Abstract   Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to show how the firm-specific resources interact with the institutional context of an emerging country in the case of E-business micro firms. This is done by identifying the factors and investigating the outcomes of those factors which give these firms economic performance from the perspective of the entry, as well as growth. This study aims at extending the knowledge on the entry and strategies of E-business micro firms entering into China. The goal of the study is to answer the research question, “How can firm-specific resources, paired with country-specific institutional context influence the successful entering into China for micro e-businesses?”, and to provide entrepreneurs which desire to internationalize on the Chinese market with a frame of reference and good practices in E-business.   Frame of references: Literature on SMEs and their associated entry modes, institutional context, firm resources and performance was used to develop a theoretical basis for the paper. The research gap was found in the corroboration of these terms in the context of the emerging Chinese E-business market.   Method: This study has adopted an inductive approach and was exploratory in nature. Qualitative case studies were employed to collect and analyze data with regards to micro E-businesses currently active on the Chinese market. The firms found are all foreign to China but active on Chinese soil. To collect primary data, we have used semi-structured interviews. For secondary data, we have used financial data, websites, and firms’ power point presentations. Following, the data was categorized, coded and analyzed according to professional research methods. Because the study is inductive, the literature was linked and discussed in relation to the findings.   Findings: The findings are numerous, stemming from both the analysis of the data, as well as from the coupling of the initial firm-resource findings with the institutional context findings. The discussion and conclusion hold all the findings. Due to their amount, they cannot be presented here in their entirety. However, the two major findings and criteria to be considered in the case of our research questions are: Proposition 1: For micro B2C E-businesses, the tangible resource is less important than the intangible resource. The capability of applying the Chinese market knowledge and experience to the institutional context, and bringing the results into the entry strategy is more important than the tangible resources Proposition 2: In a matured E-business institutional context, a partnership entry mode which requires lower investment is preferable for foreign micro E-businesses and can lead to a higher possibility for success.

Automation technologies such as industrial robots, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics threaten to dislocate a large number of workers, given their ability to perform many work activities. This thesis aims to give a complete overview of the effects of automation on employment and consists of three papers. The first paper reviews prior studies investigating how automation technologies affect employment. Relevant publications are presented by distinguishing how the effects of automation technologies are estimated (i.e., estimation of the probability of automation or of the net impact on employment), the levels of analysis (i.e., global, international, continental, country, regional, labour market, industry, firm, occupational, worker, and work activities) and the type of automation technology (i.e., industrial robots, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics). Research gaps and future research agenda are identified. The second paper investigates how the institutional context in terms of gender equality (in general and in the education and work components) affects the risk of substitution faced by women, i.e., their risk of being replaced by automation technologies in performing work activities. The study shows that in institutional contexts where gender equality is high, women face a lower risk of substitution as women do not face stereotypes and structural barriers and can thus acquire the skills that cannot be automated by machines (i.e., perception and manipulation, creative intelligence, and social intelligence). The third paper analyses how the invention of automation technologies affects the labour demand of the innovative firm. It emerges that innovating in automation technologies increases firm employment, with the largest impact found for industrial robots and big data. Jointly innovating in the three automation technologies also increases firm employment. However, innovating in industrial robots decreases firm employment in SMEs, while innovating in industrial robots and in artificial intelligence decreases firm employment in young firms. This thesis enhances knowledge about automation by providing a review of previous studies, by developing a gender perspective on automation by taking into account the influence of the institutional context in terms of gender equality, and by focusing on firm level effects of automation technologies. Policy and managerial implications can be derived from this thesis as the results provide an insight into how automation technologies impact employment. Policy makers can be informed for the design of policies promoting the invention and adoption of automation technologies and removing gender barriers in education and in the labour market. Firms can evaluate the effects of automation technologies on their workforce and help workers in protecting against the risk of substitution. The necessary interventions at the national and firm level can be planned to reap the benefits of automation while safeguarding workers.

