Residents in marginalized areas tend to show a lower level of confidence in the criminal justice system and carry out police reports and testimonies to the criminal justice system to a lesser extent than residents in other areas. In this scientific essay, a qualitative study is conducted to analyze the disinclination to leave testimonies and report crimes in marginalized areas, along with researching possible ways to improve the residents relationship with the criminal justice system. The theoretical framework for this study consists of Žižeks theory of violence, territorial stigma and social exclusion. The sample group for the study is advocates in non-profit organizations operating in marginalized areas. Using a semi-structured interview method, this study’s empirical findings reveals that a critical view of the criminal justice system, lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, ambivalent feelings about the residential area and mass medias stigmatizing effects are believed to cause a reluctance to cooperate with the criminal justice system in marginalized areas. Furthermore, our findings show that an admittance of the existence of racism within the justice system, increased communication, cultural competence, and safe meeting places are believed to improve the relationship between the residents and the criminal justice system.
Tony Atkinson is universally celebrated for his outstanding contributions to the measurement and analysis of inequality, but he never saw the study of inequality as a separate branch of economics. He was an economist in the classical sense, rejecting any sub-field labelling of his interests and expertise, and he made contributions right across economics. His death on 1 January 2017 deprived the world of both an intellectual giant and a deeply committed public servant in the broadest sense of the term. This collective tribute highlights the range, depth and importance of Tony's enormous legacy, the product of almost fifty years’ work.
Research has indicated that patients’ in-session experience of previously avoided affects may be important for effective psychotherapy. The aim of this study was to investigate patients’ in-session levels of affect experiencing in relation to their corresponding levels of insight, motivation, and inhibitory affects in initial Experiential Dynamic Therapy (EDT) sessions. Four hundred sixty-six 10-min video segments from 31 initial sessions were rated using the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale. A series of multilevel growth models, controlling for between-therapist variability, were estimated to predict patients’ adaptive affect experiencing (Activating Affects) across session segments. In line with our expectations, higher within-person levels of Insight and Motivation related to higher levels of Activating Affects per segment. Contrary to expectations, however, lower levels of Inhibition were not associated with higher levels of Activating Affects. Further, using a time-lagged model, we did not find that the levels of Insight, Motivation, or Inhibition during one session segment predicted Activating Affects in the next, possibly indicating that 10-min segments may be suboptimal for testing temporal relationships in affective processes. Our results suggest that, to intensify patients’ immediate affect experiencing in initial EDT sessions, therapists should focus on increasing insight into defensive patterns and, in particular, motivation to give them up. Future research should examine the impact of specific inhibitory affects more closely, as well as between-therapist variability in patients’ in-session adaptive affect experiencing.
The connection between clusters of innovation and economic growth has been in the interest ofresearchers and policy makers for decades. Economic distribution has been proven highlyconcentrated, and clusters are frequently studied for their dynamics to be understood. However, thereis less qualitative research focusing on agglomeration, and proximity, the distance between twoobjects, is often treated as a stable factor. Here lies the contribution of this thesis. By studying the lifescience cluster Hagastaden in Stockholm, Sweden, this case study sheds light on how dynamics ofproximity affect innovation and the importance of the communicative aspect of proximity. The Covid19 pandemic has forced many companies to work remotely and it created a unique opportunity tostudy the importance of place for innovation when the physical presence in it decreased. Throughqualitative interviews and thematic analysis, the author reveals that proximity might not be stable but,on the contrary, created. The result confirms earlier research regarding the positive effect oninnovation by being proximate but also adds to it by highlighting the aspect of communication ininnovative processes. The result implies that earlier studies on the location of analytical knowledgeclusters might need further research to be fully understood, as the result of the Hagastaden casecontradicts these to some extent by pointing to the urban environment as a factor of location choice.The results also call for further qualitative research in trying to understand the dynamics of clustercreation in general and planned clusters in particular, which could give important insights for researchand policy.
We study whether the onset of the COVID-19 crisis affected the program choices of highschool applicants in Sweden. Our analysis exploits the fact that the admission processconsists of two stages: a preliminary round in which applicants rank programs in orderof preference and a final round in which they have full flexibility to alter their preliminaryrankings. In 2020, the timing of the two rounds happened to provide a unique pre- and post-crisis snapshot of applicants’ preferences for various fields of study. Using school-leveldata on applicants’ top-ranked programs for all admission rounds between 2016 and 2020,we implement a difference-in-differences method to identify the immediate effect of thecrisis on program preferences. We find no change in preferences for academic programs,but a decline in top-ranked applications to some of the vocational programs. The declinesare most pronounced and robust for several service-oriented programs, in particular thoserelated to hotel and restaurant, which was the most adversely affected industry during thecrisis. This finding suggests that labor market considerations influence the study choicesmade by relatively young students.
