Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för tillämpad informationsteknologi

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The Elusive Nature of Emerging Technologies
(2025-09-12) Lindquist, Mikael
Emerging technologies fundamentally transform society, with this process gaining ever more momentum as the digital era unfolds; however, the early innovation processes interwoven with them remain poorly understood. The dissertation clarifies these processes considerably by examining the nature of emerging technologies and how the latter influence the early stages of innovation in organizations. The research behind it addressed two questions: How can emerging technologies be conceptualized, and, given this conceptualization, how do emerging technologies shape the conditions for early digital-innovation processes? The work drew from an interpretative, qualitatively oriented case study of public-sector organizations engaged in early innovation processes involving blockchain technology. A study at a government agency served as an especially rich data source, informing two-phase analysis wherein separate analyses were conducted and presented in four research articles, then more general case analysis addressed the overarching research questions. Two central contributions to current theory emerged. Detailing the elusive nature of emerging technologies draws attention to vital facets of their ambiguity; they lack clarity both in their material structure (how they are technically constituted) and in the purposes articulated for them (what problems can be solved). Secondly, the dissertation presents elaboration on the framing paradox of emerging technologies, which is an outgrowth of their elusive nature. This explicates how grappling with the ambiguities requires a strategy to reduce the complexity bundled with the dual ambiguity. It also highlights key tensions: legitimacy-linked ones and tensions between innovation ambitions and responsibilities for existing structures. The research’s findings hold significant practical utility. An organization that acknowledges the “dual ambiguity” and the framing paradox is better equipped to guide its planning and execution of digital innovation processes. For government, one implication of understanding the ambiguity-rife nature of emerging technologies is development of more precise targeting of innovation funding. Also, in society at large, the power game of new technology development requires a corresponding focus on the labeling processes brought into play.
Catering for Student Digital Competence - Teachers navigating the complexities of digital-infused education
(2025-03-04) Löfving, Christina
There have been massive investments in school digitalization worldwide, which have led to high policy expectations for potential outcomes, one being that students will be able to use digital technologies and understand their consequences. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how teachers make sense of student digital competence and how it is catered for in digital-infused teaching practices today. For this purpose, teachers’ accounts and enactment, as well as what conditions teachers face, are investigated in three multi-sited ethnographic studies where teachers and other personnel working in 14 primary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary schools in Sweden participated. Individual and focus group interviews, observations, fieldnotes, informal conversations, texts and walkthroughs generated the data which were qualitatively analyzed using the practice theory of sensemaking. The results indicate that, apart from considering student digital competence as a subject-specific curricular concept, it can additionally be understood as a vague, narrow, technical-instrumental and cross-curricular one. Teachers individually and differently cater for cross-curricular aspects, that is, technical aspects, source criticism and how students can avoid dangers in relation to digital technologies. In almost every lesson, teachers dedicate time to instructing their students in how to navigate digital platforms for schoolwork, which is why a new, tacit, and cross-curricular school subject of platform bureaucratization was identified. The expectations expressed in policies in relation to participation in a digital-infused society, for example, digital rights, participation, engagement, and critical resistance, legislative and ethical aspects, as well as data- and AI-literacies, are not as visible, and few teachers consider it their task to attend to these aspects. The identified constraining conditions relate to policies and prevailing discourses, school development strategies, digital technologies, and how students’ digital-infused out-of-school activities are made sense of. The practical and pedagogical implications let bottom-up and top-down perspectives meet, since the implications involve teachers, school leaders and facilitators such as school librarians and ICT advisors, and transnational and national stakeholders.
Digital Safe Spaces
(2024-12-13) Ruiz Bravo, Nadia
In today’s interconnected world, digital spaces have become essential arenas for social interaction, self-expression, and community building. Among these, the concept of digital safe spaces has gained prominence, providing marginalized communities with spaces where they can seek refuge from discrimination, harassment, and oppression. These spaces are crucial for fostering inclusivity, support, and community building. This research departs from these spaces and aims to explore their nature by contributing to the growing literature on digital safe spaces, expanding the knowledge of this area, especially in the Information Systems (IS) field. Positioned in the empirical context of the video game industry, specifically, women in game development and political actions in the gaming sphere, this thesis builds on four interrelated studies and one book chapter, each contributing to a comprehensive understanding of digital safe spaces. These studies provide a conceptualization of digital safe spaces based on characteristics and types and discuss the importance of the cultivation of digital safe spaces to create a sense of safeness. In addition, digital safe spaces are examined as desired territories for participants who can potentially experience transformation through their participation in these spaces. By providing this multi-faceted analysis, this thesis contributes to the discourse on safety, safeness, inclusivity, and social change, offering insights for scholars interested in issues of marginalization, resistance, and digital technologies.
