Monikanavaisen kriisiviestintämallin kehittäminen, asiakasyrityksenä Medi-IT Oy

Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena oli selvittää, mitä asioita organisaation tulisi huomioida tehokkaan, monikanavaisen kriisiviestintämallin suunnittelussa ja toteuttamisessa. Asiakasyritys Medi-IT Oy tukee terveydenhuollon ja sosiaalitoimen palveluntuottajien toimintaa tarjoamalla ja tuottamalla asiantuntija- ja tietotekniikkapalveluita. Tutkimuksessa keskitytään yrityksen tukipalveluyksikköön ja viestinnän lajeista häiriötilanteiden viestintään. Kriisiviestintämalli voidaan tarvittaessa lanseerata myös muihin yksiköihin. Medi-IT Oy:n kriisiviestintämallin kehittäminen aloitettiin kartoittamalla nykytilaa. Tämä tehtiin yrityksen nykyisiä toimintatapoja selvittämällä ja kysymällä asiakkaiden ja työntekijöiden mielipiteitä ja kokemuksia. Viestintään liittyvän puhelinkyselyn asiakkaille suoritti InnoLink-yritys. Kyselyn tuloksista nousi esiin viestinnän ongelmakohtia. Näihin paneutumalla löydettiin kehitettävät kohteet. Nämä kriisiviestinnän ja samalla tapahtumien hallinnan kehityskohteet on esitetty toimintojen tarkennuksina. Asiakasyritys on panostamassa prosessien laatuun ja on aloittamassa ITIL:in hyödyntämisen prosessien läpikäymisessä. Siksi myös ITIL:in periaatteita otettiin huomioon tässä kriisiviestinnän prosessimallissa. Työssä selvitettiin teoriakatsauksen pohjalta, mitkä ovat hyvän kriisiviestinnän ominaisuudet ja mitkä ovat monikanavaisuuden asettamat haasteet, edut ja haitat. Prosessin mallintamisessa käytettiin tapahtumien hallintaan keskittyvää työkalua. Työn lopputuloksena syntyi asiakasyritykselle monikanavaisen kriisiviestinnän kehittämismalli sekä kehittämistä vaativien toimintojen tarkennukset. Työhön sisältyy myös tulevaisuuden kriisiviestinnän prosessimalli, jonka toteutuminen ei ole vielä teknisesti täysin mahdollista.

Use Of Systems Approach with Total Quality Management in Industrial Organizations

The objective of the work has been to study why systems thinking should be used in combination with TQM, what are the main benefits of the integration and how it could best be done. The work analyzes the development of systems thinking and TQM with time and the main differences between them. The work defines prerequisites for adopting a systems approach and the organizational factors which embody the development of an efficient learning organization. The work proposes a model based on combination of an interactive management model and redesign to be used for application of systems approach with TQM in practice. The results of the work indicate that there are clear differences between systems thinking and TQM which justify their combination. Systems approach provides an additional complementary perspective to quality management. TQM is focused on optimizing operations at the operational level while interactive management and redesign of organization are focused on optimization operations at the conceptual level providing a holistic system for value generation. The empirical study demonstrates the applicability of the proposed model in one case study company but its application is tenable and possible also beyond this particular company. System dynamic modeling and other systems based techniques like cognitive mapping are useful methods for increasing understanding and learning about the behavior of systems. The empirical study emphasizes the importance of using a proper early warning system.

Corporate responsibility guaranteed by dialogue? Examining the relationship between nongovernmental organizations and business

The main objective of this doctoral dissertation is to examine the relationship between non-governmental organizations and business in the context of academic discourse, corporate responsibility discourse, and stakeholder dialogue. More specifically, motivated by the increasing emphasis on stakeholder dialogue as a tool for corporate responsibility and accountability, the aim is to critically assess the role of stakeholder dialogue as a self-regulatory mechanism, in particular from the perspective of foreign direct investments. The study comprises two parts; an introductory essay containing the research objectives, theoretical foundations and methodological choices, and four research articles that address one sub-objective: 1) to review the literature on NGO-business relations in business and society, management, and international business journals from 1998–2007; 2) to critically analyze the academic discourse on NGO-business relations; 3) to analyze the problematic aspects of sustainable foreign direct investments as a conceptual construct; and 4) to analyze the problematic aspects of stakeholder dialogue in connection with a foreign direct investment. The ontological and epistemological foundations of this dissertation build on the social constructionist view of reality. The dialogue in this study is viewed as a legitimacy bargaining process that is actively shaped by societal parties in discourse. Similarly, articulations of ‘partnership’ and ‘adversarial’ in NGO-business relations in academic business and society discourse are viewed as competing hegemonic interventions in the field. More specifically, the methods applied in the articles are literature review (Article 1), discourse theory (Article 2), conceptual analysis (Article 3), and case study with document analysis (Article 4). This dissertation has three main arguments and contributions. First, it is argued that the potential of stakeholder dialogue as a tool for corporate responsibility and accountability is inherently limited in both contexts. Second, the study shows the power implications of privileging partnership oriented NGO-business relations over adversarial ones, and of placing business at the centre of governance discourse. The third contribution is methodological: a new way to analyze academic discourse is presented by focusing on the problem setting of an article.

