Background: The globalization of markets, competition in the market place, shareholder activism has compelled firms to rethink their way of doing business. In today’s world stakeholders are placing much emphasis on supplier relationships given that the survival of firms depends on the type of relationship that exists between the supplier and the buying firm. The maintenance of supplier relationships is a complex task due to differences in interest and the opportunistic behaviour which may be on the part of the supplier or the buyer. For this reason, firms have to look out for supplier relationships that can improve their business performance and enhance their competitive advantage. Purpose:     The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship that exists between medical devices manufacturers in Sweden and their key suppliers, and the reasons for establishing relationships. The authors were also interested in knowing how this relationship ultimately leads to improved business performance. Method: The authors used positivist perspective and a deductive approach for this thesis. The sampled firms in this study are Arcoma AB, Baxter and Cellavision and a convenience sampling method was used in selecting the companies. The empirical data for this study was collected through interviews with senior management personnel of the three companies whose head offices are located Lund and Växjö in Sweden. Results, conclusions: The supplier relationships established by Arcoma, Baxter and Cellavision, and their key suppliers was found to be collaborative. The quests to improve on quality, reduce cost and increase the responsiveness of the supply chain are some of the reasons why firms establish collaborative relationships. Establishing collaborative relationships with key suppliers leads to improved operational and financial business performance. Improvements in operational business performance could be in the form of reduction in defects, improved compliance with quality standards, and improvement in delivery reliability and reduced lead times. The benefits to the firms in terms of financial performance stems from cost reduction and the offering of competitive prices in the marketplace which leads to increased market share and revenue expansion.

Møter mellom natt og dag (Meetings between night and day) was my Professional Integration Project (PIP). It was a musical collaborative performance implemented in three kindergartens in the municipality of Fjell, outside of Bergen on the west coast of Norway, between March 17th and March 19th 2015. The target audience for the performance was children aged three years and under. The performance consisted of 10 folk songs from the countries of Norway, Sweden and Malawi. In addition I employed voice improvisation accompanied by small instruments such as djembe, an mbira, a glockenspiel and a rain stick. The performance integrated a visual presentation of pictures taken by photographer Ingvild Festervoll Melien. In the findings I present my relation to the audience, the roles of the adults in the kindergarten, the difference between being a musician and not a teacher in the audience setting, my aspects of time and digital media, how participation and interaction were integrated in the performance, and how the collaboration with photographer Melien functioned, as well as describe my own development in regards to new acquired skills and experiences. The findings are presented through my own reflection, and through discussions where I point to literature concerning perspectives on children and arts. My conclusion shows that I have managed to create a successful musical collaboration performance in terms of developing my own artistry and engaging with the target audience of children between 0-3 years, in a performance especially created and designed for them. It also points to ways for how I can continue developing as an artist making performance for small children, and how these aspects also are transferable to other areas for musical performance. / <p>Bilaga: 1 DVD. The artistic practice and performances are documented on a DVD called Professional Integration Project NAIP, <em>Meetings between night and day.</em></p>

This thesis is study about how public spaces can be transformed through performance within them.More specifically, this study involves two public venues: The Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), Tampa, FL and The University of South Florida (USF), Tampa, FL in that within these public venues, not only do performances take place, but they transform the space they are performed in and the spaces in-between the public spaces into performance spaces.

