This qualitative study contributed to the growing body of research in luxury brand management by constructing a framework that can be utilized by luxury companies and conglomerates to develop their business strategies. The purpose was to examine: (a) how the chosen luxury firm is addressing the changing business environment of the luxury goods industry and the changing consumer environment targeted by that industry, (b) how the firm is managing growth trade-offs, and (c) how the firm is adapting its marketing orientations to become consumer-centric and experiential. Six research questions guided the study, and data collection and analysis took place in two parts. Methods for this study included and in-depth review of literature, an exploration of the business environment, and a case study. The study concluded with the formation of a strategic management framework specific to the luxury goods industry. Data analysis included an in-depth exploration of the evolution of the business environment of the luxury goods industry from the mid-1800s to the first decade of the 2000s, and a case study of the sample luxury goods company, Louis Vuitton. A historical review was conducted beginning with the company's inception in 1854 and continuing through the formation of the LVMH conglomerate in 1987. Exploration brand management successes and failures helped identify information relevant to variables in selected business categories (business environment, corporate environment, marketing strategy). Analysis of the case study resulted in the refinement of the four brand management variables: corporate, brand management, trade-off, and strategic planning. Environmental determinism and the zeitgeist were evidenced to be important factors that shaped the business strategies of LVMH and its brands. Strategic planning and strategic management response were identified as ongoing strategies that helped LVMH and its brands to effectively address and respond to environmental changes. Both environmental determinism and the zeitgeist and the use of strategic management response were incorporated into the luxury brand management framework as overarching themes for explaining the influences and responses for the four management indicators. / Ph. D.

No description available.

Behavioural case linkage (BCL) is a procedure that can be used to identify linked crime series, which contain two or more crimes committed by the same person, thereby helping the police to detect and prosecute repeat offenders who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. However, despite the potential benefits of BCL, there are also damaging consequences if crimes are incorrectly linked. Consequently, research has started to test if and how this procedure can work in the most efficient and reliable way. But, the extant literature has a number of important limitations, particularly in terms of (1) generalisability (i.e., there have been few attempts to replicate findings across geographical locations and time periods), (2) ecological validity (i.e., the methodology used to test BCL is not representative of how the procedure is used in practice), and (3) methodology (i.e., there is a lack of research to systematically compare the various methodological/statistical approaches to BCL). The primary aim of this thesis was to address these three important limitations. In terms of generalisability, this thesis has tested the extent to which previous BCL research on residential burglary, commercial robbery, and car theft can be replicated in new geographical locations and time periods. In terms of ecological validity, a number of new methodologies have been developed and tested that reduce the gap between research and practice in BCL by allowing both non-serial and unsolved offences (as well as solved, serial offences) to be included when testing the principles of BCL, and also for these principles to be tested with crime series that contain several different types of offence. In terms of methodology, novel methodological approaches have been compared with the ‘traditional’, status quo methodology for researching the BCL principles, thereby ensuring that the findings reported in this thesis can be compared with previous work. This thesis, therefore, has important implications for theory, research, and practice and the findings are discussed in the context of these. Future research directions are also outlined.

We consider the survivable network design problem - the problem of designing, at minimum cost, a network with edge-connectivity requirements. As special cases, this problem encompasses the Steiner tree problem, the traveling salesman problem and the k-connected network design problem. We establish a property, referred to as the parsimonious property, of the linear programming (LP) relaxation of a classical formulation for the problem. The parsimonious property has numerous consequences. For example, we derive various structural properties of these LP relaxations, we present some algorithmic improvements and we perform tight worstcase analyses of two heuristics for the survivable network design problem.

Yes / Big Data Analytics (BDA) is an emerging phenomenon with the reported potential to transform how firms manage and enhance high value businesses performance. The purpose of our study is to investigate the impact of BDA on operations management in the manufacturing sector, which is an acknowledged infrequently researched context. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, this empirical study leverages a comparative case study of three manufacturing companies with varying levels of BDA usage (experimental, moderate and heavy). The information technology (IT) business value literature and a resource based view informed the development of our research propositions and the conceptual framework that illuminated the relationships between BDA capability and organizational readiness and design. Our findings indicate that BDA capability (in terms of data sourcing, access, integration, and delivery, analytical capabilities, and people’s expertise) along with organizational readiness and design factors (such as BDA strategy, top management support, financial resources, and employee engagement) facilitated better utilization of BDA in manufacturing decision making, and thus enhanced high value business performance. Our results also highlight important managerial implications related to the impact of BDA on empowerment of employees, and how BDA can be integrated into organizations to augment rather than replace management capabilities. Our research will be of benefit to academics and practitioners in further aiding our understanding of BDA utilization in transforming operations and production management. It adds to the body of limited empirically based knowledge by highlighting the real business value resulting from applying BDA in manufacturing firms and thus encouraging beneficial economic societal changes.

This paper seeks to chronicle the different ways marketers have successfully defended and/or defeated legal challenges that seek to stump their creativity. Previous research, existing laws and regulating agencies are surveyed to define the current lay of the land. Ten unique cases are analyzed to discover over ten alternate responses that brand ambassadors have either successfully or unsuccessfully provided in the face of legal crisis. The findings are summarized, and further research avenues are suggested with the aspiration that up-and-coming brands gain insights from lessons learned in the past. / text

