Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the information and communication technology (ICT) industries play a crucial role in the new economy. Most SMEs operate in a fiercely competitive environment; as such, it is important to optimize business practices. It is believed that performance measurement (PM) tools can help to identify weaknesses, clarify objectives and strategies, and improve management processes. While many theories on performance measurement and performance management have been developed mainly for large organizations over the past two decades, few have been tailored for SMEs. In addition, research highlights that these tools are difficult to adapt for SMEs. This research aims to identify and investigate the critical factors influencing the performance of SMEs in the ICT industries and, in doing so, develop a new PM framework that is able to effectively measure SME performance. To improve the accuracy of the judgments in this research, methodological triangulation strategy, which mixes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, was employed. At the same time, data-source triangulation was applied to reduce the impact of potential biases. In qualitative research, twenty interviews were conducted, sixteen cases were analysed through cross-case analysis. In quantitative research, sixty-six valid responses to questionnaire surveys were collected. This thesis has completed three major tasks: 1) Investigated critical success factors that affect the performance of SMEs. 2) Analysed existing SME performance measurement techniques in order to identify the best framework for SMEs in ICT industries. 3) Constructed a practical PM framework and implementation strategy for best-practice PM in ICT-related SMEs. Research results show that an effective PM system for ICT SMEs should help the companies to formulate right strategies that can especially manage the uncertainty of the external environment in their development. Importantly, a PM process should be constructed which aligns with the SMEs' daily processes such as ordinary planning, budgeting and reporting processes. Such a PM system should involve a flexible PM framework that can be adapted dynamically to suit the changes in the PM process. It is also required that the PM framework help SMEs identify customer needs, manage and measure customer satisfaction. A PM framework meets the above requirements can be built based on the structure of business excellence models and the theory of system management. At the same time, the KPIs should be incorporated in the PM system to help design the PM framework. The constructed PM framework involves measuring both performance determinants and performance results. The performance determinants, including both internal determinants and external determinants, are represented in following dimensions: capability building; resource developing and utilizing; environment adapting; strategies formulating; internal process managing and PM on innovation and learning. The performance results' dimension should include the financial results to satisfy the investors, the customer satisfaction indicators to meet customers' needs, the competitive indicators to reflect the competitive advantages, and the collaborative measures to measure the partnership.

