Browsing by discipline "Puumarkkinatiede"

The increasing recognition of eco-friendly packaging in the packaging industry makes paperboard one of the most promising green packaging materials. The global demand for paperboard has increased rapidly in the past two decades. The purposes of the study are: firstly, to provide an overview of the consumption, production, imports and exports of paperboard products in different regions worldwide between 1992 and 2010. Secondly, as the Finnish paperboard industry has been highly export-oriented, the study also aims to provide quantitative analysis of the main determinants influencing the demand for Finnish paperboard exports in its main destinations-Germany and Russia by applying economic models from the first quarter of 1995 to the third quarter of 2011. Finally, trends projection for the future development of Finnish paperboard is presented based on results of analysis. The research is both descriptive and explanatory based on secondary data collected from various databases. The regional analysis of paperboard market from 1992 to 2010 revealed that North America and Western Europe’s paperboard production exceeded the consumption, where Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America’s consumption exceeded the production. The consumption and production growth was extremely fast in Asia and it has been the largest consumer and producer of paperboard products since 2000s. Western Europe has been the largest exporter and importer throughout the years. The empirical modeling of Finnish paperboard export demand showed that the export demand for Finnish paperboard in Germany was highly affected by the total paperboard imports of Germany and its GDP. It also has high sensitivity to the income changes of Germany in long term, but the price effect was not significant. The export demand for Finnish paperboard in Russia has low income elasticity and the price effect was statistically significant. Oil price has also significant influence on Finnish paperboard export demand to Russia. According to the linear trends projection for Finnish paperboard market to 2020, the consumption and imports will grow very slowly or even stagnate, but the production and exports will continuously increase at a faster pace.

The changing environment causes new needs and objectives for which new plans and strategies have to be created. The importance of the residents increases during these planning processes, and therefore utilizing different participatory methods comes more and more important. There are two parts in this research; the first part examines how the resident survey, from participatory methods, can be used in the strategical planning of the city’s forests’ use and management, and in the second part, the resident survey has been implemented to find out the opinions, wishes, and proposals of the residents concerning the city’s forests’ use and management in Vantaa. The first part of the research examines how the resident survey can be used in the achieving the objectives, what is the content that the resident survey is able to bring into the planning process, and to find out how and in which phase, or in which way, the resident survey can be used in the planning process. In this part, the qualitative methods were used, and the results are mainly based on the existing literature together with the implemented survey in the certain aspects. From the results, it is possible to find out that the resident survey may achieve very well the objectives of the municipality and the objectives relating residents’ local knowledge and possibilities to influence by certain criteria. The objectives related to the residents’ spiritual or psychological characteristics, like building the trust, are more difficult to achieve. On the other hand, the implemented resident survey cannot be used to achieve all the objectives of the international or institutional parts, like the objectives related to the Forest Act. It is possible to use the resident survey in every phase of the planning process, but according to the results of this research, it will not be able to bring all the objectives in every phase. The second part of the research was to implement the resident survey to find out the residents’ opinions, wishes, and proposals concerning the forests of Vantaa city. It enabled to gather the knowledge and the information about the meaning and the use of the forests, the acceptable forest management methods, the participatory in the forest management and planning, and the local information about the forests. Vantaa city was divided into the seven areas. The sample size was 2 100 – so 300 residents of the age 15 to 75 from each area. In total 950 answers were received with the respond rate 45 %. The results were created by using the quantitative methods. They show that the meaning of the forests for recreation and outdoor activities is remarkable; the most important characteristics are naturalness and feeling of the forest, calmness and silence, and the opportunities to outdoor activities and sport; the residents mostly use forests nearby home; and the most acceptable forest management methods cause less changes in the environment, like thinning, uneven-aged forest management, and harvesting. The participatory is quite unknown for most of the respondents, and the most of the residents think that this resident survey will not influence to the final decisions. Further studies about how the criteria, used in this research, could work with different resident surveys is needed, and if they can be used in the other phases of the planning process that have been found out in this research.

