The Saudi ministry of health reported that government health care spending doubled from 2008 to 2011. To address increased demand, the government encouraged small to medium enterprise (SME) growth. However, SME leaders could not leverage technology as a growth enabler because they lacked strategies to address operating inefficiencies associated with technology. Only 50% of hospitals fully implemented information technology. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore lived experiences of SME leaders on strategies needed to accelerate technology implementation. This exploration drew on a conceptual framework developed from Wainwright and Waring's framework addressing issues of technology adoption. Data were collected from semistructured interviews of 20 SME leaders in Saudi Arabia. A modified van Kaam method was used to analyze participants' interview transcripts in search of common themes. The main themes were strategies to address human resources, clinical teams, funding, and organizational and leadership alignment to accelerate the diffusion of technology. Findings indicated that insurance companies influence SME operations, growth, and survival. Analysis of findings revealed the need for change in management, training, implementation follow up, and staff retention to accelerate technology implementation. Application of findings has the potential to promote positive social change in guiding SME leaders to be change agents and enabling them to create a reliable, sustainable health care delivery system.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper insight of in which ways Swedish SMEs are dependent on their network when entering into Vietnam. In the introductory chapter there is a description of why it is interesting with the phenomenon globalization and of why Vietnam is an interesting market. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of network. The research question that evolved from this is: In what ways are Swedish SMEs dependent on their business network relationships when entering Vietnam? In the literature review the revised Uppsala model helps to gain a great knowledge of the importance of network when internationalizing. Furthermore, the core concept network is discussed from different angles. From this discussion we identified the following core concepts: embeddedness, complexity of relationships, network position, structure and bonds and trust and commitment, which the conceptual framework is based on. In the methodology chapter the approach, method and design that are used in this thesis are explained, together with the operationalization and an introduction of the respondents and the companies that they represent. In the empirical findings, the information gathered from different interviews is presented. The chapter about the empirical findings is structured based on the concept from the literature review, but also from the respondents, in order for the reader to easy be able to follow. This is followed by the analysis in which the respondents’ answers are compared to each other and then towards the conceptual framework. Lastly, the conclusion with the answer of the research question, implications and recommendations and suggestions for future research is stated. The main conclusions from this study are: • Swedish SMEs are dependent on their network when entering Vietnam. • Swedish SMEs are dependent on being locally anchored since it facilitates the interaction with the market. • Swedish SMEs are dependent on their network concerning travelling, communicating and interacting. • Swedish SMEs are dependent on their local personnel when conducting business in Vietnam. • Swedish SMEs are not dependent concerning obtaining institutional and political relationships when entering Vietnam.

The internationalization of firms, especially among SMEs, represents big challenges that must be addressed. For this thesis, the internationalization process of the Swedish company Big Image Systems AB is studied. The purpose of the thesis is to generate a theoretical model to satisfactorily describe and explain the internationalization process of Big Image Systems AB. The case study methodology is our research strategy for this qualitative study. Based on theories about SMEs and internationalization, and after exhaustive analysis and selection, we developed an internationalization model for Big Image. The so called Big Image Model considers the dimensions of internationalization developed by Welch and Luostarinen (1998) and the entrepreneurial perspective by Andersson (2001) to satisfactorily describe and explain the important factors involved in the process. We observe that the entrepreneur plays a central role towards internationalization, and that theoretical guidance can make SMEs learn from their own experiences and, as a consequence, progress.

