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Uncertainty management (UM) in projects has been a point of attention for researchers for many years. Research on UM has mainly been aimed at uncertainty analyses in the front-end and managing uncertainty in the construction phase. In contrast, UM components in the design phase have received less attention. This research aims to improve knowledge about the key components of UM in the design phase of large road projects.

This study adopted a literature review and case study. The literature review was used to identify relevant criteria for UM. These criteria helped to design the interview guide. Multiple case study research was conducted, and data were collected through document study and interviews with project stakeholders in two road projects. Each case's owners, contractors and consultants were interviewed individually.

The data analysis obtained helpful information on the involved parties, process and exploit tools and techniques during the design phase. Johansen's (2015) framework [(a) human and organisation, (b) process and (c) tools and techniques)] was completed and developed by identifying relevant criteria (such as risk averse or risk-taker, culture and documentation level) for each component. These criteria help to measure UM performance. The authors found that owners and contractors are major formal UM actors, not consultants. Empirical data showed the effectiveness of Web-based tools in UM.

The studied cases were Norwegian, and this study focussed on uncertainties in the project's design phase. Relevant criteria did not cover all the criteria for evaluating the performance of UM. Qualitative evaluation of criteria allows further quantitative analysis in the future.

This paper gave project owners and managers a better understanding of relevant criteria for measuring UM in the owners and managers' projects. The paper provides policy-makers with a deeper understanding of creating rigorous project criteria for UM during the design phase. This paper also provides a guideline for UM in road projects.

This research gives a holistic evaluation of UM by noticing relevant criteria and criteria's interconnection in the design phase.

Written communication differences across cultures can set the tone for effective or disastrous business relationships. Although English has been the go-to language in business, managers from different countries can significantly differ in how they convey the firms' information. This study explored these differences by examining the documentation presented by foreign corporations as part of their initial public offering (IPO) in the USA, particularly Chinese firms.

This work examined cultural-related differences in written communications by looking at foreign corporations' descriptions of their strengths, strategies and challenges included in F-1 documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the IPO process. The sample consisted of 97 American depositary receipts (ADRs) identified in the Bank of New York Mellon's ADR directory from 2003 to 2015.

This study found that Chinese firms significantly differ from other countries' firms in depicting their strengths, strategies and challenges.

Limitations have to do with the sample size. Future research may address this by considering other depositary markets, not just the USA.

The results will be significant for potential ADRs investors; they must be conscious of these differences in the written documentation submitted by Chinese firms compared to other foreign firms. The market should also be aware of these differences, as the Chinese seem less open to sharing information about the under spinning of their operations and financial prospects.

In this article, the author discusses works from the French Documentation Movement in the 1940s and 1950s with regard to how it formulates bibliographic classification systems as documents. Significant writings by Suzanne Briet, Éric de Grolier and Robert Pagès are analyzed in the light of current document-theoretical concepts and discussions.

Conceptual analysis.

The French Documentation Movement provided a rich intellectual environment in the late 1940s and early 1950s, resulting in original works on documents and the ways these may be represented bibliographically. These works display a variety of approaches from object-oriented description to notational concept-synthesis, and definitions of classification systems as isomorph documents at the center of politically informed critique of modern society.

The article brings together historical and conceptual elements in the analysis which have not previously been combined in Library and Information Science literature. In the analysis, the article discusses significant contributions to classification and document theory that hitherto have eluded attention from the wider international Library and Information Science research community. Through this, the article contributes to the currently ongoing conceptual discussion on documents and documentality.

Maintaining infrastructures such as roads, bridges, railways and other civil constructions requires long term documentation that ideally should comprise a reliable reflection of the physical structures. However, the Swedish Transport Administration (TRA) states that its documentation is currently inadequate and that new working method are needed. The purpose of this paper is to study how the agency is working to improve their recordkeeping, by taking a closer look at two new positions that now coordinate the delivery of documentation from the building process teams to the agency. What is their role and what challenges do they face with regard to creating, sharing and preserving records with other areas across the TRA? The study’s purpose is also to discuss the concept of the archive in the current environment and how existing archival theory can be applied to long term documentation.

