<p>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.</p>

As globalization facilitates trade across geographical borders, more and more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) take the opportunity to internationalize, sometimes even immediately after their start-up. To enhance our understanding of how SMEs internationalize, this dissertation investigates different means of interaction that SMEs employ in foreign business relationships to develop the experiential knowledge needed for further internationalization. The investigated interaction means are high-commitment internationalization modes, low-commitment internationalization modes, business network relationships, personal network relationships, and personal interaction. Based on qualitative, longitudinal data from eight born global SMEs in the biotech field and a questionnaire survey of 188 SMEs from various industries, results show how different groups of firms apply different interaction means to develop experiential knowledge and internationalize. In particular, the results show that differences in the backgrounds of founders and managers strongly influence the means that different groups of SMEs use when interacting with foreign business counterparts. Moreover, interaction of high quality and quantity, in the form of personal interaction, reduces uncertainties and supports the development of trust and experiential knowledge in internationalizing SMEs. Personal interaction is also shown to be an especially important interaction means for firms that develop new products or new technologies in collaboration with foreign customers. Building on these results, the dissertation contribute to the development of theory about the influence of interaction on the experiential knowledge development and internationalization of SMEs in general and rapidly internationalizing SMEs in particular.

There is an ongoing debate both in the United States and Europe about the need to develop a broader view of scholarship and the different activities connected with it, including “service to the community”. In Sweden, service takes the form of practice-oriented engagement and collaboration with the surrounding community, as stipulated by Swedish law regulating universities’ activities. Collaboration is frequently perceived as a supplementary task, in addition to education and research, hence the name ‘the third task’. Many academics, university teachers and researchers, are today involved in different collaborative partnerships. This thesis focuses academics’ learning in two different contexts: collaboration with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and in a multidisciplinary research programme at the National Institute for Working Life in Sweden (NIWL). The results of the first investigation reveal that the academics learn different strategies to instigate, accomplish, deepen and further develop collaboration between universities and SMEs. The results also show also that academic professionals engaged in this type of activity need to handle the rigid structures of the academic organisation, which neither encourage nor reward these individuals’ efforts to collaborate. However, this study shows that although academics and practioners from SMEs come from different working cultures with their various traditions associated with language and interaction, a continuous exchange and dialogue creates trust and competence for all parties, as well as learning in the form of new knowledge that is useful for both the academia and SMEs. Collaboration across disciplines is rapidly becoming an integral feature of research, due to the desire to explore problems and questions that are not confined to a single discipline and the need to solve societal problems. The second empirical investigation focuses on the workplace learning of researchers in a multidisciplinary research (MDR) programme at the National Institute for Working Life in Sweden (NIWL), and their collaboration with practitioners. The results show that academics in this multidisciplinary context reach a deepened awareness of the perspectives of their own and others’ fields of research, as well as a heightened curiosity to learn more. The learning also involves gaining new insights about their own learning and how this takes place; its impact on their own professional development, and discovering, sometimes surprisingly, how their competence can be used in new areas of research. The interaction of knowledge and experience with researchers of different disciplines and practitioners creates a context that demands a different type of learning for the academics, compared to working in their own disciplines. Both investigations give an understanding of how academics experience their learning in collaboration with practitioners and researchers from different disciplines. It shows how the holistic integration of knowledge deriving from the academic functions of collaboration, teaching and research contributes to development within the academia and in working environments outside it. / Det finns en pågående debatt, både i USA och i Europa om behovet att utveckla en bredare syn på akademisk kompetens och de olika aktiviteterna som den innefattar, bland annat det som kallas “tjänster riktade mot samhället”. I Sverige tar dessa samhällsorienterade tjänster formen av praktik orienterad involvering och samarbete med det omgivande samhället, i enlighet med den lagstiftning som reglerar högskolans verksamhet. Samarbete uppfattas ofta som en uppgift som ligger utöver utbildning och forskning; den kallas därför också “den tredje uppgiften”. Många akademiker, universitetslärare och forskare, är idag engagerade i olika former av samverkan. Avhandlingen fokuserar akademikers lärande i två olika sammanhang: samverkan med små och medelstora företag (SMF), och samverkan inom ramen för ett flervetenskapligt forskningsprogram vid Arbetslivsinstitutet (ALI). Resultaten från den första undersökningen visar att akademikerna lär sig olika strategier för att initiera, genomföra, fördjupa och vidareutveckla samverkan mellan högskolan och SMF. Resultaten visar också att akademikerna som är verksamma inom detta område behöver hantera den akademiska organisationens rigida strukturer, som varken uppmuntrar eller belönar dessa individers ansträngningar att samverka. Akademiker och praktiker i SMF kommer från olika arbetskulturer, med olika traditioner förknippade med språk och interaktion. Undersökningen visar dock att kontinuiteten i utbytet och dialogen skapar ett förtroende och kompetensutveckling för alla involverade parter, samt ett lärande i form av ny kunskap som är användbar både för akademin och för SMF. Tvärvetenskapligt samarbete håller på att bli en grundläggande del av all forskning, beroende på önskan att utforska problem och frågeställningar som inte är begränsade till ett enstaka ämnesområde, och behovet att lösa de problem samhället ställs inför. Den andra empiriska undersökningen fokuserar forskares lärande på arbetsplatsen inom ett flervetenskapligt forskningsprogram vid (ALI), samt deras samarbete med praktiker. Resultaten visar att det som akademiker lär i detta flervetenskapliga sammanhang är en fördjupad medvetenhet om perspektiven i deras egen och andras forskningsfält, samt en förstärkt nyfikenhet att lära mer. Lärandet innebär även att komma till nya insikter om deras eget lärande, och hur detta äger rum; hur det påverkar deras egen professionella utveckling, och att upptäcka - ibland överraskande – hur deras kompetens kan användas i nya forskningsområden. Samspelet mellan kunskap och erfarenhet hos forskare med olika ämnesbakgrund och med praktiker skapar ett sammanhang som kräver en annan typ av lärande for akademikerna, jämfört med deras inomdisciplinära arbete. Resultaten från båda undersökningarna ger en förståelse av hur akademiker upplever sitt lärande i samarbete med praktiker och andra forskare från olika ämnen. Det visar hur den holistiska kunskapsintegrationen som härrör från de tre akademiska funktionerna samverkan, undervisning och forskning, samtidigt bidrar till utveckling i arbetsmiljöer både inom och utanför akademin. / Populärvetenskaplig beskrivning på svenska av artiklarna I-IV.

