With the increasing growth of communication networks, systems, and devices,technology has driven much research and development on a variety of communication protocols, applications, and smart devices. As a result, a variety of heterogeneous networks, de facto and standards have emerged. In parallel, users are also demanding to seamlessly use any device on any network infrastructure within this heterogeneous environment. To go beyond this problem, one of solutions is deploying service entities to be served in/on the network. The services can be composed of many independent service entities to redirect the communication flow combined with pipelined transformations. The service in the network can start from an application to intercept the user flow in a range of formats, originating in different access networks, and deliver them appropriately formatted for a particular end terminal based on the other end user preferences. To provide independent services to be served within the network, we have created a decentralized virtual market-place, which facilitates a place for services to be traded, discovered, and composed between providers and consumers. This approach of virtual market based on a decentralized system is leading to many advantages and challenges compared to other traditional network services. This thesis presents a novel approach towards using market management techniques to improve cooperation among traders in the community, while enhancing the community-oriented network service architecture. Without the centralized control, the decentralized virtual market-place requires the inclusion of techniques to provide better incentives. Given such incentives, rational traders will choose to behave co-operatively and contribute their resources to maximize the efficiency of the community. This will allow an application with dramatically improved utility, efficiency, and robustness and hence enable whole new domains of use. The viability of the decentralized virtual market-place is demonstrated using a prototype implementation and simulation system. The results have clearly shown that the decentralized virtual market-place can improve and overcome the major problems of most existing network service models.

<p>This thesis is concerned with measuring the extent to which the market of mobile telephone companies is influenced by their brand reputation in international marketing. The analysis investigates the relative importance of brand reputation in the marketing of products in the mobile telephone industry. </p><p>The work comprises a study within the context of a quantitative survey of marketing information analysis. A survey is carried out by administering questionnaires on a sample of mobile telephone users within the ages of 18 and above from an international student environment at Halmstad University. Watching over your brand reputation is rationally the ideal means of benefiting from a companies brand equity management. </p><p>The findings provided useful information that may serve mobile telephone companies to strategically position themselves in the competitive international market, thereby improving their overall sales as well as market share. It can equally serve as decision guidelines to brand managers while making meaningful contributions to their companies.</p>

Immediately following public offerings, underwriters often repurchase shares of poorly performing IPOs in an apparent attempt to stabilize the price. Using proprietary Nasdaq data for a large sample of IPOs, I study the price effects and cross-sectional determinants of price support. Some of the key findings are: (1) Price stabilization is substantial, inducing significant price rigidity at and below the offer price. Stabilization appears, at least in the short run, to raise the equilibrium stock price. (2) Many studies suggest that stabilization helps to mitigate information asymmetry problems in the IPO market. I find no evidence that stocks with larger ex-ante information asymmetries are stabilized more strongly. (3) The characteristics of the lead underwriter emerge as the strongest determinants of price support. Larger and more reputable investment banks stabilize more, perhaps to protect their reputations with investors. But there are substantial differences in price support even among the largest underwriters (after controlling for IPO characteristics and underwriter size). (4) Investment banks with retail brokerage operations stabilize much more than other large investment banks. This puzzling result seems inconsistent with the common view that stabilization benefits primarily institutional investors, and I outline and examine several alternative explanation

