<p>During twelve weeks of practice experience at the company Sydved AB, I received the mission to develop a structure for the company’s internal communication. A part of this mission was to find out what the company’s employees thought of Sydveds internal communication and the most important; Sydveds intranet called “Outlook”. Due to Sydveds plans of developing the intranet I designed and accomplished an inquiry-study to find out about the employee’s opinions on the company´s internal communication and in particular their intranet.</p><p>The answers I want from this study are if I shaped the inquiry-study correctly the first time. Could I have done it in another, better way? What do scientists say about how to accomplish a qualitative inquiry-study?</p><p>For this purpose I have decided to apply a theory based study on my first inquiry-study, based on three different methods; literature study, analytic induction and theory probation.</p><p>The outcomes of the three different studies have developed my method. This new method describes how a qualitative inquiry-study through scientifically basis should be accomplished.</p> / <p>Under mina tolv veckors praktik på företaget Sydved AB fick jag i uppdrag att kartlägga en struktur för företagets interna informationsflöde. En del av uppdraget var att ta reda på vad Sydveds medarbetare ansåg om företagets interna kommunikation och framförallt dess intranät, ”Outlook”. Enligt Sydveds planer att utveckla och förbättra intranätet, utformade och genomförde jag en enkätundersökning för att få reda på medarbetarnas åsikter om företagets interna kommunikation och intranät.</p><p>Med hjälp av denna studie vill jag få svar på om jag utformade enkätundersökningen korrekt under min praktik på Sydved. Kunde jag gjort på ett annorlunda sätt? Vad säger forskningen om hur en kvalitativ enkätundersökning bör utformas?</p><p>För att få svar på dessa frågor har jag tillämpat en metodutveckling av min enkätundersökning utifrån tre olika studier; litteraturstudie, analytisk induktion samt teoriprövning.</p><p>Resultaten från dessa tre studier har lett till min metodutveckling. Denna nya metod beskriver hur en liknande enkätundersökning med vetenskaplig bas bör utformas.</p>

Collaboration across the organisational boundaries takes place for different reasons. One of them is to solve complex problems that cannot be dealt with by a single organisation. The area of vocational rehabilitation constitutes an example of inter-organisational collaboration motivated by a need for joint problem solving. Individuals are admitted to vocational rehabilitation with the aim of entering or re-entering the labour market. These individuals constitute a heterogeneous group with different kinds of problems, based on e.g. their social situation, long-term diseases and/or substance abuse. As a result, they are handled at more than one welfare state agency at the time, and the practitioners working at these agencies need to collaborate to find individual solutions for their clients. The expected positive effects of such collaboration are long-term planning, increased quality of the casee management, and reductions of invested time and money. In this thesis, an interpretive case study of inter-organisational teamwork within the vocational rehabilitation is presented. The aim of the study was to investigate how the collaboration could be supported by information technology. During a time period of two years, practitioners from three welfare state agencies took part in the research project, The activities included observations of the teamwork, individual interviews with the practitioners and design of information technology that should support the teamwork. An essential part of the design activities was the user representatives' direct participation in the design group, composed by practitioners and researchers. To stimulate the participation, methods with its origin in the participatory design approach were used. The design requirements that were defined included support for the team's communication and joint documentation of cases, and also information sharing about previous, present and future rehabilitation activities. The teamwork was characterised by an open, positive atmosphere where the practitioners were trying to find solutions for the clients within the frames of the current rules and regulations, limited by the resources allocated for vocational rehabilitation activities. However, the environment was also found to be dynamic with changing, and in some cases conflicting, enterprise objectives, Furthermore, the enterprise objectives were not broken down into tangible objectives on the operational level. The physical team meetings and the meetings with the clients constituted essential parts of the work practices and it is concluded that these meetings should not be substituted by technology. The case management could, however, be supported by a flexible tool that meets the users' needs of freedom of action.

