Crafting Alliances Between A Mexican Agribusiness And The Base Of The Pyramid: An Action Research Into Strategizing By Sergio Quinones-Romandia May 2016 Committee Chair: Lars Mathiassen Major Academic Unit: J. Mack Robinson College of Business More than 4 billion people in the world face hunger every day. In addition to this imperative shortcoming, the world’s poor confront other side effects of poverty as well, including violence, forced mobility, lack of access to education and early death. In a globalized world where capitalism has become the prevailing economic ideology, alleviating poverty can no longer be the exclusive responsibility of governments, richer nations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Today, the private sector must also “take the torch” and contribute to easing the suffering of more than half the world’s population. The Base of the Pyramid (BOP) strategy is an important opportunity for the world’s private sector to create new business opportunities while at the same time helping address and alleviate poverty. However, while the literature describes several study cases, we still have limited knowledge about the process through which managers engage in BOP strategizing. Against this backdrop, this dissertation provides a detailed account of how a Mexican agribusiness: Agroservicios Nacionales, SAPI de CV (ANSA) developed and implemented a BOP strategy to co-create value with its distributors and poor corn farmers. Our Georgia State University (GSU) research team combined Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) and Option-Driven Strategizing (ODS) and adopted action research to establish close collaboration among the firm’s top directors, a select group of its managers, designated local distributors, and our researcher team members. This dissertation presents a detailed account of the strategizing process, how AgroEstacion was conceived, how it was implemented, and the outcomes and experiences of the overall process. I also discuss the challenges our team faced, how they were resolved, and the opportunities that emerged from the strategizing process. Finally, I describe an Integrated Model that firms can use to strategize BOP opportunities in a way that benefits both their business and the surrounding society. This dissertation also represents the challenges of utilizing DCT in a practical case, following the suggestions of several authors as Teece, Pisano, Shuen, Zollo, Winters and others, from major works of writing that encourage researchers to take this theory into a more aggregate system and apply it in a practical case.

No description available.

Small businesses provide 48% of private-sector jobs in the United States and play a vital role in the country's economic growth and development. Only half of U.S. small businesses survive for longer than 5 years. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore sustainability strategies managers of small oilfield service companies used to sustain their business for longer than 5 years. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with 10 managers--one manager from each of 10 different oilfield service companies located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States and from review of publicly available documents and archived records. The conceptual framework for this study was the dynamic capability theory. Data analysis was conducted using Yin's 5-step data analysis process and methodological triangulation. Four themes emerged from the study: networking or relationship strategies, financial planning strategies, differentiation strategies, and education and experience strategies. The implications of this study for positive social change include the potential for small business managers to use these findings to develop strategies for profitability and sustainability resulting in job creation, poverty reduction, and socioeconomic development.

This research aims at finding a foundation for assessment of capabilities and applying the concept in a human resource selection. The research identifies a common ground for assessing individuals’ applied capability in a given job based on literature review of various disciplines in engineering, human sciences and economics. A set of criteria is found to be common and appropriate to be used as the basis of this assessment. Applied Capability is then described in this research as the impact of the person in fulfilling job requirements and also their level of usage from their resources with regards to the identified criteria. In other words how their available resources (abilities, skills, value sets, personal attributes and previous performance records) can be used in completing a job. Translation of the person’s resources and task requirements using the proposed criteria is done through a novel algorithm and two prevalent statistical inference techniques (OLS regression and Fuzzy) are used to estimate quantitative levels of impact and utilisation. A survey on post graduate students is conducted to estimate their applied capabilities in a given job. Moreover, expert academics are surveyed on their views on key applied capability assessment criteria, and how different levels of match between job requirement and person’s resources in those criteria might affect the impact levels. The results from both surveys were mathematically modelled and the predictive ability of the conceptual and mathematical developments were compared and further contrasted with the observed data. The models were tested for robustness using experimental data and the results for both estimation methods in both surveys are close to one another with the regression models being closer to observations. It is believed that this research has provided sound conceptual and mathematical platforms which can satisfactorily predict individuals’ applied capability in a given job. This research has contributed to the current knowledge and practice by a) providing a comparison of capability definitions and uses in different disciplines, b) defining criteria for applied capability assessment, c) developing an algorithm to capture applied capabilities, d) quantification of an existing parallel model and finally e) estimating impact and utilisation indices using mathematical methods.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of DevOps adoption on organizational agility. The first chapter establishes through literature review and a pilot study, a theoretical definition of DevOps and identifies through survey data, the key DevOps adoption capabilities. The definition and key capabilities identified during the pilot study establishes the foundation through which a subsequent study is performed. The second chapter details an examination of the effects of DevOps adoption capability on organizational agility. Through capability theory, we propose that DevOps adoption capability positively affects organizational agility. We also propose that the capabilities of collaboration/communication, continuous monitoring, measurement and automation positively affect DevOps adoption capability and likewise; the capabilities of responsiveness, competency, flexibility, and quickness affect organizational agility capability. We test our model with survey data collected from 333 respondents and find that our hypotheses are supported and that DevOps adoption capability has a positive effect on organizational agility capability. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

