Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2011. / Crowdsourcing is a new phenomenon, giving companies the ability to tap into the wisdom of crowds in order to solve complex problems, often at a fraction of the cost. In this document, the viability of crowdsourcing from the supply side is investigated with a market research questionnaire at the core of the research. Firstly, an overview of the current online crowdsourcing landscape is given with a focus on the big players, followed by a literature study on the motivation of solvers and their associated compensation needs. Because of the nature of crowdsourcing, an assumption is made that knowledge workers will be the biggest contributors in the form of solvers; this presumption is demonstrated by analysing responses to the questionnaire. The following research question is answered: What are the needs and profile of the solvers (supply side) of an internet platform that uses the principle of crowdsourcing to solve complex problems? It also answers the questions of many online crowdsourcing enthusiasts with regards to the typical solver and what their needs are, specifically with regards to compensation structures on these platforms. The typical solver profile was found to be predominantly male between the ages of 19 and 37, with a tertiary education or busy earning a degree of some sort and a strong will to become wealthy through applying this knowledge. These typical solvers have a primary objective to earn money with 100 per cent of the incentive paid to one „winner‟. They will participate more than three times even if they do not „win‟ the challenge and expect to earn more that R1 000 but less than R10 000 per day for this type of work. Certain limitations of the study are also addressed, like the clear self-selection bias and difficulty to generalise the findings to a well-defined group of people, as became evident from analysing questionnaire findings.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / Many multi-business unit organisations are not adequately prepared to deal with and capitalise on the opportunities that exist because they have a multi-faceted company structure. Increasingly, organisations are combining their efforts to exploit business opportunities and collaboration is becoming a key strategic tool. Collaboration provides ways to tap into competencies and organisational knowledge that might otherwise be trapped in business units. It is essential that these pockets, or silos, of excellence be harnessed to promote value-creating activities. The focus of this case study is on GEA Group Companies operating within the ambit of Sub-Saharan Africa. These companies exhibit a classical multi-business unit organisation with many opportunities for intra- as well as intercompany collaboration. Informal channels for collaboration may exist, but if GEA is able to collaborate more effectively internally, growth and value creation opportunists will be easier to exploit. This study has investigated the state of the current business models of the various GEA Group companies as well as the current collaboration efforts that are in place. The study has also explored the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the various business models as well the key factors influencing collaboration efforts within GEA. Based on the results of interviews and surveys that evaluated the business models and intercompany collaboration efforts, recommendations for improvements are made and an intercompany collaboration model proposed for GEA companies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Alliance portfolios, or a firm collection of simultaneous alliances, have become common phenomena particularly in technology industries. These portfolios have been found to have a significant impact on firms’ financial performance. At the same time, there is little consensus regarding the direction of this effect. Findings have shown positive, negative, curvilinear, and non-significant relationships. In this dissertation, I employed an organizational learning perspective to investigate the effect of alliance portfolio size on firm financial performance. Using a sample of 343 firm-year observations in the U.S. software industry, I explored portfolio- and firm-level characteristics as moderators of this relationship. Findings provide evidence for a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between portfolio size and firm performance that is moderated by the timing of the alliances within the portfolio and by the firms’ Top Management Team (TMT) turnover. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Over the last two decades there has been a tremendous increase in collaboration among competing firms. A significant number of these collaborations are international. This thesis explores the incentives and welfare consequences of collaboration in the context of international trade. We consider two types of cross-border collaborations. The first is collaboration by sharing a part of firms' value creating activities, such as technology development, product design and distribution. This saves on production costs but reduces product distinctiveness. Firms collaborate if and only if the reduction in product distinctiveness is lower than a threshold level. We find that the threshold increases with an increase in trade costs. That is, an increase in trade costs makes collaboration more likely. Higher trade cost lowers competition, which in turn enables the firms to save on fixed costs while forgoing some product distinctiveness. Furthermore, we demonstrate that contrary to standard intuition, higher trade cost could enhance consumers' welfare by inducing competitors to collaborate. We extend our model to endogenise location choice by the firms where collaboration requires co-location (due to the benefit of local spillovers or joint investment in key infrastructures). Unlike the original model, we find that an increase in trade costs can discourage collaboration. In both circumstances, we find that an increase in trade cost can improve consumer surplus. The second type of collaboration considered in this thesis is licensing. We extend the standard licensing literature to an environment where firms compete in the domestic as well as foreign market. We examine how trade cost affects the licensing decision as well as the optimal payment mechanism. We find that an increase in trade costs reduces the possibility of licensing. Concerning the payment mechanism, we find that (i) either royalty or (ii) a two-part tariff (involving a fixed fee as well as royalty payments) is optimal. An increase in trade costs reduces the likelihood of royalty only being the optimal payment mechanism.

