The role of urban living labs in a smart city

In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

The Role of Digital Technologies Regarding Employee Intrapreneurial and Innovative Behavior

Drawing on a resource perspective, this thesis scrutinizes the role of digital technologies regarding employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. This is done by conducting four independent empirical studies which examine how digital technologies foster and inhibit employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. The first study investigates employee-perceived information technology support for innovation, work overload, and invasion of privacy as mediators of the relationship between digital affordances and employee corporate entrepreneurship participation likelihood. The second study examines the relationship between digital technology support and employee intrapreneurial behavior and how this relationship is moderated by management support for innovation and intrapreneurial self-efficacy. Analyzing employee techno-work engagement and employee-perceived techno-strain as mediators, the third study investigates the relationships of employee-perceived digital technology usefulness and complexity with employee innovative performance. Finally, the fourth study examines the indirect effects of perceived daily techno-support and techno-stressors on daily employee innovative behavior through daily high-activated moods. Findings revealed digital affordances to foster employee corporate entrepreneurship participation likelihood through employee-perceived information technology support for innovation and reduced work overload perceptions. Support by different digital technologies was also found to promote employee intrapreneurial behavior, but its relative impact varied with different levels of management support for innovation and intrapreneurial self-efficacy. Moreover, employee-perceived digital technology usefulness fostered employee innovative performance through employee techno-work engagement, while employee-perceived digital technology complexity had negative sequential indirect effects through employee-perceived digital technology usefulness and employee-perceived techno-strain on the one hand and employee techno-work engagement on the other hand. Perceived daily techno-support had a beneficial effect through daily high-activated positive mood. Perceived daily techno-stressors fostered daily employee innovative behavior through daily high-activated negative mood but inhibited that behavior through daily high-activated positive mood. Thus, findings indicate that by offering potentials for both resource gains and losses, digital technologies might be a double-edged sword for employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. Hence, with this, the thesis advances the research on employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior as well as the digital entrepreneurship and innovation literature

Assessing the Effects of Communication Media Affordances and the Awareness of Media Security on Knowledge Sharing Behavior

Global Software Development (GSD) team members engage in intellectual activities that involve sharing business domain knowledge and technical knowledge across geographical areas, which is crucial to the successful development of software. In global software development, media choice may influence how virtual teams create and share knowledge. As digital technology advances and organizations become more digitally transformed, current communication theories for media selection lack the explanation to the complicated phenomena with the use of advanced media technologies. There have been many studies focused on the effectiveness of media, but they did not include user’s understanding of system security and its influence on knowledge sharing behavior. However, affordance theory explains the utility with both social actors and technical features. The use of media may be shaped by features of technologies and user’s perception on system security. The goal of this study was to empirically assess the effects of media affordances and media security awareness on knowledge sharing behaviors among GSD team members with the lens of affordance theory. In this study, data was collected through survey from 214 GSD employees, after inviting 1000 employees to participate. The survey data was analyzed to test the effects of communication media affordance and user’s awareness of media security on behavior in knowledge sharing. The analysis results show that awareness of media security had significant moderating effects on the relationships from some actualized media affordances to implicit knowledge sharing. The results of this study revealed positive relationships between perceived media affordances and actualized media affordances. The results also showed that organization tenure had a significant effect on implicit knowledge sharing, and professional tenure had a significant effect on explicit and implicit knowledge behavior. This study contributed to the body of knowledge in organizational communication literature by providing new insights into how technology properties and users’ awareness on technology security shape team members’ knowledge sharing practice

Enterprise Social Network Applications: Enhancing and Driving Innovation Culture and Productivity Through Digital Technologies

Enterprise Social Network (ESN) applications offer new opportunities for organizations to mobilize employees, promoting innovation beyond traditional R&D functions. Despite the popularity and success of these applications, current research has yet to fully explore the potential of ESN applications as both drivers of productive innovation and innovation culture, specifically. This paper proposes a theoretical framework that explains the role of ESN applications in facilitating organizational-wide ideation, collaboration, and socialization, thereby promoting innovation culture and innovation productivity. This study reveals that the dimensions of innovation culture, namely knowledge sharing, transparency, and risk tolerance, mediate the effects of ESN applications on the measures of firm innovation productivity— product/service innovation, process innovation, and social innovation. The findings presented here have implications for theory and practice, namely concerning building an organizational culture that promotes open innovative behavior using social technologies

Innovation Intensity: From IT Use and Innovative Culture to Organizational Performance

Drawing from past research on information technology (IT) use, organizational culture, and innovation, the present study tests a model exploring the effects of collaborative and experiential culture as well as internally and externally-focused use of IT on innovation intensity and organizational performance. As the innovation process is complex and uncertain, we try to open the black box of innovation intensity by exploring the roles played by the use of IT and the innovation culture. The research model was tested via a structural equation model using PLS with data collected from 395 top executives. Results indicate that intense use of internally and externally- focused IT positively affect innovation intensity. The results also show that collaborative culture increases innovation intensity. In turn, innovation intensity increases both operational and financial performance

Taking Open Innovation to the Next Level: A Conceptual Model of Social Product Development (SPD)

