Ph.D. theses (ICM/IKL) Titler
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Work Uniforms and Women in Male-dominated Manual OccupationsBjerck, Mari (Frederiksberg, 2017)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This dissertation is concerned with work uniforms for women in male-dominated manual occupations. As such, it has analysed parts of the gender-segregated labour market in light of material conditions that dress workers every day. This has been done on the background of a research and development project called Uni-Form funded by the Research Council of Norway. The dissertation presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork in six male-dominated occupations; construction, skilled manual work, industrial production, off- and onshore gas and oil production, industrial fishing and the Navy. It also analyses the project Uni-Form’s product development process and seeks to show how work research can benefit from employing more materiality-based studies. Work clothes and uniforms for women in male-dominated occupations have come in the form of men’s clothes or feminized copies of men's clothes where form and aesthetics have been adapted to the female body and female dress standards. There are several problematic aspects of work clothes and gender that points to premises of standardisation, which do not promote inclusion and recruitment or contribute to retaining women in the gender-segregated labour market. Research on workwear, uniforms and uniform dressing in general have largely documented that women dressing in uniform workwear are problematic in practical, functional and socialsymbolic terms, but it has not contributed with a larger study or shown how this can be solved in practice. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9434 Filer i denne post: 1
Mari Bjerck.pdf (2.273Mb) -
The Organisation of Danish Cancer Research 1949-1992Conradsen, Marie Louise (Frederiksberg, 2014)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The Cancer Centre That Never Was - The organisation of Danish cancer research 1949-1992 This thesis analyses the demise of a remarkably resilient idea relating to the establishment of a public-private comprehensive cancer centre in Denmark. Plans to establish the cancer centre were made for more than four decades without ever amounting to an actual centre establishment. After 43 years, the cancer research community finally deemed the idea fruitless and no further plans were made. But why did it take so long to abandon an idea that had at no point in its existence proved its worth or rationale? And why were better alternatives not explored although they presented themselves along the way? This thesis employs a theoretical framework inspired by economist Douglass C. North and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to answer these questions and determine whether or not the history of the cancer centre that never was can be seen as a case of path dependence. In doing so, the thesis focuses on three main questions: 1) Why was the goal of building a public-private comprehensive cancer centre never reached? 2) Why did 43 years pass before the idea of the centre was abandoned? 3) And is it possible to answer these questions by merely seeing the matter as a succession of historical events, or should it be seen in the perspective of path dependence? By using North’s concepts of formal and informal institutions, the thesis shows that the failure to establish a centre is closely linked to unfavourable institutional matrices at different times in history. The thesis also shows how the idea of the centre was promoted for different reasons by various groups of actors in the case-story, and that the idea was most vigorously promoted in times of economic recession as a tool to secure either better funding for individual cancer research groups or for the anti-cancer cause in general. At every point in history, at least one group of involved actors did not have their needs met by the institutional matrix and used the idea of a cancer centre as a way of expanding the matrix to their own advantage – thereby prolonging the lifespan of the idea. The history of the Cancer Centre That Never Was may, on the surface, seem irrational because it never paid off in the form of an actual cancer centre. However, by employing the concepts of North (institutions, path dependence) and Bourdieu’s theory on social fields and actor behavior it seems that the path paid off in different ways and on different levels than through the establishment of an actual centre. The involved public and private actors in the cancer research community had other reasons for supporting a cancer centre than what was formally presented as the primary objective: the scientific coordination of cancer research in Copenhagen. Reasons that reflected a power struggle between individual researchers, public and private research organisations and the Danish Government on issues relating to the financing Danish cancer research. The thesis concludes that path dependence did most likely occur in the story of the Cancer Centre That Never Was. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9025 Filer i denne post: 1
Marie_Louise_Conradsen.pdf (4.785Mb) -
