Commitment to military service among Finnish conscripts

This research establishes the primary components, predictors, and consequences of organizational commitment in the military context. Specifically, the research examines commitment to the military service among Finnish conscripts and whether initial affective commitment prior to service predicts later commitment, attitudes, behavior, and performance, and, furthermore, analyzes the changes in commitment and its possible outcomes. The data were collected from records as well as by surveys from 1,387 rank and file soldiers, immediately after they reported for duty, near the end of basic training, and near the end of 6 to 12 months of service. The data covered a wide array of predictor variables, including background items, attitudes toward conscription, mental and physical health, sociability, training quality, and leadership. Moreover, the archival data included such items as rank, criminal record, performance ratings, and the number of medical examines and exemptions. The measures were further refined based on the results of factor analysis and reliability tests. The results indicated that initial commitment significantly corresponded with expected adjustment, intentions to stay in the military, and acceptance of authority. Moreover, initial commitment moderately related to personal growth, perceived performance, and the number of effective service days at the end of service. During basic training, affective commitment was mostly influenced by challenging training, adjustment experiences, regimentation, and unit climate. At the end of service, committed soldiers demonstrated more personal growth and development in service, had higher-level expected performance, and less malingering during their service. Additionally, they had significantly more positive attitudes toward national defense. The results suggest that affective commitment requires adequate personal adjustment, experiences of personal growth and development, and satisfaction with unit dynamics and training. This research contributes to the theoretical discussion on organizational commitment and the will to defend the nation and advances developing models to support and manage conscript training, education, leadership, and personnel policy. This is achieved by determining the main factors and variables, including their relative strength, that affect commitment to the military service. These findings may also facilitate in designing programs aimed at reducing unwanted discharges and inadequate performance. In particular, these results provide tools for improving conscripts’ overall attachment to and identification with the military service.

Configuring Health Care Services - Service Control Improvement

The costs of health care are increasing, and at the same time, population is aging. This leads health care organizations to focus more on home based care services. This thesis focuses on the home care organization of the South Karelian District of Social and Health Services (Eksote), which was established in 2010; how its operation is organized and managed, and which problem types are faced in the daily operation of home care. This thesis examines home care services through an extensive interview study, process mapping and statistical data analysis. To be able to understand the nature of services and special environment theory models, such as service management and performance measurement, service processes and service design are introduced. This study is conducted from an external researcher‟s point of view and should be used as a discussion opener. The outcome of this thesis is an upper level development path for Eksote home care. The organization should evaluate and build a service offering, then productize home care services and modularize the products and identify similarities. Service processes should be mapped to generate efficiency for repeating tasks. Units should be reasonably sized and geographically located to facilitate management and operation. All this can be done by recognizing the different types of service products: runners repeaters and strangers. Furthermore, the organization should not hide behind medical issues and should understand the legislative, medical and operational frameworks in health care.

Developing customer need based services in personal security service industry

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how services can be developed and how the voice of the customer can be incorporated to the strategic planning of services. Furthermore, the objective is to investigate the methods of customer need analysis and service bundling. The data is collected from secondary and primary sources by reviewing the existing academic literature and by conducting in-depth interviews and surveys. The main findings of this research indicate that the service development in personal security service industry should be conducted through a formalized process and the process should begin with setting the strategic objectives. Moreover, the voice of the customer should be incorporated into all stages of the development process, especially into the front-end of the process. Furthermore, the information on customer needs should be gathered in a manner tailored for the purposes of service development.

Developing Service-based Solutions for Water Treatment in Finnish Mining Industry

The aim of this master’s thesis is to analyze the mining industry customers' current and future needs for the water treatment services and discover new business development opportunities in the context of mine water treatment. In addition, the study focuses on specifying service offerings needed and evaluate suitable revenue generation models for them. The main research question of the study is: What kind of service needs related to water treatment can be identified in the Finnish mining industry? The literature examined in the study focused on industrial service classification and new service development process as well as the revenue generation of services. A qualitative research approach employing a case study method was chosen for the study. The present study uses customer and expert interviews as primary data source, complemented by archival data. The primary data was gathered by organizing total of 13 interviews, and the interviews were analyzed by using qualitative content analysis. The abductive-logic was chosen as the way of conducting scientific reasoning in this study. As a result, new service proposals were developed for Finnish mine industry suppliers. The main areas of development were on asset efficiency services and process support services. The service needs were strongly associated with suppliers’ know-how of water treatment process optimization, cost-effectiveness as well as on alternative technologies. The study provides an insight for managers that wish to pursue a water treatment services as a part of their business offering.

