Non-profit organizations’ communicational challenges in a glocal market – A pre-study to a communication plan for the non-profit organization Humlan. This study intends to examine and analyze the current strategic position of the non-profit organization Humlan, and how the organization can develop their communicational efforts to make themselves more competitive in the glocalized market in which they compete. This has been examined by qualitative interviews with the employees of the Humlan, and a quantitative survey of Humlans potential target group, students.  The results of the interviews showed that the employees of Humlan experienced the competition in the market as fierce, and that they experienced a need to communicate their uniqueness as a non-profit organization. The employees also expressed a wish for the Humlan brand to become associated with quality. In turn, the student survey showed that the students had a low knowledge-level regarding Humlan, that they were interested in a wide array of cultural expressions, and that they mainly wanted to communicate with Humlan by taking part of information such as news. In summary, the study showed that Humlan could develop their communicational efforts by creating awareness about the organization and its uniqueness among students. However, the study showed that this could be problematic due to the students’ communicational preferences. The results also showed that it is possible to see a resemblance between the communicative issues faced by Humlan and communicative issues faced by other types of non-profit organizations.

The innovative advancements of information communication technology (ICT) combinedwith a globalized economy have given rise to organizational forms that manipulate timeand distance. Today, competitive advantages are more elusive than tangible as a result ofdynamically complex environments motivating organizations to adjust in structure andfunctional capacity. New emergent forms of organizational structures have resulted inthe virtual organization (VO), which employs a network structure and allowsorganizations the flexibility to perform core processes amongst distributed teams, units,departments, and/or organizations. In essence the virtual organization may be viewed asa strategic response to dynamic environmental forces that have encouragedorganizations to rethink the concept of competitiveness. Virtual organizations havegained popularity throughout the last decade as a more effective way of managing andcommunicating information within and across organizations. Information communicationtechnology (ICT) has aided in the globalizing effect of informationalism. Theinformational flows within a virtual organization have direct bearing on individual andgroup efforts to obtain and employ information essential to organizational objectives.This thesis investigates the information interchange within virtual organizations througha theoretical study, which converges identified relevant subject areas and introduces theMedia Rich Social Information Interchange (MERiSii) model. The empirical study isdesigned to further investigate the validity of theoretical concepts employed in theMERiSii model and to expand its development to facilitate the function of informationinterchange. VGR-IT is an IT infrastructure provider, for hospitals and healthcarefacilities in the Västra Götaland region of Sweden. Interviews conducted with an accountmanager for VGR-IT and an IT strategist for Borås Hospital give insight into thecommunicative tasks of information interchange that must be effective to support the coreprocesses within VGR-IT and the service VGR-IT provides to Borås hospital. The resultsof a comparative analysis between the theoretical and empirical studies support a revisedMERiSii model that may be implicated in future research to further verify itseffectiveness. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

The study examines how social media can be used in a business-to-business context. To understand the communication conditions, factors has been identified that affects the choice of communication channels for different types of information transferred between parts. Furthermore, the study investigates the underlying reasons for why certain communication channels are chosen before others, in different situations. The study results are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees in a small engineering consulting company. The investigation has focused on employee communication and choice of communication tools primarily in relation to the business relationship. The study answers the following questions: What factors may contribute to the selection of different communication tools in business-to-business? What are the conditions and reasons for employees to use social media in business-to-business? What opportunities can social media pose for managing knowledge exchange with customers in business-to-business? The theoretical framework is based on Media Richness Theory and Social Influence Theory. The results show that factors that affect use of social media between businesses are 1) social environmental influences on attitudes towards social media (positive or negative), 2) individual analogue and digital values, 3) social media are primarily used in a private context 4) individual's role and level within the company. It is proposed that companies require strategies and increased knowledge to operate efficiently with social media in business to business. The results also shows that factors affecting the choice of communications channels between employees and business relationship are: 1) context-dependent, 2) the availability and accessibility, 3) the role and level in the company, 4) customer relationship development, 5) the information degree of ambiguity, 6) communication channel degree of "richness", 7) urgency, 8) confirmation of agreement. / Program: Magisterutbildning i strategisk information och kommunikation

<p>Purpose of the essay: The purpose of the essay is to, from the view of the nurses working at the x-ray infirmary; see how the internal e-mail communication is working as the main digital communication method at the x-ray infirmary.</p><p>Material/Method: The material has been collected using qualitative interviews with eight nurses working at the x-ray infirmary. The material has then been analyzed through a theoretical perspective based on The Media Richness theory.</p><p>Main results: The results of the investigation have shown that the nurses see the internal e-mail communication as relatively poor. The information that is sent out by their superiors is often too extensive, this making the screening work an extra work burden. These e-mails are also supplied to the whole infirmary instead of being addressed to specific individuals. Seen through a media richness perspective, the e-mail is a mediumrich communication medium that well could be used in the everyday communication at the infirmary as the main communication agent. The problem is how the superiors design the information that they send out. The mid-rich medium that is e-mail gives the infirmary an information uncertainty that is not dealt with.</p>

