<p>Osnovni cilj istraživanja ove doktorske disertacije je da se utvrde smerovi i intenziteti dve grupe efekata: menadžmenta znanja (KM) na zadovoljstvo poslom (JS) zaposlenih i finansijske performanse (FP) preduzeća, uz prikaz uticaja pojedinih kontrolnih varijabli (nacionalno poreklo preduzeća, vlasnička struktura preduzeća, veličina preduzeća, visina finansijskih performansi preduzeća) na dimenzije menadžmenta znanja, kao i utvrđivanje moderatornih odnosa (pol, godine starosti, vrsta radnog mesta i stepen stručne spreme ispitanika) na relacije KM na JS. Istraživanje je izvr&scaron;eno anketiranjem, na uzorku N=520 ispitanika (menadžeri svih nivoa) iz proizvodnih preduzeća u Srbiji. Statistička obrada podataka vr&scaron;ena je pomoću namenskog softvera IBM SPSS Statistics 21. Pri tome, kori&scaron;ćene su sledeće statističke metode: deskriptivna statistika, t-test, korelaciona analiza, regresiona analiza, analiza varijanse (ANOVA) i hijerarhijska regresiona analiza za analizu moderatornih dejstava. U radu su posmatrane dve grupe uticaja, menadžment znanja na zadovoljstvo poslom zaposlenih i menadžment znanja na finansijske performanse preduzeća. Prilikom analize relacija obe grupe, uočene su značajne razlike. Uticaj menadžmenta znanja na finansijske performanse preduzeća je jasan i nedvosmislen: statistički značajan i pozitivan. Međutim, uticaj menadžmenta znanja na zadovoljstvo poslom zaposlenih je znatno kompleksniji: uglavnom je statistički značajan i negativan, ali ima i statistički značajnih i pozitivnih uticaja.<span style="font-size: 12px;">Osnovno ograničenje istraživanja je činjenica da se rezultati istraživanja odnose na zemlje sa specifičnim tranzicionim uslovima privrede, tako i na prisutnost psiholo&scaron;kog stava ljudi koji je specifičan u ovakvim uslovima. S druge strane, mora se napomenuti da je značajan istraživački uzorak obuhvatio i strane kompanije koje posluju u Srbiji, &scaron;to može implicirati univerzalnost rezultata. S obzirom da se tranzicioni uslovi menjaju, značajno bi bilo pratiti te promene i u odnosu na njih postaviti nova istraživanja i komparirati rezultate i u skladu sa tim davati preporuke za dalji rad i unapređenje poslovanja.</span></p> / <p>The main goal of this doctoral dissertation is to determine the directions and intensities of two groups of effects: knowledge management (KM) on employee job satisfaction (JS) and enterprise financial performance (FP). In addition, the impact of individual control variables (national origin of the enterprise, ownership structure, the size of the enterprise, and the financial performance of the enterprise) on the dimensions of knowledge management (KM) is presented. Also the effects of the defined moderating relations (gender, age, type of job and level of education of respondents) on the relations of KM to JS are analyzed. The research was conducted via survey, on a sample of N = 520 respondents (managers of all levels) from manufacturing enterprises in Serbia. Statistical data analysis was conducted with the IBM SPSS Statistics 21 software. The following statistical methods were used: descriptive statistics, t-test, correlation analysis, regression analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and hierarchical regression analysis for analysis of moderator actions. Two groups of influences were observed: knowledge management on employee job satisfaction and knowledge management on enterprise financial performance. During the analysis of these relations, significant differences were noticed. The impact of knowledge management on financial performance is clear and unambiguous: statistically significant and positive. However, the impact of knowledge management on employee job satisfaction is much more complex: it is mostly statistically&nbsp;significant and negative, but it also has statistically significant and positive impacts. The main limitation of the research is the fact that the research results refer to countries with specific transition conditions of the economy, and to the presence of the psychological attitude of people, which is specific in such conditions. On the other hand, it must be noted that a significant research sample included foreign companies operating in Serbia, which may imply the universality of the results. Given that the transition conditions are changing, it would be important to monitor these changes and in accordance with them set new studies and compare the results and accordingly make recommendations for further research and business improvement.</p>

