The purpose of this thesis is to create a deeper understanding of the challenges of Chineseenergy sources in the fashion production from the point of view of a retailer's sourcingactivities in the fast changing China. Three areas, namely, corporate social responsibility(CSR), global sourcing and changing Chinese market environment serve as the academicfoundation for understanding the current dynamics of fashion production in China. Thistheoretical framework illuminates the key drivers behind the progress of environmentalperformance in Chinese fashion production. Retailers identify energy use and especially, thesource of energy, in the production as a major environmental challenge, especially in Chinawith coal as its main source. The perspectives of five Chinese fashion garment suppliers arepresented by using a qualitative case study method. The findings show that Chinese fashionsuppliers have almost no direct power to influence the energy sources used for electricity inthe production. However, the Chinese government focuses on improving the energy supplyand promoting the use of renewable energies in China, with increasing pressure on thefactories to reduce their energy intensity. The findings in this thesis show that we are movingtowards an upward curve of higher retail prices and increased sustainability throughout theChinese supply chain.

The quantity of cell phone applications or mobile apps have seen an upsurge at an exponential rate in under a decade. Many have been created for a variety of industries, including transportation. The advent and subsequent commercialized implementation of near-instant transport by a middleman-type of app is now known as a Transportation Network Company or TNC. Examples of the more renowned TNCs are Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. In recent years, TNCs have cultivated a tremendous following, to the degree of taxicab desertion. Moreover, the massive success of TNCs led to expansion of its capacities into public transportation. The TNC’s expeditious popularity has garnered the attention of government and transit agencies. Without fail, TNCs can complement, supplement or compete with transit. However, sparsely has there been any deep discussion about a TNC potentially supplanting transit. The aim of this paper is to show how TNCs could replace public transportation in the United States if subsidized at the same level of transit agencies. Austin, Texas was analyzed as the case study city. A comparison of subsidization between Austin’s transit agency: Cap Metro, the local TNCs, and on a national aggregate level was conducted. The evidence herein clearly shows that TNCs are highly competitive when in revenue service operating at full capacity, potentially replacing public transportation.

The goal of this paper is to explore corporate and information strategies, focus is put on new and modern business models. I accentuate alignment between corporate and information strategy. Theoretical overview of corporate and information strategies is followed by description of modern trends that were discovered by author. All new trends are analyzed from IT and business point of view. Some trends are demonstrated on real companies in the paper. The analysis consists of corporate strategy and searching for the way how IT can support business and how to be in alignment. Two types of companies are included. First type is company that built up business model based on IT/ICT strategy. The other type includes companies that are running business for longer time and new IT/ICT strategy deployment or better alignment between strategies brought improvement and better market position. The paper includes basic model representing strategic management that is presented at the end. This gives an overview to all readers how the process goes from corporate and information strategy to application portfolio. The paper is destined for professionals and nonprofessionals who are interested in modern strategies. It is also useful for IT/ICT managers when working on own strategies.

This dissertation thesis examines key aspects of a shared service center concept within an accounting area. Based on the theoretical framework, it provides a comprehensive assesement of various aspects of decision making process (why, what, how, where and the outcome) and establishes hypotheses related to types of accounting services suitable for provision by service centers, locations, ownership and financial outcome. Empirical study was conducted and statistical methods had been applied to test those hypotheses. Thesis aims to provide a guidenace for managers of companies who consider to start using shared service centers or who already use them and would like to further improve this model in accounting areas.