Employment plays a crucial role in the re-entry process and in reducing recidivism among offenders released from prison. But at the same time, imprisonment is generally regarded as harmful to post-release employment prospects. Little is known, however, about whether or not offenders’ employment trajectories before and after imprisonment are similar across countries. As a first step towards filling this gap in research, this paper provides evidence on employment trajectories before and after imprisonment in four Nordic welfare states: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Using data gathered from administrative records on incarcerated offenders, the analysis focuses on individuals imprisoned for the first time and who served a prison sentence less than one year in length. Results show that although employment trajectories develop in mostly similar ways before and after imprisonment across these countries, important differences exist.
Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a neural correlate of the preattentive detection of any change in the acoustic characteristics of sounds. Here we provide evidence that violations of a purely phonological constraint in a listener's native language can also elicit the brain's automatic change-detection response. The MMN differed between Finnish and Estonian listeners, conditions being equal except for the native language of the listeners. We used two experimental conditions: synthetic vowels in isolation and the same vowels embedded in a pseudo-word context. MMN responses to isolated vowels were similar for Finns and Estonians, while the same vowels in a pseudoword context elicited different MMN patterns depending on the listener's mother tongue.
Children with language impairment (LI) and children with typical development (TD) were assessed by their respective parents using The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Swedish version SECDI) and Greenspan Socio Emotional Growth Chart (GSEGC). The aim was to investigate socio-emotional and language development in children with LI and TD with respect to possible differential patterns and relations between the groups. The results highlight a clear association between language and socio-emotional development. Children with LI were rated similar to young language-matched children with TD, but significantly lower relative to age-matched TD children, particularly concerning symbolic stages of development: the use of linguistic symbols as well as related areas such as symbol play and symbolic mental ability. The results are discussed in light of presumable background factors and possible consequences for children or sub-groups of children with LI.
There is limited knowledge of cognitive outcome extending beyond 5 years after childhood traumatic brain injury, CTBI. The main objectives of this thesis were to investigate cognitive outcome at 6-14 years after CTBI, and to evaluate if advancements in the neurosurgical care, starting 1992, did influence long-term outcome and early epidemiology. An additional aim was to study the relationship between early brain injury parameters and early functional outcome. Study 1 evaluated cognitive progress during 14 years after CTBI, over three neuropsychological assessments in 8 patients with serious CTBI. Study 2 used patient records to investigate early epidemiology, received rehabilitation and medical follow up in two clinical cohorts, n=82 and n=46, treated neurosurgically for CTBI before and after 1992. An exploratory cluster analysis was applied to analyse the relation between early brain injury severity parameters and early functional outcome. In Study 3, participants in the two cohorts, n=18 and n=23, treated neurosurgically for CTBI before and after 1992, were subject to an extensive neuropsychological assessment, 13 and 6 years after injury, respectively. Assessment results of the two cohorts were compared with each other and with controls. Data were analysed with multivariate analyses of variance. Results and discussion. There were significant long-term cognitive deficits of similar magnitude and character in the two cohorts with CTBI, treated before and after the advancements in neurosurgical care. At 6-14 years after injury, long-term deficits in verbal intellectual and executive functions were found, and were discussed in terms of their late maturation and a decreased executive control over verbal memory-functions after CTBI. Visuospatial functions had a slightly better long-term recovery. The amount of rehabilitation received was equally low in both cohorts. The length of time spent in intensive care and the duration of care in the respirator may have a stronger relationship to early outcome than does a single measure of level of consciousness at admission. Main conclusions are that cognitive deficits are apparent at long-term follow up, 6-13 years after neurosurgically treated CTBI, even after advancements in the neurosurgical care in Sweden. Measures of verbal IQ, verbal memory and executive functions were especially low while visuospatial intellectual functions appear to have a better long-term recovery.
