This research investigates the relationship between supplier capabilities, inter-firm governance and buyer-supplier collaboration. The research focuses on three functional capabilities (Research and Development (R&D), Production and Support services capability), two governance mechanisms (Contractual and Relational governance) and three types of buyer-supplier collaboration (Information sharing, Collaborative product/service development and Collaborative problem solving). A theoretical framework is developed which first examines the multiple mediation effect of contractual and relational governance on the relationship between capability and collaboration type, and second, explores the relative strength of the indirect effect through contractual and relational governance. Survey based research methodology is used to empirically test the hypotheses in this research. Data are collected from a total of 120 SMEs in the UK aerospace industry. Bootstrapping based techniques are used to analyse the data and to examine the proposed relationship between capability, governance and collaboration. The empirical findings indicate that although both contractual and relational governance are important in order to link the supplier capability with collaboration, the individual effect of contractual and relational governance varies in different combinations of capabilities and collaboration types. The potential contribution of this research is twofold: first, in terms of academic contribution, this study combines the arguments of Resource Based View and Transaction Cost Economics to provide a holistic view in explaining the interrelation between capability, governance and buyer-supplier collaboration; Second, in terms of practical contribution, this study improves the understanding of practitioners in both buying and supplying firm regarding the alignment of interfirm exchange processes with capabilities to achieve better performance in collaboration.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2017-09-26T13:05:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tiago Silva de Souza_.pdf: 989483 bytes, checksum: 54a4ff4a17ced1ad3c89fe08ea1cc911 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-26T13:05:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tiago Silva de Souza_.pdf: 989483 bytes, checksum: 54a4ff4a17ced1ad3c89fe08ea1cc911 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-14 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Institutional voids are typically found in emerging economies. When governments lack in essential facilities, in order to ensure the well function of their supply chains, companies have to properly deal with this situation by themselves. An example is a situation happening in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, since 2013, where a sequence of investigations focused on the dairy industry. Due to a lack of regulation, milk was the target of adulterations throughout the supply chain processes of the companies. The frauds affected processes of companies from different sizes and nationalities. However, in this context, a local cooperative called Cooperativa Languiru, one of the leader dairy companies in the state, has different practices with its suppliers and was not affected by this contingency. Thus, the purpose of this research, through a case study, was to analyze the relationship between a dairy buying company and its suppliers in this environment of regulatory institutional voids. Aiming to have a wider perspective, this qualitative study explored how the lack of institutions affected the sector. As results, it was verified that political and economic interferences affect the chain as well as political lobby acts. Likewise, the lack of inspectors and infrastructure impact the well-functioning of it. Nevertheless, the close relation between the Cooperativa Languiru with its suppliers abled the company to have record results without having situations in terms of adulteration. Thus, this study proposed a research framework conceptualizing that firms must closely manage their relations with suppliers in order to deal with institutional voids.

This thesis focuses on product design change in the fast fashion market and its impact on supplier companies. Theorizing from the relationship between product design and suppliers within an overarching framework of the supply chain and product design literatures, the research develops what impact product design changes have on supplier companies and how those changes connect to the performance of supplier companies. The multiple case study draws on interview data with 20 participants from a famous high-street fashion retailer and eight of its suppliers. This research validates that product design changes in the fast fashion market have physical and non-physical impacts across supplier company departments, and shows that these impacts connect significantly to the performance of supplier companies. This research contributes to the supply chain and product design literatures by providing an understanding of how product design changes create chain-like-effects, both internally and externally to supplier companies. This can catalyse supplier company strategy, which mitigates product design change to avoid this chain-like-effect. Practically, this thesis offers guidance for retailers and suppliers in creating solutions for the problems that they encounter during the product design change process by revealing the cause and effect relationship of product design changes and supplier companies. The results are currently limited to the fashion industry, and they are yet to be generalised to other buyer-driven commodity chains. Future research should focus on best practices for management to deal with the impact of product design change and in consideration in other industries.

