Browsing Ph.D. theses (DBP) by Title
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Mapping Controversies over a Potential Turn to Quality in Chinese Wind PowerKirkegaard, Julia Kirch (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The thesis inquires into dynamics and controversies of constructing a market for wind power in China. Inquiring into what the thesis dubs a quality crisis in Chinese wind power after years of high growth rates, and into a potential turn to quality, the thesis traces such current ambiguous winds of change with point of departure in the notion of global innovation networks (GINs). Thus, it looks into how international collaborations on critical components, such as software programmes, play a critical role in the qualification of wind power as a ‘sustainable’ renewable energy source. However, with a structural rather than micro-relational or processual lens, the existing GIN literature is claimed to be ill-equipped to grasp the genesis, dynamics, and agency of GINs. To fill this gap, the thesis develops a situational, constructivist framework based in Science and Technology Studies, which renders a processual and relational understanding of GINs as part and parcel of market construction. It does this by initially ‘looking away’ from the original metaphor of GINs, with the result of effectively reconceptualising it. This is done by illustrating the dynamics and the agency of GIN genesis through a mapping of controversies over issues of Intellectual Property Rights, standardisation, money, and cost and price calculations, entangled in a Chinese ‘system problem’ of stateowned actors and a Chinese experimental pragmatism of market construction, which has had unintended effects. Tracing one potential GIN taking shape around a critical component, the thesis also contributes to the GIN literature through a new methodological approach. Illustrating the potentially disruptive dynamics of GIN construction, and how the emerging GIN around software programmes possesses disruptive agency in regard to the framing of the emerging Chinese wind power market, the thesis sheds light on some of the socio-material work needed to construct and maintain GINs and the markets it co-constitutes and is co-constituted by, as well as the negotiated roles, identities, and positions of actors in a developmental context of China. The thesis coins the seemingly particular Chinese mode of market construction within wind power a fragmented and experimental ‘pragmatics of (green) market construction’, with its agile responses to emerging issues. Last, to overcome the dualism between structural and processual accounts, the thesis draws on the pragmatist notion of figuration (Elias, 1978). After demonstrating a potential figurational change reflected in the ongoing turn to quality, the thesis also considers the implications that the inquiry has for other related literatures, hereunder proposing a new research agenda for New Economic Sociology to understand market and GIN construction in a developmental context, which holds a promise for inquiring into China’s self- and other-disruptive, yet potentially path-creating modes of development and upgrading. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9116 Files in this item: 1
Julia_Kirch_Kirkegaard.pdf (4.905Mb) -
The Importance of Critical Mass and the Consequences of Scarcity for Television MarketsBerg, Christian Edelvold (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis “As a matter of size” demonstrates that size does indeed matter. Television markets have common characteristics across small and large markets, but the implications of these characteristics are varied due to the difference in size of economy and population. The influence of variable size is a consequence of the economic conditions of scarcity (limited resources) and thus the relative critical mass of the media market. Thus, the influence of size is an expression of the television market's inability to operate on normal market terms for provisioning particular types of services. Larger markets (measured by economy and population) have a higher potential of securing such content commercially. But all markets suffer from challenges in securing provisioning of original domestic content. Market intervention and public subsidy play an important role when it comes to securing domestic production. Political intervention can to some extent counteract the effects of the common characteristics, by changing market conditions through political regulation or subsidisation. The thesis shows that the European television markets mainly operate under conditions of oligopoly, usually in the form of different types of duopolies. The effect of size on market concentration is not as unambiguous as estimated in the literature, as the scope and extent of market intervention influence this quite intensely. Moreover, the study shows that television markets are dominated by relatively few, usually local, media companies and the multinational companies in most markets currently do not pose a real danger - but there are signs of a development which requires further research. Public service companies remain relatively strong in the markets studied, and continue to play an important role as a counterweight to national and international commercial competitors. Different markets require different policies that take into account the conditions in that specific market, in order to achieve a certain desirable merited effect. The thesis supports the view that a "one size fits all" policy across several markets when it comes to media regulation, risks not yielding the warranted results. Markets with