University of Macau / Faculty of Business Administration / Department of Management and Marketing

Blockbuster and Netflix are two firms in the home video rental market that experienced vastly different outcomes. Netflix vastly increased its firm value while Blockbuster lost its dominant market position and slid into bankruptcy. This paper examines the strategies pursued by Blockbuster and Netflix and the impact these strategies had on firm value. This paper finds that on average Blockbuster’s strategies did not have a significant impact on its firm value while Netflix’s strategies increased its firm value. Specifically, Netflix’s strategies in the areas of service improvement and promotional activity created the most value. The strategies each firm pursued in product line expansion provided value for Blockbuster but reduced value for Netflix.

The purpose of this dissertation is three-fold. First, it explores whether or not experience with strategic planning increases comprehensiveness of the strategic planning process. Second, it investigates the potential impact of comprehensive strategic planning processes on performance. The final rationale for this dissertation is to determine whether the impact varies according to the dimension of performance analyzed. This exploratory study uses a unique data set that combines the performance measures of select local government departments from the International City/County Manager's Association and an original survey of the heads of those departments to determine their strategic planning practices. The dissertation utilizes an evaluative approach by analyzing the practical significance of the potential impact including correlation, differences between groups, and effect size. These analysis taken together can help demonstrate a potential relationship where regression analysis would be inappropriate due to small sample size. The findings justify further studying these questions about strategic planning in the public sector. First, the analysis demonstrates that departments with more strategic planning experience have higher mean comprehensiveness than departments with less experience. Second, though the findings are mixed concerning the impact of comprehensive processes, the majority of the findings support the hypothesis that more comprehensiveness leads to better departmental performance. Finally, the mixed findings demonstrate that strategic planning comprehensiveness impacts different dimensions of performance differently.

Since its establishment as an emerging area of research in strategic management over a decade ago, business model research has had little consensus towards adopting a single definition or common language for this rapidly growing management concept.  However, strong agreement as to the relevance of value creation within organizations underlies existing business model literature. Moreover, applications of business model frameworks outside the private sector have been limited. Recent literature has identified business model innovation and design as a critical tool in effective implementation of organizational strategy, and empirical research in business models from new and alternative perspectives may reveal linkages between strategic management issues and effectiveness in creating value in public and citizen sector organizations.  Nevertheless, existing academic literature has not yet explored applications of traditional business model frameworks within a public sector context, nor has the need for empirical research linking the business model concept with public sector management been addressed. The main purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of how business models can be defined, redefined, and applied in city economic development agencies for application as a strategic public management tool. An analysis of how the business model of a prominent city economic development agency has been employed and how value is created within this model will be undertaken.  This empirical study also aims to determine conceptual linkages between business model applications in city economic development and to contribute a theoretical foundation towards development of future research.   Given the multi-faceted applications of the business model concept, the authors have conducted exploratory research targeting the application of current business model concepts and frameworks to a city economic development agency representing an influential global center of finance and commerce, the City of New York. The significance of conducting empirical studies on city economic development agencies is due to the influence in which these organizations have on industrial cluster growth, national economic competitiveness, and citywide and regional transformation. In considering this context, The New York City Economic Development Corporation is the primary economic growth engine for the City of New York, and strives to create and deliver value to citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders of New York City.   Findings from this study suggest that economic development professionals have not adequately clarified the term ‘business model’ for promoting common language between strategists, project managers, consultants, and executives to support strategic business model design within city economic development agencies.  The authors conclude that equally relevant to framing and applying theoretical foundations grounded in the business model concept, is the identification of value-creating activities within economic development agencies and development of citizen-focused value propositions.  This empirical study aims to define, clarify and explore the former, while calling upon a need for future research of the latter.

