<p>This study uses Actor – Network Theory as a lens to present a case study of the process by which Indiska Magasinet, a large Swedish retailer, has defined and developed its conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility. Actor – Network Theory offers a valuable tool to examine the inter-actor negotiations that precede a conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility. The study results are primarily based on interviews with two prominent Indiska personnel in decision-making positions. At the instigation of the writers, the Indiska personnel told stories about the company’s way of working with Corporate Social Responsibility. In doing so, they described four principle examples of how inter-actor negotiations resulted in significant developments in Indiska’s approach to Corporate Social Responsibility. Their stories also highlighted shared values and legitimacy as the main reasons that Indiska allows other actors to influence its conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility.</p>

It seems that for many people, spaces on the web are an integral part of their lives. This may include seeking out learning opportunities in online communities. There is plenty of buzz about these cyberspaces whether they are part of new social media configurations or commercialized product-related spaces cultivated by enterprises. It is important to explore how online spaces mayor may notcreate new locations of educational possibilities for workers. The subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, fusion of these technologies into work-learning practices warrants attention. This research project focuses on online communities as sites of learning, with an over-arching question of: How do self-employed workers experience informal work-related learning in an online community? Community can describe a gathering of people online that is organic and driven by a shared interest. These online spaces may also be purposefully nurtured by professional associations, workplaces, or businesses. This research project focuses on these spacesoutside the auspices of formal online courses. I draw on Actor Network Theory (ANT) to explore how work-learning is enacted in online communities and the implications of the intertwining of people and objects in multiple, fluid and distributed actor-networks. I also use the notion of legitimate peripheral participation from Situated Learning theory to explore how different possibilities for learning are shaped by locations and trajectories within a work practice and larger community of practitioners. Data was collected by interviewing 11 self-employed workers and then following the actors as objects of interest surfaced. This dissertation is a collection of five papers as well as introduction and conclusion chapters and a background chapter on ANT. Findings explore notions of online collectives shifting to more networked configurations, the complexity of work-learning practices unfolding in multiple spaces, contradictions between Web2.0 rhetoric and practices as different associations with knowledge and novel ways of knowing are enacted, and questions about the politics of technology that emerge from uncertainties around delegation, invisible practices, and necessary literacies. Given the need to pull objects out of the background and into critical inquiry, I also explored how a researcher interviews technology objects as participants in a study. / Adult Education

Övergripande diskuterar avhandlingen olika aspekter av att samhällets system av stöd och kontroll för barn och unga knyts närmare samman. Det handlar om hur samverkan framställs och uppfattas på olika nivåer och hur den konkretiseras i polisens och socialtjänstens arbete kring unga som utvecklat eller bedöms riskera att utveckla kriminalitet och/eller missbruk. Studieobjektet inbegriper övergripande ideologisknivå, lokal/praktisknivå och individuell nivå. Syftet med avhandlingen är att identifiera, beskriva och analysera polisens och socialtjänstens samverkan kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Utgångspunkten är hur; samverkan mellan myndigheterna framställs i offentliga dokument, hur lokala aktörer uppfattar behovet av men också möjligheter, svårigheter och hinder kring samverkan, hur myndigheterna lokalt är organiserade för att aktualisera, handlägga, behandla och avsluta barn och unga, och slutligen vilka barn och unga som denna samverkan kan omfatta. Avsikten är att få en bild av vad denna samverkan på policynivå innebär och sätta detta i relation till hur polis och socialtjänst förstår och skapar sina respektive och gemensamma uppdrag i förhållande till varandra lokalt.  I avhandlingen används tre olika empiriska material och olika metoder för analys: Analys av statliga offentliga dokument, kvalitativa intervjuer med poliser, socialarbetare och deras chefer i en kommun och en kvantitativ kartläggning av aktuella ungdomar i kommunen. Handlingsnät som teoretisk grund används för att studera kopplingar mellan de båda myndigheterna och de tre olika nivåerna av studien.  Genom att använda handlingsnät blir det möjligt att se hur polisens och socialtjänstens olika uppdrag kopplas samman kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Resultaten av studien visar att det pågår en ettablering av ett socio-polisiärt handlingsnät på den övergripande ideologiska nivån och den lokala kommunala nivån.  I policydokumenten förspråkas ett kontrollerande förhållningsätt gentemot ungas kriminalitet. På den lokala nivån handlade det om ett kontrollstödjande förhållningsätt för att motverka både ungas kriminalitet och missbruk.  Resultaten av studien visar att socialtjänsten fått ta ett större ansvar för att utreda och verkställa påföljder för ungas kriminella handlingar, samtidigt som det inom socialtjänsten riskerar att utvecklas en logik mera baserad på straffvärdet av den brottsliga handlingen än den unges individuella behov av hjälp och stöd.    Studien visar att i polisens och sociatjänstens arbete med enskilda barn och unga finns få möjligheter till samarbete. Dessutom var det få unga personer som samtidigt var aktuella för både polis och socialtjänst, vilket gör det svårt att uppnå något djupare längre samarbete kring enskilda ungdomar under längre tid. Det kan i bästa fall mera handla om en form av remissförfarande från polis till socialtjänst. / This thesis discusses different aspects of the link between social support and control systems for children and young people. By analysing the ideas and practice, it opens up a critical perspective in understanding collaboration between police and the social services. This study seeks knowledge about how collaborative forms are officially presented and perceived at different levels and how they are realised in the police’s and social services’ work with young people who have developed or at risk of developing criminal behaviour and/or substance abuse. The object of the study embraces the overarching ideological, local/practical and individual levels. The purpose is to identify, describe and analyse police and social service collaboration with regard to crime and substance abuse among children and young people. It addresses the following questions: How are collaborative concepts formulated in public documents in relation to the causes and problems that the collaboration is expected to resolve? What are local actors’ perceptions of collaboration? How do the police authorities and social service departments at the local level organise their activities to prevent young people’s criminality and substance abuse? How many children and young people are estimated to be involved in either the police authority, the social services department, or both? The study’s starting points are: how inter-agency collaboration is portrayed in public documents; how local actors perceive the need for – but also the possibilities, difficulties and obstacles associated with – collaboration; how the agencies are organised locally for observing, administrating, and treating children and young people and deciding when the young person requires no further attention; and finally which children and young people are subject to this collaborative work. The thesis consists of three studies using different empirical material and different methods of analysis: policy analysis of public documents, qualitative interviews with social workers, police officers and their managers in a municipality and a quantitative mapping exercise.  Actor-network theory is used to understand how actions are connected between organizations and between the three levels of the study. Using the concept actor-network it is possible to show how police and social service commitments are linked. The results of the thesis show that there was an establishment of a socio-police actor-network both at an ideological and a local level. The main idea, expressed in the official documents was that there should be a controlling attitude towards youth crime. At a local level the main ideas among those interviewed was that they had both a controlling and supportive attitude to youths, with both crime and abuse problems. It is possible that the social services logic has changed from values based on individual needs to values based on punishment. The study also showed that in practice there were just a small number of young people who were current for both the police and social services at the same time.

