Browsing by Author "Tikkanen, Henrikki, professor"
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- Configurational explanation of marketing outcomes : a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2012) Vassinen, AnttiAs marketing, as a function and a process, is required to explain itself with more transparency, new tools and comprehensive analysis processes must be created and adopted, so that marketing performance and its determinants can systematically be understood and developed. In this dissertation, I present fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (‘FS/QCA’; Ragin, 2000; Fiss, 2008; Rihoux and Ragin, 2009; and others) as a novel approach to assessing marketing performance. My key argument is that the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis research approach and methodology can be used to explain marketing outcomes as results of configurations of causal conditions in specific contexts, yielding managerially relevant knowledge that would otherwise be difficult to access and interpret. The broad aim of this dissertation is to supplement the range of marketing management support systems, modeling approaches, and marketing performance assessment systems to provide better knowledge-driven decision support. The analytical premises of FS/QCA and its applications in fields of study related to marketing position it as a candidate to overcome some key challenges faced in marketing performance analysis: dealing with causal complexity, heterogeneity, asymmetry, configurationality, contextuality, and qualitative meaning. To draw together the research approach, the methodology, and the marketing performance management perspective, I specify a synthetic research process, configurational explanation of marketing outcomes (‘CEMO’), comprising the theoretical and empirical steps required for analysis. I demonstrate how the configurational explanation process was successfully carried out in two empirical contexts to generate results that are valid, reliable, and contribute knowledge that is directly relevant within the chosen context. The key contribution of this study is intended to be methodological: a specification of an analysis process for accessing a new type of contextually relevant knowledge about causal mechanisms that shape marketing performance. New knowledge accessible with CEMO provides opportunities for staging more effective marketing actions and, ultimately, an opportunity for better marketing performance. - Constructing a service-dominant strategy : a practice-theoretical study of a start-up company
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2010) Järvensivu, PaavoContemporary marketing studies claim that in order to effectively create value firms should approach themselves and the market through a service-dominant logic (SDL) rather than a goods-dominant logic (GDL). Whereas GDL draws attention to tangible output and discrete transactions, SDL emphasizes knowledge and skills, exchange processes, and relationships. Overall, SDL enables a broader view on value creation. For the purposes of this study I approached SDL as a particular strategic perspective on value creation, forming the backbone of a service-dominant strategy. I focused especially on customer value, which refers to customer-perceived benefits less sacrifices. Despite the proliferation of research on SDL it had attracted little empirical examination. There was a lack of studies on how service-dominant strategies could be constructed and formulated. In addition, strategy research had not focused on how companies could accomplish value creation, although it is a prerequisite for continued success and survival. In order to narrow this research gap I set out to develop a novel theoretical framework to strategizing about customer value creation, and to elaborate on this perspective empirically through a case study set in a waste management start-up. The framework builds on the so-called practice turn in social theory and strategy research. The practice approach enables a simultaneous view on the micro-activities and the macro-cultural structures that constitute strategizing. According to the practice-theoretical framework, strategizing is a social activity that arises from habituated tendencies and dispositions rather than from deliberate and purposeful reflection. Thus, a strategic perspective on value creation is immanent in strategizing: it builds on the social practices that strategy practitioners draw upon. The case study involved ethnographic materials and analysis. Over a period of 20 months I participated in the start-up company’s meetings and negotiations, which constituted a considerable part of the overall strategizing. The aims were to identify the most significant social practices involved, and to analyze how they enabled or inhibited a service-dominant strategy and the tensions they formed with regard to a strategic perspective on value creation. Overall, the case study provided a nuanced view on the practical complexities of strategizing about customer value creation in the context of new business development. I found that the strategizing built largely on ten practices, including engaging in product hobbyism and building large networks, which had different inherent logics that guided the strategizing. I also identified seven tensions between the inherent logics, such as rigid versus flexible organizational boundaries and atomistic versus holistic offerings, which were ‘played out’ in the everyday strategy making, sometimes sparking observable conflicts. Significantly, I discovered that the construction of a service-dominant strategy hinged upon how the tensions were resolved. The present study has several contributions to marketing and strategy-as-practice research. With regard to the SDL literature in marketing, the novel theoretical framework, with its solid foundation in the practice turn, will enable researchers to examine different strategic perspectives on value creation in the social practices of strategizing. The case study provides an extensive empirical exploration of the construction of a service-dominant strategy, which was found to depend on specific practical tensions. It also showed that multiple perspectives on value creation coexist within a single organization. With regard to strategy-as-practice research, this study highlights the worldview on value creation that is always immanent in strategizing, and emphasizes