Kaupunkiorganisaation uudistuminen. Case Haminan kaupunki

Tutkielmassa tutkittiin kuntaorganisaation uudistumista vuoden vanhan Haminan kaupungin uudistumiskykyisyyttä. Tutkielman empiirisessä osassa käytettiin kvalitatiivista ja kvantitatiivista tutkimusotetta. Tutkimusaineistona olikoko Haminan kaupungin henkilöstö, 1639 henkilöä ja tutkimus suoritettiin keväällä 2004. Tutkimusmenetelminä käytettiin ©businessXray Oy:n KM - factoriaTM, kaupungin ylimmän johdon teemahaastatteluja. Kyselyn vastausprosenttina 44. Tutkimuksen tuloksena todetaan, että Haminan kaupungilla on uudistumiskykyisyyttä ja yhtenäistä näkemystä. Organisaation strategisessa kyvykkyydessä nousi esiin organisaation tilannetietoisuus ja - herkkyys sekä sitoutuminen, jota tarvitaan muutosprosesseissa. Toisaalta nykyisessä organisaation toimintatavassa on kehitettäväävalitun strategian suuntaiseksi. Johdon teemahaastatteluissa korostuivat tulevaisuuden organisaation menestystekijäksi ihmisten välinen avoin vuorovaikutus ja luovat ratkaisut. Haminan kaupungin tulevaisuus on suuntautumassa innovatiivisuuteen, sillä ylin johto on vahvasti dynaamiseen strategianäkemykseen orientoitunut.

Exploration of the social dimension of corporate responsibility in a welfare state

This study focuses on corporate social responsibility (or CSR)as the latest dimension to emerge in the corporate responsibility and sustainability agenda, which in the recent past has rapidly risen to the top of the list of concerns for civil societies worldwide. Despite the continuing debates and discussions about the scope, benefits, and impacts of CSR to business and community in various sectors, levels, and types of society, many companies have moved forward to confront the opportunities and challenges of CSR. Thus, this study is about those proactive companies with a focus on the importance of CSR and its management inside and outside the company. It is an exploration and learning from the experience of Finnish companies, as well as other actors interested or involved in shaping the course of CSR, locally and globally. It also looks closely at how national culture affects the views, thinking, and management of CSR in a welfare state. This dissertation primarily draws on the analyses of information collected from a series of qualitative interviews and the existing literature in the area. This is complemented by an analysis of written and published documents on CSR from various sources. The results of the study give insightful information and detailed descriptions of a roadmap useful in learning and understanding CSR in Finnish companies. Despite the varying conceptual connotations, essential roadmap indicators point to the importance of framing CSR within the corporate responsibility concept, Finnish development and the welfare state system, globalization, stakeholders, and the pursuit of sustainable development as the main drivers of CSR, the remarkable progress of CSR in companies, and identification of key management areas and practices relevant to CSR. Similarly,the study reveals the importance of culture as essential in understanding and learning CSR. Finnish culture has a positive influence on the views, thinking, and management practices of CSR issues. Such a positive influence of culture, therefore, makes it easy for business people to discuss and understand CSR, because those CSR issues are already considered common and taken-for-granted by Finns and are implicit in the welfare state provisions. The experience of Finnish companies in implementing CSR policies in the supply chain is a concrete proactive step in advancing the message of CSR, that is, to bring companies and suppliers together to work on improving and strengthening relationships towards socially responsible practices worldwide. Such a forward step to deal with CSR issues in the supply chain reflects the companies' commitments and belief that CSR can be managed with the suppliers and gain positive benefits. Despite the problems and complexities, particularly in the global supply chain, managing CSR for Finnish companies presents new opportunities and challenges that are expected to intensify in the near future. The focus on CSR policy implementation inthe supply chain points to the importance of companies taking initiatives and forging cooperation with suppliers with the aim of addressing and improving CSR questions in the supply chains. The proactive stance of Finnish companies toward CSR is complemented by the active supporting role of important societalactors such as the government and NGOs. These actors carry out various promotional efforts and campaigns, thus bringing CSR into the mainstream of Finnish companies and strengthening the synergistic learning about CSR within the Finnish business and civil circles. The efforts of the government and NGOs to promote CSR are indicative of the importance of multipartite involvement and the emergence of better civil regulations. Likewise, their drive to learn from each other, exchange experiences, and contribute in CSR debates facilitated the evolution of CSRnetworks in the country. The results of this study add to the mounting evidence that CSR, in general, has created a new dimension in managing corporate sustainability. This study provides compelling empirical evidence and some direct quotations about CSR in the Finnish context. This information can be used to learn and gain new useful insights, approaches, and concepts for managing CSR.

