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| 2. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Digital transformation of global business processes : the role of dual embeddedness
- 2020
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Ingår i: Business Process Management Journal. - 1463-7154 .- 1758-4116. ; 26:2, s. 570-592
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- PurposeWhile much existing research on multinational corporation (MNC) digital transformation has followed a linear design and implementation logic using cross-sectional data, the multiple and divergent needs of headquarters (HQ) and subsidiaries suggest that MNC digital transformation actually involves a more iterative journey. The purpose of this paper is to apply the theoretical perspective of embeddedness to better define the complexities of MNC digital transformation, and identify how HQ and subsidiaries can navigate the complexities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a longitudinal multi-case study of five Forbes Global 2000 firms that are HQ in Europe with large subsidiaries in the USA. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 26 senior executives at HQ and subsidiaries over a 15-month period.FindingsThe process of digital transformation is significantly influenced by internal embeddedness (relationship of HQ with subsidiaries and across subsidiaries) and external embeddedness (relationship of subsidiaries with their local markets), and also by strategy, financial and technology considerations. While HQ and subsidiaries have different perspectives, an understanding of these influences can help HQ and subsidiaries navigate digital transformation.Research limitations/implicationsHQ and subsidiaries can apply insights from this research to navigate the complexities of digital transformation.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates that embeddedness is a useful theory to understand the complexities of MNC digital transformation.
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| 3. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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ERP selection through business relationships : adaptations or connections
- 2011
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Ingår i: International Journal of Entrepreneural Venturing. - 1742-5360. ; 3:1, s. 63-83
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses how a generic form of information technology (IT), enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, can be selected by companies to enhance their business. ERP systems are a means of becoming more efficient through predefined standard functions called 'best practices'. Following the theory that markets are made up of business relationships in a network context, managerial advice would be to assess the vendor's existing business relationships. A company can harvest the inherent functions that an ERP system has from the vendor's prior interaction with other customers. This paper discusses how a company benefits from engaging in a new business relationship with an ERP vendor to become more competitive. However, this relationship is double-edged. A lesson is that the functions developed by the ERP vendor and the customer only offer a temporal competitive advantage, given that it can be used later in the ERP vendor's other connected business relationships.
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| 4. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Extending the ERP system : considering the business relationship portfolio
- 2014
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Ingår i: Business Process Management Journal. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1463-7154 .- 1758-4116. ; 20:3, s. 480-501
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose – Research has shown that companies focus their internal processes when they adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, the ERP systems need to expand their functionality to include customers and suppliers (with e-commerce functionality) to reach their full potential. The purpose of this paper is to consider business relationships as a resource but also a limitation when companies strive to get an extended ERP system.Design/Methodology/approach – The paper presents an illustrative case study of an industrial company’s process of developing an extended ERP and how the company’s portfolio of business relationships has affected the solution. The analysis is supported by the markets-as-networks theory.Findings – The process of developing an extended ERP system needs to incorporate the company’s business partners (customers and suppliers). It is a simultaneously bottom-up and top-down process given that the operative frontline staff hold the knowledge about the company’s business relationships while the corporate management has the means of extending the ERP system functionality and align it with the focal company’s strategy.Research implications – Companies need to consider the fact that the technological and financial status of their customers and suppliers differ. Thus, an effective and flexible extended ERP system needs to include both a high-end and low-end solution as well as understand that a full interorganizational integration might not be realistic.Originality/value – The paper puts forth business relationship portfolios as an important factor to consider when extending the ERP system functionality in the supply chain and towards customers.
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| 5. |
- Ekman, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Information technology utilization for industrial marketing activities : The IT–marketing gap
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of business & industrial marketing. - 0885-8624 .- 2052-1189. ; 30:8, s. 926-938
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose – This study aims to investigates the possible gap between the logic of these information technology (IT) systems and industrial firms’ marketing practices. Industrial firms rely extensively on IT systems for their business. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the contemporary marketing practice (CMP) model, which depicts firms’ marketing practice as ranging from transactional to more relational and networked-based, the logic of IT systems and how users in industrial firms adopt them are amended to create an extended model. The extended model is used to analyze an in-depth case based on 63 interviews regarding one industrial firm’s business with customers and suppliers and how IT is utilized in this setting. Findings – Results show that industrial firms’ relationship-oriented business is poorly supported by currently used IT systems. This gap between the IT systems, which are transaction-focused, and industrial firms’ marketing practice, which is relationship-based, has severe effects on adoption and efficiency of IT systems. The marketers prefer local, non-integrated, IT with limited usefulness on an overall firm level while resisting the firms’ comprehensive IT systems. This forms an IT–marketing gap given that current IT does not match the marketing practice of relationship-oriented industrial firms. Originality/value – This study applies an extended CMP model in a novel way focusing one industrial firm, its customers and suppliers and the IT used in this setting. The study shows that all marketing practices of the CMP model can be found in one firm’s business, albeit one category, i.e. interaction marketing (a relationship approach), is dominating. The use of the CMP framework offers new and valuable insights into the fundamental cause to the industrial marketers’ limited use of integrated IT.
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| 6. |
- Ekman, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Tit for tat and big steps : The case of Swedish banks' internationalization 1961-2010
- 2014
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Ingår i: International Business Review. - : Elsevier BV. - 0969-5931 .- 1873-6149. ; 23:6, s. 1049-1063
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study examines four major Swedish banks' internationalization process patterns during the period 1961-2010. The study complements earlier studies by also considering the banks' levels of market commitment. One objective is to determine if 'Tit for tat'-behaviour seen in earlier studies of Swedish banks still prevails after the deregulation. Adding to earlier studies, this study also considers the level of market activities and commitments. A secondary purpose is to examine how the financial crisis has affected the banks with reference to the banks' internationalization patterns. The empirical study is based on archival data on the studied banks' foreign operations. The results show that the banks' behaviour follows 'Tit for tat'-behaviour but that the internationalization has accelerated after the deregulation, hence being carried out with 'big steps' rather than small steps. The analysis also shows that the mimetic behaviour is complemented by other types of internationalization behaviours. The differences in bank internationalization also mean that the effect of a financial crisis varies depending on how the banks have internationalized.
