Public and Private Sector Decision Makers Within the Rail Baltica Growth Corridor

Transport volumes have increased and will continue to increase in European Union. Even though the growth has not been equal between different transport modes. Most of the growth has been faced on road transport. European Union aims to balance the unbalanced market shares between the modes by gaining and supporting the competitiveness of railway and waterway transport. In EU railway transportation is seen as solution to increase safety in traffic and decrease the environmental impacts of transportation. The aim of this research is to figure out how it is possible to decrease the environmental impacts by the technology already in use. Main focus of this research is in intermodality and combining the road and railway transportation. This study aims also to figure out demands and expectations towards new Rail Baltica railway route connecting Tallinn and Berlin. The research is conducted by performing a literature review about decreasing environmental impacts and combining road and rail transport. Another viewpoint is taken from the possible effects of tourism to the passenger transport on rails. Knowledge gained by literature review is deepened by additional internet questionnaire study and expert interview study. In decreasing the environmental impacts of transportation electric trains are definitely the best option providing that the electricity is generated from renewable or carbon dioxide free sources. Decrease of environmental impacts has been reached also with acceptance of larger road transport vehicles. According to interviewed passenger transport experts, the whole route from Tallinn to Berlin may not be convenient to be used in passenger transport, just because the route is too long.. In EU freight is transported mainly with semi-trailer combinations, and that is why it could be logical if huckepack trains would be used on Rail Baltica. Huckepack train allows semi-trailers to be transported on rails with time efficient loading-unloading process. Overall, Rail Baltica project is experienced as a future-oriented one and new railway alignment is seen as great alternative option for transport modes using fossil fuels.

Customer Research on a Group of European Book Publishers: Trends, Modes of Operation and Decision-Making Processes

Työn päätarkoitus oli tuottaa Stora Enson käyttöön tietoa kirjakustantajista, yhdestä yrityksen asiakassegmentistä. Yritys oli kiinnostunut useista asioista, jotka koskivat asiakkaita ja heidän mielipiteitään. Tarkoitus on, että Stora Enso voi käyttää tutkimuksella koottua tietoa oman toimintansa suunnittelun tukena. Kerätty sekundääritieto esittelee eurooppalaisen kirjakustantamisen nykytilaa ja tulevaisuutta sekä teorioita, jotka tukevat tutkittuja aihealueita. Primääritieto kerättiin henkilökohtaisilla haastatteluilla. Otanta koostui kymmenestä kirjakustantajasta, jotka toimivat Suomessa sekä Stora Enson päämarkkina-alueilla. Tutkimus tarjoaa päivitetyn kuvauksen kirjakustantamisesta. Haastateltavien mielipiteet alan trendeistä olivat yhteneviä yleisen mielipiteen kanssa, eikä suuria mielipide-eroavaisuuksia havaittu. Kustantajien toimintatapoja ja päätöksentekoprosesseja voidaan kuvata monimutkaisiksi, koska useat asiat vaikuttavat kirjan syntyyn ja paperin ostoprosessiin. Lisäksi tutkimus esittelee haastateltavien mielipiteitä paperin merkityksestä heidän liiketoiminnassaan.

Buying behavior of public organizations and its influence on export partner governance

Public organizations form a significant part of any economy, yet their buying behavior has received very little attention. Operating with complex public sector is further complicated when sales and marketing activities are done by foreign export partners. This thesis explores the buying behavior of public organizations and how partnership governance is influenced by it. The theoretical part focuses on two subjects. Firstly the strictly regulated purchase process, rigid decision making and other special characteristics of public organizations are examined. Secondly the thesis examines partnership governance forms and how coordination is arranged in the relationships. The empirical part investigates the subjects of public organization buying behavior and partnership governance using a case study of a Finnish SME and their two export partners. The findings suggest high degree of uniformity between public organizations enables the use of unilateral governance forms. By creating mutual dependence through training the possibility of adopting a purely bilateral governance form exists as well.

