This is a study of establishment and development of conveniencestores. The test specimens are two stores established in the northern parts ofSweden during the second half of 1975.The study consists of two parts. In the first part the interest is concentratedon the establishment of the stores and their development during the firstbusiness year. The development afterwards, i.e. up to and included the stores'sixth business year, is taken up in part two.In the first part a model is produced on variables of importance when stores insparsely populated areas are established and developed (chapter 2). Theoreticallythe model is based partly on the marketing mix approach, with theinterest concentrated on the design of marketing mix measures in order to meetthe households' demands, and partly on establishment studies.The empirical studies of the first stage have mainly consisted of personalinterviews with the store owners and their potential customers. Eurther, thestores' potential customers have replied to an inquiry on two occasions. Theplanning and realization of the empirical studies are shown in chapter 4.The results of the first studies are shown in chapters 4-8. In chapter 4 the testareas are presented. The establishment and development of the stores duringtheir first business year are accounted for in chapters 5 and 6. The households'buying behavior, with emphasis on store loyalty and attitudes towards the newstores, is taken up in chapter 7. The results of these studies, which aresummarized in chapter 8, show that the establishment processes of the newstores were in no way unique. An important factor in this connection is the useof local resources. Eurther, the results showed that the two stores differed intheir development of the marketing mix. Here the aim of the activities was ofimportance. There was also a certain connection between the marketing mixpolicy and the households' store loyalty.In the second part the theoretical reference frame is extended to include alsothe social aspects of food supply in sparsely populated areas (chapter 10). Theplanning and realization of the empirical studies, which on the whole agreedwith those of the first stage, are shown in chapter 11. The results of thesestudies show that the development of the stores' marketing mix as well as thehouseholds' store loyalty and attitudes towards the local stores, only hadchanged marginally (chapter 12). The social exchange between sellers andbuyers were of great importance in this connection (chapter 13).In the final chapter (chapter 14) the results are summarized and analyzed. Theimportance of developing the social exchanges between sellers and buyers isstressed here. However, these social exchanges can change over time. In thischapter the importance of continued research in this field, also includingdensely populated areas, is commented on. Einally some alternative perspectiveson food supply in sparsely populated areas are shown. / digitalisering@umu

Problem: The developing business market and the pressure it puts on business gives rise to new fields of business within SCM and logistics. Third party logistics (TPL) services have grown rapidly in importance as an alternative to vertical business integration. The emergence of TPL has brought about interest in the topic by academia, but recent literature reviews express a need for research on TPL relationships where both buyer and provider perspectives are viewed simultaneously, since a majority of previous research has been conducted more from a single organisational viewpoint. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how providers and buyers in TPL relationships adapt and cooperate to develop mutually beneficial and long-term relationships, as well as investigating their willingness and attitudes in this concern. Method: The thesis combines an explanatory and exploratory classification, and performs a qualitative, mono method study of viewpoints on TPL relationships from Swedish and Norwegian providers and buyers that currently are in a TPL relationship. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with four providers and three buyers. The findings are analysed and interpreted in light of a theoretical framework developed from the literature review, which in the analysis is applied in a TPL context to extend the understanding of TPL relationships. Conclusions: Willingness to adapt and cooperate in TPL relationships is connected with the parties’ perceived potential for economic gain and also with being able to trust the other party. Buyers emphasise the need for providers to have knowledge about the buyers’ business. Providers emphasise the need for buyers to be knowledgeable about their own business and for the buyer to fits their solutions. Attitudes: Both parties emphasise communication as crucial for the development of mutual benefits. Buyers adapt to providers’ standards as far as possible. Providers seem to want buyers to adapt to their solutions to gain economies of scale, and therefore appear reluctant to make relationship-specific investments. The use of contracts in the TPL context appears to contradict literature in that contracts work as a foundation for building trust, as well as for reducing opportunistic and operational risk. In practice, both providers and buyers highlight the use of integrated IT-solutions as a means of adapting to each other. Regular operational meetings are emphasised as part of the practical cooperation to develop the relationship’s future and to discuss day-to-day issues.

The aim of this research is to find social factors in Chinese academic immigrants’ conversion to Christianity using the perspectives of symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory. The research data are drawn from observation and interviews. Fourteen Chinese student converts were interviewed. The analysis focuses on the interaction between recruits and Christians. Results supported the idea that religious conversion happens progressively. Affective bonds are essential for the religious conversion of Chinese academic immigrants. Chinese Christian converts experienced five stages. First, they develop affective commitment to Christians close to them and regard them as their reference group. Second, an emergent generalized other is internalized in recruits’ minds through recruits’ acceptance of symbolic language in Christianity and interaction with Chinese Christians. Third, recruits understand the Bible with the perspective of Christians. Fourth, as the socially defined reality reinforces their beliefs and the affective bonds develop, recruits confess their sins and decide to believe in God. Finally, recruits strengthen their understanding of Christianity by intensifying interactions with Chinese Christians.

Abstract Due to the change of the employment, emphasizing on employees¡¦ commitment to the organization is no more the critical determinant of whether the employees will devote themselves to the organization. From 1980s, there were scholars who started to argue that employees will form global beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being, and called this concept perceived organizational support (POS). In contrast to organizational commitment, perceived organizational support emphasizes on employers¡¦ commitment to the employees and has been proved to have strong relations to many of employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors. In this study, the writer uses two different kinds of scorings as the indicators to evaluate the extent of employees¡¦ POS. The findings are as followed: 1. POS is positively related to employees¡¦ affective commitment, continuance commitment, job satisfaction and performance, but negatively related to the intention to quit. 2. No matter using which kind of scorings, within all work attitudes and behaviors we are interested, POS is most related to affective commitment and then job satisfaction. 3. POS has the strongest influence on affective commitment and job satisfaction, and the weakest one on work performance. 4. Comparing to other POS factors, leadership and self-achievement have the most global influences on employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors. 5. In whole, employees¡¦ evaluations of organizational practices of which they really experience are more related to their work attitudes and behaviors than the discrepancy between what they expect and the actual situations. 6. When combining with individual¡¦s expectation, the influence of some POS factors will become salience, although it may not have such strong influence when concerning the evaluations of organizational practices along. 7. Different ways of discrepancy between individual¡¦s expectations and the actual situations will cause different influences on employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors indeed.