This thesis is concerned with measuring the extent to which the market of mobile telephone companies is influenced by their brand reputation in international marketing. The analysis investigates the relative importance of brand reputation in the marketing of products in the mobile telephone industry. The work comprises a study within the context of a quantitative survey of marketing information analysis. A survey is carried out by administering questionnaires on a sample of mobile telephone users within the ages of 18 and above from an international student environment at Halmstad University. Watching over your brand reputation is rationally the ideal means of benefiting from a companies brand equity management. The findings provided useful information that may serve mobile telephone companies to strategically position themselves in the competitive international market, thereby improving their overall sales as well as market share. It can equally serve as decision guidelines to brand managers while making meaningful contributions to their companies.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to measure and compare the corporate reputation of four staffing and recruitment companies, from the perspective of graduating students. Background: Corporate reputation is a concept that has interested researchers for the last four decades, and still the concept incorporates a number of varied definitions, contexts and measurement methods (Gotsi &amp; Wilson, 2001). Along with definition ambiguity comes also measurement concerns such as whether to aggregate or disaggregate several perspectives into one general index of a company’s reputation. Most researchers agree that corporate reputation is a suitable concept when describing the perceptions that stakeholders have of a company, and that it can only be ascribed to one company. This study takes the perspective to investigate one external stakeholder group of staffing and recruitment companies - graduating students. The group is of interest because it can possibly become an internal stakeholder group - employees. Method: For this study a quantitative method has been applied and an investigation has been made through a survey. Methodology about measuring corporate reputation is discussed, and lay ground for the empirical data collection. An altered version of the Harris-Fombrun Reputation Quotient (RQ) is used, in order to achieve better fit of the instrument and to attain higher reliability and validity. Conclusion: The purpose of this study has been fulfilled by measuring corporate reputation from the perspective of graduating students. empirical data from 125 students has been collected, and four corporate reputations of staffing and recruitment companies have been measured. The findings are not valid for generalisability but enough to give a good estimation of the population of interest. In addition, a disaggregated analysis of the RQ components has confirmed the findings. Using the methodology of the theoretically based Harris- Fombrun Reputation Quotient further validates the findings. Graduating students perceive Academic Work in the most positive way, in respect to the other companies. / Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att mäta och jämföra anseendet av fyra bemannings- och rekryteringsföretag, utifrån avgångsstudenters perspektiv. Bakgrund: Företagets anseende är ett teoretiskt koncept som har intresserat forskare de senaste årtiondena och fortfarande råder delade meningar om definitioner, sammanhang och mätmetoder rörande konceptet (Gotsi &amp; Wilson, 2001). Med tvetydiga definitioner kommer även oklarhet gällande mätningsmetod, som till exempel om man ska summera flera intressenters åsikter till ett övergripande index eller inte. Forskare är eniga om att företagets anseende är ett passande koncept när man ska beskriva de åsikter intressenter har om ett företag. Denna studie undersöker en specifik grupp av bemannings- och rekryteringsföretags externa intressenter, nämligen avgångsstudenter. Denna grupp är intressant då de kan komma att bli interna intressenter, via anställning av ett företag. Metod: Denna studie har en kvantitativ inriktning och undersökningen har utförts med hjälp av en enkät. Metodiken i att mäta företags anseende genom att använda sig av league tabeller och pilotstudier diskuteras och ligger till grund för empiriinsamling. Användandet av en anpassad version av Harris-Fombrun Reputation Quotient (RQ) ger studien ökad validitet och reliabilitet. Slutsats: Syftet med denna studie har blivit uppnått genom att mäta företagens anseende ur avgångsstudenters perspektiv. Empirisk data från 125 studenter har samlats ihop och fyra bemannings- och rekryteringsföretags företagsanseenden har blivit uppmätta. Resultatet kan inte generaliseras för en större population, men den kan användas för att ge en bra indikation hur åsikterna för den specifika populationen är. Vidare har en uppdelad analys av komponenterna i RQ gjorts vilket har kunnat säkerställa resultaten i den totala RQ. Användandet av den teoretiskt grundade RQ ger ytterligare validitet åt resultaten. Avgångsstudenter har mest positiva åsikter om Academic Work i jämförelse med de andra undersökta företagen.

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Abstract The reason why organizations attract potential employees has been studied for a long time, excellent human resources are relatively limit under tight labor market. Therefore businesses compete with each other at recruiting these employees, but only to increase the attractiveness of organization itself ultimately keeping advantage of appeal of talented people. Talking about organizational attractiveness, corporate reputation and image first come to people¡¦s mind. The reputation index conduct by CommonWealth magazine annually influences corporate reputation and image of the public. As the development of globalization, businesses have to concern more while making an important decision.Such as ethical, legal and discretionary concerns, so called corporate citizenship. This study is intended to find relationship between corporate citizenship image, reputation and organizational attractiveness. 19 businesses are selected out form CommonWealth magazine 2006 corporate citizenship survey, 340 graduating master or bachelor students as responds. Results show that corporate citizenship image positively influence organizational attractiveness and there is a significance between high and low corporate citizenship image groups in reputation and organizational attractiveness.