THE CONSENSING APPROACH TO STRATEGIZING: The Dynamics of Dialogue in Public Sector Digital Transformation
(2024-04-10) Norling, Kristian
This thesis explores the role of consensing, a process of cognitive consensus-building through the mechanisms of sensing and synthesizing, in digital transformation strategy formulation within the Swedish public sector. It introduces the novel concepts of consensus surplus (a shared understanding that exceeds the requirements for action), deficit (insufficient shared understanding to support strategy implementation), and debt (the accumulation of unresolved issues due to a lack of consensus-building). The study argues that consensing plays a critical role in aligning strategic intent and shared understanding among stakeholders, leading to these varied outcomes. This process is enabled by the organizational infrastructure of dialogue, which encompasses generative, diagnostic, and integrative dialogue types that facilitate the development of shared understanding. Drawing upon a critical realist stance and an abductive and retroductive research approach, this study offers a nuanced perspective on the cognitive dynamics of consensing based on an in-depth analysis of qualitative data from interviews, surveys, and document analysis. It challenges prevailing notions and encourages a more collaborative approach to strategy formulation. The thesis conceptualizes consensing as a mechanism for aligning strategic intent with shared understanding, a novel approach in the formulation of digital transformation strategies. The thesis contributes to digital strategizing literature by highlighting the role of consensing in bridging the gap between intended and realized strategies. It proposes actionable strategies for fostering effective dialogue and mitigating status quo bias, thereby facilitating more dynamic and inclusive strategy formulation processes. The research also outlines potential avenues for future inquiry, such as exploring the impact of organizational culture on consensing processes and examining the role of digital platforms in facilitating consensus-building. By presenting consensing as a vital tool for organizations navigating digital transformation, this research enriches the discourse in digital strategizing and organizational practice. It advocates for a deeper understanding and application of consensing to enhance the efficacy of strategy formulation in the public sector, with implications for both theory and practice.
EXPERIENCES OF SPEAKING WITH CONVERSATIONAL AI IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION
(2023-08-17) Ericsson, Elin
This thesis explores the application of digital tools in Swedish language education, specifically in relation to speaking skills. It focuses on dialogue- based, computer-assisted language learning, which enables students to practise and develop their speaking skills in a target language. The aim of the thesis is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how students experience conversational artificial intelligence during their language education while practising speaking skills in face-to-face interaction. The thesis consists of one study conducted with language teachers, and three studies conducted in real classroom settings with lower-secondary students using two different spoken dialogue systems. A framework was designed to analyse student–conversational-agent interaction and the students’ educational experiences in the system. The data was produced through system metrics, questionnaires, digital logbooks, and interviews. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the quantitative data, while qualitative data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. There were three major areas of findings related to the conducted studies. Firstly, teachers have positive views of using digital tools, but speaking skills are the least assisted by these tools, despite being considered the most challenging skill to teach and learn. Secondly, students reported positive educational experiences when practising speaking in a spoken dialogue system, both in the short and long term. They were cognitively and emotionally engaged, felt safe, and gained confidence. However, some students became disengaged when the scenarios did not relate to their daily lives, lacked challenge, or resulted in communication breakdowns. Thirdly, students had a range of experiences with the embodied conversational agents, from seeing them as deadpan machines to relating socially with them in positive ways. The level of experienced social interaction was linked to the students' educational experiences in the system. The contributions of the thesis include the framework for analysing student–conversational-agent interaction and the adaptation of a digital logbook for this educational context. The practical implications for language education are various. Firstly, spoken dialogue systems offer supplementary opportunities for lower-secondary students to practise speaking in a target language and align with key principles of effective language learning. Secondly, understanding the complexity of various aspects of students' experiences in the system can help teachers to address challenges and diverse student reactions, transforming their role into that of a facilitator and guide for teaching and learning speaking skills using conversational AI.
Frame Shifting and Frame Blending in Digital Transformation
(2023-05-04) Ivarsson, Frida
As organizations embrace digital technologies in new ways, they experience a process known as digital transformation. This process is not just about technological changes – digital transformation also involves organizational changes that enable and result from engagements with digital technologies. Despite the growing knowledge base about this topic, extant digital transformation research is largely inattentive to how meaning-making shapes digital transformation. In this thesis, I outline an approach to unpack meaning-making in digital transformation with the concepts of frame shifting and frame blending. This conceptual framework approaches meaning-making through discursive interactions, or “talking”, where (1) frame shifting manifests when exploring what could be new in potential futures which involve digital technologies, and (2) frame blending manifests when identifying what might remain of an organization’s past in such potential futures. This work builds on insights from a longitudinal case study of meaning-making in digital transformation at the incumbent firm Sydved operating in the Swedish forest industry. The empirical research was carried out between 2018 and 2022. At Sydved, I studied the meaning-making associated with “injections” of new digital technologies into Sydved’s existing digital ecosystem. I noticed the temporal character of the meaning-making process and engaged in exploring how to understand theoretically the role of time in this process. This led me to the concepts of frame shifting and frame blending. I also studied changes connected to Sydved’s established digital application “My Forest” between 2013 and 2022 to illustrate how meaning-making shaped Sydved’s digital transformation. The thesis contributes a different conceptual framework to the digital transformation literature for approaching both meaning-making and temporality - as in the interplay of potential futures and the past - in digital transformation. It also contributes to the framing literature by elaborating on the theoretical understanding of frame shifting and frame blending as well as extending their field of application to digital transformation as an area of concern. Finally, it contributes to practice by outlining insights for arranging and participating in meaning-making during digital transformation.
