This research aims to identify the key resources influencing the growth of IT-based SMEs in Vietnam in 5 different growth stages which were developed by Churchill and Lewis (1983); and we also demonstrated the process how such key resources are created, acquired, accumulated and exploited for the growth accordingly. We interviewed 4 founding members of 4 companies to collect the primary data and used some internet sources for secondary data. Our findings show that: (1) Based on specific internal conditions, objectives of specific growth stages, market size, and backup plan for unexpected events, companies have different approaches to acquire, accumulate and exploit their key resources to achieve growth through different stages. (a) In existence stage, with the goal of realizing a viable business, companies rely mainly on 3 most important key resources: human resources (especially the founders' relevant skills and experiences), a minimum viable product and sales-related resources (sales, marketing techniques, networks for acquiring early customers). The founders may choose to start their startup by either personal money and family support or external investment (coming from founders’ personal network of angel investors, accelerators, and so on). (b) In the survival stage, with the goal of achieving financial break-even status, companies tend to work out a sustainable sales-related resources (e.g. sales and marketing techniques, brand and reputation) and afterwards significantly increase their human resources to boost the sales of the products; the financial resources to fund for the new staffing may come from either internal revenues or external investment (brought in by the network of founders and previous investors, if any). (c) In the success stage, with the goal of accumulating financial resources and others for rapid growth, given that they already have a relatively effective sustainable sales-related resources (sales and marketing techniques, procedures, brand and reputation), companies tend to boost the sales by spend money on recruiting new employees, and/or seek for sales/marketing partnership. Companies starting with an initial niche market product (rather small market size) tend to reach the revenue limit during this stage, and have to explore other new markets by developing new product lines. (d) In the take-off stage, with the goal of transforming to become a big business through rapid growth, companies tend to significantly spend financial resources to recruit more employees, improve the management procedures to train the employees better and start to decentralize decision making to managers. Especially, companies starting with an initial niche market product (relative small market size) tend to already have successfully launched and gained quite substantial customer base from their new product line. Some companies may raise external capital to fund the rapid growth in this stage. (e) In the resource maturity stage, companies with major improvement in management procedures (to optimize resources and cut down on expenses) and a backup of sufficient financial resources may sustain their business in the highly competitive market and unexpected crisis (pandemic, financial crisis, etc.) to bounce back to growth in the long term. (2) Companies who mainly rely on their own financial resources resulted from the sales of their products and other internally generated key resources tend to go through more growth stages or achieve more sustainable growth in the long term; (3) If companies have incompetent management procedures, especially the financial management and the founders do not carefully select the right investors to join the management board, their dependence of the external investment may cause negative impact for the company in the long run due to the pressure for fast growth, founders’ demotivation from diluted shares and voting rights, internal conflicts which eventually led to the financial crisis or founder exit from the company; (4) Companies starting with an initial niche market product (relatively small market size) tend to have the longer duration of the success stage because they have to find the ways to pivot their business to a larger market by expanding their product lines. If they cannot find the way to expand their niche market product line to another niche market or a mass market product, they run the risk of decline when the market becomes more competitive. Companies starting with an initial mass market product (relative large market size) tend to experience shorter survival and success stage, given that they developed an initial product applying outstanding, differentiated business model in combination with sustainable effective resources for sales from existence stage. This study presents some managerial implications for SMEs in general and IT-based SMEs to identify key resources and corresponding strategies to acquire, accumulate and exploit those resources to achieve sustainable growth.

Background: Computers are everywhere around us today and skills must be acquired in order for a person to use them. However, the topic of computer literacy is not researched enough to specify basic computer skills to consider an individual computer literate. This thesis will contribute to the research gap by investigating the computer skills of the workforce in the IT sector. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the connection between computer programming and cyber security skills of the IT professional, e.g. is there a beneficial factor of this connection. Method: For this study the quantitative research method was used to gather data. The authors decided that the best way to reach their target group and answer the research questions was to conduct a survey and pose questions on the topics of computer literacy and cyber security. Conclusion: The results show that there is a statistical significance between the user’s security habits and his or her programming skills (or the absence of them). People who write code, defined as programmers, scored better on security skills survey, whereas their counterparts, the non-programmers, have some knowledge on the topic but they can never be absolutely sure of their cyber safety in the fast changing world of IT.

