Det råder delade meningar om konsekvenserna av att arbeta i öppna kontorslandskap. Kommunikation och en bra laganda anses vara ett grundläggande element i framgångsrika organisationer. Då användandet av öppna kontorslandskap ökat finns ett behov av forskning inom området. Syftet är att utifrån ett arbetspsykologiskt perspektiv undersöka medarbetarnas upplevelse av kontorslandskap med fokus på den verbala kommunikationen och lagandan mellan medarbetarna, detta genom åtta deltagare i Downs & Hazens (1977) Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire samt semistrukturerade intervjuer. Respondenterna upplever en öppen och positiv verbal kommunikation dock upplevs den även som ett störningsmoment. Lagandan upplevs som stark och främjande av den individuella och organisatoriska prestationen. Arbetssituationen skulle förbättras om privata utrymmen upprättas samt regler och rutiner gällande agerande i kontorslandskap införs.

Den här experimentella studien undersökte huruvida man kan skyddas från bakgrundstal genom att använda sig av ett annorlunda teckensnitt än det man vanligtvis läser. Trettiotvå försöksdeltagare deltog i experimentet. Deltagarnas uppgift var att minnas information från texter om två påhittade folkslag som antingen var skriven med ett vanligt teckensnitt (Times New Roman) eller ett annorlunda teckensnitt (Haettenschweiler) i två ljudbetingelser: tystnad och irrelevant bakgrundstal. Resultatet visade att försöksdeltagarnas prestation på läsminnestestet försämrades av bakgrundstalet när texten de skulle minnas var skriven med Times New Roman, men inte när texten var skriven med Haettenschweiler. Det tyder på att man kan skyddas från att bli distraherad av bakgrundstal när man läser kortare texter skrivna med ett annorlunda teckensnitt, vilket kan vara en enkel lösning att använda i ett kontorslandskap. / This experimental study investigated whether a person can be protected from background speech when using of a different font then they usually reads. Thirty-two participants took part in the experiment. The participants' task was to recall information from texts about two fictitious cultures that were either written in a common font (Times New Roman) or in a different font (Haettenschweiler) in two sound conditions: silence and irrelevant background speech. The results showed that the participants' performance deteriorated on the reading memory test when they would remember a text written in Times New Roman, but not when the text was written in Haettenschweiler. This suggests that a person can be protected from background speech while reading shorter texts written in a different font than they usual read, which can be a simple solution to use in an open-plan office.

To find competencies on a workplace with flex office structure. Companies today, 2012 are facing new opportunities and challenges. Information technology develops, competition is bigger today than ever, increased environmental requirements will be added and new patterns of life and values are occurring. This means that people who work in offices feel strong pressure of conversion, which is something that people experience differently. Therefore it is essential how the working environment is designed in an office. Working in an office means a lot of information processing and we can see large changes taking place. The ability to work efficiently, flexible and to be able to lead and plan a company’s resources efficient is essential. The flex office was developed in the beginning of 1992 and was meant to be an office independent of space and time, and an office where all information and working material is gathered in a common database. At a flex office there are no given working places instead the employees chooses their working station for the day. A problem for the employees in flex office environment is to find the competencies they need. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a design proposal that solves the customer's information design problem in finding competencies at the workplace. Theoretical data has been gathered through studies of literature. Empirical data has been gathered through interviews, observation and a questionnaire. These data have then formed the basis for the design proposal which is created with help from Michanek and Breilers design model. To find the competencies, different working environments have been created and also a workplace location system. The design proposal divides the working environment in three different activity environments. These are made to help form the workplace location system; in order to include the needs from the target group as well as it gives the opportunities to find the working competencies through good information design. The workplace location system gives the employee the opportunity to find other competencies at the office by explicit showing the status and localization of the employee.

This thesis will discuss the emerging influence of film review aggregators and their effect on the changing landscape for reviews in the film industry. Specifically, this study will look at the top 150 domestic grossing films of 2010 to empirically study the effects of two specific review aggregators. A time-delayed approach to regression analysis is used to measure the influencing effects of these aggregators in the long run. Subsequently, other factors crucial to predicting film success are also analyzed in the context of sustained earnings.

This research explored how memorable messages and formal (official) university messages work together to inform and influence students’ college choices. Recognizing the ways in which university-constructed and other memorable messages influence students’ choice of college could potentially help colleges improve their recruitment messages and distinguish themselves from other institutions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain data from the participants, and the data were analyzed through a thematic, constant comparative method. Within the context of higher education, findings revealed students’ perceptions of memorable college-related messages, the sources of memorable college-related messages, the characteristics that increase the likelihood that students will recall a college-related message, and the extent to which college-related messages influenced students’ choice of college. This study extends the exploration of the memorable message construct and provides practical implications for university admission offices and their student recruitment efforts.

Arbetsförmedlingen is the Swedish national authority responsible for the work politics, and its main purpose is to create and build a solid and sustainable job market.Economic crises together with changes in the society and in the organization over the past few years mean that the unemployed individuals that come in contact with Arbetsförmedlingen are no longer a homogenous group. A lot of effort is put into helping those who may find it difficult to enter the work environment, such as youths (19 – 26 years old), people who have been unemployed or on sick leave for a long period of time, people with disabilities or immigrants who are newly arrived in Sweden.A harder social and economic climate can lead to frustration among the unemployed which mean that security measures at the offices has had to become adjusted. Local offices now have a public area where they have meetings with their clients and a locked open plan office space to which the public have no access. Working within an open plan office environment can cause health problems, mostly due to the constant background noise that comes from people having conversations on the phone, or with each other. The public areas have been furnished from a safety aspect, and different alarm functions are in place. Interviews with employees at the local Arbetsförmedlingen in Eskilstuna show that staff safety is a high priority with plenty of guidelines and directions to be followed.There are rules regulating the handling of personal information, and strategies need to be in place regarding the IT-structure that the organization is using.

