The aim of this thesis is to understand how organizational changes within collection development of printed media affect public librarians’ perception of community of practice and professional identity. The data collection method used is semi-structured interviews with nine public librarians in Gothenburg regarding their experience of centralized acquisition and floating collections. The material is analyzed within Wenger’s theoretical framework concerning communities of practice and identity in practice. The findings show a spectrum of experiences. There is a general difference in the result between respondents representing the central library and the district libraries. The librarians at the central library, now responsible for all acquisitions, tend to be more positive to the changes. The respondents who experience most impact express an experience of lost control over the collections and the process of selecting new media. They express difficulties monitoring new literature after the centralization. Even though all respondents state the users as the primary focus, they have different approaches in terms of how the printed collections should be used to meet the users’ needs. Three themes are identified in the discussion section. Firstly, the public librarians in Gothenburg are discussed as a community of practice in terms of Wenger’s three characterizing dimensions. Secondly, collection development in relation to practice and identity is discussed. Finally, the respondents’ experience of centralized acquisitions and floating collections is discussed, using the prevalent distinction between a focus on the collection or a focus on the user as a starting point.

This is the project report for the master thesis project in Industrial design engineering at Luleå University of Technology. The project spanned from January to June 2018. The project took place at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) in the sub-division FSV MarkV. FMV makes sure that Sweden’s defence and military have the proper and functioning equipment, whereas MarkV is responsible for providing services directed towards equipment operated on land.  MarkV wanted to implement standard as part of their planned introduction of MarkV Production System (MPS) in 2019. MPS faced the challenge of implementation at several geographically dispersed workshops. This project was therefore carried out to investigate if and how centralized standards could be implemented within their geographically dispersed organization. The project has included visits to the workshops in Boden and Luleå as well as participation at a meeting with the project group developing MPS. However, the project has mainly been conducted from a theoretical standpoint, where literature about this subject has been explored. From the theoretical framework, a requirement specification was compiled. This specification was used to point out the key components to a successful implementation. The result from this project was a model developed to describe how each and every of the key component worked, as well as how MarkV could go about affecting it. The key components in this model was standard, supporting structure, managers and leaders, employees and participation, organizational culture and dealing with resistance. A section in this model was later dedicated to addressing what must be thought of before full roll-out. It was concluded that MarkV can implement centralized standards. However, MarkV must understand that the demands put on the organization will vary between standard and standard work. Standards were also considered less likely to meet contradiction upon implementation compared to standard work. The obstacles to implementation was identified as human resistance and non-human resistance. However, it was also concluded that non-human actors, such as the standard itself and the platform for MPS could possibly facilitate change if properly designed. Identifying the root cause of resistance could contribute to the change process in terms of acting as constructive critique. Using the proposed rule-of-thumb could help MarkV cope with resistance without spending too much energy on convincing employees. For MarkV to maintain and improve standard, it was concluded that they must perform follow-up and constructively use deviations. MarkV has been recommended to use the developed model in their further development of MPS. Practical tips on how to affect individual components has been presented in the model itself as well as in the final recommendation. / Detta examensarbete genomfördes som det sista momentet i civilingenjörsutbildningen Teknisk Design vid Luleå tekniska universitet med inriktning produktionsdesign. Projektet sträckte sig från januari till juni under 2018. Projektet genomfördes hos Försvarets Materielverk (FMV) inom MarkV som är den del av Förråd, Service och verkstäder (FSV). FMV säkerställer att Sveriges försvar och militär har rätt och fungerade materiel. MarkV är ansvariga för att erbjuda tjänster som är riktade mot materiel som opereras på land. MarkV hade som mål att implementera standard i samband med introduktionen av MarkV produktionssystem (MPS) under 2019. Att implementera MPS i MarkV sågs som en utmaning eftersom verksamheten består av 24 stycken geografiskt utspridda markverkstäder. Detta projekt genomfördes för att utvärdera om och hur centraliserade standarder skulle kunna implementeras i deras verksamhet. Projektet inkluderade besök vid markverkstäderna i Boden och Luleå, samt innefattade deltagande vid ett möte med projektgruppen som utvecklar MPS. Projektet har däremot främst genomförts ur ett teoretiskt perspektiv där litteraturen inom detta område har utforskats. Från den teoretiska referensramen sammanställdes en kravspecifikation som identifierade vilka nyckelkomponenter som behöver tas hänsyn till för en framgångsrik implementering. Resultatet från detta arbete var en modell som förklarade hur dessa nyckelkomponenter fungerade, samt förklarade hur MarkV kan påverka dessa. Nyckelkomponenterna som inkluderades i modellen var standard, supporting structure, managers and leaders, employees and participation, organizational culture, dealing with resistance och before full roll-out. Slutsatsen som drogs var att MarkV kan implementera centrala standarder. Kraven som kommer att ställas på MarkV kommer däremot att variera beroende på om implementeringen innefattar standardiserade arbetssätt eller enbart standard. Standardiserade arbetssätt ansågs mer sannolikt att möta motstånd. De två olika typer av motstånd som identifierades var mänskligt och icke-mänskligt motstånd. Slutsatsen kunde även dras att icke-mänskliga aktörer, likt standarden i sig själv samt plattformen för MPS, kan främja förändringsprocessen. Att identifiera rotorsaken till motstånd ansågs kunna bidra konstruktivt till förändringsprocessen. Genom att använda den föreslagna tumregeln kan MarkV bemöta utmaningen med motstånd utan att spendera för mycket energi på att övertala anställda. För att MarkV ska kunna upprätthålla och förbättra standarder kunde det konkluderas att uppföljning och ett konstruktivt nyttjande av avvikelser kommer att vara nödvändigt. MarkV har blivit rekommenderade att använda den utvecklade modellen vid det fortsatta arbetet med att utveckla MPS. Praktiska tips på hur MarkV kan påverka de individuella komponenterna har getts löpande i modellen samt i den avslutande rekommendationen.