| 1. |
- Asgharian Bourkheili, Ehsan
(författare)
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Enhancing SMEs competitive advantage by franchising
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although there is a large body of literature on franchising systems that are mainly produced from the franchisor's perspective, looking at franchising from the franchisee's point of view has remained largely uninvestigated. Creating and sustaining competitive advantage is the prerequisite for the franchisee's (as an SME) survival in today's competitive environment. This research's comprehensive literature review shows three major groups of factors influencing the franchisee’s competitive advantage, including the franchisor-related factors, the franchisee-related factors, and factors associated with the franchisor-franchisee relationship. Since the franchisor has a dominant role in the business, it can influence the franchisee in many ways. Therefore, it is crucial to put special emphasis on how the franchisor-related factors may influence the franchisee business success.In light of the discussion above, this study was carried out to understand how franchisor-related factors, through enhancing/creating competitive advantage, might influence the franchisee’s business success. According to the literature on competitive advantage, three clusters of literature as three perspectives were reviewed and discussed. These include the resource-based view, the industry structure view, and the relational view. In the resource-based view, the firm's resources are considered as a source of competitive advantage, but in the relational view, not only the firm's internal resources, but also the interfirm resources are the source of competitive advantage. Therefore, this perspective has a significant contribution to this study. In addition to services provided services by the franchisor, as the resources, franchisor organizational factors specifically entrepreneurial orientation, and absorptive capacity were found relevant in the franchisee's competitive advantage. Accordingly, an integrative theoretical/analytical framework was built and used throughout the study.Because of exploratory nature of the study, the qualitative method was chosen and applied. Along with the purpose of the study, a multiple-case study research strategy consisting of seven cases, in two franchising systems, was performed. The results of the analysis confirm that services provided by the franchisor, the franchisors’ entrepreneurial orientation, and the franchisees’ absorptive capacity have a significant role in enhancement of the franchisees’ competitive advantage. Other significant results of the franchisor-related factors enhancing competitive advantage were found to be: the speed of raw material supply, keeping consistency in quality, economy of scale and keeping prices competitive. Furthermore, the franchisor enhances the franchisee's competitive advantage by transferring business know-how and creating collective tacit knowledge, and as well improvement in the franchisee-specific human capital. Intellectual property in a franchise system through transferring the first mover advantage to the franchisee and creating the differentiated position affect the franchisee's competitive advantage. The franchisor’s entrepreneurial orientation creates the first-mover advantage for the franchisee. Similarly, the franchisor's absorptive capacity, through creating the first-mover advantage and improving the franchisee's social capital, enhances the franchisee's competitive advantage.
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| 2. |
- Bildsten, Louise
(författare)
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Towards Partnerships in Industrialized Housing
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse purchasing strategies and their interdependence with the production process and supplier relationships in industrialized housing. The thesis is a multiple case study of four Swedish industrialized timber-housing manufacturers. The case studies included interviews with top managers concerning purchasing, production and supplier relationships. Production is considered the heart of the company. Therefore, to gain an in-depth knowledge of how production affects purchasing and thus supplier relationships and vice versa, observations were made to study the production process. Many different parts and competences need to be coordinated in the creation of a house. In the West, the construction industry has been heavily criticized for low efficiency and effectiveness. Conclusions from the case studies showed that codevelopment, customization and secure deliveries are regarded highly by industrial house builders and to obtain them, long-term relationships with suppliers are preferred. Industrialized house builders are argued to have more long-term relationships with their suppliers than traditional on-site builders. Industrial house builders choose their suppliers based on the purchased products’ value-in-production rather than price. Product and process innovations created in collaboration with suppliers seem to be a way to enhance the production process of houses. Through the site resource of the factory, industrial house builders have the potential to refine their processes in win-win partnerships with suppliers for a more efficient and effective production of houses, as onsite work is harder to standardize and control.
