An organisation’s survival is dependent on the support of a number of stakeholders. However, professional service firms tend to lose the support of their most important stakeholders, which are their well-educated employees, also referred to as their ‘talents’. This study has used Harrison and Wicks’ (2013) framework of stakeholder value creation as its point of departure, which consists of four value aspects: goods and services, organisational justice, organisational affiliation, and opportunity cost. The framework states that managerial actions, related to these four aspects, are likely to create value for stakeholders by increasing their happiness. “Happy” stakeholders are further considered to keep supporting their organisation, which generated the principal research question of this study: How can professional service firms increase the happiness of their talents? Moreover, the study was limited to neo and classic-professional service firms, which include: consultancy, advertising, accountancy, architecture, and law firms. In order to explore what managerial actions increase talents’ happiness, a case study was conducted at a British law firm. Nine solicitors of three different levels of seniority were interviewed and the firm was observed for two days. This study not only confirms the validity of Harrison and Wicks’ (2013) framework but also extends it by identifying additional managerial actions, categories for analysing ‘talent happiness’ as well as a fifth value aspect: ‘job characteristics’. In a broader perspective, this study contributes to stakeholder theory by providing an empirical and micro-level illustration of the theory.

Innovation is often related to positive outcomes for the majority to enjoy that enhances welfare and facilitates everyday activities. In different fields of study (economics, management, sociology, history and science and technology) it is becoming a field of magnitude (Malerba and Brusoni, 2007). Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009) discuss the emerging interest of innovation in the field of social science. Although the interest within the subject of innovation is high, very little research has been done regarding the aim to contribute to the design innovation policy, developed by scholars studying the field of innovation. One often so neglected study within innovation is in the field of negative unintended consequences of innovation (NUCoI) (Sveiby et al, 2012). One main contributor of innovative activities is organizational operations leading to value for end customers. While firms often have the aim to create value with innovation for the greater benefit in society, sometimes these value-creating mechanisms may create unintended negative consequences in addition to the positive effects. While innovations are increasing in rapidness and numbers of output produced, the effects on society and the natural environment needs to be highlighted. With assumptions regarding vague CSR implementation in corporations (Newell, 2005), this research tries to grasp understanding on how NUCoI is perceived from the managerial perspective in organizations regarding their stakeholder viewpoint. As a starting point, the authors use Charlie Chaplin’s famous quote “More than machinery, we need humanity” from the movie “The Great Dictator” indicating the importance of caring for various stakes. Purpose: The aim of this research is to highlight the new field of study in social science; Negative unintended consequences of innovation (NUCoI) in relation to the societal natural environment (society and the natural environment). The research contributes to the existing frameworks on organizational value creation mechanisms in innovation policy to incorporate the aspect of negative consequences of innovation (NCoI), in terms of sustainability to highlight the importance of secondary stakeholders. Results: The new Extended Value Creation Mechanism for Global Sustainability, the Societal-Natural-Environment Stakeholder Framework of Innovation and Global Sustainability framework (SNE SFI GS-framework), aims to contribute in the long-term perspective for research in innovation policy by highlighting one aspect of a field of the often so neglected societal natural environment perspective, when competing rivalry becomes too fierce. The framework highlights the importance of secondary stakeholders, where primary stakeholders may act as a “link” between the organization and secondary stakeholders. Additionally, the authors suggest going to basic practices regarding sustainability with valuating the natural resources for a prospering sustainable society. The aspects in the research include stakeholder-theory, value-creation in terms of the societal natural environment, and innovation as a field of social science, negative consequences and organizational sense-making.

Social entrepreneurship, defined as entrepreneurial activities with a clear mission to create social value, is gaining increased influence and importance in the economy. Through combining a for-profit mindset with social objectives, social enterprises provide groundbreaking solutions to societal needs. The global presence and impact of social enterprises raise the importance of internationalization of this specific kind of enterprise. This is an area of inquiry that has gained limited attention in academia and empirical studies have been few. The purpose of the study is to investigate motives for internationalization of social enterprises and how these enterprises establish in foreign markets. The study consists of an empirical investigation based on a survey sample of 65 respondents and one background interview. The result shows that the main motive for internationalization of social enterprises is to alleviate social problems. Social enterprises have a distinct international character, show patterns of early and rapid internationalization and can be characterized as international new ventures with a distinct social mission. Networks affect motives as well as choice of entry mode of social enterprises. The most common mode of entry of social enterprises is to establish alliances or partnerships with foreign actors and the main target market is less developed economies.