Background: The term Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is a relatively new concept within the financial industry. However, there are a couple of issues connected to the ESG score and sustainable finance. Thus, there is an ongoing conflict between creating economic value, which is the main task for managers, as well as tackling ethical issues such as ESG. Purpose: The purpose of this report is to investigate if there is a correlation between ESG scores and financial performance measures. The measures analysed are, Return on Assets (ROA), Retention Ratio (RET), Operating Cash-Flow (CF) and Debt-Equity (DE), for listed companies in Sweden and the UK. Method: To see if there is a correlation between ESG and financial performance, a Pooled OLS Regression and Fixed Effect Regression Model (FE) was used. The data was collected from the Thomson Reuters datastream, where 75 companies listed on the OMXSLCGI in Sweden and 75 companies listed on the FTSE100 in the UK, was retrieved. Conclusion: The regression results indicated a positive correlation between CF and ESG for both the FE regression and the Pooled OLS for the Swedish middle-ranked companies, as well as a positive correlation between DE and ESG for the lower-ranked Swedish companies. For the UK, no significant variables were found. Because of the limited significant results, this thesis found that there is yet no apparent correlation between the ESG score and financial performance based on the four years analyzed.

El presente trabajo de investigación tiene como fin estudiar la relación entre el liderazgo y el desempeño financiero del área comercial, en específico en la fuerza de ventas en Lima de cada una de las empresas a evaluar, dentro del sector asegurador. Para ello, se analizarán los siguientes estilos de liderazgo: Transaccional, Transformacional y Situacional. Cabe indicar que no estamos tomando en cuenta el estilo de liderazgo laissez-faire, ya que, partiendo de las investigaciones analizadas, llegamos a la conclusión que no existe un único estilo de liderazgo sino más bien siempre se da una mezcla entre ellos, dependiendo de cada situación presentada. Con relación al desempeño financiero abordaremos los indicadores de rentabilidad como ROI y Rendimiento sobre las ventas. Dentro del sector en el cual se basará la siguiente investigación encontramos a las principales compañías aseguradoras, conformadas por Rímac Seguros, Pacífico y Mapfre, ya que entre las 3 albergan aproximadamente el 60% de la participación del mercado nacional en los últimos ocho años. Finalmente, optamos por investigar esta relación puesto que actualmente no existen diversas investigaciones que evalúen este tipo de variables de manera conjunta; empero existen investigaciones que si evalúan el liderazgo con diversas variables ya sea productividad, desempeño, motivación, mas no con desempeño financiero que es la finalidad de esta investigación. / The main purpose of this research work is to study the relationship between leadership and financial performance of the sales force in each of the companies to be evaluated in Lima, within the insurance sector. For this, the leadership styles that are analyzed are the following: Transactional, Transformational and Situational. It should be noted that we are not taking in account the laissez-faire leadership style, since, based on the analyzed investigations, we come to the conclusion that there is no single leadership style, but rather there is always a mixture between them, depending on the situation presented. In accordance to the financial performance, we are considering the profitability indicators, such as ROI and performance on sales. Within the sector on which the following research will be based, we are considering the main insurance companies in Peru, such as Rimac, Pacifico and Mapfre since among the three they house around 60% of the market share in Peru in the last eight years. Finally, we chose to investigate this relationship since there are currently not many researches that evaluate these types of variables jointly. However, there are researches that evaluate leadership with other similar variables, such as productivity, performance, motivation, among others, but not specifically related to financial performance, which is the main purpose of this investigation. / Tesis

