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Contemporary societal issues often call for the inclusion of many perspectives and competences hence there is a demand for increased academia-society collaboration in order to generate learning, new knowledge, and dissemination of research findings. Academia needs to apply collaboration for learning within a broad spectrum of contexts. Interaction with society and practice are of crucial importance for universities today. University West in Sweden has a profile area in work-integrated learning (WIL) to address issues on integrating theory and practice in all levels of higher education. An under-researched field of academia-society collaboration is here explored revealing the perspectives of industrial PhD- students. The aim of this study is hence to apply a WIL approach to explore the perspectives of Industrial PhD-students on collaborative learning acting in the intersection of academia and work-life. Industrial PhD-students are fully employed by industry during their PhD education. Accordingly, the industrial PhD students are at the same time involved in both academia and industry, with the same academic demands as traditionally enrolled academic PhD students combined with demands and expectations from their industrial employers. Qualitative methods were applied. All industrial PhD-students across disciplines at University West (in total 21) were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. Findings expose insights that industrial PhD-students are acting as key stakeholders in academia and society embodying the collaboration for learning between practice and university. However, this kind of collaboration for learning covers both benefits and challenges to be aware of as prerequisites for work-integrated learning in academia as well as in industry. Some implications to point out are that the industrial PhD-students are spanning boundaries between academia and industry bringing forth access to networks, and empirical data. Furthermore, the results implicate that industrial PhD-students have continuous opportunities for validation and testing of empirical results and models in industry. To conclude this study also contributes to broaden the WIL concept to also include the category of industrial PhD education. Further studies will also include the perspectives on the industry of this kind of collaboration.

Universiteten i Sverige och övriga världen måste ständigt se över former för förbättrat utbyte med det omgivande samhället. Strategier för samverkan behöver kunna följas upp, mätas och förbättras. På Högskolan Väst (HV) har vi vårt profilområde inom arbetsintegrerat lärande (AIL), som generellt syftar till att integrera såväl teori som praktik i både utbildning, forskning och samverkan - på ett systematiskt och hållbart sätt. I denna rapport kartläggs samverkanseffekter i forskarutbildningen i informatik med inriktning mot arbetsintegrerat lärande. Syftet med rapporten är att utvärdera forskarutbildningen och forskningsmiljön från ett AIL-perspektiv. Vi har utgått från en informativ vetenskapsmodell (Informing Flows Framework) för att genomföra en nulägesanalys där vi identifierar och visualiserar samarbetstyper inom och mellan forskar-utbildningen/forskningsmiljön och Högskolan Västs nyckelaktörer: praktiken, forskarsamhället och doktorander. Konkreta implikationer visar hur samverkan och informationsflöden är kopplade och hur de kan förbättras. Allmänna reflektioner ges på modellen som ett användbart sätt för kvalitetsutveckling som går bortom de traditionella lärandemålen. Vi ser klara utvecklingsvägar för att kunna inkludera fler och djupare aspekter av samarbete och interaktion, som kan ge förbättrat utbyte och tydligare mått och strategier för vad och hur vi ska betrakta ”societal impact” för forskarutbildningen. Universities need to constantly accommodate new forms of collaboration with society. Interaction with and impacts on society and practice are of crucial importance. University West (UW) in Sweden has a profile area in work-integrated learning (WIL), which generally aims to address issues on integrating theory and practice in a coherent and sustainable way. In this paper we base our arguments on a research education (third-cycle) in informatics with specialization in work-integrated learning. The aim with the paper is to evaluate UW’s research education and research environment from a WIL perspective. We will adopt an informing science model in order to conduct a current state analysis, in which we identify and visualize collaboration activities within and between the research education/environment and the UWs key stakeholders; society/practices, research community and PhD students. Concrete implications show how collaboration and informing flows are connected and how they can be improved. General reflections are given on the model as a useful means for quality development and assurance beyond learning outcomes, including aspects of collaboration and interaction that can be regarded as paths of societal and practical impacts.

