The research applies the contextual context, content, and process (CCP) framework to explore the contextual and processual factors that are associated with implementing interorganisational collaborative arrangements in the public sector. Collaborative arrangements in the public sector are found to be complex, difficult to implement, and liable to failure when not fully explored and recognised. Background theory reveals the absence of a multilevel lens that can embrace the multifaceted nature of interorganisational collaborations, the multiple contextual levels, the process stages and micro-actions, and the interplay between the process and the context. By identifying the need to explore contextual and processual factors, the background theory informs the focal theory which proposes an extended CCP framework as a useful multilevel lens to elucidate the research problem. The framework is developed and validated through multidisciplinary literature synthesisation, the pilot stage, and the main fieldwork which applies qualitative methods based on multiple case studies from the public sector in Oman as data sources’ techniques. The originality of this study stemming from developing and validating a novel multilevel contextual framework. The emerged multifaceted CCP framework, used to explore contextual and processual factors when implementing collaborative arrangements in the public sector, is found to be an applicable, feasible, and useful analysis tool. It can help public policy-makers, public management, academics, change agents, and collaborating organisations in identifying the inhibitive, supportive prerequisites, and in general influencing contextual factors. It helps also in elucidating and minimising uncertainty about the nature and micro-actions of the processual stages.

<p>Background: The growth of the venture capital industry has given birth to new relations between investors and entrepreneurial firms. Venture capital firms are by definition investors serving as an active partner which implies a deeper relation between investors and entrepreneurs than has been the case previously. This new situation leads to a number of questions. Do venture capitalists really act as active partners with a long term interest in the venture? Do they add any value besides capital? How important is their influence in the portfolio company's decision making process? </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this study is to give a deeper understanding of the relation between venture capital firms and IT companies in the start-up phase. </p><p>Limitations: This study is limited to Swedish IT companies. We have further chosen to study the phenomenon from the portfolio company's point of view. A final limitation that has been made is to focus on companies financed by formal venture capital. </p><p>Realisation: Using theories treating interorganisational relations and adjacent theories treating power we have chosen to study the relation between venture capital firms and their portfolio companies. The empirical data was gathered through interviews with five entrepreneurial companies in the IT business. The studyhas been carried out with an approach similar to a qualitative case study. </p><p>Result: We have found that the venture capital firm is seen as a very devoted partner with a long term interest in the company and that their contribution of resources is important. Regarding its influence in the portfolio company's decision making process we have concluded that this is due to an informal power position resulting from their possession of critical resources. In particular we have found that the possession of capital gives rise to a very influential position in the portfolio company.</p>

Many civil society organisations (CSOs) worldwide today face declining memberships, mission-drift or that they no longer are seen as relevant in society today. Several researchers warn that this development may lead to diminished democracy on both the national level and on the organisational level. This dissertation presents a longitudinal case study of the evolving strategy formation processes as they play out within a group of organisations surrounding one of the oldest nonprofits in Sweden, the IOGT-NTO. This membership-based federation and its sister organisations are treated in the analysis as a non-profit group, or interorganisational domain, held together by a shared system of values. The group has been able to retain and even develop much of its character as well as remain true to its original mission. This study demonstrates the importance of a membership-based governance system, which is able to stay true to the organisation's ideological core. It also points at the importance of having processes that enable the organisation to change along with society, while also preserving a certain distance from its surrounding environment so that it can maintain its distinctiveness. By doing this, the organisation is not just staying true to its original mission, but also actively contributing to democracy by including new groups of members in the decision-making process. Finally, the IOGT-NTO case highlights how crucial it is to keep the ideological discussion alive within the governance system. In combination, these structures and mechanisms might enable a CSO to mitigate the iron law of oligarchy and revitalize itself. Stefan Einarsson is a researcher at the Stockholm Center for Civil Society Studies at the Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research (SIR) in Sweden. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2012.</p>

