Anna Essén

• Associate Professor, business administration
• Lecturer at Stockholm School of Economics

Both research and public discourse have recently drawn attention to the downsides of algorithmic decision making (ADM), highlighting how it can produce biased and discriminatory outcomes, and also pose threats to social justice. We address such threats that emanate from, but also go beyond, algorithms per se, extending to how public agencies and le...

Incumbent firms typically face significant risk of losing the relevance of their physical core when facing industry disruption driven by digital technologies. Existing literature emphasizes a digital first approach, whereby firm offerings are fundamentally redeveloped from a digital point of view, from the point of conception. While this prescripti...

Digital platforms have deeply transformed a wide variety of sectors. However, new platform business models often face critical legitimacy challenges. Consequently, new entrants must continuously design and redesign their business model components, particularly when entering non-platformized sectors that are highly regulated. We draw on a longitudin...

Background. Mission-driven innovation (MDI) policies are founded on governmental attempts to address fundamental but complex societal challenges. The rationale behind such attempts is typically to influence the directionality of innovation towards addressing the perceived challenge. This report focuses on a particular instance of MDI policy execute...

An abundant and growing supply of digital health applications (apps) exists in the commercial tech-sector, which can be bewildering for clinicians, patients, and payers. A growing challenge for the health care system is therefore to facilitate the identification of safe and effective apps for health care practitioners and patients to generate the m...

Digital healthcare platforms have enabled patients to receive healthcare in ways that were impossible previously—for example, by providing a “safer” way to meet, as underscored by the Covid-19 pandemic. This article investigates whether older and younger primary care users display behavioral differences on digital healthcare platforms. The article...

Research has demonstrated how ignorance is made, manipulated and called upon; how it is the result of strategies, activities and structures. This article extends the literature on ignorance by exploring actors’ own explanations of their self-inflicted ignorance following acts of ignoring. By means of a case analysis, we explore how actors explain a...

The aim of the present chapter is to juxtapose the current infrastructure and governance of Health Information Exchanges, HIEs, focusing on the Swedish setting as an empirical example, with the completely decentralized blockchain-based HIE scenario that can be inferred from the blockchain debate. We discuss on what grounds the latter scenario may b...

Background: Social relationships (i.e.interpersonal relations with individuals or groups) have been shown to have long- and short-term effects on health outcomes including reduced mortality risk and quality of life among cancer patients. Patients with tumors in the central nervous system (CNS) often suffer cognitive, neuropsychological and function...

Tema 1: Hur avbildar siffror verkligheten?

Diskussionen om digitalisering av vården har historiskt fokuserat på ”externa”, ”färdiga” system, och en tro på chefsstyrda, sekventiellt planerade och välfinansierade implementeringsprocesser. Men, är det enda sättet att skapa hållbar förändring? Den här rapporten sammanfattar ett antal studier av en innovationsprocess som såg annorlunda ut; den...

The information systems literature has paid vast attention to how macro-level structures shape local technology enactments. Less research has focused on the mutual shaping of situated technology enactments and such extra-organizational structures. This study explores how technology-afforded human action at the micro level may transform field-level...

The application of economic incentives to providers in health care governance is debated. Advocates argue that it drives efficiency and improvement, opponents claim that it leads to unintended consequences for patients and professionals. Research shows that incentives can increase well-defined activities and targets, but there is a lack of substant...

Framing has been presented as a way for micro-level actors to change and diffuse innovations. However, most framing studies have given primacy to language, whereas the role of material artifacts has been largely ignored. The aim of this study is to conceptualize and illustrate how the materiality of technology enables and constrains framing practic...

Link to paper - free access 30 days: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Witm7sx9FGH7o Objectives Patient-accessible electronic health records (PAEHRs) are being implemented at international scale. Comparing policies and systems could allow countries to learn from each other to address global and nation-specific challenges. We compare national PAEHR...

Background The Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ) is widely used to measure functional ability in persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The instrument was developed with limited involvement from persons with RA, and their perception of the instrument has not been studied in depth. The aim of this study was to explore...

While there is a proliferation of numerical data in healthcare, little attention has been paid to the role of numbers in constituting the healthcare reality they are intended to depict. This study explores the performativity of numbers in the microlevel management of rheumatoid disease. We draw on a study of patients' and physicians' use of the num...