Designing Human-Centered Hybrid Decision Support Systems
(2023-04-19) Cao, Lu
Innovative decision support systems (DSSs) are revolutionizing key processes in organizations. These systems are used in managerial decision-making to solve increasingly complicated decision tasks, for example, using artificial intelligence. This research starts with the observation from practitioners’ workshops that they have significant concerns about existing DSSs. Earlier research also shows that DSSs have often been designed with an over-emphasis on machine capabilities. This one-sided design approach is problematic since it ignores human capabilities in decision-making. Consequently, organizations need more advanced DSSs that take account of two aspects: 1) they are designed with a human-centered intent; and 2) these DSSs should better utilize the complementary capabilities of humans and machines. In this study, such DSSs are called human-centered hybrid decision support systems (HC-HDSSs). The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute design knowledge supporting the development of HC-HDSSs. To achieve results, the action design research method has been used to build, intervene in, and evaluate the designed HC-HDSSs in three iterations. Two main results are presented: 1) a prototype of HC-HDSSs, which serves as an example of HC-HDSSs; and 2) five design principles concerning how HC-HDSSs should be developed.
Platformization: Digital Materiality at the Limits of Discourse
(2023-04-13) Gustavsson, Mikael
The digital platform has served us well as a metaphor for an imaginary ‘something’ made comprehensible through theories such as matchmaking, externalities, and network effects. But as much as metaphors and theories can help us imagine and understand some aspects of a phenomenon, they can also limit us in seeing others. To understand and explain these formations of digital technology in a more nuanced way, existing theories on digital platforms need to be supplemented. In this thesis, I contribute to this emerging body of knowledge by, for example, building on and developing the concept of platformization. This thesis also illuminates, discuss, and theorize the ambivalent ontology of digital artifacts more broadly. A practice that highlights the somewhat indeterminate modes of existence of digital artifacts and the discursive work needed to make them intelligible. Hence, the thesis emphasizes and pays attention to the continuous dance between digital technology and our understanding of the same. For example, innovations and developments in a technological field may influence the meaning of an already established concept (e.g., deep learning and “AI”). Consequently, evolving material aspects of digital technology challenge prevailing discursive expressions of what ‘digital technology’ means. Therefore, we must be receptive to technological changes and reflect on whether these changes have consequences for our already established theories and concepts.
Plug & Play? Stakeholders’ co-meaningmaking of gamification implementations in workplace learning environments
(2023-01-12) Palmquist, Adam
This dissertation discusses the implementation process of gamification in organisations’ workplace learning environments, focusing on four stakeholder groups: Administrators, Leaders, Providers and Users. These stakeholder groups are represented across the dissertation’s five articles, which present the results of my investigation of the groups’ meaning attributions to the gamification implementations in their organisations’ learning environments. The empirical materials include assembled ethnographic records, surveys and event logs from the implemented technological artefacts in different settings. In the included studies, I focused on various sequences in gamification implementation. In Study I, I portrayed various design workshops by employing a participatory observation approach to amplify the voices of the Administrators and Providers. In Study II, I provided an account of a whole gamification implementation project using a design ethnography approach to give voice to the four stakeholder groups. In Study III, I utilised a mixed-methods approach, examining the Users’ notions and opinions of gamification implementation in their online corporate course. In Study IV, I identified and explained Users’, Administrators’ and Leaders’ miscellaneous gamification design preferences using a sequential mixed-methods approach. Through Study V’s blended research design, I displayed how a low level of technological maturity in an organisation undertaking gamification implementation raises concerns that threaten to jeopardise the entire project due to the unforeseen and spiked resource demand. Although the previously given design frameworks for gamification for learning have downplayed the positions of organisational stakeholders and the importance of the implementation procedure, the results of this dissertation indicate a circumstance that contradicts the downplayed representation of both stakeholders and the implementation phase in real-world gamification projects. The results of the five dissertation studies display bipolar yet interdependent connections between the four stakeholder groups’ meaning attributions to gamification in the workplace learning environment. Dissimilar meaning attributions to gamification influence the implementation process to a high degree. Based on this premise, the dissertation emphasises the importance of identifying stakeholders’ meaning attributions to gamification in the learning environment as a way to facilitate its implementation in the organisation’s ecosystem. The implications of the PhD project’s findings served as the basis for the project’s primary contribution: a model for analysing and understanding organisational stakeholders’ requirements for gamification in the learning ecosystems of large enterprises. The STAkeholder-centred GAmification (STAGA) model comprises a set of constructs highlighting the relationships among central stakeholders’ meaning attributions to and aspirations regarding gamification in the workplace learning context. STAGA is a process model intended for continually analysing and understanding organisational stakeholders and interpreting their meaning attributions to gamification. The model intends to aid and influence decision-making in the design and development process of gamification to facilitate its integration into the routines and practices of the workplace learning environment.