Abstract Strategic management is a newly emphasized subject in the new public management study methods. Public organization, effected by the business strategic planning, has gradually stressed on the strategic planning and strategic management, and emphasized its long-term strategic implementation. The core of strategic management by strategy, a management mode, except major stressed functions of traditional managing processes including planning, organization, leading and controlling, more emphasize on responding to changing environment with strategy in advance, which will not only aid the future development of organization, but also promote to achieve its goal. The police is an open system which maintains mutual response with external environment. Therefore, the police should closely keep an eye out for changing external environment and the effects caused by these changes, then adjust its own role position, value and goal, and implement a series of strategies and concrete performances to achieve its mission efficiently. First, the study explains the definition and form of strategic management and strategic planning, and the experience about how strategic management was implemented into a public sector. Second, through research of police agency¡¦ s strategic plan in USA and UK, it perceives the frame and meaning of them on practical police agency. The study, takes Penghu County Police Bureau (PHPB) as a case study, views from the local administer¡¦ s position to proceed an analysis on environmental factors which is relevant to policing strategies. Basing on the study purpose and study frame by using In-depth Interviewing, it conducts a sampling interview on the administers of PHPB in order to compare the secondary data through case study method and confirm its internal strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and threats from the external environment. Then, it sets a series of management concepts involving mission statement, vision, value, goal and objectives constructing a 5-year general development strategy which meets the local characteristics and needs, and thus advance a proposal on strategic implementation and controlling for future references of organization development and management of PHPB, and inspire other local police organizations to put into practice.

To invest children is to invest the future of the country. Preschool education is to establish the basis of children¡¦s future learning. Children stage is the key stage of the development of the personality. Parent¡¦s feeding and teaching is basic for the growth of children. According to the transition of the society and the change of the family structure, double-salavy families increase. The public nursery perform the social welfare and take care the vulnerable children. A school, facing the challenges of factors including lobby groups, liberation of education, and marketing education, has now to continue seeking for and developing a certain ¡§sustainable competition edge¡¨ by mapping out visions and strategies in the quest of proper performance scale indices to guide and encourage the efforts from its members in achieving excellency in educational performance. The contexts of the balanced scorecard present the very scale index to transform the vision and strategy of an organization into four aspects respectively of finance, customer, internal flow, earning and growth. Meanwhile, through the scalable index to guide the exercise and control of strategies and to act out the strategies, the leader of the organization is able to more easily follow up the characteristics of the results of the strategies. Therefore, the balanced scorecard has become the hottest strategy control means in the time of knowledge economy. This object of research is the public nursery Kaohsiung county Daliau Township and through the discussion of the balancecards to manage the effects and strategy of the public nursery.The process is: First of all, to discuss the developmental profile and the topic analysis the public nursery. As the subjects of the study started with SWOT analysis in the field of study, followed with the organization of a core team to establish a model of success for school to clarify and confirm the configuration of vision and strategy of the school. Then a mind-map was created to construct the strategy objectives. Based on the mind-map, the strategy map was built up to identify the feasible performance scale indices, and finally, options to follow through were concluded. The goal of this research attempts to develop a complete and robust strategic management system for the case study school that could convert strategy into actiorns. The main conclusions of this research are followed: 1. Though being applicable to a school, the balanced scorecard must be readjusted for its configuration at the right timing. 2. Discover the problems of the case school: strategy was intangible and the case school lacked consensus of strategy; there was a gap between the development of a strategy and its implementation; the performance of strategy couldn¡¦t be measured and get strategic feedback; and the performance measurement system didn¡¦t link with strategy. 3. According to the problems the case school faced, this research uses a systematic method to clarify and refine the vision and strategy framework (the Model of Success) of the school at first, which consists of vision, mission, requirements of success, and guiding principles. Then, based on the Model of Success, BSC can be developed, which contains four perspectives of strategic objectives, measuresand action plans, to help the pulic nursery communicate and manage strategy. 4. The benefits to the case school from building BSC consist of clarifying and refining the vision and strategy and building consensus, implementing strategy well, monitoring the strategy and getting strategic feedback, and linking the performance measurement system with strategy and establishing a complete BSC.

