Näkökulmia 3D-tulostuksen opetukseen ja koulutukseen

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is globally one of most interesting area in developing of manufacturing technologies. This technology is suitable for fabrication off industrial products and it interests actors in fields of computer sciences, economics, medical sciences and design&arts. Additive manufacturing is often referred as third industrial revolution: first revolution was invention of steam engines in 18th century and second was industrial revolution started by Henry Ford in 1920s. Companies should be able to test suitability of their products for additive manufacturing and 3D printing but also how much better products could be when products are totally re-designed so that all potential of this new technology can be utilized. This is where education has its importance; new generations who enter working life should be educated to know of additive manufacturing and 3D printing, its advantages but also of it limits. There has to be also possibility to educate industry and people already working there, so that industrial implementation could be done successfully. This is especially very valid for Finland. Education is strongly needed so that Finnish industry can maintain its competence in global markets. Role of education is extremely important when a new technology is industrially implemented. Additive manufacturing and 3D printing offers freedom to design new products, production and generally ways of doing things. Development, planning and execution of education for additive manufacturing and 3D printing is challenging as this area develops very fast. New innovations are coming almost every month. Planning of education for additive manufacturing and 3D printing requires collection pieces of data from various of sources. Additive manufacturing and 3D printing industry and its development has to be followed frequently, and material for additive manufacturing and 3D printing has to be renewed frequently.

Finnish doctoral dissertations of nursing education research

Nursing education research has confirmed its place in the discipline of nursing and caring sciences being one of the most central research areas. However, extensive and systematic analysis of nursing education research has been lacking both nationally and internationally. The aim of this study was to describe the focus of nursing education research in Finnish doctoral dissertations in the field of nursing and caring sciences between the years 1990–2014. In addition, the characteristics (i.e. methods, study informants and reporting of validity, reliability, and research ethics) of the dissertations were described. Also, international reviews (N=39) focusing on nursing education research were analysed for a background literature. A literature review was carried out. Altogether 51 (=N) Finnish doctoral dissertations of nursing and caring sciences in the field of nursing education research were included in the final analysis. The data for this research was collected from the open publication lists of each university offering education in nursing and caring sciences in Finland. The dissertations were published in 1990–2014. The data were analysed by content analysis both deductively and inductively. This study consists of a scientific article manuscript and a background literature review. Nursing education research has focused both nationally and internationally on four main areas: structural factors in nursing education, nurse teacherhood, teaching activities, and learning and learning outcomes in nursing education. In Finland, the most central focus area was learning (84.3 %) whereas nurse teacherhood and structural factors in nursing education were studied the least. Students were the predominant study informant group while nurse staff including nurse mentors were next and nurse educators only the third. Surveys and interviews were the most common data collection methods. In the findings there were a lot of similarities with international reviews of nursing education research. Finnish nursing education research has been very student-centred yet studies focusing on the education of other nursing based professions or different levels of education are rare. Future research about nurse teacherhood, curricula and structural factors in nursing education is recommended. There is also a need for experimental designs. In addition, nursing education research should focus on the central phenomena of nursing education and working life. All in all, more nursing education research is needed. Nursing education dissertations cover only 12.3 % of all the dissertations of nursing and caring sciences in Finland.

Kommunikaatio-operaattorin taloudellisesti kannattava liiketoimintamalli tasapuolisen pääsyn FTTH-verkkoihin

