<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>Title:</p><p>The Effect of Social Relationships on Company Internationalization</p><p>Course:</p><p>Master’s level Thesis (EFO705) in International Business and Entrepreneurship 10 Swedish credit points  (15 ECTS)</p><p>Authors:</p><p>Hanney Al-Qaisi & Bhupesh Reddy Kurre</p><p>Tutor:</p><p>Leif Linnskog</p><p>Problem:</p><p>How did social relationships affect the internationalization of a German IVF centre to the UAE? Using this case example, the thesis will be focused on studying the different social factors that could have affected the internationalization process.</p><p>Purpose:</p><p>The aim of this thesis was to describe the way that a local company in Germany went through internationalization to become a successfulmultinational company. We wanted to find out if there were any social factors that influenced the company. In particular, we wanted to investigate whether there were any entrepreneurial activities or barriers that influenced the company’s internationalisation and why it chose to open its subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is far from Germany.</p><p>Methods:</p><p>This thesis is based on a qualitative methodology for gathering and analysis of the data around the internationalization of the German company.Qualitative methods are the best techniques for looking into social relationships and whether they have an effect on the internationalization process.</p><p>Theories:</p><p>Uppsala-Model; Network Theory; Social, Business & Professional Relationships and International Entrepreneurship</p><p>Target Group:</p><p>This research provides knowledge and information to entrepreneurs businessowners, managers, general readers, and academics who would like to understand the influence of social relationships on internationalization. </p><p><p>Conclusion:</p><p>Having searched through the published literature for relevant articles on the internationalization process, social relationships and entrepreneurial activities, we were able to inform our thesis with a theoretical framework for analyzing social relationships and internationalization. Social relationships do indeed have an influence on the internationalization process, and using our case example, it was possible to outline the patterns and nature of the influence. The theories (and patterns) are interlinked, and could be related in practical terms to the establishment of a satellite fertility centre in the UAE by a German head company.</p></p>

ABSTRACT Title: The Effect of Social Relationships on Company Internationalization Course: Master’s level Thesis (EFO705) in International Business and Entrepreneurship 10 Swedish credit points  (15 ECTS) Authors: Hanney Al-Qaisi &amp; Bhupesh Reddy Kurre Tutor: Leif Linnskog Problem: How did social relationships affect the internationalization of a German IVF centre to the UAE? Using this case example, the thesis will be focused on studying the different social factors that could have affected the internationalization process. Purpose: The aim of this thesis was to describe the way that a local company in Germany went through internationalization to become a successfulmultinational company. We wanted to find out if there were any social factors that influenced the company. In particular, we wanted to investigate whether there were any entrepreneurial activities or barriers that influenced the company’s internationalisation and why it chose to open its subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is far from Germany. Methods: This thesis is based on a qualitative methodology for gathering and analysis of the data around the internationalization of the German company.Qualitative methods are the best techniques for looking into social relationships and whether they have an effect on the internationalization process. Theories: Uppsala-Model; Network Theory; Social, Business &amp; Professional Relationships and International Entrepreneurship Target Group: This research provides knowledge and information to entrepreneurs businessowners, managers, general readers, and academics who would like to understand the influence of social relationships on internationalization.  Conclusion: Having searched through the published literature for relevant articles on the internationalization process, social relationships and entrepreneurial activities, we were able to inform our thesis with a theoretical framework for analyzing social relationships and internationalization. Social relationships do indeed have an influence on the internationalization process, and using our case example, it was possible to outline the patterns and nature of the influence. The theories (and patterns) are interlinked, and could be related in practical terms to the establishment of a satellite fertility centre in the UAE by a German head company.

