Browsing by Author "Ritvala, Tiina"
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- Actors and institutions in the emergence of a new field : a study of the cholesterol-lowering functional foods market
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2007) Ritvala, TiinaRapid scientific and technological progress has resulted in the blurring of traditional industry boundaries and in the emergence of new product markets and broader organisational fields. Despite recent scholarly interest in field emergence, there is still little knowledge on how new fields emerge at the intersection of established industries and on the multi-local nature of the phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the interaction between actors and institutions in field emergence at the intersection of established industries and spatial scales ranging from local to global. This will be accomplished by building mainly on the literature on institutional entrepreneurship and importing conceptual ideas from social network theory and international business research. The main research question this study aims to answer is “How do new fields emerge from the interaction between actors and institutions at the intersection of established industries and spatial scales?” The study explores the topic through the emergence of the cholesterol-lowering functional foods market during the last two decades. Cholesterol-lowering functional foods represent a science-based field between the food and pharmaceutical industries. The societal relevance of studying functional foods is high as their medicine-like effects challenge conventional institutions regarding regulation, norms and consumer awareness of the relationship between food and health. The primary source of data is 32 semi-structured in-depth interviews carried out in Finland and the U.S. between late 2004 and April 2007. The interviewees consist of managers of MNCs and smaller startups, top scientists in the field, national public health authorities and regulative authorities. Further, a limited amount of participant observation data and a collection of secondary data such as trade journals and patent data is used. Finally, a comparative data set on nanotechnology was used in two co-authored essays on field emergence. This doctoral thesis is divided into two parts. The summary part concentrates on the theoretical and methodological foundations, while the second part consists of four essays, each exploring field emergence through different conceptual lenses. In Essay 1 we investigate the role of micro level activities induced by scientists in the emergence of a spatial cluster. The key contribution of the essay is an analytical division of the various roles played by scientists in cluster formation from the perspective of institutional change. In Essay 2, we depict how depending on their network positions, specific individuals and organisations may act as brokers that span structural holes between previously unconnected industries and disciplines, and hence trigger the emergence of new cross-industry and cross-disciplinary networks and influence the emerging institutions of a new field. The contribution of the essay is to combine social network theory and the literature on institutional entrepreneurship. In Essay 3, we discuss how institutional entrepreneurs in science-based fields mediate between globally circulating discourses and local institutions and competencies. The contribution of the essay is to investigate agency across spatial scales in order to address the central weakness of the institutional entrepreneurship approach, namely that of the concentration on geographically distinct and delimited areas. In Essay 4, I examine the cross-border transferability of the cholesterol-lowering functional foods concept. By building on neoinstitutional theory and on the recent advancement in international business research, I propose a novel concept of industry institutional distance, which is able to consider industry-specific dynamics in emerging fields. In summary, this research deepens the existing understanding on field emergence as a multi-local phenomenon. The results of this thesis indicate the fundamental importance of individual and organisational agency in field emergence. Scientists, enabled by their network position, knowledge and legitimacy, were found to transmit knowledge and practices between disciplines, established industries, and spatial scales. Successful field emergence further necessitates the collective mobilisation of a wide group of field participants and the receptiveness of the institutional environment. The results suggest that the ability to see beyond the boundaries of disciplines and industries and to operate in different institutional environments is crucial in field emergence and in building new product markets. The thesis concludes with a model of field emergence at the intersection of industries, disciplines and spatial scales demonstrating the complexities of the emergence of a new science-based field - The Art of Reconstructing a Shared Responsibility: Institutional Work of a Transnational Commons