different conditions, exposed to the same type of regulation, might have overall positive effects, but could also easily have a very negative impact if the conditions in a particular market do not fit with the intent of the policy. It is therefore far from certain that a "one size fits all" regulation will have the intended uniform effect on the affected market across several markets. This is especially true for markets that are challenged by having both a small population and a small economy. In a sense it is a paradox that the interest at European level in fair competition and equal opportunity for success can lead to different conditions of competition in a domestic market, as players may be subject to various conditions (in a way it can also be regarded as a consequence of domestic policy interventions), where the domestic players can face a strong international player, and as a result of the internal market and the Audiovisual Media Services directive, can achieve a competitive advantage, for example in relation to choosing the most lenient advertising rules. The analytical work of the thesis can substantiate claims that size has a significant effect and that there are concrete policy implications depending on size of economy and population, due to scarcity of resources in the individual market. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8629 Files in this item: 1
Christian_Edelvold_Berg.pdf (3.130Mb) -
Politisk lederskab af store byudviklingsprojekterNorn, Peter Andreas (København, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Det er i dag en udbredt opfattelse, at byer deltager som selvstændige aktører i den internationale konkurrence. Siden 1990’erne har en række byer gennemført politiske projekter for at styrke deres regionale, nationale og internationale konkurrenceposition. Store byudviklingsprojekter er blevet et ofte benyttet element i dette arbejde. Denne PhD-afhandling handler om politisk lederskab af to store kommunale, byudviklingsprojekter i Aarhus og Malmø. Afhandlingen analyserer sammenhængen mellem byregimer, politisk lederskab og gennemførelsen af politiske beslutningsprocesser. Byregimer defineres i denne afhandling som en varig konstellation af (halv)autonome aktører, som understøtter og implementerer en fælles politisk dagsorden for byen. Afhandlingen udvikler en matrix, som viser typer og tilstande af byregimer. Afhandlingen viser, at der fandtes to forskellige typer af byregimer i de to byer. Byregimerne forandredes over tid, men typen af regime forblev den samme igennem hele den undersøgte periode i hver by. Afhandlingen viser endvidere, at borgmestrenes styringsevne i de konkrete politiske beslutningsprocesser afhang af disse byregimer, og at tilstanden af byregimerne havde indflydelse på forløbet af de politiske beslutningsprocesser. Derfor kunne de to byudviklingsprojekter, som analyseres i denne afhandling, ikke udvikles på den samme måde i de to byer. Afhandlingens ene teoretiske bidrag er at vise, at borgmestres udøvelse af politisk lederskab påvirkes af den måde, hvorpå aktørernes indbyrdes relationer organiseres, dvs. af byregimet. Dette forhold har hidtil været underbelyst i den europæiske litteratur om lokalt politisk lederskab. Afhandlingens andet teoretiske bidrag er at vise, hvordan det amerikanske urban regime begreb kan lægges til grund for en analyse af forandring af regimer, og hvordan dette kan kobles til en analyse af udøvelsen af lokalt politisk lederskab. Afhandlingen rekonstruerer den politiske beslutningsproces i de to byudviklingsprojekter gennem den historiske metode. Beskrivelsen af de politiske beslutningsprocesser er skabt på baggrund af aktørernes egne udsagn. Afhandlingen påstår ikke, at disse to historier er objektivt sande, men blot at det er den måde, hvorpå de politiske aktører i de to byer selv opfatter processerne. Afhandlingen er ikke en evaluering af de to kommuners arbejde med byudviklingsprojekter; bl.a. er kvaliteten af de to projekter ikke vurderet. Afhandlingen er heller ikke en vurdering af forskellige borgmestres succes i deres embede. Afhandlingen er skrevet som en erhvervs-PhD-afhandling, der er finansieret af Realdania By. Ansvaret for fortolkningerne og konklusionerne i denne afhandling er alene mit. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9204 Files in this item: 1
Peter Andreas Norn.pdf (3.075Mb) -
Analysis of the influence of the Chicago School on European Union competition policyBartalevich, Dzmitry (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Adopting the (institutionalist) premise that ideas and the economic theories within which they are embedded influence policy, the dissertation investigates the influence of the Chicago School of antitrust analysis on the competition policy of the European Union (EU). The dissertation encapsulates three articles. The first article employs qualitative content analysis to assess whether and the extent to which the European Commission incorporates Chicago School theory into EU competition policy. It does so on the basis of current Commission Guidelines, Notices, and Block Exemption Regulations that address EU antitrust rules and EU merger control. The second article is exploratory; it narrows the focus on EU merger control and employs descriptive network analysis to investigate the overall composition of mergers cleared by the Commission during the period 2004– 2015 and attempts to reinforce the results of the analysis in the first article. The third article expands on the findings of the first and second articles and employs inferential network analysis with exponential random graph models to analyze, on the basis of Commission merger cases cleared during the period 2004–2015, whether the Harvard School, the Freiburg School, and considerations for Single Market integration underpin EU merger control, in addition to the influence of the Chicago School. The analysis presented in the articles suggests that the Chicago School has exerted considerable influence over EU competition policy. The findings further indicate that there is a strong presence of financial institutions among merger and acquisition transactions with an EU dimension in EU merger control. Finally, the findings show that the Commission appears to have a particular approach to EU competition policy that, despite being influenced by the Chicago School, cannot be explained entirely by it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9530 Files in this item: 1
