This study concerns the contracting of digital archives for Swedish municipalities and the needs and requirements that govern this. Since the early 2000s, the Swedish government has been interested in expanding the utilization of digital information management. In order to preserve “born digital” official documentation, digital archives are increasingly becoming a necessity for Swedish municipalities. This study considers what the requirements and requests are explicated in formal requirement specifications for such systems. Tobias Edvardssons framework from the book chapter “Kommersiella IT-avtal” (commercial IT-contracts)  in the book “Rättsinformatik” edited by Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg, as well as grounded theory, is used to discern pertinent categories of requirements. The study finds that the main areas of interest while negotiating a new digital archive can be divided into functional-, qualitative-, governing-, and economic requirements (in accordance with Edvardsson). Archival specifications and technical considerations are also central, as per findings using grounded theory with the support of such models as OAIS and Records Continuum Model.  The study concludes that there still are considerable steps to take before reaching an e-archive solution that can be used on a broad scale to accommodate many different needs and restrictions. However, at the same time, the development of long-term preservation systems for digital records would benefit from more standardized guidelines on a national scale.

Contemporary English language arts (ELA) teachers engage students who have been born into a digital world where emergent literacies challenge the traditionally authoritative perspectives and physical boundaries of books and classrooms. This qualitative case study inquired into the classroom experiences of three senior English language arts teachers located in two western Canadian provinces in our digital-based communications age. Analyzed through a cultural studies lens, this inquirys data were collected through the methodological triangulation of classroom observation, semi-structured interview, and online journal responses. The studys findings reveal the significance of the three selected teachers textual stances and pedagogy to their students new literacies in this time of epochal communications and cultural change. A broadening horizon of textual choice and compositional possibilities complicated each of the three teachers classroom practice in a subject area whose content, traditionally, relies upon reading and responding to print-based canonical texts. Each of these teachers was working In medias res to understand which texts and textual practices should be held on to, and which could be relinquished for the benefit of their students language learning. A major concern that emerged for each of these three educators was a perceived loss of deep critical readings by their students. This concern was counter-balanced for the subject area specialists by an emergent understanding of the affordances of a broadening set of texts and textual practices a developing awareness that students critical literacies can emerge in a rhizomal manner, and that teachers and students can co-author their literacy experiences within the (con)text of the ELA classroom. For these three participants, teaching ELA has become an ellipsis in a digital-based age where certain previously privileged texts and a sense of authority need to be relinquished in order to achieve the co-constructed understanding of word and world so valued by these educators and their students. / Secondary Education

This thesis considers how the digital medium and social networks affect the short story. I argue that digital short fiction has shown changes, such as signs of becoming more modular or briefer than its print counterparts, and that it has also reflected a shift to the personal or semi-autobiographical story. Digital short fiction has also been used increasingly to market a publisher’s or author’s name or non-digital works. I begin contextualizing this shift in Chapter 1 by analyzing different approaches to the study of the short story, including an overview of generic and historical scholarship, and I conclude with a working definition of the short story. In Chapter 2, I analyze early digital short fiction along with the themes of contemporary fiction in general that have been affected by digital media, social networks, and other changes. I also consider digital short fiction in the context of its publication media, postmodernism, and changes in communication in general. In Chapter 3, I verify these considerations with responses to questionnaires sent to writers of short fiction both on the Web and off. By studying these writers’ conceptions of the short story, preferred publication media, and writing habits, I build on the working definitions of the short story from Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 4, I consider the effects on the short story and conclude that we can update print-based conceptions of the short story to include born-digital short fiction and accommodate the contemporary shift in general to modularity, open source, social networks, and the focus on the self. Rather than establishing a concrete definition of what short fiction is at this time, I conclude that a better approach is to replace pre-defined categories with an acknowledgement that the short story is perhaps shifting closer to pre-print storytelling roots, although within the confines of current limitations such as copyright and the attention span of contemporary readers. Although we cannot fully quantify these changes at this time, I argue that they impact the short story and require scholars to consider its paratexts and publication media differently than in pre-Web years.