In recent years, a number of researchers have questioned the traditional notion of the producer as the sole generator of innovation in buyer seller relationships. Increasingly, innovation generation has been recognized as an outcome of interaction between a firm and various outside entities. According to this view, supplier involvement and alliances are a route to innovation generation. Clearly, business market relationships provide an important opportunity for interaction between buyer and seller. Despite this realization, only very limited research has focused on innovation generation in business-to-business relationships. To alleviate this important gap in literature, this thesis develops a conceptual model and hypotheses of innovation generation in business-to-buyer seller relationships. The research uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques to examine the proposed theoretical model of innovation generation. A pilot case study is followed by development of and purification of measures using the IMP database on supplier customer interfirm relations in Europe and China. The hypotheses and model are tested using correlation and regression analysis. Results suggest that innovation generation is indeed facilitated by buyer seller interactions. Interaction also moderates the effect of other relationship and technology factors and type of innovation generated / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Marketing)

<p><strong>Background:</strong> In order to survive and attain growth organizations need to make different investments which require that different decisions are being made. It is a process, by which a person, group or an organization identifies a choice or judgment to be made, gathers and evaluates information about alternatives and selects from among the alternatives. Thus, a decision is of great importance for an organization for which it is interesting for us to see how they make their decisions regarding a purchase and foremost how the actual decision-making process is constituted regarding a purchase of a simulation solution offered by our case company FrontWay AB.</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> The purpose of this thesis is to examine and understand how a client’s decision-making process looks like, concerning the purchasing of technical complex products in industrial organizations, more specifically in the pulp- and paper industry.</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> A qualitative study has been used, based on interviews with the clients of FrontWay who have bough their simulation solution or are in the buying process.</p><p><strong>Result and Conclusions: </strong>The empirical findings that has come to hand shows that the decision-making process actually was shorter than perceived by the case company. One explanation was that the investment was not seen as big. Further we have concluded that the selling organization and the buying organization do not see the same start and end point when a decision is being made. The decision-making process for the buying organization seems to be difficult to shorten down, however, if the selling organization will do some changes maybe it can be shortened down. It is however questionable if FrontWay can make changes at all since it requires a lot of work as well as a lot of resources. As it takes time to make a good decision, and also resources from the buying organization to have someone working with simulations solution fulltime it is unsure if it is of interest to actually shorten down the decision-making process.</p>

<p>Till följd av marknadens utveckling har beroendet av informationsutbyte och samverkan i olika nätverk ökat. De senaste årtiondenas fokus på informationsutbyte och samarbete ledde till att Supply Chain Management uppstod. Flera forskare har karakteriserat lyckad styrning av samverkan som en kärnkompetens som krävs för att vara konkurrenskraftig. Ägande och kontrollfunktioner som tidigare låg inom samma verksamhet har förändrats och tillämpningen av VMI har uppkommit. VMI innebär att leverantören övertar ansvaret för lagerstyrningen hos kunden. Samarbetet kräver effektivt informationsflöde inom försörjningskedjan och ett bättre informationssystem, vilket ökar möjligheten att förbättra kedjans effektivitet. Vi hade, med den här utgångspunkten i åtanke, för avsikt att besvara problemformuleringen: Hur hanteras information i VMI-styrda relationer inom koncerner? Syften med undersökningen var att undersöka hur lagerstyrning i form av VMI fungerar i en koncern, förklara hur VMI påverkar informationsflöde och relationer i en koncern samt att analysera betydelsen av VMI för informationsutbytet. Efter teoretiska studier genomfördes en undersökning på en koncern där VMI har införts och givit resultat. Resultaten från intervjuerna har sedan analyserats och vi har kommit fram till följande. För att hantera information i VMI-styrda relationer krävs att det finns bra system, en tydlig ansvarsfördelning och förtroende mellan parterna.</p>