With the aim of describing variability in the long-term outcome of quality of life after neurosurgically treated pediatric traumatic brain injury, mostly self-reports of 21 individuals with mild or moderate/severe injury were gathered using Mayo-Portland Adaptability Inventory in telephone interviews 13 years aftyer injury. A majority of the participants reported brain injury-related problems. The median outcome on Mayo-Portland Adaptability Inventory was mild to moderate limitations. The variation within the moderate/severe group varied between relatively good outcome and moderate/severe limitations. Concentration, irritability, fatigue, and transportation were reported as the most problematic areas, whereas self-care was reported as well functioning. Societal participation appeared to be the best functional domain in this Swedish study. Examples of individual reports of the life-situation at various outcome levels were provided. Variability in outcome is large within severity groups, and research may gain by addressing both outcomes of the individuals and groups. Objective questions of outcome should be accompanied by questions of actual functioning in everyday life. To ensure long-term support for quality of life for those with remaining dysfunction after pediatric traumatic brain injury, healthcare systems should implement systematic routines for referral to rehabilitation and support.
Influence of childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) on cognitive recovery and subsequent development is poorly understood. In this longitudinal study we used cluster analysis to explore acute stage individual profiles of injury age and cognition in 118 children with traumatic brain injury. Repeated measures of cognitive function were conducted at 30 months, indicating recovery, and 10 years post-injury, indicating development. Nine clusters were identified. Recovery was evident in three clusters, two of them with low functioning profiles. Developmental gains occurred for three clusters and an acute profile of higher freedom from distractibility (FFD) and lower processing speed (PS) was related to positive differences. One cluster, average low functioning and especially low verbal comprehension, demonstrated a slower development than peers. This suggests that developmental change after TBI in childhood takes place on a continuum, with both chance of long-term catching up, and risk of poor development. An acute profile of higher FFD and lower PS seemed to reflect injury consequences and were followed by developmental gains. These results challenge previous findings, and warrant further investigation.
Objective: To investigate the impact of time since injury on neuropsychological and psychosocial outcome after serious TBI in childhood or adolescence. Methods: The subjects were eight patients with serious TBI sustained at a mean age of 14 years who had been assessed neuropsychological at one, seven and 14 years after TBI. A retrospective longitudinal design was chosen to describe the development in six neuropsychological domains on basis of the assessments. Psychosocial data were gathered from clinical knowledge and a semi-structured interview at 14 years after TBI. Results: Performance of verbal IQ shows a declining trend over the three assessments, that the performance of attention and working memory is low and that verbal learning is the cognitive domain, which exhibits the largest impairments. The main psychosocial result is that three of the eight subjects go from a school situation with no adjustments to adult life with an early retirement. Conclusions: Time since insult is an important factor when assessing outcome after TBI in childhood and adolescence and that assessment of final outcome should not be done before adulthood.
Objective: To explore the cognitive long term outcome of two cohorts of patients neurosurgically treated for childhood traumatic brain injury (CTBI), either in 1987-1991 according to an older concept, or 1997-2001 with a stronger emphasis on volume targeted interventions. Research design and methods: Participants in the two cohorts were subject to an extensive neuropsychological assessment, 13.2 and 6.1 years post injury, respectively. In a between group design, assessment results of the two cohorts, n 18 and n 23, were compared to each other and to controls. Data were analyzed with multivariate analyses of variance. Results: Long-term cognitive deficits for both groups of similar magnitude and character were observed in both groups. Abilities were especially low regarding executive and memory function and verbal IQ. The cognitive results are discussed in terms of vulnerability of verbal functions and decreased executive control over memory-functions. Conclusions: There is a definite need for long term follow up of cognitive deficits after neurosurgically treated CTBI, also with the newer neurosurgical concept. Verbal learning and the executive control over memory functions should be addressed with interventions aimed at restoration, coping and compensation.
This article discusses the use of video cameras in participant observation drawing on approximately 300 hours of video data from an ethnographic study of Swedish family life. Departing from Karen Barad’s post-humanistic perspective on scientific practices, the aim is to critically analyse how researchers, research participants and technology produce and negotiate children’s corporeal privacy. Ethnographic videotaping is understood as a material- discursive practice that creates and sustains boundaries between private and public, where videotaping is ideologically connected to a public sphere that may at times ‘intrude’ on children’s corporeal privacy. The limits of corporeal privacy are never fixed, but open for negotiation; ethnographers may therefore unintentionally transgress the boundary and thus be faced with ethical dilemmas. The fluidity of privacy calls for ethical reflexivity before, during and after fieldwork, and researchers must be sensitive to when ethical issues are at hand and how to deal with them.
