Objectives: The present study aims to extend current research on how offenders’ modus operandi (MO) can be used in crime linkage, by investigating the possibility to automatically estimate offenders’ risk exposure and level of pre-crime preparation for residential burglaries. Such estimations can assist law enforcement agencies when linking crimes into series and thus provide a more comprehensive understanding of offenders and targets, based on the combined knowledge and evidence collected from different crime scenes. Methods: Two criminal profilers manually rated offenders’ risk exposure and level of pre-crime preparation for 50 burglaries each. In an experiment we then analyzed to what extent 16 machine-learning algorithms could generalize both offenders’ risk exposure and preparation scores from the criminal profilers’ ratings onto 15,598 residential burglaries. All included burglaries contain structured and feature-rich crime descriptions which learning algorithms can use to generalize offenders’ risk and preparation scores from.Results: Two models created by Naïve Bayes-based algorithms showed best performance with an AUC of 0.79 and 0.77 for estimating offenders' risk and preparation scores respectively. These algorithms were significantly better than most, but not all, algorithms. Both scores showed promising distinctiveness between linked series, as well as consistency for crimes within series compared to randomly sampled crimes.Conclusions: Estimating offenders' risk exposure and pre-crime preparation  can complement traditional MO characteristics in the crime linkage process. The estimations are also indicative to function for cross-category crimes that otherwise lack comparable MO. Future work could focus on increasing the number of manually rated offenses as well as fine-tuning the Naïve Bayes algorithm to increase its estimation performance.

The evidence that burglaries cluster spatio-temporally is strong. However, research is unclear on whether clustered burglaries (repeats/near-repeats) should be treated as qualitatively different crimes compared to spatio-temporally unrelated burglaries (non-repeats). This study, therefore, investigated if there were differences in modus operandi-signatures (MOs, the habits and methods employed by criminals) between near-repeat and non-repeat burglaries across 10 Swedish cities, as well as whether MO-signatures can aid in predicting if a burglary is classified as a nearrepeat or a non-repeat crime. Data consisted of 5744 residential burglaries, with 137 MO features characterizing each case. Descriptive data of repeats/non-repeats is provided together with Wilcoxon tests of MO-differences between crime pairs, while logistic regressions were used to train models to predict if a crime scene was classified as a near-repeat or a non-repeat crime. Near-repeat crimes were rather stylized, showing heterogeneity in MOs across cities, but showing homogeneity within cities at the same time, as there were significant differences between near-repeat and non-repeat burglaries, including subgroups of features, such as differences in mode of entering, target selection, types of goods stolen, as well the traces that were left at the crime scene. Furthermore, using logistic regression models, it was possible to predict near-repeat and non-repeat crimes with a mean F1-score of 0.8155 (0.0866) based on the MO. Potential policy implications are discussed in terms of how data-driven procedures can facilitate analysis of spatio-temporal phenomena based on the MO-signatures of offenders, as well as how law enforcement agencies can provide differentiated advice and response when there is suspicion that a crime is part of a series as opposed to an isolated event. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Från förordet: Årets rapport kartlägger det svenska entreprenörskapets utveckling under en turbulent tid präglad av pandemi, restriktioner och nedstängningar av hela samhällen vilket du kan läsa om i kapitel två. Trots pandemin ökar svenskt entreprenörskap under 2021 till nio procent (TEA) vilket är den högsta siffran som redovisats i GEM-projektet för Sveriges del sedan 2010. En minst sagt glädjande siffra.

Det är emellertid inte en anledning att luta sig tillbaka. Världen står inför stora utmaningar i form av komponentbrist, störningar i leveranskedjor samt en oroande geopolitisk situation, inte minst i och med Rysslands invasion av Ukraina. Därtill kan tilläggas att Sverige dras med olösta och kända problem som till exempel en dysfunktionell arbetsmarknad präglad av kompetensbrist kombinerat med hög arbetslöshet och låg självförsörjningsgrad bland stora delar av befolkningen.

