Browsing Ph.D. theses by Title
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A Study of Product Launches in the Swedish Pharmaceutical IndustryFraenkel, Stefan C. (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This research identifies a set of key success factors for sales force readiness, for driving the success of a new product launch within the pharmaceutical industry. Drawing from the analysis of fifty product launches in the Swedish pharmaceutical market, the study has succeeded in discriminating between four types of key success factors: the key factors that are important and crucial for a successful launch; the key factors that are important yet not necessarily crucial for a successful launch; the market conditions that are most ideal for a successful launch, and finally the type of newness of the product that is most suitable for successful launch. The overall aim of the research project was to provide guidance in optimizing the sales force readiness during the launch of a new pharmaceutical product. The research question is driven by the great importance and high cost of the sales force, together with the need for the pharmaceutical companies to continuously launch new products in a marketplace with increased challenges for all parts of the business. The research approach divides the research into two main parts. The first part reviews earlier studies/findings in the literature, collects empirical data in the form of six case studies and conducts six expert interviews with the purpose of formulating a Research Model. In the second part, the Research Model and its variables are quantitatively tested against fifty launched pharmaceutical products in Sweden. The study employs a bottom-up analysis method with Partial Least Squares Analysis, being predictive in nature, rather than the more conventional top-down and hypothesis-testing approach that typically employs regression analysis methods. In order to provide both practitioners and researchers with guidance on the results, its interpretation is presented in terms of its managerial implications as well as proposals for further research. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8224 Files in this item: 1
Stefan_Fraenkel.pdf (2.535Mb) -
[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation contributes to the existing body of knowledge on how we design computer systems, particularly multiuser software for knowledge sharing and creation in globally diffused companies. This is achieved by conducting a work place study of a global industrial engineering conglomerate which has the strategy of working with knowledge in the form of “best practices” meant to boost performance. The thesis explores the situation that workers are in, since they are meant to share and develop “best practices” knowledge in a portal based Knowledge Management System (KMS). The study indentifies a set of problems that prevents knowledge sharing from taking place to the degree to which management was specifically aiming. It was explored whether these problems could, to some degree, be mitigated by employing persuasive design, which is a new stance towards design where the aim is to directly seek to change the user’s behavior, i.e., persuading more knowledge sharing. The main contribution is an indication of an anomaly with regards to the strategic approach towards knowledge management, where knowledge sharing is seen as an effort by which companies can gain a competitive advantage by working with knowledge in a structured fashion. The issue is that the descriptions found in literature on strategic knowledge management do not address the many issues uncovered when conducting prolonged fieldwork among workers who engage in the activities that the literature seemingly takes for granted. Thus, many practical problems were uncovered that would need some level of mitigation before a company could hope to gain a strategic advantage from working with knowledge. This challenges the “stock" approach towards knowledge management, which seems to address only the management level of the organization. A contribution is also made in exploring the state-of-the-art of the emerging field of persuasive design. Persuasive design aims at enabling designers to create designs that deliberately change the user’s attitude or behavior. According to this new design tradition, the designer specifically designs with the aim of behavior transformation. The goal is a deliberate behavioral change, rather than supporting a set of existing tasks or a set of existing behaviors. The work presented shows how persuasive design is a very conceptual area of research, and that it is not a fitting approach for attaining a higher degree of participation in computer systems for knowledge sharing and creation. Persuasive design is thus not the remedy for the many problems found that prevent knowledge sharing from taking place URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8168 Files in this item: 1
Kristian_Toerning.pdf (62.64Mb) -
En undersøgelse af det intense arbejdslivKirkegaard, Line (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Denne afhandling tilbyder et diagram over eksistensformen for en gruppe højt profilerede management konsulenter. Den tilbyder et diagram over et moderne selvforhold. Den tilbyder en fortegnelse over, hvordan en gruppe højt profilerede management konsulenter griber de kriterier, de bliver udsat for i sit deres liv og den eksistensmåde, der hermed muliggøres. Med dette ønsker jeg at bidrage til de eksisterende work-life balance teorier. Min vej ind i teorierne er nemlig, at logikken i mit empiriske materiale forekommer så forskelligt fra de traditionelle work-life balance teorier, at disse ikke lader sig forene. Jeg foretager derfor en analyse af den eksisterende litteratur, og rejser i den forbindelse en grundlæggende kritik af work-life balance teorierne, for at operere med falske problemstillinger på en måde, så svaret allerede indgår i de spørgsmål, der stilles... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8390 Files in this item: 1
