This thesis presents a strategic analysis on the possibility of use of offensive cyber capabilities by NATO in its defensive efforts. There is a vast array of academic literature regarding the strategic value of the use of offensive capabilities in cybersecurity, and NATO's cyber posture, however, there is little available regarding the relationship between both. Through the use of tools borrowed from Strategic Studies, this thesis attempts to determine whether it is possible to formulate valid cybersecurity strategies for the use of offensive cyber capabilities from the combination of known academic concepts with current NATO capabilities. The thesis also analyzes the possible implications of using such strategies as well as the underlying causes of their potential success or failure. Viana, André Lopes C. NATO and Offensive Cybersecurity: A Strategic Analysis, [number of pages]p. Master Thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Supervisor PhDr. Vít Střítecký, M.Phil., Ph.D.

There is a rising global concern that centers on creating an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable world for current and future generations. This rising sustainability consciousness is built on higher-level value systems that support the sacredness of people and nature. These values promote environmental and social responsibility as avenues to fair profits, and they are currently penetrating the global business environment. Because of their coevolutionary relationships with the business environment, business organizations are now faced with the need to craft efficient and effective triple bottom line strategies that allows them to earn profits in sustainable ways. Because sustainability is complex, multifaceted concept with deep spiritual roots, building triple bottom line strategies requires that organizations develop intangible spiritual capabilities (i.e. spiritual intelligence and spiritual capital) that are valuable, rare, holistic, socially complex, and causally ambiguous, making them difficult to imitate.

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Background: IT has been reshaping competition and strategy for decades. However, the current wave of IT-driven competition is distinct from previous ones. As new digital technologies have a disruptive effect, organizations must adapt to remain competitive. Digital transformation particularly affects the automotive industry as digitalization has become the most important phenomenon since the creation of the industry. Managers in automotive companies need to thus become active in implementing strategic changes and utilize digital opportunities. For this, managers must apply their dynamic managerial capabilities to sense and seize digital opportunities and to transform the company. Research Problem: Despite the wide literature on dynamic capabilities, dynamic managerial capabilities, and digital transformation, research on these three concepts’ interlinkages is underdeveloped. There is furthermore little evidence on how the interaction of the underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities at an organizational level affect strategic change and performance in a changing environment. Research Purpose: The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of an automotive company’s development of dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate its digital transformation. It aims at showcasing how managerial cognition, social capital, and human capital are relevant to sense, seize, and transform for digital transformation. A framework is developed to visualize the respective interlinkages. Research Question: How can dynamic managerial capabilities facilitate an automotive company’s digital transformation? Research Method: This study uses a qualitative approach. An in-depth case study aiming for theory-elaboration was conducted at Volvo Group. Data was purposefully collected through interviews, observations, and internal documents, and then analyzed through a thematic analysis. Conclusion: This paper’s main contribution lies in the application of dynamic managerial capabilities in the context of digital transformation. Our findings suggest that all dynamic managerial capabilities are important for sensing, seizing, and transforming for digital transformation. We find managerial cognition to be vital throughout all the dynamic capabilities steps, whereas managerial social capital has strong influence on the sensing stage. Managerial human capital in terms of industry experience plays a major role for the seizing and transforming stages of digital transformation. Our results indicate that it is important to build teams with complementing dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate organizational digital transformation.

Intense global competition and rapid technological advances have seen innovation become central towards enabling firms to adapt and rejuvenate themselves. While firms become increasingly focused on innovation, the challenge of managing innovation and developing innovation capabilities still remains. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and evaluate the innovation capabilities of Ericsson’s Shared Services Organization (SSO). To do so, the existing literature and theories are synthesized and a multi-dimensional framework is utilized to conceptualize the determinants of organizational innovation capabilities. This framework is applied to analyse and evaluate the innovation capabilities of Ericsson’s SSO. Empirical data are collected through interviews in conjunction with qualitative content analysis of internal documents and participation in several meetings and discussions.Overall, the analysis of the case study revealed some common areas related to innovation capabilities, such as strategy intent for innovation, employees’ engagement with innovation initiatives, structured approach for innovation and management support. The conclusions and implications suggested reflect on the ways in which the case study could create a functional innovation program for fostering innovation in the organization and reaching its performance goals by exploiting untapped resources for innovation.

