Background: The globalization has made organizations knowledge based and knowledge as a key resource in order to keep up with the changing market. Therefore, knowledge management became increasingly important which also was customer-centric throughout the whole supply chain in order to create customer value. With knowledge management being important, transfer barriers arose and as the increased collection of customer data was also evident as a result of organizations becoming tmore customer-centric and the rapid changes in technology. As a result of this, privacy issues about the data of the customer arose which lead to the implementation of GDPR. Research Questions: What are the challenges and possibilities of the processes of customer knowledge transfer between organizations in a distributor-dealer relationship? In what way has the implementation of GDPR affected the transfer of customer knowledge between a distributor and a dealer? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how customer knowledge is maintained and transferred between organizations within a distributor-dealer relationship. In addition, the paper aim to investigate what forces affects the processes of transferring customer knowledge within these types of relationships. Furthermore, the study investigates what effects transfer barriers and the implementation of GDPR has on customer knowledge transfer within a distributor-dealer relationship. Method: The paper investigated two cases. One case entailed one distributor and one dealer which had a relationship through a common supply chain. The qualitative data was obtained through 13 semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: This study proves that customer knowledge transfer has both challenges and possibilities in a supply chain with a distributor and dealer relationship. Furthermore, there are several factors that affect this transfer such as communication, customer relationship management and transfer barriers. In addition, GDPR has barely any impact on the customer knowledge transfer. However, it does have an impact on the processes of organizations and can be seen as an opportunity for organizations even if organizations sometimes choose to see the negative aspects.

Particulièrement lors de collaborations dans le cadre de chaînes logistiques ou d'entreprises virtuelles, établir les workflows collaboratifs est une étape laborieuse car souvent réalisée soit de façon humaine, soit avec des méthodes manquant de flexibilité. Sur la base d'un réseau social d'entreprises, cette thèse vise à faciliter cette étape en proposant un service de déduction de processus collaboratifs inter-organisationnels. Cela soulève trois problèmes: (i) trouver les activités qui doivent être exécutées pour remplir les objectifs de la collaboration (Quoi?), (ii) sélectionner les partenaires pouvant réaliser ces activités (Qui?) et (iii) ordonner ces activités en un processus métier collaboratif (Quand?). Dans le cadre d'un réseau social, il est attendu que plusieurs organisations soient capables de fournir les mêmes activités. Dans un tel contexte de concurrence entre les organisations, une optimisation globale permet de trouver un processus final quasi-optimal, en prenant en compte ces trois questions de manière simultanée : trouver l'ensemble des "meilleurs" partenaires et leurs activités dans un contexte de collaboration spécifique. A cette fin, des ontologies de collaboration ont été développées et permettent de représenter et collecter des connaissances sur les collaborations. Ainsi, quand les utilisateurs remplissent leurs profils sur le réseau social, le système peut comprendre (i) les attentes des utilisateurs lorsqu'ils fournissent leurs objectifs de collaboration et (ii) les capacités qu'ils peuvent fournir. Un outil d'aide à la décision, basé sur un algorithme d'optimisation par colonies de fourmis permet ensuite d'exploiter les ontologies de collaboration afin de trouver un processus quasi-optimal répondant aux attentes et objectifs de la collaboration. Les résultats de cette thèse s'inscrivent au sein du projet FUI OpenPaaS dont le but est d'établir un nouveau réseau social d'entreprises visant à faciliter leurs collaborations intra et inter-organisationnelles. / Especially in the context of collaborative supply chains and virtual enterprises, the step of designing the collaborative workflows remains laborious because either it is still carried out humanly or the methods lack of flexibility. Based on an enterprise social network, this thesis aims at facilitating this step by proposing a service for the deduction of collaborative processes. It raises three main issues: (i) finding the activities to execute that answer the objectives of the collaboration (What?), (ii) selecting the corresponding partners (Who?) and (iii) ordering the activities into a collaborative business process (When?). Moreover, it is expected that many companies could be able to provide the same activities, on the enterprise social network. In this competitive context, a global optimization should be set up in order to find the quasi-optimal collaborative process that answer these three questions simultaneously. A three-dimensional solution is proposed here. First, a non-functional framework has been set up in order to determine the criteria that make a « good » partner in a specific collaborative context. Then, collaborative ontologies have been implemented and enable the representation and the acquisition of collaborative knowledge, so that the IT system can understand (a) the user's needs when they model their objectives of collaboration and (b) the user's capabilities when they model their profiles on the enterprise social network. And finally, a tool for decision support has been implemented thanks to an ant colony optimization algorithm that exploits the collaborative ontologies in order to provide a quasi-optimal process that fits the context of the collaboration and answers its objective. The results are in line with the FUI French project OpenPaaS which aims at offering an enterprise social network to facilitate their collaborations.

