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PurposePrior research has highlighted the pervasive importance of digital technologies in business and societal settings, but their enabling role in digital transformation, and effective forms of organization to address tensions that arise during attempts to promote it, have been insufficiently explored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why tensions affect clusters established to foster digital transformation.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical data were acquired through a qualitative exploratory holistic single case study, focused on the Swedish Cluster of Forest Technology. This included interviews with informants, selected by homogeneous purposive sampling, and event observation to investigate the personal perspectives of representatives of every company engaged in the cluster, followed by a thematic analysis of their comments.FindingsThe case study revealed three major tensions, between knowledge flow, collaboration and competition, but also others that were interrelated with those major tensions, related to matters such as trust and protection of intellectual property, power equality and hierarchy, and networks that must be managed in digital transformation efforts.Originality/valueThe paper extends understanding of the tensions that arise, and their management, in digital transformation processes.

As society has gotten increasingly digitalized, schools have made extensive efforts to accommodate to that development. With the digitalization of school, the special education practice and the roles of special education needs coordinators (SENCOs) and special education teachers (SETs) change. However, there is a lack of research examining this transformation, a gap which this exploratory study opens up for new understandings of. This mixed method study explores the special education practice in a municipality in Sweden, one of the most digitalized countries in the world. The findings show that SENCOs and SETs have highly positive beliefs about digital tools in special education, but at the same time their frequency of use varies greatly. Also, the study identifies special educational activities engaging with digital technology, describing a work practice with complex expectations of the special education professionals also in the area of digital teaching and learning. Furthermore, the competencies considered as necessary for handling the expectations are discussed.

Field inventoried data are often used as references (ground truth) in forest remote sensing studies. However, the reference values are affected by various kinds of errors, which tend to make the reported accuracies of the remote sensing-based predictions worse than they are. The more accurate the remote sensing techniques are becoming, the more pronounced this problem will be. This paper addresses the impact of uncertainties in field reference data due to measurement errors, model errors, and position errors when evaluating the accuracy of biomass predictions from airborne laser scanning at plot level. We present novel theoretical analysis methods that take the interactions of the error sources into account. Further, an error characterization model (ECM) is used to describe the error structure of the remote sensing-based predictions, and we show how the parameters of the ECM can be adjusted when field references contain errors. We also show how root mean square error (RMSE) estimates can be adjusted. Based on data from Scandinavian forests, we conclude that the field reference errors have an impact on the remote sensing-based predictions. By accounting for these errors the RMSE of the remote sensing-based predictions was reduced by 6-18%. The most influential sources of error in the field references were found to be the residual errors of the allometric biomass model and the field plot position errors. Together, these two sources accounted for 97% of the variance while measurement errors and biomass model parameter uncertainties were negligible in our study.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe experiences of being a manager in the municipal sector in rural northern Sweden. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were performed with 15 managers working in the municipal sector. The interviews were subjected to inductive qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: The managers' experiences were interpreted in the main theme, Striving for stability on shaky ground. They struggled within slimmed-down organizations with substitute shortages and reduced means. They expressed being burdened by conflicting demands, a work overload, work conflicts and a requirement to be present. They had to endure the negative consequences of working in small municipalities, and handling health and family life impairments. The managers expressed the importance of being strengthened by inner and outer resources, such as being motivated, having social support and finding strategies to cope. They also expressed benefits of working in small municipalities, such as great opportunities to influence and efficiency in decision-making. CONCLUSION: This study illuminates managers' adverse psychosocial working conditions, insights into working in a small municipality in the rural context and also the importance of organizational support. Future studies could focus on applying adapted workplace support interventions among managers in the municipal sector in rural northern Sweden.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how older, middle aged and younger adults perceive breakdown situations caused by lack of or inconsistent knowledge, sudden focus shifts, and conflicting intentions in dialogues between a human and a socially intelligent robot in a home environment, and how they perceive strategies to manage breakdown situations.Methods: Scenarios embedding dialogues on health-related topics were constructed based on activity-theoretical and argumentation frameworks. Different reasons for breakdown situations and strategies to handle these were embedded. The scenarios were recorded in a Wizard-of-Oz setup, with a human actor and a Nao robot. Twenty participants between 23 and 72 years of age viewed the recordings and participated in semi-structured interviews conducted remotely. Data were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis.Results: Four themes relating to breakdown situations emerged: expecting, understanding, relating, and interacting. The themes span complex human activity at different complementary levels and provide further developed understanding of breakdown situations in human–robot interaction (HRI). Older and middle-aged adults emphasized emphatic behavior and adherence to social norms, while younger adults focused on functional aspects such as gaze, response time, and length of utterances. A hierarchical taxonomy of aspects relating to breakdown situations was formed, and design implications are provided, guiding future research.Conclusion: We conclude that a socially intelligent robot agent needs strategies to 1) construct and manage its understanding related to emotions of the human, social norms, knowledge, and motive on a higher level of meaningful human activity, 2) act accordingly, for instance, adhering to transparent social roles, and 3) resolve conflicting motives, and identify reasons to prevent and manage breakdown situations at different levels of collaborative activity. Furthermore, the novel methodology to frame the dynamics of human–robot dialogues in complex activities using Activity Theory and argumentation theory was instrumental in this work and will guide the future work on tailoring the robot’s behavior.