Coping with Technology: A Study on Economic Methodology and Strategic Management of Technology

There is a broad consensus among economists that technologicalchange has been a major contributor to the productivity growth and, hence, to the growth of the material welfare in western industrialized countries at least over the last century. Paradoxically, this issue has not been the focal point of theoretical economics. At the same time, we have witnessed the rise of the importance of technological issues at the strategic management level of business firms. Interestingly, the research has not accurately responded to this challenge either. The tension between the overwhelming empirical evidence of the importance of technology and its relative omission in the research offers a challenging target for a methodological endeavor. This study deals with the question of how different theories cope with technology and explain technological change. The focusis at the firm level and the analysis concentrates on metatheoretical issues, except for the last two chapters, which examine the problems of strategic management of technology. Here the aim is to build a new evolutionary-based theoreticalframework to analyze innovation processes at the firm level. The study consistsof ten chapters. Chapter 1 poses the research problem and contrasts the two basic approaches, neoclassical and evolutionary, to be analyzed. Chapter 2 introduces the methodological framework which is based on the methodology of isolation. Methodological and ontoogical commitments of the rival approaches are revealed and basic questions concerning their ways of theorizing are elaborated. Chapters 3-6 deal with the so-called substantive isolative criteria. The aim is to examine how different approaches cope with such critical issues as inherent uncertainty and complexity of innovative activities (cognitive isolations, chapter 3), theboundedness of rationality of innovating agents (behavioral isolations, chapter4), the multidimensional nature of technology (chapter 5), and governance costsrelated to technology (chapter 6). Chapters 7 and 8 put all these things together and look at the explanatory structures used by the neoclassical and evolutionary approaches in the light of substantive isolations. The last two cpahters of the study utilize the methodological framework and tools to appraise different economics-based candidates in the context of strategic management of technology. The aim is to analyze how different approaches answer the fundamental question: How can firms gain competitive advantages through innovations and how can the rents appropriated from successful innovations be sustained? The last chapter introduces a new evolutionary-based technology management framework. Also the largely omitted issues of entrepreneurship are examined.

Avainhenkilöiden sitouttaminen organisaatioon

Tutkielman tavoitteena oli tarkastella ja tuoda esiin sitouttamisen merkitys organisaatioille, selvittää yritysjohtojen avuksi avainhenkilöiden sitoutumista ja löytää parempia keinoja organisaatioon sitouttamiseen. Lähtökohtana oli tarkastella sitouttamista henkilöstövoimavarojen johtamisen ja sitoutumisen kautta. Viitekehykseksi valittiin Allenin ja Meyerin (1990) sitoutumismalli. Sitouttaminen vaikuttaa organisaation taloudelliseen, laadulliseen, tuotannolliseen ja kilpailulliseen menestykseen. Empiirinen tutkimus suoritettiin puolistrukturoiduilla haastatteluilla ja kyselylomakkeella. Aineisto käsiteltiin teemoittelun kautta. Empiirisen tutkimuksen mukaan tärkeimmät sitoutumista nostavat tekijät liittyvät esimiestoimintaan ja johtamiseen, työn piirteisiin ja työoloihin sekä vaikutusmahdollisuuteen. Tärkeimmät sitoutumista nostavat tekijät vaikuttivat tunnepitoisen sitoutumisen muodostumiseen. Erityisesti esiin nousivat työtehtävässä viihtymisestä muodostunut ”5 vuoden- sääntö”, organisaatioiden järjestämien vapaa-ajan tapahtumien vähäinen tärkeys sekä halu pitää perhe- ja työelämä erillään. Järjestettyjen vapaa-ajan tapahtumien merkityksen vähyys liittyy haluun viettää aikaa perheen kanssa. Organisaatioiden tulisi ottaa selvää oman henkilöstönsä sitoutumiseen vaikuttavat tekijät, jolloin organisaation käyttämät sitouttamiskeinot toimisivat parhaiten ja vastaisivat henkilöstön tarpeita.

