Bertil Rolandsson

A Historical Account of the Value of Free and Open Source Software: From Software Commune to Commercial Commons

Free and open source software has transformed from what has been characterized as a resistance movement against proprietary software to become a commercially viable form of software development, integrated in various forms with proprietary software business. In this paper we explain this development as a dependence on historical formations, shaped by different ways of justifying the use of open source during different periods of time. These formations are described as arrangements of different justificatory logics within a certain time frame or a certain group of actors motivating the use of free and open source software by referring to different potentialities. The justificatory arrangements change over time, and tracing these changes makes it easier to understand how the cultural, economic and social practices of open source movements are currently being absorbed and adopted in a commercial context.

Partnerships with the police – logics and strategies of justification

Purpose – Political reforms call for new types of public-private or community partnerships, in which public services are shaped in collaboration with networks of public, business or non-governmental organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how municipal partners justify and thereby maintain partnerships with the police. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical material comprises documents and 26 semi-structured interviews with civil servants, politicians, and police staff. This qualitative study investigates three Swedish municipalities engaged in partnerships with the same police authority. Findings – Based on Boltanski and Thevenot’s order of worth, the paper describes how municipal partners manage two partly contradictory arrangements; one constituted by industrial and civic logics, and one constituted by domestic and industrial logics. Guided by these two different arrangements, they justify and thereby maintain their partnership with the police by alternating between a compromisi...

Justifying Coproduced Policeability: Restrained Creativity and New Modalities of (Dis)Agreements in the Swedish Police

ABSTRACT This article investigates the justification of coproduced policeability using the “order-of-worth” framework suggested by Boltanski and Thevénot. Building on previous research describing how tensions limit the legitimacy of public services, the analysis illustrates how persistent tensions shape the justification of coproduced policing. Drawing on both fostering and responsive modalities, reluctant adaptability allows police to cope with tense value logics and justify new coproduced solutions as legitimate means of maintaining policing practices. The analysis is based on documents and semi-structured interviews. Results imply that coproduction can result in persistent tensions that public authorities have to handle.

Preventing Cooperative Knowledge Production From Falling Apart: A Matter of Trust in Academia

The purpose of this article is to analyze why work life representatives are engaging themselves in joint knowledge production with academia. We intend to deepen our understanding of how the practitioners’ trust in academia is constituted, that is what trust-building practices conditions their trust. The article is based on interviews with practitioners who are cooperating with a Swedish research center. The result indicates that practitioners’ trust in cooperation is based on a combination of different trust-building practices, among which the academy as a dependable supplier of objective and authoritative knowledge production is still important. At the same time, practitioners’ trust is also dependent on the existence of shared and integrated knowledge production relevant to their professions. The main conclusion of the study is that academia has to manage a set of different conditions demanding that different trust-building practices be combined and managed for trust to be maintained.

Voicing the Puppet: Accommodating Unresolved Institutional Tensions in Digital Open Practices

This paper examines managerial control and the tensions caused by digital open practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews with managers of a prominent Swedish newspaper corporation, we apply the theoretical lens of institutional logics to analyse the institutional tensions stemming from pressure to integrate user-generated content, and the strategies for managing multiple logics that emerge as a result. Specifically, by linking managerial control to the logics of ‘profession’, the ‘market’ and the ‘corporation’, we use the concept of ventriloquism to show how managers recreate professional legitimacy when handling digital open practices by letting the corporate logic mimic the values of the profession. The study at hand contributes to the understanding of how digital open practices leverage managerial and corporate control, and the consequences thereof, and how the newspaper industry still has not fully managed to reconcile with user-generated content. Prior research is inconclusive as to whether digital open practices increase or decrease managerial control. This study concludes that framing the market logic in digital media exerts pressure on managers to find a defensive compromise to cope with unresolved tensions between the corporate and professional logics.