The societal demands on forest management are becoming increasingly diverse, which will be reflected in decisions made by forest owners. We examined the willingness of private forest owners in Austria, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, and Sweden to participate in a contract-based payment scheme in which they were asked to apply a specific management strategy to promote either timber production or environmental goals. The preferences for the contract-based management and associated consequences in terms of profitability, biodiversity, carbon stock, and climate change-induced damages were addressed within a choice experiment. A majority of respondents across all countries agreed to participate in a payment scheme to promote environmental goals, while schemes purely targeted to increase wood production were found less attractive. Forest owners liked improvements in profitability and environmental attributes and disliked deterioration of these attributes. Differences among countries were found in the level of expected contract payments, and commonalities were found with respect to preferences towards environmental goals, including biodiversity and carbon stocks. Hence, new policies to target European forest subsidy to promote the provision of environmental goals would likely be acceptable. Bibliografija: str. 12-13.

NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission offers data for temperate and pan-tropical estimates of aboveground forest biomass (AGB). The spaceborne, full-waveform LiDAR from GEDI provides sample footprints of canopy structure, expected to cover about 4% of the land area following two years of operation. Several options are available for estimating AGB at different geographical scales. Using GEDI sample data alone, gridded biomass predictions are based on hybrid inference which correctly propagates errors due to the modeling and accounts for sampling variability, but this method requires at least two GEDI tracks in the area of interest. However, there are significant gaps in GEDI coverage and in some areas of interest GEDI data may need to be combined with other wall-to-wall remotely sensed (RS) data, such as those from multispectral or SAR sensors. In these cases, we may employ hierarchical model-based (HMB) inference that correctly considers the additional model errors that result from relating GEDI data to the wall-to-wall data. Where predictions are possible from both hybrid and HMB inference the question arises which framework to choose, and under what circumstances? In this paper, we make progress towards answering these questions by comparing the performance of the two prediction frameworks under conditions relevant for the GEDI mission. Conventional model-based (MB) inference with wall-to-wall TanDEM-X data was applied as a baseline prediction framework, which does not involve GEDI data at all. An important feature of the study was the comparison of AGB predictors in terms of both standard deviation (SD: the square root of variance) and root mean square error (RMSE: the square root of mean square error – MSE). Since, in model-based inference, the true AGB in an area of interest is a random variable, comparisons of the performance of prediction frameworks should preferably be made in terms of their RMSEs. However, in practice only the SD can be estimated based on empirical survey data, and thus it is important also to study whether or not the difference between the two uncertainty measures is small or large under conditions relevant for the GEDI mission. Our main findings were that: (i) hybrid and HMB prediction typically resulted in smaller RMSEs than conventional MB prediction although the difference between the three frameworks in terms of SD often was small; (ii) in most cases the difference between hybrid and HMB inference was small in terms of both RMSE and SD; (iii) the RMSEs for all frameworks was substantially larger than the SDs in small study areas whereas the two uncertainty measures were similar in large study areas, and; (iv) spatial autocorrelation of model residual errors had a large effect on the RMSEs of AGB predictors, especially in small study areas. We conclude that hybrid inference is suitable in most GEDI applications for AGB assessment, due to its simplicity compared to HMB inference. However, where GEDI data are sparse HMB inference should be preferred.

