| 11. |
- Lundberg, Christine, 1972-
(författare)
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Challenges in Delivering Services: The Front-Line Hospitality and Tourism Employee Perspective
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Significant challenges are faced by front-line hospitality and tourism employees interacting with customers on a daily basis. These challenges and the ways they are dealt with form the focus of this thesis. As they interact, a range of incidents may arise from highly satisfactory encounters to service failures. It has been argued that in order to achieve satisfactory service encounters, employees need to feel in control, satisfied and motivated as well as being given appropriate assistance, information and training. Front-line employees in hospitality and tourism are focused on here due to the complex nature of the industry. It is commonly agreed that it is characterised by poor working conditions such as anti-social working hours, part-time and/or seasonal work, minimal on-the-job training and low levels of pay. These are all factors which may affect employee work satisfaction and motivation as well as recruitment and retention. The thesis is comprised of four studies. In Study I, hospitality and tourism employee work motivation is analysed. Study II examines front-line hotel restaurant employees’ experiences of service encounters. How the skills utilised by employees during these service encounters are acquired and developed is then explored in Study III. Study IV concludes by examining employee informal information sharing activities, which offer one way of developing these skills. The thesis’ findings paint a more positive picture of work and workers in hospitality and tourism than suggested in some of the earlier published research. This could be explained by the fact that the thesis utilises an employee perspective in its truest sense. The findings of the thesis show that employees are motivated (to large extent by factors that have been pointed out in earlier published work motivation research) and that they are active in the pursuit of developing skills necessary to create satisfactory service encounters. Another conclusion of the thesis’ findings is that the interaction between workers and guests in the service encounter provides an important opportunity for workers to feel satisfied at work.
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| 12. |
- Andersson, Camilla, 1979-
(författare)
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Changing the risk at the margin : Smallholder farming and public policy in developing countries
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. Paper [I] examines whether the implementation of a social safety net programme in Ethiopia has affected the value, risk and composition of farmers‟ crop portfolios. The empirical analysis suggests that the value and risk of the crop portfolio have not been altered due to the programme. However, the programme seems to have brought about some changes in the land allocated to different crops. Paper [II] studies how a social safety net affects farmers‟ (dis)investments in productive assets. More specifically, it studies how the Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia has changed livestock and tree holdings. The results indicate no significant effect on livestock holdings, but a significant increase in tree holdings. Paper [III] investigates if there is a problem of adverse selection in formal microlending in rural Bangladesh. The results indicate that farmers who only borrow formally have a shadow price of capital that is substantially higher than the average informal interest rate. This suggests that farmers that only borrow formally are perceived as poor credit risks by informal lenders. Paper [IV] explores the economic incentives surrounding the cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan. Specifically, it examines the impact of eradication policies when opium is used as a means of obtaining credit, and when the crops are produced in sharecropping arrangements. The results indicate that both these features are likely to affect the outcome of eradication policies.
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| 13. |
- Enström Öst, Cecilia, 1971-
(författare)
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Housing policy and family formation
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Essay 1: This paper addresses the impact on housing consumption of a decrease in housing allowance among single recipient parents living in rental apartments. We take advantage of an imposed limit on the recipients’ dwelling size in the Swedish housing allowance reform in 1996-1997 that can be argued to be close to a natural experiment. The focus is on overcrowding. The data for this study has been extracted from the Swedish National Insurance Board’s databank on housing allowance recipients, which is data that has not previously been available for research. The result suggests that the benefit cut has increased the propensity for a housing adjustment into overcrowding. Furthermore, it gives some support to the view that housing allowance has some real effects on recipients’ housing consumption, an effect that has been regarded as close to negligible in previous literature. Essay 2: This paper investigates whether there is a cohort effect to be found in the tenure decision of young adults and whether parental wealth seems to have any influence on first-time homeownership. Recent studies have indicated that young adults’ chances on the housing market have deteriorated; it has become more difficult to become established on the housing market and such situations may increase the importance of parental wealth. In this study, parental wealth is not only estimated as family background information on parents’ homeownership, which earlier studies on first-time homeownership have emphasizes the importance of, but also as the father’s socioeconomic status and single parenting. Very unique cohort data with information on three birth cohorts who entered the housing market during different periods in the Swedish housing policy suggests there to be a significant and large cohort effect in the tenure decision of young adults. Furthermore, the results imply that parental wealth, as well as young adults’ earnings capacity, are more important predictors of the transition to first-time tenant-ownership comparing young adults facing increasing problems on the housing market with those who did not. Essay 3: This study contributes to earlier research on homeownership and childbearing by taking into account the potential simultaneity between these two life events. A very unique and recent data set comprising three different Swedish birth cohorts that entered the housing market during different time periods in the Swedish housing policy suggests that these are events that are indeed simultaneous. Different tests indicate that taking this simultaneity into account gives an overall statistically significant improvement of the model fit. However, this result is most obvious for those young adults who faced increasing problems on the housing market. The childbearing decision of these cohorts also seems to be more sensitive to changes in the user cost, i.e., the potential cost of being a homeowner. This may indicate that the housing market could have repercussions on the childbearing pattern; however, to draw more clear conclusions from this result, the relationship between housing and childbearing needs to be further explored since changes in the Swedish housing market also coincided with economic recession, increased unemployment rates and changes in the educational system.