Bakgrund: IT-branschen spelar en central roll för Sveriges ekonomiska tillväxt och räknas idag som enbasindustri. Trots att en inkludering av kvinnliga medarbetare är värdeskapande både ur ett socialt ochekonomiskt perspektiv är män överrepresenterade i IT-branschen idag. Rekryteringsprocessen är ennyckelprocess inom SHRM som kan utformas för att nå organisatoriska mål. Syfte: Att beskriva IT-bolags utformning av aktiviteter i rekryteringsprocessen för att nå en mer jämlikkönsfördelning på arbetsplatsen. Metod: Studien antar en induktiv ansats, dock med inslag av deduktion då en förförståelse omrekryteringsprocessens steg samt strategiskt HRM är framtagen. En fallstudie med nio semistruktureradeintervjuer har genomförts för att samla in relevanta empiriska data. En tematisk analys genomfördes föratt frambringa fem olika huvudteman som sedan förankrades i relevant teori. Den empiriska data ochteorin analyserades sedan tillsammans. Slutsats: Studien frambringar tre aspekter; medvetenhet, marknadsföring och opartiskhet som allapåverkar utformandet av rekryteringsaktiviteter för att skapa en mer jämlik könsfördelning. Det framkomäven fyra utmaningar som kan hindra utformandet av aktiviteterna. Utformandet och utmaningarnagynnas av att verka i en SHRM-kontext. / Background: The IT sector is considered a great contributor for Sweden’s economic growth and countsas one of the primary industries. Despite the fact that inclusion of women adds a higher economic andsocial value, men continues to be over-represented in the industry. The recruitment process plays a keyrole in the context of SHRM and should be aligned with organisational goals. Purpose: To describe the configuration of IT-businesses activities in the recruitment process to reach aneven gender distribution in the workplace. Method: The study adopts an inductive approach, however with deductive elements containing a preunderstanding of the steps included in the recruitment process and strategic HRM. A case study wasconducted with nine semi-structured interviews to collect relevant empirical data. A thematic analysiswas carried through to produce five main themes that was later anchored in relevant theory. Theempirical data and relevant theory were subsequently co-analysed. Conclusion: Our findings identify three main aspects; awareness, marketing and impartiality that cofunctions and affects the configuration of IT-businesses activities in the recruitment process while aimingfor an even gender distribution. Four challenges were additionally identified as hindering theconfiguration of the recruitment activities, Configuration and challenges benefits from being re-enacted inthe context of SHRM.

For several years, businesses and organizations have faced an increasingly volatile environment, marked with challenges such as increased competition, globalized markets, and individualized customer requirements. These challenges are accompanied by many changes in every organizational field. As a response, different concepts have emerged that should enable organizations to master these challenges. Agility is the most recent, but others like flexibility and leanness are mentioned often, too. Many research activities concerning agility and its related concepts have been conducted in the meantime. However, there currently exists no common understanding of what constitutes agility. This makes it difficult for both researcher and practitioner audiences to build upon the insights obtained thus far. On the one hand, researchers are missing a well-founded basis to develop the topic further, while on the other hand, practitioners cannot easily uncover what parts of their organizations have to be changed and in what respect they have to be changed to respond to new market challenges. This is of particular interest for organizations in the software and information technology (IT) service industry. With the appearance of agile software developing methodologies in the early 2000s, or in a broader sense agile values and principles, the advantages of these new approaches became visible. However, it turned out to be difficult to transfer the experienced benefits beyond the team level, though this step is necessary so that the whole organization can benefit from agility. Hence, the report presented here is part of a research project aimed at identifying the structure and components of an agile organization within the software and IT service industry. To fulfill this aim, a survey from a comprehensive organizational perspective has been carried out that was based on a systematic comparison of available agility frameworks. The purpose of this publication is to give an initial comprehensive overview over the collected data. Together with a comprehensive literature review conducted prior to this study, it answers the research questions: "What are potential components of an agile organization?" and "To what extent are these components reflected by the software and IT service industry?"