Searching for keys to successful post-merger integration : a longitudinal case-study following a public sector merger

Unsuccessful mergers are unfortunately the rule rather than the exception. Therefore it is necessary to gain an enhanced understanding of mergers and post-merger integrations (PMI) as well as learning more about how mergers and PMIs of information systems (IS) and people can be facilitated. Studies on PMI of IS are scarce and public sector mergers are even less studied. There is nothing however to indicate that public sector mergers are any more successful than those in the private sector. This thesis covers five studies carried out between 2008 and 2011 in two organizations in higher education that merged in January 2010. The most recent study was carried out two years after the new university was established. The longitudinal case-study focused on the administrators and their opinions of the IS, the work situation and the merger in general. These issues were investigated before, during and after the merger. Both surveys and interviews were used to collect data, to which were added documents that both describe and guide the merger process; in this way we aimed at a triangulation of findings. Administrators were chosen as the focus of the study since public organizations are highly dependent on this staff category, forming the backbone of the organization and whose performance is a key success factor for the organization. Reliable and effective IS are also critical for maintaining a functional and effective organization, and this makes administrators highly dependent on their organizations’ IS for the ability to carry out their duties as intended. The case-study has confirmed the administrators’ dependency on IS that work well. A merger is likely to lead to changes in the IS and the routines associated with the administrators’ work. Hence it was especially interesting to study how the administrators viewed the merger and its consequences for IS and the work situation. The overall research objective is to find key issues for successful mergers and PMIs. The first explorative study in 2008 showed that the administrators were confident of their skills and knowledge of IS and had no fear of having to learn new IS due to the merger. Most administrators had an academic background and were not anxious about whether IS training would be given or not. Before the merger the administrators were positive and enthusiastic towards the merger and also to the changes that they expected. The studies carried out before the merger showed that these administrators were very satisfied with the information provided about the merger. This information was disseminated through various channels and even negative information and postponed decisions were quickly distributed. The study conflicts with the theories that have found that resistance to change is inevitable in a merger. Shortly after the merger the (third) study showed disappointment with the fact that fewer changes than expected had been implemented even if the changes that actually were carried out sometimes led to a more problematic work situation. This was seen to be more prominent for routine changes than IS changes. Still the administrators showed a clear willingness to change and to share their knowledge with new colleagues. This knowledge sharing (also tacit) worked well in the merger and the PMI. The majority reported that the most common way to learn to use new ISs and to apply new routines was by asking help from colleagues. They also needed to take responsibility for their own training and development. Five months after the merger (the fourth study) the administrators had become worried about the changes in communication strategy that had been implemented in the new university. This was perceived as being more anonymous. Furthermore, it was harder to get to know what was happening and to contact the new decision makers. The administrators found that decisions, and the authority to make decisions, had been moved to a higher administrative level than they were accustomed to. A directive management style is recommended in mergers in order to achieve a quick transition without distracting from the core business. A merger process may be tiresome and require considerable effort from the participants. In addition, not everyone can make their voice heard during a merger and consensus is not possible in every question. It is important to find out what is best for the new organization instead of simply claiming that the tried and tested methods of doing things should be implemented. A major problem turned out to be the lack of management continuity during the merger process. Especially problematic was the situation in the IS-department with many substitute managers during the whole merger process (even after the merger was carried out). This meant that no one was in charge of IS-issues and the PMI of IS. Moreover, the top managers were appointed very late in the process; in some cases after the merger was carried out. This led to missed opportunities for building trust and management credibility was heavily affected. The administrators felt neglected and that their competences and knowledge no longer counted. This, together with a reduced and altered information flow, led to rumours and distrust. Before the merger the administrators were convinced that their achievements contributed value to their organizations and that they worked effectively. After the merger they were less sure of their value contribution and effectiveness even if these factors were not totally discounted. The fifth study in November 2011 found that the administrators were still satisfied with their IS as they had been throughout the whole study. Furthermore, they believed that the IS department had done a good job despite challenging circumstances. Both the former organizations lacked IS strategies, which badly affected the IS strategizing during the merger and the PMI. IS strategies deal with issues like system ownership; namely who should pay and who is responsible for maintenance and system development, for organizing system training for new IS, and for effectively run IS even during changing circumstances (e.g. more users). A proactive approach is recommended for IS strategizing to work. This is particularly true during a merger and PMI for handling issues about what ISs should be adopted and implemented in the new organization, issues of integration and reengineering of IS-related processes. In the new university an ITstrategy had still not been decided 26 months after the new university was established. The study shows the importance of the decisive management of IS in a merger requiring that IS issues are addressed in the merger process and that IS decisions are made early. Moreover, the new management needs to be appointed early in order to work actively with the IS-strategizing. It is also necessary to build trust and to plan and make decisions about integration of IS and people.