Användning av mobiltelefoner i den digitaliserade skolan: Elevers och lärares perspektiv
(2022-11-10) Grigic Magnusson, Anita
På ett övergripande plan problematiserar avhandlingen skolans digitalisering och dess konsekvenser för både elevers och lärares skolvardag. Mer specifikt syftar avhandlingen till att fördjupa kunskapen om användningen av högstadie- och gymnasieelevers privata mobiltelefoner i klassrummet och implementering av mobiltelefonförbud i klassrummet. Med utgångspunkt i fokusgruppintervjuer av högstadie- och gymnasieelever om deras användning av sina mobiltelefoner i klassrummet, både för pedagogiska och icke-undervisningsrelaterade syften och ljudinspelningar av lärares diskussioner i ett lärarlag om implementeringen av ett mobiltelefonförbud i sina klassrum ställdes avhandlingens forskningsfrågor och utforskas i 4 fallstudier. På ett generellt plan är arbetet grundat i sociokulturell teori om lärande och utveckling, där de teoretiska begreppen infrastruktur för lärande och gränsobjekt/gränsöverskridande har använts i avhandlingens studier och kappa. Avhandlingen visar att de utmaningar och möjligheter som följer med att eleverna tar med sig och använder sina mobiler i klassrummet till stor del handlar om hur denna komplexitet ska hanteras i klassrummet. I den digitaliserade skolan har digital teknologi kommit att bli en nödvändig och integrerad komponent både för lärares undervisning och för elevers lärande. Avhandlingens studier visar på vikten av att nyansera frågan om användningen av elevernas privata mobiltelefoner i klassrummet. Avhandlingens empiriska studier bidrar till kunskapsfältet och förtydligar att det inte finns en enkel lösning på den komplexa fråga om hur elevernas användning av sina privata mobiler ska hanteras i klassrummet i den digitaliserade skolan.
Making sense of sensing: Learning through Maker-based Civic Engagement
(2022-03-02) Ekman, Karin
In the last decade or two, initiatives engaging the public in scientific activities have become increasingly popular. For example, in air pollution monitoring with Do-it-Yourself (DIY) low-cost sensors. It is a relatively new practice that emerged due to the falling costs of sensor technology and components, combined with enhanced access to communities for sharing information and support. The engagement in DIY monitoring is here described as a maker-based civic engagement where collective action towards civic goals is reached through a peer-based, interactive, and social practice adopted from the culture of the maker movement. Through a multi-sited ethnography this dissertation contributes with two perspectives on DIY monitoring; how an institutionally organized initiative perceives outcomes of public engagement and how a grassroot civic mobilization initiative acts and learns while DIY monitoring. The sites cover two approaches to involve people: top-down as an institutionally organised public engagement and bottom-up as a grassroot-driven civic engagement. To unpack the creation and sharing of meaning in this empirical setting, I draw on research on productive and exploratory dialogue, combined with research on online communities where people collectively engage in meaningful participation. The institutionally organized initiative plans for public participation and wants to influence people. However, they prioritize getting sensors up and running since not knowing how to address issues of empowerment. The members of the grassroot initiative do not engage in building common community knowledge around issues of air pollution the way the institutionally organised project wants. Instead, their civic and collective actions are intended to generate hyperlocal, open, real-time air pollution data and ensure that data will continue to be delivered. The maker-based civic engagement seen in this dissertation enables a specific form of interest-driven learning. The maker-based social media setting allows meaningful participation where members make sense of sensing through exploratory dialogues and scaffolding common community knowledge. This dissertation suggests that establishing social relationships through non-productive and purely social conversations may be of substantial value for the meaning that participants ascribe to participation in a community.