A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa(2018) Ritvala, TiinaThe author examines how the production of art may constitute an important form of institutional work and legitimating rhetoric for institutional change. With a case study on the design process of a work of art calling to mind the common responsibility to protect the Baltic Sea, she identifies three mechanisms through which an artistic form of institutional work is performed. They are (a) creating emotional response by generating a sense of nostalgia over a lost common experience,(b) educating by constructing a mnemonic device that educates the audience and constructs the commons as a shared category, and (c) empowering that gives marginalized actors power to participate in protecting the commons. The study shows how artists, through their art, contribute to the creation of a shared material and symbolic space that helps construct mutual responsibility for collective resources such as the world’s seas and oceans. - B corporations in Europe: Reasons to become a certified B corporation and factors affecting the prevalence of B corporations within Europe
School of Business | Master's thesis(2023) Oksala, Ella - Beyond Prototypes: Drivers of Market Categorization in Functional Foods and Nanotechnology
School of Business | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2015) Granqvist, Nina; Ritvala, TiinaWe develop a nuanced understanding of what drives producers’ and audiences’ categorization activities throughout market category development. Prior research on market categories assumes prototypical similarity to be the main or even only driver of categorization. Drawing on a comparative, longitudinal case study of the market categories ‘functional foods’ and ‘nanotechnology’ in Finland, we find that evolving perceptions, knowledge, and goals also impact categorization. Furthermore, our analysis uncovers that goal-based categorization is characteristic for vital market categories, and the lack thereof may mark a waning interest and category decline. Overall, while previous research stresses the role of clear boundaries and knowledge bases for a viable category, we find that overly strict boundaries may constrain category vitality and renewal. - Beyond Prototypes: Drivers of Market Categorization in Functional Foods and Nanotechnology
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2016-03) Granqvist, Nina; Ritvala, Tiina - Building a service brand in an emerging market - A case study of Saigon Petroleum Service Corporation
School of Business | Master's thesis(2019) Le, Dinh QuocBranding is considered important for any company aiming to be successful. Thus, service branding is essential in helping a service company to position its brand among many competitors in the dynamic business context. A strong brand will greatly influence customer’s perceived quality and purchasing decision. This study draws on the concept of brand equity to investigate about service branding process in the closely examined context of an emerging market. As there still limits in research about service branding, especially when it comes to relate service branding process to a context of an emerging market, the researcher decides to fill in this gap. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to explore service branding process in an emerging market. This will be achieved through a single-case study of the company Saigon Petroleum Service Corporation (SPSC) in Vietnam. The study follows qualitative methodology with the primary data collected from personal interviews with the managers of the case company and the secondary data gathered through official sources. The key findings of the study suggest that a successful service brand must possess a full set of brand identity and have a correct positioning strategy while continue to provide to customer’s a guarantee about the highest quality of service delivery. Undoubtedly, the influence of an emerging context to service branding is great and organization must be very flexible in the approach. In Vietnam, the role of relationships to government is considered vital and supporting legal framework is deemed a prerequisite for any organization to capture arising opportunities. Not only that, cultural factors can also play a key role in deciding about a national brand – a winning brand that not only understands thoroughly about Vietnamese customers but also cares deeply about the sustainable growth of the local community. - The building blocks of a climate-driven operating model – Descriptive multiple-case study
School of Business | Master's thesis(2023) Saarikko, Heidi - A city's role in initiating and developing innovation ecosystems
