Effects of a Financial Transaction Tax - Do Transaction Costs Lower Volatility?: A Literature Review

In this literature review the theorethical framework of Financial transaction taxes and their assumed effect on market volatility is assessed. The empirical evidence from various studies is compared against the theory and a simple empirical review of the Finnish stock market is conducted. The findings implicate that financial transaction taxes can not reduce volatility and their actual effect on markets is dependend by many other factors as well. Some evidence even suggests that transactions taxes may actually raise volatility.

A systematic literature review on agile project

In the 21st century, agile project management (APM) has emerged as a major evolutionary step in the area of software project management. APM is defined as a conceptual framework, consisting of various methods such as Scrum, quick respond to change, better customer collaboration, minimum coverage of documentation and extreme programming (XP) that facilitates to produce working software in multiple iterations with team work. Because agile project management has become more popular in the software industry in recent years, it constitutes an interesting and comprehensive research topic. This thesis presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of published research articles concerning agile project management. Based on a predefined search strategy, 273 such articles were identified, of which 44 were included in the review. The selected 44 articles were published between years 2005 and 2012. The thesis defines a review process by developing a review protocol and presenting the results of the review. The results are expected to provide researchers, software man

Brand Communication Strategy of E-commerce SMEs in Chinese Cosmetics Market

This study concentrates on how to develop a brand communication strategy for ecommerce SMEs in Chinese cosmetic market with new media channels. This study is a qualitative research. Data collection consists of primary data and secondary data. Primary data is from the case company’s websites, observation of benchmarked companies and observation of the case company. Secondary data will be collected from relevant websites and reliable databases. In order to explore the research questions, comparative benchmarking was conducted to develop brand communication strategy for case company April. The results of the study illustrate that e-commerce SMEs have to consider brand positioning strategy, brand awareness strategy, brand attitude strategy, brand media strategy and the brand benefits as well to develop brand communication strategy.

Finnish cleantech SMEs in China: Challenges and solutions

The rapid economic growth in China has resulted in environmental challenges ranging from air pollution to water-related issues. Thus supporting clean technology, or cleantech, that encompasses industries that focus on alternative energy, pollution and recycling, power supplies and conservation has become one of the focal points in the Chinese economic policy for the next decade. Simultaneously, the Finnish government has initiated programs to support the internationalisation of domestic cleantech companies in an attempt to spiral the industry into one of the pillars of Finnish economic growth. This study concentrates on the conjunction of these two themes and studies the challenges faced by Finnish cleantech SMEs in the Chinese market. Consequently, the study answers the following sub questions: 1. What human and financial resource-based challenges do Finnish cleantech SMEs face in the Chinese market and what are their solutions? 2. What knowledge-based challenges do Finnish cleantech SMEs face in the Chinese market and how can these difficulties be resolved? 3. What network-based challenges do Finnish cleantech SMEs face in the Chinese market, how do they relate to the resource- and knowledge-based challenges, and how can these difficulties be resolved? This qualitative study is conducted by analysing four semi structured interviews collected from four Finnish SMEs that operate in China. The findings of the study indicate that in human resources the most important challenges are related to the hiring and retaining of employees. In contrast to extant academic literature results distinguish salary and social status as the main solutions to this challenge. Regarding financial resources it is discovered that cleantech companies enjoy a benign business environment in China and benefit from the Chinese government’s support for cleantech industry. Challenges related to knowledge resources can be grouped into categories with the most interesting knowledge flows being the stream of local market knowledge into to the foreign parent company and the outward flow of manufacturing and business practice information into the target venture. The challenge related to the first flow is gathering relevant information and the main solutions are clustering at the foreign location and hiring knowledge prior to internationalisation. Regarding the second flow the main challenge is related to intellectual property rights and the most interesting solution is the purposeful transformation of explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. Finally, it is discovered that networks, called guanxi in China, greatly affect the business processes. Within the guanxi system there is the concept of face which was found to affect employee propensity to stay as well as, as a novel academic result, employees’ knowledge sharing intention.

Waste-to-Energy Scenarios in the China Context

Waste incineration plants are increasingly established in China. A low heating value and high moisture content, due to a large proportion of biowaste in the municipal solid waste (MSW), can be regarded as typical characteristics of Chinese MSW. Two incineration technologies have been mainly established in China: stoker grate and circular fluidized bed (CFB). Both of them are designed to incinerate mixed MSW. However, there have been difficulties to reach the sufficient temperature in the combustion process due to the low heating value of the MSW. That is contributed to the usage of an auxiliary fossil fuel, which is often used during the whole incineration process. The objective of this study was to design alternative Waste-to-energy (WTE) scenarios for existing WTE plants with the aim to improve the material and energy efficiency as well as the feasibility of the plants. Moreover, the aim of this thesis was to find the key factors that affect to the feasibility of the scenarios. Five different WTE plants were selected as study targets. The necessary data for calculation was gained from literature as well as received from the operators of the target WTE plants. The created scenarios were based on mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) technologies, in which the produced solid recovered fuel (SRF) was fed as an auxiliary fuel into a WTE plant replacing the fossil fuel. The mechanically separated biowaste was treated either in an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant, a biodrying plant, a thermal drying plant, or a combined AD plant + thermal drying plant. An interactive excel spreadsheet based computation tool was designed to estimate the viability of the scenarios in different WTE cases. The key figures of the improved material and energy efficiency, such as additional electricity generated and avoided waste for landfill, were got as results. Furthermore, economic indicators such as annual profits (or costs), payback period, and internal rate of return (IRR) were gained as results. The results show that the AD scenario was the most profitable in most of the cases. The current heating value of MSW and the tipping fee for the received MSW appeared as the most important factor in terms of feasibility.

Improving quality at the preanalytical phase of blood sampling : literature review

Julkaisumaa: 158 TW TWN Taiwan

Export Tire Entry to Chinese Market

After the economic reform, China has undergone fast economic growth, urbanization and adopted the western lifestyle. Global enterprises are investing in China and Finnish companies began to enter the Chinese market after the 1980s. Fast economic growth has downside effects like pollution and thus more cleantech solutions are needed. There are different kinds of entry modes that companies are using when entering the Chinese market. This thesis focuses on export tire entry mode. The purpose of this study is to examine cleantech companies’ opinions about the export tire operations. The background of this study is built by combining the written knowledge about the history of the Chinese industry and market entry modes. The empirical part of the study is a semi-structured, qualitative analysis of five case companies that are operating together in a particular export tire and represent the highest Finnish cleantech knowledge. The results of this study indicate that the export tire entry is an easy and cost effective way to enter new markets or market segment. Export tire is really dependent on the leader who in this particular case succeeded well.

OpenAIRE Guidelines for Literature Repositories, Data Archives and CRIS managers

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Targeted Annotation of Scientific Literature and Data Resources in Invenio Digital Libraries

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Grey literature, green open access: the BLDS Digital Library

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Handbook of oriental collections in Finland: manuscripts, xylographs, inscriptions, and Russian minority literature

Addenda: Turcica, Arabica, Persica and Caucasica. Studia Orientalia, vol. 64, 1988.