eBusiness Adoption in Metalforming SMEs in the Automotive Industry

Competition in the automotive industry has led the participants trying to find new ways of reducing costs, increasing efficiency and improve responsiveness to gain competitive advantage. It is not anymore single companies competing against each others, it is the whole supply chains competing. This has already earlier led the big multinational companies to gain benefits by using electronic means of doing business (eBusiness). Lower down the chain the smaller companies have not yet taken advantage of the potential benefits of eBusiness methods. Therefore, the full benefits from eBusiness methods have yet to be discovered. The aim of the Thesis is to find ways of taking advantage of eBusiness methods with their limited resources. Because small and medium sized enterprises (SME) many times lack of eBusiness knowledge this project also aims to clarify the idea of eBusiness, present the potential possibilities and benefits from eBusiness and the requirements needed to achieve them. The Thesis presents information of eBusines especially in the automotive industry. Together with this information and the information acquired from the case study company a simple route map is developed which SMEs can use gain competitive advantage by eBusiness methods.

Phylogeography and population genetics of north European Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.)

Although abundant in the number of individuals, the Atlantic salmon may be considered as a threatened species in many areas of its native distribution range. Human activities such as building of power plant dams, offshore overfishing, pollution, clearing of riverbeds for timber floating and badly designed stocking regimes have diminished the distribution of Atlantic salmon. As a result of this, many of the historical populations both in Europe and northern America have gone extinct or are severely depressed. In fact, only 1% of Atlantic salmon existing today are of natural origin, the rest being farmed salmon. All of this has lead to a vast amount of research and many restoration programmes aiming to bring Atlantic salmon back to rivers from where it has vanished. However, many of the restoration programmes conducted thus far have been unsuccessful due to inadequate scientific research or lack of its implementation, highlighting the fact that more research is needed to fully understand the biology of this complex species. The White and Barents Seas in northwest Russia are among the last regions in Europe where Atlantic salmon populations are still stable, thus forming an important source of biodiversity for the entire European region. Salmon stocks from this area are also of immense economic and social importance for the local people in the form of fishing tourism. The main aim of this thesis was to elucidate the post-glacial history and population genetic structure of north European and particularly northwest Russian Atlantic salmon, both of which are aspects of great importance for the management and conservation of the species. Throughout the whole thesis, these populations were studied by utilizing microsatellites as the main molecular tool. One of the most important discoveries of the thesis was the division of Atlantic salmon from the White and Barents Seas into four separate clusters, which has not been observed in previous studies employing nuclear markers although is supported by mtDNA studies. Populations from the western Barents Sea clustered together with the northeast Atlantic populations into a clearly distinguishable group while populations from the White Sea and eastern Barents Sea were separated into three additional groups. This has important conservation implications as this thesis clearly indicates that conservation of populations from all of the observed clusters is warranted in order to conserve as much of the genetic diversity as possible in this area. The thesis also demonstrates how differences in population life histories within a species, migratory behaviour in this case, and in their phylogeographic origin affect the genetic characteristics of populations, namely diversity and divergence levels. The anadromous populations from the Atlantic Ocean, White Sea and Barents Sea possessed higher levels of genetic diversity than the anadromous populations form the Baltic Sea basin. Among the non-anadromous populations the result was the opposite: the Baltic freshwater populations were more variable. This emphasises the importance of taking the life history of a population into consideration when developing conservation strategies: due to the limited possibilities for new genetic diversity to be generated via gene flow, it is expected that freshwater Atlantic salmon populations would be more vulnerable to extinction following a population crash and thus deserve a high conservation status. In the last chapter of this thesis immune relevant marker loci were developed and screened for signatures of natural selection along with loci linked to genes with other functions or no function at all. Also, a novel landscape genomics method, which combines environmental information with molecular data, was employed to investigate whether immune relevant markers displayed significant correlations to various environmental variables more frequently than other loci. Indications of stronger selection pressure among immune-relevant loci compared to non-immune relevant EST-linked loci was found but further studies are needed to evaluate whether it is a common phenomenon in Atlantic salmon.