Sweden is a country that stands out in terms of attracting highly skilled workers and having a large number of young firms. However, with the young age and specifically put in a concrete context of the COVID-19 pandemic, young firms may face the risk of losses due to a lack of funds to maintain or having volatile financial sources.  Therefore, this thesis tries to provide insights on the relation between knowledge management activities (KMAs) and financial performance in young firms from 5 to 10 years old in Sweden. In other words, the thesis aims to understand how young firms in Sweden have implemented KMAs inside their firms. More specifically, striving to determine which knowledge management enablers influence KMAs, what kinds of KMAs young firms are applying, and at what level those kinds of activities impact young firms’ financial performance. A mixed-method approach has been selected to utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods. Together with semi-structured interviews, Exploratory Sequential Design is applied in the thesis, which enables defining the impact of KMAs on the financial performance of young firms in Sweden and the availability of the presented conceptual framework in practice.

The hospitals and their healthcare providers need to optimize simultaneously three outcomes: healthcare costs, healthcare options offered to customers, and information utilization efficiency. The adoption of electronic healthcare record (EHR) technologies is a potential managerial mechanism for balancing these outcomes. EHR offers patient management and decision support capabilities that can ameliorate health delivery outcomes for patients, doctors, and hospitals through better-informed business and care decisions. The analysis of data collected in an EHR system may lower costs and improve health care delivery (or both). In sum, it could be argued that EHR is a source of competitive advantage. Despite this prima facie appeal, many hospitals remain reluctant to adopt and implement EHR due to lack of insights into return on investment, unavailability of tested systems and data entry obstacles. To address this gap between the potential of EHR system and lack of its adoption, the purpose of this research is to investigate the role of EHR as a resource of competitive advantage for hospital. Essay 1, titled "Implementation and Adoption of EHR: A Conceptual Model based on Resource Advantage Theory", describes the antecedents and consequences of EHR adoption and implementation. Essay 2, titled "Exploring the Relationship Between Electronic Healthcare Record Adoption and Quality of Care", delves deeper into the operational performance of a hospital. This essay focuses on the impact of EHR on different aspects of patient care and thereby on the financial performance of the hospital. Essay 3, titled "The Effect of Resources on a Hospital's Financial Performance: The Moderating Role of Electronic Health Records Implementation and Adoption", is an empirical inquiry into the key factors that may influence hospitals' financial performance. These include organizational factors (such as, number of nurses and beds) and environmental factors (such as, location and received donations). Further, this essay explores the interaction effects between EHR and these factors. In summary, this research provides a conceptualization and an empirical investigation of EHR adoption and implementation and its impact on hospitals' operational and financial performance, an area receiving widespread attention from health care organizations, patient rights activists, public policy makers and the media. Future research can take two paths. First, further research should address questions related to the integration of EHR with other production and inventory management systems, and the prospective benefits attained from system integration. Second research is needed to investigate how parallel information transfer across multiple stakeholders may concurrently preserve Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, reduce health care delivery costs and optimize service quality.

This research examines whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives impact fund financial performance of 46 Nordic mutual funds during the past five years (2016-2020). Previous studies have focused on which of the two alternatives generates a rewarding financial result. To complement previous research, this study focuses on the development of CSR - whether the gap formed between CSR initiatives and fund financial performance is moving closer towards each other based on the increased focus of ESG factors during the recent years. Two categories, strong and weak ESG performance, are juxtapositioned to find out at what stage the development is. Furthermore, analysis on which of the three categories: environmental, social or governance individually, is the driving factor of the development of CSR initiatives. Based on the matched pair methodology and hypothesis testing, funds with CSR initiatives have reached the point, in which they perform equally well to their peers without such motives. The underlying driver behind the development are examined.

The master thesis is focused on Evaluation of the Company´s Financial Performance Using Benchmarking Approach. The master thesis consists of three following parts. The first part deals with theoretical methods, especially benchmarking realization and its different types and models. The second part contains evaluation of the current situation in OBB stavební materiály s.r.o. and compares its business to others using benchmarking method. I used public data from financial annual accounts and database Amadeus. The last part includes complete evaluation of the company´s financial performance and recommendation on improvemet of the financial performance in company OBB stavební materiály s.r.o.

