Given the mission of community colleges, their leaders are often responsible for developing resources to support student success and improve relationships with surrounding communities. To accomplish these goals, community college leaders sometimes participate in cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) since CSPs can strengthen relationships and develop resources across sectors. However, little is known about campus and community leaders' perceptions of forming CSPs and the value they generate. This study examined campus and community leaders' perceptions of CSP participation, specifically the formation process and the value created. Guided by the Collaborative Value Framework (Austin and Seitanidi, 2012a), I conducted a multi-site case study of four community colleges in western rural North Carolina, with each college participating in a CSP designed to support adult students through a workforce development program. Findings revealed intricacies of the CSP formation process and the rich array of value created from CSP participation. Further, each case held a distinct personality, represented by a metaphor to highlight its unique findings: The Phoenix, The Beehive, The Compass, and The Treasure. Finally, leaders perceived CSP participation to be so enriching that each organization planned to continue, expand, or create new CSPs to meet additional shared needs. Leaders revealed a learning process connected to CSP participation that resulted in continual refinement and enhanced plans for future CSPs, illustrating the benefits of CSPs for addressing shared campus and community goals. Findings offer several implications for campus and community leaders, as well as future research and policymaking related to campus and community CSP participation. / Doctor of Philosophy / Given the mission of community colleges, their leaders are often responsible for developing resources to support student success and improve relationships with surrounding communities. To accomplish these goals, community college leaders sometimes participate in cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) between organizations. However, little is known about campus and community leaders' perceptions of forming CSPs and the value they generate. This study examined campus and community leaders' perceptions of CSP participation, specifically the formation process and the value created. I conducted a multi-site case study of four community colleges in western rural North Carolina, with each college participating in a CSP designed to support adult students through a workforce development program. Findings revealed the importance of establishing solid practices when initially forming a CSP to strengthen the collaboration. A wide variety of rich types of value creation was developed over the course of these CSPs, going well beyond the traditional expectations of simply sharing basic resources between organizations. Further, each case held a distinct and insightful personality, represented by a metaphor to highlight its uniqueness: The Phoenix, The Beehive, The Compass, and The Treasure. Finally, leaders perceived CSP participation to be so enriching that each organization planned to continue, expand, or create new CSPs to meet additional shared needs. Leaders learned new ways to improve current and future CSPs. This study can help campus and community leaders make decisions about the feasibility of participating in a CSP to address a shared goal more effectively rather than tackling a more complex problem single handedly.

Background Achieving an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development is today a key aspect in many businesses. Accordingly, cross-sector collaborations between businesses and NPOs have on an increasing scale been considered a powerful and unavoidable tool for creating environmental, social, and economical value simultaneously.   Problem Relatively little is known about how the underlying dynamics of cross-sector collaborations relate to enhanced value creation. Furthermore, the terminology in previous documentation of cross-sector collaborations has been spread out and inconsistent.   Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how business-NPO collaborations increase the potential for enhanced value creation.   Method The study has been conducted through a comparative case study of three Swedish cross-sector collaborations. Qualitative data has mainly been obtained through interviews.   Conclusions The analysis showed that the potential for enhanced value creation increases as collaboration moves from sole-creation of value toward co-creation of value. The study found that achieving co-creation of value is facilitated by (1) an issue-salient approach to stakeholder engagement, (2) achieving mutual dependency, and (3) having sustainability itself as a central aspect of a business’ purpose, strategy, and operations.

