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- Adrem, Anders H
(author)
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Essays on Disclosure Practices in Sweden - Causes and Effects
- 1999
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This doctoral thesis examines the causes and effects of corporate disclosure practices. The thesis consists of four independent but related essays that collectively make up a country study for Sweden. The first essay aims to explain why some firms have a proactive disclosure strategy while others devote less resources and effort to disclosure and investor relations. Information about Swedish firms' disclosure strategies was collected by questionnaire. The results show that the probability of a firm claiming it has a proactive disclosure strategy increases with size, ownership dispersion and official listing on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, but decreases with service & retail sector affiliation. To validate the results obtained for the firms' claimed disclosure strategies, analyst ratings of the firms' disclosure strategies were used. These were also collected by questionnaire. The analysis of analyst ratings yielded similar results. Overall, the findings are interpreted to suggest that asymmetric information and agency costs as well as capital market pressures to a great extent determine and explain a firm's choice of disclosure strategy. The second essay investigates the influence of two distinct disclosure strategies, proactive and reactive, on voluntary annual report disclosures by small listed Swedish firms. The findings reveal that, after controlling for factors that may vary with voluntary annual report disclosure level, the proactive disclosure strategy, compared to the reactive disclosure strategy, has a primary influence on strategic information and on stock price information, a secondary influence on financial information, but no influence on social information. The third essay examines whether and how international capital market pressures influence voluntary disclosure decisions by Swedish manufacturing MNEs in the context of the annual report. The results show that, after controlling for size and two important dimensions of the multifaceted concept of multinationality, international capital market pressures significantly influence the extent of strategic annual report disclosure and in particular strategic segmental disclosures. The fourth essay examines the effect of disclosure strategy on analysts' decisions to follow a firm and the characteristics of analysts' earnings forecasts. The findings show that, after controlling for important factors in a firm's information environment, firms with a more active and informative disclosure strategy are followed by a larger pool of analysts and have lower forecast dispersion. The findings also show a positive but insignificant effect of disclosure strategy on forecast accuracy. Further, no empirical evidence of systematic optimism or pessimism in analyst forecasts is found, but there is a tendency among analysts to overreact to information from firms with a more active and informative disclosure strategy.
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| 3. |
- Alpenberg, Jan, 1964-, et al.
(author)
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Investeringar i mindre och medelstora tillverkande företag : drivkrafter, struktur, process och beslut
- 2005
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis deals with investment issues in connection to growth and expansion related decision processes in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. It focuses primarily on the empirical knowledge about the structure of the companies’ investments, the processes involved, and the investment behavior in this type of company. The Swedish sub-contracting companies and the manufacturing industry in general are facing new structural changes. There is also a clear trend towards fewer, but larger and more skilled, suppliers. These changes implies for instance that small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are facing dramatically increased demands with considerable and growing needs for investments. The development of an empirically grounded framework for investments in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies is an important part of this study’s conceptual contribution. The analysis points out the general importance of projects named super investments. This means large investments with great financial and strategic impact and which significantly affect the companies risk exposure. These projects has also proved to be of significant influential importance on the companies overall investment planning process. The results also shows that changes in the internal and external environments tend to influence the companies’ investments, with respect to both the initiation of new investment projects, the progression of these projects, and the management of and principles for decision-making in the form of analysis and investment logic. In short, the present study contributes with knowledge about the investment process by providing an overall picture of how decisions about investments are made in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. The study indicates that it is important to consider both conceptual and more practically oriented conditions related to the work of developing and finding suitable investment routines.