Volunteers examines as a social community and social institution. The study reveals the problems of volunteer’s social community and identifies the shortcomings of institutional context. Master's thesis gives recommendations for the development of the volunteer’s social community in the institutional context, proposes measures to optimize the financial support of non-profit organizations and volunteers’ initiatives as one of the factors in the development of volunteer’s social community. / В рамках магистерской диссертации волонтерство рассматривается как социальная общность и социальный институт. Эмпирическое исследование позволило выявить проблемы социальной общности волонтеров и недостатки институциональных условий функционирования данной общности. В рамках магистерской диссертации предложены рекомендации по совершенствованию институциональных условий функционирования социальной общности волонтеров. Предложены меры по оптимизации системы финансовой поддержки некоммерческих организаций и инициатив волонтеров в качестве одного из факторов развития социальной общности волонтеров.

The aim of this study was to reach an understanding of social workers experiences of creating relationships with clients through the meeting as a method in an institutional context. It is a professional dilemma for social workers to build relationships with clients in a professional role with inevitible elements of control. At the same time, previous research shows that professionalism in social workers relational work with clients is about balancing between two aspects; professional and personal. The study was qualitative, conducted with semi-structured interviews with 8 social workers, within three different professional roles, in the social service in Sweden. Thematic analysis was used when processing the material. The study was analyzed through a theoretical framework based on the concepts of symbolic power and doxa and a model and components; participation, facilitating service environments and compassion. In summary, our study points to the fact that there are several ways for socialworkers to create relationships in an institutional context. Social workers have different ways of doing this work because it’s largely done with the social worker's personality. The social workers create participation to varying degrees and try to facilitate the psychosocial environment for the client in the meeting in different ways. However, it seems like the work is often related to the field's doxa.

As life expectancy increases, grandparents spend a longer part of their life with grandchildren, which opens opportunities for sharing time, resources, and affection. The present dissertation aims at investigating the content of the grandparent-grandchild relationship and, at the same time, the consequences that becoming a grandmother could have on mid-life women’s labour market participation. It revolves around three main contributions. First, it approaches grandparenting from a stratification perspective, putting forward that grandparents could perform different activities with grandchildren according to their educational levels. Second, it investigates grandmothers’ transition to retirement as driven by the institutional context, which shapes both the extent to which grandparental childcare is needed as support for the younger generations (measured through the availability of childcare services) and the extent to which it is easy and attractive to withdraw early from the labour force for old-age individuals (measured through the generosity of the pension system). Finally, it considers grandmothers’ labour market withdrawal as enabled, or constrained, by women’s previous work history, with two case-studies: England and Italy. In fact, decisions taken earlier in life on work-family reconciliation, on the one hand, could be reproduced in late-life upon the grandchild’s birth; on the other hand, years worked, and kind of job held open different routes for retirement. Taken together, the present dissertation unveils that grandparenthood is a multifaceted phenomenon, which must be studied in a multi-generational framework and by considering demographic, social, and institutional trends of current European societies.