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| 7. |
- Ekman, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Understanding Enterprise Systems' Impact(s) on Business Relationships
- 2006
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Ingår i: Advances in Information Systems Development. - Boston, MA : Springer. - 9780387308340 ; , s. 591-602
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Enterprise systems (ESs), i.e. standardized applications supplied from software vendors such as SAP or Oracle, have been extensively employed by companies during the last decade. Today all Fortune 500 companies have, or are in the process of installing, this kind of information system. A wide-spread denotation for these applications is enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. But the broad utilization use of these software packages in business is rendering this labelling too narrow (Davenport 2000).A central aspect of ESs is their multi-dimensional characteristics. Based upon a (virtual) common database, ESs allow all business activities to be observed throughout the company (i.e. an operation performed by marketing may be displayed in finance; purchasing; supply functions, and so forth, in real-time). But with this high visibility and extensive information processing capacity comes the drawback that the information system as a whole may be hard to grasp (Markus 2004, Davenport 1998).When implementing an ES package, the company can select from different industry-adapted modules providing core functionalities (i.e. that support proc¬es¬ses such as production, supply chain management, and R&D), as well among complementary modules to be used in support processes (such as finance, HR, marketing, etc). In fact, along with Internet, ESs can be seen as the most important technology to have attained wide-spread use during the last decade (Seddon et al. 2003). For a company this means that the integration of an ES into its business operations by neces-sity will, to a greater or lesser extent, affect the business activities that are carried out. For companies, these business activities have been observed by researchers to take place within relatively stable, long-term oriented business relationships with specific well-known counterparts (Håkansson and Snehota 1995). This means that ESs, especially with the high level of usage in companies (Seddon et al. 2003), become an interesting research object not only from a company-focused perspective, but also from a broader perspective, allowing business relationships to unique suppliers and customers to be included.But how can ESs be captured and understood in this setting? This question will be discussed and elaborated on in the following sections, leading to some recommendations on relevant issues
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| 8. |
- Hadjikhani, Amjad, 1946-, et al.
(författare)
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Direct and indirect impact of political activities on business performance : the case of the European Union and Swedish small firms
- 2016
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Ingår i: International Journal of Business Environment. - : InderScience Publishers. - 1740-0589 .- 1740-0597. ; 8:1, s. 1-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, the consequences of decisions by the EU on SMEs' business performance are analysed. The business network approach is employed to study how the coercive or supportive behaviour of political organisations directly and indirectly affect SMEs' business performance. The result highlights that the direct effect refers to the immediate interaction between the political and business units, whereas the indirect concerns the outcome of political units on other business firms that SMEs have relationships with. To test the assumed direct and indirect effect on business performance, four hypotheses are formulated and tested with PLS using data from a quantitative survey involving 134 SMEs in Sweden and the EU. The paper emphasises the importance of a firm's business relationships as being affected by coercive actions of political organisations, as well as receiving the full benefit from those actions of a supportive nature.
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| 9. |
- Hadjikhani, Annoch, 1985-
(författare)
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Expectations in the internationalization process – The case of two Swedish banks’ foreign activities 1995-2010
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Studies of banks’ internationalization are few, particularly of Swedish banks’ and studies holding a process view of internationalization. This is surprising considering the fact that banks’ have an incredibly important role in our societies. Furthermore, the Swedish banks have until recently been restricted from internationalizing. However today the four largest Swedish banks have all become multinational. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the two Swedish banks Handelsbanken and Swedbank’s internationalization process between the years 1995-2010. This achieved by covering all relevant foreign markets that the banks are active in during their internationalization process in a longitudinal cross-case study based on archival sources (i.e. newspaper articles, press releases and annual reports). The analytical framework is constructed from behavioral theories and follows a process view of firms’ internationalization by applying the concepts of market commitment, market knowledge and expectation. Latterly firms’ expectation is included to take the future dimension into account in understanding firms’ internationalization behavior.Conclusions made in this thesis show that the banks internationalization process has some semblances but otherwise they show completely different internationalization behaviors. The study shows that firms’ internationalization process is bound to what the firm will expect of the future and that this expectation is very different based on what knowledge the firm has and its experience. Furthermore the study evidences through empirical findings that the internationalization process of firms’ is also strongly related to the state of the market, i.e. stable or unstable.
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| 10. |
- Hadjikhani, Amjad, et al.
(författare)
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Impact of international political units on small business firms’ relationships – the case of EU and Swedish small firms
- 2009
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Ingår i: International Journal of Business Environment. - 1740-0589 .- 1740-0597. ; 2:4, s. 435-452
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the field of globalisation, there have emerged political organisations with international missions, affecting business firms. The focus of this study is on how international organisations such as the European Union (EU) influence small firms conducting business in Sweden. The study employs a business network approach and aims to develop a theoretical view to study how the coercive and supportive behaviour of such a political organisation affects business relationships. The theoretical view is constructed in two analytical parts: the focal business relationship and the political connections. The business relationship is explored by means of seven dimensions and the political connection is investigated by coercive and supportive relationships. In the study, statistical information retrieved in a survey involving 134 Swedish SMEs is analysed using PLS techniques. The results of the analysis highlight the view of heterogeneity, not only for the types of connections, but also for the different types of relationship dimensions.
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