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- Ebadzadeh Semnani, Sedigheh Sarah
(author)
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Trust in Different Types of Organizational Relationships : A Social Capital Perspective
- 2016
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)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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| 2. |
- Hosseini, Mojtaba, 1981-
(author)
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Firm-level entrepreneurship and the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises
- 2013
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)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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| 3. |
- Miciol, Frank-Gilles, 1958-
(author)
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Hur kulturen påverkar Svensk-Franska affärsrelationer : En studie av gemensamma industriella projekt mellan SAAB Aerospace i Linköping och Dassault Aviation i Paris
- 2013
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Globaliseringen av affärsrelationer har lett till att individer och företag med olika kulturell bakgrund möts i en mycket större utsträckning än vad som skedde för några decennier sedan. Svenska och franska företag dras med i den globala strömmen: de gemensamma affärsrelationerna, bilaterala projekten och mötena blir alltmer omfattande och intensivare, vilket också innebär att de kulturella skillnaderna mellan nationaliteterna blir kännbara, och de orsakar både problem och möjligheter.Det aktuella forskningsprojektet syftar till att utreda vad som kännetecknar den svenska respektive den franska affärskulturen, samt att studera vilka skillnader i dessa kulturer som påverkar gemensamma samarbetsprocesser. Studien baseras på flera fall av industriella projekt mellan SAAB Aerospace i Linköping och Dassault Aviation i Paris, där flygingenjörer utvecklar högteknologiska produkter.Två olika världar. Studien visar att svenskar respektive fransmän utvecklas i två olika världar. Även om de studerade företagen och deras ingenjörer delar samma tekniska kultur, driver de sina projekt på olika sätt, och skillnaderna kommer till uttryck ofta i samband med gemensamma beslutsprocesser, med tids- och energislukande missförstånd som följd. Besluten tas på olika nivåer, på olika sätt, vid olika tidpunkter och har olika betydelse och bindningskraft om man är i Sverige eller i Frankrike.Olikheter betyder också möjligheter. Man skall dock inte alltid betrakta dessa skillnader som ett problem. En ökad förståelse för varandras mentalitet kan leda dels till att krockar undviks, och att man kan dra fördel av skillnaderna på ett konstruktivt sätt. Den aktuella studien visar att den franska retoriska seden är väl anpassad för att hantera abstrakta frågor samt för att främja innovation. De mer konsensuella svenskarna i sin tur är svårslagna när det gäller medarbetares involvering, samt för att förverkliga idéer och visioner. Olikheter mellan den franska respektive den svenska kulturen kan då komplettera varandra och leda till synergier som kan gagna båda parterna, för ett framgångsrikt samarbete bortom våra gränser.
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