Browsing Ph.D. theses by Title
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Interactions and Convergence in Product Development NetworksBerhausen, Nico Peter (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Many studies have focused on the topic of product innovation. As a key element of how industrial organisations work, of how competition is shaped and how economic growth is realised, innovation provides an interesting research field, which will never be fully explored. Industrial organisations explore these grounds through strategic processes in which objectives should guide product development processes. Ideas, alternatives or decisions form these processes in which heterogeneous actors need to be aligned and coordinated towards the final product innovation. Heterogeneity is a key aspect here; different, new technologies, conflicting objectives, different opinions and different management practices for example, are part of this process. Although these elements have been studied extensively in extant research, I identify several gaps in the existing literature, which I in turn strive to fill with this thesis. First, a perspective of the interactions in innovation processes is needed with a focus on control mechanisms and the mobilisation of strategic objectives. Secondly, focusing on control, the way calculative boundaries are created and explored and how these may be overcome needs more development and empirical insights. Thirdly, the interaction of control mechanisms and the coordination of product development networks through these interactions lack empirical insights and build an interesting research ground. I do not provide a holistic framework or a contingent perspective of how organisations should manage innovation. Rather I discuss the many ways in which product development networks become convergent through the interaction of control mechanisms, which may act as a vehicle or translator of strategic objectives... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8588 Files in this item: 1
Nico_Peter_Berhausen.pdf (2.056Mb) -
Obling, Anne Roelsgaard (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis is the result of an ethnographic fieldwork at a major university hospital in Denmark that I undertook between June 2009 and January 2011. I was an ‘embedded’ observer in a cancer clinic and entirely dependent on the staff – administrative and clinical – for access to facilities, people and diseases. That said, I was never asked to modify my writings in any way or to show the content of my field notes or tape recordings. Neither does the hospital have any formal share in the overall thesis. The responsibility for the final outcome is on my shoulders alone. As an embedded observer I was to handle personally sensitive data, such as specific details in patient records, with confidentiality. There is no information in my writings which can be traced – directly or indirectly – back to individual patients or relatives at the hospital and hence disclose their identity. My observations lasted anywhere from 20 minutes (the length of a typical staff meeting) to five working days in a row. During a day of observation, I followed doctors from they arrived in the early mornings; when they attended the morning conferences, until they left the hospital in the late afternoon after hours of clinical work in the outpatient clinic. I also followed them in their offices and in the operation theatres. Many tableaux from the thesis you are reading now were recorded in my notebook and then reconstructed in the later writing. Wherever possible, I have used my free access to the hospital to check the accuracy of my writing, for example by procuring typical situations more than once or by going through precarious details with involved staff members. Statements that appear in quotation marks (‘…’) were recorded directly on my tape recorder or in my notebook while the person was speaking, or immediately hereafter. Through the process I have shared my ideas with the staff members involved to make sure that they understood the purpose of my work and also in order for them to have a chance to feel comfortable with my presence. Throughout the thesis, I have shortened quotes from documents and interviews in order to make the text more readable. In addition to my fieldwork at the hospital, I have worked with the sociologist Nanna Mik-Meyer. In her work, Mik-Meyer has focused on general practitioners and their preoccupation with patients who attend the consultancy with medically unexplained symptoms. Parts of the raw data material from some of her previous studies became the basis of a co-authored article, which is included in this thesis. Utterances from individuals described in this article are directly quoted from a larger quantity of interviews with general practitioners in primary care medicine. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8419 Files in this item: 1
Anne_Obling.pdf (1.338Mb) -
