Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are big contributors to today’s business environment and the society as a whole, and their contributions are highly valued. Gazelle companies can be seen as the most successful SMEs and hence the interest to analyze them. Far from all companies succeed to maintain a profitable growth and recieve the Gazelle title sequential times. Due to this, this research aims to answer the question what differentiates sequential Gazelle companies from one time Gazelle companies. In Sweden, the Gazelle title is announced to companies who fulfill certain criteria, meaning that they are homogenous in many ways. However, there must be some differences since some succeed to maintain the title whereas others do not. By the following research question, this research intends to identify some of these differentiating attributes. Is there a difference between sequential Gazelle companies and one time Gazelle companies regarding the chosen firm attributes? Existing research show that one common factor behind maintained profitable growth is the ability to ask for help in fields where management competence is lacking. It is argued that this help can be in form of external professional business services and hence this research intends to answer this second research question: Do usage of external professional business services contribute to sequential Gazelle title? Since the ability to maintain profitable growth is discussed to depend on internal competence and knowledge, or lack thereof, Resource-Based Theory is found to be an appropriate explanation tool. This theory is supported by the Stages of Growth model to further explain the development of the firms. This research had a quantitative method where a survey was used to collect data. In order to accept/reject the formed hypotheses, the data was imported to SPSS where it was statistically tested in two separate logistic regressions. The results of this research statistically show that the mixture of the included firm attributes do differ between sequential Gazelle companies and one time Gazelle companies. However, the test proved nonsignificant when examining the usage of external professional services. This means that even though there were indications of high importance, one cannot statistically argue that usage of external professional business services leads to sequential Gazelle title.

<p>Date: 2008-06-04</p><p>Course: EIK 034 Masters Thesis</p><p>Authors: Laxmi Rao & Zarina Osmonalieva</p><p>Tutor: Ole Liljefors</p><p>Title: Which factors facilitate the management of external knowledge?</p><p>Introduction: Today more and more organisations are realising that handling internal and external knowledge is a key issue for successful performance. Different theories describe the importance of this topic, for instance, Porter’s Five Forces model and Hedman & Kalling’s General Business Model demonstrate how organizations are strongly influenced by external forces. Hedman & Kalling’s model particularly demonstrates that organizations need to have the competence, capability and resources to effectively manage external knowledge in order to increase their competitiveness and develop and improve their long term survival.</p><p>Purpose: Nicholas Carr highlights that for the past decade organizational investment in IT and IS has reached nearly 50% of capital expenditure, while the organizations see little or no performance improvement as a result of this investment. While IT systems are good at storing and retrieving information, the success of the systems heavily relies on the quality of the external and internal knowledge used both during development and usage. A deeper awareness of factors which facilitate the management of external knowledge is relevant to IT managers (indeed all managers) as it will help to facilitate the development and implementation of information systems and technology which are designed to facilitate knowledge management in organisations.</p><p>Methodology: In the thesis factors related to effective management of external knowledge are identified and described. The General Business Model was used as a tool to identify and categorize the literature review into key themes.</p><p>Conclusions One of the findings is that most published research focuses on factors internal to organizations such as activities and resources and there are few papers dealing with external factors for knowledge management. It was also found that literature which focussed on external factors mainly focused on the role of individuals as resources who cross the boundary of the organization in order to acquire and diffuse the external knowledge. In general the topic of external knowledge management is not studied in a holistic way. The acquisition and diffusion processes have been investigated as separate, but not as the whole process.</p>

Due to the lack of an operationalization that centers on communication, the communication field has needed a measure that captures the unique elements interaction plays in the formation of organizational identification (OI). This dissertation offers an alternate conceptualization and operationalization of organizational identification designed to be communication-centered, and labels it Communicative Organizational Identification (C-OI). C-OI is a type of behavioral identification that is defined as the manifestation of solidarity with the values of a collective through verbal and nonverbal behaviors expressed to internal and external others. This measure was theorized as having 4 subscales: internal verbal communication, external verbal communication, internal nonverbal communication, and external nonverbal communication. To validate this measure, three rounds of data collection were utilized, ultimately reducing the measure from 46 to 10 items with three subscales: internal verbal, external verbal, and nonverbal. Both confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used in examining underlying dimensions. This measure was shown to have acceptable levels of internal consistency (Chronbach’s [alpha] = .87), comparable to alternate measures of OI. Through the use of hierarchical multiple regression the C-OI measure and its subscales were shown to have at least some incremental validity in comparison to the Mael and Ashforth (1992) in predicting communication competence of co-workers, perceived organizational support, organization-based self-esteem, intent to quit, and organizational tenure. The C-OI measure also had incremental validity in comparison to the Cheney (1982) Organizational Identification Questionnaire (OIQ) in predicting organizational tenure. The C-OI’s three subscales also showed incremental validity over several existing measures. Through Pearson product moment correlations convergent validity was illustrated for the C-OI and its subscales. The C-OI does not focus on the decision-making elements of OI’s conceptualization (Cheney, 1982), nor does it attend to its role in motivation. This dissertation also used self-report measures, and the issue of common method bias could apply here. Future research is needed to validate further the measure of C-OI particularly in terms of establishing discriminant validity, and measuring multiple targets of identification. / text

No description available.