How Material Practices and their Symbolic and Physical Meanings Form a Colonising LogicLauesen, Linne Marie (Frederiksberg, 2014)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This PhD thesis is the outcome of three-year doctoral study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder engagement in the water sector. This study contributes to new knowledge about water companies formed as hybrid organisations in the aftermath of the new public management (NPM) era worldwide. Today we see different hybrid organisations of water companies around the world that have either been fully privatised or quasi-privatised. Quasiprivatisation in Denmark means that water utilities are still perceived as natural monopolies, which has not made them into for-profit driven companies. Instead a simulated market and state regulation has been introduces with annual, national benchmarking to set a price cap as an upper limit for the consumer-price of water. Similar systems are seen in fully privatised water companies in the United Kingdom, the United States, and partially in South Africa. However, here the water companies are typically owned by private companies and not established as municipalityowned limited liabilities1 as in Denmark and elsewhere in Scandinavia. This PhD thesis proposes new models and principles and corporate social responsibility and stakeholder engagement of these water companies. The findings of the study suggest a new definition of a colonising logic of CSR competing and coexisting with the regulators’ colonising logic of NPM. Through the study and definition of these logics as colonising the water sector this PhD theisis provides an understand of new perspectives of how CSR is enacted through stakeholder engagement and how the logic of CSR frames the top managers’ claim: ”We are CSR!” (Interview B, March 2011) and the consequences of this logic. Both the logic of CSR and the logic of NPM is found to be based on the materials that the water companies are organised around, namely water. Water is perceived as a natural good that should ideally be free and plentiful for all citizens around the world. However, the competition between the two colonising logics stems from another material, namely the money or price that providing clean and pure water for all are allowed to cost the citizens. Through the dialectical interaction of these in terms of material practices between producing water and infrastructure to distribute it and collecting money as a payment for it and the regulation of this, this PhD thesis proposes a new definition of the role of materials and material practices underlying several institutional logics such as the institutional logic of capitalism, state, democracy, family, religion/science, profession, and corporation (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton et al., 2012; Friedland, 2013). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8896 Filer i denne post: 1
Linne_Marie_Lauesen.pdf (8.076Mb) -
Kulturanalytisk casestudie om udfordringer og dilemmaer med at forankre Coops CSR-strategiRosenstock, Maja (Frederiksberg, 2012)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: Ph.d.-projektet handler om forankringen af Coops CSR-strategi. Coop er, med sine 35.000 ansatte og 1200 butikker spredt ud over hele landet, Danmarks største dagligvarevirksomhed. Coop driver kæderne SuperBrugsen, Kvickly, Dagli’Brugsen, Irma og Fakta. De er ejet at Fællesforeningen for Danmarks Brugsforeninger (FDB), der igen ejes af 1,6 mio. danske forbrugere. Coop blev for nyligt udråbt som "CSR-områdets mediedarling", da de var den virksomhed i Danmark, der havde fået mest positiv CSR-omtale i medierne. Denne afhandling illustrerer, hvor svært det kan være, at praktisere CSR - selv for en virksomhed som Coop. Et af afhandlingens væsentligste bidrag er at undersøge forankringen af CSR-strategien, set indefra virksomheden selv, og på denne måde illustrere de mange udfordringer og dilemmaer, der er forbundet med at praktisere CSR. Netop kompleksiteten og de mange udfordringer og dilemmaer ved CSR-arbejdet beskrives sjældent. Tværtimod hører virksomhederne gang på gang om, hvordan CSR er en oplagt ’business case’, og om hvordan arbejdet med CSR skaber win-win situationer og giver konkurrencemæssige fordele. Afhandlingen kan dermed ses som en modvægt til de mange flatterende beskrivelser af CSR, som den direkte vej til bedre bundlinje og øget vækst. Således følger afhandlingen op på den strategiske tilgang til CSR og sætter denne under nærmere belysning. I afhandlingen diskuteres fordele og ulemper ved den strategiske CSR tilgang, ligesom det illustreres at implementeringen og forankringen af CSR-strategier langt fra er så ligetil, som det umiddelbart kan lyde, når CSR kontinuerligt beskrives som win-win situationer og konkurrencemæssige fordele. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8550 Filer i denne post: 1
Maja_Rosenstock.pdf (5.783Mb) -
