Bøger om Culture

This collection is an album of short stories; each tale a love affair with a particular song, an homage to a DJ and a dedication to someone that influenced and guided the author through his formative years.

Danish culture is a bit like sitting around a campfire. This campfire could be anything from the daily tasks at work, at home, or to the larger welfare state. The members around this fire warm themselves with feelings of (extreme) equality, trust, homogeneity, tolerance, informality, privacy, sarcasm, irony, and dark humor. But what could all these mean to expats who came to Denmark and want to join this circle? This is a small book that paints a certain picture of the Danish mentality and its implicit expectations. The book draws from existing socio-cultural, anthropological, and historical work on Danes and Denmark. It is a humorous, serious, and provocative book that battles through decoding known Danish values by finding out how they play out in real life and, not least, what they could mean to internationals and their few Danish friends.

Technological development, climate change, and globalization are challenging the national institutions and modes of governance we created during the industrial era. Our old knowledge and general understanding of the world do not provide sufficient answers anymore. To maintain meaningful lives, social calm, and liberal democracy, we need to upgrade our meaning-making to match the complexity of the world we are creating.Polymodernity is an alternative to both modernity and postmodernism, a cultural code that presents itself as an opportunity if we work deliberately towards it. Polymodernity provides us with a framework for understanding ourselves and our societies in a much more complex way. It contains indigenous, premodern, modern, and postmodern cultural elements and thus provides social norms and a moral fabric for intimacy, spirituality, religion, science, and self-exploration, all at the same time. It is a way of strengthening local, national, continental, and global cultural heritage among all and thus has the potential to dismantle the fear of losing one’s culture as the economy as well as the internet and exponential technologies are disrupting our current modes of societal organization and governance. Polymodernity will thus allow us to be meaning-making at a deeper emotional level and a higher intellectual level compared to today; it will allow us a more complex understanding, which may match the complexity of the problems we need to solve. Appropriate meaning-making is the best prevention against the frustrations that generally lead to authoritarian ideologies and societal instability. Using polymodernity as the filter through which we see the world and as a template, we can create, among other things, new and appropriate education, politics, and institutions for our societies of the 21st century. A vision such as this may even give hope.

What is artistic freedom? Something you take for granted in the Nordic countries? Yes, most people would probably say. But perhaps this is not the case at all? After all, does freedom really feel completely free when you as an artist need to please large foundations or well-established museums? How do you express yourself artistically in hyper-sensitive times? And in which direction is art moving towards in a digital age?This anthology explores artistic freedom through a wide variety of texts. All contributors are concerned with the topic – each in their own way – ranging from the legal and practical aspects to the personal and experiential. Like a kaleidoscope, the anthology illuminates different ways of looking at the subject.The anthology is published by a/nordi/c – a think tank that from 2021-2023 worked to bring the practice of the art world and the political reality closer together.The following people have written contributions in the book:CARSTEN STAURANNI SYRJÄLÄINENSARA WHYATTFREDERIK TYGSTRUPADELHEID ESHITOK SEYFARTH GULBRANDSENKHALED BARAKEHJENNI LAITISANDRA WEILOLE REITOVHEIKI RIIPINENANNA JUULCHRISTIAN VILLUMKRISTOFFER ØRUMSTINA GUSTAFSSONELINE SIGFUSSONSIGNE WULFF

Emeritus professor of Strategy, IMD Business School Dominique Turpin: "If you want a great business book, don’t miss: “Win The Strategy Execution” by Lars H. Nielsen. Hands on, practical essential if you want your strategy to really happen!Professor Marcus M. Larsen, Copenhagen Business School, dep. of strategy and innovation: "In theory, strategy may sound simple. In practice, however, succeeding with your strategy is a complex endeavor that requires commitment throughout the organization. In "Win the Strategy Execution", Lars H. Nielsen elegantly demonstrates how successful strategies must focus on the people within the organization. Through novel insights, valuable experience, and rich case illustrations, Lars offers a practical and hands-on book on how to sharpen strategy processes in all kinds of organizations.EY HR Director Peter Haugaard: “I'm certain and sure that your success in strategy execution will improve after following Lars's advice.”One thing is to develop the right strategy. Another thing to have the commitment of senior management and the board. However, the most important and most difficult thing is: Making the strategy happen. If senior management fails to motivate employees to pursue their strategic ambitions, a great strategy is like a beautiful boat in a harbor — without a dedicated team onboard it can never depart as expected. Creating followership is not easy. It requires an alignment in leadership and the ability to communicate purpose to employees' minds and hearts. When this succeeds, the company moves a decisive step forward.This book contains successfully proved advice for your actual strategy work and for effective communication with the aim of executing an ambitious strategy on the first try.Winning the strategy execution means doing the right things in the right way when they are most needed.

What is it like to leave everything behind and follow the person you love to a different country? What does it mean to be Danish and how does one integrate into the Danish environment? What makes the Danish different from other Scandinavians and why do they take first places in happiness ratings? What is worth seeing in Denmark and which events should one visit? You will find answers to these questions and more in "Married to Denmark".