Research on outsourcing has been around for several decades, while recent evolution in the information systems discipline towards ICT service commoditization significantly changes the context of decision-making. Services that are available on-demand via the Internet allow organizations implementing functions they demand in a fraction of time. This trend represents a chance for organizations seeking to use advanced ICT services without a need of major investments. Problem is the current lack of guidelines and tools for managing ICT services and their outsourcing. Given the trends on the ICT service market, it is expected that much of the IT management in the future will encompass the ICT services and utilize service-level structures. Methods currently available are either too broad or encompass only small part of the whole problem. Ad-hoc or unsound decisions in this area might cause major complications in terms of quality, usability, integration, and consequently influence total cost of organizational IT. Organizations need to either revise existing models or propose and implement completely new models to manage their IS/ICT. This thesis deals with the management of IS/ICT with focus on the ICT services outsourcing. It discusses available sourcing models in the literature and links them to the various interconnected areas. Based on these areas, it presents an integrated view on IT outsourcing strategies. Most importantly the thesis proposes an original concept for decision-making about outsourcing of ICT services named the SOURCER framework. This approach utilizes the presented outsourcing strategies, and introduces a complex methodology and decision-making criteria that will assist organizations with selection of ICT services in order to maintain and manage a most suitable ICT service portfolio. The decision-making is based on four essential viewpoints: function, costs, time, and quality. These viewpoints are discussed, individually analyzed, and serve as a basis for further research. The whole framework is developed and validated according to Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). Individual components are evaluated using a survey among a group of selected IT managers. Proof of concept is then established by a case study on framework use in a real organization. This case study covers strategy specification, business--IT alignment, specifying service architecture and its interconnections, outsourcing, and management of the ICT service portfolio.

The goal of this thesis is to create an overview of modern methods of sourcing employees, which reflect the current trends at labor market, and to elaborate a set of basic principles guaranteeing their successful use. The thesis is divided into a theoretical and a practical part. In the theoretical part a larger context of the process of sourcing employees is defined and the basic traditional ways of sourcing are described. The core part of the thesis is then dedicated to the analysis of current labor market trends and the actual modern ways of sourcing, especially career web pages, social and professional media and eventually virtual realities and online games. In the practical part, the employees'sourcing strategy at Danone, a.s. is analysed and its basic optimization initiatives are identified.

The aim of the thesis is to assess current situation on the market of information and communication technologies, especially software systems influencing logistics within companies: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and then to compare presented description of strategic sourcing with the practice of project management considering the total cost of ownership over the life cycle of supplied ERP.

The beginning of this decade has seen a phenomenal raise in the amount of data generated in the world. While this increase provides us with opportunities to understand various aspects of human behavior and mechanisms behind new phenomena, the technologies, statistical techniques and theories required to gain an in depth and comprehensive understanding haven't progressed at an equal pace. As little as 5 years back, we used to deal with problems where there is insufficient prior social science or economic theory and the interest is only in prediction of the outcome or where there is an appropriate social science or economic theory and the interest is in explaining a given phenomenon. Today, we deal with problems where there is insufficient social science or economic theory but the interest is in explaining a given phenomenon. This creates a big challenge the solution to which is of equal interest to both academics and practitioners. In my research, I contribute towards addressing these challenges by building exploratory frameworks that leverage a variety of techniques including social network analysis, text and data mining, econometrics, statistical computing and visualization. My three essay dissertation focuses on understanding the antecedents to the quality of user generated content and on subscription and un-subscription behavior of users from lists on Social Media. Using a data science approach on population sized samples from Wikipedia and Twitter, I demonstrate the power of customized exploratory analyses in uncovering facts that social science or economic theory doesn't dictate and show how metrics from these analyses can be used to build prediction models with higher accuracy. I also demonstrate a method for combining exploration, prediction and explanatory modeling and propose to extend this methodology to provide causal inference. This dissertation has general implications for building better predictive and explanatory models and for mining text efficiently in Social Media.