Imagining a New Society: Public Painting as Politics in Postwar Finland

The thesis is the first comprehensive study on Finnish public painting, public artworks generally referred to as murals or monumental paintings. It focuses on the processes of production of public paintings during the post-WWII decades in Finland and the complex relationships between the political sphere and the production of art. The research studies the networks of agents involved in the production of public paintings. Besides the human agents—artists, assistants, commissioners and viewers—also public paintings were and are agents in the processes of production and in their environments. The research questions can be grouped into three overlapping series of questions: First, the research investigates the production public paintings: What kinds of public paintings were realised in postwar Finland—how, where, by whom and for what purposes? Second, it discusses the publicness of these paintings: How were public paintings defined, and what aspects characterised them as “public”? What was their relation to public space, public authorities, and audience? And third, it explores the politics of public paintings: the relationship between Finnish public painting, nationalism, and the memory of war. To answer these questions, extensive archival work has been performed, and over 200 public paintings have been documented around Finland. The research material has been studied in a sociological framework and in the context of the political and economic history of Finland, employing critical theories on public space and public art as well as theories on the building of nationalism, commemoration, memory, and forgetting. An important aim of this research was to open up a new field of study and position public painting within Finnish art history, from which it has been conspicuous by its absence. The research indicates that public painting was a significant genre of art in postwar Finland. The process of creating a national genre of public painting participated in the defining of municipal and state art politics in the country, and paintings functioned as vehicles of carrying out the agenda of the commissioning bodies. In the formation of municipal art policies in Finland in the 1950s, public painting connected to the same tendency of democratising art as the founding of public art museums. Public painting commissions also functioned as an arena of competition and a means of support for the artists. Public paintings were judged and commissioned within the realm of political decision-making, and they suggested the values of the decision-making groups, generally conveyed as the values of the society. The participation of official agents in the production allocated a position of official art to the genre. Through the material of this research, postwar public painting is seen as an agent in a society searching for a new identity. The postwar public painting production participated in the creation of the Finnish welfare society as indications of a humane society. It continued a tradition of public art production that had been built on nationalist and art educational ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Postwar public paintings promoted the new national narrative of unification by creating an image of a homogeneous society with a harmonious communal life. The paintings laid out an image of Finnishness that was modern but rooted in the agrarian past, of a society that was based on hard work and provided for its members a good life. Postwar public painting was art with a mission, and it created an image of a society with a mission.

Accounting for competition, governance and accountability during institutional change in not-for-profit and public sector organisations

Purpose The aim of this thesis1 is to analyse theoretically how institutionalisation of competitive tendering2, governance and budgetary policies cannot be taken for granted to lead to accountability among institutional actors3. The nature of an institutionalised management accounting policy, its relevance as a source of power in organisational decision making, and in negotiating inter-organisational relationships, are also analysed. Practical motivation The practical motivation of the thesis is to show how practitioners and policy makers can institutionalise changes which improve the power of management accounting and control systems4 as a mechanism of accountability among institutional actors and in negotiating relationships with other organisations. Theoretical motivation and conceptual approach The theoretical motivation of the thesis is to extend the institutional framework of management accounting change proposed by Burns and Scapens (2000) by using the theories of critical realism, communicative action, negotiated order and the framework of circuits of power. The Burns and Scapens framework needs further theorisation to analyse the relationship between the institutionalisation of management accounting and accountability; and the relevance of management accounting information in negotiating in inter-organisational relationships. Methodology and field studies Field research took place in public and not-for-profit health care organisations and a municipality in Finland from 2008 to 2013. Data were gathered by document analysis, interviews, participation in meetings and observations. Findings The findings are explained in four different essays that show that institutionalisation of competitive tendering, governance and budgetary policies cannot be taken for granted to lead to accountability among institutional actors. The ways by which institutional actors think and act can be influenced by other institutional mechanisms, such as inter-organisational circuits of power and intraorganisational governance policies, independent of the institutional change process. The relevance of institutionalised management accounting policies in negotiating relationships between two or more organisations depends on processes and contexts through which institutional actors use management accounting information as a tool of communication, mutual understanding and power. Research limitations / implications The theoretical framework used can be applied validly in other studies. The empirical findings cannot be generalised directly to other organisations than the organisations analysed. Practical implications Competitive tendering and budgetary policies can be institutionalised to shape actions of institutional actors within an organisation. To lead to accountability, practitioners and policy makers should implement governance policies that increase the use of management accounting information in institutional actors’ thinking, actions and responsibility for their actions. To reach a negotiated order between organisations, institutionalised management accounting policies should be used as one of the tools of communication aiming to reach mutual agreement among institutional actors.

