The tutorial for post-graduate students, competitors

The tutorial contains necessary material for preparation for examination of a candidate minimum on philosophy and science methodology

How does a company overcome a declining performance through strategic internationalization decisions? : the long-term growth strategies of SUMOL+COMPAL

The following dissertation has its main research focus on SUMOL+COMPAL’s business performance between two-time frames. The first one between 2008 and 2012 characterized by declining performances immediately after the merger between Sumolis and Compal in 2008, a period of recession in the Portuguese national territory, marked by a very strong macroeconomic crisis. The second time frame, from 2013 until now, one of performance recovery, is analysed, presenting the strategies which made such positive turnaround possible. Through strategic internationalization decisions allied to continuous and disruptive innovation, SUMOL+COMPAL was not only able to survive one of the harshest recessions hitting its main market (Portugal), but to come out of it a stronger, more dynamic and international company. By linking theoretical concepts to a real case of positive performance recovery by a declining company, this dissertation will present itself as a value-added material for any strategic, international and innovation area, enabling teachers and students to incur in constructive discussions and debates.A presente dissertação tem como foco principal o desempenho da Sumol + Compal ao longo de dois períodos distintos. O primeiro, entre 2008 e 2012, que se caracterizou por um declínio de performance imediatamente após a fusão entre a Sumolis e a Compal em 2008, período de recessão no território nacional português, marcado por uma forte crise macroeconómica. O segundo período, desde 2013 até ao presente, um de recuperação do desempenho positivo, é analisado, evidenciando as estratégias que possibilitaram esta recuperação. Através de decisões estratégicas de internacionalização aliadas a uma inovação contínua e disruptiva, a SUMOL+COMPAL não conseguiu apenas sobreviver a uma das recessões mais fortes a atingir o seu principal mercado (Portugal), como se tornou uma empresa mais forte, dinâmica e internacional. Ao estabelecer uma conexão entre conceitos teóricos e um caso real de recuperação de desempenho positivo por parte de uma empresa em declínio, esta dissertação apresentar-se-á como um material de valor acrescentado a qualquer área estratégica, internacional e de inovação, permitindo a professores e alunos incorrerem em discussões e debates construtivos

Definição de território de vendas: estudo aplicado a uma empresa de comercialização e distribuição de bebidas

F60, R12A crescente necessidade de as empresas otimizarem os seus processos, tem levado a que a comunidade científica se dedique cada vez mais ao estudo dos processos logísticos, nomeadamente no que diz respeito à definição de territórios de vendas. Apesar dos estudos já existentes referentes a esta problemática, torna-se necessário que estes sejam cada vez mais desenvolvidos, de modo a que se obtenham mais soluções para serem aplicadas em casos reais, que se ajustem às características e necessidades próprias do problema em causa. Nesse sentido, estudou-se a definição de territórios de vendas para o caso real de uma empresa de comercialização e distribuição de bebidas, cliente da "Wide Scope" (empresa da área de sistemas informáticos aliados à logística). Assim, foi desenvolvida uma heurística construtiva com o objetivo de definir territórios de venda equilibrados em termos de volume de vendas financeiro, mas também em termos de distância e tempo. Para isso foram estudados métodos já existentes na literatura para este tema, de forma a poderem ser alterados conforme as características do presente trabalho. Os resultados obtidos permitiram concluir que a heurística constrói territórios de venda equilibrados, principalmente no que diz respeito ao volume de venda alocado a cada território. Deste modo, a empresa em estudo poderá pôr em prática territórios de vendas cujos vendedores tenham um trabalho equilibrado, permitindo assim a sua satisfação e a otimização do seu processo de vendas.As companies thrive to optimize their processes, the study of the logistics processes, more specifically, the definition of sale territory, has been growing among the scientific community. Despite the past research regarding this problem, it is necessary to continue to address this issue, in order to develop solutions that can be adapted to the needs and characteristics of the problem concerned in real cases. Therefore, the definition of sales territories was studied for a real case of a commercial and distribution of beverages company, customer of the company Wide Scope (an information system company tied to logistics). Thus, a constructive heuristic was developed with the objective of defining balanced territories of sales in terms of financial volume, distance and time. To do so, this research reviewed existent methods in the literature and adapted them accordingly to the characteristics of the present work. The obtained results concluded that the heuristic creates balanced territory of sales, specially regarding the volume of sales allocated to each territory. Hence, the company presented in this study may implement sales territories whose sellers have a balanced work, and therefore allowing their satisfaction and the optimization of their sales process

