Navigating Through Changing Waters. The Implementation of Sustainability Performance Measurement in the Norwegian Shipping Industry

Masteroppgave i økonomistyring (MSc) 201

Safe work practices in interdisciplinary surgical teamwork : model development and validation

PhD thesis in Health, medicine and welfareThis thesis identifies needs in health research literature on quality and safety to explore the nature of teamwork and develop models that can be applied to, and integrate findings from, such explorations. This triggers an interest in exploring how safe work practices are achieved in interdisciplinary surgical teamwork, and also a related interest in developing and validating a model for such explorations. Accordingly, surgical operations are explored by means of observations, conversations, and interviews. As part of this exploration, a literature review process produces a framework for exploring safe work practices, comprising a knowledge and system dimension. These dimensions are operationalized through a field research protocol and a semi-structured interview guide to serve as a general frame of reference during the fieldwork. The emergent findings from the exploration, in turn, establish a scientific model by refining and validating the dimensions of the framework. The exploration and model development and validation efforts are supported by a balanced methodology, emphasizing both structure/transparency and in-depth descriptions in the gathering, analysis, and presentation of data. This thesis finds that safe work practices are achieved through the ability and variety that individuals demonstrate in handling multiple sources of information before reaching a particular decision; the variety of ways in which awareness or anticipation of future events are expressed; and the different ways in which the individual team members handle sudden and unexpected situations. Safe work practices are also achieved by means of the team’s ability to compensate, through system buffers and experience from exclusive exposure to one section, for vulnerabilities and disruptions that arise through various combinations of system factors. Finally, safe work practices are achieved through the individual’s ability to disregard stress/pressure and properly apply the time and considerations necessary for the job, and sense and communicate patient-related problems, and the team’s reliance on the individual’s competency and ability to plan and improvise when challenged by a problem or unforeseen situation during an operation. Safe work practices can be defined as the dynamic and continuous effort by each individual team member and the overall team to combine and draw upon explicit and tacit knowledge repertoires to achieve a successful operation with minimal errors and complications. Safe work practices also can be viewed as the overall organization’s ability to maintain inner and outer (system) conditions that are strong enough to support individual and team abilities to combine and draw upon knowledge repertoires. This thesis’ theoretical contribution to safety research lies in establishing a scientific model for exploring safe work practices in teamwork that is of broad enough design to include existing findings and concepts, as well as new findings. By applying the model as a frame for exploration during a qualitative study, this thesis also contributes to safety research by producing a broader understanding of how safe work practices are achieved in surgical teamwork. The main implication is that safety researchers should emphasize the design of broader models to facilitate systemizing existing findings. The thesis also suggests that a broader model increases the potential for generalizability and transferability of model aspects, implying that safety researchers should consider research quality during model development. These contributions and related implications answer the identified needs for explorations into the nature of teamwork and for developing models that can be applied to, and integrate findings from, such explorations. Given the identified lack of explorations into the nature of teamwork within the health care sector, this thesis’ practical contributions lie in the broad yet in-depth approach to safety in surgical teamwork. This is potentially relevant to policy-makers, managers, researchers, and practitioners. Implications include system conditions that should be established to facilitate safe work practices in surgical teamwork, such as buffers in terms of personnel, operating rooms, and equipment and forums/seminars for sharing knowledge. Systems should also be established to formalize different types of tacit knowledge, such as by incorporating questions into checklists that trigger sharp-end/local reflections. Establishing favorable system conditions, not only physically (buffers) but also in terms of knowledge-sharing and formalizing, can reduce the likelihood of adverse events and improve patient safety

