A comprehensive study of information literacy skills on contemporary and fast-evolving workplaces requires cross-disciplinary joint problem solving. Our project is organized within four subproject teams.
Subproject Teams | |||
| Subproject team 1 Generational differences and changes in information
Shahrokh Nikou | Subproject team 2 Information sharing (literacy) and well-being
Eva Österbacka (Economics) |
Subproject team 3 Information literacy at workplace; antecedents and consequences Gunilla Widen (Information Studies) Farhan Ahmad (Information Studies) Isto Huvila (Information Studies) |
Subproject team 4 Global distributed work and information literacy
Helena Karsten |
Subproject team 1: Leadership, information literacy and its implications at workplace
This subproject will investigate the antecedents and social implications of information literacy at workplace among employees at different levels. It will specifically focus on the questions — what is the role of the organizational leadership in the development of information literacy, how information literacy influences employees’ capability to deal with organizational changes and develop social capital, and how information literacy of senior management influences organizational performance and innovation. Overall, this project adopts a multilevel and across disciplinary perspectives by building on the information science and business management research and by addressing information literacy at different levels of analysis. Such a holistic approach is greatly needed to better understand the concrete implications of information literacy in the workplace context.
Subproject team 2: Generational differences and changes in information behavior
The core objective of this sub project is to investigate the impact of different generations’ information literacy and digital literacy capabilities on the use of digital technologies and tools at the workplaces. This project will explore information literacy in the context of generational dichotomies built around the use of digital technologies, such as digital native and digital immigrants. Due to the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the contemporary century, young and old generations differ radically from one another. Digital natives represent the first generation to grow up with the new (digital) technology, spending their time and lives around different kinds of digital technologies and tools such as Internet, computers and smartphones. Digital natives think and process information differently from their counterpart generation. These differences go far further and deeper than anyone could suspect or realize. Information literacy is hypnotized to play an important role in widening or filling this gap between different generations, providing the impetus for this subproject.
Subproject team 3: Information sharing (literacy) and well-being
This subproject has two main goals: 1) To further the understanding of the role of information literacy in driving the variation in cognitive functioning between individuals over the life cycle, 2) To further the understanding of the relationships between information sharing and wellbeing in the work place. In order to succeed in this project, we will utilize the national level literacy measurement scale developed by Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and individual level self-developed information literacy scale.
Subproject 4: Global work and information literacy
This subproject will investigate the role of workplace information literacy in the accomplishment of outsourced software development carried out by globally distributed teams. Outsourcing clients and vendors are often dispersed in different geographical locations; especially in the context of offshoring, different parties usually reside in different countries. The virtual aspect of software outsourcing can cause a plethora of problems such as cultural misunderstanding, communication breakdowns and task incongruence. In this context, the role of information literacy can be critical, as an individual’s capability to navigate through information landscape characterized by different national, cultural, professional and organizational differences will prove to be critical factor in successful accomplishment of team goals.
Team members
Gunilla Widén (principal investigator) , ÅAU, Professor of Information Studies and Docent in Information Management at University of Tampere.
Her research experience is in the area of information behavior, knowledge management, and aspects of social capital and knowledge sharing in groups and organizations. Project leader of two research project financed by the Academy of Finland; Individual and organizational key skills in information intensive society (2006-10) and Library 2.0 a new participatory context (2008-13). She has been involved in several collaborative networks both nationally and internationally. She has been external expert in a number of different evaluation committees and published widely in international journals.
Eva Österbacka, Professor in Economics at ÅAU.
Her publications are on the importance of formal education, time use of individuals, economics of the family, and on gender issues. She has been involved in several Nordic research projects, which have taken a comparative approach. Her teaching areas include both standard economic theories such as e.g. microeconomic theory and labor market economics, and econometrics. She has served as an expert in several national and international evaluation committees.
Malin Brännback, chair of international business at ÅAU since 2003.
Visiting professor in Entreprenneurship at Stockholm Business School,
Stockholm University (2012-2014) and previously served as Associate Professor in Information Systems at University of Turku,
and Prof of Marketing at Turku School of Economics where she was head of the Innomarket research unit.
She is Docent in electronic commerce at Hanken. Her teaching areas include Entrepreneurship, Market Research, Information Systems, International Marketing, Strategic Management and Pharmacy. She has published widely on entrepreneurship, biotechnology business, and knowledge management.
Isto Huvila, chair of information studies at the Department of ALM at Uppsala University, Sweden and is
adjunct professor (docent) in information management at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
His primary areas of research include information and knowledge management, information work, knowledge organization, documentation, and social and participatory information practices. He has published in journals such as Journal of Documentation, Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology, Library and Information Science Research, and The Information Society.
Eija Karsten, senior lecturer and docent in Information Systems at the Åbo Akademi University in Finland.
She has worked as visiting faculty at the University of Bath, UK; Griffith University, Australia; University of Hawaii, USA, and Hanken Business School. Her research interests include change processes, the interweaving of work and computers, the use of IT to support collaboration, and social theories informing theorizing in IS. She has more than 50 publications in journals and conferences.
Jannica Heinström, senior lecturer in Information Studies at ÅAU and docent at the University of Borås has significant research knowledge in psychological aspects of information interaction, such as personality, motivation and emotion. She has worked at the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL) at Rutgers University and has published widely in various international journals.
Shahrokh Nikou, is senior lecturer in Information studies at Åbo Akademi University. He is also visiting researcher at Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Shahrokh received his PhD (Econ) from Department of Information Technologies, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, in 2012. His current research interest include consumer decision, purchasing behaviour, and on digital economy. He is a member of the editorial board of Electronic Markets, The International Journal on Networked Business and has been a member of program committee in several IEEEs and international conferences. Shahrokh has over 30 articles in international journals and conference proceedings.
Farhan Ahmad is a postdoc researcher in information science at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. In his doctoral dissertation, he examines the influence of language on knowledge sharing behavior in multilingual workplaces. His research interests are knowledge sharing, knowledge management, information literacy, language diversity, multilingual teams and sociolinguistics. He has published in journals such as Journal of Information Science, Knowledge & Process Management, and Library & Information Science Research.
Jose Teixeira, post doctoral researcher at ÅAU Information Systems unit
Jose Teixeira defended on April 2018 a dissertation entitled 'Coopetition in an Open Source Way' that reflects his research interests in coopetition and open source innovation communities.
With an educational background in both computer science and management,
He had worked in the industry for reputable companies such as Wipro, Tesco, Airbus, and Nokia.
During his professional ventures, he was an enthusiastic advocate of open source software. Before the strategic partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, he turned to academia where he approached the open source software phenomenon from a R&D strategy perspective. His most recent work has been presented at the International Conference on Big Data, the International Conference on Open Source Systems, the International Symposium on Open Collaboration, the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences and the International Conference on Information Systems. He counts with a publication in the Journal of Internet Services and Applications and some others are hopefully forthcoming on the pipeline.
Angela Djupsjöbacka
Angela Djupsjöbacka is for the moment a doctoral student at Economics ÅAU and previously member of the research project funded by Academy of Finland about the effects of labor market change on well-being and health. She received her MSc in Economics and Statistics 2006. She uses empirical methods to study questions related to labor market discrimination and applications to higher education.
The different subproject teams met regularly. Join research execution and articles co-authorship is encouraged across teams.