Evidencing and Sharing Value with Decision Making Models in an Industrial Maintenance Network

The objective of this thesis is to concretize the potential benefits that the industrial maintenance case network could achieve through using the value-based life-cycle model and the flexible asset management model. It is also inspected what factors prevent value creation and sharing in the maintenance contract practices of the case network. This thesis is a case study which utilizes modelling. Four scenarios were developed to demonstrate value creation in the future. The data was partly provided by the collaborating company, partly gathered from public financial statement information. The results indicate that value has been created through the past maintenance of the collaborating company’s rod mill and that profitability of the collaborating company has been mostly on satisfactory level during the past few years. Potential value might be created by increasing the share of proactive maintenance of the rod mill in the future. Profitability of the network could be improved in the future through flexible asset management operations. The main obstacle for value creation and sharing seems to be the lack of sufficient trust between the network members.

Towards a contextual understanding of B2B salespeople's selling competencies – An exploratory study among purchasing decision-makers of internationally-oriented technology firms

ABSTRACT Towards a contextual understanding of B2B salespeople’s selling competencies − an exploratory study among purchasing decision-makers of internationally-oriented technology firms The characteristics of modern selling can be classified as follows: customer retention and loyalty targets, database and knowledge management, customer relationship management, marketing activities, problem solving and system selling, and satisfying needs and creating value. For salespeople to be successful in this environment, they need a wide range of competencies. Salespeople’s selling skills are well documented in seller side literature through quantitative methods, but the knowledge, skills and competencies from the buyer’s perspective are under-researched. The existing research on selling competencies should be broadened and updated through a qualitative research perspective due to the dynamic nature and the contextual dependence of selling competencies. The purpose of the study is to increase understanding of the professional salesperson’s selling competencies from the industrial purchasing decision- makers’ viewpoint within the relationship selling context. In this study, competencies are defined as sales-related knowledge and skills. The scope of the study includes goods, materials and services managed by a company’s purchasing function and used by an organization on a daily basis. The abductive approach and ‘systematic combining’ have been applied as a research strategy. In this research, data were generated through semi- structured, person-to-person interviews and open-ended questions. The study was conducted among purchasing decision-makers in the technology industry in Finland. The branches consisted of the electronics and electro-technical industries and the mechanical engineering and metals industries. A total of 30 companies and one purchasing decision-maker from each company were purposively chosen for the sampling. The sample covers different company sizes based on their revenues, their differing structures – varying from public to family companies –that represent domestic and international ownerships. Before analyzing the data, they were organized by the purchasing orientations of the buyers: the buying, procurement or supply management orientation. Thematic analysis was chosen as the analysis method. After analyzing the data, the results were contrasted with the theory. There was a continuous interaction between the empirical data and the theory. Based on the findings, a total of 19 major knowledge and skills were identified from the buyers’ perspective. The specific knowledge and skills from the viewpoint of customers’ prevalent purchasing orientations were divided into two categories, generic and contextual. The generic knowledge and skills apply to all purchasing orientations, and the contextual knowledge and skills depend on customers’ prevalent purchasing orientations. Generic knowledge and skills relate to price setting, negotiation, communication and interaction skills, while contextual ones relate to knowledge brokering, ability to present solutions and relationship skills. Buying-oriented buyers value salespeople who are ‘action oriented experts, however at a bit of an arm’s length’, procurement buyers value salespeople who are ‘experts deeply dedicated to the customer and fostering the relationship’ and supply management buyers value salespeople who are ‘corporate-oriented experts’. In addition, the buyer’s perceptions on knowledge and selling skills differ from the seller’s ones. The buyer side emphasizes managing the subject matter, consisting of the expertise, understanding the customers’ business and needs, creating a customized solution and creating value, reliability and an ability to build long-term relationships, while the seller side emphasizes communica- tion, interaction and salesmanship skills. The study integrates the selling skills of the current three-component model− technical knowledge, salesmanship skills, interpersonal skills− and relationship skills and purchasing orientations, into a selling competency model. The findings deepen and update the content of these knowledges and skills in the B2B setting and create new insights into them from the buyer’s perspective, and thus the study increases contextual understanding of selling competencies. It generates new knowledge of the salesperson’s competencies for the relationship selling and personal selling and sales management literature. It also adds knowledge of the buying orientations to the buying behavior literature. The findings challenge sales management to perceive salespeople’s selling skills both from a contingency and competence perspective. The study has several managerial implications: it increases understanding of what the critical selling knowledge and skills from the buyer’s point of view are, understanding of how salespeople effectively implement the relationship marketing concept, sales management’s knowledge of how to manage the sales process more effectively and efficiently, and the knowledge of how sales management should develop a salesperson’s selling competencies when managing and developing the sales force. Keywords: selling competencies, knowledge, selling skills, relationship skills, purchasing orientations, B2B selling, abductive approach, technology firms