Bakgrund och problemdiskussion: Risker är någonting som har stor påverkan på företagets lönsamhet. Riskerna kan gälla alltifrån finanskriser till medvetna fel från ledande befattningshavare eller medarbetare. Enron var en skandal som fick betydande konsekvenser i världen. USA införde en ny lagstiftning som en följd av det inträffade. Avsikten var att minska risken för bristande rapportering. Likt USA hade vi i Sverige drabbats. Vi valde att införa den så kallade ”Koden” som har liknande syfte som USA:s nya lagstiftning. Intresset för internkontroll har de senaste åren ökat. Det får anses som viktigt att företag inför en fungerande kontroll för att möta eventuella risker som kan påverka företagens möjligheter och mål. Företagen bör följa lagar och förordningar samt riktlinjer och uppsatta planer. Ett sätt kan vara att implementera COSOs modell, ett ramverk som fått en internationell spridning. En av beståndsdelarna, information & kommunikation, är en grundläggande förutsättning för en effektiv internkontroll. Hela verksamheten måste vara informerad och arbeta åt samma mål för att det ska fungera på bästa sätt.   Syfte: Syftet är att skapa en ökad förståelse för onoterade företags interna kontroll samt implementering av informationen ut i verksamheten. Vidare är syftet att belysa vad betydelsen av god information och kommunikation innebär för företag. Slutligen önskas ge en insikt över hur företag med hjälp av en god internkontroll på bästa sätt nå uppsatta mål och minimera framtida oegentligheter.  Metod: Uppsatsens avgränsning utgörs av onoterade företag inom Västra Götalands län. Fokus i studien ligger på den kvalitativa metoden. Intresset var att få möjlighet till personliga möten där de intervjuade personerna kunde återge hur företaget aktivt arbetar med internkontroll samt hur de har valt att implementera information ut till sina medarbetare. Ett personligt möte gav oss möjlighet till mer intryck, då observationer kunde göras. Vidare används vetenskapliga artiklar samt läroböcker till det teoretiska avsnittet. Slutsats: Alla företag tillämpar internkontroll. Som tidigare studier visar är det mer eller mindre ett måste att ha någon slags kontroll över sin verksamhet. Vid framställningen av den interna kontrollen kan COSO-modellen vara till bra hjälp. Slutsatsen visar också betydelsen av information och kommunikation i företagens verksamhet.  Nyckelord: Internkontroll, COSO – modellen, Information & kommunikation / Background and problems discussed: To succeed in the corporate world, it is important to be prepared for all the risks that can occur. These risks may include anything from financial crises to conscious errors from senior executives or employees. Enron was a scandal that made a significant impact on the world, which prompted the United States to introduce a new legislation. The intention was to reduce the risk of inadequate reporting. Like the U.S., Sweden also chose to introduce the so-called "Code", which has a similar purpose as the new U.S. legislation. The interests of internal control have increased in recent years. It is important that companies apply a well-functioning control to deal with any risks that may affect the companies’ abilities and goals. The companies should comply with laws, and set plans to help them to reach their goals. One way can be to implement the COSO model, a framework with international diversification. Communication is the key for effective internal control; the entire operation must be aware of guidelines, and work in the same direction to reach the companies’ goals. Purpose: The purposes are to create a greater understanding of the unlisted company’s internal controls and the implementation of information in the operations. Further, to illustrate what the importance of good information and communication means for the companies. Finally, to give an insight in how companies with a good internal controls best can reach the goals and minimize future frauds. Method: The delimitation of the thesis is non-listed companies within Västra Götaland, Sweden. The qualitative method has been used. Our interest was to have the opportunity for personals meetings. The respondents could reflect; how companies actively work with internal control, and how they have chosen to implement information to their employees. Personal meetings gave the opportunities for more impressions to observe how it looked in the operations. Further, scientific articles and textbooks have been used to the theoretical chapter. Conclusion: All companies applying internal control. As previous studies shows, it is more or less essential to have some kind of control over the operations. In the production of internal control, COSO model can be useful. The conclusion also shows the importance of information and communication in the business operations.   Keywords: Internal control, COSO – model, Information & Communication

Digital technologies has become the leading way for individuals to communicate, but despite its many advances it may also be misused for harmful behaviors. Over the last decade cyberbullying has become a serious social health problem worldwide. It has been estimated that roughly 20 to 40% of all adolescents will experience at least one act of cyberbullying. Even though an extensive amount of research has been carried out some uncertainties remains, for instance whether there are any gender differences in experiences. The overarching aim with the current review was to analyze the role of gender in cyberbullying victimization among European adolescents. The specific aspects explored were gender differences in victimization and misused technological platforms. In order to achieve the aim a systematic review of recent evidence was carried out. Based on established inclusion criteria searches for both published and non-published articles were made in the databases of EBSCOhost, ProQuest and other sources. The selection process identified seven eligible studies that were included for analysis. The prevalence rate of cyberbullying victimization was ranging from 5% to 28%, with one study reporting higher frequencies. The findings implied a slightly higher likelihood among girls. However, the technological platforms used for victimization were similar for both boys and girls, some of the more frequently misused platforms were social networking sites, instant messaging and text messages. The review findings suggest prevention strategies are directed toward the most popular technological environments, with a somewhat stronger emphasis on girls.

It is not unexpected that the field of information and communication has come under critique for falling short on delivering on their promises surrounding equality. It is an unfortunate irony that the people working closest as messengers between organizations and the public do not represent the society to which they communicate, especially so in a Swedish context. Partly inspired by the WFA report and other troubling findings around discrimination, the purpose of this study is to explore through quantitativ research how people with minority racial, ethnic, gender, cultural or religious backgrounds working within fields related to information and communication face workplace inequality within a Swedish context. A mixed methods approach was employed to analyze the open-ended answers, including qualitative content analysis. When asking whether the respondents had experienced discrimination or inappropriate treatment in their work during their information and communication career in Sweden, 66 percent of the respondents answered yes. The respondents who had endured discrimination or inappropriate treatment had mostly endured it because of ethnic origin or nationality, gender, age. From an intersectional lens the study illustrates the double threat of gender and racial discrimination in information and communications which women face, where it is demonstrated that their work is assessed differently than coworkers, face subjection to stereotyping and pigeonholing, are deprived of formal and informal networking opportunities, face barriers to their progression and have to regularly deal with microaggressions.