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| 14. |
- Mannberg, Andréa, 1977-
(författare)
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Risk and Rationality : Effects of contextual risk and cognitive dissonance on (sexual) incentives
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Paper [I] theoretically analyzes how the level and uncertainty of future prospects affect incentives to abstain from sexual risk taking in the presence of HIV. The results suggest that, for individuals with limited access to HIV treatment, uncertainty of future health may be an important factor driving unsafe sex practices and support the empirical finding of a weak link between sexual behavior, HIV prevalence, and HIV knowledge in poor countries; therefore suggesting that AIDS policy needs to be calibrated in order to fit within different social contexts. Paper [II] empirically tests the link between uncertainty of future prospects and sexual risk taking in a group of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa. The findings indicate that expected income and health and future uncertainty are significant determinants of current patterns of sexual risk taking. However, the empirical results only provide limited support to a link between expected health and sexual risk taking. Paper [III] theoretically analyzes effects of affect and defensive denial on incentives to engage in sexual risk taking related to HIV. The results of the theoretical analysis suggest that the effect of rationalization of personal risk depends on the risk of being HIV positive. Although rationalization causes excessive risk taking behavior for individuals with a relatively low lifetime risk, it may prevent fatalism among individuals whose lifetime risk of HIV is perceived as overwhelming. Paper [IV] theoretically analyzes the role of identity conflict for the evolution of female labor supply over time. The results suggest the fear of becoming an outsider in society may have prevented a complete transition of women from housewives to breadwinners. In addition, our analysis shows that not recognizing that the weights attached to different social identities are endogenous may imply that the long-run effects on labor supply of a higher wage may be underestimated.
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| 15. |
- Mueller, Andreas, 1979-
(författare)
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Business Cycles, Unemployment and Job Search : Essays in Macroeconomics and Labor Economics
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four essays. The first essay, "Separations, Sorting and Cyclical Unemployment", establishes a new fact about the compositional changes in the pool of unemployed over the U.S. business cycle and evaluates a number of theories that can potentially explain it. Using longitudinal micro-data from the Current Population Survey 1979-2008, it documents that in recessions the pool of unemployed shifts towards workers with high wages in their previous job. The essay also shows that a search-matching model with endogenous separations and worker heterogeneity in terms of ability has difficulty in explaining these patterns, but an extension of the model with credit-constraint shocks does much better in accounting for the new fact. The second essay, "The Lot of the Unemployed: A Time Use Perspective", provides new evidence on the time use of employed and unemployed individuals in 14 countries. It devotes particular attention to characterizing and modeling job search intensity, measured by the amount of time devoted to searching for a new job. Job search intensity varies considerably across countries, and is higher in countries that have higher wage dispersion. The third essay, "Job Search and Unemployment Insurance: New Evidence from Time Use Data", examines the relationship between Unemployment Insurance and job search intensity. Among the major findings are that, across the U.S. states, job search is inversely related to the generosity of unemployment benefits and that job search intensity for those eligible for Unemployment Insurance increases prior to benefit exhaustion. The fourth essay, "On-the-Job Search and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from Time Use Data", finds that on-the-job search effort, modeled as time allocated to job search activities, is decreasing in the wage of the current job. The evidence presented is consistent with models where similar workers face wage dispersion and invest time in order to find better paying jobs.
