Ulkoisen laskennan organisoinnin kehittäminen. Case: Stora Enso Oyj

Tutkielman päätavoitteena oli analysoida, miten taloushallintoa voisi kehittää case –yrityksessä ulkoisen laskennan osalta. Case yrityksenä oli Stora Enso Oyj. Tutkielmassa analysoitiin kolme kehittämisvaihtoehtoa. Ensin analysoitiin palvelukeskuksen soveltuvuutta case –yrityksen taloushallinnon kehittämiseen. Toiseksi tutkittiin, onko konsernin sisäinen fuusioituminen mahdollistanut case –yrityksen taloushallinnon toimintojen kehittämisen ja kolmanneksi etsittiin muita vaihtoehtoisia keinoja kehittää case –yrityksen taloushallintoa. Tutkielma edustaa ymmärtävää tapaustutkimuksen tyyppiä, jossa on normatiivisia piirteitä. Palvelukeskuksen soveltuvuus case –yrityksen taloushallintoon todettiin teoriassa hyväksi. Käytännössä sen toteuttamiselle löytyi kuitenkin esteitä, eikä palvelukeskusta tässä vaiheessa päätetty perustaa. Fuusioitumisen todettiin mahdollistavan case –yrityksen taloushallinnon kehittämisen vähäisessä määrin. Tätä ei kuitenkaan ole toistaiseksi hyödynnetty. Muina ratkaisuvaihtoehtoina taloushallinnon kehittämiseen tutkittiin lähinnä sähköistä ostolaskujenkäsittelyä. Se todettiin hyväksi vaihtoehdoksi ostolaskujenkäsittelyprosessin tehostamiseksi. Teoriaosuuden tavoitteena oli asemoida palvelukeskus muiden mahdollisten taloushallinnon kehittämisratkaisujen joukkoon. Palvelukeskuksen todettiin olevan lähinnä keskittämistä, mutta sisältävän piirteitä myös ulkoistamisesta ja liiketoimintaprosessien uudelleen organisoimisesta. Uusina seikkoina nousi esille asiakaslähtöisyys ja tulosvastuu.

A cross-border VMI to Russia and cultural impacts to the implementation

VMI (Vendor managed inventory) is a collaboration model between a supplier and a customer, where a supplier has the responsibility of the inventory replenishments. The tightened competition forces companies to collaborate, and VMI is a simple method to cooperate. The aim of this study was to create a cross-border VMI model from Finland to Russia in the case company. However, the cultural differences between the countries produce problems and therefore the cultural impacts to the model and implementation were taken into account. This study includes two parts: the first framework consists of operational principles, benefits, risks, criteria and success factors of VMI and the second concentrates on cultural aspects of the process change. As a result, an operating model for case company’s supply chain was created. In addition, the suggestions for avoiding the cultural impacts in the implementation were given.

The effect of celebrity CEO’s crisis communication to crisis outcome

The purpose of this this study is to examine the effects that a celebrity CEO’s crisis communication has on the crisis outcome and further on the quick decision response, resource mobilization and information flow during a crisis. The research was conducted using a multiple embedded case method, with four cases that represent different kinds of crisis that have all involved a celebrity CEO. The cases have been collected from various secondary data sources. The results of the study indicate that in crisis situations the celebrity CEO is expected to take responsibility of the crisis communication. The CEO needs to understand how and what to communicate in these situations and they need to make quick decisions even with limited information available. Crisis outcome is highly dependent on the golden hour crisis communication and there the performance of the celebrity CEO is crucial.

Functional, Social and Emotional Values as Determinants of Environmentally Responsible Media Consumption

The primary purpose of this research is to develop an enhanced understanding of how consumption values influence environmentally responsible consumption of print and digital media. Theoretical elaboration considers the associations of functional, social and emotional consumption values, green consumer segmentation and media consumption. Additionally, the purpose is to identify consumer perceptions of print and digital media’s environmental responsibility. Empirical analysis was based on qualitative interviews with a sample of 20 Finnish consumers categorized in two segments: young adults and middle aged consumers. Primary data collection was conducted through individual, semi-structured interviews. To analyze the respondents’ approach on the topic, the interviews disclosed themes of media consumption, perceived environmental friendliness of media, norms of behavior and consumers’ general consumption patterns. The results implicate functional value dominated the consumption decision-making process both in a general level and in media consumption. In addition to functional value, environmental responsibility does provide consumers with both emotional and social values. Analysis on perceived environmental responsibility of media demonstrated consumers generally perceive digital media as an environmentally responsible alternative because it does not create physical paper waste. Nevertheless, the perceptions of environmental responsibility and media consumption patterns lacked a consistent connection. Though, both theory and empirical results indicated an average consumer lacks a comprehensive understanding of digital and print media’s life-cycle and hence their environmental advantages and disadvantages.