The popularity of wooden multi-storey construction (WMC) has increased in Finland during the recent years. Reasons for this could be the favorable changes in the legislation, the action plans of government agencies endorsing the WMC, and the developing business models of the construction industry. The business ecosystem (BE) concept has become a topical research subject and recent research suggests that the BE concept could be a useful tool in analyzing the value creation in the construction industry. This qualitative case study examined the applicability of the BE concept for the field of wood construc-tion. Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit the experiences of people involved in a specific wood construction project and thematization was used in the analysis of the data. The case construction project was a two-storey wooden loft. The aims of this thesis included the exploration of the functioning of the case BE, and identifying the roles of the BE participants, the benefits of belonging in a BE, and the key factors for the success of the BE. The study also aimed in examining the end-user involvement and the innovation detection and communication in the case BE. The interviews revealed that the core companies of the case construction project have cooperated for years before the case project took place. Some coevolutive efforts were revealed between some of the project participants, such as attempts to cut the turnaround time of the projects by focusing on process enhancements, and addressing to varying service demands by offering the services of a partner company among own services. The results suggest that a BE exists around the main contractor, which also acts as a keystone player, leading the BE. The other core companies act as niche players, bringing specialized expertise and skills that complement the inputs of others. According to the interviewees, the co-opera-tion and the construction project created benefits, such as reference value and value for the research and development. The interviewees also thought the familiarity of the project participants creates trust, and leads to better understanding of the working habits of the other participants, and thus increasing project efficiency. In addition, well-functioning communication and cooperation, and the high quality of plan-ning were seen as some of the essential factors for the success of the construction project. The residents were involved in the project only after the construction had already started, but they could nevertheless affect interior materials and could make change requests. The building project itself was perceived as relatively traditional one by the interviewees, although some innovativeness was identified in the pro-cesses and components of the project. In the future, business ecosystems in the WMC could be studied further, for example, by also examining larger scale WMC projects.

This exploratory study aims to analyze the CR reporting by eleven largest forest products companies in North America. Both annual reports and sustainability reports produced in year 2006 by eleven largest forest products companies in North America were chosen for this very study. To ensure the comparability of the results, the study adopts the similar variables in operationalizations by Routto (2008), who studied the CR reporting of European forest products companies. The methodology applied in the study is content analysis. Mean, T-test and One-way Anova analysis were used in data analysis. Though all the three pillars of CR (economic, environmental, and social) were covered in their CR reporting, the North American companies seem to give more weight to Social Focus, followed by Economic Focus and Environmental Focus respectively, whereas the largest European companies considered Environmental Focus as the most important area, Social Focus the second, whereas Economic Focus was least emphasized. A number of notable differences and similarities between the European companies and the North American companies towards CR reporting were also identified. For example, the North American companies obviously seek for more efforts to co-operate with interest groups and business partners to ensure responsible actions than the European companies. The European companies emphasize energy consumption more frequently than the North American companies. Neither the European companies nor the North American companies perceived environmental welfare at the expense of corporate profits an important element concerning Economic Focus. It would be interesting to note that neither the European companies nor the North American companies considered shareholders, NGOs and forest owners as primary target audience groups in their CR reporting, since the communication benefits were not frequently mentioned for these stakeholder groups. The study also observes some variation of CR practices within a common industrial and cultural environment. The results suggest that the US companies seem to particularly emphasize a number of issues more than the Canadian companies, namely: 1) Business behavior, 2) Social principles & guidelines, 3) Internal communication, 4) Social focus, 5) External communication, and 6) Audience. No significant difference was found concerning Social & ethical accounting and Economic focus between the US companies and the Canadian companies. Sector of Integrated forest products placed notably much more weight on Social & ethical accounting than Sectors of Consumer products and Sector of Pulp & paper & packaging in this study, whereas no other significant difference was indicated by the pair-wise comparison of means between Sector and the nine summative variables respectively. In addition, sustainability reports seem to have much clear focus on environmental-related issues than annual reports, whereas issues concerning Social Focus and External Communication received more attention in annual reports than in sustainability reports. No further significant difference was suggested between Type of report and the nine summative variables in this study. In short, the comparison between the reports by North American companies and those by the European companies showed some regional variations in CR reporting. These regional characteristics include 1) the emphasis on Social Focus by North American companies, and Environmental Focus by European companies, 2) the emphasis on partnership by North American companies, and workplace safety by European companies, 3) the emphasis on employees’ benefits by North American companies, and customers’ benefits by European companies, 4) the emphasis on commitment of top management to CR by North American companies, and existence of CR policy statements by European companies, 5) the emphasis on recycled raw materials by North American companies, and energy consumption by European companies, and 6) the emphasis on profitability by North American companies, and investing to socially/environmentally responsible targets by European companies. Such differences could also be argued to be related to the different institutional arrangements in the regions. The comparison between different sectors suggests that, Sector of Integrated forest products emphasized Social & Ethical Accounting more than Sector of Consumer products and Sector of Pulp & paper & packaging, whereas Sector of Consumer products paid more attention to Economic Focus issues than the other two sectors. The results also suggests that, sustainability reports emphasized Environmental Focus more than annual reports, whereas annual reports clearly focused on Social Focus and External Communication more than sustainability reports.

