A brief informal history of the project
Netto - a thorough-bred research project - is coming to an end, and we look back on
three eventful years. The project was initiated partly in order to study new ways of
organizing work and working-life itself, but also to build a common professional platform
and create solidarity within the Tromsø-milieu. In Telenor R&D standards this
contribution has been relatively large; 5,5 man-years during the first year, 3,5 the
second year and 3,5 the last year. This has no doubt contributed to making the milieu able
to maintain focus on some key research topics over time - thanks to the funding from the
internal Telenor Research-plan.
Having been given the resources, however, is not enough. Project-ideas and -activities
need to be defined, and the right spirit must be ignited, and last but not least - the
project-participants need to have a common understanding for the task. With as many as 11
project members at the first gathering, the project-leader was facing quite a job. Here
Mr. Jack of all electrical trades and the idea-oriented sociologist were supposed to work
towards a mutual aim and they were all to find their place and their role within the
group. The project leader however proclaimed one superior rule for all activity within the
project - a mutual respect of one another's profession. There may be diverting opinions
whether this actually has characterized Netto. Probably as many opinions as there have
been people working at the project - altogether 16 persons (not including 2 affiliated
doctor's degree students). Considering the researchers' inclination for willfulness/stubbornness,
the project-leader has undoubtedly worked hard to keep up the focus and the spirit
required. There has been a balance between including ideas from new project members and
new professional milieus and at the same time consolidate/strengthen already established
understanding for aim and meaning. But - the project-leaders Pål Ytterstad (the first
year) and Sigmund Akselsen (year 2 and 3) have by ways of diplomatic skills and
quiet-mannered authority managed to unite the group for a zealous work. And it has been
successful.
We have focused on cooperation within groups - and it has been a special challenge to
have the project-leader actually located in another town. In addition, the two doctor's
degree students who have been attached to the project, have not been located in Tromsø.
We have thus gained a lot of experience in cooperation within distributed groups, which we
have exploited in hypothesis-making and analysis of empirical data gathered by more
conventional ways.
The project has been constantly changing, not only in respect to the "crew".
It has been revised according to the R&D management's plans and concepts for how to
spend our research means. We consequently started our second year with a greater stress on
theoretic basic and research-methodologies. Simultaneously we have by various mappings and
user-trials tested hypothesis, and have experienced - once again - a productive
cooperation between theory and practice. This last year we have concentrated on the
gathering of data connected to the user-trials, and to the documentation of results.