Workplace Learning in Interactive Service Work: Coming to Practice Differently in the Connected Service Encounter
(2022-01-14) Arkenback, Charlotte
We increasingly live in a world where human and digital work and activities are intertwined in so-called digital networks, which implies changes to the skills demanded by human labour. Traditionally, the professional encounter between a service provider and a customer, client or learner has been conceptualised as ‘a game between people’, with little interference from technologies of any sort. This thesis explores how the digitalisation of frontline services changes workplace learning in interactive service work, with a specific focus on the emotional labour involved in service encounters. The theory of practice architecture is used as framework for exploring workplace learning in salespeople’s service encounters in connected retail chain stores. In the thesis, workplace learning refers to learning, training and skills development for worklife both in and outside of workplaces as well as in virtual spaces. The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises four separate studies conducted using ethnographic methods and online video research. Together, they contribute to the thesis by providing four perspectives on learning and training in service encounters: salespeople, apprentices, digital instructors (YouTube instructional videos) and employers, which is presented in four research papers. This thesis provides insights into the conditions that make salespeople’s service encounters in stores possible, how they are enacted as a game between people on the shopfloor, and why the fixed checkout has been and remains central to creating customer service and experiences. It also provides insights into how the retail chain organisations’ digitalisation of service encounters—aimed at creating seamless customer shopping experiences—is changing salespeople’s roles, skills and emotional labour. The thesis concludes that the existing conditions that form the practice architectures of salespeople’s service encounters are misaligned with those changes. Consequently, in order not to be marginalised in the connected store, retail FSEs must develop the skills necessary to interact and collaborate with technology and customers to create customer service and customer experiences. A significant contribution of this thesis that has implications for the design of VET and education for interactive service work is the findings that the connected service encounter is characterised by (1) a postdigital 6 dialogue; (2) service employees interact with both technology and customers; (3) service employees and technology have several roles, and (4) emotional labour skills comprise customer service skills intertwined with technical skills. In turn, the changes in service work identified in this thesis raise several questions regarding the development of workplace learning in the connected service encounter, such as, e.g., how to instruct and learn postdigital communication.
Constraints of Digital Transformation
(2022-01-07) Khisro, Jwan
Digital transformation is viewed as instrumental in coping with organizational and societal challenges. In the public sector, these challenges include diverse issues, such as demographic changes, constrained financial resources, increasing complexity, and digital legacy. While there are opportunities for the public sector to benefit from digital transformation, there are also important constraints to consider. The aim of this thesis is to offer insights into these constraints and conceptualize how they impact digital transformation in public sector organizations. To address this aim, I apply a clinical inquiry approach focusing on two specific cases from the Swedish public sector during the period 2019–2021. Both organizations (County Administrative Boards and Sundsvall Municipality) have ongoing digital transformation initiatives with the research endeavor directed at actively supporting these initiatives. The thesis brings together five publications stemming from the clinical inquiries and presents a synthesis of the findings. This thesis contributes to research and practice by identifying and describing three mechanisms related to IT Governance, the funding model, and digital infrastructure that constrain digital transformation in public sector organizations by imposing a biased approach to digital transformation in which short-term goals take precedence over organizations’ long-term sustainability.
Health Information Systems Interoperability: Towards a Managing as Designing Approach
(2021-10-08) Kobusinge, Grace
Integrated digital healthcare systems promise improved quality public healthcare and patient continued care among others. However, these have been hampered by various challenges including limited data exchanges between health information systems (HIS) and inadequate collaboration among healthcare centers and healthcare professionals. The devastating healthcare interoperability state has been made evident by the COVID-19 global pandemic data sharing challenges. Nonetheless, such challenges can be overcome through collaborative digital healthcare initiatives that aim at integrating digital healthcare systems. Hitherto, a number of HIS are designed with no collective vision of sharing and exchanging information, and again, there is limited knowledge about the HIS interoperability implementation process. To enhance HIS interoperability implementation, previous scholars have reiterated the salience of context and managerial capabilities in the design process. Against this backdrop, the overall purpose of the thesis is to elucidate how health information systems (HIS) interoperability implementation can be enhanced through contextual understanding and managing as designing (MaD) perspectives. Using an interpretive case study approach, two cases of HIS implementation have been studied, one in Sweden and the other in Uganda. The empirical investigation shows that the combined perspectives contribute to our understanding of HIS interoperability implementation, through the proposed MaD approach to IS interoperability implementation. In addition, the contextual understanding perspective led to the discovery of four critical factors and two guiding principles. The critical factors include having a collective interoperability design goal, managing the interoperability implementation process, analysing the context of interaction and determining an appropriate interoperability principle. The discovered two principles; include the minimum requirements principle and the informatics focus vs technology focus principle, these can guide implementers to delineate a context appropriate interoperability solution. The theoretical contribution consists of a new stance on how HIS interoperability implementation can be enhanced through embracing a MaD perspective. Thus, the proposed approach emphasizes a design attitude that supports implementers to take into consideration the context of interaction; which includes information systems as well as actors working together. The approach seeks to motivate healthcare managers to collaborate with HIS designers to improve healthcare interoperability. Again, through the design attitude implementers can analyse the context of interaction and appropriate an interoperability solution during moments of sense-making and decision-making. The proposal of a design attitude is intended to inspire implementers into a more reflective problem-solving attitude as opposed to relying on a rational decision-making model. Taken together, the thesis contributes knowledge on how IS interoperability implementation can be enhanced through contextual understanding and managing as designing perspectives not only in healthcare but also in similar complex contexts.
