Browsing Ph.D. theses (MPP/LPF) by Year Published
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A Qualitative Exploration of Narrative Ecology in the Discursive Aftermath of Heroic DiscourseLundberg, Maria (Frederiksberg, 2019)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The phenomenology of trust and self-trust in narrative leadership identity constructions is a field less explored within leadership studies. With a critical lens, this study approaches the construction of leadership identity, offering a broadened perspective on post-heroic leadership identity constructions. The investigation builds on an empirical inquiry based on qualitative interviews with 20 leaders. The thesis examines aspects of the narrative ecology of trust and self-trust related to leadership identity constructions in a post-heroic leadership context. The investigation concentrates on how a dyadic coexistence of trust and self-trust in leadership language can be understood to operate as an underlying potency in leadership identity constructions. The discussion focuses on four main findings related to trust and self-trust in the leaders’ stories. Based on an interpretative framework and building on a phenomenological and ethnomethodological perspective, I show how Ladkin’s idea of the leadership moment, together with Lührmann and Eberl’s identity theory as a model for leadership identity construction, correspond to the theory of narrative ecology, wherein the leaders operate as creative bricoleurs constructing their narrative identities by drawing upon resources in a narrative ecosystem. The discussion attempts to elucidate how trust and self-trust provide agency for post-heroic leadership mastery, replacing leadership agency associated with formal power and authority that links to traditional leadership ideas. As part of this, the text examines how the heroic and postheroic leadership paradigms operate as competing big “D” Discourses, occurring side by side in the little “d” discursive leadership-as-talk identity context. My main argument is that the tensionfilled contradiction between heroic and post-heroic leadership Discourse is resolved by metaphors fuelled by notions of trust and self-trust in discursive leadership practices, which function as narrative rescue remedies, providing the leader with identity resources that validate and stabilise the identity construct. In addition, a potential eclipse in the literature on trust in leadership research is examined, wherein I point to the absence of risk in the empirical material of this project, and ask how this nonappearance can be understood in a post-heroic leadership-identity context. Lastly, I look to how the leadership identity construction project materialised in this study can be understood in the light of a self-realisation, anti-establishment fashion in popular management. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9736 Files in this item: 1
Maria Lundberg.pdf (2.863Mb) -
The Organizing of Participation in Contemporary ArtHolm, Ditte Vilstrup (Frederiksberg, 2019)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis engages with the organizing of participation in participatory art that constitutes the so-called social turn in contemporary visual art. The purpose of the research project is to generate new knowledge about participatory art, in particular, by investigating the organizational processes involved in these practices. To this end, an in-depth, qualitative case study of the organizing of participation for a public work of art was conducted. Using sociologist John Law’s notion of modes of ordering as a tool to sharpen an analysis of the patterning effects discerned from fieldwork observations, the thesis argues that the organizing of participation in contemporary art is an effect of four main interacting modes of ordering, termed artistic autonomy, administration, the site, and public interest. First, the thesis respectively explores the modes of ordering as singular ordering patterns in the networks of the social, and then describes how they interact and the effects of that interaction in the case study. The thesis thus contributes to a new ‘organizational turn’ in art theory that considers the way in which artistic practices are concerned with the organizing and reorganizing of social ordering processes, while themselves being embedded within and filtered into other organizing practices. The thesis also contributes to organization studies’ interest in the relationship between art, aesthetics, and processes of organizing, suggesting that contemporary art theory and organization studies both ponder the question of how artistic practices generate new forms of organizing that counter society’s prevailing economic rationale. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9711 Files in this item: 1
Ditte Vilstrup Holm.pdf (19.12Mb) -
