The objective of this study is to identify the key determinants of Australia's competitive advantage in the Non-residential construction industry. Porter's Five Competitive Forces Model has been used to analyse the existing industry structure both in Australia and Thailand. In addition. Porter's Diamond Model has been used for identifying the key determinants of Australia's competitive advantage in the industry. The study has drawn upon industry data obtained from interviews with operation managers and executives of major Australian firms in the non-residential construction industry who have been successfully operating in Thailand over the last ten years. Research, undertaken in Australia and Thailand, includes interviews and case study information gained from industry, government and academia. A key finding applicable to each case study was that Australian non-residential construction firms operating in Thailand competed successfully on higher order technological expertise in construction management and operation. Expertise and innovation was created and sustained at home through vertically integrated clusters of industry suppliers to the main contractor and replicated or adapted abroad to local circumstances. Australia's national competitive advantage in the industry has relied on the interaction of key determinants. Favourable factor conditions have provided Australia with a key advantage base, for example, skilled personnel, experience in a variety of construction areas due to the demands of Australia's geography and development needs, and adequate infrastructure provision both physical and capital. Favourable factor conditions combined with intense service rivalry at home, supportive related industries, demanding buyers, and effective competition policy are the key to Australia's success. The study goes on to explain the role that industry and government can play to ensure Australia remains internationally competitive in the industry. In addition summary recommendations are provided of the steps that Thailand needs to take to improve its competitiveness in general and the development of the construction industry in particular.

Adopting a triangulated approach, this thesis consists of three separate but related qualitative studies, the collective objectives of which are to (i) gauge current levels of concern of Australian public universities with rapid intensification of the higher education sector globally; (ii) evaluate strategies developed by universities in response to increasing competition; and (iii) develop a conceptual framework to guide competitive behaviour of universities. Study 1 is a systematic content analysis of published strategic plans of universities using Leximancer (Version 2.20). Relative prominence of concepts identified in this content analysis give rise to propositions relating both to levels of concern with competition and strategies being implemented to protect market position. In Study 2, these propositions are tested in a sample of the universities by means of case studies based on face-to-face interviews with senior academics and administrators. Study 3 draws upon findings of Studies 1 and 2 to develop a strategic model to guide future strategy development. Overall, findings of the studies provide valuable insights into the management of higher education in a dynamic environment in which the intensity of competition is likely to escalate as the pace of globalisation and technological change quickens, as deregulation of the domestic higher education sector continues, as per capita funding is further reduced, as even greater elements of competition and contestability are introduced in the interests of productivity and efficiency, and as overseas student demand slackens in traditional markets.

Previous reports have shown that some bacteria utilize a dissimilatory nitrate reductase enzyme (NR) in anaerobic environments. This enzyme reduces nitrate to nitrite and also has been shown to co-metabolize chlorate to cytotoxic chlorite. A commercially available competitive exclusion (CE) product was evaluated for its nitrate reductase activity and therefore its experimental chlorate product (ECP) sensitivity. Of the 29 constituent bacteria of the CE culture, 11 had slight utilization of NR, 3 had moderate utilization of NR; the remaining were NR negative (with slight and moderate utilization: >0.1 to < 1.0 mM and > 1.0 mM nitrate utilized within 6 h, respectively). In vivo studies utilizing CE and ECP showed significant reductions in Salmonella. Although some of the bacteria were affected by ECP, the combined effect of the CE culture and ECP were effective in reducing Salmonella. Clostridium perfringens (CP) is a pathogen in the commercial poultry industry, which is the etiologic agent of necrotic enteritis (NE). Day-of-hatch broilers were fed a wheat diet and assigned to the following groups: control, commercial coccidia vaccine, commercial bursal disease vaccine, or the combination of the two, and challenged with CP in order to develop a disease model. Broilers in each treatment group had significant increases (P≤ 0.05) in lesion scores, mortality, and CP incidence. As pressure mounts for discontinuing the use of antibiotics in the agriculture industry, it is important to develop new strategies to combat these costly enteric pathogens. In vitro investigations evaluated a mixed gut culture with CP and the ECP at 5 mM or a 10 mM concentrations, over time. By 3 h there was a reduction (P≤ 0.05) in the 5 mM ECP and 10 mM ECP treatment groups. In vivo studies showed significant reductions in the incidence of CP and populations of intrinsic E. coli in all of the chickens provided ECP in the drinking water. Birds administered ECP in the feed showed significant reductions in lesion scores, incidence of CP and also had reduced E. coli log10 values. These results show that an ECP could provide the industry with a new management tool for controlling NE.

Drawing insights from strategic management and international business literature, the present study develops an integrated model to explain the competitive actions between multinational firms in a global context. Accordingly, two research questions are addressed: What key factors explain the competitive actions of multinational firms? What key factors moderate the competitive tensions experienced by different pairs of multinational firms? Using structured content analysis to identify competitive actions, the empirical findings of the present study suggest that subsidiary control, MNE size, national culture, government regulations and multimarket contact are all likely to exert important impact on a multinational firm's motivation and capability to compete and therefore influence its competitive aggressiveness in foreign markets.