Et casestudie om styring og meningsskabelse i relation til CSR ud fra en intern optikSkovmøller, Carina Christine (Frederiksberg, 2012)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: Ph.d.-afhandlingen undersøger betydningen af ledelsens styringsform i forhold til medarbejdernes meningsskabelse omkring CSR. Herunder hvorvidt CSR som koncept påvirker medarbejderes forventninger til ledelsens styringsform og sensegiving, og i givet fald hvordan. Ligeledes hvilke virksomhedsinterne processer der viser sig at have indflydelse på ledelsens styringsform og medarbejdernes meningsskabelsesproces i relation til CSR. Afhandlingen er baseret på et longitudinelt studie i VELUX hovedkontor i Hørsholm, Danmark, i forhold til implementeringen af Sustainable Living, som er det overordnede mål for VELUX’ arbejde med bæredygtighed såvel internt som eksternt. Data er indhentet med to års interval i henholdsvis 2008 og 2010 og er baseret på 70 interviews med medarbejdere, mellemledere og ledelse i 2008 og 2010 samt observationsstudier i sammenlagt 2½ år. Sideløbende med disse undersøgelser har jeg deltaget i seminarer, projekter & møder, fulgt presseomtale om CSR i VELUX og undersøgt interne dokumenter med relation til CSR området. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8421 Filer i denne post: 1
Carina_C_Skovmøller.pdf (1.402Mb) -
The Case of RomaniaSamson, Ramona (København, 2006)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: Europa undergår fundamentale forandringer i kølvandet på den Kolde Krigs afslutning. En afgørende begivenhed er udvidelsen af den Europæisk Union (EU), der indebærer, at de tidligere kommunistiske lande i Østeuropa bliver del af et samlet Europa. Samspillet mellem ydre og indre faktorer i disse samfund bevirker, at det i stigende grad er nødvendigt at befatte sig på en ny måde med studiet af europæisk forandring og integration. Svaret i denne afhandling er ’kulturel integration’. Afhandling tager sit afsæt i den aktuelle sociologiske debat vedrørende fremvæksten af et såkaldt postvestligt og postnationalt Europa. Denne indebærer, at ikke alene de østeuropæiske lande forandrer sig, men at hele Europa er genstand for grundlæggende refortolkning i takt med at landegrænser opblødes og Øst/vestdelingen af kontinentet gradvist ophæves. En sådan ’dobbelt synkronicitet’ (double syncronicity) står i modsætning til hovedparten af eksisterende teorier om europæisk integration, der forklarer Østeuropas integration i det øvrige Europa som ’transition’. Transitologien hviler på to grundantagelser: Dels at de østeuropæiske lande bevæger sig entydigt i retning af en vestlig model (konvergens), dels at integration alene udspiller sig indenfor rammerne af EU’s formelle institutionelle struktur (singularitet). I modsætning hertil er det opfattelsen hos denne afhandlings forfatter, at de aktuelle forandringsprocesser i de tidligere kommunistiske lande i Østeuropa ikke kan begribes fyldestgørende inden for rammen af disse traditionelle integrationsteorier. På denne baggrund spørger afhandlingens problemformulering: ”hvordan analyserer man forandringsprocesserne i Østeuropa i sammenhæng med de overordnede forandringer, der finder sted i Europa?” URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7732 Filer i denne post: 1
ramona_samson.pdf (2.279Mb) -
Skjold, Else (Frederiksberg, 2014)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: In this PhD thesis, The Daily Selection, I will be addressing the overall question of how research on wardrobes can contribute to a more effective connection between the production and the consumption of dress objects. The thesis builds on exemplary studies of people in their wardrobes, with the aim of focusing on theoretical and methodological concerns and implications. It is structured in three parts, each of which consists -‐ independently -‐ of its own introductory framing, its own literature review, its own methods chapter, its own field work study, and its own conclusive reflections. As such, the parts, when taken as a whole, represent an evolving process through which my overall research questions are being filtered and reflected. My scholarly approach builds on the fusing of fashion and dress research and design research, in this way closing a gap between dress practice as, on the one hand, symbolic discourse and, on the other, as an embodied practice that is 'physically embedded' in the material capacities of dress objects. In Part I, I frame this view by addressing the concept of dressing as a 'bodily situated practice', as defined by Entwistle (2000), combined with a processual view on design and everyday practices, as defined by Shove et al. (2008). Based on these perspectives, I contribute with my own explanatory frameworks of 'sartorial systems' and 'sensory anchoring', on which I base the entire thesis. In order to operationalise these frameworks in my field work, I have developed a personal methodology for the wardrobe method that embraces the sensory and temporal aspects of dress practice. In Part II, I filter this through the vehicle of a collaborative project with Danish designer Mads Nørgaard, wherein I observe how dress objects from Nørgaard's collection are appropriated and used in the wardrobes of informants. In this way, I point to discrepancies between the production and the dissemination of dress objects that take place in the fashion industry, and to the ways that people use and experience these objects in their everyday lives. In Part III, I conduct a series of ‘wardrobe sessions’ with informants in collaboration with a designer, in order to explore how use practice might cast reflections back onto design processes. In my concluding chapter, I argue that my thesis contributes with a more facetted and reflected set of thinking in relation to dress practice, and that this way of thinking could potentially bring about radical changes in the way dress objects are currently produced, disseminated and sold. All together, this thesis shows that in order to establish a more tight fit between the production and consumption of dress objects, there is very good reason to look into the dress practices that are taking place in people’s wardrobes. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8992 Filer i denne post: 1