School of Business | Master's thesis(2022) Danson, MerlinaThis thesis studies development of innovations ecosystems. Innovation ecosystems enable value creation through inter-company collaboration, which is especially important to create the required sustainable development in industries such as construction, which is traditionally resistant to change. Innovation ecosystems, however, require there to be a focal organization, an ecosystem leader, that initiates the creation of the ecosystem and defines strategy and the needed roles. They should also work on attracting required actors, and coordinate that the intended value is created by the activities done in the ecosystem. Even if the ecosystem leader in the literature is generally a company, not many companies are necessarily interested in taking that role, since that leading of an ecosystem requires a lot of resources. Therefore, this thesis studies how instead a city is able to fill that role and whether it changes the expectations or responsibilities for the leader and the ecosystem development activities. The specific research question is as follows: How can a city orchestrate and develop innovation ecosystems? This study is a qualitative single case study where the ecosystem leader is a city aiming to develop a carbon neutral construction ecosystem. The data used for the research is eleven semi-structured interviews and secondary material related to the case, such as a financing application and website publications of the city on the topic. The data has been analysed thematically in order to identify the relevant key-themes to be raised in the findings. This thesis contributes to the literature about innovation ecosystems, providing insights about how a city is able to develop an ecosystem instead of a company. This study finds that while there are some challenges that the city faces in this role, such as the bureaucratic rigidity of a public actor, it also benefits from enjoying more trust as an impartial body than a private company would. The study also suggests that as there are different ways of initiating development of an ecosystem, if starting with the activities before mapping out the ecosystem, its strategy, and roles, there is a risk of unclarity of roles and objectives for the involved actors. Therefore, the findings indicate that there is a need for the ecosystem leader, whether it be a city or a company, to engage in strategy creation and coordination to ensure satisfaction of the participants value creation of the ecosystem. This suggests that the expectations do not differ based on the type of organization behind ecosystem development and orchestration. - Driving sustainability: Sustainability managers as change agents in Finnish MNEs
School of Business | Master's thesis(2020) Eräpolku, EmiliaCorporate sustainability, the pursuit of the triple bottom line of people, profit and planet, despite its complexity provides immense potential, as if businesses embed sustainability at the core of their strategy and practice effective change management, significant positive impact can be achieved. For business to transform from business-as-usual to creating both business and societal value, driving change for corporate sustainability through inspiring, motivating and influencing others is necessary. To do this, businesses increasingly appoint individuals to positions for initiating and implementing corporate sustainability. Therefore, the research question I’m addressing in this thesis is how do sustainability managers drive change in Finnish MNEs? To answer the research question, I have studied sustainability professionals working in management roles from different seniority levels in multinational enterprises headquartered in Finland, henceforth sustainability managers in Finnish MNEs. The thesis positions as a phenomenon-driven research in the intersection of corporate sustainability, organizational change and sustainability leadership, with a special focus on the practice of issue selling. Moreover, the institutional setting of my research provides an interesting comparison to existing literature predominantly situated in anglophone institutional contexts. I conducted my research as a comparative case-study, using eight sustainability managers as the individual cases. Primary data was collected through in-depth interviews, after which I conducted within-case analyses and cross-case comparisons. What I found was that the interviewed sustainability professionals profiled under four different change agency approaches. These were the capacity building approach, rational and systematic approach, collaborative approach, and internal selling approach. Each approach includes a range of tactics used for driving organizational change for sustainability, as mentioned by the interviewees. This thesis contributes to the understanding of change agency for sustainable development at the individual level, in the particular institutional context of Finland. It also provides practical implications for managers and organizations by identifying different approaches and tactics that can be used in driving change for corporate sustainability, as well as several contextual factors that influence the process and should be considered to adopt context-specific approaches. - Fundraising in Finnish arts and culture organizations - How is it done and what challenges and development points are there?
