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- Alshaibi, Alsedieg
(author)
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Business Relationships Between Local Firms and MNCs in a less Developing Country : The Case of Libyan Firms
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- International business relationships have been widely researched over the last three decades. Themajor attention of these studies, no matter what their theoretical perspective, concerns the MNCs inthe less developing countries (LDCs). Studies that illustrate how firms in LDCs behave regardinginteraction with MNCs are slim. Therefore, this study focuses on firms in LDCs, namely Libyan firms,and their relationships with MNCs. The study reflects not only on the relationships between the localfirms with MNCs but also the impacts of other interrelated business and non-business units on theserelationships. The study employs business network theory for industrial marketing and develops amodel applicable for studying such a market.The empirical study employs a survey method which examines 60 Libyan firms’ relationships withforeign suppliers containing more than 300 questions. In the empirical part, the study shows that therelationships like technological adaptation, technological cooperation and information exchange wereawarded low values. The measures on the other hand show a high value of impact from the politicalactors and even activities in the contextual environment. The study shows in detail where and howthe political actions influence business relationships. These impacts from the local environment affectlocal firms more than the foreign suppliers, and thus have some bearing on the MNCs and local firms’relationship weaknesses and strengths.The thesis’ conceptual contribution stands on development of new notions in business network theoryby integration of the contextual environment, in other words, network environment, and examinationof their impact on the strength of the focal business relationship. The study further contributesknowledge, not only for firms and politicians in LDCs to understand the consequence of their actions,but also provides deep information for MNCs to understand issues like why firms in LDCs behave ina specific way. Such understandings facilitate the development of cooperation. The study providesinformation about a number of characteristics which are specific for the business networks of such amarket which is dependent on only one resource like oil. While most studies in the field ofinternational business regard the business activities of MNCs, more research is needed to also observethe behaviour of firms from LDCs to gain deeper knowledge on the relationship between the MNCsand local firms from LDCs. The role of political actors and the influence of dependency on one soletype of resources and aspects like change in the prices of this resource seem to be important, but arequite neglected in research in international business.
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| 2. |
- Dahlin, Peter, 1981-
(author)
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Turbulence in Business Networks : A Longitudinal Study of Mergers, Acquisitions and Bankruptcies Involving Swedish IT-companies
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The end of the twentieth centry, and the beginning of the twenty-first, was a revolving period with many mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies among Swedish IT-companies. Such events are likely to affect more than just the companies directly involved, i.e. the bankrupt and consolidating parties, and this thesis considers the contextual embeddedness of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies by studying them in a business network setting.The primary aim of this thesis is to further the understanding of business network change and its underlying dynamics. A business network is a conceptual description of the interrelatedness of companies, which makes them problematic to describe and understand. This thesis suggests a force-based approach to business network change, which focuses on the forces underlying the change rather than the actual alterations of the business network. The suggested approach emphasizes the change and enables an exploration and description of business network change based on its underlying forces, linked to form a change sequence. The events that occur and the forces they give rise to can be used to describe the character of such business network change sequences.To enable a study of a change sequence within the Swedish IT-related business network, this thesis will use a technique designed to gather information about events and parts of the business network structure by systematizing data from news items describing mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies involving Swedish IT-companies during the years 1994-2003. This data structuration technique enables a longitudinal and retrospective study of a business network change sequence. The analysis indicates a high possibility of inter-linkages between mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies involving Swedish IT-companies, and describes a business network change sequence with high intensity and wide extension, which is the type of business network change with the highest potential impact, here referred to as ‘turbulence in business networks’.
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| 3. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-
(author)
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Enterprise Systems & Business Relationships : The Utilization of IT in the Business with Customers and Suppliers
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis deals with how companies utilize their enterprise systems in their business relationships. The study’s starting point is enterprise systems that basically are standardised information systems that the company can acquire from software vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Enterprise systems aim to integrate and manage all the company’s data and it can also be linked to its business partners.The thesis contains two case studies of how a focal company utilizes its enterprise system in their business relationships. To accomplish this, an analytical framework based upon the combination of an information systems (IS) and a business relationship perspective is developed and applied. The IS perspective follows an ‘ensemble view of technology’ approach which describes the use of information systems as embedded in a both technical and social context. The business relationship perspective is founded in empirical studies of industrial companies. Basically, business relationships are unique and based on the companies’ exchanges. It also involves behavioural elements as trust, commitment, adaptations and interdependencies between the partners.The two case studies cover the business relationships between ten companies and the character of the studied business relationships varies. The results show that enterprise systems are mainly focused on the companies’ internal activities. The exchanges in the business relationships are either carried out without the enterprise system or are supported by some complementary information system. Enterprise systems are thus mainly seen as production systems. This can be explained by the heritage from former material and resource planning (MRP) systems. An alternative explanation can be that business relationships are unique and require continuous adaptations and a mutual orientation. Enterprise systems require structural data rendering them difficult to use for the activities of a business relationship. The users then develop other, individual, applications that handle what is needed in their ongoing business. The threat is that information can be lost on a company level. The challenge is therefore to investigate the complementary information systems functions to see if it is possible to extend the enterprise system to include them. To be worth its epithet, the enterprise system must facilitate all the business activities found in the companies business relationships.
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| 6. |
- Land, Rikard, et al.
(author)
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A Quantitative Survey on Software In-house Integration
- 2006
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- As organizations merge or collaborate closely, an important question is how their existing software assets should be handled. If these previously separate organizations are in the same business domain - they might even have been competitors - it is likely that they have developed similar software systems. To rationalize, these existing software assets should be integrated, in the sense that similar features should be implemented only once.We have previously made qualitative observations on this topic. This report describes the follow-up study, which was performed in the form of a questionnaire aimed at validating and quantifying the previous observations. This report describes the research design, present the questionnaire together with all responses, and make some statistical analyses. This will form a basis for further publications with deeper analyses.
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| 7. |
- Land, Rikard, et al.
(author)
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Software In-House Integration : Quantified Experiences from Industry
- 2006
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In: Proceedings 32nd Euromicro Conference onSoftware Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA). - 0769525946 ; , s. 198-205
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- When an organization faces new types of collaboration, for example after a company merger, there is a need to consolidate the existing in-house developed software. There are many high-level strategic decisions to be made, which should be based on as good foundation as possible, while these decisions must be made rapidly. Also, one must employ feasible processes and practices in order to get the two previously separate organizations to work towards a common goal. In order to study this topic, we previously performed an explorative and qualitative multiple case study, where we identified a number of suggested practices as well as other concerns to take into account. This paper presents a follow-up study, which aims at validating and quantifying these previous findings. This study includes a questionnaire distributed to in-house integration projects, aiming at validation of earlier findings. We compare the data to our previous conclusions, present observations on retirement of the existing systems and on the technical similarities of the existing systems. We also present some practices considered important but often neglected.
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