The world today is confronted by the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1920’s. Due to the financial system being globalised and interdependent, the contagion effects of the financial crisis trickled down to Europe and ultimately triggered the recession of 2007-2009, which had far-reaching repercussions on cross-border economic activities. The severe international downturn had a significant effect on the Swedish economy and Swedish SMEs. Moreover, the recession has heightened economic uncertainty and combined with the existing challenges facing SMEs, created one of the most difficult business climates in decades, hence, a prevailing need for creating resilience. The purpose of this study is to examine how Swedish Internationalised SMEs remain resilient during times of recession. This will be studied through investigating what resources and capabilities were crucial for building resilience and how the SMEs changed their strategy during the recession to remain resilient. The study is conducted through a qualitative case study and an abductive approach in order to get a profound insight into the firm’s behaviour. The theoretical framework is founded on the area of strategy and resilience, by accounting for strategy formulation, the RBV, resilience and strategic change. Moreover, the empirical chapter presents the results of the data gathered from the six case companies and is structured according to the companies and the three research problems. In the analysis, the patterns emerging from the theoretical framework and the empirical data is analysed based on the three research problems through trying to understand the underlying reasons for the emerging patterns. The study conclude that Swedish internationalized SMEs remained resilient during the recession of 2007- 2009, through reconfiguring its critical resources and capabilities, and changing their strategy to adapt to the changes in the external environment caused by the recession.

