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Today sustainability is a broadly discussed concept all over the globe due to the threat of climate change driven by human activities. Therefore, collective efforts are needed to raise awareness to conserve environmental health and sustainability, and sustainable development is to be prioritized in all organizations. Sweden demonstrates a high commitment to developing sustainability in practice through the collective effort of Swedish society. China is Sweden’s largest international trade partner in Asia. This thesis explores the strategies, facilitators, and challenges for Swedish firms pursuing sustainability goals while collaborating with Chinese partners. A single case study on a SwedishMNC, IKEA is presented to conduct the thesis. IKEA demonstrates the strategy of sustainable collaboration with Chinese partners. The analysis determines that close collaboration to co-create value, regular audits, and balancing the three aspects of sustainable development, economic, social, and environmental, are needed for a Swedish firm to pursue its sustainability goals while collaborating with Chinese partners.

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

The federal program of deinstitutionalizing psychiatric facilities has resulted in a well documented, ever-increasing mentally ill population in the nation's prisons and jails. Historically, the criminal justice system has maintained a laissez-faire attitude toward the mentally ill, and only became involved with the mentally ill when a crime had been committed. As such, the President's Mental Health and Criminal Justice Consensus Project was developed to explore ways that the two systems could work together to address the growing problem of the mentally ill offender. However, challenges arise because the criminal justice system has typically been viewed as a loosely coupled, fragmented system that is unwilling or unable to address the social issue of the mentally ill offender. The concept of coupling between agencies has serious ramifications for the ability of agencies to successfully collaborate. Theoretical foundations for collaboration between mental health and criminal justice agencies lie partly in labeling theory and the drive to avoid the negative stigmatization of the mentally ill by the formal criminal justice system. A second theoretical foundation is found in developmental theories, which seek to explain the development of organizational knowledge and skills, in handling mentally ill offenders, through interaction between the mental health and criminal justice systems. In this study, it is asserted that agencies that are appropriately coupled and have experience with collaboration will perceive greater benefits from the collaborative exchange. Furthermore, this leads to the main hypothesis of the current study that agency coupling and collaborative experience will increase the perception of benefits of collaboration and support of collaborative efforts that deal with mentally ill offenders. To assess the main hypothesis of the current study, a modified Dillman methodology was utilized. The research population consisted of a complete enumeration of the 20 Florida State's Attorneys Offices, the 66 County Sheriffs, the 54 Probation Office Managers, and the 313 municipal law enforcement agencies for a total study population of 453 possible respondents, of which 49% responded. Overall, the findings of the current study illustrate a willingness of agencies to couple with outside agencies to address the phenomenon of the mentally ill offender. The results provide theoretical support for the need to reduce the negative stigma of a mentally ill individual being additionally labeled a criminal offender. The results additionally bolster the belief that the knowledge and skills to do this can best be accomplished through interaction with outside agencies.

Principal leadership is one of the most heavily researched topics in the field of education and is a key to increasing school effectiveness and stimulating school change. One of the most important principal roles that have emerged in the literature is the facilitation of a collaborative culture. Teacher collaboration has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes such as improved instruction and student learning. Research indicates that collaboration is most effective when it is part of a district's professional development. Using a theory-driven approach, the present study evaluated a four-year collaboration initiative aimed to increase student learning in one Connecticut school district. More specifically, the study investigated whether principals' actions in support of teacher teams and the quality of teacher collaboration changed over time. Of particular interest was an examination of how principals influenced a collaborative shift in school culture and what specific strategies had the most impact on the quality of collaboration in teacher teams. Data were collected from a sample of 400 teachers, beginning in 2008 and ending in 2011, although sample sizes varied across time according to response rate. Items from the Teacher Collaboration Survey were used to measure teachers' perceptions of principals' actions in support of teacher teams and the quality of teacher collaboration. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was utilized to measure change across time, accounting for repeated measures. No statistically significant changes were found for either principals' actions in support of teacher times or the quality of teacher collaboration. However, statistically significant correlations were found between these two variables in each of the four years, indicating a moderate to strong relationship. In addition, qualitative responses on the survey were used to investigate the high leverage behaviors that principals employed to create a cultural shift in this district and provided insight into the types of change that occurred during this initiative. Finally, implications and limitations of the present study were discussed, and future research in this area was suggested.

