The governance of social cohesion: innovative coordination practices in public management

Introduction This report presents the main findings and policy implications of the COCOPS Work Package 5 (WP5) “The Governance of Social Cohesion: Innovative Coordination Practices in Public Management” (April 2012-May 2013). WP5 focused on searching and identifying innovative coordination practices and related steering instruments in public management in European public sectors, analysing their functioning and assessing their contribution to countering public-sector fragmentation and delivering public value. The WP was led by the University of Bergen (Professor Per Lægreid and Dr. Lise H. Rykkja) in close cooperation with Tallinn University of Technology (Professor Tiina Randma-Liiv and Dr. Külli Sarapuu). In total eleven COCOPS partners were engaged in WP5 (see Table 1). In addition, four non-COCOPS researchers working on the public sector coordination contributed to the study of emerging coordination practices

International strategic alliances of Thai financial enterprises: a study of the formation process

This thesis is aimed at exploring and understanding important issues concerning the formation process of international strategic alliances of Thai financial enterprises (TFEs). International alliance strategies have been deployed as an important device to stabilise and internationalise a number of TFES. In addition, as the Thai financial industry has been growing rapidly and changing over the past few decades, the industry was chosen as representative of an industry that is dynamic and in a period of transformation. The study focuses on TFEs' international strategic alliances that had been established up to the end of 1996. This period is considered to be the introductory and growth stages of the Thai financial industry. The main context of the research involves the formation stage of international alliances of Thai financial enterprises, comprising motives, criteria, and the timing of alliance development. The motives and underlying reasons stimulating international alliances, major considerations in foreign partner selection, and the strategic timing of alliance arrangements lie at the heart of the research. Moreover, co-operative performance of the alliances also supplements the above issues. The final conclusions of the thesis are drawn from a comparative analysis of the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The empirical data obtained from both surveys and case study research are cross-examined and discussed. The main conclusions of the study are as follows. Thai financial enterprises (TFEs) seemed to pay significant attention to both major aspects of alliance motives, including opportunistic (offensive) and risk-concerned (defensive) approaches. In greater detail, these motives are composed of market-defensive motives, resource-defensive motives, market-offensive motives, and resource-defensive motives. This was due to intense competitive pressures from both domestic and foreign markets as well as the increasingly unpredictable demand conditions in the industry. However, as the economic performance of the Thai financial industry had been prosperous for decades and the long-term view of the industry remained promising, TFEs' cross-border alliances were also aimed at acquiring and utilising partners' resources as well as further advancing their market and operational scope

Co-creation, innovation, decision-making, tech-transfer, and sustainability actions

Funding Information: Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on). This work was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program [H2020-SC5-2019–2]—869520 NextLand, [H2020-SPACE-202]—101004362 NextOcean, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UIDB/00124/2020 and Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016), POR Lisboa and POR Norte (Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016). Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).European Community (EC) Horizon-funded projects and Earth Observation-based Consortia aim to create sustainable value for Space, Land, and Oceans. They typically focus on addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many of these projects (e.g. Commercialization and Innovation Actions) have an ambitious challenge to ensure that partners share core competencies to simultaneously achieve technological and commercial success and sustainability after the end of the EC funds. To achieve this ambitious challenge, Horizon projects must have a proper governance model and a systematized process that can manage the existing paradoxical tensions involving numerous European partners and their respective agendas and stakeholders. This article presents the VCW-Value Creation Wheel (Lages in J Bus Res 69: 4849–4855, 2016), as a framework that has its roots back in 1995 and has been used since 2015 in the context of numerous Space Business, Earth Observation, and European Community (EC) projects, to address complex problems and paradoxical tensions. In this article, we discuss six of these paradoxical tensions that large Horizon Consortia face in commercialization, namely when managing innovation ecosystems, co-creating, taking digitalization, decision-making, tech-transfer, and sustainability actions. We discuss and evaluate how alliance partners could find the optimal balance between (1) cooperation, competition, and coopetition perspectives; (2) financial, environmental, and social value creation; (3) tech-push and market-pull orientations; (4) global and local market solutions; (5) functionality driven and human-centered design (UX/UI); (6) centralized and decentralized online store approaches. We discuss these challenges within the case of the EC H2020 NextLand project answering the call for greening the economy in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We analyze NextLand Online Store, and its Business and Innovation Ecosystem while considering the input of its different stakeholders, such as NextLand’s commercial team, service providers, users, advisors, EC referees, and internal and external stakeholders. Preliminary insights from a twin project in the field of Blue Economy (EC H2020 NextOcean), are also used to support our arguments. Partners, referees, and EC officers should address the tensions mentioned in this article during the referee and approval processes in the pre-grant and post-grant agreement stages. Moreover, we propose using the Value Creation Wheel (VCW) method and the VCW meta-framework as a systematized process that allows us to co-create and manage the innovation ecosystem while engaging all the stakeholders and presenting solutions to address these tensions. The article concludes with theoretical implications and limitations, managerial and public policy implications, and lessons for Horizon Europe, earth observation, remote sensing, and space business projects.publishersversionpublishe