Styringsbestræbelser, identitet og affektChristensen, Lone (Frederiksberg, 2019)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: I denne afhandling undersøger jeg, hvordan forskellige og tilsyneladende modsatrettede idéer om god strategiimplementering bidrager til sammenbruddet i et specifikt samarbejde mellem et hold eksterne konsulenter og direktionen i et dansk ministerium. Undersøgelsens resultat består af en analyse og en række praksisrettede råd til strategiimplementeringskonsulenter. Analysen viser, hvordan strategiimplementering foregår i et skæringspunkt mellem magtformer, der er indskrevet i de implementeringsværktøjer, som anvendes i strategiarbejdet. Den viser også, hvordan identitetskonstruerende og affektive processer kan folde sig ud i sammenhænge, hvor disse værktøjer og deres implicitte magtformer skal aktualiseres. Afhandlingen trækker på en begrebsramme, der er forankret i kritisk strategiforskning, governmentality-studier og diskurspsykologi. Omdrejningspunktet i afhandlingens analyser er det specifikke samarbejde mellem eksterne konsulenter og direktionen i et dansk ministerium omkring implementeringen af ministeriets nye koncernstrategi. Relativt tidligt i implementeringsarbejdet sker der et sammenbrud i dette samarbejde. Tiden op til og omkring sammenbruddet er præget af stærke følelser, og samtidig får sammenbruddet markante konsekvenser for konsulenternes videre arbejde med at implementere strategien i ministeriet. Analyserne er lavet på baggrund af interviews og observationer af samarbejdet mellem konsulenterne og ministeriets direktion. Der zoomes især ind på tre møder, der på forskellige måder lægger op til sammenbruddet. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9732 Files in this item: 1
Lone Christensen.pdf (3.016Mb) -
Introduction and Adoption in an Organizational ContextAricò, Marzia (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In the last decade, service design has seen a rapid diffusion, with several service design agencies established globally and commercial organizations willing to adopt it. This quick expansion is mainly due to an increasing focus of organizations on services and customer experience, building also on the need for businesses to digitalize their commercial offers and core operations. Despite the uptake of service design in practice, research has yet to deliver systematic empirical studies, rigorous analysis, and careful theorizing of service design and its fit within the strategies, practices, and processes of organizations (Ostrom, et al., 2015; Andreassen, et al., 2016). Service design’s theoretical foundations can be found in a wide range of academic fields that span from design to management (Kimbell, 2011; Karpen, et al., 2017), making it difficult to locate and develop a cohesive argument on the topic. The purpose of this study is to contribute to laying the foundations to systematically start investigating service design in an organizational context. I will use an institutional logics perspective, one of the key themes in institutional theory. Through this perspective, the study aims at clarifying the elements characterizing the organizational environment within which service design is introduced and the mechanisms for its adoption in such an organizational context. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9676 Files in this item: 1
Marzia Aricò.pdf (11.87Mb) -
Schellmann, Maximilian (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis reflects on refugee camps as spaces of organizing and investigates the politics, which are enacted and produced through such. Refugee camps have largely been neglected as sides and sites of organizing within recent studies of organization. This thesis therefore seeks to situate sites of organizing such as refugee camps - which literally are placed at the margins, both of space as well as of organizational discourses - at the centre. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9691 Files in this item: 1
Maximilian Schellmann.pdf (13.24Mb) -
The Aryanization of Danish-German Trade and German Anti- Jewish Policy in Denmark 1937-1943Bjerre, Jacob Halvas (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to explore and analyze the German Judenpolitik in Denmark by focusing on the Aryanization of Danish-German trade relations and anti-Jewish policies in Denmark from 1937 until August 1943. As a second research goal, it examines the reactions of the Danish government to the German Judenpolitik. These goals have been developed into four research questions: 1. How was Germany’s ambition to Aryanize its foreign trade developed into concrete policies, and how were these policies implemented into Danish-German trade relations as part of the German Judenpolitik in Denmark? 2. How did the German legation assist in formulating and executing the German Judenpolitik in Denmark? 3. How did the Danish government respond to the German Judenpolitik? 4. Based on the model Stages of Persecution, which stages and forms of Judenpolitik can be identified in Denmark during 1937-August 1943? These are answered by using qualitative and primary historical sources. I therefore apply a historical method which is combined with a four tier analytical approach. The overarching one is Peter Longerich’s definition of Judenpolitik understood as a tool to describe and analyze the complex processes of German anti-Jewish policy and politics. This analytical and thematical concept is applied to the Danish-German relationship in the period from 1937 to August 1943. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9692 Files in this item: 1
Jacob_Halvas Bjerre.pdf (3.866Mb) -
