Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (master), 15 higher education credits, 4FE06E, Spring 2013 Authors: Doruntina Pacarizi and Ya-Hui Hsu Tutor: Petra Andersson Title: Conflicting Goal and its Impact on the Level of Supply Chain Integration between Supply Chain Partners in the Automotive Industry – From Manufacturing SME’s Perspective Background: Supply chain integration assists SMEs to improve their operational performance, however the existing theories in supply chain integration are mostly from the LEs perspective. Therefore this thesis chose to focus on the level of supply chain integration from manufacturing SMEs perspective. Nevertheless supply chain integration is not simple due to conflicting goal, which exists between supply chain partners. Based on previous knowledge, the level of supply chain integration is affected by conflicting goal, which exits between supply chain partners. We believe that this is based on how the conflicting goal has been managed. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to obtain an understanding if the level of integration in the automotive industry between the manufacturing SME and its customer is affected by how the conflicting has been managed. Method: This thesis is a multiple case study and was conducted with a deductive approach. The empirical findings were gathered through qualitative interviews with semi-structured interview guides. Conclusions: The conclusions of this thesis are that the level of supply chain integration, which exists between manufacturing SME and its customer, is low/medium. Furthermore, the conflicting goal, which exists between these partners, are that the demand of delivery and volume flexibility, storage flexibility, demand of quality level and the relatively high manufacturing complexity as well as downstream complexity. Finally, the result of this thesis shows that the level of supply chain integration is affected by how the conflicting goal has been managed.

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International entrepreneurship (IE) is “a combination of innovative, proactive and risk-seeking behaviour that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations”. The IE literature has been concerned with entrepreneurial behaviour in multiple countries and cross-border studies of entrepreneurship and international activities of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Due to the potential for SMEs to serve as significant sources of export, considerable research has been conducted regarding their internationalization. However, despite attempts to integrate concrete frameworks of international entrepreneurship, some primary issues have not been adequately addressed and IE researchers are faced with challenges including insufficient micro-data for advancing quality research. The main objective of this thesis is to study and explore the limitations on researchers to access governmental data regarding small firms operating internationally and use it for scientific purposes. Despite company data being compiled and publicly available in some countries, such as Germany, other countries, including Canada, have not made any such efforts in a coherent way. There is a significant disconnect in the Canadian context between internationalization and firms’ data. This shortcoming may stem from various sources, including the legal framework in Canada for accessing data and a lack of sufficient financial support and expertise to gather and integrate such data. Furthermore, the type of data available to the research community through statistical institutions were identified and analyzed, as were access methods. With the increasing interest of researchers in accessing data gathered by the government, the formation of anonymized records or anonymized micro-datasets has acquired great importance. Therefore, the primary approach is to explore the extent to which data regarding firms’ characteristics and internationalization activities are currently available to the research community, as well as to ensure the confidentiality of official statistics, most notably in the Canadian context. The research resulted in the confirmation of data availability in Canada through government and statistical organizations. The latter bodies can provide researchers and research organizations access to some data but limitations arise in providing micro-datasets to researchers due to confidentiality issues; these constraints were identified and further analyzed. Moreover, this research has studied methods to overcome these limitations and assess the shortcomings in micro-data in order to advance quality research. Methods and recommendations were introduced and studied to allow researchers access to essential data and information while maintaining confidentiality.

The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of entrepreneurial team demographics, environmental scanning and networking on innovativeness. For this purpose, small and medium enterprises in Bursa region were chosen. A total of 74 general managers/owners filled out the questionnaire. Information about company, team members and firms&rsquo / environmental scanning, innovativeness and networking activities was collected. As hypothesized, findings supported the view that entrepreneurial team demographics (age heterogeneity and average educational level), environmental scanning and networking (networking with customers, competitors and particularly with public agencies) play a significant role in innovativeness of SMEs after controlling the significant effect of team size. The results were discussed together with the implications of the findings for managers and on the policies of government, public organizations and educational institutions, strengths and limitations of the study. Some suggestions for future research were made.