The study used a case study method, as the aim was to explore and understand recordkeeping practices and theoretical implications, without seeking to generalize the findings outside the Swedish Government. Two positions – the delivering coordinator and the receiving coordinator – were chosen as relevant focuses, due to their function as links between departments in which it was previously indicated that creating and maintaining reliable recordkeeping was difficult and where organizational structure might challenge the traditional archival theory. Documents and reports from the agency were used as research material through documentary analysis and a questionnaire consisting of 10 questions was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 10 coordinators at the agency.

Obtaining the correct documentation at the right time and of appropriate quality from contractors and entrepreneurs was difficult, despite detailed contractual rules and regulations identifying what should be delivered. The work of the coordinators was formally connected to the important tasks of creating, sharing and preserving records with other areas within the TRA, but in reality, the coordinators faced several difficulties due to expectations of their professional role, practices in information management between different departments and archives creation at the entire agency. The interviewees therefore had differing perceptions of what was meant by TRA’s “archive”: it was variously perceived as only including the registry; comprising only the records preserved by the archives department or encompassing only those records in the registry or in the agency’s business system/s. Findings indicate that the concepts of multiple provenances and the recordkeeping “single mind” might provide insights to better inform the recordkeeping principles needed to improve the current environment.

The study was limited to the 10 interviewees in 2 roles, although there are more positions involved in handling records. Future studies may solidify or contest the different themes identified in the present paper, through interviews of those additional roles at the agency. This paper uses the Swedish concept of the archive as a point of departure in its analysis.

By increasing the knowledge about positions that are responsible for handling records at an agency, this paper can get a better understanding of how they affect the ultimate creation of archives. This will give Swedish public agencies and other organizations, better results when they are creating strategies to preserve reliable records for the future.

This paper aims to explore the preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process. Many organizations struggle to communicate important and compulsory regulations, but the intended users are often reluctant to use them.

The study has an action research approach, and the visualized regulations were the result of a human-centered design process that considered aspects for successful organizational change.

The action research approach proved to be a successful framework to design the transformation of well-constructed illustrations in interactive guides, communicate and convince managers and users of the potential of the concept, develop a number of different well-functioning guides and establish regulations with illustrative elements and interactivity in a long-term perspective of an organization.

Further research is needed to follow-up the usage of visualized regulations to clarify how communication and quality are supported in design and production processes.

The study shows how different product regulations should be visualized and established in an organization, with a potential for further dissemination. It is likely that the approach to design and visualize regulations in this study can function in other branches.

The study finds a preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process.

The current paper sought to assess health research institutions in transferring knowledge from health research findings into decision and policy making in Malawi. The study employed both a qualitative and a multi-case study approach. Data was gathered through interviews. The study's participants were purposefully chosen directors of research institutions, public universities, and the ministry of health. Few research institutions compile a list of organisations that might benefit from their health research findings, and even fewer libraries have databanks or repositories. Policymakers rarely receive actionable messages from research institutions. Researchers are short on communication skills as well as time to transfer research findings into usable formats. Research centres including libraries should provide an opportunity for interacting and enhancing the use of research evidence. Individuals, research groups, institutions must all develop stakeholder interaction structures. Structures should define incentives and advancement opportunities for those working in health research institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the documentation movement associated with the utopian thinkers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine relied on patent offices as well as the documents most closely associated with this institutional setting – the patents themselves – as central to the formation of the document category. The main argument is that patents not only were subjected to and helped construct, but also in fact engineered the development of technoscientific order during 1895–1937.

The paper draws on an interdisciplinary approach to intellectual property, document theory and insights from media archeology. Focused on the historical period 1895–1937, this study allows for an analysis that encapsulates and accounts for change in a number of comparative areas, moving from bibliography to documentation and from scientific to technoscientific order. Primary sources include Paul Otlet’s own writings, relevant contemporary sources from the French documentation movement and the Congrès Mondial de la documentation universelle in 1937.

By understanding patent offices and patents as main drivers behind those processes of sorting and classification that constitute technoscientific order, this explorative paper provides a new analytical framework for the study of intellectual property in relation to the history of information and documentation. It argues that the idea of the document may serve to rethink the role of the patent in technoscience, offering suggestions for new and underexplored venues of research in the nexus of several overlapping research fields, from law to information studies.