Scholarly interest in the informal economy has burgeoned in recent years, in anticipation of expanding our knowledge beyond the easily observable organizational life that takes place within the formal economic system. In line with this research endeavour, the present work represents a focused study of what I have labelled 'disguised relationships'. These ties result in repeated transactions between informal economy enterprises, which fail to comply with certain elements of the laws and regulations applying to their operations, and formal firms, which operate within the state-sanctioned formal economy. Drawing on an abductive reasoning process and grounded theory approach, I conduct a case study that captures the interactions between two leading cosmetics firms (i.e. formal firms) and ten daigou enterprises (i.e. informal enterprises) between 2013 and 2017. The examination of multiple data sources (i.e. interviews, news articles and social media observations) suggests that the organizational landscape under study differs considerably from the one in which formal firms are portrayed as rational choosers of best-performing partners or exploiters of subordinate actors within the informal economy. Rather, disguised relationships emerge in a unilateral and disguised fashion following the lead of informal enterprises, and formal firms unintentionally engage in the unexpected ties. Furthermore, disguised relationships create the image of dynamism replete with, metaphorically speaking, give-take, push-pull and chase-evade. More specifically, the emergent model illustrates the interactive practices through four mechanisms: (a) informal enterprises gaining social acceptability from certain society groups and acquiring the necessary resources from the members of identity-based groups; (b) drawing on this momentum, informal enterprises forming unilateral ties with formal firms in a disguised manner; (c) formal firms counteracting the unexpected ties, with temporary compromising on the counteracting efforts; and (d) informal enterprises avoiding the combatting efforts of formal firms through socially learnt tactics and leveraging network brokers (i.e. actors sharing the same ethnic/cultural backgrounds with informal enterprises while at the same time working for formal firms). This thesis makes contributions to the literature on both interorganizational relationships and the informal economy by overcoming the perennial problem of 'dualism' that is prevalent in the extant work. First, while the subject-object dualism bestows upon formal firms a heroic status such that they are conceptualized as rational actors forming interorganizational relationships, always on the basis of plans and goals, the current work argues that formal firms may participate in unexpected, yet lasting, ties, which requires ongoing situational responsiveness. Second, the structure-agency dualism projects the static image in which formal firms deliberately establish exploitative ties with structurally isolated informal enterprises, whereas the present study suggests that informal enterprises may exercise agency to proactively establish or dissolve connections with formal firms and to strengthen or weaken the relationships at their discretion. As such, dynamism figures prominently in the interorganizational relationships between formal firms and informal enterprises.

Although the United States has hired private contractors to execute government-funded work since its inception, these contractors have become increasingly more common since the 1980s. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been no exception; the number of for- and non-profit contractors designing and implementing international foreign aid projects has proliferated. The complicated relationships among USAID, nonprofit, and for-profit contractors raise important questions about the factors that influence 1) which types of organizations receive contracts, and 2) which characteristics increase the likelihood that contractors will form inter-organizational partnerships via their work on USAID's contracts. This dissertation explores both by examining 232 contractors that implemented USAID's democracy-building projects abroad 1999-2004. First, logistic regressions were used to assess the influence of nonprofit organizations' political affiliations on their ability to obtain USAID's contracts. The results of these analyses suggest that that in certain years, nonprofit organizations with prominent, politically connected board members were more successful than others in obtaining USAID contracts. In other time periods, the composition of nonprofits' boards had no significant impact on organizational success in acquiring contracts.Second, this dissertation evaluates whether inter-organizational familiarity influences the likelihood of contractors partnering on USAID-funded contracts. The results of logistic regressions indicate that inter-organizational familiarity from past partnerships has increased the chance that organizations partner in certain time periods. These findings stress the role of organizational learning in their decisions to partner, as well as the impact of government programs designed to diversify the pool of available contractors. This research considers the ways that changing political environments influence the availability of resources for contracting organizations with particular characteristics. Moreover, it underscores the need to assess the contracting system in order to ensure that those chosen to implement government-funded work are as capable, innovative, and accountable for their work as possible.

Companies are increasingly outsourcing business critical activities to suppliers of outsourcing services. As the complexity and business  criticality of the outsourced activities increases, the risk of poor performance increases. This thesis studies large scale outsourcing in the telecom industry where a recent trend is to transfer the development, operation and maintenance of the telecom infrastructure to telecom equipment suppliers. The significance of this type of outsourcing is that the outsourced activity is the revenue generating part of the telecom operators business. Part 1 discusses the purpose and research questions followed by the theoretical underpinning in the research. The research strategy is to study the outsourcing relationship in three distinct stages of its development and the theoretical underpinning applies transaction costs analysis in the Scoping &amp; Search stage and Das &amp;Teng’s (2001) framework of trust and control for managing risks in the Negotiation and Transition stages. This design is in response to calls for a more detailed understanding of how organizations manage risks, it therefore takes the perspective of both the outsourcer and the supplier in the research. Part 2 is a multiple case study of telecom operators in Holland, Sweden and Australia where the supplier in all three cases is Ericsson Global Services organization. The study is further supplemented by mini-cases of large scale IS/IT infrastructure outsourcing. Part 3 has three main parts. Firstly, a cross case analysis of the cases in Part 2; secondly, a discussion of the findings linked to the research questions resulting in a set of propositions. The third and final part covers additional insights and learnings from studying business critical outsourcing and suggestions for further research. The main contributions in the research can be summarised as: Physical asset specificity follows transaction costs logic, however human asset specificity is largely ignored by both outsourcer and supplier Business critical outsourcing by its nature faces a limited market for capable suppliers. This results in single-source negotiations followed by a cooperative stance and open book negotiations. Das &amp; Teng’s (2001) framework for management of risks has been found to have specific directions, some bi-directional and others uni-directional. Furthermore, different dimensions in the framework operate at different managerial levels. Goodwill trust-building operate at the corporate executive level, competence trust-building, output and behavioural control at the level of the negotiation team, and the research indicates that the social control dimension is not applied in business critical outsourcing negotiations. A further finding is that goodwill trust-building precedes all other dimensions of trust and control, and is a pre-requisite for establishing a cooperative stance in the negotiations.