Concerns about problematic gaming behaviors deserve our full attention. However, we claim that it is far from clear that these problems can or should be attributed to a new disorder. The empirical basis for a Gaming Disorder proposal, such as in the new ICD-11, suffers from fundamental issues. Our main concerns are the low quality of the research base, the fact that the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming. The act of formalizing this disorder, even as a proposal, has negative medical, scientific, public-health, societal, and human rights fallout that should be considered. Of particular concern are moral panics around the harm of video gaming. They might result in premature application of diagnosis in the medical community and the treatment of abundant false-positive cases, especially for children and adolescents. Second, research will be locked into a confirmatory approach, rather than an exploration of the boundaries of normal versus pathological. Third, the healthy majority of gamers will be affected negatively. We expect that the premature inclusion of Gaming Disorder as a diagnosis in ICD-11 will cause significant stigma to the millions of children who play video games as a part of a normal, healthy life. At this point, suggesting formal diagnoses and categories is premature: the ICD-11 proposal for Gaming Disorder should be removed to avoid a waste of public health resources as well as to avoid causing harm to healthy video gamers around the world.
Using Norwegian survey data on partnered individuals ages 18 to 55 (N = 4,061; 31% cohabitors), the current study investigated differences across marital and cohabiting unions regarding the patterns of contact with the parents of the partner. In addition to investigating the frequency of such contact, we assessed the nature of and perceived quality of contacts with the partner's parents. The authors grouped respondents according to whether they had children with their partner and controlled for a range of selection characteristics. Results confirmed that parents with preschool children met their in-laws more frequently than the childless, irrespective of union type. Married respondents as well as cohabitors with preschool children reported better relations with their partner's parents than childless cohabitors. Taken together, the results imply that having small children was more decisive for the relationship with the parents of the partner than getting married, particularly with regard to contact frequency.
Using comparable survey data from eight European countries this study investigated expected consequences of forming a co-residential relationship among non-partnered individuals aged 22-35 (N = 8443). Results showed that respondents expected improvements in their financial situation when moving in with a partner, though in all countries women held more positive expectations toward their post union formation economic situation than men. This result likely reflects the lingering traditional gender structure of the society, with men faced with the responsibility of being the main breadwinner in the family. Such an interpretation would seem to be supported by the fact that this gender gap was smallest in Sweden, France and Belgium, the countries in the current sample with the most egalitarian gender structure. Potential restrictions in personal freedom by forming a co-residential relationship, on the other hand, seem to be less important, particularly among women.
Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.
I denna studie har ett internetbaserat stödforum för utmattningssyndrom analyserats i syfte att bidra med ny kunskap om identitetsskapande i interaktion, mellan individer med egen erfarenhet av utmatningssyndrom. Studien har utgått från en diskurspsykologisk inramning och sökt svar på frågeställningarna; I) vilka föreställningar om sjukdomsidentiteter förhandlas fram på ett internetbaserat stödforum för utmattningssyndrom? och II) hur konstrueras normalitet inom ramen för de sjukdomsidentiteter som produceras? Analys av medlemskategoriseringar har använts som huvudsakligt analytiskt verktyg vilket syftat till att synliggöra vilka kategorier som gjorts relevanta av forumdeltagarna. Analysen visar fem identitetspositioner vilka uttryckts som att vara: sjuk, utmattad, kunnig, inte ensam och snart bättre. På forumet görs försäkringskassan till en utanför- grupp vilket stärker gemenskapen av sjukdom bland forumdeltagarna. Denna gemenskap legitimerar att dela med sig av egna erfarenheter av utmattningssyndrom och att positionera sig som kunniga gentemot vårdapparaten. Samtidigt synliggör analysen hur forumdeltagarna konstruerar samsyn kring normalitet i utmattningen och vad som anses som normal sjukskrivningsperiod med anledning av utmattningssyndrom. I sin tur möjliggörs också identitetspositionen av att vara på bättringsvägen.
Information Technology Governance (ITG) is among the most important challenges for the managers today. IT is not anymore just a supportive tool but also a strategic driver for the businesses. In the dynamic and competitive world of today, it is crucial for organizations to know how to govern IT rather than just to use it. IT governance deals with specifying responsibilities and decision rights to encourage the desirable behaviour from IT and generate value from IT investments. IT governance can impact the overall performance of organizations, however there are still difficulties in understanding IT governance and the factors that may influence it.
