Det här arbetet är en magisteruppsats inom företagsekonomi. Studien behandlar samarbetsrelationer mellan svenska bornglobalföretag och indiska partner på plats i Indien utifrån en kulturell aspekt. Utgångspunkten är de svenska bornglobalföretagens perspektiv. Studiens objekt: Vi har fyra studieobjekt: Indpro AB är ett företag inom IT-branschen, Duràn Textiles AB och JMQ Sarees är företag inom olika delar av textilbranschen, Swedasia Travels HB är ett företag inom resebranschen. Alla fyra företag är svenska små bornglobalföretag som har nära samarbete med Indien på olika sätt. Studiens syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera vilka kulturella betingelser svenska bornglobalföretag stöter på i samarbetet med indiska aktörer och hur de svenska företagen hanterar dessa. Metod: Arbetet är baserat på en kvalitativ undersökning. Undersökningen gjordes med fyra fallföretag som utgör studiens objekt. Sammanlagt gjorde vi sex intervjuer. Teorival: Denna studie har integrerat tre teoretiska områden: Den första behandlar bornglobal som fenomen, den andra behandlar kulturen och dess olika aspekter och den tredje behandlar kommunikation som en del av kulturen. Slutsatser: Svenska bornglobalföretag som samarbetar med indiska aktörer agerar på en marknad som är relativ bekant för dem utifrån grundarens tidigare erfarenhet. Trots det upplever de svårigheter i samarbetet med de indiska aktörerna p.g.a. kulturella olikheter som påverkar arbetsprocesserna och kommunikationsflödet mellan de indiska och de svenska företagen. Tack vare sin storlek är bornglobalföretag relativt flexibla och kan därmed lättare anpassa sig till en ny kultur. Avsaknaden av stort kapital kompenseras med utvecklandet av nära och djupa relationer till sina indiska partners. Kommunikationen mellan svenska bornglobalföretag och de indiska samarbetsaktörerna underlättas av möjligheterna som Internet erbjuder vilket gör att det fysiska avståndet inte är något hinder för ”här-och-nu”- kommunikation. Grundaren av ett bornglobalföretag agerar som en frontfigur för företaget och har en nyckelroll vid hanteringen av kulturella skillnader.

Sänkningen av aktiekapitalkravet från 100 000 till 50 000 SEK den 1 april 2010, förverkligades för att förbättra de institutionella villkoren för de privata aktiebolagen och för att fungera som ett incitament till att öka småföretagande. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om de privata aktiebolagen har valt att lösgöra eller behålla sitt aktiekapital efter denna nya regel och varför. Dessutom ämnar studien att undersöka om det finns skillnader mellan de som väljer att minska eller att behålla sitt aktiekapital avseende bransch, ålder och omsättning. Studien baseras på en enkätundersökning som innefattar 212 respondenter. De resultat som denna undersökning kommer fram till är:  Att majoriteten av de privata aktiebolagen har valt att behålla sitt aktiekapital. Att anledningen bakom att behålla aktiekapitalet är att bevara företagets kreditvärdighet, att använda aktiekapitalet i verksamheten och för att proceduren med att sänka aktiekapitalet anses vara krångligt och tidskrävande. Framförallt anser inte dessa företag att en minskning av aktiekapitalet har någon större betydelse då det mesta av minskningen antingen försvinner i form av beskattning eller att mängden 50 000 SEK inte anses vara en väsentlig summa. Skillnaderna mellan de privata aktiebolagen utgörs endast av omsättningsvolym. För företag med omsättning över 3 000 000 SEK/år tenderar en minskning av aktiekapitalet att avta helt och förkommer bland företagen med mindre omsättning än 3 000 000 SEK/år.  Detta innebär att de privata aktiebolagen som ingår i studien inte upplever möjligheten till att sänka aktiekapitalet som en förbättring av de institutionella villkoren eller som ett incitament, där regeln inte alls anses ha någon inverkan för företagen. / The reduction of share capital requirement from 100 000 to 50 000 SEK, which was implemented April 1, 2010 to improve the institutional conditions for the private limited companies and to act as an incentive to increase small businesses. The purpose of this essay is to examine whether the private limited companies have chosen to reduce or maintain its share capital after this new rule and why. In addition, the study intends to investigate whether there are differences between those who have chosen to reduce or maintain its share capital regarding branch, age and revenue. The study is based on a survey involving 212 respondents. The results of this study are the following: The majority of the private limited companies have chosen to maintain their share capital. The reason behind keeping the share capital is to maintain the company’s credit rating, to use the share capital in their respective the business and because of the process of lowering the share capital is considered to be complex and time consuming. Above all, these companies do not consider a reduction of share capital having a greater significance when most of the reduction either disappear in the form of taxation or the amount of 50 000 SEK is not considered as a substantial amount.  The differences among the private limited companies consist only of revenue. For companies with revenue of more than 3 000 000 SEK/year, tends a reduction of share capital to subside completely and occurs among the companies with turnover less than 3 000 000 SEK/year. This means that the private limited companies do not perceive the possibility of lowering the share capital as an improvement of the institutional conditions or as an incentive where the reduction of share capital requirement is not considered to have any impact on businesses.