The dissertation examines IPO underpricing and long-term performance to assess the use of industry specialization as a differentiation strategy by audit firms and underwriters. Prior studies indicate that prestigious auditors or underwriters (e.g., Big 6 auditors) are associated with IPO underpricing. I extend existing literature by incorporating market share as a refined measure of auditor (underwriter) reputation. In particular, I define a differentiated auditor (underwriter) as the market leader that possesses significantly higher market share than their competitors in the client industry. I hypothesize that the impact of auditor (underwriter) reputation in the IPO setting depends on whether the audit firm (underwriter) has successfully differentiated itself from competitors within client industries. My results show that as audit firm (underwriter) industry market share increases without differentiation, the IPO underpricing increases. It appears that this group of auditors (underwriters) intentionally engages in high-risk IPOs in order to gain fee advantages. In contrast, differentiated auditors (underwriters) are related to lower IPO underpricing because their reputation assist in reducing information asymmetry between issuers and investors. My study is important because it shows that the benefits previously thought to be attributable to a very large set of auditors and underwriters stems primary

<p>Purpose: The purpose of this study is to measure and compare the corporate reputation of four staffing and recruitment companies, from the perspective of graduating students.</p><p>Background: Corporate reputation is a concept that has interested researchers for the last four decades, and still the concept incorporates a number of varied definitions, contexts and measurement methods (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001). Along with definition ambiguity comes also measurement concerns such as whether to aggregate or disaggregate several perspectives into one general index of a company’s reputation. Most researchers agree that corporate reputation is a suitable concept when describing the perceptions that stakeholders have of a company, and that it can only be ascribed to one company. This study takes the perspective to investigate one external stakeholder group of staffing and recruitment companies - graduating students. The group is of interest because it can possibly become an internal stakeholder group - employees.</p><p>Method: For this study a quantitative method has been applied and an investigation has been made through a survey. Methodology about measuring corporate reputation is discussed, and lay ground for the empirical data collection. An altered version of the Harris-Fombrun Reputation Quotient (RQ) is used, in order to achieve better fit of the instrument and to attain higher reliability and validity.</p><p>Conclusion: The purpose of this study has been fulfilled by measuring corporate reputation from the perspective of graduating students. empirical data from 125 students has been collected, and four corporate reputations of staffing and recruitment companies have been measured. The findings are not valid for generalisability but enough to give a good estimation of the population of interest. In addition, a disaggregated analysis of the RQ components has confirmed the findings. Using the methodology of the theoretically based Harris- Fombrun Reputation Quotient further validates the findings. Graduating students perceive Academic Work in the most positive way, in respect to the other companies.</p> / <p>Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att mäta och jämföra anseendet av fyra bemannings- och rekryteringsföretag, utifrån avgångsstudenters perspektiv.</p><p>Bakgrund: Företagets anseende är ett teoretiskt koncept som har intresserat forskare de senaste årtiondena och fortfarande råder delade meningar om definitioner, sammanhang och mätmetoder rörande konceptet (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001). Med tvetydiga definitioner kommer även oklarhet gällande mätningsmetod, som till exempel om man ska summera flera intressenters åsikter till ett övergripande index eller inte. Forskare är eniga om att företagets anseende är ett passande koncept när man ska beskriva de åsikter intressenter har om ett företag. Denna studie undersöker en specifik grupp av bemannings- och rekryteringsföretags externa intressenter, nämligen avgångsstudenter. Denna grupp är intressant då de kan komma att bli interna intressenter, via anställning av ett företag.</p><p>Metod: Denna studie har en kvantitativ inriktning och undersökningen har utförts med hjälp av en enkät. Metodiken i att mäta företags anseende genom att använda sig av league tabeller och pilotstudier diskuteras och ligger till grund för empiriinsamling. Användandet av en anpassad version av Harris-Fombrun Reputation Quotient (RQ) ger studien ökad validitet och reliabilitet.</p><p>Slutsats: Syftet med denna studie har blivit uppnått genom att mäta företagens anseende ur avgångsstudenters perspektiv. Empirisk data från 125 studenter har samlats ihop och fyra bemannings- och rekryteringsföretags företagsanseenden har blivit uppmätta. Resultatet kan inte generaliseras för en större population, men den kan användas för att ge en bra indikation hur åsikterna för den specifika populationen är. Vidare har en uppdelad analys av komponenterna i RQ gjorts vilket har kunnat säkerställa resultaten i den totala RQ. Användandet av den teoretiskt grundade RQ ger ytterligare validitet åt resultaten. Avgångsstudenter har mest positiva åsikter om Academic Work i jämförelse med de andra undersökta företagen.</p>

