Ph.D. theses
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An Ethnographic Study of Trust, Distance, Control, Culture and Boundary Spanning within Offshore Outsourcing of IT ServicesTøth, Thomas (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD dissertation is an ethnographic field study of the collaboration between Berlingske Media, one of the leading media companies in Denmark, and their Indian IT service provider, HCL – one of the largest IT service providers worldwide. The dissertation studies the day-to-day operational collaboration between actors from the client organization and the vendor organization in order to understand how vendor-side actors, as individuals and as a collective, can be constructed as trustworthy collaborators in the eyes of the client-side actors. While trust is the theoretical epicenter of this thesis it is, in acknowledgement of the contextual and dynamic nature of trust, subjected to an interdisciplinary analytical framework. Thus, the four analytical chapters in Part II introduce four different factors that influence the client-side actors’ perceptions of vendor-side actors’ trustworthiness: distance, control, culture and boundary spanning. The analytical conclusions are summarized in Part III of the dissertation. Based on these analytical conclusions a number of practice-oriented suggestions on how the client-side actors’ perceptions of the vendor-side’s trustworthiness can be improved are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the theoretical implications are presented and discussed. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9115 Files in this item: 1
Thomas_Tøth.pdf (3.916Mb) -
With Comparative and Multi-level Case Studies from Denmark and IrelandHelby Petersen, Ole (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD dissertation studies national similarities and differences in policy and regulation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), with an empirical focus on Denmark and Ireland. The starting point and motivation for the study is the observation that whereas PPPs are often depicted in the academic literature and in policy practice as a globally disseminated governance scheme, in reality, a closer examination of the PPP reform landscape reveals significant differences in national governments’ PPP policy and regulation and in the amount of actually implemented PPP projects. By comparing the initiatives taken by the Irish government, which has embraced PPPs, with those of the Danish government, which has been a PPP sceptic, this study inquires into the fundamental questions as to how, why and to what consequences some governments have developed widespread policy and regulation frameworks to support the implementation of PPPs, whereas others have been much more reluctant. The dissertation addressed four research questions: (i) what are the key actors, strategies and institutions that create policies and regulations for the formation of PPPs?; (ii) how did governments’ PPP policies and regulations develop over time, and how can their similarities and differences be explained?; (iii) how do differing national policy and regulation frameworks serve to facilitate or hinder the formation of PPPs, exemplified by four case studies from the schools sector?; (iv) what framework conditions does the EU set for PPP initiatives at national and sub-national levels? The main aim of the dissertation is to study how and why national PPP policy and regulation frameworks developed over time. At the national government level, the study thus contains both diachronic and synchronic analysis. Furthermore, in line with previous research within what has been called the governance approach within PPP studies, policy and regulation are also seen as constitutive elements that tap into and set the general framework conditions and institutional ‘rules of the game’ for the realisation of concrete PPP projects. The comparative interest at the central government level is thus supplemented by an analysis (a) of the interplay between decisions about policy and regulation at the national level and the formation of concrete PPP projects, and (b) of the EU’s role in regulating decisions about PPPs at national level and in relation to the formation of concrete PPP schemes. A main finding is that whereas academic PPP literature often portrays governments’ rationales for resorting to PPPs in terms of achieving innovation, collaborative advantage, value-for-money, new market possibilities, improved risk sharing etc., the findings brought to the fore in this dissertation suggest that a primary objective indeed was to remove major public infrastructure investments from governments’ balance sheets, and thereby reduce the pressure on public capital budgets and provide more infrastructure than would otherwise be possible. However, as the off balance sheet rationale has been shown to be largely false, because there is always a bill to pay in the long term, this raise a number of broader legitimacy and accountability issues, which the present PPP policy and regulation frameworks of governments do not seem to adequately address. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9114 Files in this item: 1
Ole_Helby_Petersen.pdf (1.358Mb) -
Differentiated internationalization strategies of emerging market state-owned enterprisesLi, Ming Hau (Frederiksberg, 2014)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The rise of globalization over the past several decades has witnessed a surge of cross-border activities by emerging market firms. To a large extent, such acceleration in their overseas venturing has been precipitated by the liberalization of domestic and foreign trade regimes governing foreign direct investment. In order to compete with advanced country multinationals, emerging economy firms have increasingly leveraged a broad array of resources and organizational strategies to springboard abroad. Simultaneously, such firms are subject to dynamic shifts in their institutional terrains triggered by a plethora of heterogeneous reform treatments as their governments endeavor to modernize their economies. The initiation of these potent large-scale reforms associated with transition such as economic decentralization, market liberalization, industrial restructuring and corporate ownership reform undoubtedly exert cross-cutting and transformational impacts on the resource endowments, adaptive capabilities and strategic behaviors of emerging market firms. Given this critical phenomenon, this dissertation is motivated by the primary research question – how does institutional transition and its related change processes