Background: A majority of strategic alliances do not create value for the participants. One of the main reasons for the high failure rate is an inadequate process for partner selection. If the correct partner is not selected, it can have serious effects on the management of the partnership. This is a serious problem since failed alliances usually are very expensive for the involved companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which theoretical factors are important when selecting a partner for a strategic alliance. Further we aim to investigate how these factors can effect partner selection for small and middle size technology intensive companies. Realisation: The empirical part is based on interviews with persons holding key positions at four case companies. All the case companies are situated in Mjärdevi Science Park. Result: Our research has shown that the strategic fit is the crucial factor. Other important factors are brand, network position, compatibility and attention when selecting a partner for a strategic alliance.

Next generation wireless communication systems are expected to provide a variety of services including voice, data and video. The rapidly growing demand for these services needs high data rate wireless communication systems with reliability and high user capacity. Recently, it has been shown that reliability and achievable data rate of wireless communication systems increases dramatically by employing multiple transmit and receive antennas. Transmit diversity is a powerful technique for combating multipath fading in wireless communications. However, employing multiple antennas in a mobile terminal to achieve the transmit diversity in the uplink is not feasible due to the limited size of the mobile unit. In order to overcome this problem, a new mode of transmit diversity called cooperative diversity (CD) based on user cooperation, was proposed very recently. By user cooperation, it is meant that the sender transmits to the destination and copies to other users, called partners, for relaying to the destination. The antennas of the sender and the partners together form a multiple antenna situation. CD systems are immuned not only against small scale channel fading but also against large scale channel fading. On the other hand, CD systems are more sensitive to interuser (between sender and partner) transmission errors and user mobility. In this dissertation, we propose a bandwidth and power efficient CD system which could be accommodated with minimal modifications in the currently available direct or point-to-point communication systems. The proposed CD system is based on quadrature signaling (QS). With quadrature signaling, both sender’s and partners’ information symbols are transmitted simultaneously in his/her multiple access channels. It also reduces the synchronization as well as the interference problems that occur in the schemes reported in the literature. The performance of the proposed QS-CD system is analyzed at different layers. First, we study the bit error probability (BEP) of the QS-CD system for both fixed and adaptive relaying at the partner. It is shown from the BEP performance that the QS-CD system can achieve diversity order of two. Then, a cross-layer communication system is developed by combing the proposed QS-CD system at the physical layer and the truncated stop-and- wait automatic repeat request (ARQ) at the data link layer. The performance of the cross-layer system is analyzed and compared with existing schemes in the literature for performance metrics at the data link layer and upper layers, i.e., frame error rate, packet loss rate, average packet delay, throughput, etc. In addition, the studies show that the proposed QS-CD-ARQ system outperforms existing schemes when it has a good partner. In this respect, the proposed system is fully utilizing the communication channel and less complex in terms of implementation when compared with the existing systems. Since the partner selection gives significant impact on the performance of the CD systems, partner selection algorithms (PSAs) are extensively analyzed for both static and mobile user network. In this case, each individual user would like to take advantage of cooperation by choosing a suitable partner. The objective of an individual user may conflict with the objective of the network. In this regard, we would like to introduce a PSA which tries to balance both users and network objectives by taking user mobility into consideration. The proposed PSA referred to as worst link first (WLF), to choose the best partner in cooperative communication systems. The WLF algorithm gives priority to the worst link user to choose its partner and to maximize the energy gain of the radio cell. It is easy to implement not only in centralized networks but also in distributed networks with or without the global knowledge of users in the network. The proposed WLF matching algorithm, being less complex than the optimal maximum weighted (MW) matching and the heuristic based Greedy matching algorithms, yields performance characteristics close to those of MW matching algorithm and better than the Greedy matching algorithm in both static and mobile user networks. Furthermore, the proposed matching algorithm provides around 10dB energy gain with optimal power allocation over a non-cooperative system which is equivalent to prolonging the cell phone battery recharge time by about ten times.

Background: The Kenyan financial sector has recently been growing at high rate due to the inclusion of individuals who previously were unable access banking services. This has led to a competitive situation where banks and micro finance institutions are searching for ways to manage in this competitive sector. In addition, mobile phone companies are now considered as a competitive threat. Aim: This study will look into how strategic alliances between banks and mobile phone companies can be used to overcome these challenges with a specific focus on the recent alliance between Equity Bank (Kenya), and Safaricom Ltd. The study will also focus on the management of strategic alliances within different industries. Method: The analysis of this study is based on qualitative research including the use of interviews with members of both organizations and secondary data which includes written documentation and analysis of previously recorded discussions about the alliance with different members of both organizations. Results: The authors found strategic alliances can be used as a tool which enables firms to overcome threats from their competitors while gaining additional benefits. In terms of alliance management, the use of separate teams was found to be an effective management tool in cross industry alliances.

