Employer Branding är ett managementkoncept vars primära syfte är att attrahera och behålla personal. Nyinstitutionell teori redogör däremot för att organisationers motiv att översätta samt tillämpa ett managementrecept så som Employer Branding är att framstå som socialt legitima och bra arbetsplatser. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur Employer Branding implementerats vid ett kontor inom Swedbank AB och vad det betyder i praktiken. Med nyinstitutionell teori som referensram kommer studien undersöka hur Swedbank AB har översatt, tillämpat och kommunicerat konceptet. För att besvara syftet har kvalitativ metod använts genom tre semi-strukturerade intervjuer utifrån ett selektivt urval. Information erhölls även från Swedbank AB:s hemsida. Analysen grundades utifrån etnografisk kvalitativ metod med deduktiv ansats där teoretiska begrepp har översatts till koder. Av resultatet framkom det att banken arbetar med en strategisk omdömeshantering via införandet av nya värdeord, ledarskapskriterier, en lokal prägel, samhällsengagemang, jämställdhetsarbete och ett relationellt förhållningssätt. Översättningen av receptet kan dock vara problematisk att implementera för Swedbank, då personalsatsningar tenderar att vara ekonomiskt konjunkturberoende. Banken hanterar detta genom en löskoppling mellan storytelling som förmedlar hur banken vill framstå och hur arbetet bedrivs i praktiken. Utifrån att betrakta medarbetarna som potentiella externa ambassadörer skulle banken med en mer inkluderande storytelling åstadkomma större förståelse och acceptans för sitt beslutsfattande. Organisationsrecept såsom Employer Branding verkar utifrån studiens samlade analys fungera bäst under goda ekonomiska förutsättningar. / Employer Branding is a management concept which primary purpose is to attract and keep employees. In contrast, neoinstitutional theory explains that organizations motives to translate and apply management recipes such as Employer Branding, is to appear as socially legitimate and good places to work. The study aims to examine how the management concept Employer Branding is implemented at an office of Swedbank AB and what it means in practice. With neoinstitutional theory as a framework, the study will examine how Swedbank AB has translated, implemented and communicated the concept. To answer the question, a qualitative method has been used by three semi-structured interviews based on a selective sample. Information was also provided by Swedbank AB's website. The analysis was based on an ethnographic qualitative deductive approach in which theoretical concepts have been translated into codes. The results show that the bank is working with strategic reputational management through the introduction of new core values, leadership criteria, a local character, corporate social responsibility, equality work and a relational approach. The translation of the concept can be problematic to implement within the bank, because staff actions appear to be economically dependent. The bank handles this by a decoupling between storytelling that conveys how the bank would like to appear and how the work is conducted in practice. Based on considering employees as external ambassadors, the bank could provide greater understanding and acceptance with a more inclusive storytelling concerning its decision-making. Organization recipes such as Employer Branding seems from the study's overall analysis, work best under good economic conditions.

Content distribution is the primary function of the Internet today. Technologies like multicast and peer-to-peer networks hold the potential to serve content to large populations in a scalable manner. While multicast provides an efficient transport mechanism for one-to-many and many-to-many delivery of data in an Internet environment, the peer-to-peer networks allow scalable content location and retrieval among large groups of users in the Internet. Incorporating quality-consciousness in these technologies is necessary to enhance the overall experience of clients. This dissertation focuses on the architectures and mechanisms to enhance multicast and peer-to-peer content distribution through quality-consciousness. In particular, the following aspects of quality-consciousness are addressed: 1) client latency, 2) service differentiation, and 3) content quality. Data analysis shows that the existing multicast scheduling algorithms behave unfairly when the access conditions for the popular files changes. They favor the popular files while penalizing the files whose access conditions have not changed. To maintain the client latency for all files under dynamic access conditions we develop a novel multicast scheduling algorithm that requires no change in server provisioning. Service differentiation is a desirable functionality for both multicast and peer-to-peer networks. For multicast, we design a scalable and low overhead service differentiation architecture. For peer-to-peer networks, we focus on a protocol to provide different levels of service to peers based on their contributions in the system. The ability to associate reliable reputations with peers in a peer-to-peer network is a useful feature of these networks. Reliable reputations can help establish trust in these networks and hence improve content quality. They can also be used as a substrate for a service differentiation scheme for these networks. This dissertation develops two methods of tracking peer reputations with varying degrees of reliability and overheads.