Strategic Change Management Readiness Evaluation in Organizations

The objective of this study and paper was to find out how the strategic change management readiness in organizations can be evaluated. Based on theory and prior CMP model, the framework of strategic change management and issues related to it was constructed. Additionally a synthesis of the most important phases and interventions in strategic change process and project was created. These phases were starting point, planning, implementation and evaluation and securing phases. Qualitative approach was utilized in the empirical part of the study due to the need for in-depth information about the topics surveyed through semi-structured interview. There were 18 responders from the top management of large Finnish companies. In this study interventions, strengths and weaknesses during the various phases of strategic change projects were revealed. Additionally the interviewees’ opinion on the importance of each of the interventions in strategic change project success was asked. According to this study, the most important phases recognized through researching theoretical literature, prior CMP model and empirical information in starting point phase were analysis of current and desired state and need for change accompanied with guiding coalition formulation. In planning phase the most important interventions were project organization formulation, action plan creation, analysis of prior and current strategic change projects and organizational structure analysis. In the change project implementation phase the interventions of importance were launch, quick wins, sense of urgency creation, change resistance management and change communications. In the final evaluation and securing phase project evaluation was the most important intervention. Based on the results a tool for creating change management readiness profile was created.

Towards a Strategic Sales Channel Partnership: A Case Study from the IT Services Industry

Strategic partnerships have become a key to competitive advantage and success in a dynamic, global business environment. Partnering provides a strategic response to complex offerings that need multiple sources of technology and knowledge, allowing companies to offer a wider range of services and solutions to meet their customers’ needs. Companies that collaborate with strategic partners in sales channels may significantly grow their business and improve their prospects of winning major contracts. As a consequence, companies are increasingly transforming their go-to-market strategies and sales channel structures to align with the need to create added value to customers together with a business partner. The research objective of this case study is to review and assess the success of an established sales channel partnership in IT services industry and to find ways how to develop it towards a strategic collaboration. The research consists of two main parts. The first part reviews the literature, concluding with the identification of the critical success factors for partnering. The second part sets out for the case findings, focusing on how the success of the established sales channel partnership is perceived by key executives within the partner organizations, and further what actions are required to make the sales channel partnership and joint go-to-market more strategic.

Practical Framework for Monitoring the Performance of Agile IT Projects in an Output-Based Outsourcing Context

Over the past decade, organizations worldwide have begun to widely adopt agile software development practices, which offer greater flexibility to frequently changing business requirements, better cost effectiveness due to minimization of waste, faster time-to-market, and closer collaboration between business and IT. At the same time, IT services are continuing to be increasingly outsourced to third parties providing the organizations with the ability to focus on their core capabilities as well as to take advantage of better demand scalability, access to specialized skills, and cost benefits. An output-based pricing model, where the customers pay directly for the functionality that was delivered rather than the effort spent, is quickly becoming a new trend in IT outsourcing allowing to transfer the risk away from the customer while at the same time offering much better incentives for the supplier to optimize processes and improve efficiency, and consequently producing a true win-win outcome. Despite the widespread adoption of both agile practices and output-based outsourcing, there is little formal research available on how the two can be effectively combined in practice. Moreover, little practical guidance exists on how companies can measure the performance of their agile projects, which are being delivered in an output-based outsourced environment. This research attempted to shed light on this issue by developing a practical project monitoring framework which may be readily applied by organizations to monitor the performance of agile projects in an output-based outsourcing context, thus taking advantage of the combined benefits of such an arrangement Modified from action research approach, this research was divided into two cycles, each consisting of the Identification, Analysis, Verification, and Conclusion phases. During Cycle 1, a list of six Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) was proposed and accepted by the professionals in the studied multinational organization, which formed the core of the proposed framework and answered the first research sub-question of what needs to be measured. In Cycle 2, a more in-depth analysis was provided for each of the suggested Key Performance Indicators including the techniques for capturing, calculating, and evaluating the information provided by each KPI. In the course of Cycle 2, the second research sub-question was answered, clarifying how the data for each KPI needed to be measured, interpreted, and acted upon. Consequently, after two incremental research cycles, the primary research question was answered describing the practical framework that may be used for monitoring the performance of agile IT projects delivered in an output-based outsourcing context. This framework was evaluated by the professionals within the context of the studied organization and received positive feedback across all four evaluation criteria set forth in this research, including the low overhead of data collection, high value of provided information, ease of understandability of the metric dashboard, and high generalizability of the proposed framework.