Dzmitry Bartalevich.pdf (3.271Mb) -
[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Who are the members of the most powerful group in the Danish society? To answer this question, we explored the elite through two different methodological approaches. Using correspondence analysis, we charted the oppositions structuring two exclusive groups, the 100 most important Danish CEOs and the 1,527 elite individuals identified in the Danish Power and Democracy Study in 1999. Through social network analysis, we identified and explored the integration of a core of the power network in Denmark – the power elite - and the inner circle of the corporate elite. The importance of how the elite is defined or identified is discussed in relation with the most widely used method for the study of national elites. With the positional method the size and composition is defined as the data is constructed. We propose a new data sensitive method that identifies a cohesive elite with social network analysis. This lets us analyse the composition and like C.W. Mills identify the key institutional orders in Denmark. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9512 Files in this item: 1
Anton Grau Larsen_KU.pdf (13.03Mb) -
The Case of the European CommissionHøjlund, Steven (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: What effect do evaluation systems have on the use of evaluation? This is the research question guiding this PhD thesis. By answering this research question as well as three sub-questions, the thesis addresses three important gaps in the evaluation literature: the first gap is that evaluation theory does a poor job explaining non-use and justificatory uses of evaluation. The second gap is that evaluation theory does not account for the systemic context of evaluation in its more general explanations of evaluation use. Finally, the literature does not account empirically for the micro-level of evaluation use in evaluation systems. The thesis draws inspiration from organisational theory and in particular organisational institutionalism. Organisational institutionalism explains organisational action and change to be driven by legitimacy-seeking organisational behaviour. Organisations seek to legitimise themselves in order to survive in their environment. This theory is applied to the concept ‘evaluation system’. Hence, the assumption underlying this thesis is that organisations within an evaluation system are using evaluations to appear accountable rather than improve policies. The thesis investigates the European Union’s evaluation system with a particular focus on the European Commission. This is done in four articles. The first article is a theoretical article introducing organisational institutionalism to the evaluation literature in order to explain non-use and justificatory uses of evaluations. The second article is a historical analysis of the development of the European Commissions evaluation practices. The third article is a case-based analysis of evaluation use in the European Commission. The fourth article is also an empirical article on policy learning from evaluations in three different Directorate-Generals in the European Commission. The methodology used in the empirical articles is qualitative content analysis and the data were more than a hundred Commission documents and 58 interviews with Commission staff. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9117 Files in this item: 1
Steven_Højlund.pdf (1.928Mb) -
A production network approachLindskow, Kasper (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: News publishers in the industrialized world are experiencing a fundamental challenge to their business models because of the changing modes of consumption, competition, and production of their offerings that are associated with the emergence of the networked information society. The erosion of the traditional business models poses an existential threat to news publishing and has given rise to a continuing struggle among news publishers to design digital business models that will be sustainable in the future. This dissertation argues that a central and underresearched aspect of digital news publishing business models concerns the production networks that support the co-production of digital news offerings. To fill this knowledge gap, this dissertation explores the strategic design of the digital news publishing production networks that are associated with HTML-based news offerings on the open Web. In order to do so, a theoretical model is developed that is suited for the analysis of the strategic design of business models, including the production networks that support them, in the sectors of the economy that are affected by networked informatization in general and in digital news publishing specifically. The theoretical model includes a business model construct that enables a detailed