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| 3. |
- Ebadzadeh Semnani, Sedigheh Sarah
(författare)
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Trust in Different Types of Organizational Relationships : A Social Capital Perspective
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to expand the understanding about the concepts of trust and social capital, and to explore their role in achieving desired organizational outcomes. The research followed a multiple case study approach, focusing on Iranian service providers. The reason for this focus is the insufficient scholarly contribution about social capital in developing countries. Moreover, considering the significant role of trust in social capital generation according to many scholars, this study seeks to understand how the issue of lack of trust in developing countries can influence social capital generation in these nations. In order to address the criticisms in the literature, this research first attempts to study the concepts of trust and social capital in different types of organizational relationships separately. There are, therefore, different levels of analysis in this study. The three types of organizational relationships which are the focus of this research are intra-organizational, organization-customer and business cluster.An intensive literature review was carried out on trust and social capital to build an overall theoretical picture of the problem at hand. The next step was to analyse the findings of this study by engaging both empirical and theoretical findings simultaneously. This was carried out with the aim of achieving answers to the research questions through theory matching and elaboration.The result of this study, in general, supports both the positive role of trust and social capital in achieving desired organizational outcomes. The empirical data and literature, therefore, seem to be in line with one another to a large extent. However, in several cases of this study the issue of lack of trust at the Iranian companies did in fact hinder the achievement of their desired outcomes. Moreover, the findings from the organization-customer and business cluster relationships showed that several of these Iranian companies are indeed already benefiting from social capital. However, they mostly benefit from the type of social capital arising from information flows. What they are missing, and are in fact in great need of, is the type of social capital associated with the benefits of trust. In other words, they were unsuccessful in bringing forward the benefits of the relational dimension of social capital. The study has also contributed towards refining the literature by showing that there are differences in the connotation of both “trust” and “social capital” when they are studied under different types of organizational relationships. Simply using these terms without specifying the type of relationship, or level of analysis, does not bring forward a clear understanding. Furthermore, the findings had pointed out the important difference between a contributing factor to a phenomenon and the phenomenon itself, which in this case were trust and social capital, respectively.Last but not least, the results of the cross-case analysis identified certain patterns and differences in the role of trust and social capital in different relationship types. These findings were summarized in the form of a proposed model and a matrix. The proposed model started with the development of trust in organizational interpersonal relationships, and ended with the creation of two different types of social capital that can benefit both the organization and its customers. The matrix, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of keeping a balance between different types of social capital, depending on the organizational requirement, in order to achieve the best desired outcomes.
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| 4. |
- Guan, Wei
(författare)
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Developments in Distribution Channels : A Case Study of a Timber Product Distribution Channel
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis describes and analyses the trends and developments of actors along distribution channel. In particular, the study focuses on resellers and manufacturer based on the empirical material from one particular case study. The study has three main goals: (1) to investigate the challenges arising from channel actor developments, the effects of these developments on the structure of the retailer supply chain and their implications for manufacturers and suppliers, (2) to identify explanations for manufacturer’s vertical integration of distribution and the resulting impacts and, (3) to conduct a preliminary customer value analysis relating to the distribution channel of solid wood products.The study has taken an exploratory and qualitative research approach with an abductive reasoning process. A case study strategy was adopted, which studied a distribution channel consisting of a Sweden-based timber manufacturer that vertically integrated a distributor in the UK. Semi-structured interviews comprised the primary data collection technique in this study. A two-step data collection process was conducted between May 2009 and April 2010, including 29 interviews with 24 interviewees from eight organizations, representing the manufacturer, distributor and reseller in the distribution channel. Non-participating observations were carried out by attending sales meeting and joining account managers on store visits. All interviews were documented and transcribed and the information was collated into case units, along with any supporting secondary data, such as company magazines, web resources, annual reports, sales reports, meeting presentations, etc.This thesis has produced several findings. Reseller developments have promoted the formation of reseller demands, such as integrated solutions with respects to logistics, marketing, merchandising, innovation, etc. Retailer developments have driven the change of a retailer supply chain structure, and have opened up a number of new questions to be posed on manufacturer and its positioning in the supply chain. The most important factors driving the manufacturer’s vertical integration of distribution are customer demands, the manufacturer’s repositioning strategy with regard to its business focus and its positioning in the supply chain. The vertical integration of distribution transforms the manufacturer into a direct supplier to large timber product resellers. It also offers the supplier a great opportunity to enhance offerings and establish strategic relationship with customers. The output of suppliers has expanded from solely manufacturing goods to also include services and knowledge associated with goods. In practice, it can be complicated for a supplier to create and communicate value. A full understanding of what timber product customers seek in terms of value elements has not yet been achieved. This study has assisted in terms of understanding the differing value that channel actors place on a range of product, physical distribution, service and supplier value elements by developing a value analysis framework. Suppliers can use this framework when designing, customizing and marketing offerings for customers.
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| 5. |
- Hosseini, Mojtaba, 1981-
(författare)
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Firm-level entrepreneurship and the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the last decade, firm-level entrepreneurship as an important phenomenon that may influence the corporate performance, attracted the attention of many researchers and a number of measurements were developed to gauge the entrepreneurial intensity at the firm level such as entrepreneurial orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial management. EO and CE found more popularity and researchers employed them to investigate the phenomenon of firm-level entrepreneurship.Incrementally, a contradiction was emerged in the literature regarding the proper measurement of FLE. A number of studies recommended integrating EO and CE in a more comprehensive measurement to develop a deeper understanding of firms’ entrepreneurial intensity. In fact, EO and CE complement each other. While the former focuses on the proclivity of firms to have entrepreneurial behaviors and activities, the latter is the output- based construct and points out to the actual entrepreneurial actions such as innovation, venturing and strategic renewal.This study develops an integrative model of EO and CE to classify the companies in four different categories includes non-entrepreneurial, forced-entrepreneurial, latent-entrepreneurial, and actual entrepreneurial firms. The primary objective of the study is to investigate if the actual entrepreneurial firms show the higher degrees of internationalization or not.The research has performed in two different steps to confirm the integrative model and testify the research hypotheses. In the first step, the multi-case study approach is primarily applied to investigate if the model categorizes companies that are actually different or not. To conduct this step, four companies were selected that each one was the representative of a unique category of the model. Then deep interviews were performed to assess their behaviors on some especial characteristics, which were previously mentioned as the different characteristics of entrepreneurial versus non-entrepreneurial firms. To testify the research hypotheses, a questionnaire was designed that was included of questions, which were applied and validated by former studies.
