The 2008 Climate Change Act set legally-binding carbon reduction targets. Demand side management (DSM) includes energy use reduction and peak shaving and offers significant potential to reduce the amount of carbon used by the electricity grid. The demand side management (DSM) schemes that have tried to meet this challenge have been dominated by engineering-based approaches and so favour tools like automation (which aims to make shifting invisible) and pricing (which requires customer response) to shift demand. These approaches tend to focus on the tools for change and take little account of people and energy-use practices. This thesis argues that these approaches are limited and therefore unlikely to produce the level of response that will be needed in future. The thesis therefore investigates the potential for time-shifting domestic energy demand but takes a different angle by trying to understand how people use energy in their daily lives, whether this use can be shifted and some of the implications of shifting it. The centrepiece of the work is an empirical study of eleven households energy-use practices. The interdisciplinary methodology involved in-house observations, interviews, photographs, metered energy data and disruptive interventions. The data was collected in two phases. Initially, a twenty-four hour observation was carried out in each household to find out how energy was implicated in everyday practices. Next, a series of three challenges were carried out, aimed at assessing the implications of disrupting practices by time-shifting food preparation, laundry and work/ leisure. A practice theory approach is used to shift the focus of attention from appliances, tools for change, behaviour or even people, to practices. The central finding of this work is that practices were flexible. This finding is nuanced, in the light of the empirical research, by an extended discussion on the nature of practices; in particular, the relationship between practices and agency and the temporal-spatial locatedness of practices. The findings demonstrate that, in this study at least, expanding the range of demand response options was possible. The research suggests numerous possibilities for extending the potential of practices to shift in time and space, shift the energy used in practices or substitute practices for other non-energy-using practices, though there are no simple technological or behavioural fixes . More profoundly, however, the thesis concludes that infrastructures of provision , such as the electricity grid and the companies that run it, underpin and facilitate energy-use practices irrespective of the time of day and year. In this context technology-led demand response schemes may ultimately contribute to the problem they purport to solve. A more fundamental interrogation of demand and the infrastructures that serve it is therefore necessary and is almost entirely absent from the demand response debate.

This paper explores value co-creation and value co-destruction with a focus on the social practices embedded in the online brand community “My Starbucks Idea (MSI).” The objectives of the research are accomplished through a detailed explanation of the study’s stages, starting with the Research design/Planning, and followed by the Community Entry (Entrée), Data collection, Limitations, and Ethical implications. Since the study is exploratory in character, the qualitative research strategy was used. As Bryman and Bell (2011) note, qualitative research gives particular attention to words rather than numbers in the gathering and interpretation of data. This study applied a modified ‘netnographic’ approach, a new qualitative method devised specifically to investigate consumer behaviour vis-à-vis cultures and communities present on the Internet (Kozinets 1998). This study identifies three elements of practice: stalking, gossip, and exhibitionism. It also supports the idea stated by Echeverri & Skålén (2011) that there is no positive without a negative in interactive value formation. Although those authors’ work was focused on the provider-customer interface, the idea proves applicable to the online brand community (OBC) used for illustration in this study. The present study also draws attention to a vital characteristic of practice often forgotten: ‘Language’ as an enabler of all other elements (Whittington 2006). The paper contributes to the knowledge in the practice theory domain, and thus consumer culture, especially relating to OBCs. When using OBCs as a marketing tool, considerable ingenuity must be employed by business managers to gain strategic information and feedback from online forum discussions. Such information can help in the company’s strategic decision making. By building relationships and gaining new customers through the process of collaboration, managers can become more like brand storytellers. Also, such communication can be channelled as a means to create greater awareness, both of the brand and the users’ experiences, along with aiding in the development of better services and products to meet customers’ needs. In the current study, consent was an ethical concern that limited the scope and path taken by the paper. The ten-week research period was another limiting factor in properly covering all of the contextualized consumption activities and gaining sufficient experience within the MSI community.

