This study aims to advance the understanding of Digital Opportunity Trust’s (DOT) value proposition by characterizing the ‘modus operandi’ and to develop a method to explore the impact of entrepreneurship in the developing (or under-developed) regions of the world undertaken by Digital Opportunity Trust. DOT is an initiative to help reduce poverty, and to achieve greater social and economic stability by empowering people with skills and knowledge by utilizing new technologies in their communities. Prior research suggests the adaptation of ‘Information and Communication Technology’(ICT) and technological advancement as a means of addressing 500 million people worldwide, those residing at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (Prahalad, 2005) for an effective social transformation. “Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT)” is one of the not-for-profit (NFP) / non-governmental organizations (NGO), which strives to accomplish this goal by blending ‘entrepreneurial’ education with ‘corporate social responsibility’ to foster new ventures that use digital communications technology. DOT is operating in eleven (11) countries for more than eight (8) years now, rendering it important to validate and evaluate the extent to which Information and Communication Technology ICT allows people in poor communities to exchange knowledge, and to compete with new enterprise. Personal interviews (Case Study Methodology) with DOT’s executives, staff, interns and contractors were arranged to gather insightful information and to characterize the value proposition. The aim is to gather estimates of achievement for each of the defining attributes (‘as things are’ to reflect present achievement and ‘as things could be’ to reflect how far the attribute might be ‘pushed’). While it must be the responsibility of DOT’s leaders to articulate formally its value proposition, evidence gathered in this case study points in possible directions. For example, DOT’s value proposition is based on a humanitarian goal and a win-win situation that benefits the people of underdeveloped regions as well as DOT itself. DOT does not merely advance monetary aid to the poor regions of the world; rather it creates a model of economical sustainability. It empowers people by imparting technical prowess and training to them. This not only keeps them abreast of the whole world, but also helps improve their quality of life. DOT provides technological initiatives and programs in developing areas, while adhering effectively to accountability structure. Multinational companies and not-for-profit organizations can gain useful and practical knowledge from DOT’s experience. DOT brings an edge to entrepreneurship by advocating productivity and skill, especially in technological fields. The poor man’s plight turns into a healthy, industrious skill. An emerging paradigm for creating shared value suggests that this is precisely the model worldwide corporations should invest in and apply in these ever-challenging economic times.

Approcci strategici come lo shared value e il social impact vengono considerati strategie organizzative innovative in grado di ridurre il divario fra business e società facendo leva sulla sostenibilità. Seppur motivati da postulati promettenti, essi vengono spesso biasimati perché considerati scarsamente rilevanti o efficienti. La tesi analizza come alcune organizzazioni che hanno sottoscritto l’idea della creazione di valore condiviso siano in grado o meno di produrre benefici per loro stessi e per le comunità circostanti. Lo studio usa la metodologia del case study per indagare due multinazionali e quattro PMI in Ghana. La ricerca adotta un approccio multidisciplinare allo studio organizzativo e strategico per esaminare le insidie dell’azione strategica in Ghana. Essa analizza il modo in cui i principi socioeconomici locali condizionano le scelte strategiche e la performance organizzativa. Il contributo maggiore della tesi è l’introduzione di una versione rivisitata del sistema di azione concreto (Crozier e Friedberg), per identificare le strategie di creazione di valore condiviso e impatto sociale efficientemente radicate nel contesto. Inoltre, la ricerca dimostra che i principi socioeconomici locali sono dei meccanismi dinamici di resilienza messi in atto per mezzo di controllo, collusione, negoziazione e resistenza. / Strategic frameworks like shared value or social impact creation have been posited as innovative organizational strategies capable of mending the gap between business and society through inclusive sustainability. If their claims are promising, they still face much criticism concerning their relevance and effectiveness. The dissertation investigates how organizations which have endorsed the idea of shared value creation are efficient, or not, at yielding benefits for themselves and their host communities. It uses the case study methodology to explore four SMEs and two multinational companies in Ghana. The research builds on a multidisciplinary approach to organizational behavior and strategy to dig to ground the pitfalls of strategic action in Ghana, an epitome of the recent Africa Rising narrative. It scrutinizes the way local socioeconomic mores affect strategic choices and organizational performance. The major contribution of the thesis is to introduce a revisited version of Crozier and Friedberg’s concrete system of action for efficiently embedded strategies of shared value and social impact creation. With this, the work reveals that local socioeconomic mores are dynamic resilience mechanisms of control, collusion, bargaining, and/or resistance, which strategists must take account of in designing sustainable strategies, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This thesis is a two-part exploratory inquiry into how actions of Corporate Responsibility (CR) create economic value for the company performing them, in addition to social/environmental value. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the CR initiatives of a theoretical “paragon corporation”: a corporation that excels in its CR initiatives and sees financial gain in it. The report starts by going over literature, describing the CR context that companies operate in today, and similar work. A model for describing CR activities as business activities is drawn from Nancy Bocken’s concept Business Model Archetypes, and it is proposed as a possible tool for describing economic value creation from CR activities. The first part of the study is a word frequency analysis of the annual financial reports of the companies listed on the FTSE 100, where words connected to CR are counted. The sustainability reports of the five companies that have mentioned CR terminology most in the first study are analyzed in detail during the second study, and are characterized using Bocken’s archetypes. Findings show that the paragon corporation should have CR initiatives that can be modeled after the archetypes, enabling the CR initiatives to create direct economic value for the company. The archetypes can be used when formulating a CR strategy from the ground up, or evaluating existing CR strategy. The thesis ends with suggestions for how this can be explored further.

