Bit Bang 9: Entrepreneurship

This book is the 9th in the Bit Bang series of books produced as multidisciplinary teamwork exercises by doctoral students participating in the course Bit Bang 9: Entrepreneurship at Aalto University during the academic year 2016–2017. Working in teams, the students set out to answer questions related to entrepreneurship and to brainstorm radical scenarios of what the future could hold. This joint publication contains articles produced as teamwork assignments for the course

A critical discourse analysis of negotiations between business and Aboriginal peoples : implications for strategic management of crosscultural knowledge

The concept and use of knowledge in business studies is predominantly determined by a Western interpretation, with strategic management theory and practice positioning knowledge as a key factor in the creation of competitive advantage. The thesis examines Western and Aboriginal ways of knowing, and explores the presuppositions of knowledge in Western culture.Utilising critical theory the thesis has researched and penetrated the cultural interface between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people during business negotiations. The research is a first order interpretation by a non-Aboriginal researcher that critically analyses and unpacks the non-Aboriginal discourse of cross-cultural negotiations. The thesis reveals the impact of Western normative culture on the construction of cross-cultural knowledge.It is argued the current Western orientation of strategic management theory fails cross-cultural negotiations, and that ways of knowing outside the paradigm of traditional strategic management research can provide a broader understanding of knowledge and improve cross-cultural negotiations. The thesis argues that the models for understanding national cultures are Western orientated models that may have inherent cultural limits. The thesis draws upon frame theory, and argues that cultural schema and mental models known as frames have a significant impact on cross-cultural negotiations.The significance of the research resides in two primary areas. Firstly the literature regarding knowledge in strategic management is inclined to be positivist with a strong Western academic influence. This thesis argues that the literature and discipline of strategic management will be enriched by a more heterogenous approach to knowledge through a diversity of research paradigms, and through understanding other cultural approaches to knowledge. This thesis contributes through an interpretive perspective to strategic management theory and practice.Secondly the research contributes to the literature, theory and practice of cross-cultural negotiations. Specifically there is a paucity of literature on Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal negotiations, and this thesis through the critical discourse analysis of negotiations provides a significant insight into this cultural interface. Frame theory assists understanding how non-Aboriginal negotiators make meaning during cross-cultural negotiations and how this influences their understanding of knowledge.The thesis concludes with two key recommendations. Firstly that strategic management research, theory and practice will be well served by a broader approach to knowledge. This will be achieved by recognising that a positivist approach to research in strategic management has limitations, and the management models of knowledge have culturally imbued presuppositions or schema that frame our interpretation of ways of knowing. Secondly two models for cross-cultural negotiations are proposed. The models recommend that we suspend our own constructs of reality to engage with other ways of knowing in a reflective process to generate new schemas of knowledge

Competitive Advantage of Sino-British Joint Ventures in China: A Study from Positioning, Resources, Partnership and Locational Perspectives

As a large number of MNEs have entered China and many domestic companies become increasingly competitive, Sino-foreign joint ventures are facing intensified competition in many industries in China. The review of the literature shows that few studies on Sino-foreign joint ventures focus on competitive issues, and most studies tend to examine the issues associated with partnerships. This thesis examines competitive advantage of Sino-British joint ventures in China and explains why some joint ventures have (or have not) achieved competitive advantage. The research developed a multi-perspective framework for analysing competitive advantage of the joint venture. The framework embraces strategic positioning, the resource-based view, partnerships, and location specific factors. The empirical study investigated five cases: AstraZeneca China, ERM China, Shanghai Marconi, GSK Chongqing, and YARACO. The case studies have revealed some salient characteristics of the joint ventures from the differing perspectives. The positioning perspective examines the alignment of activities with the positioning and fit among activities. Partnerships and locational factors are incorporated into the analysis. The analysis from the resource-based is focused on the potential of some critical resources for competitive advantage. The resources embedded in the partnership structure and the local context are likely to be sources of sustainable competitive advantage. The synthesized analysis investigates the relationship between activities and resources of the firm and leads to some theoretical propositions about creating sustainable competitive advantage. The research aims to make contributions to knowledge in the following respects. First, the research draws attention to competitive advantage of the joint venture as a relatively new area for the study. Second, by developing multi-perspective framework, the research can help broaden theoretical perspectives for studying the joint venture and may effect discoveries of new issues. Moreover, the research seeks to contribute to the debate about competitive advantage and strategy through synthesizing positioning and the resource-based view

Development of a collaborative innovation management framework to assist in the utilisation of agricultural waste as building materials in Nigeria

The high cost of building materials in Nigeria is creating a shortfall of conventional building materials, which is also exacerbating the housing crisis in Nigerian urban areas. In view of the above, there is an urgent need to produce low cost, sustainable building materials that are affordable to the construction industry in Nigeria to reduce construction cost associated with the shortage of housing in Nigeria. Although there is a recent interest in the transformation of waste materials into raw materials required for producing building materials, however the focus in this regard has been on general household waste materials with little or no attention paid to agricultural waste materials. Indeed, agricultural waste materials have been neglected and no effort made towards harnessing the substantial opportunities that abound in the utilization of the increasingly large agricultural waste materials generated. Therefore, this research integrates and analyses the organisational structure of construction, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors in order to develop a framework to assist in the better utilisation of agricultural waste materials as building material. The research adopted a mixed methods approach using pragmatic philosophical stance as the main basis of the research. In terms of the strategy, it adopts a case study strategy that follows an abductive approach derived from both inductive and deductive approach. Data is obtained through synthesis of literature reviews, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires from multiple cases from stakeholder’s organisations in Nigeria. The research findings revealed that there is non-existence of institutional actor’s that can assist in the utilisation of agricultural waste for building construction purposes. Hence the development of organisational innovation management framework that would better integrate the stakeholders that are involved in the implementation of management approach in converting agricultural waste to building materials. The developed framework shows an innovative organisational hierarchical process of how agricultural waste materials can be used or converted as building materials that involve the government as well as the other stakeholders. The framework was also validated using construction professional through a focus group setting to help determine if the framework will be viable in practice. To this end, this study reveals that there is an existing gap in the organizational structure required for the delivery of agricultural waste for building construction purposes. This research also has the potential to contribute to the policy debate on the issue of using agricultural waste materials as construction materials to help fill the shortfall of conventional building materials. Keywords: Agricultural Waste Materials, Building Materials, Framework, Innovation, Nigerian Construction Industry

Social entrepreneurship and value creation: Marketing perspective. Case study in European context.

The objective of the thesis was to examine how the means of marketing can support value creation in and contribute to reaching the social objectives in the context of European social entrepreneurship. The phenomenon, recognised to contribute to the objectives of sustainable development and supported by the European Union, has gained more awareness recently with the field growing in Europe. Yet the value that the innovative social ventures produce has largely remained uncharted, partly because of the issues in measuring non-monetary value. The field of marketing in the context has not been the focus of previous research, evoking interest towards the topic especially owing to the field’s ability to solve social issues by satisfying unmet needs. The research gaps discovered in the field might be a consequence of the pre-paradigmatic stage characterising the field and hindering the development of theory. The theoretical part focused on describing characteristics of social entrepreneurship, the phenomenon in the European context and the relevant theories related to value creation, social value creation and marketing in social entrepreneurship. As the social ventures consist of various business models and earning logics with different emphasis on the creation of financial and social value, theories regarding both non-profit marketing and entrepreneurial marketing were discussed. The empirical part was created based on theme in-depth interviews conducted with 31 social entrepreneurs and 10 political decision makers from eight European countries, and the data was analysed using the approach of qualitative content analysis. Based on the findings, marketing in social entrepreneurship can be described by the concept of bricolage with combining resources at hand with flexible and sometimes unplanned processes. In addition, the competitive means of marketing were interpreted to have a value adding qualities into the social venture. The hypothesis of the means of marketing being able to enhance the success of the social objectives was as well confirmed in the light of the findings, with marketing having a central role in both co-creating and communicating value to the stakeholders of the social venture.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

The resilience of urban design to pluvial flood

Resilient urban design has become an essential concern for cities needing to withstand the increasing number of natural and human-induced disasters. Yet cities and their infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable and threatened as flood protection measurements are still following the same line of thinking in terms of nature resistance. The conventional structures of flood protection are increasingly questioned amongst academics, decision makers and communities particularly since many cases of failure around the world. New approaches for characterising the resilience of urban design are urgently needed and worth investing in on local and regional scales. This research calls for a practical approach to investigate the resilience potential of urban design as a man-made solution and to consider the adjacent ecology as the natural surroundings. This aims to develop an ecologically compliant urban design approach that contributes to the mitigation of flood consequences with other infrastructure solutions. This research aims to shed light on the potential of ecological urban design to demonstrate a resilient urban form that can cope with the escalating flood threats in the Muscat area in Oman. A shift in thinking is required, towards a paradigm that calls for a breakaway from the closely confined resistance approach to the much more tolerable concept of living with the reality of water dominance. This is going to be realised by carrying out in-depth analysis of the ecological system services along with the physical aspects of urban design

