This research study explores the perceptions and experiences of individuals involved in the business collaborations of the Coal Authority (TCA) with other public and private sector organisations. The study offers two major contributions to professional knowledge and practice. The first is that the social and behavioural activities associated with the business collaboration process are of as much concern as the economic and structural aspects. The second is a conceptual model and framework which makes sense of the public sector business collaborating process, and identifies behaviours and practices which are perceived by the participants to positively contribute to successful business collaborating and to minimise the risk of inter-organisational collaboration failure. The research accounts underpinning the study are based on the researcher's direct observation, interviews, accounts and life experiences of over fifty individuals that he engaged with during his thirty months involvement within the research process. This was complemented by his reflective diary recording in real time the thought processes from the participants in both the public and private sector involved in business collaborating on a day-to-day basis, as he immersed himself in a purposeful way in the research setting. Twenty-four of the collaborators work for public sector organisations, twenty-nine work in the private sector. Thematic discourse analysis was used to interpret their life experiences and develop the framework around the four perspectives that emerged. The four perspectives are: • The context perspective • The business and strategy perspective • The delivery perspective • The people perspective Personal reflections on the research process and the framework are based on the Kirkpatrick (1967) four level theoretical model for the evaluation of learning and development outcomes. The researcher also describes the changes in behaviour and practices within TCA with regard to the way the people within TCA interact and collaborate with people from other organisations as a result of the study and its findings. Finally, the researcher demonstrates his achievement of the six learning outcomes of his DBA doctoral programme.

Purpose: The aim is to investigate the content of the collaboration between car sharing companies and the construction company. The authors aim to map the different phases of collaboration and create a reasonable model to exhibit the collaboration. Methodology: This paper used qualitative approach as the method. Primary and secondary data were used. Primary data was gathered through phone interviews. The respondents were divided into three different categories in order to achieve the most comprehensive understanding. The categories are car sharing, construction company and city official organizations. In total the research had fourteen respondents from eleven different organizations. Findings: The authors developed a business model that may be used as a general outline if the closed-pool systems are applied to other major cities. The approximate costs were calculated and the general motivations for parties to advance to business making were mapped. The city hopes to increase alternative travelling methods and save for other purposes. The construction company aims to achieve zoning benefits in terms of cost-reduction and to have more space where to build. The car sharing companies aim to increase their market share and build their business. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the collaboration between car sharing companies and the construction company is possible within the city’s influence. The zoning benefits may be acquired with correct advancement through phases and, in theory, they would ensure a working business model that enables that the needs of all parties are satisfied. Practical Contribution: Decision makers of all parties may use the information of the study to build the optimal service to the Finnish business environment. The study is additionally intended to provide insight to individuals who are interested concerning zoning and closed-pool car sharing systems. Limitations: This study is delimited to understand the industry from the perspectives of car sharing companies, construction company and the city officials. Thus, the study does not investigate the open-pool business model characteristics of car sharing companies nor provide a follow-up information concerning the success of the collaboration. The study only involves companies operating in the Finnish business environment. Suggestions regarding future research: Future research should conduct a similar study like this, but in a larger scale, meaning in at least two different countries. Future studies can focus on more than one city within a country to raise the validity and reliability of the results and conclusions.

With increased globalization and change in the educational structure, university internationalization has increased with the aim to better serve the society and connect institutions. Collaborations between universities and businesses have also become more common due to globalization and the shift in educational structure to serve society not only on an academic level. However, as internationalization is mostly regarded as an activities’ based approach, apparently there has been no theoretical or empirically explored propositions about the possibility of university internationalization through collaboration with industry. Therefore, this thesis’ purpose is to identify the set of factors that differentiate a regular internationalization approach from the one through collaboration with industry and thereby showing the relationship between university internationalization and university-business collaboration. A qualitative and inductive research approach was used through adopting a single case study of Linköping University’s internationalization in Brazil through its collaboration with Saab as an industry, which was done through collecting data from semi-structured interviews. The empirical findings confirmed that university internationalization through collaboration with industry is possible. Consequently, a model was developed that identified the differences between the two approaches and concludes by showing how university internationalization and university-business collaboration are linked.

<p>Background: The Background of this thesis dates back to November of 1999 when Sweden arranged its largest manifestation ever in a developing country, namely South Africa. The origin of this study lies within the frame of Trade&Industry, more specifically a seminar on small business partnership. At the seminar companies with less than 20 employees from both countries were introduced to each other with the long term goal of establishing partnerships between the two countries. These companies awoke our interest in the process of creating a partnership.</p><p> Purpose: With this thesis, we hope to contribute to a higher level of knowledge about small business partnership creation. We also intend to give normative guidelines as for what may be important to have in mind when creating a partnership. We will do this by describing the initial stage of collaboration between small companies and by discussing how initial conditions may affect the parties’ collaboration. </p><p>Delimitation: Our focus is on the strategic objectives and context of collaboration, and we have looked upon these factors without taking corporate culture or external factors, such as political environment, business climate etc., into account. Proceed of the Study: As well as participating in the manifestation and at the seminar we have conducted interviews with representatives from 8 companies. </p><p>Results: In creating a small business partnership companies often heavily depends on one key-person. Communication between companies will contribute to a clearer value-creation scenario - and misunderstandings can be avioded. Furthermore, flexibility, openness and equality between partners will substantially ease the process of creating a partnership.</p>