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how individual consumers negotiate in the collective community in order to co-create value. By making use of the concepts of ‘resources’ from the Service Dominant Logic of Marketing and ‘cultural lens’ from Consumer Culture Theory, this dissertation considers both individual and collective interaction in order to demonstrate the roles of individual consumers in the value creation process and how the value creation process works. A comprehensive and up to date review of literature provides a guide to the theory and a path for research. This dissertation employed netnography to understand social and cultural aspects of consumption from an online football fan community. The data collection also included participant and non-participant observations, and local fans interviewings. Hermeneutical framework of interpretation was used to analyse data. The findings show that consumers can co-create value among themselves through the roles of ‘provider’ and ‘beneficiary’. It shows the dynamic movement of individual consumers within the continuous learning process of value creation. This dissertation demonstrates that brand community plays a role as a platform of value creation. Consumers can co-create value among themselves through the process of engaging, educating and enriching. The finding demonstrates active roles of consumers in value creation process. This dissertation also discusses how inequalities between resources of consumers in brand community can cause conflicts among them and how these conflicts stimulate consumers to co-create the collective resources. Within this process, consumers have collectively balanced the power through the social interaction in order to eliminate the domination and conflicts. This dissertation extends the previous researches in value creation within brand community by demonstrating how individual consumers engage and negotiated in value creation process. It contributes to respond working consumers and double exploitation through ‘sacrifice’.

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.

The increasing usage of social networking sites, such as Facebook has changed the way that corporations and customer interact with each other. New ways of customer-corporation interactions evolve constantly, enabling customers to participate and co-create value with the corporations. An organisation that has taken this a step further is Skånetrafiken, which uses Facebook as a channel for its customer service. This thesis focuses in the interactions that occur between Skånetrafiken and its customers, which in this case takes place on Facebook.   The purpose of this thesis is to explore the what, how and why customer and corporation interaction occur on Skånetrafiken's Facebook page. In order to approach the phenomenon of co-creation, we conducted a case study as a research design and strategy. Data collection methods we used were observations on Skånetrafiken’s Facebook page, an interview and a focus group discussion.     The findings indicate that there must be an engagement for the co-creation process to begin and that the co-creation process is continuous rather than a fixed model. It further turned out that different types of interactions occur, not only customer-to-corporation, but also customer-to-customer and customer-to-employee interactions. The limitations of the study imply that the findings cannot be generalised on all organisations since only one organisation have been examined. This thesis further gives a practical implication by presenting an applicable framework for co-creation on Facebook. Additionally, few if any have previously studied phenomenon of co-creation on Facebook, which contributes to the original value of the thesis.

Short-termism and myopia on the part of corporate managers, analysts, and investors have created a business environment driven by the excessive focus on short-term results and the need to meet earnings targets at the expense of long-term value creation. These are accompanied by numerous consequences, including the potential for short-term-oriented firms, particularly in the U.S., to lag behind global long-term-oriented firms, as well as the potential for short-term mindsets in the corporate world to catalyze financial crises. In this paper, I demonstrate that the market generally assigns higher values to long-term firms rather than short-term ones. This is evidenced by the fact that firms characterized to be long-term according to various financial metrics have higher valuation multiples than their short-term counterparts. The results suggest that the market has a degree of sophistication that rewards investments for the future rather than earnings management and present gratification, and that the corporate world should therefore increasingly develop a long-term mentality.

