Much research show that strategies of personalization aiming to meet customers' needs and behaviors are an important aspect to influence the competitiveness within an industry. However there is a gap of studies on how airlines use customer involvement for creating personalized strategies in the field of e-commerce while enhancing the competitive advantage. This study is aims to describe how airlines can create personalized e-commerce strategies by considering the customer involvement in order to enhance their competitiveness. In conjunction with this first assumption the study aims to demonstrate how airlines could increase their customer loyalty by implementing the concept of customer relationship management (CRM) within their e-commerce strategies. A theoretical framework has been developed derived from a review of the existing literature in order to describe how airlines can use personalization as a strategy in e-commerce to develop a competitive advantage.  A qualitative multiple-case study has been chosen for this study. Three companies have been studied within the European airline industry and have been led by a deductive approach which will aim to investigate the theoretical framework.The analysis of empirical findings revealed some relevant conclusions, which can bring value to the research area, and also to the practice. The main findings show that airlines are involving customers into their e-commerce strategies in various forms and different levels regarding a specific project. One of the major result of this thesis is that airlines seem to focus on point of contacts with customers external to the e-commerce platform.

Competitive advantage has received considerable attention. Few studies have however chosen a holistic approach taking multiple aspects and organisational levels into consideration. This research has the goal of filling parts of this void. The aim is to deepen the understanding of competitive advantage in the service industry by analysing how alignment of strategy, control and organisation structure on multiple organisational levels impacts competitive advantage of a service company over a long period of time. Based on the idea of multiple factors and the importance of connecting different levels with each other, including production level, a framework for the service industry is developed based on the ideas of Nilsson and Rapp (2005). The framework is used to analyse the rich data gathered in a longitudinal case study of an insurance group embracing the environmental changes and the choices taken as well as the resulting competitive position. According to the analysis, the Insurance Group is not ensuring an overall coordination of its activities, although there is a fit among some dimensions. The level of misalignment increased over the time, as a result of changes in the environment and less than consistent management decisions. Although the Insurance Group has been profitable and increased its market share since its foundation, the competitive advantage, measured as performance compared to market average, decreased. The declining performance combined with the increasing level of misalignment supports the assumed importance of reaching a consistent positioning among strategy, control and organisational structure. It can therefore be presumed that strategic congruence, integrated control and coherent organisational structure influence competitive advantage. However, due to the semi-protected insurance market the effects are weaker than they probably would have been in a more competitive and unpredictable market. The Insurance Group inherited valuable and unique resources at its foundation. Their apparent stable value ensures the Insurance Group a competitive advantage, although no activities are undertaken to strengthen or even to maintain them. It can therefore be concluded that an integrated approach of competitive advantage where both positioning framework and valuable resources are used as complementarities seems to be beneficial when competitive advantage is studied. / Strategy, Control and Competitive Advantage

Syftet med studien är att undersöka elevers uppfattning av hur datorer används i undervisningen. Frågeställningen var att se om det finns fördelar, nackdelar och om det finns förändringsområden för att använda datorer i undervisningen Dataanvändandet ökar i dagens samhälle och i de flesta skolor får eleverna en egen elevdator att använda i undervisningen. Studier visar att dataanvändandet behöver vara individanpassad för att bättre hjälpa den enskilde eleven. I målformuleringar i skolan står det att eleverna ska lära sig IT för sitt kommande yrke och för att bättre kunna diskutera med sina brukare/patienter. Metoden som har använts är intervjuer. Sex elever i årskurs tre på Vård- och omsorgsprogrammet på gymnasiet har intervjuats. Fyra intervjuer har genomförts i studien, tre enskilda intervjuer och en gruppintervju. Resultatet tyder på elevdatorn innebär tillgång för eleven då den underlättar möjligheter att anteckna på. Datorn hindrar eleverna i undervisningen då det tittas på sociala medier på lektionstid, vilket medför svårigheter att fokusera på läraren under lektionen. Datorn underlättar för eleverna att organisera sina elevdokument på ett bättre sätt. Möjligheterna till förändring fokuseras på att förbättra sina anteckningar / The purpose of this study is to investigate students' perception of how computers are used in teaching. The question was to see if there are benefits, drawbacks, and if there are areas of change to use computers in teaching. Data Usage is increasing in today's society and in most schools, students get a private student computer use in education. Studies show that data usage will need to be individualized to better help the individual student. The wording of their school says that students should learn IT for their future profession and to better discuss with their consumers / patients. The method used is interviews. Six students in grades three to Health and care program in high school were interviewed. Four interviews were conducted in the study, three individual interviews and group interviews. The results indicate student computer means access to the student when it facilitates the ability to take notes. The computer prevents students in the teaching when it is watched on social media during class, making it difficult to focus on the teacher during the lesson. The computer makes it easier for students to organize their student records in a better way. The possibilities for change focused on improving their notes.