the role of extra-organizational actors in co-creating value. Furthermore, whereas previous strategy research has focused on struggles between ideologies and discourses, this study acknowledges the embodied nature of the tensions between practices. In addition, the empirical part demonstrates the role of historically and culturally transmitted, trans-individual practices. It also sheds light on strategizing in a small entrepreneurial company, which is something that has been overlooked. Finally, practitioners could use this study to create space for alternative strategies to emerge by reflecting on the different perspectives on value creation that are presented in the theoretical framework. In shifting toward a service-dominant strategy they could use the tensions that were identified in the case study as a tool enabling them to focus on the most significant aspects of strategizing - Emergence and translations of management interests in corporate branding in the Finnish pulp and paper corporations : a study with an actor-network theory approach
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2007) Aspara, JaakkoThe riddle of this Thesis is: How come the management of the Finnish pulp and paper (P&P) corporations became interested in corporate branding around the year 2000? By the Finnish P&P corporations, I refer particularly to the three large P&P corporations based in Finland in 2005: UPM-Kymmene, Stora Enso, and M-Real. By the management, I refer to managers of these corporations including the top managers, i.e. CEOs and executive board members, and even the members of the Boards of Directors. To marketing and branding research, the riddle concerning these P&P corporations, typical business-to-business (B2B) companies, is intriguing and even involves some paradoxes. First, if corporate branding is considered to relate to marketing to customers – as branding usually is – there is some paradoxical nature in the question why the management of B2B companies would become interested in corporate branding. On the one hand, it is a commonly held view that managers of B2B companies are usually not very interested in “branding”. So, why would the management of B2B companies become interested in “corporate branding”? On the other hand, managers of B2B companies have, arguably, always been interested in their companies’ reputation or image as suppliers. Since “corporate brand” appears fairly synonymous to “company reputation/image”, and if B2B companies have assumingly always been interested in that, why would the management of B2B companies suddenly become interested in “corporate branding”? Second, it can be recognized that ever since “corporate branding” was first explicitly discussed by researchers, corporate branding has been understood as being about managing and creating positive images of the company – not only in the minds of the customers, but in the minds of other stakeholders of the company, too. However, it seems unlikely that the managers of any company would become interested in “corporate branding” in order to e.g. make “all stakeholders hold a positive image of the company” in a vague and all-embracing way. Rather, it is likely that they become interested in certain management practices of corporate branding, as these are considered to serve certain specific interests related to certain stakeholders. Noting that the managers of the P&P corporations studied themselves seemed to largely consider the interest in corporate branding as having emerged inevitably, as a “natural continuance” of longer-term developments related to certain aspects, I set out to study how the management interest in corporate branding emerged in relation to those longer-term developments. The aspects were (1) shareholders, shareholder value, and share price; (2) differentiation in the market; (3) the selling of own products; (4) international expansion; and (5) environmental responsibility issues. The managers’ suggestions that the interest in corporate branding had, in a way, self-evidently emerged from developments related to these aspects made me think of them as taken-for-granted in relation to the interest in corporate branding. Further noting that the managers themselves seemed to consider the interest in corporate branding as having emerged particularly in relation to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) around the year 2000, I set out to study the emergence of the management interests also in relation to them. In studying the emergence of the management interest in corporate branding, I used an actor-network theory (ANT) approach. First of all, studying the riddle in relation to the takenfor- granted aspects corresponded to ANT, which emphasizes that researchers should start studying things from such points on where they were not yet taken for granted, or “blackboxed”. I chose to start from the situation concerning the Finnish P&P corporations in the early 1980s, when the aspects were less taken for granted. Also, I followed a general ANT tenet of “actors themselves make everything” in looking into what the practices of corporate branding were that the management of the Finnish P&P corporations became mainly interested in, and how they became interested in those practices. So, I abstained from defining myself what corporate branding would be in the case of the Finnish P&P corporations and their management, from interpreting certain management practices as corporate branding, and from arguing for certain benefits resulting from the interest in them. ANT called for me to trace and describe local and contingent histories of orderings whereby the management of the individual companies, the Finnish P&P corporations, had become interested in certain management practices of corporate branding. I based my ANT Description on interviews of managers and executives of the three major Finnish P&P corporations, of persons closely interacting with them, and of persons representing various other actors. The interviews, conducted during the year 2005, totalled 67 in number. Moreover, the Description was based on extensive source material and literature produced by the P&P corporations themselves and by third parties. All in all, the Description resulting from the use of an ANT approach helps to see how the concept of corporate branding did not merely diffuse as ready-made to the P&P corporations or due to certain structural forces. It helps to see how corporate branding got (socially) constructed or translated in the corporations, and especially: how the interest in corporate branding emerged in a historical process in relation to the black-boxing of certain aspects and how it ultimately emerged at certain moments in the histories of the companies – around the year 2000 and, further, at the specific instances of M&As around that time. Moreover, the Description helps to see how the management interest in corporate branding ultimately emerged not only in a temporal moment or simply as a natural continuity or a culmination of some developments – e.g. of those related to the taken-for-granted aspects. It shows how the interest emerged also in an interstice and place of confrontation, through some play of dominations and struggle of forces. It helps to see how the emergence of the interest in corporate branding was about a reversal of a relationship of forces, by showing how different managers came to have various interests in their world-mastering efforts but became themselves eventually somewhat mastered by corporate branding (and certain managers). It helps to see how a somewhat more unified management subject – with a common interest in corporate branding – got constructed, as common management practices of corporate branding would serve and translate the different interests of different managers. Finally, the Description helps to see how the power of certain managers and actors grew while certain management interests held, particularly, by certain other managers were suppressed or “Othered”. Although the whole ANT Description can be seen as serving to solve the riddle of how come the management of the Finnish P&P corporations became interested in corporate branding around the year 2000, I had as my research objective to make further, more concise findings and conclusions concerning the riddle of the study on the basis of the Description. This was mainly because I aimed to contribute primarily to marketing and branding research, which can be considered to be inclined towards the realist paradigm, pursuing fairly concise findings to specific research questions. Particularly, I asked (1) what were the main (immediate) management interests in/behind corporate branding in the Finnish P&P corporations?; (2) what were the management practices of corporate branding in which the management of the Finnish P&P corporations mainly became interested?; and (3) to what management practices of corporate branding were the (immediate) management interests in corporate branding “translated” in the Finnish P&P corporations? Furthermore, according to ANT authors’ interest in “Otherness”, I asked: (4) what management interests were Othered by the management practices of corporate branding in the Finnish P&P corporations? Finally, to summarize the historical developments, I also asked what “preconditions”, concerning the longer-term developments related to the taken-for-granted aspects, as well as the M&As around the year 2000, there were for corporate branding and how the management interests in corporate branding were related to them. As concise Findings of the Thesis, I summarize the preconditions for the management interest in corporate branding, the (immediate) management interests in/behind corporate branding, the management practices in which the management became interested in corporate branding, the translations of the management interests to the management practices, and the management interests potentially Othered by the management practices. Contributing to marketing and branding research, when it comes to management practices of corporate branding, I conclude that the management became integrally interested in various management practices which can be considered to relate to: (1) managing the brand hierarchy of the brand portfolio, (2) having corporate name dominance in association with product brands and units of the corporation, and (3) defining and communicating aspirational brand identity/image values. When it comes to the management interests in/behind corporate branding, I conclude that they concerned not only the management of relationships to customers but also the management of relationships to investors and investment analysts, of internal relationships to and between the corporation’s own employees and managers, and of relationships to potential employees. At large, corporate branding was also about marketing the corporation to investors and investment analysts and current and potential employees, not only to customers. In corporate branding, the management of relationships to customers, investors and analysts, to and between the company’s own employees and managers, and to potential employees became intertwined. Concerning marketing to investors and analysts, there were interests in increasing investor awareness of the corporation as a paper and board company, as well as in emphasizing the corporation’s brands, communicating a clear and focused portfolio of core products and businesses, and signalling renewal to analysts and investors. Concerning marketing to own employees and managers, there were interests in having employees identify themselves with and be proud of the corporation; committing managers to corporate strategies and goals; and having employees adopt a way of working with certain attitude, such as a proactive customerhelping attitude and environmentally and socially responsible attitude. Concerning marketing to potential employees, there was an interest in increasing their awareness of the corporation as an employer. Concerning marketing to customers, the interests in long-term marketing, in particular, were strong, e.g. having customers perceive, consider the attractiveness of, and demand new kinds of offerings by the corporation, which would de-emphasize individual products and emphasize the corporation’s whole product range, supply reliability, services, and solutions. At the same time, interests in short-term marketing and sales, as well as even segmentation, were potentially Othered. At a more general level, I conclude that corporate branding in the Finnish P&P corporations is an instance of employing strategic corporate management practices where relationships to various stakeholders – not only e.g. customers – are managed simultaneously. Furthermore, I see corporate branding as an instance of marketing the corporation not only to customers but simultaneously to various stakeholders, including, for example, investors