Purpose of the essay: The purpose of the essay is to, from the view of the nurses working at the x-ray infirmary; see how the internal e-mail communication is working as the main digital communication method at the x-ray infirmary. Material/Method: The material has been collected using qualitative interviews with eight nurses working at the x-ray infirmary. The material has then been analyzed through a theoretical perspective based on The Media Richness theory. Main results: The results of the investigation have shown that the nurses see the internal e-mail communication as relatively poor. The information that is sent out by their superiors is often too extensive, this making the screening work an extra work burden. These e-mails are also supplied to the whole infirmary instead of being addressed to specific individuals. Seen through a media richness perspective, the e-mail is a mediumrich communication medium that well could be used in the everyday communication at the infirmary as the main communication agent. The problem is how the superiors design the information that they send out. The mid-rich medium that is e-mail gives the infirmary an information uncertainty that is not dealt with.

This thesis investigated how information on a firm’s website presented with richmedia employee testimonials differs compared to a poor media descriptioncommunicating the same content in its ability to positively influence potential jobseekersperceptions about a firms employer brand values, in particular social valuedue to its potential in differentiation. A problem was identified being that firms areexperiencing difficulties with communicating social value of the firm to potential jobseekers. The authors used a mixed-method research design containing explorativeexpert interviews, an explanatory experiment where potential job-seekers wereexposed to two different versions of a firms’ website (one containing rich mediaemployee testimonial, and one containing a written text description of the samecontent), and a number of focus groups with the aim to further explain the findingsfrom the experiment. The findings indicate that rich media employee testimonials embedded in afirm's website increase potential job-seekers perceptions about a firm in terms of bothsocial value and identification with the firm. These findings suggest that firms shouldconsider using rich media employee testimonials on their career websites as analternative to the more commonly used poor media written descriptions.

Mobile Guide System has usually applied to enclosed spaces such as museums or exposition halls, but the prosperity of internet has made mobile application a trend. Then how it could be possible to make good use of mobile guide system in order to strengthen the dispersion of culture values, vibrate industrial economy and extend the life span of local culture industries so that culture and technology can develop mutual effects. The first stage of this research adopts discovery research to explain the concep-tual framework of local culture industries and mobile guide system and also uses Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) for research while the extended local culture value and consuming information values act as external factors to mobile guide sys-tem¡¦s Media Richness Theory(MRT). The second stage uses positive and qualitative research method to analyze the affecting factors to behavior intention of tourists from Anping Harbor National Historical Park about the mobile guide system applying to local culture industries. The total research tests are 250 copies and the effective tests are 226 copies. The research discovers that tourists have evolved from traditionally receiving information after arriving at the destination to collecting travling information beforehand. In the future, tourists would immediately receive information during traveling. This research considers that the development of local culture industries should acquire local culture values and local consuming values, which would strengthen the behavior intention of using mobile guide system. This discovery points out that mobile guide system can enhance the traveling happiness of tourists and lower searching cost. The information from tourist centers would be considered as one kind of hygiene factors and the messages passed from mobile guide system could be actively received by tourists to form different motivation in travel marketing and satisfaction.

Nowadays, the internet is an unseperatable part of human life and instant messaging software becomes an important role of communication channel. There are 40 million global IM registration popularity who use IM and billions of messages are sent everyday. In Taiwan, there are 6.5 million registration popularity and IM is the third important internet appilication, besides WWW and e-mail. As IM has become more and more important, there was few academic researchs published. We investigated consumer IM adoption behavior by focus group interview and structural equation model analysis. After holding a focus group interview, some antecedent of adopting IM was found out. Then we integrated technology acceptance model with media richness, computer self-efficacy and subjective norm as the antecedents of perceived usefulness(PU) and perceived ease of use(PEU) and analysised this structural equation model with LISREL. We found that subjective norm is an antecedent of PU, media richness and computer self-efficacy are PEU¡¦s antecedents. Finally, we made some suggestion for practice and other researchers base on the result.

The purpose of this research is to study the acceptance of road-users on the real-time integrated digital traffic information system, with the use of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Media Richness Theory (MRT) as foundations. Further understanding on the properties and demands of populations in the use of real-time integrated digital traffic information system are done through the application of ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and Regression Analysis. Moreover, with the integration of real time police road condition broadcasting and mobile communication technology, an ideal real-time integrated digital traffic information system is built¡Xthe Mobile Messenger, and a mobile communication technology is developed as main point of service infrastructure. Transforming static broadcasting service into mobile information service, road-users are provided with a high-speed, safe and quality driving environment.

An experiment is conducted among male adolescents to assess the impact of data collection methodology toward response quality factors, including completeness of answers, response distortion, response time, and item omissions. Data collection methodologies include in-person interviews, self-administered questionnaires, and use of an electronic form. Results suggest that personal interviews are generally the most effective method for collecting quality data from adolescent males. The impact of warning labels toward product evaluations was also tested using psychological reactance (Brehm 1966) to underpin hypotheses. Results indicate that adolescents rate their preference for entertainment products with restrictive labels higher than products with non-restrictive labels. Implications for public policy makers and both academic and managerial researchers are presented.