Public-private partnership investments in dry ports – Russian logistics markets and risks

The investments have always been considered as an essential backbone and so-called ‘locomotive’ for the competitive economies. However, in various countries, the state has been put under tight budget constraints for the investments in capital intensive projects. In response to this situation, the cooperation between public and private sector has grown based on public-private mechanism. The promotion of favorable arrangement for collaboration between public and private sectors for the provision of policies, services, and infrastructure in Russia can help to address the problems of dry ports development that neither municipalities nor the private sector can solve alone. Especially, the stimulation of public-private collaboration is significant under the exposure to externalities that affect the magnitude of the risks during all phases of project realization. In these circumstances, the risk in the projects also is becoming increasingly a part of joint research and risk management practice, which is viewed as a key approach, aiming to take active actions on existing global and specific factors of uncertainties. Meanwhile, a relatively little progress has been made on the inclusion of the resilience aspects into the planning process of a dry ports construction that would instruct the capacity planner, on how to mitigate the occurrence of disruptions that may lead to million dollars of losses due to the deviation of the future cash flows from the expected financial flows on the project. The current experience shows that the existing methodological base is developed fragmentary within separate steps of supply chain risk management (SCRM) processes: risk identification, risk evaluation, risk mitigation, risk monitoring and control phases. The lack of the systematic approach hinders the solution of the problem of risk management processes of dry port implementation. Therefore, management of various risks during the investments phases of dry port projects still presents a considerable challenge from the practical and theoretical points of view. In this regard, the given research became a logical continuation of fundamental research, existing in the financial models and theories (e.g., capital asset pricing model and real option theory), as well as provided a complementation for the portfolio theory. The goal of the current study is in the design of methods and models for the facilitation of dry port implementation through the mechanism of public-private partnership on the national market that implies the necessity to mitigate, first and foremost, the shortage of the investments and consequences of risks. The problem of the research was formulated on the ground of the identified contradictions. They rose as a continuation of the trade-off between the opportunities that the investors can gain from the development of terminal business in Russia (i.e. dry port implementation) and risks. As a rule, the higher the investment risk, the greater should be their expected return. However, investors have a different tolerance for the risks. That is why it would be advisable to find an optimum investment. In the given study, the optimum relates to the search for the efficient portfolio, which can provide satisfaction to the investor, depending on its degree of risk aversion. There are many theories and methods in finance, concerning investment choices. Nevertheless, the appropriateness and effectiveness of particular methods should be considered with the allowance of the specifics of the investment projects. For example, the investments in dry ports imply not only the lump sum of financial inflows, but also the long-term payback periods. As a result, capital intensity and longevity of their construction determine the necessity from investors to ensure the return on investment (profitability), along with the rapid return on investment (liquidity), without precluding the fact that the stochastic nature of the project environment is hardly described by the formula-based approach. The current theoretical base for the economic appraisals of the dry port projects more often perceives net present value (NPV) as a technique superior to other decision-making criteria. For example, the portfolio theory, which considers different risk preference of an investor and structures of utility, defines net present value as a better criterion of project appraisal than discounted payback period (DPP). Meanwhile, in business practice, the DPP is more popular. Knowing that the NPV is based on the assumptions of certainty of project life, it cannot be an accurate appraisal approach alone to determine whether or not the project should be accepted for the approval in the environment that is not without