http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/158302 Sat, 17 Oct 2026 21:43:28 GMT 2026-10-17T21:43:28Z http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173102 Towards consumer-oriented smart grids : investigating consumer perspectives on the adoption of smart technologies and services Siitonen, Petteri Consumers are expected to play a central role in smart grids, and therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to identify and understand factors that influence consumer engagement in them through various smart grid technologies and services. This dissertation focuses on investigating consumer opinions, awareness, and experiences of key smart grid technologies and services, as well as on analysing factors and variables that influence their adoption. By providing insights for both theory and practice, the research carried out in this dissertation aims to support the development of consumer-oriented smart grids and to inform efforts to promote the adoption of smart grid technologies and services. The research conducted in the dissertation adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods. First, consumer perspectives towards demand response are investigated using a systematic review and thematic synthesis of previous European demand response projects. Secondly, to improve the understanding of the roles of trust and technological knowledge in affecting technology adoption in the smart grid context, a cross-sectional online questionnaire survey of Finnish consumers is carried out, and the data are analysed using path analysis. Lastly, a machine learning-based social media sentiment analysis is conducted to examine how consumer opinions of various smart grid technologies and behaviours have changed in response to the 2022 energy crisis. This dissertation contributes to the smart grid literature in several ways. Firstly, by highlighting the importance of incorporating consumer perspectives into the design of demand response programs, this work provides insights that can inform the development of smart grid services that are compatible with consumers’ preferences. Secondly, the research elucidates the mechanisms by which trust and technological knowledge may influence the adoption of smart grid technologies and discusses the potential implications for future research and practice. Lastly, to shed light on how times of crisis can change public opinion on smart grids, it is investigated how the 2022 energy crisis affected Finnish consumers’ awareness and opinions of smart grid technologies and services. The results of this dissertation can serve both researchers and practitioners in the development of consumer-oriented smart grids and in informing efforts to increase the adoption of smart grid technologies and services. Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173102 2026-11-06T00:00:00Z http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173099 Operationalizing green coding in software development : from empirical evidence to workflow-integrated energy feedback Khan, Muhammad Asif The energy consumption of software has become a major concern in software engineering, with information and communication technology accounting for an estimated 1.4% to 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the estimate. Green coding, the design and implementation of software that reduces energy use while preserving functional and quality requirements, has become a distinct area of practice and research. Yet a clear gap remains between recognizing its importance and applying it in practice. Although the technical knowledge exists, energy considerations are still poorly integrated into routine software development. This dissertation investigates how green coding can be operationalized in software development through an empirical program of five publications. It first surveys software practitioners to establish the state of the practice and finds a wide gap between how important practitioners consider green coding and how far they apply it. It then compares organizations across Europe and beyond to explain why adoption varies, producing the capability-constraint-context model. It also reviews the research literature and finds uneven maturity, in which technical knowledge is well developed while its integration into development workflows is not. Building on these findings, the dissertation proposes a framework that couples three components into one feedback loop: code-level intervention, energy measurement in continuous integration/deployment pipelines, and energy-aware testing. The framework is evaluated on real software through controlled experiments on two open-source applications and a fault-injection study on a standard continuous integration/deployment pipeline. Both code changes were associated with lower measured energy, by roughly 5-8% in one application and 21.1% in the other, mainly through shorter execution time, although the blocked run order means the size of these effects should be read with caution. The pipeline measured energy at build and endpoint levels on ordinary infrastructure, detected injected regressions, and located them in the code that changed. These results provide an initial operational validation that the three components can work together as one loop; they are not a general measure of the framework’s effectiveness. The dissertation makes five contributions: an empirical baseline for green coding practice, the capability-constraint-context (3C) model for adoption analysis, a synthesis of the related research literature, an integrated framework for energy-efficient software development, and an initial validation of that framework, together with the conditions that govern its use. The publications collectively show that energy-efficient software development can be systematically studied, operationalized, and empirically evaluated. It can be built on practices that practitioners already recognize, integrated into existing workflows, and examined with established empirical software engineering methods. Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173099 2026-11-02T00:00:00Z http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173086 The digital and social affordances for knowledge co-creation in online collaboration Toivikko, Tuuli This dissertation investigates digital and social affordances for online collaboration, focusing specifically on how those working on knowledge co-creation through digital technology perceive its action potential for solving complex issues. The need to study topics related to knowledge co-creation in digital collaborative settings arises from approaches to conducting collaborative efforts remotely, which has become common in recent years. The theoretical frame used here builds on affordance theory and the concept of digital knowledge co-creation. The particular collaboration and knowledge co-creation setting focused on in this study is that of large-scale collaboration (LSC). The ability of LSC to address and solve complex problems has hitherto chiefly been explored from multiple perspectives at the individuals’ level of affordance and technology adoption. However, our understanding of that which affords action for large groups in digital collaboration remains meagre, particularly in light of the continuously and rapidly changing effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on collaboration. Hence, one of this dissertation’s core research objectives revolves around how AI‑enabled tools shape actions in LSC. The affordance approach frames the methodology and choice of methods used here, which include the qualitative analytical methods of thematic analysis, the application of the Gioia method, literature review, and narrative analysis. The data informing this dissertation consist of various types of data sets, from digital platforms’ traces to focus group interviews. Four articles constitute the basis of this dissertation. The first publication studies and presents online collaboration in large virtual expert groups, exemplified through the fast expert teams (FET) model. The second publication discusses how AI affects trust in team-level collaboration. The third publication explores the adoption of technology by leaders in a fast-organising knowledge co-creation process taking place on a collaboration platform. The fourth publication addresses the perceived action potential, i.e., affordances based on AI-enabled tools, in a collaboration that employs the FET model, which presents a novel way of working that enables the combining of dispersed and diverse expert knowledge. This dissertation’s findings show that studying technology‑mediated LSC through an affordance lens allows us to understand online collaborations’ practical preconditions, their digital environment, and what participants afford for it. The perceptions of these preconditions direct digital knowledge co‑creation participants’ actions; and, alongside these perceptions and participants’ own potential for knowledge co-creation, this dissertation investigates those digital affordances and asks how human–AI collaboration and team processes are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of AI’s trustworthiness. In conclusion, this dissertation proffers a comprehensive view of those action potentials that originate in the digital collaboration tools used by participants in LSC. The four publications contained here have been conducted by recognising which digital and social affordances enable action, how trust in human–AI interaction emerges through cross‑level dynamics, and how AI‑enabled tools support essential knowledge processes such as organising and synthesising information. Understanding affordances, trust dynamics, and the AI-enabled potential or hindrances that technology sets for online collaboration provides implications for practice, and these are presented here as a synthesis of the social and digital affordances shaping technology-mediated knowledge processes. Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173086 2026-10-23T00:00:00Z http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173056 Futures studies in software business : maintaining agility under uncertainty Yang, Nan The rapid development of advanced software technologies, particularly generative AI and its convergence with other technologies, has significantly increased uncertainty in future business environments. It lowers barriers to entry in the software industry, disrupts conventional strategies for adopting new technologies, and threatens the competitiveness of existing software businesses. To survive and succeed under such uncertainty, decisionmakers in software-intensive organizations need foresight capabilities to envision possible futures, synthesize knowledge from past experiences, and examine ongoing changes and practices. This study explores the main research question: "How do software businesses enact agility under technological and regulatory uncertainty introduced by emerging technologies?" Futures Studies provides methods to navigate possible and preferable futures in the software business, while agility is a key organizational capability for embracing and leveraging uncertainty. This study adopts Futures Studies methods from the Foresight Diamond framework, including morphological analysis, literature review, and the Delphi method, to investigate software business contexts across future-oriented 6G, retrospective 5G, and ongoing AI-driven transformation. Design science research is further employed to develop Triadic Structuration Theory through articulating how Agile practices co-evolve with emerging generative technologies and regulatory dynamics. The results reveal blurring boundaries, emerging user needs, and regulatory uncertainties within the future 6G software business ecosystem; examine the core of agility through practices and theoretical perspectives under 5G and AI; and analyze the coupling and evolution of Agile practices in response to emerging generative technologies and regulations. This study contributes to the understanding of organizational agility in software businesses under deep uncertainty, offering both theoretical and practical implications. It identifies core Agile theories and contributes to structuration theory, while providing practitioners with insights into how to strategically prepare for the future and leverage change. Moreover, by integrating Futures Studies methods and social science theories into software business research, this study advances sociotechnical research in software engineering. Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://lutpub.lut.fi:80/handle/10024/173056 2026-10-19T00:00:00Z