Organisations play a vital role in assisting communities to recover from disasters. They are the key providers of goods and services needed in both response and recovery efforts. They provide the employment which both anchors people to place and supports the taxation base to allow for necessary recovery spending. Finally, organisations are an integral part of much day to day functioning contributing immensely to people’s sense of ‘normality’ and psychological wellbeing. Yet, despite their overall importance in the recovery process, there are significant gaps in our existing knowledge with regard to how organisations respond and recover following disaster. This research fills one part of this gap by examining collaboration as an adaptive strategy enacted by organisations in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, which was heavily impacted by a series of major earthquakes, occurring in 2010 and 2011. Collaboration has been extensively investigated in a variety of settings and from numerous disciplinary perspectives. However, there are few studies that investigate the role of collaborative approaches to support post-disaster business recovery. This study investigates the type of collaborations that have occurred and how they evolved as organisations reacted to the resource and environmental change caused by the disaster. Using data collected through semi-structured interviews, survey and document analysis, a rich and detailed picture of the recovery journey is created for 26 Canterbury organisations including 14 collaborators, six non-traders, five continued traders and one new business. Collaborations included two or more individual businesses collaborating along with two multi-party, place based projects. Comparative analysis of the organisations’ experiences enabled the assessment of decisions, processes and outcomes of collaboration, as well as insight into the overall process of business recovery. This research adopted a primarily inductive, qualitative approach, drawing from both grounded theory and case study methodologies in order to generate theory from this rich and contextually situated data. Important findings include the importance of creating an enabling context which allows organisations to lead their own recovery, the creation of a framework for effective post-disaster collaboration and the importance of considering both economic and other outcomes. Collaboration is found to be an effective strategy enabling resumption of trade at a time when there seemed few other options available. While solving this need, many collaborators have discovered significant and unexpected benefits not just in terms of long term strategy but also with regard to wellbeing. Economic outcomes were less clear-cut. However, with approximately 70% of the Central Business District demolished and rebuilding only gaining momentum in late 2014, many organisations are still in a transition stage moving towards a new ‘normal’.

The Indigent Care Collaboration (ICC), a partnership of Austin, Texas, safety net providers, gathers encounter data and manages initiatives for the community's medically indigent patients. One such initiative is the establishment of a care management program designed to reduce avoidable hospitalizations. This study developed predictive models designed to take year-one encounter data and predict inpatient utilization in the following two years. The models were calibrated using 2003 through 2005 data for the 41,260 patients with encounters with ICC partner providers in all three years. Predictor variables included prior inpatient admissions, age, sex, and a summary measure of overall health status: the relative risk score produced by the Diagnostic Cost Groups prospective Medicaid risk-adjustment model. Using the 44,738 patients with encounter data in each of years 2004 through 2006 data, the performance of the predictive models was cross-validated and compared against the performance of the "common sense" method of choosing candidate patients based on prior year chronic disease diagnoses and high utilization, referred to herein as the Utilization Method (UM). The 620 patients with three or more 2005 through 2006 inpatient admissions were considered the actual high use patient subset. Each model's highest-risk 620 patients comprised its high-risk subset. Only 344 high-risk patients met the UM’s criteria. Prediction accuracy was described in terms of positive predictive value (PPV), i.e., the proportion of identified high-risk patients who were high-use patients. Three of the predictive models had a PPV of near 25% or greater, with the highest, the linear model using the DCG relative risk score, at 26.8%. The PPV of the UM was 17.1%, lower than that of all predictive models. When all high-risk subsets were limited to 344 patients (the number identified by the UM), the performance of the UM and the predictive models was similar. This study demonstrated that “common sense” targets for case management can be identified via simple filter as effectively as through empirically-based predictive models. However, once the supply of easily identifiable targets is exhausted, predictive models using a measure of health status identify high-risk patients who could not be easily identified by other means. / text

As online learning becomes more popular, higher education is becoming more interested in this new medium of learning. However, attrition has become a developing problem for colleges and universities that offer online classes, as some students found it was difficult to stay engaged in their online courses. From the literature, it was hypothesized that instructional designs that incorporate collaborative activities will lead to higher perceived engagement levels than those that incorporate individualistic learning. An exploratory study used a self-report survey instrument to measure students' perception of level of engagement in six graduate-level online classes (n=66). Half of the courses in the study integrated formal collaborative activities as a significant component of the course and half represented learning environments characterized by whole group and individualistic learning. The results showed a significant positive relationship between classes that used collaborative activities and engagement levels. However, the coded responses of the participants showed that while classes that use such activities had higher levels of engagement, it is possible that this may be attributable to other factors external to the formal elements of collaboration in the course. Recommendations are offered for future research that may help identify the elements that contribute to engagement in online courses. / text

