<p>Motivating employees is essential for any organization aspiring to succeed. However, the process of motivating is not straightforward due to the diversity of individual’s needs. The task has been made even more difficult by the fact that personalized needs have altered in recent years. For instance, in many circumstances financial compensation is not considered as the main motivational factor of employees. Therefore, various other motivational practices have been developed, which take into consideration such issues as the work environment and the job itself.</p><p>This thesis is a comparative study between Sweden and Finland. The study has an objective of exploring how corporate culture affects the use of motivational practices in the Information Technology industry.</p><p>According to the findings gathered from two organizations, Sasken Finland Oy and SYSteam, culture does influence the choice of motivational practices. The issue of how culture affects, depends on whether corporate culture is task or person-oriented.</p>

<p>Do the corporate cultures have to integrate in an international merger? In March 1999, the two large Nordic IT companies, Tieto of Finland and Enator of Sweden, announced their intentions to combine their businesses. The new entity was to have over 10,000 employees and net sales of more than 1 billion Euro. TietoEnator (TE) was to become one of the leading suppliers of IT services on the European market. The combination was announced as a Merger of Equals – the merging companies being of about the same size, and operating mainly in their respective home markets, thus avoiding competition with each other. The authors´ interest to this case has emerged from the fact that company fusions generally, and international mergers of equal partners in particular, are considered as high- risk projects. </p><p>The issues discussed in this paper are expected cultural differences between Finland and Sweden, and between Tieto and Enator; differences in management style and market structure and buyer behaviour between the two companies, and differences in the industry environments and business climates of Finland and Sweden. </p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the TietoEnator´s merger process from two perspectives: the cultural perspective and the strategy perspective. The main objective is to exemplify some theories in organizational and strategic research by connecting the theories to the significant events of the TietoEnator merger case. Five executive employees of TietoEnator in Sweden give their personal view on the merger and the development of the company. The strategic (vision, mission, and strategy objectives) statements of the company before, during, and after the merger are compared and analyzed. </p><p>Conclusions: the cultural distance should not only be considered as a negative issue. The paradox of cultural proximity, where two neighbouring cultures show significant cultural differences, is according to our findings not expected to lead to serious problems if handled in a constructive manner. Selective integration and leveraging the positive tensions between the different cultures is the key to success in internationalisation through merger.</p>

<p>The IT industry is characterised by rapid changes and an increased level of consolidation and competition. Hardware and software developers are moving away from proprietary technologies to open-standards based technology. This makes it more difficult for large hardware vendors, such as Hewlett Packard (HP) and IBM, to lock their customers and partners to proprietary solutions. Therefore, in order to keep and increase its market share, HP needs to improve its collaboration with partners. The partners, especially local and regional independent software vendors (ISV), are important due to their applications focused on solving business problems, their ability to provide industry relevance to HP’s products and their ability to influence what kind of hardware and software platforms the end-customers will choose.</p><p>We have identified key market characteristics, the ISVs’ key needs and challenges, as well as what they consider crucial in order for them to recommend a certain vendor’s hardware platform. Companies in the IT industry face several unique challenges; one is that there often exist conflicting interests between the different industry members, e.g. competitors collaborating with each other. This puts extra pressure on clarifying the rules of engagement between the collaborating parties. The ISVs are generally agnostic to which hardware platform the customers buy as long as their applications run on the specific platform, therefore the ISVs’ vendor preference is often based on more intangible relationship factors. Factors that affect and decide the ISVs’ preference are e.g. their existing vendor relationships, ease of doing business, clear point of contact and clear rules of engagement. Furthermore, many of the ISVs are interested in having joint- business planning and go-to-market strategies with HP. In order to leverage hardware, we recommend that HP tries to tie the ISVs to them and form closer relationships with the ISV community. (HP must however carefully evaluate the value of the individual ISVs and what they can offer.)</p><p>The recommendations consist mainly of how to select the relevant ISVs and, after the selection, how the ISVs should be categorised and managed by utilising HP’s partner portal for developers. This would enable HP to engage more efficiently with key partners, which in turn would lead to increased leverage of HP hardware.</p>

