2,395 research outputs found

    An Investigation of Engagement in the Context of Employer Branding and Social Media

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    The purpose of the study is to examine how companies are applying employer branding in social media and how these activities affect potential employees’ engagement. Engagement on social media has been analyzed according to the cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions using a mixed method content analysis

    Strategy formulation for the international expansion: an empirical analysis in Spain and Latam

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    Digital innovation is a stimulus for sustainable and inclusive growth for both firms and public administrations. In recent years, Digital 360 has successfully been a driver of digital innovation in the Italian market, ultimately leading the company to reach the point of saturation in the market. This thesis aims to identify the market opportunities for the internationalization process of the company Digital 360 in the regions of Spain and Latin America, currently unsaturated markets. The thesis proposes different strategic alternatives through a strategic formulation process, in which the company could replicate its current business model to act as a consolidator for these two fragmented markets. It is first analyzed the internal core competencies and resources of Digital 360 to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the firm within the competitive landscape and external context of each region. The strategic alternatives derived from the strategy formulation process and the insights gathered from the strategic analysis are presented to the top management of Digital 360 to support the decision-making processL'innovazione digitale Ăš uno stimolo per una crescita sostenibile e inclusiva sia per le aziende che per le pubbliche amministrazioni. Negli ultimi anni, Digital 360 Ăš stata un driver di innovazione digitale nel mercato italiano con successo, portando infine l'azienda a raggiungere il punto di saturazione del mercato. Questa tesi si propone di identificare le opportunitĂ  di mercato per il processo di internazionalizzazione dell'azienda Digital 360 nelle regioni di Spagna e America Latina, mercati attualmente insaturi. La tesi propone diverse alternative strategiche attraverso un processo di formulazione strategica, che l'azienda potrebbe replicare il suo attuale modello di business per agire come consolidatore per questi due mercati frammentati. Si analizzano prima le competenze e le risorse interne di Digital 360 per identificare i punti di forza e di debolezza dell'azienda nel panorama competitivo e nel contesto esterno di ogni regione. Le alternative strategiche derivate dal processo di formulazione della strategia insieme alle intuizioni raccolte dall'analisi strategica, sono presentate al top management di Digital 360 per servire come un forte supporto nel processo decisional

    Managing the quality of colour television receivers in the Republic of South Africa

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    This study investigates whether quality management has developed to such an extent that retailers, service repair organisations and consumers are satisfied with product and repair service quality provided by South African manufacturing companies. To investigate these aspects, the colour television industry has been selected because it contains various manufacturing companies of varying sizes and characters, employing different quality policies and performances. It offers relatively standardised products and services, which facilitates intercompany comparisons and employs a simple flow type assembly line process that is representative of other mass production industries. The hypotheses are tested by interviewing four selected populations by means of carefully constructed questionnaires, namely a retail population, a repair service population, a consumer population and a manufacturing population. The empirical results are statistically evaluated in terms of the various manufacturers ability to provide satisfactory product and repair service quality. Consumers and repair service organisations are selected because they represent a broad spectrum of the population with varying, but important opinions on product and repair service quality. Retailers selling colour television receivers are also selected as they play an important role in the management of quality and vary from small independent retailers to large chain stores and discounters. The results obtained from this study show that: ‱ there is a need from the retailers, service repair organisations and consumers for the South African manufacturers to improve the quality of colour television receivers ‱ there is a need by the consumers and the retailers for the manufacturers to improve their repair service quality ‱ there is a need to improve the quality control procedures employed by the colour television manufacturers.Business ManagementD. Com. (Business Management