Current literature regarding quality health services frequently identifies interprofessional collaboration (IPC) as essential to patient-centred care, sustainable health systems, and a productive workforce. The IPC literature tends to focus on interprofessionalism and collaboration and pays little attention to the concept of practice, which is thought to be a represented world of objects and processes that have pre-given characteristics practitioners can know cognitively and apply or manage correctly. Many strategies intended to support IPC simplify and codify the complex, contested, and unpredictable day-to-day interactions among interdependent agents that I argue constitute the practices of a community. These strategies are based in systems thinking, which understand the system as distinct from experience and subject to rational, linear logic. In this thinking, a leader can step outside of the system to develop an ideal plan, which is then implemented to unfold the predetermined ideal future. However, changes in health services and healthcare practices are often difficult to enact and sustain.This thesis problematises the concept of ‘practice’, and claims practices as thoroughly social and emergent phenomenon constituted by interdependent and iterative processes of representation (policies and practice guidelines), signification (sense making through negotiation and reflective and reflexive practices), and improvisation (acting into the circumstances that present at the point and in the moments of care). I argue that local and population-wide patterns are negotiated and iteratively co-expressed through relations of power, values, and identity. Moreover, practice (including the practice of leadership or consulting) is inherently concerned with ethics, which I also formulate as both normative and social/relational in nature. I argue that theory and practice are not separate but paradoxical phenomena that remain in generative tension, which in healthcare is often felt as tension between what we should do (best practice) and what we actually do (best possible practice in the contingent circumstances we find ourselves in). I articulate the implications this has for how knowledge and knowing are understood, how organisations change, and how the role of an internal practice consultant is understood. An important implication is that practice-based evidence and evidence-based practice are iterative and coexpressed(not sequential), and while practice is primordial, it is not privileged over theory.I propose that a practice consultant could usefully become a temporary participant in the practices of a particular community. Through a position of ‘involved detachment’, a consultant can more easily notice and articulate the practices of a community that for participants are most often implicit and taken for granted. Reflective and reflexive consideration of what is taken for granted may change conversations and thus be transformative.

Plenary session from the Living the Future 7 Conference, April 30-May 3, 2008, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ. / Beginning with the assumptions presented in Lewis' September 2007 College & Research Libraries article, "A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century." The presentation will explore the reasons why academic libraries will be required to collaborate both on and off campus in order to be effective in the future. It will then consider how do manage effective collaborations. Examples of collaborations such and the IU/ChaCha project and others will be presented.

Breakout session from the Living the Future 7 Conference, April 30-May 3, 2008, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ. / Meaningful and productive collaboration between librarians and faculty remains a significant, though frequently elusive goal for many academic institutions. Paradoxically, while the depth and power of collaboration emerges from the interactions between librarians and faculty, the possibilities for success often results from various institutional factors. Authentic collaboration does not exist in isolation. It is found in colleges and universities that act on their belief in the potential of these relationships to benefit students, faculty and staff. In this presentation, we will explore various understandings of collaboration, as well as the barriers and pathways to success. Perhaps most importantly, we will discuss and highlight individual and organizational actions that facilitate a capacity to manifest the collaborative imperative. Interdisciplinary research on caring and community-building, organizational culture and learning organizations will provide the basis for this presentation and discussion.

Poster presentation from the Living the Future 8 Conference, April 23-24, 2012, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ. / Academic libraries have not typically been able to build partnerships with K-12 education in ways that could both impact our information literacy mission and the goals of our universities surrounding student achievement and academic persistence. However, these partnerships are important in the big picture, as libraries try to affect information literacy and student achievement. Partnerships with pre-university students can be accomplished in various ways, but one avenue is working through college preparation and academic outreach programs affiliated with the university. Since 2010, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries have been collaborating with the Office of Admissions on an innovative program working with high school seniors through the Nebraska College Preparatory Academy (NCPA). The UNL Libraries have been able to demonstrate a strong connection with the students as they enter college, helping impact student retention and achievement statistics. Moreover, the project has improved the information literacy skills of the cohort’s students, by starting to work with them from the high school level.