Universiteten i Sverige och övriga världen måste ständigt se över former för förbättrat utbyte med det omgivande samhället. Strategier för samverkan behöver kunna följas upp, mätas och förbättras. På Högskolan Väst (HV) har vi vårt profilområde inom arbetsintegrerat lärande (AIL), som generellt syftar till att integrera såväl teori som praktik i både utbildning, forskning och samverkan - på ett systematiskt och hållbart sätt. I denna rapport kartläggs samverkanseffekter i forskarutbildningen i informatik med inriktning mot arbetsintegrerat lärande. Syftet med rapporten är att utvärdera forskarutbildningen och forskningsmiljön från ett AIL-perspektiv. Vi har utgått från en informativ vetenskapsmodell (Informing Flows Framework) för att genomföra en nulägesanalys där vi identifierar och visualiserar samarbetstyper inom och mellan forskar-utbildningen/forskningsmiljön och Högskolan Västs nyckelaktörer: praktiken, forskarsamhället och doktorander. Konkreta implikationer visar hur samverkan och informationsflöden är kopplade och hur de kan förbättras. Allmänna reflektioner ges på modellen som ett användbart sätt för kvalitetsutveckling som går bortom de traditionella lärandemålen. Vi ser klara utvecklingsvägar för att kunna inkludera fler och djupare aspekter av samarbete och interaktion, som kan ge förbättrat utbyte och tydligare mått och strategier för vad och hur vi ska betrakta ”societal impact” för forskarutbildningen. Universities need to constantly accommodate new forms of collaboration with society. Interaction with and impacts on society and practice are of crucial importance. University West (UW) in Sweden has a profile area in work-integrated learning (WIL), which generally aims to address issues on integrating theory and practice in a coherent and sustainable way. In this paper we base our arguments on a research education (third-cycle) in informatics with specialization in work-integrated learning. The aim with the paper is to evaluate UW’s research education and research environment from a WIL perspective. We will adopt an informing science model in order to conduct a current state analysis, in which we identify and visualize collaboration activities within and between the research education/environment and the UWs key stakeholders; society/practices, research community and PhD students. Concrete implications show how collaboration and informing flows are connected and how they can be improved. General reflections are given on the model as a useful means for quality development and assurance beyond learning outcomes, including aspects of collaboration and interaction that can be regarded as paths of societal and practical impacts.

This paper examines the relation between municipalities' social media performance and citizen satisfaction withthe municipality. An observational study was conducted, based on four different Swedish national public data sources. Thestudy shows that municipalities' Facebook performance is correlated to citizens' satisfaction with living in the municipalityand with satisfaction with municipal service provision. There was however no significant relationship between Facebookperformance and satisfaction with transparency and influence from a citizen perspective. In conclusion, one importantimplication of the study is that citizen perception regarding whether a municipality is a good place to live in or not is related to the use of social media for promoting the municipality. Furthermore, a relation between satisfaction and citizenperception of government service performance implies that social media could be valuable for interaction and co-creation.Finally, an implication is that usage of social media and the potential relationship to trust, influence and transparency mustbe further elaborated and studied. Overall, our recommendation is that municipalities and their citizens may benefit fromwell thought-out strategies of how to use social media for marketing, interaction and co-creating. CC BY-ND 4.0

With an increased use of external online platforms, digital government logics are gradually intertwined with external, algorithmic, crowd-influenced value logics of social media platforms. This new ...

The concept of digital divides has been on the agenda in research and policy making for at least the last 20 years. But it is still, a challenge to grasp this concept that is so elusive and transforming. Inclusion, access and equality are still key values for democraticgovernance and must be addressed in particular whenforming and contributing to a digital government. This paper seeks to intervene in current debates on digital divides and digital inclusion by analyzing two cases of responses among street-level public administration in relation to e-government services in Sweden. The case studies are strategically chosen and conducted in national agencies and in local public libraries. Three lines of contributions are discussed, firstly theimportance to care for equality secondly the need to see the non-users, and thirdly to discuss the potential of putting focus on digital diversity.

