Social networks and networking facilitating internationalization: Experiences of two Finnish fashion companies

Background: Fashion is a dynamic and creative industry where larger retailers are enjoying international success. Small businesses however are struggling in the face of international expansion, as they lack the necessary resources and managerial know-how. The Finnish fashion industry has neither been able to develop the industry environment to support small and micro firms nor has Finland relevant finance or public domains, such as, seen in other Nordic countries. Networking has been recognized to facilitate organizational growth and international expansion in industries such as manufacturing and high technology. It has enabled smaller companies to gain resources, knowledge and experiences otherwise unattainable. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore how networking has been utilized in the Finnish fashion industry. Particularly social relationships and networks are examined, as they emphasize the importance of individuals. Exploration on the past actions should also provide insight how networks and networking could be utilized and developed in the future. Main findings: It was discovered that the Finnish fashion industry (social) network is rather dense. This was mainly due to the small size of the Finnish market. In the early years of the establishment of the company, close contacts seemed to be utilized. As a company expands and extends its business, the relationships tended to move towards more utilitarian in nature. However, in some cases, the long term relationships had also affectionate features, such as trust and commitment. International networking was found to have positive impact on business opportunities. Participation to events, such as trade shows, was perceived as one of the best ways to meet new international contacts and to develop ones network. Active networking in the Finnish market, however, created both domestic and international opportunities. Furthermore, cooperation and open communication were discovered to facilitate innovation and projects. The public sector seemed to lack the interest in supporting the fashion industry according to the interviewees. The major issues for the fashion industry still concerned, among others, funding, administrative guidance and public support for developing the industry as a whole.

Young Registered Nurses’ Intent to Leave the Profession in Finland - A Mixed-Method Study

The purpose of this study was to examine and expand understanding concerning young Finnish registered nurses (RN) with an intention to leave the profession and the related variables, specifically when that intention has emerged before the age of 30. The overall goal of the study was to develop a conceptual model in relation to young RNs’ intention to leave the profession. Suggestions for policymakers, nurse leaders and nurse managers are presented for how to retain more young RNs in the nursing workforce. Suggestions for future nursing research are also provided. Phase I consists of two sequential integrative literature reviews of 75 empirical articles concerning nurses’ intention to leave the profession. In phase II, data had been collected as part of the Nurses’ Early Exit (NEXT) study, using the BQ-12 structured postal questionnaire. A total of 147 young RNs participated in the study. The data were analysed with statistical methods. In phase III, firstly, an in-depth interpretive case study was conducted in order to understand how young RNs explain and make sense of their intention to leave the profession. The data in this study consisted of longitudinal career stories by three young RNs. The data was analysed by using narrative holistic-content and thematic methods. Secondly, a total of 15 young RNs were interviewed in order to explore in-depth their experiences concerning organizational turnover and their intent to leave the profession. The data was analysed using conventional content analysis. Based on earlier research, empirical research on the young RNs intention to leave the profession is scarce. Nurses’ intention to leave the profession has mainly been studied with quantitative descriptive studies, conducted with survey questionnaires. Furthermore, the quality of previous studies varies considerably. Moreover, nurses’ intention to leave the profession seems to be driven by a number of variables. According to the survey study, 26% of young RNs had often considered giving up nursing completely and starting a different kind of job during the course of the previous year. Many different variables were associated with an intention to leave the profession (e.g. personal burnout, job dissatisfaction). According to the in-depth inquiries, poor nursing practice environments and a nursing career as a ‘second-best’ or serendipitous career choice were themes associated with young RNs’ intention to leave the profession. In summary, young RNs intention to leave the profession is a complex phenomenon with multiple associated variables. These findings suggest that policymakers, nurse leaders and nurse managers should enable improvements in nursing practice environments in order to retain more young RNs. These improvements can include, for example, adequate staffing levels, balanced nursing workloads, measures to reduce work-related stress as well as possibilities for advancement and development. Young RNs’ requirements to provide high-quality and ethical nursing care must be recognized in society and health-care organizations. Moreover, sufficient mentoring and orientation programmes should be provided for all graduate RNs. Future research is needed into whether the motive for choosing a nursing career affects the length of the tenure in the profession. Both quantitative and in-depth research is needed for the comprehensive development of nursing-turnover research.

Can tourism be sustainable? : service experiences from tourism destinations in Europe

The tourism industry is growing rapidly, and thus there is an urgent need to developing sustainable tourism. The research objective of the thesis is to explore and discuss the concept of sustainability within the tourism industry from a marketing point of view, focusing on the perspective of tourist producers’. The thesis consists of four studies, each of which contains different perspectives to support this overall objective. The first study deals with how a hotel can achieve economic sustainability by creating a high level of customer service delivery using a refined GAP-model. The second study examines how tourist producers at mass tourism destinations work with sustainable tourism as a strategic marketing tool in their tourism product development. The third study addresses economic sustainability at the macro level by estimating the tourism demand for Sweden and Norway in five different countries. In the fourth study, the concept of sustainable mass tourism is developed and analyzed from a conceptual standpoint. Study 1 and study 3 concentrate on economic sustainability from a micro and national perspective. The main contribution of Study 1 is the refined GAP-model, which can be seen as a theoretical contribution to the service marketing research. Study 3 shows that exchange rate trends strongly affect tourists’ choice of destination. Study 2 examines sustainable mass tourism as a strategic marketing tool at the destination level. The conclusions of Study 2 contribute to the findings of Study 4 and consider the tourist producers approach to sustainable tourism. One of the contributions of Study 4 is that the concept of sustainable tourism should be divided into three separate parts; economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability.