We propose a Capabilities-based approach for constructing complex emergent systems such that they are change-tolerant, and the development effort promotes change-reduction. The inherent complexity of software systems increases their susceptibility to change when subjected to the vagaries of user needs, technology advances, market demands and other change inducing factors. Despite the inevitability of change, traditional Requirements Engineering strives to develop systems based on a fixed solution. This is a mostly unsuccessful approach as evidenced by the history of system failures. In contrast, we utilize Capabilities — functional abstractions that are neither as amorphous as user needs nor as rigid as system requirements — to architect systems to accommodate change with minimum impact. These entities are designed to exhibit desirable characteristics of high cohesion, low coupling and balanced abstraction levels. Capabilities are generated by a two-phased process called Capabilities Engineering. Phase I mathematically exploits the structural semantics of the Function Decomposition graph — a representation of user needs — to formulate change-tolerant Capabilities. Phase II optimizes these Capabilities to conform to schedule and technology constraints. Results from an empirical evaluation of a real-world Course Evaluation System indicate, with statistical significance, that a Capabilities-based design is more change-tolerant than a requirements-based design. In addition, we observe that the use of the CE process inherently reduces change, otherwise generated, during the regular development effort. Empirical analysis on the change-requests of Sakai, a complex emergent system, supports this claim. Finally, we observe that the process of Capabilities Engineering assists in pre-requirement specification traceability by bridging the complexity gap between the problem and solution spaces. / Ph. D.

Yes / With the emergence of information and communication technologies, organizations worldwide have been putting in meaningful efforts towards developing and gaining business insights by combining technology capability, management capability and personnel capability to explore data potential, which is known as big data analytics (BDA) capability. In this context, variables such as sensing capability—which is related to the organization’s ability to explore the market and develop opportunities—and analytics culture—which refers to the organization’s practices and behavior patterns of its analytical principles—play a fundamental role in BDA initiatives. However, there is a considerable literature gap concerning the effects of BDA-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture on organizational outcomes (i.e., customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic business value) and on how important the organization’s analytics culture is as a mediator in the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capability and organizational outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate these relationships. And to attain this goal, we developed a conceptual model supported by dynamics capabilities, BDA, and analytics culture. We then validated our model by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling. The findings showed not only the positive effect of the BDA-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture on organizational outcomes but also the mediation effect of the analytics culture. Such results bring valuable theoretical implications and contributions to managers and practitioners.

The relationship between Gender Equality (GE) and Sustainability has been analysed for many years, with plenty of studies choosing the angle of the businesses environment to cut in. In addition, SMEs, as the predominant form of enterprise worldwide, are the primary source of employment in most countries. With that in mind, this research scrutinised internal and external drivers to Sustainability Engagement (SE) in Gotland SMEs from a Gender perspective, which presents a probable positive association between GE and SE in SMEs. The study mainly focuses on five female managers’ perceptions of GE and SE, supported by 16 responses to questionnaires. Under the Capabilities Approach (CA) and Dynamic Capabilities theoretical framework, we analyse the specific women managers’ Individual Dynamic Capabilities (IDC) and corporate Dynamic Capabilities, which proves that external and internal factors positively affect corporate SE. The study also introduces a particular psychological model of Social Desirability and Social Approval to delve deeper into female managers sensing mechanisms.

