Beauty for Sale - An Empirical Study of Appearance-Related Consumption in Finland

This study examines appearance-related consumption in Finland. The theoretical portion discusses appearance-related consumption, on one hand from a consumer culture perspective, as both a possibility and responsibility for everyone; and on the other hand, from the point of view of behaviour and attitudes associated with sociodemographic and lifestyle-related factors. The empirical part of the study concentrates on the following aspects: 1) Finns’ appearance-related consumption patterns, attitudes towards appearance-related consumption and attending to one’s looks through consumption, as well as general changes in consumption patterns and attitudes; 2) gender differences in attitudes and consumption patterns, and their possible changes over time, and; 3) other differences among population groups in attitudes and consumption patterns, and their possible changes over time. The following dissertation utilises data from seven different nationally representative surveys. Data include Finnish Household Budget surveys from 1998 (N=4 359), 2001 (N=5 495) and 2006 (N=4 007), as well as, The Everyday Life and Well-being Survey (N=908) collected in 2011, and Finland 1999 (N=2 417), Finland 2004 (N=3 574) and Finland 2009 (N=1 202) surveys. The study indicates that Finns’ relationship to appearance-related consumption is, generally, somewhat inconsistent. In Finland, a significant share of a household’s total spending, around the EU average, is allocated to products and services related to appearance. In addition, at an attitudinal level, physical appearance is important to most Finnish consumers. However, in many respects, these attitudes reflect a certain reservation towards appearance-related consumption practices. The number of those consumers who see themselves as truly dedicated to attending to their looks through consumption is quite small, whereas the amount of those willing to take a reserved or even negative attitude towards appearance-related consumption is clearly higher. Attitudes towards attending to one’s looks and the importance of appearance-related consumption had not changed during the past decade. Study shows that at present, appearance-related consumption is a form of consumption that is particularly important to women, younger consumers, people with middle or higher income, and those with normal weight. Gender is in the key role when explaining appearance-related consumption and contrary to common belief, gender differences seem to have stayed quite stable. The results also indicate that, to some extent, differences between younger and older age groups might be diminishing.

Improving internal performance of a company - Introducing employee empowerment via job redesign in Finnish small and medium sized enterprises

This bachelor's thesis is about to find out to what extent Finnish managers and small and medium sized organizations are willing and able to put employee empowerment into practice and what experiences they have got from employee empowerment as an approach towards job redesign. Some of the top enterprises in the world are known for their empowered employees as a single most important factor for their success and this thesis focuses on introducing the subject to Finnish managers and organizations to find out what benefits, barriers and other thoughts they have about the whole idea of empowered employees in Finnish organization culture. Most notable findings in this thesis are that Finnish managers do think that their organization's employees are capable to work efficiently if their job is extended and the organizations would perform better when right person's job is enriched and he/she is given more power to solve problems.

The Relationship of Organizational Culture, Employee Motivation and Innovativeness: Evidence from Finnish Technology Industries

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the effects of tangible and intangible incentives on the dimensions of motivation and organizational innovativeness in the context of different organizational cultures. Theory suggests that an antecedent of innovativeness is individual creativity of employees, which is influenced by intrinsic motivation, flexible organizational structures, and transformational leadership. Empirical evidence for this research is derived from 424 respondents representing technology-driven industries in Finland. Data is collected through an online questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS statistics software. The results imply that intangible incentives and intrinsic motivation have an important role in determining organizational innovativeness. The positive relationships of intangible incentives, intrinsic motivation and innovativeness seem to be higher in flexible organizational cultures. As practical implications, managers should foster flexible organizational cultures that highlight employee empowerment. The motivating power of non-financial intrinsic incentives and recognition of good work should not be undermined when compared to tangible monetary rewards.