Myndigheter har en central roll i dagens samhälle och många av dem möter vi varje dag vilket gör deras arbete högst aktuellt. Deras ansvarsområden överlappar ibland varandra vilket kräver att de samverkar. Tack vare samverkan kan myndigheterna effektivisera sitt arbete och uppnå bättre resultat. Däremot fungerar deras samverkan inte alltid på ett effektivt sätt utan är något som måste utvecklas och skapas tillsammans. Syftet med denna studie var att få en bredare förståelse för samt bidra med kunskap kring interorganisatorisk samverkan vid återvinning av brottsutbyten med särskilt fokus på faktorer som kan främja respektive utgöra hinder för samverkan. Efter avslutad studie har vi gett ett bidrag om de faktorer som kännetecknar interorganisatoriska samband vid brottsbekämpning om brottsutbyten samt gett förslag på förbättringar. Vi valde att använda oss av en fallstudie som metod där en kvalitativ forskningsansats tillämpades. För att få olika perspektiv samt en ökad förståelse för fenomenet som studerats har vi intervjuat sex experter, därmed en från varje myndighet. Vår teoretiska referensram består av forskning som behandlar samverkans betydelse, former och förutsättningar med särskild fokus på främjande respektive hindrande faktorer för interorganisatorisk samverkan. Vi presenterar även en analysmodell som fungerade som en utgångspunkt då vi med hjälp av denna konkretiserade vårt informationsbehov. I empirikapitlet presenterar vi de olika myndigheterna och deras roll i samverkan samt resultaten av intervjuerna. Information kring brottsutbyten presenteras också vilket utgör grunden för den empiriska bakgrunden och den empiriska undersökningen. Detta utgör tillsammans med den teoretiska referensramen grunden för vår diskussion och slutsats. Vår studie visar att det finns faktorer i de utvalda myndigheternas interorganisatoriska samverkan som utgör hinder samt främjar deras arbete kring återvinning av brottsutbyten. Engagemanget ser vi som en främjande faktor i myndigheternas interorganisatoriska samverkan. Kommunikationen mellan myndigheterna utgör en främjande faktor samtidigt som det också finns hinder i kommunikationen. Andra hinder för samverkan är sekretess och brist på relevanta verktyg för uppföljning. Eftersom myndigheterna arbetar utifrån olika ansvarsområden, uppdrag och regelverk konstaterar vi avslutningsvis att samverkan behöver bättre styrning som kan stödja pågående projekt och bidra till bättre synkronisering, koordinering och integrering av arbetsprocesserna. / Authorities play a central role in today's society. We meet many of them every day, which makes their work very actual. Their responsibilities sometimes overlap, which requires them to interact. Through this collaboration, the authorities can improve their efficiency and achieve better results. However, their collaboration does not always work well but is something that has to be created and developed together. The purpose of this study was to contribute with knowledge about inter-organizational collaboration in the reclaiming of profits from crime. We wanted to get a wider understanding of government collaboration that takes place with particular focus on factors that can promote or constitute barriers to collaboration. After completing the study, we have made a contribution about the factors that characterize inter-organizational collaboration in the reclaiming of profits from crime and suggest improvements. We have conducted a qualitative case study as a method. To get different perspectives and an increased understanding of the phenomenon studied, we have interviewed six experts, one from each authority. Our theoretical framework consists of research addressed the importance of collaborations as well as forms and conditions of collaboration with particular focus on facilitators and barriers for inter-organizational collaboration. We also present an analysis model which was used as a starting point for our information needs. In the empirical part of the present study we present the authorities' role in the collaboration as well as the results of the interviews. Information about the reclaiming the profits from crime is also presented and it forms the basis for the empirical background and the empirical study. This, together with the theoretical framework, forms the basis for our discussion and conclusion. This study identifies important facilitators and barriers for the inter-organizational collaboration in the reclaiming of profits from crime. The factors such as commitment impacts the collaboration positively. Communication between the authorities constitutes a promotion factor while there are also obstacles in the communication. Other barriers in collaboration are confidentiality and lack of relevant follow-up tools. As the authorities work on different responsibilities, tasks and regulations, we conclude that the collaboration requires better governance that would support ongoing projects and contribute to better synchronization, coordination and integration of the work processes.