Environmental awareness and uncertainty about continued supply of fossil fuel has given rise to the renewable energy movement. Wind based power generation has been at the forefront of the motion to integrate distributed energy sources in the traditional power system. Due to various technical restrictions, wide scale penetration of wind generated power has been held back by most utilities. One such restriction is the variability of generation due to the technology’s dependence on Mother Nature. Energy storage devices can complement the wind generators by reducing this variability. These devices can store excess generation for supply during low generation periods. There are several promising technologies for both energy storage and power storage applications. Power storage devices provide short term fluctuation dampening capability while energy storage devices allow longer term storage. Pumped hydro, Vanadium Redox battery and Sodium-Sulphur battery are some of the viable energy storage technologies. This project provides a set of algorithms and guidelines to obtain the optimal configuration parameters of an energy storage device. To verify the efficiency of the algorithms, a model system has been obtained from a local utility. This system represents a typical radial distribution system in rural Ontario. The load demand, wind speed and energy prices for a period of one year have been obtained from utilities and Environment Canada. The main goal in determining the location of the storage device within a distribution system is to minimize the total cost of energy and the total energy loss during the period of analysis. Locating the storage device near the wind turbines or near the largest loads lead to the optimum results. Buses that are located near those elements can be considered as suitable locations for the storage device. The energy storage capacity and charge-discharge rate of the storage device are selected based on four criteria: maximize wind turbines’ load following capability, maximize capacity factors of the wind turbines, minimize system energy losses and minimize system energy costs. A weight based multi-objective optimization algorithm has been proposed to assign various priorities to these criteria and obtain a single solution. The larger the energy storage capacity of the storage device, the better the improvement in system performance. Lower charge-discharge ramp rates provide superior results. The parameters for storage device operating schedule, i.e. charge-discharge trigger levels, have been selected using similar criteria and weighted objective approach as for the capacity selection process. Higher charge trigger levels and moderate discharge trigger levels provide the optimum system performance. Once a set of parameters for the storage device has been selected, bus voltages over the period of study are analyzed. Voltage variations outside certain limits have been identified. Finally, a Monte Carlo based simulation approach is presented to obtain output parameter (system performance) variation ranges for pseudo random changes in input parameters.

Environmental awareness and uncertainty about continued supply of fossil fuel has given rise to the renewable energy movement. Wind based power generation has been at the forefront of the motion to integrate distributed energy sources in the traditional power system. Due to various technical restrictions, wide scale penetration of wind generated power has been held back by most utilities. One such restriction is the variability of generation due to the technology’s dependence on Mother Nature. Energy storage devices can complement the wind generators by reducing this variability. These devices can store excess generation for supply during low generation periods. There are several promising technologies for both energy storage and power storage applications. Power storage devices provide short term fluctuation dampening capability while energy storage devices allow longer term storage. Pumped hydro, Vanadium Redox battery and Sodium-Sulphur battery are some of the viable energy storage technologies. This project provides a set of algorithms and guidelines to obtain the optimal configuration parameters of an energy storage device. To verify the efficiency of the algorithms, a model system has been obtained from a local utility. This system represents a typical radial distribution system in rural Ontario. The load demand, wind speed and energy prices for a period of one year have been obtained from utilities and Environment Canada. The main goal in determining the location of the storage device within a distribution system is to minimize the total cost of energy and the total energy loss during the period of analysis. Locating the storage device near the wind turbines or near the largest loads lead to the optimum results. Buses that are located near those elements can be considered as suitable locations for the storage device. The energy storage capacity and charge-discharge rate of the storage device are selected based on four criteria: maximize wind turbines’ load following capability, maximize capacity factors of the wind turbines, minimize system energy losses and minimize system energy costs. A weight based multi-objective optimization algorithm has been proposed to assign various priorities to these criteria and obtain a single solution. The larger the energy storage capacity of the storage device, the better the improvement in system performance. Lower charge-discharge ramp rates provide superior results. The parameters for storage device operating schedule, i.e. charge-discharge trigger levels, have been selected using similar criteria and weighted objective approach as for the capacity selection process. Higher charge trigger levels and moderate discharge trigger levels provide the optimum system performance. Once a set of parameters for the storage device has been selected, bus voltages over the period of study are analyzed. Voltage variations outside certain limits have been identified. Finally, a Monte Carlo based simulation approach is presented to obtain output parameter (system performance) variation ranges for pseudo random changes in input parameters.

Innovation policy (science & technology policy/program) aims to stimulate industrial innovation and address the gap between ideas and the market for new products/process. Hence, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are an important target group for innovation policy. While SMEs play important economic role in Taiwan, it is more meaningful to evaluate related innovation policies, to understand the impact of polices as well as test theoretical models of interactions between the public and private sectors. This topic is significant but little studied or investigated with the chance of bias. From the perspective of program evaluation, the thesis evaluated the effect of government subsidies on SMEs¡¦ innovation including impact assessment and efficiency assessment and took the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program as an example. The target population for evaluation covered three groups: SBIR awardees, firms with rejected applications, general SME manufacturers. Questionnaires were delivered to 942 firms with SBIR Phase I or Phase II awards and 222 firms with rejected applications between 1999 and 2004; 374 and 36 valid questionnaires were returned separately. The Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs provided the data of general SMEs. This thesis evaluated the impact of SBIR by a quasi-experimental design and examines the efficiency by an econometric model. Main findings are as follows: A. The impact of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ R&D spending is significant. 2. Productivity (employment or sales): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ employment is significant. Compared to general SME manufacturers, the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ sales is significant; but compared to firms with rejected applications, the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ sales is not significant. B. The efficiency of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): On average, 0.28 percentage change in SBIR awardees¡¦ R&D spending is correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship). 2. Productivity (employment or sales): On average, 0.08 percentage change in SBIR awardees¡¦ employment and 0.25 percentage change in SBIR awardees sales is separately correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship).

