This study is an investigation of aspects of tourism planning and management in Europe. In particular it is an examination within three distinct and complementary case study areas in the European coastal zone, of factors that may contribute to tourist area success. The historical development and the current problems of the tourism industry at international and national levels are discussed and the framework of European Community and national government approaches to tourism planning are analysed. Based on studies of the planning and management framework and extensive field work undertaken in Weymouth, the Algarve and Malta the thesis provides an interpretation of the mechanisms of development and control in operation at destination areas. It considers the extent to which the aims presented in the planning documentation for the area have been met in terms of visitor, resident and business success, and explores the relationships between these factors. The study concludes that, in general, the planning mechanisms and support for tourism development have been implemented only as a reaction to market failure and that resort managers are ill-equipped to deal with many of the problems that are evident in the tourism system. In particular the study highlights the importance of information and monitoring within the process of planning and control, and argues for greater emphasis on the role of residents, businesses and the quality of the environment in the tourism planning process.

The development of new products in the personal finacial services (PFS) sector is an area that is being increasingly relied upon by organisations to provide competitive differentiation in the highly competitive environment that they now operate within. Despite this reliance, relatively little is known about how new product development (NPD) activity is undertaken within the PFS sector. The literature in this area is inundated with different models and techniques to aid development programmes, but how closely they are followed and implemented in the reality facing personal financial service companies is questionable. The first stage of the research therefore examines the implementation of planned new product development in the sector, in order to highlight the gap between theory and practice, and provide for a more contingent approach to development activities. The second and third stages of this study are concerned with providing a detailed investigation of the development, launch and distribution of a particular new PFS product. Specific attention is paid to the organisational and behavioural factors that influenced its development and eventual market outcome. Such factors are given very little consideration in the existing literature supporting NPD activity, yet it is shown that the consequences that they can have for the success of new PFS products in the marketplace can be critical. The overall value of the research is found in its questioning of the universal nature of the existing provision of theoretical approaches to, and support techniques for NPD, in addition to determining the need for companies, both within and outside of the PFS sector, to take into account highlighted behavioural and organisational factors when involved in development programmes.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-100). Also available via the Internet.

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This research focuses on corporate entrepreneurship within the sales unit of a multinational corporation. The multinational corporation sets the frame for the research where the realization of CE as a management concept is analyzed in the sales unit. The purpose of this thesis is to gain an in depth understanding of entrepreneurship, and corporate entrepreneurship as a management concept. Additionally it is supposed to increase the literature on the topic of corporate entrepreneurship within a sales unit. It aims to bring the research areas of selling and sales behavior as well as corporate entrepreneurship closer together. In order to gain the in depth knowledge required for this thesis an extensive literature review on the topic of entrepreneurship has been conducted. Corporate entrepreneurship builds on the research of entrepreneurship and is referred to as a management concept. The management concept of change management is introduced and its’ link to corporate entrepreneurship is established. The literature review also covers general research on the multinational corporation as well as the sales unit and the entrepreneurial actions already existing in the sales unit. Furthermore a case study approach has been realized to increase the understanding of corporate entrepreneurship in real life. Therefore eight employees of a multinational corporation, who work in the sales unit, have been interviewed with semi structured interviews. The semi structured interviews were approximately one hour long, resulting in taped material of 9 hours. This material has been transcribed and with the help of the analyzing software NVivo clustered. The clusters of NVivo formed the base to answer the research questions. Elements such as sales innovativeness and creative selling, knowledge sharing, an entrepreneurial mission statement, an employee suggestion scheme, freedom resulting in innovation and an active change management are elements realizing corporate entrepreneurship within the sales unit. Sales innovativeness and creative selling is realized in the sales unit through new selling approaches such as cross selling and value based selling. Knowledge sharing holds a great advantage for the employees where successful ideas and tactics for example form country regions are applied to other regions or even the headquarter. Knowledge share also sparks innovation. The entrepreneurial mission statement is necessary to provide guidelines and describe the desired behavior. The entrepreneurial orientation mission statement refers to the overall entrepreneurial orientation of the company. Freedom according to the data of the case study results in innovation and motivation. Therefore general freedom in the work routine characterizes corporate entrepreneurship in the sales unit. Furthermore an active change management which is also present in the sales unit of the case company supports the process of including corporate entrepreneurship as an overall management concept. These results lead to the conclusion that corporate entrepreneurship is realized to a certain degree within the sales unit, but still holds room for improvement. In the end the generalizability of the thesis as well as advices for future research are given.

Nowadays, hierarchical organizational structure, which has been created and dominated in 20th century, still remain widely used. The success of hierarchy in organizations in a period of time from 1960 to 2000 had been justified by such factors as: the relatively steady environment and preference of transparency and predictability over flexibility. However, in 21th century the business environment changed, therefore, the relevance of hierarchy becomes questionable. The given study provides a comparison between the hierarchical organizational structure and a modern holacratic structure. The research problem for this study is the lack of scientific and empirical data on how organizations can embrace the change in its structure and increase its vitality and adaptivity. The purpose of the current master’s thesis is to resolve the stated problem by investigating the organizational change of US-based company Zappos that was established in 1999 as a pioneer of online retail company and became a large corporation 10 years later. Following the process of expanding in 2013, the company switched from hierarchical organizational structure to the holacratic. The study is divided into three historical embedded cases in order to evaluate the reasons and outcomes of the organizational change. According to the research findings, the premises of Zappos organizational change was exceptional culture, orientation on long-term perspective and the influence of CEO visionary leadership. Additionally, the outcome of this study indicated that for large organizations that have hierarchical organizational structure the transformation to holacratic structure is too risky due to the complexity and long duration of shifting process. It has also been stated that emerging and scaling enterprises should have a holacratic structure in order to support the growth of adaptivity by eliminating the hierarchical ladder, distributing authority to all employees, while ensuring the encouragement of active involvement into company’s operations and strategic developments.