Since the early 1990s, institutional approaches to organizations have increasingly focused on explaining the role of agency in processes of institutional creation and transformation. The paradox of embedded agency, the question of how actors can become motivated and enabled to transform supposedly taken-for-granted practices, structures and norms has become the fundamental puzzle of contemporary institutional theory. Recent attempts to resolve this puzzle under the label of “institutional work” focus on practices aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions, but portray them as planned, discrete episodes that unfold in isolation from everyday organizational or social life. Thereby, the label highlights institutionalists’ current neglect of work in its literal meaning as actors’ everyday occupational tasks and activities. The detachment of institutional work from practical work constitutes a significant blind spot in institutionalists’ understanding of agency and calls for research that examines the reciprocity of institutions and work. Drawing on illuminating constructs from theories of practice, this study extends existing field-level approaches to the paradox of embedded agency. It argues for a practice-based institutionalism that focuses on individual actors and the role of their collective micro-level praxis in constituting macro-level institutions. It re-connects institutional arguments to every-day activity rather than organizational or managerial action, unpacks the micro-practices and micro–politics by which actors negotiate institutional contradictions and demonstrates the reciprocity of institutions and work. The research addresses the detachment of institutional and practical work through a single-case study of a global law firm’s banking group. It explores what banking lawyers do when they ‘do deals’ and how their practical work may attain institutional relevance. Positioned at the intersec-tion of local laws, international financial markets, commercial and professional logics, banking lawyers operate across multiple institutional frameworks. Observations and accounts of their work provide particularly rich insights into the dynamics of institutional persistence and change, because they illustrate empirically how contradictory institutionalized concepts, practices and logics are experienced, negotiated, and constituted at work.

Cette thèse explore la notion d’innovations en contrôle de gestion environnemental et vise à explorer la façon dont elles sont créées, si elles sont adoptées ou non dans les entreprises et les conséquences de l’adoption, et enfin comment elles sont pratiquées. Les méthodes de recherche combinent l’observation participante, les entretiens semi-directifs et des données secondaires. Cette thèse est composée de trois articles qui explorent ensemble les différentes facettes de l’innovation en contrôle de gestion. Le premier article aborde la question de comment les innovations sont créées et leur processus d’institutionnalisation. L’accent est mis sur les acteurs et leurs stratégies, le qui et le comment du processus d’institutionnalisation. Grâce à une étude de cas approfondie d’une organisation, le deuxième article révèle le processus de non-adoption d’une méthodologie de comptabilité carbone. Le troisième article analyse les pratiques entourant une innovation en contrôle de gestion dans une multinationale. Dans l’ensemble cette thèse fait trois principales contributions théoriques sur le travail institutionnel spécifique développé par les élites, le rôle de la légitimité interne dans la légitimité organisationnelle, et sur les processus de co-émergence de nouvelles pratiques. Cette recherche sur les innovations en contrôle de gestion environnemental contribue également à mieux comprendre comment le développement durable peut aussi être atteint à travers la comptabilité dans les organisations. / This dissertation explores the notion of environmental management accounting innovation and aims to explore how they are created, if they are adopted or not into companies and the consequences thereof, and finally how they are practiced. Research methods combine participant observation, semi-structured interviews and secondary data. This dissertation is composed of three articles that together explore the different facets of management accounting innovations. The first article tackles the question of how innovations get created and on their path to institutionalization. The focus is on the actors and their strategies, the who and how of the institutionalization process. Through an in-depth case study of one organization, the second article uncovers the process of the non-adoption of a carbon accounting methodology. The third article analyses the practices surrounding and accounting innovation in a multinational.Overall, this dissertation makes three main theoretical contributions on the specific institutional work developed by elite, the role of internal legitimacy in organizational legitimacy, and on the processes of co-emergence of new practices. This research on EMA innovations also contributes to further understanding how sustainable development can be pursued through accounting in organizations

The need to focus and economize on scarce attention is increasingly being acknowledged within management accounting and control literature. The aim of this study is to investigate how practitioners go about creating new concepts and measurements to induce attention towards new issues and as-pects of strategic importance for the organization. In this case study, we follow a project group in a Swedish municipality, creating a management control model of employee health. A close-up view is provided through a narrative approach, based on filming and participant observation, illustrating the highly situated and contextual character of atten-tion in sensemaking processes. The naming of the concepts of management control was found to be associated with a science-framing, while references to local practices of management control induced practice-framing strongly de-emphasizing characteristic features of management control. Line-managers of the study accepted the framework without demands for indica-tors or predictive models. This outcome is in line with a practice notion of management control and a language-game understanding of human communication: management control systems are part of the practices defining meaning and directing at-tention towards different aspects of any situation. Rather than being a lan-guage, management control concepts and measurement may not provide much more than the phonetics of business. Consequently, it may be ques-tioned whether what gets measured automatically gets managed. In line with the attention-based view of the firm and a practice notion of management control, this study suggests that new attention is created through the naming and framing of management control ideals, and as a result of the expressions of managerial intent through practices.

