Background: Sweden is known for encouraging entrepreneurship where 99.9% of the business organizations are SMEs. Including Sweden, several other countries in the world provide significant importance to family firms, as their contribution is noteworthy to the global economy. Due to numerous reasons such as globalization and growth aspects, FSMEs are forced to gain competitive advantage through international diversification. Internationalization of FSMEs can be influenced by unique characteristics of family firms.Purpose: Internationalization is a process where the decision of internationalization can be affected by several factors including resources. Among unique characteristics of family firms, FSMEs also possess family-specific resources that may influence these decisions. Hence the purpose of this study is to gain an in-depth understanding on which and how family-specific resources influence internationalization decisions.Method: With the use of a single case study method, we gained valuable insight of a Swedish candy manufacturing family firm which engaged in internationalization successfully. The data was collected through in-depth interviews, observations, company website, published press interviews, press articles and other databases.Conclusion: Internationalization can be a daunting decision for family firms where availability of resources play a major role. The key family-specific resources that influenced the decision of internationalization of the family firm studied in this thesis were bridging social capital, human capital and governance capital. The remaining capitals may have contributed to the internationalization process. Other than the family-specific resources, factors such as generational change and ability to gain substantial financial support in further influenced their internationalization decisions. These findings likewise confirm the existence of heterogeneity of family firms which makes them unique.

Maturity models have become a widely used framework for assessing various capabilities and technologies among businesses. This thesis develops a maturity model for assessing Business Analytics (BA) in Swedish e-commerce firms. Business Analytics has become an increasingly important part of modern businesses, and firms are continuously looking for new ways to perform analysis of the data available to them. The prominent previous maturity models within BA have mainly been developed by IT-consultancy firms with the underlying intent of selling their IT services. Consequently, these models have a primary focus on the technical factors towards Business Analytics maturity, partly neglecting the importance of organisational factors. This thesis develops a Business Analytic Maturity Model (BAMM) which fills an identified research gap of academic maturity models with emphasis on the organisational factors of BA maturity. Using a qualitative research design, the BAMM is adapted to the Swedish e-commerce industry through two sequential evaluation stages. The study finds that organisational factors have a greater impact on BA maturity than previous research suggests. The BAMM and the study's results contribute with knowledge of Business Analytics, as well as providing e-commerce firms with insights into how to leverage their data.

O conhecimento tem se mostrado como uma importante fonte de vantagem competitiva para as organizações. Por isso, as empresas buscam, cada vez mais, mecanismos que alavanquem os processos de geração, gestão e disseminação do conhecimento organizacional. Uma das ferramentas, que pode potencializar a transformação do conhecimento em vantagens competitivas, é a universidade corporativa. Nesse contexto, as franquias surgem como um dos objetos de estudos que podem ajudar a explicar esta relação, pois desenvolver e compartilhar conhecimento são aspectos vitais para o franchising. Dessa forma, o principal objetivo deste trabalho é identificar elementos que possam influenciar na geração de vantagens competitivas pela implantação e gestão de universidades corporativas no franchising. Para atingir esses objetivos, foi desenvolvida uma revisão teórica focada nos conceitos de vantagens competitivas, universidades corporativas e franchising. O primeiro esforço mostrou que existe uma lacuna teórica no tema, indicando a necessidade de se realizar um estudo de campo para aprofundar o conhecimento sobre o fenômeno estudado. O estudo de caso, em conjunto com entrevistas em profundidade, foram os métodos escolhidos para realizar o objetivo proposto. Foram realizadas dez entrevistas em profundidade com especialistas em educação corporativa e no franchising, sendo levantadas informações secundárias dos processos de educação do Giraffas e das Universidades Corporativas do Banco do Brasil, Ernest Young do Brasil, Cacau Show e McDonald\'s do Brasil. Para as duas últimas empresas foram desenvolvidos estudos de caso, levantando-se informações comparativas dos seus principais concorrentes. Dessa forma, também foram analisadas informações da Chocolates Brasil, Kopenhagen, Bob\'s e Subway. As principais conclusões do trabalho foram: as universidades corporativas podem impactar de forma expressiva no desenvolvimento de vantagens competitivas no franchising; apesar de as franquias promoverem diversas ações educacionais, as universidades corporativas ajudam a organizar de forma estratégica essas ações, gerando, nos casos estudados, mais impactos que as ações isoladas; as ações que mais geram resultados e barreiras à imitação são as relacionadas à disseminação do conhecimento tácito; a relação entre unidades próprias e franqueadas parece ser importante para se estabelecer estratégias educacionais da rede; a avaliação dos impactos dos treinamentos nos resultados operacionais e financeiros é uma grande dificuldade observada; a literatura preconiza uma relação entre unidades próprias e franqueadas nos estágios de maior maturidade do negócio que não foi observada nos casos estudados; também não foram observadas uma preocupação acentuada com o envolvimento de outros stakeholders e com a busca efetiva de modelos de autofinanciamento. / Knowledge has been shown to be an important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Therefore, companies increasingly seek mechanisms that leverage the processes of generation, management and dissemination of organizational knowledge. One of the tools that can enhance the transformation of knowledge into competitive advantages is the corporate university. In this context, franchises emerge as one of the