Frandsen, Thomas (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The world is increasingly turbulent with shorter and shorter technological life cycles and more and more frequent changes in customer demand. This situation implies that flexibility and agility are crucial for producers of products and services. Much effort has been directed toward understanding innovation and the ways in which management can increase the value of innovation efforts. As a consequence, suggestions emphasizing different aspects of innovation and creativity have been put forward. However, the value of architectural knowledge for innovation is increasingly recognized as crucial with modular architectures proposed as one way of increasing the rate of innovation by introducing flexibility and agility without sacrificing efficiency. Modularity is a way to design a system with the intent of reducing its complexity by decomposing the system and reducing interdependencies between the subsystems of the system through standardized interfaces. Systems designed in this way allow for greater flexibility through recombination; however, they retain efficiency by means of standardization and scale economies from the reuse of components. For this reason modular architectures present an interesting solution to the dilemma of whether to invest in innovation or in efficiency. The topic has received much attention in the face of demands from customers for increasingly heterogeneous products and services. However, an important aspect to keep in mind is that, while decomposition is a powerful way of reducing complexity, most real systems remain only nearly decomposable (Simon, 1962) or loosely coupled rather than uncoupled (Orton & Weick, 1990).... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8420 Files in this item: 1
Thomas_Frandsen.pdf (6.869Mb) -
Viken, Monica (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The focus of this thesis is an analysis of the legal aspects and use of surveys in trademark and marketing practice litigation in Norway. I examine the legal relevance of surveys and analyse how they are considered as evidence by the courts and administrative bodies. Human behaviour can be defined within a legal context by interpreting legal sources and also by developing a survey based on the market place. In this thesis, I compare the use of survey findings as evidence of human perceptions in the context of the average consumer who represents the opinion of the relevant group. If the factual public opinion of the respective group of addressees is taken into consideration, the rules are interpreted with a basis in the market place (reality), and not within a formal legal framework (abstraction)... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8367 Files in this item: 2
Monica_Viken_Abstracts_only.pdf (92.83Kb)Monica_Viken.pdf (1.886Mb) -
Constructing and Organizing Biogas Markets Amid Fragility and ControversyBuchhorn, Adam (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This research project examines markets for biogas plants in Denmark, referred to simply as biogas markets, as a fragile and controversial process of framing and organizing by analyzing how unexpected events, called ‘overflows’, and controversies influence how markets frame biogas plants as a valuable economic good and ensure biogas plants are implemented through market transactions. Without well-constructed and well-organized markets these fundamental economic functions cannot take place. The overarching argument of the project is that to realize changing technical, political, and socio-economic intentions of biogas the market must be framed and organized to reframe and solve overflows and controversies that characterize biogas markets in Denmark. Otherwise, what we end up with are ‘markets of good intentions’. Although they are rarely predicted and constitute the robustness as well as the source of the inevitable fragility and controversy of the market, it is essential to the framing of biogas plants as a valuable commodity and the completion of transactions, that overflows and controversies are addressed and internalized into the market assemblage. This involves identifying and rendering them debatable based on the calculations and other elements that underpin the alleged value of biogas and the actions of market actors... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8048 Files in this item: 1
Adam_Buchhorn.pdf (5.390Mb) -
Flexibility, performance and commitment in work-life managementRaastrup Kristensen, Anders (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis offers a critical contribution to the theories of work-life balance. Within the contemporary theoretical perspectives on work and life the individuals are constructed as being responsible for work-life balance by turning it into a problem of the personal behaviour, decisions, psychological traits and family condition of the human subject. In this sense the everyday problem of balancing between work and home is reduced to be primarily an individual problem and decision. When the problem of work-life balance is raised in this way, it is difficult for companies to offer managerial and organizational solutions that do not automatically exclude this as an individual problem. It might be possible for managers and organizations to help the employees in achieving work-life balance, but it is fundamentally a challenge that the individual employees must solve. The thesis offers a different perspective on the relation between work and life. This perspective is not based upon the individual employees’ perception and hence constitution of work-life balance. Instead, it is argued that the constitution of the relation of work and life is to be found in its effects. These effects are not established in the constitution of the boundary between work and home, but are rather recognized by how the employees determine and define activities and tasks as work. For example, is it work to send email in the evening? Is it work to read an article at the weekend? Is it work to update a profile on Facebook? The question is therefore ‘what is work?’ and not ‘what is the boundary between work and home?’ URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7973 Files in this item: 1
