Abstract This study examines the phenomenon of end-user engagement in innovative public procurement. Innovative public procurement aims at satisfying human needs and fixing societal problems by enhancing the development of innovative products, services or processes. To understand the functions expected from procurement, collaborative interfaces, such as interaction with citizen communities, become instrumental for innovations to materialise. In contrast to the existing debate on innovative public procurement focused on broad policy issues or the dyadic relationship between procurer and supplier parties, the interest of this study lies in the micro-level interaction within the inter-organisational triad of public-sector procurer, private-sector supplier and public-service end-user. Value creation via end-user engagement is examined in the study through the three issues of co-creation activities, end-user roles and procurer capabilities. The empirical findings are based on a qualitative case approach to four innovative public property procurement projects in northern Finland. The primary data are generated through interviews and participant observation on relevant procurer, supplier, end-user and expert informants. The results of the thesis highlight the need to further place end-user interaction at the heart of developing public procurement procedures. First, the study categorises end-user engagement activities following the key principles of value co-creation in dialogue, access, risk assessment and reflexivity as well as transparency related actions. Second, the study identifies four end-user roles, conventional, cooperative, collaborative or controlling roles, each of which embodies different value potential according to the procurement situation. Third, adopting a user-centred approach to public procurement calls for an experimental culture that enables the procurer’s capabilities of learning-by-doing, alliancing and networking as well as the evaluation of external support to take place. By integrating the debate of public service co-production into the public procurement context, the study contributes to both innovative public procurement and public service management discussions. From a practitioner’s perspective, the main motivation to use innovative public procurement should not be financial savings, but the added value-in-use and well-being of the public. / Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja tutkii loppukäyttäjien sitouttamista innovatiivisissa julkisissa hankinnoissa. Innovatiiviset julkiset hankinnat pyrkivät täyttämään ihmisten tarpeita ja vastaamaan yhteiskunnallisiin ongelmiin tehostamalla innovatiivisten tuotteiden, palveluiden ja prosessien syntymistä. Ymmärtääkseen hankinnalta vaaditun toiminnallisuuden, yhteistyö julkisia palveluita käyttävien kansalaisten kanssa on elintärkeää innovaatioiden materialisoitumiselle. Siinä missä innovatiivisten hankintojen keskustelu on nykyisellään keskittynyt erityisesti hankintapolitiikkaan ja dyadiseen suhteeseen tilaajan ja toimittajan välillä, tämä tutkimus keskittyy vuorovaikutuksen tarkasteluun mikrotasolla triadisessa suhteessa julkisen sektorin tilaajan, yksityisen sektorin toimittajan ja julkisen palvelun loppukäyttäjän välillä. Loppukäyttäjien sitouttamisella saavutettua arvontuotantoa tarkastellaan tutkimuksessa kolmen sitouttamisen toimintoihin, loppukäyttäjän rooleihin ja tilaajan kyvykkyyksiin liittyvän kysymyksen avulla. Empiiriset tulokset perustuvat laadulliseen tapaustutkimukseen neljästä innovatiivisesta tilahankinnasta Pohjois-Suomessa. Ensisijainen aineisto on kerätty haastattelemalla ja havainnoimalla keskeisiä tilaaja-, toimittaja- ja loppukäyttäjäorganisaatioiden edustajia. Tutkimuksen tulokset korostavat loppukäyttäjävuorovaikutuksen selkeää asettamista innovatiivisten hankintakäytäntöjen ytimeen. Ensiksi, tutkimus luokittelee loppukäyttäjien sitouttamisen vuorovaikutukseen, pääsyyn, riskien hallintaan ja refleksiivisyyteen sekä läpinäkyvyyteen liittyviin toimintoihin. Toiseksi, tutkimuksen tuloksissa tunnistetaan neljä tilannesidonnaista loppukäyttäjien omaksumaa joko perinteistä, auttavaa, kumppanillista tai hallitsevaa roolia. Viimeiseksi, käyttäjäkeskeinen lähestymistapa julkiseen hankintaan edellyttää kokeilevaa kulttuuria, joka mahdollistaa tilaajalle ensiarvoiset kokeilemalla-oppimisen, verkostoitumisen ja ulkoisen tuen arvioimisen kyvykkyydet. Integroimalla julkisten palveluiden yhteistuotannon keskustelua julkisen hankinnan kontekstiin, tutkimuksen kontribuutiot suuntautuvat sekä innovatiivisten julkisten hankintojen että julkisten palveluiden keskusteluun. Käytännön toimijoiden näkökulmasta tärkeää on, että taloudellisten säästöjen sijasta hankinnan tärkein vaikutin olisi käyttöarvon luominen ja kansalaisten hyvinvoinnin edistäminen.