Spare Part Management of Bubbling Fluidized Bed Boiler

Energy generation industry is very capital-intensive industry. Productivity and availability requirements have increased while competition and quality requirement have increased. Maintenance has a significant role that these requirements can be reached. Even maintenance is much more than repairing faults nowadays, spare parts are important part of maintenance. Large power boilers are user-specific therefore features of boilers vary from project to project. Equipment have been designed to follow the customer’s requirements therefore spare parts are mainly user-specific also. The study starts with literature review introducing maintenance, failure mechanisms, and systems and equipment of bubbling fluidized bed boiler. At the final part spare part management is discussed from boiler technology point of view. For this part of the study science publications about spare part management are utilized also some specialist from a boiler technology company and other original equipment manufacturers were interviewed. Spare part management is challenging from the boiler supplier point of view and the end user of spare parts has a responsibility of stocking items. Criticality analysis can be used for finding most critical devices of the process and spare part management shall focus to those items. Spare parts are part of risk management. Stocking spare parts is increasing costs but then high spare part availability is decreasing delay time caused by fault of item.

A qualitative study of inclusion at a residential summer camp

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the inclusion process at a Project Rainbow affiliated camp. Project Rainbow is a non-profit organization which promotes inclusion into children's camps in Ontario. This study was completed in order to provide stakeholders of the camping industry insight on how inclusive techniques can be implemented in residential camps. The researcher observed one camp's inclusion techniques for six days. The researcher observed three campers with disabilities and the camp staff and campers that interacted with them on a daily basis. While the researcher was at the camp, she interviewed nine staff members. The staff members consisted of the camp director, the inclusion coordinator, four camp counsellors, and three inclusion counsellors. An additional interview was conducted after arriving home from camp with the manager from Project Rainbow. The qualitative analysis program NVivo was used to help organize the analyzed data. The researcher found that in attempting to build a culture of inclusion, two important concepts are necessary. First, mutual leadership involved the camp director and Project Rainbow working together as a team to facilitate the inclusion process. Second, power of supportive relationships focused on inclusion being the responsibility of everyone, teamwork, and creating a welcoming environment. Hints at some potentially serious problems related to staff training, teamwork, and attitudes of non-disabled campers pointed to future research and policies which focus on the Ontario and Canadian Camping Associations' role in inclusion, in addition to camp in this study and Project Rainbow.

The carbon disclosure project, an evolution in international environmental corporate governance : motivations and determinants of market response to voluntary disclosures

This paper examines the factors associated with Canadian firms voluntarily disclosing climate change information through the Carbon Disclosure Project. Five hypotheses are presented to explain the factors influencing management's decision to disclose this information. These hypotheses include a response to shareholder activism, domestic institutional investor shareholder activism, signalling, litigation risk, and low cost publicity. Both binary logistic regressions as well as a cross-sectional analysis of the equity market's response to the environmental disclosures being made were used to test these hypotheses. Support was found for shareholder activism, low cost publicity, and litigation risk. However, the equity market's response was not found to be statistically significant.

Community and the Recognition of the Other: A Levinasian Examination of The City, Inc. 1987-1992

This case study examines how The City, Inc.’s work within North and South Minneapolis, Minnesota neighborhoods from 1987 and 1992 was framed within a compilation of articles drawn from prominent Twin Cities’ daily newspapers. Positioned within a conceptual framework based on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this study explores how the idea of community, as constructed and reinforced through organizational initiatives and local print media, impacts the everyday relationships of those within and between communities. Framed within a discourse analysis, Levinasian ethics considers what aspects of community discourse restrict and oppress the relation with the other. The study concludes by suggesting how the identified aspects of conditional belonging, finding the trace, and building community can be valuable in offering an alternative to assessment-style research by considering the relationship and responsibility of the one for the other.