Else_Skjold.pdf (5.047Mb) -
Humanitarian Discourse in the Age of MediatizationVestergaard, Anne (Frederiksberg, 2011)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This thesis explores the history of humanitarian organizations as agents in public life. When taking on the role as mediators between Western publics and distant sufferers, what conception of social responsibility do humanitarian organizations promote? What are the consequences of the institutional context of these organizations on the form of social responsibility that they are able to promote? In a historical perspective, what changes in these conceptualizations can we observe and to what extent can we understand them as resulting from institutional changes? These questions are asked with the assumption that the discourse of humanitarian organizations is at once a reflection of and a force in the configuration of dispositions in target publics. Enquiring about the history of humanitarian organizations as agents in public life, thus, means enquiring about the ways in which over the past 40 years, these organizations have given meaning to our relation to different sufferers and contributed to shaping our individual and collective conception of the scope and nature of our social responsibility.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8318 Filer i denne post: 1
Anne_Vestergaard.pdf (6.561Mb) -
Netter, Sarah (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: Despite the growing interest on the part of proponents and opponents - ranging from business, civil society, media, to policy-makers alike - there is still limited knowledge about the working mechanisms of the sharing economy. The thesis is dedicated to explore this understudied phenomenon and to provide a more nuanced understanding of the micro- and macro-level tensions that characterize the sharing economy. This thesis consists of four research papers, each using different literature, methodology, and data sets. The first paper investigates how the sharing economy is diffused and is ‘talked into existence’ by the communicative acts of a number of different actors. The second paper looks at how the reality of these narratives is actually experienced by the representatives of one type of sharing platform, i.e., fashion libraries. The third paper further expands the understanding of micro-level tensions experience by sharing platforms by looking at the case of mobile fashion reselling and swapping markets. The final paper combines the perspectives of different sharing economy stakeholders and outlines some of the micro and macro tensions arising in and influencing the organization of these multi-sided markets. Presently, the future of the sharing economy is rather uncertain, in part due to its conceptual ambiguity and lack of independent empirical research. This thesis concludes that the fate of the sharing economy primarily depends on two factors. Firstly, it depends on the ability of stakeholders to resolve tensions and arrive at a more nuanced and less normative discourse - one that will largely inform the ways in which sharing initiatives can be supported and regulated. Secondly, it depends on the ability of policy-makers and sharing initiatives to shift consumer mindsets from ownership to access in order to increase the adoption of these new consumption practices, while simultaneously reducing overall consumption levels and contributing to sustainable development. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9397 Filer i denne post: 1
Sarah_Netter.pdf (2.017Mb) -
Uldam, Julie (Frederiksberg, 2010)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: In the wake of increasing disillusion with the potential of alternative online media for providing social movements with a virtual space for self-representation and visibility (Atton, 2002; Downing, 2001; Rodriguez, 2001) activists have been adopting online social media into their media practices. With their popular appeal and multimodal affordances social media such as YouTube and Facebook have reinvigorated hopes for the potential of the internet for providing social movements such as the Global Justice Movement, which is often misrepresented as a homogeneous and in a negative light in the mass media (Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993; Juris, 2008), with new possibilities for promoting self-representations to wider publics – beyond the echo chambers of alternative media (Cammaerts, 2007; Sunstein, 2001). In the mediation of institutional politics the increasing use of popular online spaces has brought about the term ’YouTube‐ification of Politics’ (Turnsek and Jankowski, 2008). However, two