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- Ludvigsson Wallette, Martin
(författare)
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In (re)search of corporate governance models between markets and hierarchies : The governance of franchising
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research project started with the purpose of understanding the importance of corporate governance in franchising. The dissertation includes four articles all of which describe the governance of franchising.The first article is a review study using a strategy of systematic search to produce a systematic review. The second article, building on the first, expands the conceptual domain within the governance of franchising. The third is an empirical contribution by an exploratory study with theory development. Finally, the fourth article evaluates governance of the findings in articles 1-3 in an empirical model. The first article explores whether corporate governance could be a factor explaining the success or failure of franchising networks. The article presents for the first time a review of articles at the interface of corporate governance and franchising. This division enables a detailed analysis of current research in the field. The contribution of article 1 is that the literature largely ignores the traditional view of corporate governance when examining, the structure and performance of franchising networks. Additionally, article 1 finds that franchising literature covers governance topics when discussing the governance modes and provides grounds for developing corporate governance theories. The second article aims at expanding the conceptual domain within governance of franchising. Article 2 explores at which levels a franchise company is viewed and suggests a conceptual model that expands the concept of governance in franchising to include higher-order ownership structures. The article provides guidance for future work that expands corporate governance and franchising scholarship by highlighting some research questions of significant interest related to an emerging view of governance in franchising. Furthermore, it clarifies the differing perspectives on corporate governance and franchising. The contribution of the second article offers a wider corporate governance view, together with the franchisees that invest their own capital and maintain their own balance sheets, providing a rich context to explore governance issues. The theoretical insight has contributed to a new expanded franchise corporate governance framework model for analyzing the area of governance in franchising.The third article explores the absence of understanding of the role and influence of the individual members in the governance processes of these franchise companies. Furthermore, this qualitative study of how the ownership and governance of the firm affect the franchise system shows the limited knowledge we have within the area of governance in franchise companies. The findings revealed to suggest that governance and ownership transform how franchise businesses are directed, by applying contracts as a buffer between the governance layers but also with are lational governance view not only from the franchisor but also at the board of director’s level. The contribution of this empirical data suggestsinteresting results that franchise depends on ownership. In conclusion, this paper shows that the choice of franchise can depend on the ownership situation. While franchise research has historically mainly focused on the channel governance of the relationship between the franchisee and the franchisor and from a theoretical perspective, the summary of the interviews and data in the third article points us to a new typology for the governance situation. The fourth article considered world sales, productivity, and franchise levels as dependent variables. If the company has survived at the top, it provides an indirect basis for an effective franchising model. In this study, I examined the effects of corporate governance by studying ownership changes impacton firm franchise performance. It is commonly assumed that superior corporate governance provides strategic and operational benefits and should result in superior financial performance. The fourth article focused on the 139 largest US-based international firms in the franchise retail sector over 10 years, conducting a panel fixed effect regression-based analysis. The article emphasizes on understanding how ownership characteristics have led to financially significant effects on the level of franchising. The findings provided evidence that changes in ownership governance in franchising firms create higher levels of franchising. If there is a change in ownership structure the franchise performance in terms of world sales is significantly increased and indicating that ownership structure change affects franchising performance and thus supports the research question. The fourth article fills the gaps by examining the role of ownership governance and how that affects franchise companies. Additionally, this article’s research opens up for future examination of the endurance of the stable plural-form theory.
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| 2. |
- Ribca, Iuliana, 1993-
(författare)
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Lignin-Based Thermosets with Tunable Mechanical and Morphological Properties : A Study of Structure-Property Relationships
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Nowadays, there is an urgent need to decrease our dependence on fossilresources and shift towards the use of renewable resources for advancingsustainable development. Utilizing renewable and bio-based raw materials,such as lignocellulosic biomass, for designing new materials is a promisingapproach to promote this objective. The main components of lignocellulosicbiomass are cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Lignin is the most abundantaromatic biopolymer in nature and it is produced on a large scale fromchemical pulping processes as technical lignin. Lignin has the potential as asustainable and renewable alternative to fossil-based aromatics in variousapplications, e.g. thermosetting resins.Technical lignin has a complex and heterogeneous structure, with arelatively low chemical reactivity. It is characterized by a high dispersity, thepresence of various functional groups that are unevenly distributed along thelignin chains, and various interunit linkages between the monoaromatics. Toovercome the challenges associated with lignin heterogeneity, technicallignin can be fractionated and/or chemically modified.In this work, LignoBoost Kraft lignin was used as a starting material toproduce lignin-based thiol-ene thermosets. Firstly, lignin was fractionatedusing two approaches: 1) sequential solvent fractionation, and 2) microwaveassistedextraction. These fractionation approaches enabled access to ligninfractions with unique and tunable properties. Subsequently, lignin waschemically modified, in particular through allylation. Two allylation reagentswere used: allyl chloride and diallyl carbonate. The use of allyl chlorideenables a selective allylation of the phenolic OH groups, leaving the aliphaticand carboxylic acid OH groups unmodified. On the other hand, diallylcarbonate can react with all the aforementioned OH groups, leading to ahigher degree of allylation. Subsequently, allylated lignin was thermallycross-linked with various polyfunctional thiols, leading to thiol-enethermosets. The structure-property relationships of the thermosets wereinvestigated by varying several parameters, including the lignin source,fractionation approach, chemical modification, and thiol cross-linker. Byadjusting these parameters, various thermosets with tunable mechanical andmorphological properties were produced. Understanding the structurepropertyrelationships of these bio-based materials is crucial for identifyingpotential applications.
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| 3. |
- Stephan, Katharina, 1986-
(författare)
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Biogenesis of the bc1 complex in mitochondria
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Mitochondria perform a variety of tasks, but the function they are most prominent for is the energy conversion to form ATP, the universal energy equivalent of the cell. The majority of this ATP is created by the oxidative phosphorylation system, consisting of the respiratory chain and the ATP synthase. These elaborate machineries channel electrons through the respiratory complexes and thereby generate an electrochemical gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane. This, so called proton motive force, is in turn utilized by the ATP Synthase to produce ATP.A particularity of the oxidative phosphorylation complexes is that their subunits are derived from two genetic sources. As a result, and the fact that the respiratory chain complexes contain redox cofactors, the biogenesis of these enzymes is challenging and involves multiple, highly coordinated and regulated assembly steps. For the obligate homodimeric bc1 complex, a handful of assembly factors are known and its assembly can be divided into distinct assembly intermediates. In this work we provided insights into the maturation of the catalytic subunit cytochrome b. We revealed that the insertion of the redox active heme b groups is sequential and that it depends on the interaction with the early assembly factor Cbp4. With successful insertion of both heme bs, the binding of the structural subunit Qcr7 is necessary for stabilization and further assembly.Furthermore, we were able to delineate the dimerization event in detail. We could establish that the interaction of the two matrix subunits, Cor1 and Cor2, with the bc1 complex assembly intermediate II, as well as the dissociation of Cbp4, are the triggering point for dimerization.In our subsequent work we investigated the roles of the fairly uncharacterized assembly factor Bca1 and its interplay with the structural subunit Qcr7. We could demonstrate that Bca1 interacts early and transiently during assembly and is an important factor for efficient assembly. Additionally, we could show that Qcr7 is not only a structural subunit but also serves as an assembly checkpoint for the maturation of the bc1 complex.With our work we could illustrate the necessity for basic biochemical research within the model organism yeast, as the fundamental molecular mechanisms are well conserved. This is exemplified by our work on UQCC3, the human orthologue of the bc1 complex assembly factor Cbp4.
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