analysis of production networks and an integrated strategy theory that combines networked-based approaches to value creation and capture with Emerson’s power-dependence theory in order to conceptualize both collaboration and competition strategies. In addition, a novel method is developed that can be used to collect and analyze very large amounts of data on the resource exchanges that take place between news publishers and their business partners. The method allows for systematic mapping of the flows of resources in digital news publishing ecologies and of the production networks that are associated with the co-production of digital news offerings. The theoretical model and methodology developed in the dissertation are used to explore the American digital news publishing ecology and the strategies that 41 different leading American news publishers use to design their production networks. In the analysis, the activities carried out by and resource flows between a total of 1,356 business partners and news publishers in the American digital news publishing ecology are identified and visualized. In addition, a fundamental architecture that is shared by all digital news publishing production networks and a typology of 9 different types of production networks are identified. Furthermore, it is found that the structure of the American digital news publishing ecology is highly asymmetric and gives rise to a number of specific strategic dilemmas for news publishers. Finally, 9 different types of strategies that news publishers use to design their production networks, each of which mediates the dilemmas they face in different ways, are identified. In the conclusion to the dissertation, the findings of the dissertation are discussed, put into perspective, and connected to the existing research on other elements in digital news publishing business models in order to bring us closer to a holistic theory of the strategic design of digital news publishing business models. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9284 Files in this item: 1
Kasper Lindskow.pdf (28.67Mb) -
Security sector reform in Sierra LeoneAlbrecht, Peter Alexander (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The thesis argues that security sector reform (SSR) has failed according to its own ambition of establishing a ‘centrally governed state’. A primary reason for this failure is found in the concept of authority that state-building projects and much of the academic work that underpins it. Since the late 1990s, internationally supported efforts to make and consolidate peace in Sierra Leone have been synonymous with SSR. Support was given by the United Kingdom (UK) in particular to contain and ultimately overhaul the armed forces, which staged two coups in 1992 and 1997. Support was also provided to the central government to institute national security coordination and intelligence organizations, and to reestablish the Sierra Leone Police (SLP). The collapsed, but internationally recognized state was to be rebuilt, and security was seen as not only a prerequisite for this process to begin, but its very foundation. The first question of the thesis revolves around why the western universalist state concept came to guide SSR in Sierra Leone, and why it was considered of such fundamental importance to stability internationally. The second question revolves around how to conceptualize authority when actors such as paramount and lesser chiefs that may neither be categorized as state nor non-state are the primary makers of order in rural areas of the country. Speaking of the weakness or failure of a state is a way of describing what it is not, namely a centrally governed set of institutions that is able to make order within the territorial space that defines it. A focus on the state as an analytical concept does not, however, tell us much about how order is then made, and by whom it is made in Sierra Leone. The thesis rethinks what authority is in a way that does not privilege ‘the state’ as an analytical category, a tendency that has dominated much policy and academic thinking. The thesis’ empirical basis of doing so is data relating to international policy-making processes, interviews among the key actors of Sierra Leone’s SSR process, and ethnographic fieldwork in Peyima, a small diamond mining town in Kamara Chiefdom, Kono District. In a view of authority tied to ‘the state’ lies the conceptualization of a political entity, a bordered power container, which stands above, is detached from, and at the same time encompasses, controls and regulates society. In UK support of Sierra Leone’s statebuilding efforts, the practices of traditional leaders and their productive effects in the justice and security field, and enforcing order, were acknowledged. However, failure to respond adequately to their central role in governing Sierra Leone’s countryside came in two ways, both of which are related to concepts of the western universalist state that continue to guide SSR. The first failure was embedded in misrecognizing the resilience and productivity of local actors and institutions, and their authority to appropriate, interpret, translate and above all shape the elements of what was offered through SSR. The second failure came in not recognizing the hybrid nature of all actors in the justice and security field, based on the fact that they draw authority to act within the field from numerous sources across physical and symbolic space, in local and national domains. Hybridity is integral to state formation in Sierra Leone. It is foundational, and is historically grounded in the colonial era, articulating an infinite mixture of various forms of authority (from state legislation to status of autochthony and secret society membership). Inevitably, this order was reproduced by SSR, even if the aim of the international actors who supported this process of change had been to eradicate it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8549 Files in this item: 1