Background: The growth of the venture capital industry has given birth to new relations between investors and entrepreneurial firms. Venture capital firms are by definition investors serving as an active partner which implies a deeper relation between investors and entrepreneurs than has been the case previously. This new situation leads to a number of questions. Do venture capitalists really act as active partners with a long term interest in the venture? Do they add any value besides capital? How important is their influence in the portfolio company's decision making process? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to give a deeper understanding of the relation between venture capital firms and IT companies in the start-up phase. Limitations: This study is limited to Swedish IT companies. We have further chosen to study the phenomenon from the portfolio company's point of view. A final limitation that has been made is to focus on companies financed by formal venture capital. Realisation: Using theories treating interorganisational relations and adjacent theories treating power we have chosen to study the relation between venture capital firms and their portfolio companies. The empirical data was gathered through interviews with five entrepreneurial companies in the IT business. The studyhas been carried out with an approach similar to a qualitative case study. Result: We have found that the venture capital firm is seen as a very devoted partner with a long term interest in the company and that their contribution of resources is important. Regarding its influence in the portfolio company's decision making process we have concluded that this is due to an informal power position resulting from their possession of critical resources. In particular we have found that the possession of capital gives rise to a very influential position in the portfolio company.

<p>Syftet med föreliggande studie var att utvärdera participation i ett förändringsarbete inom hälso- och sjukvården, i ett projekt för kvalitetsutveckling och processorientering inom vårdkedjan i Höglandsområdet, Jönköpings läns landsting.</p><p>Den övergripande målsättningen med projektet var att utveckla ett processorienterat och därigenom mer helhetsorienterat vårdsystem, för att uppnå bättre kvalitet för äldre vårdtagare, som ofta har behov av behandling vid olika enheter i vårdkedjan.</p><p>Syftet med studien var också att utvärdera hur participation förhåller sig till ständigt förbättringsarbete och lärande i riktning mot en processorientering av vårdkedjan och ökat fokus på patienten.</p><p>Vårdinstanserna i vårdkedjan inom samtliga sex kommuner och primärvårdsområden i Höglandsregionen, såväl som en medicinklinik och en rehabiliteringsklinik vid två olika sjukhus, har medverkat i studien. 55 personer, som representerade de olika yrkeskategorierna inom vårdkedjan, har deltgit i utvärderingen. Studien utfördes med hjälp av fokusgrupper och materialet analyserades ur ett fenomenografiskt perspektiv.</p><p>Resultaten visar att participation på alla nivåer i organisationen är en förutsättning för ett uthålligt kvalitetsutvecklingsarbete och en processorientering av vårdkedjan. Omfattningen av participationen avspeglas i omfattningen av ständigt förbättringsarbete och lärande.</p><p>Kritiska faktorer var ledningens förmåga att kommunicera med och informera de anställda, ledningens engagemang i fråga om att driva ett strukturerat och långsiktigt förändringsarbete, ett tydligt processägarskap inom vårdkedjan och adekvata resurser. Resultaten genererade åtskilliga intressanta frågor för fortsatt forskning och utveckling.</p>

