<p><strong>Kurs:</strong> Mälardalens Högskola, EIK024, Magisteruppsats i IT-ekonomi</p><p>Författare: Anna Lycksén & Patrik Wallin, Västerås</p><p>Titel: Hantering av riskfaktorer för små och medelstora företag vid IT Outsourcing</p><p>Handledare: Therese Hansen</p><p>Nyckelord: IT Outsourcing, SME, riskfaktor, hantering</p><p>Problem: Outsourcing av affärsprocesser såsom IT har funnits länge, men fokus hartidigare varit på stora företag av ett antal olika anledningar. För det förstaville outsourcingleverantörerna vinna stora kontrakt för att uppnå stordriftsfördelarså att deras egna kostnader kunde hållas så låga som möjligt.För det andra lyckades inte de mindre outsourcingleverantörerna som försöktege sig in på marknaden för små och medelstora företag (SME) med atterbjuda tjänster som ansågs vara tillräckligt lockande för SME. Slutligen ansågde flesta SME att de inte hade något att tjäna på att outsourca. Tidernahar dock förändrats. IT outsourcing för SME blir allt mer vanligt, men trotsdetta forskas det relativt lite på området. Med tanke på ovanstående anseruppsatsförfattarna att området är såväl relevant som intressant att behandla.</p><p>Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att utifrån IT outsourcings tre faser beskrivaoch analysera hanteringen av riskfaktorer för små och medelstora företag(SME) vid IT outsourcing, för att därigenom belysa vad SME börtänka på för att lyckas med IT outsourcing.</p><p>Teori: Den teoretiska referensramen börjar med ett konceptuellt ramverk därkoncept som IT Outsourcing, SME, risk och riskfaktor fastställs. Vidare innehållerteoriavsnittet en sammanställning av de tre faser som ingår i IToutsourcing, där riskfaktorer och hanteringsåtgärder kopplas till respektivefas . Ledande referenser är Chou & Chou, Aubert, Palvia och Bahli & Rivard.</p><p>Metod: Studien utgörs av besöksintervjuer och telefonintervjuer. Intervjuer hargjorts på företagen Arvid Nordquist, Företag X, Gärdin & Persson och Byggbeslag.</p><p>Resultat: Resultatet av studien visar att det är viktigt för SME att förbereda noggrantoch sedan välja rätt leverantör vid IT outsourcing. Vidare indikerar ocksåstudiens resultat att det är av stor vikt för SME att värdesätta och behålla</p>

<p>Companies need capital in order to run their business, do necessary investments and grow larger. These actions are combined with high costs where both internal and external financing might be appropriate. Capital structure is the relation between debt and equity.</p><p>In this thesis we have focused on the decision behind the capital structure. We have focused on the road freight industry and we have tried to find out how management reason about their decision. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to describe and analyze SMEs’ decision of capital structure within the road freight sector in the Jönköping region. Emphasise is put on the different aspects that influence the capital structure decision and to what extent this is a strategic issue coloured by personal beliefs.</p><p>To fulfill the purpose mainly a qualitative approach with primary data from structured interviews has been used. The interviews were conducted face-to-face with six owner and/or managers. Further on, secondary data from the firms’ annual reports were used and analyzed.</p><p>The pecking order theory explains that firms, especially SMEs, prefer to finance their businesses with internally generated funds. Focus of the theoretical part are on theories of what factors that affects the capital structure decision, how this can be argued to be a strategic question for SMEs, how risk affects the capital structure decision and how this decision is made in a family business. These theories are presented to shed light on the capital structure decision making process of SMEs.</p><p>From this study it is found that the majority of the companies’ prefer internal financing i.e. reinvested earnings, and as a second alternative to use debt in form of bank loans. The study also shows that the reasons behind this preferred order are the will of being independent, previous experience and managements’ risk-taking propensity. We believe that these factors combined with beliefs about debt and realized need for debt works as a base for how a capital structure strategy is discussed, formed and developed. From this study it can also be concluded that risk indirect affects the capital structure decision and that a restrictive view on debt leads to a restrictive desire to grow since a fast growth in most cases needs to be financed by debt. Last, the study concludes that even though the studied firms prefer to finance with retained earnings they all use debt more or less.</p>

<p> </p><p><strong>Problem: </strong>Business world has met uncertainty, which settled everywhere: from global financial markets and national economies, to organizations and employees’ minds. As every crisis, this situation came unexpectedly, almost out of a clear blue sky. Sweden, being highly dependent on international development, has faced negative effects in all aspects of business life. SMEs have emerged as an engine of economic and social development throughout the world.  As well as more than 99 percent of all enterprises in Sweden are classified as SMEs, the impact of economic crisis may be more than significant.</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of the current economic crisis and recession on the Small and Medium Enterprises in Sweden.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In order to fulfill our purpose we combined both techniques – qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches. We used a quantitative analysis tool – survey to collect primary data from the SMEs. In its turn, qualitative analysis was implemented to see how the data from earlier studies and our findings can be interconnected.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>It was found, that companies are facing mostly negative effects. The perception of currently facing economic challenges can be assessed as anxious, which means that companies see the further development in a tough way. Damaged business confidence can be also recognized in pessimistic forecasts for profitability in 2009. However, the crisis can be considered as a driver for change. On the positive way, every downturn and faced challenge, e.g. stressful situation, stimulate organisations to analyze, look for new effective solutions and make decisions in the way they would never thought about. It was found out that importance of crisis planning is distinctly risisng during current times of uncertainty. Futhermore, companies tend to react on the faced challenges by designing, following crisis plans and creating special crisis teams.</p><p>Our research may help the businesses to understand what difficulties the majority is facing, and thus not only to prevent same risks but also turn them into opportunities.</p><p> </p>