I årets rapport görs även nedslag i entreprenörernas relation till miljömässig- och social hållbarhet. Svenska entreprenörer uppvisar på intet sätt det största engagemanget för bland annat miljömässig hållbarhet globalt sett. Men det finns anledning att tro att det åtminstone delvis kan bero på att företagare i Sverige ställer högre krav inom sin verksamhet, speciellt jämfört med företagare i utvecklingsländer.

Background: Software engineering research aims to establish software development practice on a scientific basis. However, the evidence of the efficacy of technology is insufficient to ensure its uptake in industry. In the absence of a theoretical frame of reference, we mainly rely on best practices and expert judgment from industry-academia collaboration and software process improvement research to improve the acceptance of the proposed technology. Objective: To identify acceptance models and theories and discuss their applicability in the research of acceptance behavior related to software development.Method: We analyzed literature reviews within an interdisciplinary team to identify models and theories relevant to software engineering research. We further discuss acceptance behavior from the human information processing perspective of automatic and affect-driven processes (“fast” system 1 thinking) and rational and rule-governed processes (“slow” system 2 thinking). Results: We identified 30 potentially relevant models and theories. Several of them have been used in researching acceptance behavior in contexts related to software development, but few have been validated in such contexts. They use constructs that capture aspects of (automatic) system 1 and (rational) system 2 oriented processes. However, their operationalizations focus on system 2-oriented processes indicating a rational view of behavior, thus overlooking important psychological processes underpinning behavior. Conclusions: Software engineering research may use acceptance behavior models and theories more extensively to understand and predict practice adoption in the industry. Such theoretical foundations will help improve the impact of software engineering research. However, more consideration should be given to their validation, overlap, construct operationalization, and employed data collection mechanisms when using these models and theories.

To start to include sustainability in a design project is a transition. This transition requires change in how people do things, that is, behaviour change, and it takes place in the midst of the usual pressures of product design. Prior research on sustainable design has mostly explored the so-called technical side – identifying what tasks should be performed, such as specifics of including sustainability criteria when analysing product concepts. Recent studies have advocated the consideration of the human nature of the people who are to implement these ‘technical’ tasks, to undergo and drive the transition.

We therefore embarked on an action research project to support behaviour change towards implementing sustainable design in the individual members of design project teams. Our action research partner was a design consultancy who wanted to begin working with sustainable design. Our research question was: How might the partner organisation support individual behaviour change towards implementing sustainable design?

Firstly, we identified some barriers to behaviour change; these barriers were related to motivation, capability and opportunity to apply sustainable design. Secondly, to investigate how to address the barriers and support individual behaviour change, we integrated concepts on behaviour change, motivation, learning for sustainability and climate communication to form a conceptual system (a theoretical model). In parallel, we undertook a participatory action research project with the consultancy, where we iteratively and collaboratively employed our model to develop ideas for specific actions that the organisation could take. We also tried out some of these actions and observed the outcomes.

We learnt that it is important to not just define what ‘technical’ tasks project teams should ideally perform, but to also scaffold the journey as a series of simpler steps. Shrinking the ‘technical’ tasks into meaningful steps that are within reach helps individuals to feel confident and competent, which in turn leads to increased intrinsic motivation and behaviour change. Progressively achieving small steps aligned with their values reduces the risk of dissonance and denial, and therefore increases the potential for action.

In this article, we present our model and our learnings.

Similar to visual illusions playing tricks on your eyes, cognitive illusions cause you to misjudge reality and therefore potentially make biased decisions. You are especially vulnerable when starting to introduce sustainability into concept development decision-making since this setting offers unfamiliarity, and complexity. Given a shortage of theories regarding which cognitive illusions product developers are susceptible to, we formulated a conceptual model. This model is based on the decision-making tasks that product developers undertake when they are developing concepts and the conditions that they experience when integrating sustainability into this decision-making. From decision-making literature, we identified the following cognitive illusions as occurring when undertaking those tasks under those conditions: availability, anchoring and confirmation bias when generating ideas; illusory correlation and validity effect when selecting between ideas; evaluability bias and status quo bias when gate reviewing. Based on the model, we synthesised literature on how to mitigate for the identified illusions and organised this synthesis according to when (during which task type) a product developer should perform the mitigating actions. These mitigating actions vary according to task type and focus on the quality of the decision-making process.