This thesis examines perceptions of cooperation among small to medium sized enterprises (SME) in western Oregon's forest products industry. Recent changes in the industry, such as corporate consolidation, global marketing, and government regulations have created an environment in which many SMEs find it difficult to stay competitive. Cooperation among SMEs is one method for alleviating the situation; however, few SME owners are engaging in cooperative projects or behaviors. Common assumptions and stereotypes about the individualistic nature of the forest products industry lead some to believe that cooperation is an unlikely avenue for SME owners. Through 16 in-depth interviews with SME owners, this view is found to be overly simplistic. It does not account for the variety of factors at play and the depth of the issues involved in SME owners' attitudes toward cooperation. In studying attitudes toward cooperation, this study first attempts to understand the cultural values of the decision makers. It is apparent that values play an integral role in the decision making and strategy of SME owners. This research highlights the complexity of the issues facing small businesses and their owners and reveals that four main factors contribute to SME owners' perceptions about cooperation and influence strategic business decisions: common values, stereotypes, risk perception, and a lack of knowledge about cooperation. Values are found to be especially relevant in understanding and influencing attitudes toward cooperation as values affect risk perception and risk perception in turn directly impacts business strategy. Understanding the values of SME owners helps to describe their attitudes toward cooperation and dispels the notion that they are too independent to ever work together. Eight recommendations stem from the findings of this study which may lead to cooperative action and more successful SMEs: 1) Find a trustworthy agent to act as a sponsor; 2) Build credible systems; 3) Match members with similar values; 4) Expound the potential benefits of cooperation to reduce risk perception; 5) Find a spark plug, not a spokesperson; 6) Provide education; 7) Define and implement both learning networks and action groups; 8) Target new and future categories of SME owners such as women and the children or grandchildren of current owners. / Graduation date: 2004

In the first part of this thesis, we study revenue management in resource exchange alliances. We first show that without an alliance the sellers will tend to price their products too high and sell too little, thereby foregoing potential profit, especially when capacity is large. This provides an economic motivation for interest in alliances, because the hope may be that some of the foregone profit may be captured under an alliance. We then consider a resource exchange alliance, including the effect of the alliance on competition among alliance members. We show that the foregone profit may indeed be captured under such an alliance. The problem of determining the optimal amounts of resources to exchange is formulated as a stochastic mathematical program with equilibrium constraints. We demonstrate how to determine whether there exists a unique equilibrium after resource exchange, how to compute the equilibrium, and how to compute the optimal resource exchange. In the second part of this thesis, we study the estimation of risk measures in risk management. In the financial industry, sell-side analysts periodically publish recommendations of underlying securities with target prices. However, this type of analysis does not provide risk measures associated with underlying companies. In this study, we discuss linear regression approaches to the estimation of law invariant conditional risk measures. Two estimation procedures are considered and compared; one is based on residual analysis of the standard least squares method and the other is in the spirit of the M-estimation approach used in robust statistics. In particular, Value-at-Risk and Average Value-at-Risk measures are discussed in detail. Large sample statistical inference of the estimators is derived. Furthermore, finite sample properties of the proposed estimators are investigated and compared with theoretical derivations in an extensive Monte Carlo study. Empirical results on the real data (different financial asset classes) are also provided to illustrate the performance of the estimators.