Do the corporate cultures have to integrate in an international merger? In March 1999, the two large Nordic IT companies, Tieto of Finland and Enator of Sweden, announced their intentions to combine their businesses. The new entity was to have over 10,000 employees and net sales of more than 1 billion Euro. TietoEnator (TE) was to become one of the leading suppliers of IT services on the European market. The combination was announced as a Merger of Equals – the merging companies being of about the same size, and operating mainly in their respective home markets, thus avoiding competition with each other. The authors´ interest to this case has emerged from the fact that company fusions generally, and international mergers of equal partners in particular, are considered as high- risk projects. The issues discussed in this paper are expected cultural differences between Finland and Sweden, and between Tieto and Enator; differences in management style and market structure and buyer behaviour between the two companies, and differences in the industry environments and business climates of Finland and Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the TietoEnator´s merger process from two perspectives: the cultural perspective and the strategy perspective. The main objective is to exemplify some theories in organizational and strategic research by connecting the theories to the significant events of the TietoEnator merger case. Five executive employees of TietoEnator in Sweden give their personal view on the merger and the development of the company. The strategic (vision, mission, and strategy objectives) statements of the company before, during, and after the merger are compared and analyzed. Conclusions: the cultural distance should not only be considered as a negative issue. The paradox of cultural proximity, where two neighbouring cultures show significant cultural differences, is according to our findings not expected to lead to serious problems if handled in a constructive manner. Selective integration and leveraging the positive tensions between the different cultures is the key to success in internationalisation through merger.

The IT industry is characterised by rapid changes and an increased level of consolidation and competition. Hardware and software developers are moving away from proprietary technologies to open-standards based technology. This makes it more difficult for large hardware vendors, such as Hewlett Packard (HP) and IBM, to lock their customers and partners to proprietary solutions. Therefore, in order to keep and increase its market share, HP needs to improve its collaboration with partners. The partners, especially local and regional independent software vendors (ISV), are important due to their applications focused on solving business problems, their ability to provide industry relevance to HP’s products and their ability to influence what kind of hardware and software platforms the end-customers will choose. We have identified key market characteristics, the ISVs’ key needs and challenges, as well as what they consider crucial in order for them to recommend a certain vendor’s hardware platform. Companies in the IT industry face several unique challenges; one is that there often exist conflicting interests between the different industry members, e.g. competitors collaborating with each other. This puts extra pressure on clarifying the rules of engagement between the collaborating parties. The ISVs are generally agnostic to which hardware platform the customers buy as long as their applications run on the specific platform, therefore the ISVs’ vendor preference is often based on more intangible relationship factors. Factors that affect and decide the ISVs’ preference are e.g. their existing vendor relationships, ease of doing business, clear point of contact and clear rules of engagement. Furthermore, many of the ISVs are interested in having joint- business planning and go-to-market strategies with HP. In order to leverage hardware, we recommend that HP tries to tie the ISVs to them and form closer relationships with the ISV community. (HP must however carefully evaluate the value of the individual ISVs and what they can offer.) The recommendations consist mainly of how to select the relevant ISVs and, after the selection, how the ISVs should be categorised and managed by utilising HP’s partner portal for developers. This would enable HP to engage more efficiently with key partners, which in turn would lead to increased leverage of HP hardware.

Motivating employees is essential for any organization aspiring to succeed. However, the process of motivating is not straightforward due to the diversity of individual’s needs. The task has been made even more difficult by the fact that personalized needs have altered in recent years. For instance, in many circumstances financial compensation is not considered as the main motivational factor of employees. Therefore, various other motivational practices have been developed, which take into consideration such issues as the work environment and the job itself. This thesis is a comparative study between Sweden and Finland. The study has an objective of exploring how corporate culture affects the use of motivational practices in the Information Technology industry. According to the findings gathered from two organizations, Sasken Finland Oy and SYSteam, culture does influence the choice of motivational practices. The issue of how culture affects, depends on whether corporate culture is task or person-oriented.

This paper explores how CSR can be eliminating the discrimination of sexual orientation in the employment between the constraints of state governance and market competition by applying CSR as a strategy of institutional innovation to reach the goal of protecting equality of rights for gay people in the workplace. From interview data, we find CSR has positive effects to make up the limitations within the social regulations of Taiwan government and heteronormativity. In contrast to the Gender Equality in Employment Act imposed by government, CSR as a bottom-up model of institutional practice it will internally provides corporations advantages to maintain their privileges as passing through the failure of state and enterprise systems. By analyzing the CSR ideas, we contend that CSR is a feasible project of social innovation for corporations to create friendly work environments by planning gender equality programs of training, advocating recognition of gay civil partnership, and including anti-discrimination of sexual orientation into CSR routines.

