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- Fransson, Martin, 1965-
(author)
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Självbeskrivning och tjänstekognition : Om processkartläggning på Arbetsförmedlingen
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- When duties are documented, new ideas are often created regarding how the work should be carried out. Writing is an important source of development, but unfortunately the possibilities are limited when it comes to transferring new ways of thinking to personnel. As with organizational change in general, employees tend to neglect new instructions. On the basis of their personal ways of thinking, they might find that the new order is incorrect, requires more resources, lacks contact with reality, or cannot be understood. The people who have prepared the new directives think they are surely justified and easy to understand. In their eyes, those who stick to what used to be correct and reasonable seem resistant to change. The aim of this dissertation is to understand the influence of self-assessment on service cognition and to propose how this influence can be utilized to attain strategic aims. The term self-assessment refers here to the activity whereby employees, in a structured manner, collectively assess and document their own instructions. The concept of service cognition refers to individual employee’s conceptions on how to carry out their own tasks, on how colleagues carry out theirs, and on connections between activities in the common workflow. The object of study is self-assessment as business process modeling at the local offices of the Swedish Employment Service. What is explored is the crass but fruitful understanding that new ways of thinking more easily arise among those who define organizational design than among those who are expected to change. Using socio-cognitive theory as well as longitudinal and extensive action research, the reasons are investigated behind the inevitable development of units which are trusted to write their own instructions and, in so doing, start to talk about the way work is done. Despite the independence needed to coordinate by consensus, it seems that the collective mind thereby induced actually enhances opportunities for central control and change: Units designing their own routines surely become better coordinated, but also more controllable and adaptive to strategic change. Furthermore, some principles are presented to support self-assessment regarding organization and change.
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- Vinther, Hanne Fogh, et al.
(author)
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Effects of coexistence between the blue mussel and eelgrass on sediment biogeochemistry and plant performance
- 2012
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In: Marine Ecology Progress Series. - : Inter-Research Science Center. - 0171-8630 .- 1616-1599. ; 447, s. 139-149
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The habitat-modifying suspension-feeding mussel Mytilus edulis may have facilitating or inhibiting effects on seagrass meadows depending on the environmental conditions. We investigated the effects of M. edulis on sediment biogeochemistry in Zostera marina meadows under eutrophic conditions in Flensborg fjord, Denmark. Sediment and plant samples were collected at 5 stations with Z. marina (Eelgrass), 5 with Z. marina and M. edulis (Mixed), and at 2 unvegetated ones, 1 with mussels (Mussel) and 1 with sand (Sand). The Mixed sediment was en riched in fine particles (2 to 3 times), nutrients and sulphides compared to Eelgrass stations. In creased sediment nutrient availability at the Mixed stations was reflected in increased N and P content in eelgrass. However, the plant biomass did not differ significantly between stations, while shoot features (number of leaves and leaf area) were significantly reduced at Mixed stations, suggesting an inhibiting effect of M. edulis on Z. marina. Negative correlations between eelgrass measures and sediment sulphide at Mixed stations indicate that the presence of mussels increases sulphide invasion in the plants. A survey of 318 stations in Danish fjords suggests a threshold of 1.6 kg M. edulis m(-2) beyond which no coexistence between Z. marina and M. edulis was found.
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- Bovik, Catarina
(author)
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Customer-perceived Value in Business Relationships
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The content of customer-perceived value has in this study been explored with the aim of providing an understanding of the concept. The evolving service-centered logic for marketing puts an emphasis on value, especially the value perceived and determined by the customer. Concurrently, a development is recognized within the industrial business-to-business sector where goods and services are packaged into total service offerings – with an increasing prominence for services. This is the background of the study. The study itself was conducted in order to elucidate the concept of customer-perceived value in a context where total service offerings are provided within dyadic business-to-business relationships. The conceptual framework, guiding the empirical study, has its points of departure in the field of service research. A case study conducted in the commercial aircraft engine maintenance industry has provided a description – depicted in value maps – of context-specific attributes forming the dimensions of customer-perceived value. It is suggested that customer-perceived value is created at three levels; at a product level, at a partnership level, and at a psychological level. Furthermore, the value maps clarify the double nature of customer-perceived value, which is found to have both an origin side – how the service provider should act to deliver value – and a side illuminating the more or less monetarily quantifiable effects of value. The origin and effect of customer-perceived value are proposed to be explained by a model where the notion of “flow” is central. Flows of goods, information, risk, involvement, and money intersect the value features and provide the sources of value on the origin side of customer-perceived value. The effects can be traced to the flows of revenue benefits, cost benefits, interest effects, and costs to use. Concurrently, flows both build, and are filtrated by, “trust” during the process in which the customer’s perception of value comes into being. On the effect-side of value, the concepts stochasticity and substantiality are introduced in order to capture the uncertainties that make translations into monetary terms difficult. The outcome of the abductive reasoning in the final phase of the investigation is a conceptual model – proposed as the main contribution of the study – summarizing aspects of customer-perceived value. My definition of customer-perceived value, together with a list clarifying the many facets of the concept, concludes the study.
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