Thesis (M.A. 1978) from the Department of Politics, University of Adelaide.

Thesis (Honors)--Liberty University Honors Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available through Liberty University's Digital Commons.

It is an emerging phenomenon that the leading multinational companies are studying how to use the engagement experiences of customers and communities as the foundation of value co-creation. To achieve this, the business leaders have increasingly adopted an ecological organizational form, namely business ecosystem. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the real world examples and pioneers in this field. However, in the academic research, it is addressed by a number of researchers that there is significant lack of empirical studies that examines the emergence and formation of business ecosystem, especially in ICT industry. In essence, this study takes Cloud as the context to develop concepts on the emergence of business ecosystem and examine the manifestation of such evolution in the emerging business field. Through extensive literature reviews and empirical interviews, the current study developed answers to the research question, “How do new business ecosystems emerge, in the context of Cloud computing?” at qualitative level. In general, it is considered in the study that business ecosystem is a type of more advanced business form emerged recently. It has the characteristics as follow: provision of value, integration with external partners, requiring multiple participants, shifting from individual to collaborative thinking, interdependence of the participants, value co-creation, co-petition, open innovation and shared fate of success or failure. From a macro level viewpoint, the emergence of business ecosystem is the result of the continuous evolution of business forms, from linear type towards a more complex networked type. At a micro level, for an ecosystem to emerge in a given industry, it involves strategic design and appropriate execution. Furthermore, a set of critical elements need to be in the right place for a business ecosystem to emerge, which including: prerequisite conditions for ecosystem to emerge, external environmental and resource, shared vision, leadership of the ecosystem, common platform, mechanisms of the ecosystem, ecosystem healthiness, and IT infrastructure. The study further suggests that the emergence of business ecosystem as a new business form is not out of luck or probability. It is a natural path that under governance of the evolution forces existing in the social-economic contexts, just as the evolution of all the living creatures in the natural environment. For this broader perspective, the emergence of ecosystem is inevitable due to the social-economic and technological driving forces.

The veil over Africa’s economic improvement has finally been cut off giving the continent a positive face lift in terms of her contribution towards the world economy. Many countries in Africa have been considered emerging economies due to improved economic policies and stabilization of the political environment. Foreign investors and firms seeking new markets and opportunities could take advantage by engaging in relationship and network building to facilitate entry into African markets. Hence, this paper seeks to highlight some possible entry networks that could easily facilitate firms’ internationalization. Taking position within the network enhance strategic move through exchange of information. The information gathered facilitates firms’ internationalization decision and again deals with psychic distance threats. With regards to entry into Africa, internationalizing firms for the fear of high risk and turbulent nature employs network approach in extending their operations. Generally the network is linked with firms both domestic and other foreign who have already entered African markets. The international experience of such firms proffer learning environment and knowledge about the happenings of doing business in that turbulent emerging markets. Business agencies, firm-2-firm, professional bodies, municipalities, personal contacts, student nationals trained in the country of the internalizing firms among others could all form the network web upon which entry could be attained.

Master’s thesis work was selected together with University of Oulu and author of this thesis, where the goal was to highlight the role and contribution of sales and marketing functions in disruptive energy business context. The healthy relationship of sales and marketing may guarantee a sustainable business where both functions should have unified vision, strategies and objectives to achieve their goal. There is serious consensus for sales and marketing integration as business situation is getting more and more complex. The electricity industry like other industries has been influenced by advent of technology, the rise of Internet, usage of information and communication. To encounter this advanced setup, budgets and priorities are rethought, and sustainability becoming the key factor in shaping up the skills and resources an organization may possess. Due to all these subsequent changes, there is an overall change in business structure for all industries and energy market is no exception. Consequently, some of the key business practices have been highlighted in this work. These business practices reflect not only traditional business structure but, also opens up relatively modern practices that are affecting energy business. Keeping these changing trends in mind, a case study has been analyzed in order to signify the role of sales and marketing units to give its respective firm competitive advantage over others. The thesis work also investigates the level of integration between sales and marketing functions in order to create value to its customers. As the case study has been conducted in Finnish company therefore; it may not provide a generalized global context. There is an attempt to give a theoretical framework which might bring positive theoretical and practical implication of the research work.

