| 1. |
- Hernant, Mikael
(författare)
-
Profitability Performance of Supermarkets : The effects of scale of operation, local market conditions, and conduct on the economic performance of supermarkets
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ever since introduced and rolled out on the market during the 1950's and 1960's the supermarket format of grocery retail stores has played an important role in the grocery retail sector in Sweden, as well as in other countries. Although the sector in Sweden has evolved into a sector harbouring various store formats, the supermarket remains the major one - about half of the total volume of sales currently goes through supermarkets. Issues referring to the economic performance of supermarkets, and its antecedents, are thus of interest not only to retailers, but also to consumers as well as to society, overall.This study contributes to previous research by explicitly addressing bottom-line performance of supermarkets, and by bridging different fields of research. With the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm as theoretical underpinning, a cross-sectional design is developed for the study, comprising the economic performance of 168 supermarkets. By pooling data from various sources a unique database is developed, providing prerequisites for a comprehensive investigation into the effects of scale of operation, local market conditions, and supermarket conduct on various aspects of supermarket performance, all the way to bottom-line profitability performance.The results show that profitability performance of supermarkets is a consequence of a complex network of relationships between various aspects of economic performance, scale of operation, local market conditions and supermarket conduct. The profit margin, i.e. the span between gross margin and operating costs%, turns out as the major determinant of profitability performance. The profit margin, in turn, is found related to productivity, which in turn is found related to the volume of sales. Scale of operation and local market conditions are found working themselves into profitability performance, via conduct and various aspects of economic performance. However, neither scale nor favorable local market conditions turns out as the determinant of high rather than low profitability performance. Among the most as well as among least profitable, there are small and large supermarkets, facing local markets of favorable as well as unfavorable conditions. Rather, the dividing line between the low vs. highly profitable lies in the interplay between market conditions and conduct. Results from analyses of internal and external characteristics of the least and most profitable show important dissimilarities referring to their interplay with local market conditions. As such, the study provides important implications for retailers, from a strategical, tactical, as well as operational perspective.
|
|
| 2. |
- Jamal, Mayeda
(författare)
-
Creation of Social Exlcusion in Policy and Practice
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Social exclusion of vulnerable children and families is a serious concern for policy-makers and practitioners alike. This doctoral thesis explores the social construction of exclusion in the UK. The thesis explores both historical and current processes of interactions between the socially excluded populations and policy agents. The empirical findings suggest that the neglect of the children's rights value perspective in social policy, and the resultant practice thereof, may be counter-productive to combating social exclusion."... institutions perpetuate exclusion unofficially. Public Sector workers who reflect the prejudices of their society may institutionalise some kinds of discrimination"The Department for International Development (DfID), UK"it just kills you in the end.. especially because you don't know if you are doing more good than harm.. the worst decision for me is when I see the child should be removed from home but I know if I do that, he will never get the kind of therapeutic attention that he needs.. instead he will probably be in multiple placements and at the end of the day, it boils down to the choice whether you let him be abused by hi natural family or let the Government do it.. the abuse does not stop with intervention.. it's just the System that does it then..""Practice is about watching your back not about what can I do for this child"Excerpts from interviews with child protection social workers, UK"Decisions were made for us, we were tossed here and there like a worthless piece of scum"Excerpts from interviews with care-leavers, UKMayeda Jamal is a Doctoral student at the Center for Media and Economic Psychology at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), Sweden, and a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Organizational Social Psychology at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK. Mayeda has a Masters degree in Human Resource Management and a B.A. in Economics.