Service Productization and Product Servitization in The Contract Manufacturing Company

The role of contract manufacturing and subcontracting has been seen in black and white in product and service point of view. It used to be seen either as a product or a service. In the thesis product-service system, offering combining products and services, was discussed. Theory was created from two perspectives; Service productization via Business Model generation and product servitization via New Service Development process. Target for the case study was to point out new ways of service thinking and ways for changing business environment in contract manufacturing, especially in customer satisfaction and profitability point of view. The case study is following the New Service Development process phases. First ideas were collected from literature and via sales management interviews. Service offering and tool for service requirement evaluation was created. Last financial results of example service scenarios were calculated. It is recommended to take service offering into internal use and further develop it into modular service model. It is also recommended to take created customer service requirement evaluation tool into use for capturing customer service needs but also for communicating those internally.

Service Blueprinting in Irregularity Service Improvement, case Swissport Finland Ltd

The trend of concentrating to core competencies leads to outsourcing of non-core activities. One such activity is logistics, where the responsibility is given to third-party service providers. This means the service provider acts as an intermediary between the buyer and the end customer. This thesis concentrates on depicting the operational environment of one such service provider, Swissport Finland Ltd, and the improvement of their checked baggage irregularity service. The tools used for this work were service blueprinting, an illustrative method for service mapping, and failure modes and effects analysis. The theoretical part of the thesis offers a framework for using these tools for logistics services, while the empirical part consists of a study mostly qualitative in nature. Action research method was used for the service improvement research. According to the results of this study the combination of service blueprinting and FMEA can be used successfully for irregularity service improvement. The most important result was an enhanced irregularity process that has been found to alleviate earlier problems.

Reframing the relationship between service design and operations: a service engineering approach

The significance of services as business and human activities has increased dramatically throughout the world in the last three decades. Becoming a more and more competitive and efficient service provider while still being able to provide unique value opportunities for customers requires new knowledge and ideas. Part of this knowledge is created and utilized in daily activities in every service organization, but not all of it, and therefore an emerging phenomenon in the service context is information awareness. Terms like big data and Internet of things are not only modern buzz-words but they are also describing urgent requirements for a new type of competences and solutions. When the amount of information increases and the systems processing information become more efficient and intelligent, it is the human understanding and objectives that may get separated from the automated processes and technological innovations. This is an important challenge and the core driver for this dissertation: What kind of information is created, possessed and utilized in the service context, and even more importantly, what information exists but is not acknowledged or used? In this dissertation the focus is on the relationship between service design and service operations. Reframing this relationship refers to viewing the service system from the architectural perspective. The selected perspective allows analysing the relationship between design activities and operational activities as an information system while maintaining the tight connection to existing service research contributions and approaches. This type of an innovative approach is supported by research methodology that relies on design science theory. The methodological process supports the construction of a new design artifact based on existing theoretical knowledge, creation of new innovations and testing the design artifact components in real service contexts. The relationship between design and operations is analysed in the health care and social care service systems. The existing contributions in service research tend to abstract services and service systems as value creation, working or interactive systems. This dissertation adds an important information processing system perspective to the research. The main contribution focuses on the following argument: Only part of the service information system is automated and computerized, whereas a significant part of information processing is embedded in human activities, communication and ad-hoc reactions. The results indicate that the relationship between service design and service operations is more complex and dynamic than the existing scientific and managerial models tend to view it. Both activities create, utilize, mix and share information, making service information management a necessary but relatively unknown managerial task. On the architectural level, service system -specific elements seem to disappear, but access to more general information elements and processes can be found. While this dissertation focuses on conceptual-level design artifact construction, the results provide also very practical implications for service providers. Personal, visual and hidden activities of service, and more importantly all changes that take place in any service system have also an information dimension. Making this information dimension visual and prioritizing the processed information based on service dimensions is likely to provide new opportunities to increase activities and provide a new type of service potential for customers.

Task Force on Librarians’ Competencies in Support of E-Research and Scholarly Communication

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

Service offering classification for logistics services

This thesis studies the development of service offering model that creates added-value for customers in the field of logistics services. The study focusses on offering classification and structures of model. The purpose of model is to provide value-added solutions for customers and enable superior service experience. The aim of thesis is to define what customers expect from logistics solution provider and what value customers appreciate so greatly that they could invest in value-added services. Value propositions, costs structures of offerings and appropriate pricing methods are studied. First, literature review of creating solution business model and customer value is conducted. Customer value is found out with customer interviews and qualitative empiric data is used. To exploit expertise knowledge of logistics, innovation workshop tool is utilized. Customers and experts are involved in the design process of model. As a result of thesis, three-level value-added service offering model is created based on empiric and theoretical data. Offerings with value propositions are proposed and the level of model reflects the deepness of customer-provider relationship and the amount of added value. Performance efficiency improvements and cost savings create the most added value for customers. Value-based pricing methods, such as performance-based models are suggested to apply. Results indicate the interest of benefitting networks and partnership in field of logistics services. Networks development is proposed to be investigated further.