School of Business | Master's thesis(2019) Jokivuolle, FionaIn Finland, the arts and culture field has through decades been funded largely by the public sector, unlike in the USA and the UK where fundraising from private sources have always been part of the main operations in arts and culture organizations. However, for example due to uncertainty around public funding, Finnish arts and culture organizations have noticed the increased pressure for additional funding, and recently started to broaden their funding base. Arts and culture organizations have followed Finnish universities by starting active fundraising and increasing company cooperation. The topic of active fundraising in the arts and culture field being relatively new in Finland makes it interesting to study. This study examines how fundraising is currently done in Finnish arts and culture organizations and what challenges and development points there are related to fundraising in the arts and culture field in Finland. Fundraising is examined from a broad perspective including all sources of private funds - individuals, foundations and companies. This study is a qualitative interview study consisting of 10 interviews. The interviewees consist of 7 professionals of arts and culture organizations, 1 individual donor, 1 private foundation representative and 1 expert in economics. The empirical data was analyzed with thematic analysis. The empirical findings are also discussed with organizational translation theory. The main findings indicate that Finnish arts and culture organizations are doing active fundraising and company cooperation to different extents, but overall, many are in the beginning of planning and starting active fundraising operations, meaning that the operations include experimentation. Fundraising is seen as more and more necessary to ensure the competitive edge for the arts and culture organizations. It is seen necessary and beneficial not only because of the monetary objectives - need for more funds and broadening and diversifying the funding base - but also because of the communicational and organizational benefits it creates for the arts organizations. The findings also suggest that fundraising from private sources is often done for enabling new initiatives and interesting content. The main challenges or development points the findings suggest are the need for broadening the currently narrow philanthropic culture in Finland, and the need for further developing the public support mechanisms to ease fundraising operations for arts and culture organizations. Other development points include organizations understanding the investment perspective in fundraising and making fundraising operations a more long-term and strategic activity in the organizations, and making companies see the value of arts organizations as beneficial partners, as currently the company cooperations done do not turn into enough funds for the arts organizations. - Guggenheim to the world – a single case study of the internationalization of an art organization
School of Business | Master's thesis(2018) Kärnä, MarikaThe objective of the research is to explore internationalization of a modern and contemporary art museum and interpret literature of international business in the context of art organization. The purpose of this research is to understand how an organization has internationalized by establishing museums all over the world carrying its own brand name. This research applies literature from international business and earlier museum studies and extends them to the art museum field. The study was conducted as a qualitative single case study focusing on the Guggenheim Foundation. The research data was constructed from news archive of New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat. Based on the findings internationalization process of the Guggenheim Museum has been an ambiguous process. The research suggests that the internationalization of the Guggenheim Museum can be understood through networks. To conclude, based on the network approach it can be described that during the internationalization process Guggenheim Museum interacts with a socio-political network of the foreign market in which the actors of socio-political network and their group of interest can directly or indirectly have an impact on the attempt to internationalize. - The impact of recent geopolitical disruptions on the internationalization strategy of scaleups: Case of the Polish market
School of Business | Master's thesis(2023) Laakso, Sofi - Institutional entrepreneurs and structural holes in new field emergence: comparative case study of cholesterol-lowering functional foods and nanotechnology in Finland
School of Business | D4 Julkaistu kehittämis- tai tutkimusraportti tai -selvitys(2006) Ritvala, Tiina; Granqvist, Nina - The Internationalization of Social Enterprises: A Systematic Review of Literature
School of Business | Master's thesis(2018) Teperi, EllaSocial enterprises (SEs) hold the potential to solve some of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and are increasingly operating across national borders, creating transformational global movements and improving the lives of people around the world. SEs are undoubtedly be-coming important players in society, with approximately one out of four new enterprises in the European Union being an SE. However, extant research is centered on enterprises working with-in communities, regions, or countries, and there is scant empirical research examining their international operations. Furthermore, while the internationalization processes of purely com-mercial firms have been studied extensively, the understanding of how this process might differ in the case of SEs is limited. The objective of this thesis is to gain an understanding of extant knowledge of the phenome-non of the internationalization