More than Words? An Analysis on the Language and Structure of General Election Manifestos of the British Labour Party 1983-2005

The topic of this study is the language of the educational policies of the British Labour party in the General Election manifestos between the years 1983-2005. The twenty-year period studied has been a period of significant changes in world politics, and in British politics, especially for the Labour party. The emergence educational policy as a vote-winner of the manifestos of the nineties has been noteworthy. The aim of the thesis is two-fold: to look at the structure of the political manifesto as an example of genre writing and to analyze the content utilizing the approach of critical discourse analysis. Furthermore, the aim of this study is not to pinpoint policy positions but to look at what is the image that the Labour Party creates of itself through these manifestos. The analysis of the content is done by a method of close-reading. Based on the findings, the methodology for the analysis of the content was created. This study utilized methodological triangulation which means that the material is analyzed from several methodological aspects. The aspects used in this study are ones of lexical features (collocation, coordination, euphemisms, metaphors and naming), grammatical features (thematic roles, tense, aspect, voice and modal auxiliaries) and rhetoric (Burke, Toulmin and Perelman). From the analysis of the content a generic description is built. By looking at the lexical, grammatical and rhetorical features a clear change in language of the Labour Party can be detected. This change is foreshadowed already in the 1992 manifesto but culminates in the 1997 manifesto which would lead Labour to a landslide victory in the General Election. During this twenty-year period Labour has moved away from the old commitments and into the new sphere of “something for everybody”. The pervasiveness of promotional language and market inspired vocabulary into the sphere of manifesto writing is clear. The use of the metaphors seemed to be the tool for the creation of the image of the party represented through the manifestos. A limited generic description can be constructed from the findings based on the content and structure of the manifestos: especially more generic findings such as the use of the exclusive we, the lack of certain anatomical parts of argument structure, the use of the future tense and the present progressive aspect can shed light to the description of the genre of manifesto writing. While this study is only the beginning, it proves that the combination of looking at the lexical, grammatical and rhetorical features in the study of manifestos is a promising one.

Assessment of Coastal Bird Populations and Habitats on the Finnish Coast of the Baltic Sea: Implications for Monitoring and Management

Coastal birds are an integral part of coastal ecosystems, which nowadays are subject to severe environmental pressures. Effective measures for the management and conservation of seabirds and their habitats call for insight into their population processes and the factors affecting their distribution and abundance. Central to national and international management and conservation measures is the availability of accurate data and information on bird populations, as well as on environmental trends and on measures taken to solve environmental problems. In this thesis I address different aspects of the occurrence, abundance, population trends and breeding success of waterbirds breeding on the Finnish coast of the Baltic Sea, and discuss the implications of the results for seabird monitoring, management and conservation. In addition, I assess the position and prospects of coastal bird monitoring data, in the processing and dissemination of biodiversity data and information in accordance with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and other national and international commitments. I show that important factors for seabird habitat selection are island area and elevation, water depth, shore openness, and the composition of island cover habitats. Habitat preferences are species-specific, with certain similarities within species groups. The occurrence of the colonial Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) is partly affected by different habitat characteristics than its abundance. Using long-term bird monitoring data, I show that eutrophication and winter severity have reduced the populations of several Finnish seabird species. A major demographic factor through which environmental changes influence bird populations is breeding success. Breeding success can function as a more rapid indicator of sublethal environmental impacts than population trends, particularly for long-lived and slowbreeding species, and should therefore be included in coastal bird monitoring schemes. Among my target species, local breeding success can be shown to affect the populations of the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), the Eider (Somateria mollissima) and the Goosander (Mergus merganser) after a time lag corresponding to their species-specific recruitment age. For some of the target species, the number of individuals in late summer can be used as an easier and more cost-effective indicator of breeding success than brood counts. My results highlight that the interpretation and application of habitat and population studies require solid background knowledge of the ecology of the target species. In addition, the special characteristics of coastal birds, their habitats, and coastal bird monitoring data have to be considered in the assessment of their distribution and population trends. According to the results, the relationships between the occurrence, abundance and population trends of coastal birds and environmental factors can be quantitatively assessed using multivariate modelling and model selection. Spatial data sets widely available in Finland can be utilised in the calculation of several variables that are relevant to the habitat selection of Finnish coastal species. Concerning some habitat characteristics field work is still required, due to a lack of remotely sensed data or the low resolution of readily available data in relation to the fine scale of the habitat patches in the archipelago. While long-term data sets exist for water quality and weather, the lack of data concerning for instance the food resources of birds hampers more detailed studies of environmental effects on bird populations. Intensive studies of coastal bird species in different archipelago areas should be encouraged. The provision and free delivery of high-quality coastal data concerning bird populations and their habitats would greatly increase the capability of ecological modelling, as well as the management and conservation of coastal environments and communities. International initiatives that promote open spatial data infrastructures and sharing are therefore highly regarded. To function effectively, international information networks, such as the biodiversity Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) under the CBD, need to be rooted at regional and local levels. Attention should also be paid to the processing of data for higher levels of the information hierarchy, so that data are synthesized and developed into high-quality knowledge applicable to management and conservation.