Teaching with Digital Mathematics Textbooks - Activity Theoretical Studies of Data-Driven Technology in Classroom Practices
(2021-09-24) Utterberg Modén, Marie
The introduction of digital textbooks, with data-driven functionalities, is a recent trend in mathematics education challenging established teaching practices. This new technology represents a key shift as student datasets make it possible to track the performance of all students, present data in real time, and allow teachers or the system itself to adjust the learning environment and presented tasks. Hence, the overall aim of this thesis is to explore and understand teachers concerns when digital mathematics textbooks are introduced in their teaching. The research is conducted in real classroom settings and activity theory has provided a lens to explore and understand teaching with digital textbooks by analysing its activity systems. The analysis is divided into three interrelated sub-activities: first, planning the teaching; second, teaching with data-driven decision support; and finally, teaching with adaptive tutoring functionality. Each of the three activities is discussed through the concepts of conflict of motives, congruence, and contradictions. This thesis reveals opportunities for development of teaching with digital textbooks by pointing out contradictions, which can act as a source of change and development for new ways of structuring and enacting the teaching activity. The studies show that planning teaching with a digital mathematics textbook with a high degree of flexibility puts more burden on teachers. They need additional competences and increased resources, particularly in terms of time for teaching. Teaching with data-driven dashboards and adaptive tutoring functionality builds on an individualized approach. This contradicts established teaching norms, building on the collective classroom activity, and where most activities are organized by a teacher to develop not only mathematics knowledge and abilities, but also more general skills. Furthermore, adaptive functionality challenges teachers´ perceived control of the learning process and their accountability. On the other hand, the possibility of monitoring students performance visualized on dashboards and support for adaptation to student needs showed to provide actionable knowledge in teaching, making individualization easier.
Designing Platform Emulation
(2021-05-25) Rudmark, Daniel
Many contemporary firms and public agencies seek to engage external third-party developers to supply complementary applications. However, this type of development sometimes occurs without organizational consent, which creates problems for subjected organizations at both the technical and organizational levels. In this thesis, I have developed a theoretical perspective called open platform emulation. This perspective builds on emulation logics, where designers use an external model as a basis for developing compatible platform capabilities superior to the original model. In this thesis, this model has been external unsanctioned development. In open platform emulation, such capabilities include governance decisions enabling coherence with previously proven solutions, the flexibility to accommodate new development trajectories, and strategies for applying openness to a digital resource. The means to achieve these capabilities involves design rules’ architecture, interfaces, and integration protocols, which convey the capabilities to third-party developers. This way, a platform owner can draw on governance and architectural configurations to emulate self-resourcing behavior through the platform core. I generated the contributions from this thesis by materializing open platform emulation in a clinical setting. More specifically, I used action design research (ADR) together with the Swedish Transport Administration (STA). Starting in early 2012, I led a platform initiative that, in collaboration with the STA, sought to emulate self-resourcing to design an open platform. Here, I conducted two full ADR cycles that resulted in a currently active production platform used by both the STA and external third-party developers. Before this engagement, I also conducted studies of related phenomena within the Swedish public transport industry, and I have continued to follow the STA’s platform trajectory since its release in 2014. The theoretical contributions from this thesis include design principles that seek to guide the designers of open platforms in situations where digital resources are subject to self-resourcing. These design principles cover both product and process aspects throughout the open platform’s developmental trajectory. Also, I offer additional theoretical implications based on this work. These include extensions to current theories on open platforms, different types of platform emulation, an enunciated influence response to outlaw innovation, and methodological implications for guided emergence in ADR.
