In the face of continuous transformations in organisations, technological advancements directly impact the practice of professionals who need to (re)imagine and (re)shape their roles, workflows, and contexts. To navigate these uncertainties and collaboratively explore alternative futures, we present a collaborative method to stage hybrid design futures in organisational settings. We tested the method in a five-workshop journey in a Swedish public academy for competence development that trains healthcare practitioners such as doctors, midwives, nurses and dentists, among others. The findings and outcomes from workshops are presented in the light of a combined analytical framework of hybrid design futures. The collaborative method engaged participants to be active creators during workshops by creating physical models representing their future scenarios, writing speculative stories about their future roles, enacting ideas from their speculative fictions, and making low-fidelity prototypes of potential technological applications in their future workplace. The results suggest that the collaborative method helped participants develop their sense of agency to change and shape their futures within the organisation. The findings indicate that participants became more aware of technological roles, their capacity to own their futures, and the need to collaborate with other departments within the organisation. 

Global labor market shifts have spurred the need for innovations and adaptations in workplace norms. This evolution demands a workforce with technical and soft skills to meet sustainability and industry advancements. The paper aims to elucidate the complex challenges related to the ambition to develop a socially sustainable, competitive, and green industry subjected to an accelerating pace of change. It outlines the findings of a Delphi study conducted in Sweden, which integrated workshops, interviews, and surveys with experts from various sectors to identify 14 key challenges. These challenges were synthesized into five themes: innovative competence supply management practices, resilient organizations and production systems, analytics for improvement and learning, socially sustainable work, and green transformation practices. The study provides a set of propositions within these themes, offering a strategic roadmap for future research to foster the growth of industries that are socially responsible, competitive, and committed to environmental sustainability. A practical implication of the study is the recognition of the larger competence ecosystem of which industrial companies are a part. This community must work together to create the knowledge needed to manage the shift to a green, sustainable, and digital working life. 

Introduction Public sector organizations in Sweden are currently undergoing a transformation, moving away from the new public management model and hierarchical structures towards increased flexibility, cross-collaboration, and collective leadership approaches. This shift is a response to various trends and external factors, including the COVID pandemic, advances in AI technology, and ongoing climate and social crises, necessitating greater agility, trust, swift responsiveness, and collaboration. The transition to this new paradigm is also driven by a governmental decision to introduce trust-based leadership in the public sector (Tillitsdelegationen, 2019). Trust-based leadership promotes the idea that employees, entrusted with expertise and experience, know best how to provide superior services for citizens (Bringselius, 2021). However, research reveals a gap between policies promoting trust-based leadership and its actual implementation in practice. Purpose The paper aims to present preliminary findings from two ongoing research projects in collaboration with various stakeholders in the Swedish public sector. It seeks to outline how managers and employees, from diverse work environments in the public sector, perceive the need for transformation and enhancement at individual, team, and systemic levels. The ultimate goal is to transition from traditional hierarchical structures to shared leadership and self-leadership practices, fostering more sustainable conditions in hybrid work environments. Methodology Multiple organizations, including four Swedish municipalities, two governmental authorities, a research institute, and a research funding agency, participate in the research. Each organization participates with one to four distinct pilot teams (14 in total). These represent diverse work contexts, ranging from school kitchens and organizational development departments to back-office administrators, preventive eldercare, technology researchers, and various others. Data collection involves different methods: individual interviews with managers overseeing 14 pilot teams, focus group interviews with employees from eight pilot teams, and a photo voice study. The latter includes collecting photos and reflective narratives, followed by group analyses through workshops. Preliminary Results The conference presentation will delve into commonalities and differences in perspectives between managers and employees. It will explore how transitioning requirements vary based on roles or work contexts in the public sector. Current results highlight areas crucial for sustainable hybrid working, with a focus on shared leadership. Employees emphasize the need to clarify shared purpose, goals, and vision, increase trust, and improve communication skills. Participants also stress the importance of strengthening team engagement, encouraging risktaking, and developing the capacity to navigate complexity through cross-collaboration. Recognizing and building structural enablers at the organizational level is also recognized as important. Additionally, participants underscore the significance of cultivating self-leadership skills to foster sustainable conditions in hybrid work and advance shared leadership development. Challenges include establishing conditions for improved work-life balance, allocating time for reflection, enhancing time management, and prioritizing tasks aligned with the broader purpose of work. Developing self-regulation rituals that contribute to motivation, wellbeing, and ongoing learning at work are emphasized, moving away from a focus on short-term deliverables

Futures Literacy is the capability to imagine and understand potential futures to prepare ourselves to act and innovate in the present. This pilot study aims to understand how artistic methodologies and speculative design can support the collaborative exploration of futures in the context of work and contribute to developing peoples' capability of futures literacy. Our premise is that technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of things can augment people and support their needs at work. To illustrate this process, we have presented a collaborative method that integrates an artistic intervention with speculative design activities. We tested the method in a full-day workshop with seventeen (17) participants from a Swedish academy responsible for enabling learning and competence development at work in the healthcare sector. The results indicate that the artistic intervention, combined with the speculative design activities, can challenge current participants' perspectives and offer them new ways of seeing futures with technologies. These new ways of seeing reveal underlying premises crucial in developing the capability of futures literacy. © The Author(s)

