Abstract Knowledge Management is always a mission critical task. There has been over thousand thesis about Knowledge Management (KM) published in Taiwan. Eight of these thesis adopted KM activities of China Steel Corporation (CSC) as case studies. However, we seldom see someone analyze KM activities by the approach of Systems Thinking in Taiwan. In early , Forrester defined Systems Thinking as ¡§an approach of studying and managing complex feedback systems.¡¨ Sherwood (2002) adds on holistic point of view: ¡§If you wish to understand a systems, and so be in a position to predict its behavior, it is necessary to study the system as a whole. , Peter Senge (1991) proposed the concept of Systems Archetype in The Fifth Discipline. The connection between Systems Thinking and Knowledge Management is worthy to pay attention. In this thesis, the author used the methodology of interviews. By interviews, the author fond three critical challenges of CSC KM activities: lack of executive support, indifferent peer attitude and communication obstacles. Furthermore, the author applied Causal Loop Diagrams to find the cause of the above three challenges. By Causal Loop Diagrams, the causes are conservative culture, not enough time and lack of full recognition of KM. Based on the CSC organization activity research of Professor G. Gary Hu¡Fthe theory of ¡§Strategic Surplus,¡¨ was created by Professor Showing H. Young in the department of Business Administration , National Sun Yat-sen University¡Fthe U Theory of the Fifth Discipline, the author would like to give CSC the following recommendations: 1. Insert fresh air to the conservative working culture of CSC. 2. Help knowledge worker to do time management or employ more knowledge worker. 3. Apply U theory. Helps people in CSC to establish proper mindset toward change and KM.

Taiwan¡¦s PCB industry has established a complete industry cluster in Taoyuan, we are famous for the flexible delivery, outstanding quality and competitive price, it leads Taiwan to become the third largest PCB production country in the world. Nevertheless, even PCB industry has essential position in worldwide IT industry, high market concentration ratio, high product homogeneity and powerful bargaining power of buyers have weaken the profitability and forced many leading companies exited the market, such as Shea May, Unicap, Printed Wire 2003 and Unic in 2004, however, under such competitive environment, there are few companies steadily grow up and holding high performance in this battlefield. The purpose of this study is to present the competitive strategies of three high performance PCB companies ¡VGlobal Brands Manufacturer Ltd(CMK-GBM), Dynamic Electronics Co. Ltd.(Dynamic) and Taiwan PCB Techvest Co. Ltd.(TPT) along with associated literature documentations, also, through the case study and on-site interviews, we may have better understanding of the core competencies and competitive edge inside these high performance companies. The result of this study presents that different competitive strategies have been selected by CMK-GBM, Dynamic and TPT but all of them emphasize on marketing ability and production efficiency these two core competencies. Furthermore, their competitive advantages are driven from their competitive strategies and core competencies. Based on the study, isolated one-man business managing style is outdated. Instead, for the purpose of achieving the maximum synergy, enterprises must plan and choose punctiliously with their cooperating vendors or integrate with other companies of similar business conduction. For instance, CMK-GBM chooses to cooperate with the world¡¦s biggest PCB company Japan CMK in order to shorten the time and effort in the fields of technology and customer development. Dynamic applies the tactics of vertical integration to crisscross the investment to the raw materials vendor so they are able to acquire the raw materials steadily and competitively. TPT selects the strategy of horizontal integration and cooperation with single production process PCB vendors so they are able to provide a prompt delivery data and a competitive pricing. Furthermore, helping them to position as the 2nd biggest PCB supplier of TFT-LCD PCB market. In viewing of this comprehensive study, besides the excellent choices of the suitable strategically alliances, all these three PCB companies also have outstanding and loyal manpower resource, high quality product, and superior production capability. Therefore, they are able to break through difficult dilemmas and to grow continuously in such an intensively competitive industry.

Due to the development of the broadband Internet access and advanced learning technology, online synchronous teaching with teachers and students located at many different countries becomes feasible nowadays. Online international teaching not only enhances the varieties of teaching environments but also arouses learners to generate multiple thoughts through interacting with foreign instructors and classmates without living their own countries. However, online international teaching is a more complex educational environment, the cross-cultural differences and the characteristic of computer-mediated communication result that a single instructor would not be possible to handle all the matters in an online synchronous classroom. In the past, international instructors employed teaching assistants to reduce problems of cultural differences. This idea can be applied to online international teaching, a group of instructors can form a teaching team which includes different nations¡¦ instructors, teaching assistants and technicians such that the problems caused by the cross-cultural communication and challenges of information technology can be reduced. Online international team teaching is a brand new teaching environment, there are few researches being done in this kind of teaching environment so far. Therefore, this study wants to explore the components and the important criteria for online international team teaching. The case we adopted for this study was an online international team teaching course called ¡§Business English and Communication¡¨ offered by the MIS department of NSYSU. This research used participant observation and in depth interview to get primary data, and then use the phenomenology to analyze the secondary data which extracted from course discussion boards. The research findings are three main components and 17 criteria in total for online international team teaching. The three main components are ¡§online international teaching¡¨, ¡§online collaboration by teaching team¡¨ and ¡§interacting instruments¡¨. ¡§Online international teaching¡¨ includes 6 criteria offering guidelines for international teaching. ¡§Online collaboration by teaching team¡¨ includes 5 criteria offering suggestions for international collaboration. And ¡§interacting instruments¡¨ includes 3 criteria related to the interacting instruments of online international team teaching course. The last 3 criteria are for the common intersection of the three main components. We also proposed suitable suggestions from three different aspects, teaching aspect, material/ system aspect and learning aspect for researchers to do further study and for instructors to better teach online international team teaching courses.

