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Globalisation and competition from low-cost countries has pushed manufacturing firms towards offering services to remain competitive. However, increasing the service orientation of a manufacturing firm to find new ways of value (co-)creation has presented several challenges, such as the fact that services do not provide the expected revenues, and resistance from both the sales force and from customers towards services. The aim of this thesis is to understand challenges linked to increasing service orientation in manufacturing firms, by means of goods and service business logics. The thesis emphasises the three dimensions of business logics – value perspective, service business strategy, and service offering – and studies them empirically in service divisions in the pulp and paper industry and in the automotive industry. The findings show that firms with inconsistency between the three dimensions face certain challenges. Most often, the firms have a value perspective of goods business logic, but a service business strategy and a service offering of service business logic. Therefore, the most important and most difficult challenge to overcome in order to increase a manufacturing firm’s service orientation is the employees’ value perspective. Three service manoeuvres were key to overcoming this challenge: changing employees’ mind-sets, starting to value services, and separating products and services. Although separating products and services could be assessed as a service manoeuvre consistent with goods business logic, it facilitated an increased service orientation. The fact that goods business logic manoeuvres led to a higher degree of service orientation, whereas service business logic manoeuvres did not always do so, is discussed as a service orientation paradox.

Municipal housing companies (MHCs) can be seen as hybrid organizations, operating under multiple institutional logics that are likely in tension with each other. Measuring the performance of hybrid organizations is a much harder exercise than measuring the performance of pure public or pure private entities. There is a lack of research in this area. To fill this gab van Helden and Reichard’s (2016a) proposed a framework that assigns typical characteristics to PMS in hybrids. The authors call for empirics to test the framework. Accordingly, the first purpose of the thesis is to test the hypotheses of this framework in practice, using a case study approach of two MHCs, MKB AB and LKF AB. The second purpose is to shed light on challenges, conflicts and even propose solutions for MCS/PMS. The thesis ended up by proposing a conceptual model for MCS/PMS that aims to reconcile conflicting goals and logics. The model integrates strategic management control tools (BSC and ERP) to support strategy implementation and formulation as well as to reconcile the different interests of the various stakeholders.

The change from mere product supply to customer solutions, integrated and customized offerings (including e.g. products, software and services), has been argued to be a route to success in the 21st century. However, current literature offers little support for leaders who must manage the customer solutions business’ need for bridging the diverging business logics of products and consulting. The thesis addresses this organizational challenge and aims for an understanding of the phenomenon corporate consulting, consulting businesses in product-based organizations. More specifically, the author investigates whether, and if so how, corporate consulting can be a general way of providing customer solutions. The author was formerly a marketing director of just such a corporate consultancy, and has remained a part-time employee throughout the research project. An in-depth study from within the organization enabled the collection of a rich set of longitudinal empirical data through self-ethnography and insider action research. It also led to a marked emphasis on aspects relevant to both academy and industry. A subsequent broader study into other corporate consultancies helped to generalize the findings further. The thesis investigates corporate consulting using two levels of analysis. The subsequent findings indicate firstly that, within the consulting unit, the simultaneous existence of consulting logic and product logic can lead to dual organizational identities (a consultant- and a staff identity) in corporate consultancies. The importance of managing these identities through conscious rhetoric is emphasized. Secondly, on an overall company level, the relation between the product business and the consulting business is in focus. The main conclusion here is that, despite a consulting unit’s responsibility for customized offerings, customer-orientation cannot be delegated to corporate consultancies in order to enable the traditional product business to carry on with “business as usual.” In a customer solutions business, top management must, instead, infuse a general customer-orientation into the whole organization, and the corporate consultancy must be handled as an integral part, rather than a mere extension for customization. / <p>Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2003</p>