Tangible Scalar Fields

Data Visualization is a field that explores how to most efficiently convey information to the user, most often via visual representations like plots, graphs or glyphs. While this field of research has had great growth within the last couple of years, most of the work has been focused on the visual part of the human visual and auditory system - much less visualization work has been done in regards to the visually impaired. In this thesis, we will look at some previous methods and techniques for visualizing scalar fields via the sense of touch, and additionally provide two novel approaches to visualize a two-dimensional scalar field. Our first approach creates passive physicalizations from a scalar field in a semi-automatic pipeline by encoding the scalar value and field coordinates as positions in 3D space, which we use to construct a triangular mesh built from hexagonal pillars that can be printed on a 3D printer. We further enhance our mesh by encoding a directional attribute on the pillars, creating a visual encoding of the model orientation and improving upon a readability issue by mirroring the mesh. Our second approach uses a haptic force-feedback device to simulate the feeling of moving across a surface based on the scalar field by replicating three physical forces: the normal force, the friction force and the gravity force. We also further extend our approach by introducing a local encoding of global information about the scalar field via a volume representation build from the scalar field.Masteroppgave i informatikkINF399MAMN-PROGMAMN-IN

Market share in the Norwegian grocery sector : a study of internal factors that affect market share

Master thesis Business Administration BE501 - University of Agder 2016This thesis is an exploration of internal factors on headquarter level, on what effect market share. This thesis is based on the Norwegian grocery sector. The actors in the Norwegian grocery sector have over the years gotten fewer and fewer with bigger market share. All the factors independent variables have been written about by many scholars in some of the independent variables I have chosen to look at big international scholars but in other cases I have chosen the leading Norwegian scholar in the field. Like in the independent variable, franchising I have had my focus in the literature review on the leading Norwegian scholar Nilssen . Supplemented by other scholars. In my research on the literature review look at a Norwegian scholar I have the opportunity to look at local factors. From the quantitative analysis done I have been able to identify a few factors that are significant in relations to market share. The result on the umbrella level where better than on the concept level. These factors are informative for foreign firms that want to establish them self in this industry in Norway. These factors are also interesting for companies that challenges the way that the actors in the Norwegian grocery sector, actors that offer grocery’s online. All my findings are being reinforced by the scholars I have researched in my literature review which are making my thesis a stronger contribution to the academia

Norwegian dialect classifications

From the mid 19th century, there is a tradition of classifying the dialects spoken in Norway on the basis of linguistic features that show the different developments of Norwegian dialects in time and space after the Old Norse period. Most of these features are phonological or morpho-phonological. The most prevalent theoretical background has been historical-comparative linguistics. Eight different classifications are presented, starting with a division into three main dialect areas (Aasen 1848); scholars later proposed a division into two (Ross 1905, Larsen 1897, Kolsrud 1951, Skjekkeland 1997)), four (Christiansen 1954, Mæhlum & Røyneland 2012) and even twelve dialect areas (Sandøy 1985). Some of these classifications build upon each other, others take a more original approach incorporating insights from structuralism and sociolinguistics. The possibilities to renew the tradition of dialect classification by introducing other linguistic and extra linguistic factors, are discussed at the end of the article.publishedVersio

Career ambitions and legislative participation: the moderating effect of electoral institutions

What motivates politicians to engage in legislative activities? In multilevel systems politicians may be incentivized by ambitions to advance their careers either at the state or federal level. This article argues that the design of the electoral institutions influences how politicians respond to these incentives. Analyzing a unique dataset of both 'stated' and 'realized' career ambitions of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), it finds that those who seek to move from the European to the national (state) level participate less in legislative activities than those who plan to stay at the European (federal) level. For MEPs who aim to move to the state level, attendance and participation in legislative activities is substantively lower among legislators from candidate-centered systems. Importantly, the effect of career ambitions on legislative participation is stronger in candidate-centered systems than in party-centered systems. These findings suggest that the responsiveness associated with candidate-centered systems comes at the expense of legislative activity

Race to Return: An Event Study of Race Performance and Share Price Reactions

This thesis investigates the relationship between race performance in Formula One and the immediate stock price reaction of the companies involved. Using event study and regression analysis, we examine the effect of race results on the abnormal returns of eight different companies. Our results show that race performance does not have an immediate statistically significant effect on abnormal returns. We also find that winning the Driver's Championship and Constructor's Championship does not lead to positive abnormal returns for companies associated with the winning team. Our findings suggest that companies do not add immediate shareholder value by their performance in Formula One.nhhma