As the global economy grows rapidly, certain environmental and societal problems have become challenges. This pushes more and more global companies to integrate those concerns in their business operations, in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This thesis analyzes leading global companies’ CSR performance by using forest and IT industry as comparable cases, in order to point out the strength and weakness of CSR practice, and to indicate the proposal for CSR development. The study also describes the differences in emphasizing CSR between forest industry and IT industry, and between globally and in China market. The method of content analysis is introduced to the study. Based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines as classification frame, relevant information from the CSR reports of analyzed sampling units was classified into corresponding indicators and then transformed into the numbers that represent companies’ CSR performance. The result of the study shows that on a global scale environmental and economic responsibilities are the mainly focused areas of CSR by global companies while companies’ performance of human rights responsibility is very poor. In the future, global companies should work harder on human rights by taking actions to analyze violent risks and prevent discrimination instead of only releasing policies. Concerning differences between industries, forest product companies emphasize economic, environmental and labor practice responsibilities much more than IT companies do. IT industry is able to learn the experience from forest industry to improve its weak areas. The other finding in the study is that nearly no global companies publish separate unit CSR reports in China or sufficient information of CSR activities in China. It indicates that CSR is still at the very beginning status in China and global companies are recommended to take more responsibility for its development.

Globalization has remarkably redirected the flows of global forestry investment to developing countries since early 1990s, several leading multinational forest companies have established a huge area of Eucalyptus plantations in the past decades in Guangxi, China. Previous studies show that the establishment of Eucalyptus plantations has both positive and negative effects on rural environment and communities’ livelihoods, but few of these studies have highlighted the local communities’ perspective. This study aims to assess how the local communities perceive ecosystem services and their livelihoods after the intense land use changes to provide a deeper understanding of the impacts for companies operating or investing in the region, moreover, it also aims to complement the previous studies on forest industry managers’ perception on plantation forestry and ecosystem services in the context of China. With the guidance of two qualitative questionnaires, 5 village-level and 80 villager-level semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data in villages near Eucalyptus plantations. The results indicate that from local communities’ perspective, the establishment of Eucalyptus plantations has degraded ecosystem services, especially soil fertility, water quantity and quality, the local livelihoods have been however diversified to some extent. Some managerial implications concerning community engagement are provided according to the findings so that the forest companies can achieve better business performance in Guangxi and similar areas in future.

Cameroon is a country located in Central Africa. The country has an export-led economy, which means that the country highly depends on exports to ensure its population well-being. Sawnwood exports represent 14% of Cameroon’s total exports. Sawnwood is therefore one of the most important export products for Cameroon. Since Cameroon signed the EU-Cameroon voluntary partnership agreement policy in 2010, Cameroon’s sawnwood exports were impacted. The aim of this study is therefore, to examine the export competitive performance of Cameroon’s sawnwood industry from 2001 to 2017. Based on the literature, a set of three methods analyzing the competitiveness of Cameroon’s sawnwood exports were chosen. These methods are: The Revealed Comparative Advantage Index (RCA) and RSCA index which were used to analyze the competitiveness and international specialization of Cameroon in exporting sawnwood. The Spearman Rank Correlation was used to study the export competitive performance of Cameroon’s sawnwood across years and to analyze the level of competition between Cameroon, Finland, China and Ghana. Lastly, the Constant Market Share Analysis was used to explain the drivers of Cameroon’s sawnwood export competitiveness. This study also compiles information on forest in Cameroon and provides an overview of Cameroon sawnwood industry, it can therefore serve as a base for further studies on sawnwood in Cameroon. Results show that Cameroon has a competitive advantage and is the highest specialized in exporting sawnwood compared to Finland, China and Ghana. Nevertheless, the export competitive performance of Cameroon across years is not continuous and highly depends on external factors. Results also show that Cameroon has reduced its exports to EU and has diversified its importers portfolio by redirecting its exports trade flows towards Asia, especially China which has less stringent imports policies compared to EU. Cameroon will need to improve its production technologies and management practices to ensure a long run competitiveness on the global sawnwood market.