This study sets out to investigate the role of affectivity in crisis management groups and its connection to effective crisis management. We studied the affective reactions in 23 crisis management groups in a major global corporation that participated in a global training program of crisis management. Our results elucidate a condition of asymmetrical affectivity, where positive expressions are associated with negative outcomes and negative expressions are associated with positive outcomes when groups commit to making sense of a crisis. These patterns were moderated by prior crisis experience at the organizational level as well as managerial behavior at the individual level. To explain this multi-level and dynamic complexity of crisis management effectiveness, we theorize a model of adaptive strategizing building on the strategy-as-practice perspective. The model contributes to the strategic management literature on organizational crisis, and especially the stream that focuses on social-emotional aspects of crisis management, by explaining why some organizations’ crisis management groups strategize more effectively than others.

This study examines management teams' work in making fast strategic decisions under extreme time pressure. Focusing on affective reactions as behavioural responses to business disruptions due to unforeseen events, we elaborate the strategy-as-practice perspective by drawing upon qualitative and quantitative datasets collected from 39 sites in a corporate setting over three consecutive phases during a four-year period. The data show two types of patterns: intensity-focused and type-focused affective reactions in management teams' use of management tools as part of mental shortcuts when making fast decisions. These patterns are contingent on whether the teams functioned in contexts that had previous experience of management of similar unforeseen events. Affective reactions in the use of tool-based mental shortcuts unveil a mechanism of practices that explains middle management teams' strategic actions during business disruption due to unforeseen events. While research predominantly suggests that affect is "bad" for management teams in crisis-related contexts, we find that this view is misleading. Affective reactions not only hinder but also aid crucial information exchanges between middle management teams and corporate levels while making strategic decisions under extreme time pressure. Therefore, we propose a reconceptualized view of managing fast strategic decision making and discuss the implications for theory and practice.

De digitala mediernas popularitet visar att virtuella erbjudanden om kommunikation fyller många människors behov. Ett perspektiv omfattar vardagsanvändning av Internet. Ett annat perspektiv omfattar distanskurser i högre utbildning. Ett tredje perspektiv avser beskrivningar av teknologins påverkan på praktiken. Kommer föreläsningar att försvinna, hur organiserar studenterna grupparbete på nätet, vilken kunskap följer av en given pedagogisk design? Det här numret innehåller komplementära åsikter om spelbaserat lärande och en karaktäristik av några generella villkor för IT-medierade praktiker. Rose-Marie Olsson kartlägger villkoren för reflekterat lärande genom självstyrd visualisering. Jennifer Petersson beskriver spel som motivations- och intresseskapande undervisningsdesign. Martin Svensson utvärderar aktörernas hantering av känslor och beslutsfattande samt anger konsekvenserna för IT-medierad högre utbildning.

This chapter focuses on management of emotions in an emergency setting. More specifically, how do emergency call takers manage double-faced emotional management – i.e., their own and the caller's emotions – simultaneously? By triangulating interviews, observations, and organizational documentation with theories on emotional management multiple strategies were identified. The range of strategies included hiving (selecting and modifying) calls, elaborating on (by deploying attention and reshaping/reappraising) content of calls, auralizing (by externalizing an emotional barrier) as well as taming emotional expression. The set of emotional management strategies are concluded in a Heat-model. The model is further discussed in terms of performance efficiency; in terms of how emotional aspects may interfere with decision-making capabilities as well as how wellbeing can be maintained for call takers.