Many studies have been carried out throughout the world on how street-connected children relate to the streets, but not enough of these studies are seen through a gender perspective. Hence, the general conception of street-connected children is in some manner still mainstreamed, which casts an image claiming all children in the same category. This demonstrates that there is currently a missing gap of knowledge. This study covers whether the role of gender could affect the lives of the children that live and work on the streets, through a qualitative research in the field with 28 interviewees. These interviews were largely conducted in Brikama, Serekunda, Topkunda, Farafenni, Madina Salaam and Bakau in The Gambia, where the majority of the Gambian NGOs and street-connected children is located. The results from analysing these interviews pointed towards the same pattern: that there were a few similarities in the livelihoods of the street-connected boys and girls. However, the differences concerning their livelihoods on the streets were greater since the findings demonstrated that their challenges and opportunities of achieving the Ten Central Human Capabilities were different. Street-connected boys and street-connected girls were both exposed to child labour. The main difference was, street-connected boys, who lived in groups, worked in car garages, fish industries and for shop owners, while the few girls who permanently lived on the streets, were alone and sexual exploited. This research is thus not merely a contribution to the studies of street-connected children, but how gender is relating to the streets. Furthermore, a contribution to improve these vulnerable children’s livelihoods and also increase the awareness through the perspective of humanities, which might be crucial in future policy recommendations and research.