objects of study that may help explain this relationship, for developing and sharing knowledge are vital for franchising. Thus, the main objective of this work is to identify elements that can influence the generation of competitive advantages for the implementation and management of corporate universities in franchising. To achieve these goals, it developed a focused literature review on the concepts of competitive advantage, corporate universities and franchising. This first effort proved that there is a theoretical gap in the topic, indicating the need to carry out a field study to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon studied. The case study, in conjunction with in-depth interviews were the methods chosen to achieve the proposed objective. Ten interviews were conducted in depth with experts in corporate education and franchising, being lifted secondary information from Giraffas education processes and from the corporate universities of Banco do Brasil, Ernest Young of Brazil, Cacau Show and McDonald\'s Brazil, for the last two companies was developed case studies, rising comparative information of its main competitors. In this way, were also analyzed informations from Chocolates Brazil, Kopenhagen, Bob\'s and Subway. The main conclusions were: corporate universities can impact in a significant way in the development of competitive advantages in franchising; despite franchises promote various educational activities, corporate universities help organize strategically these actions, generating, in the cases studied, more impact than isolated actions; actions that generate more results and barriers to imitation are related to the dissemination of tacit knowledge; the relationship between owned and franchised units appears to be important to establish educational strategies of the franchising network; evaluating the impact of training on operating and financial results is a great difficulty observed; the literature reports a relationship between owned and franchised units in the stages of greater maturity of the business that was not observed in this study; They were also not observed a concern about the involvement of other stakeholders and the effective search of auto financing models.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:36:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 19 / Nenhuma / As competências devem ser compreendidas sob uma perspectiva dinâmica devido à rapidez das mudanças no ambiente competitivo. O dinamismo é essencial quando se sabe que as mudanças são características constantes do mercado. Neste contexto, a trajetória de uma organização pode ser considerada como um dos pontos fundamentais para o entendimento da dinâmica de uma organização, pois sua análise apresenta uma rica fonte de informações que explicam as mudanças e estratégias tomadas para melhor compreensão da consolidação das competências organizacionais, ao longo do tempo. O presente trabalho analisa o desenvolvimento de competências organizacionais nos diferentes negócios de uma empresa do setor calçadista do Rio Grande do Sul (RS) e a sua articulação com as práticas de gestão, tendo como referência a sua história e as principais mudanças ocorridas. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, de natureza exploratória e descritiva, desenvolvida através do método de estudo de caso no Grupo Paquetá. Os dados foram coletados / The notion of competence should be understood under a dynamic perspective due to how fast changes take place in the competitive scenario. Considering the fact that changes are a constant factor in the market, dynamism is essential. In this scenario, the organization path can be considered as one of the key elements to understand the organizational dynamics, since this analysis presents a rich source of information and basis to understand the consolidation of organizational competences throughout time. The present work analyses the development of organizational competences in the different business of a shoes section of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and its articulation with the managerial practices, having as reference its history and the main changes that have happened. It is a qualitative research, with exploratory and descriptive characteristics, developed by the case study method in the Paquetá Group. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documental analysis. The main result

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:40:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 25 / Nenhuma / A competição a nível mundial obrigou as empresas de manufatura a reformularem os seus modelos gerenciais e seus sistemas produtivos , visando uma melhor utilização dos recursos da produção e uma elevação na sua eficiência operacional para atingir uma vantagem competitiva sustentável. Diante deste contexto, esta pesquisa apresenta a proposta de um modelo descritivo de sistema MES (Manufacturing Execution System) visto como um recurso sob o enfoque da Teoria da Visão Baseada em Recursos, para a aplicação na gestão da produção de uma empresa de manufatura de lonas de freios para veículos pesados. O seu desenvolvimento segue o método da pesquisa-ação, através da adaptação de um modelo de uma pesquisa anterior, incluindo uma fase de diagnóstico, na qual se realiza um levantamento da situação da organização sob estudo, uma fase de aprendizado externo, realizada em outra empresa com o objetivo de se aprender sobre o seu processo de seleção e implantação de sistema similar e uma fase de planejamento da ação, que apr / The worldwide competition forced manufacturing companies to reformulate their managerial models and production systems, seeking for a better use of production resources and an increase in their operational efficiency to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. In front of this context this research presents a proposal of a descriptive model of a MES system (Manufacturing Execution System), seem as a resource under the focus of the Resource-Based View theory, for implementation in the production management of a brake linings manufacturing company for heavy vehicles. Its development follows the action research method, by adapting a model of a previous research, including a diagnosis stage, which makes an assessment about the situation of the organization under study, a stage about external learning, held in another company with the objective to learn about its process of selection and deployment of a similar system and a stage of action planning which presents the description of a model to be deployed in th