A feedback loop is a method used to collect, store and handle provided feedback. It also includes methods for working with lessons learned since learnings are seen as the backbone of feedback loops, since they cannot be successful without learnings. Research regarding knowledge development, particularly feedback loops and lessons learned, is in need for further research to understand how industrial organisations working with digital automation and processes can work with and manage feedback and lessons learned in a cross-functional and co-productive setting. To study this, the research was conducted through a co-production between the researcher and ABB AB as a case company. The collaboration allowed for deep insights in work methods, as well as how feedback loops are worked with and used today along with desired methods for feedback loops and sharing of lessons learned. To achieve this, multiple user interviews were conducted as well as an observation and meetings with other stakeholders and follow-up sessions with the case company. This study also compares perspectives of existing feedback loops with each other as well as a new developed feedback loop designed for industrial organisations working with digital automation and digital processes.

Social innovation brings about sustainability which is regarded as a new paradigm for development. In order to bring about social innovation, cross-sector collaboration among different actors is required. However, it is known that establishing cross-sector collaboration is very complex, especially in a penta helix model where the public administration, business, academia, third sector and citizens are all involved. The research aims to investigate the initial conditions for establishing penta helix collaboration in the context of co-produced social innovation from the perspectives of core co-producers. Through a case study of ReTuren, a co-produced public platform for waste handling and prevention in Malmö, Sweden, the research finds out four themes of initial conditions, viz. environment, resources, relationships, and strategy. It is also discussed that the significance of these conditions to the collaboration establishment can depend on the development stage of the social innovation initiative. The research also provides new insights about the unclear boundary and the flexible role of each sector in the penta helix model. Based on the findings, an adapted model of initial conditions from Bryson et al. (2015) for penta helix collaboration in social innovation is created.

Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly being adopted in urban planning as its multifunctionality presents opportunities to address several environmental issues faced by cities. However, significant barriers remain to the widespread implementation of GI. In the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the dominance of engineering knowledge systems hinders GI from being brought to the forefront of infrastructural planning and decision-making processes. This dominance, and opportunistic implementation, also prevent GI from being equitably distributed across the city; thus, neglecting the needs of local equity-denied groups. To address the inequitable and engineering-dominated planning and decision-making processes around GI, this study aims to determine how GI and social equity can play a larger role in municipal operations. Through a literature review, document analysis, and key informant interviews, the relations between GI and equity are examined, as well as the extent to which the two are prioritized in planning and decision-making processes in the City of Vancouver. The concept of urban resilience is proposed as a way to bridge knowledge gaps, as its ability to act as both a boundary object and bridging concept can help to foster transdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge co- production. The findings highlight the need for practitioners to diversify their knowledge systems in order to successfully increase GI uptake and incorporate equity into practice. To enhance equitable GI practices within the City of Vancouver, staff are recommended to internalize and conceptualize equity in their personal and professional lives before attempting to operationalize it. This paper develops a set of equity criteria, which centre three dimensions of social equity: distributional, recognitional, and procedural equity, to help practitioners operationalize equity in GI project evaluations. A set of variables to aid in the identification of local equity-denied groups is also presented. As municipalities become increasingly aware of the disproportionate impacts felt by equity-denied groups, the hope is that this research will inform more equitable distributions of GI to address their needs.

Since 1970, high project failure rate and low user satisfaction has elicited research on users and their role in the process. It is believed that users' physical participation or psychological involvement in the development process can improve user satisfaction and/or system quality. Previous research treats users as a source of requirements and hypothesizes satisfaction to increase when requirements are fulfilled. However, inconsistent conclusions lead to confusion. Recently, a co-production concept has been proposed to understand consumer participation in product development process. In this reconceptualization, users, instead of requirement generator, should be part of the production. In this study, based on co-production concept, we view users as one knowledge source and study how knowledge can be coordinated through the co-production process. After collecting data from 97 system users, most of the hypothesized relationships have been confirmed. IS-user co-production has a positive effect on expertise coordination and, in turn, improves teamwork outcomes. The only relationship that is not significant is between "bring expertise to bear" and "creativity." Implications for practitioner and suggestion for future research are provided. Co-production was found to be a second-order construct comprised of multiple formative constructs. Higher levels of coproduction behavior were expected and were found to produce better outcomes of collaborative efforts. For future study, this relationship is expected to hold true when pairs of information systems developers and information systems users who have worked together on the same information systems development project are surveyed at the end of their projects (or just before it ends or recently thereafter).

