Purpose -The paper aims to identify the differences and similarities in work environment preferences of office users of different age. Design/methodology/approach -The paper analyses results of a preference survey answered by more than 1,100 office employees in Finland. The survey included questions concerning user preferences in terms of location, buildings, workspaces, and services. The analysis starts with a principal component analysis (PCA). The respondents are divided into five clusters based on their year of birth, and their responses are compared based on regression analysis. The identified differences are confirmed by discriminant analysis. Findings -The study shows that there are differences in the work environment preferences of users of different age. Significant differences were found concerning personal services, commuting, collaboration, restaurant services, and adjustability of indoor climate. The study also identifies areas in which preferences between younger and older employees did not differ remarkably, such as privacy and the virtual environment. Research limitations/implications -While the study indicates that there are preference differences in the workforce as it currently exists, it does not explain whether the identified differences are connected to generations, or if they are simply a result of age and experience. Practical implications -The paper includes findings that are valuable for all parties that are involved in designing and managing work environments. Originality/value -The results give new insights on what office users of different age prefer in their work environments. The paper proposes that some general notions regarding generational differences in the workplace lack academic evidence, and presents results that suggest that the differences are not as significant as generally thought.

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Utilities, such as steam or cooling water, have shown to play an important role within the process industry, since a malfunctioning utility is a plant-wide disturbance that can lead to large revenue losses due to reduced production quantities. This work focuses on identifying disturbances on utilities that give economical consequences. Measures of utility availability and area availability are introduced and used for estimating the ratio of disturbances on utilities. A generic method for handling disturbances on utilities is presented, which could be applied using site models of different level of detail. Some modeling approaches for modeling a site are described and the framework of the general method is demonstrated with a case study example at Perstorp AB, Sweden.

This is the published version of a paper published in L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature.Citation for the original published paper (version of record):Tengberg, M. (2015) Improving Students' Narrative Comprehension through a Multiple Strategy Approach: Effects of Dialogic Strategy Instruction in Secondary School. Language and Literature,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. L1-Educational Studies in Permanent link to this version:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-35973 1 Tengberg, M., Olin-Scheller & Lindholm, A. (2015). Improving students' narrative comprehension through a multiple strategy approach. vol. 15, Department of Educational Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden, email: michael.tengberg@kau This article reports on an intervention study using a multiple strategy approach -called Dialogic Strategy Instruction (DSI) -to improve seventh grade students' narrative comprehension in terms of students' ability to generate inferences and develop interpretations of characters and events. DSI combines strategy instruction with dialogical principles for classroom discussion and response writing. After a 13-week intervention period, students in the intervention condition demonstrated significant improvement in generating inferences and interpretations compared to pre-test results. However, the average effect was small and the improvement was not significantly different relative to controls. An analysis of students with low pre-test scores showed that the intervention group had made significant and strong improvement relative to controls. Results for middle and high achievers were non-significant in this respect. Therefore, although DSI appears valuable for low achievers, results indicate that the instructional principles implemented may not offer instructional support for all children. Possible reasons for the absence of a general effect are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

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