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| 16. |
- Pham Khanh, Nam, 1975
(författare)
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Prosocial Behavior, Social Interaction and Development: Experimental Evidence from Vietnam
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Paper 1. Funding a New Bridge in Rural Vietnam: A Field Experiment on Conditional Cooperation and Default Contributions The ability to provide public goods is essential for economic and social development, yet there is very limited empirical evidence regarding contributions to a real local public good in developing countries. This paper analyzes a field experiment where 200 households in rural Vietnam could make real contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge. In particular, we study the role of two kinds of social influence: i) conditional cooperation, i.e., that people may be more willing to cooperate if others do, and ii) the effects of the default alternative, i.e., that people are influenced by the default alternative presented to them in the choice situation. We find significant and substantial effects of both kinds of influence. For example, by either giving the subjects the additional information that one of the most common contributions by others is 100,000 dong (a relatively low contribution) or introducing a zero-contribution default alternative, the average contribution decreases by about 20% compared to the baseline case. Paper 2. Are Social Preferences Stable over Time? We use a combination of two natural experiments and one field experiment to measure people’s prosocial behavior in terms of voluntary money and labor time contributions to an archetypical public good – a bridge – in rural Vietnam, at three different points in time from 2005 to 2010. Since the experiments are far apart in time, potentially confounding effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing are presumably small, if at all existent. We find a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between voluntary contributions in these experiments, whether correcting for other covariates or not. This result suggests that prosocial preferences are at least partly stable over long periods of time. Paper 3. Conditional Cooperation and Disclosure in Developing Countries Understanding the patterns behind people’s voluntary contributions to public goods is crucial for the broader issues of economic and social development. By using the experimental design by Fischbacher et al. (2001), we investigate distributions of contribution types in developing countries (Colombia and Vietnam) and compare our findings with those previously found in developed countries. We also investigate the effect of introducing disclosure of contribution. Our experiments show that, on average, the distributions of contribution types are similar both in the two countries and compared to previous findings, except for free-riders, and overall remain unaffected by disclosure of contributions. Paper 4. Social Capital and Private Adaptation to Climate Change: Evidence from the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam Farmers in developing countries often face capital constraints in adapting to climate change. Can farmers’ own social capital be utilized to facilitate the adaptation? This study uses four components of social capital – formal institutions, informal institutions, trust, and cooperativeness – to examine whether social capital is systematically linked to adaptation to climate change. The results suggest, in general, that social capital at the individual level does not affect farmers’ private adaptation to climate change. Yet, some forms of social capital are significantly associated with the choice of some particular adaptation measures. Paper 5. Are Vietnamese Farmers Concerned with their Relative Position in Society? This paper examines the attitude towards relative position or status among rural households in Vietnam. On average, respondents show rather weak preferences for relative position. Possible explanations are the emphasis on the importance of equality and that villagers are very concerned with how the local community perceives their actions. We also investigate what influences the concern for relative position and find, among other things, that if anyone from the household is a member of the Peoples Committee then the respondent is more concerned with the relative position.
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| 17. |
- Fuentes, Christian
(författare)
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Green Retailing : A socio-material analysis
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The marketing and consumption of green products has grown significantly in recent years. As mediators between producers and consumers, retailing sites play an important role for the distribution of green products. It is through stores and other retail sites that green products are marketed and made available to consumers. But how does retailing work to circulate green products? How are green products made part of specific consumption worlds and practices? And does green retailing facilitate the development of more environmentally sustainable patterns of production and consumption? Green retailing: a socio-material analysis offers a critical account of green retailing. Using practice theory and drawing on an ethnographic study of an outdoors retail chain, this book argues that the understanding of green retailing benefit from the acknowledgement of the complexities involved in retail practices. The book analyses the work done by the Nordic Nature Shop to make their green outdoors products meaningful and functional to consumers. It shows how the retail chain uses its outlets to create a world in where their products are become necessary while simultaneously giving the products the qualities needed to function in this world. Green outdoors products are through the Nordic Nature Shops marketing work framed as tools and problem solvers that mediate between society and nature and protect fragile environments. Through their marketing of green products, the Nordic Nature Shop promises that it is possible to consume the outdoors in a greener way. However, in offering consumers products that resolve the contradiction between wanting to enjoy and wanting to protect the outdoors, the Shop also makes a number of resource intensive outdoors consumption practices possible. This means that while the Nordic Nature Shop contribute to the greening of contemporary consumption practices it simultaneously reproduces consumer culture and discourages the emergence of more reflexive and critical forms of consumption.
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| 18. |
- Abouzeedan, Adli, 1955-
(författare)
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SME Performance and Its Relationship to Innovation
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Current SME performance models suffer from a number of disadvantages. The models use intensively a business ratio approach, they look at SMEs as a homogenous group, they consider firms to be closed systems, they do not directly incorporate the impact of an enterprise’s innovation activities, and finally they are complex and rely on sophisticated statistical refining methods making them unpractical to use by SME managers. There are four major challenges when one tries to build SME performance models that lack these deficiencies. The first challenge is that the desired performance evaluation model must optimally incorporate both quantitative and qualitative input. The second challenge is that the model must incorporate non-financial input parameters, such as firm size and age (among others), in the performance evaluation models. The third is that the model must consider the variety of SMEs as concerns their business sectors, nationalities, sizes, and ages. The final challenge is that the model must be able to utilize existing limited information available from the SMEs bookkeeping practices in an optimal way.The thesis addresses three questions related to constructing a better SMEperformance model, namely (1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the existing models used in evaluating SME performance? (2) What characterizes a comprehensive model for measuring SME performance with acknowledgement of the firm’s innovation activities? (3) How can a firm’s innovation activities be enhanced in relation to the firm’s external environment?To construct a model that copes with these challenges, I used a literature-based selection of parameters as well as a theory-based selection. I used both a conceptual approach and an empirical approach to discuss and propose a model, the Survival Index Value (or SIV) model, as an alternative to the existing performance models for SMEs.The major contributions of this thesis to the field of SME performance can be summarized in three outcomes: the SIV model as a new model of SME performance evaluation, the ASPEM as a new tool for strategic utilization of SME performance models, and a new approach to account for innovation in relation to the external environment of the firm using the IBAM tool.The work adds to the theory of the firm, as it presents a new way of evaluating firm performance. It also contributes to bridging the theory of the firm to organizational theory, by elevating the significance of networking and its impact on SME efficiency.
