ABB Corporation is a swedish-swiss international company, specializing in power and automation technologies. The company is a joint-venture between ASEA and Brown Bouveri, merging into one company in 1988. ABB has five business unit, where the products and services mainly comes from research and development work within the company. Each business unit performs R&D initiatives and investments within respective area of reach, in order to achieve competitive products and services. ABB Corporate Research is responsible for research and development within the company where R&D initiative takes place. During autumn 2013 ABB Corporate Research will launch an improvement study, which will be the basis for subsequent major project. Information is a key factor within ABB Corporate Research, where each stakeholder in a specific project has access for specific information. The question is, how accessible/searchable is the information, and also how user-friendly is the current information system within the unit.   The mission of the conducted study is to examine what the employees of ABB Corporate Research think about the existing information distribution system for technical reports and publications, also propose overview improvements within the particular area. Delimitation has been established to conduct the study within the department of Software Architecture & Usability (SARU) in Västerås, which is a part of Automation Technology (AT) department, in order to deliver on the required time frame.   Theories regarding Innovation management, Lean thinking, Change management, Information distribution, Integration of information system and Ishikawa was studied thoroughly within the project. A qualitative research methodology was used, based on performing interviews with key personnel within SARU. The interviews converted into key factors (findings), which resulted into correlations to all key factors. A root cause analysis (Ishikawa) was performed, in order to examine and visualize which challenges appear within the current information system.   The result from the conducted analysis and correlations indicates that: the database is not user-friendly enough, it is difficult to acquire correct information, information is not in detail level due to limitation of information, it is time consuming to search in the databases in order to acquire correct information, Usually rely on internal networking instead of searching into the information system, restricted internal security and person based information dependence.   With the help of theories within the project, in combination with the conducted results from the analysis and correlations, improvements have been proposed. Due to the time frame of the project, further analysis should be performed for respective improvement proposals. The improvement proposals could be a starting point for the upcoming project. The improvements proposals are:   RSS Feeds solution for usability efficiency Standardized Work Methodology Integrated Database Interface Internal Information Transparency   The authors recommend implementing all improvement proposals, in order to further achieve productivity and efficiency within the organization.

Objectives: The concept of clinical champions has been widely promoted, yet empirically underdeveloped in health services literature. The objectives of this study are to investigate the role of the clinical champion and how it contributes to effective patient safety change. Methods: Case study design was used to examine the role of champions in the implementation of rapid response teams in two hospitals. Central themes were derived through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with key informants. Results: Analysis revealed a typology of champions: clinical, managerial, and executive. Champions engaged in five core activities: disseminating knowledge, advocating, building relationships, navigating boundaries, and facilitating consensus. Individuals became champions by informal emergence or by formal appointment combined with informal emergence. Conclusions: This study furthered understanding of patient safety champions by revealing types, activities, and modes of emergence. Findings will allow health care professionals to use an evidence-based approach to identifying and supporting champions.

The increasing competition is making increasing demands of today's businesses to be changeable. Change projects have therefore become increasingly common in order to satisfy market expectations. These projects have often proved difficult to implement and fail rather than succeed. There are many people who reflect on why this is and theorists are increasingly reasoning about the importance of communication in the change process. This is something that has given rise to a new area of expertise called change management. For the most part, it is about developing strategies for management to communicate change to employees and working together with these to reach the intended goals. In the relationship between a third party such as IT consultants and their customers the communicative challenge gets a bit different. The purpose of this study has been to identify important factor that makes communicating change a challenge in this relationship. This has occurred in the context of an IT consulting company and their interactions with the customer in the implementation process of a new web solution. The aim has been to seek greater understanding for the role of communication in the relationship. The study has resulted in a number of factors identified to be important when understanding how communication becomes a challenge in these change projects.

Objectives: The concept of clinical champions has been widely promoted, yet empirically underdeveloped in health services literature. The objectives of this study are to investigate the role of the clinical champion and how it contributes to effective patient safety change. Methods: Case study design was used to examine the role of champions in the implementation of rapid response teams in two hospitals. Central themes were derived through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with key informants. Results: Analysis revealed a typology of champions: clinical, managerial, and executive. Champions engaged in five core activities: disseminating knowledge, advocating, building relationships, navigating boundaries, and facilitating consensus. Individuals became champions by informal emergence or by formal appointment combined with informal emergence. Conclusions: This study furthered understanding of patient safety champions by revealing types, activities, and modes of emergence. Findings will allow health care professionals to use an evidence-based approach to identifying and supporting champions.