<p>This master thesis has been written at the School of Mathematics and System Engineering (MSI) at Växjö University in the field of computer science. IT security has become one of the main topics of every enterprise since they all use information technology in their business. Investments have to be done in order to achieve a high protection status of the IT environments. Specially small and medium-sized enterprises need more knowledge and advisory how to handle their IT security. This thesis analyses management tools that have the goal to improve the IT security. The second and main part of the thesis is the design of a tool that should helps to solve the described problems.</p>

Der Mini-Guide wendet sich an Prozess- und Qualitätsmanagementverantwortliche in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen, die eine Systematik suchen, mit einfachen Mitteln ihre Prozesse grafisch darzustellen, um in ihnen Verbesserungspotential zu erkennen. Der Modellierungsleitfaden im ersten Teil des Buches gibt dafür eine wertvolle Methodenhilfe. Die praktische Umsetzung wird mit Hilfe des Grafiktools MS Visio demonstriert. Es wurde dabei mit Standardeinstellungen (EPC-Shape) gearbeitet. Die Modellierungsmethodik kann damit auf sehr unkomplizierte Weise in einer Firma, die MS Visio installiert hat, genutzt werden. Der zweite Teil des Buches widmet sich dem Aufbau eines webbasierten Qualitätsinformationssystems, das die Arbeit von Teams an unterschiedlichen Standorten bei der Kommunikation, dem Dokumentenmanagement und dem Wissensmanagement unterstützt. Der Entwurf eines solchen Systems als webbasierte Kollaborationsplattform wurde auf Basis von MS Sharepoint WSS 3.0 prototypisch umgesetzt. Die dargestellten Inhalte sind Ergebnis eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG) geförderten Projektes an der Fakultät für Maschinenbau der TU Chemnitz. Das Projekt hatte das Ziel, kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) bei der kooperativen Zusammenarbeit, insbesondere in Produktionsnetzwerken, zu unterstützen. Das aus erfahrenen Wissenschaftlern, Praktikern und Studenten zusammengesetzte Team des Instituts für Fertigungsmesstechnik und Qualitätssicherung (IFMQ) zeichnete im Projekt für das Thema Qualitätsmanagement (QM) und Qualitätsinformationssysteme (QIS) verantwortlich.

Mažos ir vidutinės įmonės – dinamiškiausia, nuolat besikeičianti įmonių grupė, vidurinioji ūkio sandaros grandis, turinti lemiamą įtaką ekonominiam augimui ir socialinių santykių stabilumui. Mažos ir vidutinės įmonės (toliau - MVĮ) sudaro gausiausią Lietuvos įmonių grupę, todėl jų skatinimas kurtis, veikti ir plėtotis tampa prioritetine Lietuvos ekonomikos plėtros kryptimi. Lietuvos valdžia įvairiais būdais stengiasi remti MVĮ, kad šios galėtų vystyti savo veiklą bei numato vis daugiau paramos priemonių. Pagrindinis darbo tikslas - išanalizuoti valstybės paramos smulkiam ir vidutiniam verslui įgyvendinimo sistemą Lietuvoje bei pateikti tobulinimosi kryptis. Darbe analizuojama smulkaus ir vidutinio verslo rėmimo politika vykdoma Europos Sąjungoje, kurios pagrindu bus pateikiamos tobulinimosi gairės valstybės paramos SVV teikimui Lietuvoje. / Small and medium sized business is the middle structure link of national economy, which has decisive impact to the economy development and social relation stability. Small and medium sized enterprises (further – SME) are amount the biggest part of all Lithuanian enterprises. Thus, governments promotion is requested for business enterprises. Yearly Lithuanian government take about SME and sets supports forms in national market. Thus this becomes the economy development priority in Lithuania. The government, according to instruments of support for SME, attempts to engage people to take part actively in the small and medium business. The main purpose of this work is describing and studying the instruments of government supports for SME and to reveal, which instrument of existing national supports system should be further developed as well as possible to propose ways, how they can be achieved hereafter. Also there are discussed about the main directions of businnes stimulations, which are used in European Union countries and which may be used in Lithuania. It is necessary to mention governments promotion for SME forms, like the creation of business infrastructure net, the establishment of business incubators, tax concessions, municipalities support and etc. Goverment is responsible for financial and non-financial support. It gives the support according to small and medium business programs. The promotion of government for SME could raise not only the development of the... [to full text]

