Transport av flis via transportband

Validerat; 20101217 (root

Transport av flis via transportband

Validerat; 20101217 (root

Sambandet mellan formalisering och prestation : en kvantitativ studie av företag i introduktionsfasen

Validerat; 20101217 (root

Prior partnering experience and preferred alliance partner diversity of small firms

Purpose: This study investigates how small firms develop preferences for varying levels of alliance partner diversity by applying a behavioral perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Data was collected via an original survey administered by the Swedish National Bureau of Statistics (SCB) of 1026 Swedish firms with 50 employees or less. Hypotheses were tested by specifying a series of fractional response regressions. Findings: The results show a U-shaped relationship between experienced and preferred alliance partner diversity in small firms, and further show moderating effects of firm age, prior growth and environmental dynamism. The findings suggest that preferences towards diverse alliance portfolios in small firms may arise, not only from well-informed deliberate strategic thinking based on prior experience, but also as a consequence of cognitive bias. Practical implications: Our findings suggest that: 1) small firms considering a wide variety of alliance partners should carefully investigate whether they are, in fact, capable of mastering a highly diverse alliance portfolio or if they are overconfident novices. 2) Holders of homogenous alliance portfolios should recurringly investigate whether homogeneity is due to informed strategy or inertia. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literatures on alliance partner diversity and behavioral alliance portfolio configuration by shedding light on the learning mechanisms that shape alliance portfolio strategies of small firms by explicating the complexity of how different experience levels of partner variety affect current alliance portfolio preferences

Self-Initiated Expatriates - Disloyal Adventurers or Misunderstood Heroes?

China is growing as an economic power leading to more and more foreign organizations taking the opportunity of its future potential and hence opening up their subsidies there. Companies nowadays, have several options when it comes to what type of workforce they should recruit. Self-Initiated Expatriates (SIEs) are a growing group in the international workforce who goes to work in another country on their own initiative as compared to the traditional expatriates that are sent by companies. Our literature research indicated that SIEs are perceived as a group of people who lack organizational commitment and tend to switch jobs often, which makes organizations reluctant to employ and invest in them.Inspired by this, we have a performed a study, which investigated SIEs’ experiences in China. The purpose of the study was to develop recommendations for organizations on how to better leverage SIEs as human resource. To fulfill the purpose of our thesis, we conducted a qualitative study, where we interviewed ten Westerners who currently had a job or previously had been employed in China. Our empirical findings revealed that SIEs perceive themselves as developing better cross-cultural skills and improving their language proficiency more than traditional expatriates as well as being much cheaper to employ. They do however need challenges, freedom and career development possibilities in order to stay satisfied. The failure to provide these from the company side results in them quitting their job or if the costs of quitting are too high, they stay on but performing only what they absolutely have to. As for the existing definitions, we found that a definition that only includes individuals with clear plans of return is not suitable since some SIEs have a “for now” mindset and only considering SIEs who intend to leave in the near future might lead to an overrepresentation of “failed” SIEs in the population. A more suitable definition should allow for less definite plans for staying in the host country

Chapter 7 OCEAN ENVIRONING MEDIA

This edited volume interrogates the role of media technologies in the formation of environments, understood both as physical spaces and epistemological constructs about them. Using the concept of ‘environing media’, the book advances a deeper understanding of how media processes – defined here as the storage, process, and transmission of data – influence human-Earth relations.Virtually all aspects of the interconnected global ecological crisis can be related to the intensification and acceleration of scaling up the human imprint on the planet by technological means. Combining ideas from the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences, Environing Media offers a perspective on how we entered the current geological epoch – the Anthropocene. The ten chapters explore colonial, planetary and elemental environing media, with cases including indigenous history, ocean monitoring, computational history, climate modelling, environmental history, the air as medium, the biosphere and the Earth system. Drawing upon a breadth of examples and expertise in history, anthropology, geography, cultural history, science and technology studies, and media studies, the book discovers a novel approach to human-Earth histories that demonstrates how technologies have mediated between humans and environments and in the process contributed to a societal feedback loop between knowing and doing environment, each impacting the other. Environing Media is a timely addition for scholars and upper-level students in environmental humanities and media studies

Editorial: Navigating in a Measurable Epistemic Landscape

For this special issue on Navigating in a Measurable Epistemic Landscape we invited contributions from scholars with various disciplinary backgrounds to debate the measurable epistemic values, logics and practices of educational institutions such as school and university. Hence, we further the discussion of Confero’s first issue Managing by Measuring: Academic Knowledge Production under the Ranks (Nylander et al., 2013) by highlighting the measurable epistemic landscape of the broader educational system.The fulltext is published under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</p

Work at inpatient care units is associated with an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection; a cross-sectional study of 8679 healthcare workers in Sweden.

BACKGROUND: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the protection of healthcare workers has been in focus throughout the world, but the availability and quality of personal protective equipment has at times and in some settings been suboptimal. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 8679 healthcare workers and healthcare support staff in the county of Uppsala, north of Stockholm, were included in this cross-sectional study. All subjects were analysed for IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2, and predictors for positive serostatus were analysed in a logistic regression model including demographic parameters and self-reported employment characteristics. RESULTS: Overall, 577 (6.6%) were classified as seropositive, with no statistically significant differences between healthcare workers and support staff. Among healthcare workers, age (OR 0.987 per year, 95% CI 0.980-0.995), time to sampling (OR 1.019 per day, 95% CI 1.004-1.035), and employment at an outpatient care unit (OR 0.620, 95% CI 0.487-0.788) were statistically significantly associated with risk of infection. Covid-19 specific units were not at particular risk, compared to other units with comparable characteristics and staff demography. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2 transmission is related to inpatient healthcare work, and illustrate the need for a high standard of basic hygiene routines in all inpatient care settings

Halmstad University Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2011 Technical Paper

Traffic congestion is a large and growing problem in many countries due to an ever increasing number of vehicles. Increasing capacity by simply extending the road infrastructure is in many places impossible due to space and cost limitations. Everyday, people spend countless hours in car queues all over the world. The existing road infrastructure must be better utilized to save time and to reduce energy use. By enabling wireless communication between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I) the flow of traffic can be better controlled in order to increase not only efficiency but also safety and comfort. Cooperative platooning is one way to increase efficiency by allowing vehicles to form road trains behind a lead vehicle. The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) is an attempt to move towards a quicker deployment of cooperative platooning. This extended abstract gives an overview of Halmstad University’s team and its technical and organizational approach in preparing a vehicle for the competition.Grand Cooperative Driving Challeng