<p><strong>Introduction:</strong> Research has shown that family firms play an important role in modern economies and that they maintain special characteristics and features in comparison to non-family businesses. Furthermore, it is evident in literature and practice that internationalization is a crucial process and strategy in the present global business environment.</p><p><strong>Problem:</strong> These findings however, have not led to a family business internationalization strategy. Only some studies have been conducted concerning the influence of the special features of family firms on the process of internationalization. This means that there is a gap between theory and practice.</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> To increase the academic understanding of the phenomenon internationalization of family businesses, through the use of both theoretical and empirical findings.</p><p><strong>Research questions:</strong> This study attempted to fulfill the purpose by providing answers to several research questions. The main research questions are: What is the current state of knowledge about internationalization, family business features and previous research in internationalization of family firms? How do the family business features theoretically influence the internationalization process? How do the family business features empirically influence the internationalization process? What are the theoretical contributions and practical managerial implications of these findings?</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> A solid literature research has been conducted in order to determine the theoretical influences of family business features on internationalization. The empirical testing of the expectations was conducted through a qualitative approach by taking personal interviews at eight companies, four in The Netherlands and four in Sweden, and studying secondary documentation.</p><p><strong>Findings:</strong> The study shows that it is difficult to decisively determine the either facilitating or constraining influence of family business features on internationalization. The results show that the 23 features which have been studied in the sample are facilitating or constraining under certain conditions (see table 5, p. 108). This implies that managers, researchers and consultants will be required to study these conditions first in order to determine the facilitating or constraining effects in a company. In addition, a model has been constructed illustrating the empirical findings concerning the internationalization process (see figure 8, p.112). Finally, concerning internationalization theories, it is determined that family businesses tend to use the Network approach in starting their internationalization process, the Stage approaches in further developing the international operations and support their process through the Resource-based view and the Knowledge-based view.</p>

<p>Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are reported to encounter difficulties in accessing to formal external financing resource. Banking systems in this category of countries are either under-developed or newly reformed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether SME financing in China, measured by SMEs per capita, is affected by local bank competition, measured by number of banks per capita or share of foreign banks. Control variables such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), level of infrastructure and geographic location are also included in the regression models.</p><p>The main findings are that: when disregarding the ownership of banks, bank competition has positive impact on SME financing across Chinese provinces, although the relationship is non-linear; and foreign banks do not significantly influence SME bank financing in China. The first finding generally support the conventional theories of industrial organization and the second one offers the basis for further arguments about the role of foreign banks in financing SMEs in China.</p>

Internationalization of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the healthcare industryhas experienced rapid growth in the recent decade. Although research on understanding thisprocess and what drives it has been conducted, previous studies are limited in recognizing thefull influence of both domestic and foreign institutional environments. This study investigatesthe internationalization of four Swedish SMEs operating in healthcare markets through aninstitutional-based perspective, asking how and why SMEs internationalize and how theymanage different institutional environments. By analyzing the empirical case findings in thelight of a theoretical framework based on internationalization theory, institutional theory andinstitutional entrepreneurship we attempt to answer our research questions mentioned above.The thesis concludes that internationalizing SMEs experience a large range of barriers ofwhich most can be effectively overcome by cooperation and access to networks with keyopinion leaders. Findings on managing the institutional environment pointed to that thedomestic institutional environment can act as a driver for internationalization, while theability to influence and change foreign institutional environments were found to be nearimpossible for a single firm. However, our study shows that attempts at institutional changecan be achieved through cooperation together with other firms, organizations and mostimportantly influential networks with key opinion leaders. Internationalizing SMEs within thehealthcare industry might not be institutional entrepreneurs in its true sense; however theyhave the possibility of getting there.

中小企業如何規劃績效評量系統(PMS)？以台灣一中小企業為例做分析 / The paper wishes to provide another angle of study in the performance measurement system (PMS) in SMEs by using a case. The topic was inspired by literatures that focus on PMS in SMEs. As widely understood, the importance of PMS has grown in the last 30 years and there were many PMS models. Yet, applying these PMS models to SMEs is still in doubt. This paper is interested in how SMEs implement their PMS without using any PMS models. In Taiwan, SMEs refer to enterprises with less than 200 employees. However, here in this paper we apply the U.S. definition, company with less than 500 employees, as our standard. The chosen company we studied has nearly 500 employees up to the end of 2013. In one literature - Performance Measurement System in SMEs (2005) - it concluded ten dimensions of PMS characteristics commonly used by popular PMS models. In order to examine the robustness of the PMS in the case company, these dimensions are used to make comparison. The result shows that the case company constructed a quite robust PMS by applying these dimensions. However, since there’s limited resource for SMEs to implement models, we recommend SMEs to use these dimension to examine their PMS instead of trying to find out the best model.