In this chapter we use firm-level data from the Greek manufacturing sector to identify how three features of economic geography – spatial heterogeneity, spatial proximity and spatial concentration – influence the size and sign of intra- and inter-industry FDI spillovers. We find that FDI spillovers predominantly materialise at the sub-national level, with horizontal spillovers being more prominent at the regional level and vertical spillovers being highly localised. Furthermore, we find important synergies between spillovers from FDI and industry- and region-specific agglomeration. Also, our findings show that FDI spillovers are conditional on regional characteristics related to a region’s manufacturing base, FDI concentration, urban agglomeration and aggregate productivity. These results highlight the important role played by geography for the materialisation of FDI productivity spillovers and suggest that these key geographical features ought to be taken into account both in the study of FDI spillovers and in the design of FDI-promotion and regional development policies.

The aim was to investigate whether there is a relationship between degree of e-government in Swedish municipalities and perceived satisfaction among citizens generally. This is a large-scale quantitative study based on validand reliable Swedish national surveys. Based on these surveys, a new comprehensive index for measuring "degree of digitalization" was constructed. Citizen satisfaction was measured using established indices covering three dimensions:satisfaction with living in the municipality, satisfaction with performance of government activities (delivered services), and satisfaction with transparency and influence. The results show that there is a relationship between the degree of digitalization in a municipality and the perceived satisfaction among its citizens. The degree of digitalization is related to all three dimensions of citizen satisfaction. Additionally, this study indicates that the strength of this relationship is in parity with or even stronger than the relationship between citizen satisfaction and other crucial factors such as educational level and median income. CC BY-ND 4.0

Marifus

Entrepreneurship and innovation are central targets in business development initiatives and regional development, nationally as well as on the international and European arena. The project presented in this chapter addresses two aspects. The first is the potential conflict of targets embedded in the aim to improve the economic performance and competitiveness of countries and the need to prevent an increase in regional diversity with regard to growth and wealth. The second is linked to multilevel governance, involving actors from the European level to the local/regional level with competing competencies and resources. First, the current structure and the availability of programs and instruments to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurial behavior are presented. The next section outlines the theoretical framework based on the concepts of New Economic Growth Theory. The fourth section provides an overview of national and regional figures for innovation and entrepreneurship based on data from the Regional Innovation Scoreboard and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The section also addresses the potentials of regional growth initiatives based on entrepreneurship and innovation stimulating measures from an empirical and conceptual point of view. The final section summarizes the main findings and addresses how the identified potential conflicts of targets and interests can be avoided, or solved in the process of implementation.

Operalization of Social Capital in Small Communities – the Impact of Social Media, by Elisabeth Lauridsen Lolle, analyzes regional development in peripheral areas. The contribution includes the examining of the social capital and particularly the influence of social media on the social capital in 14 Danish villages. Lauridsen Lolle (2013) argues in this in depth research that when examining the social capital of communities, the most valuable parameter is to look at associations and in particular the character of these associations as these are the most typical proxy for networks. The study also shows that we might have to extend the notion of network to include that of social media as this type of network gets increasingly more important.

