IT Multisourcing Management : A Qualitative Study from the Vendor's Perspective

IT multisourcing is an outsourcing method that combines services of various different vendors in a single technology focused undertaking. This study investigates the benefits and disadvantages that an IT multisourcing setting presents to the vendor from a management perspective. As vendors are responding to client needs, studying their experiences can present valuable information for managing IT multisourcing projects for client companies and their decision makers. The study aims to gather as much information of multisourcing from the vendors’ perspective, but due to the main focus in previously conducted research articles being on the client’s side, there is a gap in research to be filled. This study aims to fill the gap by interviewing eight IT industry experts with experience from IT outsourcing and multisourcing projects. As multisourcing describes a situation where one client contracts two or more independent vendors on a single IT project or undertaking, it is also a situation where the different tasks assigned to vendors have some impact on each other. This is true in most cases, even though the vendors may operate independently from each other. It has been shown that multisourcing is only efficient when vendors are communicating with each other. This study also focuses on examining the communication and cooperation activities of the various operators in a multisourcing setting. Through examination of a selection of most ocmmonly used models in IT multisourcing, the thesis aims to expand the knowledge on what the benefits and disadvantages of IT multisourcing are as well as what the management challenges in these settings are with an emphasis on the vendor's view point

Money and a Room of One’s Own?! A Feminist Deconstruction of the Situation of Female Jazz Musicians 1960–1980

‘What does it take for a woman to be able to write a novel?' asks Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own. The answer is surprisingly mundane: She needs money and a room of her own. Although Woolf writes at length about passion and talent, she concludes that material preconditions are actually more crucial. Similarly, the present article argues that there has been no lack of interest in jazz among female musicians, but a lack of socially accepted possibilities for professionalisation. This article endeavours to deconstruct some of the socio-cultural contexts and frameworks of music-making in a feminist way. To this end, the most crucial findings from semi-structured interviews with Norma Winstone, Sidsel Endresen, Aki Takase and Uschi Brüning are presented and discussed. To contextualise the interviews, Bourdieu's analyses of the academic and literary fields will be referred to with relation to the institutionalisation of jazz, while questions of canonicity and historiography will be discussed, as well as questions surrounding performativity and corporeality. Linking up with research surrounding these issues in other musical styles, this article attempts to map and contextualise the debate about gender and the arts in its complex, sometimes controversial and even paradoxical dynamic

Unusual synchronization phenomena during electrodissolution of silicon: the role of nonlinear global coupling

The photoelectrodissolution of n-type silicon constitutes a convenient model system to study the nonlinear dynamics of oscillatory media. On the silicon surface, a silicon oxide layer forms. In the lateral direction, the thickness of this layer is not uniform. Rather, several spatio-temporal patterns in the oxide layer emerge spontaneously, ranging from cluster patterns and turbulence to quite peculiar dynamics like chimera states. Introducing a nonlinear global coupling in the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation allows us to identify this nonlinear coupling as the essential ingredient to describe the patterns found in the experiments. The nonlinear global coupling is designed in such a way, as to capture an important, experimentally observed feature: the spatially averaged oxide-layer thickness shows nearly harmonic oscillations. Simulations of the modified complex Ginzburg-Landau equation capture the experimental dynamics very well.Comment: To appear as a chapter in "Engineering of Chemical Complexity II" (eds. A.S. Mikhailov and G.Ertl) at World Scientific in Singapor

Strategic Alliances as a form of Coopetition and its impact on the Performance of Airlines: A Case Study analysis of Lufthansa, Finnair, and Alitalia

The research on coopetition (i.e., simultaneous cooperation and competition) has increased significantly over the last two decades. Noteworthy findings have been made, including the benefits that a firm gains from such a relationship. However, only limited studies centralize the impact on performance through coopetition. Existing studies on coopetition and the effect on performance show mixed outcomes, and researchers claim that the results depend on the firm's industry. Thus, it is relevant to analyze the impact of coopetition on market performance. The following study will examine the aforementioned research gap by looking into the airline industry where coopetition relationship has been practiced in the form of strategic alliances for more than 20 years. The empirical analysis was based on a multiple case study of three airlines, from three different countries, operating in three different alliances. That allowed to investigate similarities and differences among the diverse sized companies in terms of the performance impact. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Additionally, annual reports were used as secondary data and to enhance credibility through triangulation. Findings show that in general, coopetition through strategic alliances contributes positively to airlines. Nevertheless, the degree of how much airlines benefit from alliances depends on the position in the network and the airline's size. Airlines of small size gain most from the relationship, and airlines with a central position in the alliance give more to the strategic alliances than they get out. The findings reveal that airlines of large size gain less from alliances and increasingly form other types of partnerships like joint ventures that create a more balanced give and gain relationship. Notwithstanding, the COVID epidemic will have a crucial impact on airlines and increase the importance of strategic alliances and partnerships further