Emergent leadership in online communities: an interactive process of co-influencing

We propose a theoretical approach informed by a power-in-practice perspective that allows us to examine the emergence of leadership in online communities. We theorize leadership emergence as a process of co-influencing that is constituted by forces of ‘pushing’ and ‘pulling’ different enactments of power that are formative of communal interactions. More specifically we identify three pathways for emergent leadership based on different modes of community influence. These insights are based on a detailed exploration of interactions in one particular online community #WeAreNotWaiting, offering distinct contributions to the literature on leadership emergence, particularly in online communities without formal roles and hierarchies

Breaching, Bridging, and Bonding: Interweaving Pathways of Social-symbolic Work in a Flanked Healthcare Movement

This article explores how heterogeneous and distributed forms of social-symbolic work combine over time to yield synergistic relationships that precipitate institutional change. We study a collective effort by patient activists to change the technological and regulatory standards of Type-1 diabetes care. We offer contributions to radical flank theory by conceptualizing radical and moderate flanks as dynamic and overlapping pathways of action rather than fixed actor positions, and we show how a medial ‘bonding’ pathway can provide important social glue to connect the radical and moderate flanks. While in our case the material and discursive ‘hacking’ work in the breaching pathway disrupted institutions, triggered technology innovation, and created momentum for change, material and relational ‘bridging’ embedded these efforts into existing institutional structures and longer-term innovation trajectories. Values and amplification work in the bonding pathway served to keep the two other pathways aligned over time. By addressing how a complex social problem – patient-centric innovation - may be affected through heterogeneous social-symbolic work that leads to institutional accommodation, our study holds considerable policy and societal relevance.European Commission Horizon 2020European Research CouncilOpen access funding provided by IReLEarly view, to check citing and date details in 6

Affective resonance and durability in political organizing: The case of patients who hack

We explore the role of affect in fuelling and sustaining political organizing in the case of an online Type-1 Diabetes community. Analysing this community’s interactions, we show that the drive towards political transformation is triggered by affective dissonance, but that this dissonance needs to be recurrently enacted through the balanced circulation of objects of pain and hope. We propose the notion of affective resonance to illuminate the dynamic interplay that collectively moderates and fosters this circulation and that keeps bodies invested and reverberating together around shared political goals. Affective resonance points researchers toward the fragile and complex accomplishment that affective politics represents. Focussing particularly on the community’s interactions on Twitter, we also reflect on the role of (digital) resonance spaces in how affects circulate. By adopting and transposing concepts from affect theories into the context of patient communities, we further add important insights into the unique embodied challenges that chronic illness patients face. Highlighting the hope induced by techno-bodily emancipation that intertwine into a particular form of political organizing in such healthcare movements, we give emphasis to patient communities’ deeply embodied affects as important engines for political, social, and economic change.European Commission Horizon 2020European Research CouncilPlease check date and citing details, double copyright and add set text accordingl

Normative positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: findings from a large-scale qualitative study in nine European countries

Mobile applications for digital contact tracing have been developed and introduced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed as a tool to support ‘traditional’ forms of contact-tracing carried out to monitor contagion, these apps have triggered an intense debate with respect to their legal and ethical permissibility, social desirability and general feasibility. Based on a large-scale study including qualitative data from 349 interviews conducted in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland, the United Kingdom), this paper shows that the binary framing often found in surveys and polls, which contrasts privacy concerns with the usefulness of these interventions for public health, does not capture the depth, breadth, and nuances of people’s positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps. The paper provides a detailed account of how people arrive at certain normative positions by analysing the argumentative patterns, tropes and (moral) repertoires underpinning people’s perspectives on digital contact-tracing. Specifically, we identified a spectrum comprising five normative positions towards the use of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: opposition, scepticism of feasibility, pondered deliberation, resignation, and support. We describe these stances and analyse the diversity of assumptions and values that underlie the normative orientations of our interviewees. We conclude by arguing that policy attempts to develop and implement these and other digital responses to the pandemic should move beyond the reiteration of binary framings, and instead cater to the variety of values, concerns and expectations that citizens voice in discussions about these types of public health interventions