No description available.

Face à la dispersion géographique de leurs activités, les firmes multinationales (FMN) sont amenées à gérer des relations intra- et inter-organisationnelles de plus en plus complexes. Cette recherche doctorale porte sur la coordination de ces relations dans le contexte de l’usine mondiale (global factory), qui constitue une forme particulière de l’entreprise-réseau. Elle s’appuie sur une recherche-action menée auprès de l’entreprise Renault Trucks (groupe Volvo). L’étude empirique est fondée sur 63 entretiens, des groupes de discussion interactifs et l’organisation de deux workshops, complétés par des données secondaires. Les résultats obtenus mettent en avant le rôle prépondérant de la firme-pivot dans le pilotage des relations avec les partenaires internationaux. Selon la configuration du partenaire (niveau d’autonomie opérationnelle et fréquence de la transaction), il est recommandé de choisir des mécanismes de coordination spécifiques. Un jeu de 21 propositions vise à améliorer notre compréhension de l’usine mondiale en termes d’agencement et de fonctionnement interne. Enfin, un design organisationnel de l’usine mondiale est développé. / Facing the geographic dispersion of their activities, multinational companies (MNCs) are involved in the management of increasingly complex intra- and inter-organizational relationships. This doctoral research focuses on the coordination of these relationships in the context of the global factory, which represents a particular form of the network-firm. It is based on an action research project conducted at Renault Trucks (Volvo Group). The empirical study covers 63 interviews, interactive panels and the organization of two workshops, completed by secondary data. The results highlight the important role played by the lead firm for the management of relationships with international partners. Depending on the configuration of the partner (level of operational autonomy and frequency of the transaction), it is recommended to choose specific coordination mechanisms. A set of 21 proposals intends to improve our understanding of the global factory in terms of configuration and internal operations. Finally, an organizational design of the global factory is developed.

Penningtvätt och finansiering av terrorism är ett internationellt problem som ständigt hotar världsekonomin och det finansiella systemet. Detta har medfört att Financial Action Task Forces grundläggande rekommendationer, som legat till bas för en stor del av regelverken inom den svenska finanssektorn, besitter en betydelsefull roll, likaså enskilda bankmedarbetares beslutsfattande inom de svenska storbankerna.Syftet med studien är att förstå hur och varför det kan existera ett gap mellan FATF:s grundläggande rekommendationer och några svenska bankers agerande i reglering av penningtvätt genom att observera enskilda bankmedarbetares beslutsfattande inom de svenska storbankerna.Beslutsteorier ligger till grund för att förstå hur psykologiska kognitioner kan påverka en individs beslutsfattande. Vår föreställning har även varit den, att enskilda bankmedarbetare inom de svenska storbankerna kan fatta beslut och utföra handlingar i relation till organisationsförhållande så som styr- och kontrollsystem, komplexa organisationsmiljöer, informationssystem, individuell kompetens samt selektion, urval och värderingar, som råder inom banken.Sett till vår teoretiska referensram, empiriska insamling och analys har vi konstaterat att de olika organisationsförhållandena kan vara bidragande faktorer till varför penningtvätt inom svenska storbanker kan uppstå. Banktjänstemän fattar inte enbart oönskade beslut på grund av brister i organisationsförhållandena, utan även på grund av olika kompetensnivåer som innebär att vissa medarbetare med högre kompetens erhåller ett bredare handlingsutrymme. Under studiens gång har vi fått en indikation på att kundkännedom och kundrelation kan vara en kritisk faktor till uppkomsten av penningtvätt, då det existerar osäkerhet i enskilda bankmedarbetares bedömning av kunders trovärdighet / Money laundering and terrorist financing is an international issue that is constantly threatening the world economy and the financial system. This meaning, that FATF's fundamental recommendations, as a basis for a large part of the regulations, within the Swedish financial sector have a significant role in the counter of money laundering as well as the decision-making of bankers in the Swedish major banks.The purpose of the study is to understand how and why there exists a gap between the Financial Action Task Force's fundamental recommendations and the behavior of a number of Swedish banks in the regulation of money laundering by observing bankers'decisionmaking.By applying an abductive approach, decision theories lay the foundation for understanding which psychological cognitions can affect a bankers decision making. Our idea has also been that individuals in the Swedish major banks can make decisions in relation to which organizational relationships such as control system, complex work environments, informations systems, selections and values exist within the bank.Referring to our theoretical reference framework, empirical collection and analysis, we have found that the different organizational relationships can be contributing factors to why money laundering within Swedish major banks can arise. Bankers not only take unwanted decisions because of the shortcomings in the organizational relationships, but also because the employees have different levels of competence and thus have wider scope for action. During the study, we have received an indication that customer relationships and how well bankers knows the customer, can be a critical factor to the emergence of money laundering.

