In the past thirty years, the IMP Group's Interaction and Network Approach has gained its increasing popularity in researching economic behaviours among resource-dependent business actors through relational linkages (Håkansson et al., 2004; Turnbull et al., 1996). Within network research, understanding the dynamics in business networks, in which interfirm relationships are regarded as crucial constituents, has been of particular interest (Johnston et al., 2006; Möller and Halinen, 1999). Moreover, technology has been identified as an important component driving the evolution of a business network, where technological change may bring about positive and negative effects on the relationships embedded in this network, and consequently, results in network dynamics (Afuah, 2000; Christensen, 1997; Håkansson and Waluszewski, 2002b; Lundgren, 1995). A perspective of resource interaction (e.g. Håkansson et al., 2009) suggests that technological change needs to be treated as a process rather than a critical event. However the nature of this process as well as how it impacts on the configuration of a technology-based business net and on dynamics of relationships constituting this net remains under-examined.Based on qualitative research methods, a longitudinal single-case study is chosen to conduct an empirical investigation in the optical recording media industry, in order to address the above research problems. To facilitate the data collection, a focal net perspective and an input-process-output model are employed. The focal net under study is characterised as a value-creating and technology-bundled business net. A total of 72 interviews were carried out in three stages and with the focal actor, its customers, suppliers and a complementor. The empirical data allows the research to reconstruct the evolution of the focal business net, which covers a time-span of more than 10 years from 1998 to 2008, and in which major technological change has taken place three times, from CD-R to DVD-/+R, DVD Double Layer and HD/Blu-ray technologies. In the development of the optical recording technology, the focal net has experienced four net reconfigurations in which radical changes of relationships as well as disturbance in resource interaction are observed. Based on the case study result, empirical observations are offered and new insights into the process of the arrival of technological change and net reconfiguration and relationship dynamics affected by this technological arrival are developed. Moreover, theoretical contribution, managerial implications, limitations and future research directions are provided.

The expansion and diffusion of mobile phones globally has resulted in the provision of financial transactional services over the existing mobile phone platforms, generally referred to as mobile money. The supply end of mobile money services is an important factor in the success of the financial transactions offering. This research assessed vulnerabilities in the mobile money supply network that are inherently related to the existence of the principal – agent problem and their implications on availability and access to the services. The research study was conducted using a qualitative approach. Qualitative information was collected through interviews guided by open – ended questionnaires. Thematic analysis approach was followed to systematically analyse the data and generate findings of the study. Agent transactional data was analysed to complement the findings from qualitative analysis The findings suggest that the principal agent problem permeates the mobile money delivery network mainly after businesses joining as agents and manifests as moral hazard. Moral hazard is the dominant feature of the principal – agent problem, with adverse selection very low. Drivers of moral hazard are demonstrated by the influences and demands of agents’ core businesses and challenges in agent monitoring and training. The existence of the principal – agent problem has limited or no implications on access and availability of services. However, overtime the combined vulnerabilities identified related to the principal agent problem are likely to manifest into risks that are likely to affect access and availability of mobile money services. Regulators, Mobile Network Operators and agent enterprises must collectively review monitoring approaches for mobile money service providers to address challenges identified and increase the effectiveness of monitoring. Service provision standards should be reviewed to suit the various business environments the services are provided within. Mobile Network Operators and agent enterprises need to institute stronger partnership arrangements that enhance ownership and obligations for all parties, in particular agent enterprises. Agreements must enable application of different mobile money delivery models suitable to meet the demands and requirements of the agents’ core businesses. Innovations such as Near Field Communication (NFC) can be integrated with Point of sale (POS) applications and mobile money platforms to reduce the administration burden on agents and human error. Such applications must consider the cost implications of adoption from the agents’ business perspective.