Exchange is at the core of public space. Whether trading products or sharing information, exchange between people produces social interactions and spatialized hubs of activity. Without exchange public spaces fail. Today, the Internet threatens older methods of spatialized exchange as people communicate through email, pay bills electronically, and shop online. These despatialized forms of exchange are having a damaging impact on previously functioning public spaces such as the post office and retail stores. Distribution centers, meanwhile, are thriving as product exchange points but they remain completely invisible and inaccessible to the customer. With the United States Postal Service in rapid decline, once monumental buildings will soon be abandoned. Taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of post offices, I am proposing a centrally located public distribution center; giving online companies a physical presence in the city, monumentalizing the currently despatialized market, and reintroducing the public to the exchange process.

Le journal télévisé (JT) se servirait-il d'effets cinématographiques pour dramatiser certains faits? La course à l'audience souvent évoquée à partir du milieu des années 1980, en particulier depuis la privatisation de TF1, expliquerait-elle cette tendance? Sans pour autant prétendre que le JT relève de la fiction, nous émettons l'hypothèse qu'il existe une « information-cinéma » dans un but marchand. Par « information-cinéma », nous entendons une information que nous nous attendons à trouver dans une fiction mais pas dans une émission censée refléter la réalité. Notre recherche porte sur le JT de la 1ère chaîne française qui deviendra TF1 en 1975. Nous nous intéresserons plus spécialement à l'édition de 20 heures. Car, à ce jour, elle est à la fois la plus ancienne des éditions françaises et, à quelques rares périodes près, elle est la plus suivie tant en France qu'en Europe, toutes chaînes et toutes éditions confondues. Cette recherche a des facettes qui s'entrecroisent : télévision, JT, mise en scène cinématographique, marchandisation. Ceci ajouté à notre propre expérience, riche et diversifiée, notre approche se veut multidisciplinaire et exploratoire. Elle est aussi historique : une remontée dans le temps a été nécessaire pour vérifier si l'information-cinéma n'existait pas déjà au cours des années ou des décennies précédant l'arrivée des chaînes commerciales. Tout en étant restreint, l'échantillon que nous avons constitué s'est révélé suffisamment révélateur pour confirmer notre hypothèse d'une information-cinéma devenue marchande et conclure que, par la fréquence et la combinaison croissantes de l'information aux allures cinématographiques, la mission première du JT est toujours d'informer. Mais il doit aussi et de plus en plus divertir et vendre. Et ce qui est valable pour TF1 l'est sans doute pour d'autres JT en France et ailleurs. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : journal télévisé ou JT, information-cinéma, marchandisation, information, TF1

The importance of office physical layout has never been studied by scholars andentrepreneurs from the perspective of managing human resources in project-basedorganizations (PBOs) from a managerial perspective. This paper believes that officephysical layout has great influence on organizations’ working efficiency in PBOs. Withthe increase of PBOs, it requires a new context for human resource management (HRM).The paper mainly focuses on the impact of office physical layout on communication andinnovation in PBOs. In the literature review part, the paper collects together relevantresearches, experiments, and theoretical studies on physical layout, PBOs,communication and innovation, and finds out the gaps between the empirical situationsand current theoretical studies. Moreover, the relations between office physical layout,communications, innovation and organizational competitive advantage will be explored.The discussions and analysis are based on the premise that if people can maximize theopportunity of communication in PBOs through office physical layout, the possibility ofknowledge transfer and knowledge integration, creativity and innovation will also belargely improved. To testify this premise, we spent five months research time andfocused on four companies in Sweden and took interviews with their senior managers.The paper also does comparisons with the office physical layout in PBOs and in otherorganizations to find out whether organization’s natures will influence its working waysand their office physical layout. The implications of the work for both future researchand practice are taken into our considerations. The result of this research shows officephysical layout indeed has great impact on employees’ communication, innovation andworking efficiency. However, different organizations should take into their empiricalconditions into consideration when designing their office physical layout.

In recent years, the development of wireless sensor networks has made a great progress. Early projects focused on replacement of existing systems equipped with wires. These systems started out as simple static data collection networks with one smart central node that could decide further actions based on the content of the collected data. Through time, the intelligence has become more decentralized, which means the nodes now can cooperate in a more efficient and dynamic manner. The task given is to evaluate TinyOS and NesC on specific hardware from Crossbow Technology Inc, applied on an application called the Open Secure Office Project. This application is designed to enhance the security without negative effects on comfort in a frequently visited open-plan office. Finally, a real world system demonstration should be performed. We propose a solution where there is no urgent need to cover the entire office area with radio signals to maintain a secure sensor system. This is true as long as all entries and exits to the office area are “guarded” by some base station which has as main task to keep track of people and equipment entering or leaving the office. Small scale tests have been performed which show that it is possible to easily develop and maintain a wireless sensor network security system, that could be coordinated by alternative systems.