With the coming of digital times, global competition resulted in every industry expanding their requirements in supply chain integration and enterprise resource planning. The importance of information system integration industries also increases with time. When all kind of industries continues to integrate supply chain and establish cooperative partnerships, trying to exploit cooperation to acquire more competencies in the market, we want to know whether the information system integration industries establish their cooperative relationship. Therefore, our study tried to review the actives and relationship between integrators by the systems integration service process. Through the theory¡¦s guiding, we attend to induce the factors of inter-firm cooperation in system integration industries. We use multiple case study to design our research¡Aand select three cases to study. Semi-structural interview is used to collect needed data to understand the true cooperative relationship between integrators. According to transaction cost theory, resource-base theory and social exchange theory, we propose some theoretical propositions to guiding the real cases analysis. The conclusions not only describe the real cooperation in Taiwan system integration industries, but also induce several factors of cooperative relationship between integrators, including product characteristics, transaction cost, resource, trust and guanxi. Moreover, the transaction cost is the most important element in the cooperative relationship between information system integrators.

Abstract As various forces rendering the business environment more dynamic, for survive and prosper, organizations nowadays must rapidly correspond to changes. In order to lower labor cost and develop competition advantage, enterprises always apply human resource flexibility strategy to achieve purposes. However, the practices of human resource flexibility strategy change the job related characteristic, and cause the effect on the psychological contract of employee. And then, it will be the factor for the attitude and behavior of employee in the enterprise. The current human resource arrangement should be adjusted in order to respond to the changes in the market in a timely manner. It is available to implement task flexibility, numerical flexibility, working-time flexibility, and wage flexibility to meet the practical work demands. Our object was domestic bank enterprises, we adopted questionnaire to discuss ¡§the perception of the practices of human resource flexibility strategy¡¨ and ¡§the condition of the psychological contract¡¨ by employees. And then, we explore the relationship between ¡§the perception of the practices of human resource flexibility strategy¡¨ and ¡§organizational commitment¡¨ of employee by the intermediary variable ¡§the violation of psychological contract¡¨. Our results of the research are as the following: There are some practices of human resource flexibility strategy in the bank enterprises, and the employees really have experienced the violation of psychological contract. Finally, through the relation of social exchange, the consequences of Psychological contract will response on Organizational commitment.

Knowledge withholding intentions (KWI), defined as the likelihood an individual will give less than full effort on knowledge contribution. If every member withholds knowledge in a software development team, it results in poor project performance. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence knowledge withholding intentions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model based Social Cognitive Theory and extends it with Social Exchange Theory to analyze the antecedents of knowledge withholding intentions from personal cognitions and contextual factors. Furthermore, the contextual influencers are subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding with a comprehensive view. Through a survey of 227 participants who have experience in software development, task interdependence, procedural justice, leader-member exchange, team-member exchange were found to have negative influences on knowledge withholding intentions. On the contrary, knowledge withholding outcome expectations and knowledge withholding self-efficacy were found to have positive influences on knowledge withholding intentions.

This study focuses on the conflict process in a multi-culture team and discusses those factors which bring the conflict to next stage. In this study, 6 participators in Global MBA program which was formed by National Sun Yat-Sen Univiersity in Taiwan, University Victoria in Canada, and Johannes Kepler University in Austria were interviewed. By using narrative inquiry as research method, the study integrates different perspectives and analyzes factors behind this case. The result shows that if the interpersonal relationship is based on social-exchange theory, every participator provides one¡¦s good exchange with owned culture, but culture and value differences turn the goodness into misunderstandings. The expectation of one side wasn¡¦t met by the other side. The inefficient social exchange finally became subliminal conflict. In addition, peer support and mental balance play important roles in the process, and both of them are impacted by culture. The similarity of cultures connects people from different countries and builds up peer support which raises the subliminal conflicts to the surface. The difference of the cultures makes it more difficult to understand other¡¦s kindness. Both sides can¡¦t achieve mental balance, so it moves the conflict process back to previous stage and repeats itself. Finally, the attitude after conflict incident is the key factor to end up the conflict. Positive attitude helps participators to create more cultural understanding and solve the problem. On the contrary, negative attitude comes with rude behavior and brings down the organization. The study provides the empirical experience of the conflict process and further discussion which can be practiced in the cross-culture management and conflict management in the future.

How do people determine satisfaction in their relationships? One way may be to engage in bottom-up processing and rely on sexual satisfaction to arrive at an overall evaluation of the relationship. Another way may be to engage in top-down processing and allow the overall relationship satisfaction to color the perceptions of sexual satisfaction. The current study more rigorously examined the causal relationship between sexual and marital satisfaction through multilevel cross-lagged regression analyses of 8 waves of marital and sexual satisfaction reported by 72 newlywed couples over the first five years of marriage. Consistent with bottom-up processing, initial sexual satisfaction predicted subsequent marital satisfaction. Also, consistent with top-down processing, initial marital satisfaction predicted subsequent sexual satisfaction. The current findings extend theoretical perspectives on the relationship between sexual satisfaction and suggest that both causal paths be considered in future research and clinical practice.

Texte remanié de : Ph. D. : Anthropology : Yale University : 1975. / Bibliogr. p. 167-174.