This practicum sets out to address several challenges faced by a multinational corporation operating within a globalized marketplace through the reconsideration of its workplace design. The aim is to achieve a balance between cultural adaptation and standardized corporate identity in the design for the hypothetical multinational management consulting company, Torrent. The balance is perused in order to support Japanese and Canadian national-work-cultures, the two cultures on which the practicum is based, while creating a strong, consistent, and recognizable visual identity across its different subsidiaries. The practicum’s overall objective is to demonstrate how both of these themes can be achieved simultaneously in order to create a balance that benefits both the multinational company as well as its host country. The practicum’s outcome involves two design solutions developed for Torrent based on a single workplace, one responding to Japan’s national work culture, and the other to Canada’s. A standardized corporate identity is achieved through the communication of a consistent company identity in both workplace designs.

The New Zealand construction supply chain today is inefficient. From a literature review it is found that non value adding activities including waste of time and materials are caused by islands of information with ineffective communication between supply chain participants. This represents an opportunity for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide a strategic supply chain management model for the industry enabling interaction and shared information between all parties. To evaluate the performance of ICTs in the New Zealand construction supply chain, this thesis uses as a case study newly launched software---BlueSky. BlueSky was developed by the Building Integration Software Company located in AUT Technical Park. BlueSky was designed to integrate the fragments of the current information flow of the chain from architect through to the end property owner. Supporting Data was gathered by distributing a structured questionnaire designed to find the opportunities and inhibitors for utilizing ICTs to facilitate the synthesis of the chain. 200 responses were received. The study was funded by a TEC grant. The BlueSky case study is based on two pilot sites; one is an architectural design company and the other is a master contractor company in Auckland. The case study also evaluated the potential problems which may bring risks to supply chain members and provide possible recommendations for future research. The study found from the results of the questionnaire that a significant shift in the mindset of participants of the supply chain will be necessary in terms of collaboration and team work if mutual benefits are to be achieved. It is found that in the two pilot sites BlueSky did make a significant difference in terms of reduced cost, accuracy of information, improved documentation management, and overall increased speed and clarity of information. In the wider community of the industry as a whole considerable education is needed to break down mistrust between members. In general each member appears to be determined to secure the best result as individuals rather than considering the overall outcome for the whole chain. This reluctance to co-operate is coupled with a reluctance to utilize ICTs. Recommendations are made to overcome this mindset.

In 2004, 6% of the Crowne Plaza Auckland Hotel's guests were Priority Club members. Two years later, this number has more than doubled to 13%. Are the Priority Club guests contributing to leverage the hotel's profitability? This research is aimed at answering the question if the continuous increase in the number of Priority Club guests staying at the Crowne Plaza Auckland Hotel is an opportunity for the property to effectively optimise its revenue generation performance. The study is essentially focused on assessing the ability of the loyalty programme to generate revenue to the hotel. The Priority Club Rewards is a demand-based, revenue-orientated marketing strategy which is predominantly aimed at 1) promoting and attracting its 30 million members worldwide to stay at the company's extensive portfolio of hotels as well as 2) to entice the club members to spend money on the hotels' services and facilities. In return for their loyalty, these customers are entitled to receive benefits that correspond to their membership level. From a revenue management perspective, the programme exists to strategically help hoteliers not only to achieve higher occupancy levels through repeat visits from the club members but to also leverage the hotel's revenue generating performance through encouraging its members to not only stay in suites and club rooms but also to use the property's services and facilities more regularly. In other words, the objective of the Priority Club Rewards is to help hoteliers attract customers to their properties and at the same time encourage them to spend money whilst onsite. It was found that the Priority Club programme is fulfilling its first core objective, which is to bring more customers to the Crowne Plaza Auckland property. Hence, this research is predominantly focused on assessing the rewards programme's ability to also assist the Auckland hotel to increase profitability. The objective of this project is to analyse whether or not the increasing growth in the number of club members staying at the property can also be interpreted as a growth in the hotel's revenue generation performance. Firstly, a thorough review of the literature was conducted in order to identify any previous academic work that specifically analysed the relationship between the areas of revenue management and loyalty marketing. However, no extensive previous research was found that effectively analysed how these two fields interact with each other, particularly in the hotel industry. Nevertheless, research from Internet articles and other web-based media resources was highly beneficial to the success of this research. There were two data collection processes employed in this research: a Priority Club Survey identified the needs and preferences of the club members when staying at the Auckland hotel and, secondly, a Spending Pattern Analysis was conducted based on the hotel guests' account statements. The results from these two research methods were then carefully analysed and interpreted in order to achieve an accurate set of resourceful conclusions and recommendations.

