Service-Dominant Business Model Design for Digital Innovation in Smart Mobility

In many business domains, rapid changes have occurred as a consequence of digital innovation, i.e., the application of novel information technologies to achieve specific business goals. A domain where digital innovation has great potential is smart mobility, which aims at moving around large sets of people and goods in a specific geographic setting in an efficient and effective way. So far, many innovations in this domain have concentrated on relatively isolated, technology-driven developments, such as smart route planning for individual travelers. Nice as they are, they have relatively small impact on mobility on a large scale. To achieve substantial digital innovations – for example, optimizing commuting on a city-scale – it is necessary to align the efforts and related values of a spectrum of stakeholders that need to collaborate in a common business model. To this aim, the study proposes the use of service-dominant business logic, which emphasizes the interaction of value network partners as they co-create value through collaborative processes. Moving to this paradigm has significant implications on the way business is done: the business requirements for services will change faster, and the complexity of value networks required to meet these requirements will increase further. This requires new approaches to business engineering that are grounded in the premises of service-dominant logic. The paper introduces the service-dominant business model radar (SDBM/R) as an integral component of a business engineering framework. Following a design science approach, the SDBM/R has been developed in close collaboration with industry experts and evaluated through an extensive series of hands-on workshops with industry professionals from several business domains. This paper focuses on the application and evaluation in the smart mobility domain, addressing the design of new business models for digital innovation of collaborative transport of people and goods. In summary, it contributes a novel business design approach that has an academic background and relevant practical embedding

Networked: New York City’s Charter Schools and the New Profiteers

This dissertation examines the extent to which corporate players and interests are represented on New York City charter school boards by collecting and analyzing board member data for all approved charters as of January 2013. The affiliations of individuals sitting on charter school and charter management organization boards are identified. The implications of those affiliations as well as their potential to affect school governance are explored within a modern educational landscape in which policy-making favors market-based approaches and provides new entry points for profiteering. The empirical analysis and conceptual framework for this study are informed by research on interlocking directorates as well as on more contemporary forms of power, or “flex-nets,” situated within social networks. The results show that individuals tied to corporations – particularly hedge funds and other financial organizations – fill a significant number of charter school board seats, especially in comparison to parents, teachers and community members without those ties. Many of these board members have explicit ties to each other as well as affiliations with charter advocacy organizations, political action committees, and niche markets working behind the scenes to shore up pro-market education reforms. The study explores the potential ramifications of their dominance over charter schools, and proposes that financiers and their networks may stand to benefit more from charter school proliferation than schoolchildren and local communities. Findings suggest that students in many of the charter schools across New York City are being trained for lives of relegation and regulation by the keepers of power, rather than its skeptics

The chalenges for families in the digital age.

UID/CCI/04667/2016It is with great pleasure that we present the 2018 Yearbook from the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media at Nordicom: Digital Parenting: The Challenges for Families in the Digital Age. The topics addressed in the 2018 Yearbook – how to relate to or mediate children’s use of digital media, generational gaps in the use of media and the use of social media to display or seek support in parenthood – are timely and relevant in many respects and have engaged many qualified scholars from around the world. Parenting in the digital media environment is a theme often discussed in news media and among parenting groups. Balancing the opportunities of digital media and at the same time considering potentially unwanted and/or negative effects can be a challenge, both for adults and for the younger generation. There are no established policies, long traditions or experience to turn to and many are seeking advice. The 2018 Yearbook is the result of a great collaborative effort. Nordicom is deeply grateful to the editors of this new anthology, Giovanna Mascheroni, Cristina Ponte and Ana Jorge, as well as to all the contributors who have made this publication possible. It is our hope that the collection of articles will make interesting reading all around the world, stimulate new research and debate and provide new ideas regarding the topical and highly relevant issue of being a parent in the digital age. In the work of the Clearinghouse, the global dimension is a core principle, both with respect to the content we publish and distribute and to the contributors who produce it. Digital Parenting represents this principle by presenting contributions and examples and involving authors from many areas of the world. All books published by the Clearinghouse aim to shed light on different aspects concerning children, youth and media, spread current information and knowledge and hopefully stimulate further research. Various groups of users are targeted; researchers, policymakers, media professionals, voluntary organizations, teachers, students and interested individuals. It is our hope that this new Yearbook will be of interest and provide new insights on the topic of digital parenting to a broad range of readers. Göteborg, October 2018 Catharina Bucht Jonas Ohlsson Information coordinator Directorpublishersversionpublishe

Exploring Strategies for Successful Implementation of Electronic Health Records

Adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems in nonfederal acute care hospitals has increased, with adoption rates across the United States reaching as high as 94%. Of the 330 plus acute care hospital EHR implementations in Texas, only 31% have completed attestation to Stage 2 of the meaningful use (MU) criteria. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that hospital chief information officers (CIOs) used for the successful implementation of EHR. The target population consists of 3 hospitals CIOs from a multi-county region in North Central Texas who successfully implemented EHRs meeting Stage 2 MU criteria. The conceptual framework, for this research, was the technology acceptance model theory. The data were collected through semistructured interviews, member checking, review of the literature on the topic, and publicly available documents on the respective hospital websites. Using methodological triangulation of the data, 4 themes emerged from data analysis: EHR implementation strategies, overcoming resistance to technology acceptance, strategic alignment, and patient wellbeing. Participants identified implementation teams and informatics teams as a primary strategy for obtaining user engagement, ownership, and establishing a culture of acceptance to the technological changes. The application of the findings may contribute to social change by identifying the strategies hospital CIOs used for successful implementation of EHRs. Successful EHR implementation might provide positive social change by improving the quality of patient care, patient safety, security of personal health information, lowering health care cost, and improvements in the overall health of the general population

