Even though safety culture in health care has been on the agenda for more than a decade, the implementations have been difficult. The aim of this study was to out of the sensemaking perspective, examine the process behind implementing safety culture. The present study tested a hypothetical model where open communication, clear information and leader safety attitude predict reporting incidents (part of safety culture) which in turn mediate to safety performance. Survey data was obtained from 104 employees at a Swedish hospital which has tried to implement safety culture recently. To test the model, structural equation modeling was used. Results showed a strong model fit and all factors predicted reporting incidents. Reporting incidents predicted safety performance and mediated between the predictors and safety performance. Thus, in line with theoretical background all three predictors seem to be important in the implementation process of safety culture.

År 2005 infördes standarden IAS 40 som ger svenska börsnoterade förvaltningsfastighetsbolag möjligheten att redovisa sina fastigheter till verkligt värde. Verkligt värde har kritiserats på grund av det bygger på subjektiva bedömningar och det kan leda till en missvisande redovisning som kan få negativa konsekvenser för intressenter. 1 januari 2013 infördes den nya standarden IFRS 13 för att ställa ytterligare upplysningskrav gällande värdering av tillgångar till verkligt värde. Denna studie behandlar hur värdering till verkligt värde påverkar intressenters informationsbehov, deras uppfattning av fastighetsvärdering till verkligt värde och resonemang kring införandet av IFRS 13. Syftet med undersökningen var att förklara för hur olika intressenters behov av redovisningsinformation påverkas vid värdering av förvaltningsfastigheter till verkligt värde. För att uppnå studiens syfte har en kvalitativ metod använts där djupgående intervjuer genomförts. Respondenterna valdes ut med utgångspunkt i att de ska erhålla kunskap och erfarenhet av börsnoterade förvaltningsfastighetsbolag. Studiens respondenter är investerare, kreditgivare och finansanalytiker eftersom samtliga påverkas främst av värdering till verkligt värde av förvaltningsfastigheter. Studien har visat att olika intressenter i och med sin yrkesidentitet fokuserar på olika delar av värderingsinformation om verkligt värde. Intressenter drivs av rimlighet snarare än precision och anser därför de att det är viktigare att bolagen redovisar bakomliggande antaganden än det verkliga värdet. Intressenter skapar sig två uppfattningar av fastigheters verkliga värde, en positiv och en negativ. De anser att verkligt värde fungerar bra vid en hög marknadsaktivitet då många fastigheter köps och säljs, tvärtom uppfattar intressenter att finns stora brister med verkligt värde vid låg marknadsaktivitet. Intressenter misstror även att det redovisade verkliga värdet är marknadsvärde eftersom att fastigheter ofta säljs för ett annat pris än det redovisade. Studien visar att införandet av det nya regelverket ger en ökad uppfyllelse av intressenters informationsbehov, men att det blir en avvägning mellan relevans och mängd i värderingsinformationen för att deras behov av ska uppfyllas. / In 2005 the standard IAS 40 was introduced which provides Swedish listed companies with investment properties the opportunity to evaluate their properties at fair value. Fair value has been criticized because it is based on subjective assumptions that can lead to inaccurate financial reports and negative consequences for stakeholders. January 1st 2013 the new standard IFRS 13 was introduced which requires increased disclosures of valuation at fair value. This study examines how fair value affects stakeholders information needs, their perception of property valuation at fair value and reasoning about the implementation of IFRS 13.                                       The aim of the study was to explain how different stakeholders information needs are affected by the valuation of investment properties at fair value. To achieve the purpose of the study a qualitative method was used and in-depth interviews have been conducted. Respondents were selected on the basis that they would obtain the knowledge and experience of listed companies with investment properties. The study's respondents are investors, creditors and financial analysts because they are primarily affected by the valuation measurement at fair value of investment properties. The study has shown that different stakeholders in their professional identity focuses on different aspects of the valuation information about fair value. Stakeholders are driven by plausibility rather than accuracy, therefore they think it is more important that companies report underlying assumptions than the actual fair value. Stakeholders creates two different perceptions of the properties fair value, one positive and one negative. They believe that fair value function well at a high level of market activity when several properties are purchased and sold, on the contrary stakeholders perceive there are large gaps with fair value at low market activity. Stakeholders distrusts the reported fair value is the market value, since the properties often are sold for a different price than the reported. The study shows that the introduction of the new standard provides a greater fulfilment of stakeholders information needs, but it is required that there is a balance between relevance and quantity of information if their needs will be satisfied.