of SEs. In order to do so, I examine the state of current research at the intersection of international business and social entrepreneurship by conducting a sys-tematic literature review of 183 articles on social enterprises and social entrepreneurship in rel-evant journals. Through the systematic literature review, I synthesize and analyze extant litera-ture, uncovering the most prominent contributions and theoretical viewpoints in SE research to date. I identify institutional theory, the resource-based view and the network view as the most prominent theoretical approaches used in the literature. However, the review also reveals a dearth of knowledge of the international operations and internationalization process of SEs. Therefore, I subsequently review insights from international business literature, considering how they may shed light on the identified knowledge gaps. As the main theoretical contribution of the study, I propose a model of the internationalization process of SEs, bringing together the scholarly fields of social entrepreneurship and international business. The proposed model high-lights the role of networks of likeminded individuals and organizations, and of the innovative mobilization and use of resources, as well as the substantial influence of the guiding social goal in the internationalization process of SEs. In addition to synthesizing and analyzing current knowledge and proposing a model of the in-ternationalization process of SEs, I present two illustrative case studies, which provide empirical insights of the internationalization paths SEs may take. In addition, the illustrative case studies highlight areas in need of further research. - Mapping disparities among stakeholder objectives in urban planning process. Lapinlahti hospital area as a case study
School of Business | Master's thesis(2024) Ynnilä, HeiniI set to analyse and explain the outcomes of the competition for the development of Lapinlahti hospital area in 2019–2020 through qualitative research. I focused on four stakeholder groups which I identified as relevant stakeholders of the given issue: Helsinki city officials and politicians, NGO Lapinlahden Lähde and property developer Nrep. My main research questions were as follows: What were the stakeholder objectives at the beginning and at the end? What kind of discourses or processes influenced stakeholder objectives? Through examining the discourse that took place during the competition, my aim was to identify significant discursive shifts that altered initial stakeholder objectives and resulted in the rejection of the winning competition proposal. Along with the data provided by each stakeholder, articles appeared in Helsingin Sanomat were included in my analysis. Helsingin Sanomat was shown to be influential in the process and it can be thus regarded as the fifth stakeholder of the issue. To map the process of changing objectives, I followed process theories and temporal bracketing strategy by Ann Langley (1999). Following the tradition of discourse analysis, popular in organisational studies, written documents were treated as agents giving meaning. Moreover, the analysis was deepened with interview data. After having collected all my data, I organised it in chronological order. By treating the data equally, no one source was emphasised over the others. I then summarized argumentations in my data, and subsequently went through the key arguments chronologically to discover the dominant themes and see how they were changed during the process. As a result, I was able to identify three main phases of the process. I believed that a complex case such as Lapinlahti was not to be explained in detail with the help of one framework alone. Only after I had gone through data and identified themes, I could see which frameworks allowed me to best explain my findings. Through this abductive reasoning, I e.g. linked my emerging themes to Lefebvre’s (1974) concepts regarding shaping space and its social relations. At the footsteps of Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999), and Vaara et al. (2006), I analysed how stakeholders gained legitimacy. Inspired by Ritvala et al. (2021), I studied how and why staining took place in the process. It was shown that the first phase of the process was dominated by a conflict outside the competition, but which made stakeholder stances clear from the beginning. In the second phase, tensions between stakeholders and their objectives were subtly growing as the public discourse focused on values. In the final phase public discourse was dominated by themes related to agency and legitimacy, and the tone of voice hardened to public confrontation. This affected political decision-making where initial tensions become visible again and the objectives of the development initiative changed. This corresponded with the objectives of Lapinlahden Lähde. During the process, Lapinlahden Lähde legitimized its status as a relevant stakeholder. The objectives of Nrep in turn remained unfulfilled and the legitimacy of Nrep as a stakeholder was weak in the eyes of the public. What dominated public discourse and affected political decision-making were themes connected to agency and legitimacy: who has the right to own and operate in Lapinlahti? Public and private stakeholders were contrasted and simplified as good and bad, or right and wrong. - Meanings and functions of modern headquarters' buildings
