Municipality social care faces some challenges in recent times due to demographic changes and technological advances. Welfare technology is implemented in the social care, and this fact is transforming the work practice to a great extent. The established work practice is challenged, when learning processes is needed in this transformation, as the competence of the staff needs to be developed. These changes will thus demand learning as well as unlearning. Resistance to changes can create power struggles at the workplace. In social care organizations we have found some examples where power games emerge by groups of staff in relation to their managers when changes in the work practice are planned, and that could also affect motivation among the staff.

The work practice is often based on old structures, where managers are permitting the staff to self organize and conduct their work in their own manner. Values in the groups of staff have been developed during a long period of time, as a kind of culture at the workplace, where many of the staff have been working for several years at the same workplace. These structures and values also affect the behavior of both managers and the staff, where of course managers are interested to legitimate behavior that is favoring to the local context. When the society now is requiring changes, the old structures and values will be questioned, and have to be reassessed and replaced. Established structures and values cannot be continued to endure any longer. Thus, the managers have to have turn around the established cultures at the workplace. This situation can push power games to occur, between managers and groups of staff. Power games among professionals in organizations are studied in different contexts, but are quite neglected in social care contexts where learning has to occur when transformations of the work practice are going on.

This phenomenon at workplaces in social care organizations is invisible at the first sight. Moreover, it is quite hidden in the organization as such aspects related to structures and values are not often openly discussed at the workplace. Thus, it is difficult to reflect around such a real situation in practice. This will imply the difficulties in studying such cases dealing with hidden agendas hold by different groups at a workplace.

The aim of this paper is from a theoretical perspective suggest how to conduct a study in work practices associated with social care when transformations and learning has to occur, focusing on resistance and power games among managers and groups of staff.

The study requires closeness to the empirical field as well as collaboration and intervention with practitioners, which characterizing both action and practice research and its variants. The challenges within the social care organizations are of socio-technical character where learning and change should be obtained. The research is guided by an interest for improvement and clarification, and to contribute both to the research community and to the work practice. The collaboration and mutual learning would follow an inquiry process where the researchers will have to introduce themselves carefully, as the practitioners are not asking the researchers for help. Instead, the upper management are interested in solving the challenges with implementation of technology and transformation of work practice.

The research question of the article is to explore whether the method dialogue meetings could be relevant for collaboration reflective learning among researchers and practitioners when welfare technology should be implemented in municipalities, or not. A testbed was planned to be implemented in a retirement home in a Swedish municipality, and the practitioners worked with a pre-study of that testbed. The aim of the article is to describe the collaboration and dialogue between the researchers and the practitioners in the dialogue meetings, and to reflect upon the potential of dialogue meetings as an arena for democratic collaboration and reflection among researchers and practitioners. The research methodology approach is participatory action research with mixed methods (dialogue meetings, focus groups,participant observations). During the dialogue meetings, the researchers learned more about the use of traditional research methods, and the practitioners learned more about how they could improve their use of the methods in order to facilitate change processes in their organization. Dialogue meetings could be relevant for reflective learning among researchers and practitioners in different organizational contexts, as a method to promote bridging the gap between practice and research in a democratic way; create inter-professional collaboration and reflection, and contribute to work change processes and sense-making.

eHealth is considered a solution to current challenges in healthcare. However, its use is not very well developed, and its potential has been little exploited. There are many reasons for the limited diffusion of eHealth. Knowledge, opportunities for training and collaborative activities are examples of factors that influence diffusion. Managerial responsibility is decisive in transforming healthcare. This paper aims at exploring middle management strategies that can facilitate workplace learning when introducing eHealth and new ways of providing healthcare. Introduction of eHealth will imply new and innovative working processes, where both employees and managers need to be aware that their work will change fundamentally, from routine work to work that involves learning, skills development and continuous changes in work practice. This study takes a qualitative approach by analysing data collected through focus group interviews. The findings indicate a necessity for a shift towards learning-oriented leadership and adaptive management that emphasizes employee involvement and opportunities for learning. Helping employees make sense of the complexities associated with continuously changing work practices is another identified middle management strategy. Scenario planning and backcasting stand out as suitable tools for sensemaking in complex organizations and as techniques that can promote workplace learning. © 2020 The Author(s)