Organizational culture and structure are among the factors that have significant influence on many issues in an organization. According to previous research, organizational culture and structure need to be considered when implementing IT governance. However, there is a lack of research focusing on how organizational culture and structure can influence IT governance performance and implementation. Thus, the main research question addressed in this thesis is: How are organizational culture and structure related to IT governance? To address this question, this research has performed literature reviews and conducted case studies to investigate the role of organizational culture and structure on IT governance. As the first step, the previous literature was reviewed to find the gaps in the research on culture and IT governance. As the next step, four case studies were conducted to explore the influence of organizational culture and structure on IT governance. Two case studies have investigated the relation between organizational structure and IT governance implementation and performance in large organizations; and two other case studies investigated on how different types of organizational culture influence IT governance performance outcomes.
The results of this research respond to the research question by specifying the role of culture in IT governance through a categorization of prior research both from research and practice perspectives; specifying the influence of different organizational culture types on IT governance performance outcomes in different organizations; and by specifying IT organizational structure relationship with IT governance performance outcomes and IT governance implementation.
The research presented in this thesis provides both theoretical and empirical contributions to the IT governance research and practice.
Cloud computing is used to a greater extent in today’s organizations and enables organizations to obtain on-demand network access to IT services. When cloud computing is adopted in an organization, the IT governance becomes more challenging, because organizations need to address business and IT-related processes as well as managing risks and maintaining the relationship with cloud computing vendors. This research aims at finding how cloud computing service model specifically Software as a Service (SaaS) influence IT governance structures, processes and relational mechanisms in a public organization. For this purpose a case study was conducted in a Swedish municipality and the data was collected through interviews with IT managers and from internal documents of municipality and was analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of this study shows that SaaS influences the IT governance structure by improving roles and responsibilities definition and speeds up the decision-making processes. Moreover, the communication with the vendors is more efficient due to the use of SaaS.
Globalization has affected the organizations in many aspects such as structure, architecture, internal/external strategies and sourcing management. Outsourcing is one of the recent business strategies used to provide IT needs via external agents. The relationship between the service buyer and provider companies is a constituent playing a significant role in IT outsourcing success or failure. This research has a focus on the influence of organizational culture of buyer companies on the specific factors of trust, cooperation, communication and commitment in their relationship with the IT service provider. Two explorative case studies are done in global companies using ITO which revealed the presence of organizational culture effect. Particularly, being innovative, having open discussion as an organizational culture and looking for extending contracts with providers as a strategy, appeared as the major difference between the two cases organizational culture; which influences the studied factors of ITO relationship in this research.
Today it is not possible for the companies to compete without having IT as a strategic driver. That is why IT governance becomes crucial for managers to bring the most value from IT to the business. Additionally organizational culture is an important factor and often blamed when IT governance projects fail. However little in-depth research investigated how the organizational culture changes can improve the IT governance performance. This research is a case study of the IT department of a large company attempting to improve the IT governance while facing the digitalization challenge. In this case the IT department has an organizational culture change journey seeking to improve the IT governance performance. The results indicate that the initial clan culture orientation of the IT department has led to a successful IT governance performance in cost-effective use of IT. Furthermore, adhocracy is identified as preferred culture for improving IT governance for growth.
Managers face enormous challenges today to plan the decision rights and responsibilities in order to reach desired IT behaviors which are aligned with business objectives of organizations. This is known as IT governance and is ranked as one of the firms' top concerns. Not surprisingly, it is crucial for organizations to find the affecting factors on IT governance and solve the problems associated with it. Culture in national, organizational or group level is an affecting factor in organizations that can play a role in IT governance and this role is rarely explored in academic research. This paper provides a literature review investigating the influence of culture on IT governance. The research purpose is to identify how culture and IT governance in the companies can be linked together and promote this area for future research. The literature review is done systematically and the findings are classified by using an IT governance framework with three main components of structures, processes and relational mechanisms. The results indicate there is an influence from national and organizational culture on IT governance. However, the number of studies is very few and there is still a lack of knowledge on how culture can influence IT governance. This research calls upon a further research on culture impact on achieving an effective IT governance implementation in organizations.
IT governance is crucial for managers to regulate the decision rights and responsibilities that the desired IT behaviors and business objectives are aligned with each other. Additionally, culture in national, organizational or group level can play a role in IT governance and this role is rarely explored in academic research. This paper provides a literature review investigating the impact of culture on IT governance. It is aimed to find the linkage between these two concepts and to promote this area for future research. The literature review was done systematically and the findings are categorized by using an IT governance framework which includes three main components: structures, processes and relational mechanisms. The results indicate there is an influence from national and organizational culture on IT governance, especially on relational mechanisms. However, the number of studies is very few and there is still a lack of knowledge on how culture can influence IT governance.