challenges remain: the first relates to fragmentation – the internet’s properties as a ‘pull-medium’ is argued to merely connect likeminded users (Cammaerts, 2007: 138). The second relates to ’lazy politics’ – the internet’s ephemeral properties are argued to facilitate brief participation in single-issue campaigns that fails to foster political engagement (Fenton, 2008a: 52). This thesis focuses on the latter. It addresses the possibilities of popular online spaces for fostering collective solidarity and political engagement in social movement organisations. It explores how these possibilities are played out in the online arena of popular sites employed by the two London-based social movement organisations: the World Development Movement (WDM) and War on Want. Drawing on the cases of WDM and War on Want, the thesis addresses three dimensions of these practices, exploring (1) rationales for using popular online spaces to promote the SMO agenda; (2) the social movement organisations’ online campaigns; and (3) members’ identifications with the campaigns through discourse analysis and interviews with SMO directors, campaign, outreach and web officers as well as SMO members. It is by analysing how SMOs use different online spaces as locations for strategic framing and the formation of political identities that we can begin to study how the internet may contribute to an agonistic public sphere where also voices of dissent are heard. The thesis is based on Mouffe’s understanding of politics and the political as grounded in discourse but also based on a view of political engagement as conflictual, affective and sometimes irrational (Cammaerts, 2007; Fenton, 2009; Mouffe, 2005). Even though this does not mean that SMOs do not apply rational considerations in planning their strategic agendas for public visibility and legitimacy, it does mean that the study of these considerations need to take into account this dual character of political discourse as both rational and affective (Hajer and Versteeg, 2005). Therefore, we need to consider instrumental and affective issues to understand the relationship between strategic protest and the underlying dynamics of intragroup commitment (Griggs and Howarth, 2002; Snow et al., 1986) – the interconnections between strategy and identity, external resonance and internal commitment. In this way, the democratic potentialities of the internet can be seen as not only related to the ways in which SMOs communicate their agenda but also to potentialities for forging political identities and commitment (Fenton, 2008a). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8211 Filer i denne post: 1
Julie_Uldam.pdf (6.193Mb) -
Design af levende billeder i film og tv-serierWille, Jakob Ion (Frederiksberg, 2015)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: 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 Filer i denne post: 1
Jakob Ion Wille.pdf (16.57Mb) -
Om kulturel produktion på Roskilde FestivalMunkgård Pedersen, Kristine (Frederiksberg, 2010)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The dissertation explores how cultural production is unfolding at Roskilde Festival – the biggest music- and culture festival in Denmark. The overall question being adressed is how the festival is assembled. The question is explored through four subquestions related to the cultural expressions, identity and materiality of the festival. The first part of the dissertation investigates the specificity of the festival’s audience- based culture. The symbolic and historical connections between the festival and the 1960s’ cultural activism is argued to be of an importance to the socioaesthetics, performed jointly by audience as well as performers. The dissertation further investigates how the identity of the festival is being negotiated between a number of different commercial and cultural actors: sponsors, volunteers and artists among others. The many different economic and cultural practices and values converge when the festival ground is being transformed from anonymous space to festival space embracing both cultural and commercial content. In this regard the dissertation investigates how the valuebased economic logics of subcultural production is debated and negotiated during the pratices of materializing space. It is argued that the complexity of the festival identity adds to the credibility of the festival and its many different producers. The second part of the dissertation is a socio-material analysis of two festival projects. One is the hybrid festival area Cosmopol, the other is the Orange Stage area. The analyses are based on a research agenda developed by the Actor- Network-Theory (ANT) which explores how ideas are materialised through proceses of interaction, translation and involvement. The explorations explain how subcultural attitudes, practices of transgression and oppositional identity are distributed through an ephemeral network of actors including humans (volunteers, artists, performers) and things (scenes, art works, graffiti, pictures and music) which forge performative alliances with the festival audience. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8058 Filer i denne post: 1
Kristine_Munkgaard_Pedersen.pdf (17.24Mb) -
