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his master thesis is the outcome of a journey into the New Service Development (NSD) practices of large organizations involved in business to business (B2B) innovation. The scope of the project is to generate new knowledge on the challenges that organizations face to engage business customers into their internal innovation processes. Research shows that, in B2B settings, customer involvement is one of the critical success factors for meaningful service innovation. Structuring such engagements bring to less uncertain results. In collaboration with the Innovation Labs of ING Bank, the project applies a service-centred design approach to understand the barriers for smooth customer involvement in innovation, defining a new process to structure the early stages of development taking into account the experiences of the stakeholders involved. Different research activities were conducted within the case study in collaboration with innovators, service designers, and front office professionals to explore the problem areas and define the most important challenges as experienced by professionals working on new service development in the context of B2B corporate finance. The research, both in literature and in the case study, has provided a picture of the intrinsic complexity of these processes, especially in the fuzzy front end, which is usually experimental, chaotic, difficult to plan and unpredictable. The challenges highlighted from the research are linked to a current barrier present between innovation Labs and the front office department of the bank, which is the one directly involved in customer-facing activities. This barrier prevents the smooth involvement of customers in new service development practices. Focusing on the challenges and using an iterative design approach, I have developed a new process and the tools needed to structure collaboration between the front office department and the innovation Labs to ultimately support customer-centricity in the fuzzy fr, Design for Interaction

Learning outcomes: The case’s learning objectives to work on can vary according to the topic selected by the teacher. This case has been put forward with a particular interest in corporate strategy issues, specifically, on the joint management of businesses (in this case, academic programs). Therefore, students are expected to be able to understand the managerial dilemma on centralization and decentralization; recognize the peculiarities of a shared services center (SSC); and decide on which services to centralize in an SSC. Case overview/synopsis: Centralizing or not centralizing is a frequent managerial dilemma. This is a challenge faced not only by business managers but also by corporate level areas responsible for jointly managing various businesses. Resources and capabilities allocation is an essential process for strategy execution, specifically in corporate strategy that must answer the question: How to jointly manage businesses? Sharing services is a collaborative strategy which aims to increase efficiency by centralizing some processes related to this joint business management. Mario, Dean of the Escuela de Administración in Medellín, Colombia, intends to optimize the school resource allocation processes so that there is more equitable support between the different academic programs. For this, he has thought of creating an SSC as it is a practice that he has seen in prominent companies in the city. His idea is to start operating the SSC in early 2018; however, the particular character of a management school leads him to ask himself: What to centralize and what not to centralize? Complexity academic level: This case of decision (Ellet, 2007; Sánchez et al., 2013) can be used to promote student learning of strategy courses both at advanced undergraduate levels and in graduate programs. Likewise, it can be used in workshops with executives and administrative personnel of companies that face the centralize–decentralize dilemma. These types of topics are the sub

Governments and organisations have set targets for increased food production as a result of an increasing population. In order to increase food production, the capacity of agricultural enterprises needs to be expanded. The Swedish agricultural industry expresses difficulties in finding labour, which prevent businesses from expanding, or that companies must settle with less skilled employees. In order to respond to the set targets of increased food production, agricultural companies need to be better able to attract and retain employees. The average age is high among employees in Swedish agriculture while the portion of young employees is declining. Since young peoples are the new generation of employees, they are of particular interest to agricultural companies to hire. One way to address the problem of finding and retaining workforce is through marketing. Employer branding is a marketing concept that includes how companies can attract and retain employees. Businesses can develop its employer brand by knowing what attributes of employer branding that are valued by their existing employees. This study aims to investigate how young employees value employer branding attributes in the Swedish agricultural sector. This study applies a qualitative approach with case study design. The case studies consist of nine cases involving nine different young employees from agricultural companies in the region of Mälardalen. Data has been collected through semi-structured interviews based on an interview guide with questions to get the young employees' thoughts and answers. A conceptual framework has been developed to analyze the collected data. The framework is evolved from existing knowledge of employer branding. The framework is based on the analytical categories; work content, affiliation, compensation, career, benefits, all of which are considered to contain attributes that affect a company's Employer brand. The collected data has been analyzed with thematic encoding and divide, Regeringar och organisationer har satt upp mål om en ökad livsmedelsproduktion till följd av en stigande befolkning. För att livsmedelsproduktionen ska kunna öka behöver kapaciteten hos lantbruksföretag utvecklas genom nya investeringar. Nya investeringar är beroende av input resurser så som tillgång till relevant arbetskraft. Den svenska lantbruksbranschen uttrycker svårigheter i att hitta arbetskraft, vilket leder till att expandering av verksamheten hindras, eller att företag får nöja sig med sämre kompetens bland. För att kunna bemöta den framtida förväntansbilden om en ökad livsmedelsproduktion behöver lantbruksföretag bli bättre på att attrahera och bibehålla anställda. Det råder idag en hög medelålder bland anställda i svenskt lantbruk, samtidigt som andelen yngre i lantbruket minskar. Eftersom unga personer är den nya generationen anställda, är de av speciellt intresse för lantbruksföretag att anställa. Ett sätt att adressera problemet med att hitta och bibehålla personal är genom marknadsföring. Employer branding är ett marknadsföringsverktyg som innefattar hur företag kan attrahera och bibehålla anställda. Företag kan utveckla sitt employer brand genom att förstå vilka egenskaper av employer branding som värderas av deras befintliga anställda. Den här studien syftar till att undersöka hur unga anställda värderar egenskaper av employer branding i den svenska lantbrukssektorn. Den här studien tillämpar ett kvalitativt angreppssätt med fallstudiedesign. Fallstudierna består av nio fall innehållande nio olika unga anställda från lantbruksföretag i Mälardalen. Empiri har samlats in genom semistrukturerade telefonintervjuer. Ett konceptuellt ramverk har utvecklats för att analysera den insamlade empirin. Det konceptuella ramverket bygger på existerande kunskap om employer branding. Ramverket baseras på de analytiska kategorierna; arbetsinnehåll, erkännande, kompensation, karriär, förmåner och utveckling, som alla anses innehålla egenskaper som påverkar ett föret