Over the recent years, the paradigm of Innovation Laboratories (abr. InnoLabs) is gaining an increasing attention among business organizations as a potential source of assistance in the process of the development of new or the improvement of their existing products and/or services. Business organizations approach the InnoLabs in the search for assistance in dealing with the challenges of the often times complex and uncertain innovation process, and ultimately become successful in their innovation projects. Although the overall goal of the existing InnoLabs is to support the systematic, effective, and efficient innovation development, they target different innovation challenges and thereby vary in their focus and service offerings. As a consequence, all the innovation support that might be needed in the course of an innovation process remains dispersed among different InnoLabs. In this esteem, this thesis aims to centralize all the mediated support offered by the existing InnoLabs by bringing them into a collaborative network. In pursuance of this, initially, the diversity among the existing InnoLabs in terms of their structural and functional manifestations is explored by employing a triangulation of online survey and in-depth expert interviews with the InnoLab facilitators. Subsequently, based on the diversity observed herein, the incentives, approaches, and possibilities of interconnection among InnoLabs are determined. Having conceptualized the framework for inter-InnoLab collaboration, the next part of this thesis deals with facilitating such collaborations in an online space. The internet, since its inception, has drastically altered the practices of intra- and inter-organizational connectivity. Recently, one could observe a growing interest among all types of organizations towards the social networking sites (abr. SNSs) as an effective medium for reaching out to a global audience. As a result, a significant amount of business related information is already available and continuously accumulating on SNSs. However, the SNSs fall inadequate in supporting the inter-InnoLab collaboration because of the missing dedicated functionalities, isolated platform boundaries, platform dependencies, lack of support for domain-specific features, privacy concerns, and issues of data transparency. In response to this, this thesis advocates the designing of dedicated inter-organizational collaboration platforms with seamless integration of SNS data. Successively, employing a design science research approach, a dedicated, domain specific, and SNS integrated web-based collaboration platform (the InnoLab_Net) is designed for supporting inter-InnoLab collaborative activities.

Over the recent years, the paradigm of Innovation Laboratories (abr. InnoLabs) is gaining an increasing attention among business organizations as a potential source of assistance in the process of the development of new or the improvement of their existing products and/or services. Business organizations approach the InnoLabs in the search for assistance in dealing with the challenges of the often times complex and uncertain innovation process, and ultimately become successful in their innovation projects. Although the overall goal of the existing InnoLabs is to support the systematic, effective, and efficient innovation development, they target different innovation challenges and thereby vary in their focus and service offerings. As a consequence, all the innovation support that might be needed in the course of an innovation process remains dispersed among different InnoLabs. In this esteem, this thesis aims to centralize all the mediated support offered by the existing InnoLabs by bringing them into a collaborative network. In pursuance of this, initially, the diversity among the existing InnoLabs in terms of their structural and functional manifestations is explored by employing a triangulation of online survey and in-depth expert interviews with the InnoLab facilitators. Subsequently, based on the diversity observed herein, the incentives, approaches, and possibilities of interconnection among InnoLabs are determined. Having conceptualized the framework for inter-InnoLab collaboration, the next part of this thesis deals with facilitating such collaborations in an online space. The internet, since its inception, has drastically altered the practices of intra- and inter-organizational connectivity. Recently, one could observe a growing interest among all types of organizations towards the social networking sites (abr. SNSs) as an effective medium for reaching out to a global audience. As a result, a significant amount of business related information is already available and continuously accumulating on SNSs. However, the SNSs fall inadequate in supporting the inter-InnoLab collaboration because of the missing dedicated functionalities, isolated platform boundaries, platform dependencies, lack of support for domain-specific features, privacy concerns, and issues of data transparency. In response to this, this thesis advocates the designing of dedicated inter-organizational collaboration platforms with seamless integration of SNS data. Successively, employing a design science research approach, a dedicated, domain specific, and SNS integrated web-based collaboration platform (the InnoLab_Net) is designed for supporting inter-InnoLab collaborative activities.

