Answering the many calls for more empirical research in the domain of corporate entrepreneurship, this thesis presents an exploration of potential activities apt to foster entrepreneurial activity in Siemens AG. Siemens is widely considered an industrial conglomerate and one of the oldest companies among the top global players, ranked 40th in the Global 500 Fortune list of 2010. In 2009, Siemens’ top management identified a severe lack of entrepreneurship throughout the company as a critical issue, and as a new key action in the strategic planning of 2010 to 2014. In this context, this thesis addresses the question: “How can entrepreneurship be strengthened within local Siemens organisations?” Based on a preliminary literature review and pilot study, the research focusses on aspects of structural arrangements, temporal orientation, and mandates granted to local subsidiaries and their relationships in fostering local entrepreneurship among the multinational’s subsidiaries. Within Siemens, three cases were investigated. First, the acquisition and integration of Shinwha Electronics in South Korea, explored in the pilot study, was further analysed. A business venturing endeavour explicitly declared as “entrepreneurial”, sponsored by the top management and taking place entirely in the Siemens existing organisation of Fire Safety was taken as the second case. The carve-out of the security business – consisting, significantly, of two “failed” acquisitions – was selected as the third case. These three cases represent a unique combination :the first case revealed differences in entrepreneurial behaviour by contrasting existing Siemens entities with the entrepreneurial acquired firm; the second case was informative about “genuine” entrepreneurial activity taking place entirely within the Siemens entity; and the third case illustrated the limitations to business opportunity recognition and exploitation in the Siemens context. In the Siemens context, the findings identified five specific areas of practice that were key to fostering or impeding corporate entrepreneurship: (1) a weak emphasis on business innovations and opportunity recognition on the sales side, (2) the insufficient scope of current subsidiary mandates, (3) the need to extend the established Siemens culture of mature, well specified processes of business exploitation to exploration, (4) a revised set of criteria used by human resources in recruitment, promotion, training and rewards, and (5) a greater emphasis on long term orientation and management decisiveness. Contributions to theory include the extension of existing conceptual models on corporate entrepreneurship to offer a more complete picture of factors affecting corporate entrepreneurship at different levels of organisation within conglomerate multinational enterprises.

The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing service quality in third sector organisations (TSOs) through a stakeholder lens. Specifically, the study explores factors determining how service quality is defined, understood. conceptualised and managed through exchanges with multiple actors. This study seeks to conceptualise a holistic understanding of the service quality construct to inform the potential for greater economic and social value co-creation. The study examines service quality by undertaking an exploratory qualitative case study of a consortium of TSOs delivering employability services contracted by the State. Multiple data collection methods are employed including in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, focus groups, research observation, repeat interviews, and documentation analYSis. The findings identify three key themes including: conceptualising service quality, stakeholder identification and classification, and stakeholder salience, that need to be ,considered to understand and improve service quality. This study reflects that in a many-to-many context, service quality is a multifaceted concept differentiated at multiple levels, dimensions, and stages. Service delivery complexities in multiorganisational, multi-stakeholder settings are moderated by service quality enablers and value co-creation mechanisms and processes. TSO stakeholders are broadly defined, including those who can affect and those affected by service quality. Balancing polarities in normative and instrumental stakeholder expectations is aided through the co-determination of attributes of stakeholder salience important to both managers and stakeholders. Factors influencing the co-determination of salience include: the degree of values alignment across stakeholders, the impact of environmental changes on stakeholder inter-dependencies, and attributes of salience important to managers and stakeholders. Attributes of stakeholder salience have both positive and negative impacts on service quality. A detailed conceptual model of service quality in a many-to-many context is presented thus aiding theoretical development and practical application. In addition, practical recommendations are extended together with an agenda informing future research.

Collaborations in supply chains continue to be a central focus in a firm’s success and businesses are regularly striving to harness the collective capabilities of the networks to which they belong through the use of effective collaborative strategies. It is therefore vital for the firms to ensure sound and effective collaborative strategies in their supply chain practices. It is researched that supply chain collaboration provides a competitive edge in terms of improving the capability and performance of supply chain networks and the organisations linked in the network. The aim of the research is to contribute to a better understanding of the collaborative supply chain practices adopted by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This study on SMEs explored and evaluated scope of vertical and horizontal collaborations. This research also examined the relationship between different collaborative strategies adopted by SMEs. Additionally other collaborative issues such as: essential requirements of collaboration, principle reasons of collaboration, major hurdles in collaborative initiatives, and the major benefits associated with collaborations were also discussed in this research. Empirical data has been used to determine the relationship between various collaborative initiatives and to find out any difference in these initiatives from country to country. A chi-square test, ANOVA test, a post-hoc analysis and a correlation analysis were conducted with survey data collected from 365 manufacturing SMEs from the UK, India and China. The results indicate that collaborative initiatives adopted by the SMEs differ significantly from country to country and the results also indicate positive relationship between different strategies.