The quest for intra-party democracy in populist right parties: an ethnography of the 'Alternative for Germany'

European populist right parties have been the subject of numerous academic studies, providing competing arguments about their appeal and success. Parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have been perceived as short-lived outlets for protest voters, frustrated with the failure of mainstream parties to address issues of immigration and law and order, or as temporary byproducts of rapid and destabilizing economic change. However, such explanations overlook other roots and development of populist political movements. This dissertation focuses on the organizational dynamics in the AfD, a party which has achieved something that had eluded the radical right in Germany – a federal electoral breakthrough. Before the 2017 Bundestag Election, no populist right party has managed to pass the threshold for parliamentary representation on the federal level – a failure that can be attributed to Germany’s strong political culture of containment and civic confrontation of far right movements through large protests and anti-fascist activities. Drawing on original data from fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews with AfD party members, the research presented in this dissertation argues that the Alternative for Germany does not follow the path of hierarchical and centralized decision-making structures, typical for the radical right parties. Indeed, I show that the AfD exhibits organizational features of intra-party participation that are mostly associated with the left and populist left party family. I examine the impact of internal democratic structures and grassroots activities on the party’s ability to rally a diverse range of supporters, empower the grassroots in the decision-making processes on manifesto development and candidate selection, and discourage centralization of power in the hands of the federal leadership. The findings of intra-party democratic dynamics in the AfD can serve as an important addition to the broader literature on party organization, and specifically how populism may influence party structures. Parties that conduct their internal affairs in a 'democratic way' are able to persuade voters that they have an internal democratic ethos, instead of being entirely controlled by political elites, whether their political agenda is inclusionary or exclusionary. The perception that the 'demos' governs party decisions may add to the party's credibility as a potential government participant, and in the case of the AfD, fight off Nazi stigmatization and social exclusion

Enable Flexibilisation in FAIRWork’s Democratic AI-based Decision Support System by Applying Conceptual Models Using ADOxx

Decision-making in complex production environments is challenging as the information and knowledge requirements must be constantly observed since the ecosystems they operate in are continuously changing. Artificial intelligence (AI) can tackle complexity in decision-making by making machines more intelligent. But reacting to changing or new problems and related decision processes to facilitate the understanding of the involved humans is an equally important problem. Therefore, decision support systems are required to assist complex decisions and enable flexibility to support the decision-makers. Within this scope, we will introduce the Democratic AI-based Decision Support System (DAI-DSS), which is designed and implemented within the EU-funded FAIRWork project, considering both human and machine actors during decision-making. The FAIRWork project proposes a model-based approach to both express high-level decision scenarios and formally describe the decision processes, which are then used as input for configuring the decision support system to meet concrete decision problems

Networked together: designing participatory research in on-line ethnography

Abstract. This book contains the conference proceedings of the third edition of Rethinking Educational Ethnography: Researching on-line communities and interactions Conference hold in Napoli from 6th to 7th of June 2013. In 2013, the third edition of the Conference has invited ethnographers in different fields of research (not only in education), and those involved in ethnographic investigations in diverse disciplines (anthropology, sociology, etc.) to present and discuss contributions on the challenges of participatory research design in digital ethnography

US technology policy in the age of the US-China tech war

My DPhil thesis critically examines the United States’ technology policy in the context of the US-China Tech War. I investigate how the US approach to tech policy, particularly in relation to the tech private sector, has affected its standing in this ongoing rivalry. The thesis is divided into two parts, encompassing a total of three articles. The first part, represented by Article 1, delves into the decline in US influence among its allies, evidenced by European Union member states adopting data localisation policies targeting US tech companies. I argue that these policies represent a form of soft balancing against US technological dominance, reflecting allies’ waning confidence in US leadership in the tech war. Recognising the strategic losses experienced by the US in Part 1, Part 2 examines one possible explanation for the US decline in the tech war. Building on existing scholarship pointing to the lack of a consistent, unifying approach to tech policy, I examine US tech policy in two key areas: alliance management and private sector management. Article 2 characterises US alliance management as non-cooperative, revealing the challenges of successfully influencing allies to counteract Chinese tech companies’ presence in their own critical national infrastructures. Article 3 characterises the US approach to its private sector as laissez-faire, showing that US Big Tech companies operate under rational profit maximisation irrespective of their alignment with the US government. My findings reveal that the US’s non-cooperative approach to alliance management and its laissez-faire approach to private sector management have negatively affected its standing in the tech war. This thesis provides insights into the foreign policy dimensions of tech policy and demonstrates the analytical benefits of anchoring technology-related studies in theoretical frameworks derived from International Relations