This study examines some aspects of student performance in the 21st century skills of Information and Communication (ICT) Literacy and collaboration. In this project, extant data from the Assessment and Teaching for 21st Century Skills project (ATC21S) will be examined. ATC21S is a collaborative effort among educational agencies in six countries, universities, educational research groups, high tech innovators and the multinational corporations Cisco, Intel and Microsoft. ATC21S demonstration tasks explore the use of digital literacy and collaborative problem solving constructs in educational assessment. My research investigates evidence from cognitive laboratories and pilots administered in one of the ATC21S demonstration scenarios, a collaborative mathematics/science task called "Global Collaboration Contest: Arctic Trek." Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, I analyze student work samples. Specifically, I (i) develop a rubric as a measurement tool to evaluate the student assessment artifact "Arctic Trek Notebook" for (a) generalized patterns and (b) trends that may indicate skill development in collaborative learning in a digital environment and (ii) conduct descriptive studies among the variables of student age and student notebook characteristics. Results are intended to inform instructional leaders on estimates of student ability in virtual collaboration and to make suggestions for instructional design and professional development for online collaborative learning assessment tasks in K-12 education.

The issue that this study addresses is the public transportations difficulty to adapt and keep up with the continuously digitizing society. To address this problem, the purpose of this study will be to investigate what could be a contribution to the further improvements within public transportation systems. The study is established alongside with the recently started “Welcome onboard” project, where the purpose is to develop and extend the public transportation as we know it today. The aim is to through five different functional areas urge the utility, where crowdsourcing will play a central role. We are distinguishing three public transport authorities attitudes towards the different functions of the project. We will investigate the attitudes towards the Welcome  onboardprojects functions and if they could be a contribution to the RKM-companies future development. Furthermore, this thesis will also investigate how the RKM-companies would grade the different advantages of different functional areas, and in a extend what would bevital for an future implementation. The empirical data collection consist of interviews of informants with a deep understanding ofthe development of the public transportations. First we interviewed two key persons of the Welcome onboard project, to get a deep understanding of the project. Later on we interviewed key persons at Värmlandstrafiken and Västtrafik, that are two different regional public transportation authorities. To strengthen our results we also chose to interview Samtrafiken, which task are to develop collaborations and offer services within information and ticket solutions for the public transport industry. This is made in order to benefit both traffic the RKM and the travelers.  All the interviews were transcribed and analyzed, later the empirical data collection could be compared through different cases. These cases were categorized by information about the company that the interviewees where representing and the answers regarding the attitudes towards the “Welcome onboard”-project and its functions. The result from the thesis will give an understanding of Västtrafik, Värmlandstrafiken and Samtrafikens perspective of the functions and attitudes towards the further development of public transportation.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciane Regina Vecchio.pdf: 2006375 bytes, checksum: 38fd580f36d3a291c92a565a5a79935e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-30 / This work, in view of the strong presence and growing ICT - Information & Communication Technologies - in society, aimed to seek the representations of students from years 8 and 9 of elementary school on Computers in Education. Such representations are seen as an important element to be considered by schools that seek to converge their core educational goals with the new characteristics and interests of this new generation towards pedagogical innovation using ICT. This research focuses on research and the discourse of these students based on the theory of social representations. Data collection was performed in three steps, using three tools: spreadsheet (with four open questions and twenty-one closed), virtual discussion forum (three open questions) and digital text document (three open questions). Content analysis was performed through the creation of categories, followed by preliminary analysis that based summaries of each step, which shaped the social representations of the students. Finally, analysis of students' social representations on Computers in Education could understand the scale assume that ICT in the school context and present the Computers in Education as a bridge, anchored in the desire for social inclusion and educational innovation / A presente dissertação, tendo em vista a presença marcante e crescente das TIC Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação na sociedade, teve como objetivo buscar as representações sociais de alunos de 8ºs e 9ºs anos do Ensino Fundamental sobre a Informática Educativa na escola. Tais representações são compreendidas como um elemento importante a ser considerado pelas escolas que buscam convergir seus objetivos pedagógicos essenciais com as novas características e interesses desta nova geração rumo à Inovação Pedagógica com o uso das TIC. A presente pesquisa tem como foco de investigação o discurso desses alunos e fundamenta-se na teoria das Representações Sociais. A coleta de dados foi realizada em três etapas, por meio de três instrumentos: planilha eletrônica (com quatro questões abertas e vinte e uma fechadas), fórum de discussão virtual (três questões abertas) e documento de texto digital (três questões abertas). A análise de conteúdo foi realizada por meio da criação de categorias, seguidas de análises preliminares que embasaram as sínteses de cada etapa, as quais configuraram as representações sociais dos alunos. Por fim, a análise das representações sociais dos alunos sobre a Informática Educativa na escola permitiu compreender a dimensão que as TIC assumem no contexto escolar e apresentam a Informática Educativa como uma ponte, ancorados no desejo de inclusão social e inovação pedagógica