This exploratory research focuses on impacts of the rural socio-cultural context on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption for business information needs using the Maldives as the study context, and attempts to develop a model to capture the influences of the rural context on ICT adoption decisions. The numerous ways in which rural context differs from urban context, such as small markets combined with familiarity among community members and reliance on interpersonal relationships, suggest potential impacts on the nature and management practices of rural businesses and provide an approach to explore ICT use in rural settings. Using findings from the literature, a theoretical framework was developed to outline how the socio-cultural context of a rural community of a developing country might affect ICT adoption by rural businesses. The research model predicts relationships between context factors and perceived benefits and barriers of ICTs, and between these perceptions and intentions to adopt/use ICTs. The initial phase of the research was exploratory in nature focusing on a few selected rural and urban businesses and the second phase consisted of a quantitative survey of 314 rural and urban businesses. The findings supported predicted differences between rural and urban contexts for all five factors included in the research model. The results also show that context factors explain 35.5% of variance on perceived benefits of ICTs and 49.3% variance on perceived barriers of ICTs. The findings raised questions about the disjoint between opinions of ICTs and actual use and the limited value derived from ICTs. The research also highlighted that promoting ICT adoption in rural businesses was a highly complex issue that has important linkages to public policy support. Overall, this research provides important insights into the complex dynamics that exist in rural settings that have implications for ICT use and provides empirical evidence to illustrate differences between urban and rural contexts, as well as the level of influence from different context factors on ICT adoption. This research has relevance for organizations working towards the development of rural communities.

Vaggeryd is a rural municipality and wants to develop its rural areas. Therefore Vaggeryd’s municipality wants to become a cluster region within the equus industries and hence become an equine municipality where equestrians can live and run their businesses as well as providing for equine activities and competitions. The reason why it is interesting to create a cluster region is because it comes with benefits for the companies and it helps developing the regional economy (Enright, 1998; Porter, 2000). “Clusters lower barriers to new business formation that improve the environment for productivity.” (Porter, 1998a). One investment made in 2005 in the direction of becoming an equine municipality was the start up of an Advanced Vocational Education [KY] in the region, named Horse Entrepreneur. All 23 students in this programme, year 2005 and 2006, were interviewed and it turned out that all of them wanted to start up own businesses within 10 years, but only three planned to establish their companies in Vaggeryd. Most of the students planned to move back to their home municipality. Eight students in total could, however imagine themselves establishing in Vaggeryd. The students thought that this kind of education is very important for equestrians who want to start up businesses. The students believed that Vaggeryd’s municipality will become a good and functional equine municipality and referred to the highway E4 (which runs through the municipality), the race track and the veterinary clinic. More farms with large lands are what the students think the municipality council should invest in to attract equine companies as well as to become an equine friendly municipality. From the cluster analysis a similar result was found. It showed that there is no agglomeration in the four investigated industries over Sweden, namely horse breeding, horse competitions, managing race tracks and gallops courses and riding educational services and horse rents. This means that the places where the entrepreneurs choose to set up their businesses are less important; hence they can likewise set up in Vaggeryd. However a trend was expected. The districts where most of the equine businesses in Sweden take place are rural areas close to populated regions, so called semi-urban areas. There are no cities in Vaggeryd’s municipality only two towns, Vaggeryd and Skillingaryd. The conclusion drawn is that if Vaggeryd wants to become an equine municipality it must invest (Enright, 1998; Malmberg, 2002). For example creating job opportunities, and building farms on areas with large lands. These investments are needed to attract inhabitants and business people to their municipality before the equine companies can flourish. Investments make this type of clusters attractive (Enright, 1998; Malmberg, 2002). The cluster data revealed that there are no equine activities in Vaggeryd’s municipality today; however it has the possibility to become an equine municipality due to suitable condition, for example land plots with lakes and the closeness to highway E4. Vaggeryd should focus on facilitating business activities and providing with updated networks in order for companies to gain from being clustered, according to the cluster theory advocated by von Hippel (1988) and Hakansson (1987). Vaggeryd suits for equine businesses which are trading goods and services with other businesses, hence which are not dependent on a location close to cities, according to Karlsson (2008) in the field of clustering in smaller regions.