This thesis aspires to advance understanding of how start-up firms’ and small and medium sized firms’(SMEs) network relationships affect acquisition of financing and information necessary to achieve firmbusiness development through the exchange in business relationships. It contributes to research on socialstructure by clarifying how network relationships that facilitate exchange have a positive effect on firmbusiness development, defined as subjective and objective enhancement of firm performance. The empirical setting consists of case studies in entrepreneurial start-up firms and of quantitative researchin SMEs. The findings show that in the start-up phase of firm development, network relationships that areembedded in social attachment and shared cognitive schemes constitute means to acquire informationcontaining referrals to new business partners, thus affecting the structural development of start-ups firms’business network. Findings further show that relationships to banks are important in order to fund thisstructural development. The thesis also shows the effects of banks, as institutional actors, on SMEs’investments in international business relationships and the effects of such investments on SMEs’ businessdevelopment. It is shown that relationships to domestic and local banks in different ways affect SMEs’specific investments in international business relationships. A local bank relationship decreases the SME’srelationship specific investments, while a domestic bank relationship increases relationship specificinvestments. There is however an indirect positive effect of a local bank relationship on the SME’srelationship specific investments, mediated by a positive effect of the SME’s relationships to other localinstitutional actors. The results further show that increases in relationship specific investments promoteSMEs’ business development. Findings made in this thesis also show that institutions, experiencedthrough interaction in the international business relationship, positively affect relationship specificinvestments and the performance enhancement of such investments. A general conclusion drawn fromthe findings presented in this thesis is the relevance of a type of actor - actors that facilitate exchangesamong firms and their business partners who are, or wish to be, independent - to the businessdevelopment of start-ups and SMEs. This thesis challenges banks to increase cognitive alignment with customers of start-up firms and toconsider corporate customers in view of their business relationships and network structure. Theseapproaches are suggested to facilitate bank’s assessment of firm creditworthiness. / <p>QC 20100722</p>

Disertacijoje analizuojama, kaip vadovų savaiminio mokymosi pagalba daryti įtaką įmonės veiklos rezultatams. Vadovų savaiminis mokymasis nagrinėtas tarpdiscipliniškai – atskleisti vadybiniai, psichologiniai bei edukologiniai aspektai. Susisteminta savaiminio mokymosi samprata bei atskleisti jos ryšiai su formaliuoju ir neformaliuoju mokymusi. Įvardinti vadovų savaiminio mokymosi veiksniai: savaiminio mokymosi individo, savaiminio mokymosi aplinkos veiksniai bei savaiminio mokymosi metodai. Taip pat aprašyti mažų ir vidutinių įmonių veiklos rezultatai. Vadovų savaiminio mokymosi veiksnių įtaka įmonių veiklos rezultatams ištirta empiriškai Lietuvos mažose bei vidutinėse įmonėse. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad didžiausią įtaką Lietuvos mažų ir vidutinių įmonių rezultatams (įmonės inovatyvumui, klientų pasitenkinimui ir jų nusiskundimų fiksavimui, darbuotojų pravaikštų mažėjimui ir darbuotojų pasitenkinimui) turi tam tikri vadovų savaiminio mokymosi veiksniai: aukštas vadovų pasiekimo poreikis, aukštos teigiamos vadovų nuostatos į mokymąsi, lengvai darbuotojams prieinama informacija įmonėje, skiriamas laikas, o taip pat ištekliai bei priemonės, reikalingos mokytis. / The dissertation analyses how to impact enterprise performance results with the help of managers’ informal learning. The concept of managers’ informal learning has been analyzed interdisciplinary – the aspects of management, psychology and educology sciences have been revealed. The concept of informal learning has been clarified and its interrelationship with formal and non-formal learning has been defined. Also factors of managers’ informal learning have been identified: individual informal learning factors, factors of informal learning environment and informal learning methods. The performance management results of small and medium-sized enterprises have been described. The impact of managers’ informal learning on enterprise performance results has been verified empirically in Lithuanian small and medium sized enterprises. The research revealed the particular factors having the biggest impact on Lithuanian small and medium-sized enterprise performance results: enterprise innovativeness, customer satisfaction and their complain tracking, absenteeism decline and employee satisfaction. The mentioned most significant managers’ informal learning factors are as follows: manager’s high need for achievement, high positive manager’s attitudes towards learning, easily accessible information in organization, resources and time allocated for learning.