Ecodesign-direktiivi ja sen vaikutukset Suomessa

Direktiivi 2005/32/EY energiaa käyttävien tuotteiden ekologiselle suunnittelulle asetettavien vaatimusten puitteista annettiin 6.7.2005. Direktiivin puitteissa Euroopan komissio tulee antamaan tuoteryhmäkohtaisia asetuksia, joissa määritellään tuoteryhmäkohtaisesti ympäristövaatimukset. Direktiivin tarkoituksena on integroida ymparistönakokohdat ja elinkaariajattelu tuotesuunnitteluvaiheessa. Tällä direktiivillä pyritään parantamaan ympäristösuojelun tasoa ja tuotteiden energiatehokkuutta. Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena on esitellä Ecodesign direktiiviä ja selvittää sen puitteissa annettujen asetusten vaikutusta Suomessa. Työssä tutkitaan hehkulamppujen maahantuonnin kieltävän asetuksen vaikutuksia kotitalouksiin, ympäristöön ja sähkömarkkinoihin. Lisaksi työssä on tutkittu sähkömoottoreita koskevan asetuksen vaikutuksia Suomen teollisuudessa. Lopuksi työssä arvioidaan Suomen ilmasto ja energiapolitiikan tavoitteiden ja velvoitteiden tuomien toimenpiteiden vaikutuksia. Työssä esitetään esimerkkitarkasteluja siitä, millaisia saastoja sähkönkulutukseen voitaisiin saavuttaa eri tuoteryhmissä direktiivin pohjalta annetuilla asetuksilla. Tarkasteluun valitut tuoteryhmät olivat kotitalouksien valaistus ja sähkömoottorit.

Altistuminen PAH-yhdisteille kreosoottikyllästetyn puun käsittelyssä

Tässä työssä selvitettiin altistutaanko kreosoottikyllästetyn puun käsittelyssä polysyklisille aromaattisille hiilivedyille ja mistä työsuojelullisista syistä altistumista tapahtuu. Lisäksi työssä selvitettiin mitä altistuminen tarkoittaa työnantajan kannalta. Altistumista tarkasteltiin työturvallisuuden näkökulmasta. Lähtöaineisto koostui maastossa toteutetuista tutkimuksista. Aineisto kerättiin kesällä 2009 kolmesta Itä-Suomessa sijaitsevasta kohteesta, joissa käsiteltiin kreosootilla kyllästettyä puuta. Altistumisen todentamiseksi tutkimukseen osallistuneilta työntekijöiltä pyydettiin virtsanäytteet, joista analysoitiin yhden yleisimmän PAH-altistumista indikoivan merkkiaineen, virtsan 1-pyrenolin pitoisuuksia työntekijöillä. Altistumisen syiden selvittämiseksi työntekijöitä haastateltiin ja havainnoitiin. Tulosten perusteella työntekijät altistuvat PAH-yhdisteille työssään. PAH-altistumisen merkkiaineena olleelle virtsan 1-pyrenolille ei toimenpiderajaa tällä hetkellä ole, mutta se on Työterveyslaitoksella suunnitteilla. Lainsäädäntö velvoittaa erinäisin toimenpitein työnantajaa minimoimaan työntekijöiden altistumisen syöpäsairauden vaaraa aiheuttaville aineille, kuten PAH-yhdisteille. Tulosten perusteella työsuojelutoimenpiteitä on syytä tehostaa altistumisen minimoimiseksi ja etenkin ihon suojaamiseen on syytä kiinnittää erityistä huomiota.

