Context: The explosive growth of renowned software ecosystems such as the cloud-based accounting platform Xero, and the communication hub Slack has largely occurred because of an app marketplace they have built. To a large extent, in-app marketplaces are becoming mandatory for SaaS companies. Looking at the 15 largest SaaS companies, all of them have an app marketplace with a median number of 347 applications integrated to the marketplace [1]. It is challenging for any organization to orchestrate a platform independently. The more other participants contribute to that platform, greater resources are applied to create richer offerings for the platform’s end-users. Looking at the initial stages of when an organization transitions from a product to platform development, there is an underlying challenge of how that organization attracts third-party developers to partner and enrich the ecosystem. Objective: This thesis aims to identify what can be used to attract third-party developers or organizations to develop and integrate onto an emerging platform or- ganization. It also examines problem areas faced by emerging software ecosystems when trying to attract third-party developers onto their platform. Method: I performed a case study to investigate the needs of third-party devel- opers looking to develop on a platform organization. I also used mixed data collection to obtain different sources of information, including internal and external interviews, virtual events, an internal developer workshop, and an investigation of competitors and other software ecosystems. Results: The thesis highlights that emerging software ecosystems often do not have the resources or capacity to build an initial robust platform experience as some of the more established software ecosystems like HubSpot and Shopify. With the lack of research completed to date on emerging software ecosystems, I was motivated to investigate the best practices that are crucial to attract third-party developers onto the platform. Conclusion: Through thematic analysis, the study revealed eight emerging con- cepts. When transitioning to a software ecosystem, organizations have struggled with six common issues. Additionally, six recommendations were gathered to help guide emerging software ecosystems towards best practices to attract third-party developers onto their platform. / Graduate

Introduction: When the American investment bank Morgan Stanley suddenly decide to increase their target stock price of the Ericsson stock by 100 percent, it became the point of origin for our interest in investor relations. In this particular case the increase of target stock price was announced right after new Morgan Stanley analysts started covering the stock. Why this tremendous increase in target stock price, we will probably never know. Perhaps the new analysts perceived the information disclosed from Ericsson’s investor re-lations function different from the prior analyst, and ended up in adjusting the target stock price. Problem: Stock prices today are very dependent on the market expectations of future company growth. Market actors estimate the potential growth by analysing information disclosed by the company. It has therefore become increasingly important for companies to manage their investor relations with a strategic marketing perspective to be able to meet the internal and external needs. Companies must also present themselves to investors in a way that appeals both on a rational and an emotional level. Once new investors are attracted and old ones are kept, companies must constantly communicate about their performance to uphold investors trust and there by creating or maintain long-term relationships. Purpose: The purpose is to explore if and how a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations in traded companies. Method: This study has been conducted with qualitative research method. Collection of empirical data has been done through six semi-structured interviews with directors and managers whom all work with investor relations for their respective company. The six par-ticipating companies are all traded on the Stockholm stock exchange. The collected data were first analysed with the Kotler, Kartajaya & Young (2004) model and secondly ana-lyzed from a relationship marketing point of view. Analysis: The analysis shows that our sample of companies subconsciously work in align-ment with the Kotler et al. (2004) model and that they also work with different types of re-lationship marketing. Together this provides a holistic image of how traded companies work with a marketing perspective in their investor relations. Conclusion: After having analysed our empirical findings it is our belief that a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations.