of uncertainties. In order to reflect the period or the project’s useful life that is exposed to risks due to changes in political, operational, and financial factors, the second capital budgeting criterion – discounted payback period is profoundly important, particularly for the Russian environment. Those statements represent contradictions that exist in the theory and practice of the applied science. Therefore, it would be desirable to relax the assumptions of portfolio theory and regard DPP as not fewer relevant appraisal approach for the assessment of the investment and risk measure. At the same time, the rationality of the use of both project performance criteria depends on the methods and models, with the help of which these appraisal approaches are calculated in feasibility studies. The deterministic methods cannot ensure the required precision of the results, while the stochastic models guarantee the sufficient level of the accuracy and reliability of the obtained results, providing that the risks are properly identified, evaluated, and mitigated. Otherwise, the project performance indicators may not be confirmed during the phase of project realization. For instance, the economic and political instability can result in the undoing of hard-earned gains, leading to the need for the attraction of the additional finances for the project. The sources of the alternative investments, as well as supportive mitigation strategies, can be studied during the initial phases of project development. During this period, the effectiveness of the investments undertakings can also be improved by the inclusion of the various investors, e.g. Russian Railways’ enterprises and other private companies in the dry port projects. However, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the participation of different investors in the project lack the methods and models that would permit doing the particular feasibility study, foreseeing the quantitative characteristics of risks and their mitigation strategies, which can meet the tolerance of the investors to the risks. For this reason, the research proposes a combination of Monte Carlo method, discounted cash flow technique, the theory of real options, and portfolio theory via a system dynamics simulation approach. The use of this methodology allows for comprehensive risk management process of dry port development to cover all aspects of risk identification, risk evaluation, risk mitigation, risk monitoring, and control phases. A designed system dynamics model can be recommended for the decision-makers on the dry port projects that are financed via a public-private partnership. It permits investors to make a decision appraisal based on random variables of net present value and discounted payback period, depending on different risks factors, e.g. revenue risks, land acquisition risks, traffic volume risks, construction hazards, and political risks. In this case, the statistical mean is used for the explication of the expected value of the DPP and NPV; the standard deviation is proposed as a characteristic of risks, while the elasticity coefficient is applied for rating of risks. Additionally, the risk of failure of project investments and guaranteed recoupment of capital investment can be considered with the help of the model. On the whole, the application of these modern methods of simulation creates preconditions for the controlling of the process of dry port development, i.e. making managerial changes and identifying the most stable parameters that contribute to the optimal alternative scenarios of the project realization in the uncertain environment. System dynamics model allows analyzing the interactions in the most complex mechanism of risk management process of the dry ports development and making proposals for the improvement of the effectiveness of the investments via an estimation of different risk management strategies. For the comparison and ranking of these alternatives in their order of preference to the investor, the proposed indicators of the efficiency of the investments, concerning the NPV, DPP, and coefficient of variation, can be used. Thus, rational investors, who averse to taking increased risks unless they are compensated by the commensurate increase in the expected utility of a risky prospect of dry port development, can be guided by the deduced marginal utility of investments. It is computed on the ground of the results from the system dynamics model. In conclusion, the outlined theoretical and practical implications for the management of risks, which are the key characteristics of public-private partnerships, can help analysts and planning managers in budget decision-making, substantially alleviating the effect from various risks and avoiding unnecessary cost overruns in dry port projects.