BACKGROUND: Project based structures has become more and more common in the organizations of today. As the project based structures are given a more central role in the organizations the interdependencies between the projects are getting more attention. These structures need a new type of control to meet the unique challenges that arise. The research that has been done has been concentrated around the project form and the projects internal control, the area of multi-project management is therefore relatively unexplored. The few existing studies on the subject focus on projects in the construction industry why research in more complex fields of business have been requested. PURPOSE: The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze how knowledge intense multi-project organizations manage their project activities, and to determine how different organizational characteristics affect the need for management control systems. METHODOLOGY: The empirical data has been collected through interviews with personnel in BT Products R&D, Gambro R&D and AstraZeneca Development. These organizations are all mature and project intense. CONCLUSION: With an organization´s line of business follows a certain level of uncertainty and interdependencies between projects. Another important factor is the organization´s level of internal and external differentiation. These three factors together describe the characteristics of an organization, which forms the organization´s starting position. To handle the uncertainty of unpredicted events the organizations’ reflexes has to be quick enough; this is made possible through a project oriented organizational structure where the project managers have more authority than the function manager. Interdependencies between projects is handled through coordination, the level of coordination needed is dependent on the degree of interdependencies. Last but not least the organization has to handle the complexity that comes with the degree of internal and external differentiation. This is managed through the integration and extent of the management control systems. In the analysis chapter a model is presented that describes the relationship between the organization characteristics and management control systems. / BAKGRUND: I dagens organisationer är det allt vanligare att verksamheten bedrivs i projektform. När företag allt mer började ta till sig projektbaserade strukturer kom relationen mellan projekt i fokus. Denna arbetsform kräver en ny typ av styrning, detta för att hantera de beroenden som finns mellan projekten samt för att möta de samordningsproblem som kan uppstå. De senaste åren har projektstyrning blivit ett allt vanligare forskningsområde, multiprojektstyrning finns det dock inte mycket information om. Den forskning som väl genomförts har inriktats mot byggsektorn varför forskning på komplexare områden eftertysts. SYFTE: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka och analysera hur kunskapsintensiva multiprojektorganisationer hanterar sin projektverksamhet, samt att utröna hur olika organisationers egenskaper påverkar behovet av styrsystem. GENOMFÖRANDE: Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom intervjuer på BT Products R&D, Gambro R&D och AstraZeneca Development R&D. Samtliga organisationer är mogna och har en arbetsgång som baseras på projekt. RESULTAT: Ett företags verksamhetsområde medför en viss grad av osäkerhet i den praktiska verksamheten, ytterligare en annan verksamhetsspecifik faktor är beroendegrad mellan projekt. Vidare är ett viktigt karaktärsdrag hos organisationer graden av differentiering. Dessa tre faktorer beskriver organisationens karaktäristika, med andra ord vilket utgångsläge organisationen har i sitt arbete. För att kunna hantera osäkerhet krävs att organisationen har tillräckligt bra reflexer för att möta oförutsedda händelser, detta löses genom att ge projekten mer auktoritet jämfört med funktionen. För att hantera beroenden krävs att verksamheten koordineras, vilken grad av koordinering som krävs beror på vilken grad av beroenden som finns representerat. Slutligen måste den komplexitet som differentiering ger hanteras, detta sker genom integrationen och omfattningen av styrsystemen. I uppsatsen presenteras avslutningsvis en modell som beskriver relationen mellan organisationen och dess styrning.

Applied economists and strategy scholars have examined a variety of firm-level factors that may explain the level and direction of firms' innovative effort and performance, including firms' profit incentives. Innovation at the firm level, however, should also depend heavily on the nature of the pecuniary and non-pecuniary incentives driving the efforts of those individuals that are responsible for innovative activities within firms. Drawing on research in economics and social psychology, I examine three questions: 1. What are the motives of individuals engaged in firm innovation? 2. How do individuals' motives and incentives affect their innovative effort and performance? 3. How do individuals' motives and incentives differ between entrepreneurial and established firms, and are any such differences associated with differences in innovative effort and performance? My empirical analysis builds on the National Science Foundation's SESTAT data, which contain survey responses from over 10,000 scientists and engineers employed in U.S. firms. Among others, the data contain measures of individuals' extrinsic, intrinsic, and social motives (e.g., preferences for work benefits such as salary, intellectual challenge, and contribution to society), effort, and innovative performance. In chapter Two ("What makes them tick - Employee motives and firm innovation"), I develop a formal model of the relationships between individuals' motives and incentives, effort, and innovative performance. Econometric analyses using the SESTAT data suggest that individuals' motives have significant effects upon innovative effort, as well as on innovative performance, controlling for effort. Overall, intrinsic motives (in particular, intellectual challenge) appear to be more beneficial for innovation than extrinsic motives. In chapter Three ("Fire in the belly? Individuals' motives and innovative performance in startups and established firms"), I examine differences in motives, effort, and performance between startups and established firms. I find that individuals' extrinsic motives differ significantly between startups and established firms, while their intrinsic motives are surprisingly similar. Startup employees expend more effort and have higher patent application counts than individuals in established firms. Individuals' motives explain only a limited amount of these effort and performance differences across firm types, however, because the intrinsic motives that are most strongly associated with effort and performance differ little between startups and established firms. / Dissertation

