Energy cooperatives have become an important player in the German energy transition. After two legal amendments in the Renewable Energy Act in 2012 and 2014 the number of new foundations dropped sig-nificantly. Several studies have investigated potential barriers and opportunities for energy cooperatives to expand their business model beyond energy production and adapt to the legal changes. This study aims to identify relevant factors that lead energy cooperatives to have a high or a low level of diversification. To this end, I interviewed board members of eight energy cooperatives and complemented the findings by the assessment of firm documents and newspaper articles. While no single factor seems to be decisive, the founding initiative, in particular a clear vision and concrete business goals correlate with the level of di-versification. Important is, that a high level of internal resources or strong support from the local govern-ment alone cannot explain a high level of diversification. Instead, I identified two important aspects, in-teractive effects and threshold effects, that help to understand why energy cooperatives have a high or low level of diversification. Interactive effects mean, that a negative performance in one factor, such as a low level of internal resources, can be outbalanced by a very positive performance in another factor, such as external resources or local political environment. Threshold effects mean, that apparently a certain perfor-mance of a factor might be sufficient to achieve a high level of diversification, whereas a high performance of all factors, also leads to a very high level of diversification, as was shown with one cooperative, that serves as best practice example and corresponds to the theoretical model as forecasted. That means future research should deal with the complex nature of energy cooperatives, as diversification and probably de-velopment in general cannot be explained by looking at single factors, such as the level of internal re-sources. The findings also suggest, that for some energy cooperatives the plan to adopt new business mod-els was already laid at the foundation and did not spontaneously emerge as response to the legal changes. A future study should investigate, whether that applies to energy cooperatives more generally, or was just found  to be  true  for the eight cases  studied  here. The role of external resources  to adopt  new  business models has to be emphasized and calls for more cooperation among energy cooperatives and with external partners, to continuously be important players for the energy transition.

Quick-service restaurant owners who fail to apply effective business strategies could risk business closure within the first 5 years of operations. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective strategies that independent quick-service restaurant owners used to sustain business longer than the first 5 years. Resource-based theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with 6 owners of independent quick-service restaurants in the southern region of the United States who sustained their businesses longer than the first 5 years, and from the review of business documents pertaining to sustainability. Data were also collected using business artifacts such as job descriptions, menus, websites, social media platforms, and business licenses, and analyzed using methodological triangulation. Member checking was used to help ensure reliability and validity of the interpretations. Six key themes emerged from the data: organization value, customer required excellence, financial perspective, human assets, physical operating materials, and technological prowess. The 6 themes aligned with the 5 types of internal resources established in the conceptual framework. The implications of this study for positive social change include the potential to support the welfare of the local citizens and owners of quick-service restaurants across the United States by providing strategies necessary to increase business survival rates, improve job sustainability, and encourage job creation.

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the relations between support, academic self-efficacy, and stress during the transition into middle school. Research suggests that early adolescents experience an increase in stress across the middle school transition (e.g., Chung, et al., 1998), due to a mismatch between the individuals' developmental needs and the environment (Eccles et al., 1993). Stress has been found to be a risk factor for mental health disorders among adolescents (Grant et al., 2003). The current study examined if teacher and classmate support and academic self-efficacy served as external and internal resources for buffering stress by analyzing data from 142 young adolescents from an economically and racially diverse longitudinal sample. The current study examined: (a) the relations between support from teachers and classmates, academic self-efficacy, and stress; (b) patterns of change across the middle school transition; (c) the extent to which support from teachers and classmates is associated with stress in fifth and sixth grades; (d) the extent to which academic self-efficacy moderated the relation between support and stress, and (e) whether there were group differences (i.e., gender, race, and/or gender x race). Teacher support was negatively associated with perceived stress during sixth grade, while classmate support was a not significant correlate. There was not significant change over time in any of the key variables (i.e., teacher and classmate support, academic self-efficacy, and perceived stress). Regression results indicated that teacher and classmate support served different roles as academic self-efficacy moderated the relations between classroom support and perceived stress among fifth grade students. Teacher support was negatively related to perceived stress among sixth grade students. The only group difference found was that female sixth grade students reported higher levels of teacher support than male students did. Implications for school psychologists and future directions for research are also addressed.