Line_Kirkegaard.pdf (1.175Mb) -
Relasjonen mellom virksomhetsledelse og kontraktshåndtering, belyst via fire norske virksomheterSimilä, Jan Ole (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Why do we focus on the internal arrangements of the contractual process from a leadership perspective? Through empirical research where we have asked questions about the internal organizational arrangements, what kind of knowledge the organization need, and how institutional arrangements affect the contract process, we have tried to answer the main research question. We have also carried with us a question of if the organization's attachment to the public or private sector affects the arrangements. I have conducted a comparative case study where data has been generated from two public sector organizations, The National Road Administration, Helsebygg Midt-Norge, one private sector organization, Siemens, and one hybrid organization, NTE. Data was primarily generated from the governance system of the different organizations, and informant interviews. The analysis was carried out by two steps; first an empirical analysis, then a theoretical analysis, based on contractual theory, of the empirical findings. The empirical analysis shows that the organizations share the same thoughts on how to organize the contractual work; the division between the line and the project organization, the distribution of decision-making authority, and the institutionalization of a specific governance system. The organizational processes are formalized, and the governance system gives the clear recommendation on desired actions. The empirical data gives a clear understanding that the contract process is dominated by one profession — the engineers. Regarding the question on knowledge, I found the organizations to be interested foremost on problem solving competencies (engineering competencies). Other competencies, for example economic or legal competencies, where viewed as support competencies. We also found that personal skills in handling the complex and difficult processes and attitude toward ethics seemed to be of importance. On the question on how institutional elements in the organizational environment affected the contract process, we found that the overall interest of the organizations was stability and predictability. We also found that the market mechanisms cause the organizations some worry. In the end, the empirical findings did not give us any strong reasons to differentiate between public sector organizations and private sector organizations in how to deal with contractual work processes. The theoretical analysis has been carried out within classical and relational contract theory. The analysis shows that the empirical findings, to a great extend, can be explained through classical contract theory. It also gives us some ideas on what areas of the theory, especially relational contract theory that should be improved. Regarding the main research question, the conclusions indicate a need to establish a comprehensive approach to the contract process, to ensure a good balance between different partial processes. There also seem to be necessary to work on improvements on contract theory to increase the applicability of the theory, especially the relational contract theory. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8011 Files in this item: 1
Jan_Ole_Similä.pdf (2.216Mb) -
En kognitiv-typologisk analyseBalieu, Henriette (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The dissertation seeks to answer the following questions: Which semantic properties allow for a verb to appear as well transitively as intransitively without any morphological changes, i.e. a semantic characterization of the verbs that alternate. When does the reflexive pronoun se appear in the intransitive version of the alternation? What characterizes the situations referred to by the alternation and what makes them so apt to appear in the causative alternation not only in Spanish but also in typologically related and unrelated languages, i.e. a more general characterization/description of the situations referred to by the verbs in the alternation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7945 Files in this item: 1
Henriette_Balieu.pdf (2.781Mb) -
En beretning om forvaltningsrevisionens beretningerJustesen, Lise (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation is about state performance auditing in Denmark – a practice that the National Audit Office of Denmark (NAOD) is mandated to undertake. My analysis of performance auditing takes as a starting point the fact that performance auditing is a kind of writing and that one immediate and obvious output of performance auditing consists of written reports. In a sense it could be argued that performance auditing is a particular kind of writing. However, not much research has paid attention to the question of how the writing of audit report is performed in concrete settings. What characterizes such processes? Does it follow certain rules? How are different actors involved? What kinds of effects follow from the writing and how, and to what extent, are the possible effects constrained by the particular kind of writing? The dividing line between the auditors as the writers, the auditee as the object of writing and the public as readers of the message conveyed by the report also seems to be questionable. In the dissertation, I show that in processes where it is difficult to determine in what sense a report is an output or an input and where these processes begin and end, the roles between writing and reading, active and passive may get blurred too. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7046 Files in this item: 1