This thesis presents a new methodology named CASADEMA (CApturing Semi-Automated DEcision MAking) which captures the interaction between humans and the technology they use to support their decision-making within the domain of Information Fusion. We are particularly interested in characterising the interaction between human decision makers and artefacts in semi-automated fusion processes. In our investigation we found that the existing approaches are limited in their ability to capture such interactions in sufficient detail. The presented method is built upon a distributed-cognition perspective. The use of this particular theoretical framework from cognitive science enables the method to take into account not only the role of the data captured in the physical and digital artefacts of the fusion system (e.g., radar readings, information from a fax or database, a piece of paper, etc.), but also the cognitive support function of the artefacts themselves (e.g., as an external memory) as part of the fusion process. That is, the interdependencies between the fusion process and decision-making can be captured. This thesis thus contributes to two main fields. Firstly, it enables, through CASADEMA, a distributed-cognition perspective of fusion processes in the, otherwise, rather technology-oriented field of Information Fusion. This has important conceptual implications, since it views fusion processes as extending beyond the boundary of physical/computer systems, to include humans, technology, and tools, as well as the interactions between them. It is argued that a better understanding of these interactions can lead to a better design of fusion processes, making CASADEMA an important contribution to the information fusion field. Secondly, the thesis provides, again in the form of CASADEMA, a practical application of the distributed-cognition theoretical framework. Importantly, the notations and definitions introduced in CASADEMA structure the otherwise currently rather loosely defined concepts and approaches in distributed cognition research. Hence, the work presented here also contributes to the fields of cognitive science and human-computer interaction. / <p>Examining Committee: Henrik Artman, Docent (Kungliga tekniska högskolan), Nils Dahlbäck, Professor (Linköpings universitet), Anna-Lisa Osvalder, Professor (Chalmers tekniska högskola)</p>

The background to this thesis is the impact of information technology on libraries and librarywork. If information technology causes changes in the tasks and work of libraries, thenlibrary organisations should also change. It is important to engage and inform the staff if suchchanges are to succeed. This thesis investigates the notions about library tasks and librarywork among eight &quot;middle-managers&quot; at Linkopings universitetsbibliotek.The investigation is based on interviews and then analysed with Soft Systems Methodology(SSM). By identifying the &quot;Weltanschauung&quot; of the staff, the thesis tries to create logicallydesirable and culturally feasible models of systems relevant to the situation at Linkopingsuniversitetsbibliotek. Based on the interviews, this thesis proposes two such models.The first model aims to make the library users competent to seek, find and evaluate their owninformation. The aim of the second model is to make library work more efficient by gettingthe staff to see themselves as parts of a process instead of isolated functions.

The essay concerns &quot;the knowledge society&quot;, IT and the possibilities of school being changedto meet the future. The purpose was to reflect the ideas of researchers and authorities concerningwork and education in &quot;the knowledge society&quot; and to illuminate/shed light on theimportance of information technology in this connection, to map organizational and pedagogicalshortcomings in the current school system and the changes that can be needed, and to investigatehow these changes can affect teachers, pupils and librarians.The investigation, which was a text analysis of normative and futurist sources, was especiallydirected towards how modem information technology can influence education/teaching.The differences between researchers and authorities were most obvious in the view of theimportance of knowledge of facts and central control mechanisms for standards or grading.For the authorities, who were devoid of a thought out/carefully prepared and consequent viewof knowledge and by that also of pedagogics, the information technique was the foremostcause of a change in pedagogy. The researchers also perceived the possibilities of IT, butemphasized the importance of pedagogical innovations irrespective of the technology

The paper aims to find out how staff and users at two public libraries and one Internetcafeuse Internet. The purpose has been to find out what they find and how they use the informa­tion they retrieve. The studies are based on eight longer interviews with the staff and 33 shorter with the users, who also were observed for a week. The paper includes a background chap­ter about Internet, search tools and the studied places. The following chapters are about pre­vious research, our survey and a discussion with the results, literature and our opinion.We have found out that Internet is usually used for information retrieval. That staff educa­tion is of importance when an implementation is made. Most of the users wanted to use Internet for free, but many of them were willing to pay a small amount. The users in the survey were very different according to age and sex.

This thesis deals with options about information technology in education, the starting pointbeing a project in progress, namely Ostindieprojektet. This is the first collaboration betweenDatatorget and Stadsmuséet in Göteborg. The research is built on a phenomenological approach.The &quot;backbone&quot; information is collected from qualitative interviews, conducted mainlyduring March-April 1995.The questions for the interviews deal with the opinions about the reasons with Ostindieprojektetand IT in education, what conditions required to complete Ostindieprojektet and the ITdevelopment, the availability of the material, how IT-use can affect education, possible qualitiesfor the student with IT-use and how IT-use can affect the role of the school-1ibrary as ateaching tool.Some key subjects examined in the thesis deals with governmental investigations, viewsabout pedagogic and knowledge, problem-based leaming, computer-based education and therole of the school-library. The research shows that the interviewers have the same opinionsas the above mentioned key subjects. In completing the thesis we hope we have created aforum for critical discussion.