Integration is one of the driving themes in database and applied computing research. Starting with the development of Federated Information Systems and passing over to Enterprise Application Integration, the integration of distributed systems receives a lot of attention with the development of Web services these days. Integration on an architecture independent level can be cast to the integration of autonomous object oriented systems which requires the integration of object structure and object behaviour. Past research has mainly addressed the structural aspects meaning the integration of class attributes and relations. This thesis is addressing the integration of object behaviour and proposes a structured, model-driven approach for the integration of business processes specifying software application behaviour. It consists of the identification of correspondences between business processes on different levels of abstraction and associates the correspondences with integration patterns that lead to a specific technical integration. One advantage of the approach is that correspondences and patterns are defined separately, which enhances the re-usability of patterns in different integration scenarios. Integration scenarios can be distinguished between horizontal and vertical integration, and within or across enterprise borders. Within an enterprise, horizontal integration consists of integrating systems on the same level of abstraction and vertical integration consists of integrating systems on different levels of abstractions, whereas across enterprise borders, horizontal integration consists of determining the most appropriate systems, from among a set of functionally equivalent ones, and vertical integration consists of defining an appropriate combination of systems to create a new one. So far, there exist no approach that attempts to support all integration scenarios within a framework. This thesis proposes an integration approach that is able to support all integration scenarios mentioned before. The approach is built on a meta-meta layer architecture and provides generic methods and techniques for the logical integration of object behaviour based on a domain independent framework. The thesis proposes two alternative outcomes of an integration. First one creates a new global behaviour that integrates local behaviour and can be supported by a service oriented architecture. Second alternative outcome are synchronisation points between business process, so-called inter-process dependencies, that can be supported by an event-driven architecture. The advantages and disadvantages of both are discussed in detail.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T14:09:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_213_.pdf: 1354449 bytes, checksum: 82ae1a6cc0a1d18a343169fa491c3d77 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-29 / Nas últimas décadas, as empresas passaram por um processo de reestruturação produtiva e enfrentaram grande competitividade nacional e internacional, o que provocou o surgimento de novas práticas gerenciais, dentre as quais se pode citar a tendência em desenvolver relacionamentos interorganizacionais, formando, assim, redes horizontais e/ou verticais. A partir deste contexto, a presente dissertação tem como objetivo principal analisar os aspectos intervenientes dos relacionamentos interorganizacionais entre empresas prestadoras de serviços de comércio exterior do município de Vitória (ES) e seus prestadores de serviços (despachantes e transportadores), empresas estas componentes de uma rede vertical. A principal justificativa para a pesquisa está no fato de investigar os relacionamentos interorganizacionais no setor de serviços, enquanto a maioria dos trabalhos com este enfoque prioriza setor industrial. Assim, para alcançar tal objetivo, foi utilizada uma estratégia de pesquisa que se aproxima de estudo de casos, tendo por base, portanto, uma metodologia qualitativa. Foram realizadas dez entrevistas semiestruturadas com gestores do setor, cujos dados foram tratados por meio da análise de conteúdo e organizados em torno de temas. A pesquisa de campo permite concluir que os aspectos intervenientes dos relacionamentos interorganizacionais estão presentes nos casos estudados, além de evidenciar a presença de um novo, não referenciado na revisão de literatura: a competência. Como complemento, um arcabouço com as relações entre estes aspectos é apresentado a fim de melhorar o entendimento do fenômeno estudado. / In the last decades, companies had passed through a process of productive reorganization and had faced great national and international competitiveness, what caused the development of new managerial practices, amongst which the tendency of developing interorganisational relationships, bringing up horizontal and/or vertical networks. From this context, the main objective of the current study is to analyze the interorganisational relationships’ enablers aspects among foreign trade services companies of Vitória (ES) and its third-parties (dispatching and transportation companies), that forms a vertical network. The main reason for this research is the investigation of interorganisational relationships in the service sector, while the majority of the studies with this approach focus on industrial sector. Thus, to reach such objective, the research strategy used is case study, using as support a qualitative methodology. Ten semi-structured interviews with managers of the sector had been carried out. The data was analysed through content analysis and organized around themes. The empirical research allows to conclude that interorganisational relationships’ enablers aspects were frequently found in the cases studied, besides evidencing the presence of another aspect not shown in the literature review: competency. As complement, we propose a model which shows the existing relations among those aspects in order to improve the understanding of the phenomenon studied.

The fast growth of science parks around the world has inspired many researchers to investigate the function and performance of science parks (SPs). Interestingly, mixed findings are reported on science park performance in the literature: some researchers found that SPs have benefits for the firms located on site; whereas other researchers doubt the benefits that SPs are claimed to have. This thesis aims to explain these mixed findings and proposes a relational approach to study the general view of interorganisational knowledge flows. The main research question to be answered is: How can the mixed findings of previous research studies regarding innovative performances of science park firms be explained? A sample of 52 new technology-based firms (NTBFs) situated in Gauteng was interviewed by means of structured questionnaires. Despite the fact that this research did not empirically confirm the theoretical explanation of the mixed findings found in science park literature, some issues raised in the recommendation section of this thesis could account for the mixed findings, namely differences in the scanning processes of new entrant firms, the nature of networking activities, services provided by SP management teams, academic-industry links and configurations of knowledge flows. The findings and recommendations of this study may help policy makers to further improve the design and functioning of science parks in emerging economies. / Thesis (PhD(Technology Management))--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / unrestricted