Cette thèse prend pour objet des situations d’apprentissage guidé du français, en face à face et en dehors de cadres institutionnels, se déroulant dans le contexte multilingue du Luxembourg. Elle décrit et analyse des interactions entre des locuteurs plurilingues adultes dont la première langue est le chinois ou le coréen et des locuteurs plurilingues agissant en tant qu’experts pour la langue française. Plus particulièrement, dans l’optique d’une analyse qualitative des données, ce travail s’efforce d’appliquer les outils de l’analyse conversationnelle d’inspiration plutôt anglo-américaine à une vision didactique de tradition de langue française. Pour ce faire, il est fait appel aux notions de compétence communicative (Hymes 1972), de dramatisation (Goffman 1991) et de rôle social (Cicurel 1988). L’analyse montre que dans des situations d’apprentissage-en-interaction, les apprenants et les experts ont recours à une diversité de ressources interactionnelles liées à des activités de dramatisation : le dialogue-en-situation, la voix, la séquence préfabriquée, la séquentialité discursive, la réparation, la séquence explicative, le récit préenregistré, l’évaluation, le récit enchâssé, l’identité, le récit conversationnel de l’expert, l’interview, le récit conversationnel de l’apprenant et le mode éditeur. Pour conclure, un rapprochement est opéré entre ces activités de dramatisation et la didactique du FLE, à plusieurs niveaux, sous la forme de recommandations suggestions. / The current thesis focuses on guided language learning exchanges in French, in a face-to-face non-institutional setting in the multilingual context of Luxembourg. It describes and analyzes interactions between adult plurilingual speakers whose first language is Chinese or Korean and multilingual speakers acting as experts for the French language. Taking a qualitative analysis approach, our work strives to apply the tools of conversation analysis of a rather Anglo-American origin to a vision of “didactique” corresponding to the French language tradition. To this end, we rely in particular on the notions of communicative competence(Hymes 1972), dramatization (Goffman 1991) and social role (Cicurel 1988). The analysis of learning-in-interaction data shows the enactment of a variety of dramatization-related interactional resources by both learners and experts: the situated dialogue, the voice, the formulaic language, the discursive sequentiality, the repair, the explanatory sequence, the pre-recorded conversational narrative, the evaluation, the embedded narrative, the identity, the conversational narrative of the expert, the interview, the conversational narrative of the learner and the editor mode. A few recommendations-suggestions are proposed in the conclusion, focusing on how these dramatization activities could inform, at different levels, the development of French teaching and learning.

Notre thèse compte trois articles. Premièrement, nous analysons de manière systématique les articles publiés dans les journaux à comité de lecture en finance qui font référence à la culture. Il s’agit de faire émerger les définitions en usage, à partir d’une analyse du terrain académique. Nos résultats sont les suivants : l’usage est généralement lié à l’énigme pays, il concerne un champs d’investigation large, il est marqué par une forte polarisation disciplinaire, et aucun cadre théorique accepté n’est identifiable. En conséquence nous nous attachons à l’étude d’un sujet où l’énigme pays prévaut : l’analyse des structures de capitaux. Notre échantillonnage - les sociétés européennes cotées sur 20 ans - procède directement de nos conclusions : nous nous efforçons de circonscrire les effets du développement économique, et de la variété qualitative dans les institutions légales, politiques, socio-économiques. Deuxièmement, nous analysons les interactions entre la politique financière des entreprises et les cycles d’affaire anticipés. Nous mettons en évidence deux mécanismes opposés, l’un pro-cyclique et l’autre contra-cyclique, caractérisant respectivement les sociétés à actionnariat dispersé et concentré. Notre argumentation se fonde sur les corollaires de la dispersion de l’actionnariat : elle entraine un équilibre d’agence particulier, une variation dans les coûts d’opportunité de l’agence et de la latitude managériale, un rôle disciplinaire spécifique pour l’endettement, un rapport de signaux altéré.Troisièmement, nous démontrons que ce mécanisme principalement financier, - de polarisation de la politique financière en fonction des cycles d’affaires anticipés - est associé à un contexte institutionnel et à des comportements financiers différents. En particulier nous démontrons que la même polarisation empirique, observée pour la cyclicité du levier d’endettement des entreprises, est observée en relation aux politiques de dividende, au « market timing », concerne l’ancrage institutionnelle des sociétés, leur profil de transparence, certaines de leurs caractéristiques structurelles, l’environnement contractuel, ainsi que des variables culturelles. / This thesis is composed of three essays. The first is composed of a screening process that has been performed on peer-reviewed journals in finance, to investigate the recent rise in interest for cultural approaches. The aim has been to let definitions emerge in order to build a field-based analysis about culture in finance. The results include the following: the use of culture is mainly connected to the country puzzle; it concerns a very large range of topics; there is a marked polarization in approaches; and, finally, no consensual framework emerges from the screening process. As a result, the focus has been on a subject where the country puzzle is looming large: i.e. capital structures. A sample has been taken, consistent with the first essay findings and recommendations. The variability of the sample is limited in terms of: economic development, and judicial, political, institutional quality, and has focused upon European listed firms over a 20-year period.In the second essay, the interactions between firms’ financial policies and expected business cycles have been investigated. Two conflicting mechanisms have been evidenced, finding: firms with dispersed ownership lead pro-cyclical policies, while firms with concentrated ownership lead contra-cyclical policies. The theoretical considerations unfold from the idea that ownership dispersion implies a different mix in agency relations, and entails specificities in agency costs and the benefits of managerial discretion, while it fosters differing needs for such things as, disciplining through debt and signaling. The third essay shows that, both, the pro- and contra-cyclical mechanisms are mediated by structural, cultural and institutional factors. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the pro-cyclical effects are observed in contexts similar akin the “U.S Role Model”; furthermore, the effects encompass varying dimensions of capital structures, such as, cyclicality of leverage, market timing or still dividend policies, and they extend to varying contextual dimensions, including ownership dispersion, institutional anchoring, transparency, risk, structural variables for firms, the contracting environment, and measures of national cultures.