lise_justesen.pdf (1.671Mb) -
Ledelsernes indflydelse på introduktion og vedligeholdelse af kvalitetsstrategier i det danske sundhedsvæsenFrey Larsen, Anette (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The focus of this thesis is ”Quality Leadership in Danish Hospitals” and the conditions for good quality development on the operational level. Within this framework it is the objective of the thesis in three selected hospitals, geographically spread over the country, to investigate the view of the concept “quality” among department leaders from five referral centers and its impact on the department's quality work. The overall quality concept in the three hospitals is based on two different leadership technologies: Total Quality Management and Accreditation. Two of the hospitals have applied the TQM model as leadership technology but use the method in different ways. The third hospital applies Accreditation. Accordingly the three hospitals have organized in separate ways..... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8064 Files in this item: 1
Anette_Frey_Larsen.pdf (1.421Mb) -
An understanding anchored in pragmatismBang Mathiasen, John (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The subject matter chosen for this PhD, learning within a Product Development (PD) working practice, might give rise to wonder given that I have a theoretical education within supply chain management, achieved practical experience as senior supply chain manager and finally, conducted a great many lectures dealing with supply chain management. Offhand, it may seem an odd choice, but my practical experience, briefly illustrated in the below, triggered the decision to study learning within a PD working practice. PD implies design of components and clarifications of the assembly process. A side effect of these activities is a routing, which establishes the supply chain; that is, the total journey, which all components must undertake before the product is saleable. Hence, seen from the perspective of the operation, the supply chain to be managed throughout the life cycle of the product is created during the PD phase. Changing a supply chain later on is possible, but it requires a significant effort. When managing a supply chain area, in which a large part of the products had a life cycle of more than 10 years, I realised the critical importance of influencing the PD process. Thus, employees from the supply chain department were often engaged in intense exchanges of views with the PD engineers and substantial resources were devoted to improving the awareness of supply chain considerations during the PD process. Nevertheless, in my firm conviction, these efforts only managed to exert minor influence and consequently, the established supply chains were difficult to handle. Ever since then, I have wondered why we were unsuccessful in influencing the supply chain of a new product. The involved supply chain engineers had a highly theoretical background as well as practical experience, but it was not possible to initiate learning among the PD engineers as regards the establishment of a more suitable supply chain. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8509 Files in this item: 1
John-Bang_Mathiasen.pdf (1.812Mb) -
Om udvikling af medarbejdernes brandorienterede dømmekraftHermansen, Dorte (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: How can service companies get their employees to ‘live the brand’? This thesis answers this question through a dialogue between practice and theory. It investigates the potential of philosophical-dialogical methods to transform abstract brand values into action in corporate branding praxis at TDC and explores opportunities to apply the methods in context of service companies in general. It develops an understanding of corporate branding as an organisational and cultural project in which collective dialogue-processes serve as the main sensemaking process. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7813 Files in this item: 1
Dorte_Hermansen.pdf (2.588Mb) -