Increasing population and rising incomes change food consumption patterns. The United Nations estimates that global food demand will double between 2010 and 2050 (Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012). As a result, many governments are promoting sustainable agriculture to increase their food production. The Swedish government aims to make agriculture in Sweden sustainable, resilient, competitive and attractive (Swedish National Food Strategy, 2017). This informs our choice of southern Sweden, the breadbasket of the country as the study area. Climate change, competition and concerns over the new Common Agricultural Policy are the main challenges of farmers in the region. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate interorganisational collaborations from the perspectives of farmers in the region. We used exploratory approach to study collaborations among farmers and their partners where semi-structured interviews and observations were used to gather data. We adopted Creswell’s steps of data analysis. The study finds that many of the farmers have less knowledge of sustainability and sustainable agriculture. The study finds two main types of interorganisational collaborations existing between and among the farming companies and their partners - sustained dyadic collaborations and long-term collaborations. The study also finds the factors that enable and sustain collaborations in the sector. These factors are classified into enablers and sustainers. The enablers include climate change, legislation and regulations, globalisation, competency motivations, resource-related reasons, society-related reasons, partner reputation, expertise, quality and trustworthiness and capacity to deliver on promises, and the sustainers are trust building, transparency, good relationships and cooperation, shared vision, and good agronomic advice from partners. The study concludes that interorganisational collaborations between and among farming companies and their partners are driven largely by economic interests and climate change and therefore have little to do with sustainability.

While IT-enabled innovations continue to disrupt long-lasting industries, emerging concepts and theories seek to explain implications of digitalisation on its value, competition and organisation. Over the past two decades, the notions of digital capability and business model reconfiguration as antecedents of organisational performance have become increasingly influential in the Information Systems literature. Appreciation of the role of strategic agility, external resources and interorganisational collaborations on IT-enabled value propositions has shaped the core logic and fundamental assumptions of the two aforementioned concepts. Nevertheless, the relationship between digital capability and business model reconfiguration remains underinvested and largely elusive. In order to reconcile such fragmented literature, the aim of this study is to investigate the coevolutionary dynamics of digital capability and business model reconfigurations. Digital capability reflects on the organisational ability to identify IT-enabled opportunities and deploy IS/IT to mobilise resources and structures in order to exploit those opportunities. Business model reconfiguration encapsulates management agenda to elevate value propositions for customers, partners and other stakeholders in order to create and capture value. It entails altering organisational resources and processes to enable such value propositions. Empirical data that is used in this thesis is gathered from an insurance company and contains information about the internal and external contexts, decisions, actions and performance between 2008 and 2016. There are four major phases during this time period. As identified, during each, the company revised its strategic intentions, invested in new IS/IT and human resources and reconfigured its business model. Results of this study illustrate that organisational digital capability drives strategic intentions for co-exploration and co-exploitation of value with partners. Such emerging strategies shape the configuration of the firm’s business model, which in turn leads to investments for generating the required IS competencies. This process increases the organisational digital capability, which affects the future cycles. Development of each IS competency is a result of co- exploration strategies. It is likely that such IS competencies are leveraged for co-exploitation in the future phases. In addition, Business-to-Business (B2B) IS competencies are instrumental in operationalising business models: however, as the number of partners grow and configuration of business models change, dyadic connections are likely to be replaced by standard ones.          Strategies of co-exploration and co-exploitation could lead to innovative, adoptive or evolutionary business model reconfigurations. However, for incumbent organisations, business model innovation seems to follow several business model adaptations and evolutions. That is, a great deal of organisational learning and tinkering with business models, strategic intentions and technological backbone is needed to innovate business models. The final contribution of this research is the analytical model devised for exploring the essence of strategic decision making in dynamic environments. Based on the Appreciative Systems Model, the model illustrates how the perception of the constant flux of events and ideas leads to strategic intentions based on value and reality judgments, which in turn triggers action to operationalise those understandings. Both formulating the intentions and executing them will change future events, perceived ideas and emerging intentions based on evolving values and standards.