Considerations for OrganizationsPrat-i-Pubill, Queralt (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to focus in understanding axiological knowledge in knowledge driven societies which survive thanks to the creation of science and technology and new products and services. The considerations of this thesis are critical to organizations and society at large, because as I will show axiological knowledge is key to ensure the survival of human beings in specific survival conditions. Living in a knowledge driven world means the creation of knowledge in organizations is key. Thus axiological knowledge would need to be created to accommodate this need in organizations. Contrary to established beliefs, and although we experience most our behavior as intentional and volitional pertaining to our particular nature, we are constituted, in the form of automatic, evident, “true” interpretations and understandings of the world, through minimal constituent cultural configurations. This axiological knowledge is shaped by collective motivations through the communication of a constituent speech in the form of narratives, stories, myths, rituals and symbols created to ensure survival in specific material conditions. This axiological knowledge provides us with the adequate knowledge to interpret and value the world according to the existing survival conditions. Currently, many approaches aiming to change the axiological conditions, among others, to promote creativity, responsibility, sustainability and ethics in organizations appeal to personal responsibility and goodwill, without consideration of the affect system and the axiological knowledge currently in place. I argue these proposals are unsuccessful because they disregard the latest social sciences research and also because their key assumptions are outdated. These approaches either assume an anthropology of matter and spirit or an anthropology of matter and reason, as well as a mythical epistemology. This thesis is organized as a compendium of four articles structured in two parts dealing with the complexity of the axiological. The first part comprises two articles describing, argumenting and analysing our current axiological world. The second part, introduces and deals with the diverse discursive approaches to managing motivations in management studies, those of narratology, storytelling and rhetorics, and develops linguistic theory to intervene in collectivities by creating axiological knowledge. I argue, that focusing on the axiological knowledge is a pending need that will not be undetected for long in organization studies. The most difficult issue is to avoid current approaches to the axiological and thus to allow for new research to take place. This thesis is a step towards creating the theoretical basis for this research to develop. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9672 Files in this item: 1
Queralt Prat-i-Pubill.pdf (2.618Mb) -
Asmussen, Benjamin (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The overall purpose of this thesis is to understand how and why networks played a significant role for the merchants and company traders of the Danish Asiatic Company (DAC) in their trade in China. To explore this, the following research questions will be answered: From the perspective of network analysis and prosopography, what characterised the merchants and traders as a group and how was experience transmitted among the company traders? From the perspective of microhistory, what role did networks play for selected individual company traders? To examine these questions, an analysis on several levels is performed, starting from a broad perspective of the company, its function, and purpose from a network perspective. The rise and fall of the DAC serves as an important backdrop for the research questions. Then the focus narrows down to the societal group of merchants who were responsible for managing the company as directors and others that handled the trade with China. After examining the group as a whole using the prosopographical approach, the focus becomes narrower, turning to microhistory to get as close as possible to a small set of actors, distributed over the 100-year history of the DAC. The chapters reflect this division. In chapter II, the Danish Asiatic Company is analysed, sketching its history and examining the various purposes the company served for various actors of both individual and organisational nature. In chapter III, the focus narrows to the merchants of the company, seen as a group, approached with the help of prosopography. Here, first the merchants serving as directors will be analysed and then the company traders – both viewed as a group and with the assistance of network analysis. Finally, in chapter IV the focus becomes even narrower as four actors are provided with microhistorical narratives, followed by an analysis in view of the previous chapters. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9639 Files in this item: 1
Benjamin Asmussen.pdf (7.036Mb) -
An Ethnographic Study of Organizing for Social Transformation for Women in Urban Poverty, Delhi, IndiaFischer, Anne Sofie (Frederiksberg, 2018)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Negotiating Spaces of Everyday Politics is an ethnographic study of everyday lives and processes of social transformation among urban poor women in Delhi, India, as they seek to alter their life circumstances through taking up driving as a profession. With millions living under conditions of extreme poverty, rampant gender- and caste-based discrimination, and violence in familial, community and public spheres, the study addresses acute societal ills. Using the case of social enterprise Azad & Sakha and their Women on Wheels initiative, which seeks to address issues of poverty and injustice against women by helping them become professional drivers, the thesis’ central aim is to develop a contextualized theorizing of social transformation. This is accomplished by exploring lived experiences and practices of everyday relations through a spatial approach based on insights from human geography, such as the work of Massey (2005) and Simonsen (2007; 2008; 2010; 2013); gender studies, notably Butler (2015), as well as processual and performative perspectives within anthropology and entrepreneurship. The study focuses on the emergent features and ambiguities of social transformation, seeking to move beyond considerations of social entrepreneurship devoid of politics. As such, it contributes to the growing literature on entrepreneurship as social change that advocates a more critical perspective to social entrepreneurship, i.e., one that focuses on “the social.” URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9696 Files in this item: 1
