The Nature of Learning about Customers in a Customer Service Setting - A Study of Frontline Contact Persons

The starting point of this thesis is the notion that in order for organisations to understand what customers value and how customers experience service, they need to learn about customers. The first and perhaps most important link in an organisation-wide learning process directed at customers is the frontline contact person. Service- and sales organisations can only learn about customers if the individual frontline contact persons learn about customers. Even though it is commonly recognised that learning about customers is the basis for an organisation’s success, few contributions within marketing investigate the fundamental nature of the phenomenon as it occurs in everyday customer service. Thus, what learning about customers is and how it takes place in a customer-service setting is an issue that is neglected in marketing research. In order to explore these questions, this thesis presents a socio-cultural approach to understanding learning about customers. Hence, instead of considering learning equal to cognitive processes in the mind of the frontline contact person or learning as equal to organisational information processing, the interactive, communication-based, socio-cultural aspect of learning about customers is brought to the fore. Consequently, the theoretical basis of the study can be found both in socio-cultural and practice-oriented lines of reasoning, as well as in the fields of service- and relationship marketing. As it is argued that learning about customers is an integrated part of everyday practices, it is also clear that it should be studied in a naturalistic and holistic way as it occurs in a customer-service setting. This calls for an ethnographic research approach, which involves direct, first-hand experience of the research setting during an extended period of time. Hence, the empirical study employs participant observations, informal discussions and interviews among car salespersons and service advisors at a car retailing company. Finally, as a synthesis of theoretically and empirically gained understanding, a set of concepts are developed and they are integrated into a socio-cultural model of learning about customers.

The Nature and Change of Bonds in Industrial Business Relationships

A focus on cooperative industrial business relationships has become increasingly important in studies of industrial relationships. If the relationships between companies are strong it is usually a sign that companies will cooperate for a longer time and that may affect companies’ competitive and financial strength positively. As a result the bonds between companies become more important. This is due to the fact that bonds are building blocks of relationships and thus affect the stability in the cooperation between companies. Bond strength affect relationship strength. A framework regarding how bonds develop and change in an industrial business relationship has been developed in the study. Episodes affect the bonds in the relationship strengthening or weakening the bonds in the relationship or preserving status quo. Routine or critical episodes may lead to the strengthening or weakening of bonds as well as the preservation of status quo. The method used for analyzing bond strength trying to grasp the nature and change of bonds was invented by systematically following the elements of the definitions of bonds. A system with tables was drawn up in order to find out if the bond was weak, of medium strength or strong. Bonds are important regulators of industrial business relationships. By influencing the bonds one may have possibilities to strengthen or weaken the business relationship. Strengthen the business relationship in order to increase business and revenue and weaken the relationship in order to terminate business where the revenue is low or where there may be other problems in the relationship. By measuring the strength of different bonds it can be possible to strengthen weak bonds in order to strengthen the relationship. By using bond management it is possible to strategically strengthen or weaken the bonds between the cooperating companies in order to strengthen the cooperation and tie the customer or supplier to the company or weaken the cooperation in order to terminate the relationship. The instrument for the management of bonds is to use the created bond audit in order to know which bonds resources should be focused on in order to increase or decrease their strength.

Publishing in the Networked World: Transforming the Nature of Communication, 14th International Conference on Electronic Publishing 16-18 June 2010, Helsinki, Finland

The title of the 14th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB), “Publishing in the networked world: Transforming the nature of communication”, is a timely one. Scholarly communication and scientific publishing has recently been undergoing subtle changes. Published papers are no longer fixed physical objects, as they once were. The “convergence” of information, communication, publishing and web technologies along with the emergence of Web 2.0 and social networks has completely transformed scholarly communication and scientific papers turned to living and changing entities in the online world. The themes (electronic publishing and social networks; scholarly publishing models; and technological convergence) selected for the conference are meant to address the issues involved in this transformation process. We are pleased to present the proceedings book with more than 30 papers and short communications addressing these issues. What you hold in your hands is a by-product and the culmination of almost a Year long work of many people including conference organizers, authors, reviewers, editors and print and online publishers. The ELPUB 2010 conference was organized and hosted by the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. Professors Turid Hedlund of Hanken School of Economics and Yaşar Tonta of Hacettepe University Department of Information Management (Ankara, Turkey) served as General Chair and Program Chair, respectively. We received more than 50 submissions from several countries. All submissions were peer-reviewed by members of an international Program Committee whose contributions proved most valuable and appreciated. The 14th ELPUB conference carries on the tradition of previous conferences held in the United Kingdom (1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999), Russia (2000), the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil (2004), Belgium (2005), Bulgaria (2006), Austria (2007), Canada (2008) and Italy (2009). The ELPUB Digital Library, http://elpub.scix.net serves as archive for the papers presented at the ELPUB conferences through the years. The 15th ELPUB conference will be organized by the Department of Information Management of Hacettepe University and will take place in Ankara, Turkey, from 14-16 June 2011. (Details can be found at the ELPUB web site as the conference date nears by.) We thank Marcus Sandberg and Hannu Sääskilahti for copyediting, Library Director Tua Hindersson – Söderholm for accepting to publish the online as well as the print version of the proceedings. Thanks also to Patrik Welling for maintaining the conference web site and Tanja Dahlgren for administrative support. We warmly acknowledge the support in organizing the conference to colleagues at Hanken School of Economics and our sponsors.