Lectio praecursoria: Environmental policy evaluation concepts exemplified in the context of the European Unions strategy for better regulation

Lectio praecursoria 3.2.2006 Tampereen yliopisto

Diverse Routes from School, via Higher Education, to Employment. A Comparison of Nine European Countries

The central theme for this study is graduate employment and employability in European-wide discussion. In this study, the complex relationships between higher education and the world of work are explored from the vantage point of how individuals make use of the higher education system in their transition from education to employment. The variation among individual transition processes in nine European countries is analysed with the help of a comparable graduate survey. Countries in this study are Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway. The data used for the study is commonly known as the “CHEERS” or “Careers after Higher Education, A European Research Survey.” The data was collected in 1999. The study discusses the possibilities and limitations the higher education system has in supporting the initial education-to-work transitions of youth. The study also addresses problems with comparing national higher education systems in terms of enrolment and graduate employability. A central purpose for this study is to reflect on concerns about the prolongation of individual transitions with a framework that simultaneously considers both the graduate employability and the duration of the education-to-work transition process. The key concept for this study is the standard student/graduate; synonym concepts are the traditional and the conventional student/graduate. Standard graduates are relatively young individuals who are performing their initial transition from education to working-life and who complete the degree-earning process within the stipulated time frame. In all nine countries, standard graduates make up a considerable share of the student flow, passing from higher education to the labour markets. The share of standard graduates is by far the largest in France, where they comprise the overwhelming mass. The proportion of the standard graduates is the lowest in Italy, Finland, and Austria where approximately one in four graduates completed the process of higher education within the stipulated time frame. Of the nine countries compared, employability of the whole graduate population is the greatest in Norway, the UK, Finland, and the Netherlands. Compared with employability of the whole graduate population, variation among the countries is considerably reduced when reviewing the employability of only the standard graduates. Thereby, even though the ranking among countries remains largely unchanged, the variations among them are smaller when the duration of degree earning process is standardized. The study also discusses other ideal types of student careers (or transition processes) besides the standard student/graduate. Results of regression analyses indicate that that at the pan-European level analysis, the graduate labour markets are not heavily segmented in terms of the type of the individual transition process. When considering within-country differences between the graduates, the field of studies is clearly a more powerful explanatory variable than the type of the transition process. There are, nevertheless, clear indications that, irrespective of the country, chances of finding a high status job are, on the average, highest amongst those who graduate within the stipulated duration of the degree program and who thereby have experienced the standard student career, whereas, participating in working life while studying protects against unemployment after finishing one’s degree.

Market orientation and performance in entrepreneurial SMEs

Market orientation is the organizational culture that creates the necessary behaviors for continuous additional value for customers and thus continuous superior performance for the business. The field of market orientation has been studied repeatedly during the past two decades. Yet research has concentrated on large firms in large domestic markets creating a need for diversifying research. The master’s thesis at hand examined the general incidence of market orientation among SMEs from five different industries as well as its consequences on SME performance. The empirical part of the thesis was conducted with a web-based survey that resulted in 255 responses. The data of the survey was analyzed by statistical analysis. The incidence of market orientation varied among dimensions and market orientation did not show any direct effect on firm performance. Customer orientation was the only dimension that showed a direct (positive) effect. On the contrary, moderating effects were found which indicate that the effect of market orientation in SMEs is influenced by other factors that should receive further attention. Also industry specific differences were discovered and should be further examined.

Time-varying Risk Premiums and Conditional Market Risk: Empirical Evidence from European Stock Markets

This study investigates the relationship between the time-varying risk premiums and conditional market risk in the stock markets of the ten member countries of Economy and Monetary Union. Second, it examines whether the conditional second moments change over time and are there asymmetric effects in the conditional covariance matrix. Third, it analyzes the possible effects of the chosen testing framework. Empirical analysis is conducted using asymmetric univariate and multivariate GARCH-in-mean models and assuming three different degrees of market integration. For a daily sample period from 1999 to 2007, the study shows that the time-varying market risk alone is not enough to explain the dynamics of risk premiums and indications are found that the market risk is detected only when its price is allowed to change over time. Also asymmetric effects in the conditional covariance matrix, which is found to be time-varying, are clearly present and should be recognized in empirical asset pricing analyses.

Capital Structure of Finnish SMEs and Financial Constraints

This thesis studies capital structure of Finnish small and medium sized enterprises. The specific object of the study is to test whether financial constraints have an effect on capital structure. In addition influences of several other factors were studied. Capital structure determinants are formulated based on three capital structure theories. The tradeoff theory and the agency theory concentrate on the search of optimal capital structure. The pecking order theory concerns favouring on financing source over another. The data of this study consists of financial statement data and results of corporate questionnaire. Regression analysis was used to find out the effects of several determinants. Regression models were formed based on the presented theories. Short and long term debt ratios were considered separately. The metrics of financially constrained firms was included in all models. It was found that financial constrains have a negative and significant effect to short term debt ratios. The effect was negative also to long term debt ratio but not statistically significant. Other considerable factors that influenced debt ratios were fixed assets, age, profitability, single owner and sufficiency of internal financing.