Anne Sofie Fischer.pdf (34.35Mb) -
A study of crowd phenomena in the U.S. financial markets 1890 to 1940Hansen, Kristian Bondo (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation undertakes an explorative historical analysis of problems associated with crowd phenomena in the U.S. financial markets between 1890 and 1940. While a study of crowd-related problems in the financial markets invariably involves examinations of panics and crises, the dissertation shows that crowds were not exclusively seen as crisis phenomena, but were considered by many financial writers to be of much broader significance to the organisation and functioning of markets. The dissertation claims that it is necessary to explore the close connections between financial markets and crowd phenomena in order to fully understand how markets were perceived and conceptualised in the given historical period. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s reflections on the analysis of problematisations, the dissertation explores how practical, academic and popular accounts of financial markets problematised (i.e. reflected upon, contested and responded to) various crowd phenomena as they occurred in the markets. As part of the historical exposition, the dissertation examines how financial writers employed tropes and terminology from late nineteenth century crowd theories when describing and seeking to explain the processes and practices of the markets. The dissertation argues that the way in which crowd phenomena were problematised as well as the attempts to address these alleged crowd problems influenced perceptions of financial markets and transformed approaches to market analysis and speculation. Drawing on an archive of handbooks on how to become a successful investor or speculator, scholarly work on financial markets (from the academic fields of economics, sociology and psychology) as well as a range of popular (fictional and non-fictional) textual accounts of trading in financial markets, the dissertation offers a broad, yet rigorously focused, historical perspective on crowd phenomena in financial markets. Furthermore, it explores how ideas about crowd action, imitation, herding and contagion were introduced to and became integral parts of the discourses on financial markets. Reiterations of such historically formed ideas about crowd phenomena in financial markets are still prominent in current discussions and the dissertation thus offers a historical contextualisation of a pertinent feature of contemporary debates on financial markets. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9496 Files in this item: 1
Kristian Bonco Hansen.pdf (2.088Mb) -
Studies in Post-Kantian Philosophy and Social TheoryPresskorn-Thygesen, Thomas (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation examines the concept of normativity through a series of studies in post- Kantian philosophy and social theory. The overall aim is to analyse the historical as well as systematic relevance of the concept of normativity to modern philosophy and to the methodological challenges of social theory. In pursuing this overall research agenda, the dissertation contributes to a number of specific research literatures. Following two introductory and methodological chapters, Chapter 3 thus critically examines the analysis of normativity suggested in the recent attempts at transforming the methods of neo-classical economics into a broader form of social theory. The chapter thereby contributes to the critical discourses, particularly in philosophy of science, that challenge the validity of neo-classical economics and its underlying conception of practical rationality. In examining the practical philosophies of Kant and Hegel, Chapter 4 substantiates and collects the numerous, specific insights on normativity, practical rationality and autonomy that have been generated by the so-called ‘post- Sellarsian’ reading of German Idealism. The chapter thereby contributes not only to this particular branch of philosophical exegesis, but also to the social theoretical concern with the conceptions of autonomy and agency that have influenced European modernity. Chapter 5 examines the social theoretical transfiguration of the problems of German Idealism that occurred in the works of Durkheim and Weber. It does so by situating Durkheim and Weber in the context of Neo-Kantian philosophy, which prevailed among their contemporaries, and the chapter thereby reveals a series of under-thematised similarities not only with regard to their methodological positions, but also in their conception of social norms. Chapter 6 employs the late Wittgenstein’s much-debated rule-following considerations to recapitulate the significance of normativity to philosophy and social theory; in this way the chapter shows a wider import of the rule-following considerations that go beyond the strict mathematical and epistemological perspectives most often analysed in the Wittgenstein scholarship related to this topic. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9473 Files in this item: 1
Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen.pdf (2.149Mb) -
