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Many companies are entering the international manufacturing arena. The continued expansion of the global market suggests that international manufacturing will grow. Among other concerns, the difficulty of producing high quality in some countries suggests that it is critical that companies using international locations for manufacturing find methods to better monitor and improve quality. The purpose of this research was to develop and test a method for quality improvement in an offshore environment. This method would be specifically applicable to a third-party logistics company (3PL), where the 3PL is a United States company that brokers manufacturing in China, networks to multiple manufacturers for a variety of products within that country, and is responsible for the final quality of the products made in China. After designing a new quality method that focused on regular recording and reporting of data, it was implemented into a 3PL test-case company and tested and results reported. From the results salient points were identified that improve quality when working with a 3PL located in China with a parent company in the United States. These points include: structure for reporting quality, management involvement, employee dedication to quality, and cultural understanding and awareness. Recommendations for further research are also outlined. These include: extended time (beyond three months) to implement the method and test it, larger sample size to improve the quantitative analysis, cost benefit analysis for the implementation of the method, implementation in different nations, and implementation in a manufacturing company specific to a product.

The purpose of this study is to explore how firms create an engaging customer experience through live shopping. More specifically, by performing a case study this thesis will provide an example of how firms use live shopping to create interactions, as well as to provide value through firm offerings.  This thesis performs qualitative exploratory research with an abductive research approach by studying the case company, Flowlife. Both primary- and secondary data sources are conducted. The primary data is collected through semi-structured interviews with seven employees at the selected company and further analyzed through thematic analysis. While secondary data is conducted through observations of two recorded live shopping event and KPIs provided from the company.  The empirical findings highlight that live shopping allows the studied firm to get close to their customers. Moreover, it was stated that the firm recognizes live shopping as a powerful tool to share information to customers; both about their products, but also about “added value” beyond what is embedded in their products. Finally, it can be identified that the firm perceive a control over the interactions that live shopping brings.  The presented study identifies that live shopping allows a firm to reach beyond the ordinary online experience by combining elements from brick-and-mortar stores with digital affordances. This way, a firm can increase the probability of building trust and relationships. Moreover, live shopping is agile in its nature and allows a firm to adjust and customize firm offerings while providing it. It can also be stated that live shopping allows a firm to provide greater value-in-use and elevate a firm’s role in the value creation process by expanding its role in the joint sphere.

This dissertation uses game theoretic models in a principal-agent framework to study how firms optimally manage long term career related incentives for their sales people. When sales people put sales effort they face incentives not only from short term incentives like commissions and bonuses but also from long term rewards associated with progression in their career. In particular, sales people are often motivated to get promoted and avoid being laid off, to get selected to managerial positions and to form stronger relationships with customers so that they can bargain for higher wages in the future, respectively. Three different essays examine each of these three career related incentives and how firms can optimally manage them. Essay 1 (Chapter 2) studies why and how firms use a type of promotion and layoff policy, called the Forced Ranking policy, to provide optimal long term career incentives to sales people. Findings from the essay suggests that when sales people are ambiguity averse and there is economic uncertainty regarding promotions and layoffs, firms are likely to commit to a promotion policy but may or may not commit to a layoff policy as part of Forced Ranking. Interestingly, it is shown that firms enjoying higher margins are more likely to commit to both promotion and layoffs, consistent with observations from industry practice. Results also suggest that in absence of costs from promoting and laying off employees, firms should use an up-or-out contract to motivate the sales force. Essay 2 (Chapter 3) investigates how career incentives associated with promotion of sales employees to sales management roles may interfere with selection of the right sales managers. The essay was motivated by the common observation that organizations often promote their best sales people to sales managerial roles but after promotion find that the sales people are not as good as they were expected to be in their new roles, a phenomenon called Peter Principle. An alternative explanation for this phenomenon of adverse selection is provided and possible solutions are analyzed as part of the essay. In essay 3 (Chapter 4) long term career incentives that sales reps face when they can form relationships with their customers are considered. Loyalty generated from customer-salesperson relationships is often "owned" by the sales person and it can be lost if the sales person moves to another firm. Therefore, firms compete for both customers as well as sales reps with the objective of poaching customers that are loyal to the sales reps. The essay analyzes how firms can deal with such a competition. Findings suggest that contrary to general beliefs, the presence of anti-employee poaching regulations like Non-Compete clauses, or tacit collusion to not poach each other's employees may hurt firm profits under some conditions. Overall, the dissertation answers how firms can manage sales force career incentives to maximize profits.

