The corporate political activity field has focused on the study of political capabilities that allow firms to influence governments and regulators. Building on previous studies, this thesis examines a set of capabilities that allow host firms to adapt to rather than influence political environments. Specifically, this set of adaptive political capabilities can be used by firms to confront host country political contexts in emerging economies that share two characteristics: authoritarian regimes and weak institutions. The findings of this thesis show that host firms can develop and use adaptive political capabilities rather than political capabilities to start and sustain their operations in this type of political contexts. This entails attuning firm processes, structures, and practices to local norms and political behaviors, rather than attempting to shape the host country political environment in its own likeness. Our results suggest host firms can develop adaptive political capabilities to enhance their strategic repertoire when starting or sustaining operations in emerging economies with such characteristics. Our contribution is that by using mixed methods, we provide and test several exploratory propositions that support the conceptualization of a framework to guide the development of adaptive political capabilities by host firms and we make explicit a taxonomy of corporate adaptive political strategies that can enable firms to envision how they can adapt to host political contexts.

Literature review about corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggests that there are organisational benefits to be gained from unintentional discretionary expenditure in laudable behaviour. With this in mind, the methodology integrates insights from the ‘stakeholder theory’ and the ‘resource-based view theory of the firm’ to sharpen the strategic base for CSR investment. Quantitative and qualitative research techniques have been used to discover how business organisations are creating shared value for themselves and for society. The main study was carried out amongst hotel enterprises in Malta. The quantitative analysis tested the relationship between Strategic CSR (in terms of the organisational benefits) against the firms’ commitment, behaviour and resources devoted to CSR. Secondly the qualitative phase of this study involved an analysis of interviews with owner-managers across the Maltese hospitality industry and with experts who are responsible for setting policies in the tourism regulatory context. The results have indicated that responsible behaviour led to the firms’ financial performance and market standing, effective human resources management and operational efficiencies. Following the empirical findings a model representing the ‘creation of shared value’ for business and society has been put forward.

This study aims to investigate the relative contribution of tangible and intangible resources, and capabilities on firm performance based on the measures of market share, sales turnover and profitability and explore the complex interaction and foundation of different resource sets and capabilities in the process of performance creation within the context of resource-based theory. In order to address these objectives, a mixed-methods research approach incorporating both qualitative and quantitative components was utilised. Hence, a sequential explanatory design is employed, commencing with qualitative methods including in-depth interviews along with the literature review to define and organise resources and capabilities in a coherent system that will form the basis of survey instrument, leading to quantitative methods which empirically test a series of hypotheses regarding the contribution of resources and capabilities on firm performance. Whilst qualitative data analysis indicated organisational culture, reputational assets, human capital, business processes and networking capabilities as the most important determinants of firm performance, the survey that was conducted on a total of 243 questionnaires obtained from 951 firms revealed that intangible resources and capabilities contributed more greatly to firm performance compared to tangible resources. However, in contrast to the proposition of resource-based theory that views capabilities as the most important skills that underpin the development and deployment of both tangible and intangible resources, capabilities offered rather limited additional explanatory power to the prediction of firm performance only with respect to profitability against the combined effects of tangible and intangible resources. All findings were explained especially within the context of Turkish business environment that shows typical emerging market characteristics. Moreover, some noteworthy results were elaborated based on the developed and emerging market differences. Overall, the study raises some questions with respect to resource contributions on firm performance and offers a fruitful avenue for further research.

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.