ABSTRACTTitle: The Effect of Customer Preferences Dynamism on Incumbent Firms:The Case of Nokia in the Mobile Phone industry.Authors: Adnan Kandeel kandeeladnan@gmail.comDinsel Sali dinsel08@yahoo.comFaculty: Department of Management and EngineeringDate: 27th of May 2013Background: The study of the dynamism of customer preferences’ effect onincumbent firms offers in-depth understanding of the active roleof customers in affecting the position of incumbent firmswhich has been neglected in the vast majority of literaturethat examined the declining position of incumbent firms.Aim: The aim of this thesis is to examine the dynamism of customerpreferences’ effect on incumbent firms.Definitions: Incumbent firm: the dominant firm in an industry.Customer preferences: the collection of attributes including explicitand implicit attributes of a certain product.Preference stereotypes: the implicit prejudgement by customers about a certain product that can not be ascribed to an explicit attribute.Methodology: A qualitative approach where online historical data from 1100 NokiaMobile phone user reviews for 11 years were collected, profiled, andthen analyzed.Completion and results: Incumbent firms are affected by the dynamism of explicit andimplicit preferences through their effect on radical and incrementalinnovation. Furthermore, preference stereotypes can affect incumbentfirms’ ability to impact the change of product meanings throughradical innovation and investment in technology.Keywords: Incumbent firms, Customer preferences dynamism, Radical innovation

This dissertation considers the impact of voter exit on the survival of incumbent regimes. I argue that voters exit the political process as a result of emigration or political violence. Using the example of Zimbabwe, I argue that ZANU-PF benefited from the exit of nearly four million Zimbabweans who emigrated outside the country in response to declining economic conditions and who exited the political system as a result of violence.

Electoral violence can have dire consequences for a society, but remains a strategy employed by incumbents to secure electoral victory. This thesis search to explore if electoral violence instigated by progovernment side actually do increase the incumbent’s probability of electoral victory. The novelty of the question derives from taking into account a differentiation between the instigating side as progovernment or anti-government, which previous studies have not done. The argument is that as the opposition is likely to have other motives and resources available than the incumbent, anti-government violence should target other spectrums of the population and thus have a different effect on the electoral outcome than progovernment violence.  The findings give consistent statistical significance to a positive relationship between progovernment instigated violence and probability of incumbent electoral victory when controlling for electoral fraud and anti-government violence. This supports the hypothesis and suggests that incumbents do benefit, at least in the short term, from applying electoral violence. However, long-term backlash may still occur and the consequences for the society is dire. The relationship between anti-government violence and electoral outcome did not achieve statistical significance. Further research are needed to improve the nuance of the findings in this thesis and better understand electoral violence from different actors perspective.

Chapter 1 novelly examines the nature of the interaction between private donors and not-for-profit organisations (NPOs) when NPOs can invest endowment funds in a two-asset risky portfolio and donors can contribute to both the endowment fund and the annual campaign. I study a three-stage non-cooperative game with two types of economic agents: a cohort of heterogeneous donors and one representative NPO. In equilibrium, donors always contribute to the endowment fund; however, they may not contribute to the annual campaign. The proportion of the NPO's endowment fund invested in the risky asset is a discontinuous function of the endowment; donors contribute less to an aggressive NPO and more to a cautious one. When the NPO can solicit donors to contribute only once, this increases the expected level of the contribution in equilibrium, but this may not generate higher expected utility for donors. Chapter 2 presents a dynamic model of charitable giving. At each period, donors contribute to an NPO's endowment; the NPO provides a charitable good and invests in the  financial market. Investments are made in a risky asset and a risk-free asset. I introduce two types of shocks to account for uncertainty: donors' income shock and  financial market fluctuations. I show that the optimal share of disposable endowment invested in risky asset is constant. Donors' strategy, whether to contribute or free-ride on the NPO's investments, depends on donors' shadow prices. Donors contribute when NPO's endowment is relatively low. Large contribution levels encourage the NPO to participate in the capital market at the expense of providing charitable good. I show that the NPO prefers an environment with a lower rate of return on risk-free assets. NPO's risk exposure to the  financial market affects both NPO's and donors' decisions. However, risk exposures on donors' side do not impact parties' decisions. Regulation analysis suggests that portfolio ceiling and provision floor are achievable. Chapter 3 links two data sources: the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) data over the period of 1987-2014 and the U.S. presidential elections data. I develop a dynamic model to examine how the national-level political incumbent shapes the NPOs' risky investment portfolio selection, adjusting for a set of NPOs' intrinsic characteristics and real interest rate. I  find that right-leaning Republicans act as a rein on NPOs' risky investments, i.e., a Republican administration is associated with a reduction in NPOs' holdings of corporation stocks and a 16.28% reduction in equity share relative to a Democratic administration. It is attributed to the impact of the Republican administration by more facilitating NPOs' accessibility to borrowing than having a Democratic president. I argue that NPOs behave as backward-looking investors or are reluctant to change their portfolio due to the significant portfolio adjustment cost, using past performance as an indicator to make their current risky investment decisions. Heckman two-step estimation indicates that NPOs' investment is an endogenous sample selection instead of a random choice. I show that NPOs have a less extensive equity share with more severe agency costs; foundation size plays a different role when NPOs decide whether to invest in risky assets compared with investing NPOs. Moreover, for investing NPOs, the equity share is expected to decrease by 12.0% if there is a 1% increase in the real interest rate; NPOs are more inclined to invest in risky assets when the real interest rate increases, in the sense of riding with the rational bubble.