Although literature reveals that significant efforts have been made to study ICT adoption and diffusion, the diversity of research in terms of theory and methodology is very low. Most studies have relied on traditional adoption theories (e.g., TAM and DOI) and these theories are not capable of providing rich explanantion on how the adoption and post-adoption develop over time. It is argued here that ICT adoption involves multi-dimensional and complex issues. These issues range from how various roles played by actors in emerging ICT are accounted for to ensuring successful adoption. Therefore, this research aims to advance our understanding of emerging ICT adoptions in SMEs from a dynamic process perspective. The specific objectives of this research are to: establish the stages of the dynamic process, identify the key actors and their roles, explore the critical factors affecting the emerging ICT adoption process, identify the challenges and provide recommendations and implications for stakeholders in promoting future adoption and diffusion in UK SMEs. The research adopts a social-technical approach that challenges the ideas of the mainstream thinkers. More specifically, it adopts Actor Network Theory (ANT). The key ANT concepts that influenced the empirical investigation are inscription, translation, framing and stabilisation. The research adopted a qualitative method using face to face interviews. Two rounds of data collection were undertaken. The first round started with a theoretical review, the analysis of relevant literature, and unstructured interviews mainly with small business managers. Eleven interviews were carried out. The second round of interviews was semi-structured with key human actors identified in the first round of interviews. A total of fifteen interviews were conducted. They included the small business manager; SMEs service sector customers, government agencies, SMEs consultants, and IT vendors. The aim was to further explore the dynamic adoption process, the roles and challenges of actors and to validate the outcomes of the findings. The analysis was guided by a hybrid approach of thematic analysis using NVivo software. The study proposed and validated a conceptual framework that illustrates the dynamic process of emerging ICT adoption in SMEs from the Actor Network Theory perspective. This framework helps to understand the adoption process, actors involved, actors’ roles and interactions, and the critical factors. Using the key concepts of ANT as the basis of the investigation, the findings identify a number of key activities associated with the adoption process. These activities include: problem assessment and evaluation, concept generation and evaluation, concept specification, product outsourcing /role delegation, misalignment and alignment of interests, product trial, product modification, adaptation, and impact and problem redefinition. These activities reveal that adoption of emerging ICT in a small business context is not constant, straightforward and certain; instead it is unpredictable, dynamic, and an on-going and reiterative process. ANT concepts were further used to analyse and categorise 20 roles that different actors play, 15 critical factors influencing emerging ICT adoption in SMEs, and the challenges facing actors. While all of these roles, factors, and challenges are critical, in this study, the findings reveal that monitoring and legislation are the most recurring roles at each stage. Furthermore, ease of use, managerial time, shared support, customer focus and adoption costs are the factors affecting the success of multiple stages (three stages). Finally, the thesis presents the contributions and implications for both research and practice in future adoption and diffusion.

This research seeks to contribute towards the understanding of economic linkage within the rural context by exploring the relationship between rurally located small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their purchase of producer (business) services. In addition, the work considers other inter-rural and intra-rural differences, in both firm (SME) behaviour and firm characteristics. Whilst the subject of linkages has been explored by other researchers, the market town and SME focus of this thesis provides a more spatially contained framework than is often encountered within this type of research. By using four towns of similar size and structure contained within two noticeably different counties, the work is able to explore difference within the rural setting. Given its emphasis on market towns, rural areas, SMEs, the service sector and indigenous growth potential, the work contributes to current debates in both academia and in national and European government policy. The underlying hypothesis is that integration, in terms of local spending on producer services, is a function of a firm's characteristics. In order to test this hypothesis, data was collected from four rural towns, and a logistic regression model was constructed using variables that described both firms' characteristics and proportion of spend on services in their resident town. The model was then tested using data collected firom a further two towns. This thesis shows that there is a relationship between a firm's characteristics and the location of the firm's producer service spending, enhancing our understanding of firms operating within the rural context. Key characteristic variables that are shown to have a relationship with producer service spend location are: firm Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), size (in terms of total sales, total number of hours worked by all staff), total spend on producer services by firm and distance that the current location is from the firm's previous location. Given the changing role and nature of rural firms, this research provides timely information concerning the relationship between firms and service providers.