This thesis examines the decision-making regarding market-orientation within specific types of Swedish state-owned enterprises, namely the Public Business Authorities (Affärsverk, PBAs), during a period of institutional upheaval in the 1980s. It specifically focuses on the leadership groups – director general and board – of the Energy PBA (Statens Vattenfallsverk), the Postal PBA (Postverket), and the Tele PBA (Televerket). The thesis adopts a theoretical framework that integrates the perspectives of varieties of capitalism and the attention-based view of the firm, which posits that firm behaviour is determined by where and how attention is directed within the organisation. The thesis delineates two distinct leadership strategies for addressing market-orientation: the deliberative institutional change strategy, characterised by consensus-building through negotiation using existing modes of strategic interaction, and the entrepreneurial institutional change strategy, characterised by leveraging existing modes of strategic interaction to transcend them and forge novel paths towards new modes of strategic interaction. The former was applied by the Postal and Energy PBAs, while the latter was applied by the Tele PBA.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore senior managers¿ perceptions of strategic management, with the specific context being the National Oil Corporation in Libya. As such it represents a ground-breaking study at PhD level. An extensive literature identified key themes and models of strategy formulation and strategic management, in particular Karami¿s model of strategic management (Karami, 2007) together with key factors influencing the processes involved. This led to a study of the Libyan NOC based on a two-stage research design, the first a survey involving two hundred and fifty two senior managers of whom seventy returned completed questionnaires and the second conducting twelve semi-structured follow up interviews to deepen the findings from the questionnaire with qualitative data. The findings of this thesis suggest that the Libyan NOC may have relied too heavily in the past on strategy formulation and strategic management as the preserve of a very few individuals at the very top of the organisation, as the role of the great majority of senior managers was limited to monitoring and high level supervision. It was found that although political directives set the strategy for the whole organisation, there was a gap in knowledge and understanding between the senior business managers and the political appointments to the Board. Recommendations for improving practice therefore concerned steps in the strategic management process and senior managers¿ effectiveness especially in the Board as a team. Recommendations for reflecting the Libyan NOC as an example of a state-owned enterprise in Karami¿s model were to include Board effectiveness as the first step, to add medium-term objectives and to include social responsibility in environmental scanning under external factors.

The research critically examines the positive and negative effects of hiring and not hiring non-family executives in Scandinavian family businesses. The analysis relies on a qualitative data collection method through semi-structured interviews with four participants. They can provide diverse information on the topic. It has been justified to use 2/1 ratio as one of the participants who had experience of hiring non-family executives, had not been hired it yet. It has been indicated from the current research that non-family business executives may bring healthy changes to the family business they can have greater efficiency, growth, and increased profitability. Nevertheless, challenges occur in recruiting and retaining non-family executives because of the unique family business dynamics. The research claimed that balancing the relationship between family workers and non-family executives can be a significant challenge. It is recommended from the research findings that family businesses in Scandinavia must identify the significance of embracing talent and expertise to drive growth and innovation. They must take the necessary measures to ensure that non-family executives are on the same page. Future research must focus on discovering innovative perspectives to make necessary changes, increase sales, enhance the customer base, and ensure prolonged growth in family businesses.

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Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain how the gender diversity of the top management team affects the disclosure strategy regarding gender diversity, in state-owned enterprises. The study, in addition, tests if hybridity, conceptualized as conflicting institutional logics, has a moderating effect on this relationship. Theoretical perspectives: With its starting point in the upper echelon theory, the study uses both positive accounting theory and signaling theory to explain managers’ disclosure decision, where the intuitional logics approach represents the moderating decision-making context. Methodology: The study is based within the positivistic paradigm, following a deductive approach and quantitative methodology. Both the textual and visual diversity content of the annual reports of 30 state-owned enterprises over a 5-year period, is collected and analyzed using the Spearman correlation matrix and multiple regression analysis. The moderating effect of hybridity is tested through hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis. Findings: The findings of the study provide partial support for the relationship between the gender diversity of the top management team and gender diversity disclosure, suggesting that the influence of management depends on the means of disclosure. No support is found for the claim that hybridity has a positive moderating effect on this relationship. However, incorporating hybridity stills indicates that integrating the institutional context into the upper-echelons model facilitates understanding about the relationship, by establishing conditional boundaries and identifying main effects.