Academic literature on the analysis of value creation in private equity industry is still in its infancy. The approach to value attribution is still a contended subject by both academic and professional writers. The purpose of this research was to determine how South African Private Equity industry generates value in portfolio companies. This was achieved by gathering 24 transactions from institutional investors and private equity firms and disaggregating their returns into value drivers. Identified value drivers were financial leverage, revenue growth, EBITDA multiples and EBITDA margin. Contrary to the common belief that the private equity model is more dependent on cutting costs and less on growing businesses, the findings of the study revealed that revenue growth was the biggest relative driver of value while operational efficiency, the least. Results regarding the importance of financial leverage in value creation in the last 10 years could not confirm the popular argument which states that as the private equity model matures the industry is moving towards other value levers. While descriptive statistics confirmed that the level of gearing and size of companies influence the relative importance of EBITDA margin and revenue growth, results from statistical tests were in several cases inconclusive. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Title: The future of Real estate lies in the Internet of Things Date: 2018-05-22 Grade: Bachelor Thesis Authors: Fabian Henningsson & Harley Ljungdahl Supervisor: Navid Ghannad Purpose: Understand how IoT can create value when implemented within real estate companies Frame of reference: In this part we will present our frame of reference. Our key concepts when gathering this secondary data was IoT, Value creation. These key concepts formed how our model for Value Creation in IoT for real estate companies would look like. Method: In this chapter we have described the method we used to collect our primary data. We have also presented a discussion about why we have chosen the methods we have used and what relevance they have for our survey. Finally, we present the reliability and validity of our sources and research. Empiric: We have interviewed three companies active on the Swedish real estate market. How they use and how they look at the use of IoT technology in an enterprise perspective. Analysis: We have made both a within and cross case analysis on the empirical findings and this has resulted in our model explaining the primary value drivers of IoT in real estate companies. Conclusion: With the help of our primary value drivers in our model and innovation, it´s suggested that the real estate companies can create value with the help of IoT solutions. Keywords: IoT, IoT and real estate, Smart cities, value creation, IT and value creation, IoT value creation and value chain model. Examiner: Thomas Helgesson

This thesis reviews the UK life insurance industry comprehensively in terms of performance and business behaviour. One major contribution of the thesis is to challenge the conventional view on evaluation of investment funds from a shareholders’ perspective. The accounting valuation techniques to evaluate investment from the policyholder’s perspective have not been advanced to the same extent as methods designed to evaluate investment from the shareholder’s perspective, due partly to the accounting complexity of the investment management. Against this context, the thesis develops a valuation method on the basis that policyholders’ basic expectation that their saved funds shall be invested with value growth higher than inflation in the real goods market, and the thesis takes this as the benchmark to assess the reported value of policyholders’ assets. The thesis employs this valuation to assess the performance of different life assurance products (conventional vs. modern) and examine whether the transformation (from conventional to modern) has any impact on insurer performance and behaviour. The thesis also examines whether product diversification impacts realised and unrealised investment income homogenously; the result suggests that the effect of product diversification on performance varies across different measurements of realised and unrealised gain. The second major contribution of the thesis is to test the validity of different output proxies and compare efficiency scores based ranking for competitive firms to the value creation based ranking. Overall, the thesis suggests that different output proxies give consistently similar ranking for competitive firms, and cost efficiency based on different proxies are closely related to conventional measurers of firm performance and value creation in terms of value and ranking.