Social entrepreneurship – Believe in it or not!

The practice of social entrepreneurship already exists for a long time but the concept is quite new and has more recently raised a growing interest among academics. However, the majority of researches and considerations about the subject have taken a strong positive concern by omitting some sort of a critical reflection. The idea of this study is to consider the gap between the very optimistic and the more precautious concerns about social entrepreneurship. It means presenting the advantages and downsides connected to the topic in the business, public and third sector. The aim is to help the reader building his/her own belief on social entrepreneurship by considering the positive and negative sides of social entrepreneurship. Hence, the research is intended to take a critical step and aims to answer to the following research questions:  Shall we believe in social entrepreneurship?  What are the reasons for believing or not in social entrepreneurship taking into account the advantages and possible risks of it in the business, public, and third sector? The theoretical framework consists of the comparison between the promising and precautious sides about social entrepreneurship for private, public and non-governmental organizations including the actors or participants inside these sectors. The empirical part is conducted using a qualitative method. Personal interviews of experts in the fields of business, public and third sectors were handled. The purpose of this approach is to compare the critics in theory with the experience of persons dealing with social entrepreneurship. The results from the interviews revealed that in general, reasons for believing in social entrepreneurship prevail over critics about the subject. Social entrepreneurship may not yet represent a full performing business. Concerns for weakening the public power and putting aside the interests of communities in need may exist too. Furthermore, naïve and extra liberal ways of thinking or doing can lead to practices going in opposition with initial social objectives. Nevertheless, problems about social entrepreneurship would be mainly due to the young age of the movement. Time and experience would give better foundations and results to social entrepreneurs. Critics about social entrepreneurship could also easily be done to any sorts of business. Overall, the positive considerations of social entrepreneurship with skillful, motivated and responsible actors could represent some useful tools for enterprises, governments and charities. Some tools among many other possibilities to help people in need.

Suorituskyvyn johtaminen ja IT-strategian suuntaaminen; Case: ICT-alan yritys

Yrityksen tietohallintoon kohdistuu tänä päivänä paljon vaatimuksia. Vaatimukset kohdistuvat tietohallinnon merkitykseen liiketoiminnan tukijana ja suorituskyvyn edistäjänä. ICT-toimialan rooli palveluiden tuottajana ja Suomen taloudellisen kas-vun tukijana ovat merkittävät. Tämän diplomityön tavoite on selvittää mikä on tietohallinnon rooli ja merkitys osana yrityksen suorituskykyä ja miten sitä tulisi kehittää. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys koostuu yleisistä suorituskyvyn johtamisen malleista, suorituskyvyn joh-tamisen malleista tietohallinnossa sekä IT-strategian suuntaamisen malleista ja suuntaamisen vaikutuksesta yrityksen suorituskykyyn. Tutkimuskysymys on: miten strategian suuntaamista tulisi kehittää jotta tietohallinto pystyisi edistämään yrityk-sen suorituskykyä? Tutkimusstrategia on case-tutkimus ja empiirinen aineisto on hankittu teemahaastatteluilla. Case-tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan strategian suuntaamisen arvioinnin mallin valit-seminen on tärkeää. Strategian suuntaamisen kaikki näkökulmat tulee ottaa huomi-oon. Esimerkiksi osaaminen, kommunikaatio, kumppanuudet ja ihmisten käyttäy-tyminen saattavat jäädä ns. kovien näkökulmien varjoon. Strategian suuntaamisessa tulee kiinnittää huomiota suuntaamiseen kaikilla organisaatiotasoilla. Toiminnalli-sen tason merkitys tulee myös huomioida. Strategian suuntaamista kehitettäessä tulee arvioinnissa ottaa huomioon eri liiketoimintayksiköiden arvioinnit, koska ne saattavat poiketa vahvasti toisistaan ja siten vääristää kehittämiskohteiden valitse-mista.