Executive Summary In the complex world of today with customers as well as suppliers scattered around the world the inevitable outcome is complexity. Going back to the early days of industrialism companies to a large extent owned the whole chain from supplies to sales of the final products. An example is Ford, the company controlled almost the entire chain, they even established their own rubber plantation. During the last decades companies have switched to a more intense focus on their core competences leaving supporting services, raw material and components to others. Again, the manufacturing industry, using Ford as an example, uses sub-suppliers for components and material. Partly this is because today there is a far broader variety in what is produced according to customer’s different demands. Earlier people simply bought a car but today people have varying needs as well as a desire to express themselves by choosing model, color, rims et cetera. Today these companies are to a larger extent characterized as devel-opers-designers-assemblers. The choice was to investigate FläktWoods Jönköping, a Swedish company, part of FläktWoods Group. The company has been producing climate control equipment since 1918 as is considered as one of the world leaders in its line of business. Some of this company’s customer and product categories have been investigated together with relevant competition and relationships. An investigation regarding some of FläktWoods supplier categories and the related issues competition and relationships has also been performed. This has been done in order to understand how these matters are connected and affect each other as well as develop guidelines to handle these matters. In-terviews with different managers in the company have been conducted and the results were compared to related scientific literature. By studying FläktWoods certain patterns of internal as well as external relationships were found. It became clear that with an increased customer perceived complexity of products sold as well as complexity of components purchased by FläktWoods the importance and complexity of internal as well as external relationships increased. Also, with less competi-tion relationships also increased in importance. The outcome of these patterns is a framework structured in a number of steps that helps in forming these relationships by considering the nature of the products, components and competition. This can be seen as a tool for FläktWoods and potentially for other manufac-turing companies when forming different relationships.

Orientadores: Maria Bernadete Marques Abaurre, Neury Jose Botega / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T00:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cruvinel_MonicaVasconcellos_M.pdf: 6900210 bytes, checksum: 9b8553f112d0234454dceaba61666ad4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: O Orkut configura-se como um espaço público de impermanências, onde a intimidade passa a ter visibilidade através dos relatos dos sujeitos. Narrar, sabendo-se vigiado, traz implícito um jogo de ¿revelar¿ e ¿esconder¿ que, de alguma forma, regula e constitui as relações sociais deste espaço virtual. Ao narrativizar suas experiências, os sujeitos vão produzindo discursos que além das suas, trazem vozes de outros. É um entrecruzar de memórias, de onde cada um seleciona e organiza, no tempo e no espaço, a hiper-textualidade de sua escritura. É possível ¿caminhar¿ por esta ¿Cidade Azul¿ e identificar rituais da contemporaneidade que começam a se fixar em nossa sociedade: novas maneiras de dizer a morte, novos modos de experimentar o luto e novas formas de trazer para a esfera do público o que, por muito tempo, ficou na esfera do privado. Nesta pesquisa, procuro compreender a maneira como os adolescentes, usuários do Orkut, estão lidando com a vida e com a morte, com a contraditória solidão que emerge em meio a um emaranhado de relações virtuais, capaz de aproximar algumas distâncias e de aprofundar outras. Analiso os discursos de jovens brasileiros que se suicidaram e que deixaram pelos espaços públicos do Orkut os rastros virtuais de uma morte (a)enunciada / Abstract: Orkut consists of a public place of discontinuities, where intimacy is unveiled through the subjects¿ narratives. To narrate knowing that one is being watched enacts a game of ¿displaying¿ and ¿hiding¿ which, somehow, rules and constitutes the social relations of such virtual place. When narrating their experiences, the subjects enact discourses that, beyond their own voices, bring the voices of the others. There is an entanglement