ABSTRACT Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SMEs) have long been recognised as the major drivers of economic activities due to their entrepreneurial traits of being innovative which lead to job creation, sustaining economic growth, export expansion, and efficient allocation of resources in line with their competitive goals and their respective country’s objectives. In their pursuit as major economic drivers in their respective economies, SMEs are barely exposed to hostile environments triggering fierce competition from Multinational Corporations. This has entailed that SMEs need to enhance their capabilities in such environments to sustain their competitive advantage by reconfiguring their internal and external competences and resources in response to changing environments. Surprisingly, literature on how SMEs develop dynamic capabilities in such markets is limited and inconsistent. Therefore, this thesis explores how SMEs develop dynamic capabilities in emerging markets specifically in African markets.   The central purpose of the study is to explore how SMEs in emerging markets such as Africa develop dynamic capabilities to compete alongside MNCs. Building on prior researches which conceptually suggested that market orientation, learning orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation in separate cases, enables SMEs to build dynamic capabilities in dynamic environments, this study explored this viewpoint through a qualitative case study data. Comparative multiple case studies are developed in order to have a holistic understanding of how SMEs across sectors develop dynamic capabilities. The study employs empirical data collected through the use of semi-structured interviews in which samples are purposively selected from 10 firms from separate industries in Africa, in which five were drawn from Cameroon and other five drawn from Zambia. The study follows a qualitative-deductive approach.   Findings indicate that SMEs develop dynamic capabilities in emerging market principally through the lenses of market orientation and learning orientation. While entrepreneurial orientation is found lacking the potential to enable SMEs build-up the required dynamic capabilities due to the fact that it places huge demand on SMEs who are short of adequate financial resources to meet up with the contingencies of being fully entrepreneurial. That is to say, market orientation and learning orientation other than entrepreneurial orientation are the enablers of dynamic capabilities in emerging market. The findings contribute to existing literature by building an empirically-grounded synthesis of the constructs of market orientation, learning orientation and entrepreneurial orientation involved in the development of dynamic capabilities which validates earlier claims on the development of dynamic capabilities in dynamic environment. Second, the results contribute to theory by advancing an original model which brings together all standalone models in the field of dynamic capabilities development into one, thereby harmonising the polarisation of facts. Furthermore, the findings bear potential for researchers and entrepreneurs intending to invest in emerging markets such as Africa.   To improve on this study, we suggest undertaking a related cross-comparative case study on similar grounds which takes into account homogeneity and age parameters at industry level from two or more countries. We believe this might provide an additional explanation on how SMEs in emerging markets develop dynamic capability and may also shed more light on whether age of a firm has an effect on the build-up of dynamic capabilities.

Forbidden to stand aims to provide a comprehensive account of how participation in sitting volleyball (SV) has impacted upon the lives of players with impairments. To achieve this aim, this study uses capabilities approach, a theoretical and methodological framework unexplored in sport contexts but widely appraised in political philosophy as one of the most comprehensive approaches to well-being and quality of life. One of the implications of the use of capabilities approach was the compulsory need to pay attention not only to personal capabilities per se, but also to the contextual elements of the individuals experience in SV. As such, whilst identifying, describing and assessing the main personal capabilities in which participation in SV had a significant impact, the present study presents simultaneously an anthropological account of the SV field in the United Kingdom (UK) as it developed. In connecting capabilities approach and disability sport for the first time, this study contributes to our understanding of the impact of sport on the whole lives of people and to the development of a holistic tool to measure personal development, helping to address an acknowledged omission of such instruments in the academic field of adapted physical activity. In order to respect the pluralism and complexity of capabilities approach, an ethnographic methodological design was used due to its flexibility in combining a plurality of theoretical insights; data sources and perspectives. During the study the researcher performed different roles within the SV community facilitating empirical data collection using the ethnographic tool kit. A key development in this process was the definition of an analytical thematic framework which directed the extensive analysis of the whole data set. A set of ten relevant capabilities were then identified as the most relevant for SV players with impairments, and SV impact on those capabilities described. This study reveals that while the potential to enact and promote capabilities is present in SV context in the UK, it is very dependent upon influential factors operating at a personal, cultural and environmental levels. At a personal level, the enjoyment and expansion of capabilities in players with impairments was very much influenced by the possession of substantial financial resources and previous sporting capital; thus the players who have expanded their capabilities the most were individuals who already possessed a good level of capabilities enjoyment. At the cultural level, while SV field detains important qualities to promote capabilities enjoyment such as an equalisation of the social worth between people with and without impairments, these were often overridden by the political and cultural dominance of an able-bodied volleyball ethos. At an environmental level, the overdependence of Volleyball institutions from the funding allocated by national sport agencies such as UK Sport, as well as the incipient development of SV grassroots stream clearly placed SV in a vulnerable position in relation to external political forces. The most important outcomes of the present study is the identification of life dimensions that are significantly affected by participation in SV as well as the identification of the most important factors mediating such impact. Beyond the fields of disability sport and adapted physical activity, a theoretical/methodological symbiotic relation between capabilities approach and social sciences of sport would encourage those involved in sport to refocus their mission on people and human development instead of on economic and institutional benefits.