That companies need to respond to the issue of climate change is no longer in question and with multiple carbon management activity options to choose from, companies need to select the most appropriate carbon management strategy to meet the challenges of a carbon constrained future. Because of South Africa’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change as a developing country and because of business’ pivotal role in addressing this urgent issue, it is important to characterise the corporate responses to climate change. The contextual factors that influence carbon management strategy decisions need to be understood so that appropriate policy decisions are taken to encourage innovation related to climate change opportunities.To this end, secondary data in the form of qualitative responses from 70 large South African listed companies to the Carbon Disclosure Project 2011 questionnaire were analysed for this study during September and October 2012. The detailed responses were first mined using a text-mining statistical program to identify the five carbon management activities currently practised by the companies. A cluster analysis of these activities revealed four general response strategies to climate change and carbon emission reduction pressures.The companies were found to have a strong focus on saving energy with less focus on higher-order sustainability activities. While market capitalisation, turnover, sector and carbon commitment were shown to correlate and indeed predict the carbon management strategy chosen by companies, no significant link was found between carbon management strategy and corporate financial performance. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This thesis study is based on the research question ‘Does ESG-scores affect turnover growth in companies with recent IPOs in the US?’. With four multiple regression models, we tested our hypotheses. Additionally, we made a box-plot analysis to look for trends between groups of companies, where the groups were constructed based on ESG-scores. We believe that we came up with a, yet vague, answer to the question after analyzing the results of the research. For the companies in the sample, ESG-scores do affect Turnover Growth negatively, however we want to stress that we claim it with great caution, as it cannot be concluded with any statistical significance. This study also shed some light on whether or not a manager should spend time and resources, after initiating an IPO in the US, on implementing sustainability in their business model to achieve a high ESG-score to satisfy the demands of the higher number of stakeholders which comes with going public. Conclusively, and generally, we found that a manager should focus strictly on financial performance rather than both financial- and sustainability performance closely following the initiation of an IPO in the US.

As the fourth digital revolution is initiated and digitalization is becoming increasingly evident in today’s society, the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) is experiencing a boom and is continuously transforming a vast variety of industries. Previous studies have found several links between AI usage and economic benefits, such as increased efficiency and lower costs. Furthermore, such benefits have been connected to financial performance indicators such as return on assets (ROA) and stock return. Additionally, the Nordic countries are known for their flourishing technological environment and the involvement in well-known technology-oriented companies. These underlying factors shaped the interest of exploring the relationship between AI usage and financial performance, as measured by ROA, stock return and the volatility of stock returns. The idea of including these three performance indicators was to get both an internal perspective, as well as a market perspective from an investors point of view while incorporating risk. This census study was conducted by performing three multiple regression models on the companies on Nasdaq OMX Nordic, which resulted in a population of 152 companies. By gathering observations between the years 2015-2019, the total number of observations amounted to 721 for the ROA model, 720 for the stock return model, and 714 for the risk model. The study follows a quantitative research design, with an objective and positivist view in regard to the research philosophical assumptions. Furthermore, a deductive research approach is taken, since previous studies, as well as theories such as the stakeholder and shareholder theories, the disruption theory, the resource-based theory and the dynamic capabilities theory are used to make conclusions. Additionally, the chosen regression model was the OLS model, incorporating the robust function since none of the regressions were fulfilling the assumption of constant variation of the error term. On a 95% confidence interval, all null hypotheses could be rejected, meaning that there was a relationship between AI usage and all performance indicators. However, the relationships were unexpectedly weak and opposing of the researchers’ expectations. As it turns out, internal performance as measured by ROA, as well as market performance measured by stock return proved to have a small negative relationship with ROA. This means that Nordic companies utilizing AI sees a negative impact on financial performance in the short run. However, risk as measured by the standard deviation (SD) of stock returns, showed a positive relationship with AI usage, meaning that investing in companies using AI is riskier. The findings contradict the idea that the economic benefits from AI cause a higher financial performance. However, since AI is just seeing a boom as of recently, it is possible that it might pay off financially in the long run.