Culture is one of the most important properties in every country. Although every country has her own culture, it isn¡¦t easy to find a viable business model and turn it into a real industry. Hollywood is very famous around the world, and it really makes a lot of people know the culture of movies. Also it contributes a great quantity of profit to USA. In Taiwan, our government also works hard to develop a real industry with our culture and make a higher profit. In 2005, our government listed the culture and creative industry in the project¡yPlan for National Development in the New Century ¡zto imrpove the relative environment and to train more people. However, we find most of our enterprises in culture and creative industry are small - medium companies and their scale is not big enough to compete with overseas companies. Culture and creative industry is full of uncertainty and risk (Hesmondhalgh,2002). For these small - medium companies, we may need a systematic method to build the business model.¡yStrategy planning¡zis a very famous tool or theory in management which offers a systematic thinking and makes a correct strategy. Moreover, these successful companies in culture and creative industry are good at using media to promote their goods or services. Media is not only a promotional tool, but also a channel to access the information from the customers or fans. Therefore, I combine this factor into this research to find how the companies use this information from media to help their strategic planning. In this research, I use qualitative research method to find a typical case, PILI multimedia, which is famous with the palmar drama in Taiwan. For enterprise, I use the strategic planning to find how well the information from the multimedia affects the planning process. This research separates the strategic planning into four steps to help us understand the information flow more clearly. From the research findings, , several suggestions are made for the companies in culture industry . ¡]1¡^To find the media your own culture goods or service really want. ¡]2¡^Use the information carefully and order it. ¡]3¡^Make sure your organization could handle the huge and complicated information.

The R&D Alliance was developed as the third strategic option to face the environment in a rapid change world. Based on the operating mechanism of the R&D Alliance, the beneficial results such as resource gathering, development risk and capital dropping will be achieved. However, when all members in the R&D Alliance mutually cooperate for the given benefits and targets, another question about keeping the own characteristics risen and need to further reconsider it. Therefore, the connective patterns between members play an important role in determining whether these operations will be successful, especially for the Chinese-major communities which have more obvious interference hiding in relational capital. The present study focuses on pattern of the R&D Alliance from the view of the relational capital. Adopting the individual case to study two R&D Alliances related with the juridical-person institutions is the main framework of this research and the results are analyzed from the three subcomponents in the relational capital that are trust, friendship and respect. Conclusions are drawn as follows: 1.Impacts of the trust relationship in the R&D alliance: members were constrained by the long-run contact, mutual cooperation experience and the formal contract (e.g. cooperation signatures or nondisclosure agreements) to reduce member suspicions and lead the positive Impact to the R&D alliance. 2.Impacts of the friendship in the R&D alliance: through the way of the frequent interaction, the beneficial receptions, and the explicit cooperative objectives, a conflict or a distant feeling between each others will be reduced, instead of increasing communication or rapidly uniting members to smoothly work the alliance. 3.Impacts of the respect in the R&D alliance: through the way of the good-will interactions, suppressing the opportunistic behaviors, globally adopting the opinions, predicting the next move about members, regulations in the contracts as well as self-constraints, the harmonics and the advantages existed in the members will be benefited for the development of the R&D alliance. 4.Impacts of the achievements in the R&D alliance: In the operating process, the partnership in the R&D alliance achieved the goals by means of the well, routine and miscellaneous communications, an explicit objective management, and the good interactions.

<p>Financial Institutions have been regarded to be the core area of economic development. However, Nepal could not achieve satisfactory level of economic development and growth due to Maoists war (1996-2006) and the political instability. The increase in size and number of commercial banks are limited only in the urban areas so that banking services are not accessible to the general public.</p><p>This paper examines interaction between financial development and economic growth in Nepal employing correlation analysis, regression analysis, financial ratios and other related theories.</p><p>As we found that financial institutions have grown rapidly which has implication in overall economy of the nation. The economic indicators such as GDP, GDP per capita, loan assets of commercial banks, investment, deposit, number of commercial banks, and inflation rate from fiscal year 2001 to 2007 are used for the analysis of this study.</p><p>The relevant ratios of commercial banks such as deposit, investment, and profitability are found to be in increasing trend. The growth rate of GDP/capita is however volatile in the study period, the regression result of Deposit/GDP is weakly significant under the study period {(0,06)*}. The investment growth rate is not significant at all possibly due to the time lag of the effect of investment on the economic development.</p><p>Furthermore, correlation between Growth rate of GDP and deposit/GDP (ρ=0.49). The Growth rate of GDP and investment over GDP is positive related with a correlation coefficient of 0.82. This has confirmed our beliefs in the set out of the thesis.</p>