Anders_Raastrup_Kristensen.pdf (4.374Mb) -
Essays on Autonomous Strategic ActionLinder, Stefan Matthias (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Kun abstrakt er tilgængelig online for denne PhD afhandling. CBS Bibliotek har en trykt udgave der kan findes via CBS bibliotekskatalog. Only abstract of this Ph.D. thesis is available online. The CBS Library has a printed edition this edition can be found through the CBS Library Catalogue. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8356 Files in this item: 1
Stefan_Linder_PhD_abstract.pdf (31.84Kb) -
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Abstract: The research motivation for this study is to improve the understanding, scholarly and my own, of wireless service adoption as services enters and leaves users’ hands and minds. Wireless devices and services are enabling an unprecedented intertwinement of human actions and information systems in everyday life. Current IS research has so far paid scant attention to studying technologies which transcends the organizational domain. Little emphasis has also been provided beyond the absolute point of acceptance and adoption of artifacts. Nevertheless, many new wireless services transcend traditional use spheres. With this emerges the strong need to follow the shaping of user engagements with new mobile data services. This is the key phenomenon of interest in this dissertation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7804 Files in this item: 1
lars_andreas_knutsen.pdf (4.838Mb) -
Tscherning, Heidi (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The development of mobile devices has occurred with unprecedented pace since the late nineties, and the increase of generic services has proliferated in most developed countries, driven by the expanding technological capabilities and performance of mobile platforms. This dissertation investigates how consumer objectives, orientation, and behavior can aid in explaining the adoption and use of a new type of mobile devices: “app phones”. This dissertation focuses its effort on two focal influences of adoption and use; social influences and competing forces. Through a qualitative case study and field study this dissertation explores early adoption and use of iPhones. The case study is a one-shot cross-sectional case study that investigates five individuals, related through the same social network, and their decision to adopt an iPhone prior to its release in Denmark. This adoption decision engenders high switching costs as adopters lack references to imitate and need skills to unlock and jailbreak their iPhones to make them work on Danish networks. The specific purpose of the case study is to explore how social influences impact mobile users’ early adoption decisions, as it is well known in the literature that people with similar characteristics, tastes, and beliefs often associate in the same social networks and, hence, influence each other. The field study is cross-sectional with multiple snapshots and explores fifteen individuals part of the same university study, who receives an iPhone for a period of seven months short after its release in Denmark. The specific purpose of the field study is to explore how competing forces of iPhone usage influence assimilation, i.e. the degree to which the iPhone is used, over time. The dissertation, furthermore, contains a systematic literature review. The main contribution of this dissertation is reported through four articles and is directed at both academic researchers and practitioners. The study emphasizes the importance of social influences and competing forces in the investigation of adoption and use of certain mobile devices. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8342 Files in this item: 1
Heidi_Tscherning.pdf (2.504Mb) -
Kampagnestyring i Velfærdsstaten: En diskussion af trafikkampagners styringspotentialeSpeiermann, Sabrina (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
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Reinholt, Mia (Frederiksberg, 2008)[More information][Less information]