This position paper presents an overview of key insights in relation to the provisioning of IT services in the digital business context. These insights, as derived from relevant academic and practitioner literature and engagement with patrons and members of the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) global consortium, have informed the development of IVI’s IT-CMF Service Provisioning (SRP) Critical Capability (CC). Additionally, changes to the SRP CC improve the alignment of the capability with the ISO 20000 standard and the ITIL framework. They also reflect digital changes such as the virtualization, automation, and orchestration of IT infrastructure, and support the growing prevalence of Agile and DevOps approaches [1].

In the ever-changing digital business environment, organizations need to be able to adapt quickly and become more agile. The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) is an IT management framework comprised of 36 key areas or Critical Capabilities (CCs) [2], one of which is Benefits Assessment and Realization (BAR). This position paper presents an overview of key insights, to provide context and understanding of the value of organizations having an effective benefits assessment and realization capability in the digital business context, as derived from academic and practitioner literature.

Although English language is considered an essential requirement to find a position in the Brazilian work market, little do we know about what proficiency level is expected from workers by companies and how language assessment occurs at work. This investigation was developed in an automation company located in São Paulo metropolitan area. It is a case study which aimed to better understand the language use expectations and analyze the assessment process to identify: the assessment tools used in the company, its language view and if the assessment process meets the company’s language use expectations. This study uses questionnaires, interviews and documents analysis for data collection and triangulation of sources. The company is a place where English is used in daily tasks due to international partnerships and taught in an in-company course. The results show a mismatch between the proficiency and achievement tests applied in the company and its language view. In addition English language is a gatekeeper in recruitment process only for some positions. The language use expectations for workers vary according to their position and department but are not assessed likewise.

Branding has for a long time been in focus in strategic decision making for firms in a business-to-consumer context. Brands has been used as a tool to differentiate products and position firms’ offers towards competitors. In a business-to business context branding has not been in focus in the same way. Strategic decisions have more dealt with technology innovation and market expansions. In recent times, a greater interest for brand building in a business to business (B2B) context has emerged, both in practice and academia, especially for globally active B2B firms that strive to create a unified look of their products and firms. The hard global competition has made it difficult to compete on product quality alone, services around the product and intangible features has been important parts of B2B firms’ offers. The B2B firms’ more complex offers can be incorporated under a common brand that differentiates the firms’ offer from competitors. Although that the practical importance of B2B branding has been acknowledge lately, research dealing with B2B branding is still relatively limited. Most studies on B2B branding attempt to describe what brands are, how they affect companies, or vice versa. Research on the process of B2B brand building is however scarce. Also, when B2B brands are in focus of a study, it is usually their tangible characteristics that are examined. In B2C brand literature, intangible aspects and, the metaphor to see the brand as a person is widely discussed (Aaker, 1997). However, there is very little research on brand as a person element in the B2B context. Brand personality is normally defined as the human characteristics associated with a brand, More research into the brand personality building processes in a B2B context are therefore needed. Following the above discussion this study’s aim is to investigate how brand personality is built in B2B companies. A qualitative approach has been adopted to enable us to investigate, in-depth, an under-researc