Submitted by William Justo Figueiro (williamjf) on 2015-07-27T20:13:49Z No. of bitstreams: 1 08d.pdf: 663701 bytes, checksum: f70aa28177bd583712169784504e3366 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-27T20:13:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 08d.pdf: 663701 bytes, checksum: f70aa28177bd583712169784504e3366 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-07-13 / Nenhuma / Este estudo analisa como capacidades do fornecedor influem na prestação de serviços em outsourcing de manutenção de aplicações. O objeto de análise é uma operação de outsourcing consolidada, através do serviço prestado por uma empresa brasileira de TI para um cliente multinacional também de capital nacional. A lente teórica utilizada foi Visão Baseada em Recursos, e, a partir da revisão da literatura sobre o tema, foram identificadas as principais capacidades em outsourcing já estudadas anteriormente, sendo elas: capacidade técnica, capacidade de gestão de pessoas, capacidade de liderança e capacidade de gestão do relacionamento com clientes. A metodologia utilizada foi um estudo de caso único baseado em entrevistas em profundidade com as principais lideranças técnicas e gerenciais da empresa. Após análise dos dados, foi identificado que a capacidade técnica, como proposto pelos estudos anteriores, era insuficiente para o serviço da manutenção de aplicações, sendo proposto a sua ampliação com elementos de flexibilidade em TI. Constatou-se que a capacidade de liderança sugere exercer influência sobre as demais capacidades. Por fim, o estudo apresenta um modelo de relacionamento das capacidades com os seus elementos, um quadro de proposições e sugestões para estudos futuros. / This study examines how supplier capabilities influence the provision of services in outsourcing of application maintenance. The object of analysis is a consolidated outsourcing operation, through the service provided by a Brazilian IT company for a multinational client also from the national capital of the country. The used theory was Resource Based View. From the literature review on the subject, one identified the core outsourcing capabilities that have been already studied. They are technical capability, personnel management capability, leadership skills and ability to manage the client relationship. The methodology used was a single case study based on indepth interviews performed with the main technical and management leaderships of the company. After the data analysis, one identified that the technical capacity as proposed by earlier studies was insufficient to the service of the application maintenance and it was proposed its expansion with elements of flexibility in TI. One found that the leadership ability suggests having influence upon the other capabilities. Finally, the study presents a model of capabilities relationship with its elements, a framework of propositions and suggestions for futures studies.

The resource-based view of the firm (RBV) is one the most important areas of research content to emerge in the field of strategic management in the last 15 years. The RBV is prescriptive. That is, the RBV prescribes that competitive advantage stems from those resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable (VRIN). With rare exception, resources that meet the VRIN criteria are widely purported to be intangible in nature. From a research perspective, the RBV stream tends to be dominated by conceptual discussions and advancements. However, empirical tests of the core premises, or the main prescription, of the theory are argued to be very limited in quantity. To add to the body of empirical research that seeks to verify the main prescription of the RBV, this research undertakes a new and different level of analysis, one that has not been previously tested. Given that firms compete with both tangible and intangible resources, the present study is interested in determining if, as the RBV implicitly prescribes, resources that are intangible in nature are more important determinants of firm success than tangible resources. Although the research question is basic and fundamental, it has rarely been appropriately or adequately tested within the RBV stream, as is demonstrated by this thesis. To carry out the research, this study offers a conceptual model of the firm’s resource pool that includes tangible assets (financial and physical assets), intangible assets (intellectual property assets, organizational assets, reputational assets), and capabilities. A series of hypotheses are posited to explore the proposition that intangible resources contribute more greatly to firm success, on the dimensions of sales turnover, market share, and profitability, than tangible resources. / A field survey, administered to 2000 manufacturing and services businesses operating in Australia, is used to gather the data. Of the 2000 surveys sent, the hypotheses are empirically tested using multiple hierarchical regression analysis on a final sample of 291 firms. Control variables include firm age and Porter’s five forces of industry structure. Based on the results, verification of the RBV’s main prescription can not be supported unequivocally. Intellectual property assets, for example, do not have a statistically significant association with firm success, after accounting for the effects of tangible resources and the control variables. Organizational assets, however, not only explain additionally significant variation in firm success, after accounting for the effects of tangible resources and the control variables, but make among the greatest, unique contribution to firm success based on the size of the beta coefficients. Reputational assets offer additional explanatory power to predicting firm success after accounting for the effects of tangible assets and the control variables, but only with respect to one measure of firm success does its beta coefficient make a larger, unique contribution than financial assets. Lastly, contrary to theory, capabilities are not the single most important determinant of firm success, after accounting for the effects of intangible assets, and tangible and intangible assets, in two separate hierarchical regression equations. This finding is surprising and explanations are provided. Overall, the study raises some questions with respect to just which resources are the most important determinants of a firm’s market and financial success and offers a fruitful avenue for further research.