The history of Taiwan hypermarket industry began with the entering of Makro in1989. The same year, the French company Carrefour established a joint-venture with President Group in Taiwan. Besides Carrefour and Makro, companies that joined the market include local brands Geant and RT-MART and international brands like Costco and Tesco. After years of fast booming in the early stage of development, the entire industry has faced stagnancy for years. Why the industry suffered a downturn can be explained from the following aspects: investors are not optimistic about the overall macroeconomic conditions, consumer confidence is too weak, the competition within the Taiwan hypermarket industry is intense, and the strategic groups of all the participants in the markets are similar. All the reasons combined caused some company have no choice but leave the market or change their strategy. Macro left Taiwan market and Tesco Taiwan are included in Carrefour Taiwan. However, not every company in this industry suffered, Costco¡¦s sales increased when the industry top leaders, Carrefour and RT-MART, faced decreasing sales last year. The purpose of the study is to understand how Costco satisfies customer demand through its unique way in the competitive Taiwan hypermarket industry, how Costco makes consumers accept its way of doing business and how this unique business model differs from competitors in terms of operation, profit earning by analyzing the external industry competition, consumer demand that Costco faces and Costco¡¦s internal operation model. Besides internal and external analysis, the author designs a questionnaire that focus on Costco¡¦s customers¡¦ feelings about it.

Background: The rise in ethical consumerism has become evident through an increase in sales of fair trade products in recent years. Consumers are prepared to pay a premium for fair trade chocolate, and with a steady future growth in the fair trade movement, this is an attractive market for new entrants. Of particular focus are the Swedish and German markets for fair trade chocolate as they show promising growth rates and interest in this field. Problem:       The chocolate industry is very competitive, and the observation that consumers reward companies that act socially responsible presents an opportunity for ethical companies to compete. This is attractive for entrepreneurial firms, but there exist numerous motivations why firms choose to engage in fair trade. Purpose:        The purpose of this thesis is to understand the role of fair trade in corporate strategy (either in partial or entire assortment), its relation to entrepreneurial opportunity-seeking behaviour, and examining how the strategic resource of Fairtrade certification is used to gain competitive advantage. Method:         A qualitative interview study was applied, and ten chocolate companies active in the Swedish and German markets were included in the sample. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews (four telephone interviews and six email responses), and complemented with secondary data from company websites and press releases. The interviewees were mainly representatives of the marketing department and CEOs. Empirical findings were analysed using relevant models and theories, and organized under the two categories of ‘firm use of fair trade’ and ‘visibility of fair trade.’ Conclusion:   The findings in this thesis show that there are multiple reasons why chocolate companies engage in fair trade including reputation, spreading awareness, proactive opportunity-seeking behaviour, strategic differentiation, as a means of communicating to producers and consumers, and for quality insurance of raw ingredients. Fair trade engagement is visible through its role as a social resource. This image is created by ethical and social commitment and wholeness in values, non-exploitative respectful business network relationships, consistency in firm behaviour, and through wealth creation in terms of benefiting the firm, society, and the environment. The Fairtrade label is not imperative to achieving a state of competitive advantage, but can inevitably lead to that result through the firm wholeness created by mission- and vision-driven values.

The competitive climate of production and high labour cost, motivate western companies to use technologies like automation as a mean to increase manufacturing competitiveness. On the other hand companies are aware about cost reductive policies like lean production which has shown noticeable achievement; consequently some manufacturers tend to follow such system. In this situation, in order to have lean enterprise, it is vital to find a clear picture of challenges and potentials of implementing automation within a lean environment. If the process of developing automation is not efficient and companies’ strategy and mission is not considered in time of project development, the result may not be lean at the end. So finding an appropriate guideline that can be used in time of developing automated projects is very important.This thesis aims to develop a guideline that can be used in developing automation solutions to have lean result at the end of the projects. The guidelines can be used in both assembly and manufacturing development projects.VOLVO GTO has chosen as the case study for this thesis. In order to find the answer of research questions two main areas in manufacturing and assembly are marked.

No description available.

In recent years, corporate social responsibility (CSR) becomes more and more popular not only in  academic world but also in practical world. Many transnational companies adopted CSR practices base on kinds of motivations. There is also a rising trend on CSR program among Chinese SME. Moreover we noticed that, despite the challenges and misunderstandings, some Chinese textile SME successfully created competitive advantage with strategic CSR. However, there are few previous researches try to study on Chinese company in field of strategic CSR, especially on Chinese SME. This research intends to discover how the competitive advantage was created by strategic CSR in Chinese textile SME and try to explain the process by the existing theories. A case study approach was adopted in the study. From the case study and interview results, we aim to explain the behaviours of case firm by existing theories and conclude a Chinese SME specific CSR strategy. In the end, differentiated corporate social strategy, special CSR concept and CSR communication were concluded as the key factors influencing the success in the Chinese textile SME.

Nowadays many companies are interested to improve their production system. It has become important in globalize and competitive market for the survival. The companies are looking to their production systems in the different direction to get the competitive advantages. But the most important is to find out the problem of the production system to make improvements. In this thesis, a part of the production system of a company is studied to find the problems of the production system to make the improvements and to recommend some points to the company for the achievements of its goals. For this purpose, the overall equipment effectiveness calculations have been used to see the current situation of the production system of the company. These calculations of the O.E.E. of the different production work stations make the clear picture of the problems. It calculates the availability of the production system which shows that maintenance system’s effectiveness. The quality rate calculations of the work stations show the conditions of the machines and the worker’s skill and the calculations of the performance efficiency of the work stations show the utilization of the machines. The result of this thesis after all the calculations of O.E.E. is that there is a problem in the utilization of the machines. Most of the time the machines remain idle or wait for the maintenance if it fails.