Logistik har kommit att bli ett av de främsta verktygen för att effektivisera ochkostnadsminimera i ett företag. God lagerhållning och fulla lastbilar som avgår från rätt platsvid rätt tidpunkt har blivit en nödvändighet för att klara konkurrensen på marknaden. Syftetmed denna uppsats är att utreda och analysera vad som händer när ICA byter ut sin befintligaspeditör och därmed övergår från single sourcing till multisourcing. Uppsatsensfrågeställningar besvaras genom en kvalitativ undersökning med djupgående intervjuer ochdatainsamling som forskningsdesign. I fem år använde sig ICA av single sourcing ochpersonalen på ICA:s distributionsenhet i Helsingborg menar att arbetet blev för stort för endasten speditör att hålla under kontroll. Relationen mellan speditören och kunden är en väsentligdel för framgångsrika företag. För att framgång ska vara möjligt är ett klimat med samarbeteoch tillit grundläggande. Förtroendet och samarbetet kommer bli gynnsamt om de olikaparterna har en förståelse för varandra och är involverade i hur hanteringen sköts mellan allaparter, detta skapar en rättvisa som är nödvändig för att leveranskedjan ska fungera. ICA hadeinte behövt ändra strategi från single sourcing till multisourcing, det hade varit tillräckligt attbara ändra rutinerna för planering av leveranser och kapaciteten på transporterna. Förändringeni leveransplanen hade även fungerat om ICA valt att fortsätta använda single sourcing. Om detfinns en kontinuerlig uppföljning förbättras inte bara relationen utan även klimatet församarbete mellan parterna och detta medför en möjlighet för ICA genom förebyggande arbetemed förbättringar. / Logistics has become one of the main tools for streamlining and cost minimizing in a company.Good stock and full trucks departing from the right place at the right time have become anecessity to cope with competition in the market. The purpose of this paper is to investigateand analyze what happens when ICA replaces its existing freight forwarder and thus transitionsfrom single sourcing to multisourcing. The questions of the thesis are answered through aqualitative survey with in-depth interviews and data collection as research design. For fiveyears ICA used single sourcing and the staff at ICA's distribution unit in Helsingborg believedthat the work load became too big for only one freight forwarder to keep under control. Therelationship between the freight forwarder and the customer is an essential part forsuccessfulcompanies. For success to be possible, a climate of cooperation and trust is fundamental.Confidence and cooperation will be beneficial if the different parties have an understanding ofeach other and are involved in how management is handled between all parties, this creates ajustice that is necessary for the supply chain to function. ICA did not have to change its strategyfrom single sourcing to multisourcing, it would have been enough just to change the proceduresfor planning deliveries and the capacity of transport. The change in the delivery schedule wouldalso have worked if ICA had chosen to continue to use single sourcing. If there is continuousfollow-up, not only the relationship but also the climate for cooperation between the partiesimproves and this provides an opportunity for ICA through preventive work withimprovements.

abstract: The mobile crowdsensing (MCS) applications leverage the user data to derive useful information by data-driven evaluation of innovative user contexts and gathering of information at a high data rate. Such access to context-rich data can potentially enable computationally intensive crowd-sourcing applications such as tracking a missing person or capturing a highlight video of an event. Using snippets and pictures captured from multiple mobile phone cameras with specific contexts can improve the data acquired in such applications. These MCS applications require efficient processing and analysis to generate results in real time. A human user, mobile device and their interactions cause a change in context on the mobile device affecting the quality contextual data that is gathered. Usage of MCS data in real-time mobile applications is challenging due to the complex inter-relationship between: a) availability of context, context is available with the mobile phones and not with the cloud, b) cost of data transfer to remote cloud servers, both in terms of communication time and energy, and c) availability of local computational resources on the mobile phone, computation may lead to rapid battery drain or increased response time. The resource-constrained mobile devices need to offload some of their computation. This thesis proposes ContextAiDe an end-end architecture for data-driven distributed applications aware of human mobile interactions using Edge computing. Edge processing supports real-time applications by reducing communication costs. The goal is to optimize the quality and the cost of acquiring the data using a) modeling and prediction of mobile user contexts, b) efficient strategies of scheduling application tasks on heterogeneous devices including multi-core devices such as GPU c) power-aware scheduling of virtual machine (VM) applications in cloud infrastructure e.g. elastic VMs. ContextAiDe middleware is integrated into the mobile application via Android API. The evaluation consists of overheads and costs analysis in the scenario of ``perpetrator tracking" application on the cloud, fog servers, and mobile devices. LifeMap data sets containing actual sensor data traces from mobile devices are used to simulate the application run for large scale evaluation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2019