This research report contributes to a Nordic perspective on co-operation for sustainable destination- and regional development based on studies conducted within a Swedish-Danish Interreg project 2012-2014 (MARIFUS). An introduction chapter with major themes initiates this report followed by five chapters1 written by researchers from Aalborg University, Denmark (Incevida) and University West, Sweden (School of Business, Economics and IT). The purpose of this report is to give deeper nsights in Nordic destination and regional development by empirical case studies. These studies have been presented and discussed at seminars during international scientific conferences within regional science (the 16th Uddevalla Symposium 2013 in Kansas City, USA and the 17th Uddevalla Symposium 2014 in Uddevalla, Sweden) organized by University West. The contributions are nterdisciplinary in that sense that they are written by scholars from different scientific disciplines such as business administration, informatics, planning and culture studies. However, all scholars have a destination and/or regional perspective as a point of departure in the case studies conducted. The three-year project offered great opportunities to cross-border learning and applied research in close co-operation (Work integrated learning) with project partners and students.The studies are partly supported by the project MARIFUS “Maritime Inlands – past, present and future strengths” financed by the European Union Regional Development Fund (Interreg IV A). The editors express sincere gratitude to all authors and all partners of the MARIFUS project. Denna forskningsrapport bidrar med ett nordiskt perspektiv på samverkan för hållbar destinations och regionalutveckling baserad på studier inom ett svenskt-danskt Interregprojekt 2012-2014 (MARIFUS). Rapporten inleds med ett introduktionskapitel med huvudteman, följt av fem kapitelskrivna av forskare från Ålborgs Universitet, Danmark (Incevida) och Högskolan Väst, Sverige (Institutionen för Ekonomi och IT). Syftet med rapporten är att ge djupare insikter i nordisk destinations- och regionalutveckling genom empiriska fallstudier. Dessa studier har presenterats och diskuterats vid seminarier vid internationella vetenskapliga konferenser inom regionalvetenskap (16:e Uddevalla Symposiet 2013 i Kansas City, USA och 17: e Uddevalla Symposiet 2014 i Uddevalla, Sverige) som anordnades av Högskolan Väst. Bidragen är tvärvetenskapliga då de är skrivna av forskare från olika vetenskapliga discipliner såsom företagsekonomi, informatik, planering och kulturvetenskap. Alla forskare har emellertid ett destinations- och/eller regionalt perspektiv som utgångspunkt i fallstudierna som genomförts. Det treåriga projektet erbjöd goda möjligheter tillgränsöverskridande lärande och tillämpad forskning i nära samarbete (Arbetsintegrerat lärande) med projektpartners och studenter. Studierna genomfördes med bidrag från projektet MARIFUS "Maritime Inlands – past, present and future strengths” som delfinansierades av Europeiska Unionens Regionala Utvecklingsfond (Interreg IV A). Redaktörerna vill slutligen framföra tack till författarna och alla partners i MARIFUS-projektet

A novel approach, namely cross-border regional innovation system, has been recently introduced to the literature on economic geography as a framework for studying innovation and scientific collaboration in a cross-border context. However, despite the importance of the topic for cross-border regions, there are no existing empirical accounts comprehensively validating the concept. Here an attempt to shed some light into this “black box” is made by addressing this research gap via empirical material from Northern European cross-border regions. Specifically this is done by applying data on publications, sectoral and cultural statistics together with measures for accessibility and institutional and organisational similarity. These measures are linked to the varying types of proximity discussed in the literature on innovation and scientific collaboration; the impacts of proximity on the volume of cross-border scientific collaboration are described through preliminary descriptive statistics. This provides an answer to the specific research question of this paper: does high levels of proximity guarantee subsequent high levels of scientific collaboration and integration in a cross-border context? Consequently, the preliminary descriptive analysis shows that the similarity of the knowledge bases, i.e. cognitive proximity, on the adjacent sides of the border is an important explanatory factor for heightened scientific cross-border collaboration: if the various sides of the cross-border region are too dissimilar in terms of their science bases, little or no collaboration is taking place between them. However, the presented data shows that there are also enormous differences, which are not accounted for by the proximity measures, between the cross-border regions of Northern Europe in terms of their volume of cross-border scientific collaboration.

Here the issue of technological catch-up is discussed through the concept of national innovation systems. Despite some positive signs, in general, the global differences are growing i.e. the gaps between the best and the weakest performers are widening. Still, whereas on a global scale convergence is far from being the reality, the analysis was able to indicate a group of countries that have been able to catch-up to the “best in class” countries. Accordingly, there seems to be a clear association between national innovation system capabilities and the levels of economic development of countries.

This study investigates indicators of external scale economies in Canada for the period 2004-11. Accounting for firm-level external scale forces, we explore the extent to which external scale economies impact employment growth. Our analysis focuses on three factors: the impact of external scale economies accounting for Marshallian specialization and Jacobs diversity, competition by industry, and related and unrelated firm varieties in terms of employment and sales. Results accounting for non-linearity between employment growth and agglomeration suggest that in the short run, during the period 2004-2011, local competition and diversity in Canada have had a positive impact on employment growth, while the effect of Marshallian specialization is negative; during the period of the global financial crisis and immediately thereafter (2008-2011) however, the magnitude of the positive effect of competition and diversity is lower, while the negative effect of specialization on employment growth is also smaller and rather insignificant. In the long run, a peak threshold for specialization and diversity is found, while a lower bound threshold for competition can be identified. Moreover, diversity is found an insignificant employment growth determinant in the agricultural sector, while concentration contributes insignificantly to employment growth in the industry sector.