This paper aims to analyse experiences gained by entrepreneurs in small enterprises located in a region undergoing structural change, focusing on networking and e-government for local development. The study is a further development of a study that focused on how municipalities supported entrepreneurship and destination development. In-depth qualitative interviews were made with twelve entrepreneurs from ten small enterprises. Based on a theoretical discussion of networking, e-government and social media marketing, the results indicate that networks and strategic networking were important in order to develop their enterprises, which also contributed to local development. The importance of initial face-to-face contacts in order to build business relationships in networks was stressed. The use of local e-government was hitherto limited to e-services for public procurement, the use of social media marketing was limited due to lack of time, competence and motivation for most of the entrepreneurs.

This chapter aims to describe and analyze a sample of small enterprises located in a region undergoing structural change with focus on entrepreneurship and e-government and is a further development of a previous study that focused on how municipalities supported entrepreneurship and destination development. In this study the focus is extended to include small enterprises contributing to development of tourist destinations within the same region. In-depth qualitative interviews weremade with twelve managers from ten small enterprises. Based on a theoretical discussion of entrepreneurship, e-government and regional development, the results indicate that networks and strategic networking were important for these small enterprises both in terms of developing the enterprise butalso to develop entrepreneurship for regional development. The findings further indicate that municipal information, communication and competence development in order to support entrepreneurship and the development of small enterprises could be improved. The importance of face-to-face contacts was stressed. The use of local e-government was hitherto limited to e-services for public procurement. The entrepreneurs who used the e-services had mainly positive experiences, although despite the complexity of the e-services. The respondents did not ask for more municipal e-services, but that could be a consequence of their limited experience of the potential of local e-government. The use of social media among the enterprises was limited due to lack of time, competence and motivation for most of the enterprises, although the potential of social media for marketing was seen as extensive. A few of the respondents were on the other hand very skilled in their use ofdigital media, as a consequence of their professional knowledge and business orientation.

This article will contribute to the debate about regional development in peripheral areas by examining the social capital in 14 villages in a Danish municipality, and particularly the influence of social media on the social capital.Contrary to the current public discourse in Denmark on peripheral communities and how they are falling apart because of demographic changes, economic cut backs, and structural changes, this study did not find one single village, where the social capital seems to be in any imminent danger. The article also proposes a different perspective on the operationalization of social capital. Social capital is typically measured in big international values surveys based on the variables network, trust and reciprocity. However, this study is based on a qualitative research with interviews in 14 villages in a peripheral Danish municipality. This in depth research shows that when examining the social capital of communities, the most valuable parameter is to look at the most typical proxy for network: associations and in particular the character of these associations. They furthermore give an indication of the kind of social capital they are building and maintaining.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. However, the study cannot conclude that the communities not using the social media have less social capital then the one who does, nor that they are disconnected from the citizens.

This paper aims to describe and analyse a sample of small enterprises located in a region undergoing structural change with focus on entrepreneurship and e-government and is a further development of a previous study that focused on how municipalities supported entrepreneurship and destination development. In this study the focus is extended to include small enterprises contributing to development of tourist destinations within the same region. In-depth qualitative interviews were made with twelve managers from ten small enterprises.

   Based on a theoretical discussion of entrepreneurship, e-government and regional development, the results indicate that networks and strategic networking were important for these small enterprises both in terms of developing the enterprise but also to develop entrepreneurship for regional development. The findings further indicate that municipal information, communication and competence development in order to support entrepreneurship and the development of small enterprises could be improved. The importance of face-to-face contacts was stressed. The use of local e-government was hitherto limited to e-services for public procurement. The entrepreneurs who used the e-services had mainly positive experiences, although despite the complexity of the e-services. The respondents did not ask for more municipal e-services, but that could be a consequence of their limited experience of the potential of local e-government. The use of social media among the enterprises was limited due to lack of time, competence and motivation for most of the enterprises, although the potential of social media for marketing was seen as extensive. A few of the respondents were on the other hand very skilled in their use of digital media, as a consequence of their professional knowledge and business orientation.