The aims of this research investigate and discuss the possibility of how a local government can construct city image by organizing local festivals with its marketing campaign. In generally, most of festivals and events can inject economic revenues and build up the city images upon branding marketing. Basically, the local government remains the main authority to coordinate the festival promotion and marketing, but festival branding and marketing even meet many challenges and struggles. Significantly, many of phenomena in Taiwan tourism markets presented those current festivals facing many potential problems and unpredictable impacts with respect to festival management and sustainability. However, these problems and dilemma including local government please tourists, lack of culture protection, demolishing local specialty and lack of innovation as well as the purposes of this festival. Wan-Nien Festival was chosen as the case study of this research since Wan-Nien Festival has exhibited for more than ten years to be the most popular and historical event of Taiwan official festivals as a result of its amazing campaign and diverse contents. Due to its entirely empirical characteristics and comparing with other short-lifecycle festivals in Taiwan tourism market, Wan-Nien Festival has been already authorized by Taiwan Tourism Bureau to call for the 2010 main folk festival t. On the contrary, a number of festival managements might face the end situation due to the limitation of budgets even though those festivals have already experienced and accumulated high popularity and reputation such as Yilan International Children¡¦s Folklore ¡® Folkgame Festival. Similarly, Wan-Nien Festival might face the same challenge and difficulty for its sustainability without money injection. In contrast, many famous festivals and events are still in the process and development, such as Edinburgh International Festival which has been held for more than sixty years (from 1947). However, these famous festivals still attract many tourists all over the world as a result of their marvellous activities and they also turn into highly-acceptations festivals by the branding marketing. According to the argument of above description, the purpose of this research intends to discuss the possibility of Wan-Nien Festival branding-building and branding management. The methodology of this research can be divided into three perspectives. First of all, Three outstanding international festival, Edingburgh International Festival, Qingdao International Beer Festival, and Yilan International Children¡¦s Folklore and Folkgame Festival will beanalysed, induced, and compared the significant key factors and impacts to result in the success of these festivals. Secondly, referring to the branding management, research strategy adopt semi-construct interview to ask eleven relative stakeholders such as governors involved in holding festival, representative from Wan-Nien Festival local committee, village wardens, scholars specialize in festival marketing and tourism and business representatives. This research method tries to build up complete theory in the base of grounded theory and utilize the Atlas.ti 5.6.3 software to integrate and collect these interview data. The main research process is to record all correspondents interview conversations by the step to open coding, family coding, illustrating network diagram and finally constructing research theory. Due to the deep interviews with 11 relative stakeholders who might directly or indirectly participate in Wan-Nien Festival marketing and branding, this dissertation illustrated several significant discoveries and valuable information. These results demonstrate that there are numbers of key factors of a success festival such as well-using of the local resource, festival organizing and support with more assistance from a local government, and integrating local community agreement. The research results also recapitulate that local participators involvement seem main power to drive the local feature and shape the festival organization. In addition, the main attraction to identify the difference of marketing branding and marketing position is to plan the local stories.

This qualitative study explored conflict resolutions in everyday setting by applying grounded theory method to data on real-life conflict experiences. The data represent 53 graduate students (27 male and 26 female) of 20 different nationalities. After careful coding, we found seven categories. By applying a dimensional analysis model, we not only identified that ¢wpreparation for resolving conflict¡ü is the central phenomenon but also explored how conflict origins, casual condition, contextual condition, intervening condition, resolution strategies and consequences are related to the central phenomenon and the dynamics among themselves. This helped in developing a grounded formal theory that provide a detailed picture of the complex process of conflict resolution in everyday setting by covering its origins, dynamics, resolution strategies, consequences, and effects in different contexts. Detailed explanations with ample examples from the data were provided. Implications for future researchers and practical implications are discussed.