Corporate social responsibility is a concept where companies voluntarily set guidelines on how to conduct responsible business and how to meet the growing requirements of external stakeholders. Having business operations internationally in multiple regions, multinational companies are subject to more stakeholder pressure than companies that are active in only one market. Responsibilities that are expected to be considered by companies by stakeholders are usually described to be interrelated and include economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic and environmental aspects. This thesis aims to add the internal view of the company to the existing theoretical body of work that mostly consists of reactive solutions to external stakeholder pressure. To gain insight as to how the internal CSR environment differs from the existing theoretical framework, empirical data was acquired by holding semi-structured interviews to three employees that work in CSR related tasks in UPM, the case company chosen for this thesis. The interview data was then analyzed in an effort to provide an oversight into the internal views and values towards CSR within the case company. This study found out that the internal view to CSR in the case company revolves heavily around the interconnected layers of economic, environmental and social responsibilities. By conducting dialogue with various stakeholder groups that have different expectations related to CSR, the case company is able to pursue the optimal position between legal requirements, the stakeholder expectation and the possibilities of the company to meet those expectations. Furthermore, findings show that industry plays a heavy part in what CSR is conducted by a company and that the integration of CSR into corporate strategy is a fundamental part of creating a corporate culture where responsibility is not a separate entity from the business. Additionally, many CSR issues are global in nature and overcoming those requires a tremendous amount of effort from a growing network of companies and stakeholders, whose aim it should be to create requirements to responsibility that do not vary heavily between regions. By using CSR, a company can increase their advantages and reduce their challenges arising from being a multinational company. Integrating CSR into business strategy creates internal advantages. Active stakeholder interaction improves and broadens the networks the company is a part of. Also, conducting responsible business reduces the external pressure the companies are subjected to. The findings of this study could be used to show that further research in the field of CSR needs to be put into the integration of responsibility and business functions, the relationships between a company and its stakeholder groups. The latter especially from the perspective that stakeholder expectations and company possibilities are unlikely to completely match and an optimal solution can be achieved regardless. Lastly, research can be directed towards the growing amount of global issues and the responsibilities placed on them by governments and other regulatory bodies with enforcement capabilities.

Today, data is increasingly gathered from end users via products and services. Business Intelligence (BI) tools may be utilized for analysis of the collected data to improve decision making process in a firm. This thesis focuses on the role of BI tools for internationalization and organizational learning. Particularly, usage of analytics tools in the mobile domain is concentrated on. A multiple case study was conducted in collaboration with four Finnish companies. All the studied firms aim at internationalization, and have utilized mobile analytics tools in their business operations. The results indicate that BI/mobile analytics tools may facilitate organizational learning in many ways. Further, organizational learning may be part of the internationalization process of the firm. Based on the results, a model was developed and proposed, which integrates usage of BI tools with internationalization, and organizational learning theories. The model may be considered as a starting point for further theoretical development in the future. The main managerial implication of the study is to understand the significant role of BI/mobile analytics tools in organizational learning, when aiming at internationalization in the context of mobile application business.

With globalization and the current direction towards more integrated and cooperating world of business, workplaces and especially teams are becoming increasingly diverse. Cultural diversity brings with it benefits to the team, but also disadvantages like misunderstandings and even conflicts. In this thesis I aimed to find what leaders of multicultural teams have to take into account to avoid conflicts rising from different expectations and perspectives people from different cultures have. To achieve this I first looked at the main differentiating variable in multicultural teams: culture, and then worked through diversity, teams and leadership to find approaches that lead to best results when managing multicultural teams. To do this I used literature review as there already is variety of literature of the different components, and also confirmed this through empirical study, where I observed and interviewed a multicultural team, OuluSES, for almost a year. The most important findings were first of all about culture: culture was found to be emergent, people have their own individual culture, but are also part of bigger cultures. For managers of multicultural teams the most important finding was that creating personal relationships lessen the misunderstandings and especially conflicts in multicultural teams, and also lead to best results overall, especially compared to approaches where cultural differences were completely ignored. The findings from this thesis not only offer a new perspective into the debate between static, national cultures and emergent cultures, but the biggest advantage of the thesis is for every-day leaders of multicultural leaders. As cultural diversity is bound to increase also in the future, workplaces are also bound to become increasingly diverse, which means that leaders have to be ready and equipped to deal with conflicts rising from the differences in expectations, which is where this thesis helps.