|
|
| 3. |
- Frostenson, Magnus
(författare)
-
Legitimationskontrollen : en studie av etiska värderingars roll i gränsöverskridande förvärv och fusioner
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- From an employee perspective, the study examines the intra-firm role of ethical values in four cases where Swedish firms are acquired by or merge with foreign comptetitors. This is done by using the conceptual tool of internal legitimacy, adding up to the research question on what grounds internal legitimacy is created for changes regarding work content, work routines, and organization in the Swedish firms under study.A model for understanding internal legitimation in an organizational context is developed, defining internal legitimacy as an internal license to operate, understood in relational terms, given by the employees on the basis of common values, meaningfulness, self-interest, and emotional grounds. Different forms of internal legitimacy are identified. Moral (normative) legitimacy rests upon common (ethical) values, cognitive legitimacy builds on meaningfulness, pragmatic legitimacy has its roots in self-interest, while the emotional context warrants its own form of legitimacy that can be understood in identificational terms.The four cases differ in substance from each other. The first case concerns an Internet firm taken over by a German competitor. The second case is about a consultancy firm that is acquired by a British multinational. The third case describes an American acquisition of an industrial firm, while the fourth case focuses on a merger of equals between a Swedish and a Finnish firm within raw material extraction and manufacturing.Changes in work content are found to be more detrimental to internal legitimacy than changes in work routines and organization. This is due to the challenge that externally imposed changes in work content pose to the basic meaning of work as understood by the employees.Five factors, understood as facilitators for internal legitimacy, are identified. The autonomy factor, the competence factor, the identification factor, the market logic factor, and the instrumental factor. These factors have a strong bearing on the creation of internal legitimacy in the examined firms.The autonomy factor signifies a claim for relative organizational autonomy and independence from the new owners and respect for the individual need for self-realization at work. In ethical terms, both these aspects build on elements of freedom, equality, tolerance, diversity, and co-determination, ethical concepts that are closely knit together in the minds of Swedish employees and provide the basis for how they want to be treated by the new owners.The competence factor refers to employee expectations on the new owners' knowledge and competence. This factor can be understood as instrumental, building on self-interest, in the way that there is a strong expectation that the new owners contribute with knowledge that is good for business. But it can also be understood in value terms, signifying a respect for professional knowledge as a value, shared for example in technically oriented engineering cultures.The identification factor has to do with what the employees are, want to be, and to what extent the new owners facilitate their endeavor to become this. This factor is multi-faceted. Elements of narcissicstic self-interest, correspondence between employee values and the perceived values of the new owners, and emotional factors all contribute to identification, not the least in terms of status.The market logic factor refers to the fact that acceptance of evolutionary market logic warrants legitimacy for relatively harsh measures in terms of, for example, downsizing. The degree to which the employees consider evolutionary market logic to be valid in a functional sense is crucial since it implies the level of cognitive acceptance of the rules of the game of the market and, also, their natural consequences on a micro-level.The instrumental factor builds on self-interest and has to do with the degree to which personal interests, for example career interests, are furthered by the order established by the new owners.Ethical values play an important role in the sense that they are fundamental to trust, which must be enjoyed by a foreign owner to gain acceptance from an internal Swedish employee force. Trust is manifested in the autonomy factor and the identification factor. Knowledge can also be seen as a value, however not an ethical one, that is also vital to trust and is manifested in the competence factor.One important finding is that there seems to be a common Swedish understanding of the ethical values at stake. Autonomy, expressed as freedom, is linked to participation, equality, and respect for the individual. Another important finding is that, contrary to intuitive expectations, there is no connection between conventionally understood macro-level national cultural similarity and micro-level internal legitimacy for changes in terms of work content, work routines, and organization. Internal legitimacy is virtually absent in the German-Swedish case and relatively low in the Finnish-Swedish case. To some degree it exists within the British-Swedish case while it is high in the U.S.-Swedish case. This shows that assumptions of macro-level cultural similarity are not good predictors when it comes to micro-level outcomes concerning the human side of mergers and acquisitions. Rather, the five factors mentioned above have more significance in terms of internal legitimacy creation.
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
- Anderson, Helén, 1954-
(författare)
-
En produkthistoria! : AB Hägglund & Söner 1922-1981
- 1994
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Kring en kärna av kompetens inom mekanisk verkstadsindustri har det ständigt tillverkats nya produkter vid AB Hägglund & Söner med säte i Örnsköldsvik. Möbler, busskarosserier, flygplan, gruvlok, elektriska motorer, svetsmaskiner, fartygskranar och hydrauliska motorer är bara några exempel. Utvecklingen av nya produkter har skett i nära samarbete med kunder med vilka man haft långvariga affärsutbyten. Inom företaget har intresset och entusiasmen för nya produkter och konstruktioner varit en ständig drivkraft till ökad kunskap. Redan tidigt utvecklades en kultur och tradition av att gärna och med stor arbetsinsats ge sig in på svåra men utmanande och spännande projekt kring nya produkter.I denna empiriska del behandlas företagets omvandling under en period av sextio år. Med utgångspunkt från produkterna söker författaren beskriva förändring såväl i intern resursomvandling som externt i interaktion med kunder och leverantörer. Boken utgör den empiriska delen av "Ett industriföretags omvandling".