IT governance is one of the top concerns of organizations today seeking to gain value from their IT investments and create competitive advantage. Organizational culture on the other hand is one of the various factors influencing IT governance performance. However there is not much research conducted to understand this topic deeply. This research thus, is exploring the influence of organizational culture on four IT governance performance outcomes through a case study in IT department of a large Swedish company. The results provide evidence that organizational culture is influencing IT governance performance. Specifically the current clan culture orientation of the IT department has led to a successful IT governance performance in cost-effective use of IT. Furthermore adhocracy as the preferred culture is identified to influence IT governance in effective use of IT for growth which is not so successful with the current clan culture.
Information Technology (IT) is widely used in organizations and managers continue to struggle with how to govern IT. IT governance concerns the decision rights and division of responsibilities to achieve value from IT investments. Any IT governance approach is incorporated into a given organizational structure. However in the particular context of public organizations, there is little research on IT organizational structure relationship with IT governance performance. In this research, a case study is done in a public organization to find out how suitable is the organizational structure of the IT department is in relation with the IT governance performance. The results reveal that the IT department organizational structure needs to suit the IT governance performance desired outcomes. In this case, operating as a public organization has actuated the organization to focus on IT governance outcome of effective use of IT for growth. This together with the IT governance archetypes of this public organization for different IT decisions led the IT department leaders to adopt a matrix organizational structure.
In today's complex organizations, IT governance is an important managerial challenge. IT governance deals with decisions and responsibilities concerning IT. There are many factors influencing IT governance. One factor that has remained relatively unexplored by academic research is that of organizational culture. This research explores the influence of the organizational culture of collaborative networks on IT governance performance. A case study was conducted in a large complex company with several networks. The findings indicated that the networks desire different organizational culture types based on their priorities for IT governance outcomes. A clan organizational culture is desired when aiming for effective use of IT for asset utilization and cost effective use of IT. An adhocracy culture is desired when prioritizing the effective use of IT for business growth. Finally a combination of market and hierarchy organizational culture is desired when seeking effective use of IT for business flexibility and cost cutting.
In today's complex organizations, IT governance is an important managerial challenge. IT governance deals with decisions and responsibilities concerning IT. There are many factors influencing IT governance. One factor that has remained relatively unexplored by academic research is that of organizational culture. This research explores the influence of the organizational culture of collaborative networks on IT governance performance. A case study was conducted in a large complex company with several networks. The findings indicated that the networks fit better with different organizational culture types based on their priorities for IT governance outcomes to maximize performance. A clan organizational culture is desired when aiming for effective use of IT for asset utilization and cost-effective use of IT. An adhocracy culture fits better when prioritizing the effective use of IT for business growth. Finally, a combination of market and hierarchy organizational culture is desired and fits better when seeking effective use of IT for business flexibility and cost cutting.
Information technology governance (ITG) is one of the top challenges of managers today and culture in different level can have an important role while implementing IT governance. This is a new and significant issue, which has not been investigated deeply. This paper sets out to provide a systematic review of the literature, focusing on the role of culture in IT governance. The literature review findings are categorized through the lens of IT governance’s five focus areas which are IT strategic alignment, IT value delivery, Risk management, IT resource management and Performance measurement. This study contributes to the field of IT governance by reviewing and discussing the existing literature on the role of culture on IT governance. This literature review resulted that there are few research studies in this topic and many of the IT governance focus areas are not covered regarding the role of culture in these IT governance areas.
Information technology governance (ITG) is one of the top challenges of managers today and culture in different level can have an important role while implementing IT governance. This is a new and significant issue, which has not been investigated deeply. This paper sets out to provide a systematic review of the literature, focusing on the role of culture in IT governance. The literature review findings are categorized through the lens of IT governance's five focus areas which are IT strategic alignment, IT value delivery, Risk management, IT resource management and Performance measurement. This study contributes to the field of IT governance by reviewing and discussing the existing literature on the role of culture on IT governance. This literature review resulted that there are few research studies in this topic and many of the IT governance focus areas are not covered regarding the role of culture in these IT governance areas.