How special groups organize for collaborative creativity in conditions of spatial variability and distanceO’Donnell, Shannon (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The enormous challenges and opportunities impacting the world community today increasingly require people to practice collaborative innovation effectively both in person and across geographic boundaries. Simultaneously, advances in technology such as social networking tools, digital 3-D representations, virtual worlds, and open source practices are inspiring generations of users to develop new kinds of adaptive collaborative networks and capabilities. But when people work across organizational and geographic boundaries, new challenges arise that make it difficult for groups to achieve the levels of excellence they are capable of achieving together in close proximity. Practitioners need help determining how best to perform collaborative creativity given unique and dynamic work conditions. Meanwhile, as new forms of creative group work emerge at an accelerating pace, researchers struggle to keep up with and develop nuanced understanding of the variations in collaborative processes we increasingly see performed. With this PhD research, I aim to increase our understanding of a particular, specialized form of collaborative creativity called “ensembling.” I investigate this phenomenon by studying it in diverse—including “stretched”—conditions. By stretched, I mean that, literally, groups are stretched apart in space as membership size and spatial distance between members increase and work configurations vary. The groups I study are those both capable of achieving and driven to achieve a peak-performance state of ensemble, and do so via the enactment of an interdependent set of methods that call ensemble into being, a process I call ensembling. In their ideal form, these work methods support the emergence of ensemble and result in the creation of aesthetically coherent and novel outcomes that are particularly responsive to the contexts in which they are made. To investigate the phenomenon of ensemble, I first develop a construct of ensemble based on informant descriptions, and use theory and data to develop a detailed description of how ensembling is performed in natural conditions (i.e., in close physical proximity). Then I look at an extreme example in which a set of expert groups’ ability to ensemble was put under stress by an unprecedented work task. In 2009, multiple string quartets (many considered world class) organized to perform a new musical composition. The composition challenged four quartets at a time to perform as an integrated ensemble while sitting apart, in various configurations, and at spatial distances of up to 70 feet. To help them address the difficulties produced by increased membership and distance, the musicians integrated a simple coordinating technology into their process. To learn how participants made ensemble possible given these new conditions, I engaged multiple qualitative methods for generating data and multiple perspectives for interpretation. I first considered their process as an iterative approach to exploring strategies for addressing constraints, in order to show how the methods of ensembling interacted with conditions of increased group size, increased spatial distance and configurational variability, and to elicit their evolving beliefs about what methods made ensemble more likely to occur given these conditions. Then I performed an alternative interpretation, disrupting this logic and exploring the ways in which participants used methods of ensembling—particularly openness to uncertainty and reconceiving—to create unanticipated potentialities for ensemble to emerge despite constraints. I show how they worked with a coordinating technology called a “click-track” in important new ways that went beyond “merely” achieving synchronous coordination to increasing their autonomy, relatedness, and ability to demonstrate artistic virtuosity, enabling them to engage equally in leadership and participation and to play. Finally, performing a comparative analysis across sub-units of the case, including examples of breakdown in the process, I generated additional insights into what conditions, beliefs, methods and behaviors enable or inhibit processes of ensembling. Integrating learning from analysis and interpretation, I propose a new range of conditions in which ensembling is possible, and a revised and expanded description of the methods by which groups ensemble. Conditions can expand to include larger groups with limited-tenure consisting of enduring-tenure sub-groups, multiple task interdependencies at group and sub-group levels, balanced tenure at sub-group level, a balance between proximity and distance, opportunities to work with and without technological mediation, and self-determined configuration variability. I show that the emergence of ensemble depends on, for instance, a shared purpose to ensemble, and methods such as a “struggle” phase, episodes of close physical proximity, collective leadership, “dueting” in different configurations, reconceiving constraints, living with the paradox of one-and-four, opening the process to uncertainty and to the emergence of consent, and subliminal technology engagement. Ultimately, these groups demonstrated an increasing ability to adapt to new conditions faster and more creatively, making new configurations possible, and suggesting ways in which ensemble might be performed in other kinds of group settings. I summarize findings in the form of a “framework of ensembling” that is meant to serve as a tool to further enrich our yet nascent understanding of this complex phenomenon and to aid in the exploration of ensembling in contexts outside the usual places we expect it to occur. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8653 Files in this item: 1
Shannon_O'Donnell.pdf (7.529Mb) -