This thesis drew upon the resources of philosophical hermeneutics to construct a conceptual framework for understanding the process of educational change. The experience of a particular case of change was then analysed from the perspective of the hermeneutic change agency framework. The conceptual framework for the thesis was developed from the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer and also from writers who engaged with Gadamer, most notably, Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas. The retrieval orientation in Gadamer's hermeneutics was balanced by the critical analyses of Ricoeur and Habermas. Gadamer's notion of the 'fusion of horizons' was presented as the culmination of the change process: a fusion between the horizon of the change text, and the horizons of the change process participants. The thesis explored the potential of hermeneutic strategies such as play and conversation as a means to animate a hermeneutic form of change agentry. The case investigated in this thesis was a change process comprised of four strategies conducted over the years 1980 to 1996 at a Jesuit school located on the east coast of Australia. The change strategies aimed to promote the Jesuit ethos of the school and hence have been described in this thesis as 'ethos strategies'. The purpose of the thesis was not to evaluate the success of the ethos strategies, it was to explore how insights derived from philosophical hermeneutics could illuminate an analysis of the lived experience of a particular case of change. The subject matter of this thesis is timely because many Catholic schools are currently in a period of transition from a leadership exercised by Religious (nuns, brothers or priests) to a leadership exercised by lay people. The thesis situated the ethos programs in their theological and demographic contexts by presenting relevant theological developments from the Second Vatican Council and by describing the sharp decrease in the numbers of Religious personnel available to work in the schools. The teacher response to the ethos programs was considered in the context of the many practical difficulties associated with the scheduling of teacher development programs in fast-moving and busy schools. Although this thesis was particularly focused on change strategies that were conducted in the context of Jesuit education, the thesis is more generally situated in the research literature on educational change. The hermeneutic orientation of this thesis highlighted the elements of understanding, interpretation and meaning, and these elements are given some prominence in the more recent research literature on the change process. The complexity of change and the cultural dimension of the change process has been emphasised in the most recent educational change research literature and these themes have also found expression in this thesis. Participant observation, document analysis and qualitative interviews were used as data collection strategies for the case study in this thesis. The researcher was actively involved in the events investigated in the case study, and a case narrative was developed from the researcher's experience as a change agent responsible for implementing one of the change strategies at the case site. The case narrative was written in the first person and from the perspective of the researcher as a change manager. The methodology of the research was grounded in the hermeneutic insight that understanding and tact lies at the heart of the research process, rather than procedure and method. Hermeneutic research relies upon a capacity to identify and respond to the question that is presented by the expression of life being understood. Change agentry was presented in this thesis as unfolding in a middle space between the familiarity of current practice and the unfamiliarity of the new world that a change process seeks to open up. Hermeneutics has long understood that that interpretation would be impossible if the expressions of life were totally alien and unnecessary if there was nothing alien in them. A hermeneutic approach to change agentry seeks to discover points of commonality and points of challenge between the world of current practice and the world that the change process would open up. This thesis points to the tactful and dialogical dimensions of change agency when it is considered from the vantage point of philosophical hermeneutics.

This thesis is about the role that shop floor workers play in organisational change. In particular, it investigates the manner in which a distinct group of worker-level leaders and change agents affected the generation and implementation of change and helped to shape the change process in an organisation undergoing planned change. The data for the thesis were obtained from a three-year, longitudinal case-study of organisational change in a medium-sized automotive components manufacturer, Moving Metals Limited (MML). Data were collected at MML during a move from traditional mass production to lean production and the research was conducted using processual action research, while the researcher adopted the dual roles of researcher and consultant to the company. The research identified a distinct group of workers, with no supervisory capacity, who were able to shape the change process in the organisation. These workers are referred to as workers of influence. This group of workers emerged as central characters in the process of organisational change and as leaders and change agents in the organisation. Drawn from the empirical data, criteria for identifying workers of influence are developed in this thesis, based on the authority vested in them by the workforce and their access to management decision-making. A taxonomy of workers of influence is developed in this thesis using these criteria, as well as the duration of tenure of influence. In much of the literature, shop floor workers are portrayed as either passive participants in, or active resistors of organisational change. This research provides evidence of some workers acting as leaders and change agents in an active and influential manner. The research examines issues of power, influence, autonomy and control and their impact on workers' capacity to participate in change. In so doing, this research identifies and opens up an important area of study with implications for organisational theory, literature and the implementation of planned interventions in organisations. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Department of Social Inquiry, 2000.

The ability to implement strategies successfully is important to any organisation. Despite the importance of the implementation process within strategic management, this is an area of study often overshadowed by a focus on the strategy formulation process. This thesis concentrates on the strategy implementation process, investigating barriers to strategy implementation. A research framework called the Organisational Minefield was developed to represent the importance of the implementation process to organisations. In contrary to most studies available in strategic management, this research included participants from all levels of the organisation.To identify barriers to strategy implementation, a case study of Air New Zealand was conducted. This involved focussed interviews with 28 participants from the Network and Revenue Management Department of Air New Zealand. Other sources of data such as research articles and secondary company data sources were also used.The findings revealed that: participants from different levels of the organisation have unique perceptions of the implementation process; implementation variables could become roadblocks that undermine the implementation process; these barriers can be overcome if managers are perceptive to the organisation's current situation; and the Organisational Minefield framework presented verified the significance of the role of barriers in the implementation process. The findings add two additional barriers to implementation, namely leadership and power. It was also discovered that the participants acknowledged that these two barriers will impede or enhance the success of Air New Zealand. This was backed by the level of commitment and loyalty shown by the participants, which brought Air New Zealand one step closer to unravelling the mysteries of the implementation process.

Donau-Universiẗat, Magisterarbeit--Krems, 2005.

Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 2008. / Online publiziert: 2009.

Univ. Augsburg, Diss., 2008.