A-2008-2 Carl-Erik Wikström, An investigation into factors for successful customer relationship
management implementation: Change, information technology and the human being. May 2008.
Abstract.
This dissertation explores qualitatively issues of CRM success from three perspectives: organizational
change, the implementation of the information technology (IT) artefact and from the perspective of the
role and qualities of the human being as a CRM success factor. In this study multiple approaches in exploring
CRM success have been applied: first a case study into the phenomenon of change in a CRM implementation was
conducted, secondly design science approach in investigating the piloting of CRM was applied, and thirdly
the dissertation is concluded by a conceptual analytical study into the human-centredness of CRM.
Based on this dissertation it has been empirically shown that for successful CRM implementation it is
important for the company to first establish a clear customer relationship strategy. First then should
the company engage in the organizational transformations, which are in many cases needed in order to
align business processes and people with the customer-focused strategy. In this study evidence is given
to the fact that even though transformational issues may affect CRM success, change should be investigated
from a broader perspective than focusing on intentional change events only: emergent and unintentional
change should be included as important factors in future CRM success research, too. Moreover, it is shown
in this study that the piloting of CRM does not necessarily support successful CRM implementation. On the
contrary piloting may even raise the risk for failure.
Traditionally human beings are seen in a very fragmented manner in CRM, and most often only one type of
human qualities like e.g., cognitive or emotional features are taken into account. In this study evidence
is given that in most CRM approaches the prevailing conception of humans is monistic. The human being is
seen as consisting of only one basic mode of being in that humans are conceptualized as objects with no
mental and social qualities. The prevailing image of the human being in CRM is often a managerial one
and it is suggested that CRM would better succeed if a more holistic approach to the human beings would
be acknowledged. In order to understand the active human being as a whole, one needs to pay attention to
both the interacting basic human modes of being and their tacit and explicit features in human knowledge
management. In this dissertation the nature and qualities of humans in CRM theorization has been brought
a fore, and thus new explications of the construct has been offered to serve as means for further research
and also development of CRM applications.
Keywords: organizational change, CRM success, piloting, IS implementation, qualitative
research, conception of the human being, human-centredness.
Ph.D. Thesis.
A-2008-2 has appeared electronically as
Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis, vol. 741.
A-2008-3 Toni Vanhala and Jenni Anttonen (Eds.), Proceedings of EHTI'08:
The First Finnish Symposium on Emotions and Human-Technology Interaction. May 2008.
A-2008-3 has appeared electronically as
D-2008-3.
A-2008-4 Antti Järvelin, Applying Machine Learning Methods to Aphasic Data. June 2008.
Abstract.
This thesis aimed to study the inner dynamics of both normal and disordered word
production using machine learning methods. A set of experiments where machine
learning methods were applied to naming data was performed. The data was
produced by aphasic and non-aphasic speakers in various aphasia tests. In this
thesis two different approaches on applying these methods on aphasic data have
been taken. In the first part, the efforts are concentrated on developing a
computational model for simulating the actual cognitive naming process, i.e.,
lexicalization. Modeling lexicalization has both theoretical and practical
benefits, as the models might provide new insight to the process of
lexicalization and serve as a guide for treating aphasia. The latter part of
this thesis explores the possibilities of applying machine learning classifiers
to classify aphasic and non-aphasic speakers into groups based on their aphasia
test results. This way, relationships between clinical aphasia syndromes could
be identified from the classification results. Inconsistencies in the currently
used aphasia classification system could also be revealed. On the other hand,
these classifiers could be used as a basis for a decision support system to be
utilized by clinicians diagnosing aphasic patients. Based on the results, it can
be concluded that, when correctly applied, machine learning methods provide new
insight to the spoken word production of aphasic and non-aphasic speakers.
However, both application areas would greatly benefit from larger aphasia data
sets available. This would enable more reliable evaluation of the models of
lexicalization and classifiers developed for the data.
Keywords: machine learning, neural networks, classification, multi-layer perceptrons,
aphasia.
Ph.D. Thesis.
A-2008-4 has appeared electronically as
Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis,
vol. 738.
A-2008-5 Minna-Kristiina Paakki, Consumer Trust in E-Commerce.
A Feminist Ethnographic Study. June 2008.
Abstract.
E-Commerce has become an important part of everyday life for consumers during the
21st century. The variety of services in e-commerce has widened in recent years and
since the early years consumers have adopted those services as part of their everyday
lives. Consumer trust in e-commerce is an individual, local and social matter
combined with the technological side of e-commerce. The consumer’s own personal
views and expectations have an influence on trust. These influences and aspects vary
from consumer to consumer, but they can be recognized from their talk and the
elements of their everyday lives: the social aspect, the communal aspect, the
infrastructure aspect and the personal aspect.
