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The aim of this bachelor thesis is to provide ZF Friedrichshafen AG with a flexible Human Resource concept for the successful handling of future joint venture projects in China. In order that future JV are planned and conducted successfully, a structured HR approach built on a combination of ZF experience and academic evidence has been developed. It points out cultural differences, creates awareness of potential organizational issues and gives advice. This thesis draws upon various academic resources which are expanded through ZF knowledge. For this, eight expert interviews with China experienced ZF managers were held.
This blueprint covers several of the HR issues that arise when setting up new joint ventures in China. By shedding light upon success factors a necessary flexibility when dealing with different partner firms is provided. After a theoretical outset and a brief introduction of ZF Friedrichshafen and ZF Passau this thesis peaks in the HR blueprint for joint ventures in China. Worth notable factors in setting up the structure, when recruiting and inheriting staff from the joint venture partner as well as considerations of the new Labor Contract Law and for policies and practices allow an understanding of what Human Resource issues can be anticipated in Chinese joint ventures. These then can be planned adequately for.
The results of this work offer a strategical Human Resource framework on how to best approach a next joint venture project in China. A broad range of HR issues have been analyzed and the most critical for joint venture success found implementation in the blueprint. Arranging a working organizational structure with a Chinese partner and implementing uniform policies and practices while considering cultural factors as well as complying with the legal requirements of the Peoples Republic of China is a task which is not easily carried out. Yet while setting up joint ventures in China already is a complex project, the partnering with a Chinese state owned enterprise is a challenge that requires special attention by HR professionals. The blueprint gives insights and guidance for stated issues.
The purpose of this paper is a conceptualization of the identification and motivational methods for top distributors in the Chinese market for frequency converters. An examination of the market size, participants and segments is provided. Further the benefits for the manufacturer and distributor that occurring from a partnership are elaborated on and the term top distributor is defined.
Based on marketing channel literature a conclusive multidimensional model for the top distributor selection has been developed. The basic dimensions for distributor selection were determined as Sales/Market, Product/Service and Risk/Uncertainty factors. Those dimensions are supplemented by the China specific factors Guanxi and Human Capital. With special focus been given on the aspects that businesses might encounter when operating in China the reginal factors in distributor evaluation are also being discussed.
IN order to determine the value of different rewards two surveys were conducted. For the identification of the most valuable motivators a rewards portfolio was developed and applied on the data gathered in this surveys. The rewards portfolio was based on the portfolio analysis first developed by the Boston Consulting Group. The rewards determined as most valuable from both the manufacturers and distributor sides were “additional marketing and customer acquisition support”, “extended payment terms” and “market intelligence from manufacturer”. An explanation for the importance of those rewards is additionally provided.
City branding
(2015)
The subject of this Bachelor thesis is based on place branding. The goal is to show its evolution since its creation until today and to analyze its importance nowadays. Our work focus mainly on four aspects of place branding, namely sense of place, identity of a place, stakeholders and communication. Sense of place helps to create meanings and attachment to the place. Identity of a place is mostly created by the different people living there and is very important to build a successful brand. Stakeholders are fundamental to place branding and it is very important to recognize the right groups of stakeholders to involve in the branding process, especially local people. Communication is a big part of place branding and has to be managed in an adapted way. The growing evolution of online branding has to be taken into account and managed closely. Word of mouth is a very efficient and powerful way of communication and it should not be neglected when creating a city brand. All these elements are being studied through the example of Strasbourg’s city branding, “Strasbourg, the Europtimist”. We see that the city is ignoring some of the elements mentioned above and could improve its city branding by applying these aspects more carefully. The Bachelor thesis then analyses the success of one of Strasbourg’s sub-brands: “Strasbourg, Capital of Christmas”. Through its analysis, we demonstrate that the key success factors of this event are based on the involvement of the right groups of stakeholders, a strong identity of place, the creation of meanings to the place and a powerful word of mouth. Recommendations are then made to improve the branding of “Strasbourg, the Europtimist”, based on the successful branding of “Strasbourg, Capital of Christmas”.