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Jakobsen, Gitte P. (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: With the increasing globalization, new organizational structures, and rapid change the leader has been increasingly individualized and personalized. The leader has been put under pressure to reveal a leadership, in which the personality of the individual leader is increasingly important. Moreover, the individual leader has become central for creating and communicating organizational meaning, and the leaders’ personal conduct, ethics and identity are taken to be symbolic of the organizational brand. Leaders are increasingly publicly evaluated based on how he “tells the story” of him-self and the organization e.g. the extent to which the leader exemplifies and lives the organizational brand. This is reflected in a growing demand for leader development programs with a personal orientation, and psychological oriented development focused on the individual leaders’ personal challenges. Recent theoretical developments in the intersection of critical management studies and narrative identity studies have challenged prior assumptions and approaches, with a departure in social constructivist perspectives leadership is conceived as narrative identity construction embedded in social practice and context. Hence, leader studies turn to investigate the emergence of leaders as processes of identity work in particular contexts, privileging the use of language, social interaction and critical reflexive approaches. This dissertation explores the narrative construction of leader identity in the context of a leader development program, examining the processes and the content of identity work of leaders. Empirically five Danish executives from five different industries have been studied in a three year period, starting with a one-year long leader development program and in two following interviews. The material is analyzed within a theoretical and methodological framework inspired by a combination of social constructivist, discursive, narrative and critical management approaches to identity and leadership research. The narrative analytical framework is based on narrative theory, narrative therapy theorization, and positioning theory, analyzing the thematic, temporal and relational aspects of the five leaders’ narrative accounts. Hence, the analytical strategy analyzes the narrative recourses of: problem stories, preferred stories, storylines, and the negotiation of subject positions used by the five leaders in constructing certain situated leader identities URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7807 Files in this item: 1
Gitte_P_Jakobsen.pdf (1.488Mb) -
A History of Danish School Governing from 1970-2010Grønbæk Pors, Justine (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In Denmark, as in many other welfare states, we strongly believe that problems within the public sector can be solved by means of better management. For quite some years it has been assumed that management leads to more control over and better quality of welfare. Politicians and public servants have therefore been concerned with how the individual hospital, nursing home and school can develop its management. This has created a somewhat strange problem: How is it possible from a position at the top of a governing hierarchy to create management capacity from below? This thesis is about how Danish local government, municipalities, have developed understandings of governing relations between themselves and the public school over the last 40 years. The thesis tracks how municipalities have gradually assigned organizational independence to the individual school and increased their expectations of its self-management.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8355 Files in this item: 1
Justine_Grønbæk_Pors.pdf (4.586Mb) -
Antecedents, processes dynamics and firm-level impactØrberg Jensen, Peter (Frederiksberg, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD thesis addresses one of the most intensely debated phenomena over the past decade within the realm of international business: Firms’ relocation of value chain activities to other parts in the network of multinational corporation (MNC) or to external suppliers/services providers in foreign countries (hereinafter referred to as offshoring), often to destination countries with lower cost structures. Whereas the offshoring of manufacturing tasks has existed for several decades, and has been analyzed in the international business literature, the offshoring of advanced services tasks from developed country firms to destination countries such as India, which offer an attractive cocktail of low costs and highly skilled labour, is a more recent phenomenon. The offshoring of this type of services tasks forms the subject of this PhD thesis... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7741 Files in this item: 1
Peter_d_orberg_jensen.pdf (674.8Kb) -
The Contingent Value of Networked CollaborationVaarst Andersen, Kristina (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Co-location of industry professionals often leads to development of collaboration networks, and multiple studies have emphasized the benefits of embedded collaboration. Due to higher levels of trust, embedded collaboration reduces transaction costs and facilitates ready knowledge exchanged. Other studies have pointed to dangers of over-embeddedness. The argument is that too high levels of embeddedness lead to habitual thinking, preferential treatment, and thereby mitigate performance. However, research on the conditions under which embeddedness in different types of collaboration networks primarily yields costs or benefits still leaves much to be investigated.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8352 Files in this item: 1
Kristina_Vaarst_Andersen.pdf (2.825Mb) -