Peter_Alexander_Albrecht.pdf (8.787Mb) -
A Genealogy of the Emergence and Development of Protestant Voluntary Social Work in Denmark as Shown Through the Cases of the Copenhagen Home Mission and the Blue Cross (1850 – 1950)Sevelsted, Anders Ludvig (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
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Hierarchies, Logics and Foundations of Social Order Seen Through the Prism of EU Social RightsMossin, Christiane (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: It has been the purpose of this dissertation to analyze a contemporary battlefield of law, the field of EU social rights, from a political-philosophical point of view. It is the conviction of the dissertation that law is deeply and inescapably conceptually connected with fundamental features of social order. Law and social order are not presumed to be identical, but to be mutually constitutive. The interrelations between the two do not merely concern the rights and obligations explicitly laid down in the law, but fundamental presumptions regarding the nature of human beings, overall purposes of social order, hierarchical and dynamical features of society and the possibility at all of regulation, its logics and sources of authority. On the basis of a historical-conceptual understanding of law according to which law, social structure and metaphysical presumptions are inescapably intertwined, the dissertation derives from the binding provisions of law certain essential features of social order. More precisely, the dissertation demonstrates that from a political philosophical point of view, EU social rights can be said to imply the contours of a particular social order. Significantly, the essential features in question are derived through detailed analyses of EU social rights - through critical investigations of definitions of right-holders, material scope, legal core concepts, exclusions and justifications, complexities and ambiguities of interpretation. The general point is the following: Political philosophical features of social order may not only be derived from the overall constitutional aspects of law (in the case of EU-law: fundamental principles inscribed in the Treaty; the constitutional architecture of EU-law), but are implied in the detailed material web of secondary law. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9111 Files in this item: 2
Christiane Mossin_PART_1.pdf (3.720Mb)Christiane Mossin_PART_2.pdf (3.211Mb) -
How the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark Came to Compete through their Knowledge Regimes from 1993 to 2007Møller Boje Rasmussen, Martin (Frederiksberg, 2014)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The present PhD-dissertation ” ”Is Competitiveness a Question of Being Alike? How United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark came to compete through their Knowledge Regimes from 1993 to 2007” studies the ideas which policy research organizations such as ministries of economics, economic councils and different types of think tanks – or what Campbell and Pedersen recently have defined as a nations knowledge regime – holds about the international competition of nations and what a nations competitiveness consists in, as well as whether and how these ideas co-varies with different national knowledge regimes particular form and organization. The primary argument and research result is, that even if the ideas, which policy research organizations in United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark in the period from 1993 to 2007 holds, in many ways are similar, they nonetheless exhibit nationally distinct features and differences. In short, the PhD-dissertation demonstrates, that not only does the organization of knowledge regimes vary. So do the ideas they produce. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8972 Files in this item: 1
Martin_MB_Rasmussen.pdf (2.257Mb) -
Institutionelt arbejde i den kommunale digitaliseringsprocesFederspiel, Sofie Blinkenberg (Frederiksberg, 2014)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Denne afhandling beskæftiger sig med institutionaliseringen af digitalisering i den danske kommunaladministration. At digitalisere vil i den sammenhæng sige at bruge informationsteknologi (IT) til strategisk udvikling af arbejdsgange, og digitalisering er derfor tæt forbundet med at skabe en organisation, der både er omstillingsparat, refleksiv og nytænkende. Selvom institutionalisering af digitalisering således er synonym med en radikal forandring af den kommunale administration, mangler der viden om, hvordan arbejdet med at institutionalisere digitalisering påvirkes af organisationsmedlemmernes forhold til IT: et forhold, som litteraturen tidligere har indikeret, kan have afgørende betydning for digitalisering. Afhandlingen bidrager med ny viden på området. Til det formål trækker afhandlingen på det neo-institutionelle begreb institutionelt arbejde, som giver mulighed for at belyse aktørernes rolle i institutionaliseringsprocesser. Afhandlingen baserer sig på et casestudie af to typiske danske kommunaladministrationer, hvoraf den ene er et resultat af kommunesammenlægning i forbindelse med kommunalreformen i 2007. Det empiriske grundlag består af kvalitative data i form af interviews, dokumentanalyser og mødeobservationer. Den indledende dataanalyse, som er inspireret af grounded theory, pegede på tre centrale analysetemaer i relation til afhandlingens fokus. Disse temaer, som lægger op til tre forskellige håndteringer af data og cases, danner grundlag for afhandlingens tre artikler. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8993 Files in this item: 1