Porin Kuudennen osan tarinoista rakennettu kulttuuriperintö

Tutkimus käsittelee viranomaisten ja asukkaiden välistä vuorovaikutusta kaavaprosessin aikana. Tutkimusalueena on valtakunnallisesti merkittäväksi kulttuuriympäristöksi luokiteltu Porin Kuudes osa, joka on yksi laajimmista yhtenäisenä säilyneistä 1800-luvun lopun puukaupunkialueista Suomessa. Hermeneuttis-fenomenologista otetta soveltava tutkimus perustuu muistitietoaineistoon, joka avaa näkökulman paikallisen kulttuuriperinnön syntymiseen, periytymiseen ja muutokseen. Kuudennen osan vuonna 2012 voimaan tulleessa asemakaavamuutoksessa suojeltiin 405 rakennusta. Sekä viranomaiset että asukkaat haluavat säilyttää arvokkaan ympäristön jälkipolville. Asukkaiden ja viranomaisten lähtökohdat arvottamiselle ovat kuitenkin erilaiset. Asiantuntijoiden näkemys kulttuuriympäristön arvoista perustuu eksplisiittiseen viralliseen tietoon, joka heijastaa positivistista käsitystä maailmasta mitattavista objekteista koostuvana kokonaisuutena. Asukkaiden arvostus asuinaluetta ja sen rakennuksia kohtaan puolestaan nousee sukupolvelta toiselle siirretyn aineettoman perinnön yhteisöllisestä merkityksestä. Heidän kokemuksensa kiteytyy kodin ja kotiseudun käsitteissä ja se tuodaan esiin rakennuksiin liittyvissä tarinoissa. Tulkinta on virallista tietoa haastavaa ja täydentävää. Kestäviä suojelupäätöksiä voidaan tehdä vain viranomaisten ja asukkaiden väliseen tasa-arvoiseen vuoropuheluun perustuen. Tutkimus nostaa asukkaiden kokemuksellisen, paikkaan sitoutuneen hiljaisen tiedon virallisen tiedon rinnalle, kulttuurisesti kestävän maankäytön suunnittelun perustaksi. Koska ihminen toimii sellaisten asioiden puolesta, jotka hän kokee arvokkaaksi, asukaslähtöinen rakennussuojelu on lähtökohtaisesti yhteisön omakseen kokeman aineettoman kulttuuriperinnön suojelua.

Issues with Fedora & Hydra, experiences from a research-data-driven implementation

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

User-generated experiences: how automated platforms for content creation and sharing has transformed information access

Esitys KDK-käytettävyystyöryhmän järjestämässä seminaarissa: Miten käyttäjien toiveet haastavat metatietokäytäntöjämme? / How users' expectations challenge our metadata practices? 30.9.2014.

Becoming Locals in a Borderland of Exiles. Sense of Place in the Stories of Lithuania Minor Dwellers

This thesis deals with sense of place, the relation that we construct with our dwelling and the surrounding environment. The topic belongs to the field of human geography. Sense of place is deeply intertwined with the ideas of feeling at home and having a place where to return. I argue that narratives of life experience help us relate to the places we inhabit, go through, leave. My analysis concerns Lithuania Minor, the Lithuanian region lying by the border with Kaliningrad, and focuses in particular on Vilkyškiai, a village in the municipality of Pagėgiai. Most of the area’s original population disappeared in the war. After 1945, people from all over the country and the USSR settled here. This raised the prickly question of who belongs to the borderland. Refugees, migrants and settlers allow us to observe closely the development of sense of place and its main constituents. Through this analysis, I challenge the idea of people’s natural rights to places and shows how time, engagement in local-based cultural activities and recollection help foreigners become locals. To grasp the locals’ sense of place, I collected open, light-structured interviews and applied some elements of semantic analysis to interpret the materials. From my research, it emerges that the cultivation of the region’s cultural heritage and the practice of storytelling were crucial in making the respondents feel at home. Leaving aside all legalistic claims concerning the issue, I suggest that people belong to the land they dwell. I believe that their sense of place deserves consideration from the State and the other actors seeing them as migrants.