What are the factors behind the recent development of industrial technology in China? Does China follow the path of learning technology from outside through direct foreign investment and international trade as other Asian newly industrialized economies, or imitate the U.S. model that develop science and technology within the country based on the strong domestic research capacity? This study examines these questions using a comprehensive research model and a new Chinese patent dataset. The patent statistics in this study are created based on more than 120 thousand granted invention patent abstracts in China between 1985 and 2003. Compared with the Chinese patent data used in prior studies, this dataset distinguishes firm patents from patents awarded to universities and research institutes. The dependent variable for regression analysis is the technological innovation performance of Chinese domestic firms as measured by the number of patents awarded to firms in 30 Chinese provinces from 1989 to 1999. The final panel data for regression analysis were completed with other provincial indicators for the same years on research and development (R and D) expenditures by firms and public institutions, foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic consumption, and foreign exports. The results of count data fixed effect regression approaches show that the efforts of firms, measured by industrial R and D expenditures, spillovers from R and D activities conducted at universities and public institutions in the same region, and demand driven mainly by foreign exports are the most prominent positive factors in the domestic firms technological innovation performance. While the net impact of FDI on domestic firms patenting activity is mostly insignificant and sometimes negative

This thesis attempts to analyze a part of the big and complex process of how intellectual property ownership and technological innovation influence the performance of firms and their revenues. Here I analyze a firm's stock market performance as a function of the quantity and quality of intellectual property (patents) owned by the firm in context of the three US high-technology sectors, Pharmaceuticals, Semiconductors and Wireless. In these sectors, value of a firm is predominantly driven by the technologies which a firm owns. I use citation based indicators and number of claims to measure the quality of patents. This research presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that in high-tech sectors, companies which generate better quality intellectual property perform better than average in the stock market. I also posit that firms which are producing better quality technologies (good R&D) invest more in R&D regardless of their market performance. Furthermore, though smaller firms get relatively less returns on quality and quantity of innovation, they tend to invest a bigger fraction of their total assets in R&D when they are generating high quality patents. Larger firms enjoy the super-additivity effects in terms of market performance as the same intellectual property gives better returns to them. In addition, returns to R&D are relatively higher in the pharmaceutical industry than semiconductor or wireless industries.

Since ¡§Doi Moi¡¨ (renovation) begun in 1986, Vietnam has engaged in economic reform on an on-going basis in order to create a fruitful investment environment and attract foreign investors to engage in its market. As the total investment amount is over 19 billion US dollars, the role of Taiwanese investors played is more important than before. Notwithstanding that the investment environment in Vietnam has improved more significantly than ever, the enterprises¡¦ operation still has to bear considerable risk. Due to Vietnam¡¦s special single-party state constitution, for foreign investors, it is expected that the political risk is existed with the high feasibility of government change policies and ignore investors¡¦ benefits. According to this, the purpose of this research is to realize how the host¡¦s political risk influences Taiwanese MNEs¡¦ entry mode choice. As previous studies generally focused on the discussion of the relationship between political risk and entry mode choice, however, the moderating effects of firms¡¦ own resource and advantages are less mentioned. Therefore, this thesis tries to provide a theoretical framework based on resource-based view, eclectic theory and other related theories that includes profitability, financial structure, and R&D capability as the contingency factors to examine how these factors moderate the relationship between political risk and entry mode choice. The findings of this study reveal that when the political risk in Vietnam getting higher, Taiwanese MNEs are more likely to engage in Vietnam through JVs. Besides, the positive moderating effect of profitability is also existed. It shows when a firm with higher profitability, it will more tend to choose JVs as the political risk in Vietnam rising.