The increased interest in relationship marketing and the potential of the Internet as a platform for relationship building activities have given rise to new ways for companies to interact with their customers, such as services based on a freemium pricing model. Based on the premise that relationships are processes consisting of interactive moments of value-creating activities, value is considered subjective, relative and dependent on the context in which the activity takes place. Value is therefore variable given its context and cannot be pre-defined without nuances being lost. Despite the Internet's given role in societal development, our understanding of what contributes to customers' intentions to build relationships with online services is yet to mature. As the music industry is well established on the Internet, alongside the change in how music is consumed, it is thus appropriate to examine activities in accordance with a freemium based service that distributes music online, since it still lacks in academic understanding. This study aims to provide insights about virtual relations and how online services that provide cultural content should relate to there users as well as contributing to the ongoing academic discussion regarding value and how it is manifested by highlighting contextual impact on relational activities. For a rapprochement of relations to online services in cultural industries, this study assumed a practice perspective. In accordance with practice theory and action research, primary data was collected through participatory observation set in users' natural social environment, with a targeted sample of informants well familiar with the object of study - the online service Spotify. The results show that value in virtual relationships arise inter-subjectively between users, where value is relative to past experiences, changeable over time, and expressed through individual and collective activities afforded by current context. If usage of a service is part of the daily routine, it also becomes a part of the user's identity, which the user, in order not to disrupt the routine, is willing to make sacrifices to uphold, thus maintaining their identity and ongoing relationship to the service provider. The more affordances a service provider manages to convey, the more meaningful a relationship is considered to be. The affective dimension of cultural products, especially music, allows for interpersonal coordination, and emotional convergence, where value is created inter-subjectively through collectively shared practices, allowing us to share feelings and experiences and enjoying how the closeness of interpersonal relationships contribute to our everyday lives. The inter-subjective value creation process thus also works as a process of humanizing the virtual relationship. / Det ökade intresset för relationsmarknadsföring och Internets potential som plattform för relationsbyggande aktiviteter har gett upphov till nya sätt för företag att interagera med sina kunder, till exempel genom freemium-tjänster. Utifrån premisserna att relationen är en process av interaktionsögonblick av meningsskapande aktiviteter, förutsätts värde vara subjektivt, relativt och beroende av kontexten i vilken aktiviteten utspelas. Värde är således föränderligt givet kontexten och kan inte på förhand definieras utan att nyanser går förlorade. Trots Internets givna roll i samhällsutvecklingen, saknas fortfarande förståelse för vilka parametrar som bidrar till kunders intentioner att bygga relationer med online-tjänster.    Då musikindustrin är väl etablerad på Internet, parallellt med att det skett en förändring av hur musik konsumeras, är det således motiverat att undersöka aktiviteter förenliga med en tjänst som distribuerar musik online, baserad på affärsmodellen freemium, då den akademiskt sätt ännu befinner sig i sin vagga. Studiens syfte är att ge insikter om virtuella relationer för hur online-tjänster med kulturellt innehåll ska förhålla sig till sina användare och bidra till den pågående akademiska diskussionen om hur värde manifesteras genom att belysa kontexters inverkan på relationer. För ett närmande av relationer till online-tjänster inom kulturella industrier, antogs för denna studie ett praktikperspektiv. I enlighet med aktionsforskning inhämtades primärdata genom deltagande observation i användarnas naturliga sociala miljö, baserat på ett målinriktat urval av informanter väl bekanta med studieobjektet - online-tjänsten Spotify. Resultatet visar på att värde inom virtuella relationer uppstår intersubjektivt mellan användare, är relativt mot tidigare erfarenheter, är föränderligt över tid, och kommer till uttryck genom individuella som kollektiva aktiviteter beroende av rådande kontext. Är användningen av tjänsten en del av den dagliga rutinen, blir användningen en del av användarens identitet, med påföljden att användaren är beredd att göra uppoffringar för att inte bryta rutinen och på så vis upprätthålla sin identitet och relation till tjänsten. Ju fler affordanser tjänster lyckas förmedla, desto mer meningsfull upplevs relationen.   Den affektiva dimensionen som kulturella produkter för med sig, särskilt musik, möjliggör för interpersonal koordination och emotionell sammanstrålning, där intersubjektivt värdeskapande kollektivt tillskjuter värde i den gemensamma upplevelsen, då vi tillåter oss att dela våra känslor och upplevelser och njuta av den närhet som mänskliga relationer bidrar till i våra vardagliga liv. Det intersubjektiva värdeskapandet bidrar till ett förmänskligande av den virtuella relationen.