The purpose of this study is to empirically address the relationship between absorptive capacity and internationalization. Previous researchers have identified issues relating to firm’s lack of knowledge when handling international business. Absorptive capacity is the ability of firm to acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit external knowledge needed to solve such problems in firm’s internationalization. This research suggests that if a firm is able to measure its absorptive capacity, the result may improve the firm’s international business activities and performance. Reasons for absorptive capacity measurement suggested by this research is to enable firm to increase their level of internationalization by drawing from their international experiences, and to also have a better understanding of their business environment to gain new opportunities, achieve sustainable competitive advantage and to increase their survival rate in the fast growing global market. This study is in the form of a quantitative research focusing on Finnish companies conducting international operations. A structured questionnaire was used as the data collection process by using the key informant technique with a total of 98 respondent firms in Finland as at 2013. SPSS software was used to run the statistical analysis of the study to determine the correlations between the studied variables. Consistent with prior research, the results of the study support the notion that there is a significant relationship between absorptive capacity and firm internationalization. The study provides several implications to companies and their managers concerning firm international operations. The given results of the study illustrate that there is a need for managerial action that builds and supports organizational absorptive capacity to enable increased firm internationalization.

Currency wars are featured by competitive currency devaluations. Countries endeavor to reach the bottom of their currency prices in relation to other exchange rates. It becomes competitive when one country follows suit after another country and most of the time, the trading partner, has exacted a devaluation in their currencies. There are various negative effects that riddle the markets of the home economy and that of the foreign markets. Multinational corporations and also the local small and medium size enterprises are the most affected entities next to the citizenry. This study endeavors to provide an in-depth view on the particular situation that Japan has dealt with over decades. Due to the severe and constant deflationary pressure that started since the early 90s Japan has undertaken several policies to prop up the economy. A broad explanation is given about the ample topic of currency devaluation. This analysis stems from an economics topic such as monetary and fiscal policies. But the details explained are elemental to understand the implications of the international business in the core industries in the Japanese market. This is a qualitative research based on discourse analysis. The mode of analysis is particularly helpful in collecting and organizing the data with the most precise manner. Several interviews were recorded, coded and categorized accordingly. Data was collected through a time period spanning over 9 months. The results underlined a deficiency in the application of policies to help the Japanese economy. The various interventions exacted by the Bank of Japan have been rather short lived. The case of Japan still extends yonder as the new policies’ results application is yet to be seen. The currency devaluation that the authorities in Japan have applied have been of no avail. The economy is still lagging in the numbers. The industrial sectors of core production for the economy such as the automakers, electronics and banking have dealt with extreme situations under stark uncertainty. The case of Japan is but one situation that is replicated throughout other countries around the world. As one of the few extant research studies on currency devaluation undertaken via a qualitative approach based on discourse analysis, this study offers a very different angle. This analysis differs from usual research on this area which is quantitative and supported by other parallel research methods. This study follows a call on a more pragmatic understanding of what the situation has been for the particular case of Japan. Discourse analysis has allowed for a very hands-on experience into the very core of the international business by gathering the thoughts of the industry participants and that of the central bankers as well. This study aims at finding the link of government policy application and engineering and how that affects the operations in cross-border business making. Economic policy affects the entire country structure that allows for it to advance and prosper. That is why, this study has taken a particular aim at currency devaluation, as the operations beyond the political borders is what brings a corporation to become a globally sensible, sustainable, profitable and viable entity. Thus, their dealings are affected by how the exchange rate, stability and instability, is monitored and impacted by the governments.

Oulu, is currently branded the capital of Northern Scandinavia is a city of approximately 200 000 people and holds as of 2014, 4600 international residents. While that is a small amount of people in comparison to the population Oulu is still opening to have more tourists and foreign residence to consider it as a place of visiting and residing. This brings about the branding of the city as mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph. This thesis aims to investigate the reasons why ethnic-minorities in Oulu, Finland decide to become self-employed/ entrepreneurs. It also aims to look at different aspects of the business which include how the business was funded, the assistance of family in starting the business, the availability of social capital and to find out the composition of their employees. The use of qualitative methods will be used for research with the use of one-on-one, face-to-face interviews which include 6 entrepreneurs who have started up a business in Oulu, Finland.

Transnational entrepreneurship is a process by which individuals pursue entrepreneurial objectives between two countries they are socially embedded in, by leveraging resources in their possession across both societies in ways which most effectively suit the enterprises. At the turn of the century the wave of globalization has swept through every corner of the world, people moving countries in search of employment opportunities or other reasons such as education. Through these life experiences individuals experience new cultures, society and acquire new knowledge. In turn entrepreneurial minded individuals start business on the interface of their home and host countries by leveraging resources available to them on both ends. In this thesis transnational entrepreneurship in Nigeria is studied to understand its influence on business creation and its economic impacts within a developing country. The perspective of transnational entrepreneurship in a developing African country is the focal point. Taking into consideration the lack of study of transnational entrepreneurship from a developed country to a developing African country. Therefore, Nigeria is chosen as an ideal country to investigate considering the size of its economy and position within the African continent. Therefore, three Nigerian transnational entrepreneurs’ activities are studied to tackle the research problem. According to the findings of this study. The motivation of transnational entrepreneurs to operate in Nigeria is their intention to influence the level of the country’s economic development. The resources transnational entrepreneurs possess sets them out based on their understanding of two environments and ability to align their activities to avoid institutional challenges as well as maximizing potential. Secondly, the possession of advance educational background and exposure to highly skilled network within industries aids the successful creation of such businesses which in turn open a channel for local community to tap into international networks.