The case of travel guidebook productionAlačovska, Ana (Frederiksberg, 2013)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This thesis focuses on the production of travel guidebooks. Its aim is to explore the mutual coconstruction and entanglement of genres, producers and institutions in cultural production and cultural work. It also examines how authorial and institutional, professional and industrial selfreflexivity exists in and through ambiguous and shifting interrelations with genres and their poetics. To this end, it develops a preliminary theoretical framework for a comprehensive exploration of the complex dynamics of cultural production that is attentive to the cultural objects themselves: here, a down-market, ‘uninventive’ and ‘heteronomous’ genre known as the travel guide(book). The thesis argues that the specificity of the genre is continually contextualized and re-contextualized, qualified and re-qualified, commodified and rendered autonomous, in the daily, local, and intimate practices of guide-making. The argument presented is that the genre is not merely a backdrop for creative agency or a predetermined set of rules, but a complex entity – spatially and temporally dispersed – that affords autonomous opportunities for various modes of action, self-definition, and self-interpretation. Thus, genres are active elements or animating forces of cultural production, rather than merely outcomes of industrial dynamics. What arises from the empirical material is that cultural producers experience ‘autonomy’ in and through the notion of genre which itself is fuzzy, vague, tacit, implicit and often non-formalized. Nonetheless, it is obdurately present in a spectrum of strategies, rhetoric, a sense of responsibility, expertise and professionalism applied by such producers in order to explain, define and justify their practical decisions and evaluations. The first three chapters explore perceived limitations of sociological, anthropological and sociocultural paradigms of cultural production. They also indicate some potential areas for crossfertilization with genre theory, which has conceptualized the notion of genre as social action, cognitive action-schemata, and institutions that mediate between industry, producers, and audiences. The last four chapters follow and trace interpenetrating and interlocking relations between genres and institutions firstly, as they mutually and historically co-produce each other in industrial practice; secondly, as entangled in individual and professional auto-biographies with reference to the genre and its adjacent markets; and third, as embedded in actual production practices - how guidebook producers make use of and interact with the editorial brief (or institutionalized and contractually binding genre specificity) and independent genre trajectories (autonomous logic), while making daily evaluations of their work and their own professional selfreflexivity. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8703 Filer i denne post: 1
Ana_Alacovska.pdf (2.311Mb) -
Krogh Petersen, Morten (Frederiksberg, 2011)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: ‘Good’ Outcomes – Handling Multiplicity in Government Communication This thesis examines how five Danish government organizations produce and assess communicative solutions in practice, and argues that government communication may be understood as a case of multiplicity. In the practices of producing and assessing communicative solutions it is uncertain what constitutes a ‘good’ outcome of government communication. This uncertainty is grasped by drawing upon analytical resources from the field of multiplicity-oriented ANT analyses. Empirically, the thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the five government organizations. Combining empirical observations, theoretical insights, and political programmes, four ‘modes of ordering’ are developed and these are utilized in exploring how the multiplicity of government communication unfurls and how it is handled in practice. The thesis shows how the ordering attempts described by the four modes of ordering coexist and interfere, and it suggests the notions of ‘sequencing’ and ‘singularizing’ for understanding how the multiplicity of government communication is handled in the production and assessment of communicative solutions. The study upon which the thesis reports has been carried out in connection with a larger Industrial PhD project, entitled Measurements you can learn from, that aimed at developing, testing, and implementing new and better communication measurements. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8306 Filer i denne post: 1
Morten_Krogh_Petersen.pdf (10.91Mb) -