Bakalauro darbe analizuojamas informacinių komunikacinių technologijų naudojimas ugdant specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčius vaikus bendrojo lavinimo mokykloje. Darbe atlikta mokslinės ir metodinės literatūros analizė, anketinė apklausa. Tyrimo tikslas – išanalizuoti informacinių komunikacinių technologijų naudojimą, ugdant specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčius mokinius, bendrojo lavinimo mokykloje. Tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Pristatyti specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčių mokinių sampratą. 2. Išanalizavus mokslinę ir metodinę literatūrą įvertinti informacinių komunikacinių technologijų naudojimą specialiųjų poreikių turinčių vaikų ugdymosi procese. 3. Ištirti specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių mokinių ir pedagogų požiūrį į informacinių komunikacinių technologijų naudojimą ugdyme. 4. Atskleisti pedagogų požiūrį į informacinių komunikacinių technologijų veiksmingumą ugdant specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčius vaikus. Tyrimo metodai - mokslinės literatūros analizė, anketinė apklausa raštu, kiekybinių ir kokybinių duomenų analizė. Tyrime dalyvavo 38 pedagogai ir 64 specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turintys mokiniai. Tiriamieji atrinkti iš anksto atlikus žodinę apklausą ir nustačius pedagogus, kurie dirba su specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčiais mokiniais. Anketinė mokinių apklausa vykdyta specialiųjų pedagogų ir logopedų užsiėmimų metu prieš tai išaiškinus pildymo metodiką. Atlikus tyrimą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Bachelor’s paper analyses the appliance of information and communication technologies in educating students with special educational needs in a school of general education. Analysis of scientific and methodological literature and questionnaire survey have been done. Research aim: analyse the appliance of information and communication technologies in educating students with special educational needs in a school of general education. Research tasks: 1. Introduce the concept of students with special educational needs. 2. After having analysed scientific and methodological literature, evaluate the appliance of information and communication technologies in an educational process of students with special educational needs. 3. Analyze the attitude of students with special educational needs and pedagogues towards the appliance of information and communication technologies in education. 4. Reveal the attitude of pedagogues towards the effectiveness of information and communication technologies in educating students with special educational needs. Research methods: analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire survey in writing, analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The research was attended by 38 pedagogues and 64 students with special educational needs. Attendants were selected after a verbal interview was done in advance and pedagogues working... [to full text]

Globalization and the surge of competition across industries forced companies to improve their supply chain capabilities to serve their customers efficiently and effectively. Due to this fact, businesses are no longer capable of handling all supply chain operations without collaboration and coordination with other firms. One of the key obstacles to coordination is the lack of information sharing and trust between firms since they view information as a sensitive asset. Digital technologies like blockchain, with its inherited features, have the capability to facilitate real-time information sharing, solve trust issues, and improve end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. This licentiate thesis highlights the impact of multiple aspects of information sharing on the bullwhip effect mitigation and explores the potential of blockchain technology as a new coordination mechanism for reducing information distortions, enhancing trust, and orchestrating decision making. Three research papers have been produced within this context and are appended to the thesis. Paper A presents an information sharing-based blockchain architecture to mitigate the bullwhip effect in service supply chains. Paper B aims to explores the literature in terms of using multiple aspects of information sharing to lessen the bullwhip effect. Finally, Paper C introduces an agent-based modeling and simulation approach for two aspects of information sharing: “what to share” and “how to share.” The results show that blockchain technology does provide a significant solution to trust-based issues and information sharing visibility considering the bullwhip effect mitigation. The results also provide a guide for supply chain managers to achieve better coordination and serve as a roadmap for supply chain researchers.