Core enterprise is the center of Green Supply Chain (GSC) and it helps partners to meet the environmental standards and to improve GSC’s performance. However there are two questions for core enterprise when it establishes GSC: What roles do core enterprise play in GSC? How does core enterprise improve GSC’s performance? What criterions are considered when core enterprise chooses partners in GSC?   In order to answer these questions, this paper will use following methods: firstly, Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Analytic network process (ANP) have be used to study on three research companies (IKEA, TOYOTA and Apple); Secondly, six interviews with research companies’ employees.   After case study, the results show that when core enterprise chooses partners, it will draw up some criterions and sub-standards for partners to fulfill. Furthermore, core enterprise plays the roles as GSC’s builder, director, coordinator, and designer in the system.   Finally, this paper answered the research questions: Firstly, in order to improve the performance of GSC, core enterprise should direct all partners in GSC to save materials and recycle waste in each link of GSC. Secondly, core enterprise can use four criterions to choose partners. These criterions are: environmental management performance, product-related elements, production-service levels, and enterprise culture.

Next generation wireless communication systems are expected to provide a variety of services including voice, data and video. The rapidly growing demand for these services needs high data rate wireless communication systems with reliability and high user capacity. Recently, it has been shown that reliability and achievable data rate of wireless communication systems increases dramatically by employing multiple transmit and receive antennas. Transmit diversity is a powerful technique for combating multipath fading in wireless communications. However, employing multiple antennas in a mobile terminal to achieve the transmit diversity in the uplink is not feasible due to the limited size of the mobile unit. In order to overcome this problem, a new mode of transmit diversity called cooperative diversity (CD) based on user cooperation, was proposed very recently. By user cooperation, it is meant that the sender transmits to the destination and copies to other users, called partners, for relaying to the destination. The antennas of the sender and the partners together form a multiple antenna situation. CD systems are immuned not only against small scale channel fading but also against large scale channel fading. On the other hand, CD systems are more sensitive to interuser (between sender and partner) transmission errors and user mobility. In this dissertation, we propose a bandwidth and power efficient CD system which could be accommodated with minimal modifications in the currently available direct or point-to-point communication systems. The proposed CD system is based on quadrature signaling (QS). With quadrature signaling, both sender’s and partners’ information symbols are transmitted simultaneously in his/her multiple access channels. It also reduces the synchronization as well as the interference problems that occur in the schemes reported in the literature. The performance of the proposed QS-CD system is analyzed at different layers. First, we study the bit error probability (BEP) of the QS-CD system for both fixed and adaptive relaying at the partner. It is shown from the BEP performance that the QS-CD system can achieve diversity order of two. Then, a cross-layer communication system is developed by combing the proposed QS-CD system at the physical layer and the truncated stop-and- wait automatic repeat request (ARQ) at the data link layer. The performance of the cross-layer system is analyzed and compared with existing schemes in the literature for performance metrics at the data link layer and upper layers, i.e., frame error rate, packet loss rate, average packet delay, throughput, etc. In addition, the studies show that the proposed QS-CD-ARQ system outperforms existing schemes when it has a good partner. In this respect, the proposed system is fully utilizing the communication channel and less complex in terms of implementation when compared with the existing systems. Since the partner selection gives significant impact on the performance of the CD systems, partner selection algorithms (PSAs) are extensively analyzed for both static and mobile user network. In this case, each individual user would like to take advantage of cooperation by choosing a suitable partner. The objective of an individual user may conflict with the objective of the network. In this regard, we would like to introduce a PSA which tries to balance both users and network objectives by taking user mobility into consideration. The proposed PSA referred to as worst link first (WLF), to choose the best partner in cooperative communication systems. The WLF algorithm gives priority to the worst link user to choose its partner and to maximize the energy gain of the radio cell. It is easy to implement not only in centralized networks but also in distributed networks with or without the global knowledge of users in the network. The proposed WLF matching algorithm, being less complex than the optimal maximum weighted (MW) matching and the heuristic based Greedy matching algorithms, yields performance characteristics close to those of MW matching algorithm and better than the Greedy matching algorithm in both static and mobile user networks. Furthermore, the proposed matching algorithm provides around 10dB energy gain with optimal power allocation over a non-cooperative system which is equivalent to prolonging the cell phone battery recharge time by about ten times.

Following the development of new technologies, more and more users can access online mobile content now. Reading news is the most used service in Taiwan. Because of the potential profits of valued-added services in telecommunications, many traditional media are joining this market by providing news content. The author tries to find out the motivations, reasons of partner selection, and the measures of performance of the strategic alliances between telecommunication operators and news content providers by in-depth interviewing managers of telecommunication and media in news mobile content service strategic alliance. This research analyzes the different strategies taken by both parties and evaluates the outcome of strategic alliance. This research indicates that the different managerial culture between alliances would influence the sustainability. Besides, Strategic alliances have the risk of profit-sharing and stray from seeking short-term profit.