Although literature reveals that significant efforts have been made to study ICT adoption and diffusion, the diversity of research in terms of theory and methodology is very low. Most studies have relied on traditional adoption theories (e.g., TAM and DOI) and these theories are not capable of providing rich explanantion on how the adoption and post-adoption develop over time. It is argued here that ICT adoption involves multi-dimensional and complex issues. These issues range from how various roles played by actors in emerging ICT are accounted for to ensuring successful adoption. Therefore, this research aims to advance our understanding of emerging ICT adoptions in SMEs from a dynamic process perspective. The specific objectives of this research are to: establish the stages of the dynamic process, identify the key actors and their roles, explore the critical factors affecting the emerging ICT adoption process, identify the challenges and provide recommendations and implications for stakeholders in promoting future adoption and diffusion in UK SMEs. The research adopts a social-technical approach that challenges the ideas of the mainstream thinkers. More specifically, it adopts Actor Network Theory (ANT). The key ANT concepts that influenced the empirical investigation are inscription, translation, framing and stabilisation. The research adopted a qualitative method using face to face interviews. Two rounds of data collection were undertaken. The first round started with a theoretical review, the analysis of relevant literature, and unstructured interviews mainly with small business managers. Eleven interviews were carried out. The second round of interviews was semi-structured with key human actors identified in the first round of interviews. A total of fifteen interviews were conducted. They included the small business manager; SMEs service sector customers, government agencies, SMEs consultants, and IT vendors. The aim was to further explore the dynamic adoption process, the roles and challenges of actors and to validate the outcomes of the findings. The analysis was guided by a hybrid approach of thematic analysis using NVivo software. The study proposed and validated a conceptual framework that illustrates the dynamic process of emerging ICT adoption in SMEs from the Actor Network Theory perspective. This framework helps to understand the adoption process, actors involved, actors’ roles and interactions, and the critical factors. Using the key concepts of ANT as the basis of the investigation, the findings identify a number of key activities associated with the adoption process. These activities include: problem assessment and evaluation, concept generation and evaluation, concept specification, product outsourcing /role delegation, misalignment and alignment of interests, product trial, product modification, adaptation, and impact and problem redefinition. These activities reveal that adoption of emerging ICT in a small business context is not constant, straightforward and certain; instead it is unpredictable, dynamic, and an on-going and reiterative process. ANT concepts were further used to analyse and categorise 20 roles that different actors play, 15 critical factors influencing emerging ICT adoption in SMEs, and the challenges facing actors. While all of these roles, factors, and challenges are critical, in this study, the findings reveal that monitoring and legislation are the most recurring roles at each stage. Furthermore, ease of use, managerial time, shared support, customer focus and adoption costs are the factors affecting the success of multiple stages (three stages). Finally, the thesis presents the contributions and implications for both research and practice in future adoption and diffusion.

This thesis reports on the association between particular psychological attributes of owner/operators and organisational financial performance in New Zealand small to medium sized enterprises (SME's). The specific psychological attributes of interest are ambiguity tolerance, self efficacy, resilience and planning orientation. A direct response mail survey was sent to 4,500 New Zealand organisations fitting the criteria for this study. Ambiguity tolerance, self efficacy and resilience were assessed using established item scales from the literature. Planning orientation was assessed using planning scenario analysis. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling. Results show that the planning orientation of owner/operators has a significant direct association with organisational financial performance. Ambiguity tolerance, self efficacy and resilience were found to have a significant indirect association with financial performance. The findings of this research have implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically there are implications for cognitive and personality psychology, organisational theory and behaviour, entrepreneurship and research related to the psychological attributes of interest in this thesis. Practically, the results provide managers with a meaningful tool to aid in the selection, training and management of individuals responsible for strategic decision making in SME and other organisational settings.

This thesis aims to develop an inter-organisational knowledge transfer (KT) framework for SMEs, to help them have better understanding of the process of the KT between a SME and its customer (or supplier). The motivation is that knowledge management issues in SMEs is very neglected, which is not in line with the importance of SMEs in the UK national economy; moreover, compared to KT within an organisation, between organisations is more complicated, harder to understand, and has received much less attention. Firstly, external knowledge is generally believed to be of prime importance for SMEs. However, there is little empirical evidence to confirm this hypothesis. In order to empirically evaluate the hypothesis, and also specifically to identify SMEs' needs for external knowledge, a mail questionnaire survey is carried out. Then, based on the key findings of the survey, some 5MB managers are interviewed. The conclusions triangulated from both the key findings and the interview results strongly support the hypothesis, and demonstrate that SMEs have very strong needs for inter-organisational KT, and thus provide very strong empirical underpinning for the necessity of the development of the framework. Secondly, drawing support from a process view, a four-stage process model was proposed for inter-organisational KT. Then a co-ordinating mechanism underpinned by social networks and organisational learning is developed. The process model, co-ordinating mechanism together with cultural difference between organisations constitute an initial framework. Through interviews with SME managers, the initial framework is revised a final framework. The framework validation exercise shows that the final framework could help SMEs have better understanding of the KT. In order to remind and help SMEs to address the 'boundary paradox' embedded in interorganisational KT, and further reflect its complexities and difficulties, the important factors related to each stage of the framework are identified from a strategic perspective, with the help of the co-ordinating mechanism and relevant literature. The factors are also verified by interviews in SMEs. As a result, the initial factors are revised by removing the factors that are perceived as unimportant. The interview results demonstrate that the important factors, as a checklist, can remind and help SMEs to address the 'paradox', and are thus very useful for them.