Abstract R&D investment differs from general investments due to more and greater uncertainties. Once the R&D technique is selected and the investment turns into sunk cost, a path dependence of the R&D investment will occur that locks in the involved parties in the R&D cooperation relationship and the determined cost path. Due to information asymmetry, whether the executer honestly provides information about the project type will be critical to the profit or loss of the R&D investment. If a high cost type project be confesses, the financier can immediately terminate the project to avoid more losses. On the contrary, if the cost type is concealed, the financier will sink more costs into it. Thus, soft budget constraint should be seriously considered in R&D investments. First, we capture the intrinsic uncertainty in R&D investment by introducing both cost and outcome uncertainties of R&D investment. Furthermore, we introduce the financier type and the executor¡¦s expectation of the probability that a high cost project would be refinanced ex post to establish a dynamic game of incomplete information. With this setup, we develop reputation effects from repeated R&D games. The incentive for the financier to avoid executor¡¦s opportunism by establishing reputation makes the commitment to hard budget constraint credible. Second, we attempt to develop a foundation for the concept of the SBC and to extend the analysis of SBCs to the contractual relationship of R&D investment. Information asymmetry is one important cause for contractual incompleteness, and the only one cause makes two legal contract theories unhelpful. Instead of relying on court enforcement, it is possible for the financier to leave contract terms unspecified and rely on a private self-enforcement mechanism. Writing down explicit contract terms can define the self-enforcing range by imposing a private sanction on the executer perceived to be violating the contract understanding. Such a self-enforcing relationship is a useful framework in which to analyze the SBC of R&D investment. In Chapter 5, we describe industrial R&D activities in China and uses statistics to calculate the softness of budget constraint. The main point of the R&D investment model is that the incentive for the financier to establish reputation increases as the probability of success decreases. With this point of view, given the probability of success for R&D projects in high-tech industries being lower than that in conventional industries, refinancing should be relatively more common in conventional industries than in high-tech industries. Statistics of R&D activities in China confirm the above proposition in that the computer-related industry has the hardest budget constraint compared to other industries within the state-controlled sector.

Today, advancements in the information technologies increased the significance of electronic business in the world. Besides the numerous advantages provided by these advancements, competition has also increased for the enterprises. In this competitive environment, companies have to access information faster and response to the changes quickly. In a supply chain, it is a highly possible that one of the partners may defect in providing its services. When these exceptional cases occur, the pending parties have to establish transitory collaborations to replace the missing partner promptly in order not to suffer this deficiency economically. Companies need to know the competences and capabilities of their prospective business partners before establishing partnerships. Furthermore, the reputations of the candidate partners have to be known to avoid possible regrettable partnerships. In this thesis, we have developed a trust and reputation model that can be used over supply chains to determine and exploit the reputation of providers in transitory collaboration formation. The trust model takes the behaviors of providers, consumers into account and combines multiple criteria to aggregate a single reputation value. Experimental results show that, our model provides a robust and reliable reputation mechanism addressing a number of issues that have not been covered in the related studies. In addition to this, an implementation of the model is realized within a Web application and the functionalities have been exposed as Web Services. The interoperability of the Web Services have been ensured through standard GS1 XML documents, which are utilized and extended in scope of the thesis. Furthermore, client interaction is provided through Web based user interfaces and REST services.

Today, the proliferation of social communication channels and the rapidization of communication cause fast dispersion of information and interpretation of social, cultural and economic developments. Therefore, societies interact with organizations not only through products and services, but also through image, visibility, perceptions, rumors, etc. Organizations have to develop reputation policies / they have to measure, track and manage their reputation. The most important element of an organization&rsquo / s reputation management is the ability to see its current reputation standing and make proper projections. Reputation measurement studies aim to achieve that. However, these studies usually focus on the perceptions and assessments of organizations&rsquo / characteristics and performances. There are social dynamics and social identities, which are constituted independent of what an organization is and does, and they are influential on reputation. Ignoring this would lead to a blurry picture of reputation. Social issues and developments operating independent of the organization, but are related to its products/services, do have impact on people&rsquo / s assessment of reputation. This study focuses on the significance of the social determination of reputation. It claims that socially influential discourses like health, anti-Americanism, environmentalism, along with political or cultural identities, act as a filter for people&rsquo / s evaluations of companies&rsquo / reputations. Individuals, when they give reputation scores to companies, not only consider their characteristics, products or services, their size, internationality, etc. but also evaluate companies&rsquo / identities, their positions with respect to social issues related to their products/services. Individuals also evaluate reputation according to their own habituses, their political and cultural identities.

Underwriter need to participate in the process of new issue firms going public. Related reference about Taiwan's underwriter IPOs market share haven't appear. In this study, we expect to find out the relationship between Taiwan's underwriter IPOs market share and some related factors. Then offer issuer, underwriter and investor the conclusion as reference. The IPOs samples are selected during the period 1991 through 2000 in Taiwan. There are 475 newly issued firms in this period. We subtract some incomplete data samples and bank samples.There are 247 IPOs samples in our regression model. Although underwriter IPOs market share is less significantly impacted by IPOs offer price , results imply that when offer price is too low,this would damage issuer's benefit and lead to underwriter IPOs market share decrease. When offer price is too high, this would damage investor's benefit and just lightly lead to underwriter IPOs market share decrease. Results show that there is no industry specialization in Taiwan's underwriter industry. Although underwriter IPOs market share is less significantly impacted by IPOs one year performance,results imply that when underwriter market higher one year return IPOs, this would attract more investors and lead to underwriter IPOs market share increase.Results show that underwriter IPOs market share is significantly impacted by nderwriter's asset and age. The underwriter with larger asset and larger age gains more IPOs market share.