Purpose Policy makers are applying market-inspired competition and financial incentives to drive efficiency in healthcare. However, a lack of knowledge exists about the process whereby incentives are filtered through organizations to influence staff motivation, and the key role of managers is often overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to explor...

Objectives The study provides a conceptual model for analyzing the connections and gaps between national policy and care provider processes aimed at patient accessible electronic health records. We illustrate the model using empirical data from the Netherlands as an explorative case study. Methods The conceptual model integrates governance and orga...

Background. The Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ) is widely used to measure functional ability in persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The instrument was developed with limited involvement from persons with RA, and their perception of the instrument has not been studied in depth. The aim of this study was to explore...

Research in sociology suggests that the effects of standards are not nearly as straightforward or as homogenising as they first appear. The present study extends these insights by demonstrating how even standards designed simply to collect data can produce extensive and unanticipated effects in medical fields as their uses evolve across actors and...

Background: Value-based health care is increasingly used for developing health care services by relating patient outcomes to costs. A hierarchical value scorecard for creating outcome measurements has been suggested: the 3-tier model. The objective of this study was to test the model against the patient's view of value in a chronic care setting. M...

Purpose Many scholars have urged firms to empower consumers to become co-producers, arguing that this empowerment leads to a win-win situation that benefits consumers and providers alike. However, critical voices have emphasised that co-production is a way to exploit rather than empower consumers and hence represents a win–lose idea that benefits p...

The research process and production of scientific knowledge has traditionally been understood to be based on abstract analysis and intellectual capacity rather than physical and emotional resources, promoting an understanding of academic practice as a detached, non-emotional and objective activity. Lately, several researchers have bemoaned this lac...

Objective: We describe and explain the development of a clinical quality database and its use for different clinical, management and patient empowerment purposes. Design: A longitudinal case study covering 1993-2009. Setting: Rheumatology departments in Swedish hospitals. Participants: Those involved in developing the clinical database and i...

The Heideggerian strand of organization studies has highlighted important aspects of organizational practices. Because of the emphasis of the practice-oriented approach on routine practice, researchers have taken a special interest in how innovative, improvised action arises. One of the dominant views is that innovative action is the outcome of dif...

Involving users in the design process is increasingly discussed as the quickest and most reliable way to capture the needs of users and consumers. In parallel, the fastest growing population segment in Asia and the West is older people. This article asks whether their involvement in the design process could accelerate a growing service market and i...

This paper explores the embodied dimension of creativity in academic knowledge work. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1962) among others, we provide rich illustrations of how creative performances in terms of the development of new 'theoretical' ideas involve our pre-reflective, sensory and bodily emotionality. The paper contributes to the field of creati...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for studying the process of technology‐based service system innovation from a broad perspective using an approach that elucidates the non‐linear facets of this process. The framework draws on Lévy‐Strauss's concept of bricolage, which implies that individuals' “making do with resources at...

While it is agreed that there can be a difference between the routine as inscribed in artefacts, the ostensive aspect of the routine and its performative aspect, little is known about the relationship between these parts of the routine. Further, while authors acknowledge that there is variability in routines as performed, the contemporary literatur...

Purpose: This paper explores the constituents of and challenges related to the innovation of technology-based services in the long-term homecare sector. Methods: This research used purposeful extreme case sampling, a mixed methods approach to research that included focus groups and interviews, to learn from the experiences of an innovative teleh...

Scholars are increasingly questioning the notion that electronic surveillance merely constrains individuals' liberty and privacy. However, illustrations of alternative perspectives are few and there is a need for empirical research exploring the actual experience of surveilled subjects. This study, carried out in Sweden, seeks to offer a nuanced ac...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the role of emotions in consumers' evaluations of service quality. Design/methodology/approach The study uses empirical qualitative data from in‐depth interviews with 26 senior citizens who are consumers of long‐term residential care services in a Swedish rural community. The empirical findings are analysed induc...

Contemporary literature typically conceptualises standardisation and customisation as two ends on a continuum. Using qualitative data from the public home‐help services setting, this paper explores how standardisation and customisation can concurrently operate in practice. The findings suggest that in many cases, services in this setting include a...