Design and Development of a Performance Evaluation Prototype for IT Organizations in the Context of Outsourcing

The present study shows design and development of a performance evaluation prototype for IT organizations in the context of outsourcing. The main objective of this research is to help an IT organization in the context of outsourcing to realize its current standing, so it can take corrective steps where ever necessary and strive for continuous improvement. Service level management (SLM) process plays a crucial role in controlling the quality provision for IT service. Out sourcing is the process of entrusting the responsibility of providing certain goods and services to an external party. We have tried to identify as many as twenty complexities and categorized in to four headings. Complexities associated with contracts and SLAs,SLM process,SLM organization and complexities due to intrinsic characteristics. In this study it is possible to measure the quality of the performance of an IT organization in an outsourcing environment effectively

An evaluation of Primary health care system in Kerala

The thesis entitled An Evaluation of Primary Health Care System in Kerala. The present study is intended to examine the working of primary health care system and its impact on the health status of people. The hypothesis tested in the thesis includes, a. The changes in the health profile require reallocation of resources of primary health care system, b. Rate of utilization depends on the quality of services provided by primary health centers, and c. There is a significant decline in the operational efficiency of the primary health care system. The major elements of primary health care stated in the report of AlmaAta International Conference on Primary Health Care (WHO, 1994)” is studied on the basis of the classification of the elements in to three: Preventive, Promotive, and Curative measures. Preventive measures include Maternal and Child Health Care including family Planning. Provision of water and sanitation is reviewed under promotive measures. Curative measures are studied using the disease profile of the study area. Collection of primary data was done through a sample survey, using pre-tested interview schedule of households of the study area. Multi stage random sampling design was used for selecting the sample. The design of the present study is both descriptive and analytical in nature. As far as the analytical tools are concerned, growth index, percentages, ratios, rates, time series analysis, analysis of variance, chi square test, Z test were used for analyzing the data. Present study revealed that no one in these areas was covered under any type of health insurance. Conclusion states that considering the present changes in the health profile, traditional pattern of resource allocation should be altered to meet the urgent health care needs of the people. Preventive and promotive measures like health education for giving awareness among people to change health habits, diet pattern, life style etc. are to be developed. Proper diagnosis and treatment of the disease at the beginning of the stage itself may help to cure majority of disease. For that, Public health policy must ensure the primary health care as enunciated at Alma- Ata international Conference. At the same time Public health is not to be treated as the sole responsibility of the government. Active community participation is an essential means to attain the goals.

An economic evaluation of industrial estates in kerala

A massive programme for the development of small scale industries in India known as ‘Industrial Estates Programme‘ was launched by the Government of India in 1955, This technique of industrialisation was recommended by the Small Scale Industries Board in 1955. The first industrial estate in India was set up at Rajkot (Gujarat) in September 1955 and the first shed allotted in December 1955. Since the Government of India entrusted the state governments with the responsibility of starting the estates, the Government of Kerala decided to start one industrial estate in each district during the second plan. It was envisaged that each district should have two industrial estates each, one as urban estate, the other as semi-urban or rural estate. This study attempts to make an economic evaluation of the Industrial estates programme in Kerala. It is based on a survey of all working industrial units in the 17 major industrial estates of Kerala.

Managerial Performance – An Analysis of Selected Antecedents and Mediators

The primary focus of this study was to asses the impact of selected antecedent variables namely Psychological Empowerment at Work (PEW), Psychological Contract Violation (PCV), Work Life Balance (WLB), Job Satisfaction (JS) and Affective Organisational Commitment (AOC) on Managerial Performance (MP) of middle level managers of private sector manufacturing and service sector organisations in Kerala.The study brings out the significance of Job Attitudes namely Job Satisfaction and Affective Organisational Commitment in meaningfully explaining the linkage between the rest of the antecedent variables in the study and Managerial Performance. The study interestingly revealed that Job Attitudes play a mediating role in explaining performance of managers unlike visualised in the initial conceptual framework. The study points to the importance of taking care of job attitudes in the work place to ensure performance of managers. The result of the study also brings out the significance of maintaining work-life balance especially in service sector organisations because it will have a direct impact on the level of performance of managers than most of the other contextual factors. Hence, it is the responsibility of HR department to initiate activities which are customised to the collective aspirations of the members of respective organisations to ensure positive job attitudes. HR departments should advice and convince the top management to provide resource support and endorsement to such initiatives.