A holistic perspective on continuing care for substance use and dependence: Results and implications from an in-depth study of a Norwegian continuing care establishment

This article explores, systematically and in depth, users’ perceptions of participating in a Norwegian non-profit establishment that provides a continuing care programme for substance use and dependence. Identified results are linked to a holistic system perspective, where human, technology, and organisation (HTO), as well as external environment, are viewed as intertwined. At the establishment level, i.e., where the continuing care programme is delivered, we find that a clear holistic and user-oriented profile – comprising combined interventions including physical and social activities – can create a safe and stable environment that exerts a positive mental and physical influence on the user and thereby promotes abstinence from substances. However, our results suggest that the internal environment needs to connect more strongly with the external environment, such as a substance-free network, close family, and working life. At the establishment level, we conclude that there is a need to develop an explicit strategy and practice for collaborating with the external environment, built on systemisation and application of individual users’ insights into the design of the current interventions. Further research should explore the presence and absence of interplays between elements of human, technology, and organisation and the external environment, and the associated consequences for intervention processes and users’ health outcomes. Our holistic system model, empirically informed by data from a Norwegian context, can represent a starting point for such endeavours. The holistic system model also constitutes an original and novel contribution to research on continuing care interventions.publishedVersio

Arbeidsinkludering for personar med funksjonsnedsetjingar. Ein diskursanalyse av avisartiklar si framstilling av funksjonshemming og arbeid

Dette er ein kort introduksjon til masteroppgåva. Oppgåva er eit empirisk, kvalitativt litteraturstudium, som bygger på diskursanalytisk metode. Føremålet er å avdekke korleis personar med funksjonsnedsetjingar blir framstilt i media, ved å studere korleis makt i språk kan komme til uttrykk. Sjølve analysen er gjort av sju nyheitsartiklar frå ulike aviser, og er blitt sett i samanheng med teori forankra i bøker, forskingsartiklar og offentlege dokument. Personar som har funksjonsnedsetjingar er ei stor og samansett gruppe. Sjølv etter mange år med satsing for å få fleire i arbeid, er det urovekkande å lese at det framleis er eit mindretal som er i jobb. Normalitet og avvik, og låge krav og forventingar, er viktige omgrepspar som er synlege i avisartiklane, saman med omgrep som eksotisering, generalisering og funksjonsnedsetjing som tilleggskompetanse i arbeidslivet. Etisk medvit, menneskesyn og menneskeverd spelar ei sentral rolle i forståinga av korleis fordommar, haldningar og diskriminerande praksisar viser seg. Problemstilling og forskingsspørsmål er forsøkt svart med kritisk refleksjon som tyngdepunkt gjennom heile masteroppgåva

Exploring varieties of knowledge in safe work practices - an ethnographic study of surgical teams

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Within existing research in health and medicine, the nature of knowledge on how teams conduct safe work practices has yet to be properly explored.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We address this concern by exploring the varieties in which knowledge is expressed during interdisciplinary surgical operations. Specifically, the study was conducted in a surgical section of a Norwegian regional general hospital, between January and April of 2010, by means of an ethnographic design combining detailed non-participant observations, conversations and semi-structured interviews.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Based on an analysis of the gathered data, we identify three particular themes in how knowledge is expressed by operating room personnel: (i) the ability and variety individuals demonstrate in handling multiple sources of information, before reaching a particular decision, (ii) the variety of ways awareness or anticipation of future events is expressed, and (iii) the different ways sudden and unexpected situations are handled by the individual team members.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that these facets of knowledge bring different insights into how safe work practices are achieved at an individual and team level in surgical operations, thus adding to the existing understanding of the nature of knowledge in safe work practices in surgical operations. Future research should focus on exploring and documenting the relationships between various elements of knowledge and safe work practices, in different surgical settings and countries.</p