Social media is a very important marketing channel for marketers. Marketing through social media can easily enhance the effects of viral marketing or accelerate the word-of-mouth effect. How small e-stores and startups that lack marketing resources conduct their online marketing strategies and overcome their marketing weaknesses are the points of interest in this research. This research examines how new online shops implement marketing strategies using social media. Our samples come from the E-commerce Idea Competition of 2009 and 2010. The students who participate in this competition only have two months to operate their online stores so that they can be taken as typical samples of new online shops. We encode 141 online shops¡¦ contents, including their final reports and website contents of blogs, Facebook, micro-blogs and YouTube. We use the content analysis method to analyze the dimensions of product information, trust messages, promotions, interactivities, multimedia contents and brand stories. This research is to answer two research questions. The first research question asked is how small e-stores implement their marketing strategies using social media. The findings show that information is exposed more completely in blogs because of the students¡¦ familiarity with blog platforms and the variety of information that it can handle. Promotions information such as special offers is the most commonly used information pattern on social media. The second research question is how the e-stores enhance and overcome marketing weaknesses in using social media. We found out that trust messages are seldom used in social media and only a few promotions skills were used. These are caused by the time constraints and the unfamiliarity with social media. From the results, it was shown that these students used very limited resources in implementing their marketing strategies. Analyzing the contents of the social media can give us a better understanding of the behavior and strategies of small e-stores and startups. To overcome these weaknesses, it is suggested that the features of the social media they want to use be studied first and to reduce the numbers of social media usage to become more familiar with the social media platform. The current study found what the operating characteristics of small e-stores and startups are and some suggestions are given to strengthen their weaknesses and establish long-term businesses. We hope that these suggestions can be applied to the e-commerce environment so that future startups can have a better working understanding of marketing using the social media.

Literature studies on institutionalization are mainly predicated on repetitive work performing sectors, in which firms are more prone to developed institutionalization processes in literature. But, in this study, it is aimed to examine reasons behind low tendency of construction firms to institutionalization process in Turkey. In literature, two main obstacles against institutionalization are shown as firms&rsquo / resistance to change and founder family acts on firm. So, family businesses and their effects on firm operations are also included to this study&rsquo / s scope, with business growth and institutionalization process. Conducted interviews are based on a questionnaire which is prepared to identify / cognition level of institutionalization, factors leading firms to institutionalization, firms&rsquo / established system perform in the name of institutionalization and finally summarize experiences firms gained from institutionalization process. Twenty-one interviewed contractor firms enlightens acts of construction firms in Turkey, because like interviewed firms, 70% of construction firms in Turkey is still governed by 1st generation. Results indicate that construction firms seem to apply most of the systems offered by literature for institutionalization because of rapid business growth. In general they refuse a high institutionalization level because of construction projects&rsquo / temporary and unique nature, causing a highly competitive and uncertain sector requiring a highly flexible firm structure. Institutionalization is mainly processed to enhance control, it is not considered to take place for balancing family and firm relationships. This is because of high family dominancy in firms, leading to a highly jeopardized sustainability.