因應資訊化作業，大型企業組織透過企業資源規劃系統來整合組織內部與外部的資訊，以促進各種不同的商業功能間資訊的流動與交換。企業資源規劃系統中的主要模組包括商業流程管理。傳統商業流程管理著重在商業處理的自動化。先進的商業流程管理整合了流程邏輯與商業邏輯的功能，以有助於商業策略的規劃。商業流程管理的生命週期包括流程設計、系統配置、流程啟動、診斷四個階段。現有的研究多集中在前三個階段，較少與診斷有關的研究。本篇論文針對商業流程管理系統，研發系統發生錯誤時的診斷工具。本論文提出了診斷模型。此模型由使用者反應的問題中，定義錯誤類別、歸納使用者外部資訊，由商業規則和資料庫綱要中參考整合限制，並對應到系統的內部資訊。我們也開發了追蹤工具，追蹤錯誤可能的發生點，並依不同類別進行問題偵錯。除了針對本身的工作流程中的活動，也對前後的活動進行搜尋，以縮小錯誤偵測的範圍，協助資訊人員有效率排除錯誤。本論文根據一家電子公司的商業流程管理系統的個案研究，顯示我們所提出的診斷模型與追蹤工具有助於問題的偵錯。 關鍵字: 商業流程管理、診斷工具、商業邏輯 / An Enterprise Resource Panning (ERP) system integrates internal and external information andfacilitates the flow of information between all business functions inside and outside an organization. One of the main components of an ERP is the Business Process Management (BPM). Traditional BPM focues on the automation of business processes while advanced BPM has been extended to integrate with process logics and business logics for business strategy. The life cycle of a BPM system consists of process design, system configuration process enactment and diagnosis phases.Much research has been done on the first three phases. Little attension has been paid to the diagnosis phase. This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a diagnosis tool for BPM systems. We propose a diagnosis model to represent the external and internal view of an error event. This diagnosis model is helpful for the troibleshouting to capture the status of an error event. Moreover, a bug tracer system is devlopement based on the proposed diagnosis model to diagnose the problem of workflow activities, and also trace before and after activities in the workflow, narrow the scope of error detection. Case studies from an electronic company demonstrate that the proposed diagnosis model and the tracer tool are helpful for troubleshooting. Keywords: Business Process Management, Diagnosis Tool, Business Logic

Background – The energy sector is experiencing instability and energy companies must embrace more flexible structures and strategic initiatives to remain relevant. Purpose – To gain understanding about the challenges with implementing strategic congruence and integrated control in umbrella organizations and how their interplay can contribute to achieving a common business logic. Methodology – In the scope of a single case study, we conducted 20 interviews on corporate, business and functional level at Tekniska verken in Linköping AB. The ‘tentative model’ of Nilsson and Rapp (2005) was re-assessed to examine a common business logic. Findings – Our empirical findings indicated that the businesses of umbrella organizations can be diverse while simultaneously being congruent. When addressing strategic congruence, it is challenging because transparent communication and collaboration between business areas as well as optimizing organizational structures and designing clear responsibility areas is difficult to achieve. Regarding integrated control, it is not easy to realize because the corporate plan needs wide acceptance and breaking down complex content to the business areas is challenging. Not to mention that a common frame of reference regarding terminology and alike control standards requires high commitment.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions plusieurs modèles de collaboration entre l’ingénierie logiciel et le web sémantique. À partir de l’état de l’art, nous proposons une approche d’utilisation de l’ontologie dans la couche de métier d’une application. L’objectif principal de notre travail est de fournir au développeur des outils pour concevoir la matière déclarative une couche de métier "exécutable" d’une application afin de simuler son fonctionnement et de montrer ainsi la conformité de l’application par rapport aux exigences du client au début du cycle de vie du logiciel. Un autre avantage de cette approche est de permettre au développeur de partager et de réutiliser la description de la couche de métier d’une application dans un domaine en utilisant l’ontologie. Celle-ci est appelée "patron d’application". La réutilisation de la description de la couche de métier d’une application est un aspect intéressant à l'ingénier logiciel. C’est le point-clé que nous voulons considérer dans cette thèse. Dans la première partie de notre travail, nous traitons la modélisation de la couche de métier. Nous présentons d’abord une approche fondée sur l’ontologie pour représenter les processus de métiers et les règles de métiers et nous montrons comment vérifier la cohérence du processus et de l’ensemble des règles de métier. Puis, nous présentons le mécanisme de vérification automatique de la conformité d’un processus de métier avec un ensemble de règles de métier. La deuxième partie de cette thèse est consacrée à définir une méthodologie, dite de personnalisation, de création une application à partir d'un "patron d’application". Cette méthode permettra à l'utilisateur d'utiliser un patron d'application pour créer sa propre application en évitant les erreurs de structures et les erreurs sémantiques. Nous introduisons à la fin de cette partie, la description d’une plateforme expérimentale permettant d’illustrer la faisabilité des mécanismes proposés dans cette thèse. Cette plateforme est réalisée sur un SGBD relationnel. / In this thesis, we study several models of collaboration between Software Engineering and Semantic Web. From the state of the art, we propose an approach to the use of ontology in the business application layer. The main objective of our work is to provide the developer with the tools to design, in the declarative manner, a business "executable" layer of an application in order to simulate its operation and thus show the compliance of the application with the customer requirements defined at the beginning of the software life cycle. On the other hand, another advantage of this approach is to allow the developer to share and reuse the business layer description of a typical application in a domain using ontology. This typical application description is called "Application Template". The reuse of the business layer description of an application is an interesting aspect of software engineering. That is the key point we want to consider in this thesis. In the first part of this thesis, we deal with the modeling of the business layer. We first present an ontology-based approach to represent business process and the business rules and show how to verify the consistency of business process and the set of business rules. Then, we present an automatic check mechanism of compliance of business process with a set of business rules. The second part of this thesis is devoted to define a methodology, called personalization, of creating of an application from an "Application Template". This methodology will allow the user to use an Application Template to create his own application by avoiding deadlock and semantic errors. We introduce at the end of this part the description of an experimental platform to illustrate the feasibility of the mechanisms proposed in the thesis. This platform s carried out on a relational DBMS.Finally, we present, in a final chapter, the conclusion, the perspective and other annexed works developed during this thesis.

Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med förståelse för vad som ger verksamheter inom offentlig förvaltning rätt förutsättningar för att lyckas med sin marknadsföring och kommunikation. Detta genom att studera verksamhetslogik, organisationskultur och varumärkesorientering genom en enkätundersökning och semistrukturerad intervju med den ende kommunikatören i Söderköpings kommun. Studien har utförts med Söderköpings kommun som studieobjekt. Detta med utgångspunkt i tidigare forskning om den kommunikativa organisationen och de utmaningar som presenteras. Undersökningen belyser kommunikatörens roll i det övergripande systemet och dennes utmaningar i att länka samman organisationens strategi med kommunikation och att bygga och bevara förtroende. Studien visar att den mindre organisationen står inför liknande utmaningar som den större, med skiljaktiga förutsättningar. Det framgår att den rådande verksamhetslogik och organisationskultur som styr kommunikationen förutsätts av dialog, förståelse och flexibilitet. Följaktligen blir kommunikatörens uppdrag brett och komplext då resurser för kommunikation i vissa avseenden saknas. Intervjustudien visar att en fungerande lyssnandekultur är en grundläggande förutsättning för verksamhetens vitalitet.

Domain-specific query languages (DSQL) let users express custom business logic. Relational databases provide a limited set of options to execute business logic. Usually, stored procedures or a series of queries with some glue code. Both methods have drawbacks and often business logic is still executed on application side transferring large amounts of data between application and database, which is expensive. We translate a DSQL into a hybrid data-flow execution plan, containing relational operators mixed with procedural ones. A cost model is used to drive the translation towards an optimal mixture of relational and procedural plan operators.

This thesis addresses the paradigm shift required for an MBA qualification in a world order of inclusive globalisation (WOIG) – where humankind‟s security is assured, and where global poverty has been eradicated. A new research methodology, termed critical metasynthesis, which is the enrichment of critical management research with metasynthesis and Socrates‟ dialectic method of systematic inquiry has been used. The critical metasynthesis derives its outcome from the insights of global leaders from the developed and developing world, refuted by Nobel Laureates from the past decade. From the Socratic dialogue an end-purpose Statement of Visions for a new world order, society, business, business leadership, and the postmodern MBA emerged, namely: to deliver a WOIG; requiring a society that finds its greatness in protecting both its humanity and its economy as a whole; requiring world-class businesses – financially robust across business cycles, with global stewardship as the dominant business logic; requiring global business leaders with an ability to envision the WOIG, and then to lead thereto in an entrepreneurial and path-breaking manner exerting leadership qualities associated with the golden Rule of Humanity; requiring an MBA that educates and inspires the business leader to lead (and, to co-lead with societal and political leaders) the planetary turn-around to a WOIG. For this, a fundamental change of paradigm for the MBA emerged as a prerequisite. The first prerequisite is a Social Contract with Business as a trichotomy of global business responsibility towards society, politics and the Earth. This, becomes the raison d‟être of the postmodern MBA. The second prerequisite is an educational context aligned with the values and aspirations of a WOIG society. The outcome of the postmodern MBA is a fundamental personal re-orientation as thé kairos moment - through holistic critical reasoning excellence and achieving a WOIG mindset. Flowing from this to craft, build and to manage enterprises for the turn-around from today‟s world order of destructive globalisation to a WOIG. The thesis contributes a new educational context, vocabulary, and guidelines for a new canon of MBA knowledge. The thesis concludes by describing new vistas of follow-up research in four interlocking priorities for the professoriate, namely: discovering, integrating, applying and teaching a postmodern MBA in a WOIG – to deliver MBA graduates who can lead any business in any industry sector in any country towards positive sustained results for all stakeholders. / Business Leadership / D.B.L.