Dynamic capabilities are those capabilities that characterize the firm’s potential to systematically solve problems, formed by its propensity to sense opportunities and threats, to make timely and market-oriented decisions, and change its resource base. The purpose of this Master’s Thesis is to study dynamic capabilities in the context of exports and identify the how an exporting firm may be able to develop the capabilities to compete in dynamic market environments. The data for this study was collected by conducting a literature review of academic articles. These academic articles were empirical studies on the subjects of resources, capabilities, dynamic capabilities, routines and exporting. The discussion and analysis of the academic articles followed an induction approach. Conclusions were drawn from the analysis and discussion of a select group of peer reviewed empirical studies on the subjects of resources, capabilities and dynamic capabilities in exporting/internationalization. The findings show that the capabilities that enable dynamism in an exporting firm are a combination of the absorptive capabilities of exploration and exploitation and the export firm’s management’s entrepreneurial orientation. The export firm management’s entrepreneurial capacity, particularly the ability to sense and interpret opportunities in foreign markets and the ability to align and re-align internal resources to capitalize on those opportunities. The export firm management’s entrepreneurial capacity is essential as a guiding and supervisory capability that drives the use and development of export capabilities and facilitates the dynamism of the export firm through the creation, development and use of absorptive capabilities. The findings explain how routines are fundamental to export firms’ growth and development, and how routines enable the export firm sustain competitiveness in dynamic market environments over time. The study reveals a gap in the research of organizational routines in exporting. Based on these findings the study draws some managerial and theoretical implications and recommends extending the study by conducting an empirical investigation. Due to the significance of routines, further research into the role of routines in dynamic capabilities in the context of exporting is also recommended.

Kandidaatintutkielmassa on tehty analyysi Suomen ja Ruotsin kustannusaloista. Tutkielman tarkoitus on selvittää mikä on kustannusalan tila Suomessa ja Ruotsissa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteina on verrata Suomen ja Ruotsin kustannusaloja ja löytää markkinoilta samankaltaisuuksia sekä eroja. Lisäksi on tarkoitus selvittää, mitkä tekijät selittävät näitä eroja ja samankaltaisuuksia. Tutkimusmenetelmä on vertaileva tapaustutkimus ja tapauksina ovat Suomen ja Ruotsin kustannustoimialat. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys on distruptiivinen innovaatioteoria. Tämän teorian avulla analysoidaan kustannuskenttiä Suomessa ja Ruotsissa. Tutkimuksen päätulokset ovat, että vuoteen 2014 asti Suomen ja Ruotsin kustannuskenttä on näyttänyt hyvin samankaltaiselta niin markkinoiden rakenteen kuin tunnuslukujenkin osalta. Vuonna 2015 Ruotsin markkina alkoi näyttää parempia tunnuslukuja äänikirjojen ja e-kirjojen myynnin kasvaessa noin 100% vauhtia. Myös kokonaismarkkina Ruotsissa kasvoi, kun taas Suomessa supistui. Selviä johtopäätöksiä ei tutkimuksen laajuuden takia voi vetää, mutta alustavasti voi sanoa, että Ruotsin markkina on distruptoitumassa ja kasvamassa, sillä Ruotsissa on kokeiltu uudenlaisia liiketoimintamalleja. Suomen markkinalla ei ole nähtävissä samanlaisia merkkejä.