A Digital Transformation fundamentally involves the implementation of one or more digital tools, which is a process often burdened with challenges. It is estimated that approximately 66 to 84 percent of the taken Digital Transformation initiatives are unsuccessful, which can be attributed to organizational shortcomings, more specifically structural ones. While public organizations regularly do not achieve the same success as those in the private sector, it was of interest to investigate the Swedish ones. Where 86 percent of residents use the internet to interact with public authorities. Previous research has singled out the IT organization to be the appointed leader of Digital Transformations, further research on that relationship is limited. Therefore, this study examines how the IT organization, in an agile environment, can align its structure for a successful Digital Transformation. To answer the discovered research problem, the following research question has been formulated: “How should an IT organization’s structure be aligned in an agile environment in order to achieve a successful Digital Transformation?”. This is research in progress and will be continued by conducting case studies in four public organizations. Data will be collected through semi0structured interviews and analyzed thematically. Finally, a presentation of different aspect of organizational structure alignment through digital transformation based on these cases will be provided.
Digital transformation has been an interesting concept from the organizational perspective for a long time. The benefits of a successful digital transformation can take your organization into the next step by providing an increased organizational growth, aid market reachability by penetrating new and exciting markets, or enable your business operations to function to a greater extent than before with higher efficiency and lower lead times. Digital transformation is however a complex and diverse concept that means to integrate new innovations by using digital technology into the organization with the need of making greater organizational changes to succeed. This research, has explored how different organizational aspects like structural, technological and cultural ones can impact the success of a digital transformation during an ERP system change. A case study has been conducted in a company to identify how the current structural, technological, and cultural aspects influence the current digital transformation in that the company. The data was collected through interviews with employees having managerial roles and from internal documents of company and was analyzed using thematic analysis. The results show an agile approach, a more decentralized structure and high readiness for change, along with a transparent communication between management and co-workers to be beneficial for a successfully digital transformation.
Detection of epileptic seizures on the basis of Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings is a challenging task due to the complex, non-stationary and non-linear nature of these biomedical signals. In the existing literature, a number of automatic epileptic seizure detection methods have been proposed that extract useful features from EEG segments and classify them using machine learning algorithms. Some characterizing features of epileptic and non-epileptic EEG signals overlap; therefore, it requires that analysis of signals must be performed from diverse perspectives. Few studies analyzed these signals in diverse domains to identify distinguishing characteristics of epileptic EEG signals. To pose the challenge mentioned above, in this paper, a fuzzy-based epileptic seizure detection model is proposed that incorporates a novel feature extraction and selection method along with fuzzy classifiers. The proposed work extracts pattern features along with time-domain, frequency domain, and non-linear analysis of signals. It applies a feature selection strategy on extracted features to get more discriminating features that build fuzzy machine learning classifiers for the detection of epileptic seizures. The empirical evaluation of the proposed model was conducted on the benchmark Bonn EEG dataset. It shows significant accuracy of 98% to 100% for normal vs. ictal classification cases while for three class classification of normal vs. inter-ictal vs. ictal accuracy reaches to above 97.5%. The obtained results for ten classification cases (including normal, seizure or ictal, and seizure-free or inter-ictal classes) prove the superior performance of proposed work as compared to other state-of-the-art counterparts.
The detection of epileptic seizures by classifying electroencephalography (EEG) signals into ictal and interictal classes is a demanding challenge, because it identifies the seizure and seizure-free states of an epileptic patient. In previous works, several machine learning-based strategies were introduced to investigate and interpret EEG signals for the purpose of their accurate classification. However, non-linear and non-stationary characteristics of EEG signals make it complicated to get complete information about these dynamic biomedical signals. In order to address this issue, this paper focuses on extracting the most discriminating and distinguishing features of seizure EEG recordings to develop an approach that employs both fuzzy-based and traditional machine learning algorithms for epileptic seizure detection. The proposed framework classifies unknown EEG signal segments into ictal and interictal classes. The model is validated using empirical evaluation on two benchmark datasets, namely the Bonn and Children's Hospital of Boston-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (CHB-MIT) datasets. The obtained results show that in both cases, K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Fuzzy Rough Nearest Neighbor (FRNN) give the highest classification accuracy scores, with improved sensitivity and specificity percentages.
Knowledge tracing—where a machine models the students’ knowledge as they interact with coursework—is a well-established area in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Education. In this paper, an ensemble approach is proposed that addresses existing limitations in question-centric knowledge tracing and achieves the goal of predicting future question correctness. The proposed approach consists of two models; one is Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) built by incorporating all relevant key features engineered from the data. The second model is a Multiheaded-Self-Attention Knowledge Tracing model (MSAKT) that extracts historical student knowledge of future question by calculating their contextual similarity with previously attempted questions. The proposed model’s effectiveness is evaluated by conducting experiments on a big Kaggle dataset achieving an Area Under ROC Curve (AUC) score of 0.84 with 84% accuracy using 10fold cross-validation.