The decisive reset: attainable governance for revitalising democracy

To improve democratic legitimacy, successful resolution of public policy challenges has to emerge from highly pressurised political predicaments. Increasing civic functionality requires integrative Civil Service practice, building trust in adaptive oversight. With the task of effective governance stretching out-of-reach in straining institutional arrangements, a proposition is developed for an “Attainable Governance” reset to revitalise democracy. Motivated by the need for progress that is sensitive to the reality and risks of the present and embodying requirements to hold open unforeseen possibilities for future action, the groundwork is laid for a new “decision architecture” that improves policy-framing and decision-making. With a mission to compose a conceptual framework for “facing the future” in the United Kingdom, I make the case for refreshing democratic arrangements, including a proposed structural intervention to the policy-making system with a correlative cultural step-change in leadership. Laying out a novel framework, the analysis draws widely on strands of thinking in social theory and political philosophy, public administration and policy-making, systems thinking and design, planning and strategic management, anticipation and futures, economics, and sociology. Taking an “integral” methodological orientation, in three parts I: (1) diagnose the converging Predicament, (2) develop a conceptual Proposition, and 3) sketch-out an approach to leadership that facilitates operational adaption in Procedures for applied practice. Positing that we have to deal with systems-of-problems (“messes”) and system-of-systems (“systemic messes”) with an analytic primacy on expanding temporal considerations to factor in more anticipative insights, I take a Complex Adaptive Systems-informed stance. The need for a “Decisive Reset” to refresh democracy, featuring phased systemic reordering and tactical modularity to produce better public decision-making that is responsive and agile in the short-run, while actively gauging medium-term realities and future-proofing for long-run uncertainties, results in a new decision architecture and methodology

A Jeffersonian Republic by Hamiltonian Means: Values, Constraints & Finance in an Authentic American Ownership Society

This article, the second in a trilogy, interprets American ownership-spreading programs past and present under the aspect of a comprehensive theory of the American ownership society (OS) developed in its predecessor article, titled Whose Ownership? Which Society? It also identifies what appears to be a significant gap in our efforts to become a comprehensive OS thus far. By early in the 20th century, we had developed and implemented a number of highly innovative and successful programs dedicated to the task of spreading human and nonhuman capital (in the form of arable land in particular) quite broadly. Since about the 1930s, however, small-parceled land has receded in importance as a form of nonhuman capital such as can underwrite productive autonomy; and we now lack the land to dole out in that fashion in any event. To complete our OS in the manner that we began to do seriously in the late 19th century, we must turn to the prospect of spreading the ownership of business firms. Our home-spreading and education-spreading programs have modernized over the course of the later 20th and early 21st centuries in tandem with the modernization of finance technologies. Our share-spreading programs have not. The article accordingly surveys and preliminarily assesses some early proposals to spread shares in firms by means analogous to those employed to spread homes and educations. In doing so it also looks ahead to its sequel, which is devoted to updating those early proposals in a manner more sober than that of the earlier proposers

Management of societal value creation through “creating shared value” : Making corporate sustainability more systematic