Emergency call takers listen to callers expressing mundane errands, but also to callers who describe severe accidents, agony and deaths. The emergency setting is further complicated by having to perform triage under time-pressure, but without possibilities of seeing the patient. The setting rests on an imperative of speedy management—there are few or no possibilities to postpone or reconsider decisions. At the same time, the mode of communication (telephone) may cause overflow or insufficient information, resulting in an uncertain and ambiguous decision setting. A focal point for the organization is therefore the individual capability of conducting triage. However, call takers are also helped by organizational routines, which are manifested in decision support systems, in order to navigate this uncertain and ambiguous setting. Taken together, the emergency setting brings a tension to the fore—how does this emotional setting, with features of vivid and interruptive experiences that possibly detour normative decisions, interact with routines that are supposed to provide for both stability and that recurrent decisions can be made under similar conditions? Drawing on the fields of psychology, decision making, organization theory and communication theory the tension is investigated by a series of four studies. The first study is a field study of the emotional landscape of emergency call taking. Emergency call takers rated callers’ emotional expressions in authentic emergency calls, the level of intensity and expressed need for help. The second study is an experiment, using a speech sample from authentic emergency calls in order to find out whether expressed emotion and intensity contribute to perceived need for help. The third study focuses on management strategies of call takers. More specifically, how do emergency call takers manage double-faced emotional management—i.e., their own and the caller’s emotions—simultaneously? The fourth study focuses on how call takers make decisions, more specifically how call takers use intuitive and emotional capabilities to complement or challenge rational aspects of the decision support systems. The studies reveal that certain emotions occur more often than others and that the level of intensity of expression contributes to perceived help need. Call takers have also developed specific emotional management strategies in order to cope with both callers’ and their own emotions. Finally, call takers were found to use rational and formal routines as well as non-formal, intuitive and emotionally based individual routines in order to derive their decisions. These findings are put into organizational context in terms of implications for emergency call taking. Limitations to the development of situation-specific expertise and obstacles for organizational learning are identified. Also, emergency call taking would benefit from drawing on knowledge found outside of the medical domain. However, the most important finding is that interpretation of emotional expressions in callers’ voices can trigger modifications of the triage routine in use.

Empirical regularities regarding start-ups that do not show prolonged longevity have been known for some time. In this chapter, the regularity is argued to originate from an interaction between cognition-laden characteristics of entrepreneurs and contextual conditions. Overconfidence is argued to cause miscalibration of objective probabilities of success, which in turn causes excess entry, but also to negatively affect survival rates. Moreover, overconfidence is argued to be an evolutionary mechanism that helps explain the distribution of entrepreneurs at the local level. It does so by advocating overconfident entrepreneurs to be more likely to beacon personal, but miscalibrated, beliefs to others and thereby set off spillover effects. The bias is therefore argued to be detrimental to actors at an individual level (as it negatively affects survival rates), but favorable at the system level (as it facilitates spillover effects). The concluding discussion of these matters is extended by a discussion of policy issues.

This paper explores and problematizes decision-making in a high-consequence industry which is characterized by the stage-gate process. We showcase that decision-makers do not differentiate between the types of knowledge used for modelling decisions and calculation of risks. This makes them susceptible to incorporating cognitive distortions—biases—into the stage-gate process. We conclude by amending the risk for certain kinds of biases with a knowledge maturity framework in order to outline conditions for pragmatic decision making.

Product development is a phased decision making process that is difficult to manage, for example, due to lack of knowledge in the early phases when design freedom is high. The management becomes even more challenging when adding the new, complex and potentially long range considerations of sustainability to decision making in product development.

More explicitly, the management challenge is manifested in that product developers initially know little about the design problem, which is when they have highest design freedom. Later, when the product developers have acquired more knowledge about the design problem, design freedom has diminished. In sum, this paradox illustrates two challenging situations in which product developers undertake decision-making – low knowledge and high freedom, and higher knowledge and lower freedom. With the addition of time pressure, these challenging decision making situations lead product developers to become susceptible to relying on heuristics, and prone to systematic errors and biases.

In our study, we aim to outline and understand which cognitive shortcomings are involved and create potential problems in development of more sustainable products. We do so by asking the question ‘Which cognitive barriers are most relevant when incorporating sustainability considerations into product development?’ Out of four identified categories of product development decisions - concept development, supply chain design, product design, and production ramp-up and launch – we focus on the first three as they are categories of decisions where product developers may try to incorporate sustainability. To address this question, we used the rich psychology literature on cognitive shortcomings to identify which barriers are particularly relevant in the decision-making context described by the literature on product development and decision-making for sustainability.