Strand, Robert Gavin (Frederiksberg, 2012)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: In this dissertation I examine the establishment of corporate social responsibility (CSR) bureaucracies at corporations and I come to consider the CSR bureaucracy as a space for reflection within the corporation. In the face of charges that bureaucracies are inherently unethical and devoid of consideration for humanistic concerns, I argue that within the large bureaucracy that is the corporation, the CSR bureaucracy can create a space in which tensions that arise from conflicting values and purposes can be identified, negotiated, and actions coordinated. I position this dissertation within the field of CSR, to which I introduce the Weberian distinction between formal and substantive rationality as means through which to identify and describe tensions that become apparent with the CSR agenda. This dissertation contains four articles, two of which draw from the engaged scholarship approach. One includes findings from a study I conducted as an action/intervention researcher with a U.S. corporation during the period in which a CSR bureaucracy was established. The other includes findings from a study of CSR focused MBA courses I instruct in which reflection is a primary learning objective. The other two articles include findings from studies I conducted to explore the establishment of a CSR position to the top management teams of U.S. and Scandinavian corporations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8462 Filer i denne post: 1
Robert_Strand.pdf (3.503Mb) -
Evidence from VietnamPham, Ha Thi Van (Frederiksberg, 2009)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The thesis revolves around the internationalization of Vietnamese firms - that is, how the international competitiveness of these firms is enhanced in terms of both upstream and downstream value chain activities and the export performance implications hereof. For Vietnamese firms, as well as for other firms from emerging markets, internationalization trajectories may differ considerably from the internationalization patterns portrayed in classical theories (such as the Uppsala Model) based on observations of the internationalization of firms from Western, developed market economies. Classical theories have primarily focused on firms’ marketing & sales and networking capabilities as levers of internationalization – and less on upstream capabilities, such as manufacturing and auxiliary service competencies. Likewise the situation in other emerging markets many Vietnamese firms are inserted in global value chains (GVCs) governed by multinational buyers. For these firms, manufacturing skills may be of equal - or greater - importance to export performance than the mastering of marketing & sales and networking in foreign markets. The thesis presents various theoretical perspectives on firms’ internationalization – perspectives that vary in terms of their focus on either upstream or downstream activities (or, the interrelationship of these two types of activities). The thesis tries to fill out the knowledge gap as to which of these theoretical perspectives fit best the trajectories of Vietnamese manufacturing firms involved in exports. In doing so, the thesis also draws on GVC models, entrepreneurial literature, and studies of economic as well as strategic export performance. Unique survey data covering 226 Vietnamese manufacturers involved in exporting was collected through face-to-face interviews conducted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. On the basis of these data a set of hypotheses is tested using structural equation modelling as a statistical tool. The empirical study suggests that Vietnamese firms create international competitiveness in relation to both upstream and downstream activities. Furthermore, the study suggests that upstream competitiveness of the sample firms is significantly more attractive in terms of economic export performance (export sales, profitability and growth) than downstream competitiveness. However, when export performance is measured in more far-sighted, strategic terms, there are no significant differences between the two dimensions of competitiveness. The study also reveals some interesting industry differences: for firms in the “low-tech” textiles & garments industry, upstream competitiveness has greater impact on economic export performance than downstream competitiveness. Conversely, downstream competitiveness results in a higher economic return than upstream competitiveness for firms from the “high-tech” industries of electronics and mechanical manufactures In the last part of the thesis, theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications are discussed along with conclusions and suggestions for future research. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7934 Filer i denne post: 1
Ha_Thi_Van_Pham.pdf (3.762Mb) -
Un estudio sobre emigrantes norteamericanos en un pueblo mexicanoBalslev Clausen, Helene (Frederiksberg, 2008)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: Den traditionelle migrationsforskning betragter Mexico, som et typisk faktor eller transit land, samt har sit fokus på migrationsflowet fra Syd (Latinamerika) til Nord(USA). Dette case studie derimod bidrager empirisk med identifikationen af en ny type immigranter, angelsaksiske noramerikanere, som i stadigt større omfang emigrerer fra Nord(USA) til Syg(Mexico), hvilket som noget nyt også gør Mexico til et pull faktor land..... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7733 Filer i denne post: 1
helena_balslev_clausen.pdf (5.975Mb) -