The aim of this study was to identify how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) affects business processes and service delivery within hotels and how ICT interacts with strategic issues confronting hotel managers. The areas of exploration were: 1) the business context of ICT; 2) the main role of ICT in day to day business; 3) ICT's impact on service delivery to hotel guests; and 4) the role of ICT in the future.As the study was exploring the General Managers' (GMs) perceptions, interviewing was selected as the most appropriate data gathering method. The sample covered a range of Auckland hotels which differed according to location, size and quality. Semi-structured interviews were used to facilitate the comparison of data between interviewees. Common themes and concepts were identified which were compared to the demographic characteristics of the hotels as well as previous research detailed in the literature.The contextual issues identified were staff availability and retention, competition (particularly price wars resulting from discounting), and location and infrastructure issues. Only half the GMs interviewed identified benefits from ICT in the day to day operation of their business. All of them described challenges or disadvantages posed by ICT. The impact on service delivery to guests was viewed more positively but there were still misgivings about the potential barriers which ICT created. There was a strong view that staff were of overwhelming importance to service delivery. Finally, envisioning the future, ICT was perceived as having the ability to make a strong contribution to business development but this ability would be constrained by staffing problems. Analyses of the findings suggest that ICT has a dual role of gathering management data and providing guest services, and GMs appear unaware of how this dual role contributes to the challenges posed by ICT. Similarly, there was limited awareness of the interaction between human agents in a business, the organisational structures, and ICT.The business implications of these findings suggest that GMs would benefit from being aware of the roles of ICT and addressing the needs of staff for a clearer understanding of how their role, and the ICT that supports it, fits into their broader operation of the business.This study is the one of first to examine the impact of ICT in New Zealand hotels, and, in particular, how this interacts with the broader social issues, and offers insights into the areas of potential conflict and ways to manage the impacts of ICT in hotels.

The aim of this study is to understand the importance of public relations activity in non-profit organisations. The study emphasizes the bearing public relations activities can have on non-profit organisations in the contemporary world. This is especially true in an over communicated society where the vast majority of organisations compete to gain access to the scare media resources to put their message across to their potential clients, supporters and customers. Non-profit organisations generally have to depend on the donor agencies and therefore fail to attract a sizeable public relations budget. On the one hand, these organisations lack the resources to launch a successful public relations campaign and on the other the lack of knowledge and interest among general staff members makes it even harder for a public relations campaign to be developed or successfully launched. In this study, I used both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to collect and analyse data. The data were collected from two non-profit organisations based in New Zealand working in the area of child welfare. The primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and survey questionnaires. A single semi-structured interview was conducted with each team leader of the two selected organisations. However, this was like skimming the surface and in-depth interviews would have helped me to collect richer data. On the other hand the data collected was sufficient for this research and it helped me to create a holistic understanding of the topic. The findings of the research highlight that most non-profit organisations working in the area of child welfare find it hard to market themselves due to a lack of funds and employee involvement. Although the findings from the study are significant; caution is necessary in applying the results to other scenarios and in making generalizations. One of the key findings from this research is that both organisations did not use public relations as a strategy. Most decision related to public relations was made on random basis and no long term strategic plan was made to adopt public relations as a core strategy to build creditability among their stakeholders.