Consumer trust in e-commerce is a topic that needs in-depth interviews and analysis,
and ethnography allows that kind of work. To formulate trust is a process and feminist
ethnography also about process: it is about understanding process, over time and
space. Feminist ethnography is also about underlining the power that the consumer
has in her/his life in terms of e-commerce and other aspect of their everyday lives.
The shaping of feminist ethnography in information system studies is a novel entry
point to research e-commerce and trust.
The consumer viewpoint in the framework of consumer related trust issues consists of
society, community, consumer, e-vendor, e-services, e-product and communication
channels. This framework takes into account the consumer’s viewpoint and the social
influence of the consumer’s community into e-commerce services adoption and use.
The consumer’s interpretations of trust and e-commerce are in the focal point of this
research.
New ways of using e-commerce can and have been found and sometimes old habits
follow into the world of e-commerce. Trust in e-commerce is a personal matter that
includes many aspects of the consumer’s life: the personal and interpersonal, the
public and private. Surrounding communities are present in consumers’ everyday
lives and also in their use of e-commerce. Consumers make the decision (based on a
feeling or rational thinking) to trust (or not to trust) in e-commerce in general or in eservices,
e-products or e-vendors. Consumers are willing to take the risk to be
vulnerable in their e-commerce consumption.
Keywords: trust, e-commerce, feminist ethnography, information systems,
consumer.
Ph.D. Thesis.
A-2008-5 has appeared electronically as
Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis, vol. 740.
A-2008-6 Timo Niemi, Turkka Näppilä and Kalervo Järvelin,
Harmonization of XML-based Data Sources. June 2008.
Abstract.
Numerous approaches for integrating data from heterogeneous data sources exist.
It is commonly assumed that the data sources remain quite stable and all sources to
be integrated are known in advance. Hence an integration system can be built to
integrate such heterogeneous sources. However, in practice, there is often a need
to serve ad hoc data requirements concerning unexpected autonomous data sources
containing volatile data. A different approach is therefore needed. We propose
that when extracting data from XMLbased data sources data are harmonized.
We introduce aconstructor algebra, which is a powerful tool for harmonizing XML data.
This algebra forms for any XML document a unique relational representation, called
the XML relation representation. We demonstrate that the XML relation representation
supports the grouping and aggregation of data at different levels of granularity
which is essential, for example, in OLAP applications.
Keywords: XML, data heterogeneity, dataharmonization.
A-2008-7 Tuomas Talvensaari, Comparable Corpora in Cross-Language Information Retrieval.
September 2008.
Abstract. Cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) enables users to express queries
in a language different from the language of the documents to be retrieved. For example, a
Finnish-speaking person could pose a query to a CLIR system in Finnish (the source language)
to retrieve documents written in English (the target language). The language barrier is usually
crossed by translating the query into the target language, after which the documents can be
retrieved with the methods of monolingual information retrieval (IR).
Aligned text collections (corpora) are common query translation resources in CLIR. A parallel corpus
is a collection where texts in one language are aligned with their translations in another language.
The aligned texts of a comparable corpus are more loosely related. They are not translations, but
share topics and include common vocabulary in the two languages. Both kinds of corpora can be used
to train statistical translation models, but parallel corpora are preferred because more dependable
translation knowledge can be derived from them. However, parallel corpora do not exist for all
language pairs and domains. Hence, it is sometimes necessary to resort to noisier comparable corpora.
This thesis proposes new methods for the acquisition, alignment, and employment of comparable corpora.
The acquisition method is based on language-aware focused web crawling, where web content written in
specific languages and discussing specific topics of interest is obtained by employing the hyperlink
structure of the web. In the alignment phase, the source language documents are used as CLIR queries
to retrieve target language documents. The similarity of the query to the documents, and various other
factors, are used as evidence to form alignments between the source and target language documents.
The constructed corpora were employed in query translation as a cross-language similarity thesaurus, a
structure where target language words are ranked based on their similarity with a source language word
that is given as input. The highest ranking words are assumed to be either translations of the input word
or related to it in some other manner.
The methods were evaluated with extensive IR experiments that covered different language pairs, domains,
and test data. The proposed CLIR approach was combined with approaches based on bilingual dictionaries.