More and more industries have collaborated aggressively with other fields, and try to strengthen their relationship recently in cultural creative industries. However, people always focus their attention on the successful reason of executing alliance, but they ignore the successful reason of concluding alliance. The process of concluding alliance usually come fault because of the gap in their concept. For the reason, this thesis will research the factor of concluding alliance successfully. According to the process of concluding alliance, we have known the result of concluding alliance would have affected by motive, partner selection and the type of alliance. The alliance could conclude when the factor match up with each other. Base on this structure, the thesis try to explore which reason affecting the alliance conclusion. This thesis applied in-depth interview method to gather the firsthand information of the cultural creative industries. According to the research structure and firsthand information, it could generalize five successful factor of concluding alliance. Finally, it would have examined the development of cultural creative industries in Taiwan and found them lack for a channel to connect.

<p>Background: Traditionally defined boundaries and borders between organizations are at present being re-evaluated because of new and tougher demands. Today we can see a trend where these boundaries are being lowered or even eliminated when organizations choose to co-operate instead of compete. </p><p>Purpose: In order to create an understanding for the partner selection process in the newly founded joint ventures between the companies which are building the Swedish 3G Network, the determining factors are being studied. </p><p>Delimitation: The studies companies are co-operating as network operators but are at the same time competing as mobile operators. This relationship is in the literature described as co-opetition, which will not be investigated in this paper. </p><p>Realization: Taking our starting point in Geringer’s task- and partner-related approach, a simple model has been created for the task. Empirical data have been collected through interviews, and have been analyzed with this model. </p><p>Results: Essentially the same factors have been found determining for the companies which have committed themselves for co-operation. These factors do however tend to differ partly between the two joint ventures that have been founded. In the Europolitan Vodafone” Hi3G joint venture, compatibility between top management and culture&structure seem to be the motivating factors. From a Telia - Tele2-perspective, the mutual factors seem to be financing and compatibility between top management. An important criterion has in both joint venture constellations to the access to existing real capital and infrastructure as well as having existing customers.</p>

The globalization of the markets and the worldwide competition forces the SMEs to implement new technologies and organize themselves using new concepts in order to maintain their competitivity. This type of temporary alliance is called as Virtual Enterprise (VE). SMEs seem to be appropriate units for building this type of temporary alliances when their properties (such as flexibility, adaptability and agility) are taken into account. This study is concerned with the simulation modeling of shop floor activities for SMEs in VEs. Analyzing the SMEs with their current and new work load over the existing one by using simulation tool may help the VE management unit to see the most appropriate SMEs for the projects. Because of mentioned advantages, this thesis will test whether the simulation tool will or will not be used in the selection of the VE partner. The simulation methodology for modeling shop floor activities of SMEs was developed by using ARENA simulation tool in this thesis. A hydraulic cylinder company was selected for pilot application. Manufacturing of twelve basic hydraulic cylinders was studied in the developed model. Four different queue rules were applied to the developed model to optimize the system efficiency. By analyzing the output statistical results of ARENA which were obtained with the usage of the input variables of SME (such as resource capacities, process times, setup and remove times of parts, variables wrt to workers, etc.) best manufacturing policy for pilot SME was able to be found. To see the response of the system under different circumstances, grinding and hardening operations for a drive shaft manufacturing were assigned to the company. This new job was applied on two models (Base Model and Optimized System Model) and the statistical results of each were examined.

Aim: The aim of this thesis is to describe possible steps of how circular partnerships can be formed, and how they can connect the different steps of a material loop, such as design and recycling. The focus of the empirical study within this thesis is the reconnection of recycling, design and production within the household goods industry. By this we will answer the following research question:“What are the rationales and circumstances needed for separate organizations to develop a sustainability-oriented innovative partnership in the context of the Circular Economy?” The Case: This research project is based on a case study of a collaboration between Stena Recycling AB, a Swedish recycling company, and Electrolux AB, a global appliances producer. Together those two companies formed a pilot project, called the “Infinity Project”, whose goal is to produce a vacuum cleaner which is made out of 100% post-consumer recycled materials, and is 100% recyclable. Methodology: The researchers participated in the meetings of the Infinity Project, and interviewed the people who were involved in the beginning of the collaboration. The research is done in an abductive process, as literature was analyzed that explained the findings made in our observations. From the theory and our findings we created a model, which helps explain the what, why, and how of Stena Recycling AB and Electrolux AB reconnecting recycling with design and production processes. Key findings: Through industrial symbiotic lenses and a corporate social innovation mindset the two companies recognized the enormous amount of waste as a problem of linear business models. With a mindset driven by corporate social innovation, they saw the potential of a collaboration in order to achieve a shared competitive advantage. By selecting each other as a partner for this circular economic collaboration, they identified how they could combine their respective knowledge and resources to reach their mutual goals. Through a long term strategic approach with a clear and shared vision, clear targets from the directing management, and a team with complementary skills, many program synergies have been realized, with potentially outsized successes for each organization. This setting also created an environment of trust and a common identity within the project, which was fundamental to create social innovation and to find successful ways to reconnect recycling with design and production. Additionally, the existence of the project within each organization seemed to function as a talent magnet, attracting like-minded sustainability-motivated talent who would best perform towards the goals of the project.