Dirt, aesthetics and inclusion in public service workDahl, Dorte Boesby (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This dissertation investigates how changing management strategies in the public sector contribute to shaping and developing the ‘parking attendant’ as a certain sort of person in a municipal centre responsible for parking attendance. The job as parking attendant is – just as many other jobs in the public sector – the object of changing management strategies according to changing political agendas. Meanwhile, the job is also a psychologically demanding and stigmatized unskilled job in the public sector. The dissertation analyzes how parking attendants, whose job is increasingly professionalized, interact with changing management strategies by for instance resisting or avoiding them. The dissertation relies on sociological fieldwork among parking attendants and their managers. The fieldwork included shadowings of daily work, interviews, gathering of documents and participant observation at job-interviews. The analytical point of departure for the dissertation is Ian Hacking and Paul du Gay’s theories of how identities are ‘made up’. This sort of analysis is coupled in three articles in the dissertation to other perspectives on the relation between work and identity. These are about how employees handle stigma, which is considered in research on ”Dirty Work”, about how managers and employees draw upon ”aesthetic labour” to meet the public’s scepticism and as a means to bring down the number of assaults and finally how managememt strategies aiming at creating inclusion and diversity contribute to the making up of the parking attendant. All three analysis contribute to expand our understanding of work and identity in the public sector. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9265 Filer i denne post: 1
Dorthe Boesby Dahl.pdf (4.542Mb) -
On Second-hand Valuation PracticesLarsen, Frederik (Frederiksberg, 2015)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: In this thesis I address the question of how value is created in second-hand markets. Focusing on the role of charity thrift stores I present an ethnographic account of fieldwork I undertook in the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store in San Francisco. I analyse my ethnographic findings in light of contemporary literature on values and valuations in material culture and reaching back through the anthropological literature on commodities and gift economies I build a framework around David Graeber’s formulation of a concept of social, relational value. In order to structure the analysis I take Mary Douglas’s seminal work on classification as a starting point and argue that the practices of valuation constitute a process of transformation form discard to commodity. To support the analysis I introduce theoretical concepts from the ethnographic literature on values, secondhand markets and valuations. Practices of categorization enable the employees to create value, but disorder is a condition of the process, which hinders the flow as well as provides opportunity for value. I describe thrift, a considered use of resources, as the main ‘infravalue’ that drives the valuations and allows the organization to create economic, social and emotional value. Next I zoom in on the interaction between people and objects on a micro-level. The theoretical framework here brings anthropological theory into play with actor-network theory (ANT) approaches to nonhuman actors, and I introduce the term withdrawal from object-oriented philosophy to address the agency of objects in valuations. By dividing the analysis into two parts I demonstrate in greater detail how objects as part of valuations are given agency through social entanglements, but also how the objects by their mere existence influence valuations beyond this entanglement. Their presence as more than the sum of their social relations has a profound impact on the valuations by resisting as much as partaking in the process of transformation. In the last section of the thesis I present an explorative study of the extended trajectory the objects take through markets and wholesale companies in Thailand. I discuss the role of the thrift store in the global context of second-hand exchanges and offer a critical reflection on the consequences of the proliferation of second-hand markets. The thesis provides a situated approach to the study of human-objects interactions and demonstrates that an understanding of the different forms of value that are at play reveal charity thrift organizations as important players in second-hand markets. Thrift enables the organization to salvage as many objects as possible while providing services to the community. In doing so they are vital in transforming discards into commodities for the other actors in the market. This study highlights the importance of considering materiality, and especially objecthood, in the context of second-hand markets, and suggests a situated framework for understanding the relationship between objects and practices in the broader context of material culture studies. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9182 Filer i denne post: 1
Frederik Larsen.pdf (4.499Mb) -
Antecedents, processes dynamics and firm-level impactØrberg Jensen, Peter (Frederiksberg, 2008)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: 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 Filer i denne post: 1
Peter_d_orberg_jensen.pdf (674.8Kb)
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