This research sought to establish the nexus between the two management disciplines of strategic management and knowledge management. Through a study of the life cycle of knowledge assets within the Australian Public Sector, this nexus has been established. Over the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in the nascent discipline of knowledge management (Wiig 1997). However, discussion regarding knowledge, knowledge workers and knowledge management started much earlier when Chester Barnard’s management classic The Functions of the Executive (1938) included suggestions made on how to manage knowledge workers. The 1960s saw management authors and researchers such as Peter Drucker (1993; 1994; 1995; 1997a; 1997b), Machlup (1962), and Michael Polanyi (1967) discussing topics such as knowledge work, knowledge workers, and tacit and explicit knowledge. During much the same period, strategic management was also being researched and discussed, with Alfred D. Chandler being among the first scholars to study strategic management. His book Strategy and Structure (1962) described the development of organisations, and showed that the practice of strategic management predated its study as a management discipline. Chandler was followed by other researchers including Igor Ansoff (1965) and Learned, Christensen, Andrews and Guth (1965), Henry Mintzberg (1979; 1985; 1990; 1996a; 1996b; 1999), and Michael E. Porter (1980; 1985). Research continues in both disciplines; however, research on the interface between these two important disciplines is rare, particularly in Australia.The Australian Public Sector was selected as the target industry for this research, and case study as the research strategy. The research strategy combined a variety of methods including interviews, questionnaires and surveys. The approach taken with data analysis was to employ aspects of the approach used in grounded theory. In addition, action research was used as a meta-methodology, in that periods of review and reflection were undertaken that generated improvements to the research methodology. This research has found that there is a marked interdependence between strategic management and the management of knowledge assets. The strategic management process requires skills and capabilities (knowledge assets) for its execution. Moreover, the resultant strategies require the exploitation of knowledge assets to ensure effective implementation. The life cycle of knowledge assets starts and ends when their need or otherwise is identified directly or indirectly by strategic plans. Knowledge assets are acquired, deployed, utilised and maintained until they are no longer needed. They are then disposed of by outsourcing or atrophy when people are redeployed or retrained. This research has focused on the disciplines of strategic management and knowledge management; however, its contribution lies largely in the area of capability management. Corporate strategy theorists, from the RBV (Resource Based View) and KBV (Knowledge Based View) schools, see organisations as a body of knowledge (Spender 1996). From the perspective of knowledge assets, used as the theme of this research, an organisation is a body of capabilities, and to achieve corporate objectives, the capabilities must match the strategies.