Part of a larger study of high-performing districts in Ontario, this mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) study identified school district actions perceived by principals to help them make sense of their leadership work and contribute to their sense of efficacy in carrying out that work. Qualitative data included interviews with 23 principals, 10 senior district leaders, and 5 trustees in two high-performing districts in the province. Narrative analysis was used to analyze these data. Quantitative data were provided by the responses of 1,563 principals and 250 senior district leaders to two forms of a survey which included sub-sets of questions about variables of special interest to this study. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the survey results. Interview results showed that in the two study districts, each of 12 district actions framing the study were perceived to influence principals’ efficacy or principals’ sensemaking or both. Of those 12 district actions, principals in one of the two study districts identified 8 of the 12 district actions as especially influential in helping them to make sense of their work and to develop their sense of efficacy for carrying out that work; 10 of the 12 district actions were identified by principals in the second study district. Four of the 12 district actions were common across the responses of principals in both study districts including: networking interactions among principals; job-embedded and regional professional development opportunities; support from superintendents with the writing of school improvement plans; and emphasis and support with data interpretation and use for decision making processes. Except for one of these four district actions (use of evidence for decision making), survey results pointed to the same sets of district actions as particularly influential to both principals’ efficacy and sensemaking. This research adds to the understanding of what districts do that helps their school leaders work more effectively. Implications are identified for the actions of district leaders and for future research.

This thesis investigates an Intranet based leadership strategy. The aims are to follow, describe and analyse an Intranet based leadership strategy through a broad, dynamic and cultural perspective, and to carry out an ethnography-based research process and thereby explore the potential uses of ethnography within human-computer interaction (HCI). The empirical material is gathered from three qualitative investigations in the municipality of Stockholm. The material is interpreted and analysed through the concepts of culture, lifeworld, sensemaking, sense unmaking and trust. Some aspects of leadership are studied as well. The theoretical toolbox is framed by phenomenology and a hermeneutic writing process paired with methods of semi-structured interviews, participative observations, open unstructured questionnaires and the snapshot method. Cultural analysis of empirical results from an ethnographic fieldwork has shown that the time spent in the field can be shortened when ethnography is utilised within HCI. Furthermore, other contributions from ethnography to technology development are the possibility to point out explicit versus implicit symbolic communications and cultural pitfalls for technology developers as well as to support the transformations of cultural values and the content of steering documents into technology development. Ethnographers within HCI can promote designing for trust by exploring how intended users think about this issue. Some recommendations for organisations that aim to use the Intranet as a leadership strategy are also presented as an additional outcome of the results in the study. It is argued that it is of importance to discuss usability versus diversity; that developers of the Intranet tools investigate influential circumstances at local workplaces and that they study the impact of work routines on cultural identification in order to avoid ‘we’ and ‘they’ thinking within the organisation. Moreover, it is important to put a wider effort into the discussion of what happens when the content of a steering document meets practice. It is also questioned whether a vision is the right way to go forward, and it is suggested that it should be clarified what quality development actually means.

Cette recherche aborde la contribution du leadership à la construction de l’intelligence collective dans une équipe de travail qui produit un bulletin de nouvelles télévisé. L’intelligence collective est une façon de travailler qu’ont développée les organisations hautement fiables, c’est-à-dire les organisations où la moindre erreur peut mener à la catastrophe. En favorisant la capacité de s’adapter à un environnement en constante évolution, le développement de l’intelligence collective permet aux organisations d’être plus compétitives dans un univers imprévisible. Nous avons tenté de voir si les mécanismes de construction de l’intelligence collective étaient présents dans une salle des nouvelles et comment le leadership émergent contribuait à la construction de ces mécanismes. Nous avons mobilisé les théories du sensemaking et de l’organizing de Weick et avons étudié les interactions entre les acteurs de l’organisation en contexte. L’analyse a montré comment un leadership distribué parmi les membres a contribué à l’émergence des mécanismes de l’intelligence collective. L’originalité de ce travail repose sur la mise en relation de l’observation du leadership en émergence et de la construction de l’intelligence collective. En ce sens, nous croyons qu’il peut contribuer aux recherches sur l’intelligence collective en présentant concrètement comment elle se construit dans une équipe de travail.