Experiences among primary school teachers in Tanzania

The overall aim of the study was to explore primary school teachers’ experiences of constraints to their work, and actions taken for improvement after undergoing in-service courses in the Education Quality Improvement through Pedagogy program. The research interest was thus to deepen the understanding of teachers’ experiences of constraints to their work and experiences of actions taken to improve classroom actions. In order to achieve this ambition, the study was conducted with primary school teachers in Shinyanga district-Tanzania. Two research questions guided the study: What do teachers experience as constraints to their work? The second: How have teachers improved their classroom actions after undergoing professional development courses? The theoretical framework of the study is centred on limiting and enabling frames on teachers’ work and professional development. In order to understand the classroom situations, qualitative research was designed applying a phenomenological approach with semi-structured interview, observation and videotaping to collect data. Forty experienced primary school teachers from ten primary schools participated in the study. The results of the first research question indicate that teachers face many constraints in their work. Three categories identified as interactional, environmental and professional role constraints. The most critical experienced by all teachers is teaching in large classes and inadequate teaching and learning materials. The results of the second research question show that teachers’ actions taken for improving their work were influenced by professional development activities. Three main categories including expanded interaction, expanded use of environment and expanded professional roles were identified. Generally, the knowledge generated is relevant for viewing teachers’ experiences of the challenges they encounter in teaching and the importance of professional development beyond the sampled respondents. The results suggest that constant provision of teachers’ professional development could improve teaching performance.

Store experiences and their influence on store performance and brand strength: Case Samsung Experience Store

Experiential marketing is increasingly seen as a new magical key to consumers’ hearts. Brands are turning brick-and-mortar stores into state of the art retail spaces where memorable experiences and strong brand relationships are hoped to be born. Around the globe, several brands have opened up a special format of stores – the experience store. Although many speculations on the positive effects of experiences have been presented, few studies have provided empirical, quantified evidence for the link between store experiences and brand success. In consequence, research was needed to find out whether experience stores truly are so special. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether store experiences are capable of building brands and influencing store performance. For this purpose, empirical research was conducted in the Samsung Experience Store Helsinki. As main constructs of the study, store experience, brand equity, store performance, and product class involvement were measured, along with relevant background variables. Data was collected with an electronic survey from actual customers of the store, resulting in a sample of 131 respondents. Partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS) was used for the analysis of the research model. Also, regression analysis was conducted to account for mediation and moderation effects. The results showed that store experiences do positively influence first, store performance, and second, separate dimensions of brand equity (that is, brand awareness, brand personality, and brand loyalty). Also, the effect of store experiences on store performance was found to be mediated by brand equity. Interestingly, customers’ product class involvement was detected to moderate the effect of store experience on store performance. That is, those who were highly involved with electronics had greater store experiences, and also displayed a stronger linkage between store experience and store performance. The results encourage marketers to continue with efforts to create great experiences for their customers. Experience stores can – and should be seen – as both powerful brand building tools and profitable sales channels. The creation of exceptional experiences can act as an important function of physical stores in the face of severe online competition.

Creating better customer experiences: Service Design effects on customer experience

Pro gradu –tutkielman tavoitteena oli tutkia, kuinka palvelumuotoilua voidaan käyttää parempien asiakaskokemusten luomisessa. Tutkimuksen teoreettisessa osuudessa keskityttiin tutkimaan palvelumuotoilun ja asiakaskokemuksen käsitteitä. Tutkielman empiirinen osuus tehtiin laadullisena tutkimuksena, jossa vertailtiin asiakaskokemuksia kahdessa Espoon kaupungin yhteispalvelupisteessä: Leppävaarassa sijaitseva yhteispalvelupiste oli hiljattain suunniteltu uudelleen käyttäen palvelumuotoilun periaatteita; Matinkylän palvelupiste oli alkuperäisessä muodossaan tutkimuksen aikana. Tutkimuksen yhtenä tavoitteena oli myös selvittää, oliko palvelumuotoilun menetelmin tehty muotoiluprojekti Leppävaaran yhteispalvelupisteessä onnistunut, kun sitä arvioitiin asiakaskokemuksen näkökulmasta. Tutkielman aineisto kerättiin suoran havainnoinnin ja haastattelun keinoin. Yhteensä 33 yksittäistä asiakasta havannoitiin ja haastateltiin tutkimusta varten toukokuussa 2015. Vastaajat valikoituivat satunnaisesti havannointipäivien asiakkaista. Heitä havainnoitiin koko asiakaspolun ajan minkä jälkeen heitä haastateltiin. Tutkimuksen tulokset ovat kaksiosaiset. 1) Arvioitaessa asiakkaiden kokemuksia liittyen palvelutilan toimivuuteen ja aineelliseen ympäristöön todettiin, että palvelumuotoilulla saavuttettiin parempi asiakaskokemus, ja täten Leppävaaran muotoiluprojekti oli onnistunut tavoitteissaan. 2) Kun taas tuloksia tarkasteltiin asiakaspalvelutilanteiden näkökulmasta, projekti ei ollut päässyt tavoitteisiin ja palvelumuotoilun menetelmillä ei pystytty parantamaan asiakaskokemuksta. Espoon kaupungin muotoiluprojekti on vielä kesken, tulosten perusteella tutkija ehdotti jatkotoimenpiteenä muun muassa lisäkoulutusta palveluhenkilökunnalle.