Programmes and policies to support ecological sustainable development and the practice of implementation is a question of innovation rather than known and taken for granted procedure. This thesis argues a priori models concerning stability in the social sciences, and human geography especially, are less able to help us understand this practice and planning in such unstable situations. Problematic in common understandings of planning and policy implementation concerning sustainability are the dualisms between physical-social spaces and between rationality-contingency. The first dualism makes it hard to grasp the interaction between humans and nonhumans. The second dualism concerns the problem of how to capture change without resorting to reductionism and explanaining the evolving projects as either technically, economically, or culturally rational. The scope of the thesis is to test resources from actor-network theory as a means of resolving these dualisms. The case is the Stockholm Local Investment Programme and the new district of Hammarby Sjöstad. The programme’s objective was to support the implemention of new technologies and systems, energy efficiency and reduced resource-use as well as eco-cycling measures. The case-study follows how the work with the programme unfolded and how administrators’ efforts to reach satisfactory results was approached. In doing this, the actors had to be far more creative than models of implementation and traditional technology diffusion seem to suggest. The recommendation is to take the instrumentalisation framing the plasticity of a project in planning seriously – as innovativeness is not a special but the general case. Hence, to broaden our tools and understanding of planning a human geography of planning projects is pertinent.

This study uses Actor – Network Theory as a lens to present a case study of the process by which Indiska Magasinet, a large Swedish retailer, has defined and developed its conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility. Actor – Network Theory offers a valuable tool to examine the inter-actor negotiations that precede a conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility. The study results are primarily based on interviews with two prominent Indiska personnel in decision-making positions. At the instigation of the writers, the Indiska personnel told stories about the company’s way of working with Corporate Social Responsibility. In doing so, they described four principle examples of how inter-actor negotiations resulted in significant developments in Indiska’s approach to Corporate Social Responsibility. Their stories also highlighted shared values and legitimacy as the main reasons that Indiska allows other actors to influence its conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) are becoming standard tools in healthcare, lauded for improving patient access and outcomes. However, the healthcare professionals who work with, around, and despite these technologies in their daily practices often regard EPRs as troublesome. In order to investigate how EPRs can prompt such opposing opinions, this project examines the EPR as a collection of communication genres set in complex contexts. In this project, I investigate an EPR as it was used on the Nephrology ward at a large, Canadian, urban, paediatric teaching hospital. In this setting, this study investigates EPR-use in relation to the following aspects of context: (a) the visual rhetoric of the EPR's user-interface design; (b) the varied social contexts in which the EPR was used, including a diversity of professional collaborators who had varying levels of professional experience; (c) the span of social actions involved in EPR use; and (d) the other genres used in coordination with the EPR. <br /><br /> This qualitative study was conducted in two simultaneous stages, over the course of 8 months. Stage one consisted of a visual rhetorical analysis of a set of genres (including the EPR) employed by participants during a specific work activity. Stage two involved an elaborated, qualitative case study consisting of non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Stage two used a constructivist grounded theory methodology. A combination of theoretical perspectives -- Visual Rhetoric, Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory, and Actor-Network Theory -- supported the analysis of study data. This research reveals that participants routinely transformed EPR-based information into paper documents when the EPR's visual designs did not support the professional goals and activities of the participants. <br /><br /> Results indicate that healthcare professionals work around EPR-based patient information when that genre's visual organization is incompatible with professional activities. This study suggests that visual rhetorical analysis, complemented with observation and interview data, can provide useful insights into a genre's social actions. This research also examines the effects of such EPR-to-paper genre transformations. Although at one level of analysis, the EPR-to-paper-genre transformation may be considered inefficient for participants and so should be automated, at another level of analysis, the same transformation activity can be seen as beneficially