We contribute to the practice of people developing decision support for sustainable product development by increasing awareness of cognitive barriers that are particularly relevant in this context. Theoretically, we contribute with increased understanding regarding how different cognitive barriers may be influential under certain phases, and not under others – a matter which underpins a forthcoming discussion on how clusters of cognitive shortcomings may affect outcomes of including sustainability in the product development process.

Emergency call taking is a high-stake situation where errorless decisions must be made under ambiguous, emotionally volatile and time-critical conditions. The primary mean for communication, the telephone, restricts call takers to a single modality—their hearing—making information gathering difficult.  Through an in- situ study, using interviews, observations and archival records, we develop understanding of call takers every day decision practices. Emergency call takers emphasize the role of sociomaterial cues, such as background sounds of the context and emotional cues, referring to the state of the caller, when making sense of emergency calls. More specifically, they engage in matching and mismatching of non-verbal cues, facets that constitute building blocks for decoupled and coupled sensemaking processes. Theoretical and practical implications of such single modal sensemaking are further discussed.

Emergency calls are high-stake situations characterized by volatile and time-critical conditions. The use of the telephone restricts sensory perception to a single modality-hearing-which makes both sensemaking and embodied sensemaking more difficult. Using observations, interviews, and organizational documents, we unveil how attention to the non-verbal cues of callers and their surroundings assists emergency operators to make sense of incoming calls for help. We find that operators use two practices to prioritize the calls: a frame-confirming practice and a frame-modifying practice. The practices are underpinned by configurations of verbal and non-verbal cues, wherein caller's emotional expressions and environmental sounds are both considered as distinct input. The non-verbal focus in this study extends our understanding of first-order sensemaking within the emergency domain but also in other sensory deprived settings in high-consequence industries. The contributions of this analysis to sensemaking research reside in the revelation that non-verbal cues contextualize and consequently frame the discursive elements of sensemaking. More specifically, this research offers the insight that embodies sensemaking benefits from attention being given to callers' non-verbal cues, rather than valuing only one's own bodily experiences and mere verbal descriptions about events. © 2017.

Emergency call taking is a high-stake situation where errorless decisions must be made swiftly—often under ambiguous, emotionally volatile and time-critical conditions. The use of the telephone restricts operators to a single modality—their hearing—hindering multiple sensory perception.  Through an in-situ study, using observations, interviews and archival records, we develop understanding of operators every day decision practices. Emergency operators emphasize the role of sociomaterial cues, such as background sounds and the emotional state of the caller, when making sense of emergency calls. More specifically, they engage in matching and mismatching of non-verbal cues, facets that constitute building blocks for contraction and broadening of the sensemaking frame. Theoretical and practical implications of such single modal sensemaking are further discussed.

This paper serves to deepen the understanding of how inconsistencies between feeling, thinking, and doing are managed by decision-makers in emergency settings. We use a practice approach and investigate the emergency physicians in an Emergency Department (ED), by means of 200 h of observations, 12 in-depth interviews, and organizational documentation. Data are analyzed using an abductive template-based approach. The configuration of three different decision-making modes, namely an experiential-based mode, an ostensive-based mode, and an action-based mode, provide an eight-fold typology of emergency physicians' decision-making praxis. “Weak” signals are the starting point for clinical assessment, and inconsistencies among the modes are strategically used and surprisingly often associated with positive treatment outcomes. The praxis perspective used in this article bridges literature on choice and interpretation—processes usually separated in organizational and decision-making literature. Inconsistency between the modes allow physicians to create an action space where decision-making is about more than providing the “right” answer. Making use of the eight-fold typology helps physicians identify “blind spots”, improve practice in both mundane and medically rare cases, as well as aid in revision of existing routines. This awareness also provides for high-quality care, an increased acceptance of inconsistencies by the public, with a potential to reduce litigation issues. © 2022