Neue additive Fertigungsverfahren erzeugen hochkomplexe Strukturen deren strukturmechanische Eigenschaften bisher nicht vorhersagbar waren. Mit einem neuen Ansatz wird ohne Vernetzung wie sie in der FEM benötigt wird, eine Simulation des strukturmechanischen Verhaltens möglich. Erste Untersuchungen an bisher unvorstellbar komplexen Modellen zeigen eine hervorragende Performance, die gerade im Umfeld von typischen Gitterstrukturen der 3D-Druckverfahren einsetzbar sind und darüber weit hinausgehen. In diesem Vortrag wird anhand von Beispielen der hohe Wirkungsgrad der Software External aufgezeigt, der so in der FEM nicht möglich ist.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (p. leaves [209]-217).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-196).

Date: 2008-06-04 Course: EIK 034 Masters Thesis Authors: Laxmi Rao &amp; Zarina Osmonalieva Tutor: Ole Liljefors Title: Which factors facilitate the management of external knowledge? Introduction: Today more and more organisations are realising that handling internal and external knowledge is a key issue for successful performance. Different theories describe the importance of this topic, for instance, Porter’s Five Forces model and Hedman &amp; Kalling’s General Business Model demonstrate how organizations are strongly influenced by external forces. Hedman &amp; Kalling’s model particularly demonstrates that organizations need to have the competence, capability and resources to effectively manage external knowledge in order to increase their competitiveness and develop and improve their long term survival. Purpose: Nicholas Carr highlights that for the past decade organizational investment in IT and IS has reached nearly 50% of capital expenditure, while the organizations see little or no performance improvement as a result of this investment. While IT systems are good at storing and retrieving information, the success of the systems heavily relies on the quality of the external and internal knowledge used both during development and usage. A deeper awareness of factors which facilitate the management of external knowledge is relevant to IT managers (indeed all managers) as it will help to facilitate the development and implementation of information systems and technology which are designed to facilitate knowledge management in organisations. Methodology: In the thesis factors related to effective management of external knowledge are identified and described. The General Business Model was used as a tool to identify and categorize the literature review into key themes. Conclusions One of the findings is that most published research focuses on factors internal to organizations such as activities and resources and there are few papers dealing with external factors for knowledge management. It was also found that literature which focussed on external factors mainly focused on the role of individuals as resources who cross the boundary of the organization in order to acquire and diffuse the external knowledge. In general the topic of external knowledge management is not studied in a holistic way. The acquisition and diffusion processes have been investigated as separate, but not as the whole process.

No description available.

<p>Globular clusters have linear sizes (tidal radii) which are theoretically de- termined by their mass and by the gravitational potential of their host galaxy. However observationally, cluster sizes are simply a determination of where the cluster’s surface brightness profile becomes zero. This distance is also known as the limiting radius. While it is commonly assumed that the tidal radius and the limiting radius of a globular cluster are the same thing, it has yet to be validated. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the assumption that cluster tidal radii and limiting radii are equal by comparing the tidal radii of an observed and simulated globular cluster population.</p> <p>An established link between cluster tidal radii and limiting radii will yield new methods of utilizing globular clusters as tools for studying galaxies. If cluster sizes are truly imposed by the tidal field of the host galaxy, then tidal radii measurements can be used to trace the mass distribution within a galaxy, including the dark matter halo. Additionally, as we will demonstrate in this thesis, cluster sizes can also be used a tracer for the orbital anisotropy profile of a galaxy.</p> <p>To explore the assumption that tidal radii and limiting radii are equal, we utilize the globular cluster population of the Virgo giant M87. Unusually deep, high signal-to-noise images of M87 are used to determine the radius for approximately 2000 globular clusters. To compare with these observations, we simulate a globular cluster population that has the same characteristics to the observed M87 cluster population. These characteristics include cluster radial distribution, mass distribution, central concentration distribution and line of sight velocity dispersion. Placing these simulated clusters in the well-studied tidal field of M87, the orbit of each cluster is solved and the theoretical tidal radius of each cluster is determined. We compare the predicted relationship between cluster size and projected galactocentric distance found in our sim- ulation to observations in order to test whether a cluster’s tidal radius and limiting radius are equal. We find that for an isotropic distribution of cluster velocities, theoretical tidal radii are approximately equal to observed limiting radii. The simulation predicts the observed increase in cluster size with galac- tocentric distance, which is expected if tidal radii are dependent on the tidal field. Additionally, simulated cluster sizes are of the same order of magnitude as observed cluster sizes. However the simulation does underestimate cluster sizes in the inner regions of M87. To minimize the discrepancy between theory and observations, we further explore the effects of orbital anisotropy on cluster sizes, and suggest a possible orbital anisotropy profile for M87 which yields the best fit between theory and observations. Finally, we suggest multiple future studies which will aid in our understanding of tidal theory and in establishing a stronger link between tidal radii and limiting radii.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)