The introduction of a new appraisal system has been seen as a common practice for firms to map its strategic goals and organizational objectives. Such a practice can be seen as a kind of organizational change. Previous studies on the introduction of new appraisal system tend to adopt a cross-sectional approach to examine the effect of the new appraisal system from various dimensions. In the mean time, how the new appraisal system is forming and how the member of organizations affect the shaping of the appraisal system are basically neglected. In order to fill this gap, this research adopted a longitudinal perspective to examine how a sub-business unit (SBU) of L Company introduced a new appraisal system. We particularly concerns how this new appraisal system is shaping, why the leader of this SBU introduced a new appraisal system, how employees react to the introduction of this new system, how leaders and employees perceive the change of the appraisal system. A grounded approach was implemented to explore the introduction process of this new appraisal system. Action research was used as the main research method. Information was collected from the participation of the introduction of the new appraisal system based on interview, observation, field log, and internal data of the firm. In this study, we find that the introduction of new appraisal system was driven by the change of external environment and the motivation of the leader of the SBU. Additionally, employees would resist the change of the new appraisal system. Such a resistance was caused by the change of routine, the perception of the reasonability and the sense of equities. The new appraisal system, in essence, was the outcome of the communication between the leader and the employees of this SBU. At last, leader and employees viewed appraisal system differently. The leader saw the new appraisal system as a means to realize strategies, while employees tended to perceive the change of appraisal system as a punishment.

The outsourcing business of the call center grew enormously in recent years, but there were only a few studies focused on the outsourcing employees, especially the turnover problems and related issues, which were deeply concerned by call center supervisors. This research aims to comprehend the turnover problems of the outsourcing employees; in addition, what policies the managers of the call centers adopt to solve the turnover problems. This is a one-case study. The qualitative research methodology follows the principles of the grounded theory. Eight supervisors of different call centers in the company were interviewed during April to November in 2003. The data collection and analysis is a long process of hard working. The research findings can be concluded as the following three aspects. The first is that the high turnover rates of outsourcing employees cause serious problems to various call centers. The unstable manpower quality and the lower department morale would generate inconsistent customer services. It turns out the operation costs increase as well as the outsourcing cost. Because of the strong impact to the operation in each call center, supervisors have adopted several approaches in order to solve the turnover problems in the last few years. The most significant improvement is from the following efforts, such as clarifying the basic salary and benefit for the outsourcing employees in the outsourcing contract, training the back-up personnel, and improving the management skills of the vendors. For the second aspect of the research findings, we conclude that the turnover problem is caused by the internal organizational factors and the external organizational factors. The internal factors contain the working environment associated with the climate, and the administration policy or style. The external factors include the personal concerns of outsourcing employees, and the vendor problems. Furthermore, there are two intervening conditions: employees¡¦ personality and working life quality. That would reinforce the influential factors to the turnover problem and action/interaction strategies. Finally, some of the empirical results of this research are consistent to the literatures about the call center operation. By improving recruit process, employee training and encouraging policy, it may lower the turnover rate that may result in a better quality of customer service, and then have the outsourcing cost down.

This thesis is a case study about the transformation processes for a petrochemical corporation in Taiwan during the last thirty-nine years (1965~2003). We adopted the Grounded theory as the research method to probe the relationships between growth and change for the case company. We had several interviews with senior managers. In addition, the public reports about the company are also collected, such as news and financial analyses on newspapers or journals. There have been four phases of company development that are divided by three changes. According to the findings in this research, it is concluded that most of the transformation or change decisions were based on the core competence. Therefore, the R&D capabilities that have been much emphasized by the company provide the speed and flexibility for the company to adapt the industrial dynamics. Another important factor is the vision of the executive managers. They make good decisions because they foresee the company needs for the growth associated with the environmental changes. Finally, we have found that the core technical competence plays the essential role for the corporate transformation. Enterprises should well recognize their cores and then develop proper business strategies. They should plan for changes and incorporate them into organizational process to establish a company¡¦s culture