Authenticity in agriculture, food and resource markets has been an ongoing policy challenge to regulators and food industries, and a major concern to consumers given the complex nature of global food supply chains and the increasing spate of market fraud reports across the world. In a bid to boost their economic return, some firms may engage in illicit activities that comprise authenticity including: adulteration, substitution of substandard products, unapproved enhancements of food products, false and misleading quality claims. Such actions, often times, create negative reputation externalities for other agri-food firms in the sector, and may also result in trade conflicts and border rejections; while consumers incur transaction (search) costs in verifying product attributes due to quality uncertainty. This dissertation focuses on collective reputation and contributes to an understanding of authenticity issues in agri-food and resource markets. The analysis examines the role of industry-led quality assurance systems and evolving technologies in enhancing authenticity signals and reducing information asymmetry in the context of market fraud and collective reputation within food and resource supply chains. This dissertation consists of three papers. Paper 1 examines technological solutions to authenticity issues in the context of international trade. The paper explores the role of an emerging authenticity technology, International Barcode of Life (IBOL) in strengthening the enforcement of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora (CITES). The focus of the analysis is CITES restrictions on commercial trade in the endangered species tree of Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra). The first paper provides an overview of the applications of the IBOL technology in species identification to date. A graphical partial equilibrium trade model examines three scenarios consisting of adoption of IBOL authenticity technology by a single major importing country, multilateral adoption, and adoption by the exporting country. The scenarios suggest that a threat of multilateral testing for the authenticity of imported rosewood could eliminate cross border commercial trade in the endangered species. Upstream testing and certification of authenticity in the exporting country could increase importers’ confidence and the demand for legally harvested rosewood. The results suggest that technological solutions to authenticity issues in international markets have the potential to reduce quality uncertainty and could act as a complement to regulatory enforcement under CITES. Paper 2 explores the industry-led Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) quality assurance system for Canadian wines to examine how an industry seeks to signal authenticity assurances to protect its collective reputation. Hedonic and Probit models are estimated using data on wine attributes sourced from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Hedonic models examine whether VQA certification, versus other collective and individual reputation signals (region, winery), elicits a price premium. The Probit analysis examines factors that determine a winery’s decision to seek VQA certification for a specific wine. The results suggest that while a number of attributes including VQA certification, percentage alcohol content, sweetness (sugar level), volume of wine supplied and vintage, have a significant influence on the price of wine, VQA adds a premium beyond other signals of reputation (winery and region). The magnitude of the effect of individual and collective reputation on the price of wine differs for the different types/colours of wine. The Probit model results suggest that wineries that supply large volumes of wine (more than 1000 cases) in Ontario and produce icewine and non-blended wines have a higher tendency of seeking VQA status. The results imply that VQA could be used as a shorthand for quality, while premium and reputation driven by authenticity in the wine industry could serve as an incentive for other agri-food industries to establish similar quality assurance systems. Paper 3 examines the incidence of mislabelling and substitution in fish markets using supply, demand and welfare analysis. The paper focuses on incentives for the private sector (retailers) or a third party to adopt IBOL technology to protect their reputation and for supply chain monitoring. The feasibility of IBOL technology for a typical retail store in Canada is assessed using a simple simulation analysis. The analysis suggests that the costs of switching to the IBOL system, the number of retailers already using the technology and their market shares are likely to influence a retailer’s adoption of the technology. The ease of catching cheaters along the fish supply chain through third party monitoring is expected to depend on the accuracy of the technology in detecting fraud, the sampling frequency (rate) and rate of species substitution; while enforcement of legal penalties and other costs would serve as a disincentive to cheat as these costs negatively affect expected profit. The simulation analysis suggests that presently IBOL technology appears to be feasible for a typical retail store in Canada if testing is done in an external facility, but may not be feasible if fixed and other costs associated with the IBOL system are considered. The paper suggests that reducing the size of the technology to a hand-held tool and coordination of small scale retailers are potential ways to make the technology affordable and expand its use.