This bachelor thesis aims at elaborating a relationship between corporate sabbatical programs and their impact on employee retention by taking the dimension of flexible working as mediating tool. The trend towards offering multiple ways of flexible working is growing as employees are demanding workplaces that encourage work-life balance. Sabbaticals are one type of flexible working arrangements regarding the continuity of work. Flexible working is becoming more and more commonly used by organisations with the goal to increase their recruitment attractiveness and their (employee) retention capability for “high potentials”. A relationship between sabbaticals and employee retention could be hypothesised in two theories. First, the component Flexible Working with the example of sabbaticals was added to the employee lifetime value (ELV) model. The ELV model describes an approach to employee retention, recognising the employee as an internal customer of the organisation. With applying the ELV model, an indirect relationship between sabbaticals and retention could be developed. Second, the retention impact of sabbaticals was implied by transferring the retention effects of flexible working in general on sabbatical leaves directly. The retention effects were measured in the dimensions of job embeddedness and organisational commitment. Both theories are able to design a relationship between the two variables, directly and indirectly, but always considering and linking flexible working to the concepts.
Living in times when the Internet and Social Media is changing customer’s behavior, Customer Relationship Managers face the question how to deal with those changes and how to optimize their strategy to remain attractive for the customers. The behavior of people is changing immensely as customers do not prefer to be influenced by companies which are pushing products and brands to them. The force and pressure of customers towards brands is rising steadily, since they expect them to actively engage with them and to offer high quality information rather than a brand who is trying to make the purchase decision for the customer. These times, ordinary customers turn into active influencer who could reach a huge number of people and potential customers and therefore influence their purchase decision. Therefore understanding the current customer behavior and the way how, when and why they make a purchase and what could influence their decision is crucial to businesses. Consequently, businesses have to start managing the complete Customer Decision Journey of each target group and customer. On this account, this Thesis will cover each step of the Customer Decision Journey – Formulation, Pre-Purchase, Purchase, and Post-Purchase - and its influence factors. Thus the key success factors will be indicated, afterwards the Thesis will continue with the concept of corporate Online Shops and Multichannel Retailing and two Case Studies will finish this paper. After a secondary research, findings show that the participation of a certain generation and culture, as well as product reviews on the Internet and Social Media peers are influencing the Customer Decision Journey tremendously. Thus, Online Shops are playing an important role in the first two stages of the Customer Journey and the second Case Study shows the importance of the post-purchase stage. On the one hand side, all those new channels that are influencing and changing the customer and his/her behavior could be a big challenge for businesses. But on the other hand, businesses could start to modify their strategy and approach towards its customers, make use of new possibilities the Internet is offering and start creating a positive, memorable and shareable customer experience.
In recent years the Green Bond market has shown a tremendous growth. It would be interesting to see where the motivation of the issuing companies comes from. One theory is that they expect to have a lower credit spread in this new market segment then in the normal bond market. It is the goal of this paper to analyse if this is the case or not. To do such an analyse it is necessary to find a connection between sustainability and classical capital market theories. Due to a lack of common understanding and measurability of sustainability this is not easy to do. Nowadays it is not possible to give a price for social benefit and as a result it is also not seen in the credit spread.
One can see major changes in the business industry, self-fulfillment is not anymore a state to achieve just through material rewards like a high salary but a human reward like recognition for the work employees did, especially in the western countries like Germany or the United States where a high amount of people have enough wealth already. Businesses need to understand the importance of the emotional engagement of their employees at work. The Gallup Institute, one of the leading researching Institutes about employee engagement found out in their research that employees are not emotionally engaged to wards their working place. Here are results for the year 2013: The disengagement of employees causes damages to the whole economy with the amount of 98,5 billion euros to 118,4 billion euros. The low emotional engagement in 2013 was 67% of all employees in the company. 16% of the company is highly engaged but in the same time 17% of the employees are working with no emotional engagement. The thesis “the art of happiness in business” will research throughout the literature of leadership and corporate culture as a key to increase the employee engagement in German companies. To be happy in a company is more than just earning money and leaving the company, employees need to be connected to the working place with their heart and mind. There is a new era coming the “generation happiness” which wants more than money. In a decade where happiness beats money, they want to work in beautiful environments where they can contribute to something bigger than themselves, they want to be happy and reaching their full potential will be a result.
