e-Repositori UPF :: Master of Science in Management

Recent Submissions

The impact of blockchain technology on the supply chain collaboration: the implementation process and effects on trust issues between
(2020) Brück, Magdalena Paula
In the last decades women, especially in the developed countries, had more opportunities of accessing a higher education and achieving careers traditionally pursued by men. Still, the percentage of women in the leading management positions is low. Are there specific antecedents, which explain the existing gap between men and women who made it to the very top of their careers? Using data from the World Value Survey, this thesis shows that the factors influencing this gap are diverse but lead to the following key conclusions. In older generations the gender gap in management positions is stronger and more present, and an increasing age is a contra productive fact for women that pursuit a management position. Belonging to a middle- or high-income class and having high education is positively related to female employment in general, as well as in management positions. Religion leads all in all to a lower participation in the labor market, and inhibits the career path of females more, than the one of males. The equality and liberalism that a democracy reinforces and promotes, reduces the difference between women and men in the labor market, fostering female participation. This inclination towards equality in the labor market and in high hierarchical positions is also supported by values such as trust and respect. Typical management attributes such as competition and risk preferences are important for the acquisition of a supervisor position, but do not increase the probability of a competitive or more risk-taking woman in a supervisor position.
Does management have a gender?: Antecedents of missing women in management positions
(2020) Suhner, Laura Carolina
In the last decades women, especially in the developed countries, had more opportunities of accessing a higher education and achieving careers traditionally pursued by men. Still, the percentage of women in the leading management positions is low. Are there specific antecedents, which explain the existing gap between men and women who made it to the very top of their careers? Using data from the World Value Survey, this thesis shows that the factors influencing this gap are diverse but lead to the following key conclusions. In older generations the gender gap in management positions is stronger and more present, and an increasing age is a contra productive fact for women that pursuit a management position. Belonging to a middle- or high-income class and having high education is positively related to female employment in general, as well as in management positions. Religion leads all in all to a lower participation in the labor market, and inhibits the career path of females more, than the one of males. The equality and liberalism that a democracy reinforces and promotes, reduces the difference between women and men in the labor market, fostering female participation. This inclination towards equality in the labor market and in high hierarchical positions is also supported by values such as trust and respect. Typical management attributes such as competition and risk preferences are important for the acquisition of a supervisor position, but do not increase the probability of a competitive or more risk-taking woman in a supervisor position. Does Management have a Gender? Antecedents of Missing
Does the gender quota make sense? Women on supervisory boards and firm performance
(2020) Weidler, Helen Lina
On March 6, 2015, Germany followed Norway’s lead and introduced a statutory gender quota for supervisory boards, requiring publicly listed and parity co-determined companies to give at least 30% of their board seats to women. In a sample of 72 German companies, we explore the effect of gender quotas on firm performance. Consistent with previous literature, we find evidence that the introduction of a quota law harms firm performance as measured by ROA. However, the magnitude of this effect is smaller, while still negative, for firms with a higher percentage of gender diversity on supervisory boards. Furthermore, we account for heterogeneity in ownership, culture, and industry. The moderating effect of board gender diversity on the negative law effect is stronger for non-family-owned firms, firms headquartered in a protestant region, and non-manufacturing firms. Conversely, this moderating effect disappears with regard to family-owned firms, firms located in a catholic region, and manufacturing firms. Our results are robust controlling for firm-level time varying characteristics as well as firm fixed effects.
Euroll: you are enrolled
(2020) Zheng, Shichu
Heco: healthy cooking
(2020) Dávila Llaguno, Jéssica
There is an issue of high importance affecting Mexico. Our unhealthy nutrition habits derived from our tight and busy schedules doesn’t allow us to adopt a healthy nutrition lifestyle which is one of the main causes of being the second country worldwide in obesity levels. Because of this we have identified a business opportunity in Mexico City, where nearly 4 M people are working and live with this constant struggle, 3.1% of these people are concerned about following a healthy lifestyle and could have the acquisitive power to be interested in our service. HeCo comes to offer a solution by creating a virtual kitchen service, through an app, where a person can pick up the meals they want to eat for their whole week and get them delivered to the most convenient location. By designing healthy meals, using eco-friendly packages and adopting a zero-waste policy, we want to become one of the main suppliers of meals to office employees in Mexico City. Our goal is to contribute to improve the Mexican’s health by allowing people to adopt an accurate diet. Following a weekly timetable, our operations would be focused on receiving the orders, grocery shopping, cooking the meals and delivering them to our customers. A customer can choose from a wide variety of healthy plans that would include breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. Among the characteristics that makes us different we can mention that we offer a flexible service, the customer will only pay for what they order and no subscription fee is required. We are aware of the high environmental impact that waste has on the planet, this is why we want to be committed to target our actions in order to reduce this impact. In this sense, we will engage our customers in working with us in order to create conscious of left-overs, allowing them to cancel orders with or without refund according to our timetable and the cancelled meals could be donated to people in need. Our project will require an initial investment of 484,065 MXN and to support the first 8 months of operations, the founder will contribute with 750,000 MXN to the equity, a personal loan of 363,400 MXN from BBVA Bancomer with a maturity of 60 months at a 29.87% rate and a friends & family loan of 250,000 MXN due in 12 months and interest free. We are estimating to breakeven reaching the 9th month of operations.
Spillovers from the international market and the performance of family firms: evidence from an emerging market
(2020) Robles Contreras, Valeria Yamel
