Health and ICT in developing countries is one project in the Global Communication focus area. In spite of ambitious initiatives, we lag significantly behind the United Nations and the World Health Organization’s aims for development in general and health in particular in developing countries. The HIPS project (Health information system programme, www.hisp.org) is an action-oriented research project involved in ten countries in Southern and Eastern Africa, India and Vietnam, with the goal of improving the overview, planning and management of basic health services.

The focus in HISP is on the health of mothers and children as well as aiding in the curbing of selected communicative diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The intention is to provide low-tech ICT to collect, systematize and analyse basic health indicators. Currently, a reliable overview is hampered by strong institutional fragmentation (public vs. private donors), as well as geographical/regional and hierarchical barriers.

A principal challenge is facilitating the spreading of technology, competence and experiences in a south-south-north network in such a way that generic solutions may be adjusted to local institutional, political and practical routines. The project has a variety of sources of funding including NORAD, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the EU’s 6th Framework Programme.

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The intensification of globalization in recent years has given impetus to the movement of industrial production from Western countries to low-cost countries in the East. One implication of this development has been that modern production facilities - which often have the most advanced, environmental friendly and efficient technology available - have been shut down and replaced by technologically less sophisticated, low-cost production units that often pay less attention to safety, health, and environmental issues than their western counterparts.

Hydro, the Norwegian integrated aluminium company, maintains high standards regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) and health, environment and safety (HES) issues. Consequently, the company has been challenged by establishing new profitable production facilities in developing countries. In the focus area Global Communication the study of greenfield projects in China and Europe shows that each project has its own unique set of challenges regarding cultural issues, infrastructure, availability of work force, local regulations and laws. To plan, execute, and achieve an effective production ramp-up with a new local organization therefore requires both state-of-the-art technology and competence as well as the ability to deal with emerging issues (which cannot be known in advance of planning). The importance of this last is demonstrated by attempts to set up what are called “blueprint” production facilities, or when routines and procedures are transferred from other sites – often generating more pain than gain.

Greenfield projects are often characterized by a lack of a common background among those involved regarding work approaches and procedures, because the project team is typically composed of people from various sites in the network. As a consequence, “misunderstandings” frequently arise when plans are put into action – situations that can be perceived as “learning situations” that help develop a common background out of which shared intentions, purposes, goals, practices and routines emerge. This also results in a local uniqueness in perceptions, as well as in what is acted upon and what is regarded as efficient practice. The study reveals that there are actually quite distinct variations between different greenfield projects and the length of time it takes to establish a efficiently functioning and competent organization. The next step will be to examine why this is true and whether it is possible to reduce the time it takes for a new organization to gel.

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This research project analyses working conditions and career opportunities among knowledge workers/professionals in software companies in California, Malaysia and Norway. The definition of software companies includes web design, systems design and consulting. The project examines three main topics: (1) The occupational culture in the software industry and its significance for career and personal growth opportunities for software engineers and similar professional employees in the companies. (2) Learning opportunities and learning strategies in software companies, focusing on their organizational systems (including intranet) and practices to support individual learning from experience (so-called communities of practice), on the job training as well as formalised professional learning. (3) The way employees in the software industry manage their home-work balance, and how they experience the company’s way of facilitating this.

The concept of occupational culture relates to factors and relationships that shape work conditions and career opportunities. The concept thus includes the different institutional, symbolical and action-related mechanisms that regulate working conditions and career opportunities in occupations that require advanced software proficiency.

The analysis of learning, learning strategies and learning opportunities start from the study of occupational culture. The research emphasise the exploration of different relations between work, knowledge and learning, related to strategies of skills enhancement and competence-building among employees. Special focus is on the use of different technologies as tools or sites for learning, such as the role of intranets and the usefulness of common management concepts like organization learning and communities of practice.

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