In the setting of healthcare in general, and medical Emergency Departments (ED) in specific, decision-making is at the core of almost all activities—ranging from simple medical prescriptions to crucial decisions in life and death situations. Despite the far-reaching rational traditions and objective assumptions characterizing the ED, it has lately been acknowledged that the everyday decision-making involves much more than a simple analytical action-reaction sequences. In order to disambiguate symptoms, doctors need for example to balance on the one side, intuition and emotion-laden (non-reason based) decisions and on the other side, rational (reason based) decisions. For instance, to sensitize clinicians to non-verbal information, such as an odour, may provide an additional information that otherwise could have been overseen. The shifting between different modes (reason and non-reason based) also happens in interaction with others, through means of different channels, and in different locations. Decision-making in the ED therefore become staccato paced rather than distinct and flowing, which also implies that the decision-making skills do not take place in a vacuum, but are rather bound to restrictions of the context in which they take place. How the ED context as such, and the shifting between different modes, influences and shapes the enactment of medical decisions, is however less clear. Based on an in-depth qualitative study conducted at the Stanford Hospital and Clinics’ Emergency Department, the purpose is therefore to describe and analyze how the medical decision-making process unfolds, is staged, and shaped by contextual logics. Theoretically, the paper takes its departure in the psychological decision-making literature. Empirically, the paper is based on more than 200 hours of participant observation, document collection, and semi-structured interviews, which was analyzed using a template-based approach. Through the analysis, two different logics are identified—one ‘backstage logic’ and one ‘front-stage logic’—that both, but in different ways, shape how the decision-making process unfolds and the decisions are staged. The two logics have their underpinnings in dualistic assumptions of traditional decision-making literature, but are context dependent enactments rather than being based on information processing and individual capabilities. Through the logics we explain how Doctors may uphold a professional role, under both institutional and individual decision-making pressures, but also create a sense of public security to meet the widespread expectations of healthcare being a ‘precise science’. By that, we contribute with an enhanced understanding of how reason and non-reason based elements intertwine and serve a purpose for both caregivers and patients. In turn, this helps in bridging the caregivers’ and patients’ sometimes different perspectives by creating realistic assumptions about how medical decisions are made in practice. The study advances our understanding beyond a dualistic and personal emotion versus rationality dichotomy by emphasizing decisions as blends of non-reason and reason-based process by enclosing personal and relational conditions. Such a contextualization is valuable as it increases understanding of that decision-making processes is about more than providing ‘the right’ answer. 

This chapter focuses on whether perceived emotional intensity and help need is possible to discriminate in expressions of fear and neutrality in brief authentic emergency calls. Extraction of acoustic parameters of fear and neutrality was done prior to letting participants listen to a low-pass-filtered stimuli set. Participants discriminated fear and neutrality in both the intensity and help need condition. In turn, judged intensity and judged help need correlated strongly, with partial correlations indicating that participants use acoustically measured intensity (mean dB) as information to infer the intensity/help need relationship. We also discuss the implications of emotional expression in the call centre domain.

This chapter focuses on whether perceived emotional intensity and help need is possible to discriminate in expressions of fear and neutrality in brief authentic emergency calls. Extraction of acoustic parameters of fear and neutrality was done prior to letting participants listen to a low-pass-filtered stimuli set. Participants discriminated fear and neutrality in both the intensity and help need condition. In turn, judged intensity and judged help need correlated strongly, with partial correlations indicating that participants use acoustically measured intensity (mean dB) as information to infer the intensity/help need relationship. We also discuss the implications of emotional expression in the call centre domain.