<p>Date June 12, 2008</p><p>Program IT Management</p><p>Authors Jessica Jarrell, 820506.</p><p>Västerås</p><p>Rais Iqbal, 791229.</p><p>Västerås</p><p>Supervisor Ole Liljefors</p><p>Title Business-to-Business IT Integration</p><p>Introduction</p><p>As business world has moved into digital era, new trends in business models have been emerged to do business. Digital infrastructure provided by internet enables enterprises to extend their boundaries for new customer and trading partners. Extending the enterprise without a solid IT infrastructure is incomplete, this is the reasons that enterprises are investing more and more in IT to build an IT integrated infrastructure where all its trading partners are linked together. On the other hand, technological world provides solutions and services to build IT integration for such extended enterprises. A wide variety of IT integration solutions and patterns available for enterprise to meet their integration goals, but this often brings unclear situation where companies have to think a lot before implementing IT integration patterns. A slight mistake in this scenario could shake the equilibrium between IT and business, to keep the equilibrium steady companies need to thoroughly examine their short-term and long-term goals and then different integration patterns can be employed to meet these goals.</p><p>Research Question</p><p>What approaches can be helpful for companies to accomplish successful business-to-business IT integration pattern for their short-term and long-term goals?</p><p>Purpose</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to describe the concept of extended enterprises and, identify and describe the existing B2B IT integration approaches employed by extended enterprises.</p><p>Method</p><p>The research is of qualitative type and secondary data is used to conduct this research. Books and research papers has been used to construct theoretical framework. Electronic databases available at library of Mälardalen University such as Google scholar, Emerald and interlibrary network of Sweden (Libris) are used to search for secondary data.</p><p>Analysis Findings from the detailed literature study are analyzed to answer the research question. Integration patterns are analyzed described by the different authors of integrations patterns in three different ways. Firstly, integration patterns were analyzed in term of their advantages and disadvantages with technology and business, secondly, maturity of these integration patterns are analyzed and finally these integration patterns are analyzed for company’s short-term and long-term goals.</p><p>Conclusion Business process oriented and method-oriented approaches are good for long-term goals due to handling of business process management in both approaches and reusability aspects of method oriented approach. For short-term goals portal-oriented approach dominating in the integration community, application interface oriented approach is also good to meet the short-term goals. However, combinations of different approaches are found feasible.</p>

<p>Date: 12-June-2008</p><p>Authors: Muhammad Saeed – 760721</p><p>Västerås – Sweden</p><p>Mehmood Ziauddin – 830730</p><p>Västerås – Sweden</p><p>Title: A Structured Approach for Evaluating Risk Impacts in IT Projects</p><p>Introduction: Risk is an integral part of any project and it’s more appropriate to say for IT because it is changing with a very fast pace. Different surveys, reports and researches show astonishing statistics about the risks in IT projects. Through proper risk assessment techniques most of the uncertainties can be reduced while initiating, implementing and improving IT projects. Different authors talk about different risks and different strategies to respond to them. It becomes difficult at times to keep in check all the risks. Often risk management is over hyped, and often it’s totally neglected. Their needs to be a balanced approached in risk management.</p><p>Problem: How a structured approach will be beneficial for an organization in assessing risk impacts on IT Projects?</p><p>Purpose: The aim of this report is to develop and analyze a structured approach which will permit an organization in identifying & categorizing risks and measuring their impact on IT Projects.</p><p>Method: Exploratory research approach is used and data collection is done using secondary sources. Our thesis is qualitative research based. Qualitative research is the one which is not relying on statistical data as compared to quantitative research.</p><p>Besides our text books and study material, the main source of information was internet databases and university library from where we read different articles, thesis and books. Majority of the material studied was collected from Mälardalen University Library’s online databases like, Elin@Mälardalen, Compendex, Emerald and Ebrary. We also consulted some books which we got by inter-library loan from Mälardalen University.</p><p>Conclusion: With the help of Remenyi’s approach for categorizing risks and Applegate’s approach of measuring risk impact, we have managed to develop a structured approach and reached a conclusion that proper identification and categorizing of risks can be very beneficial for an organization in numerous ways. This systematic way assists top management, project managers, IT & non IT Personnel is taking preemptive measures for managing risks. The benefits it brings is that it gives an equal understanding within the organization and this structured approach gives an in-depth and clear understanding of the risks associated with IT projects.</p>

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