The premise of this research is to view the decision process that the audience chooses to be the pay member of performing arts as a consuming behavior, and this research takes this consumer behavior for the studying topic. The researcher interviews the audience who is or was the pay member of performing arts, and analyzes the interviewing data by the Grounded Theory¡¦s process from Open Coding, Axial Coding, to Selective Coding for building a pay member¡¦s consumer behavior in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. Besides, according to the pay member¡¦s consumer behavior, the researcher proposes suggestions to performing arts organizations and discusses the practical feasibility of these suggestions by interviewing the performing arts organizations. In order to study the decision process that the audience chooses to be the pay member of performing arts, the researcher interviews 20 audiences who are pay members from different performing arts organizations. The research analyzes the interviewing data by Grounded Theory: firstly it gets 76 concepts in the process of Open Coding, and then integrates the concepts into 16 categories in the process of Axial Coding, finally refines the categories into 5 central categories which are respectively ¡§the cultivation of interests and motivation¡¨, ¡§the media of awareness and contact¡¨, ¡§the combination of decision factors¡¨, ¡§personality¡¨, and ¡§the feedback reaction¡¨. According to the relationship of these categories the research builds up a pay member¡¦s consumer behavior in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. In addition, the researcher also interviews three performing arts organizations which respectively are ¡§Cloud Gate¡¨, ¡§Godot Theatre¡¨, and ¡§Performance Workshop¡¨. During the interview, the researcher discusses the pay member¡¦s consumer behavior with these three organizations and they also assess the feasibility of the suggestions which this research proposed. By this method, this research hopes can develop the more practicable suggestions of the membership system. in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. In the conclusion of this research, the researcher proposes not only the advantage and disadvantage of the performing arts¡¦ membership system, and also the suggestions of direction to improve the membership system in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts.

In the internet era,many small-and-medium enterprises begin to engage in e-commerce field.There have been many legends of internet in many contries for the last decade. Traditional enterprises set up their websites and step in the e-commerce continuously. They try to create new entrepreneurial stories. In the past, only large corporations have the capability to perform global business and operate twenty-four hours a day. Because of the sufficient manpower and financial resources, they are proactive in the marketing and customer service. However the internet technology and e-commerce have transformed the traditional business model. Nowadays, small or median enterprises.also can reach global customers and perform the transactions through the internet for twenty-four hours a day. This thesis is about the small and median enterprises to start the e-commerce by joining the H company that is an ISP vendor in Taiwan. This is a multiple cases research containing six internet companies. The research method is the grounded theory. After the interviews and associated data collection, we analyzed the data according to the three steps of grounded theory; they are open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The internet venture can be described as three stages: starting a business idea, the start-up process, and the internet venture performance. For those internet startups with satisfactory performance, the research summarizes the following characteristics. The entrepreneurs well understand the web skills for internet transaction. Therefore, they pay much attention to the e-business procedures so that they are able to well maintain their websites,and make the best use of the websites to promote their merchandises and to conduct long-term customer¡¦s relationship.On the other hand,for those internet ventures with worse performances, the entrepreneurs usually know little about the e-commerce. They hardly participate their e-shops and have no time to manage their websites. Because they also have low expectation of the e-commerce, they don¡¦t learn the management tactics of inernet venture. For one extreme case, the entrepreneur has never done anything on his website. In this research, it is found that the internet venture performance is positively correlated with the expectation level. The type of merchandise is not the most critical factor to succeed an internet venture. Whenever the entrepreneurs have the higher understanding of the internet technology and the more participation to conduct the e-commerce activities, the performances are always better. Usually, for those startups with proactive entrepreneurs, they have higher possibilities to gain satisfactory financial performance.

The research was focus on exploring the growth strategy of small and medium business in Taiwan. We are interested in finding the orbit and the logic of Taiwan¡¦ small and medium business, which are growing rapidly and becoming global business recently. However, how to explicit the competitive advantage of business growth is a complicated and tacit task. The methodology of the research applied the grounded theory to do the qualitative analysis. After sampling from Taiwan passive component industry base on the strategic group, we will proceed the in-depth interview with the top management team of the businesses. The first-hand data and information from interview will be analysis, comparative, and coding repeatedly and iteratively. Gradually, the category and abstract concept will be emergent from the outcome of coding. The theory will be constructed from the relation of the concepts until the saturation it reached. The research founded that to catch the "strategic timing fit" was the orbit and the logic of Taiwan¡¦ passive component industry. There were three timing in the rapidly changing and creative environment: a) timing of technological paradigm transition; b) timing of production transition; c) timing of entrance and existence of competitors. The leaders of the firms in the case showed that they built the strategic capabilities and resources within the organization to meet the "strategic timing fit", which was the key factor of rapid growth in the past decade.