A significant number of funeral homes in the United States are family-owned businesses. These family-owned funeral businesses contribute to society throughout generations to create wealth, provide employment opportunities, and serve the communities that surround them. The purpose of this descriptive multiple case study was to explore strategies that leaders of family-owned funeral business owners in the eastern region of the United States used for intergenerational succession planning. Game theory was the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with 3 family business owners and review of the family businesses' professional association websites and family historical documents. Yin's 5-step process served as a guide for analyzing data. Data analysis revealed 6 themes: family succession values, the game, the players, strategies, payoff and rewards, and the outcome. Implications of this study for social change include family business owners' enhanced awareness of successful strategies, which may improve business continuity leading to an increased rate of intergenerational transitions within the funeral industry.

For the past several decades, there has been a fundamental dispute between the appropriate mechanism for repeat procurement. On one hand, the supporters of Porter (1979) advocate a competitive setting where short-term contracts are used to increase buyer power and lower supplier prices. On the other hand, the supporters of Deming (1986) advocate the idea of long-term contracts to align buyer and supplier incentives. This trade-off between long-term and short-term contracts has fundamentally affected the practice of procurement, with most suppliers opting for hybrid strategies such as Incumbent Biasing: a strategy characterized by short-term contracts with frequent rebidding with an advantage given to the incumbent. This work examines this hybrid strategy to determine its effectiveness. First, we create an empirical model that identifies and measures the trade-offs between the Porter and Deming strategies. Using this model, we find that Incumbent Biasing has an impact on procurement performance via two mechanisms: first, Incumbent Biasing decreases bidding competitiveness in repeat procurement bidding, which decreases performance; second, Incumbent Biasing has a moderating effect where it improves incentive alignment between the buyer and supplier and improves procurement performance. We show that depending on the current contract design, the net effect of Incumbent Biasing on overall procurement performance can be either positive or negative. This is first work to empirically test the impact of Incumbent Biasing on procurement performance and the first to identify the positive and negative mechanisms by which this impact occurs. Using this research, managers will be able to identify their firm's position with regards to incentive alignment with their supplier to determine if Incumbent Biasing has a net positive effect for their firm. After identifying the impact of Incumbent Biasing on procurement performance, we contribute to the literature by testing this analysis through two additional extensions. First, using secondary data analysis we show that our construct for procurement performance is correlated with firm performance. We do this by comparing the answers to our procurement performance construct items to the change in gross margin of the publicly traded respondents in our study over time. This shows that our construct is not only reliable, but that procurement performance has a positive impact on overall firm performance. This is the first work to provide an empirical construct for procurement performance that is validated via secondary data analysis of firm performance. Second, we test a competing theory to Incumbent Biasing which is Multi-Sourcing: the strategy of spreading a contract to multiple suppliers to maintain competitiveness in bidding. Approximately $46\%$ of our sample identify as using both strategies simultaneously and we test for an impact between the two. We show that the two strategies to not impact each other and can be viewed independently. Subsequently, we test two Multi-Sourcing constructs in our model and find that there is no significant impact on bidding competitiveness from Multi-Sourcing. Subsequently, we examine the impact of repeatedly awarding a contract to a pool of bidders. In our model, one contract is bid repeatedly over time, resulting in bidders gaining information about their competitors' cost. The academic literature is mixed on how a buyer should approach this type of contract bidding interaction. On one hand, it is argued that establishing an awarding structure that favors the incumbent decreases the frequency of switching, and thus cost. On the other hand, it is argued that an awarding structure that favors the non-incumbent (entrant) bidders places competitive pressure on the incumbent and generates low margin bids. This issue is further complicated by the practice cited in the academic literature of ``defection', where entrant firms either perceive a bias or believe that their cost is uncompetitive and will not bid in future stages. We create a framework that explores the apparent contradictions in these recommendations and gives conditions when biasing toward the incumbent or entrant should be implemented. We first characterize bidders based on their effort to bid and their cost to supply the contract. We then show that in the case of low effort to bid and high cost for the entrant, entrant biasing is optimal; when the reverse is true incumbent biasing is optimal. Using the results from our analysis, we provide guidance to buyers facing a repeated procurement

This paper examines the effect on incumbent firms of industries which Amazon.com, Inc. enters. Using event study methodology, this paper tests the returns for incumbent firms on the day Amazon announces entrance into their industry. The paper studies the effects on two portfolios for each industry, a market capitalization weighted and an equally weighted. Each portfolio’s expected return is computed using the market model and then compared to actual returns to find the abnormal return. The results are mixed. Five industry portfolios have significant 1 – day abnormal returns and 2 – day CAR while the six other industries show no significance in either metric. The results prompt a discussion and logic? behind the markets response to Amazon entering new markets. The leading explanation of the industries that saw effects is the time in which Amazon entered.