In ICT industry, firms’ financial prosperity and growth are highly depended on innovation. The innovation provides competitive advantage and high performance for the ICT companies. The purpose of the paper is to study effect that the companies’ internal resources, experience on the market, investments in innovation and business environment have on their performance. The sample includes 22 ICT companies from North America, EU and Asia region. The examined data cover period from 2011 to 2015. The companies’ annual reports and USPTO were used as the sources of the data. The mixed research method is chosen to reach the study’s objectives. The study is analysed with help of DEA and Balanced scorecard performance measurement methods. Organizational learning theory and Resource based theory are applied to answer the research questions in the study. The outputs of performance are categories such as assets and competencies, innovative activities, suppliers and customer relations, and employees and management. These categories are presented by a variety of indicators such as assets turnover, labour productivity ratio, debt ratio, SG&A costs ratio and number of published patents. The factors such as companies’ size, age, investments in R&D and business environment have significant impact on the performance of innovative activities. The results suggest that the large established ICT companies are less efficient in studied categories than the smaller and younger ICT firms. Moreover, the younger smaller companies show higher efficiency even in terms of such outcomes as R&D intensity and number of published patents. The results are consistent with the findings attained in previous studies from the same scientific field.

The aim of the thesis is to make a strategic analysis of the newly opened private school by University of Economics, Prague. For analysis of external environment is used PEST model and Porter's model of Five Competitive Forces. Special attention is paid to description of Czech-MBA-schools market. Internal environment is described by analysis of company's resources. Outputs from partial analyses are summarised in SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis serves than for formulation of strategic recommendation to ISBM.

The diploma thesis deals with the problems of external financing company LAZAM CZ s. r. o. The first, theoretical, part contains general discussion about the possibilities of external financing of the company, mainly through credit drawing one of the banks operating in the Czech Republic. The method is literature review. Second, analytic, part then solves selection of company and it’s product, which is suitable for company LAZAM CZ s. r. o. It is used several methods of evaluating the situation of the company and it’s surroundings. The analysis and used methods are aimed to fulfill the main goal set thesis.

[pt] Países do mundo todo têm envidado esforços para alcançar um crescimento econômico sustentável para enfrentar um ambiente de negócios cada vez mais globalizado, complexo e incerto. Nesse contexto a inovação é considerada como uma das principais soluções e caminhos. O Brasil, no que concerne à sua capacidade de inovação, está muito abaixo das grandes potências inovativas do mundo. Apesar dessa realidade, o setor de agricultura tem demonstrado crescimento considerável na sua capacidade de inovação e produção de conhecimento de fronteira. No entanto, mesmo dentro desse setor, a busca por resultados mais inovativos tem sido uma preocupação constante das empresas. Nesse sentido, a prática da inovação aberta como processo catalisador da inovação, tem se mostrado uma necessidade. Assim, o estudo de caso múltiplo, realizado em três unidades descentralizadas, da Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária - Embrapa, empresa importante do setor agropecuário, permitiu analisar e avaliar como os recursos internos e as alianças estabelecidas por essas Unidades, interagem e afetam seus desempenhos de inovação, de modo que consigam aumentar suas contribuições para a capacidade de inovação do Brasil. O estudo constatou que, embora as Unidades pratiquem a inovação aberta, a interação entre suas fontes de conhecimento internas e externas propiciam um aumento de suas capacidades e desempenhos de inovação, ainda que tais interações propiciem apenas uma paridade competitiva às Unidades e desempenhos inovativos na média, os resultados confirmam a importância da interação entre os dois embientes internos e externos. / [en] Countries around the world have made efforts to achieve sustainable economic growth in order to face an increasingly globalized, complex and uncertain business environment. In this context, innovation is considered as one of the main solutions and paths. Brazil, in terms of its capacity for innovation, is far below the great innovative powers in the world. Despite this reality, the agriculture sector has shown considerable growth in its capacity for innovation and the production of frontier knowledge. However, even within this sector, the search for more innovative results has been a constant concern of companies. In this sense, the practice of open innovation as a catalyst for innovation has been shown to be a necessity. Thus, the multiple case study, carried out in three decentralized units, of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation - Embrapa, an important company in the agricultural sector, allowed to analyze and evaluate how the internal resources and the alliances established by these Units, interact and affect their performance innovation, so that they can increase their contributions to Brazil s innovation capacity. The study found that, although the Units practice open innovation, the interaction between their internal and external knowledge sources provides an increase in their innovation capacities and performances, even though such interactions provide only a competitive parity to the Units and innovative performances on average, the results confirm the importance of the interaction between the two internal and external environments.

