Browsing Ph.D. theses (ICM/IKL) by Title
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Now showing items 8-17 of 17
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Strand, Robert Gavin (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In this dissertation I examine the establishment of corporate social responsibility (CSR) bureaucracies at corporations and I come to consider the CSR bureaucracy as a space for reflection within the corporation. In the face of charges that bureaucracies are inherently unethical and devoid of consideration for humanistic concerns, I argue that within the large bureaucracy that is the corporation, the CSR bureaucracy can create a space in which tensions that arise from conflicting values and purposes can be identified, negotiated, and actions coordinated. I position this dissertation within the field of CSR, to which I introduce the Weberian distinction between formal and substantive rationality as means through which to identify and describe tensions that become apparent with the CSR agenda. This dissertation contains four articles, two of which draw from the engaged scholarship approach. One includes findings from a study I conducted as an action/intervention researcher with a U.S. corporation during the period in which a CSR bureaucracy was established. The other includes findings from a study of CSR focused MBA courses I instruct in which reflection is a primary learning objective. The other two articles include findings from studies I conducted to explore the establishment of a CSR position to the top management teams of U.S. and Scandinavian corporations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8462 Files in this item: 1
Robert_Strand.pdf (3.503Mb) -
Evidence from VietnamPham, Ha Thi Van (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The thesis revolves around the internationalization of Vietnamese firms - that is, how the international competitiveness of these firms is enhanced in terms of both upstream and downstream value chain activities and the export performance implications hereof. For Vietnamese firms, as well as for other firms from emerging markets, internationalization trajectories may differ considerably from the internationalization patterns portrayed in classical theories (such as the Uppsala Model) based on observations of the internationalization of firms from Western, developed market economies. Classical theories have primarily focused on firms’ marketing & sales and networking capabilities as levers of internationalization – and less on upstream capabilities, such as manufacturing and auxiliary service competencies. Likewise the situation in other emerging markets many Vietnamese firms are inserted in global value chains (GVCs) governed by multinational buyers. For these firms, manufacturing skills may be of equal - or greater - importance to export performance than the mastering of marketing & sales and networking in foreign markets. The thesis presents various theoretical perspectives on firms’ internationalization – perspectives that vary in terms of their focus on either upstream or downstream activities (or, the interrelationship of these two types of activities). The thesis tries to fill out the knowledge gap as to which of these theoretical perspectives fit best the trajectories of Vietnamese manufacturing firms involved in exports. In doing so, the thesis also draws on GVC models, entrepreneurial literature, and studies of economic as well as strategic export performance. Unique survey data covering 226 Vietnamese manufacturers involved in exporting was collected through face-to-face interviews conducted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. On the basis of these data a set of hypotheses is tested using structural equation modelling as a statistical tool. The empirical study suggests that Vietnamese firms create international competitiveness in relation to both upstream and downstream activities. Furthermore, the study suggests that upstream competitiveness of the sample firms is significantly more attractive in terms of economic export performance (export sales, profitability and growth) than downstream competitiveness. However, when export performance is measured in more far-sighted, strategic terms, there are no significant differences between the two dimensions of competitiveness. The study also reveals some interesting industry differences: for firms in the “low-tech” textiles & garments industry, upstream competitiveness has greater impact on economic export performance than downstream competitiveness. Conversely, downstream competitiveness results in a higher economic return than upstream competitiveness for firms from the “high-tech” industries of electronics and mechanical manufactures In the last part of the thesis, theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications are discussed along with conclusions and suggestions for future research. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7934 Files in this item: 1
Ha_Thi_Van_Pham.pdf (3.762Mb) -
Un estudio sobre emigrantes norteamericanos en un pueblo mexicanoBalslev Clausen, Helene (Frederiksberg, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Den traditionelle migrationsforskning betragter Mexico, som et typisk faktor eller transit land, samt har sit fokus på migrationsflowet fra Syd (Latinamerika) til Nord(USA). Dette case studie derimod bidrager empirisk med identifikationen af en ny type immigranter, angelsaksiske noramerikanere, som i stadigt større omfang emigrerer fra Nord(USA) til Syg(Mexico), hvilket som noget nyt også gør Mexico til et pull faktor land..... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7733 Files in this item: 1
helena_balslev_clausen.pdf (5.975Mb) -
Antecedents, processes dynamics and firm-level impactØrberg Jensen, Peter (Frederiksberg, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This PhD thesis addresses one of the most intensely debated phenomena over the past decade within the realm of international business: Firms’ relocation of value chain activities to other parts in the network of multinational corporation (MNC) or to external suppliers/services providers in foreign countries (hereinafter referred to as offshoring), often to destination countries with lower cost structures. Whereas the offshoring of manufacturing tasks has existed for several decades, and has been analyzed in the international business literature, the offshoring of advanced services tasks from developed country firms to destination countries such as India, which offer an attractive cocktail of low costs and highly skilled labour, is a more recent phenomenon. The offshoring of this type of services tasks forms the subject of this PhD thesis... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7741 Files in this item: 1
Peter_d_orberg_jensen.pdf (674.8Kb) -
Nielsen, Michael E. (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: ‘No amount of preparation could have lessened the shock and revulsion I felt on entering a sporting-goods factory in the town of Sialkot, seventy miles from Lahore, where scores of children, most of them aged five to ten, produce soccer balls by hand for forty rupees, or about $1.20, a day. The children work eighty hours a week in near-total darkness and total silence. According to the foreman, the darkness is both an economy and a precautionary measure; child-rights activists have difficulty taking photographs and gathering evidence of wrongdoing if the lighting is poor. The silence is to ensure product quality: "If the children speak, they are not giving their complete attention to the product and are liable to make errors.” The children are permitted one thirty-minute meal break each day; they are punished if they take longer. They are also punished if they fall asleep, if their workbenches are sloppy, if they waste material or miscut a pattern, if they complain of mistreatment to their parents or speak to strangers outside the factory. A partial list of "infractions” for which they may be punished is tacked to a wall near the entrance. It’s a document of dubious utility: the children are illiterate. Punishments are doled out in a storage closet at the rear of the factory. There, amid bales of wadding and leather, children are hung upside down by their knees, starved, caned, or lashed.’ URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7730 Files in this item: 1