Pour devenir plus flexible, le secteur public a ouvert la voie à de nouveaux principes inspirés de la gestion propre aux firmes, soit la marchandisation des services (Fairbrother et Poynter, 2001). Notre recherche souhaite mieux comprendre les facteurs qui peuvent influencer l’implication du syndicat lorsque la marchandisation est introduite dans la gestion de la prestation des services municipaux. Pour se faire, nous avons choisi de comparer des cas des municipalités dans deux pays, la Ville de Québec et Edinburgh en Écosse, afin de nous aider à comprendre davantage les interactions entre les influences nationales et locales. Nous proposons que les ressources de pouvoir du syndicat local et la stratégie patronale influencent l’implication du syndicat dans la gestion de la prestation des services municipaux, peu importe le contexte national. Les résultats de la recherche nous indiquent que les ressources de pouvoir et la stratégie patronale influencent directement l’implication syndicale. Alors que les ressources de pouvoir donnent un rapport de force au syndicat face à l’employeur, la stratégie patronale peut encourager ou freiner l'implication syndicale. Nos résultats ont aussi soulevé certaines différences entre les contextes nationaux de l’Écosse et du Québec affectant l’implication syndicale: les législations de « Best Value » au Royaume-Uni et celles encadrant les conventions collectives et relations de travail au Québec. Ainsi, des recherches futures sont nécessaires pour mettre à l’épreuve les modèles nationaux couramment utilisés en relations industrielles pour contribuer à la création d’une nouvelle théorie comparative. / In order to become more flexible, the public sector has opened the way to new principles inspired by the private sector: the marketisation of services (Fairbrother et Poynter, 2001). Our research aims to better understand the factors which affect the participation of trade unions when marketisation is introduced in the delivery of local government services. To do so, we have decided to compare local government case studies in two different countries, Québec City and Edinburgh in Scotland, to help us better understand the interactions between local and national influences. Our hypothesis is that local trade union power resources and the employer’s strategy will influence trade union participation in the management of local government service delivery, regardless of the national context. The main findings of our research suggest that power resources and employer stategy both directly affect local trade union involvement in the management of local government service delivery. While power resources help to bolster the trade union’s power, the employer strategy can either encourage or impare trade union participation. Our results also raised differences relating to the national contexts of the UK and Québec which affected local trade union participation : « Best Value » legislation in the UK and « Code du Travail » legislation which frame collective agreements and industrial relations in Québec. We consider that future research on the subject is necessary in order to verify the current models on national industrial relations and to develop new comparative theories.