Sverige toppade nyligen en ranking som det land i världen som det är bäst att leva i avseende indikatorn livskvalité, totalplacering blev en femte plats. Det är positivt men vid sidan om topprankningar framträder en annan dyster verklighet mitt i det svenska välfärdssamhället. Civilsamhällets olika verksamheter med matutdelning utgör en nyckelroll i samhället. Dagligen ser vi medmänniskor köa för ett mål mat, en värmande kopp kaffe men kanske även för ett vänligt ord. Civilsamhällets aktörer synes utgöra en förutsättning för ett fungerande samhälle.
Syftet med studien är att utforska situationen för ålderspensionärer vilka diskursivt benämns ”fattigpensionärer” och som besöker civilsamhällets verksamheter som bedriver matutdelning, det som i media ofta benämns som ”soppkök”. Studien baseras på tolv semistrukturerade intervjuer med ålderspensionärer och personal. Studien utgår från klassteori, struktureringsteorin samt teorin om KASAM och belyser frågeställningar kring hur social stratifiering skapar exkludering, hur individen som aktör kan hantera sin livsvärld samt hur en känsla av sammanhang och tillhörighet är av betydelse för individen.
Resultaten påvisar att en del av de ålderspensionärer som varit med och byggt upp den svenska välfärden inte får den del av kakan i tillräckligt hög utsträckning, i stället har det blivit en daglig rutin att besöka civilsamhällets verksamheter för att få fysisk och social hunger mättad. Slutsatsen är att det föreligger exkludering men resultaten visar också på ålderspensionären som en handlingskraftig aktör.
Studien vill vara en ögonöppnare för vem individen är som besöker civilsamhällets matutdelningar. När det är tydliggjort kan makthavare agera och sätta in de åtgärder som behövs för att säkerställa en välfärd för alla.
The financial system is currently undergoing structural changes all over the world. Thanks to the advances of technology, banks are also changing the way they interact with their customers. From a face-to-face to a faceless contact, via cash machines and the Internet, banks are urging to create effective communication channels that maintain close relationships with their customers. To better illustrate this situation, this study was based on the case of FöreningsSparbaken, a Swedish retail bank, which has a traditional structure and is also undergoing structural changes. With the implementation of new technologies, the bank's customers are experimenting some dissatisfaction concerning the new services provided. Little personal contact, reduction in service options and payment of Internet service fees are the major negative aspects that customers are facing with the bank's changes. These issues are addressed and discussed in this research on the basis of marketing approach.
The paper addresses three main problems resulting from uncertainty in information security management: i)dynamically changing security requirements of an organization ii) externalities caused by a security system and iii)obsolete evaluation of security concerns. A framework based on options reasoning borrowed from corporate finance is proposed and adapted to evaluation of security architecture and decision-making for handling these issues at organizational level. The adaptation as methodology is demonstrated by a large case study validating its efficacy.
Information technology evolves at a faster pace giving organizations a limited scope to comprehend and effectively react to steady flux nature of its progress. Consequently the rapid technological progression raises various concerns for the IT system of an organization i.e. existing hardware/software obsoleteness, uncertain system behavior, interoperability of various components/method, sudden changes in IT security requirements and expiration of security evaluations. These issues are continuous and critical in their nature that create uncertainty in IT infrastructure and threaten the IT security measures of an organization. In this research, Options theory is devised to address uncertainty issues in IT security management and the concepts have been developed/validated through real cases on SHS (Spridnings-och-Hämtningssystem) and ESAM (E-society) systems. AUMSIS (Automated Uncertainty Management System in Information Security) is the ultimate objective of this research which provides an automated system for uncertainty management in information security. The paper presents the architectural description of AUMSIS, its various components, information flow, storage and information processing details using options valuation techniques. It also presents heterogeneous information retrieval problems and their solution. The architecture is validated with examples from SHS system
The continuously evolving nature of today's internet outdates the existing security and safety mechanisms and therefore there is an emerging need to propose robust, powerful and reliable solutions. These advancements have a great impact on the software and system architectures, resulting in a highly dynamic smart networked environment. The systems used within these complex environments have at least two things in common, namely, the need to restrict or grant access for the required resources based on security policy to face security threats, and the need to sustain resilience of the environment in face of safety hazards. Both aspects should consider trust.