How Managers Engage with Design to Transform Public GovernanceBason, Christian (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In recent years, design has emerged as an approach to shaping public policies and services across industrialized and emerging economies. International institutions, national and local governments, foundations, philanthropies, volunteer and community organizations, and educational institutions at all levels have taken up a variety of approaches inspired by the field of design, often in response to growing pressures to innovate. But how these approaches influence public innovation – how they change the roles of public managers, how they help managers generate new ideas and solutions – and whether, as some have suggested, they might signal the rise of new governance models or paradigms – these issues have not, with perhaps a few exceptions, been rigorously explored. In this thesis, I explore these issues by examining the experiences of public managers who have pioneered the use of design approaches. More specifically, I confront three questions: • Characterizing design practice: Within public sector organizations, what does the application of design approaches entail? Why do public managers look to and commission design, and what tools, techniques, processes and methods are brought into play? • Design as change catalyst: How do design approaches, if at all, influence how public managers engage with their problems and opportunities for innovation? To what extent do design approaches help public managers achieve the changes they are striving for, and why? • Emerging forms of public governance: What form and shape do the outputs resulting from design approaches take? What are the links between design approaches and the emergence of new types of public solutions and governance models? URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9480 Files in this item: 1
Christian Bason.pdf (4.594Mb) -
Mellemlederens oplevelse af forandringsmodstand i organisatoriske forandringerHansen, Richard Ledborg (Frederiksberg, 2017)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Forandringer er på den globale dagsorden i alle dets mange afskygninger. Den fremstår i det nære som en sammenlægning af to enheder i en mellemstor virksomhed. I det fjerne som opkøb af en komplimenterende virksomhed. Såvel i det offentlige som i det private sker forandringer hele tiden. Behovet for at tilpasse de indre ressourcekrav til ydre omstændigheder øges i både hyppighed og hastighed. De mange forskellige omstændigheder og rationaler skaber en kontekstuel varians, der synes uendelig. Med dette, som den helt overordnede kontekstmarkør, bliver succesfulde forandringer en presserende nødvendighed for enhver virksomhed, der løbende søger at tilpasse sit virke. Hvorvidt det lykkedes for virksomheden, i hvilket omfang og hvorfor det falder ud som det gør er baggrunden for dette forskningsprojekt. Dette projekt undersøger fænomenet modstand mod forandring, da dette begreb er den hyppigst angivne årsag til forandringer, der ikke lykkedes. Fænomenet undersøges fra en særlig organisatorisk position; mellemlederen. En position der tilsvarende hyppigt angives som både kritisk omdrejningspunkt samt afgørende drivkraft for en succesfuld implementering af forandringer. Rolle som forandringsagent er således en dimension af rollen som mellemleder og dermed forskningsmæssigt interessant. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9506 Files in this item: 1
Richard Ledborg Hansen.pdf (6.618Mb) -
En kvalifikation af ledelsesmuligheder for at forebygge sygefravær ved psykiske problemerSteen Pedersen, Pernille (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Sygefravær på grund af psykiske problemer udgør op mod halvdelen af det samlede sygefravær på det danske arbejdsmarked. Ledelsesindsatser er afgørende for at forebygge sygefravær ved psykiske problemer, viser flere undersøgelser. Imidlertid mangler der forskningsbaseret viden om, hvordan ledelse kan bidrage i denne henseende. Et udbredt dogme synes at være, at medarbejderens fysiske og mentale sundhed er et ledelsesansvar. Heraf følger f.eks., at medarbejderens selvværd og mentale robusthed bliver anset som et vigtigt omdrejningspunkt for ledelsesindsatser. Udgangspunktet for afhandlingen har imidlertid været at undersøge, om der findes ledelsesmuligheder, der ikke indebærer en udvidelse af lederrollen til også at omfatte aktiviteter, der kan sammenlignes med terapeutiske indsatser. Dette giver anledning til spørgsmålet: ”Hvilken ledelsesopgave kan knyttes til forebyggelse af sygefravær ved psykiske problemer?” URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9277 Files in this item: 1
Pernille Steen Pedersen.pdf (2.389Mb) -
Palm Oil in Southeast Asia in Global Perspective (1880s–1970s)Giacomin, Valeria (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation examines the case of the palm oil cluster in Malaysia and Indonesia, today one of the largest agricultural clusters in the world. My analysis focuses on the evolution of the cluster from the 1880s to the 1970s in order to understand how it helped these two countries to integrate into the global economy in both colonial and post-colonial times. The study is based on empirical material drawn from five UK archives and background research using secondary sources, interviews, and archive visits to Malaysia and Singapore. The dissertation comprises three articles, each discussing a major under-researched topic in the cluster literature – the emergence of clusters, their governance and institutional change, and competition between rival cluster locations – through the case of the Southeast Asian palm oil cluster. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9381 Files in this item: 1