This master thesis is dedicated to strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and to the concept of creating shared value (CSV). It analyses the difference between CSV and common business philanthropy which is based on allocation of some part of their profit. It shows the connection between business and civic society. Currently the companies realise that their success is related to the well-being of the society in which they work. Therefore - when adopting the concept of CSV companies focus on the field in which they are active in their core business. The thesis concentrates on partnering business companies with civic society organisations. This is based on the belief that social and economic aims coincide. This partnership is a challenge to find a solution to common social issues. It should gain profit to both sides. The theory of this thesis is complemented by a research and analysis of interviews with respondents from both business and civic companies.

La presente investigación tiene como finalidad evaluar el impacto de la táctica de negociación “ganar – ganar” sobre la creación de valor compartido de los proyectos residenciales de unidades premium localizados en Santiago de Surco, desde un ángulo estratégico - gerencial. La importancia del estudio se relaciona con validar el aporte de una metodología de negociación al posicionamiento y a la capacidad competitiva de los proyectos en mención. El estudio consta de seis capítulos. En el primero se desarrolla la literatura más adecuada para justificar teóricamente los fundamentos y resultados del estudio; se describe brevemente el desempeño del sector inmobiliario en los últimos cinco años; y, finalmente, se identifican las características de la oferta y demanda del mercado premium, a nivel Lima Metropolitana y Santiago de Surco. El segundo capítulo presenta las pautas generales que direccionan la investigación. El tercer capítulo describe la metodología seleccionada en función a las características del problema de investigación (ruta cualitativa y diseño etnográfico). El cuarto capítulo desarrolla el proceso para la extracción de información de la muestra de especialista y homogénea. En la misma línea, se desarrolla el “Índice creación de valor compartido ajustado al segmento residencial premium” con el objetivo de identificar a los proyectos creadores de valor compartido. El quinto capítulo exhibe los resultados obtenidos a través de la validación de las hipótesis planteadas; de la misma manera, revela el tipo de relación existente entre las variables de estudio. Finalmente, el sexto detalla las conclusiones y recomendaciones. / The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of the winning negotiating tactic on the creation of shared value of residential projects of premium units located in Santiago de Surco, from a strategic - managerial angle. The importance of the study relates to validating the contribution of a trading methodology to the positioning and the competitive capacity of the projects mentioned. The study consists of six chapters. The first develops the most appropriate literature to theoretically justify the fundamentals and results of the study; briefly describes the performance of the real estate sector over the past five years; and finally, the characteristics of the offer and demand of the premium market are identified, at the Lima Metropolitana and Santiago de Surco level. The second chapter presents the general guidelines that address the research. The third chapter describes the methodology selected based on the characteristics of the research problem (qualitative path and ethnographic design). The fourth chapter develops the process for extracting information from the specialist and homogeneous sample. In the same vein, the "Premium Residential Segment Adjusted Shared Value Creation Index" is developed to identify shared value creator projects. The fifth chapter shows the results obtained through the validation of the assumptions raised; in the same way, it reveals the type of relationship between study variables. Finally, the sixth details the conclusions and recommendations. / Tesis

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Vi har i denna uppsats undersökt hur ett småföretag kan skapa gemensamt värde kopplat till en av deras produkter, och hur skapandet av gemensamt värde kan bidra till en cirkulär värdekedja. För att undersöka frågeställningen har teorier om värdekedjor, gemensamt värdeskapande samt cirkulär ekonomi applicerats på en produkt, Clamp Tray, som säljs av det svenska småföretaget NAVET. Genom intervjuer och annat informationssamlande, har en tydlig värdekedja av Clamp Tray byggts upp, och denna har slutligen analyserats med en kombination av teorierna gällande gemensamt värde och cirkulär ekonomi. Resultaten visar att Clamp Tray redan har kommit en god bit på vägen till en cirkulär värdekedja, och att det även finns en stor potential inför framtida utveckling, genom bland annat omdefinierande av produktiviteten i värdekedjan, återupptagandet av produkter och marknader samt möjliggörandet av lokala kluster, faktorer som är centralt inom gemensamt värdeskapande.

An ontology describing the constructs and their inter-relationships for business models has recently been built and evaluated: the Business Model Ontology (BMO). This ontology has been used to conceptually power a popular practitioner visual design tool: the Business Model Canvas (BMC). However, implicitly these works assume that designers of business models all have a singular normative goal: the creation of businesses that are financially profitable. These works perpetuate beliefs and businesses that do not create outcomes aligned with current natural and social science knowledge about long term individual human, societal and ecological flourishing, i.e. outcomes are not strongly sustainable. This limits the applicability and utility of these works. This exploratory research starts to overcome these limitations: creating knowledge of what is required of businesses for strongly sustainable outcomes to emerge and helping business model designers efficiently create high quality (reliable, consistent, effective) strongly sustainable business models. Based on criticism and review, this research project extends the BMO artefact to enable the description all the constructs and their inter-relationships related to a strongly sustainable business model. This results in the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Ontology (SSBMO). To help evaluate the SSBMO a practitioner visual design tool is also developed: the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Canvas (SSBMC). Ontological engineering (from Artificial Intelligence), Design Science and Systems Thinking methodological approaches were combined in a novel manner to create the Systemic Design Science approach used to build and evaluate the SSBMO. Comparative analysis, interviews and case study techniques were used to evaluate the utility of the designed artefacts. Formal 3rd party evaluation with 7 experts and 2 case study companies resulted in validation of the overall approaches used and the utility of the SSBMO. A number of opportunities for improvement, as well as areas for future work, are identified. This thesis includes a number of supplementary graphics included in separate (electronic) files. See “List of Supplementary Materials” for details.