Un nouveau cadre théorique pour concevoir le processus de production du savoir dans la pratique infirmière s’avère nécessaire pour tenir compte du processus sur les plans individuel et collectif et de l’influence du contexte dans cette production. Pour cette démarche, c’est la théorie de la réflexivité de Giddens qui nous a semblé être la plus pertinente pour guider la présente étude qui visait à décrire et à comprendre le processus de production du savoir dans la pratique infirmière au moyen de la réflexivité. Plus concrètement, l’étude s’est intéressée à découvrir les conditions et dynamiques des contextes institutionnel, pratique et professionnel qui peuvent influencer le processus de production du savoir dans la pratique infirmière ainsi qu’identifier les étapes de ce processus. Le constructivisme projectif fut le paradigme qui a guidé l’étude. Le devis de recherche ce fut l’analyse secondaire de données qualitatives. Le contexte de l’étude était une unité de soins intensifs d’un hôpital général et universitaire à Barcelone. La collecte de données avait été réalisée à l’aide de l’observation systématique, de six entrevues structurées, de sept réunions de groupe et d’une analyse documentaire. L’analyse des données a été effectuée selon des critères provenant de l’approche mixte de Miles et Huberman, du processus d’analyse des données qualitatives de Morse ainsi que des recommandations faites par des auteurs clés par rapport à l’analyse secondaire. Les critères de rigueur ont été utilisés et les aspects éthiques ont été assurés. Les résultats de cette étude démontrent que les conditions et dynamiques des contextes institutionnel, pratique et professionnel influencent profondément l’action infirmière et le développement du savoir. Ces conditions et dynamiques sont intériorisées dans la vie professionnelle des infirmières et constituent des façons «normales» d’aborder la pratique. Toutefois, bien qu’il existe une acceptation du statu quo, les sentiments contradictoires et la souffrance ressortent facilement. Ces conditions et dynamiques provoquent chez les infirmières une incapacité à agir de façon juste, éthique et responsable ainsi qu’une limitation face à l’exploration de nouvelles possibilités, formulations et manifestations de pratique. Les résultats mettent également en évidence les étapes du processus de production du savoir au moyen de quatre grands thèmes: la reconnaissance de la réflexivité quotidienne, l’examen systématique des pratiques, la construction d’un nouveau savoir et la reconstruction émancipatrice du savoir. Finalement, cette thèse met en relief l’importance de la théorie de Giddens pour l’étude de la production du savoir et de la relation entre l’infirmière et le contexte ainsi que l’utilisation du devis d’analyse secondaire des données qualitatives pour la discipline infirmière. / A new theoretical framework for designing the process of knowledge production within nursing practice is necessary to take into account the individual and the collective process of knowledge production as well as the influence of the context on this production. The theory of reflexivity of Giddens seems to be most relevant. This study aimed to describe and understand the process of knowledge production within nursing practice through reflexivity. More specifically, it was important to uncover the conditions and dynamics of the institutional, professional and practice context which influence the process of knowledge production within nursing practice and to identify the steps of this process. Projective constructivism was the paradigm that has guided the study. The research design was a secondary analysis of qualitative data. The study context was a critical care unit of a general and university hospital in Barcelona. Data were collected through systematic observation, six structured interviews, seven focus groups, and documents analysis. Data were analysed according to the mixed approach of Miles and Huberman, the qualitative analysis of Morse, and recommendations from various authors on secondary analysis. The rigor criteria were used and the ethical aspects were covered. The study results suggest that the conditions and dynamics of institutional, practical and professional contexts impact profoundly the nursing action and knowledge production. These conditions and dynamics are internalized in the working lives of nurses and provide “normal” ways of nursing practice. However, although there is an acceptance of the status quo, the conflicting feelings and suffering emerge easily. These conditions and dynamics cause incapacity among nurses to act fairly, ethically and responsibly and limit their exploration of new possibilities, formulations and demonstrations of practice. The results propose also the stages of knowledge production through four major themes: the recognition of daily reflexivity, systematic review of practices, the construction of new knowledge and the re-construction of emancipatory knowledge. Finally, this thesis suggests the importance of Giddens' theory for the study of knowledge production and the relationship between the nurse and the context, as well as the use of secondary analysis of qualitative data for the nursing discipline.

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