    Competition policy review

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    This is the first comprehensive review of Australia’s competition laws and policy in over 20 years. The National Competition Policy Review (The Hilmer Review) of 1993 underpinned the development of the National Competition Policy – a co-operative initiative of the Commonwealth and State and Territory governments that the Productivity Commission found contributed to a surge in productivity, directly reduced some prices and stimulated business innovation. The subsequent Review of the Competition Provisions of the Trade Practices Act (The Dawson Review) of 2003 examined the operation of the competition laws and resulted in some strengthening of the provisions. There has been considerable change in the Australian economy since the Hilmer Report of the early 1990s and the boost in productivity that underpinned the growth in living standards over the past two decades is waning. The Competition Policy Review will examine the broader competition framework to ensure that it continues to play a role as a significant driver of productivity improvements and to ensure that the current laws are operating as intended and are effective for all businesses, big and small.   MESSAGE FROM THE PANEL This is our Final Report reviewing Australia’s competition policy, laws and institutions. The Panel undertook a stocktake of the competition policy framework across the Australian economy. Although reforms introduced following the Hilmer Review led to significant improvements in economic growth and wellbeing, the Panel believes that renewed policy effort is required to support growth and wellbeing now and into the future. To this end, we have reviewed Australia’s competition policy, laws and institutions to assess their fitness for purpose. Taken together, our recommendations comprise an agenda of reinvigorated microeconomic reform that will require sustained effort from all jurisdictions. We believe this commitment is necessary if Australia is to boost productivity, secure fiscal sustainability and position our economy to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Given the forces for change already bearing on the Australian economy, delaying policy action will make reform more difficult and more sharply felt. An early response will make the reform effort more manageable over time, allowing Australians to enjoy higher living standards sooner rather than later. The recommendations and views expressed in this Final Report draw upon the expertise and experience of each member of the Panel. Importantly, we have also had the benefit of hearing from a wide cross-section of the Australian community and from participants in all sectors of the economy

    The digital impact on the supply chain: The servitization of agri-food industry

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    For decades, many firms have been deeply transformed due to the creation and integration of digital technologies in different processes or instances, conceptualized as digitalization. In the specific case of manufacturing industry, this trend has been described as Industry 4.0. Simultaneously, manufacturing firms tend to adapt their business model by including more service offerings to gain competitiveness, described theoretically as servitization. Research on those topics has already provided many case studies for the manufacturing industry. Within this industry, the agri-food sector, though, is sidelined. Nowadays, there is no paper dealing with servitization of agri-food and we face a lack of global overview regarding the digital revolution. However, significant implications are affecting agri-food towards being more agile and fast to increase and diversify offerings in order to answer specific customers’ needs. Therefore, the supply chain is deeply changing and faces more complexity. Not only a better economic performance is expected based on capture and advanced analysis of data, but also more sustainability and interconnectivity through corporate social responsibility (CSR) or creating shared value (CSV) to avoid waste and redundant operations. The following thesis aims to provide a theoretical contribution about the impact of digital technologies in the supply chain as imperative enablers of the servitization of agri-food sector. The first section will introduce the subject and the research gap. The second section is dedicated to a state of research of servitization, digitalization and their mutual influences for the manufacturing industry. The third section is a methodology that aims to analyze the main issues to be taken into account. The fourth section is a dynamic description to show that the application of digital tools in the supply chain contribute directly to the servitization of agri-food firms

    Corporate Social Responsibility To-Come: A Derridean Interruption of Transparency

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    This study investigated the relation between rhetorics of transparency and organizational action. Digging into CSR literature from a philosophy of communication perspective, this project seeks to determine if corporate social responsibility delivers on the promises it makes of a better world. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, the research first lays out his often overlooked contribution to the philosophy of communication, and then moves towards possible applications in deconstructing the perceived benefits of CSR, particularly in its transparent nature. By looking at organizational life from the Triple Bottom Line, this dissertation peels back the underlying rhetoric of planet, people, profit to discover an ethical project with gaps, fissures, and inconsistencies, in need of a future-oriented version that lives up to this challenge CSR sets out for itself in such precarious times

    Retail brand management: towards modelling the grocery retailer brand from an ethnographic perspective