New ways to do business plans in multicultural organizations

Business plans are made when establishing new company or when organizations launch new product or services. In this Master Thesis was examined the elements are included in the business plan and emphasized. Business plan is a wide document and can also contain company specific information, the literature review was restricted into three areas which were investigated from the relating literature and articles. The selected areas were Market Segmentation and Targeting, Competitive Environment, and Market Positioning and Strategy. The different business plan models were investigated by interviewing companies who operates in a different industry sectors from each other’s. The models were compared to each other and to the findings from literature. Based on interview results and literature findings, the business plan for fibre based packaging. The created business plan contains three selected areas. It was found that the selected business plan elements can be found from the interviewed companies’ business plans. The market segmentation was done by comparing the market share to known total market size. When analyzing the competitive environment, there was no one selected model in use. The tools to evaluate competitive environment was selected parts from both SWOT analysis and Porter’s five forces model in applicable part. Based on interview results, it can be state that the company or organization should find and built its own model for business plans. In order to receive the benefits for future planning, the company should use the same model for long time.

The role of business model in computer game development organizations

The computer game industry has grown steadily for years, and in revenues it can be compared to the music and film industries. The game industry has been moving to digital distribution. Computer gaming and the concept of business model are discussed among industrial practitioners and the scientific community. The significance of the business model concept has increased in the scientific literature recently, although there is still a lot of discussion going on on the concept. In the thesis, the role of the business model in the computer game industry is studied. Computer game developers, designers, project managers and organization leaders in 11 computer game companies were interviewed. The data was analyzed to identify the important elements of computer game business model, how the business model concept is perceived and how the growth of the organization affects the business model. It was identified that the importance of human capital is crucial to the business. As games are partly a product of creative thinking also innovation and the creative process are highly valued. The same applies to technical skills when performing various activities. Marketing and customer relationships are also considered as key elements in the computer game business model. Financing and partners are important especially for startups, when the organization is dependent on external funding and third party assets. The results of this study provide organizations with improved understanding on how the organization is built and what business model elements are weighted.

Challenges for virtual teams in voluntary organizations

This research concerns virtual teams in the field of volunteer work. The developments in the area of information and communication technology have decreased their costs and made them easily accessible. As a result, it seems natural that also the voluntary organizations have adopted online tools and virtual teams as a part of their work modes. However, virtual teams have not received much research in this context, and one of the goals of this study was to begin closing that gap. The research had two main focus areas: the challenges that the volunteers face in the teams, and the leadership that the teams have. The study used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted over Skype and email and included members from six different teams. The case organization was a European-wide student organization that widely utilized virtual teams in its work. The study identified three critical issues for managing the virtual teams. The first challenge was creating common ground for teamwork through electronic communication. Secondly, volunteering created challenges for the teams through variations in the level of commitment of the members, as some left the organization during the term of the team. Lastly, knowledge transfer was a challenge that came from changing the team members regularly each year. As for the second key topic, leadership in the teams was spread among the team members unevenly. The teams had a formal leader, but they exhibited signs of shared leadership, and the team members were able to influence the team through their own level of involvement. Especially the experience that a member had contributed the amount of influence she held. All in all, the challenges that the volunteers faced were similar to those of normal virtual teams. Volunteering brought additional challenges through the varying levels of commitment and the changing of the team members. Additionally, the role of the team leader was not as firm. The results of the study can be applied to other volunteer organizations that utilize virtual teams.

Challenges for virtual teams in voluntary organizations

This research concerns virtual teams in the field of volunteer work. The developments in the area of information and communication technology have decreased their costs and made them easily accessible. As a result, it seems natural that also the voluntary organizations have adopted online tools and virtual teams as a part of their work modes. However, virtual teams have not received much research in this context, and one of the goals of this study was to begin closing that gap. The research had two main focus areas: the challenges that the volunteers face in the teams, and the leadership that the teams have. The study used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted over Skype and email and included members from six different teams. The case organization was a European-wide student organization that widely utilized virtual teams in its work. The study identified three critical issues for managing the virtual teams. The first challenge was creating common ground for teamwork through electronic communication. Secondly, volunteering created challenges for the teams through variations in the level of commitment of the members, as some left the organization during the term of the team. Lastly, knowledge transfer was a challenge that came from changing the team members regularly each year. As for the second key topic, leadership in the teams was spread among the team members unevenly. The teams had a formal leader, but they exhibited signs of shared leadership, and the team members were able to influence the team through their own level of involvement. Especially the experience that a member had contributed the amount of influence she held. All in all, the challenges that the volunteers faced were similar to those of normal virtual teams. Volunteering brought additional challenges through the varying levels of commitment and the changing of the team members. Additionally, the role of the team leader was not as firm. The results of the study can be applied to other volunteer organizations that utilize virtual teams.