This study aims to make a diagnosis and counseling to the operation of small and medium businesses of high-tech by way of case study. Two manufacturers of electronic passive components were chosen in this study. Acting as the assistant and consultant of the top management, the writer took about 21 months to proceed with the study by practically participating in the operation of the object companies. This study includes the following contents¡G(1) Basic Analysis, (2)Financial Analysis, (3)Operating Goal and (4)Operating Counseling. For the Basic Analysis, the two companies have been making better profit through the diagnosis and counseling. For the Financial Analysis, ¡§A¡¨ Company has the most complete financial operating report, with which the management can be fully aware of and then successfully control the financial status of the company. Examples are provided in this study. For the Operating Goal, the policy of the gross margin ratio is the most significant part of the strategy in ¡§A¡¨ and ¡§B¡¨ companies. The analyzing method of Boston Consultant Group is proved effective for making the strategy of gross margin ratio and OK yield. At last, for the Operating Counseling, practical examples are offered in many aspects, such as manufacturing and technology, 5S arrangements, management conference, human resources, joint investment and quality assurance. During the period of study, some very important ideas have been attained in the interpersonal relationship, i.e. ¡§management is service¡¨ and ¡§establishing good communication mechanism is vital for management¡¨. Besides, 26 forms have been collected for maintaining the management system, including financial management, manufacturing, quality and sales control, and operating management. The operating diagnosis and counseling are more essential for small and medium businesses than for those big companies since they are different in capital investment, man power and profit risk. It is a favorable result that the two companies have been making noticeable achievements during this period of time. The methods described in this study have also been applied to another two companies with remarkable outcome. As in chemical reaction, the operating counseling could be a catalyzer when it is well applied, while it could be a restrainer when being misused. The methods described in this report will help to make an efficient counseling, which will accelerate business development.

<p>Vaggeryd is a rural municipality and wants to develop its rural areas. Therefore Vaggeryd’s municipality wants to become a cluster region within the equus industries and hence become an equine municipality where equestrians can live and run their businesses as well as providing for equine activities and competitions. The reason why it is interesting to create a cluster region is because it comes with benefits for the companies and it helps developing the regional economy (Enright, 1998; Porter, 2000). “Clusters lower barriers to new business formation that improve the environment for productivity.” (Porter, 1998a). One investment made in 2005 in the direction of becoming an equine municipality was the start up of an Advanced Vocational Education [KY] in the region, named Horse Entrepreneur.</p><p>All 23 students in this programme, year 2005 and 2006, were interviewed and it turned out that all of them wanted to start up own businesses within 10 years, but only three planned to establish their companies in Vaggeryd. Most of the students planned to move back to their home municipality. Eight students in total could, however imagine themselves establishing in Vaggeryd. The students thought that this kind of education is very important for equestrians who want to start up businesses.</p><p>The students believed that Vaggeryd’s municipality will become a good and functional equine municipality and referred to the highway E4 (which runs through the municipality), the race track and the veterinary clinic. More farms with large lands are what the students think the municipality council should invest in to attract equine companies as well as to become an equine friendly municipality.</p><p>From the cluster analysis a similar result was found. It showed that there is no agglomeration in the four investigated industries over Sweden, namely horse breeding, horse competitions, managing race tracks and gallops courses and riding educational services and horse rents. This means that the places where the entrepreneurs choose to set up their businesses are less important; hence they can likewise set up in Vaggeryd.</p><p>However a trend was expected. The districts where most of the equine businesses in Sweden take place are rural areas close to populated regions, so called semi-urban areas.</p><p>There are no cities in Vaggeryd’s municipality only two towns, Vaggeryd and Skillingaryd. The conclusion drawn is that if Vaggeryd wants to become an equine municipality it must invest (Enright, 1998; Malmberg, 2002). For example creating job opportunities, and building farms on areas with large lands. These investments are needed to attract inhabitants and business people to their municipality before the equine companies can flourish. Investments make this type of clusters attractive (Enright, 1998; Malmberg, 2002).</p><p>The cluster data revealed that there are no equine activities in Vaggeryd’s municipality today; however it has the possibility to become an equine municipality due to suitable condition, for example land plots with lakes and the closeness to highway E4.</p><p>Vaggeryd should focus on facilitating business activities and providing with updated networks in order for companies to gain from being clustered, according to the cluster theory advocated by von Hippel (1988) and Hakansson (1987). Vaggeryd suits for equine businesses which are trading goods and services with other businesses, hence which are not dependent on a location close to cities, according to Karlsson (2008) in the field of clustering in smaller regions.</p>