Effect of forest-based biofuels production on carbon footprint, Case: Integrated LWC paper mill

International energy and climate strategies also set Finland’s commitments to increasing the use of renewable energy sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The target can be achieved by, for example, increasing the use of energy wood. Finland’s forest biomass potential is significant compared with current use. Increased use will change forest management and wood harvesting methods however. The thesis examined the potential for integrated pulp and paper mills to increase bioenergy production. The effects of two bioenergy production technologies on the carbon footprint of an integrated LWC mill were studied at mill level and from the cradle-to-customer approach. The LignoBoost process and FT diesel production were chosen as bioenergy cases. The data for the LignoBoost process were obtained from Metso and for the FT diesel process from Neste Oil. The rest of the information is based on the literature and databases of the KCL-ECO life-cycle computer program and Ecoinvent. In both case studies, the carbon footprint was reduced. From the results, it can be concluded that it is possible to achieve a fossil-fuel-free pulp mill with the LignoBoost process. By using steam from the FT diesel process, the amount of auxiliary fuel can be reduced considerably and the bark boiler can be replaced. With a choice of auxiliary fuels for use in heat production in the paper mill and the production methods for purchased electricity, it is possible to affect the carbon footprints even more in both cases.

Working capital management in the small and medium-sized enterprises Case: Project-based business environment in Flowrox Oy

This Master´s thesis illustrates how growing a business ties up the company´s working capital and what the cost of committed capital. In order to manage a company´s working capital in rapid business growth phase, the thesis suggests that by monitoring and managing the operating and cash conversion cycles of customers´ projects, a company can find ways to secure the required amount of capital. The research method of this thesis was based on literature reviews and case study research. The theoretical review presents the concepts of working capital and provides the background for understanding how to improve working capital management. The company in subject is a global small and medium-sized enterprise that manufactures pumps and valves for demanding process conditions. The company is expanding, which creates lots of challenges. This thesis concentrates to the company´s working capital management and its efficiency through the supply chain and value chain perspective. The main elements of working capital management are inventory management, accounts receivable management and accounts payable management. Prepayments also play a significant role, particularly in project-based businesses. Developing companies´ working capital management requires knowledge from different kind of key operations´ in the company, like purchasing, production, sales, logistics and financing. The perspective to develop and describe working capital management is an operational. After literature reviews the thesis present pilot projects that formed the basis of a model to monitor working capital in the case company. Based on analysis and pilot projects, the thesis introduces a rough model for monitoring capital commitments in short time period. With the model the company can more efficiently monitor and manage their customer projects.

Perceptions of health club exercise among middle-aged women

The goal of this Master’s Thesis is to investigate the typical perceptions of health club exercise among middle-aged women. This study is conducted for a Finnish health club Viva Wellness Club due to their interest to examine the perceived barriers of middle-aged women to exercise at their health club. In addition, the behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, motivation and facilitating factors concerning health club exercise are studied. The social aspect of health clubs as social environments is taken into account. The study is conducted qualitatively with semi-structured interviews Eight customers from Viva Wellness Club are interviewed. The findings revealed that the consumers perceived health club exercise as important, effective, diverse and convenient. Despite the fact that some differences were found, the perceptions about exercise in general concurred with the contestants’ perceptions about health club exercise. The perceived barriers to health club exercise encompassed lack of time, tiredness, health restrictions, weather, family commitments and feelings of embarrassment about one’s appearance and condition.

Infra-alan työturvallisuuslainsäädäntö: tapaturmat ja turvallisuusasioiden hoitaminen pk-yrityksissä

Työn tarkoituksena on tutkia työsuojelun ja työturvallisuuden kehitystä Suomessa, keskeisintä työturvallisuutta ohjaavaa lainsäädäntöä infra-alalla sekä alalla tapahtuneita tapaturmia TOT -raporttien kautta sekä tapaturmista aiheutuvia kustannuksia. Haastattelujen avulla pyritään selvittämään miten työturvallisuusasiat hoidetaan pienissä ja keskisuurissa yrityksissä. Haastattelujen tuloksia verrataan alan isoon toimijaan. Teoriatietoa on haettu alan julkaisuista ja työn tutkimuksellinen tieto on saatu haastattelemalla erikokoisia maarakennusalan yrityksiä (10 kpl). Näiden yritysten liikevaihto on vaihdellut 0,2 - 80 milj. euroon henkilöstömäärän vaihdellessa 1 - 150 henkilöön. Lainsäädäntö Suomessa antaa riittävän hyvät lähtökohdat työturvallisuuden erinomaiselle tasolle, jos jokainen osapuoli hoitaa heille laissa ja asetukissa määrätyt velvoitteensa. Tapaturmien ennalta ehkäisy on paras tapa ehkäistä tapaturmia. Haastatteluista kävi ilmi, että erityisesti pienissä yrityksissä annettuja lakeja ja säännöksiä ei aina noudateta lain vaatimalla tavalla. Laiminlyönnit eivät välttämättä ole tahallisia vaan kaikissa yrityksissä ei ole asioista tietoa. Puutteita nimenomaan havaittiin suunnitelmien laadinnassa, vaarojen ja riskien kartoittamisessa. Yrittäjien tapaturmat ovat lisääntyneet palkansaajiin verrattuna rakentamisen toimialalla työpaikkatapaturma tilaston mukaan.