Sofie_B_Federspiel.pdf (1.765Mb) -
An Embedded, Comparative Case Study of Municipal Waste Management in England And DenmarkDam, Sofie (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD concerns the potentials and challenges for conducting innovation in public-private partnerships (PPPs) towards the objective of transforming municipal waste management towards more sustainable systems. In recent years, local authorities have been met with intensified demands from the EU and national governments to change existing waste management systems from solutions based on disposal and recovery towards more recycling and prevention and at the same time deliver more efficient waste management services through the inclusion of private businesses. These two demands may to some degree be mutually supportive, but may also lead to challenges in the prioritization and development of new solutions. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9169 Files in this item: 1
Sofie Dam.pdf (2.365Mb) -
With Comparative and Multi-level Case Studies from Denmark and IrelandHelby Petersen, Ole (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD dissertation studies national similarities and differences in policy and regulation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), with an empirical focus on Denmark and Ireland. The starting point and motivation for the study is the observation that whereas PPPs are often depicted in the academic literature and in policy practice as a globally disseminated governance scheme, in reality, a closer examination of the PPP reform landscape reveals significant differences in national governments’ PPP policy and regulation and in the amount of actually implemented PPP projects. By comparing the initiatives taken by the Irish government, which has embraced PPPs, with those of the Danish government, which has been a PPP sceptic, this study inquires into the fundamental questions as to how, why and to what consequences some governments have developed widespread policy and regulation frameworks to support the implementation of PPPs, whereas others have been much more reluctant. The dissertation addressed four research questions: (i) what are the key actors, strategies and institutions that create policies and regulations for the formation of PPPs?; (ii) how did governments’ PPP policies and regulations develop over time, and how can their similarities and differences be explained?; (iii) how do differing national policy and regulation frameworks serve to facilitate or hinder the formation of PPPs, exemplified by four case studies from the schools sector?; (iv) what framework conditions does the EU set for PPP initiatives at national and sub-national levels? The main aim of the dissertation is to study how and why national PPP policy and regulation frameworks developed over time. At the national government level, the study thus contains both diachronic and synchronic analysis. Furthermore, in line with previous research within what has been called the governance approach within PPP studies, policy and regulation are also seen as constitutive elements that tap into and set the general framework conditions and institutional ‘rules of the game’ for the realisation of concrete PPP projects. The comparative interest at the central government level is thus supplemented by an analysis (a) of the interplay between decisions about policy and regulation at the national level and the formation of concrete PPP projects, and (b) of the EU’s role in regulating decisions about PPPs at national level and in relation to the formation of concrete PPP schemes. A main finding is that whereas academic PPP literature often portrays governments’ rationales for resorting to PPPs in terms of achieving innovation, collaborative advantage, value-for-money, new market possibilities, improved risk sharing etc., the findings brought to the fore in this dissertation suggest that a primary objective indeed was to remove major public infrastructure investments from governments’ balance sheets, and thereby reduce the pressure on public capital budgets and provide more infrastructure than would otherwise be possible. However, as the off balance sheet rationale has been shown to be largely false, because there is always a bill to pay in the long term, this raise a number of broader legitimacy and accountability issues, which the present PPP policy and regulation frameworks of governments do not seem to adequately address. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9114 Files in this item: 1
Ole_Helby_Petersen.pdf (1.358Mb) -