Valeria Giacomin.pdf (6.399Mb) -
Lunde Jørgensen, Ida (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of art support by investigating the underlying legitimations and institutional logics of two of the most significant foundations supporting visual art, in Denmark, the private New Carlsberg Foundation and public Danish Arts Foundation. Drawing on insights from neo-institutional and French convention theory, the thesis makes its central contributions within the fields of neo-institutional theory, cultural policy and philanthropy studies. The first paper shows the suitability of neo-institutional theory, particularly the theories of isomorphism, cultural and institutional entrepreneurship, institutional logics, and rhetorical work to address a number of key debates in cultural policy pertaining to the evaluation of aesthetic performance, the justification of investment in the arts and how ideas and meanings become taken for granted in the cultural policy field. In addition, the first paper theorizes the wider field of cultural policy, suggesting twelve institutional arenas where cultural policy is unfolded, of which the thesis focuses on public and private foundations. In the second paper, the thesis focuses on uncovering the key legitimations of art support in the New Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation at critical points in time, drawing on and contributing to the literature on institutional logics and convention theory. Specifically, the thesis shows the importance of nine particular logics of legitimation underlying art support; the industrial, market, inspired, family, renown, civic, projective, emotional and temporal. Most central to the foundations’ operation are the professional (industrial), artistic (inspired) and civic logics. The thesis shows that the invocations of these logics are highly reflective upon wider societal institutions, prevailing institutional logics, the nature of the critical moment and the organisations’ practices and purpose. In the third paper the thesis hones in on the temporal logic, and draws attention to the micro-level use of this logic, which suggests that logics are invoked in characteristic ways. The third paper illuminates five distinctive uses of the past in the New Carlsberg Foundation, pertaining to the charter, the founding family, place, the moment and anecdotes and importantly shows that while some of these uses are reflected and instrumental, others are institutionalised and show propensity towards institutional reification. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9337 Files in this item: 1
Ida_Lund_Jørgensen.pdf (2.172Mb) -
Towards a Relational Perspective on Incubating PracticesHenriques, Christine Thalsgård (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The world wants more entrepreneurs so badly, that it has become a major priority of governments all over the world trying to produce them. Based on Industrial PhD collaboration between the Danish Science Park, Symbion A/S and Copenhagen Business School, this dissertation presents a unique opportunity to study how the interactions between technology-based entrepreneurs and an Accelerator programme may lead to increased entrepreneurial capacity, learning and growth. The Industrial PhD setting offers privileged access to entrepreneurs, advisors, incubator management and investors, and we get to listen to stories seldom told in this field. As follows, the write-up of the ethnographic fieldwork is a narrative multi-voiced analysis in search of entrepreneurial learning in an incubator context. The phenomenon of business incubation – in this dissertation referred to as incubating activities - is originally intended as a forum that is shielded off from the everydayness of things, with the purpose of adding resources and removing barriers to venture creation. The idea is that entrepreneuring actors will be offered complementary resources and forced to spend time on planning and strategies in a helicopter perspective, which in the end will benefit the process and make venture success more likely. Policy makers together with researchers of entrepreneurship policy and incubation, to a large degree assume that entrepreneurial actors somehow lack skills and resources and cannot easily acquire these themselves, and furthermore that it is possible to affect the resources, behaviour and skills of entrepreneurs. It has nevertheless been shown that enhancing entrepreneurial growth from support activities is not as easy, even if the intentions are good and the resources invested considerable (Blackburn and Schaper 2012, Bruneel et al. 2012, Mason and Brown 2013). It is also taken for granted that entrepreneurs are open to learning and foreign intervention (help and support). This study shows that this is not always the case. Hence, the dissertation explores a highly political and delicate matter touching upon the legitimacy of business incubation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9305 Files in this item: 1
Christine_Thalsgård_Henriques.pdf (2.056Mb) -