In recent years, scholars of science and technology studies (STS) have increasingly turned their attention to the role of collective imagination in shaping sociotechnical futures. This scholarship leaves open the question of how the collectives involved in bringing these futures to life come into being. Starting with one episode in the ongoing conflict over the construction of Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory in settler-colonial Canada, this discourse analysis draws on scholarship in feminist, anticolonial, and co-productionist STS to study this process of collective formation in relation to sociotechnical futures. It does so by examining how oil and gas workers become enrolled into a sociotechnical imaginary I call Canadian resource techno-nationalism. Comparing media and politicians’ representations of oil and gas workers with White workers’ representations of themselves indicates that they can end up participating in this imaginary regardless of their affinity to it. Examining policy documents and scholarly literature about the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in impact assessment, as well as political debates and mainstream media coverage about the conflict over the Coastal GasLink pipeline, draws attention to how elites’ active construction and protection of the boundary between knowledge and politics works to enroll Indigenous people into oil and gas jobs and, therefore, into the collective performing Canadian resource techno-nationalism. In both cases, elite actors deploy the resources at their disposal in ways that help funnel oil and gas workers into lives imagined for them, securing the power of the settler state in the process. This dynamic illustrates the importance of disentangling participation in the collective performance of sociotechnical imaginaries from freely given consent. Residents of liberal states can end up performing dominant imaginaries less out of any sense of affinity to them than as a response to the disciplinary power these imaginaries help sustain.

This dissertation explores how the rise of widely available digital technology impacts the way music is produced, distributed, promoted, and consumed, with a specific focus on the changing nature of the relationship between artists and audiences new technology has engendered. Through in-depth interviewing, focus group interviewing, and discourse analysis, this case study explores the contemporary artist-audience relationship. This study demonstrates that digital technology impacts the relationship by making it closer and more multidimensional. This is intensified by the fact that everyone is participating; the audience and artist actively engage each other. The omnipresence of music culture combined with the omnipresence of technology is particularly salient. Media consumers are simultaneously engaged with music through technology, and technology through music and this happens on many different levels. Taken as a whole, artist and audience's musical lives are fragmented as they occur in multiple online and offline places, at multiple times, and are continuous. They create, download, stream, listen, share, burn, and build upon content while engaging in multiple personal and social practices. And, in the process, they experience rich meaning making attached to particular life events, people, places, and times. Engagement in a music community is not just listening to music, or consuming music, but participating in a culture. The nature of contemporary music culture is best characterized by community and as such, this dissertation argues we might better think of the audience as accomplices to the artist. / Mass Media and Communication