We studied how emergency operators' interpretation of callers' anger, fear, and sadness influenced emergency assessments in 146 authentic emergency calls. All emergency calls need to be decided on quickly and operators discriminated emotional expressions, by separating fear from other emotions across help need levels. Using path analysis and structural equation modeling, caller's fear, as opposed to expressions of anger and sadness, showed both direct and indirect effects on the intention to provide help. Based on the findings, emergency operators are argued to actively incorporate callers' expressions into emergency decisions, rather than peripherally processing emotional expression. Such findings allow for a discussion on the interpersonal effects of emotional expressions and, more practically, how fast help will be able to arrive to the location of the emergency. © 2018 Ubiquity Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

The paper explores affective, construal and risk aspects of consumer’s judgments and deci-sions at the point of purchasing in e-auctions. Using an eBay example, the paper investigates applicability of psychological theory, revealing a nuanced view of consumer behavior. Obser-vations regarding concert ticket and car sales were utilized in exploring the phenomena. The observations indicated concert tickets to have a sharper raise in prize in comparison to the cars sold, as the auction got close to an ending. Furthermore, the research showed that automatic bidders won most of the auctions. The findings are discussed in terms of a proposed psycho-logical perspective.

Emailing does not preclude emotional exchange and many times it causes us to engage in spiralling exchanges of increasingly angry emailing. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to explore how factors of temporality are related to anger when emailing, to model circumstances that protect against, but also ignite, anger escalation, and to raise a discussion for practitioners of how to avoid damaging email communication. By intersecting literature on communication, information systems, psychology and organisational studies, factors leading to an ‘emotional verge’ are identified and summarised in a model showing factors likely to prime, but also protect against, anger escalation.

This paper seeks to examine individuals’ preference between reward choice and reward specificity under different requirements (number of purchases) for rewards. The main goal is thus to contribute to the understanding of how to design effective incentives. More generally our study also adds to the growing body of studies on situations when individuals prefer less choice over more choice. Methodology: We conducted an empirical field study in a fictive setting whereby students (N=99) rated their preference for three kinds of rewards that differ in terms of specificity and choice; cash, rebate coupon and product in-kind. One-tailed t-tests were performed to test two hypothesis formulated on how number of purchases required for rewards matters for preference of kind of reward. More specifically, we hypothesized that in general customers prefer more choice over less choice but that a certain threshold level in terms of number of purchases required for a reward, specificity becomes more highly valued than choice. Findings: We found reward choice to be preferred over reward specificity irrespective of the size of the spending requirement. In other words, individuals’ rated a preference for cash over rebate coupon over product in-kind as reward irrespective of number of purchases required for rewards. Surprisingly though, we found that the preference for cash over rebate coupon decreased in magnitude while the preference for cash over rebate coupon increased in magnitude as the spending requirement was changed from low to high. Potential explanations to our findings are discussed. Originality: Individuals preference between reward choice and reward specificity is an aspect of incentive design that has received sparse attention in previous studies. In this regard we draw on goal-setting theory, which previously has been used mainly within a principal-agent context.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka studenters tankeprocess och medvetenhet om kreativitet under en åttaveckors period. En tidigare studie (Wendel, 2010) redogjorde för studenternas lärprocess genom brännpunkter och brytpunkter samt identifikation av mönster för studenternas tankesätt. Den nuvarande studien fokuserade på brytpunkten insikt och tankemönstret medvetenhet (Wendel, 2010). Datamaterial bestod av totalt 452 tankeanteckningar ifrån 62 studenter från två kursomgångar. Materialet i form av tankeanteckningarna analyserades dels med en Narrativ Analys (NA) och dels med Latent Semantisk Analys (LSA). Resultaten för NA visade en förändring av medvetenhet om kreativitet. En kreativ utveckling, en förändrad tankeprocess och medvetenhet om kreativitet återspeglades i de ord som studenterna använde i sina tankeanteckningar. LSA visade på skillnader i studenternas utsagor i början (vecka<4) av kursen jämfört mot slutet (vecka>4) av kursen. Detta är synonymt med fynden i NA, att studenterna successivt blir medvetna och diskuterar sin kreativitet. Studenternas tematiseringar visade tre olika kluster där orden indikerade på internalisering, sentiment och förhandling. En sådan förändring av medvetenhet om kreativitet är också indikativ på att en ny förståelse skapats och tyder på att det aktuella kursmomentet inom högre utbildning stödjer studentens lärande om sitt eget kreativa tänkande och agerande. Keywords: tankeprocess, medvetenhet, kreativitet, kreativ utveckling, lärande, semantisk analys.