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Human behavior threatens to ruin irrevocably our long-term existence; the downhill slide is steep and seemingly soon will be incurable. Shifting from unsustainable development would require substantial and far-reaching changes in lifestyles and living standards. As stakeholders (customers, consumers, shareholders, suppliers, distributors, employees, and local communities), through different kinds of dialogue we can influence organizations' performance by applying pressure on them to change unsustainable behaviors. This doctoral thesis is concerned with the dialogue occurring in the interface between service organizations, under pressure to change their behavior, and their stakeholders, and the link between stakeholder dialogue and organizations' performance management. The overall aim of the thesis is to describe and understand how stakeholder dialogue can contribute to the value-creation process of a sustainable service. The theoretical frame of reference finds its inspiration in research on management accounting, service management, and sustainable development/corporate social responsibility. In this way, it attempts to bridge the gap between business and ethics. Theoretically, the thesis is a melting pot of ideas on stakeholder value creation. Herein, the customer focus of service research expands to a stakeholder focus, and the management approach of the quality movement, more specifically total responsibility management, develops the thinking of performance management beyond the functionalistic tradition. The thesis also applies a triple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental) approach. The thesis is a compilation of five different studies that follow an interpretative case study approach. The empirical framework stems from the public and private sectors through studies of Swedish public organizations (the Swedish Road Administration and Sveaskog), parts of the Swedish public transport industry, and Swedbank. The thesis contributes to an understanding of what sustainable service is and the complexity of the transformation process of an organization towards sustainability. Further, it reflects on the role of stakeholder dialogue in a sustainable service. Finally, the thesis contributes to an understanding of how sustainable service matches with performance management by developing a sustainable performance management framework. The framework is a total quality value-creation concept that avoids reducing the complexity of the studied problem by solving it in three parallel, continuous processes or dimensions coupled with each other: the descriptive, instrumental, and normative dimensions. The descriptive dimension involves a social, ethical, and political documentary contextualization through sustainability reports purposed for stakeholder communication. The instrumental dimension contains a traditional set of management controls and techniques supported by triple bottom line performance measurement. The normative dimension is founded in sustainability- and triple bottom line-thinking, values-based leadership, and a feedback and learning process dedicated to genuine stakeholder dialogue.

Purpose– "User" is the lingua franca term used across IT design, often critiqued for giving a reductionist portrayal of the human relationship with technologies. The purpose of this paper is to argue that equating "user" with flesh and blood "people out there" is naïve. Not only that, it closes important options in conducting human-centered design.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conceptually elaborate a relational understanding of the user and integrate research findings on user representations found at the intersection of human-centered design and social studies of technology.Findings– The user is best understood as a relational term that bridges between people out there and renditions of them relevant for design. A distinction between "user representations" and "engaged use" is a key distinction to clarify this further. Research to date demonstrates that R & D organizations have a wide range of user representations and positioning human-centered design to these would advance its likely yield.Research limitations/implications– The strategic positioning of user studies and other human-centered design within R & D organizations is a growing research area that merits further research.Practical implications– Descriptions of users would benefit from being more strategic in order to become viable amidst other design concerns. This can be aided by, for instance, visualizing the "users" that different fractions in the company rely on and compare these to the users indicated by human-centered design.Originality/value– The paper makes an original reconceptualization of the user and integrates literature on user representations to open new options for conducting human-centered design.

Background Universities in Sweden are since 2006 based on a government decree instructed to work with sustainable development. Recent studies on progress for Sustainable Development indicate that change is relatively slow and that most of the activities could be labelled: Business as usual. One apparent challenge is to understand what Sustainable Development means and consequently what needs to be changed compared to current performance. Visions and long range goals are important in any change work and should consequently also be important in the work for sustainable universities. Interesting questions are how visions and long range goals are defined in universities and to what extent they support work for Sustainable Development. Purpose The general purpose of the study is to see how universities could work for Sustainable Development and to find out areas of further improvement. The specific research questions in this study are: How could university work with sustainable development be characterized in education and research? How are visions and goals for Sustainable Development described by universities? How could visions and goals be improved in order to better support change towards Sustainable Development? Methodology Swedish universities are chosen for the study. The reason for this is that Swedish law since 2006 explicitly requires universities to work with Sustainable Development. This means that we can choose a random sample from the total Swedish university population and look at the interpretation of work for Sustainable Development. We use common definitions for Sustainable Development and compare them with university missions and directives from the Swedish state to answer the question how university work for Sustainable Development could be characterised. We identify typical definitions for what is required for a vision and for goals. These definitions are compared with the university interpretations as per web-sites and from individual views. Main results A review of how Sustainable Development is presented in the Swedish University world.

Sustainable Development (SD) has been on the agenda for some time. SD is an overall objective of Swedish Government policies. In an official document, Strategic Challenges - a Further Elaboration of the Swedish Strategy for Sustainable Development (Comm. 2005/06:126), issued in 2005 by the Swedish Government the national strategy from 2004 is further elaborated. It is stated that the strategy covers the following three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. It stems from a long-term vision of sustainable development and is related to international sustainable development efforts, including UN initiatives and the EU's strategy in the area. Already 2004 it became obligatory for Swedish schools and universities to include sustainable development in the curriculum. Thus, Universities should be in a good position to interpret what sustainable development is and transferring it to actions. It is after all universities who will provide the people to live and lead the change needed. Universities in Sweden have now had 6 years to work with sustainable development and there should be good examples of how this can be done. Interesting questions are how universities have interpreted sustainable development and how they are working with it. This paper presents an explorative study on to which extent the Governments sustainability strategy has been absorbed and become part of the strategy of the Swedish universities. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss how sustainable development is being interpreted. We also look at how the value per harm concept could contribute to the understanding of sustainable development. It is an exploratory case study on how 17 Swedish universities integrate SD in its mission. It is obvious that all of the studied universities have broken down the university decree into its lowest common denominators and managed to mark some of its educations by placing a sustainability sticker here and there in their course catalogues and policy documents but we are sorry to say it but beneath this superficial surface the is not much, from a sustainability point of view, integrated, wise, insightful and sound teaching going on. The question then is, how did all this happen? The collected data show that all universities are aware of the university decree. A problem with the decree is that it is vague while it clearly calls for action. This is perhaps a possible approach if the attitude is that anything goes. But as the aim is to accomplish directed action on a sustainable development that through their activities shall promote sustainable development that ensure that both the present and coming generations are guaranteed a sound environment, economic as well as social well-being and justice, this is a not so efficient approach. This mission is too vague and there are not enough guidelines on how to interpret it, create a meaningful strategy, implement, manage, measure, or report on it.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore what options the adult learner has for continued learning and what role universities are playing in providing net-based education. Current options for lifelong learning and improvement opportunities in the educational process are described based on an assessment inspired by principles of lean management. Design/methodology/approach – Sweden is chosen as an example. The current level of net-based university education and the demand for it is assessed using official Swedish data. Lean management principles are used as a starting point to define parameters for interest for the adult learner. These parameters are then converted into a five-level scale for assessing current performance with focus on university courses. The authors also study how Swedish County Councils manage their employee education and carry out a check of courses offered by massive open online course providers. Findings – Lean management principles in combination with customer focus seem to present relevant parameters for assessing distance education. Preliminary results indicate that lean lifelong learning has a considerable improvement potential. The main reasons for this potential seem to be more of a bureaucratic and political nature, whereas technology and resources appear to be less of an issue. Practical implications – The results have implications for both universities and organisations. The pressure on universities to become more customer-focussed, while at the same time, cost-effectiveness is likely to increase. Originality/value – Using the customer perspective for educational services and applying lean principles to education.