<p>Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a global concern and has been adopted by many largemultinational corporations. Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the mostcommon type of business in the EU including Sweden, yet most research on CSR has beenfocused on large corporations. As SMEs run in various settings and there have been littleempirical studies on CSR in SMEs, the purpose of this study is to fill a part of the researchgap and provide an in-depth look at CSR in SME to investigate specific barriers and/oropportunities to addressing CSR. This study reviews the relevant literature of CSR in SMEs.Through semi-constructed interviews with two small-sized organic product companies inSweden, this study analyzed CSR from an SME perspective in a Swedish context by CSRtheory and Resource-Based View (RBV). According to the findings, the main barrier for CSRfor the case companies is financial recourse constraints, while the main opportunity is theircapability for communication. This study contributes and motivates CSR in SMEs bydemonstrating how they understand CSR, how they communicate with both internal andexternal stakeholders of their best practices, and providing examples to share the experiencesfor SMEs.</p>

<p><strong>Problem/frågeställningar: </strong>När företagsledare runt om i världen ska ta beslut uppgår 40% av dessa beslut till att baseras på magkänslan. Ett påstående kring konkurrensfördelar och magkänsla är att ”<em>ett av de största hindren för konkurrensfördelar är att agera enbart på magkänsla eller intuition</em>”. Denna uppsats tar fasta på det påståendet och granskar hur BI, ett verktyg som stödjer företagsledarna i sina beslut, spelar in. Ett synsätt för att studera konkurrensfördelar är det resursbaserade synsättet, där resurser följaktligen är grunden i det som skapar konkurrensfördelar. Kombinationen mellan hur BI stödjer med information för att underlätta beslut och faktumet att magkänsla eller intuition hindrar konkurrensfördelar gör att den här uppsatsen ställer sig frågan ”<strong>Hur och varför kan BI ur ett resursbaserat synsätt stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på kort samt lång sikt inom stora företag?”</strong></p><p><strong>Syfte: </strong>Att beskriva samt förklara hur och varför BI ur ett resursbaserat synsätt kan stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på kort samt lång sikt inom stora företag.</p><p><strong>Teori/modell och metod: </strong>Inom den teoretiska referensramen presenteras och diskuteras först definitionen av BI och dess användning. Därefter följer en presentation av det resursbaserade synsättet utifrån en modell byggd av Hart, vilken kompletteras med annan forskning inom det resursbaserade synsättet. Det genererar sedan en egen modell, som därefter byggs på med en BI-del för att utgöra en undersökningsmodell som används vidare i uppsatsen.</p><p><strong>Tillvägagångssätt: </strong>För den här uppsatsen har 18 st företag som har någon form av BI på företaget intervjuats. Utöver att företagen är bland Sveriges 120 största har inga vidare urval sett, vilket har resulterat i respondenter från branscher så som media, teleoperatörer och försäkring. På dessa företag har intervjuer skett med den person som ansetts vara BI-ansvarig. Vissa företag har Controllers som är de som har övergripande ansvaret för BI, medan det på andra företag är IT-chefer eller specifikt BI-ansvariga. Inom metodavsnittet förs även en genomgång kring de intervjufrågor som framtagits.</p><p><strong>Huvudsakliga resultat/slutsatser:</strong> I slutsatserna fastslås bland annat att BI kan stödja och driva på en så kallad patchningsförmåga, vilket innebär att företag är snabba i anpassningen mot marknaden. Därutöver konstateras att en av anledningarna till att BI stöttar skapandet av konkurrensfördelar är dess förmåga att stödja effektivisering, optimering och processinnovation i olika förmågor som senare kan leda till konkurrensfördelar. Dock visar det sig också att BI är sämre på att stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på lång sikt, tack vare avsaknaden av stöttandet till faktorer som gör resurser svåra att imitera.</p> / <p><strong>Problem: </strong>When business leaders around the world are about to take a decision, 40% of these decisions are based on gut rather than any rational information. This, together with the claim that “<em>one of the biggest hinders for competitive advantage is acting solely on gut or intuition</em>” leads to the combination of the decision support tool Business Intelligence and competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be seen from numerous perspectives; one of these is the resource-based view, where the resources are the basic pillar for competitive advantage. From this the thesis study question is formulated; “<strong>How and why can BI, seen from a resource-based perspective, support the creation of competitive advantage, on short and long term, in large companies?</strong>”</p><p><strong>Purpose</strong>: To explain and describe how and why BI, seen from a resource-based perspective, can support the creation of competitive advantage, on short and long term, in large companies.</p><p><strong>Theory: </strong>The theoretical foundation is based upon definitions on BI and what BI really is, together with a presentation and discussion on the resource-based view. Following the BI and resource-based view parts, the research model for this thesis is presented, where a modified resource-based view model for competitive advantage, and a definition collection for BI, is combined.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>For this thesis, 18 companies where they have some sort of BI solution implemented, has been interviewed. The companies have been selected based from their size, where the 120 largest companies first were contacted with an interview proposal. The companies are based in industries such as media, telephone communications and insurance. On these companies, the individual that is the “BI responsible” has been interviewed, which varies from company to company. BI responsibles could be Controllers, IT Managers or specific BI Managers.</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> In the conclusions part of this thesis the research question is divided into a how part and a why part. One conclusion from the how part, is that BI can both support and drive a so-called patching capability, which means that a company can be faster and more agile in their market adaption. One of the reasons why BI can support competitive advantages from a resource-based view is that it can help to drive efficiency, optimization and process innovation in different capabilities that can lead to competitive advantage. Another conclusion is that despite its abilities to support what drives competitive advantage through the resource-based view, the term for this is mainly short-term, due to the fact that it is not hard to imitate the information, which constitutes the basic resources that BI supports.</p>