Digital development has taken place at a dramatic pace, this development has brought about new work-related challenges for those who work with software development. This qualitative essay highlights the IT staff's experience of their work situation. The study is based on a number of individuals who work in the IT sector. In view of the fact that sick leave in the IT sector has increased in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth understanding of their work situation, focusing on requirements, control and social support, thus providing some explanations for the increased sickness absence. The theoretical reference framework applied to empirin is the requirement-control and support model as well as previous research on occupational health. The study follows a qualitative method where semistructured interviews have been conducted with IT staff. The empirical result indicates that IT staff at different levels have different requirements and that self-control is an important factor in managing them. Self-control also means that the boundary between work and leisure is wiped out, which may reduce the possibility of recovery. The result shows that social support creates a cooperative spirit with IT staff, which results in a good working environment. The essay thus shows that it may be a good idea to try to implement measures, which allows less work-life-free interfaces and improve the informative support to reduce sick leave. / Den digitala utvecklingen har skett i en dramatisk takt, denna utveckling har medfört nya arbetsrelaterade utmaningar hos dem som arbetar med mjukvaruutveckling. Denna kvalitativa uppsats belyser IT-personalens upplevelse av sin arbetssituation. Studien tar sitt avstamp ifrån ett flertal individer vilka jobbar inom IT-sektorn. Mot bakgrund av att sjukskrivningarna inom IT-sektorn har ökat de senaste åren är syftet med denna uppsats att ge en fördjupad förståelse för deras arbetssituation med fokus på krav, kontroll och socialt stöd och därmed ge några förklaringar till de ökade sjukskrivningarna. Den teoretiska referensram som appliceras på empirin är krav-kontroll-och stödmodellen samt tidigare forskning kring arbetsrelaterad hälsa. Studien följer en kvalitativ metod där semistrukturerade intervjuer har skett med IT-personal. Det empiriska resultatet tyder på att IT-personalen har i varierande nivå olika slags krav och att egenkontrollen utgör en viktig faktor för att hantera dessa. Egenkontrollen innebär även att gränsen mellan arbete och fritid suddas ut, vilket kan innebära att möjligheten till återhämtning minskar. Resultatet visar att det sociala stödet skapar en samarbetsanda hos IT-personalen vilket resulterar i ett gott samarbetsklimat. Uppsatsen visar således att det kan vara en god ide att försöka implementera åtgärder vilket möjliggör en mindre gränslöshet mellan arbete och fritid samt att förbättra det informativa stödet för att minska sjukskrivningarna.

Partant de choses assez générales ce travail de recherche avance pas à pas pour aboutir à une étude de cas : le secteur des technologies de l’information lituanien. Dans un premier temps, les principaux termes liés à la combinaison des stratégies d’innovation et des ressources humaines sont définis ; suivit de la classification des innovations ainsi que des fondements de la combinaison de deux stratégies (innovation et ressources humaines); enfin une vue d’ensemble est dressée des transformations opérées par les Pays d’Europe Centrale et Orientale (PECO) lors du passage du système soviétique au système européen d’innovation. La recherche se poursuit en comparant le système national d’innovation lituanien à celui de l’Italie prenant en compte des facteurs tels que le rôle des intermédiaires ; suit l’observation du marché mondial et lituanien des technologies de l’information et alors seulement nôtre étude sur la combinaison des stratégies en termes d’innovation et des ressources humaines dans le secteur des technologies de l’information lituanien (de 2004 à 2007) fournit des résultats s’appuyant aussi bien sur l’expérience d’autres pays que sur les données issues des réponses de PDG lituaniens oeuvrant dans les technologies de l’information. Notre travail aboutit à des recommandations au gouvernement lituanien ainsi qu’aux intermédiaires et aussi bien aux managers qu’aux salariés des entreprises lituaniennes. / Given an increasing competition in knowledge intensive economic sectors, a perfectly aligned and executed Innovation strategy appears crucial to reduce the cost and time necessary for creation as well as introduction of a new product or service. More than that, the chosen Innovation strategy should be aligned with the company’s business model, technological base and the Human Resource strategy. Thus, the structure of this research work is built on the flow ‘From general to case’ basis where at first, there are the classification of innovations and foundations of combination of the two strategies presented, and only then our survey on combination of the Innovation and Human Resource strategies in Lithuanian IT sector 2008 (covering a three-year period from 2004 to 2007) delivers results by applying both the experience of other countries and the data enclosing the answers from CEOs of Lithuanian IT companies. The survey is conducted to create a systemic approach and multifactor understanding of combination between the Innovation and Human Resource strategies in Lithuanian IT sector. Such a structure serves as a solid background for Policy implications: we deliver recommendations for Lithuanian Government, intermediaries, enterprises and both firms’ managers and its employees. We believe that Lithuanian IT companies are on the right track to catch up more developed countries in innovation; however, there should be many changes done, and we expect a fast transformation process in the upcoming years.