Service paradox in a product oriented company: A service business development case

The master´s thesis had three aims; to develop a service portfolio, to support the management of services through the developed portfolio, and evaluate effects of service differentiation strategy on the future selection of services. The product oriented case company in service paradox is Hilti (Suomi) Oy, which is entering systematic service management era, supported by the late strategic change. Low return on service business investments is referred as service paradox. The project was carried out as a case study, where the primary information source was twenty-one conducted interviews. The theory part focuses on marketing logics, service strategies, and categorization of services. The empirical part contributes in solving the aim related research questions. As a result of the case study a service portfolio was created, next further steps in service management were suggested, and the effect on selection of services by service differentiation strategy was evaluated. The main goal of creating service portfolio contributes to systematic management of services, which required revising at the case company.

Voittoa tavoittelemattoman organisaation asiakashankinnan suorituskyvyn mittaaminen

Tutkimuksen ensimmäinen tavoite on kaksiosainen. Aluksi pyrittiin selvittämään, kuinka voittoa tavoittelemattomalla sektorilla voidaan mitata asiakashankinnan suorituskykyä. Toiseksi tutkittiin, mikä on mittauksen tila Suomen voittoa tavoittelemattomassa sektorissa. Toinen tavoite oli rakentaa suorituskykymittaristo suurehkon järjestön asiakashankintaan ja pohtia asiakashankinnan tavoitteiden jalkauttamista mittareiden avulla. Ensimmäinen tavoite toteutettiin kirjallisuuskatsauksen ja kyselytutkimuksen avulla. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen perusteella rakennettiin kyselylomake, jota jaettiin suomalaisiin voittoa tavoittelemattomiin organisaatioihin. Kirjallisuuskatsauksessa selvisi, että suorituskyvyn kannalta tärkeintä olisi mitata kontaktien määrää siinä, missä kontaktien laatu ja prosessin sujuvuus toimivat täydentävinä mittauskohteina. Kyselytutkimuksen perusteella noin puolet vastaajaorganisaatioista mittasi toimintaansa ylipäätään. Käytetyt mittarit painottuivat asiakashankinnan laatuun. Toisen tavoitteen osalta mittaristo luotiin hyödyntämällä LUT:issa rakennetun SAKE-sovelluksen implementointiprosessia. Mittaristo kattaa sekä puhelimitse että kentällä tehdyn asiakashankinnan ja sähköisen markkinoinnin määrä- ja laatumittarit. Lisäksi on arvioitu, asiakashankinnan tavoitteet voidaan jalkauttaa käytännön työhön. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla tehdyt johtopäätökset toimivat ohjenuorana, kun pohditaan vastaavan toiminnan mittaamista. Tehtyä mittaristoa ei ole tarkoituksenmukaista soveltaa muualla sellaisenaan, vaan mittaristo tulee aina sovittaa kohdeorganisaatioon. Kyselytutkimuksen tuloksia ei voida pienen vastaajamäärän takia yleistää järjestökenttään.

A systematic mapping study of web services discovery mechanisms

Context: Web services have been gaining popularity due to the success of service oriented architecture and cloud computing. Web services offer tremendous opportunity for service developers to publish their services and applications over the boundaries of the organization or company. However, to fully exploit these opportunities it is necessary to find efficient discovery mechanism thus, Web services discovering mechanism has attracted a considerable attention in Semantic Web research, however, there have been no literature surveys that systematically map the present research result thus overall impact of these research efforts and level of maturity of their results are still unclear. This thesis aims at providing an overview of the current state of research into Web services discovering mechanism using systematic mapping. The work is based on the papers published 2004 to 2013, and attempts to elaborate various aspects of the analyzed literature including classifying them in terms of the architecture, frameworks and methods used for web services discovery mechanism. Objective: The objective if this work is to summarize the current knowledge that is available as regards to Web service discovery mechanisms as well as to systematically identify and analyze the current published research works in order to identify different approaches presented. Method: A systematic mapping study has been employed to assess the various Web Services discovery approaches presented in the literature. Systematic mapping studies are useful for categorizing and summarizing the level of maturity research area. Results: The result indicates that there are numerous approaches that are consistently being researched and published in this field. In terms of where these researches are published, conferences are major contributing publishing arena as 48% of the selected papers were conference published papers illustrating the level of maturity of the research topic. Additionally selected 52 papers are categorized into two broad segments namely functional and non-functional based approaches taking into consideration architectural aspects and information retrieval approaches, semantic matching, syntactic matching, behavior based matching as well as QOS and other constraints.