supporting the detailed reviewing of patient information by healthcare professionals. <br /><br /> To account for this function in the transformation dysfunction, my research suggests that many contextual factors need to be considered during data analysis in order to construct a sufficiently nuanced understanding of a genre's social actions. To accomplish such an analysis, I develop a five-step approach to data analysis called 'context mapping. ' Context mapping examines genres in relation to the varied social contexts in which they are used, the span of social actions in which they are involved, and a range of genres with which they are coordinated. To conduct this analysis, context mapping relies heavily on theories of "genre ecologies" (Spinuzzi, 2003a, 2003b; Spinuzzi, Hart-Davidson & Zachry, 2004; Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000) and "Knotworking" (Engestrom, Engestrom & Vahaaho, 1999). Context mapping's first three steps compile study data into results that accommodate a wide range of contextual analysis considerations. These three steps involve the use of a composite scenario of observation data, genre ecologies and the description of a starting point for analysis. The final two steps of this approach analyse results using the theory of Knotworking and investigate some of the implications of the patterns of genre use on the ward. <br /><br /> Through context mapping analysis, this study demonstrates that EPR-based innovations created by a study participant could result in the generation of other improvisations, in a range of genres, by the original participant and/or by other collaborators. These genre modifications had ramifications across multiple social contexts and involved a wide range of genres and associated social actions. Context mapping analysis demonstrates how the effects of participant-made EPR-based variations can be considered as having both beneficial and detrimental effects in the research site depending on the social perspective adopted. Contributions from this work are directed towards the fields of Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory research, and Health Informatics research, as well as to the research site itself. This study demonstrates that context mapping can support text-in-context style research in complex settings as a means for evaluating the effects of genre uses.

Information systems (IS) are widely acknowledged to be central for contemporary organizations. Along with the increasing importance of new IS in organizations, a school of thought has developed over the last few years that claims that IS and organizations mutually shape each other. While new IS shape organizational structure and behavior, the actual role and importance of IS in organizations is largely dependent on the organizational setting. However, questions of how IS and organizations mutually shape each other have remained largely unexplored.    The purpose of this thesis is to create better understanding of the design and use of IS in an organizational context. Actor-network theory (ANT) is used as a theoretical perspective to gain an understanding of how IS and organization influence each other. An interpretive case study approach was used for data collection. The case study was conducted in the municipal organization of Umeå, Sweden, over a period 36 months that covered the design process and use of a new IS. Semi-structured interviews, participant observations and document analysis were used as data collection techniques.    The findings indicate that the municipal organization became intertwined with technology by mobilizing a significant amount of allies in the IS adaption process. It was also found that the character of the IS in the organization was multi-faceted, and there were different versions of the application available for different actors. A new organizational behavior was established as a result of the design and use of the IS. While the new IS contributed to making more available the complicated financial aspects of the municipality, it also contributed in reinforcing a certain view on decision-making that was focused on organizational resources rather than on organizational objectives. The organizational changes that took place were of a constant nature, and there was no closure of the change processes as new issues continuously surfaced that needed attention.    The concept of evolving multi-purpose networks is coined to describe and analyze the character of the technology dependent organization. The concept of negotiation loop is coined to describe and analyze the processes of IS adaption, where the role and meaning of the IS changes as new actors are enrolled to the network. An evolving multipurpose network is changeful as negotiation loops continue after the IS is established in the organization. The notation of evolving multipurpose networks is meant to stimulate reflection both for researchers and practitioners, underscoring the negotiated character of IS in organizations. It is meant to allow a better understanding for how the design and use of IS in an organizational context is a process of mutual influence between the IS and organization. / digitalisering@umu

No description available.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal