The impact of alliance management capabilities on alliance attributes and performance: A literature review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter-firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) - firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge - as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner-specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge-sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance

Ecologically grounded multimodal design:The Palafito 1.0 study

We present results of a ten-month design study targeting the observation of creative artistic practice by a video-artist, a sculptor and a composer. The study yielded the multimedia installation Palafito/Palafita/Home-on-stilts 1.0, featuring 19:30 minutes of sonic material and video footage, and three 5x8x3-meter raw-wood sculptures. This paper focuses on the procedural dimensions of the asynchronous, ubiquitous group activities carried out by the three subjects through light-weight, off-the-shelf infrastructure. Data was extracted from a virtual forum and a file repository. The analysis of the creative exchange indicated cycles of activity alternating between reflection, exploratory action and product-oriented action. The participants were engaged in reflective activities 63% of the time, epistemic activities spanned 33% of the study and product-oriented activities accounted for only 4% of the creative design cycle. Dialogic activities did not follow a regular pattern, but a relationship between enactive and dialogic activities was observed. We discuss the implications of these results for embedded-embodied approaches to sound art

Towards value pluralism, knowledge pluralism, and recognitional justice: improving integration of cultural benefits of ecosystem services in environmental decision-making

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.This mainstreaming of the ecosystem services (ES) concept and approach is reflected in its adoption by governments and non-governmental organizations around the world, including in the United States: in 2015, a U.S. Federal Memorandum directed all Federal agencies to integrate ES information in their decision-making processes. In principle this momentum represents an opportunity for improved consideration of the cultural benefits of ES in decision-making, as part of the improved consideration of ES as a whole. However, there is concern that cultural benefits – and the plural values and multiple knowledge systems they reveal – are being left behind in processes of standardization in ES theory and practice. Cultural benefits challenge the emphasis on instrumental values common in the ES field. Further, in revealing the culturally contextual and situated character of all ES, cultural benefits challenge the universalizing and generalizing tendencies common in this field. More meaningful consideration of the cultural benefits of ES, as one strand of a larger movement toward value pluralism and knowledge pluralism, is a question of both equity and ecological outcomes. On-going conversations and critiques in the ES field around how to create space for multiple worldviews, including multiple human-nature relationships and well-beings, are critical to bringing environmental management into alignment with environmental justice, including distributional, procedural, and recognitional justice for current and future generations. In addition, ensuring a place for currently marginalized knowledge systems in ES theory and practice, including place-based and Indigenous ways of knowing, brings new solutions to the table and increases the adaptive capacity of managers and decision-makers at local and global scales as they face into growing global environmental challenges. To support movement toward knowledge pluralism in ES theory and practice, the three manuscripts presented in this dissertation offer: 1) a conceptual framework that reveals ES-knowledge as a system, seeking to support personal and collective reflexivity around the role of worldviews embedded in our institutions and the implications of this (Manuscript 1); 2) a theoretical model of learning opportunities for integration of a diverse forms of knowledge, and explores how some cultural-benefits-knowledge-forms are more likely to convey non-instrumental, relational value aspects or holistic value perspectives, and more likely to be effectively considered at particular stages of decision-making (Manuscript 2); and 3) an Opportunities Framework that can be used to systematically identify available forms of cultural-benefits-knowledge, and the opportunities that exist to integrate these knowledge forms in a particular decision context (Manuscript 3). This final manuscript both introduces the framework and illustrates its potential by applying it to a past decision process: Elwha River dam removal and restoration in Washington State, U.S.A. Next steps for research and application of a knowledge-pluralist ES approach are discussed in the dissertation's conclusion

Adaptive object management for distributed systems

This thesis describes an architecture supporting the management of pluggable software components and evaluates it against the requirement for an enterprise integration platform for the manufacturing and petrochemical industries. In a distributed environment, we need mechanisms to manage objects and their interactions. At the least, we must be able to create objects in different processes on different nodes; we must be able to link them together so that they can pass messages to each other across the network; and we must deliver their messages in a timely and reliable manner. Object based environments which support these services already exist, for example ANSAware(ANSA, 1989), DEC's Objectbroker(ACA,1992), Iona's Orbix(Orbix,1994)Yet such environments provide limited support for composing applications from pluggable components. Pluggability is the ability to install and configure a component into an environment dynamically when the component is used, without specifying static dependencies between components when they are produced. Pluggability is supported to a degree by dynamic binding. Components may be programmed to import references to other components and to explore their interfaces at runtime, without using static type dependencies. Yet thus overloads the component with the responsibility to explore bindings. What is still generally missing is an efficient general-purpose binding model for managing bindings between independently produced components. In addition, existing environments provide no clear strategy for dealing with fine grained objects. The overhead of runtime binding and remote messaging will severely reduce performance where there are a lot of objects with complex patterns of interaction. We need an adaptive approach to managing configurations of pluggable components according to the needs and constraints of the environment. Management is made difficult by embedding bindings in component implementations and by relying on strong typing as the only means of verifying and validating bindings. To solve these problems we have built a set of configuration tools on top of an existing distributed support environment. Specification tools facilitate the construction of independent pluggable components. Visual composition tools facilitate the configuration of components into applications and the verification of composite behaviours. A configuration model is constructed which maintains the environmental state. Adaptive management is made possible by changing the management policy according to this state. Such policy changes affect the location of objects, their bindings, and the choice of messaging system

Addressing climate vulnerability : promoting the participatory rights of indigenous peoples and women through Finnish foreign policy

Julkaistu versi

Control in Multidivisional Firms: Levels Issues and Internal Differentiation.

Most large corporations are organized as multidivisional firms, consisting of a corporate headquarters and a number of semi-autonomous business units. The control of business units is crucial for the success of business units as well as the firm as a whole. In deciding on the appropriate control mechanisms both corporate factors and business level factors need to be taken into account. The multilevel nature of control and the complexities of using different styles of control within one multidivisional firm are the central topics of the dissertation.

Stakeholder Theory, Value, and Firm Performance

This paper argues that the notion of value has been overly simplified and narrowed to focus on economic returns. Stakeholder theory provides an appropriate lens for considering a more complex perspective of the value that stakeholders seek as well as new ways to measure it. We develop a four-factor perspective for defining value that includes, but extends beyond, the economic value stakeholders seek. To highlight its distinctiveness, we compare this perspective to three other popular performance perspectives. Recommendations are made regarding performance measurement for both academic researchers and practitioners. The stakeholder perspective on value offered in this paper draws attention to those factors that are most closely associated with building more value for stakeholders, and in so doing, allows academics to better measure it and enhances managerial ability to create it