In this study an effort is made to bring more clear insights into the effect of management control systems on strategy formation. The content of management control systems does not have a final conclusion. Primary components of management control systems include managerial accounting and other controls. In the other hand, the process of strategy formulation mainly divided into two ways which are deliberate strategy and emergent strategy. The deliberate strategy is more applied to stable and predictable conditions while emergent strategy is a prompt response of enterprise to strategic uncertainties. Different perspectives of management control systems will separately help for two kinds of strategy formulation. This is an exploratory study which is contingent on size of organizations. Choosing steel industry as interviewers, the study divided them into two groups that are three large companies and three middle & small companies and proceeded elite interview separately. The conclusions are as follows: 1. High formalization of management control systems help for the need of information of deliberate strategy formulation. 2. The degree of participation and communication of interactive control systems in large companies are higher, while those of interactive control systems in small companies are lower. 3. No matter what the size of an organization is, the initial stages of strategic activities are shaped by management control systems. 4. No matter what the size of an organization is, boundary systems do not serve as a strategy filter. 5. The top management of interviewer companies tends to not realize that employees may make up the key performance indicator (KPI) due to the changes in the priority of KPI for responding to strategic uncertainties. 6. No matter what the size of an organization is, complete management control systems will help for higher performance in organization.

The objective of this study is to investigate the determinants of the export behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. In SMEs, key decision makers play important roles / therefore, studying the impact of managerial characteristics is of paramount importance for understanding the determinants of SME export behavior. Particularly, possible relations between CEO age, tenure, level of education, international experience and foreign language skills and the export performance of SMEs will be examined. While doing this, two distinct theories, namely, upper echelons perspective and resource-based view of the firm (RBV) will be integrated. Furthermore, the study will focus on the role of the human capital as a strategic resource that may enhance the SME export performance. The relations between international experience and foreign language skills of the human capital and SME export performance will be analyzed from upper echelons perspective and RBV point of view. Overall, this study attempts to illustrate that CEOs and human resources are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable resources for SMEs, and that studying their attributes in SME internationalization context is crucial to understanding the determinants of expert activities of SMEs. As a result, this study expects to reveal important implications for those who aim at increasing the export performance of SMEs. Practitioners may benefit from the findings by addressing which managerial and human capital characteristics influence SME export behavior and in which directions, so that they can better match the characteristics of CEOs and human capital with SMEs in order to attain higher export performance.

Dans le contexte d'un contrat de la Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA) avec la société Nexans, le CRTBT-CNRS a développé une bobine supraconductrice de stockage d'énergie, ou SMES Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage), avec des rubans PIT Bi-2212 pour un fonctionnement à 20 K. L'utilisation d'un bobinage supraconducteur permet de stocker l'énergie électrique sous forme magnétique sans conversion d'énergie, ceci pendant des temps très longs. Le bobinage stocke 800!kJ à décharger en 1 s pour atteindre une puissance de 500 kW sur la charge, ce qui génère une tension maximale de 5 kV. La cryogénie est réalisée avec des pièces en cuivre qui relient les cryoréfrigérateurs et le bobinage, avec différence de température de 2 K au maximum. L'interface HT (Haute Tension) entre les drains et le bobinage a une tenue diélectrique de 5 kV et permet de refroidir efficacement les amenées de courant et les 26 galettes, soit 40 km de ruban. L'énergie dissipée dans le cuivre et le bobinage pendant la décharge représente 1 l'énergie stockée. Des mesures thermiques à 20 K ont été réalisées sur des échantillons pour mesurer l'interface!HT par exemple, puis sur un bobinage de dimensions réduites pour valider les solutions retenues. Le procédé de coétamage des rubans supraconducteurs développés par Nexans permet d'adapter la géométrie du conducteur à sa situation dans le bobinage. Les essais des dix premières galettes bobinées a validé la cryogénie développée. L'étude d'extrapolation pour un SMES de 20 MJ présente une géométrie torique adaptée à un refroidissement par thermosiphon avec un câble bi-étagé Rutherford / 6+1 en fils ronds de Bi-2212.