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    As producers of national and international brands, manufacturers and service providers were the focus of brand management literature. However, as retailers have become major players nationally and internationally, managing retailers as brands have become a major challenge. The retailer unique business nature, and managerial needs as well as its ever-changing business environment render managing the retail brand a unique and complex task. For the retail brand to embrace and adapt to its managerial challenges, a multitude of brand management approaches should be employed. However, when addressing retailers as brands, the retail management literature has failed to account for this multiplicity exposing a gap in the literature. To fill this gap, a communal retail brand management model is proposed to help retailers embrace and adapt to their various branding requirements inflicted by their business challenges. To build the model, a common core among the various approaches involved in managing retail brands should be identified so as to simplify, by forming a unified approach, yet maintain the essence of each approach. The holistic, humanitarian and managerial orientations of the concept of organizational culture identify it as the common core and thus act as the backbone on which the model will be built. Since the model will be built through cultural interpretation, the ethnographic tradition of qualitative inquiry is utilized because it provides an emic perspective, which is the best strategy (that consequently provides best tools) for interpreting cultures. Besides, the flexibility of the ethnographic tradition allows the adoption of other qualitative traditions of enquiry to aid in building the model. Thus, the case study tradition is employed to confine the study within the precincts of a single retail brand in order to conduct deep analysis for several stakeholders simultaneously. Additionally, the analytical technique of the grounded theory tradition is employed to capitalize on its systematic ability to form conceptual themes out of raw data that, ultimately, become the model's building blocks. In light of conducting a five-months participant observation study in two grocery stores of a leading supermarket brand in two countries (Sainsbury's stores in the UK and Egypt), the findings revealed that modelling the retail brand culture resembles, metaphorically, a tree. The culture symbols resemble the tree attractive leaves, the rituals & local heroes resemble the supportive trunk, and values resemble the roots that anchor in the soil, which, in turn, resembles the cultures in which the retailer operates. The thesis concludes that the Tree- Model is a road map that guides retailers to build and manage their brand identity and consequently enable them to embrace and adapt to the various branding requirements dictated by their business challenges

    Cultural differences and premium flexibility : the case of The Navigator Company

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    In a progressively digital and competitive world we live in, it is vital for the companies to objectively evaluate what competences (and not resources) bring them competitive and comparative advantage in the XXI century. Culture is a crucial resource at a country level since it shapes a nation’s character and society. This implies that individuals, who are absorbed by this influence, will transfer it for their organizations, transforming culture in a competence that can be a strong basis for achieving competitive advantage in international environments. In an international context, Portugal will struggle to be competitive in a world of top technology, scale economies and cheap labor of industrialized, emergent and developing countries, respectively. The premium flexibility theory attempts to explain the success of exporting Portuguese companies in B2B segments. Consequently, the main objective of this dissertation is to answer the research question: “How national culture effects competitive advantage on Portuguese companies?” For this purpose, a case study about The Navigator Company was performed in order to understand if the main national dimensions of the premium flexibility theory were verified in a real case context. It is also important to comprehend how do they influence the competitive advantage of The Navigator Company in the pulp sector. The outcomes of this study conclude that, premium flexibility does exist on the case of The Navigator Company, although with several limitations and modifications and that it positively contributes to a better and improved customization, agility of the processes and on a greater efficiency of the flow of information and products.No mundo cada vez mais digital e competitivo em que vivemos, Ă© vital para as empresas avaliarem de forma objetiva quais competĂȘncias (e nĂŁo recursos) lhes trazem vantagem competitiva e comparativa no sĂ©culo XXI. A cultura Ă© um recurso crucial ao nĂ­vel do paĂ­s, pois molda o carĂĄter e a sociedade de uma nação. Isso implica que os indivĂ­duos, absorvidos por essa influĂȘncia, a transfiram para suas organizaçÔes, transformando a cultura numa competĂȘncia que pode ser uma base forte para o alcance de vantagem competitiva em ambientes internacionais. Num contexto internacional, Portugal vai lutar para ser competitivo num mundo de tecnologia de ponta, economias de escala e mĂŁo-de-obra barata de paĂ­ses industrializados, emergentes e em desenvolvimento, respetivamente. A teoria da flexibilidade premium tenta explicar o sucesso das empresas portuguesas exportadoras nos segmentos B2B. Consequentemente, o objetivo principal desta dissertação Ă© responder Ă  questĂŁo de pesquisa: “Como Ă© que a cultura nacional afeta a vantagem competitiva nas empresas portuguesas?” Para o efeito, foi realizado um estudo de caso sobre a The Navigator Company, a fim de perceber se as principais dimensĂ”es nacionais da teoria da flexibilidade premium foram verificadas num contexto de caso real. TambĂ©m Ă© importante compreender de que maneira influenciam a vantagem competitiva da The Navigator Company no setor da celulose. Os resultados deste estudo concluem que a flexibilidade premium exista no caso da The Navigator Company, embora com vĂĄrias limitaçÔes e modificaçÔes e que contribui positivamente para uma melhor e melhor customização, agilidade dos processos e uma maior eficiĂȘncia do fluxo de informaçÔes e produtos
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