The world is under a constant change and digitalization. More and more products are being produced with the help of software and a popular way for companies to sell their products and services is via the cloud. For long products have been developed and produced with the help of project management. Methodologies have developed overtime to better fit the requirements and environment in which products are developed, but products and its development methods are evolving too quickly and applied theories are not keeping up with this change. The aim of this study is to investigate the challenges of SDP’s and parameters of optimization in SDP’s as well as to identify how the identified parameters will help project management in SDP’s. This was done by using an abductive approach and a qualitative method, designed to be exploratory. Interviews were conducted on individuals within the IT-sector and the collected empirics were analyzed together with theory. The findings of the study were that in order to improve a SDP’s process and success one needs to consider a number of parameters which consist of improving clarity of communication and ways of communication by using communication tools on a continuous basis with both the project team and all stakeholders. Organizations must ensure that they choose approaches based on a projects uncertainty rather than to choose an approach to be certain. The areas of which this study contributes to is the knowledge of how to manage projects that involve software development having the known project methodologies in mind. / Världen är under konstant förändring och digitalisering. Allt fler produkter utvecklas med hjälp av mjukvara och ett populärt sätt för företag att sälja sina produkter och tjänster är via molnet. Länge har produkter utvecklats och producerats med hjälp av projektledning. Metoderna har utvecklats över tiden till att vara bättre anpassade för de krav och miljöer som produkter utvecklas i, men produkter och dess utvecklingsmetoder utvecklas allt för snabbt och applicerade teorier hänger inte med i den snabba utvecklingen. Målet med denna studie är att undersöka mjukvaruutveckling projektets utmaningar och parametrar som optimerar mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt, samt identifiera hur de identifierade parametrarna hjälper projektledning i mjukvaruutveckling. Detta gjordes genom att använda ett abduktivt angreppssätt och en kvalitativ metod, ämnat till att vara explorativ. Intervjuer gjordes på individer som befinner sig inom IT-sektorn och den samlade empirin analyserades tillsammans med teori. Resultaten av studien var att för att kunna optimera en mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt processer och framgång så behöver man ha ett antal parametrar i åtanke och dessa består av att förbättra tydligheten i kommunikation och kommunikationsmetoder genom att utnyttja kommunikationsverktyg kontinuerligt med både samtliga projektmedlemmar och alla intressenter. Organisationer måste säkerhetsställa att de väljer en projektmetod baserat på projektets osäkerhet snarare än att välja en projektmetod baserat på vad man är säker på. Denna studie bidrar till kunskapen om hur man hanterar projektledning med de kända projekt metoderna i åtanke i områden som involverar mjukvaruutveckling.

The appearance of the Internet and new, rapidly changing emerging online technologies have led to some fundamental changes in marketing -- especially direct marketing. Besides the growing popularity of the Internet, the appearance of databases and one-to-one marketing are challenging traditional marketing methods. This thesis attempts to illustrate how direct marketing techniques can be implemented in an IT company. It starts with an overview of the concepts of direct marketing and its techniques and then provides a brief synopsis of its past as well as possible future trends. The differences between B2B and B2C marketing communications are discussed as is the role of direct marketing in the information technology (IT industry). The last section presents a case study -- concluded with the cooperation of SEAL Communication and Oracle -- which demonstrates how an IT company can effectively use direct marketing in order to achieve its goals and build long-lasting and fruitful customer relationships. For the successful execution of the direct marketing campaign, both Internet based tools and traditional methods were applied, in order to show that both of these technologies can be used together when targeting different groups with different needs.