Busquets, Javier (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis is about innovation and power. Human nature has always been expressed by our capacity to innovate and adapt to almost any environment (Bowlby, 1962; Giddens, 1991). In the 20th century, the primary function of business organisations was to invent, produce and commercialise their products and services in different markets. As a matter of fact, business organisations in the last century proved to be the best way of disseminating innovation (Schön, 1971). Currently in the 21st century, there is a call to better understand how new ideas, technology and sources of knowledge are managed, based on the premise that novelty can unfold anywhere and that innovation cannot be considered a linear process consisting of a chain of activities. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8164 Files in this item: 1
Javier_Busquets.pdf (3.025Mb) -
Møller Larsen, Marcus (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Offshoring can be defined as the relocation of organizational tasks and services to foreign locations. Increasingly, firms experience that unforeseen costs and difficulties of managing offshoring undercut anticipated benefits; that unexpected challenges of offshoring jeopardize and eventually undermine initial objectives. Guided by the research question—what are the organizational consequences of offshoring?—the purpose of this thesis is to investigate why some firms fail when offshoring and other do not. The thesis consists of four research papers using various datasets and methodologies that investigate offshoring in an organizational context. The first paper investigates how the complexity of offshoring leads to ‘hidden costs’ of implementing offshoring activities. The second paper looks at how these hidden reconfiguration costs influence the process performance of the offshored activity and how this relationship is moderated by the modularity of that activity. The third paper investigates the effect of the organizational reconfiguration of offshoring on firms’ strategies. The final paper studies different strategies of adaptation in offshoring. Taken together, this thesis argues that whether firms relocate activities with the purpose of accessing resources or as a response to political pressures, the process of offshoring presents firms with the challenge of coordinating and integrating offshoring activities in a global organization. The complexities and uncertainties of an organization consisting of a number of offshored activities (in contrast to an organization with only co-located activities) require firms to invest additional resources in coordination mechanisms so that an efficient reintegration can be achieved. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8669 Files in this item: 1
Marcus_M _Larsen.pdf (1.714Mb) -
(Re)assembling work in the Danish PostMogensen, Mette (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The well-being of employees is currently a central matter of concern both in public and private companies. If employees do not feel well, in the last instance they might experience a burn out or fall ill from stress and thus add to the highly costly yet ever growing number filling up the statistics of this modern epidemic. In short, well-being is key to productivity. For sure this is not a new story, but at the core of organization and management theory: how to best organize the human resources of production balancing off the need for increased productivity and the preservation of physical and mental resources of the worker? In contrast to classic principles such as Taylor’s scientific management, it seems today generally agreed that well-being thrives when work is organized by principles of ‘flexibility’, ‘learning’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘creativity’. However, at the same time workplaces and organizations are under an enormous pressure towards standardization and optimization. This dissertation investigates empirically competing or intersecting ways of organizing well-being and productivity, with an analytic outset in the work task, departing from historically generated, however still prevalent, dichotomies and normativities of standardization and flexibility respectively. The empirical case of the dissertation is the organization of postal work in a big and formerly publicly run distribution company in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic field work and the employment of an auto-photographic method, the dissertation investigates how the current and simultaneous efforts of standardization and flexibility configure the well-being(s) and productivities of postal work. The theoretical framework is primarily informed by Actor Network Theory and the dissertation attend to a detailed investigation of how well-being and productivity are enacted in the daily work practices and the constant shifting/delegation going on between the inscribed postal worker of work tools, standard procedures and management programs on the one side and the routinized bodies of the postal workers on the other. Most of the time this results in ‘working compatibilities’ silently enacting bodies-with-standards that are both productive and well. At other times, however, controversy and conflicts arise, pointing to the fact that the presence of multiple modes of organizing are not always productive. The empirical chapters departs from selected auto-photographs that prompt different unfoldings of the way postal work is organized – or sought organized – and the way well-being and productivity arise