Green Service Level Agreement under Sustainability Lens in IT Industry

Nowadays, when most of the business are moving forward to sustainability by providing or getting different services from different vendors, Service Level Agreement (SLA) becomes very important for both the business providers/vendors and as well as for users/customers. There are many ways to inform users/customers about various services with its inherent execution functionalities and even non-functional/Quality of Services (QoS) aspects through negotiating, evaluating or monitoring SLAs. However, these traditional SLA actually do not cover eco-efficient green issues or IT ethics issues for sustainability. That is why green SLA (GSLA) should come into play. GSLA is a formal agreement incorporating all the traditional commitments as well as green issues and ethics issues in IT business sectors. GSLA research would survey on different traditional SLA parameters for various services like as network, compute, storage and multimedia in IT business areas. At the same time, this survey could focus on finding the gaps and incorporation of these traditional SLA parameters with green issues for all these mentioned services. This research is mainly points on integration of green parameters in existing SLAs, defining GSLA with new green performance indicators and their measurable units. Finally, a GSLA template could define compiling all the green indicators such as recycling, radio-wave, toxic material usage, obsolescence indication, ICT product life cycles, energy cost etc for sustainable development. Moreover, people’s interaction and IT ethics issues such as security and privacy, user satisfaction, intellectual property right, user reliability, confidentiality etc could also need to add for proposing a new GSLA. However, integration of new and existing performance indicators in the proposed GSLA for sustainable development could be difficult for ICT engineers. Therefore, this research also discovers the management complexity of proposed green SLA through designing a general informational model and analyses of all the relationships, dependencies and effects between various newly identified services under sustainability pillars. However, sustainability could only be achieved through proper implementation of newly proposed GSLA, which largely depends on monitoring the performance of the green indicators. Therefore, this research focuses on monitoring and evaluating phase of GSLA indicators through the interactions with traditional basic SLA indicators, which would help to achieve proper implementation of future GSLA. Finally, this newly proposed GSLA informational model and monitoring aspects could definitely help different service providers/vendors to design their future business strategy in this new transitional sustainable society.

Climate change and global responsibility - the role of energy consumption, GDP and CO2 emissions

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges faced by this generation. Despite being the single most important environmental challenge facing the planet and despite over two decades of international climate negotiations, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise. By the middle of this century, GHGs must be reduced by as much as 40-70% if dangerous climate change is to be avoided. In the Kyoto Protocol no quantitative emission limitation and reduction commitments were placed on the developing countries. For the planning of the future commitments period and possible participation of developing countries, information of the functioning of the energy systems, CO2 emissions development in different sectors, energy use and technological development in developing countries is essential. In addition to the per capita emissions, the efficiency of the energy system in relation to GHG emissions is crucial for the decision of future long-term burden sharing between countries. Country’s future development of CO2 emissions can be defined by the estimated CO2 intensity of the future and the estimated GDP growth. The changes in CO2 intensity depend on several factors, but generally developed countries’ intensity has been increasing in the industrialization phase and decreasing when their economy shifts more towards the system dominated by the service sector. The level of the CO2 intensity depends by a large extent on the production structure and the energy sources that are used. Currently one of the most urgent issues regarding global climate change is to decide the future of the Kyoto Protocol. Negotiations on this topic have already been initiated, with the aim of being finalised by the 2015. This thesis provides insights into the various approaches that can be used to characterise the concept of comparable efforts for developing countries in a future international climate agreement. The thesis examines the post-Kyoto burden sharing questions for developing countries using the contraction and convergence model, which is one approach that has been proposed to allocate commitments regarding future GHG emissions mitigation. This new approach is a practical tool for the evaluation of the Kyoto climate policy process and global climate change negotiations from the perspective of the developing countries.