In today's marketplace firms have to become specialized in specific technological aspects in product development due to intensifying competition. Further, the increasing complexity of offerings make firms become more dependent on other value-chain contributors such as providers of complementary and component technologies. Therefore, in addition to the inherent market of appeal of product, a successful introduction may depend on the firm's interactions with suppliers and even "competitors". These interactions with other firms in the marketplace present a unique set of challenges to firms. In this dissertation, we explore how a firm's approach to interacting with supply chain partners and/or competitors may depend upon how its product provides value to customers. In the first essay, we look into how a firm should design the interdependence between a durable good and a consumable such as a printer and a cartridge and utilize the benefits of an industry of generic consumable suppliers. In the second essay, we analyze the different approaches that firms adopt while commercializing their technologies to competitors in a networked environment (such as telecommunications). We identify the impact of the competitor's development capabilities on the trade-off between the increased competition and network benefits. In the third essay, we explore situations in which firms collaborate to develop a component innovation that they later market individually; they codevelop and jointly market; and they choose to individually develop and market. We consider how competitive strategies between development partners should consider the influence of supplier formation on the investment incentives of an OEM. In summary, this dissertation examines how the management of interactions with supply chain partners and competitors can play an important role in technology development and deployment. Our results highlight key trade-offs and provide insights for managers who are involved in developing and deploying new products. / text

Competing successfully in globalized markets requires a complex mix of product, price, promotion and distribution. It requires novel approaches to ownership in overseas involvement and the development of new modes of global relationships. In response to these needs, new types of alliances are emerging as corporations endeavor to meet the global challenge. At the forefront of globalization, the telecommunications industry is experiencing a high-rate of cross-border alliance formation. / This thesis attempts to straddle both business and legal domains, on national and international levels, to survey the evolution of the telecommunications industry and to envisage the future prospects of multinational telecom carriers with respect to the conduct of transnational alliances for international expansion. Chapter 1 describes the changes occurring in the field of telecommunications, while Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 provide an essential understanding of the motivations and the modalities of cross-border strategic alliances and propose contracting techniques for the purpose of surmounting managerial and operational challenges that may be confronted when engaging in global strategic alliances. With a focus on the telecommunications industry, Chapter 4 explores the motives of and difficulties encountered by multinational telecom carriers in using alliances to expand globally, and examines their business strategies and performing phases. Chapter 5 further questions the necessity of using cross-border strategic alliances in an increasingly international competitive environment by examining the current national and international regimes with respect to the transactions of telecom services. The Conclusion reviews significant factors that may infringe upon the use of strategic alliances as a business strategy.

This study examines the issues of collaboration and competition in the context of oil and gas sector organizations. The convergence of economics and organization science literatures suggests a connection between the prevalence of extraorganizational exchange and the role of technology in driving innovation and growth. Specifically, the role of collaboration as a strategy for increasing the returns to technology and providing competitive advantage is explored in this research. / Two questions were advanced to examine the framework. The first investigated the relationships between a set of organizational characteristics and collaborative success; four propositions were developed to test this question. The second issue explored how organizations manage collaborative-competitive tensions in an environment characterized as fiercely competitive and marked by widespread collaborative arrangements. / Using a qualitative research methodology, thirty face-to-face interviews were conducted with executives and senior-level managers from twenty-three companies over an eight-month period; a questionnaire was also used to gather the more objective information. The sample included diversified energy, exploration and development, pipeline and oil and gas service companies. The majority of firms were located in the Houston, Texas area. / The most important implications of the study pertain to innovation and organizational change issues. Principal findings were that the ability to manage complex and multiple time frames was positively associated with an organization's level of collaborative capability, a construct that measured collaborative experience and expertise; organizational boundaries that are neither completely permeable nor fully defined were consistent with more successful collaborations; and the proposed direct relationship between collaborative capability and competitive advantage was only weakly supported. Further results indicate that three-fourths of the sample did not experience conflict between collaborative and competitive strategies, while those firms that noted tensions were confined to oil and gas service companies; and collaborative arrangements were motivated by three imperatives of capital intensity, competition and dependency, each of which led to distinct organizational outcomes.