Jaunas žmogus augdamas susiduria su įrairiausiomis bendravimo problemomis, kurios trukdo sėkmingai socializacijai. Bendravimo meno vaikai mokosi šeimoje, tačiau mokykla- antroji vaiko bendruomenė po šeimos, kurioje jis socializuojasi, įgauna tam tikrų elgesio, bendravimo su bendraamžiais ir vyresniaisiais įgūdžių. Siekti šiltų pedagogo ir mokinio tarpasmeninių santykių vis sunkiau net ir tobulėjančiose ugdymo institucijose. Mokykloje, kaip ir kitose įstaigose, kur telkiasi įvairaus amžiaus, patirties, požiūrių žmonės, neapsieinama be konfliktų. Pedagoginiai konfliktai tarp mokinių ir mokytojų dažniausia prasideda tuomet, kai mokiniai ”įžengia“ į paauglystę. Pedagogini��� konfliktų atsiradimo priežastys yra labai įvairios. Tačiau, norint išsamiai sužinoti, kokie veiksniai įtakoja konfliktus klasėje, buvo pasirinktas kokybinis tyrimas. Jį atlikus paaiškėjo, kad konfliktai vyko dėl netinkamo paauglių elgesio, bei mokinių ir mokytojų antipatijos vienas kitam. Be to paaugliai mokykloje pasigenda jaunų specialist�����, kurie geriau supranta mokinius ir įžvelgia paauglių individualybę. Išryškėjo ir tai, kad konfliktų klasėje nesprendė tie pedagogai, kurie dalyvavo konflikte. Į pagalbą jie pasitelkė socialinį pedagogą arba administraciją. Konfliktų valdymą apsunkina ne tik mokytojų nemokėjimas valdyti konfliktus, bet ir tai, kad ugdymo įstaigoje, kurioje atliktas tyrimas, kol kas nėra ilgalaikių konfliktų prevencijos priemonių. / A growing young person meets different communication problems, which interfere in his/her socialization. Children learn communicative skills in the families, but school is the child’s second community after the family where they socialize, get some behaviour , communication with their friends and adults skills. It is becoming more and more difficult to seek for good relationship between children and teachers and children between children even in the developing educational institutions. In school as in any other institutions, where one can meet people with different age, experience, attitude, it is impossible to avoid conflicts. The most common time for pedagogical conflicts between teachers and school children is when they become teenagers. The reasons of the pedagogical conflicts are very different. But to understand that situation better and what actions make influence on the conflicts in the classroom a quantity research was chosen. When it was performed it became clear that the conflicts were because the teenagers misbehaved and because teachers and children didn’t like each other. Besides there are very few young teachers at school who understand young people better and see their individual personality more. It became evident that the teachers who had a conflict didn’t take part in solving them. They asked social educationalist or school administration to help them. The management of conflicts becomes more difficult because the teachers can’t manage the... [to full text]

abstract: Executive compensation design involving equity shares has been widely used in Europe, the United States and other developed countries where the capital markets are relatively mature. In China, due to the differences in industries, ownership structure, stages of enterprise development, constraints faced by the firms, the executive compensation design using equity shares tends to vary accordingly. For the state-owned companies, the situations are more complex than others. This complexity has not been a focus of the past literature, particularly on the compensation contract design and its subsequent implementation. Based on Coase contract theorem, agency theory and human capital theory, I examined how different state-owned firms vary in their approaches on managerial stock compensation design using a case study approach. The thesis concludes with a summary of major findings and a discussion of policy implications. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) came into the power when banking institutions started to become more and more competitive. The focus on CRM increased banks' abilities to understand their customers' current needs more precisely and also helped them to understand their customers' behaviours, such as what they have done in the past, and what they plan to do in the future. Such practice further helped banks to design strategies based on each customer's preferences in order to meet their customers' demands (Xu, et al., 2002). The adoption of the CRM within the banking industry chiefly depends on the overall adoption of IT culture within the country. Today, developed countries like the UK are enjoying innovative technologies, tailored-made systems, and have a high level of IT maturity within their banking industry. On the other hand, developing countries such as Pakistan are still dealing with several technological issues and the biggest one is the lack of IT alignment within most of their organizations especially within their banking industry (Kundi and Nawaz, 2006). Therefore, it is essential for researchers to further investigate the major IT-related problems faced by the banking industry, especially problems with the current use of the CRM system within the banking industry of developing countries i.e. Pakistan compared to banks in developed countries i.e. UK.This research has investigated and covered the overall operational issues of the CRM system within the banking industry of both developed and developing countries i.e. UK and Pakistan by using a qualitative case study research approach with two case studies, in which the Pakistani banking sector is selected as the developing country for case study one; for a developed country, the UK banking sector is selected as case study two. From the several existing UK and Pakistani banks, the researcher has selected some leading banks from the two countries and conducted several semi-structured interviews with different bank employees. Furthermore, the obtained interviews' results from both case studies are analyzed, compared, and discussed using an in-depth cross-case analysis approach and uncovered the similarities, differences, and several CRM operational issues within the banking sectors of both Pakistan and the UK.

Akut stroke är en allvarlig och livshotande sjukdom som ofta leder till fysiska och kognitiva funktionsnedsättningar. Riksstroke är ett kvalitetregister som samlar in och tillhandahåller information om strokevården i Sverige. Under 2019–2020 pågår ett omfattande valideringsarbete där analys av bortfallet inom registret utförs. Syftet med uppsatsen var att som i en del av detta arbete analysera omfattningen av bortfallet i flera faktorer och om det fanns en skillnad mellan grupperna kön, ålder och sjukhus. Därefter testades två metoder för bortfallshantering, complete case analysis och multipel imputations by chained equation (MICE). Dessa utvärderades genom att jämföra de skattade oddskvoterna för död inom 90 dagar efter inskrivning på sjukhus. Resultatet visade att det fanns stora skillnader i bortfall mellan män och kvinnor, åldersgrupper och sjukhusen. Där kan en stor del av skillnaden i bortfall troligtvis kan förklaras av åldern på patienterna. Det två utvärderade metoderna producerade jämförbara resultat.