本論文主要由三大研究主題組合而成：第一個主題是依照中國金融體系的現況，針對國有銀行、政策性銀行、股份制商業銀行及城市商業銀行等四種不同類型銀行的獲利績效進行比較實證研究。其中的股份制商銀與城市銀行，其資本組成除少數仍有國務院持股（即中央政府持股）外，股東成員擴及地方政府、國有企業及民間企業，股本結構明顯較國有商業銀行及政策銀行多元化。不同的股本結構，尤其是官股比例（政府持股比例）是否對各家銀行的獲利能力產生影響，是本文主要研究興趣所在。本文採用Bankscope資料庫，涵蓋1997至2004年中國大陸49家銀行的財務及股東資料。結果發現：銀行股權結構中，中央政府持股比例越高，銀行獲利表現越差，地方政府持股的影響則較不明顯；而四類銀行中，股份制商銀與城市商銀的表現遠優於國有銀行及政策銀行。但1999年以後中國國有銀行的財務整頓措施的確使得國有銀行的相對表現有所提升。 鑑於外商銀行大舉進入中國金融市場，勢必對中國銀行帶來更多的競爭壓力，本論文第二個研究主題進一步將研究範圍擴及至世界資產排名前一百大的銀行，企圖比較中國銀行與世界百大銀行經營績效的差異。在這個主題中，延續前一主題「股權結構」的重要性，除了官股比例，同時考慮外資持股及本國人持股，分析三類持股對績效的影響，又鑑於總體面的政府治理因素可能對股權與銀行績效的關係產生變化，本研究也將政府治理變數，包括文獻中經常提到的證券市場內線交易情況、政府政策透明度及政府貪污情況等因素納入考量，比較這些因素對中國銀行與百大銀行影響有何差異。實證結果如下：對中國銀行及世界百大銀行而言，政府持股對銀行獲利的影響是負向的，而外資持股的影響則恰相反，開放程度愈高、銀行自由度愈高越有利於銀行績效提升。中國政府越無貪污情況時，越有助於外資持股對銀行績效的正向影響。對世界百大銀行而言，政府越無貪污情況時，越有助於外資持股對銀行績效的正向影響。而政府政策透明度越高，越有助於政府持股與本國人持股的正向影響。 第三個主題探討我國上市櫃公司不同的對外與大陸投資決策對母公司獲利性的影響。本文將投資決策對公司獲利的影響視為內生，也就是投資決策受公司特性因素的影響。同時，我們進一步假設公司的投資決策是分兩階段完成，第一步會先決定是否進行海外投資，一旦確定後，再決定是否赴大陸投資。因為有兩層的投資決策，本文以延伸的Heckman’s Two Stage Method進行估計。 實證結果顯示，在投資決策的影響因素方面，對第一層赴海外投資而言，規模愈大、國際化程度愈高、愈勞力密集的公司愈傾向赴海外投資；對第二層赴大陸投資的決策，影響因素也類似，只是公司規模不再是重要影響因素。至於獲利的影響因素方面，第一類「赴大陸投資的公司」與第二類「未赴大陸但赴其他國家投資的公司」的利潤型態較類似，長期負債對獲利都有負向顯著影響，總資產也傾向負向影響，至於第三類「未從事任何海外與大陸投資公司」的利潤型態則與前兩類不同，總資產與研發支出都呈現顯著負向影響。而三類公司的績效比較部分，第一類公司的平均預期資產報酬率雖若高於第二類，第二類公司又高於第三類公司，但三類公司兩兩之間平均預期資產報酬率的差距並未達統計上的顯著性。 / This dissertation contains three main parts. The first part studies the effects of government owned share on Chinese banks’ performance. After a series of financial reforms in the 1990s, joint stock commercial banks and city commercial banks started to boom and play an increasingly important role in China’s banking industry which had previously been monopolized by four state-owned commercial banks. These two new bank-types are considerably more diversified in that the primary shareholders include the central government, local governments, state-owned enterprises and private enterprises, not just the central government. Using 49 Chinese banks’ financial data retrieved from Bankscope, this part examines the effect of different ownership structures, in general, and government-owned-shares, central vs. local, in particular, affect the profitability and risk of banks in China. It also compares the profitability of four types of banks, namely state-owned banks, policy banks, joint-stock commercial banks and city commercial banks. We conclude that, without equivocation, the higher the ratio of state-owned shares is, the worse is the profitability of the bank. And we also note the profitability of joint-stock commercial banks and city commercial banks is much better than that of state-owned and policy banks. In light of the ever-growing foreign competition facing Chinese banking industry, the second part expands the sample banks to World’s top 100 banks and studies the differences between Chinese banks and foreign banks from the respects of ownership structure, government governance and bank regulations. Our empirical results reveal that for both Chinese banks and top 100 banks, government owned share has a negative effect on banks’ profitability, while foreign owned share has an opposite effect. For both of them, the more the foreign institutions have access to the banking market and the more freedom the banking industry enjoys, the better the bank performs. For Chinese banks, lesser corruption helps strengthen foreign share’s positive effect on banks’ performance. Furthermore, higher transparency would increase the positive effect of government owned share and domestic owned share. The third part studies the profitability of Taiwan’s listed companies with and without investment in China. Unlike past studies which deal with the decision of investment in overseas and China as exogenous, the decision is endogenous in this paper. That is, the decision making is based on the firm’s characteristic factors. We further assume that there are two hierarchy decisions made by firms when they decide in investing in overseas and China. The first decision is whether it should invest overseas. Once the first decision is made, the next one is whether a firm should invest in China. This two decision model, which allows us to extend Heckman’s two-step method, is referred to as an extended-Heckman method in this paper. Our empirical results regarding the determinants of investing overseas and China are as follows. With respect to the investment in overseas, firm size and export ratio show positive influence on the decision of investment, while capital labor ratio shows negative effect. Next, with respect to the investment in China, determinants are similar except that firm size is no longer significant. Our results regarding the profit performance reveal that for ‘the firms with investment in China’ and ‘the firms without investing in China, only investing other countries’, long term liability ratio has a significantly negative impact on profitability, whereas total asset, R&D expenditure show a negative effect on profitability for ‘the firms without investing overseas, nor investing in China’. As for the performance comparison among firms of these three investment types, the differences are insignificant. This result implies that there are still considerable individual differences among the firms of the same investment type.