Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (February 17, 2010) Includes bibliographical references (p. 21)

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special study report entitled: Architecture along the rail. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-172). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-172). Also available on the Internet.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

The everyday survival of the other at the border between ‘East’ and ‘West’ is the object of this study. The country in-between, Estonia, is a ‘melting pot’ of Russian, Western and Nordic influence, what makes this zone an active, diverse, nevertheless invisible in the global awareness. The process of transition and rapid neoliberalization, which is characteristic for the post-socialist country such as Estonia, brings together number of side-effects, lots of redundant people, who could not adapt to the new regime, who speculate and trade. The investigation of ‘Russian’ semi-official spaces of trade in Estonian capital, Tallinn, reveals the values and defects of the open-air markets.  The thesis highlights the need to politicize the processes around the disappearing and/or transforming the open-air markets in the city. In spite of the fact, that the informal trading is often connected with poverty, illegality, low hygiene, distrust and crime, this work explores the alternative ways of trading, the power of immediacy and aesthetics in confrontation to the global capital. The architecture as the transversal practice cuts across the patterns of trading based on irresponsible consumerism and desire, and experiments with the original concept of the market with the dialogue in front. The speculative interventions are the sites of the common life, production and renewal.

The internationalization of SMEs has been recognized as one of the important paths to growth in SMEs. However, internationalization is also a resource and competence-demanding process. This is especially true for smaller-sized SMEs – the small and micro-sized firms – which have a large resource constraint, making internationalization even more challenging. Although this group of small firms counts for an average of over 98% of the total population of enterprises in EU countries, extant research on the internationalization of this group is still limited. Therefore, the main purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of evolving patterns of internationalization in the smaller-sized SMEs. The study uses emerging market entry along the internationalization of small firms as a context to probe the dynamics of perceived risk (uncertainty) and perceived opportunity in different foreign markets which influence the important decisions of small firms during their internationalization. The main study takes a longitudinal approach and uses mixed methods to investigate the features in both the initial period and the continued period of internationalization. It mainly builds on a multiple-case study of 12 Swedish firms, which have/had emerging market entry experience and/or involvement. This study illustrates influences from the environmental, organizational and individual levels on evolving patterns of internationalization in the investigated firms. This dissertation concludes that critical decisions and actions taken in the internationalization process depend on interactions among the influence and resources from the three levels. Such interactions form a conditional preference on perceived risk (uncertainty) and perceived opportunity during the internationalization of small firms. The study further proposes that the dynamics in the internationalization process are caused by a prospect-guided change mechanism. This dissertation contributes to the literature by: differentiating patterns of internationalization; enriching the study of “born global” in the continued period of internationalization; introducing a new perspective on the interpretation of dynamics in the internationalization; and increasing the understanding on the interactions of resources from three levels on the internationalization of small firms.

Many studies have recognised the importance of a variety of factors in the internationalisation of firms. Only a few, however, have attempted to integrate these factors into a comprehensive framework. In this study, taking the network approach as its main analytical foundation, an integrative theoretical framework is developed and tested empirically to assess the impact of a wide range of factors on the internationalisation of firms. The internationalisation phenomenon is examined in a more comprehensive manner than in many previous studies, as a two-sided process of both inward and outward international operations. Using logistic regressions in the analysis of empirical evidence gathered through a national survey sample of 148 Brazilian software firms, the theoretical framework proposed in this study obtained substantial support. The findings expand previous knowledge through a comprehensive explanation that incorporates determinant factors from four distinct dimensions - contextual, organisational, network, and entrepreneurial - in examining the internationalisation of firms from emerging markets. The findings indicate that business networks are indeed strategic mechanisms for a firm in developing its internationalisation trajectory, as hypothesised. The results of this research suggest that studies based on the business-network model of internationalisation can no longer ignore the impact of other factors at the contextual, organisational, and entrepreneurial level. Incorporating these elements into research that seeks to explain the internationalisation of firms could provide a more sophisticated understanding through new insights and allow scholars to go beyond one-dimensional and static theorising.

Prices in financial markets are primarily driven by the interaction of risk and time. The returns to financial assets over long time horizons are primarily driven by fundamental news regarding their promised cash flows. In contrast, short-run price variation is associated with a large degree of predictable, transient investor trading behavior unrelated to fundamental prospects. The quantity of long-run risk directly affects economic well-being, and its magnitude has varied significantly over the past century. The theoretical model presented here shows some success in quantifying the impact of news about future risks on asset prices. In particular, some investing strategies that appear to offer anomalously large returns are associated with high exposures to future long-run risks. The historical returns to these portfolios are partly a result of investors’ distaste for assets whose worth declines when uncertainty increases. The financial sector is tasked with pricing these risks in a way that properly allocates investment resources. Over the past thirty years, this sector has grown much more rapidly than the economy as a whole. As a result, asset prices appear to be more informative. However, the new information relates to short-term uncertainty, not long-run risk. This type of high-frequency information is unlikely to affect real investment in a way that would benefit broader economic growth.