and analysts, and current and potential employees. I encourage managers to develop, experiment with, and implement more such strategies – with “corporate tenaciousness” and by providing right incentives to managers of different levels. When it comes to secondary contributions, contributing to general management and organization research concerning management power relations, I conclude that in corporate branding, the power of corporate communications and corporate marketing managers grew in managing day-to-day business with customers and in managing relationships to investors and internal relationships to and between employees and managers. The corporate communications and corporate marketing managers increased their influence, control, and power, reducing the power of e.g. mills, divisions, sales offices and their managers, as well as human resources managers. Moreover, corporate marketing and corporate communication managers largely combined their forces in speaking for corporate branding. Concerning the adoption of administrative innovations or fashionable management concepts/techniques, I conclude that their adoption in individual companies may occur in a matrix. This notion of a matrix stems from: (1) various individual management interests of different managers being served by a certain new individual management practice; (2) a certain individual management interest of certain managers being served by various new individual management practices, and (3) the management interests served by the new management practices being stronger than certain management interests Othered by the management practices. As an additional contribution, I conclude that one management practice of corporate branding in the Finnish P&P corporations, i.e. focusing promotion on one brand per product, was an instance of “decoupling”. Finally, as an additional contribution to Finnish P&P industry research, I conclude that the management interest in corporate branding related to the recognition of increasing importance of marketing, communication, and image-building; the urge to attract and satisfy investors and investment analysts; and the recognition of the increasing importance of motivating and attracting employees - Essays on software product development : a strategic management viewpoint
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2008) Mäkelä, Markus M. - Essays on the behavioral foundations of competitive interaction
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2013) Luoma, JukkaThe competitive dynamics perspective offers a micro-level, dynamic view of market competition. It is axiomatic for students of competitive dynamics that competitive actions and interactions are shaped by the boundedly rational decision making of organizational actors. Thus competitive behavior cannot be inferred directly from the objective characteristics of the competitive situation. Competitive dynamics researchers have combined rather eclectic theoretical perspectives to develop a plethora of insightful behavioral hypotheses about the predictors of firms' competitive conduct and about the performance implications of those choices. Partly as a result, however, there is a paucity of efforts to systematically explore the behavioral foundations of competitive interaction. In this study, I engage in such an endeavor and propose that a routine-based view of interfirm rivalry offers a fruitful but underexplored behavioral basis for understanding how the bounded rationality of organizational actors influences the process and outcomes of market competition. The study consists of an overview and four essays, which contribute to a routine-based understanding of interfirm rivalry. I introduce and develop the concept competitive action routines, defined as repeated patterns of interaction between organizational members related to a firm's market moves. The first two essays study the role of competitive action routines in competition related to store openings between Finnish grocery retail organizations (1960-1995). Based on an in-depth qualitative investigation, I argue that competitive action routines are a valuable, often indispensable method with which firms cope with rapidly accelerating rivalry—contrary to the view held by many competitive dynamics scholars that routines are simply a source of inflexibility and inertia. The third essay is a quantitative empirical analysis of the evolution of product launch activities of Finnish mutual fund firms (1997-2009). The fourth essay explores the role of feedback in competitive interaction through a computational study. Together, these two studies suggest that environmental feedback is an important source of heterogeneity in competitive behavior because of the change in organizational routines and rules that the feedback generates. Overall, the routine-based approach to the study of interfirm rivalry acknowledges that the firm's competitive behavior is a collective enterprise of multiple individuals within the firm. This balances the almost exclusive focus of existing competitive dynamics literature on the very top-level members of organizations. Moreover, the routine-based view implies that rivalry hinges on the firms' previous encounters with competitors. Relatedly, the routine-based view conceptualizes the relationship between competitive actions and performance as a feedback mechanisms, which adds boundary conditions to existing claims about the virtues of competitive aggressiveness. Finally, in terms of predicting competitive moves, a routine-based view suggest that the likelihood, speed and other characteristics of competitive actions are best predicted by the attributes of firms' behavior in the recent past - Failure to innovate : essays on the challenges and barriers to realizing business transformation