An ethnographic study of accountants who become managersBévort, Frans (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Management in a professional service firm such as Deloitte is suspended between a range of different fundamental concerns and ways of thinking. There is a market in which client needs are to be met, competitors matched and outperformed. There is the general public in which accounting firms such as Deloitte increasingly have become the object of critical scrutiny in their role as guardians of the common rules of accountability and legislation on accounting. There is a very strong professional culture and ethics, stemming from being a part of the professional community of a profession which creates unique ways of organizing and managing. And there is a growing concern about how to run the continually growing accounting-based advisory organizations (or professional service firms) in a way that efficiently utilizes the aggregated resources, which again creates a focus on management as a distinct issue. It is primarily the contradiction and dynamics of the latter two ‘internal’ concerns that the study of the dissertation is about - seen as institutional logics of professionalism and, or versus, bureaucracy. While the focus of most research into professional service firms has been on how general structural changes affect this unique species of organization, this study investigates how these contradictions affect the way accountants live and work performing roles as managers; how do accountants who become managers make sense of these contradictory logics? The dissertation treats this question theoretically by applying extant literature dealing with institutional change and logics with a special emphasis on recent research that focuses on the micro-processes which are the foundations of institutions and concretizes how institutional logics affect the action and sensemaking of actors. The dissertation contributes to this research by applying sensemaking theory and symbolic interactionism. The study is based on a 3-year ethnographic study in which managers at all levels have been interviewed and observed. Actual management processes and management training have been observed, via shadowing and participant observation. Relevant archival material has been included in the analysis. All these sources have been recorded and systematized in order to create a point of departure for the analyses of the dissertation. The main findings of the study point to: The institutional changes described by the Professional Service Firms research can be identified at the micro- or actor level in terms of ideals, systems, way organizing and structures which use a logic of bureaucracy and among which the development of a new middle-management role is a critical feature. These changes seem to have important consequences for the basic psychological contract between the professional and the organization in professional service firms. The changes, as they are found in the case, are more complex and laden with conflicts than otherwise described in the literature about professional service firms. This is based on the way the actors ‘draw on the existing logics’ and the conditions they have for doing this locally. This points to the importance of investigating the interaction of actors in order to understand how the new management practices are institutionalized/structurated. The changes towards a new model of management, found in the study, are based on the ability (and will) of the managers to navigate the contradictory logics in such a way that they can establish a meaningful identity as managers, and that they can mobilize other actors who support a new way of understanding management and that they are able to create space for the conversational reflection upon their behavior as managers and management. The ability (and will) of the managers is in its turn dependent on local conditions and interaction enabling these steps of sensemaking. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8448 Files in this item: 1
Frans_ Bévort.pdf (2.294Mb) -
An empirical study of enacted sensemaking in everyday conflict at workNaima Mikkelsen, Elisabeth (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This study is about everyday conflicts that occur at work; how meaning and action interact in processes of conflict handling in organisational conflicts that arise naturally in every arena of daily life when people meet in social interactions. I approach the phenomenon of conflict by exploring those social processes of organisational sensemaking that arise when conflict occurs in a nonprofit organisation, my own processes of sensemaking of the research process about conflict, and conflict research literature’s sensemaking of the concept of conflict. Weick argues that “[t]he basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” (1993, p. 653). Accordingly, sensemaking is conceptualised as a process of social construction where individuals attempt to interpret and explain sets of cues, or signals from their environments. The term can also be applied to the craft of research as sensemaking, in which researchers as sensemakers actively analyse the empirical material and generate representations of how reality is (Weick, 1989). Accordingly, in this study, I basically aim to understand conflict at work and understand research about conflict at work; that is, how conflict, as a social phenomenon, plays out in organisational cultures and group dynamics, and how conflict is conceptualised in conflict research literature. The study examines the following research questions from a sensemaking perspective: 1) How is conflict conceptualized in conflict research literature? 2) How do staff and management experience and act out conflicts in the nonprofit organisation of NGO Plus and how does changing conflict sensemaking affect conflicts at work? 3) What is my process of theorizing in conflict research? URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8609 Files in this item: 1
