Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title Page -- Colophon -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1. Introduction -- Ann Westenholz -- 1.1 A sociological approach -- 1.2 The structure of the book -- 2. Companies' Involvement in Open Source Software Communities -- Ann Westenholz -- 2.1 Historical development of software -- 2.2 Literature on companies' involvement in open source software communities -- 2.2.1 Summary and reflections on the literature -- 2.3 Commercialization of open source software in Denmark -- 2.3.1 'Institutional entrepreneurs' and the development of commercial open source companies in Denmark -- 2.3.2 Companies that are members of the Association of Open Source Suppliers in Denmark -- 2.3.3 The Association of Open Source Suppliers in Denmark -- 2.3.4 The software developer -- 2.4 Conclusion and reflection -- 3. TYPO3 - A Commercial Open Source Software Community -- Ann Westenholz, Benedikte Brincker and Peter Gundelach -- 3.1 Introduction -- Ann Westenholz -- 3.2 TYPO3 as an à la carte community -- Benedikte Brincker and Peter Gundelach -- 3.2.1 The concept of community -- 3.2.2 Interaction and values in the TYPO3 community -- 3.2.3 An à la carte community -- 3.2.4 Summary and reflection -- 3.3 TYPO3 as a Community of Commercial Actors -- Ann Westenholz -- 3.3.1 Summary and reflection -- 3.4 Institutional Work in the Development of the TYPO3 Community -- Ann Westenholz -- 3.4.1 Interaction between a commercial actor and voluntary open source developers negotiating stories about 'the customer-driven market' or 'the evil market' -- 3.4.2 Interaction between community members and commercial companies negotiating stories about 'sharing knowledge' or 'not-sharing knowledge' -- 3.4.3 Interaction between TYPO3 companies and their customers negotiating stories about 'reliable open source software' or 'unreliable open source software' -- 3.4.4 Summary and reflection.

The institutional order of organizing in working life is very different in Scandinavia and China. When Scandinavian and Chinese managers and employees meet in concrete work relations they not only work together on a product they also become engaged in institutional work dealing with the inconsistencies between the institutional orders of organizing. This in turn may affect the institutional orders by maintaining or transforming them. We don't know what is going to happen as it depends on the awareness, skill and reflexivity of Scandinavian and Chinese institutional actors in the sense that these actors are able to work with institutionally defined orders.

A dominant sociological argument asserts that changes in working life and society in general have affected our identities, with the result of increased individualization and the decline of the "organizational man." The author is critical of this epochalist claim and argues that it is important to design an approach to analyzing the identities and telling the stories of the current transformation of work and identities that recognizes the processes within working life. This proposal goes beyond a grand-scale epochalist claim about the consequences of the transformation to a postmodern area of identity. As an alternative, the author suggests an analysis of identities, drawing on a relational and social constructivist paradigm. She examines how workers employ elements from widespread identity stories as "raw material" when negotiating emerging identities. Drawing on a qualitative study within the information technology field, the author illustrates what such an analysis of emerging identities might look like.

The aim of this article is to analyse the construction of time as perceived by a group of IT workers. It is argued that two stories about working time have been socially constructed during the 19th and 20th centuries, not as an epochal phenomenon but as a multi-times phenomenon: a clock time story and a task-time story. A quantitative method is used in analysing the IT workers, which breaks with the traditional conception within research that a social constructivist approach requires qualitative data and methods. The analysis reveals that these IT workers do not represent an homogenous group. Rather, four distinct groups are identifiable: Blurred Timers, Invaded Clock Timers, Clock Timers, and Task Timers – with Blurred Timers being the largest group and Task Timers the smallest. Employment status and union membership have a direct and significant impact on these time identities whereas gender, age, educational level, and challenge of the work do not have any direct or significant correlation with these time identities. Finally, the time identities are put into perspective and compared to recent research on gender and industrial relations.

This article addresses the methodological question of how the researcher tackles the problem of only having access to empirical data through social interpretation processes (a second order social constructivism). It is argued that researchers can learn new aspects about an organization by replacing a logic perspective, predominant within western research, with a paradox perspective on the analysis of the organization. A paradox perspective rests on the assumption that mutually exclusive phenomena exist in the organization. This article describes the four phases of analysis which were developed when a paradox perspective was applied to analyse development at an employee-owned Danish newspaper.

This article addresses the methodological question of how the researcher tackles the problem of only having access to empirical data through social interpretation processes (a second order social constructivism). It is argued that researchers can learn new aspects about an organization by replacing a logic perspective, predominant within western research, with a paradox perspective on the analysis of the organization. A paradox perspective rests on the assumption that mutually exclusive phenomena exist in the organization. This article describes the four phases of analysis which were developed when a paradox perspective was applied to analyse development at an employee-owned Danish newspaper. (Economic and Industrial Democracy / FUB)

Workplace democracy is brought up for discussion by the modern project and the postmodern condition. The modern project is represented by three fictitious eye-witnesses, who all seem to have succumbed to a modern repressive tolerance. Only one 'postmodern eye-witness' protests against the description of the democratic condition and challenges the three modernists by emphasizing the necessity of paradoxes and ruptures to acquire liberty. One facet of the liberating dialogue suggested by the postmodernist is to deconstruct the social system through divorce.

Institutionalisation of employee representatives on boards of directors and the social construction of the board as a practical strategic actor

In this study we attempt to analyse how the implementation of employee representatives on Danish boards of directors transformed labour market relations, and how boards of directors developed integrative rather than aggregative decision making processes. The 1973 legislation granting employees of private Danish companies the right to elect members to the board of directors broke with a 75 year old tradition of labour-management rela-tions. The article analyses the role of the political parties (from a wide political spectrum) to the development of the law. Thereafter the article analyses its implemen-tation. The authors see this development as on of a struggle bet-ween two kinds of logic: aggregative as opposed to integrative logic, or consistency versus practicality. The credibility of these boards depends on the fact that they make decisions from the point of practical logic, but employ consistency logic when they explain these decisions to their voters.

The focus of the article is on the dominating assumptions in theories of decision making and the relationship between decisions and change. This discussion is used to understand strategic decision making in Danish companies in which, since 1973, employees have been able to elect representatives to the board of directors. It is the authors' observation that employers and employees develop joint perspectives on the realities facing their company and also try to influence the decision from the point of view of their respective interests. To understand these processes, it is claimed that interest and identities must be treated as endogenous rather than exogenous variables, that these processes need to be understood in a social constructivist rather than a social realist paradigm, and that a relational paradigm must replace the dominant substantialist paradigm. These positions challenge dominant assumptions in traditional decision-making theory. The authors work toward formulating a decision-making theory based on a relational perspective.