With a growing demand for spectrum availability, spectrum sharing has become a high-profile solution to overcrowding. In order to enable spectrum sharing between incumbent/primary and secondary users, incumbents must have spectrum protection and privacy from malicious new entrants. In this Spectrum Access System (SAS) advancement, Primary Users (PUs) are obfuscated with the efforts of the SAS and the cooperation of obedient new entrants. Further, the necessary changes to the SAS to support this privacy scheme are exposed to suggest improvements in PU privacy, Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device (CBSD)-SAS relations, and punishment for unauthorized transmission. Results show the feasibility for PU obfuscation with respect to malicious spectrum sensing users. Simulation results indicate that the obfuscation scheme can deliver location and frequency occupation privacy with 75% and 66% effectiveness respectively in a 100% efficient spectrum utilization oriented obfuscation scheme. A scheme without spectrum utilization constraint shows up to 91% location privacy effectiveness. Experiment trials indicate that the privacy tactic can be implemented on an open-source SAS, however environmental factors may degrade the tactic's performance. / Master of Science / With a growing demand for spectrum availability, wireless spectrum sharing has become a high-profile solution to spectrum overcrowding. In order to enable spectrum sharing between incumbent/primary (e.g.,federal communications, naval radar, users already grandfathered into the band) and secondary users (e.g., commercial communications companies), incumbents must have spectrum protection and privacy from malicious new entrants. In this Spectrum Access System (SAS) advancement, Primary Users (PUs) are obfuscated with the efforts of the incumbent informed SAS and the cooperation of obedient new entrants. Further, the necessary changes to the SAS to support this privacy scheme are exposed to suggest improvements in PU privacy, Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device (CBSD)-SAS relations, and punishment for unauthorized transmission. Results show the feasibility of PU obfuscation with respect to malicious spectrum sensing users. Simulation results indicate that the obfuscation tactic can deliver location and frequency occupation privacy with 75% and 66% effectiveness respectively in a 100% efficient spectrum utilization oriented obfuscation scheme. A scheme without spectrum utilization constraint shows up to 91% location privacy effectiveness. Experiment trials indicate that the privacy tactic can be implemented on an open-source SAS, however environmental factors may degrade the tactic's performance.

Prior research on incumbent firm response to radical technological innovation identifies firm, technology, and environmental factors associated with incumbents’ performance after a technology shift. What remains unexplored are factors affecting choice of response made before a technological shift occurs. Such ex ante choices are important intermediate outcomes affecting long-term performance outcomes. Competitive considerations may be influential inputs in choice processes because technological innovation is often related to competitive strategy. The resulting research question for this study is: What role do competitive considerations play in incumbent firms’ ex ante strategic choices in response to potentially radical technological innovations? Findings from a survey of key informants in the electronics industry whose firms face a potential technological disruption (n=120) suggest that incumbents’ response choices are affected by competitor-related orientations and by perceptions of relative strength of their strategic assets. Limited support is found for a moderating effect of perceptions of the competitive environment. The results of this study extend theory on incumbent response to radical technological change by shedding light on the influence of competitor interdependence. Findings also suggest the importance of strategic choice as an intermediate variable in understanding incumbents’ long-term performance. Research examining choice factors at varied stages of a technology’s diffusion can further advance understanding of the evolving nature of strategic response choices and the effects they have on long-term performance.

Why do people run for elective office? Indeed, it is a central topic in political science that arguably is controversial to reveal, but always appealing since public authority remains in office. This study provides an explorative analysis to investigate local elites’ motives running for local parliament and village offices respectively in Kebumen, Indonesia. In examining individual’s motives, experiences and meanings of candidates are analysed using thematic analysis methods to capture emerging ideas of initial motives, enabling and constraining factors that affect the motives, and how both motives alter. The empirical findings of this study show that “people demand” and “community service” are both socially driven motives which act as a catalyst for the initial motives in candidacy process. In contrast, “monetary incentives” and “personal satisfaction” are both individually driven motives, which in turn replace the initial motives in response to high-cost political competition, that is so-called money politics. This study also captures the emergence of religious motive in the shifting process of the socially driven to the individually driven motives. Eventually, the study affirms that both motives, in combination, constitute a political motive as a desire of power to hold an elective office.