This thesis considers how the digital medium and social networks affect the short story. I argue that digital short fiction has shown changes, such as signs of becoming more modular or briefer than its print counterparts, and that it has also reflected a shift to the personal or semi-autobiographical story. Digital short fiction has also been used increasingly to market a publisher’s or author’s name or non-digital works. I begin contextualizing this shift in Chapter 1 by analyzing different approaches to the study of the short story, including an overview of generic and historical scholarship, and I conclude with a working definition of the short story. In Chapter 2, I analyze early digital short fiction along with the themes of contemporary fiction in general that have been affected by digital media, social networks, and other changes. I also consider digital short fiction in the context of its publication media, postmodernism, and changes in communication in general. In Chapter 3, I verify these considerations with responses to questionnaires sent to writers of short fiction both on the Web and off. By studying these writers’ conceptions of the short story, preferred publication media, and writing habits, I build on the working definitions of the short story from Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 4, I consider the effects on the short story and conclude that we can update print-based conceptions of the short story to include born-digital short fiction and accommodate the contemporary shift in general to modularity, open source, social networks, and the focus on the self. Rather than establishing a concrete definition of what short fiction is at this time, I conclude that a better approach is to replace pre-defined categories with an acknowledgement that the short story is perhaps shifting closer to pre-print storytelling roots, although within the confines of current limitations such as copyright and the attention span of contemporary readers. Although we cannot fully quantify these changes at this time, I argue that they impact the short story and require scholars to consider its paratexts and publication media differently than in pre-Web years.

No description available.

In the past decade, the financial industry has been criticized to lack a faster digital transformation to provide more efficient services, where FinTech (a neologism generated from the contraction of “(Fin)ancial” and “(Tech)nology”) start-ups or fintechs represent a paradigm shift to reinvent the industry. FinTech is gaining attention in multiple academic disciplines, however, it was found that it has been neglected from the international business discipline to understand the internationalization process of fintechs. Furthermore, as the financial industry is an important cornerstone to foster economic growth and social welfare, particularly in the context of Latin American emerging countries, lack of studies in this context also motivated the development of this thesis. The purpose of this study is to accommodate FinTech in the international business discipline drawing from network theory and born-digital firms’ characteristics, emphasizing on core activities within the digital value chain to analyze the internationalization process and identify the main challenges. A conceptual framework was developed to analyze the internationalization process of Ecuadorian fintechs and the challenges faced. The research has a qualitative approach, employing multiple case studies strategy, where semi-structured interviews with founders and senior managers of four Ecuadorian fintechs were conducted. Empirical findings showed that despite having a high digital value chain and take advantage of internet technologies to internationalize faster, Ecuadorian fintechs followed a gradual regional expansion within Latin American countries and their internationalization process was mostly network-driven. Furthermore, besides the most prominent internationalization challenges such as liabilities of outsidership (LoO) and institutional regulations, additional resource-related internationalization challenges were found such as funding, skilled IT talents and innovation, which raise the importance to emphasize in such challenges for further research.

This thesis focus lies on the topic of business ecosystems and their use for digital firms in their internationalisation. The aim is to investigate the value creation and capture process for digital firms through the perspective of business ecosystems. For this endeavour, different concepts such as the born digital theory, key interlinked internationalisation process theories and business ecosystems theory are described throughout the literature review. Other models of previous researchers are used as a foundation to render an own created framework that is more applicable to the scenario and combination of the three aspects this paper investigates. The knowledge gap defined by the authors is about adding new insights on the ecosystem perspective in international businesses by exploring the value creation and capture process of born digitals. Furthermore, it will display the bottlenecks and benefits deriving from a business ecosystem. This leads to the research questions investigating the utilisation of business ecosystems for value creation and capture in internationalisation of digital firms, as well as the bottlenecks and benefits that come with it. For the empirical data collection to receive insights on the research questions and successfully draw conclusions, semi-structured interviews were conducted within the scope of a multiple case study. In addition, secondary data from various authors and experts in the respective research areas were used to bedrock the findings.As the results of the study showed, business ecosystems are greatly appreciated and utilised by digital firms. Moreover, they create value for them and let them strive in many ways, such as focusing on their core business, to succeed and be able to enter new markets. This is only possible with the cooperation of the various actors in the business ecosystem. Nevertheless, there are also severe bottlenecks that have been brought to light that reach beyond what has been present in the literature and considered by other scholars, as well as benefits that keep them competitive. Furthermore, this study provides managerial implications on how to deal with the liability of outsidership and smallness, and for the policy implications, that policymakers should be aware of global and political issues, and their impact on businesses.