Problemområde och syfte: Åldrandet kan innebära såväl fysiska som psykiska utmaningar för den enskilde. Kroppen och tillvaron förändras och möjligheterna att delta i sociala nätverk som man gjort tidigare kan begränsas. Många upplever ensamhet vilket i tidigare forskning har visat sig få konsekvenser för såväl välbefinnande som fysisk och psykisk hälsa. Denna studie fokuserar på några av de faktorer som hänger samman med åldrandets livsvillkor; social aktivitet, socialt stöd, ekonomi samt rörelseförmåga och hur dessa kan sättas i samband med upplevelser av ensamhet hos äldre. I en tioårig jämförelse undersöks: (a) hur äldres sociala aktiviteter, socialt stöd, ekonomi och rörelseförmåga förändras över tid, (b) hur upplevelsen av ensamhet hos äldre förändras över tid och (c) hur förändringar gällande social aktivitet, socialt stöd, ekonomi och rörelseförmåga under denna tid påverkar upplevelsen av ensamhet. Material: Data från insamlingstillfällena 2004 och 2014 i den nationellt representativa Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD), en longitudinell undersökning utifrån urvalet i den svenska levnadsnivåundersökningen (LNU) användes (n = 466). Metod: Samband mellan ensamhet 2004 och 2014 och social aktivitet, socialt stöd, ekonomi samt rörelseförmåga undersöktes i bivariata analyser och logistiska regressioner. Samband mellan ensamhet 2014 och förändringar under 2004-2014 gällande social aktivitet, socialt stöd, ekonomi samt rörelseförmåga undersöktes i logistisk regression. Resultat: Socialt stöd, ekonomisk buffert och rörelseförmåga kunde associeras till känslor av ensamhet 2004 men endast socialt stöd kvarstod som signifikant associerat till ensamhet då man kontrollerat för kön, ålder och ensamboende. Social aktivitet, socialt stöd och rörelseförmåga kunde associeras till känslor av ensamhet 2014, sambanden kvarstod efter att ja kontrollerat för nämnda bakomliggande faktorer. Social aktivitet och rörelseförmåga minskade betydande under den undersökta tioårsperioden, men endast minskning i rörelseförmåga kunde tydligt associeras till ensamhet. Resultaten analyseras utifrån ett kapabilitetsteoretiskt perspektiv. Slutsatser: Att ha nära stödjande relationer, delta i social aktivitet och inte hämmas av fysisk funktionsnedsättning är viktiga aspekter för att undvika ensamhet. Studien framhåller vikten av det sociala arbetet och samhällets ansvar att möta upp med förmågor när den enskildes inre förmågor avtar, för att på så sätt bidra med möjligheter för den anskilde att leva ett värdigt och värdefullt liv. / Objectives: Aging process may include both physical and mental challenges for the individual. Body and life go through changes and limit the opportunities to participate in social networks in same extent as before. Many elderly experience loneliness, which in previous studies has been shown to have consequences for well-being as for physical and mental health. The objective of this study was to examine some of the factors associated with living conditions in old age (+70); social activity, social support, economy as well as mobility problems and how these can be associated with experiences of loneliness among the elderly. Examined in present ten year comparison is: (a) how the extent of social activities, social support, economy and mobility change over time, (b) how the experience of loneliness in old age change over time and (c) how changes in social activity, social support, economy and mobility during this ten year period affects the experience of loneliness. Material: Data from the 2004 and 2014 waves of the nationally representative Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD), a longitudinal study and database based on the sample of the Swedish level of living survey (LNU) was used (n = 466). Methods: Correlation between 2004 and 2014 loneliness and social activity, social support, economy and mobility was investigated in bivariate analyses and logistic regressions. Relation between loneliness 2014 and changes during 2004-2014 in social activity, social support, economy and mobility were investigated in logistic regression. Results: Social activity, social support and mobility problems were associated with feelings of loneliness in both 2004 and 2014. Social support and mobility were associated with loneliness 2004 but only social support remained significant associated with loneliness when adjusting for gender, age and living alone. Social activity, social support and mobility were significantly associated with loneliness 2014 even when adjusting for gender, age and living alone. Social activity and mobility decreased during the ten year period but only decrease in mobility was significantly associated with loneliness. The results were analyzed in the light of the capability theory. Conclusions: Supportive relationships, participation in social activity and not be hampered by physical disabilities are important aspects to avoid loneliness. The study stresses the importance of the social work and society's responsibility to meet up with capabilities when the individual's own capabilities are declining to provide opportunities to live a dignified and valuable life.

This field study explored the lives of children with hearing loss on the biggest island of Zanzibar, Unguja. Through a qualitative method the collecting of data was performed by interviewing one ministry, one organization, two non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and 14 children with hearing loss. The method to find participants to the study was done through snowballing. The organizations have project plans to improve the living situation for the people with hearing loss on Zanzibar, however they lack resources and fundings to implement them. The consequences of living with undiagnosed hearing loss are behavioral problems and mental health issues, lower academic results, and working on less paid jobs. This research relates to the Sustainable Development Goals with focus on goal four, quality education. The result of this study is divided into two, one descriptive part and one covering the interviews of the children. The descriptive part enhances an understanding of the context and the view of people with hearing loss. The interviews with the children constitutes the data analyzed through the theoretical framework. The study established that the children on Unguja are limited in their development due to the lack of knowledge about hearing loss in communities, limited communication abilities, and lack of support in school. Resulting in limited abilities to develop and improve their living situations.