The aim of this study was to describe and analyse online teaching practices in the Swedish higher education context. The study had an online ethnographic approach and was based on empirical data on the teaching in two university courses. The study rested primarily on observational data but interviews and available documents also formed the basis for analysis. Empirical data were analysed with a perspective of practice theory – a perspective within a sociomaterial account. The results showed that online teaching was characterised by an embodied sociomaterial practice. The teacher’s body could be understood as both multiple and closely interwoven with technology. Furthermore, the teacher’s body was used in the teaching situation to reduce technological complexity but also, along with other forms of materiality, to prefigure what kind of teaching would take place. Teacher interventions in online environments could furthermore be understood as relational to both technology (that is the virtual material arrangement) and teachers’ doings and sayings (that is the teaching practice). Teacher interventions were aimed at making the arrangement intelligible for the students. The study showed that teacher interventions arranged both students and information and communication technology (ICT) in order to make them work as a teaching practice. The teaching practice that emerged was characterised as an interplay between virtual materiality and social practice, where asymmetricrelations between teachers and the ICT prevailed. / Syftet med föreliggande studie var att beskriva och analysera undervisningspraktiker online i svensk högre utbildningskontext. Studien har en onlineetnografisk ansats och baseras på empiriska data av undervisningen i två kurser på universitetsnivå. Studien stödjer sig främst på observationsdata men även intervjuer och dokumentstudier ligger som grund för analysen. Empiriska data har analyserats med ett praktikteoretiskt perspektiv – ett perspektiv inom sociomateriell teoribildning. Resultatet visar att undervisning online kännetecknas av en förkroppsligad sociomateriell praktik. Lärarkroppen kan förstås som både multipel och tätt sammanvävd med teknologi. Vidare används lärarkroppen i undervisningssituationen för att reducera komplexitet men även för att, tillsammans med annan materialitet, prefigurera vad det är för typ av undervisning som kommer att utspela sig. Vidare kan lärarinterventioner i onlinemiljöer förstås som relationella till både tekniken (det vill säga det virtuellt materiella arrangemanget) och lärares göranden och säganden (det vill säga undervisningspraktiken). Lärarinterventioner syftar till att göra arrangemanget begripligt för studenterna. Studien visar att lärarinterventionerna arrangerar både studenter och informations- och kommunikationsteknologi (IKT) i syfte att få dem att fungera som en undervisningspraktik. Den undervisningspraktik som uppstår är inte given på förhand utan emergent. Den karaktäriseras av ett samspel mellan virtuell materialitet och social praktik där asymmetriska relationer mellan lärare och IKT råder.

In der Mitte der Dissertation steht die Frage nach den Koordinationsmustern und den institutionellen Bedingungen online-medialen gelingenden, produktiven, also das Generieren informationeller Güter bezweckenden, Zusammenarbeitens. Diese wird exemplarisch und exponiert am Beispiel der freien Gemeingüterproduktion studiert, genauer gesagt am Fall der Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia. Die Studie zeigt, wie und in welchen institutionellen Kontexten das Herstellen und Verwalten informationeller Gemeingüter durch online-medial vermitteltes Kooperieren gelingen kann. Dazu wurde eine dreijährige teilnehmende Beobachtung durchgeführt und mit qualitativen Interviews und Dokumentenanalysen methodisch kombiniert. Typologisiert wurden die Beteiligungsweisen, die es Wikipedianern erlauben, an dem Projekt konstruktiv teilzunehmen, konkret die Handlungsmuster, um Beteiligen zu formieren und dabei unbezahltes und zielorientiertes Editieren zu animieren, anzuleiten und vorzulegen, sowie Handlungsmuster des Qualifizierens von Beiträgen und Beiträgern als Beobachten, Auszeichnen und Ausschließen. Das dabei effektive institutionelle Ensemble wurde als Satz an Richtlinien und Codevorgaben sowie normativen Einstellungen in Bezug auf das Arbeitsethos der Wikipedianer, die Form ihrer Vergemeinschaftung, das Teilnehmerkonzept und das enzyklopädische Werkkonzept ermittelt.