Samverkan inom psykiatri/socialpsykiatri inbegriper organisationer och de professionella roller som utgår ifrån olika lagar och riktlinjer, organisatoriska strukturer samt teoretiska och professionella grunder. Syftet med denna studie är att ge en bild av hur en kommunal socialnämnd och en lokal psykiatrisk verksamhet kan arbeta med en långsiktig strategi för samverkan. Denna fallstudie granskar samverkan mellan psykiatrin och socialtjänsten i en kommun i Stockholms län. Ansatsen är organisationsteoretisk och belyser de strukturer och processer som samverkan innebär. De organisationer som berörs tillhör olika administrativa och politiska sektorer inom landsting respektive kommun och innefattar olika professionella inriktningar såsom läkare, socialsekreterare, sjuksköterskor, psykologer, kuratorer, arbetsterapeuter, boendestödjare, mentalskötare m.fl. Fallstudien omfattar dels en dokumentationsstudie över avtal och rutiner för samverkan, utvärderingar och andra typer av dokumentation samt en intervjustudie av personer med olika professionella roller inom respektive organisation. Resultaten visar att framgångsrik samverkan bygger på klara strukturer utifrån mandat från respektive organisations ledning samt processinriktade faktorer, framför allt behovet av gemensamma "arenor" som stöd till de direkta kontakter som behöver tas i arbetet med individuella patienter och klienter. / Collaboration in the area of mental health involves organizations and professional roles with their basis in differing laws and guidelines, organizational structures and theoretical and professional foundations. The aim of this study is to examine the structures and processes involved in collaboration between the social service and providers of psychiatric care. Drawing on organizational theory concerning the nature of collaboration and factors which can hinder or assist successful collaboration, a case study has been constructed examining collaboration between a local psychiatric clinic in the region of Stockholm and the social service in a local community. The organizations concerned belong to different administrative and political sectors and involve professionals with various specialties such as psychiatrists, social welfare secretaries, nurses, psychologists, counsellors, occupational therapists and others. A study of formal agreements and routines for collaboration, evaluations and other forms of documentation, in combination with an interview study of persons with different professional roles in each respective organization, reveals the importance of a commitment to support collaboration from the management of each organization and the systematic creation and upholdning of meeting places for the various professions in order to support and facilitate cooperation concerning individual clients and patients.

Konkurrensen på marknaden blir allt tuffare och i takt med detta blir kundperspektivet en allt viktigare framgångsfaktor. Syftet med denna rapport är därför att undersöka och fördjupa förståelsen för hur företag inom vitvarubranschen använder sig av användarinvolvering i produktutvecklingsprocessens olika faser. Dessutom ska det skapas en förståelse för vad detta ger för effekter för företaget samt hur de använder och sprider kunskap från involveringen av konsumenter. Forskningsfrågorna besvarades genom en djupgående litteraturstudie för sedan att bygga upp en teoretisk referensram och därigenom få en uppfattning av rådande teorier och metoder som används vid kundinvolvering. Detta jämfördes sedan med en semistrukturerad intervjustudie där kundinvolvering inom vitvarubranschen undersökts. Respondenterna som deltog i intervjustudien var anställda hos Electrolux, ett internationellt företag som arbetar med vitvaruprodukter. Studien visar att det finns olika åsikter kring kundinvolvering vad gäller i vilka faser konsumenten ska involveras i processen och i vilken grad involveringen ska ske. Resultatet visade att de metoder som används för att integrera användare i produktutvecklingen huvudsakligen används i informationssyfte för att skapa en förståelse och kunskap om konsumentens användande av produkten, som sedan kan användas av produktutvecklarna. Att involvera konsumenter i arbetet ansågs främst ha positiva effekter, men att det fanns vissa svårigheter som var viktiga att ta hänsyn till för att nå ett önskat och användbart resultat. Dessutom visar studien att tvärfunktionella samarbeten bidrar till enklare kommunikation och informationshantering eftersom flera olika funktioner är med under hela produktutvecklingsprocessen. / The competition in the market is getting far more resilient, hence, the customer perspective becomes an increasingly important success factor. The purpose of this report is, therefore, to investigate and immerse the understanding of how companies in the home appliance industry implement customer involvement in the different phases of the product development process. In addition, an understanding of how customer involvement will affect the company and