With the increasing expansion of companies into the global markets, Relationship Marketing (RM) has become more significant than ever, drawing to it the interest of scholars and the attention of practitioners. One aspect of the subject, which this research addresses, is the need to understand the nature and importance of relationships across cultures, since such understanding is critical to organizational expansion. The focus of this research is B2B relationship marketing, with cross-cultural marketing as a major component of analysis. Building on and extending relevant cross-cultural theories, this research investigates B2B relationship marketing in a Middle-Eastern telecom company, Saudi Telecom Company (STC), a company that is well placed for providing fertile illustrations of the mechanism of B2B relationship marketing. It is, furthermore, a key company in Saudi Arabia with hundreds of partners worldwide, and its economic importance to the country is second only to SABIC, the state-owned national oil company. Adopting a case study research strategy, the research explores how a growing organization absorbs cultural awareness into its B2B relationships. Data are garnered by interviewing 35 STC managers, 29 STC Small Medium Enterprise SME business partners, and three of STC’s Major Enterprise partners, as well as accessing and analysing secondary data from the company. The findings to date suggest that as the company grows it needs to develop B2B cross-cultural awareness at local and global level. This research extends cross-cultural models which have been developed in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context such as cross-cultural marketing theories proposed by Hall and Hofstede to understand cross-cultural theory in a B2B context. By exploring the role of culture in B2B relationships in the telecom industry in the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular, in light of a case study conducted on a specific and major company, STC and its global partners, and by investigating and assessing how it conducts its B2B relationships, this research aspires to extend the understanding of cultural awareness in B2B relationship and thereby to make a useful contribution to scholarship.

This is an exploratory study which investigated the process by which banks' lending behaviour in Myanmar (Bunna) was influenced by the institutional environment and their responses towards them. The theoretical framework used in this study was primarily drawn upon Scott's new institutional theory. Since the theory focused on the convergent perspective rather than divergent perspective, the theory of Oliver's strategic responses to these institutional pressures, coercive, normative and mimetic, was incorporated in the theoretical framework development. The main method of data collection was interviews. NVIVO was used to analyse these interviewed data. However, descriptive statistics were also used to provide a comprehensive picture of the context being studied. The findings suggest that banks' always attempted to extemalise risks to borrowers. Their responses to institutional pressures were to conform but a range of other forms of resistance were also found. However, strong forms of resistance were uncommon. I have also identified the situations in which the banks would choose either strong or weak forms of resistance to institutional pressures. Such identifications may add understanding to the specific lending strategies that are developed in different circumstances. The study also contributed to closing the gap in banking literature through conducting research in the context of Myanmar, which was previously unexplored. In addition, it suggests areas needed to be improved for financial sector development in Myanmar.

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / abstract / China Development Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / Geography / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Geography / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

<p>Nowadays global market is quite attractive for high competition environment.  First is to reduce risks and uncertainties of the business in their home countries. Second is to exploit the growing global market for goods and services which can lead to economies of scale and the increasing of market share. In order to be visible in global market, brands can be used to play an important role. From marketing point of view, brands are the means that consumers use to distinguish products and services based on essential and non-essential attributes and they are a source of business’s differential advantage. Furthermore, brands communicate tangible and intangible advantages and are attractive to a range of feeling. In order to make decisions for brand strategy, branding plays an important role. Critical advantage of branding is for product identification, and it is also the key element for marketers to differentiate a product from its rivals. However, branding provides many benefits apart from identification and differentiation of products</p>

Internationalisation has become part of the daily life of most small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Europe. The internationalisation of enterprises is a dynamic phenomenon and is in this thesis studied as one specific example of change processes in the development of SMEs. Previous research on internationalisation has largely been explorative, most often without any modelling of causal relationships, and with insufficient definitions of concepts. The dominating dynamic models have been based on the assumption of un idirectional changes in small steps, and only cross sectional data have been used. The present research is one of the first where longitudinal date is available for studying the process of internationalisation. The data comes from a panel consisting of 1700 SMEs from 7 countries in Europe where each firm is observed 4 or 5 times in the period 1991-95. Around 47% ofthe enterprises in the panel exhibit development of their export quota which can be explained by an incremental change modeL. Importantly, an almost equally large proportion, 45% ofthe enterprises, exhibit fluctuations in their export quota which can not be explained by the incremental change models. Although variations have been found, the non-incremental change patterns are significantly represented in all countries, all size classes of enterprises and in all industry sectors; and can therefore be considered to be general features -- not patterns associated with specific sub groups of enterprises. The causal analyses of factors influencing export orientation were not able to identify a temporally stable regression model for export quota. The endogenous variable market extension has been found to be influenced by four composite measures: external interaction (+), available capacity (-), employment (+), and manager capabilities (+). Measured by growth in total sale, there is clear evidence that the non-regular change patterns of export quotas can not be regarded as indicators of failure. On the contrary, the results suggest that the non-regular change patterns identifY enterprises which successfully use adaptation and flexibility to their competitive advantage. An initial model was build on previous research where conceptualisation and relationships have mainly been tested with cross-sectional data. This model did not stand up to a test with longitudinal data. The discrepancy between cross sectional and longitudinal modelling indicates that there is a qualitative difference in what can be deduced from research based on one observation and multiple observations. The same conclusion can be derived from the fact that factor analyses as well as path analyses produced different results when the yearly data sets were analysed separately or concurrently.

Sweden is today faced with one of the most extensive refugee waves in the history of the nation. The refugees’ attain valuable competences which are not being exploited, and alienation is becoming a serious societal problem. Researchers have stressed the importance of entrepreneurship and its positive effects on national socio-economic growth. The experience of immigrating has shown to trigger entrepreneurial activities, and it has become an apparent strategy of immigrant entrepreneurs’ to include home country resources and networks in their businesses in order to stay competitive. This has come to be known as transnational entrepreneurship, and the concept has proven to be even more favorable due to its positive socio-economic effects on dual contexts. This thesis considers the idea of refugees engaging in transnational entrepreneurship as a strategy to diminish the ongoing crisis. To enable this, a qualitative study was conducted to analyze the process of already established entrepreneurs with a refugee background. By doing so, practical and theoretical implications were able to be identified, subsequently contributing today’s refugees with valuable information on how to successfully engage in transnational entrepreneurship. By applying the theory of Effectuation on four individual cases, the authors were able to identify key aspects, allowing them to draw generalizations and final conclusions.   The outcome of this study suggests a distance to the homogeneous perspective given transnational entrepreneurs, and instead an added dimension considering the immigrants’ motives to migration. The findings in this thesis present how the resources and networks held by the transnational entrepreneurs relocate as a consequence of the additional aspect of the immigrants’ background as refugees. Furthermore, the findings of this thesis have added the dimension of multiple contexts to the theory of Effectuation and thereby enabled the theory to be applicable on an international business level.