Cette thèse vise à combler une lacune de la connaissance sur les effets systémiques des outils de contrôle de gestion dans son acception de pilotage organisationnel. Elle se repose sur une étude ethnographique longue de plus de 3 ans, réalisée dans une direction de ligne d'une entreprise européenne de transport ferroviaire Eurorailway. Elle montre qu'une direction de ligne a utilisé successivement deux ensembles d'outils de pilotage pour gouverner, conduire et animer les entités internes contributrices à la production ferroviaire. D'abord un ensemble d'outils de la contractualisation dans une relation horizontale avec ses entités internes; ensuite un autre ensemble d'outils de pilotage par la hiérarchie dans une structure verticale. Leurs cohabitations, concurrences et affrontements ont généré des effets systémiques complexes sur les individus, les processus et pratiques organisationnels et in fine sur la performance: des effets de congruence bénéfiques dans certaines pratiques, absence d'effets dans d'autres pratiques et des effets néfastes par leurs interactions. Éclairée par la théorie de la pratique de Schatzki qui contourne l'opposition gênante entre le déterminisme fonctionnaliste et les critiques psycho-sociologiques, notre recherche montre que leurs effets réels ne peuvent se comprendre qu'en lien avec la pratique de gestion qui les mobilise. / This dissertation contributes to the limited body of knowledge on systemic consequences of management control tools, also to the limited body of research on management control as system by mobilizing management tools as an analyzer of organizational phenomena. Based on an ethnography case study in a large European railway company, this research finds that this organization utilizes successively two packages of management tools for the governance of internal entities involved in the production of services delivered ta passengers: the first one based on the levers of customer/supplier relationship, the second one by hierarchal levers. The systemic effects generated by these packages of management tools are complex, some are beneficial, other are neutral, and some are even harmful to the performance. By applying Schatzki's practice theory which circumvents the unhelpful opposition between the functionalist determinism and the sociological/psychological critical approaches, we argue that the systemic consequences of management tools can only be apprehended in the practice where they are used. Mobilizing management tools as an analyzer of organizational phenomena offers a new vista to study management control as a system.

The aim of the study is to generate knowledge about principals´ pedagogical leadership practice. Furthermore, the study aims at generate knowledge of what is happening in a joint action research practice when principals explore a pedagogical leadership. In the study the theory of practice architectures interacts with the choice of methodological orientation and is used to analyse the results. The study is embedded in the Nordic action research tradition. Partnership between universities and practitioners is seen as an important arena for professional development. The results are of importance to the principals who daily work to improve their schools. The students' learning and development appear to be an important and almost obvious component of the principal´s pedagogical leadership practice.   The principal's pedagogical leadership is defined as an indirect leadership in which the principal focuses on arranging the conditions for the teachers so that they are given the opportunity to improve their teaching. A pedagogical leader is not just talking about changes, he/she also calls for concrete actions in the school's internal work. The principals´ pedagogical leadership can be described as orchestrating the surrounding arrangement in such a way that they enable a learning and collaborative practice at the school. Part of this orchestration is about supporting forms of cooperation so that good norms and a development-promoting culture are established. The study shows how trustworthy relationships in the groups were absolutely necessary for the participants to be able to change their understanding of the pedagogical leadership. The changes in the joint action research practice have been described as three stages: the establishment stage, the testing stage and the critical stage, where the names of the stages characterize what happened in the groups during different periods of time in the change process. A critical and emancipatory approach was developed in the process. / Rektors pedagogiska ledarskap är ett ledarskap som ofta beskrivs som något positivt och nödvändigt men också som otydligt och svårgripbart. Denna studie är tänkt som ett bidrag till utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning med särskilt fokus på rektorers pedagogiska ledarskap, rektorers professionsutveckling och skolförbättring. Avhandlingen är en aktionsforskningsstudie som bygger på samarbete, delaktighet, engagemang och partnerskap mellan forskare och rektorer. Den handlar om att förstå och förbättra en praktik men också om att skaffa sig kunskap om hur en sådan förbättring går till och vad som händer under arbetets gång. Aktionsforskning möjliggör ett vetenskapligt kunskapande samtidigt som en praktik förbättras. Studiens resultat visar att rektors pedagogiska ledarskap handlar om att orkestrera skolans omgivande arrangemang så att de möjliggör en lärande och professionell praktik samt bidrar till en god förbättringskapacitet på skolan. Det handlar om att skapa rutiner för vilka som ska mötas och tala med varandra, hur ofta de ska mötas, vad de ska tala om och på vilket sätt det ska ske. En pedagogisk ledare nöjer sig inte med att tala om förändringar utan genomför och även uppmanar till konkreta aktioner i en skolas inre arbete. Rektors pedagogiska ledarskap har en tydlig viljeinriktning mot elevernas lärande och studien visar att det är ett ledarskap som stärks när fler delar på ansvaret.