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2013) Laukkanen, MikkoFirms cope with the need for change through the innovations they create. These can be new products, services, processes, or business models – in other words, any of the ways that they create and deliver value to their customers. The imperative for firms to change comes from the dynamic nature of our society and the businesses that inhabit it. As customers’ habits or preferences change over time firms must be able to react with offerings suited to new situations. The most capable of firms may even be able to shape the way these factors develop over time by creating novel value offerings that draw users away from earlier alternatives. All the while, a firm’s competitors are also seeking for ways to serve customers in new and improved ways, exacerbating the urgency that firms face in generating new innovations in an ever-changing business environment. The four complementary essays of the work aim to address the following research question: In open economies and networks, what are the causes of failure and barriers to new types of innovation? This research question is supported by the two questions: 1) How can entrepreneurial managers avoid failure in their novel innovation initiatives? and 2) In what new ways can researchers collaborate with industry players in innovation while studying the phenomena? All four essays make us of semi-structured interviews with managers associated with challenging and failed innovation initiatives. In all, over 100 interviews were conducted, and these were complemented with archival materials and research notes from observations. The work proposes as set of new frameworks and methodologies for studying innovation. The essays advance earlier literature on value-creating systems through the application of such concepts as dynamic capabilities, open innovation, and services innovation in novel empirical settings. On the whole, the work makes the case for new neo-Schumpeterian theory of innovation; one that challenges existing perspectives on the role of organizational and industry boundaries in innovations, and is better-suited for the innovation activities taking place in open systems and across boundaries. Such a theory brings focus on the entrepreneurial manager and his/her capabilities to create and manage new innovations. This work hopes to provide a starting point and some guidance for the development of this new view on innovations. For managers, the findings of the work highlight the most common sources of failure in bold innovation initiatives and provide guidance for successfully realizing business transformation. - Marketing metrics, marketing performance measurement, and marketing control
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2013) Frösén, JohannaMarketing performance measurement as a tool for controlling marketing activities has attracted substantial interest among academics and business practitioners. There have been calls for more accountability in marketing, as well as for tools that increase transparency in terms of its intangible value within a firm. Several new metrics as well as new measurement methods have been developed. Indeed, the availability of metrics or tools is no longer a challenge for firms – instead, adopting an appropriate mix of marketing metrics for measuring and communicating marketing performance in each individual firm has become the burning issue. This report brings a novel perspective into the extant discussions on marketing performance measurement and marketing control, stressing the combinatory role of the different types of metrics and forms of control. Furthermore, it emphasizes contextuality in the definition of marketing performance and, accordingly, in its measurement and control. Two types of contextuality are recognized: first, the use of marketing metrics is shown to vary across different types of firms operating in different markets. Second, the appropriate use of metrics is shown to be contingent not only on contextual factors but also other, cultural forms of marketing control being exercised simultaneously. In sum, the findings point to multidimensionality and contextuality in marketing performance measurement, suggesting that the sets of metrics and tools of control should always be tailored to the firm-specific context. For managers, this study provides guidelines for measuring marketing performance in a comprehensive manner, taking the firm-specific characteristics into account. The research is based on large-scale national survey data collected in Finland in 2008 and 2010. Complementing the theoretical contributions, the empirical findings give valuable insights into contemporary practices of marketing performance measurement and control in Finnish firms. On the practical level, therefore, the findings point to avenues for improving marketing accountability and related practices among Finnish firms. - Videography in consumer culture theory : an account of essence(s) and production
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2012) Hietanen, JoelLiberated into the online virtual spaces through digitalization, video media has become an omnipresent part of our lives. Simultaneously, the videographic method for conducting and expressing ethnographic research has received increasing attention in the field of consumer culture theory (CCT). Yet, as is the usual case with nascent and still marginal research orientations, the publications about the method have been relatively descriptive, and thus have not explored the potential of the approach from a philosophical perspective. This dissertation addresses this gap and develops a possible ontology and epistemology for conducting and expressing research on video media. How is videographic expression different compared to text and photography? What could it be like to experience it? While such a philosophical account of essence(s) in video work in CCT calls for establishment, there is also a need to further consider issues about the production of videographic research on a workbench level, i.e. what the production of such visual ethnographic research is like. In this study an epistemology of videographic relation is constructed, in a bricolage fashion, by adapting ‘postmodern’ perspectives from ‘poststructuralist’, ‘radical humanist’ and a Deleuzian ‘superior empiricist’ perspectives. This Deleuzian approach eschews the objectifying and Cartesian logic of representation and any correspondence between video and a reality that is often attributed to the videographic image. Instead, I will present possibilities for evocative relations of affect and embodiment that have the potential to emancipate thought and thus constitute an efficacious relation towards the world. Adopting key notions from Deleuzian philosophy of cinematography, I will also provide concrete approaches from my three earlier videographic projects, in order to bring these abstract notions into practice by utilizing various aesthetics of the moving image, thus extending the toolkit of aspiring videography researchers in CCT.