Submitted by Patrícia Valim Labres de Freitas (patricial) on 2016-03-30T17:46:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Priscila Pagliarini Sartori_.pdf: 2997914 bytes, checksum: cfddb4abee1fd8021eb803dfebc8085d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-30T17:46:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Priscila Pagliarini Sartori_.pdf: 2997914 bytes, checksum: cfddb4abee1fd8021eb803dfebc8085d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-07 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / PROSUP - Programa de Suporte à Pós-Gradução de Instituições de Ensino Particulares / A análise do comportamento das empresas no cenário competitivo atual destaca os temas da internacionalização e da inovação como determinantes tanto das estratégias adotadas quanto do desempenho alcançado (RIBEIRO et al., 2010). O objetivo geral deste estudo concentrou-se em compreender como se relacionam a inovação e a internacionalização em empresas da Indústria Brasileira de Software e Serviços de TI (IBSS). A proposta de investigação partiu da necessidade de uma compreensão inicial sobre a dinâmica do setor de TI e da IBSS, assim apresentou-se uma caracterização do setor, da indústria e das empresas observadas na pesquisa. São apresentadas ainda características do processo de inovação e da internacionalização destas empresas. A partir da revisão teórica sobre inovação e internacionalização foram identificados indícios sobre como se relacionam a inovação e a internacionalização, os quais foram verificados empiricamente na trajetória das quatro empresas participantes da pesquisa, por meio de um estudo de caso múltiplo. A análise sobre a relação entre inovação e internacionalização em empresas da IBSS foi embasada em informações obtidas através de dados secundários e de entrevistas em profundidade, em uma abordagem qualitativa. Observou-se nos casos analisados que a inovação ocorre de forma essencialmente incremental, com foco no core business e apoiado fortemente nos recursos humanos. A inovação mostrou-se neste contexto como um elemento central para a manutenção da competitividade, tanto no mercado doméstico quanto internacional. A internacionalização apresentou-se como uma alternativa de expansão de negócios, porém frente ao cenário econômico atual passou a compor a estratégia das empresas. Para a análise de aspectos relacionados à competitividade das empresas foi empregada a perspectiva das capacidades dinâmicas (TEECE et al., 1997; TEECE, 2007), permitindo a identificação de indícios quanto à sua capacidade de adaptação ao ambiente de rápidas mudanças e a interação com o ecossistema do setor de TI no âmbito global, para identificação e exploração de novas oportunidades. De forma geral, foi evidenciada uma interação positiva entre inovação e internacionalização no contexto das empresas analisadas, impactando no desempenho, no crescimento e em novas oportunidades de negócios. / The analysis of the behavior of companies in the current competitive scenario highlights the themes of internationalization and innovation as determinants of both the strategies adopted and the performance achieved (RIBEIRO et al., 2010). The objective of this study focuses on the comprehension of the relation between the innovation and internationalization in Brazilian Software Industry and IT Services (IBSS) companies. The research proposal began from the need of an initial understanding of the dynamics of the IT industry and IBSS thus presented a characterization of the sector, industry and business observed in the survey. Characteristics of the innovation process and the internationalization of companies participating in the research are presented as well. Evidences were identified based on the literature review of innovation and internationalization, which were verified empirically, through a multiple case study on how they relate to innovation and internationalization in the background of the four companies analyzed. The analysis of the relationship between innovation and internationalization of companies of this industry was based on information obtained through secondary data and in-depth interviews in a qualitative approach. It was observed in the analyzed cases that innovation is essentially incrementally, focusing on core business, and as an endogenous process, strongly based on human resources. The innovation showed up here as a central element in maintaining competitiveness in both domestic and international markets. The internationalization showed up as a business expansion alternative, but face to the current economic environment it became a part of the strategy of companies. To analyze aspects related to the competitiveness of the companies it was used the perspective of dynamic capabilities (TEECE et al., 1997; TEECE, 2007), allowing the identification of evidences to its ability to adapt to the quick changing environment and the interaction with the ecosystem of the IT industry at the global level to identify and explore new opportunities. Overall, a positive interaction was observed between innovation and internationalization in the context of the analyzed companies, impacting on performance, growth and new business opportunities.

For several years, businesses and organizations have faced an increasingly volatile environment, marked with challenges such as increased competition, globalized markets, and individualized customer requirements. These challenges are accompanied by many changes in every organizational field. As a response, different concepts have emerged that should enable organizations to master these challenges. Agility is the most recent, but others like flexibility and leanness are mentioned often, too. Many research activities concerning agility and its related concepts have been conducted in the meantime. However, there currently exists no common understanding of what constitutes agility. This makes it difficult for both researcher and practitioner audiences to build upon the insights obtained thus far. On the one hand, researchers are missing a well-founded basis to develop the topic further, while on the other hand, practitioners cannot easily uncover what parts of their organizations have to be changed and in what respect they have to be changed to respond to new market challenges. This is of particular interest for organizations in the software and information technology (IT) service industry. With the appearance of agile software developing methodologies in the early 2000s, or in a broader sense agile values and principles, the advantages of these new approaches became visible. However, it turned out to be difficult to transfer the experienced benefits beyond the team level, though this step is necessary so that the whole organization can benefit from agility. Hence, the report presented here is part of a research project aimed at identifying the structure and components of an agile organization within the software and IT service industry. To fulfill this aim, a survey from a comprehensive organizational perspective has been carried out that was based on a systematic comparison of available agility frameworks. The purpose of this publication is to give an initial comprehensive overview over the collected data. Together with a comprehensive literature review conducted prior to this study, it answers the research questions: 'What are potential components of an agile organization?' and 'To what extent are these components reflected by the software and IT service industry?