This study is about helping managers identify and enhance the idiosyncratic firm resources required for delivering superior perceived use value to customers. Specifically, the research has focused on the organisational knowledge required for routinised service delivery, and has operationalised this organisational knowledge as activities. Project 1 was a comparative study involving observation and interviews in two similar but differentially performing financial services organisations in order to identify the activities involved in service delivery and the differences between the two operations. Project 2 identified customers’ perceptions of value through customer interviews, and then mapped the links between these and the service delivery activities identified in Project 1. Project 3 involved a clinical inquiry intervention aiming to encourage and leverage the firm specific resource of inter-team coordination to enhance the delivery of customer value. The research has confirmed the role of firm specific resources as a source of competitive advantage, and has demonstrated a link with customers’ dimensions of perceived use value. In this study, effective inter-team coordination is identified as the firm specific strategic resource that appears to enable effective service delivery as perceived by customers, through the sharing of knowledge and interpretations, and the development of service process innovation. Many of these coordination activities are discretionary rather than prescribed, with implications for management practice. From this research, a framework has been developed for considering and managing firm specific sources of advantage at the detailed operational level. This is a micro level approach that makes specific links between the customer experience and internal activities, through identifying internal and external competitiveness factors, mapping the ‘inside-outside’ connections, and achieving alignment between internal activities and customer perceptions of value.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Sustainability is about ensuring that current and future generations have equal access to resources and a quality of life that provides long-term economic security at the same time as safeguarding the natural and cultural environment. Using a process of sustainable development (SD) it is possible to formulate management tools and planning strategies to change and direct industrial or human activities that are contrary to sustainability. SD requires unified responses to guide this process through a new set of customs and practice, and achieve acceptance and changes in the behavior and actions of individuals and organisations. The outcomes of SD will be determined by the human response to sustainability, which is in part a cultural response. Culture has a duality of meaning in every day use. It is either the value system that shapes the aspirations, identity and attitudes of individuals and groups; or the ‘way of life’ for a particular group of people who are drawn together through customs, religion, language, arts, science or technology. Culture has principles in common with sustainability by bestowing upon current generations cultural heritage and identity, as well as responsibility for safeguarding future cultural diversity and ecological balance. This thesis suggests that cultural values are a key to sustainability and that deliberate strategies and criteria are needed for the arts and creative industries to assist SD. The idea that culture is central to SD is based on the fact that sustainability is a concept whereas culture is a human value system and a way of life. Using the concept of ‘cultural capital’, this thesis identifies a framework that can guide and report both the tangible economic and physical outcomes and the intangible benefits that occur through artistic and cultural activity. Tangible outcomes include artists, buildings and creative products while intangible benefits lead to cultural identity, diversity and a sense of place. It is then suggested that if a framework based on cultural capital were applied to SD, such a process would be called ‘culturally’ sustainable development. The idea of culturally sustainable development (CSD) is explored in academic and business literature, and in the practical examples of existing action found in the Western Australian arts and cultural community. Based on this intelligence, strategies are identified to provide the next steps for developing the concept and practice of CSD. Strategies call for government, business and the arts to have equal responsibility for mainstreaming the concepts of CSD and cultural capital, and encourage CSD activities and projects. At the implementation level, strategies focus on developing a universal framework for CSD, incorporating Creative Action Plans or creative business plans, along with a CSD Index, and a creative cluster approach to project management or industry development. CSD is about investing creatively in sustainability through cultural capital, the new growth stock of SD.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-352).