The approach to water management worldwide is currently in transition, with a shift evident from purely centralised infrastructure to greater consideration of decentralised technologies, such as rainwater harvesting (RWH). Initiated by recognition of drivers including increasing water demand and increasing risk of flooding, the value of RWH is beginning to filter across the academic-policy boundary. However, in the UK, implementation of RWH systems is not straight forward; social and technical barriers, concerns and knowledge gaps exist, which currently restrict its widespread utilisation. Previously, these issues have been examined independently. The research described in this thesis highlights the need for interdisciplinary working to lower the barriers and resolve the concerns. Consequently, a combination of social and engineering research perspectives, methods and analysis is utilised to achieve the aim of the research: the production of a strategic framework to support the implementation of RWH in the UK. The framework is the culmination of empirically derived social and technical evidence bases including: surveys with householders and architects; interviews with small to medium enterprises (SMEs); a design and performance evaluation of a non-domestic RWH system; non-domestic water closet (WC) monitoring to develop a demand profile and a water quality study and health impact assessment (HIA) of a non-domestic RWH system. Results indicate that householders were willing but not able to implement RWH, due to financial constraints and perceived maintenance burdens. For SMEs 5 ‘implementation deficit categories’ were identified, which undermined their ability to implement. The use of continuous simulation tools, with appropriate data, need to be promoted and the non-domestic demand profile derived was distinctly different to the well-established domestic profile, yielding implications for system design. The non-domestic RWH system was able to achieve an average water saving efficiency of 97% for the period monitored and the HIA quantified the risk to health as being within the recognised screening level. Triangulation of the results into an integrated socio-technical evidence base facilitated the identification of three core strategy aims, their corresponding actions and actors (stakeholder groups). The overall strategic framework is presented in the form of a Venn diagram. It is unlikely the comprehensive nature of the strategic framework would have been achieved, if the interdisciplinary process had not been undertaken. Therefore adoption of a socio-technical approach to implementation is vital, if RWH in the UK is to transition from novel to mainstream.

This dissertation has identified, developed and empirically tested concepts associated with the capacity of chairpersonship to promote innovation in entrepreneurial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A multi-methodological approach is applied in five studies, comprising a systematic literature review, three empirical studies and a concluding conceptual paper. The dissertation focuses on how the chairperson of the board of directors influences value creation in entrepreneurial SMEs. Value creation in this context is about the performance of strategic leaders at entrepreneurial firms’ upper echelons in acting and making strategic choices aimed at increasing firms’ capability to engage in innovation. Innovation is defined as the generation and/or adoption of an idea or behaviour, relating to a product, service, device, system, policy or program, which is new to the adopting organization. Innovation has been widely recognized as a concept central to economic growth and societal development. Governance is widely recognized as essential for the support and development of innovations in firms. However, the academic literature is scarce regarding how the chairperson of the board can contribute to and promote innovation in SMEs. This dissertation offers theoretical and empirical insights into how the chairperson of the board of directors influences value creation in entrepreneurial SMEs. In this respect, the dissertation offers a conceptual framework and a research model for understanding board leadership in promoting innovation in entrepreneurial SMEs. The framework and research model emphasize the behavioural aspects of board leadership and show how these are related to the development of entrepreneurial SMEs. Furthermore, the findings in this dissertation provide actionable knowledge for practitioners and policymakers. In this respect, the dissertation contributes theoretical and empirical understandings of the benefits of employing external chairpersons with relevant knowledge and experience in SMEs. These insights also provide practitioners with advice on the qualifications and processes that can help them to develop innovation-promoting boards.

Title: Management of Key Account Relationships in SMEs: A Resource-Based View Authors: David Gedda &amp; Simon JohanssonLevel: Master thesis, 30 hpKeywords: Relationship Marketing, Key Account, Key Account Management,Customer Relationship Management, SME, High-performing firms Background: Management of firms most valuable customers, the key accounts,are of great importance for firms in general. This is in particulartrue for SMEs which battles with notably constrained resources.The situation of SMEs poses careful consideration in how tomanage these relationships successfully. Research Question: What characterizes high-performing SMEs in terms of how theymanage their key account relationships? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of what characterises high-performing SMEs in terms of how theymanage the relationships with their key accounts. Method: A qualitative study with an abductive approach using a multiplecasestudy design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews wereconducted to collect primary data on eight Swedish SMEs in theB2B-context. Theoretical Framework: Theories about the resource-based view and relational capabilitiesare presented followed by theories about relationship marketingand its subsets KAM and CRM. The last part of the theory consistsof theories on relationship quality. Findings: In general, high-performing SMEs tend to have a more structuredapproach towards their management of their key accountrelationships. This is mainly shown through four characteristics:Clear categorization of key accounts, Senior responsibility for keyaccounts, Deep integration with key accounts and Systematicprocess towards their key accounts.