Decision making and decision support in service systems

This thesis is a literature study that develops a conceptual model of decision making and decision support in service systems. The study is related to the Ä-Logi, Intelligent Service Logic for Welfare Sector Services research project, and the objective of the study is to develop the necessary theoretical framework to enable further research based on the research project results and material. The study first examines the concepts of service and service systems, focusing on understanding the characteristics of service systems and their implications for decision making and decision support to provide the basis for the development of the conceptual model. Based on the identified service system characteristics, an integrated model of service systems is proposed that views service systems through a number of interrelated perspectives that each offer different, but complementary, implications on the nature of decision making and the requirements for decision support in service systems. Based on the model, it is proposed that different types of decision making contexts can be identified in service systems that may be dominated by different types of decision making processes and where different types of decision support may be required, depending on the characteristics of the decision making context and its decision making processes. The proposed conceptual model of decision making and decision support in service systems examines the characteristics of decision making contexts and processes in service systems, and their typical requirements for decision support. First, a characterization of different types of decision making contexts in service systems is proposed based on the Cynefin framework and the identified service system characteristics. Second, the nature of decision making processes in service systems is proposed to be dual, with both rational and naturalistic decision making processes existing in service systems, and having an important and complementary role in decision making in service systems. Finally, a characterization of typical requirements for decision support in service systems is proposed that examines the decision support requirements associated with different types of decision making processes in characteristically different types of decision making contexts. It is proposed that decision support for the decision making processes that are based on rational decision making can be based on organizational decision support models, while decision support for the decision making processes that are based on naturalistic decision making should be based on supporting the decision makers’ situation awareness and facilitating the development of their tacit knowledge of the system and its tasks. Based on the proposed conceptual model a further research process is proposed. The study additionally provides a number of new perspectives on the characteristics of service systems, and the nature of decision making and requirements for decision support in service systems that can potentially provide a basis for further discussion and research, and support the practice alike.

Enhancing business-to-business relationship through value co-creation in traditional business sector: A case of building services engineering

This study discusses the significance of having service as a business logic, and more specifically, how value co-creation can be seen as an enhancing phenomenon to business-to-business relationships in traditional business sector. The purpose of this study is to investigate how value cocreation can enhance a business-to-business relationship in the heating, ventilation and airconditioning (HVAC) industry of building services engineering, through three sub-objectives: to identify what is value in the industry, how value is co-created in the industry, and what is value in a business-to-business relationship in the industry. The theoretical part this study consists of academic knowledge and literature related to the concepts of value, value co-creation and business-to-business relationships. In order to research value co-creation and business-to-business relationships in HVAC industry of building services engineering both, metaphorical and conceptual thinking of service dominant (S-D) logic and more managerial approach of service logic (SL), contributed to the theoretical part of the study. The empirical research conducted for this study is based on seven semi-structured interviews, which constituted the holistic, qualitative single case study method chosen for the research. The data was collected in September 2014 from CEOs, managers and owners representing six building services engineering firms. The interviews were analysed with the help of transcriptions, role-ordered matrices and thematic networks. The findings of this study indicate that value in HVAC industry consists of client expertise and supplier expertise. The result of applying client expertise and supplier expertise to the business-to- business relationship is characterized as value-in-reputation, when continuity, interaction, learning and rapport of the business relationship are ensured. As a result, value co-creation in the industry consists of mutual and separate elements, which the client and the supplier apply in the process, in addition to proactive interaction. The findings of this study, together with the final framework, enhance the understanding of the connection existing between value co-creation and business-to-business relationship. The findings suggest that value in the HVAC industry is characterized by both value-in-use and value-inreputation. Value-in-reputation enhances the formation of value-in-use, and consequently, value cocreation enhances the business-to-business relationship. This study thus contributes to the existing knowledge on the concepts of value and value co-creation in business-to-business relationships.

eWOM communication in social media: A study of its antecedents in higher education context

The aim of this master’s thesis was to examine antecedents of eWOM communication in social media in the higher education context. In order to achieve this goal, eWOM communications of the students’ of international master’s programmes at Lappeenranta University of Technology were studied. The main research question was formulated as follows: What kind of effect do service-, brand-related antecedents, contextual antecedents and moderating factors have on LUT’s international master’s degree students’ eWOM communication in social media regarding their studies? The theory part of the master’s thesis was focused on the discussion of service- and brand related eWOM antecedents, contextual antecedents, as well as moderating relationships between them. The empirical part of the master’s thesis was based on quantitative research method. A web-based survey was carried out among current students of international master’s degree programmes at LUT. Out of 712 e-mail invitations sent, 159 responses were received in total. Thus, response rate was 22%. The results of the study showed that satisfaction, commitment, virtual brand community commitment, need for an advice, positive altruistic concerns, negative altruistic concerns, and attitude towards eWOM communications have an effect on eWOM in higher education context. Several moderating effects on eWOM were determined in the present study as well. On the other hand, it was found that dissatisfaction, loyalty, brand identification, desire to help the organization, need for positive self-enhancement, and social risk perception do not have an effect on eWOM in higher education context.