<p>Throughout the years more and more charitable organisations have appeared and the competition between them has increased. This has forced the charities to use more marketing strategies in their work in order to strengthen their competitiveness. </p><p>Research in philanthropy in terms of economy and marketing has been neglected in Sweden and the research that is done today is mainly focused on why individuals donate to charity. A donation, according to the writers of this thesis, has been seen as an economical activity and can therefore be explained and understood through economical models and theories. This thesis aims to see <em>how </em>a contributor to charity makes the decision to donate money, consequently see how the donation decision process actually works from a theoretical model of a buying decision process from marketing literature. </p><p>The purpose of this thesis is therefore to from a buying decision process concerning products describe the donation decision process for contributors to charity. By achieving this purpose the writers aim to compare if a donation decision process go through certain steps similar to a buying decision process. This is expected to give a theory-testing contribution to science where the chosen theoretical model for a buying decision process is strengthened. </p><p>The thesis is based on a qualitative method of research to achieve this purpose where the main information comes from semi-structured interviews with three charities and ten individuals who all contribute to charity.</p><p>From the gathered empirical data and the following analysis, several conclusions are presented in the thesis based on earlier research questions. The purpose of the thesis is considered to have been fulfilled, the chosen theory of buying decision process is considered to be fully proficient to explain a donation decision process. A donation to charity is, according to the thesis, considered as an impulse decision with low involvement that has strong emotional factors, such as motivation, which influences the decision. The writers believe that this thesis could be useful to other researchers within this field of science, or charities searching for insight into individual’s donation decision process. </p> / <p>Genom åren har allt fler hjälporganisationer etablerats på marknaden och konkurrensen mellan dem ökar. Detta har inneburit att hjälporganisationerna har blivit tvingade att använda marknadsföringsstrategier i större utsträckning än tidigare för att stärka sin konkurrenskraft. </p><p>Forskningen inom filantropi i samband med ekonomi och marknadsföring är eftersatt i Sverige och den forskning som sker idag är främst inriktad på varför individer donerar pengar till välgörenhet. Denna uppsats vill undersöka <em>hur </em>en bidragsgivare kommer fram till beslutet att donera pengar.</p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen blir därför att utifrån en köpbeslutsprocess gällande produkter beskriva donationsbeslutsprocessen för bidragsgivare. Genom detta syfte vill uppsatsförfattarna se hur donationsbeslutsprocessen går till och jämföra den utifrån en modell för köpbeslutsprocesser som finns inom marknadsföringsteorin. Detta förväntas ge ett teoriprövande bidrag till forskningen och stärka och vidga användningsområdet för den valda modellen för köpbeslutsprocessen. </p><p>För att uppnå detta syfte har uppsatsen en kvalitativ metod där den primära källan för information är semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre stycken hjälporganisationer och tio stycken bidragsgivare. Utifrån empirin och den följande analysen presenteras ett antal slutsatser. </p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen ansågs vara uppfyllt då den valda teorin om köpbeslutsprocessen väl kunde förklara en donationsbeslutsprocess. En donation enligt uppsatsen är ett impulsbeslut med låg involvering trots att motiven bakom är av emotionell natur. Det låga engagemanget grundar sig i att bidragsbranschen ses som homogen. Tilliten spelar stor roll, men är komplex för bidragsgivarna och många är väldigt känsliga för medierapportering. </p><p>Det förväntade bidraget till forskning kan därmed sägas ha uppnåtts, marknadsföringteorin om köpbeslutprocessen kan användas för att beskriva en donationsbeslutsprocess. Uppsatsförfattarna anser att denna uppsats kan komma till användning för andra forskare inom området eller för hjälporganisationer som vill få insikt i bidragsgivarnas beslutsprocess.</p>

<p>Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to study the interaction between seller and buyer in a mobile phone store. The specific research questions under investigation are:Are there any underlying factors behind mobile purchase, and if so, what are they? Are mobile purchases driven by lifestyle factors and do customers try and create identities when purchasing new mobile phones?</p><p>Material/Method: The study employs an ethnographic method when trying to answer the posed research questions. I have under a period of two weeks studied the seller-buyer interaction in a mobile phone store. In order to further increase the accuracy of my findings, I have complemented my observations with a sample of buyer and seller interviews.</p><p>Main results: The observations and interviews were initially studied in isolation, resulting in different themes. These themes were then collapsed into some common themes pertaining to the different methods. Overall, I conclude three major findings from the seller-buyer interaction which I name, (1) context and influence, (2) status, and (3) social accepting.</p>

Small and medium sized companies are important to the European economy and considered as the true backbone of the European economy, being primarily responsi-ble for wealth and economic growth. Further, the purchasing function of small and medium sized companies had become more and more important to firms within the creating of competitive advantages. Additional, former research emphasizes the need of companies to engage in closer relationships in order to survive in nowadays business environments. These three issues, - SMEs, its purchasing performance and the relationships the small and medium sized firms are engaged with are interrelated and therefore the essences of the thesis. The thesis is limited to the manufacturing industry due to the potential wide area of small and medium sized companies. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the purchasing practices of small and me-dium sized enterprises with a focus on strategic considerations and supplier relation-ships. The research project is developed with four single case studies. Participating companies were two small sized manufacturing companies and two medium sized manufac-turing companies, defined according to the definition of the European Commission. The study is built on a critical review of former literature and research findings within the purchasing area and the area of small and medium sized companies. The find-ings from literature review (frame of references) and the findings from the empirical study were connected in order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis as well as the developed research questions. In the analysis, the characteristics of SMEs purchasing process were outlined. Evi-dence for strategic consideration were found and the characteristics of the companies relationships where established. Small and medium sized enterprises have developed its purchasing performance po-sitively in the comparison to former research findings. By using business technology systems, strategic planning and deliberations and finally through building close and long-term relationships, manufacturing SMEs found a suitable ways to perform its purchasing activities successful and found its place in sophisticated supply chains.