of memories, from where one selects and organizes, on time and space, the hiper-textuality of one¿s own writing. It is possible to ¿walk¿ along such ¿Blue City¿ and to identify the rituals of contemporaneity which have started to settle into our society: new ways of narrating death, new ways of experimenting mourning, and new ways of rendering public that which, for a long time, had been confined to the private domain. In the present research, I attempt to understand how teenagers, users of Orkut, are dealing with life and death, with the ambivalent loneliness that springs from a set of virtual relations which might shorten some distances and make rifts between others. I analyze discourses of Brazilian youngsters who committed suicide and left, along the public spaces of Orkut, the virtual traces of a foretold, uttered death / Mestrado / Linguistica / Mestre em Linguística

Orientador: Raquel Salek Fiad / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T23:26:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Miranda_FlaviaDanielleSordiSilva_M.pdf: 5344515 bytes, checksum: 9dda85b18f8d163ec459455c553b46dd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Neste trabalho, analiso enunciados publicados em fóruns on-line de quatro comunidades virtuais da rede social Orkut, a fim de investigar práticas letradas no meio digital e suas relações com/para contextos off-line, em especial, formados pelas instituições escolares. Para tanto, faço uso de metodologia qualitativa, de cunho etnográfico em que os registros foram gerados em navegações na Internet e abarcam o período de janeiro a dezembro de 2010, compondo um total de 499 enunciados selecionados. Com base nas concepções enunciativas sócio-históricas, de dialogismo e sobre os gêneros discursivos de Bakhtin, assumo que todo enunciado é elo de uma cadeia complexa formada por outros enunciados com os quais dialoga em uma atitude responsiva. Logo, não adoto posição taxativa que considere on-line e off-line como "mundos" separados e incomunicáveis. Pelo contrário, acredito em sua interconexão e continuidade, sendo essencial conjugar, portanto, alguns pressupostos ligados ao(s) letramento(s) e aos gêneros digitais, visto que o corpus foi formado por meio da web. Na busca por compreender os processos de produção escrita que se davam nos fóruns examinados, percebi que a publicação, correção e composição de textos no ambiente Orkut eram feitas como forma de treinamento para exames vestibulares, bem como concursos e tarefas escolares em sua maioria. Dessa forma, constatei que os gêneros produzidos em supremacia pelos internautas eram os mesmos praticados no Ensino Médio e que os principais critérios com que os textos eram analisados também eram similares aos empregados por professores, destacando-se a reescrita como estratégia fundamental. Por um lado, a retomada de práticas do letramento escolar no meio digital pôde evidenciar tanto o embricamento entre on-line e off-line, quanto lacunas no currículo escolar e a necessidade de repensar suas práticas mediante os multiletramentos colocados em foco, sobretudo, pelas novas tecnologias digitais. Por outro lado, pude identificar como as práticas de escrita na rede são favoráveis ao ensino-aprendizagem da escrita em função do maior número de pares que os orkuteiros têm, bem como devido ao fato de que, ao escreverem no computador, podem visualizar suas atividades, elaborando reflexões e percepções mais claras sobre o processo de escrever em uma meta-análise de suas produções escritas. Além disso, verifiquei como ideias sobre atividades de escrita carregadas pelos orkuteiros entrelaçavam-se a concepções de sujeitos que circulam ou já circularam na sociedade, revelando o dialogismo como (rica) propriedade da linguagem / Abstract: This research aims at examining published statements in on-line forums in four on-line Orkut's communities in which topics permeate the writing or rewriting of texts, in order to observe the peculiarities of literacy practices that circulate in the digital, as well as analyzing their connections with off-line and schools. It is a kind of qualitative research situated in the field of Applied Linguistics studies and ethnography. The registers were generated from a corpus formed by access of the Internet during the year of 2010. According to socio-historic Bakhtin's notion of dialogism and discursive genre, I believe that all statements are links in a complex discursive chain formed to other statements with which they dialog in a responsive way. This research doesn't take on-line and off-line like separated worlds, otherwise I