This thesis was conducted as an assignment for a multinational technology corporation (“the Firm”) headquartered in Finland. The objective of this constructive research was to systematize the Firm’s sustainability strategy by developing a tailored solution for managing societal value creation. Additionally, theoretical understanding of corporate sustainability was refined. Corporate sustainability can no longer be regarded as an optional endeavour due to immense stakeholder pressure. In general, managers have recognized this issue, but they are poorly equipped to implement such aspirations systematically. Literature on corporate sustainability is also disharmonious, boasting a multitude of overlapping concepts with vague definitions and disputed characteristics. Accordingly, this thesis aims to tie up the loose ends in both theoretical and managerial domains of corporate sustainability by drawing on the concept of creating shared value (CSV). Systematization of corporate sustainability is studied with a pragmatic orientation in the context of for-profit organizations. Firstly, the meaning of CSV for business is elaborated. Secondly, contemporary operationalization methods of CSV are synthesized. Lastly, a new framework for managing societal value creation is constructed which aims to solve the Firm’s problem of fragmented sustainability practices. The construction was grounded in a diversified literature review and tailored according to empirical findings on the Firm’s context. This data was collected with standardized open-ended interviews and extracted perceptions were compared with official documents. Finally, the resulting construct was validated by subjecting it to a weak market test to Firm executives. The theoretical contribution was based on a refined conception of CSV. Its original definition was accepted but it was supplemented with enhanced definitional demarcation, role of firms, role of CSV in society, and analytical rigour. Managerial contribution centred on breaking down the complexity related to societal value creation initiatives. Due to being an intensive qualitative study, the theoretical contribution can be generalized analytically whereas the managerial contribution may be generalizable on a case-to-case basis to other firms in similar contexts. Promising avenues for future research were identified especially in terms of internally coherent sustainability performance measurement systems.Tämä konstruktiivinen tutkimus toteutettiin toimeksiantona suomalaiselle teknologiateollisuuden yritykselle (“Yritys”), jolla on myös toimintaa kansainvälisesti. Tavoitteena oli systematisoida Yrityksen vastuullisuuskäytäntöjä yhteiskunnallisen arvonluonnin kontekstissa ja tuottaa tähän räätälöity prosessi. Lisäksi tutkimus pyrki edistämään teoreettista ymmärrystä vastuullisesta liiketoiminnasta ja kehittämään sen jalkauttamiskäytäntöjä. Kasvavan institutionaalisen paineen takia vastuullisen liiketoiminnan harjoittamisesta on tullut yrityksille pakollista toimintaedellytysten turvaamiseksi. Yritysjohtajat tunnistavat tämän tilanteen, mutta heillä ei tyypillisesti ole asianmukaista ymmärrystä tai menetelmiä vastuullisuuden jalkauttamiseen. Kirjallisuudessa on myös runsaasti erimielisyyksiä vastuullisuuskäsitteistä ja niiden merkityksistä. Tämä tutkimus kuroo umpeen nykytietämyksen aukkokohtia hyödyntämällä jaetun arvonluonnin käsitettä (creating shared value eli CSV). Vastuullisuustoiminnan systematisointi rajataan voittoa tavoitteleviin organisaatioihin ja sitä lähestytään pragmaattisesti seuraavilla tutkimuskysymyksillä: 1) mitä jaettu arvonluonti merkitsee liiketoiminnalle, 2) millaisia jaetun arvonluonnin operationalisointikeinoja on nykykirjallisuudessa ja 3) millainen viitekehys Yritykselle tulisi kehittää yhteiskunnallisen arvonluonnin johtamiseen. Ratkaisun rakentaminen perustui monialaiseen kirjallisuuskatsaukseen ja se räätälöitiin Yrityksen nykytilan ja tarpeiden mukaan. Empiirinen aineisto kerättiin puolistrukturoiduilla haastatteluilla ja vertaamalla näitä havaintoja Yrityksen virallisiin asiakirjoihin. Konstruktiolle suoritettiin lopuksi heikko markkinatesti haastattelemalla Yrityksen johtohenkilöitä. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen kontribuutio perustui CSV-käsitteen jalostamiseen. Sen alkuperäinen määritelmä hyväksyttiin, mutta sitä täydennettiin selkeämmällä rajauksella, CSV:tä käyttävien yritysten roolilla, CSV:n yhteiskunnallisella roolilla sekä analyyttisyydellä. Liikkeenjohdollinen kontribuutio keskittyi yhteiskunnallisen arvonluonnin kompleksisuuden purkamiseen. Koska kyseessä oli intensiivinen kvalitatiivinen tutkimus, voidaan teoreettinen kontribuutio yleistää analyyttisesti ja liikkeenjohdollinen kontribuutio voitaneen yleistää case-to-case –periaatteella muihin yrityksiin samankaltaisissa konteksteissa. Mahdollisuudet tuleville tutkimuksille ovat lupaavia etenkin aiempaa johdonmukaisempien vastuullisuussuorituskykyä mittaavien järjestelmien kehittämisessä

Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments

This book presents the collection of fifty two papers which were presented on the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY ’08 - Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments, held in Ofir, Portugal, from 25th to 27th of June, 2008. The main motive of the meeting was the growing awareness of the importance of the sustainability issue. This importance had emerged from the growing uncertainty of the market behaviour that leads to the characterization of the market, i.e. environment, as turbulent. Actually, the characterization of the environment as uncertain and turbulent reflects the fact that the traditional technocratic and/or socio-technical approaches cannot effectively and efficiently lead with the present situation. In other words, the rise of the sustainability issue means the quest for new instruments to deal with uncertainty and/or turbulence. The sustainability issue has a complex nature and solutions are sought in a wide range of domains and instruments to achieve and manage it. The domains range from environmental sustainability (referring to natural environment) through organisational and business sustainability towards social sustainability. Concerning the instruments for sustainability, they range from traditional engineering and management methodologies towards “soft” instruments such as knowledge, learning, creativity. The papers in this book address virtually whole sustainability problems space in a greater or lesser extent. However, although the uncertainty and/or turbulence, or in other words the dynamic properties, come from coupling of management, technology, learning, individuals, organisations and society, meaning that everything is at the same time effect and cause, we wanted to put the emphasis on business with the intention to address primarily the companies and their businesses. From this reason, the main title of the book is “Business Sustainability” but with the approach of coupling Management, Technology and Learning for individuals, organisations and society in Turbulent Environments. Concerning the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, its particularity was that it had served primarily as a learning environment in which the papers published in this book were the ground for further individual and collective growth in understanding and perception of sustainability and capacity for building new instruments for business sustainability. In that respect, the methodology of the conference work was basically dialogical, meaning promoting dialog on the papers, but also including formal paper presentations. In this way, the conference presented a rich space for satisfying different authors’ and participants’ needs. Additionally, promoting the widest and global learning environment and participativeness, the Conference Organisation provided the broadcasting over Internet of the Conference sessions, dialogical and formal presentations, for all authors’ and participants’ institutions, as an innovative Conference feature. In these terms, this book could also be understood as a complementary instrument to the Conference authors’ and participants’, but also to the wider readerships’ interested in the sustainability issues. The book brought together 97 authors from 10 countries, namely from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sweden and United Kingdom. The authors “ranged” from senior and renowned scientists to young researchers providing a rich and learning environment. At the end, the editors hope and would like that this book will be useful, meeting the expectation of the authors and wider readership and serving for enhancing the individual and collective learning, and to incentive further scientific development and creation of new papers. Also, the editors would use this opportunity to announce the intention to continue with new editions of the conference and subsequent editions of accompanying books on the subject of BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, the second of which is planned for year 2011.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Smart Industry - Better Management

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Smart industry requires better management. As industrial and production systems are future-proofed, becoming smart and interconnected through use of new manufacturing and product technologies, work is advancing on improving product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency, and cost, optimally using supply chains. Presenting innovative, evidence-based, and cutting-edge case studies, with new conceptualizations and viewpoints on management, Smart Industry, Better Management explores concepts in product systems, use of cyber physical systems, digitization, interconnectivity, and new manufacturing and product technologies. Contributions to this volume highlight the high degree of flexibility in people management, production, including product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency and cost in being able to finely adjust to customer needs and make full use of supply chains for value creation. Smart Industry, Better Management illustrates how industry can enabled by a more network-centric approach, making use of the value of information and the latest available proven manufacturing techniques