To round up the thesis scientifically “the art of happiness in business” will develop from the existing theory about leadership and corporate culture a 21st century theoretical model as a scientific response to the changes in the industry, who one can find throughout this work. As an outlook the thesis will serve as the scientific foundation for future projects with experienced entrepreneurs to develop practical models increasing the employee engagement for companies.
Modern online marketing strategies, techniques and problems - based on product ''Weddings in Bali''
(2015)
The purpose of this Bachelor-Thesis is to analyze the current situation of the company The Seven Agency in regards to the efficiency of currently used online marketing
channels to promote the website www.baliwedding.org in the international market. The conclusions were made based on results of a questionnaire which has been sent to
current and former clients of the company. Another part of this work contains research about how the company can achieve optimal results with using appropriate channels.
Both, the results of the Situation- and Target-Analysis have been compared to each other and were completed with a summary of the effectively and not effectively used
channels and a recommendation based on secondary data and literature study in order to achieve targeted results has been given.
The Bachelor-Thesis has been written in cooperation with The Seven Agency, located in Bali, Indonesia.
Nowadays companies operate highly international. Therefore intercultural projects correspondently increase. So far there is a lack of literature about the influences of culture on project management, especially when the project is about a worldwide process standardization.
The present Bachelor Thesis starts at this point and analyzes the international project IVR2020 at the company MAN Truck & Bus by means of a written survey.
As the process was developed in the German headquarters the basic assumption was that the more different a country is compared to Germany the more challenges will occur.
Here it was concentrated on the influencing aspect of culture.
Therefor the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede were considered and a cumulated difference in the form of a number was derived for each country. Those were brought into correlation to the occurring challenges that were determined by a written survey of the project managers and sales managers that are already far enough in the process to give reliable answers.
The correlation analysis leaded to the result that none of the formulated hypotheses could be confirmed. However there where relatively strong negative correlation that indeed
disproved the hypotheses but leaded to the assumption that there might be correlations between the single cultural dimensions and the different facets of challenges. This turned out to be correct for some of the cultural dimensions.
Resulting from these correlations cautious predictions for the countries in which the IVR2020 process will follow in near future were made.
Furthermore the concrete problem fields for MAN Truck & Bus and their causes were evaluated. Based on the findings in literature and the analysis of the written survey recommendations for future similar projects were deviated.
Longevity in the globalised marketplace depends on the ability to remain competitive. Various definitions of economic competitiveness exist: this report compiles them, discusses the methodologies used to measure economic competitiveness and compares the results obtained when these various systems are applied to the country of France. Thereafter, examinations of aspects such as the development of gross domestic product, trade performance, price competitiveness, productivity and employment will be conducted with the aim of providing answers to the following questions: does France really experience a competitiveness problem? If so, what are potential causes of this competitiveness? Is there a particular domain in which France experiences greater difficulties than in others? Comparisons are constantly drawn to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and China, where possible. First of all, France's GDP development is described in combination with a discussion of whether or not GDP (per capita) serves as a measure of the performance level of an economy. Then, the country's trade performance is closely examined. Aspects such as France's export market shares and its trade products and partners are investigated. Thereafter, focus is placed on price competitiveness. Analysis of the real effective exchange rate based on consumer price indices, the inflation rate and the nominal effective exchange rate is conducted before the aspects of labour costs and productivity are treated. A breakdown of France's GDP and GDP per capita growth rates, as well as unit labour costs are explored in detail. As the last component of the examination, focus is placed on the subject of employment. The findings of this report suggest that France suffers from a competitiveness problem which presents itself mainly in the field of employment which has a knock-on effect on the labour market. The findings of this report mainly confirm the findings of the literature. Proposed measures in order to resolve France's competitiveness problem target the minimum wage, the elderly workforce, labour market regulations and labour taxes. It is argued that implementation of the suggested measures could eventually improve France's level of productivity and the other issues examined.