The model used as the basis for regulation of human radiation exposures in the United States has been a source of controversy for decades because human health consequences have not been determined with statistically meaningful certainty for the dose levels allowed for radiation workers and the general public. This dissertation evaluates the evolution of the science and regulation of radiation health effects in the United States since the early 1900s using actor-network theory and the concept of co-production of science and social order. This approach elucidated the ordering instruments that operated at the nexus of the social and the natural in making institutions, identities, discourses, and representations, and the sociotechnical imaginaries animating the use of those instruments, that culminated in a regulatory system centered on the linear no-threshold dose-response model and the As Low As Reasonably Achievable philosophy. The science of radiation health effects evolved in parallel with the development of radiation-related technologies and the associated regulatory system. History shows the principle of using the least amount of radiation exposure needed to achieve the desired effect became established as a social convention to help avoid inadvertent harm long before there was a linear no-threshold dose-response model. Because of the practical need to accept some level of occupational radiation exposure, exposures from medical applications of radiation, and some de minimis exposure to the general public, the ALARA principle emerged as an important ordering instrument even before the linear no-threshold model had gained wide support. Even before ALARA became the law, it had taken hold in a manner that allowed the nuclear industry to rationalize its operations as representing acceptable levels of risk, even though it could not be proven that the established exposure limits truly precluded harm to the exposed individuals. Laboratory experiments and epidemiology indicated that a linear dose-response model appeared suitable as a "cautious assumption" by the 1950s. The linear no-threshold model proved useful to both the nuclear establishment and its detractors. In the hands of proponents of nuclear technologies, the model predicted that occupational exposures and exposures to the public represented small risks compared to naturally occurring levels of radiation and other risks that society deemed acceptable. Conversely, opponents of nuclear technologies used the model to advance their causes by predicting health impacts for undesirable numbers of people if large populations received small radiation exposures from sources such as fallout from nuclear weapon testing or effluents from nuclear reactor operations. In terms of sociotechnical imaginaries, the linear no-threshold model was compatible with both of the dominant imaginaries involved in the actor-network. In the technocratic imaginary of institutions such as the Atomic Energy Commission, the model served as a tool for qualified experts to make risk-informed decisions about applications of nuclear technologies. In the socially progressive imaginary of the citizen activist groups, the model empowered citizens to formulate arguments informed by science and rooted in the precautionary principle to challenge decisions and actions by the technocratic institutions. This enduring dynamic tension has led to the model retaining the status of "unproven but useful" even as the underlying science has remained contested. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation provides a social science perspective on an enduring paradox of the nuclear industry: why is regulation of radiation exposure based on a model that everyone involved agrees is wrong? To answer that question, it was necessary to delve into the history of radiation science to establish how safety regulation began and evolved along with the understanding of radiation's health effects. History shows the philosophy of keeping radiation exposures as small as possible for any given application developed long ago when the health effects of radiation were very uncertain. This practice turned out to be essential as science started to indicate that there may not be a safe threshold dose below which radiation exposure had no potential for health consequences. By the 1950s, a combination of theory, experiments, health studies of the survivors of the World War II atomic bombings, and other evidence suggested that the risk of cancer was proportional to the amount of radiation a person received (i.e., linear). Although this "linear no-threshold" model was far from proven, both sides used it in debates over nuclear weapon testing and safety standards for nuclear reactors in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Since the model predicted small health risks for the levels of radiation experienced by radiation workers and the public, nuclear advocates used it to argue that the risks were smaller than many other risks that people accept every day. At the same time, opposing activists used the model to argue that small cancer likelihoods added up to a lot of cancers when large populations were exposed. This decades-long discourse effectively institutionalized the model. The model's "unproven but useful" status was strengthened in the early 1970s when the Atomic Energy Commission supplemented its numeric exposure limits by turning the longtime practice of dose minimization into a requirement. This "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" requirement plays a vital role in rationalizing why a non-zero exposure limit is safe enough despite the fact that the linear no-threshold model treats any amount of radiation as harmful.

Yes / Co-production and active participation of the consumers are considered to have enhanced the value co-creation activities that would ensure business benefits of a firm. The marketing literature available does not explicitly explain the philosophy that would motivate the consumers to help to increase values for co-creation activities. In this context, attempts have been made to identify the factors that would impact on co-production and consumers’ participation to co-create values. By studying literature and theories such as theory of co-creation, theory of value creation, information processing theory, marketing theory and expectancy value theory, a conceptual model called F-P-C-B (Future Participation (F) - Co-production (P) - Co-creation (C) - Business Benefit (B)) has been developed along with nine hypotheses. The data was from 362 respondents in India and the model was tested using PLS based analysis. The study shows that it is important for the firms to shift from product-oriented activities to customer-related strategies. It is also found that for obtaining more profitability and better business results, customers should be involved in business activities by way of involving in co-design, idea generation, and other relevant activities of the firms. Moreover, the study highlights that knowledge sharing between the customers and the firm authorities ensures better business values.

Yes / People in the Global North often have a problem talking about — and processing — the inevitability of death. This can be because death and care of the dying has been professionalised, with encounters of death within our families and communities no longer being ‘normal and routine’ (Kellehear 2005). Young people are particularly excluded from these conversations, with implications for future mental health and wellbeing (Ainsley-Green 2017). Working in Wolverhampton and Bradford, the Dying 2 Talk (D2T) project aimed to build young people’s future resilience around this challenging topic. We recruited over 20 young people as project ambassadors to co-produce resources that would encourage talk about death, dying and bereavement. The resources were used as the basis of ‘Festivals of the Dead’ which were taken to schools to engage wider audiences of young people (aged 11 +). The project aimed to use alternative ‘ways in’ to open discussion, beginning with archaeology, and ultimately using gaming, dance, creative writing and other creative outputs to facilitate discussion, encourage compassionate relationships and build resilience. The resources succeeded in engaging young people from ages 11–19 years, facilitating a comfortable and supportive environment for these vital conversations. Project evaluations and observations revealed that the Festivals, and the activities co-created by the young ambassadors helped to facilitate spontaneous conversations about death, dying and bereavement amongst young people by providing a comfortable and supportive environment. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/V008609/1), building on a pilot project funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund at the University of Bradford. / The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/V008609/1), building on a pilot project funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund at the University of Bradford.