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| 4. |
- Altshuler, Liliya
(author)
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Competitive Capabilities of a Technology Born Global
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since the early 1980s, rapidly internationalizing start-ups have captured attention of the academia, media and institutions. These ’born global’ firms seem to disregard the traditionally established views of firm internationalization. In spite of the significant resource limitations, they manage to reach international markets rapidly and keep their competitive position in the long term, running against international players of various sizes with different levels of resource availability. A great majority of research so far has focused on the early start-up and rapid internationalisation stage of born globals’ development. The question of how these firms uphold a competitive advantage in the long term with their limited resources and a small size, while operating in various countries, remains under-researched. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, has been to describe and explain the organisational factors and processes that serve as the sources of competitive advantage of technology-based born globals in the long term. The view that knowledge-based capabilities are the key sources of competitive advantage of born globals has been accepted. A longitudinal process study of one successful Danish technology born global has been undertaken over the period of 3.5 years to define and research in detail the key capabilities that have been critical to the firm’s competitive advantage in the long term. The R&D-related, alliance, branding and managerial capabilities have been investigated in separate articles. This dissertation contributes to the field of international entrepreneurship, as well as to the fields of each functional capability in the study: R&D and innovation management, alliance management, brand management, managerial capabilities, knowledge management, and organisational learning.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Linn
(author)
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Pricing capability development and its antecedents
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Previous studies have convincingly argued that firms’ ability to efficiently utilize their resources is linked to the effectiveness of their routines and resources for pricing. The ability to appropriate value and achieve a more efficient resource utilization relative to competitors through routines and resources for pricing has been named pricing capability. If an effective pricing capability could enable a firm to achieve a more efficient resource utilization and gain a competitive advantage, the questions if, and if so how, managers are able to design pricing capabilities are highly relevant. However, previous studies have presented conflicting arguments regarding managers’ ability to design pricing capabilities and stated that pricing capabilities are protected by isolating mechanisms. I argue that both the antecedents of pricing capability development and managers’ ability to design pricing capabilities are unclear. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the antecedents of pricing capability development. The findings from this longitudinal case study of pricing capability development in five business units within “Technologica”, a multinational manufacturing firm acting on mature markets within business-to-business relations, provide empirical evidence of how managers are able to design pricing capabilities through their discretionary decision making. I propose that managerial governance choices, originating from individual managers’ perception concerning which pricing governance structure they perceive to be the most efficient and profitable, are key antecedents of pricing capability development. Also, I suggest that managers, through pricing governance arrangements, are able to tackle behavioral aspects among sales representatives that create obstacles for effective value appropriation. This study shows that one such behavioral aspect is sales representatives’ tendency to sometimes favor hedonic intrinsic motives over extrinsic incentives in customer meetings and, thus, prioritize a friendly, pleasant customer relation at the expense of profit maximization. I suggest that a better understanding for managers’ ability to develop organizational capabilities could be gained by shedding more light on the link between managers’ choices regarding capability governance structures and the designability of different types of organizational capabilities. Finally, I propose that different types of organizational capabilities differ in terms of manageability and imitability, and vary in their relevance for different firms depending on industry conditions.
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| 6. |
- Bergendahl, Jaqueline
(author)
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Entreprenörskapsresan genom beslutsprocesser i team, en elektronisk dagboksstudie i realtid
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A theoretical framework based on the process of how founders and members of a team make decisions during the establishment stage of their respective new ventures, is a relatively unexplored area in the entrepreneurship research field. I develop upon Sarasvathy’s (2001) framework, which is based upon the existence of two decision making processes; causation and effectuation, during the establishment phase of a new venture. I show that the founders and the members of each respective team do not stringently follow either the causation process or the effectuation process: Instead their focus varies between the causation and effectuation processes during the course of the venture establishment phase. I have found four critical factors, which affect the direction towards the use of causation or effectuation; the prototype, new business opportunities, parallel processes and the team. My theoretical development is: that the focus of the founders and the team members varies between causation and effectuation, they also apply causation and effectuation in a parallel manner, and that diverging goals affect the direction towards effectuation. I follow eight new ventures in their establishment stage, by means of electronic diaries, in the “Venture Lab” incubator at Lund University. An electronic diary routine was developed during the study; this was a particularly useful method in attaining information on how the teams were making their decisions in real time. It was apparent however that in diary based research, our knowledge on how to use electronic systems and how to make these systems user-friendly is still limited. In this respect the electronic diary routine was developed together with three groups of new venture founders in the incubator. I received evaluations and experiences of user-friendliness in the use of the electronic diaries from these groups. And conclude that these experiences create conditions for a user-friendly diary, with reliable answers and can be reached through; personal meetings with the users throughout the study, the development of the diary questions with the users and treating the diaries confidentially.
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| 7. |
- Bertilsson, Jon
(author)
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The Way Brands Work: Consumers' understanding of the creation and usage of brands
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- During the recent years the concept or phenomenon of brands and the importance ascribed to them by the traditional marketing discourse seems to have spread to the every day discourse of ordinary consumers. Consumers are therefore thought to posses some kind understanding of how brands as a phenomenon work. This study sets out to investigate how consumers construct such a brand understanding, and what such brand understanding contains. Prior consumer literature mainly conceptualizes consumers’ understanding construction as a vertical top-down process, where consumers either learn about consumption phenomenon from traditional socialization agents, or when the consumers are subjected to and individually handle the ideological infrastructure of a consumer culture. In this study it is however argued that a substantial part of consumers’ brand understanding construction is horizontal and occurs in consumers’ peer-to-peer micro level interactions. By employing a “Netnographic” method to capture and analyze young Swedish consumers’ online micro level interactions, I have managed to identified three major types of micro interactions, consultative, disputative and normative, in which consumers’ brand understanding is thought to be formed. Their brand understanding contained both cynical reasoning and underlying paradoxes. By being cynical of the workings of brands the consumers creates a cynical distance that enables them to both assume a critical stance towards brands as a phenomenon, simultaneously as they may confess to fully participate in the brand consumption game. Consumer cynicism concerning the workings of brands may not emancipate consumers from the structures of the market, but displaying cynical reason may be important to receive recognition from peers and to gain status positions in ones social group.