Problems and issues at project level have been the main concern of the construction management studies and construction professionals. Consequently, the long-term strategic issues at corporate level remained uncovered in construction companies. The complex and unique characteristics of the industrial context of construction also limited the adoption of strategic management concepts by the companies. Recently, however, changing business environment, increasing competition in construction arena and higher client expectations have been the drivers for a shift in perception of strategic thinking experienced by construction executives. It is realized that setting long-term strategies is the roadmap towards gaining sustainable competitive advantage by the firm. The focus on strategic management raised the question about the strategic information sources for construction industry. Unless the required information is provided to the professionals as an input, decisions of high quality are unattainable outputs. This indispensable need for information increased the awareness of the companies about information technology and consequently strategic information systems which have great significance in shaping the competitive strategy of the organization. Although the significance of strategic thinking and information systems are realized by construction companies, it is still a complex task to design a strategic information system since the information needed to make the critical strategic decisions are widely spread and lost among the other data related to daily activities. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a generic IT-supported strategic management tool integrating the scattered information which can aid the decision making process of construction executives. Strategic fields within the context of construction industry are extracted from previous researches and discussed by experts in order to reach the right information sources which are to be stored in a database and accessed by the users through interfaces. The applicability of the developed strategic information system is tested by a Turkish construction company on real construction projects. Finally, the benefits, shortcomings and potential future developments for the tool are discussed by referring to the case study.

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<p>In today’s world information and knowledge is the most valuable asset and an increasing number of people are working with selling their specialized knowledge. In this knowledge economy professional services are increasing in importance and consultants play an increasingly important role.</p><p>This master thesis investigates the interplay between management</p><p>control and the strategizing process in IT-Consultancy firms.</p><p>With the purpose of gaining an understanding on how management control systems are being sed in IT consultancy firms and to identify the role it plays within the strategic dimension a case study approach was utilized.</p><p>The method is based on a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews as the mean for data collection. A total sample of 7 respondents from two IT-consultancy firms and one Management Consultant participated. The interviewees possess different positions</p><p>within the two organizations ranging from top management down through the organizational levels in order to achieve a triangulation of the studied phenomenon.</p><p>A framework consisting of different perspective on strategic management accounting, performance measurement in professional services, Levers of control and IT-Consultancy was built and used in order to analyze the collected data. The data shows that the strategizing process is for the main part conducted in the front line of the organization where the consultantsinteract with the customer on a daily basis.</p><p>The conclusion drawn is that the interaction between strategizing process and management control systems is that the management control is designed in a way that not only allows for a clear strategizing activity to take form in the lower levels of the organization, but to</p><p>constantly assure that this is what is done throughout the organization.</p>

Purpose - The purpose of the thesis is “To explore the Thai ICT market and identify differences with the leading market” Where the research questions are: 1. How are the main actors influencing the ICT market in Thailand? 2. How can the ICT market in Thailand be improved by identifying the gaps to the leading market? Method – For reaching the purpose a qualitative case study has been carried out, methods that are used are interviews, observations, document studies and literature study. Secondary data has been collected from document studies and was compiled in excel documents. Primary data has been collected from interviews, employees at Ericsson in Thailand has contributed when gather data about organizational culture. Interview with representatives from institutions in Thailand were made to achieve current data. Interviews were made to receive a primary source of information with high focus on the thesis subject and strengthen by secondary data. Findings – The most urgent problem to improve the ICT market in Thailand is to develop the infrastructure. The infrastructure needs to be developed in rural areas and urban areas. Institutions in ICT need to do active work on the market in order to expand and develop the market. Service operator’s needs to standardise and offer less price plans in order to minimize confusion among the consumers. The consumers need to increase their usage of ICT services in order to decrease the gap to the leading ICT market. One solution could be that the government push the development with all actors on the ICT market. Changing the foreign business act can lead to investments needed to expand the infrastructure. Further, creating a demand of higher technology from the consumer’s perspective will pressure the actors to develop robust network of high technology and benefit future development of technology. Implications – This study has been carried out on location in Thailand but communication has not been made in the national language in Thailand, which can contribute to misunderstandings of data. The study´s result is strengthened by being on location in Thailand, gathering primary data by interviews and do observations on place in the target environment. Delimitations – The delimitations have been made to look at the ICT market from Thailand’s perspective with learning’s from Sweden. Further, delimitations to explore the main actors that are influencing the market has been done. A market has many environmental forces and they needed to be restricted in this study.