The initial success of open business models is encouraging many organizations to implement their own co-innovation networks. Social product development, or SPD, represents a new business model enabled by social technology platforms. It extends collaboration beyond customer-involvement models to socially-engaged individual actors in the ideation and development of new products. The increasing adoption necessitates developing a framework to help researchers clearly understand and practitioners effectively design the SPD platforms. This paper develops a conceptual model for SPD and illustrates the validity of the model via a case study on a particular SPD platform, focusing on its business model, network governance, and key processes and design features. The proposed model is sufficiently general yet grounded in the phenomenon to guide future research on socially-enabled innovation and SPD networks in particular

The Affordances of the Digital Medium : Users’ perceptions of digitalization

The aim of this administrative research is to identify the opportunities and obstacles associated with the exploitation of digitalization and digital services. The objective of the study is viewed from a user perspective, undertaken using a co-creation approach. The research material was collected in group discussions between participants in rural areas in Finland, as well as from the organizational environment of Finnish health care. Affordance theory, together with the concepts of the digital medium, and the co-creation of digitalization provide a theoretical framework for the research. The affordance approach provides a perspective to interpret the relationship between the user and the environment, where the aspects of the digital medium and the forming of the collective perception are also considered. By the theoretical framework, this doctoral dissertation responds to the following research question: what is the meaning of affordance theory for the utilization of the digital medium? The results of my study reflect citizens' views on digitalization and e-services. The participants’ attitude towards digitalization is described from the perspective of users, the environment, and digital applications. The model of participatory-deliberative design presented in the study enabled the multidimensional views of the topic. In conclusion, the perspective derived from affordance theory helps us to understand the factors that enable or prevent the utilization of the digital medium. However, the description also opens the cognitive process to the observer itself and to the development community. The increased self-awareness about one’s insights enables the user to be more flexible in controlling how to utilize the opportunities in the environment. Overall, increased awareness of the potential of the environment offers an opportunity to understand the views of others on the subject under consideration and to explain the underlying perception. The additional aspects of design and co-creation of the digital affordances support the successful discovery and implementation of the possibilities. The contribution of this research becomes apparent in unexpected events, as the increased digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates. The results also contribute to much more common surroundings and situations, as in the case of digitalization of welfare services.Tämän hallintotieteellisen tutkimuksen tavoitteena on digitalisaation ja digitaalisten palvelujen hyödyntämiseen liittyvien mahdollisuuksien ja estävien tekijöiden tunnistaminen. Käsiteltävän aiheen tarkastelu noudattaa käyttäjälähtöistä lähestymistapaa, joka toteutettiin yhteiskehittämisen menetelmää hyödyntämällä. Tutkimuksen aineisto kerättiin Suomen maaseutupaikkakunnilta sekä terveydenhuollon organisaatioympäristöstä osallistujien välisistä ryhmäkeskusteluista. Affordanssiteoria yhdessä digitalisaatiotematiikan sekä yhteiskehittämisen lähestymistavan kanssa muodostavat tutkimuksen teoreettisen viitekehyksen, joka tarjoaa tarkastelunäkökulman käyttäjän ja ympäristön välisen vuorovaikutussuhteen tulkitsemiseksi. Tutkimuksen teoreettisen viitekehyksen kautta väitöskirja vastaa tutkimuskysymykseen, mikä merkitys affordanssiteorialla on digitalisaation hyödyntämiselle. Tutkimuksen tulokset ilmentävät kansalaisten näkemyksiä digitalisaatiosta ja sähköisistä palveluista. Osallistujien suhtautuminen digitalisaatiota kohtaan kuvataan käyttäjien, ympäristön ja digitaalisten sovellusten näkökulmista. Tutkimuksessa esiteltävä osallistavan deliberatiivisen suunnittelun (participatory-deliberative design) malli mahdollistaa aiheeseen sisältyvien moniulotteisten näkemysten esiin nostamisen. Johtopäätöksenä voidaan todeta, että affordanssiteorian näkökulma auttaa ymmärtämään niitä tekijöitä, jotka mahdollistavat tai estävät digitalisaatioon liittyvät oivallukset. Affordanssien, eli ns. tarjoumien muodostumista kuvaava kognitiivinen prosessi tarjoaa lisääntyneen oivaltamisen mahdollisuuden sekä havainnoijalle itselleen, mutta myös kehittämisyhteisön hyödynnettäväksi. Kaiken kaikkiaan lisääntynyt tietoisuus ympäristön mahdollisuuksista tarjoaa mahdollisuuden ymmärtää muiden näkökulmia tarkasteltavaan aiheeseen ja selittää ajattelun taustalla vaikuttavia syitä. Tutkimuksen vaikutukset ovat hyödynnettävissä niin odottamattomissa tapahtumissa, kuten COVID-19 pandemian myötä tapahtunut ”digiloikka” osoittaa. Tutkimuksen näkökulma on myös sovellettavissa paljon yleisempiin tilanteisiin, kuten esimerkiksi hyvinvointipalvelujen digitalisoinnin tarkasteluun.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Information technology for competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains: a review

This paper offers a systematic review of the literature on the use of information technology (IT) in logistics and supply chain management to achieve competitive advantage. While IT has revolutionized traditional logistics and supply chains to achieve numerous benefits such as increased efficiency and responsiveness, it is not still clear to what extend IT has contributed to competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains. This paper contributes to this debate by: (i) reporting the literature on the role of IT in achieving competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains based on the linkages between ‘adaptation’, ‘alignment’, and ‘agility’, (triple A’s) (Lee, 2004), and (ii) discussing managerial implications and identifying future research directions