Anxiety and entrepreneurship in a bureaucracySigurdarson, Hallur Tor (Frederiksberg, 2016)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Since the early 1980s there has been a call for entrepreneurship and innovation in the public sector. The call became an international discourse with considerable implications for public administration. Accordingly, bureaucracy is a ubiquitous hindrance for entrepreneurial practices and many of the solutions proposed for public sector bureaucracy draw on research and practices in the private sector and are guided by economic rationality. Instead of adopting this common critique and its set of solutions, in this dissertation a different approach is developed to enquire into the capacity of a bureaucratically organised Ministerial Department to entrepreneur. The approach involves an emphasis on local practices, affects and movements in an ethnographically inspired study. The result is also an idea – local and contextual – of the relationship between entrepreneurship and bureaucracy, which is distant from the entrepreneurship/bureaucracy dichotomy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9377 Files in this item: 1
Hallur Tor Sigurdarson.pdf (2.632Mb) -
Rethinking practice, problems and possibilitiesHjordrup, Sanne K. (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This industrial PhD is about talent management. More specifically, it is about how the customer relationship becomes a source of value and value creation for the company through the practice of talent management, a key strategic HR initiative. Talent management is a costly activity in terms of both time and money. Nevertheless, talent management is an HR practice that is virtually taken for granted in any company of a certain size. This is the case because it is assumed to be a value-adding initiative and believed to be a key strategic HR initiative, in particular for large global organisations, to remain competitive. This dissertation suggests that talent management practices are not necessarily as value-adding as is the long-standing assumption, and thus challenges prevailing notions of what constitutes valuable talent management. It argues the need to rethink the practice of talent management to ensure that it adds a level of value that justifies the amount of attention and resources spent on it. The dissertation examines what the implications are for talent management when a company introduces a customer focus as a way of competing in the market. In order to examine this, the dissertation brings the concept of value into the discussion of talent management and thus invites new ways of connecting the various dots of talent management – both within the HR function and in the interaction between HR, the business and the customers. Value is a complex concept, and in the management literature (including the literature on talent management), the concept is often addressed in a narrow economic sense based on an industrial logic. The strategic management literature has increasingly focused on value in a relational sense, which alters ways of doing successful business. The dissertation argues that when a company perceives customer relations as a potential source of competitive advantages, this has implications for notions of value and value creation in the organisation, including the practice of talent management. This requires a relational perspective on value and value creation, which implies that value becomes both more difficult to control and more complex and embedded in a system of multiple, mutually dependent factors. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9207 Files in this item: 1
Sanne K. Hjordrup.pdf (3.334Mb) -
A Philosophical Examination of the Creative Manager, the Authentic Leader and the EntrepreneurJohnsen, Christian Garmann (Frederiksberg, 2015)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis undertakes a philosophical examination of three figures at the heart of post-bureaucratic thought – the figures of the creative manager, the authentic leader and the entrepreneur. While the figures of the creative manager, the authentic leader and the entrepreneur share the aim of resolving the crisis of Taylorism, this thesis argues that they produce their own internal crises. They do so because the figures of the creative manager, the authentic leader and the entrepreneur are inherently bound to concepts that resist transmutation into a managerial logic that would enable them to serve their functional purposes without betraying their conceptual dynamics. What philosophy offers us is not a ready-made solution to the crises of the creative manager, the authentic leader and the entrepreneur, but rather a point of departure for constructing concepts that enable us to explore the paradoxes embedded within these figures. Since philosophical concepts dwell in crisis, they enable the thesis to capture the paradoxes, aporias and impossibilities that inevitably accompany post-bureaucratic thought. Instead of regarding the crises in post-bureaucratic management thinking as an impasse, abyss or deadlock, the thesis shows how they can chart new ways of conceptualizing the postbureaucratic organization. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of pharmakon, Deleuze’s concept of simulacrum and Zizek’s concept of fantasy, three concepts equally marked by their paradoxical nature, this thesis opens up a philosophical critique of the post-bureaucratic image of thought. This will be done by exploring the figure of the creative manager through a reading of Gary Hamel’s popular management handbook The Future of Management informed by Derrida’s concept of pharmakon; the figure of the authentic leader through a reading of Bill George’s semiautobiographic self-help tome Authentic Leadership informed by Deleuze’s concept of simulacrum; and the figure of the entrepreneur through a reading of Richard Branson’s autobiography Losing My Virginity informed by Zizek’s concept of fantasy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9186 Files in this item: 1
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