believe that there is interconnection and continuity between them. This work is also based on studies on the literacy and digital literacy considering that the corpus was constructed in the web. In the study I realize that the textual production on Orkut was a kind of train for student's tests in examinations in general. The analysis of the orkuteiro's texts pointed out that the majority produced genres were the same that ones produced in High School as well as the way to make the corrections was similar to the teacher's action, in this way rewriting the text is the principal strategy. On this side, resume scholar practices on digital media shows the relation between on-line and off-line, as well as gaps in the scholar curriculum. It's time of thinking about scholar practices in relation with the multiliteracies on focus, especially, for the new digital technologies. On the other hand, I could identify how practices of writing on the network are good for the teachinglearning of writing in the light of the highest number of peer the people who use Orkut have. When they write in a computer they can display their activities drawing up reflections and perceptions about the writining process in a meta-analysis of their writing productions. Moreover this work examined the concepts of writing and language expressed by the members in the social network and in the society, indicating the dialogism like (rich) feature of language / Mestrado / Lingua Materna / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

2001年9月4日HP（惠普電腦）的執行長Carly Fiorina宣佈將以250億美元價格收購Compaq（康柏電腦），這樁購併案不但金額上是電腦業過去最大的一筆交易的兩倍，而且也是惠普公司六十三年歷史中最重要的一樁買賣。HP和Compaq合併後，將成為全世界第二大及名符其實的「日不落」電腦公司。合併後，這兩家公司過去四季以來的營收總合為874億美元，僅次於IBM。 本研究係以惠普台灣分公司ESG（企業系統事業群）中，其中一項產品「工業標準伺服器」事業部為個案的研究。探討惠普及康柏兩家公司合併前後，此產品事業部的公司組織及營運策略。藉由探討策略的三構面：(1)營運範疇(2)核心資源(3)關係網路，以及運用策略九說中「四競技場」的分析架構：(1)價值與效率的競技場(2)結構與能耐的競技場(3)體系與實力的競技場(4)同形與異質的競技場。了解合併前後三家公司在經營此事業的不同處，並對關連性問題提出建議。 期望本研究三點主要研究目的，對於同質性企業合併時，可以提供有意義參考的價值： 一．從策略三構面：(1)營運範疇(2)核心資源(3)關係網路，剖析合併前 後三個案公司。 二．從四個競技場：(1)價值與效率的競技場(2)結構與能耐的競技場(3)體系與實力的競技場(4)同形與異質的競技場的分析，了解合併前後三個案公司的競爭優勢。 三．惠普台灣分公司在工業標準伺服器事業，合併後的營運績效是否達到合併綜效的目標。 藉由本研究的結論，對於想進行同質性企業購併的企業經營者，可以找到更有意義的啟發。乃至於利用更短的學習曲線，創造合併後的獲利契機。 / The Graduate Institute of Business Administration National ChengChi University The Study of organization and business strategies of Industry Standard Server in Hewlett Packard Taiwan before and after the merger of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer On September 4th, 2001, Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard announced the merger of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer at USD25 billion dollars. This amount was in fact twice as much as the biggest merger that had ever happened in IT industry, and moreover, it is the most important decision that has been made in HP’s 63-year history. After the merger, Hewlett Packard has become the worldwide number two computer company, an empire where the sun never sets. The annual revenue of new Hewlett Packard totals 87.4 billion dollars, only second to IBM. This research is to pick the product “Industry Standard Server” that belongs to the business unit of Enterprise Solution Group in Hewlett Packard Taiwan to do the case study. The theories I will be using are: 1) the three dimensions of business strategy: a) business scope; b) core resources; and c) relationship network and 2) the four competitive strategies: a) value and effectiveness; b) position and strength; c) group and core competence; d) industry and differentiation Through the change of the organization and its business strategy before and after the merger, I will come up how the three companies – Hewlett Packard, Compaq and the New Hewlett Packard have their own business strategies and will also provide suggestions to related questions. By the end of this research, I hope some points can be made and provided to companies that are planning to have their horizontal integration. I will do so by observing and analyzing from the following three aspects: 1) To analyze the three companies by the three dimensions of business strategy 2) To analyze competition advantages of the three companies, before and after the merger. 3) To analyze how Industry Standard Server Business Unit in Hewlett Packard Taiwan achieves Synergy through the merger of the two companies Finally, the intention of this research is to help and to provide advise to those companies that are planning to have their horizontal integration, and hopefully through this research, a shorten learning curve will benefit them and through such integration, synergy will be seen.