how they use and spread the knowledge from these implementations will be created. The research questions were answered through an in-depth literature study to create a theoretical framework and therefore gain an understanding of prevailing theories and methods used in customer involvement. This was subsequently compared with a semi-structured interview study in which customer involvement in the home appliances industry was investigated. The respondents who participated in the interview study worked at Electrolux, an international company in the home appliance industry. The study shows that there are different opinions about customer involvement regarding the phases in which the consumer should be involved in the process and to what extent the integration should take place. The results of this research indicate that the methods used to integrate users in the product development process are mainly for informational purposes, to create an understanding and knowledge of the consumer's use of the product. This knowledge could later on can be used by the product developers. Involving consumers in the process was considered to have positive effects, however there were some difficulties that were important to take into account in order to achieve a desired and useful result. The study also shows that cross-functional teams could contribute to easier communication and information management since many different functions are involved throughout the product development process.

Les collaborations interorganisationnelles apparaissent de plus en plus incontournables pour s’attaquer concrètement, et avec quelques chances de résultats, à nos problèmes et défis collectifs les plus importants, que ce soit dans les domaines de l’environnement, de la santé ou de la sécurité publique. Ces initiatives de gouvernance collaborative surpassent chacune des organisations individuelles pour décider et intervenir collectivement. Dans cette visée, cette recherche contribue à mieux comprendre le processus de concertation et les interactions entre les acteurs et les organisations qui participent à des initiatives de collaboration interorganisationnelle où de nombreuses parties prenantes sont interpellées. Plus précisément, cette étude porte sur la problématique des réseaux d’acteurs et de la gouvernance en sécurité routière au Québec. Nous nous sommes penchés sur l’expérience de la Table québécoise de la sécurité routière (TQSR) afin de comprendre les enjeux actuels de représentation et de concertation en matière d’action gouvernementale. Cette recherche examine le rôle de l’identité des acteurs et de leurs interactions dans les processus de construction de consensus et de prise de décision, de même que les divers enjeux de communication inhérents à ce genre d’exercice collectif. Nous démontrons également qu’un facteur de succès d’une collaboration interorganisationnelle repose sur la capacité des acteurs à construire une identité collective malgré leurs intérêts divergents et parfois opposés. Cette thèse améliore donc notre compréhension des mécanismes et des processus à la base des collaborations interorganisationnelles comme pratique de gouvernance collaborative, un mode de gestion de plus en plus utilisé dans l’administration de nos sociétés contemporaines. Cette thèse contribue également à montrer la manière dont les organisations se construisent et se maintiennent localement par l’entremise de la communication et de ses modalités. / Successfully dealing with organizational problems and challenges, regardless of sector, increasingly involves inter-organizational collaboration. Collective governance is involved the whole of the collective’s capacity to intervene and make decisions far exceeds that of any one organization. In this vein, this research contributes to a better understanding of the collaboration processes and the interactions among the actors participating in multi-stakeholder inter-organizational collaborative initiatives. More specifically, this study deals with the issue of actor networks and road safety governance in Quebec. We focused on the work of the Table québécoise de la sécurité routière (TQSR) in order to explore the ongoing issues of representation and communication with regard to public policy. This research looks at the role of actors’ identities and their interactions in the negotiation and decision-making processes as well as the multiple communication issues inherent to this sort of collective work. We also demonstrate that inter-organizational collaborative success rests on the actors’ capacities to build a collective identity, despite divergent and sometimes even opposing interests. This thesis thus improves our understanding of the mechanisms and processes that lie at the root of inter-organizational collaborations as collaborative governance practices increasingly common in modern public management. This study also advances our understanding of how organizations construct and maintain themselves via communication in its multiple modalities.