Corporate Entrepreneurship in Healthcare Organizations: An explorative study of employees’ corporate entrepreneurial behavior, job satisfaction and turnover intention

The Finnish healthcare industry is currently facing significant challenges due to economic crises, aging population and major structural reforms, which have resulted in decreased job satisfaction and increased levels of turnover. This proposes that healthcare organizations need to come up with new, creative means to tackle these issues. Several researchers have argued that corporate entrepreneurship may be the necessary means to achieve this. As previous research has mainly focused on examining this concept from organizational perspective, this study looks at how it occurs on the level of individual employees. The purpose of this study is to examine how corporate entrepreneurship is manifested in individual behavior, and how this type of behavior is associated with the individual’s job satisfaction and turnover intention. Additionally, this study will examine the differences in corporate entrepreneurial behavior between private and public sector organizations, as previous research suggests that these two may be characterized differently. Data was collected with the help of a literature review as well as a survey study, which was sent out to a number of employees of four different healthcare organizations, out of which three were public and one was a private sector organization. Six distinct behavioral characteristics were recognized in previous research, which make up the measure for corporate entrepreneurial behavior. Principal components were formed from the different areas of the survey (corporate entrepreneurial behavior, job satisfaction, turnover intention), after which the association of these components were examined with linear regression analysis, which proved that corporate entrepreneurial behavior is positively correlated with both job satisfaction and intention to leave the organization. Differences between sectors were analyzed with analysis of variance and cross tabulation analysis, but neither of these suggested that any significant differences would occur. These results suggest that employees who behave entrepreneurially tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, but also consider leaving their current organizations more often than others. This may be due to the fact that healthcare organizations are not fertile for entrepreneurial behavior, which will drive entrepreneurial individuals looking for employers who may be more supportive of this type of behavior. With growing levels of dissatisfaction as well as little room for entrepreneurial behavior, the studied organizations may actually be in the process of losing those employees who have the ability and desire to behave in such manner, and who could very well be those who will eventually come up with solutions for the major challenges that these organizations are facing.

The Development of a Survey to Assess the Type of Capacity within Nonprofit Sport Organizations

The topic of organizational capacity and organizational capacity-building has gained importance among Canadian nonprofit sport organizations. This is illustrated by practitioners calling for increased attention to the capacity-building matters of nonprofit organizations, and two critical Canadian federal government documents outlining strategic direction for the nonprofit sport sector. Consequently, the purpose of this quantitative research study was to develop a valid and reliable survey to categorize nonprofit sport organizations into capacity types identified by Stevens (Stevens, 2006). This quantitative research study offers a preliminary development towards achieving a reliable and valid tool for assessing types of nonprofit sport organizational capacity. This research provides interesting insight into what capacity means by organizing the all-encompassing literature into an easy to understand framework. In addition, it sets the stage for future researchers to build upon this survey development process to achieve a reliable and valid capacity measuring tool.

How health organizations can apply scenario based planning and analytic technologies to make strategic consequential decisions in a time of uncertainty

The magnitude of the cervical cancer problem, coupled with the potential for prevention with recent technological advances, made it imperative to step back and reassess strategic options for dealing with cervical cancer screening in Kenya. The purpose of this qualitative study was: 1) to explore the extent to which the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology and the Scenario Based Planning (SBP) method, with the application of analytics, could enable strategic, consequential, informed decision making, and 2) to determine how influential Kenyan decision makers could apply SBP with analytic tools and techniques to make strategic, consequential decisions regarding the implementation of a Cervical Self Sampling Program (CSSP) in both urban and rural settings. The theoretical paradigm for this study was action research; it was experiential, practical, and action oriented, and resulted in co-created knowledge that influenced study participants’ decision making. Action Africa Help International (AAHI) and Brock University collaborated with Local Decision Influencing Participants (LDIP’s) to develop innovative strategies on how to implement the CSSP. SBP tools, along with traditional approaches to data collection and analysis, were applied to collect, visualize and analyze predominately qualitative data. Outputs from the study included: a) a generic implementation scenario for a CSSP (along with scenarios unique to urban and rural settings), and b) 10 strategic directions and 22 supporting implementation strategies that address the variables of: 1) technical viability, 2) political support, 3) affordability, 4) logistical feasibility, 5) social acceptability, and 6) transformation/sustainability. In addition, study participants’ capacity to effectively engage in predictive/prescriptive strategic decision making was strengthened.