School of Business | Master's thesis(2022) Lintunen, AleksiThis study examines the functions and meanings of modern headquarters’ (HQ) buildings in the case of Supercell, a global game company. In particular, the study aims to uncover how design aspects of HQ buildings may foster organisational culture and support the management of organisational change. It poses the following research question: What meanings and functions do companies, and their stakeholders attach to HQ buildings in the post pandemic era of increased remote work? This interdisciplinary study is situated at the crossroads between two disciplinary areas: management studies, including international management, and architecture. Previous research on corporate HQ is extensive but fragmented. Much of this research concentrates on HQ’s characteristics, roles, and location. However, limited attention has been paid to the functions and meanings of modern HQ buildings themselves which is the focus of the present study. This case study provides several novel findings. Firstly, it highlights the importance of designing a multifunctional configurable office space which meets Supercell’s changing needs. Secondly, the office space in the new HQ building provides Supercell’s employees with a number of core services that meet their individual needs and facilitate their daily lives. Thirdly, Supercell’s new HQ building is a representation of the organisational culture and identity for its internal and external stakeholders. These findings were generated through a case study of Supercell’s new HQ building in the district called Wood City in Helsinki, which represents Finnish wooden architecture. The study draws on qualitative material consisting of personal interviews, newspaper articles and information available on the web. Two interviews were conducted with Supercell’s representative and the architect of the building. Insights from interview data were complemented with information gained from newspapers and the web. This Master’s thesis was conducted as part of a multi-year Headquarters’ Location research project in the International Business Unit at the Department of Management in Aalto University School of Business. - MNCs and local cross-sector partnerships: The case of a smarter Baltic Sea
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2014) Ritvala, Tiina; Salmi, Asta; Andersson, Per - MNCs and local cross-sector partnerships: The case of a smarter Baltic Sea
School of Business | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2014) Ritvala, Tiina; Salmi, Asta; Andersson, PerAlthough cross-sector partnerships (XSPs) between multinational corporations (MNCs), governments and non-profit organizations are increasingly used to solve local problems and build responsible business, they have received limited attention in international business research. Because XSPs are vulnerable to conflicts and pose specific demands for subsidiary managers, it is critical to understand the integration mechanisms of XSPs that enhance their success. We study managerial sensemaking in an XSP formed to improve the environmental state of the Baltic Sea. Drawing from a cross-disciplinary literature review and insights from a case study we identify three kinds of integration mechanisms: resource mechanisms, ideational and social mechanisms, and organizational mechanisms. Our findings further imply that managerial “bricolage”, i.e. strategically combining resources at hand, is critical in enacting the integration mechanisms. The findings help to understand how integration and success of MNCs' local partnerships may be increased. - Mobilisation of issue networks: the case of fighting heart disease in Finland
School of Business | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2009) Ritvala, Tiina; Salmi, AstaIn this study we examine the mobilisation processes of public, private and third sector actors to solve pressing contemporary issues. We develop an analytical framework that integrates the business network and institutional entrepreneurship literature to investigate the initial mobilisation processes of issue networks. Empirically, we focus on collective actions in Finland to tackle heart disease, which is a pressing global health issue. Our results stress the role of network mobilisers in creating institutional change by framing the issues and connecting different networks. We argue that network relationships are the key resource for creating institutional change and solving common issues. - Multinational Corporations in Sustainable Cities: The Case of a Sustainable Headquarters Building
A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa(2023-07-31) Ritvala, Tiina; Ahmas, Ella; Piekkari, RebeccaThis empirical chapter contributes to international business (IB) research on the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) by opening a new research trajectory on sustainable headquarters (HQ) buildings. This multidisciplinary study conceptualizes the notion of a sustainable HQ based on a case study and three streams of literature – research on HQs, sustainable office design and the SDGs in IB. It offers a novel angle to prior research on HQs that has largely focused on their functional roles. While IB scholars are increasingly embracing the SDGs, limited attention has been devoted to SDG 11, “sustainable cities and communities.” This chapter draws on a real-time, longitudinal, single case study of a Nordic multinational in renewable products. The authors adopt a future-facing, phenomenon-based approach to envision and reimagine the modern wooden corporate HQ building on a culturally sensitive site in the heart of Helsinki, Finland. The findings emphasize the environmental, social, economic and cultural considerations of HQ buildings. By combining HQ premises with commercial spaces, and by opening the building to citizens, sustainable HQ buildings create a lively city space and increase urban social cohesion. The use of wood as a construction material and the application of design principles that promote human–nature relationships, have a positive impact on climate and human health. By focusing on the physical building, the authors aim to change the way IB scholars understand and study the role of HQ as a part of sustainable cities.