operate to reconfigure and alter firm resources and capabilities for internationalization? Since a significant proportion of emerging market firms are owned by governments, this thesis investigates how reforms have transformed state-owned firms’ strategic characteristics for internationalization. The dissertation comprises of three research papers utilizing extensive primary fieldwork and a manually compiled panel dataset of Chinese firms to examine emerging market state-owned firms’ overseas activities. The first paper is a conceptual piece which develops an overarching framework to delineate the reconfigured orchestration of multiple institutional reforms in the emerging economy context can spawn organizational diversity among state-owned firms leading to their differing outward FDI strategies. The second paper builds on this notion of organizational diversity and investigates how corporate ownership reform confers varying levels of institutional competitive advantages to marketized and non-marketized state owned firms to support their overseas venturing. It further examines how the relationship between firm ownership and outward FDI propensity is moderated by state-owned business group affiliation. The final paper studies how hybrid organizational forms arising from institutional transition such as university-run firms can evolve novel organizational features including ‘incubating platforms’ to launch overseas entrepreneurial spin-offs. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9113 Files in this item: 1
Ming_Hua_Li.pdf (2.466Mb) -
Hierarchies, Logics and Foundations of Social Order Seen Through the Prism of EU Social RightsMossin, Christiane (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: It has been the purpose of this dissertation to analyze a contemporary battlefield of law, the field of EU social rights, from a political-philosophical point of view. It is the conviction of the dissertation that law is deeply and inescapably conceptually connected with fundamental features of social order. Law and social order are not presumed to be identical, but to be mutually constitutive. The interrelations between the two do not merely concern the rights and obligations explicitly laid down in the law, but fundamental presumptions regarding the nature of human beings, overall purposes of social order, hierarchical and dynamical features of society and the possibility at all of regulation, its logics and sources of authority. On the basis of a historical-conceptual understanding of law according to which law, social structure and metaphysical presumptions are inescapably intertwined, the dissertation derives from the binding provisions of law certain essential features of social order. More precisely, the dissertation demonstrates that from a political philosophical point of view, EU social rights can be said to imply the contours of a particular social order. Significantly, the essential features in question are derived through detailed analyses of EU social rights - through critical investigations of definitions of right-holders, material scope, legal core concepts, exclusions and justifications, complexities and ambiguities of interpretation. The general point is the following: Political philosophical features of social order may not only be derived from the overall constitutional aspects of law (in the case of EU-law: fundamental principles inscribed in the Treaty; the constitutional architecture of EU-law), but are implied in the detailed material web of secondary law. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9111 Files in this item: 2
Christiane Mossin_PART_1.pdf (3.720Mb)Christiane Mossin_PART_2.pdf (3.211Mb) -
Design af levende billeder i film og tv-serierWille, Jakob Ion (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Ph.d.-afhandlingen Film som Design undersøger, beskriver og kortlægger design og designerens arbejde i filmens og det levende billedes verden for på den baggrund at bidrage med indsigter i og foreslå analytisk håndtering af det, der bredt forstås ved det levende billedes design. Generelt behandler filmens teorier det levnende billedes stil og design som en reaktion på filmens eller tvseriens dominerende narrativ. Omvendt opfatter designtænkningen generelt filmens eller tv-seriens design som repræsentation af designartefakter. Mens disse forståelser i og for sig er rimelige, udtrykker de også en begrænset indsigt i filmisk design. Det primære mål for afhandlingen er derfor at udvide forståelsen og betydningen af design i den filmiske produktion og det filmiske værk. Dette sker gennem empiriske studier af film- og tv-produktioner og ved at overføre begreber og metodeforståelse fra designverdenen til filmens verden. Der tages på den måde hovedsageligt udgangspunkt i eksisterende filmvidenskabelig og designfaglig teori, der søges appliceret på filmens design for på den bagrund 1) at formidle og udvikle ny viden om området og foreslå anvendelsesorienteret metode til analytisk arbejde med dette samt 2) at revurdere og evt. revidere opfattelsen af designets betydning for skabelsen af det filmiske værk. På den måde tydeliggøres på den ene side designeren og designets betydning for skabelsen og oplevelsen af det visuelle værk, mens denne forståelse på den anden side søges instrumentaliseret i både praktisk anvendelsesorienteret og analytisk metode. For at differentiere sig fra mere kontekstorienterede diskurser arbejdes der i afhandlingen hovedsagligt med en formalistisk forståelse af det levende billede, inspireret af en poetik, hvor det levende billedes design primært opfattes som et resultat af kunstneriske eller designmæssige valg. Implicit i denne forestilling findes samtidig idéen om designeren som væsentlig medskaber (eller demiurg) af filmen eller tv-seriens fiktive univers. Disse og andre forestillinger fremstillet i afhandlingen sandsynliggøres gennem et empirisk materiale, der blandt andet indeholder studier af designarbejdet i så forskellige film som Lars von Triers Melancholia (2011) og Steven Spielbergs Minority Report (2001). Dertil bygger afhandlingen blandt andet på eksempler fra danske og internationale tv-serier samt på erfaringer fra et eksperimenterende samarbejde mellem manuskript- og producerelever fra Den Danske Filmskole, studerende fra Det Danske Kunstakademis Skole for Design og Danmarks Radio, TV-DRAMA. Endelig trækker afhandlingen på en bred vifte af eksempler på filmisk design fra det vestlige korpus af klassiske film fra George Méliès Le voyage à travers l’impossible (1904) til Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9106 Files in this item: 1
Jakob Ion Wille.pdf (16.57Mb)