This thesis is about service provider flexibility and how provider flexibility facilitates customer value creation in contexts where customer processes and activities change. Provider flexibility is delineated as a mechanism of value creation and defined as the ability of the service provider to respond to changes or to bring about changes that support its customers’ value creation. Although provider flexibility has been implied as a relevant factor in value creation, previous studies focusing on some kind of provider flexibility would benefit from a deeper understanding of the strategic role that service provider flexibility plays in value creation. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework that explicates the strategic role of provider flexibility in value creation. The role of provider flexibility in the adjustment of the provider’s processes and activities and the development of opportunities based on insights from customer interactions are thus emphasized. Moreover, while these insights from customer interactions can offer valuable development opportunities for the service provider, these opportunities yield returns only with the transfer of the insights back to the service provider’s organization. The research process evolves along five research articles that develop the understanding of the strategic role of provider flexibility in value creation. The study builds on the empirical data from five service organizations of large industrial firms. The empirical insights from the articles are expanded and their conclusions further developed by iteratively and abductively substantiating the research model. The discussion explicates how exercising provider flexibility—in the form of organizational flexibility in the provider sphere, interaction flexibility in the joint sphere, and flexibility in use in the customer sphere—contributes to value creation. Moreover, findings show that the provider and the customer are entwined in a service system surrounding their service relationship. Provider flexibility in this aspect functions not merely as a mechanism of value creation, but also as a carrier of knowledge and information about the customer. Having this dynamics in mind, the provider continues to use provider flexibility to reinvent itself and constantly evolve the organization. This thesis contributes to the literature by providing a framework that explicates the strategic role of provider flexibility in value creation. More specifically, the contributions are: 1) an increased understanding of how provider flexibility in value creation is exercised, placing provider flexibility at the core of the encompassing process of value creation, and thus explicating the manner in which the encompassing process of value creation can unfold; and 2) an increased understanding of the strategic role of the work of part-time marketers by delineating the process of provider flexibility in value creation where different aspects of provider flexibility in value creation are linked. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Accepted. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Background: Online marketplaces constitute one of the most successful business innovations of the Web 2.0. Nonetheless so far no branding theory has been connected to the topic of two-sided online marketplaces. This might be due to the high complexity and reciprocity of their value creation which however needs to be in order to apply any marketing and branding strategies.   Purpose:       Therefore, the purpose is to understand and clarify the value creation processes of two-sided online marketplaces and develop branding theory based on the findings thereof.   Method:        Within this thesis we conducted qualitative research.  The study is built on semi-structured interviews with 15 respondents that have used various two-sided online marketplaces either as sellers and buyers.   Conclusion: In order to understand the various variables of two-sided online marketplaces business model, we have identified, conceptualized and extended an integrative model to manage and brand their value. With the knowledge resulting from our literature review we built a model illustrating all pillars which influence value creation and thus brand perception and extended this model with the results of our own research. We have identified that while user behavior and preferences generally remain heterogeneous, commonalities such as social influences and convenience stick out most often for both user sides. Both pillars have barely been covered by research, which solely focused on network effects, price allocation and trust.

With the arising digital disruption and global market pressures, several manufacturing companies have recognized the strategic integration of services as a way to competitive advantage and corporate profitability, they therefore have the desire to differentiate themselves by creating new service-oriented strategies, namely Product-Service Systems (PSS). While transforming towards a PSS provider there are a number of barriers that the organization has to overcome. After an extensive literature review the authors identified 34 such barriers. Tukker (2015) argues that the number of successful adoptions of PSS among manufacturing firms is surprisingly low, despite an increased literature awareness and focus on the barriers. The identified barriers are most often seen through the manufacturers’ perspective and little is mentioned about the customers’ perspective on barriers. The gap that was identified in the literature was the lack of customers’ perspective upon these barriers. This thesis aims to investigate the perceived barriers from both the customers’- and the provider’s perspective, and to examine which barriers the provider should emphasize to have the highest potential to successfully transform into a PSS provider. We used Bosch Rexroth as a focal firm and conducted in total 29 interviews with them and their customers and a workshop with 11 participants from the provider. The data from the provider and the customers were separately analysed until the last step, where it generated a barrier spheres. The spheres were used as a foundation for the emerging framework. The framework’s step wise approach is a guideline for manufacturing firms in their efforts to overcome the barriers in order to successfully adopt PSS. This thesis is a first contribution towards shredding light upon the customers’ perspective of barriers towards PSS. Our research shows that one perspective of these barriers is insufficient, since PSS involves both the provider and the customers it should thereby include both perspectives. The managerial implications of this thesis is partly the framework but also the importance for a provider to work closely to their customers and build strong relationships in order to overcome to barriers towards PSS together.