|
|
| 6. |
- Anderson, Helén, 1954-
(författare)
-
Ett industriföretags omvandling : en studie av Hägglunds förändringsprocess 1922-1981 med bas i företagets produkter, relationer och resurser
- 1994
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Företagets omvandling är en ständig process av utbyten med andra företag. Genom utbyte mellan företag av såväl varor och tjänster som kunskap och kompetens skapas relationer. Ett företags interaktion med andra företag utgör därmed en omvandlingskraft. En annan drivkraft utgör den interna kompetensomvandlingen av resurser inom ett företag. Företaget är en organisation av individer som drivs av sina uppfattningar och det egna företaget och de omgivande företagen. Teknikfaktorn är också en betydelsefull förändringskraft för industriföretag. Den beaktas genom företagets produkter som ses som "bärare" av omvandling. Med utgångspunkt från verkstadsföretagets produkter söker författaren skapa en helhetsförståelse för hur företaget AB Hägglund & Söner förändrats över lång tid.I avhandlingen ingår också "En produkthistoria", den separat publicerade empiriska delen som beskriver AB Hägglund & Söner från 1922 till 1981.
|
|
| 7. |
- Arbin, Katarina, 1971-
(författare)
-
Individual information system acceptance behaviour : An electronic ordering system case
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Organizations have spent and continue to spend millions of dollars on information systems (IS) in order to enable business success. Information systems have long been used to help managers make better decisions, better understand the nature of customers and improve employee productivity. They have enabled transformations in organizations, such as simplification and acceleration of work processes, and contributed to continued improvement and innovation in these processes. It is not that easy however to make this simplification and acceleration of work processes to happen. A common problem is that individuals that are supposed to use these systems do not use them, and if an information systems is to contribute to business success it has to be adopted and used. The question is therefore, how do we get individuals to adopt and use systems that are implemented?This dissertation focus on what influences individual adoption and use, and how we can get individuals to adopt and use systems that are implemented. The information system under investigation is an electronic ordering (e-ordering) system. E-ordering systems are used by individual end-users (requestors, authorizers and goods receivers) in an organization when ordering products and services. The system aims at contributing to reduced maverick (i.e. wild= purchases and increased compliance with a few centrally chosen suppliers, thus facilitating lower purchasing prices and a reduction of the costs for purchasing. The thesis also discusses the relative difficulty in getting individuals to continue to use the systems compared to get them to adopt it. Another issue that is discussed is that the acceptance process does not have to happen gradually, it can instead happen in short spurts. It is further discussed what can influence these spurts.
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
- Löfgren, Angelika
(författare)
-
International network competitiveness : Technical and foreign market knowledge development in international SME networks
- 2014
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How can small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) compete over time within international networks? This thesis takes a stance in that business network relationships are essential for international SMEs as such networks can provide knowledge and learning opportunities. International network competitiveness is, in this thesis, introduced as a concept that captures SMEs long term performance, resulting from the firms being competitive within international business networks. This thesis thereafter proposes that an analytical framework of International network competitiveness, can promote the study of SMEs' long term performance within international networks.The thesis subsequently acknowledges that SMEs frequently need to develop a combination of technical- and foregin market knowledge so as to stay competitive within international networks. In fact, technical knowledge development is central for an increasingly wider selection of firms, not only high tech firms. By investigating the function of co-innovation (innovation together with network partners), for the proposed components of international network competitiveness, the thesis demonstrate that innovation has intriguing and central functions for the international network competitiveness of SMEs.
|
|
| 10. |
- Nilsson, Göran, 1963-
(författare)
-
Processorientering och styrning : regler, mål eller värderingar?
- 2003
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Frågan är om det under de senaste femton åren funnits något mer populärt managementkoncept än processorientering. När en organsation genomför en förändring som införande av processorientering kan detta givetvis påverka ett antal olika aspekter i organisationen. Frågan som belyses i denna avhandling är vad som händer med styrningen vid förändringar mot ökad processorientering. Särskilt fokuseras vad som händer med betoningen av olika styrformer som regelstyrning, målstyrning och styrning med värderingar. För att belysa detta har två förändringsprocesser som syftat till ökad processorientering studerats, den ena i form av en aktionsforskningsstudie och den andra i form av en retrospektiv fallstudie. Dessa två fall illustrerar en stor spridning i processorienteringsansatserna. Den ena ansatsen som benämns mekanistisk uppvisar stora likheter med taylorism och fordism. Den andra som benämns organisk uppvisar snarare likheter med socioteknik och cultural management. Hur styrningen förändras i fallen visar sig vara kopplat till vilken processorienteringsansats som tillämpas. Trots olikheterna i ansatserna är syftena med processorientering likartade i de två fallen. Studien visar dock att den organiska ansatsen kopplar starkare till syftena än den mekanistiska. För att analysera varför respektive processorienteringsansats kommit att tillämpas och varför styrningen förändrats i olika riktningar har contingencyteori, institutionell och kognitiv organisationsteori använts.
|
|