<p>Background: The Swedish food industry has changed dramatically during the last decades and to become and remain as a player has become a demanding task for several of the small and medium sized enterprises (SME). The trading blocs have increased the development of their own brand (DOB) and this has given the SME new competition but also the possibility to produce these products for the trading blocs. In addition to this the trading blocs have be-come more and more centralized and to strengthen their position in nego-tiations and other aspects which are important for the trading blocs.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the trad-ing blocs, with their development of their own brand, affect the Swedish small and medium sized producers in the food industry. It is also to look into what kinds of strategies that are used by the SME in order to tackle the competition from the distributors own brands.</p><p>Method: To fulfill our purpose a qualitative approach has been used for this thesis. Seven different interviews have been done, either by phone or face to face, with the three largest trading blocs and with four the SME in Sweden, three producing and one distributing company.</p><p>Conclusion: The focus on low prices and the trading blocs’ stronger, central position on the market have made the competition more intense. To be or remain as a player on the market it is important for the SME to be a supplier to the trading blocs. However, since there are many players striving to become a supplier it is a tough situation and the price becomes an important factor. The trading blocs want low prices and keep pushing the suppliers to keep them low, or even lower them. This price focus is a major issue for the SME, and the DOB have become an important mean for the trading blocs to keep prices low. Due to scenarios like this it is very important for the SME to have strategies in place and the most common and most efficient is the bypass and flanking attack strategies. These two strategies are intense and keep the SME alert when it comes to product development and new innovations.</p>

<p>Systemutvecklingsmetoder har funnits för att utveckla system och</p><p>programvaror sedan vattenfallsmodellen gjorde sin introduktion på den</p><p>tiden då IT kallades för data processning. Sedan dess har det funnits ett</p><p>antal metoder, vissa av dem används än idag. Gemensamt för de flesta</p><p>metoderna är att de är anpassade till mycket komplexa system som används</p><p>inom stora organisationer. Inom det Svenska samhället så fanns det år 2005</p><p>över 890 000 småföretag (0-49 anställda) enligt statistiska centralbyrån.</p><p>Det är lätt att förstå att småföretagen är viktiga för Sverige. För att Sveriges</p><p>småföretag skall kunna överleva i en allt tuffare konkurrenssituation så är</p><p>det viktigt att de hela tiden effektiviserar sina verksamhetsprocesser med</p><p>exempelvis innovativa IT lösningar. Denna rapport kommer att undersöka</p><p>tänkbara systemutvecklingsmetoder till småföretag och där efter</p><p>specialanpassa en metod.</p> / <p>System development methods have existed to develop systems and</p><p>programs since the waterfall model was introduced when IT was called</p><p>data processing. There have been a number of methods since that day,</p><p>some of them are still used. A common denominator for the most software</p><p>development methods are that they where all developed to support software</p><p>engineering to complex system in large organizations. Within the Swedish</p><p>society there were over 890 000 small businesses (0-49 employed) in year</p><p>2005 according to statistiska centralbyrån. It’s no secret that the small</p><p>businesses are very important to Sweden. To assure survival when the</p><p>competition gets harder the small businesses must the entire time look over</p><p>there business processes. Sometimes this means that they need new custom</p><p>made IT systems. This thesis will examine possible system development</p><p>methods for small Swedish businesses and adopt one method to fit small</p><p>business software development.</p>