The combined approaches outperformed pure dictionary-based translation. In addition, the comparable corpus
translation performed better in domain-specific CLIR than translation utilizing high-quality parallel
corpora. This suggests that the proposed methods are particularly useful in domains where CLIR resources
are scarce.
Ph.D. Thesis.
A-2008-7 has appeared electronically as
Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis, vol. 779.
A-2008-8 Erkki Koponen, The development, implementation and use of e-learning: critical realism and
design science perspectives. December 2008.
Abstract.
Utilisation of ICT (information and communication technology) in learning
increases in societies. However, the research of the ICT utilisation in learning
has mainly focused on the course level pedagogy or technology leaving larger
multidisciplinary organisational views into shadow. This study extends the
individual level monodisciplinary view of the research to group, organisation
and society levels in which the pedagogy, social relations, overall management
and ICT holistically are considered from a multidisciplinary perspective of
Information Systems, Organisation Science and Education. However, Information
Systems is emphasised.
The research problem of the study of the utilisation of ICT in learning
concentrates, firstly, on the description and analysis of constructs. Secondly,
the study concentrates on evaluating the methodological approaches including
critical realism and design science. Theoretical triangulation is adopted as the
methodology of this conceptual-analytic study. Thirdly, we formulate a holistic
research framework including the pedagogy, community and social relations,
organisation and overall management, as well as ICT, on the course, institute
and society levels. Fourthly, we evaluate and analyse the learning models and
their extensions in the ICT utilisation context. Fifthly, we evaluate and
outline dispositions and activities in the development, implementation and use
processes of the utilisation of ICT in learning. Finally, we describe and
evaluate the practical examples and an international e-learning development
project in which the researcher was involved. The aim of the international
project was to produce recommendations for the development, implementation and
use of higher education ICT utilisation in learning on the individual,
organisation and society levels. In this study the utilisation of ICT in
learning is called as e-learning.
Firstly, the outcomes of the study show that the appropriate methodological
background as theoretical triangulation can be based on critical realism in
evaluating the e-learning development, implementation and the use processes, and
design research in outlining the e-learning development, implementation and use
dispositions on the individual, organisational and interorganisational levels.
These two different theoretical approaches can be juxtaposed in the same
study.
Secondly, the outcomes of the study show that a more extensive than
individual level research framework and design area is required in the research
of the e-learning development, implementation and use processes. An individual
student and teacher level framework from pedagogic perspective should be
extended to cover the organisation and society levels from the pedagogy,
community and social relations, organising and overall management as well as
from the ICT perspectives.
Thirdly, the outcomes of the study show that the e-learning enables to
extend learning as a holistic phenomenon which includes formal, informal,
intuitive and unexpected learning. The holistic view of the learner as a
physical, cognitive, emotional, social and cultural being needs holistic and
flexible learning models to support all of these human characteristics
intertwined. ICT may enable or constrain a holistic view of learning depending
on the dispositions of e-learning. The e-learning situation can be organised
more flexible than the conventional classroom based learning situation. From the
learning theoretical perspective constructivism, experiential and social
learning well support the e-learning in which the learner can extend conscious
and unconscious experiences, experimentations and intrinsic motivation on
individual and group levels.
Fourthly, the outlined flexible e-learning infrastructure shows that the
e-learning development, implementation and use processes can be seen as resource
based on work design problems in which human, ICT and informational resources
are subject to be organised to enhance learning. In addition to the material and
social possibilities in the e-learning system, also the constraints emerge. We
found technical, informational, moulding, mediating, and cultural possibilities.
However, the e-learning system may include at least technical, proscribing,
enforcing, functional, and cultural constraints. In the work design of the
e-learning complex network problems, the hierarchical decomposition problems and
modularity problems may emerge. In the e-learning development, implementation
and use processes the attainment of common understanding among the interested
parties may become a challenge. Our solution proposal for this challenge is the
e-learning community of knowing and finally the e-learning community of inquiry
in which the learners, teachers, ICT and administrative staff work together by
applying an action research method in order to attain a joint understanding on
the group, institute and interinstitute levels. All the possibilities and
constraints which emerge in the e-learning system can be collected under the
notion of goal function which demonstrates the "goodness" of the e-learning
system.
Finally, according to the evaluation of the e-learning practices, practical
examples and the international e-learning project numerous recommendations for
further research and practice are presented.
Keywords: e-learning, critical realism, design science, pedagogy, ICT, organisation,
society.
Ph.D. Thesis.
A-2008-8 has appeared electronically as
Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis, vol. 805.