Innovation policy (science & technology policy/program) aims to stimulate industrial innovation and address the gap between ideas and the market for new products/process. Hence, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are an important target group for innovation policy. While SMEs play important economic role in Taiwan, it is more meaningful to evaluate related innovation policies, to understand the impact of polices as well as test theoretical models of interactions between the public and private sectors. This topic is significant but little studied or investigated with the chance of bias. From the perspective of program evaluation, the thesis evaluated the effect of government subsidies on SMEs¡¦ innovation including impact assessment and efficiency assessment and took the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program as an example. The target population for evaluation covered three groups: SBIR awardees, firms with rejected applications, general SME manufacturers. Questionnaires were delivered to 942 firms with SBIR Phase I or Phase II awards and 222 firms with rejected applications between 1999 and 2004; 374 and 36 valid questionnaires were returned separately. The Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs provided the data of general SMEs. This thesis evaluated the impact of SBIR by a quasi-experimental design and examines the efficiency by an econometric model. Main findings are as follows: A. The impact of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ R&D spending is significant. 2. Productivity (employment or sales): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ employment is significant. Compared to general SME manufacturers, the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ sales is significant; but compared to firms with rejected applications, the growth of SBIR awardees¡¦ sales is not significant. B. The efficiency of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): On average, 0.28 percentage change in SBIR awardees¡¦ R&D spending is correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship). 2. Productivity (employment or sales): On average, 0.08 percentage change in SBIR awardees¡¦ employment and 0.25 percentage change in SBIR awardees sales is separately correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship).

Government support for applied Research and Development (R&D) persisted in the US despite evidence to the contrary. Many provide government R&D funding for enterprises of particular interest and a number of countries have substantially increased their expenditure on R&D. SBIR as a means of funding high-risk R&D with broad commercial and societal benefits that would not be undertaken by a single company, either because the risk was too high or because a large enough share of the benefits of success would not accrue to the company for it to make the investment. Therefore, the program¡¦s goal is to the development and application of new, enabling technologies that individual firms would not or pursue on their own and thereby encourage the economic growth that comes from the commercialization and use of new technologies in the private sector. However, very few studies of R&D policy toward innovative subsidy program in developing country. Public programs to subsidize high-technology firms have represented a significant but little-studied area of public expenditures. This article assesses the long-run success of firms participating in the SBIR program in Taiwan. The plan of this research is as follows. The purpose of this search in Taiwan is to study the impact of government-industry R&D programs on private R&D. The research has 3 important aspects. First, using a questionnaire to understand the enterprises intention and behavior which have participated in the ¡§Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)¡¨ this paper first examines whether government R&D subsidies influence firm¡¦s innovative activities. Second, this paper examines what the correlation is between government funding and private R&D expenditures. Finally, this research conducted 67 important interviews from enterprises. Not only the multi-methodology comparisons, the empirical results aimed at: 1) Examine the role of public/private partnerships (PP/Ps) as an instrument to leverage public investment in strategy technology and innovation and to achieve other goals of technology and innovation policy; 2) Identify the critical factors determining the success of R&D subsidy program for innovation, with an emphasis on programme design, financial arrangement, and evaluation 3) Government R&D subsidies have a significant positive effect or not on firm¡¦s R&D expenditure / employment / firm-financed R&D spending.

The purpose of the study is to discuss the Engineer¡¦s working Passion and detects the inner meaning by way of inquiring senior engineering managers firstly. In this research, the inner meanings are applied to developing the framework and questionary. The inquiry result is that working passion¡¦s sources affect working passion¡¦s behaviors, and working passion behaviors bring working passion effect. In this study, working passion source is defined as independent variable, working passion effect is defined as dependent variable, and working passion behavior is defined as a mediator. Furthermore, person-organization fit and person-job fit are defined as interfered variables. The thesis adopted questionnaire survey and target on R&D dept. engineers in Taiwan high-technology industry. 388 copies of the 450 questionnaires issued are returned, among which 369 copies are valid. The data were analyzed by reliability analysis, factor analysis, one-way ANOVA, hierarchical regression and Canonical correlation analysis to discuss the relationships. The findings of the study are as follows. (1) A positive relationship between the working passion sources and the working passion effects. (2) A positive relationship between the working passion behaviors and the working passion effects. (3) Working passion behaviors mediate the relationship between the working passion sources and the working passion effects. (4) Person-organization fit and person-job fit interfere in each other variables. The more person-organization fit, the more motivation and leadership result in working passion behaviors. The more person-job fit, the more leadership and team birr bring working passion behaviors.