Open innovation that Henry Chesbrough introduced in 2003 promotes the usage of the input of outsiders to strengthen internal innovation processes and the search for outside commercialization opportunities for what is developed internally. Open innovation has enabled both academics and practitioners to design innovation strategies based on the reality of our connected world. Although the literature has identified and explored a variety of benefits and costs, to the best of our knowledge, no study has reviewed the benefits and costs of open innovation in terms of their importance for strategic performance. To conduct such a study, we need to take into account two main issues. First, the number of benefits and costs of open innovation are multifold; so, to have a comprehensive comparison, a large number of benefits and costs must be compared. Second, to have a fair comparison, benefits and costs must be compared in terms of different performance criteria, including financial and non-financial. Concerning the issues above, we will face a complex process of exploring benefits and costs. In this regard, we use multiple criterion decision-making (MCDM) methods that have shown promising solutions to complex exploratory problems. In particular, we present how using a stochastic multi-criteria clustering algorithm that is one of the recently introduced MCDM methods can bring promising results when it comes to exploring the strategic importance of benefits and costs of open innovation. Since there is no comprehensive understanding of the nature of the benefits and costs of open innovation, the proposed model aims to cluster them into hierarchical groups to help researchers identify the most crucial benefits and costs concerning different dimensions of performance. In addition, the model is able to deal with uncertainties related to technical parameters such as criteria weights and preference thresholds. We apply the model in the context of open innovation for universities concerning their research collaboration with industries. An online survey was conducted to collect experts' opinions on the open-innovation benefits and costs of university-industry research collaboration, given different performance dimensions. The results obtained through the cluster analysis specify that university researchers collaborate with industry mainly because of knowledge-related and research-related reasons rather than economic reasons. This research also indicates that the most important benefits of university-industry research collaboration for universities are implementing the learnings, increased know-how, accessing specialized infrastructures, accessing a greater idea and knowledge base, sensing and seizing new technological trends, and keeping the employees engaged. In addition, the results show that the most important costs are the lack of necessary resources to monitor activities between university and industry, an increased resistance to change among employees, conflict of interest (different missions), an increased employees' tendency to avoid using the knowledge that they do not create themselves, paying time costs associated with bureaucracy rules, and loss of focus. The research's findings enable researchers to analyze open innovation's related issues for universities more effectively and define their research projects on these issues in line with the priorities of universities.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka anhörigkonsulenters erfarenheter av arbetet med anhörigstöd samt upplevelsen av samverkansprocesser med andra aktörer. Studien gjordes med en kvalitativ ansats där empirin samlades in genom sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med anhörigkonsulenter i olika kommuner i Sverige. Empirin analyserades och sammanställdes genom en tematisk analys. Vidare analyserades resultatet i relation till studiens teoretiska utgångspunkter vilka var det salutogena perspektivet och tillhörande känslan av sammanhang [KASAM] samt strukturella aspekter av samverkan. Resultatet visar att anhörigkonsulenterna upplever anhörigas behov som varierande utifrån deras skilda situationer. Tre övergripande behov uppfattas av anhörigkonsulenterna vilka är ett informationsbehov, behov av nya perspektiv och behov av att sätta sig själv i fokus. Resultatet visar att anhörigkonsulenterna upplever att de arbetar med ett individuellt utformat stöd för att möta anhörigas stödbehov men att arbetet görs inom vissa fastställda ramar. Det finns generellt tre insatser som erbjuds anhöriga vilka är individuella samtal, gruppsamtal och aktiviteter av olika slag. Några kommuner erbjuder även andra insatser vilket tyder på att stödet till anhöriga varierar mellan olika kommuner. Anhörigkonsulenterna upplever samverkan som individberoende men som en stor och viktig del av arbetet, dels för att nå ut till anhöriga, dels för att implementera anhörigperspektivet internt inom kommunerna. / This study seeks to explore caregiver consultants' experiences in providing assistance for relative caregivers and their views of collaboration process with other actors. The study adopted a qualitative approach with empirical data gathered from six semi-structured interviews with caregiver consultants in various municipalities throughout Sweden. The empirical data were analyzed and compiled using thematic analysis. Furthermore, the results were analyzed in relation to the study's theoretical framework, which encompassed the salutogenic perspective and the sense of coherence [SOC], along with structural aspects of collaboration. The study's findings indicate that caregiver consultants perceive the needs of relative caregivers as varied, depending on the specific situations of the caregivers. Three overarching needs were identified by the caregiver consultants: an informational need, a need for new perspectives, and a need to prioritize oneself. The results show that the caregiver consultant works with an individually formed support to meet the family caregiver needs, even if the support is predefined within certain boundaries. Generally, three types of support are offered to family caregivers, namely individual sessions, group sessions, and various activities. Some municipalities also offer additional support, suggesting variations in support for relative caregivers across different regions. Caregiver consultants regard collaboration as individual dependence but a significant and integral part of their work, both for reaching out to relative caregivers and for embedding the caregiver perspective internally within municipalities

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This qualitative study addresses a gap in horizontal crisis management research regarding the way collaboration plays out in practice in times of crisis. It is empirically focused on public actors in Kalmar County and takes aim at complementing earlier critical studies around power displacement and recapture in the realm of crisis collaboration to unearth impediments to interagency collaboration. An interview is carried out with duty officers and crisis management officers in four organizations with key tasks in the institutional crisis management system on the regional and local level, and the ambition is toshed light on how collaboration might be affected by formal, as well as informal, imbalances given that the organizations involved belong to different policy subsystems. It uses earlier theories regarding mandate, clusivity and trust as a point of departure, and asks: what impediments arise when actors from different political subsystems engage in interagency crisis collaboration in Kalmar County? The empirical analysis shows, surprisingly, a stark contrast to earlier stories from around the institutional crisis management system that described dysfunctional and asymmetric crisis collaboration.