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| 6. |
- Lindahl, Ingela, 1969-
(författare)
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Design-led organisations : A multiple-case study of the interplay between design and marketing
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge base concerning the interplay between design and marketing. Based on the findings from the empirical studies, the aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze how marketing and design interplay in companies and the main reasons for such interplay. The research builds upon a multiple-case study of companies mainly within the furniture manufacturing industry. The research focus is the study of companies described as “design led”, i.e. “characterized by a dominant logic that views design as central to the companies’ strategic positioning”(Beverland and Farrell, 2007). Three different interfaces between design and marketing within the company and towards its external actors are studied. The studied companies illustrate how a company’s desire to create a brand that is closely related to product design creates an effect on internal activities as well as the interfaces to external actors, e.g. customers and suppliers. Based on empirical findings, it is proposed that by being design-led, companies may not only create a competitive advantage connected to the good itself and its product design, but also through its potential to offer new products based on the company’s design competence and its brand image. One such example of new potential is the offering of an integrated interior solution and the concept of “aesthetic complexity” that is introduced and suggested as a driver for such solutions. Moreover, a more general model on the interplay between product design and marketing compared to those previously presented in literature is suggested. This model considers the different company approaches to design, e.g. more or less selforiented, and marketing, e.g. more or less market-oriented. It is proposed that depending on the company’s approach to design and marketing, the coordination between design resources and marketing within the company should be managed differently. This thesis also presents a tentative model on the relationship between the companies’ different desired brand images and their sourcing of external designers. It is proposed that a company’s desired brand image and its design philosophy affect the company’s practices when sourcing external design resources, e.g. in the choice of contracting more or less well-known designers. The conclusions presented in this licentiate thesis may serve as a starting point for managers to understand the interplay between design and marketing in companies. Although still tentative, the conclusions suggest a number of marketing-related prerequisites and consequences when a company aims to be design-led. By considering these different aspects, companies might improve their chances of being successful when creating a brand image that is closely connected to design.
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| 7. |
- Saeedi, Mohammad Reza
(författare)
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Fostering Dynamic Capabilities of SMEs. The Impact of Inward International Licensing on Absorptive Capacity and Networking Capability : A Multiple Case Study in Pharmaceutical Industry
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Resource limitation and inadequate capabilities are the SME’s major problems. On this basis, alliances as vehicles of inter-firm collaboration provide opportunities for SMEs to obtain complementary capabilities and critical resources to overcome resource limitations. In this respect, examining the extant literature on non-equity strategic alliances shows that very few studies have empirically examined the impact of these alliances, such as inward international licensing (IIL) on SMEs’ dynamic capabilities (e.g. absorptive capacity and networking capability) in developing context. Consequently, to close this research gap, the purpose of this study is to examine and explore the major impacts of inward international licensing (IIL) on dynamic capabilities of SMEs, with focus on absorptive capacity (ACAP) and networking capability (NC) in a developing economy context (Iran).This study is focused on pharmaceutical SMEs involved in international business activities through inward international licensing (IIL). The study is explorative, qualitative and elaborative in nature. The dominant analytical approach in this study was abductive. Given the research type (nature), a multiple-case study was selected as an appropriate research strategy to achieve the research purpose and objectives. All cases were selected purposefully. The data were collected from four pharmaceutical SMEs (licensees) with licenses from European pharmaceutical largescale enterprises (LSEs). The results of the first part of this study reveal that in all cases studied, inward international licensing (IIL) has a strong effect on absorptive capacity (ACAP) and networking capability (NC). In this regard, all absorptive factors (AFs), namely acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation, have been enhanced by influenced contextual factors (CFs) of ACAP. The SMEs’ management and strategy, human resources, internal knowledge, and inter and intra-firm relationships, as several contextual factors (CF) of ACAP, have been forcefully influenced by inward international licensing (IIL). The second part of the empirical results indicates that the international licensing alliance between SMEs and LSEs helps the development of SMEs’ networking capability as well. This was particularly significant in development of the main components of networking capability, such as relationship initiation capability (RIC) and relationship developing capability (RDC).
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