FTTH-liityntäverkkoja voivat rakennuttaa ja omistaa perinteisten teleoperaattoreiden lisäksi myös muut toimijat, kuten sähköyhtiöt, valtion- ja kuntien omistamat yhtiöt ja yksityiset osuuskunnat. Markkinatoimijoiden ja eri teknologioiden keskinäinen kilpailu johtaa kuitenkin helposti pieniin liityntätiheyksiin ja hajanaisiin pieniin verkkoihin. Tämä tekee verkkojen kannattavasta rakentamisesta vaikeaa ja palvelujen toteuttamisesta tehotonta. Tilannetta voidaan parantaa tasapuolisella pääsyllä, joka selkeyttää arvoketjun osapuolten rooleja. Diplomityön tavoitteena oli kuvata kommunikaatio-operaattorin rooli Suomen telemarkkinaan ja rakentaa sille taloudellisesti kannattava liiketoimintamalli toisen osapuolen toteuttamiin tasapuolisen pääsyn FTTH-verkkoihin. Työ toteutettiin hyödyntäen konstruktiivista tutkimusotetta ja sen lopputuloksena syntyi soveltuva liiketoimintamalli. Kommunikaatio-operaattorin kaksipuolisella alustalla yhdistetään valtakunnallisesti toisiinsa palveluntarjoajat ja alueellisiin liityntäverkkoihin liittyneet loppuasiakkaat. Kommunikaatio-operaattorin liiketoimintamalli mahdollistaa kapasiteetin, palvelunlaadun ja toimintavarmuuden suhteen erilaistetut virtuaaliset tukkutuotteet ja sitä kautta mahdollisuuden uuteen ansaintaan.

2014 Ukraine crisis – Implications for corporate crisis management

In the late year 2013 events started to unfold in Ukraine’s capital city Kiev that would change the political and economic environment of the EU and Russia. The tension had been building for years between the two parties with Ukraine in the middle and during 2014 the tension blew up and events started to escalate into a crisis, which we now know as the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The crisis would include political, economic, and even military actions by all the parties involved with Ukraine slipping close to civil war. Both political and economic hardships followed for others as well with both the EU and Russia placing heavy political and economic sanctions on each other. Most notably in terms of this paper, the Russian federation placed total import embargo sanctions on food imports from the EU and some other countries. This meant that a Finnish dairy company, Valio, had to engage in corporate crisis management as almost a fifth of its total revenue was cut in a heartbeat. Valio had been prepared for some kind of complications with their Russian market as events started to unfold in Ukraine in the beginning of 2014 but never did they suspect that a complete shutdown of the Russian market would follow. The company is still recovering after more than a year after the sanctions were posed and have not been able to supplement the lost revenue streams. This research is a qualitative research aiming to find answers to the main questions: 1) What is the 2014 Ukraine crisis and what kind of special implications does it have and 2) How did the crisis affect Valio and how did Valio fare in its crisis management efforts. The data has been collected both from secondary document sources and primary sources. The main findings of this research are that the political and economic environment of the EU and Russia has gone through a profound change during the years 2013-2015. The companies and governments should re-evaluate what kind of environment they are now facing and what kinds of risks the new situation poses. This also calls for a deep academic analysis from the academic community. In corporate crisis management of Valio the main findings are that the former literature has looked into crisis management as one-time occurrence but the new crises and global events would call for a more on-going crisis analysis and active crisis management. Thus, corporate crisis management should be viewed as a cycle. Valio specifically handled the situation surprisingly well, considering that their revenue was indeed cut by a fifth. The main aspects of crisis management, which Valio did not handle as well, concern the learning curve of crisis management. They could be doing more in order to prepare for future crises better by learning from this experience. The situation is then still on-going in the autumn 2015 both in Ukraine and within Valio.

Suorituskyvyn mittaus ja controller toimintojen kehittäminen Venäjällä toimivassa yhteisyrityksessä