Throughout the years more and more charitable organisations have appeared and the competition between them has increased. This has forced the charities to use more marketing strategies in their work in order to strengthen their competitiveness.  Research in philanthropy in terms of economy and marketing has been neglected in Sweden and the research that is done today is mainly focused on why individuals donate to charity. A donation, according to the writers of this thesis, has been seen as an economical activity and can therefore be explained and understood through economical models and theories. This thesis aims to see how a contributor to charity makes the decision to donate money, consequently see how the donation decision process actually works from a theoretical model of a buying decision process from marketing literature.  The purpose of this thesis is therefore to from a buying decision process concerning products describe the donation decision process for contributors to charity. By achieving this purpose the writers aim to compare if a donation decision process go through certain steps similar to a buying decision process. This is expected to give a theory-testing contribution to science where the chosen theoretical model for a buying decision process is strengthened.  The thesis is based on a qualitative method of research to achieve this purpose where the main information comes from semi-structured interviews with three charities and ten individuals who all contribute to charity. From the gathered empirical data and the following analysis, several conclusions are presented in the thesis based on earlier research questions. The purpose of the thesis is considered to have been fulfilled, the chosen theory of buying decision process is considered to be fully proficient to explain a donation decision process. A donation to charity is, according to the thesis, considered as an impulse decision with low involvement that has strong emotional factors, such as motivation, which influences the decision. The writers believe that this thesis could be useful to other researchers within this field of science, or charities searching for insight into individual’s donation decision process. / Genom åren har allt fler hjälporganisationer etablerats på marknaden och konkurrensen mellan dem ökar. Detta har inneburit att hjälporganisationerna har blivit tvingade att använda marknadsföringsstrategier i större utsträckning än tidigare för att stärka sin konkurrenskraft.  Forskningen inom filantropi i samband med ekonomi och marknadsföring är eftersatt i Sverige och den forskning som sker idag är främst inriktad på varför individer donerar pengar till välgörenhet. Denna uppsats vill undersöka hur en bidragsgivare kommer fram till beslutet att donera pengar. Syftet med uppsatsen blir därför att utifrån en köpbeslutsprocess gällande produkter beskriva donationsbeslutsprocessen för bidragsgivare. Genom detta syfte vill uppsatsförfattarna se hur donationsbeslutsprocessen går till och jämföra den utifrån en modell för köpbeslutsprocesser som finns inom marknadsföringsteorin. Detta förväntas ge ett teoriprövande bidrag till forskningen och stärka och vidga användningsområdet för den valda modellen för köpbeslutsprocessen.  För att uppnå detta syfte har uppsatsen en kvalitativ metod där den primära källan för information är semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre stycken hjälporganisationer och tio stycken bidragsgivare. Utifrån empirin och den följande analysen presenteras ett antal slutsatser.  Syftet med uppsatsen ansågs vara uppfyllt då den valda teorin om köpbeslutsprocessen väl kunde förklara en donationsbeslutsprocess. En donation enligt uppsatsen är ett impulsbeslut med låg involvering trots att motiven bakom är av emotionell natur. Det låga engagemanget grundar sig i att bidragsbranschen ses som homogen. Tilliten spelar stor roll, men är komplex för bidragsgivarna och många är väldigt känsliga för medierapportering.  Det förväntade bidraget till forskning kan därmed sägas ha uppnåtts, marknadsföringteorin om köpbeslutprocessen kan användas för att beskriva en donationsbeslutsprocess. Uppsatsförfattarna anser att denna uppsats kan komma till användning för andra forskare inom området eller för hjälporganisationer som vill få insikt i bidragsgivarnas beslutsprocess.