I dagens digitala värld uppkommer nya typer av företag som Born Digitals, vilka har möjligheter att kunna etablera sin försäljning på internationella marknader på ett digitalt sätt. Forskningen om Born Digitals är begränsad trots denna typ av företags ökade närvaro i takt med digitaliseringen och den teknologiska utvecklingen i världen. Denna studie syftar till att utforska när och var Born Digitals etablerar försäljning på internationella marknader. Semistrukturerade intervjuer med nyckelpersoner i relevanta bolag har genomförts som en del av den kvalitativa ansatsen som har använts. Resultat i studien visar dels, i linje med tidigare forskning, dvs att Born Digitals kan skala upp effektivt och nå ut på internationella marknader snabbt. Samtidigt visar det också att de begränsas av faktorer som psykisk distans precis som traditionella företag. Vi finner tydliga hinder relaterade till kultur, språk, lagar och infrastruktur som förhindrar företagen att dra nytta av de egenskaper i en digital produkt och i ytterligare grad kunna bryta traditionella mönster inom internationalisering. Dessa hinder innebär resurskrävande anpassningar och relationsbyggande som ofta sker via fysisk närvaro med mänskliga interaktioner.

Background:             Internationalisation for businesses has been researched for decades and has been well understood. However, new types of organisations have emerged in the digital age, disrupting the organisational landscape. One of these disruptive organisations is born digitals (BD), which have become more prominent in recent years. Some of the biggest companies today are BDs, including Google and Spotify. However, how they internationalise and their processes look is not well understood. Because of this, it is of interest to understand how these organisations internationalise as they have been such a disruptive force in the international market.  Purpose:                       The purpose of the study is to investigate the internationalisation process of a BD firm, to recognise what internal and external factors influence their decision-making and whether specific strategies are being used. It aims to utilise prior internationalisation theories to provide a further understanding of these organisations and the way they work. The goal of the study is also to provide a framework that BDs can use to internationalise successfully.  Method:                         This study implemented a qualitative research design with an inductive approach and a single case study for the research design. The case company works with search engine optimisation (SEO) within the online service providers (OSP) industry. It included interviews with six employees from the company, with a total of nine interviews. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured manner to create flexibility in the interview design.   Conclusion:                  The key points of the study results were the following: (i) several internal and external factors and how they influenced BDs' internationalisation were identified, and which factors had a more significant impact on their processes. (ii) It was identified that they do not plan for specific internationalisation strategies, however, it was seen that they do develop strategies, although done unconsciously. (iii) This resulted in the development of a new framework that aims to provide insights into the process BDs undergo when internationalising.

The archive and the historian are symbiotically dependent on one another. The archive relies on the historian to make use of the records it houses, and the historian looks to the archive to reconstruct history. But can a historian responsibly reconstruct history when the archive is fraught with relativity and bias? This thesis serves two purposes; one, pulling from seminal archival science and collections management texts, it chronicles the monumental, intellectual changes to American archival sciences, theories, and institutions, and two, it shows how these early conversations pertaining to archival theories are both not far removed from digital preservation efforts and at times incompatible with the unique non-analogous problems created by web-born sources. But as this thesis argues, theoretical offerings are not always the most implementable for archives; the crux of archival science has historically and contemporarily been responsibility versus practicality, particularly in regard to appraisal theory. These problems exacerbate in the digital realm where the sheer amount of records and material produced by the second warrants extremely narrow but careful collecting. To not add to the overwhelming problem of digital appraisal theory, this thesis offers tangible solutions to help mitigate irresponsible collecting practices.