This report presents the findings of a Delphi study coordinated by Linköping University (LiU) in collaboration with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and the Chalmers University of Technology. The study was carried out in 2022 as part of a Vinnova-funded planning project aimed at establishing an interdisciplinary research environment to prepare an application for a new competence centre focused on building a long-term, sustainable Swedish industry. The Delphi study aimed to identify key challenges related to the ambition to develop a socially sustainable, competitive, and green industry subjected to an accelerating pace of change. The Delphi study was based on an interactive research approach to facilitate the cocreation of knowledge for the dual purpose of advancing long-term theory development and innovation processes. The consortium and its reference groups consist of industrial companies (such as AstraZeneca, Ericsson IndustryLab, Rimaster, Saab Aeronautics, Scania, Volvo GTO and Volvo Cars), intermediaries and educational actors (such as Skill, IUC Sverige and Linköping Science Park), labour market organisations (including IF Metall, Industriarbetsgivarna, Unionen, and Teknikföretagen), governmental agencies (the Office for Sustainable Working life), and researchers from LiU, Chalmers, and RISE. There are key industrial targets forming the starting point for the Delphi study that also guide policies and investments in strategic agendas for the industrial stakeholders. For the Swedish industry to be resilient and sustainable, new competence and organisational abilities are required to decrease the dependency on fossil energy in production. Transformation towards electrification, circular economy, and digitalisation are key enablers, and these transitions are ongoing and accelerating at a fast pace. Furthermore, new and constantly emerging targets require organisational resilience, like managing new requirements and targets within energy consumption and supply of competence. The findings of this report include a total of 14 identified challenges. To organise and create conditions for flexible work for all To successfully manage crises and drastic external events To successfully drive and contribute to the green industrial transformation To facilitate employee-driven innovation and organisational learning To attract, develop and retain employees with the right skills To take advantage of and exploit the opportunities of digitalisation To create inclusive workplaces and utilise diversity To organise competence development To collaborate with external parties to ensure the availability of competence To design for socially sustainable work considering efficiency and good health in a dynamic environment To organise the creation of added value for and together with customers and suppliers To systematically drive continuous improvement work in parallel with long-term development work To develop leadership that creates better opportunities both for a climate-neutral footprint and a competitive industry with good working conditions To transform research- and policy-based knowledge into practice The 14 challenges were further analysed according to perceived importance and ability and presented in a priority matrix. According to the priority matrix, the 14 challenges were then synthesised into six main research themes: A. Innovative competence supply practice, B. Resilient organisations & production systems, C. Analytics for improvement & learning, D. Socially sustainable work, E. Green transformation practices, and an open and undefined research theme labelled as Future challenges. The research themes are also presented together with six main analytical and theoretical perspectives in a matrix that can be used to intersect and interweave the research themes to guide the research agenda in a potential future research program.

The widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work due to COVID-19 calls for studies that explore the ramifications of these scenarios for office workers from an occupational health and wellbeing perspective. This paper aims to identify the needs and challenges in remote and hybrid work and the potential for a sustainable future work environment. Data collection involved two qualitative studies with a total of 53 participants, who represented employees, staff managers, and service/facility providers at three Swedish public service organisations (primarily healthcare and infrastructure administration). The results describe opportunities and challenges with the adoption of remote and hybrid work from individual, group, and leadership perspectives. The main benefits of remote work were increased flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance and individual performance, while major challenges were social aspects such as lost comradery and isolation. Hybrid work was perceived to provide the best of both worlds of remote and office work, given that employees and managers develop new skills and competencies to adjust to new ways of working. To achieve the expected individual and organisational benefits of hybrid work, employers are expected to provide support and flexibility and re-design the physical and digital workplaces to fit the new and diverse needs of employees. © 2021 by the authors. 

There is a growing consensus around the transformative and innovative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. AI will transform which products are launched and how new business models will be developed to support them. Despite this, little research exists today that systematically explores how AI will change and support various aspects of innovation management. To address this question, this article proposes a holistic, multi-dimensional AI maturity model that describes the essential conditions and capabilities necessary to integrate AI into current systems, and guides organisations on their journey to AI maturity. It explores how various elements of the innovation management system can be enabled by AI at different maturity stages. Two key experimentation stages are identified, 1) an initial stage that focuses on optimisation and incremental innovation, and 2) a higher maturity stage where AI becomes an enabler of radical innovation. We conclude that AI technologies can be applied to democratise and distribute innovation across organisations.

This case study presents how the mixing of speculative design with artistic methodology can contribute to the inquiry oftechnological potentialities in the future of work. The goal and belief are that technologies such as artificial intelligence canaugment employee creativity and support their well-being at work. The co-design process followed an artistic approach andconsisted of three cycles of labs, workshops and events during the span of one year to support professionals with nontechnicalbackground in the ideation and conceptualization of possible futures. The artistic approach consisted of differentexploration perspectives of technology through the use of embodiment, artifacts and creation of speculative fictions. Theresearch team that facilitated the labs was interdisciplinary and the participants were assembled from different partnerorganizations from industry and public sector. We share the learnings from this study attending to three different perspectives:our learnings from the facilitation of the artistic approach, our learnings from the future of work ideas and concepts developedby participants, and discussion of what these learnings can mean to design practitioners and the research community. Resultsindicate that embodiment and speculative fiction can create engagement among professionals that lack technical expertiseand support them in collaborative exploration of alternative futures of work with novel and abstract technologies such as AI.

There is a growing consensus around the transformative and innovative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. AI will transform which products are launched and how new business models will be developed to support them. Despite this, little research exists today that systematically explores how AI will change and support various aspects of innovation management. To address this question, this article proposes a holistic, multi-dimensional AI maturity model that describes the essential conditions and capabilities necessary to integrate AI into current systems, and guides organisations on their journey to AI maturity. It explores how various elements of the innovation management system can be enabled by AI at different maturity stages. Two key experimentation stages are identified, 1) an initial stage that focuses on optimisation and incremental innovation, and 2) a higher maturity stage where AI becomes an enabler of radical innovation. We conclude that AI technologies can be applied to democratise and distribute innovation across organisations.