<p>Problem: The online betting industry has erased the importance of national borders and opened up the world, which has lead to a more diversified perspective of the company. In this master thesis we wanted to broaden and develop the topic of corporate valuation with regard to the on-line gambling industry. In order to do that, a case study of the on-line betting firm Unibet and its core betting activities has been carried out.</p><p>Purpose: The study aims to identify factors in the strategic, SWOT and financial analysis that will be used in the cash flow valuation model in order to derive the company value.</p><p>Method: A case study has been chosen to collect empirical data to our study.</p><p>Conclusion: A cash flow valuation in different scenarios was carried out. With the assumptions made in the “probable” scenario a value of approximately GBP 85 million was reached, which was significantly lower than the listed value. This is mainly due to the fact that we believe that the increased competition will make it difficult for Unibet to maintain its strong growth in sales in the future. The assumptions have been based on the information gained from the strategic analysis, the SWOT analysis and the development in financial ratios.</p>

<p>Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not a new issue however it has recently started to get more attention. Mostly research has been conducted within the larger companies in many different aspects such as benefits with CSR, its financial impact and the implementation process. Since this is a matter that becomes more and more important in the society of today we wanted to focus our study on small and medium sized enterprises to see how they can take part in the CSR implementation too. Firstly we wanted to examine the small and medium sized companies (SMEs) within the Jönköping region however due to the special conditions of the companies in this region we decided to conduct a case study instead. The case study is conducted with the managing director of Ekenäs Mekaniska AB, the primary information were collected through two face to face interviews. The material was then compiled and analysed. We provide some practical solution to the problems existing within Ekenäs Mekaniska AB and suggest a model for Ekenäs Mekaniska AB as well as for other companies. The purpose of conducting this case study is to make it easier for Ekenäs Mekaniska to implement more CSR in the future as well as it is to serve as an example for other small sized firms that it is possible to still conduct CSR even though you are limited in resources. We also aim at providing a step by step guide on how to implement CSR efficiently that can be used for both small, medium sized companies and large companies however each step needs to be undertaken with the size of the company in mind. The final conclusion of this case study is that the most important stakeholder of Ekenäs Mekaniska AB when implementing CSR is the employees. A clear goal, vision and mission from the top managers are crucial for Ekenäs Mekaniska AB to implement CSR efficiently. The communication with the important internal and external stakeholders and the feedback collected from them are also very important to ensure that everyone in the organization is doing the right things. The employees need to be guided through a systematic guide book to ensure that the current or potential CSR activities satisfy their needs. The strategy of Ekenäs Mekaniska AB should well combine with their CSR agenda by us-ing the model introduced in the thesis. Due to limited financial resource, it is hard for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to implement the whole CSR activities within the organization, therefore, the local government should provide appropriate fund or tax reduction programs to help SMEs implement CSR efficiently.</p>

<p>The arrival of the cell phone in rural areas has taken Kenya by storm. It has turned out to be such an amazing transition happening since most people in the start, did not reckon its capacity to gradually become a lifestyle choice. It has certainly changed the way people communicate and becoming a natural necessity for people of Kenya. This can be seen from the numbers of cell phone units sold in the past years. The cell phones in Kenya have gone from 1 million in 2002 to 6.5 million in 2006. Some of this boost has found their way into the rural areas of Kenya and that is what this thesis focuses on. Through a qualitative research approach presented as a case study provide both vigorous descriptions and exiting information. The case study is based mainly on material from telephone interviews that were carried out with a selected sample of the population living in the countryside to obtain their points of view. In addition some opinions received in email form from an organization based in the western part of Kenya is included. A related email questionnaire was administered to one of the companies that sell cell phones in Kenya. Reference has been made to previous research to present some insightful frame of reference on this subject. In conclusion the people in rural parts of Kenya use the short messaging service (SMS) as the most cost effective way of communication. Furthermore, the M-Pesa function on that enables users to make money transactions is also widely used since most people in these areas do not have a bank account. The cell phone has transformed the job market and had a tremendous impact on running a business and made it easier to be available when looking for jobs. It is clear that the cell phone has brought practical, social and economical change and contributing to cultural enhancement. There is however future needs as to solve the battery charging which is a main problem that rural inhabitant have to deal with. This thesis finally shows that the penetration of the cell phone in rural Kenya is of great success. The cell phone is a technique to bridge the gap between cities and rural areas in Kenya.</p>

University, Diss.--Göttingen, 2006. / Zsfassung in dt. Sprache.