Value co-creation enhances employers' branding through the engagement of organisations' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and employees' behaviours, such as performance, loyalty and satisfaction. Although a growing body of research has explored the notion of value co-creation, the current understanding of the interrelationship between value co-creation and corporate social responsibility is underdeveloped. There is fierce academic debate surrounding the concept of value co-creation, calling for further theoretical and empirical work on this field. Furthermore, the concept of employer branding is still a nascent area in management and marketing scholarships and requires further conceptual nourishment. Although significant studies have covered the role of organisations and consumers in value co-creation resulting in employer branding, there has been little research to address the role of employees in value co-creation, dictating further assessment of their role in the process of value co-creation and participation in employer branding in a CSR context. Therefore, this thesis seeks to identify and analyse how, and to what extent, efforts to become socially responsible can co-create value for internal stakeholders and contribute to employer branding. As such, part of the theoretical foundation for this research is built on CSR. Subsequently, relevant conceptual avenues pertaining to the co-creation of value, corporate branding and employer branding are explored and analysed. An extensive literature review is undertaken to inform the robust development of an initially proposed conceptual framework of the main factors that impact upon this process. The proposed conceptual framework has set a broad guide for the researcher regarding the empirical fieldwork involved. The context for the research explores the notion of value co-creation within employer branding in the Omani hotel sector. To analyse value co-creation in depth, a qualitative interpretive multi-case study approach is adopted. The research also considers aspects of managerial philosophies and employees' perceptions regarding their organisations' current and future CSR activities, and how these activities impact value co-creation for stakeholders. The findings indicate that value co-creation has three major elements - it is dynamic and iterative, it requires dialogical interactions among various parties, and it leads to dualistic outcomes. The adoption of CSR increases the employees' satisfaction, whereas a lack of understanding of the CSR activities leads to the co-destruction of value, which in return affects the organisational turn-over in the long run. Therefore, creating awareness about the importance of the implementation of CSR is considered crucial, as it will benefit the organisation and improve the level of performance and loyalty of the internal stakeholders. The researcher proposes an original conceptual model on this tripartite nature of value co-creation and an analysis of how value co-creation can lead to the development of sustainable and socially responsible employer branding. An employee-oriented perspective towards value co-creation is introduced as an endeavour to enrich the area of research and address current conceptual deficiencies. The research also advances scholarship by critically assessing the role of employees as an independent but integral entity in the value co-creation process, establishing clear and robust links between CSR, value cocreation and employer branding.

The management consulting industry is growing. The industryis also described as being exposed to increased pressure fromthe environment. An interesting question is then how resourcesare managed in management consulting firms in order tosustain competitive advantage. The purpose with this thesis isto investigate how firms in the management consulting industrymanage their resources through the lens of the resourcemanagement framework and if there are any signs of change.Through a multiple case study of the processes in two largemanagement consulting firms, the activity (i.e. the use ofresources) perceived as important for the leveraging ofcompetitive advantage is studied. The findings suggest thatcustomers have a much more central part in the resourcemanagement process than depicted in the resourcemanagement framework. The clearest signs of change refer tothe development of new career paths and an increased globalintegration of competencies.

Social learning interventions have been implemented to develop coaches in many contexts, however are yet to be applied to coaches of athletes with disabilities. The lack of knowledgeable coaches prevents people with disabilities from participating in sports. The overall purpose of this doctoral research programme was to enhance the learning capability of the Canadian wheelchair curling coaches’ landscape. To achieve this overall purpose, the study was divided in three phases (i.e., pre-intervention, framing, and assessment). The pre-intervention phase aimed at understanding the disability sport coaches’ landscape; the framing phase aimed at building on the pre-intervention findings to frame a social learning space intervention for disability sport coaches; finally, the assessment phase, as the name suggests, assessed the value created through the intervention. More specifically, the four articles presented in this dissertation illustrate the work done to achieve the overall purpose of enhancing the learning capability of Canadian wheelchair curling coaches. The pre-intervention phase includes Article 1 and Article 2. Article 1 is a literature review of the two major areas addressed in this dissertation, which are disability sport in Canada and coach development. Article 2 introduces the metaphor of a landscape to create a visual representation via a map that includes the major elements of the Canadian wheelchair curling coaches’ landscape. Semi-structured interviews with 16 participants were thematically analyzed and helped create the above-mentioned elements, such as the coaches’ pathways, the types of learning structures, and the barriers. Moreover, Article 2 provides three considerations for systems conveners who seek to lead social learning space interventions in landscapes. Next, the framing phase took place concurrently with the assessment phase. Common to both phases, the intervention included a series of face-to-face and online interactions through the use of four online tools. Multiple data generation techniques (e.g., in-depth interviews, focus groups, observations) were employed during a 13-month period and resulted in 615 single-spaced pages of data. Thematic and interpretative analyses were used to make sense of the data. The framing phase, as presented in Article 3, includes the process through which the researchers (N = 3) made use of collaborative inquiry to co-construct the intervention with the participant coaches (N = 16) and Curling Canada technical leaders (N = 6). Additionally, Article 3 built upon the considerations from the pre-intervention phase to report how the intervention managed the limitations of the landscape, prioritized meaningful learning, incorporated influential people, as well as produced reflections on the consequences of the lack of enabling conditions. Article 4 expands the landscape metaphor and presents four composite vignettes of the participants according to their wheelchair curling coaching experiences. The vignettes vividly illustrate major contextual factors of the landscape common to all participants and the range of values created in the intervention. Overall, the findings of this dissertation contribute theoretically, methodologically, and practically in several ways. From a theoretical perspective, it is the first study to date to make use of landscapes of practice and the value creation framework to increase the learning capability of disability sport coaches. From a methodological perspective, the articles included in this dissertation made use of multiple and longitudinal data generation techniques to provide a broader perspective of the values created. Finally, the use of visual representations like the map and the vignettes, while unconventional, might facilitate the knowledge transfer for coaches and coach developers willing to frame social learning space interventions.