The purpose of this study is to develop the construct of organizational hardiness which is thought to distinguish organizations that thrive under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty from organizations that whither under these same conditions. This new construct is based on individual hardiness which is a constellation of personality dispositions that a large body of empirical work has suggested supports individual performance under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty. Paralleling the individual hardiness dispositions of challenge, commitment, and control, organizational hardiness is posited to consist of the organizational level constructs of sensemaking, organizational identification, and enactment. The development of organizational hardiness is supported by literature reviews of individual hardiness, organizational stress, sensemaking, organizational identification, and enactment. To support the theoretical development of this construct, this study includes a content analysis of the CEO letters to shareholders for the 20 largest commercial banks in the United States during the years 2000-2009. Using generalized least squares estimation techniques, the current study demonstrates a positive relationship between organizational hardiness, sensemaking, organizational identification, and enactment and multiple measures of organizational performance. Furthermore, organizations demonstrating higher levels of organizational hardiness demonstrate higher levels of organizational performance on three out of four measures. The study concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications concerning the development of this new construct.

The shaping of spatial structures at the urban, regional and national levels involves numerous kinds of actors and planning activities. In recent years, calls for crosssectoral coordination and integrated planning approaches echo extensively across different fields of planning. However, experiences from planning situations around Sweden and elsewhere reveal great challenges to such ambitions. This thesis explores key conditions for an integrated approach to urban and transport planning, focusing on the relationships between public professional actors and agencies involved in the interface between urban and transport planning and strategy making, at the local and national level in Sweden. The theoretical framework is based on communicative planning theory and theories on sensemaking. The empirical material emanates from the project The Livable City, a collaboration project between three Swedish municipalities and national authorities responsible for transport and urban planning in Sweden. The aim of The Livable City was to develop knowledge about integrated planning of the built environment and transport systems and to develop integrated processes for coordination of different interests, demands and needs. Case studies were conducted, based on document studies, interviews and observations. The results from this study illustrate various aspects of how plans and strategies in a multiperspective environment need to make sense to actors with different perspectives on what planning is all about. A sensemaking perspective on planning suggests that plans and strategies to promote an integrated approach to planning will always be partial and selective despite ambitions for these to be comprehensive or holistic. Commitment, reification and participation have in the cases proven to be useful concepts to understand the sensemaking aspect of planning practice. Interactive processes may inform the shaping of perspectives and can therefore be an element in efforts to promote integrated approaches to urban and transport planning, although the extent to which this may be achieved is highly dependent on contextual conditions and will vary from case to case. / QC 20111125

Technology used in the Swedish workplace is perceived to be controlling, gener- ally still difficult to use, and with a low degree of usability. Even though the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been concerned with researching different ways of developing usable systems for at least half a century, there seem to be problems with the diffusion of the results into practice. One of the possible approaches to developing usable systems is user-centred design, and in this thesis I am concerned with the issue of introducing user-centred design and usability work in public authorities and institutions. I will present work done in two different research projects with a focus on change, where the aim has been to introduce or enhance usability work. Through a lens of social construction- ism and reflexivity I will explore the outcome of the projects and the implica- tions for the introduction of user-centred design in practice. Furthermore, I will explore whether the focus on the introduction of usability work might hinder the formation of a sustainable change in the organizations interested in devel- oping usable systems. The research question then becomes; can we introduce usability work in organizations? The answer to this question is no. Instead, we need to change our perspective from introduction to situated reflexive change: focusing on sensemaking and a situated process of ongoing change, where the stakeholders in the organization themselves must play an active and responsible part. This entails a shift from dualism to duality and a reconsideration of what our usability methods can con- tribute with. Furthermore, I will explore possible approaches to working with situated reflexive change with tools that are familiar in the field of HCI, but with an expanded scope. In particular I will discuss field studies conducted by system developers as a tool for making sense of usability issues, personas as a tool for inducing reflexivity in and on practice, and usability coaching as a sensemaking tool for both organizational stakeholders and researchers in order to understand and reflect upon change. / <p>QC 20130118</p>