This thesis examines the extent to which horizontal collaboration is being undertaken in the logistics industry, the different ways horizontal collaboration is being implemented in the logistics industry and the performance enhancements that can be achieved by logistics companies through horizontal collaboration partnerships. Research into the subject of horizontal collaboration has only in the past 5 years gained enough momentum and support to become a topic in its own right, rather than a footnote to research on vertical collaboration. For this reason existing research on the topic has been confined to a small number of areas and very little literature exists on comparing the performance enhancements of different types of horizontal collaboration. This research involved a large-scale survey to investigate general patterns and perceptions of horizontal collaboration in the logistics industry and following that a number of case studies were undertaken to gain in-depth knowledge of how horizontal collaboration can be successfully undertaken. The results from these were then developed into a set of guidelines which can be used by logistics companies implementing horizontal collaboration by providing information on issues such as problems that can be addressed using horizontal collaboration, necessary partner requirements, necessary internal requirements, duration and formality of the collaboration, benefits, risks and obstacles for each of the four main types of horizontal collaboration being undertaken in the logistics industry. Horizontal collaboration was found to be a wide-spread practice in the UK Logistics industry across companies of all sizes and types. The most common form of horizontal collaboration is ‘shared services’, however, ‘joint ventures’ are perceived to be the most effective form of collaboration.

This thesis examines how entrepreneurs make sense of hardship related to external resource acquisition. Specifically, the study is focused on entrepreneurs' endeavours to build technology partnerships, with incumbent organizations. Entrepreneurs' failed' attempts to establish technology partnerships are referred to as micro-failures. Building on Weick's sensemaking theory, Goffman's frame theory, and the social movements literature, the investigation takes framing perspective to reveal collective interpretive schemes of entrepreneurial micro-failures. The concept of "frame" is understood here as a sensemaking and sensegiving interpretive scheme. The material for the study of sensemaking is provided by entrepreneurs' stories of their micro-failure experience. The data set comprised narrative interviews with 35 entrepreneurs and 16 semi-structured interviews with the top managers of private and public organizations in France. Frame analysis was applied to the corpus of narratives. Two frames of entrepreneurial micro-failures were revealed - the natural order frame and the injustice frame. Each of these frames is operationalized as a system of interrelated idea elements united by a unifying theme (i.e. "injustice" or "natural order"). The idea elements that were empirically identified to be crucial components of entrepreneurs' interpretive schemes include but are not limited to narrative attributions, identity beliefs, convictions and rhetorical arguments. The findings of the study suggest that those entrepreneurs who are more prone to be denied access to technology partnerships are more likely to interpret their micro-failures as injustice. The findings also demonstrate that the injustice frame plays a sensegiving role in the context of entrepreneurs' social network and produces discursive impact at the level of community. This thesis contributes to the literatures of entrepreneurship, organizational sensemaking, and new ventures legitimization.

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Strategic alignment of business goals and information systems (IS) strategies is a persistent theme in the literature and a key issue for information technology (IT) executives. Prior studies provide evidence that strategic alignment contributes to business success by enabling organisations to leverage information technology and information systems capabilities to gain competitive advantage. Understanding the association between national culture and strategic alignment has become imperative, as a growing number of organisations now operate in multinational and cross-cultural environments. However, a cursory look at the strategic alignment literature reveals a relative dearth of empirical studies examining how national culture affects strategic alignment. To address this apparent gap in the literature, this research set out to explore the impact of national culture on strategic alignment using an adapted version of the grounded theory approach suggested by Corbin and Strauss (2014). In doing so, the study inductively developed a conceptual model of national culture and strategic alignment – the CUSA model – grounded in empirical data from three subsidiaries of telecommunications companies currently operating in Ghana. The CUSA model proposes that the external national culture context – comprising the national culture context of the corporate headquarters and the subsidiary host national culture – shape strategic alignment indirectly through strategic and operational activities in the internal organisational context. The variables most amenable to the impact of national culture are communications, organisational and information systems structure, information systems governance and strategic planning, and management style. Consequently, approaches to strategic alignment may be universal, contingent or hybrid. Whereas the universal approach echoes the national culture of the corporate headquarters, the contingent approach mirrors the subsidiary host culture. The hybrid approach reflect both the corporate headquarters and the subsidiary host national cultures. The model further proposes that, if not managed effectively, barriers to effective intercultural communications, culture-related conflict and mistrust, and differences in work values and practices, might be impediments to strategic alignment success. This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge on strategic alignment by building an empirically grounded model that satisfies the theoretical and practical need for such a framework. This study is an exemplar of the application of an adapted grounded theory approach rooted in the interpretive research paradigm, a suitable alternative to the use of national culture dimensions in information systems research involving national culture.