Gamification as a means for employee motivation, personal engagement and behavioral outcomes: a gamification system developers’ perspective

A major challenge faced by companies today is the engagement gap at the workplace and how to motivate employees to engage in less intrinsically motivating work activities that are valuable for the organization. The objective of this study is to investigate gamification as a means for employee motivation and personal engagement that result in behavioral outcomes from the gamification developers’ perspective. Theories of work motivation and engagement are viewed in relation to gamification. The empirical part conducts a qualitative multiple-case study. The data is analyzed with the CAQDAS NVivo. The empirical findings suggest that gamification can enhance employee motivation, but careful consideration of extrinsic motivators is necessary to avoid their detrimental effect on intrinsic motivation. Employee self-determination is built through internalization of gamified system’s goals reaching autonomous motivation to engage in the target behavior. Employee engagement is built by fulfilling the psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability. The results suggest that gamification can build employee motivation and engagement leading to behavior change if designed with the business objectives in mind. Moreover, the gamified system needs to be renewed to address the changes in the business environment and reflect them in the employee behavior.

Solar Twins and Solar Analogues in Galactic Surveys.

The Sun is a crucial benchmark for how we see the universe. Especially when it comes to the visible range of the spectrum, stars are commonly compared to the Sun, as it is the most thoroughly studied star. In this work I have focussed on two aspects of the Sun and how it is used in modern astronomy. Firstly, I try to answer the question on how similar to the Sun another star can be. Given the limits of observations, we call a solar twin a star that has the same observed parameters as the Sun within its errors. These stars can be used as stand-in suns when doing observations, as normal night-time telescopes are not built to be pointed at the Sun. There have been many searches for these twins and every one of them provided not only information on how close to the Sun another star can be, but also helped us to understand the Sun itself. In my work I have selected _ 300 stars that are both photometrically and spectroscopically close to the Sun and found 22 solar twins, of which 17 were previously unknown and can therefore help the emerging picture on solar twins. In my second research project I have used my full sample of 300 solar analogue stars to check the temperature and metallicity scale of stellar catalogue calibrations. My photometric sample was originally drawn from the Geneva-Copenhagen-Survey (Nordström et al. 2004; Holmberg et al. 2007, 2009) for which two alternative calibrations exist, i.e. GCS-III (Holmberg et al. 2009) and C11 (Casagrande et al. 2011). I used very high resolution spectra of solar analogues, and a new approach to test the two calibrations. I found a zero–point shift of order of +75 K and +0.10 dex in effective temperature and metallicity, respectively, in the GCS-III and therefore favour the C11 calibration, which found similar offsets. I then performed a spectroscopic analysis of the stars to derive effective temperatures and metallicities, and tested that they are well centred around the solar values.

Employee layoff announcements and shareholder wealth: empirical evidence from Finland 2008-2013

This thesis investigates the short-term stock price reaction to layoff announcements in Finland. It also studies whether the characteristics of the firm or the layoff announcement have an impact on the stock market reaction. Standard event study methodology was utilized to examine the stock price reactions to layoffs and to test the created hypotheses. The event pool consisted of 102 publicly disclosed layoff announcements that were announced during the time period from June 2008 to December 2013. The empirical results show that the stock market reaction is strongly positive in the pre-event period of -10 to -1 with CAAR of 2,69%. The reaction is however slightly negative on the event date with AAR of -0,57%. Based on the results the conclusion is that either the managers are timing the markets or the layoffs are seen as efficiency improving acts and the market becomes aware of such actions pre-event. Additionally different characteristic hypotheses are tested to find out whether they would explain the reaction. The characteristics are: the reason stated by the management, business cycle, industry group, prior performance, leverage-ratio, the size of the company, the size of the layoff and the duration of the layoff.

Central Spitsbergen from sketch surveys made in 1896 and 1897

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

Map of the sources of Snake River : with its tributaries together with portions of the headwaters of the Madison and Yellowstone from surveys and observations of the Snake River Expedition

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

Map of the sources of Snake River : with its tributaries together with portions of the headwaters of the Madison and Yellowstone from surveys and observations of the Snake River Expedition

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

Geological sketch map of New Zealand constructed from official surveys and the explorations of F. von Hochstetter, Julius Haast and others

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

The Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Nova Zemla and between the 60th and 82d parallel of latitude from Swedish, Danish, British, Russian and German surveys and explorations up to 1871

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

India : west coast : Gulf of Cutch to Viziadrig from surveys by the officers of the East India government 1828-1856

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan

India : west coast : Viziadrug to Cochin with the Lacadivh archipelago from surveys by the officers of the East India government 1828-1856

Kartta kuuluu A. E. Nordenskiöldin kokoelmaan