On the use of QoS requirements as base of multicast charging

We propose a charging scheme for cost distribution along a multicast tree when cost is the responsibility of the receivers. This scheme focuses on QoS considerations and it does not depend on any specific type of service. The scheme has been designed to be used as a bridge between unicast and multicast services, solving the problem of charging multicast services by means of unicast charging and existing QoS routing mechanisms. We also include a numerical comparison and discussions of the case of non-numerical or relative QoS and on the application to some service examples in order to give a better understanding of the proposal

What kind of European Banking Union? Bruegel Policy Contribution [2012/12?]June 25, 2012

This paper discusses the creation of a European Banking Union. First, we discuss questions of design. We highlight seven fundamental choices that decision makers will need to make: Which EU countries should participate in the banking union? To which categories of banks should it apply? Which institution should be tasked with supervision? Which one should deal with resolution? How centralised should the deposit insurance system be? What kind of fiscal backing would be required? What governance framework and political institutions would be needed? In terms of geographical scope, we see the coverage of the banking union of the euro area as necessary and of additional countries as desirable, even though this would entail important additional economic difficulties. The system should ideally cover all banks within the countries included, in order to prevent major competitive and distributional distortions. Supervisory authority should be granted either to both the ECB and a new agency, or to a new agency alone. National supervisors, acting under the authority of the European supervisor, would be tasked with the supervision of smaller banks in accordance with the subsidiarity principle. A European resolution authority should be established, with the possibility of drawing on ESM resources. A fully centralized deposit insurance system would eventually be desirable, but a system of partial reinsurance may also be envisaged at least in a first phase. A banking union would require at least implicit European fiscal backing, with significant political authority and legitimacy. Thus, banking union cannot be considered entirely separately from fiscal union and political union. The most difficult challenge of creating a European banking union lies with the short-term steps towards its eventual implementation. Many banks in the euro area, and especially in the crisis countries, are currently under stress and the move towards banking union almost certainly has significant distributional implications. Yet it is precisely because banks are under such stress that early and concrete action is needed. An overarching principle for such action is to minimize the cost to the tax payers. The first step should be to create a European supervisor that will anchor the development of the future banking union. In parallel, a capability to quickly assess the true capital position of the system’s most important banks should be created, for which we suggest establishing a temporary European Banking Sector Task Force working together with the European supervisor and other authorities. Ideally, problems identified by this process should be resolved by national authorities; in case fiscal capacities would prove insufficient, the European level would take over in the country concerned with some national financial participation, or in an even less likely adverse scenario, in all participating countries at once. This approach would require the passing of emergency legislation in the concerned countries that would give the Task Force the required access to information and, if necessary, further intervention rights. Thus, the principle of fiscal responsibility of respective member states for legacy costs would be preserved to the maximum extent possible, and at the same time, market participants and the public would be reassured that adequate tools are in place to address any eventuality.

Land administration in a micro-state: the role of land use planning

Land policy in micro-states and the land administration that underpins it is often devised within a legacy framework inherited from a colonial past. Independence has allowed self-determination of the future political direction yet the range, legal framework, institutional structure and administration systems tend to mirror those of ex-colonial powers. Do land policies, administration systems and processes developed to serve large heavily populated countries scale down to serve the requirements of micro-states? The evidence suggests not: many land administration systems in the Caribbean face difficulties due to poor records, unclear title, exploitation of state lands, incomplete or ongoing land reform programmes, irregular or illegal settlement and non-enforced planning regulations. Land matters are typically the responsibility of several government departments and agencies responsible for land titling and registration, cadastral surveying of property interests, physical planning, taxation and financial regulation. Although planning is regarded as a land administration function, organisational responsibility usually rests with local rather than central government in large countries, but in microstates local government may be politically weak, under-resourced or even non-existent. Using a case study approach this paper explores how planning functions are organised in the Caribbean state of St Vincent & the Grenadines in relation to land administration as a whole and compares the arrangement with other independent micro-states in the region.