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This thesis investigates an Intranet based leadership strategy. The aims are to follow, describe and analyse an Intranet based leadership strategy through a broad, dynamic and cultural perspective, and to carry out an ethnography-based research process and thereby explore the potential uses of ethnography within human-computer interaction (HCI). The empirical material is gathered from three qualitative investigations in the municipality of Stockholm. The material is interpreted and analysed through the concepts of culture, lifeworld, sensemaking, sense unmaking and trust. Some aspects of leadership are studied as well. The theoretical toolbox is framed by phenomenology and a hermeneutic writing process paired with methods of semi-structured interviews, participative observations, open unstructured questionnaires and the snapshot method. Cultural analysis of empirical results from an ethnographic fieldwork has shown that the time spent in the field can be shortened when ethnography is utilised within HCI. Furthermore, other contributions from ethnography to technology development are the possibility to point out explicit versus implicit symbolic communications and cultural pitfalls for technology developers as well as to support the transformations of cultural values and the content of steering documents into technology development. Ethnographers within HCI can promote designing for trust by exploring how intended users think about this issue. Some recommendations for organisations that aim to use the Intranet as a leadership strategy are also presented as an additional outcome of the results in the study. It is argued that it is of importance to discuss usability versus diversity; that developers of the Intranet tools investigate influential circumstances at local workplaces and that they study the impact of work routines on cultural identification in order to avoid ‘we’ and ‘they’ thinking within the organisation. Moreover, it is important to put a wider effort into the discussion of what happens when the content of a steering document meets practice. It is also questioned whether a vision is the right way to go forward, and it is suggested that it should be clarified what quality development actually means. 

This paper presents ideas that evolved during a project development course for teachers at Uppsala University. The aim of the study was to investigate eventual interest among teachers at the IT department to include ethnography in their teaching. Throughout the study a creative discussion took off. Due to these discussions the purpose of the initial study shifted and resulted in a concrete suggestion of a teaching method that uses ethnographical elements as tools to increase student activity and achievements of goals in HCI education. The method has potential to increase students’ and teachers’ awareness and knowledge of each student as a cultural being, through directed discussions that are linked to both course goals and cultural features. Thereby they can get insights of where the student as an individual is best suited within HCI as a diverse field. However; there are also pitfalls that need to be identified and discussed.

This paper examines organisational ergonomics as an area that can be improved by use of cultural analysis. The empirical ground is the study of an Intranet based leadership strategy which is utilised in Stockholm municipality with the purpose to implement a steering document in a similar way to all employees. Three different perspectives of organisational ergonomics are explored and analysed through the lens of deep cultural analysis. The aim of the paper is to show how culture can be used as a tool to interpret organisational ergonomics.

In this paper aspects of the term cross-cultural are discussed. It is common that this concept is used in a non-reflexive way in technological and cultural focused literature. Somehow it seems to be taken for granted that interactions are cross-cultural if they are committed between people from different countries or from different parts of the world. I argue that the same interactions can be both cross-cultural and in-cultural depending on which theoretical standpoint the researcher chose to enact in the analysis. Based in my research I analyze some interviews, in order to explore if they should be regarded as cross-cultural or in-cultural. The aim is to inspire discussions among researchers in technology areas about what the term cross-cultural really means.    

Denna rapport är skriven i en populärvetenskaplig form. Syftet med den är att återkoppla forskningsresultat på ett lättillgängligt sätt till berörda personer i forskningsfältet. Forskningsprocessen har följt vetenskapliga krav och vetenskaplig etik.

This thesis presents results from an investigation of a virtual leadership strategy, which is utilised in the city of Stockholm. The Intranet is used as a strategic tool to implement a steering document in a similar way among all employees in the organisation. In this frame, features like sensemakings of the distributed information, influences of experienced lifeworlds, circumstances at local workplaces, cultural aspects and technological issues are explored.

The investigation is fully qualitative. Interviews have been processed, recorded and transcribed. A survey with open and unstructured questions has broadened empirical results.

The aim is to explore opinions towards and driving forces behind taking part of an Intranet based leader strategy and to investigate what circumstances at local workplaces affect the potential success of such a leader strategy.

A new interpretation of Geert Hofstede’s work is suggested in future works. This is framed in a cultural model.