Development of a social service in a multi-party network

Tämän pro gradu-tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli tutkia monen toimijan sosiaalipalvelukehittäjäverkoston toimivuutta ja sen toimivuuteen vaikuttavia tekijöitä. Aihetta lähestyttiin erilaisten teoreettisten kokonaisuuksien kautta, joiden avulla saatiin luotua tutkimukselle pohja. Viitekehys tutkimukselle luotiin yhdistäen erilaisia teoreettisia aihealueita verkostoista, verkostojen johtamisesta ja palveluista. Tutkimuksessa korostuu motivaation, yhteisen, tarpeeseen perustuvan tavoitteen, sitoutumisen ja orkestroinnin merkitys verkostotoiminnassa hyvän lopputuloksen aikaansaamiseksi. Tutkimuksen empiirisessä osuudessa tehty kvalitatiivinen case-tutkimus keskittyy tiettyyn verkostoon, joka on Socomin koordinoimana kehittänyt Kaakkois-Suomen alueelle uudenlaista sosiaalipalvelua liittyen henkilökohtaiseen apuun. Verkosto on monen toimijan verkosto, jonka jäsenet edustavat erilaisia tahoja ja organisaatioita. Tutkimuksen perusteella verkosto on toiminut hyvin ja tehokkaasti ja saanut luotua toimivan sosiaalipalvelun. Verkosto tukee kirjallisuuskatsauksessa löydettyjen tekijöiden, kuten verkosto-orkestroinnin, sitoutumisen ja yhteisen päämäärän, vaikutusta verkoston toimintaan ja lopputulokseen.

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.

Post-industrial 2.0 – Social Web as the second coming of the post-industrial society

This study presents a review of theories of the so-called post-industrial society, and proposes that the concept of post-industrial society can be used to understand the recent developments of the World Wide Web, often described as Web 2.0 or social Web. The study combines theories ranging from post-war management science and cultural studies to software development, and tries to build a holistic view of the development of the post-industrial society, and especially the Internet. The discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society after the World Wars has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. It is furthermore deeply connected with the discourse on the postmodern society, which emphasizes cultural fragmentation, intertextuality, and pluralism. The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. While 1990s Internet technologies often used the network as a traditional broadcasting channel with added interactivity, Web 2.0 technologies are specifically designed to utilize the network model by facilitating communication between various services and devices, and analyzing the relationships between users and objects in order to produce intelligent insight. The wide adoption of the Internet, and recently of Internet-enabled mobile devices, is furthermore continuously producing new ways of communicating, consuming, and producing. Applications of the social Web, such as social media or social networking services, are permanently changing our traditional social, cultural, and economic practices. The study first presents an overview of the post-industrial society, the Internet, and the concept of Web 2.0. Then the concept of social Web is described with an analysis of the term social media, the brief histories of the interactive Web and social networking services, and a description of the concept ―long tail‖, used to represent the masses of information available in the Web that do not receive mainstream attention. Finally, methods for retrieving and filtering information, modeling social and cultural relationships, and communicating with customers, are presented.

The Utilization of Chinese Social Media in Internationalization into China: Perspective of a Western Company

The purpose of this qualitative research is to analyze western-based companies’ social media usage in internationalization into China and to identify social media presence’ impact on the internationalization process. Additionally, the benefits and challenges a western company may face while using social media in China will be illustrated. Competitive advantages, knowledge, networks and relations, and costs and risks could be identified as the key antecedents for successful internationalization. A great social media presence could create a competitive advantage for a western company while competitive advantages may be communicated in social media marketing, knowledge and networks can be enhanced and utilized in internationalization via social media two-way communication. The biggest benefit for internationalization resulted from decreased marketing costs due to cost-effectiveness of social media. The results revealed that cost effective brand awareness was the main benefit from the social media usage in internationalization into China. However, companies struggled with the limited resources and despite of understanding the importance of Chinese social media, lacked sufficient resources for the social media operations. Companies should determine clear strategy and goals that they are willing to achieve via social media in internationalization process, and allocate required resources according to the social media strategy. Localization of the social media operations is important in China, and business-to-consumer companies tend to benefit more from the social media presence. Business-to-business companies may increase the brand’s credibility by successful Chinese social media operations.