A processual and embedded explorationStelling, Christiane (Frederiksberg, 2014)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis addresses the need, development and management of trust in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), an issue that thus far has received only very little attention. For this purpose, the dissertation contributes with four separate articles, of which the first two explore the main concepts – PPPs and trust – while the last two present the empirical exploration of trusting in PPPs by drawing on four in-depth case studies. The exploration of the PPP concept in the first article focuses on the definitory and classificatory practices across disciplinary and professional fields and contributes with an inductive map of the dominant patterns. The review of PPP publications argues that the main divergence lies in the focus on two differing dimensions. While a first group focuses on PPPs as a new way of distributing responsibilities across public and private partners a second group defines PPPs as a new means for joint decision-making and interactive collaboration between public and private partners. For the thesis it is especially the second dimension – the relational - that becomes relevant when trust moves centre-stage. In the second article, the dissertation addresses trust conceptualizations in an interorganizational setting. The article argues for a more processual approach to (re)embed trust in time and space. Following, the paper develops a processual framework for studying interorganizational trusting as ever evolving, always embedded and not least rooted in individual experiences of organizational members from various organizational levels. Finally, the article highlights the constitutive importance of contingency not only creating the need for trust but also its precondition. It is because we experience the future as open (contingent) that we are in need and able to form trust, i.e. suspend doubts and form positive expectations about another’s future behaviour despite he/she has the possibility for alternative actions. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8942 Files in this item: 1
Christiane_Stelling.pdf (1.915Mb) -
Positioning and Framing in Nascent Institutional ChangeGirschik, Verena C. (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This doctoral dissertation aims to understand how companies realize corporate responsibility—both how they perform corporate responsibility in particular local contexts and how they negotiate understandings of what corporate responsibility means. It builds on an inductive case study of the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, a company known for its remarkable investments in integrating societal objectives into its business model and promoting new ways of thinking about and doing business. The case inspired the overarching theoretical question how actors construct and legitimize new ideas and practices at the nascent stages of institutional change. To address this question, the dissertation develops a micro-sociological approach to institutional change that brings to light how actors struggle over meaning in power relations by focusing on processes of positioning and framing. The three articles in this dissertation unfold distinct yet interdependent processes of positioning and framing that constitute new ways of performing and understanding corporate responsibility. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9275 Files in this item: 1
Verena_Girschik.pdf (1.257Mb) -
The Case of U.S. Chambers of CommerceCrawford, Brett (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Much of the organizational institutionalism literature suggests that the phenomenon of interests is a central construct, however, portrays interests in an overly deterministic, rational, and liberal way. In this thesis, I challenge those views and suggest that interests are a complex and interdependent socially constructed phenomenon. Accordingly, interests represent an actor’s recognition, perceived importance, and participation in a number of figurations and social games. Illustrated through the institution of U.S. chambers of commerce, I explore how chambers of commerce have withstood a changing American culture to become both the world’s largest business federation and public-private partnership. Moreover, even as the United States represents the most liberal of liberal market economies, chambers of commerce represent a context where capitalists have set aside market competition and unified their interests to become one of the largest and most influential institutions in the world. Following a brief introduction of interests and chambers of commerce, this thesis begins with the first paper, which is a critical review of the phenomenon of interests within the organizational institutionalism literature. Tracing the conceptual variety of both the origins and functions of interests in institutional studies, I illustrate how an overly deterministic and rational view of interests is problematic. The critical review continues with a discussion of my critiques of the extant literature followed by an introduction of a less rational and calculative approach to interests by coupling Bourdieu’s (1998) conceptualization of interests with Elias’s (1978) sociology emphasizing figurations and social games. The three subsequent empirical papers test this approach to interests on macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of the institution of chambers of commerce. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8452 Files in this item: 1
Brett_Crawford.pdf (9.887Mb) -