Efficient policies to stimulate the competitiveness of firms require knowledge of future firm-strategies and a proper assessment of the location advantages of a country or region. Therefore, industry comparative advantage analysis needs to be complemented by firm competitive advantage analysis. This yields four hypotheses of firm strategies on the basis of the existing advantage combination. Detailed empirical analysis of a representative sample of Austrian manufacturing firms during 1990- 2000 shows that changes in employment, value-added and exports are in line with the suggested development. Three of the 3-digit industries lost their advantages while seven industries gained advantages, yet overall industry distribution has been remarkable stable over the four advantage combinations. In terms of number of firms, however, a large share (30%) of the total population shifts between advantage combinations even during short periods of time. The firm strategies outlined suggest a differentiated policy approach, yet the short-term dynamics revealed empirically imply a high potential for policy failure. / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

p. 1-199 / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-03-07T19:21:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 111aaa.pdf: 1991814 bytes, checksum: 63349300fd6db0a98b40c6e3640a922a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Tatiana Lima(tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2013-03-13T20:17:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 111aaa.pdf: 1991814 bytes, checksum: 63349300fd6db0a98b40c6e3640a922a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-03-13T20:17:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 111aaa.pdf: 1991814 bytes, checksum: 63349300fd6db0a98b40c6e3640a922a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / A vantagem competitiva das nações. Apenas em seu título o tema já sugere diversidade de dimensões e possibilidades de análise dos aspectos que tornam um Estado - Nação ou uma região mais ou menos competitivo dentro de um determinado contexto econômico. Entrementes, da mesma forma que as dimensões de análise são multi-variadas, inúmeros são os questionamentos que acompanham essa temática tão intrigante. Em quais aspectos residiriam essa vantagem, ou quais fatores seriam decisivos na construção dessa vantagem. Certamente, as vantagens competitivas de países são um dos principais elementos em termos de alocação internacional da atividade econômica, atraindo fluxos de capitais. No caso do modelo de Michael Porter, o foco dessa dissertação, a competitividade é analisada em seus principais determinantes e seus inter-relacionamentos. O modelo é apresentado e criticado em suas deficiências e lacunas como um modelo insuficientemente explicativo do desenvolvimento econômico. / Salvador

Organizational subunits such as marketing, sales, human resources, and customer service invest in software as a service (SaaS) as a means to reduce information technology costs, speed time to market, gain access to new technologies, and improve application support and maintenance. For these reasons, SaaS has been characterized as a form of outsourcing, and one in which the internal IT function is losing relevancy because contracts are being executed between external application service providers and the affected subunits directly without IT oversight. Here we argue that SaaS is not outsourcing as it has been traditionally envisioned and enacted, and that through the generation of four types of functional slack it has demonstrated the ability to result in higher levels of IT innovation in support of a digital business strategy. A redistribution of IT resources from efficiency to innovation as a result of SaaS adoption was found that prescribed movement toward an equilibrium of ambidexterity between exploitative and exploratory activities. This research has established a number of firsts: 1) explored the production and combination of multidimensional slack, concentrated at a functional level; 2) demonstrated a previously disconfirmed positive relationship between IT outsourcing and innovation; 3) confirmed the feasibility of a theorized positive relationship between outsourcing and ambidexterity, and 4) discovered a new pathway within the realm of digital business strategy between a key external trend and an internal organizational shift of roles, responsibilities, and knowledge patterns. Further, our findings suggest that IT ambidexterity may be a better construct for investigating the impact of IT on firm performance than traditional measures of IT performance.