Strategic enactment : an interpretive approach to organisational strategy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009.The purpose of this thesis is to explore the field of strategy by way of its historical trajectory and to consider the major branches that constitute this broad, but fragmented discipline. It is an interdisciplinary endeavour that draws specifically on systems theories and complexity theory as a way to enrich the field. The strategy field tends to be philosophically unreflexive. As a result it is dominated by an objectivist ontology, which underpins strategic choice. One of the aims of this thesis is to explore the implications for strategy, if instead, an interpretive stance, based on an ontology of social constructionism, is adopted. The literature has not fully explored and developed different ontologies in the context of strategy and hence has left a major gap in theorising about strategy. This thesis attempts to address that gap and therefore one of the contributions of the study will be a tentative theory of strategic enactment. This research attempts to answer the following key questions: 1. What are the major theoretical frameworks and conceptual models that frame the field of strategy? 2. How well do these frameworks and models contribute to strategy under conditions of high ambiguity and uncertainty? 3. What contributions may be made by applying complexity theory to the field of strategy? 4. What are the implications of adopting an interpretive approach to strategy? 5. What are the implications of strategic enactment on strategic leadership? Given that these research questions are of a philosophical and theoretical nature, the research methodology and approach is one based on theoretical exploration. It is therefore not an empirical study, but a conceptual one embracing both breadth and depth. It is broad in that it covers multiple literature sets which include bodies of knowledge in organisational theory, leadership, strategy, systems thinking and complexity theory. It is deep in its interrogation of core conceptual constructs that are pertinent to the strategy frame of reference and in its comprehensive coverage of the major topics that circumscribe the field. While it relies on an extensive coverage of existing texts it is not a hermeneutic study from a methodological point of view. It does not purport to interpret and to elicit the meaning of texts. The term interpretive in the title instead refers to the ontological notion of sensemaking and interpretation that is central to strategic enactment. Interpretive in this sense is not an interpretation of texts in a hermeneutic fashion, but interpretive in relation to enacting reality. Despite being a theoretical study it still draws on deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning. The study makes several contributions. It re-conceptualises strategy in a way that lends itself to be generalisable across all sectors, approaches strategy formulation and implementation as a single intertwined process, interrogates, combines and integrates strategy-related and other concepts in way that has not been done before, provides a theoretical basis for scenario planning and demonstrates how it may considered as a soft systems approach, presents a practical methodology for undertaking scenario planning, critiques existing CAS-based theorising about strategy, leadership and organisation and draws out the potential of complexity theory for strategy and leadership. The final contribution of this study is a tentative theory of strategic enactment that highlights key constructs such as identity and agency that have been underemphasised in the strategy literature. Such a theory offers alternative explanations from that of strategic choice, and is able to deal with the phenomenon of emergence in organisational settings. It is unique in that it integrates complex adaptive systems with an interpretive approach to organisational strategy. The following may be identified as key findings of this study: • Strategy is still a pre-paradigmatic field and hence its theoretical underpinnings are of necessity eclectic. • While strategic choice is the dominant approach, many of its tenets are contested, especially when organisations are considered as complex adaptive systems. • Deliberate strategy is not possible as all forms of strategy are ultimately emergent. • Agency is an important construct in strategy. Agency does not reside in the key power brokers alone, but extends to all organisational actors and their structural networks of relations. Agency is also invested in non-human actors in the form of artifacts. • Agency is limited to micro-level actions and does not embrace macros states of the system. • Identity is an important construct in strategy. The identity of agents is shaped in their interactions with other agents. Who they are impact on what they can and cannot do, and also impact who they construct themselves to be. In this sense there is a strong link between agency and identity. • Identity is also shaped in situated activity in practice and therefore strategy-as-practice is important. • Strategic enactment presents alternate explanations for the utility of strategy tools and strategic plans from strategic choice.Please refer to the main copy of the thesis for abstract

Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies - Part 1

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue titled "Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies" - Part 1 that was published in the journal Philosophies