Normative positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: findings from a large-scale qualitative study in nine European countries

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Democratic research: Setting up a research commons for a qualitative, comparative, longitudinal interview study during the COVID-19 pandemic

The sudden and dramatic advent of the COVID-19 pandemic led to urgent demands for timely, relevant, yet rigorous research. This paper discusses the origin, design, and execution of the SolPan research commons, a large-scale, international, comparative, qualitative research project that sought to respond to the need for knowledge among researchers and policymakers in times of crisis. The form of organization as a research commons is characterized by an underlying solidaristic attitude of its members and its intrinsic organizational features in which research data and knowledge in the study is shared and jointly owned. As such, the project is peer-governed, rooted in (idealist) social values of academia, and aims at providing tools and benefits for its members. In this paper, we discuss challenges and solutions for qualitative studies that seek to operate as research commons

Headquarters' Involvement in Managing Subsidiaries

Within contemporary research on the multinational corporation (MNC), the topic of headquarters' involvement has grown considerably in importance. As the central organisational unit in the MNC, headquarters has the potential to add value to the firm by performing an administrative and entrepreneurial role. While the administrative role concerns synergetic coordination and control activities, the entrepreneurial role pertains to developing and implementing new innovations such as management innovations at the corporate-wide level.  Existing literature has generated valuable insights into headquarters' administrative and entrepreneurial role and the potential to create value for the MNC. However, more research is needed on how headquarters can advantageously involve itself and integrate subsidiaries to ensure that their activities are aligned with the MNC strategy without impinging upon subsidiaries' autonomy and without incurring their resistance to headquarters' coordination, control, and innovation activities.  This thesis aims to advance our knowledge on headquarters' involvement in managing its subsidiaries. Within the administrative role, I examine coordination and control activities, and within the entrepreneurial role, I examine the process of developing and implementing management innovations and facilitating factors. The thesis draws on a single longitudinal case study of the development and implementation of a new performance management practice by a European MNC within the construction industry. During the fieldwork, I gathered empirical material from observations and interviews as well as secondary data. While this thesis has been carried out as a single case study, the outcome of the thesis is presented in four separate papers, exploring headquarters' involvement in coordination, control and innovation activities.  This thesis contributes to the literature on headquarters' involvement in managing subsidiaries by suggesting a collaborative approach to subsidiary engagement and participation that addresses 1) the issue of subsidiary demotivation by feeling degraded to an implementer, 2) the suitability issue by reducing the risk of mismatch between new headquarters integration and innovation activities and subsidiary contexts. Combining headquarters' and subsidiaries' stocks of perspectives and knowledge helps transcend the spatial, cultural, institutional and political boundaries between headquarters and subsidiaries.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Submitted. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Submitted.</p