Abstract The Chinese government has fulfilled the policy of ¡§revolution opening¡¨ since 1979, and it has taken ¡§outside economy¡¨ and ¡§region incline¡¨ course to fulfill the programming development with ¡§southern, middle, and western¡¨ three-route region. The Chinese government has given the programming development to keep the initiative in its own hands to attract foreign capital, technology, and enterprise management experiences. Such a development has made Chinese economy grow up rapidly, and set up a political economic environment of socialism which has been filled with Chinese characteristics. The Chinese government has carried out the policy of ¡§the ninth five-year national development program prospect goal suggestion¡¨ in 1996. The policy indicates that Shanghai is the nuclear window which can be the connection between China and the world and plans to build Shanghai to be the center of international economy, trade, finance and shipping. Thus, Shanghai has started a diversely development that can attract international enterprises¡¦ investment largely. In the demand of market institution, the process of being developed has faced a serious problem that is a lack of enough enterprise management elites. Education funds and resources, total amounts of high colleges and equipments have shown up the imbalance of the Chinese government. In order to achieve the goal of training professional elites, the Chinese government takes ¡§building nation with technology education¡¨ as a main policy and ¡§distance education¡¨ as a main artifice, and uses communication channel as network and television to train enterprise management elites of ¡§fast, effort-saving, excellent, and few amount¡¨ to make development of human resource in China, which can grow up with Chinese economy at the same time. ¡§Shanghai long-distance education group¡¨ belongs to Shanghai City Government. It is the first long-distance institute allowed by China National Council to set up with grouping. It expands Chinese education resources, merges Shanghai Television University, Shanghai Education TV Company, Shanghai Electric Education Institute, Shanghai Television Secondary Training School, and Shanghai Calculator Assessment Application Office to set up the large information platform, and uses the entire development of Shin-shi Harbor in Shanghai City to provide with the service of elites-training in all kinds of fields, and improve the competitive ability of internationalization after participating in WTO by the way. The thesis takes qualitative research of ¡§grounded theory¡¨ to combine with document probe, personal participation, deep interview, and induces the practical development situation of prospect, mission, goal, and strategy of research objects with ¡§open coding¡¨, ¡§axial coding¡¨, and ¡§selective coding¡¨. The thesis also probes deeply the regulation and market-opening policy of the Chinese government, the evaluation of putting in education market with enterprise resources, vertical and horizontal revolution of internal organization, motivation of learning, position of marketing, institution of competition, effect of internationalization, and potential of development, contrasts with the relationship between dependent and dependent variables to prove those issues near the real situation, and predicts the prospective trend. The thesis is practical and marketable. Besides probing China long-distance education of training enterprise management elites, the thesis also expects to provide Taiwan¡¦s enterprises with some related criterions of investing in China and economic competition and cooperation between Taiwan and China. Moreover, the thesis finds out Chinese electric learning and the market opportunity of electronic commerce. It will be good for integrating the resources between Taiwan and China and it will create a peaceful and prosperous environment.

As trend toward liberalization, telecom industry in Taiwan is getting more and more saturated. It means that competition between telecoms firms is getting more and more sharp. As a result, all telecoms firms are striving to gain and keep their customers and trying so hard to understand comsumer behavior on choosing telecoms firms. In the past, researches on consumer behavior are usually base on quantitative methodology. Quantitative researches on consumer behavior focused on specific moment of customers. This research is base on qualitative methodology to extend consumer behavior on choosing telecoms firm from a specific moment to a dynamic model and establishing a thorough consumer behavior on choosing telecoms firm model. This research on consumer behavior on choosing telecoms firm is base on grounded theory. By the analysis and coding process of the interview data that collected from eighteen interviewers in a theorical sampling process, this research generalizes eighty three open coding and fifteen axial coding. In the selective coding process, this research generalize three major concepts of consumer behavior on choosing telecoms firm and establishes a model of consumer behavior on choosing telecoms firm.