Consumer online communication of corporate social responsibility in the sin industry context: Cases in the global online gambling industry.

So-called sin industries are often related to harmfulness, unethical business, and unproductiveness. Nowadays, the alcohol, gambling, and tobacco industries are most often considered to be part of sin industries, which is also the context of this study. However, the definition of a sin industry is always related to time and culture. Despite the controversies of sin industries, there are studies that have shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement is even more important for sin industries than for normal industries and that CSR has a positive effect on firm value in sin industries. With CSR this study refers to an ideology where company takes mostly voluntary actions towards various groups of stakeholders and the environment. In other words, the company goes beyond the legal norms and regulations. In particular, the purpose of this thesis is to find out how companies, operating in the online gambling industry, communicate about their CSR actions to consumers at their web pages. The online environment is essential for this study as online gambling environment is a source of many controversies in comparison to the traditional gambling halls and casinos. These include, for example, greater accessibility, anonymity, and availability of the service. This study uses qualitative textual analysis as its approach, more precisely the discourse analysis. In addition, as this study focuses on large international companies and their actions, also case study approach will be presented. The cases studied are Mybet, Unibet, and Bwin.Party. In order to study the subject, elements from discourse analysis are combined with insights of essential CSR theories, and the specific characteristics of the online gambling industry. As a background for the framework, this study uses the framework of Du & Vieira (2012). After analyzing the discourses of CSR communication and CSR practices, it seems that all of the case companies still do not use all the potential that the online environment provides in terms of CSR or stakeholder communication. There are large differences between different communication tools used at different web pages (gambling pages vs. corporation pages) and between the firms’ CSR profiles. Moreover, there are large differences in the CSR practices used in the web pages of the case companies. The findings of this study are partially alarming as the case companies represent the largest companies in the industry. There are major varieties between the companies’ CSR communication and clear shortcomings in some parts of the online communication. Moreover, the trust of the consumer was broken in some places. If this is the standard that the biggest players in the industry have set with regards to CSR communication, it is probable that the smaller players are performing even worse. Moreover, the regulators are most likely concentrating on the larger companies, so the smaller companies might have fewer incentives and pressure to perform according to the regulations or exceeding the legislation. The conclusions of this thesis provide insights to managers, regulators, and scholars. Suggestions for future studies are provided as well.

Social media in the purchasing of knowledge-intensive business services

The purpose of this thesis was to understand how industrial buyers utilize social media in the purchasing of knowledge-intensive business services. By combining theories from past research a theoretical framework was formed to visualize the role of the social media at the different stages of the purchasing process. The subject was approached from the industrial buyers’ perspective instead of the knowledge-intensive business firm. The research was conducted using two qualitative research methods: interviews and netnography. The selected interviewees have been involved in the decision-making unit for purchasing knowledge-intensive business services. Additionally all of them are using various social media. Based on the interviews social media is used merely to support decision-making. Some of the interviewees had also shared their own experiences about the service and collaboration with the service provider with other social media users. Based on the interviews two social media were chosen for closer examination. The findings from netnography support the results from the interviews. The outcome of knowledgeintensive business services is dependable of the professionals. Therefore the information is used during decision-making process to confirm the formed image of the service, and the professionals of the service provider. Information obtained from social media complements information provided by the supplier. Even though the interviewees had not themselves used social media to find information about the service during search process, finding from netnography suggest it to exist. Industrial buyers ask other users’ opinions and experience about the services, and receive recommendations to them. Some recommendations are given publicly, but more discreet information is shared in private conversations. Observations in social media show that industrial buyers might be exposed to triggers to promote problem recognition as well. Companies share news and successful customer cases through their social media profiles, which might affect the industrial buyers, but to confirm this requires further research. The industrial buyers’ use of social media during different purchasing processes of knowledgeintensive business services can be conceptualize based on the findings. This helps companies to create right content to their social media pages, and encourage professionals to develop their networks in social media.