Smart mobile devices are becoming increasingly essential daily companions. Applications (apps) are the interface through which the consumer can leverage unique capabilities of smart mobile devices to interact with people, other devices and firms via the supporting mobile ecosystem. Smart mobile devices and apps are influencing how competition is defined and changing how firms do business by improving internal processes and increasing flexibility and convenience for customers. Mobile apps and devices enable users to move from a portable and mobile communication and computing environment to that of a ubiquitous communication and computing environment [u-space]. Discussion in terms of ‘mobile marketing’ is therefore too limiting, our understanding should be ‘ubiquitous marketing’. Six papers explore ubiquitous marketing further. The retail sector provides a contextual setting for paper one and finds that mobile marketing increases value for retailers and consumers. Integration of all retailer / consumer interfaces with mobile marketing to maximise exposure and connectivity between both parties is recommended. Paper two investigates the sources for mobile app ideas in companies and finds that apps developed externally or within the firm with some outside help, were perceived to be more effective. Apps that leverage the mobile devices unique features is central to the methodology proposed for developing an app in paper three. The next three papers examine the impact that mobile apps and devices have on business activities and customer relationships. Paper four finds increased operational efficiency in a Dental  Practice, while paper five identified the opportunity for increased firm-customer interaction in a medical context. Paper six determines that rather than five dimensions of SERVQUAL, financial service quality of apps consists of three dimensions: Reliability, personal and visibles; and that service success can be derived from providing less service. This thesis contributes to a fuller understanding of U-commerce theory. It advances understanding in how apps are making significant changes in how information technology is managed and controlled from an organisational perspective, and how these technology advances can influence consumer interaction. / <p>QC 20160516</p>

In order to grow and survive, a firm must create value with consumers in ways that both fit in with consumer demands and stand out from competitors. Focusing on and understanding consumer and firm assessments of value and creation of value has become a central scope in the contemporary strategic management and marketing literature for understanding and explaining firm survival and success. Consequently, the overall aim of this thesis is to provide a conceptually and empirically grounded understanding of consumers’ and managers’ value assessments and behavior in value creation. This thesis draws on a consumer experience perspective and theories on social construction, organizational identity, self-congruence, and the theory of attractive quality, and combines multiple qualitative and quantitative studies. The findings in this thesis shed light on the interplay between consumers, firms, and contextual structures in value creation. Contextual structural, cultural, and political forces are shown to affect and be affected by the shared and individual cognitions of value creation that firms and consumers use in their assessment and creation value. The results of the study enhance the understanding of how firms can adopt various strategic schemas or organizing logics to optimize different types of use value creation when choosing between opposing and contradictive demands in their value creation. Furthermore, the thesis provides a deeper understanding of the hierarchical nature of consumer judgments of value that can be used to enhance the effectiveness of firm prioritizations and as a foundation for future value-creating strategies.