<p>Introduction: When the American investment bank Morgan Stanley suddenly decide to increase their target stock price of the Ericsson stock by 100 percent, it became the point of origin for our interest in investor relations. In this particular case the increase of target stock price was announced right after new Morgan Stanley analysts started covering the stock. Why this tremendous increase in target stock price, we will probably never know. Perhaps the new analysts perceived the information disclosed from Ericsson’s investor re-lations function different from the prior analyst, and ended up in adjusting the target stock price.</p><p>Problem: Stock prices today are very dependent on the market expectations of future company growth. Market actors estimate the potential growth by analysing information disclosed by the company. It has therefore become increasingly important for companies to manage their investor relations with a strategic marketing perspective to be able to meet the internal and external needs. Companies must also present themselves to investors in a way that appeals both on a rational and an emotional level. Once new investors are attracted and old ones are kept, companies must constantly communicate about their performance to uphold investors trust and there by creating or maintain long-term relationships.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose is to explore if and how a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations in traded companies.</p><p>Method: This study has been conducted with qualitative research method. Collection of empirical data has been done through six semi-structured interviews with directors and managers whom all work with investor relations for their respective company. The six par-ticipating companies are all traded on the Stockholm stock exchange. The collected data were first analysed with the Kotler, Kartajaya & Young (2004) model and secondly ana-lyzed from a relationship marketing point of view.</p><p>Analysis: The analysis shows that our sample of companies subconsciously work in align-ment with the Kotler et al. (2004) model and that they also work with different types of re-lationship marketing. Together this provides a holistic image of how traded companies work with a marketing perspective in their investor relations.</p><p>Conclusion: After having analysed our empirical findings it is our belief that a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations.</p>

The demand for labour force in the European building industry has increased in recent years due to the constant migrations and the need to provide housing, schools and hospitals to accommodate this growing population. Due to this scenario and to governmental policies that were created to supply this need, Swedish building companies want to recruit more female employees in particular. The purpose of this case study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the building company NCC uses its external communication to strategically attract more women to the industry. Our research was of a qualitative nature. We analysed, with the help of a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach, recruitment materials and job advertisements published on the company’s homepage, in order to demonstrate how men and women are represented in NCC’s recruitment communication and in which way the company communicates specifically to women. We have also analysed which aspects of the company’s recruitment communication were appealing to women, through focus group interviews made with female engineering students. As theoretical ground for this case study we have chosen previous research and literature in the fields of organizational communication, employer branding, decoding in communication processes, gender studies, stereotyping and gender aware recruitment. The findings in this study show that both men and women are represented in NCC’s recruitment communication, but that a bigger focus is placed on the visual representation of women.  NCC strategically aims at attracting women both in the way female workers are visually portrayed on the homepage but even in the wording found in the company’s recruitment texts and job advertisements. This targeted communication does not reach its full potential in terms of attractiveness to women though, perhaps due to the rather cosmetic visual representation of the company’s work environment, as well as the lack of personal connection that is made between the portrayed employees and the potential job candidates.

This thesis compared the bird and mammal populations utilizing three multiflora rose hedgerows in Delaware County, Indiana during a one year period.. Results were based on weekly observations and snap-trapping records. Relative abundance and frequency indices were used in comparing populations. Birds were also classified according to their seasonal occurrence on the areas, and activities of birds and mammals were reported.This study showed that the species composition of the areas was similar but that population sizes and degree of species utilization varied as a result of adjacent land use and disturbance rather than the length or volume of the hedgerows.Ball State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306

This thesis investigates how a knowledge-intensive, small, young firm, in a highly competitive environment, deal with difficulties in their recruitment process.. Given their assumed disadvantages, how does the firm attract and retain key personnel? A case study was conducted of a small young firm in Silicon Valley. The findings suggest that small firms do not directly compete with larger firms for personnel, and that the company should emphasize small firms´ work characteristics in their recruiting practices to become attractive for job-seekers.

Problem- An increasingly globalized world is a cause for highly competitive job markets, making the attraction and retention of young talents increasingly important (Wallace et al., 2014). Additionally, current studies have not been able to successfully frame possible needs and wishes of this cohort towards their future workplaces (Deal et al., 2010). Aim- Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of what these young talents, seek for from a workplace. Method- This study applies a qualitative, and inductive approach, to explore and simultaneously allow new in-depth insights into the study area. Therefore, 13 fictive stories were collected from current, and former students in Sweden. The fictive stories were used to ease the participants into the distancing of themselves from current social structures, and to express their actual needs and wants. Findings- With the findings five major dimensions could be identified, that concerns the study group when picturing a desirable workplace: Workplace structure &amp; dynamics, Validation &amp; acknowledgment, Acceptance and Freedom, Private &amp; Work life balance, and Personal growth and the future. These dimensions further split into issues and seeking’s that concern equality and flat leader style, as well as an inhibited insecurity and the wish for support and acceptance. Limitations- This research is, as all qualitative studies greatly dependent on the researchers’ interpretation of the underlying material. Also, other factors as for example national culture could have possible effects on the outcomes of this study, however efforts were made to discuss the potential influences. Contribution- With the five dimension that were identified in our study, new knowledge on what it is that attracts and motivates young adults in Sweden to a certain company, could be collected. This knowledge might benefit businesses that regard these, when reaching out for new labor force. Also, further studies can be built upon this research, as for example an inductive testing on the applicability in other contexts, or generalizability of the model.