Spelet om musiken - Unga musiker spelar digitala musikspel
(2020-11-04) Ideland, Jens
Under de senaste årtiondena har många spelutvecklare, utbildare och forskare argumenterat för att digitala spel bör användas som miljöer för lärande. Vanliga argument har varit att spel är säkra zoner där misslyckanden inte får allvarliga konsekvenser och att spelare kan upptäcka och lära sig se aktiviteter från de professionellas synvinkel. När de simulatorlika digitala musikspelen Guitar Hero och Rock Band blev populära menade många att de instrumentlika gitarr-, trum- och mikrofonkontrollerna erbjuder en kroppslig upplevelse som bidrar till att spelare utvecklar kunnande om musik och musicerande samt att spelandet kan bli en ingång till ”riktigt” musicerande och musikundervisning. Syftet med denna avhandling är att bidra till en förståelse av hur samspelet mellan individ, och spelmiljö i en social kontext formar spelaktiviteten när unga musiker, de som vill lära sig den aktivitet spelen handlar om, tar sig an simulatorlika digitala musikspel. Intresset riktas mot hur denna grupp kan använda, utveckla och uttrycka erfarenheter, kunnande och identitet relaterade till musik och musicerande, men även digitala spel och spelande. För att nå detta syfte utgörs studiens huvudmaterial av spelsessioner med fokus på Guitar Hero World Tour och Rock Band The Beatles som dokumenterats med video. De ungdomar som deltar studerar musik på gymnasiets estetiska program och är vana vid att musicera tillsammans, men spelsessionerna genomfördes under avspända former på en fritidsgård en bit från skolan. För att stärka analysen av deltagarnas interaktion med spelet och varandra har även ett bakgrundsmaterial av intervjuer, observationer och enkäter använts. Genom att utnyttja både den ekologiska psykologin (Gibson, 1986) med dess fokus på affordanser (handlingserbjudande) och teorier om inramningar och positioner i situerade aktivitetssystem (Goffman, 1961; 1974/1986) synliggör studien bland annat att: 1) De materiella förutsättningarna och den sociala organisationen samspelar och formar spelaktiviteten, både i nuet och över tid. Till exempel framgår det tydligt att tidigare spelversioners materiella betingelser har gjort avtryck i de spelstrategier och föreställningar som formar hur deltagarna tar sig an den aktuella spelmiljön. 2) Den ”riktighet” som krävs av spelen för att unga musiker ska kunna använda och uttrycka kunnande om musik och musicerande i spelaktiviteten kan bidra till att de hamnar i en utsatt position, exempelvis när en sångare har svårt att sjunga melodin i sångutmaningen. 3) Gitarr- och trumkontrollens ”oriktighet” är samtidigt viktig för att deltagarna ska kunna positionera sig som skickliga spelare eller rama in aktiviteten som en form av ofarlig lek som gör det möjligt att föra in och göra andra musikaliska och sceniska uttryck relevanta i spelaktiviteten. Studien visar sammantaget att musikspelsaktiviteten inte är någon säker zon utan snarare en svårhanterad balansakt mellan spelande, lek och musicerande som riskerar att utmana musikintresserade ungdomars status och identitet som musiker och spelare. På ett mer teoretiskt plan synliggör studien att de affordanser spelare uppfattar och agerar på i spelmiljön vanligtvis kräver att de hanterar och kombinerar en rad auditiva, visuella och kinestetiska resurser. De behöver därför använda flera olika kunnande och förmågor för att ”göra” affordanser och hitta handlingsmöjligheter i den ecosociala miljön. För att kunna göra spelandet till en form av musicerande krävs exempelvis att unga musiker kan uppfatta och uttrycka en koherens mellan förlagans musicerande, spelspårets förenklingar och det egna spelagerandet. Det räcker med ganska små störningar i, till exempel, spelspårets representation av förlagan för att detta meningsskapande arbete och inramningen som ett lekfullt musicerande ska rämna. Snarare än att uppfatta spelaktiviteten som en form av musicerande blir gitarr- och trumutmaningarna därför ofta en i huvudsak visuellt baserad läsuppgift.
Enacting ambidextrous IT governance in healthcare
(2020-05-20) Kizito, Michael
With digitalization, Information Technology (IT) has become an integral part of digital business strategies and future solutions and this calls for organizations to prioritize the governance of IT if they are to succeed or remain relevant. IS research has focused on the transformation of the IT function, where IT governance is considered one component of the IT function profile. At the same time, previous research in IT Governance has been criticized for an over-emphasis on design (mechanisms) rather than enactment and an over emphasis of efficiency through diagnostic control at the expense of innovation capabilities. Future research should focus on the enactment of governance as well. In line with this bias, the empirical studies in this thesis focusing on how IT governance is enacted in healthcare organizations are guided by the theory of organizational ambidexterity which suggests that successful organizations need to exploit existing opportunities to achieve efficiency, while at the same time exploring new opportunities to achieve innovation. In the health sector, the use of IT in hospitals over the years has been that IT is slowly adopted in comparison to other sectors but things have changed and healthcare has embraced the use of IT in digitalization. The adoption of IT is attributed to the intense pressure placed on hospitals to provide better quality of care, lower costs, and more and easier access to medical information for patients. Moreover, the use of IT in hospitals has followed a predictable pattern that has occurred in other sectors with more advanced IT resources. More hospitals have implemented integrated IT applications and span several functions. Some of the implementations include enterprise resource planning systems, electronic medical records and electronic medical administration records. This has contributed to the increase in complexity and sophistication of the IT capability in hospitals/healthcare and in turn increased the importance of IT governance in healthcare organizations. This empirical research adds to theoretical insights in the field of IT governance through the resource orchestration and ambidexterity perspective. This research employs qualitative data collection and analysis strategies following on the research question which is open ended and exploratory in nature. The research was carried out in two different settings i.e. Sweden and Uganda. This thesis contributes to research through offering a path ahead for future studies of IT governance. This was done by offering a unique account of how ambidextrous IT governance is enacted and operationalized through the resource orchestration lens. Second, the thesis contributes to the role of policy in the dynamic process of ambidextrous balancing, as well as on the role of policy in the digitalization of healthcare. As such, this thesis suggests that digital policy design should utilize the findings and method of the cross-country ambidextrous policy study herein to inform future design decisions.