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| 19. |
- Svensson, Peter, 1974-
(författare)
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The Dynamics of Innovation and Knowledge-Based Regional Development
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Geographical regions as diverse as Silicon Valley, California and Linköping, Sweden have been the sources of new technology and endogenously created innovations. Scholars and policymakers recognise that specific regions or clusters of businesses have the capability to engage in more innovative activities and new business formation and to experience higher employment growth than others. This dissertation uses qualitative methods to study various aspects of regional development and innovation. It is based on five papers by the author and colleagues with levels of analysis ranging from regional to firms’ first sales in order to capture the dynamics of both the top and bottom levels of regional development. It then uses these papers’ empirical material to address the research questions of (a) how a new scientific knowledge base becomes established and exploited in a spatial context, and (b) how people create and diffuse innovations in a social and spatial context. This dissertation’s main findings are that (a) regional leadership involving the building of alliances with triple-helix actors is crucial for initiating a knowledge-based regional development process, (b) a consensus space is a catalytic mechanism for ensuring the speed and effectiveness of regional development, (c) lowering the barriers for the actors involved boosts participation and the rate of innovation, and (d) users’ perspectives are essential for social, institutional and commercial innovation. This dissertation’s main implications are that knowledge-based regional development’s initial stages require leadership that (a) builds alliances and establish an arena for the triple-helix actors, (b) analyses the regional barriers to the commercialisation of knowledge, and (c) utilises both endogenous and exogenous resources.
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| 20. |
- Verma, Sanjay
(författare)
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New Product Newness and Benefits : A Study of Software Products from the Firms’ Perspective
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is widely believed among researchers as well as practitioners that there is a link between new product newness, or innovativeness, and benefits to the firm developing and marketing a product; more innovative products are generally expected to create more profit and growth. However, research findings are conflicting—positive-, negative-, and no-relationship have been reported between product newness and benefits by different researchers. Moreover, most research has been confined to hardware products. Software is a different kind of product. It is marked by low industry entry barrier, low marginal cost of production, intense competition for quick market leadership, subject to increasing rate of return, et al. An ever larger part of investments in new products consist of computer software, software that is used in PCs, control industrial processes and give products like mobile phones, cameras and cars new features. To what extent newness gives benefits in software development is however still un-researched. Thus, the purpose this study was formulated as: To explore effect of newness of new software products on the benefits to the firms. To fulfill this research purpose, first we had to find out “What are the relevant elements of (i) newness, and (ii) benefits of new products” in the context of firms that develop and market computer software products? This part of the study is reported in Part I. In a second step the effect of product newness on benefits was investigated quantitatively. This part of the study is reported in Part II. Part I is based upon semi-structured in-depth interviews of managers responsible for seven new software products in firms from Finland, India, Sweden and the US. Supplementary secondary data were collected from archival sources to write case descriptions of each software product. Within- and cross-case inductive analysis of seven-case database led to identification of relevant elements of newness and benefits. As newness elements, distribution technology, and complementary technological-, and marketing-resources were found to be vital; as benefits element, non-monetary benefits of new products stood out. Part II reports a quantitative study involving 321 Swedish software firms. Data were collected through a Web-survey, using a questionnaire based on findings of Part I, and analyzed through Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. Findings indicate that marketing fit, and technological familiarity enhance product-level benefits, whereas technological fit, and familiarity enhance firm-level benefits. From the three environmental factors only aggressive marketing practices was found to be of significance. Neither switching costs nor computer mediated transactions was found to have any moderating role on product newness and new product benefits relationship. Overall, this study extends previous research in the area of product newness-new product benefits and fills the gap in the literature (i) by developing grounded measures for operationalizing new product newness and benefits concepts in the context of software product firms, and (ii) by identifying significant elements of new product newness that affect new product benefits. By limiting to a particular industry, this study provides useful findings—for both researches of new product development, and for managers in software firms—such as marketing fit, and technological familiarity enhance product-level benefits, whereas technological fit, and technological familiarity enhance firm-level benefits.
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