Peter Vogelius

Bio: Peter Vogelius is an academic researcher from Aalborg University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Quality assurance & Sustainable refurbishment. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 28 publications receiving 212 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Vogelius include Technical University of Denmark.

Employees in the dual role of employee and end-user - a new source of innovation for companies?

Abstract: This study describes a process in which a company involves an employee as the enduser in the innovation activities of the company. While it has been recognised that endusers sometimes innovate and that user/producer relations are important for product development, little is known about employees in the dual role of end-user and employee. This paper argues that companies can benefit from using employees as end-users in their innovation activities. This research is based on a qualitative case study of a major manufacturer of building materials. The study draws on user-driven innovation theories and innovation theories in general. This case indicates that it has been an advantage to involve the employee as a user in the innovation activities of the company as this gives the company access first of all to a new context – the user’s context – which is detached from the traditional bindings of the company, and secondly to new knowledge that is based on the user’s generation of knowledge and lessons learnt in the use situation. The investigation shows that employees as end-users can contribute to companies’ innovation activities concerning the product, the organisation and the marketing. However, in order to benefit from this new type of collaboration, the company may consider how this process influences the practices of both the company and the employees, and attention must be paid to the dilemmas resulting from the process.

What is Value-Adding? Contradictions in the Practice of BPR in a Danish Social Service Administration

Abstract: This article explores the implementation of BPR in the Social Service Administration in a Danish municipality. The technical rationality inherited in BPR marginalises broader conceptions of work-rationality represented by the social workers. This results in a 'clash' between rationalities in the Family Group, causing increased strain and lower job satisfaction.

Cooperation in Construction:: The role of values

Abstract: The study presents a building project executed by a major Danish construction company, where cooperation and its staging were essential for achieving high productivity and competitiveness. The form of this cooperation is the main theme for the article. The contractor actively changed the communication and sociological values of the actors involved and saw it as essential for their way of cooperating. The cooperation included and combined elements of traditional industrial building production, with concepts and initiatives that had to be understood by means of sociological analysis. Tentatively the companies in the case can be understood as possessing a social capital which is enforced and united by initiatives of the main contractor. The social capital was built up and maintained through the actual constitution of cooperation already in the initial phase of bidding before the building process. The management logic of the main contractor is interpreted as based on a sociology-inspired understanding focusing on norms and social values rather than on contractual (law) and functional (engineering) logic, which had hitherto been prevalent in Danish construction management.

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract: The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Science in action

Abstract: Ecological Engineering: Journal of Ecotechnology. Editor-in-chief William J. Mitsch. Elsevier. 4/yr. DFL 361, $195.