The purpose of this Diploma Thesis is to identify relationships between organizations in a chosen area. It was selected the branches of UniCredit bank, a. s. in the South Bohemian Region. Organizational data have been acquired from publicly accessible resources -- mostly public service registers, the central bank of the Czech Republic's registers and Internet resources of Unicredit Bank as well and through empirical investigation by an interview method with representatives of the branches. In the conclusion of the Thesis are gained knowledge inserted into the Model of inter-organizational relationships and thank to this are characterized the relationships between these organizations.

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Agradecemos a compreensão on 2018-10-17T14:08:12Z (GMT) / Submitted by Renata Calonego (rcalonego@gmail.com) on 2018-10-17T15:31:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO RENATA CALONEGO_UNESP FAAC.pdf: 2394780 bytes, checksum: 94a54dee3c1fe8b42eb27ed440abae37 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Lucilene Cordeiro da Silva Messias null (lubiblio@bauru.unesp.br) on 2018-10-17T16:24:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 calonego_r_me_bauru.pdf: 2394780 bytes, checksum: 94a54dee3c1fe8b42eb27ed440abae37 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-17T16:24:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 calonego_r_me_bauru.pdf: 2394780 bytes, checksum: 94a54dee3c1fe8b42eb27ed440abae37 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Enquadrado no âmbito da perspectiva relacional, elege-se como tema o estudo da comunicação enquanto competência essencial, que perpassa pelo entendimento do protagonismo comunicacional nas organizações. Compreende-se esse vínculo e o grau de prática desse olhar, a partir da percepção de quatro comunicólogos que atuam em multinacionais do segmento de ferramenta, alimentício, telecomunicações e bebida. Identifica-se e descreve os saberes que estruturam a comunicação enquanto competência essencial e as dimensões que permeiam o entendimento do protagonismo comunicacional nas organizações. Analisa-se comparativamente esses objetos de estudo frente às associações do saber dialogar, saber criar senso coletivo, saber reconhecer o protagonismo dos públicos, saber dinamizar discursos e saber gerar benefícios mútuos com as noções de interdependência, comunicação enquanto relação, contexto em movimento e cultura. Trata-se de um estudo qualitativo multicaso, cuja coleta de dados é feita por meio de entrevistas com roteiro de perguntas semiestruturado, tendo os dados tratados mediante análise de conteúdo. Evidencia-se que a percepção dos comunicólogos entrevistados sobre o grau da prática da comunicação enquanto competência essencial se difere em cada organização investigada. No entanto, todas as quatro contemplaram fatores que indicaram um direcionamento para praticar os saberes considerados neste trabalho. As organizações do ramo de telecomunicações e de bebida foram as que menos apresentaram possuir um olhar direcionado para o protagonismo comunicacional, tendo a dimensão da cultura e a categoria do saber criar senso coletivo ausentes em suas análises. De modo contrário, os outros dois objetos de estudo demonstraram de modo mais claro os traços que indicam a prática da comunicação como competência essencial, sendo alto o grau de prática do saber dinamizar discursos em todas as organizações analisadas. / Within the context of relational perspective, the study of communication as an essential competence is chosen as the theme, which permeates the understanding of communicational protagonism in organizations. The link and degree of practice of this look are understood based on the perception of four communicologists who work in multinational companies in tool, food, telecommunications and beverage segments. The knowledge that structures communication as an essential competence, as well as the dimensions that permeate the understanding of communicational protagonism in organizations, are identified and described. These objects of study are analysed comparatively to dialogue, creation of collective, recognition of audiences protagonism, dynamism of discourses and generation of mutual benefits with the ideas of interdependence, communication as a relation, context in movement and culture knowledge associations. It relates to a qualitative multicase study, whose data collection is made through interviews with semi-structured questionnaire, with the data processed through content analysis. It is evident that the perception of communicologists interviewed about the degree of communication practice as an essential competency differs in each investigated organization. However, all four considered factors that indicated a direction to practice the knowledge considered in this work. The organizations of telecommunications and beverage sectors were the ones that less presented to have a directed look at communicational protagonism, having the dimension of culture and the knowledge to create collective sense category absent in their analysis. On the contrary, the other two objects of study have demonstrated more clearly the traces that indicate the practice of communication as essential competence, being high the degree of practice of knowing how to dynamize discourses in all the analysed organizations. / CAPES: 88887.201354/2018-00