Approximately 64% of nonprofit leaders struggle to connect with supporters through fund initiatives alone, and 59% of nonprofit leaders lack the marketing communication capability to attract new donors. Fundraising is vital to nonprofit organizations' sustainability and essential for successfully attracting new donors. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore effective external communication strategies used by 3 southern California nonprofits through the conceptual lens of the integrated marketing communications theory. Data were gathered using semistructured interviews, a review of organizational documents and online databases, and the Baldrige Excellence Framework. The data were analyzed using Yin's 5-step process. The two key themes that emerged were process strengths and process opportunities. The results of this study could contribute to positive social change by helping organizations strengthen external communications strategies to increase new donors and financial capital to achieve mission goals.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第23783号 / 医博第4829号 / 新制||医||1057(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 中山 健夫, 教授 上野 英樹, 教授 金子 新 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Une image hyperspectrale est un cube de données 3D dont chaque pixel fournit des informations spectrales locales sur un grand nombre de bandes contiguës sur une scène d'intérêt. Les images observées peuvent subir une dégradation due à l'instrument de mesure, avec pour conséquence l'apparition d'un flou sur les images qui se modélise par une opération de convolution. La déconvolution d'image hyperspectrale (HID) consiste à enlever le flou pour améliorer au mieux la résolution spatiale des images. Un critère de HID du type Tikhonov avec contrainte de non-négativité est proposé dans la thèse de Simon Henrot. Cette méthode considère les termes de régularisations spatiale et spectrale dont la force est contrôlée par deux paramètres de régularisation. La première partie de cette thèse propose le critère de courbure maximale MCC et le critère de distance minimum MDC pour estimer automatiquement ces paramètres de régularisation en formulant le problème de déconvolution comme un problème d'optimisation multi-objectif. La seconde partie de cette thèse propose l'algorithme de LMS avec un bloc lisant régularisé (SBR-LMS) pour la déconvolution en ligne des images hyperspectrales fournies par les systèmes de whiskbroom et pushbroom. L'algorithme proposé prend en compte la non-causalité du noyau de convolution et inclut des termes de régularisation non quadratiques tout en maintenant une complexité linéaire compatible avec le traitement en temps réel dans les applications industrielles. La troisième partie de cette thèse propose des méthodes de séparation-déconvolution conjointes basés sur le critère de Tikhonov en contextes hors-ligne ou en-ligne. L'ajout d'une contrainte de non-négativité permet d’améliorer leurs performances / A hyperspectral image is a 3D data cube in which every pixel provides local spectral information about a scene of interest across a large number of contiguous bands. The observed images may suffer from degradation due to the measuring device, resulting in a convolution or blurring of the images. Hyperspectral image deconvolution (HID) consists in removing the blurring to improve the spatial resolution of images at best. A Tikhonov-like HID criterion with non-negativity constraint is considered here. This method considers separable spatial and spectral regularization terms whose strength are controlled by two regularization parameters. First part of this thesis proposes the maximum curvature criterion MCC and the minimum distance criterion MDC to automatically estimate these regularization parameters by formulating the deconvolution problem as a multi-objective optimization problem. The second part of this thesis proposes the sliding block regularized (SBR-LMS) algorithm for the online deconvolution of hypserspectral images as provided by whiskbroom and pushbroom scanning systems. The proposed algorithm accounts for the convolution kernel non-causality and including non-quadratic regularization terms while maintaining a linear complexity compatible with real-time processing in industrial applications. The third part of this thesis proposes joint unmixing-deconvolution methods based on the Tikhonov criterion in both offline and online contexts. The non-negativity constraint is added to improve their performances