Tässä työssä tutkittiin kahden suomalaisen yrityksen omistamaa yhteisyritystä Venäjällä. Tavoitteena oli kehittää tasapainotettu mittaristo suorituskyvyn mittaukseen johtamisen tueksi. Lisäksi oli tarve parantaa materiaalinhallintaa kehittämällä controllerin työtä helpottava työkalu, sekä kehittää materiaalinhallinnan prosessia läpinäkyvämmäksi ja suoraviivaisemmaksi. Työ koostuu teoreettisesta ja empiirisestä osuudesta. Teoria koostuu raportoinnista, suorituskyvyn mittauksesta ja materiaalinhallinnan seurannasta. Työssä käytettiin laadullisia menetelmiä ja tutkimustyypiksi valikoitui toimintatutkimus. Teoreettinen aineisto on peräisin julkaisuista ja alan kirjallisuudesta. Empiirinen aineisto kerättiin pääosin haastatteluista, benchmarkkauksesta ja dokumenteista. Työn tuloksena saavutettiin päätavoite, eli kehitettiin Excel – pohjaiset työkalut suorituskyvyn mittaukseen ja materiaalinhallinnan seurantaan. Lisäksi kehitettiin kirjallinen ohjeistus näiden työkalujen käyttöön ja materiaalinhallintaprosessien suoraviivaistamiseksi. Diplomityö helpottaa yrityksen johtamista ja kontrollointia sekä sisäisesti että ulkoisesti omistajanäkökulmasta katsottuna. Venäjällä toimivan ulkomaalaisomisteisen yrityksen seuranta on haastavaa, jossa prosessien toimivuus ja läpinäkyvyys ovat olennaisessa roolissa.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE LOCAL ADVANTAGE? - Investment value of the analyst local advantage in the Finnish stock market in 2006–2014

An investor can either conduct independent analysis or rely on the analyses of others. Stock analysts provide markets with expectations regarding particular securities. However, analysts have different capabilities and resources, of which investors are seldom cognizant. The local advantage refers to the advantage stemming from cultural or geographical proximity to securities analyzed. The research has confirmed that local agents are generally more accurate or produce excess returns. This thesis tests the investment value of the local advantage regarding Finnish stocks via target price data. The empirical section investigates the local advantage from several aspects. It is discovered that local analysts were more focused on certain sectors generally located close to consumer markets. Market reactions to target price revisions were generally insignificant with the exception to local positive target prices. Both local and foreign target prices were overly optimistic and exhibited signs of herding. Neither group could be identified as a leader or follower of new information. Additionally, foreign price change expectations were more in line with the quantitative models and ideas such as beta or return mean reversion. The locals were more accurate than foreign analysts in 5 out of 9 sectors and vice versa in one. These sectors were somewhat in line with coverage decisions and buttressed the idea of local advantage stemming from proximity to markets, not to headquarters. The accuracy advantage was dependent on sample years and on the measure used. Local analysts ranked magnitudes of price changes more accurately in optimistic and foreign analysts in pessimistic target prices. Directional accuracy of both groups was under 50% and target prices held no linear predictive power. Investment value of target prices were tested by forming mean-variance efficient portfolios. Parallel to differing accuracies in the levels of expectations foreign portfolio performed better when short sales were allowed and local better when disallowed. Both local and non-local portfolios performed worse than a passive index fund, albeit not statistically significantly. This was in line with previously reported low overall accuracy and different accuracy profiles. Refraining from estimating individual stock returns altogether produced statistically significantly higher Sharpe ratios compared to local or foreign portfolios. The proposed method of testing the investment value of target prices of different groups suffered from some inconsistencies. Nevertheless, these results are of interest to investors seeking the advice of security analysts.

Accounting treatment for intangible assets acquired in a business combination under IFRS

The role of intangible assets and the amount of business combinations have increased significantly during the last decades which has caused the need to reform and harmonise the accounting treatment for acquired intangible assets. The aim of this study is to find out how the new accounting standard for business combinations, IFRS 3, has affected the accounting treatment for identifiable intangible assets and goodwill in the examined media companies between 2005 and 2014. The most significant reforms introduced by IFRS 3 have been goodwill impairment test and the fair value accounting for acquired intangibles. This study is conducted by using a descriptive analysis and the empirical data consists of financial statement information of listed Finnish and international media companies. The main objectives of IFRS 3 have been to reduce the amount of acquisition cost allocated to goodwill and allow companies to recognise new intangible assets separately from goodwill. The results of this study show that the amount of the acquisition cost allocated to goodwill has decreased during the examined period and due to the fair value accounting, business acquisitions have made new intangible assets visible that otherwise would have not met the recognition criteria under IAS 38. The application of IFRS has revealed a big amount of invisible assets in the balance sheets but at the same time this has reduced the comparability between companies.