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| 8. |
- Bringselius, Louise
(author)
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Personnel Resistance in Public Professional Service Mergers: The Merging of Two National Audit Organizations
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The human side of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) – with focus particularly on resistance - has puzzled scholars for decades. Still, there is little discussion as regards to how the concept should be defined or understood. Often expressions of resistance, rather than its actual content, are described. What do personnel actually oppose? In this dissertation, the content, process, and context of resistance are explored in a broad and integrative approach. A personnel perspective is adopted. Observations from a longitudinal real-time case study on the merger of two national audit institutions in Sweden are reproduced. Analysis indicates that more attention needs to be directed to the moral side of M&A, in order to understand resistance. In the case study, management took the merger as an opportunity to increase organizational control, thereby breaking a psychological contract with personnel and turning to utilitarian values. Opposition to this united professionals in the two organizations, and resistance rapidly shifted from a horizontal to a vertical dimension. Such a displaced balance between trust and control may be a common reason for resistance in M&A. An evaluation of the competence and morality of the opposite party occurs, in order to establish a level of trust. With distrust comes a competition for control, since parties in this context may experience a moral obligation to optimize the new organization. A new definition of the resistance concept is suggested.
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| 9. |
- Bryntse, Karin
(author)
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Kontraktsstyrning i teori och praktik
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to develop an increased understanding of contract management as a mode of governance. A specific aim has been to explore how complex municipal services are managed by contract. A framework for analysis of contract management was developed by combining elements from interorganisational theories with different perspectives, such as transaction cost theories, network theories, and sociological institutional theories. The framework was applied in empirical studies of contract management of technical services in local authorities in Sweden, England and Germany. A follow-up study was carried out after four years. The empirical findings revealed a mixture of different governance mechanisms. Competition and conditionality were combined with trust and continuity. Detailed specifications and formal contracts were combined with a flexible and problem-solving approach to variations. Local agreements were combined with standardised contract conditions. Short contracts were combined with long-term relationships. There were differences in the style of contract management between large and small organisations, between stable services and services characterised by uncertainty and risk, and between countries with different societal systems. The style of management changed significantly within four years, from a stronger emphasis on price competition and adversial pressure to an emphasis on quality and partnership. A general conclusion is that contract management can be regarded as a mixture of governance mechanisms of opposite character, creating a balance of co-operation and competition. It is proposed that formal procedures can be seen as enhancing the evolution of trust in complex relationships. This contradicts the common view of formalism as an obstacle and opposing feature to trust. The use of standard contract conditions also indicates that contract relationships are partially constructed at an aggregate level. This confirms that contract management has to be analysed in a societal context. The general change of style of contract management within four years indicates that there might be general patterns of contract management, which change over time.
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| 10. |
- Carleheden, Sten-Åke B
(author)
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Telemonopolens strategier : en studie av telekommunikationsmonopolens strategiska beteende vid liberalisering av teleoperatörsbranschen
- 1999
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this thesis the strategic behaviour of the three operators (Televerket/Telia, PTT Telecom and BT) on strong technological development and deregulation of the business during a period of fifteen years have been described, interpreted and analysed. Some thirty more operators have also been investigated in this respect - however not in depth. The strategic behaviour of the operators have been compared with the behaviour of the operators of the companies in three other businesses. The ananlysis was carried through along two dimensions. In the one dimension the strategic orientation is focused and in the other the strategic method. In this way the PTOs could be classified. The analysis revealed that the PTOs changed their strategies in response to environmental shifts. It further revealed that the PTOs had to pass through certain phases which formed a pattern and could be expressed in terms of Domain defence, Domain offence and Domain creation. In their basic behaviour the PTOs showed great similarities in spite of differences in their prerequisites. On a more detailed level also differences emerged. A comparison between the operator business and the other three industry groupings proved great similarities in the basic behaviour. On a more detailed level the similarities became primarily industry/group specific.
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