The goal of thesis is to make external and internal analysis of Kores Praha, spol. s r.o., then evaluate its results and suggest recommendations for the creation of strategy.

Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med kunskap om lärarassistenters första tid i Uppsala kommuns pilotprojekt. Med utgångspunkt i vad som kallas resursteori har två forskningsfrågor ställts; 1) På vilket sätt har interna och externa resurser bidragit till lärarassistenternas socialisationsprocess? 2) Vilka konsekvenser får lärarassistenternas socialisationsprocess när den sker inom ramen för ett pilotprojekt? Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer studeras specifikt hur åtta projektanställda lärarassistenter i Uppsala kommun upplevt den första tiden som anställda och vilka resurser som varit betydande för deras socialisation. Resultatet visar att den första tiden i projektet varit försiktig och trevande, något som beskrivs som både positivt och negativt i form av mjukstart och trögstart. Å ena sidan främjas relationsutveckling av mjukstarten men å andra sidan hämmar trögstarten anpassningen till arbetet. Den negativa sidan visar dels hur viktigt det är att arbetsverktyg är klara och redo att användas när den nyanställde introduceras till det nya arbetet då det annars kan skapa negativa upplevelser och bidra till oro. Resultaten visar även en ömsesidighet i pilotprojektet där ingen riktigt visste vad lärarassistentrollen skulle innehålla, och därmed blev det en ny situation för samtliga parter att förhålla sig till. Det övergripande resultatet visade, genom ovan nämnda teman, att pilotprojektet utifrån ett socialisationsperspektiv präglades av en dubbel socialisation. / The purpose of this paper is to study the teacher assistants initial period in the pilot project of municipality of Uppsala. Based on resources theory as a theoretical framework two research questions were asked; 1) In what way have internal and external resources contributed to the socialization process of teacher assistants? and 2) What consequences does the pilot project have on the teacher assistants socialization process? Semistructured interviews were used to ask eight teacher assistants employed in the pilot project about how they experienced the first time in the new workplace and what resources were important for their socialization. The result shows that the initial period of the employment was cautious and tentative, which was described as both positive and negative in terms of a soft start or a tardy start. On one hand the soft start promotes relationship development, but on the other hand the tardy start inhibits adaptation to work. The negative side shows how important it is that work tools are ready to be used when the new employee is introduced to the new work, otherwise it can create negative experiences. The results also show that the pilot project was characterized by a reciprocity where nobody really knew what the teacher assistant role would contain, and thus it became a new situation for all parties to relate to. Through these themes, the overall results shows that the pilot project from a socialization perspective was characterized by a double socialization.

This Master´s thesis deals apply strategic analysis on construction company AGOS stavební a.s. Pelhřimov. Thesis goal is to evaluate the situation of the chosen company within the business environment in which is the business located. Fundamental of thesis is applying PESTLE analysis, Map of competitive groups, Porter five forces analysis, Analysis of internal resources and key success factors, SWOT analysis and evaluation of whole situation.