Let's demystify the phenomena known as digital transformation. Let's break down this best-known secret to success and build it up page by page. Let's look at all the threads that connect and create this digital spiderweb. And let's dig into what kind of role you can play as a digital artist in this new and infinite digital renaissance. This book is born from the urge to help guide you through the digital pitfalls, to show how the anthropological approach needs to play an even bigger role now than ever, how culture, leadership, infrastructure, organizational change and agile methodologies can help if seen as intervened enablers. This book will thus not dig into deep descriptions of known technologies or methodologies. This already exists in abundance on the world wide web. The point of interest for this book is the bigger picture, the connections, the intent, the purpose and you. I will come with this bold statement: that you will never succeed with your digital transformation if you don't first understand the different entities in it and their connections, and then decide how your digital transformation should be. This book will provide insights into this and show you how it all can be connected to create the great customer experience you and your customers want.

PROFESSOR SEAN MEEHAN, IMD BUSINESS SCHOOL: "By framing the central issue as alignment we have a fresh lens to look at change process. “Winning Through Alignment in Leadership” is worth any executive’s time."This book is about how you as a leader can design the process and work purposefully to create strategic alignment within your organisation.When the manoeuvrability is challenged by the speed of the market and the complexity of the organisation.Alignment is about cohesion and team manoeuvrability. To shorten the time from when the strategy is in place to when it is put into practice and executed.The challenge is to ensure that you, across all functions and areas of responsibility, perform at your very best when it matters most, thus optimising your competitiveness.Lars H. Nielsen has close to 30 years’ experience in facilitating successful strategic development processes in the business sector. This book offers you insight into how organisations such as Sanofi Genzyme, Pfizer, Sparekassen Kronjylland, Banedanmark, Bayer Crop Science and the Danish national rowing team have handled the challenges with success and created unique performances when it really mattered.It starts with you as a leader – and especially with you as management.

Professor Sean Meehan, IMD Business School, Lausanne, CH:Lars H. Nielsen's thoughtful reflections on the journeys of successful Olympians, including his own, provide a clear, straightforward and motivating approach to achieving the persistent peak performances required to win. His approach is informed, and in "Winner Culture" vividly illustrated, by his work with winning organizations such as PANDORA, ATP, Danfoss and Jyske Bank. More a "just-do-it" than a detailed "how-to", Winner Culture identifies critical elements which based on my own observations, leadership teams have, despite repeated urging not to, a tendency to either overlook or not take sufficiently seriously enough. Two examples: 1) The power of establishing an highly ambitious goal, aligning by visualizing what goal achievement will require and reinforcing what is required along the journey through crystal clear communications (super illustrations here from the sports and business worlds); 2) Stay the course! I see this myself in practice: executives get fatigued, burned-out, bored and frustrated with the lack of progress. They unhelpfully introduce new twists, new ideas, often at just the wrong moment. The bigger lesson is that a strong performance management culture offers lots of space to all helpful ideas, but each in its own place and at the right time. A persistent theme running through the book, but not emphasized is the strength of the leaders 'showcased'; they are all strong leaders who took responsibility for creating, cultivating and guarding their winning cultures. The stories in which they feature are top class - Lars does a great service in lifting the curtain on these journeys to goal accomplishment. "Winner Culture" is an easy accessible read which should motivate executives and leaders as they face unrelenting uncertainty. Read it!Olympic Champion, 2012, Mads Rasmussen, Rowing: "A winner culture can be created. In this book Lars explains how."A winner culture is when success turns into a conscious habit. This was ATP’s ambition and it worked. The results speak for themselves: In 2010 ATP was named the world’s best pension fund. A winner culture means delivering the out-of-the-ordinary top performance on a daily basis. It is a winner culture which enables competent organizations and teams to achieve success when needed most. Since 1989, Lars H. Nielsen has been helping to create winners in a large section of the business sector. In addition to ATP he has cooperated with organizations as Jyske Bank, Danfoss and PANDORA – and it is the creation of a firmly anchored winner culture in these companies that this book is all about. In this book, which is intended for the ambitious manager or staff member and is based on in-depth case studies, Lars H. Nielsen tells how it is possible to create a winner culture for any team or organization. Be inspired, create a winner culture and reach the optimum performance – not just once but again and again.

"Be ware of European Islam!" This warning I have heard so many times during my stay in the East. But the authors of this warning ignore wittingly or unwittingly the fact that one of Islam’s secrets for survival through history has been its ability to adapt to the conditions of the different peoples and territories it reached. Uniform Islam does not exist; Muslims of Arabia understand it in a way that corresponds to their conditions and mentality, so do Muslims in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Sub-Saharan Africa, and so on. Accordingly, Muslims living in the Western hemisphere must have the same right to understand it according to their conditions. To me, that is the universality of Islam.