<p>Article 15(1) of the Community Trade Mark Regulation states that the Community Trade Mark holder has to put the mark into genuine use in the Community within five years from registration. Even though the regulation does not deal with the extent of use necessary, the Joint Statements uphold that genuine use within one country is enough. However, recent case law from national offices have ruled in the opposite direction, resulting in legal uncertainty concerning how much use that is needed. The courts claimed that use within merely one Member State is not use in a substantial part of the Community and therefore not genuine.This paper shows that it is not satisfactory to define genuine use in the Community by way of analogy to the term substantial part of the territory. The latter derives from the test of reputation concerning a different case entirely. Instead, most indicators point towards a market-oriented approach where national frontiers do not matter. Focus should be on the extent of use being made compared to the market concerned in the entire EU. A case-by-case assessment is required, where all relevant circumstances are taken into consideration.</p>

The purpose of this study was to propose and test a comprehensive model ofmarketability using both individual and situational predictors. Participants in thisstudy were members of professional associations and were recruited from internetlistserves. They consisted of 485 employees and 176 co-workers. This study used amatching technique to link participant and co-worker data and was the first study toassess multiple perspectives of marketability. Results demonstrated the relationshipsof human capital variables, positivity traits, proactive career behaviors, thenvironment and industry characteristics on internal and external marketability.Interestingly, not all predictors related to both internal and external marketabilityuniformly, suggesting that the two constructs may have different consequences.

The mobile application (App) industry has grown tremendously over the past five years, primarily fueled by small App development businesses. Lacking advertising budgets, these relatively unknown, small businesses often offer free versions of their paid Apps to reduce customer uncertainty about App quality and get noticed in the crowded App industry. In this research I investigate the implications of offering free versions on the adoption speed of paid Apps by building on the existing marketing and information systems literature on sampling and versioning. Using a unique dataset of 2.82 million observations from 4,180 Apps and accounting for endogeneity, I find that while the strategy of offering free versions of paid Apps is popular, it impacts the adoption speed of paid Apps negatively. I also find that the presence of free versions has a larger negative impact on the adoption speed of Apps bought for fun and pleasure (hedonic Apps) and in the later life stages of paid Apps. I expect that the results of my study will enable App developers to make informed decisions about offering free versions of paid Apps and prompt academicians to produce more work focusing on this industry. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays on reputation and repeated games. Reputation models typically assume players have full memory of past events, yet in many applications this assumption does not hold. In the first chapter, I explore two different relaxations of the assumption that history is perfectly observed in the context of Ely and Välimäki's (2003) mechanic game, where reputation (with full history observation) is clearly bad for all players. First I consider "limited history," where short-run players see only the most recent T periods. For large T, the full history equilibrium behavior always holds due to an "echo" effect (for high discount factors); for small T, the repeated static equilibrium exists. Second I consider "fading history," where short-run players randomly sample past periods with probabilities that "fade" toward zero for older periods. When fading is faster than a fairly lax threshold, the long-run player always acts myopically, a result that holds more generally for reputation games where the long-run player has a strictly dominant stage game action. This finding suggests that reputational incentives may be too weak to affect long-run player behavior in some realistic word-of-mouth environments. The second chapter develops general theoretical tools to study incomplete information games where players observe only finitely many recent periods. I derive a recursive characterization of the set of equilibrium payoffs, which allows analysis of both stationary and (previously unexplored) non-stationary equilibria. I also introduce "quasi-Markov perfection," an equilibrium refinement which is a necessary condition of any equilibrium that is "non-fragile" (purifiable), i.e., robust to small, additively separable and independent perturbations of payoffs. These tools are applied to two examples. The first is a product choice game with 1-period memory of the firm's actions, obtaining a complete characterization of the exact minimum and maximum purifiable equilibrium payoffs for almost all discount factors and prior beliefs on an "honest" Stackelberg commitment type, which shows that non-stationary equilibria expand the equilibrium set. The second is the same game with long memory: in all stationary and purifiable equilibria, the long-run player obtains exactly the Stackelberg payoff so long as the memory is longer than a threshold dependent on the prior. These results show that the presence of the honest type (even for arbitrarily small prior beliefs) qualitatively changes the equilibrium set for any fixed discount factor above a threshold independent of the prior, thereby not requiring extreme patience. The third chapter studies the question of why drug trafficking organizations inflict violence on each other, and why conflict breaks out under some government crackdowns and not others, in a repeated games context. Violence between Mexican drug cartels soared following the government's anti-cartel offensive starting in 2006, but not under previous crackdowns. I construct a theoretical explanation for these observations and previous empirical research. I develop a duopoly model where the firms have the capacity to make costly attacks on each other. The firms use the threat of violence to incentivize inter-cartel cooperation, and under imperfect monitoring, violence occurs on the equilibrium path of a high payoff equilibrium. When a "corrupt" government uses the threat of law enforcement as a punishment for uncooperative behavior, violence is not needed as frequently to achieve high payoffs. When government cracks down indiscriminately, the firms may return to frequent violence as a way of ensuring cooperation and high payoffs, even if the crackdown makes drug trafficking otherwise less profitable. / text