This thesis aims to develop an inter-organisational knowledge transfer (KT) framework for SMEs, to help them have better understanding of the process of the KT between a SME and its customer (or supplier). The motivation is that knowledge management issues in SMEs is very neglected, which is not in line with the importance of SMEs in the UK national economy; moreover, compared to KT within an organisation, between organisations is more complicated, harder to understand, and has received much less attention. Firstly, external knowledge is generally believed to be of prime importance for SMEs. However, there is little empirical evidence to confirm this hypothesis. In order to empirically evaluate the hypothesis, and also specifically to identify SMEs' needs for external knowledge, a mail questionnaire survey is carried out. Then, based on the key findings of the survey, some 5MB managers are interviewed. The conclusions triangulated from both the key findings and the interview results strongly support the hypothesis, and demonstrate that SMEs have very strong needs for inter-organisational KT, and thus provide very strong empirical underpinning for the necessity of the development of the framework. Secondly, drawing support from a process view, a four-stage process model was proposed for inter-organisational KT. Then a co-ordinating mechanism underpinned by social networks and organisational learning is developed. The process model, co-ordinating mechanism together with cultural difference between organisations constitute an initial framework. Through interviews with SME managers, the initial framework is revised a final framework. The framework validation exercise shows that the final framework could help SMEs have better understanding of the KT. In order to remind and help SMEs to address the 'boundary paradox' embedded in interorganisational KT, and further reflect its complexities and difficulties, the important factors related to each stage of the framework are identified from a strategic perspective, with the help of the co-ordinating mechanism and relevant literature. The factors are also verified by interviews in SMEs. As a result, the initial factors are revised by removing the factors that are perceived as unimportant. The interview results demonstrate that the important factors, as a checklist, can remind and help SMEs to address the 'paradox', and are thus very useful for them.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine what impact the new phenomena of virtual teams have on a Swedish SMEs internationalization process. The method of the thesis was decided to be a qualitative study, together with an abductive approach. The data was collected by interviewing managers from six different SMEs that have implemented virtual teams in their organization. All companies are located in Sweden, and are active on the international market, or aim to be internationalized in a near future. Multiple theories are presented in the theoretical framework, the theories chosen to support this thesis are Internationalization, Small-medium enterprise, Virtual teams vs physical teams, and cultural dimensions influencing the team. Based on the theories, a conceptual framework model was developed to show the connection between the mentioned theories. All findings extracted from the interviews is presented in the empirical findings chapter, where the primary data describes each case answers regarding the specific topics and theories. The analysis chapter visualizes the connection between empirical findings and the different theories, presenting advantages and challenges when using a virtual team. The conclusion of the thesis show that implementation of virtual teams can help Swedish SMEs leap over stages in a classical internationalization process. The thesis intends to influence managers of SMEs to implement virtual teams to digitalize their company, or to make their internationalization process easier. Ending the thesis with recommendations for future research

Actuellement, comprendre comment les entreprises innovent avec un impact environnemental positif dans l’optique d’un développement plus durable est une problématique essentielle pour les entreprises et la société. Néanmoins,l’innovation environnementale reste insuffisamment appréhendée. L’objectif de cette thèse est de mettre en évidence les spécificités des innovations environnementales pour les PME au regard des déterminants et des barrières perçues.Le cadre théorique adopté est celui de l’hypothèse de Porter, pour examiner l’effet de la réglementation. Il a été enrichi par les approches RBV et KBV pour une meilleure prise en compte des capacités et ressources des PME dans leur adoption d’innovations environnementales.Cette recherche est basée sur trois articles empiriques et une démarche quantitative qui mobilise différentes méthodes économétriques.Trois contributions majeures sont issues de cette thèse : (1) Les PME innovantes en matière environnementale perçoivent plus de barrières, de manière plus intense et en plus grand nombre par rapport aux autres PME innovantes ou non-innovantes; (2) Les PME innovantes environnementalement font appel à plus de sources de connaissances externes vis-à-vis des autres PME; (3) Les PME peuvent adopter des innovations environnementales de manière proactive, comme les grandes entreprises, elles possèdent certaines capacités.Ces résultats sont à l’origine de recommandations en matière de politiques publiques et managériales qui visent à une plus grande diffusion des innovations environnementales pour les PME. / Understanding how companies innovate for positive environment impact and sustainable development is a crucial issue for business and society today. Yet,little is currently known about this particular kind of innovation. The objective of this thesis is to shed light on the specificities of environmental innovation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in terms of determinants and perceived barriers.The theoretical framework is based on the Porter’s Hypothesis in order to examine the effect of regulation. It is enriched by the RBV and KBV approaches to better take into account SMEs’ capabilities and resources in the adoption of environmental innovation.This research is based on three empirical articles and on a quantitative approach which mobilizes several econometric methods.This thesis contributes to three key findings: (1) Environmentally innovative SMEs perceive more barriers, in more intense and numerous ways, compared to others innovative or non-innovative SMEs; (2) Environmentally innovative SMEs utilize more external knowledge sources than other SMEs; (3) SMEs, like large firms, can adopt environmental innovations proactively because they possess certain capacities.These results lead to public policy and managerial recommendations for more widespread and more effective environmental innovation in SMEs.