IT service management is becoming more and more important in the current business environment. Especially the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a widely adopted and accepted IT service management framework (Wagner 2006). Organizations that adopt one of the IT service management frameworks expect to achieve a large range of benefits through the use of the frameworks. The major benefits that are expected to be realised include reduced costs, IT services that are tailored to the business needs, a higher quality of IT services, and improved customer satisfaction (OGC 2007a). Despite the growing importance and acceptance of IT service management and ITIL, there is not much literature that is concerned with the benefits that can be realised when one of the relevant IT service management frameworks is in place. Only a few studies were published in conference proceedings (e.g. Hochstein et al. 2005, Potgieter et al. 2005, Cater-Steel et al. 2006). Even though these studies were able to confirm some of the claims made by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the publisher of the ITIL series, there are still a lot of claims that are not evaluated to date. This thesis is taking a Monte-Carlo method based simulation approach to identify some of the benefits of the ITIL for customer service. To achieve this, an initial research model was developed that represents the four most likely benefits for customer service of the use of ITIL and their relationship with customer service and the generation of business value. Subsequently the different path ways for the relationships were explored and models for each of the possible paths were designed. These models include a mediated model, an unmediated model and a partially mediated model. After defining the estimates and constraints for the simulation, the simulation was executed using a MS Excel spreadsheet. The simulation results presented a large amount of data for each of the models and their relationships. The models produced normal distributions and showed stability for changed input and throughput parameters. The analysis of the findings showed that the changes in estimates for each of the models and the associated results of the simulation followed a linear pattern. The linearity of the models combined with the normal distribution of the results offers a lot of opportunities for the use of the developed models. A further enhancement through a test with real-life data could provide the basis for a tool to quantitatively predict the impact of an ITIL implementation on customer service and the creation of value for the business. In addition the four most likely contributors to improved customer service based on the use of ITIL have been identified from a literature review. The identified contribution towards improved customer service of these four beneficiary factors is supported by the results of the simulation. Therefore the results of this thesis provide the research community with a model that could provide the basis for further exploration of the beneficiary effects of ITIL on customer service.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2005. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005.

Syfte: Företag har svårt att positionera sig på webben då de misslyckas att utveckla sina webbsidor för att stödja dess varumärkesstrategi. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur ett företag kan tillämpa designstrategi ur ett användarcentrerat designperspektiv för att stödja företagets övergripande varumärkesstrategi på webben. Kunskapslucka: Denna studie har identifierat en kunskapslucka vad gäller hur företag fastställer och verkställer designstrategi för att stödja övergripande varumärkesstrategi på webben. Metod: Studien avser att undersöka tillämpning av designstrategi genom att ta fram ett designförslag som baserats på en användarcentrerad designprocess. För att göra detta har intervjuer med experter samt expertutvärdering av webbsidor utförts för att kartlägga en billeverantörs återförsäljares domän, baserat på motsvarande strategi för köpresa som är avsedd för att leda besökaren till billeverantörens produkt- och tjänsteutbud som representeras av återförsäljare och dess webbsidor. Denna datainsamling ligger till grund för persona och kontextscenarion som översätts till identifierade krav som motsvarar produktens designstrategi. Designstrategin ligger sedan till grund för det skapande momentet i den användarcentrerade designprocessen, där iterativ design leder till förädlande av framtagna ramverksskisser till interaktiv prototyp. Resultat och slutsats: Resultatet av studien som var en framtagen interaktiv prototyp visar att användarcentrerad design som tillämpar designstrategi, genom att fastställa företagets och användarens mål och behov samt innehålls- och funktionalitetskrav, är ett alternativ som tillåter strukturerad förädling av en webbsida till den punkt att webbsidan uppfyller sin designstrategi. Resultatet visar också att beroende på hur grundlig en kartläggning är och hur välformulerad designstrategin är påverkar hur väl framtagen webbsida, vare sig det är en prototyp eller slutprodukt, uppfyller sitt syfte. / Purpose: Corporations experience difficulties positioning themselves on the web as a result of not developing their websites in a way that is inline with their overall business strategy. The purpose of this study is to explore how corporations should apply design strategy, based on a user-centered design perspective, to support their overall business strategy on the web. Originality/value: This study has identified a knowledge gap in terms of how corporations define and apply design strategy in order to support their overall business strategy on the web. Methodology: This study aims to research the application of design strategy by creating a prototype through the use of a user-centered design process. This was done by interviewing experts as well as evaluating websites, in order to explore the domain of a car manufacturers retailers, which was based on the corresponding strategy of leading the visitor to the car manufacturers offerings that are represented by the retailers and their websites. This data collection was the foundation in the creation of a persona and context scenarios that was translated into identified needs that represented the products design strategy. The design strategy in turn was the foundation for the creating phase of the user-centered design process, where iterative design lead to refining framework sketches and an interactive prototype. Findings and conclusion: The study which resulted in an interactive prototype shows that user-centered design, which applies design strategy by defining the corporations and the users goals and needs, is an alternative that allows for structured refinement to the point that the website fulfills its design strategy. The results also show that depending on how well the domain exploration is executed as well as how well the design strategy is defined will affect the resulting website and to what extent it fulfills its purpose, whether it’s is still a prototype or if it’s the end result.