Headquarters' Involvement in Managing Subsidiaries

Within contemporary research on the multinational corporation (MNC), the topic of headquarters' involvement has grown considerably in importance. As the central organisational unit in the MNC, headquarters has the potential to add value to the firm by performing an administrative and entrepreneurial role. While the administrative role concerns synergetic coordination and control activities, the entrepreneurial role pertains to developing and implementing new innovations such as management innovations at the corporate-wide level.  Existing literature has generated valuable insights into headquarters' administrative and entrepreneurial role and the potential to create value for the MNC. However, more research is needed on how headquarters can advantageously involve itself and integrate subsidiaries to ensure that their activities are aligned with the MNC strategy without impinging upon subsidiaries' autonomy and without incurring their resistance to headquarters' coordination, control, and innovation activities.  This thesis aims to advance our knowledge on headquarters' involvement in managing its subsidiaries. Within the administrative role, I examine coordination and control activities, and within the entrepreneurial role, I examine the process of developing and implementing management innovations and facilitating factors. The thesis draws on a single longitudinal case study of the development and implementation of a new performance management practice by a European MNC within the construction industry. During the fieldwork, I gathered empirical material from observations and interviews as well as secondary data. While this thesis has been carried out as a single case study, the outcome of the thesis is presented in four separate papers, exploring headquarters' involvement in coordination, control and innovation activities.  This thesis contributes to the literature on headquarters' involvement in managing subsidiaries by suggesting a collaborative approach to subsidiary engagement and participation that addresses 1) the issue of subsidiary demotivation by feeling degraded to an implementer, 2) the suitability issue by reducing the risk of mismatch between new headquarters integration and innovation activities and subsidiary contexts. Combining headquarters' and subsidiaries' stocks of perspectives and knowledge helps transcend the spatial, cultural, institutional and political boundaries between headquarters and subsidiaries.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Submitted. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Submitted.</p

Ledaren - Företagets juvel? : En fallstudie om ledarens betydelse för företagets internationella framgång

Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera det växande behovet av International Human Resource Management (IHRM) i syfte att skapa förståelse för företagets interna resurser och hur dessa kan bidra till företagets utveckling. För att uppnå uppsatsens syfte har vi utformat följande huvudproblem; I vilken utsträckning kan ett företags strävan efter internationell framgång förstås genom dess ledare? För att besvara det formulerade huvudproblemet har vi valt att använda en kvalitativ ansats och tillämpat fallstudie som forskningsstrategi. Den teoretiska referensramen innefattar en beskrivning av olika etableringsstrategier och medföljande ledarpositioner samt behandlar det resursbaserade synsättet vilket är relevant för vårt ämnesval och vår frågeställning. Vidare består av teorikapitlet av en deskription av IHRM och tillsättningsstrategier. Det empiriska kapitlet behandlar den information som tillhandahållits genom fallföretaget och dess informanter rörande ledarpositioner och efterfrågade kompetenser hos en internationell ledare. Kapitlet är strukturerat utefter de informanter vi utsett; företagets VD, marknadschef samt försäljningschefer. I analyskapitlet diskuteras och analyseras den teoretiska referensramen tillsammans med det empiriska utfallet. Kapitlet belyser de olika ledarpositioner som medför de valda etableringsstrategier samt vilka kompetenser som prioriteras vid tillsättning av den internationella ledaren. Från vår analys framgår det att de främsta kompetenser en kvalificerad försäljningschef bör besitta är förmågan till social kompetens och ett tekniskt kunnande, goda förhandlingskunskaper samt en stark drivkraft. Vidare i kapitlet analyseras de faktorer som kan bidra till företagets internationella framgång. Uppsatsens slutsats visar att NORDENs ledande position inom tubfyllningsbranschen har uppkommit tillföljd av försäljningschefernas ovärderliga erfarenhetsbaserade kunskaper samt förmågan att anpassa företagets globala strategi till lokala kunders önskemål. Avslutningsvis presenteras förslag till fortsatt forskning inom IHRM samt rekommendationer till fallföretaget

Democratic research: Setting up a research commons for a qualitative, comparative, longitudinal interview study during the COVID-19 pandemic

The sudden and dramatic advent of the COVID-19 pandemic led to urgent demands for timely, relevant, yet rigorous research. This paper discusses the origin, design, and execution of the SolPan research commons, a large- scale, international, comparative, qualitative research project that sought to respond to the need for knowledge among researchers and policymakers in times of crisis. The form of organization as a research commons is characterized by an underlying solidaristic attitude of its members and its intrinsic organizational features in which research data and knowledge in the study is shared and jointly owned. As such, the project is peer-governed, rooted in (idealist) social values of academia, and aims at providing tools and benefits for its members. In this paper, we discuss challenges and solutions for qualitative studies that seek to operate as research commons