Background: The Background of this thesis dates back to November of 1999 when Sweden arranged its largest manifestation ever in a developing country, namely South Africa. The origin of this study lies within the frame of Trade&amp;Industry, more specifically a seminar on small business partnership. At the seminar companies with less than 20 employees from both countries were introduced to each other with the long term goal of establishing partnerships between the two countries. These companies awoke our interest in the process of creating a partnership. Purpose: With this thesis, we hope to contribute to a higher level of knowledge about small business partnership creation. We also intend to give normative guidelines as for what may be important to have in mind when creating a partnership. We will do this by describing the initial stage of collaboration between small companies and by discussing how initial conditions may affect the parties’ collaboration. Delimitation: Our focus is on the strategic objectives and context of collaboration, and we have looked upon these factors without taking corporate culture or external factors, such as political environment, business climate etc., into account. Proceed of the Study: As well as participating in the manifestation and at the seminar we have conducted interviews with representatives from 8 companies. Results: In creating a small business partnership companies often heavily depends on one key-person. Communication between companies will contribute to a clearer value-creation scenario - and misunderstandings can be avioded. Furthermore, flexibility, openness and equality between partners will substantially ease the process of creating a partnership.

The purpose of this bachelor paper is to analyze the different technologies used for supporting inter-organizational project work and how these technologies influence the project’s overall success. The results of this research have proved that the main impact ePM tools (e-Project Management tools) have upon inter-organizational projects are in terms of time-savings and easiness of communication when in need for communicating abroad with different business partners. Various types of collaboration tools can help the communication process between organizations and provide the project participants with the means of creating and supporting a collaborative environment. Other perceived benefits of ePM tools have been resulted including: reduce project costs due to time-savings and quality of information which lowers the risks for deficiency occurrences; improve the decision-making process; improve internal and external communication; facilitate knowledge sharing and expertise exchange; and create an agile business environment characterized by innovation, flexibility, faster market reaction and ability to work efficiently. Global time zones and communication skills are challenges to creating an efficient collaborative inter-organizational environment.

<p>The purpose of this bachelor paper is to analyze the different technologies used for supporting inter-organizational project work and how these technologies influence the project’s overall success. The results of this research have proved that the main impact ePM tools (e-Project Management tools) have upon inter-organizational projects are in terms of time-savings and easiness of communication when in need for communicating abroad with different business partners. Various types of collaboration tools can help the communication process between organizations and provide the project participants with the means of creating and supporting a collaborative environment. Other perceived benefits of ePM tools have been resulted including: reduce project costs due to time-savings and quality of information which lowers the risks for deficiency occurrences; improve the decision-making process; improve internal and external communication; facilitate knowledge sharing and expertise exchange; and create an agile business environment characterized by innovation, flexibility, faster market reaction and ability to work efficiently. Global time zones and communication skills are challenges to creating an efficient collaborative inter-organizational environment.</p>

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<p>In electronic commerce, systems development is based on two fundamental types of models, business models and process models. A business model is concerned with value exchanges among business partners, while a process model focuses on operational and procedural aspects of business communication. Thus, a business model defines the what in an e-commerce system, while a process model defines the <i>how</i>. Business process design can be facilitated and improved by a method for systematically moving from a business model to a process model. Such a method would provide support for traceability, evaluation of design alternatives, and seamless transition from analysis to realization. This work proposes a unified framework that can be used as a basis to analyze, to interpret and to understand different concepts associated at different stages in e-Commerce system development. In this thesis, we illustrate how UN/CEFACT’s recommended metamodels for business and process design can be analyzed, extended and then integrated for the final solutions based on the proposed unified framework. Also, as an application of the framework, we demonstrate how process-modeling tasks can be facilitated in e-Commerce system design. The proposed methodology, called BP³ stands for Business Process Patterns Perspective. The BP³ methodology uses a question-answer interface to capture different business requirements from the designers. It is based on pre-defined process patterns, and the final solution is generated by applying the captured business requirements by means of a set of production rules to complete the inter-process communication among these patterns.</p>

In electronic commerce, systems development is based on two fundamental types of models, business models and process models. A business model is concerned with value exchanges among business partners, while a process model focuses on operational and procedural aspects of business communication. Thus, a business model defines the what in an e-commerce system, while a process model defines the how. Business process design can be facilitated and improved by a method for systematically moving from a business model to a process model. Such a method would provide support for traceability, evaluation of design alternatives, and seamless transition from analysis to realization. This work proposes a unified framework that can be used as a basis to analyze, to interpret and to understand different concepts associated at different stages in e-Commerce system development. In this thesis, we illustrate how UN/CEFACT’s recommended metamodels for business and process design can be analyzed, extended and then integrated for the final solutions based on the proposed unified framework. Also, as an application of the framework, we demonstrate how process-modeling tasks can be facilitated in e-Commerce system design. The proposed methodology, called BP3 stands for Business Process Patterns Perspective. The BP3 methodology uses a question-answer interface to capture different business requirements from the designers. It is based on pre-defined process patterns, and the final solution is generated by applying the captured business requirements by means of a set of production rules to complete the inter-process communication among these patterns.