Companies operating in emerging markets face highly turbulent and complex environments. Russia is no exception; the firms acting on the Russian market perform in the conditions of economic instability, energy export dependence, state bureaucratic constraints and unfair competition from the part of oligarchic groups. However, despite all these challenges, more and more private owned companies manage to enjoy high growth and margins. A critical group of firms are the so-called high-growth private companies. These firms arouse special interest since they are believed to be main growth generators and, particularly in Russia, could become a key to new economic growth model. Operating in a highly turbulent Russian market requires companies to adopt and continually develop their strategies to quickly changing conditions in order to sustain growth and stay competitive in the long term. This can be achieved with the help of dynamic capabilities which serve as one of the sources of sustainable competitive advantage. However, there is a lack of research on Russian high-growth private companies and their growth strategies, even in Russian academic circles. The purpose of this study is to explain the sustainability of growth strategy by describing the linkages between Russian high-growth private companies’ dynamic capabilities, choice of growth strategy and sustainability of this growth strategy. This was studied through a qualitative multiple-case study of five Russian high-growth private companies within the IT-industry, which is one of the most rapidly developing industries in Russia. Interviews with CEOs and managers of the companies together with secondary data represent the gathered empirical data. Key issues such as companies’ dynamic capabilities, growth strategies, competitive advantages as well as the sustainability of companies’ strategies were analysed based on the empirical data. The results of the study indicate that the sustainability of company’s growth strategy depends on (1) combination of different strategic scopes (2) growth strategy foundation on company’s dynamic capabilities (3) sustainability of competitive advantage it provides (4) successful management of all the interconnected dimensions of growth. All five case companies possess sustainable competitive advantages and pursue sustainable growth strategies with a number of potential weaknesses. The study contributes to the knowledge of Russian high-growth private companies and their growth strategies as well as sustainability of growth strategies. Finally, we make recommendations for the case companies based on the results. Companies can sustain growth by building new competences and making certain changes to the existing strategies.

In December 2004, at the SoDIS® (Software Development Impact Statements) symposium in Auckland, an industry certification as a method of credentialing teachers and analysis of SoDIS was mooted. SoDIS, a process of ethics-based risk assessment and analysis of downstream risk to project and software stakeholders, including the public, is currently in the process of progressing from prototype to commercial product. Certification was proposed to ensure the integrity of the process and the quality of service to stakeholders.Certification sponsored by industry, commercial organisation, or professional association (collectively referred to as industry certification, or certification) has been a form of credentialing for over half a century. Industry certification was adopted by the IT industry when Novell, Inc. began testing and certifying IT industry and IT network professionals in 1986 (Cosgrove, 2004; Novell, 1996). Global certification testing centres were established in 1990 by Drake International (now Thomson Prometric) (Foster, 2005).During the 1990s, industry certification became a veritable juggernaut: a "multi-billion dollar business" (Cosgrove, 2004, p. 486), an industry that has arisen in its own right (Adelman, 2000) and driven by several dynamics (Hitchcock, 2005). In 2000 there were over 300 discrete IT certifications with approximately 1.6 million individuals holding approximately 2.4 million IT certifications (Aldelman, 2000). The total number of available certifications is impossible to quantify (Knapp & Gallery, 2003). Many academic institutions both at tertiary and secondary level are integrating industry certification, especially IT certification, into their curricula.Is industry certification, however, a pedagogically robust form of credentialing? Does it have value to its stakeholders? Is it an appropriate form of credentialing for the SoDIS process? This research, using both Phenomenography and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as a joint methodology, focuses on the experiences of actors with the phenomenon of industry certification and extracts both the essence of the understanding and perceptions of the value and validity of industry certification, and the essence of industry certification itself.Due to the vast amount of literature found describing industry actors' perceptions of and experiences within the phenomenon, the research is predominantly literature-based. Further data was collected from interviews with a small, purposive sample of industry certification holders and employers, with the research further informed by my own experiences within the domain which is the focus of the research. The methodology paradigm is interpretive: the research aims to interpret the social construction that is the phenomenon of industry certification.While this research does not attempt to single out specific industry certifications to determine their value or pedagogical robustness, the findings suggest that, in general, well designed and well administered certifications with integrity and rigour of assessment processes, are indeed pedagogically sound, with significant value. The research identifies both benefit and criticism elements of typical certifications, along with elements of the various certification programmes categorised into standard (typical), and more rigorous (less typical) certification programmes.The research develops and presents a paradigm for building an appropriate vendor specific or vendor neutral certification programme that is pedagogically sound with value for its stakeholders. The contrasts and complementary aspects of industry certification and academic qualifications are highlighted. It is therefore concluded, and supported by data from the interviews, that such a credential is indeed appropriate for teachers and analysts of SoDIS.

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