Maternal Healthcare in Low-Resource Settings: Investigations of IT as a resource
(2020-05-15) Nyende, Hawa
Maternal mortality is a major problem especially in developing countries. Maternal deaths are partly attributed to the limited access to healthcare and a shortage of medically trained health professionals who can provide maternal healthcare service. Approaches have been adopted to improve access and quality of healthcare. However, the approaches have been challenged by quality of care and limited infrastructure. The quality of healthcare can be improved through transforming healthcare, by managing and organizing care on a value-based system. Thereby, involving multiple actors who integrate resources to co-create value in order to benefit themselves and others. Information technology (IT) has been identified as a key driver of value co-creation in this transformation though, the way in which IT can drive value co-creation in healthcare has not been fully explored. The thesis aims to enhance our knowledge on how IT as a resource contributes to value-based maternal healthcare in low-resource settings. This thesis draws on service dominant logic framework and case study approach. The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises of four studies that are focused on the use and design of IT for maternal healthcare. Three studies were carried out in Uganda and one study was carried out in Sweden. Interviews, observations, focus group discussions and document reviews were used in data collection. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data that was collected. The studies resulted into the appended five published papers. The findings in this thesis shed light on the empirical understanding of the practices in maternal healthcare that include institutions and structures, and, the existing IT infrastructure that support actors to co-create value. In addition, empirical insights on opportunities in which IT can be designed and used to achieve value-based maternal healthcare are provided. Lastly, findings provide insights into value as perceived by actors at various levels when they use IT to engage in cocreation activities in maternal healthcare. In addition to the empirical insights, the thesis contributes theoretically to information systems research by enhancing knowledge on the role of IT in service innovation. Particularly, this thesis contributes by identifying three aspects in which IT triggers value co-creation. Aspects include recreating relationships among actors, transforming actor capacities and re-organizing tasks in maternal healthcare. Thus, the thesis identifies the importance of IT in resource integration that leads to value. In addition, the interplay of all the three aspects extends understanding on the dynamics and transformative perspective of the service ecosystem that is required to achieve value-based maternal healthcare. Practically, the thesis contributes to valuebased maternal healthcare by identifying managerial implications in the structural and functional roles of IT that overcome opposing demands in the co-creation activities at various levels of healthcare. Another implication is the digital infrastructures that communicate value propositions and provide resource-rich service platforms for resource integration. Lastly, the thesis contributes to policy by suggesting implications on applying task-shifting strategy in low-resource settings and, technology use and designs that support professionals and non-professionals in the task-shifting strategy.
Kritiskt digitalt textarbete i klassrummet
(2020-03-13) Molin, Lisa
Increasingly sophisticated technologies are expanding opportunities to create, use and share digital and multimodal texts based on different perspectives and motives. Among the prerequisites for participating actively in a democratic society is adopting an analytical and reflective approach towards texts – that is, developing critical digital literacy. Therefore, research on teaching and learning activities aimed at developing critical digital literacy awareness – namely, critical digital literacy work – is crucial. The aim of this thesis is to contribute knowledge of critical digital literacy work as part of in situ classroom activities. The thesis is underpinned by a sociocultural perspective and includes two substudies following a design-based approach. The empirical material, comprising field notes, video- and audio recordings and interviews, was generated from two different classes in two secondary schools in 2011–2012 and 2016–2017. The first substudy explored opportunities for critical digital literacy work in a digitalised classroom and revealed that there were good conditions for such work, including frequent use of digital multimodal texts and a climate of openness and exploration that enabled students to use their previous experiences of texts. However, the critical digital literacy work was limited due to a focus on traditional texts in the students’ end products, and critical aspects were not made explicit in the lesson design. The second substudy explored the development of critical literacy work through instructional design, focusing on students’ deconstruction of digital multimodal texts, and the specific lesson design supported the students’ development of critical digital literacy. The findings showed that critical digital literacy work must be an ongoing activity for students to develop not only an understanding of every mode involved but also an appreciation of what these modes mean when they intertwine. The results of the studies in this thesis suggest that developing critical digital literacy demands extensive access to texts in the classroom and a lesson design that teaches about the construction of digital multimodal texts. Thus, detailed instruction is key and must comprise several steps to enable students to grasp the complexity of digital multimodal texts.

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