The R&D alliance becomes a popular way to develop products by cooperating with external organizations in the face of severe global competition. The enterprises can improve core competence and reduce environmental uncertainty through R&D alliances. However, the success rate of alliance is not high. Consequently, how to organize and operate R&D alliances effectively and successfully is the key competence of enterprise to win in the future. In order to increase the success rate of R&D alliance, the purpose of this study is to create a conceptual and integrated model for developing the successful mechanisms of formation and operation on R&D alliances. VPDCA (Vision-Plan-Do-Check-Action) cycle was developed as a conceptual framework through literature survey and case study for investigating the successful mechanisms of formation and operation on R&D alliances, which is to be regarded as a ¡¥learning by doing¡¦ process. First of all, vision leading is the first step to assure alliance to be succeeded. SSO (Search-Select-Organize) was developed as a successful process model for organizing R&D alliances. R&D alliance operation was regarded as a teamwork operation in this study. Only has the good effective team operation, can achieve expected vision. LICTEL (Leadership-Integration-Communication-Trust-Execution-Learning) was considered as the key aspects to run alliances successfully. The key success factors of each aspect are as follows: Leadership: vision, inspiration vitality, integrity and delegation Integration: open, linkage, collaboration, leverage outside resources, synergy Communication: dialogue, open mind, passion, patience and positive thinking Trust: co-value, cooperation, communication, consensus and commitment Execution: discipline, push and pull Learning: connect, interaction and share The achievements of operation and management on R&D alliance should be evaluated finally. 3P (Pleasure-Performance-Profit) was considered as key measures to evaluate the outcomes of R&D alliance implementation. Furthermore, effectiveness, efficiency and competence build-up are regarded as key measures to evaluate implementation performance of R&D alliance.

<p>Rättsläget vad gäller beskattningen av FoU-samarbeten i enkla bolag synes i vissa avseenden</p><p>vara oklart. Trots detta har inkomstskatterättsliga implikationer av FoU-samarbeten</p><p>mellan företag inte behandlats i någon större utsträckning i doktrinen. Tyngdpunkten i</p><p>denna uppsats ligger på den resultatfördelning och de förmögenhetsöverföringar som kan</p><p>uppstå i samband med FoU-samarbeten och de tänkbara inkomstskatterättsliga effekter</p><p>som de för med sig. Vid en belysning av dessa transaktioner har vi funnit att det finns ett</p><p>behov av klargöranden för hur dessa skall behandlas inkomstskatterättsligt.</p><p>Utifrån vår studie framgår det att samarbetsavtalet får en avgörande betydelse för beskattningen</p><p>i enkla bolag. Den rådande uppfattningen synes alltså vara att ett bolagsavtal kan ha</p><p>skatterättslig verkan avseende inkomstfördelningen utan att en äganderättsförändring behöver</p><p>ske. Det torde dock krävas, som lyfts fram i doktrinen, att fördelningen kan anses</p><p>vara företagsekonomiskt motiverad och inte endast betingad av skatteskäl. Exakt var denna</p><p>gräns går är dock inte helt klart. Vad gäller förmögenhetsöverföringar inom ramen för ett</p><p>samarbete torde det i vissa fall kunna bli aktuellt med uttagsbeskattning.</p><p>I vår jämförelse med andra former av samverkan har vi funnit att det föreligger skillnader</p><p>avseende periodiseringen av inkomster och utgifter, vilket innebär att det kan finnas inkomstskatträttsliga</p><p>incitament till att bedriva FoU-verksamhet i ett enkelt bolag framför</p><p>andra former av samverkan.</p> / <p>The legal position concerning income taxation of R&D-cooperations in “simple companies”</p><p>(enkla bolag) seems to be somewhat uncertain. Despite this, income tax effects of</p><p>R&D-cooperations have been sparsely discussed in the doctrine. The emphasis of this thesis</p><p>is on the possible income tax effects of the division of income and the possible income</p><p>tax effects of those transfers of property that may arise in connection with R&Dcooperations.</p><p>When studying these transactions we have found that there is a need for</p><p>clarifications on how they shall be treated in the income tax law.</p><p>On the basis of our thesis it is clear that the cooperation contract is of decisive importance</p><p>for the taxation of “simple companies”. The current opinion seems to be that a cooperation</p><p>contract can be of importance for the division of income at the income taxation without</p><p>the need of a previous transfer of property. Nevertheless it should be required, as put</p><p>forward in the doctrine, that the division is considered to be economically motivated and</p><p>not only based on tax evasion purposes. Transfers of property within a cooperation could</p><p>in some cases conduct withdrawal taxation.</p><p>In our comparison with other forms of cooperation we have found that there are some differences</p><p>concerning the point of time of taxation for income and the time for deducting</p><p>expenses. This means that there could be income tax incentives to run R&D-cooperations</p><p>in a “simple company” rather than in other forms of cooperation.</p>