Strategies to Improve Business Performance with Information from Social Media

In the past 3 decades, China has experienced rapid economic growth. The China retail market reached renminbi (RMB) 29,651 billion in 2016, up by 10.4% from 2015. Using traditional ways that developed before the Internet era to acquire information regarding customers\u27 changing preferences for products and services in a fast-moving business world is insufficient to support management in the retail industry to make informed strategic decisions. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore successful customer-centric strategies that business leaders used to improve business performance with marketing information acquired from social media. The population comprised business leaders from 5 different companies in the retail industry in Southern China who have successful experience in improving business performance with the marketing information acquired from social media. The conceptual framework for this study was built upon the diffusion of innovations theory. The data were collected through semistructured interviews, social media sites, and analyzed using Yin\u27s 5-step data analysis process for case studies to identify themes. The findings revealed 3 emergent themes: knowledge strategies, persuasion and decision strategies, and implementation strategies. The findings from the study may contribute to positive social change when local employment opportunities can increase through increased employee spending in Southern China

Evaluasi Heuristik Aplikasi Open Source Groupware Sebagai Solusi Praktis e-Government

Tulisan ini bertujuan memaparkan evaluasi heuristik terhadap empat aplikasi open source Groupware berdasarkan sepuluh prinsip heuristik Nielsen. Groupware sebagai Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) sangat dibutuhkan untuk mendukung e-Government mengingat tuntutan era globalisasi menuju transformasi knowledge-based organization. Hasil perbandingan akan digunakan sebagai acuan dalam tahap lanjutan yaitu pembuatan paket aplikasi Groupware siap instal yang terintegrasi pada server berbasis linux. Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah kesimpulan mengenai aplikasi Groupware yang paling sesuai dengan kebutuhan pengguna berdasarkanperbandingan usability heuristic Nielsen

The effect of staff development and policies on the performance of immigration personnel in northern Nigerian borders

Border management has become a central issue in the contemporary global arena. Globalization has led to increasing flows of people, goods and services across regional borders. The porosity of borders in Nigeria which is loosely patrolled, resulted in massive influx of illegal immigrant and many other form of organized border criminal activities especially in north-eastern regions. Several initiatives on coordinated border management had been made both at regional and continental level with the purpose to address the issues related to border management. Yet there are growing number of concerns on how border will be managed effectively. Border management means the administration of borders, concerns with rules, procedures, processes, and techniques regulating the activities and traffic across defined border zones. The main objective of this study is to investigate the challenges and find out lasting solutions to the problems militating against the performance of border management personnel in Nigeria immigration service. The study unit of analysis is zone C of north-eastern Nigerian borders. Mixed-method of data collection was employed in this research of both quantitative and qualitative techniques, as a better means of problems solving than either method, where by number of questionnaires was distributed in the field. On the qualitative aspect an in-depth interview of face to face was employed to the study target population. The study empirically tested 4 hypotheses from the quantitative point of view in which 3 are supported and only 1 is not supported. The result indicated that there is significance relationship between organizational policies, infrastructural facilities and staff welfare to staff performance, while staff development has no significant effect to staff performance. Furthermore, result from the qualitative findings reveal that shortage of manpower, lack of training and re-training programme, inadequate provision of infrastructural facilities and lack of recruitment process based on merit and competency as well as porosity of borders impinge the realization of performance of personnel. The study concludes that government should put effective institutional framework that will immensely help in improving performance of Nigeria Immigration Service which would serve as panacea to border management crises bordering north-eastern Nigeria and the country at large

Corporate social responsibility report

Altres títols : Sustainability report

Ethics and taxation : a cross-national comparison of UK and Turkish firms

This paper investigates responses to tax related ethical issues facing busines

Leadership Strategies of a Multinational Enterprise in the West Bank

Business leaders require the appropriate strategies and knowledge to successfully grow their companies through international expansion. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the West Bank in Palestine often encounter complex barriers as the executives of the firms explore business opportunities in foreign countries. The objective of this single case study was to explore, in depth, the perspectives of business leaders from a population of executives of an MNE in the West Bank. The conceptual framework used in the study was cultural intelligence. The selected multinational business leaders participated in semistructured, face-to-face interviews followed by member checking. The 2 executives of the MNE shared their experiences and knowledge concerning the internationalization processes of their company. The data analysis process followed Yin\u27s 5-phase analysis cycle; it entailed an analysis of interview responses followed by member checking and a review of administrative documents of the MNE under study. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: international knowledge and adaption of local conditions, strategic partnerships, and diversification and specialization. The findings from the study could contribute to positive social change by encouraging executives to explore business opportunities in the West Bank, resulting in an increase in employment rate and better living standards for the residents

Kresge Foundation 2010-2011 Annual Report

Contains an introduction to Kresge's strategy; board chair's letter; president's letter; foundation timeline; program information; grant summary, including geographic distribution; grants lists; financial summary; and lists of board members and staff