michael_e_nielsen.pdf (1.355Mb) -
India's national Oil Company and International Activism in SudanPatey, Luke (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
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A Case Study of Branding and Identity Struggles in a Low-Prestige OrganizationFrandsen, Sanne (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This dissertation examines the relationship between corporate branding and identity work at organizational and individual levels in the context of a lowprestige corporation. It is based on 17 months of research undertaken as an inhouse ethnographer at MGP, a European based national telecommunication corporation. The study seeks to contribute to integrated corporate branding theory by adopting a critical perspective on the intra-organizational affects of brands and branding. The dissertation contains three papers, each of which contributes to discussions within corporate branding, organizational identity and identification, as well as to literature on management control and employee resistance. The findings demonstrate that the management adopts integrated corporate branding in a hypocritical manner, while employees in response develop a cynical distance to their work. While this may be interpreted as negative consequences, the dissertation argues that these are productive and have certain advantages for the management in the given context. Thus, the findings challenge the integrated corporate branding ideal of coherence between the external and internal dimensions of corporate branding as the only productive way to create a successful corporate brand. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8366 Files in this item: 1
Sanne_Frandsen.pdf (690.4Kb) -
A critical political economy perspectiveBuch-Hansen, Hubert (København, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The focus of this thesis is one "component” of EC competition regulation, namely that of merger control. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7729 Files in this item: 1
hubert_buch-hansen.pdf (2.956Mb) -
An implementation and evaluationHalskov, Jakob (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The research object of this thesis is the so-called knowledge patterns and their usefulness in automatically extracting specic semantic relations from unannotated and uncategorized text on the WWW so as to facilitate semi-automatic updating and extension of existing ontological and terminological resources. The main contribution of the thesis is the implementation of a com- plete ontology extension framework called WWW2REL which is 100% based on a knowledge-poor, domain-independent processing of WWW text snippets and includes the three stages of pattern discovery, pattern ltering and relation instance ranking. Unlike most comparable systems WWW2REL is special in that it is both highly portable, can be applied to any semantic relation type and operates directly on uncategorized WWW text snippets. The system is tested on the biomedical UMLS Metathesaurus for four dierent relation types and manually evaluated by four domain experts. It is demonstrated that high precision in the task of knowledge discovery from a noisy text source can be achieved using a very simple instance relevance measure and two ranking heuristics. In contrast, many comparable systems operate on richly annotated academic text and tend to apply heuristics which are custom-tailored to a specic domain and/or relation type. When selecting the overall best ranking scheme, average system performance across all four relation types ranges between 70% to 65% of the maximum possible F-score by top 10 and top 50 relation instances, respectively. Finally, the thesis experiments also examine the portability of individ- ual knowledge patterns and of the ranking heuristics. It is concluded that synonymy KPs are the most domain independent closely followed by ISA KPs, whereas patterns for "may_prevent" and especially "induces" are more dependent on the domain. Empirical experiments also suggest that a ranking heuristic which penalizes relation instances whose arguments occur frequently in a general language corpus can be highly eective, but may need to be adapted to the domain in question. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7731 Files in this item: 1
jacob_halskov.pdf (1.810Mb) -
Enhancing Social Entrepreneurship and Stakeholder TheoryDacanay, Marie Lisa (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis develops a framework for understanding how social enterprises engage the poor and address poverty, a pressing global problem of the 21st century. Using casebased theory building, it studies a theoretical sample of three pairs of Philippine-based social enterprises, where the poor were suppliers, workers, and customers. In half of the cases, the poor were also owners. The research studies the roles and role changes of the poor in these social enterprises, how and why these roles changed, or did not change, and the impact of the roles and role changes, if any, on the social enterprises and the poor. Data for the research was gathered mainly from key informant interviews, published and unpublished organizational documents as well as previous studies done by external consultants on the case subjects. Based on a cross case analysis of the data from the theoretical sample, the thesis develops three models of stakeholder engagement among social enterprises with the poor as primary stakeholders or SEPPS, namely: control, collaboration and empowerment. This thesis provides insights and develops propositions about the importance of stakeholder engagement and the power and limitations of these three models in bringing about social inclusion and poverty reduction. These propositions are suggested to be applicable in countries in the South other than the Philippines where systemic poverty and inequality are exacerbated by the failure of state and market institutions to address the needs of the poor. This thesis makes a contribution to social entrepreneurship and stakeholder theory. It does so by sharing a perspective from the South and giving a voice to the poor as stakeholders. The researcher notes that overall, the poor and the South are under-represented in these discourses. On the whole, social entrepreneurship theorizing has been characterized as embryonic as a topic of academic inquiry. Stakeholder engagement is considered an under-theorized area in stakeholder theory. In developing a framework for understanding stakeholder engagement models involving the poor, this thesis makes a first step towards applying and extending stakeholder theory in SEPPS. The thesis likewise enriches social entrepreneurship theory by conceiving of SEPPS as a global social enterprise model that catalyzes South-North cooperation to address poverty and inequality. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8513 Files in this item: 1
Marie_Lisa_Dacanay.pdf (2.477Mb)
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