as effects of these organizations. In this unfolding the analysis proceed on a tension between phenomenological and actor-network theoretical readings of empirical material creating a patchwork-like assemblage of postal work. This involves a stitching together of highly mundane, corporeal practices and material such as bicycles and kickstands, personal experiences, the researcher’s interpretations, the technical scripts of electric bikes, the norms of postal workers, the discourse of management and the political-economic developments of European postal markets. Through the empirical chapters, the dissertation depicts postal work not as a story of standardization versus flexibility, but as a constant ‘juggling’ and balancing act between them. This is not a story of humanization or the opposite, it is both at once. It is not a story of stabilization or perpetual change, it is both at once. It is a story of the hanging-togetherness of an organization that displays multiple versions of well-being and productivity as well as multiple controversies as a result of this. Depending on the stakes one has in this complex organizational set-up, whether one is the postal worker, the local manager, the HR consultant or perhaps the customer, preferences will differ, and indeed this is an important discussion. What is the better way to organize postal work? The analysis presented in the dissertation will not deliver the answer to this, but hopefully make the discussion a more qualified one, by displacing old truths. Having as point of departure and final emphasis a heuristics of the work task, the thesis aims to contribute to a specification of organization theory, HRM and work environment theorizing, which otherwise tend to have lost its primary object: work. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8589 Files in this item: 1
Mette_Mogensen.pdf (9.923Mb) -
Med udgangspunkt i støtteverbers leksikaliseringsmønstre i dansk og franskHein, Birgitte (Frederiksberg, 2003)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Enhver oversætter mellem et germansk sprog som dansk og et romansk sprog som fransk ved, at det ofte er bestemte sproglige konstruktioner, der volder problemer. En af disse konstruktioner består af et støtteverbum og et objekt, der tilsammen danner en semantisk enhed. Da denne konstruktion er hyppigt forekommende, specielt i juridiske og administrative tekster, kan det være af både praktisk og teoretisk værdi at skaffe et klarere billede af, hvordan konstruktionerne idiomatisk opbygges og bruges på de to sprog. Undersøgelsen søger at indskrive sig i en sammenhæng, der vedrører både oversættelse og lingvistisk beskrivelse, ud fra et ønske om at en komparativ beskrivelse skal kunne give en oversætter viden, som han kan bruge i sit praktiske arbejde. De fleste, som har benyttet computer-støttede oversættelser, må være enige i, at det stadig er nødvendigt med kvalificeret menneskelig oversættelse, hvis man skal have en idiomatisk korrekt og brugbart resultat. Der er ganske vist i dag mulighed for computer-støttede ”rå-oversættelser”. Somme tider kan disse oversættelser tjene til for eksempel at give en internetbruger et hurtigt indtryk af indholdet af en web-side på et sprog, som han ikke behersker.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8623 Files in this item: 1
Birgitte_Hein.pdf (776.8Kb) -
Insights from Annual General MeetingsStrand, Therese (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis consists of five empirical studies, all relating to shareholder activism at annual general meetings. The first study concerns the structure and content of general meetings in Denmark and Sweden comparatively. The paper reveals significant differences in the level of activism, with Swedish investors being the most active in terms of proposals, proxy voting, and ‘voice’. The paper takes a legal approach, and discusses divergence in activism levels from the perspective of shareholder prerequisites to engage in monitoring efforts. Further, the paper investigating the topics addressed through questions and opinions. The results show that matters which can be categorized as irrelevant are reasonably rare. This is an important finding, as suggestions to abolish general meetings have often been based on the assumption that general meetings facilitate nothing but irrelevant, time consuming, and costly discussions that serves no monitoring function. The second study analyses the impact of voting power on shareholder activism. We hypothesize that there is a positive relationship between shareholder activism and a measure of the largest shareholder’s sensitivity to increased participation by small shareholders and find that firms’ amenability to small shareholder influence leads to more proposals by the nomination committee, but fewer proposals by other shareholders. We interpret this as evidence that the shareholder elected nomination committees effectively channel shareholder concerns and preempt other kinds of activism. Politicians and companies that desire active shareholders could improve the amenability of firms to shareholder influence by ownership transparency, shareholder committees, and contacts with shareholder associations and other vehicles for collective action... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8460 Files in this item: 1
Therese_Strand.pdf (1.719Mb)