the thought styles sometimes are so far apart it is impossible to find compatible common ground for agreement or disagreement. Net neutrality is an example of such an issue. Seen from the core values of the interoperability thought style, traffic differentiation based on traffic content is not permitted, since traffic content by design should be separated from the implementation of the network to provide interoperability and separation of concerns. This in practice implies net neutrality, but not through regulation or policy, but instead by technical design to ensure open-endedness and permissionless innovation at the edges of the Internet. In addition, the concept of regulation is in conflict with the interoperability thought style, as regulation aims to control or forbid behavior, whereas the interoperability perspective strives to allow and permit behavior. This is in conflict with the principles of the bureaucratic thought style where regulation is one of the means through which to attain a want. Similarly, core values of the market thought style, such as bundling, market barriers and lock-in effects are in stark conflict with the embedded open-endedness of the Internet and the Internet’s architecture. In particular there are two separate groups of actors with a primary market perspective: the actors selling services on the Internet, and the actors selling Internet-service. Their logics are similar, but their goals different, and regulation and technical standards could provide an advantage to either of the two types of for-profit actors. It is important to note that these thought styles are not tied to education or work title. As an example, an engineer can be bureaucratic by preferring consolidating and integrative design for control. Or a manager might be interoperability minded by avoiding a business decision because it would have led to technical lock-in down the line. This thesis suggests that the Internet today can be conceptualized as an architecture and set of protocols for best-effort digital end-to-end communication effected by its users through adhocratic processes based on ideals of design for interoperability. This conceptualization is primarily grounded in the interoperability perspective; however, notions of the bureaucratic and market perspectives are becoming prevalent, particularly in actual and future coordination of the Internet. The Internet is currently in a slow transformation towards a more vertically integrated network coordinated by value capture and regulation; this is different from a network where all components explicitly are decoupled to as large extent as possible. These perspectives with their compatibilities and conflicts are captured through interviews, discussions, reading of academic literature, bylaws, standards, routing data and exploration of Internet use. This dissertation also intends to be an introduction to the nascent field of Internet coordination and suggests, through examples, relevant approaches to capture multifaceted arenas colored by norms, values, coordination, and technology.
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| 2. |
- Cöster, Mathias, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Digitalisering
- 2021. - 2
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digitalisering är ett begrepp som står högt upp på agendan i många sammanhang. Att digitalisering är av fundamental betydelse för våra samhällen är de flesta överens om, men sällan diskuteras vad begreppet faktiskt kan betyda. Detta vill författarna Mathias Cöster och Alf Westelius reda ut i den här boken, som nu är inne på sin andra upplaga.De gör det genom att diskutera såväl digitaliseringens framväxt som olika aktuella och möjliga framtida konsekvenser av den.Sagt om boken"Mathias Cöster och Alf Westelius tar med läsaren på en resa där digitaliseringen problematiseras med utgångspunkt i informationsteknikens historiska framväxt. På så sätt formulerar författarna ett viktigt fundament för fortsatt diskussion om teknikens möjligheter och begränsningar ur ett brukarprespektiv. Jag rekommenderar alla med ambitionen att förstå och påverka det moderna samhället att ta till sig och reflektera över innehållet." Pär J. Ågerfalk, professor i informationssystem vid Uppsala universitet
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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- Ryczer-Dumas, Malgorzata, 1990-
(författare)
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Users' agencies : juxtaposing public portrayals and users' accounts of app-mediated cardiac arrest volunteer work in Sweden
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis embraces a social science research perspective to examine uses of the app SMSlivräddare (eng. SMSlifesaving), now Heartrunner, dedicated to alert volunteers nearby to assist people suspected to suffer from a cardiac arrest outside hospital. This case study of the uses of the health and medical app juxtaposes the public portrayals of the app, its prospective users, their agencies and use practices with the volunteer users’ own accounts. The analysis explores dimensions of the app’s and its users’ agencies as delegated by the technology’s portrayals and perceived by its users. It renders visible also possibly obscured aspects of the volunteer users’ agencies and practices at the time of the technology’s implementation in the two first regions, before its subsequent adoption in other Swedish regions and in Denmark. A medical research perspective has so far dominated the studies of lifesaving apps. Such research evaluates the patients’ health outcomes resulting from the app use by the volunteers and concentrates on the examination of the efficiency aspects of the app, such as how many users arrived and how many engaged in resuscitating the patients. At the same time, it contributes to the promissory discourses and instrumental approaches applied to understand the meanings and uses of health and medical apps. In contrast, building on the discourse and thematic analysis of the qualitative research material, this thesis seeks to highlight the users’ perspectives in their co-constructing of the SMSlifesaving technology through their app use practices; it embraces a socio-material theoretical approach and critically explores the users’ agencies as delegated by the discourses of the project developers, managers and evaluators of the medical technology and as negotiated by the users in their daily practices. This thesis, first, investigates the public portrayals of the app, its users and their agencies published online, in the user-recruiting practices, and in a medical research publication evaluating the SMSlifesaving technology. Next, it examines how the volunteers’ accounts describe the rationales of their entry into their SMSlifesaving app use practices, the social context embedding their entry and the meanings which they ascribe to their practices. Third, the study investigates how the volunteers’ accounts in juxtaposition to the online portrayals of the SMSlifesaving technology represent the volunteers’ app use before their receptions of the app’s notifications which inform them about cardiac-arrest cases nearby, at the time of reception of such notifications, and following acceptance of such notifications.Contributing to the field of critical social research on health and medical apps, the thesis identifies that both the SMSlifesaving app users and the technologies they co-construct have agencies. It illustrates the users’ agencies delegated and negotiated; the latter when they overcome the app everyday dependencies and judge the app-mediated volunteer work importance versus their paid work and private life commitments, develop dutiful engagement with the app and re-define the app’s medical promises for the patients and their families
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