International Management & Leadership
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Leadership, leader-follower relationship, and
subordinates’ behaviors during the Covid-19
pandemic
(2021)
The boom of information technology development created high demand for skilled labour force in IT occupations. IT professionals install, test, build, repair or maintain hardware and software and can do the job from any location in the world.
Demand for the workforce significantly outstrips the global supply. In a situation of staff shortage employers have to compete on local and global labour markets. The ability of a firm to attract and retain the best talent would become a source of its sustainable competitive advantage.
Aim of the study is to understand what influences perception of employment attractiveness by IT professionals the most. This study intends to expend the existing knowledge about employees´ needs and “psychological contract” concept.
The research was conducted with the participation of 4 IT and 4 HR English-speaking experts who live and work in Austria. In the study the grounded theory approach and the descriptive qualitative methods were applied.
The research findings explain which factors influence the decision of IT professionals to join, stay or leave an employer. The results are discussed in relation to talent attraction and retention practices of Austrian employers.
Increasing international competition and accelerated technological change characterize the environment in which companies must maintain and, if possible, expand their competitive advantage. In this context, the new, popular keyword innovation management is often mentioned. Many corporations propagate and use it for marketing purposes. As a result, the companies have to evaluate, develop and launch innovations increasingly faster, which poses great challenges for many and requires a high degree of adaptability.
This master thesis analyzes innovation management (IM) in the automotive industry and in other industries (material manufacturers, service providers, medicine, ...) depending on the number of employees and turnover. In addition, the maturity levels of the IMs and the innovation management systems (IMS) are examined. It also tries to determine which design or "building blocks" are necessary for a successful innovation management. Furthermore, factual and monetary guidelines by the management are evaluated. The thesis also aims to find out how the success of IM is measured. Therefore, guideline-based expert interviews were conducted with responsible people from the innovation departments and then systematically analyzed.
In the literature, expenses for innovations are often wrongly equated with the R&D rate. In this master thesis, it could be shown that this ratio is highest in the automotive industry. However, it does not correlate with the number of employees, turnover, maturity level, success or design of the IM. Furthermore, it could be shown that larger companies have a higher degree of maturity. The reason for this is that more people are usually involved in innovation and that a holistic understanding of innovation is better anchored in large corporations. When designing the IM or the roles of the innovation department, large companies use several different types. While the IM departments in small and medium-sized companies are usually incubators and accelerators, large companies also use corporate venture capital to support start-ups and develop new business models. In this thesis, the success of IM was determined by the number of innovations implemented in customer projects. It was found that, regardless of the size of the company, a higher degree of maturity of the IM and the accelerator role seem to have a positive influence.
Unfortunately, there are rarely concrete goals and targets set by the management although these, along with a holistic understanding of innovation in the company, are without doubt the most important part of a successful innovation management.
The presented master thesis of the study subject International Management and Leadership at the University of Applied Science Vorarlberg in Dornbirn handles the potential future influence of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due diligence on SMEs. First this thesis introduces the most important regulations that might come into place with this Due Diligence Act and gives a theoretical input when and how it will come into place, and also who it will affect directly and who will be affected indirectly. The empirical data resulted of several qualitative expert interviews and a following quantitative research. The expert interviews are split in two different groups, first the topic experts from institutions like chamber of commerce or chamber of labour and second experts from highly successful Austrian companies which are already handling the topic and the future challenges. Expected outcome of the qualitative interviews was a better view on the actual situation especially the impact on small and medium enterprises. On the basis of this results the quantitative survey was produced. In the quantitative survey the goal was to see, how much entrepreneurs and companies in the small and medium sector already are aware of the upcoming legal challenges throughout the supply chain. With all this collected data the practical outcome of this thesis is the Checklist, which helps entrepreneurs to find out if and how much they will be affected by the Act. And finally, the most important part is the Guideline, which introduces first risk assessment tools, that will help companies to prepare for future legislation and bring undoubtedly a certain advantage for the upcoming challenges.
For centuries, companies and institutions are working on the development of organisational project maturity models. The purpose of these models is to develop a path for improving an organisation’s capability of managing projects. Projects are the means by which companies implement their strategic objectives. Trends like globalisation and advances in IT lead to more geographically distributed teamwork. Therefore, this thesis gives a comprehensive answer to how project management maturity models address transnational project management.
For accomplishing the research objective, this thesis follows an integrated, qualitative literature review approach. Theoretical frameworks and applied research on project management maturity assessments were systematically collected and analysed. The results extracted from these two sources were synthesised to extract findings.
The main research result shows that models continuously adapt to transnational project management. They are doing this by aligning the organisational culture and values, focusing on organisational wide learning and gradually embedding behavioural and intercultural competencies. Maturity assessments need to follow this trend.
Furthermore, transnational convergence of the models’ dimensions was observed. This development leads to growth in size and complexity. To apply them internationally, the models should be simplified or easily adapted to specific countries and cultures.
Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to explore the of self-initiated expatriates prior to and during acculturation to life in a smaller periphery region such as Vorarlberg, Austria. By providing insights into their lived experience this research aims to fill in the gaps of missing information on motivators, success factors to adjustment, issues, and stressors, and more that SIEs experience when adjusting. Specifically, what items promote adjustment and what items hinder adjustment.
Findings: Developed a better understanding of how and what motivational factors lead to expatriation. Furthermore, that opportunities arise by chance. During acculturation, language factors (dialect), cultural differences act as stressors. While social support, and organizational support, learning of the language act as promoters of acculturation.
Further Research could be done including ethnicities, SIEs moving from developed to developing countries, adjustment in regions with dialect vs no dialect.
Key words: self-initiated expatriates, expatriation, acculturation, adjustment, promoting acculturation, hindering acculturation.
Scrum has been a prominent project management framework for managing software development projects. The scrum team embodies values such as commitment, focus, respect, courage, and openness to develop trust, which serves as the foundation of the scrum framework. However, in recent years, scrum teams are shifting towards a work-from-home environment which is relatively new to most of them and known to present various challenges. Looking at the benefits of adhering to scrum values, this study aims to investigate the challenges scrum teams experience in adhering to scrum values while operating virtually, as well as to explore practical strategies to overcome the identified challenges, particularly during the storming stage of team development. This research employed a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews with scrum team members who have experience working in a virtual environment. Through qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews, this research identifies significant challenges within five main categories: communication, collaboration, interpersonal dynamics, the virtual work environment, and personal workspace issues. However, beyond the challenges, the study reveals practical strategies as well for successful team dynamics and higher efficiency. The strategies derived from team members' experiences are categorized into six categories: enhanced meeting management, leveraging in-person engagements, optimizing tools & technology, effective communication strategies, team-building, and nurturing a positive work culture.
This paper gives an insight into how cybersecurity is built inside and outside banks in Austria. The research was conducted based on information received from bank representatives in Austria as well as on literature, participation in various kinds of online conferences, and so on. The main objective of this paper was to investigate the cybersecurity execution scheme and to consider the possible impact of the cultural factor on cybersecurity execution. Due to a force majeure situation like coronavirus, the author was able to obtain little information from participants, but even this helped to draw satisfactory conclusions and make recommendations to banks. Thanks to the vast amount of literature and research, confirmation of the factor under study was found, confirming the relevance of the work and the potential for further research.