Heterogeneity of structure can increase mechanical stability, stress resistance and resilience, biodiversity and many other functions and services of forest stands. That is why many silvicultural measures aim at enhancing structural diversity. However, the effectiveness and potential of structuring may depend on the site conditions. Here, we revealed how the stand structure is determined by site quality and results from site-dependent partitioning of growth and mortality among the trees. We based our study on 90 mature, even-aged, fully stocked monocultures of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) sampled in 21 countries along a productivity gradient across Europe. A mini-simulation study further analyzed the site-dependency of the interplay between growth and mortality and the resulting stand structure. The overarching hypothesis was that the stand structure changes with site quality and results from the site-dependent asymmetry of competition and mortality. First, we show that Scots pine stands structure across Europe become more homogeneous with increasing site quality. The coefficient of variation and Gini coefficient of stem diameter and tree height continuously decreased, whereas Stand Density Index and stand basal area increased with site index. Second, we reveal a site-dependency of the growth distribution among the trees and the mortality. With increasing site index, the asymmetry of both competition and growth distribution increased and suggested, at first glance, an increase in stand heterogeneity. However, with increasing site index, mortality eliminates mainly small instead of all-sized trees, cancels the size variation and reduces the structural heterogeneity.Third, we modelled the site-dependent interplay between growth partitioning and mortality. By scenario runs for different site conditions, we can show how the site-dependent structure at the stand level emerges from the asymmetric competition and mortality at the tree level and how the interplay changes with increasing site quality across Europe. Our most interesting finding was that the growth partitioning became more asymmetric and structuring with increasing site quality, but that the mortality eliminated predominantly small trees, reduced their size variation and thus reversed the impact of site quality on the structure. Finally, the reverse effects of mode of growth partitioning and mortality on the stand structure resulted in the highest size variation on poor sites and decreased structural heterogeneity with increasing site quality. Since our results indicate where heterogeneous structures need silviculture interventions and where they emerge naturally, we conclude that these findings may improve system understanding and modelling and guide forest management aiming at structurally rich forests. This study was supported by the ERA-Net COFUND programme SUMFOREST, with the national funding organization Federal Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture (REFORM, grant #2816ERA02S). The project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No952314 and under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 778322, and the 2017 - 2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme, with the national funding organization Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant #16LC1805B). The German Science Foundation funded the project “Structure and growth of mixed Scots pine/European beech stands compared with pure stands analyzed along an ecological gradient through Europe” (grant #PR 292/15-1). H.P. and E.U. were additionally supported by the Bavarian Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry through the projects “Pine-spruce mixed stands in Bavaria” (grant #7831-20339-2012) and “Maintenance of the long term experimental plots in Bavaria (W07, #7831-26625-2017). M.d.R. and R.R.-P. were supported by the projects CLU-2019-01 - iuFOR Institute Unit of Excellence” of the University of Valladolid and VA183P20–SMART, funded by the Junta de Castilla and Leon (Spain) and co-financed by the European Union (ERDF “Europe drives our growth”). J.C. was supported by the National Agency of Agricultural Research (Project No. QK21020307). K.B. was supported by the Polish Government MNiSW 2018–2021 Matching Fund No. 117/H2020/2018. M.M. was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant (PRG1586) and Estonian University of Life Sciences projects number P180024MIME and P200029MIME. R.S. was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency project No. APVV- 19-0035. Peer reviewed

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on "sociotechnical imaginaries " providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper's empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s' ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s' counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society's impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield-and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration.

Over the last decade, the bioeconomy has been increasingly promoted as a strategy able to shift our economies away from fossil fuels and boost local economic growth, especially of rural areas in Europe. The bioeconomy is an important part of the European Union agenda, it is promoted through European wide strategies that are translated into local and regional policies. However, the bioeconomy does not unfold equally across regions; it has different implications influenced by the spaces and the narratives with which the policies are created and implemented. Amongst all the actors participating in the bioeconomy strategies, local practitioners play a crucial role in interpreting the narratives and implementing the policies in a way that makes sense for their local contexts. Hence, there is a need to understand how local and regional practitioners apply bioeconomy strategies to grasp how those are expressed in different regional contexts. Through the case studies of the forest-based bioeconomy in Catalonia and Finnish Lapland, this paper explains why economic narratives prevail in the local bioeconomy and how regional spatialities are affected by it. The cases show that the bioeconomy remains close to economic growth and is applied through regional economic development policies, thus focusing on specific economic sectors and hindering the role of the bioeconomy in a wider regional transformation. Understanding the narratives and how these reflect the spatialities help us to advance a spatially sensitive approach to the bioeconomy, this is, a bioeconomy practised according to the socio-spatial conditions, closer to ideas of inclusivity, plurality and justice, and with a greater role in a wider regional transformation, rather than the greening of specific economic sectors. Popular article based on the paper, with commentaries, is published in Versus Research Debate.