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Research papers
A number of Asia Business oriented papers presented at the CISTM 2010 conference in Tampere
Ahoniemi, L. & Ruohonen, M.J. (2010) Findings from Case Studies on Managing Knowledge in
Sino-Finnish Business Environment.
Summary:
Finnish large scale companies have made Green Field Investments in China and moved their production abroad. Since 2007 in Finnish machinery construction industry more
employees worked abroad than in Finland. In China there is nowadays operating close to 300 companies and many of them were established 2004-2007. Most of the Chinese
units are concentrated in Shanghai and its Greater Area or Beijing. The most important factors to start operations in China are the increasing markets of China and South
East Asia, shorter delivery times and closer connections to their customers to fulfill their needs. In earlier times the cheap production costs has also been a major
benefit, but the salary cost level has nowadays remarkably grown esp. in Shanghai area. Anyhow, operating and managing local business unit has turned out challenging
especially in the study field knowledge management in different cultural environment. The earlier studies concerning business in China are mostly analyzing situation
from the American point of view. This paper is concentrating to present major challenges in transferring technology esp. due to human resource and cultural differences.
The data is collected in 34 interviews of Finnish and Chinese managers operating in different Finnish business units in China 2007-2010. The research project Chindica
(China – India Initiative for Competitive Adaptation; A Multidisciplinary & Multinational Study of Strategic Challenges in Global Management in the Fast Changing Economy)
is ongoing until spring 2011; therefore the results presented in this paper are tentative.
Saxena, K.B.C., Ruohonen, M.J. & Bharadwaj, S.S. (2010) Strategic Outsourcing of Engineering Processes Using Agile Methods.
Summary:
During recent years outsourcing has been extended to business processes (BPO) to offshore locations, mainly to low-cost destination countries like India and China. Engineering
process outsourcing (EPO) is a segment of BPO dealing with outsourcing of engineering service functions and is being widely adopted by companies as the next strategic move towards
globalisation. Recent studies of EPO taken up in Finland and other European countries have found that companies going for EPO have largely focused on countries where they also
have a local market for their products so that they could get cost savings both in the production as well as distribution and sales of their products. These companies have not
taken advantages of the technical expertise available in these countries which could enable them to outsource high value-adding functions such as product design, perhaps because
of the risk of intellectual property loss. This paper proposes dynamic outsourcing along with the use of agile manufacturing methods as the outsourcing strategy with embedded
agility for such companies in order to get not only cost savings but also better quality of products through outsourcing of high value functions such as product design and market
research. Such a strategy will enable these companies not only to exploit capability-based sourcing but also to take advantage of the market potential of offshore locations for
improving their market positioning globally.
Kumar, V., Saxena, K.B.C. & Ruohonen, M.J. (2010) Customer Knowledge Acquisition using Social Media.
Summary:
Customer knowledge using traditional media was all about transactional data. However with the advent of Social web, companies have to look beyond the boundaries of organization
for gaining insights into customer knowledge. Social web which provides an exaggerated amount of customer data based on interaction is both a source of opportunity and challenge.
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