This study analyzes the performance of Ecuadorian firms, depending on their ownership and corporate governance structure, when facing a shock with negative spillovers from the international market. Using data on 67,279 firm-year observations pertaining to 16,468 medium and large companies in Ecuador from 2011 to 2017, I find that firms that are family-owned and controlled suffer more from a negative internationally transmitted shock into the local economy. Furthermore, the results show that the greater negative impact of the shock on family firms could be driven either by their inertia to undertake divestitures or by their lower ability to access alternative sources of financing.
Uncertainty avoidance and its effect on diffusion of electronic commerce - a crosscountry study
(2020) Kivine, Linda Sofia
The diffusion of e-commerce has seen a significant surge in recent years. Economic, political, and technological factors are considered as the main determinants of technology diffusion. However, these findings appear inconclusive as diffusion rates of e-commerce diverge considerably across countries, even with similar economic and political situations. There is evidence that socio-cultural factors can be relevant in explaining cross-country discrepancies in technology diffusion; nevertheless, its effect on internet retailing has rarely been explored. Furthermore, the highest barrier to the success of e-commerce is the perceived risks in that mode of retailing. This makes us wonder whether the risk perception across countries can help explain disparities in e-commerce growth rates across nations. This study focuses on uncertainty avoidance, a measure of the extent that people in a given culture feel threatened by the unknown to explain cross-country e-commerce diffusion. This study further explores the role of technology infrastructure in e-commerce diffusion, intending to explain the moderating effect of technology infrastructure on the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and e-commerce diffusion. The results reveal that uncertainty avoidance has a significant negative impact on the diffusion of internet retailing. However, with a reliable technological infrastructure, this negative effect is weakened.
Nothing spreads like fear: effects of mortality salience caused by COVID-19 on consumption habits of consumers whose self-esteem comes from virtue or appearance
(2020) Dinçer, Lara
Consumption is driven by different strong motivations, like emotion, identity, and social connection. But the values, habits, and norms that shape what we consume and how we consume could shift. Currently, we are experiencing a pandemic which is expected to have an impact on consumer behavior in the future. Because the pandemic, COVID-19, is causing mortality salience on people and it is previously shown in many literary articles that mortality salience affects consumer choice. Previous studies provide many results showing events that remind individuals of death to engender existential anxiety and one major way to cope with it is to bolster self-esteem. This paper examines the effects of mortality salience caused by COVID-19 on the consumption behavior of people whose self-esteem is based on virtue or appearance. It investigates whether increased mortality salience will push consumers with high virtue to buy more environmentally conscious products while consumers with appearance as self-esteem domain will buy more luxurious products. In the first step, the paper explains the theoretical development of the relevant aspects of mortality salience and self-esteem. Intending to quantify this effect, the second part of the paper explains the experiment done and uses test statistics to analyze the outcomes. Lastly, it shows the results which provide evidence that mortality salience will lead to more environmentally conscious consumption from people whose self-esteem is more inclined to virtue. Whereas mortality salience did not increase the luxury buying behavior of people with high body-esteem and raised the following question: Can mortality salience lead people to shop less?
Feminized boards of directors in SMEs: effects on employees’ perceptions and firm performance
(2020) Palau Pinyana, Erola
Upper management positions seem to be male-dominated. Research has shown that a positive association exists between firm performance and the presence of women in boards of directors. This study aims to determine the relationship in Catalan SMEs and analyse employees’ perceptions on the judgement of their possibilities to move upwards in corporations with feminized and masculinized boards. The results indicate that Catalan SMEs with feminized boards show less potential of financial risk and more satisfied employees than firms with masculinized boards
Disney-Fox deal : valuation of an acquisition
(2019) Korenkova, Tatiana
The entertainment and media industry is a constantly changing and fast-growing industry. Thanks to the increasing number of M&A transactions and shifting consumer demand for high-quality content on Internet, media market has to reshape and companies are encouraged to transform their products by focusing on digitalization. This master thesis evaluates an acquisition of 21st Century Fox by the Walt Disney Company, the two media giants inside the US market and beyond. First of all, the paper examines what an M&A deal is and what drives some companies to proceed these transactions. Also, the valuation methods for M&A are studied and applied in the research. In addition, the media industry and the companies are analyzed by focusing on trends, competition, and historical financial performance. After this, the fundamental analysis of both companies is provided and the economic reasoning of the acquisition of Fox by the Disney Company is determined by using Discounted Cash Flow method and the Data Envelopment Analysis. Both companies are valued independently and as a combined firm. As a consequence, the acquisition deal seems to be the perfect strategic and economic fit. The transaction will increase a leading position of Disney in the movie and TV production and will decrease the approaching competition from streaming and online companies. Besides, the purchasing price of $71,3 billion is going to be beneficial for Disney. Also, the deal will cause the efficiency score of Disney to grow from 41,6% to 47%. And, therefore, the estimated value of a synergy is going to be twice as high as the current Disney’s EV ($1 281,568 billion as the best estimate), which promises the high potential for this media corporation. Moreover, the transaction will encourage Disney’s Revenues and Income to grow by 35% and by 48% in 6 years, respectively, and will force its market share to increase from 15,6% in 2018 to 31,9% by 2024, which also will strengthen the company’s position in the market.
Kupusluge.pl : buying and selling services
(2019) Bak, Karol Michal
Application of operations research to healthcare industry in developing countries. Case study : optimization of the location of primary health care centers in Tunisia
(2019) Hamani, Wafa
It has been agreed that over the last 50 years, the awareness of using Operations Research (OR) techniques in developing countries - where lack of resources is the norm - has increased and became more significant. One sign of this, is the emergence of several initiatives to promote OR in such countries. However, despite this rise in awareness, the use of OR is still very low compared to the “developed” countries due to the presence of many obstacles such as the lack of OR experts, insufficient technological and financial resources, scarcity of accurate data…

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