On the Politics of Translation in Global GovernanceGrasten, Maj Lervad (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis is about the rule of law in global governance and the role of legal expertise. It is about how contested concepts, vague wordings and political promises combine with international legal expertise to shape political and social realities in the making of global order(s). To this end, the aim of the thesis is to problematize and scrutinize the meaning and doings of the rule of law as a key concept in present-day international law and politics. Drawing on the case of internationally administered rule of law reforms in post-conflict Kosovo, the main problem I address in the thesis is – given the ambiguity of the very meaning of the concept – how, why and when is the meaning of the rule of law ‘fixed’, stabilized and made knowable to serve as a source of justification for the authority of international experts in ruling the domestic legal and what are the political implications thereof? To address this problem, I adopt a practice-oriented, multi-sited ethnographic approach to reconstruct the different and often conflicting meanings that are inscribed into the concept of the rule of law by various international actors, in particular international lawyers, engaged in rule of law reforms in the period from the establishment of the UN administration in 1999 until today where an European Union (EU) rule of law mission exercises extensive powers within the legal field in Kosovo. The main argument of the thesis is that the practical meaning of the rule of law in global governance is constituted through struggles over drawing the boundary between ‘law’ and ‘politics’ in the quest towards constructing and enacting law’s relative autonomy versus what is narrated and thus assessed as being social, political and moral influences. This plays out in the often mundane, everyday practices and ordinary language of international actors who are formally identified, authorized and justified to possess the professional knowledge – the particular expertise – that is required to solve the ‘problem’ of the rule of law and thus to translate it into what it should be in practice. Importantly, the separation and relationship between law and politics is not naturally given in practice and can therefore not be taken for granted. The boundary between the two realms is narrated and enacted differently by different actors for a particular purpose, in a given time and place. Indeed, inscribing meanings into the rule of law follows from enacting and inscribing a particular meaning into the boundary between law and politics. In sum, the construction of knowledge and meaning around the ‘rule of law’ unfolds in struggles over discursively fixing, momentarily stabilizing and thereby inscribing meaning into this boundary, which in turn would authorize a particular group of actors and their attending solutions to the problem over other actors and their solutions. The construction of knowledge and meaning around the ‘rule of law’, I will demonstrate in this thesis, is a result of how politics of translation play out in everyday practices of global governance. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9633 Files in this item: 0
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A Neoinstitutional Analysis of the Emerging Organizational Field of Renewable Energy in ChinaHøyrup Christensen, Nis (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Today, China is the world leading investor in renewable energy. At the heart of this effort lies China’s ability to shape markets through industrial policies. Through a neoinstitutional theoretical perspective this dissertation views China’s efforts within renewable energy as the emergence of a new organizational field. Despite the importance of organizational fields as a key concept in the neoinstitutional literature, there is a lack of studies on exactly how they emerge. Throughout four articles this dissertation scrutinizes therefore the emergence of the field of renewable energy in China and the mechanisms driving this emergence. Firstly, the relation between state and market is examined, and it is argued that Chinese state interventions in markets, for instance through subsidies, are based in deeply rooted historic grounds. Thus, the article explains the general context in which the Party-state handles subsidized markets, like renewable energy. Secondly, the specific development of the idea of sustainable development, and how it evolves into an institutional logic of its own, is analysed. It is around this institutional logic that renewable energy emerges as a field. The key mechanism in play is the idea work of the Party state by which sustainable development is positioned in the Partystate discourse. Thirdly, subsidization of renewable energy in China is examined as an important feature of the increasing institutionalization of the organizational field. It is shown how negotiation between companies and Party-state is the vital mechanism by which subsidies are determined.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8627 Files in this item: 1
Nis_Høyrup_Christensen.pdf (1.412Mb) -
A Comparative Case Study of Danish and Swedish Passenger Rail 1990–2015Christensen, Lene Tolstrup (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This doctoral thesis (PhD) explores from a public governance perspective the role of stateowned enterprises (SOEs) in an era of marketization of public service provision and thus contributes to the renewed academic interest in contemporary SOEs. It builds on an explorative comparative case study of DSB SOV and SJ AB in the marketization of passenger rail in Denmark and Sweden respectively from the 1990s to 2015. In the period both cases kept full state ownership and Sweden gradually exposed all services to competition whereas in Denmark with time competition was put on hold. The case study consists of document study and +50 interviews and is based on a historical institutionalist perspective on gradual change that emphasizes interpretation in the implementation between rule makers and rule takers as a driver of institutional change. It leads to the conceptualization of the SOE as an institutional market actor (IMA). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9410 Files in this item: 1
Lene Tolstrup Christensen.pdf (2.932Mb)
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