Theorizing the Nature of Reflection

For the past decades reflection has been the buzzword of adult and higher education. Reflection is facilitated in many practices and there is abundant research on the issue. Despite the popularity of the concept, the reasons why bringing about reflection in educational practices is difficult remain unclear. The prevailing theories inform of the process in its ideal form. However, to a great extent, they fail to offer conceptual tools for understanding and working with the actualities of reflection. The aim of the doctoral thesis was to explore the challenges and prerequisites of reflection in order to theorize the nature of reflection. By the term reflection it is here referred to becoming aware of and questioning the assumptions that orient our thinking, feelings and actions. The doctoral thesis consists of five studies that approach these questions from different viewpoints and within different contexts. The methods involve both a philosophical and an empirical approach. This multifaceted approach embodies the aim of both gaining a more thorough grasp of the phenomenon and to develop the methodology of researching reflection. The theory building is based on conceptual analysis and rational reconstruction (see Davia 1998; Habermas 1979; Rorty1984) of Mezirow s (1981; 1991; 2000; 2009) theory of transformative learning. In order to explore the aspects which, based on the analysis, appeared insufficiently considered within Mezirow s theory, Damasio s (1994; 1999; 2003; 2010) theory on emotions and consciousness as well as Clausewitz s (1985) view on friction are used as complementary theories. Empirical analyses are used in dialogue with the theoretical, in order to challenge and refine the emerging theorization. Reflection is examined in three different contexts; regarding university teachers pedagogical growth, involuntarily childless women recovering from a life-event crisis, and soldiers preparing to act in chaotic situations of the battlefield as well as recovering from it. The choice of these contexts is based on Mezirow s notion of disorienting dilemma as a trigger for reflection. This notion indicates that reflection may more naturally emerge in association to life-event crises or other cumulative sets of instances, which bring our worldview and beliefs under question. Nevertheless, reflection is often being promoted in educational contexts in which the trigger conditions may not readily prevail. These contextual issues as well as the differences between the facilitated and non-facilitated contexts have not, however, been considered in detail within the research on reflection (or transformative learning). The doctoral thesis offers a new perspective into reflection which, as a further development on Mezirow s transformative learning theory, theorizes the nature of reflection. The developed theory explicates the prerequisites and challenges to reflection. The theory suggests that the challenges of reflection are fundamentally connected to the way the biological life-support system affects our thinking through emotions. While depicting the mechanisms that function as a counterforce to reflection, the developed theory also opens a perspective for considering possibilities for carrying out reflection, and suggests ways to locate and deal with the assumptions to be reflected on. The basic dynamic of the challenges to reflection was explicated by conceptually bridging the gap between Mezirow s and Damasio s theories, through exploring the connections between the meaning perspective and the biological functions of emotions. The concepts of comfort zone and edge-emotions were formed so as to depict the emotional orientation of our thinking, as part of the explanation of the nature of reflection.

Nature of chemistry in the national frame curricula for upper secondary education in Finland, Norway and Sweden

The aim of this study was to discover how current chemistry syllabi in the frame curricula for up- per secondary education in three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, and Sweden) take into account topics related to the nature of chemistry. By qualitative content analysis, the statements related to the nature of chemistry were divided into categories. Conclusions and implications for improving the frame curricula under study were made by comparing results with research into the nature of science. Chemistry syllabi from the Nordic frame curricula analyzed take into account the aims related to the nature of chemistry in a very similar manner. The ideas that should be made more explicit in all of the analyzed curricula are: i) the limits of the chemical models and theories, ii) the relationship between chemistry and other natural sciences, iii) the importance of creativity in chemical research, iv) the concepts of evidence in science texts, v) the social nature of chemical research, and vi) chemistry as a technological practice.