Weick (2006) calls for researchers to investigate how employees ‘hold it together’ during periods when organizational routine and order are challenged. This thesis focuses on employee experiences during two types of organizational upheaval: periods of planned, large-scale organizational change and periods of organizational crisis triggered by external events. In both conditions, employees can react negatively. This leads to failure to cope with the current situation and with future situations that pose similar threats and challenges. On the other hand, if employees can make sense of a threatening, challenging situation, the outcomes are more positive for them as individuals and for the organization as a whole. Weick’s (1988) concept of sensemaking is used as a guiding framework for investigating the experiences, attitudes, and actions reported by employees in times of organizational change and crisis. The general assertion of the thesis is that the espoused and enacted values of an organization provide sensemaking cues to employees in difficult times. More specifically, the role of stated organizational values is examined. Organizational values are often stated as a set of principles that provide guidance for employees, particularly as part of a managing-by-values approach. The context for the research program is the healthcare industry, because values are very important for healthcare employees. Moreover, healthcare organizations must continue to function optimally during challenging conditions. Three research studies are reported. Study 1 was conducted in an Australian public hospital that was undergoing large-scale change. Thirty-five employees from a range of occupations were interviewed midway through the five-year period of change. Thematic analysis of their interviews revealed that employees mostly reported negative experiences of the change program. Furthermore, employees made sense of the change program by focusing on specific cues in their situation. One such cue was the organization’s strongly promoted set of ‘core values’. The stated values were seen to be a visible symbol of the hospital’s principles, but there were negative perceptions about how well these principles were enacted. Study 2 was conducted in a public hospital in Singapore exposed to a crisis situation due to the SARS virus in 2003. Thirty-one employees from a range of occupations were interviewed four months after the outbreak had ended. Twenty of these participants returned for a second interview, one week after the first interview. A card sort procedure and thematic analysis of the interview data were used to investigate employees’ experiences of the crisis. Results revealed that employees made sense of the crisis through identification with their profession and their organization. They also perceived that the hospital’s actions during the crisis were consistent with its written set of organizational values. In addition, employees identified a number of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) that they had shown during the crisis. Study 3 was conducted at three hospitals in Singapore. A pilot study involved 24 employees from a public hospital. They engaged in a focus group discussion about professionalism and they refined a set of hospital-specific employee behaviors that could potentially be classified as OCBs. The main study involved survey completion by a stratified sample of employees from another public hospital (n= 214) and from a private hospital (n=184). All respondents were invited to complete a second survey (measuring related variables) three weeks after the first survey. Analysis of 301 usable survey responses revealed findings that contribute to different literatures. Firstly, asking respondents to rate OCBs according to whether they were voluntary, unrewarded, and beneficial to the organization, revealed that many OCB items used in previous research were not perceived as being ‘true OCBs’ by the survey respondents. Furthermore, despite the use of many possible OCB dimensions, the true OCB items were factor analyzed into just two factors. One factor reflected OCBOs, which are behaviors directed towards the organization as a whole, while the other factor reflected OCBIs, which are behaviors directed towards other individuals. A second contribution is the suggestion that employees’ sense of ‘professionalism’ is a single construct. Survey respondents did not distinguish between professional identification and professional commitment in the same way as organizational identification and commitment were differentiated. Professionalism was weakly related to tendency to engage in OCBOs and more strongly related to tendency to engage in OCBIs. Finally, the main contribution to the values literature is the development of the concept of ‘organizational values integrity’ (OVI). This is conceptualized as the perceived alignment between organizational actions and organizational words, especially those words espoused in values statements. Structural equation modeling revealed that OVI influenced organizational identification and organizational commitment, which both mediated the impact of OVI on OCBOs. Furthermore, OVI had a direct impact on OCBOs. Overall, this thesis highlights employee perceptions that the organization acts in ways that are aligned to its stated values as important influences on employee attitudes and OCBs, particularly in difficult times. Implications for managerial practice and further research are discussed.

Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / Organisations find themselves in a world of ever-increasing rate of change. Increasingly organisations operate in what is known as the edge of chaos—that zone which paradoxically might lead to paralysis and disaster or to creativity and innovation. In this area of uncertainty, organisations rely on their ability to create new organisational knowledge. What is unclear is exactly how new knowledge comes into being under these conditions and what would count as new organisational knowledge. The thesis tries to shed light on the process by which new organisational knowledge comes into being by considering the context of complexity as an environment that demands innovation while at the same time being the catalyst for knowledge creation. The debate on the nature of organizational knowledge is revisited and contrasted from individual knowledge. A review of the mainstream theories of organisational knowledge creation led up to Boisot’s Social Learning Cycle as the benchmark theory that is used in the rest of the argument. Thereafter the work of Weick on Organisational Sensemaking is discussed. It is argued that the condition of complexity leads to an increase in occasions that activate and heighten organizational sensemaking processes. Parallels are noted between the process of sensemaking and parts of the Social Learning Cycle. It is shown that under conditions of comlexity, organisational knowledge creation processes and sensemaking processes are not only similar, but that organisational sensemaking can be seen as the mechanism whereby new organisational knowledge is created when organisations operate at the edge of chaos. This has a number of implications. The theory of organisational sensemaking is applied to an area of organisational life where it has not been seen as applicable, organisational knowledge creation processes are shown to be much more fundamental phenomena than the literature suggests, and combining Boisot and Weick leads to greater theoretical elegance.