Elisabeth_Naima_Mikkelsen.pdf (1.476Mb) -
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Abstract: This PhD thesis is an ethnographic exploration of strategy work in practice. The academic contribution of the thesis is positioned in the overlap between Critical Approaches to Strategy and Strategy as Practice. This implies a critical position that does not take strategy for granted and which emphasizes a philosophical understanding of the practice concept. Other studies have adopted a similar Critical Strategy as Practice position, but very few ethnographic studies of strategy work have been conducted from this point of departure. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute two-fold to the existing Critical Strategy as Practice literature: One, to strengthen the tradition theoretically through the development and mobilization of a conceptual braid of practice, narrative, and performativity; and two, to provide an extensive empirical analysis of strategy work from this perspective. The case for the thesis is strategy work in the Stakeholder Department of a multinational biotech corporation, which is here called Bioforte. The thesis explores the dual aspects of the title as “making strategy-work”—the specific doings of crafting strategy; and “making Strategy work”—finding ways for strategy, as a concept, to function in the context of an organization. Building on the double entendre of the title, the guiding research question for this exploration is quite simply: What does strategy work do? The answer to this question is, however, not simple, because as the ethnographic exploration demonstrates, strategy work in the Stakeholder Engagement Department at Bioforte has a range of performative effects. Through narratives of everyday practice, the thesis demonstrates how strategy work contributes to organizing the organization by shaping The Strategy Working Group, the department, the work, and the selves of the people working with strategy. The organizing force of strategy work is partly achieved through the continual collective creation and maintenance of distinctions such as strategic/operational and left brain/right brain. In this sense, the thesis argues that the organizing forces of strategy is to be found in the performative nature of strategy work. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8663 Files in this item: 1
Marie_Mathiesen.pdf (5.342Mb) -
How to exploit the potential for management accounting of information technologyRom, Anders (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: A lag seems to exist between management accounting techniques and management accounting practices of organisations (Bjørnenak, 1997a). The accounting lag exists in spite of the interaction taking place between academia and practice in terms of researchers conducting field studies and management accountants attending research-based courses before and during their careers in practice. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7717 Files in this item: 1
anders_rom.pdf (2.648Mb) -
Value creation and ambiguity in client-consultant relationsSmith, Irene Skovgaard (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Et godt og effektivt samarbejde mellem kunde og konsulent fremhæves generelt som en afgørende betingelse for at få succes med brug af eksterne konsulenter. Dansk Industri har sammen med Dansk Management Råd (DMR) og Copenhagen Business School (CBS) etableret et udviklingsprojekt, der under overskriften 'Vækst i Vidensamfundet' har til formål at udvikle det afgørende samarbejde mellem kundevirksomheder og konsulentvirksomheder. Nærværende ErhvervsPh.d.-afhandling er en del af dette udviklingsprojekt og sætter fokus på, hvad der sker i kunde-konsulent samspillet i konteksten af konsulentopgaver, hvor det handler om at implementere forandring. På sådanne forandringsprojekter forventes konsulenterne at bidrage med viden, værktøjer og løsninger samtidig med, at de fungerer som forandringsagenter i kundeorganisationen og involverer og arbejder med ledere og medarbejdere på forskellige niveauer. Det gør kunde-konsulent samspillet til en kompleks størrelse, der ikke bare handler om den personlige relation og godt samarbejde mellem konsulent og opdragsgiver/projektsponsor. Når vi har at gøre med ydelser, hvor konsulenterne går i clinch med organisationen for at implementere forandring, må kunde-konsulent relationer ses i et bredere perspektiv end fokus på personlige relationer mellem enkeltindivider tillader. Kunden er en organisation; en kompleks social konstellation af mennesker med forskellige positioner og interesser. Det afgørende er, hvilken rolle konsulenterne får, når de bevæger sig ind i denne sociale sammenhæng, og hvilke muligheder og begrænsninger det indebærer for at være med til at skabe forandring som ekstern part i processen. Afhandlingen stiller skarpt på disse sociale aspekter af samspillet mellem konsulenter og interne aktører i konteksten af kundeorganisation. Forskningen, der ligger til grund for afhandlingen, er udført som antropologisk feltarbejde på to forandringsprojekter; den ene i en industrivirksomhed og det andet på et hospital. Dette indebar både observation af konkrete situationer, hvor konsulenter og interne aktører arbejdede sammen, og efterfølgende interviews med både konsulenter og de relevante ledere og medarbejdere om deres oplevelse af samspillet. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7127 Files in this item: 1
irene_skovgaard_smith.pdf (1.890Mb) -
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)