Debates over the legitimacy and rationale of intellectual property have raged for many years without signs of abating. Universities, research centers, policy makers, editors and scholars, research funders, governments, libraries and archives all have things to say on the legitimacy of the patent system, its relation to innovation and the appropriate role of intellectual property in research and science, milieus that are of central importance in the knowledge-based economy. The value of this paper lies in proposing a new way to approach patents that could show a way out of the current analytical gridlock of either/or that for many years has earmarked the “openness-enclosure” dichotomy. The combination of intellectual property scholarship and documentation theory provides important new insight into the historical networks and processes by which patents and documents have consolidated and converged during the twentieth century.

This paper offers a definition of the core of information science, which encompasses most research in the field. The definition provides a unique identity for information science and positions it in the disciplinary universe.

After motivating the objective, a definition of the core and an explanation of its key aspects are provided. The definition is related to other definitions of information science before controversial discourse aspects are briefly addressed: discipline vs. field, science vs. humanities, library vs. information science and application vs. theory. Interdisciplinarity as an often-assumed foundation of information science is challenged.

Information science is concerned with how information is manifested across space and time. Information is manifested to facilitate and support the representation, access, documentation and preservation of ideas, activities, or practices, and to enable different types of interactions. Research and professional practice encompass the infrastructures – institutions and technology –and phenomena and practices around manifested information across space and time as its core contribution to the scholarly landscape. Information science collaborates with other disciplines to work on complex information problems that need multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to address them.

The paper argues that new information problems may change the core of the field, but throughout its existence, the discipline has remained quite stable in its central focus, yet proved to be highly adaptive to the tremendous changes in the forms, practices, institutions and technologies around and for manifested information.

This paper aims to investigate the in-company training according to the technologically demanding and safety-critical feature of the aircraft industry. This study addresses to the tension between the structured and the more incidental part of in-company learning in their training and learning environment.

Against the background of concepts of workplace learning from vocational training research and concepts of the safety management system from safety research, aircraft companies from England and Germany were visited. Data from interviews with training managers and trainees as well as non-participant observations are analysed.

The findings show that workplace vocational learning in this industry is guided by different measures to design the learning environment to prevent purely incidental and informal knowledge acquisition. However, the formalisation of informal learning process leads to a high expenditure of material, personnel and time resources. The findings show that trainers and training managers working together internationally creatively manage different training systems. The training activities are designed to convey the values of safety culture like responsibility, accuracy, transparent communication and reporting. The requirements of the safety management system are also met through the training.

Challenges and tensions in the actual implementation of the training activities could not be identified. The people interviewed were selected by the companies, so there is a risk that certain perceptions are over-represented.

The results show that the safety-critical industry needs its own pedagogical approach to workplace learning, which is not based on independent work processes in the workplace. Insights can be drawn for in-company training in other safety-critical industries too. However, to enable effective in-company learning, which at the same time strengthens the safety culture of the company, many resources must be used. The companies must consider all dimensions of work from the individual level to the work structure level.

This paper discusses the tension between formal and informal learning and shows the specific design of this tension on the basis of a concrete industry for the specific needs of this industry. The results lead to the realisation that the general discussion about workplace learning must be viewed in a differentiated way depending on the industry.

Materiality as an emerging trend aims to make sustainability reports (SR) more relevant for stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate whether the reporting practice of electric utility companies (EUC) is in compliance with the materiality principle of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) when disclosing SR.

A twofold content analysis focusing on material aspects (MAs) is conducted, followed by correlation analysis. Logic and conversation theory (LCT) serves to evaluate the communication quality of documented materiality in SR by EUC.

The coverage and quality of documented MAs in SR by EUC do not meet the requirements for relevant and transparent communication. Materiality does not guide the reporting practice and is not taken seriously.

Mediocre quality of coverage and communication in SR shows that stakeholders’ information needs are not considered adequately. The content analysis is limited in focusing on merely documented aspects rather than on actual performance.

This study considers the quality of communication of documented materiality through the lens of LCT. It contributes to the academic debate by introducing LCT as a viable theoretical perspective for analyzing SR. The paper evaluates GRI-G4 reporting practices in the electricity sector, which, while under-researched is crucial for sustainability. It also contributes to the emerging body of empirical research on the relevance of materiality as a guiding principle for sustainability reporting.