Wooden furniture industry is a traditional low-technology based and labor intensive industry (Kaplinsky & Readman, 2000), which is highly recommended for global outsourcing. Besides, the raising of “China plus one” manufacturing strategy made Southeast Asian countries became new investment destinations. In case of Vietnam, the largest exporter of wood products in Southeast Asian, wooden furniture industry is highly export-oriented with a fast growing rate especially since 2008 (MARD, 2012). While the global economic crisis in 2008 has a vital impact on the national economy, it is reported that the foreign subsidiaries in furniture industry in Vietnam have outstripped their local competitors (VNS, 2013). Despite the importance of foreign subsidiaries in Vietnam, there is lack of study regarding their competitive advantage and strategy. Investigating on how foreign subsidiaries respond to the external challenges is essential to support strategic knowledge on managing industry? Under the influence of market turbulence. This empirical study used qualitative data from interviews with eight managers of foreign furniture processing subsidiaries in Vietnam. Results indicated that under the influences of global downturn, managers have become more proactive and flexible in their strategic planning when facing with chaotic turbulence, which brings both opportunities and challenges. The study pointed out that the negative impact of global recession was passed through in later time in low-cost manufacturing countries and business risks could be minimized especially in companies with a strong pool of intangible resources (reputation, technology, innovation capability). Despite its complexity, recession was not completely seen a threat, yet the managers perceived it as external turbulence from which organizations can benefit but only if they choose the right strategic orientation.

This thesis aims to assess the state and development of beekeeping in Uruguay. Uruguay exports more than 90% of its honey and supplies regularly to the demanding markets in the EU and the US. As marginalized actors in the global honey chain, the beekeepers' livelihoods are largely dependent on the shifts of globalization, predominantly on the patterns of global economy. Proliferation of voluntary certification schemes such as Fairtrade International and European Union Organic Farming have become evident features of these patterns. Adoption of voluntary certification schemes has impacted particularly the development trajectories of smallholders, which is why particular attention in this thesis was laid on them. It was, however, quickly understood the development is dependent on several factors on different levels. To conceptualize these levels, value chain governance and voluntary certification schemes in them were seen shaping the livelihood outcomes of the smallholders. Combining governance and horizontal livelihood approaches, which represents the main innovation of this thesis, was used to identify action points and upgrading strategies feasible for the beekeepers as actors engaged in the global honey chain. In addition, this thesis further highlights the context of beekeeping as a livelihood, honey as a commodity with certain features and market dynamics, as well as Uruguay as the main geographical scope. Research methods were qualitative. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2014 with four different respondent groups along the global honey chain: importers of honey in the EU; representatives of local institutions and export agencies in Uruguay; and the beekeepers themselves, which of some were organized in cooperatives. From the collected data, the development trajectories were analyzed deductively to identify the viable strategies to improve sustainable livelihood outcomes. Based on results, the global honey chain was found buyer-driven since the buyers bear the most powerful role. The structure replicates features of market and captive types of governance, suggesting there is a high degree of power asymmetry and coordination. Higher coordination, however, favors successful upgrading. By identifying the activities performed by actors in the chain, the action point was found in the production node due to the recent increase in activities. High costs of inputs and low margins throughout the chain were observed, particularly in the export node. Beekeepers' baseline conditions were determined as access to livelihood assets, which were found generally weak. State of the fundamental aspect of beekeeping, access to natural assets, was found alarming. The decreased floral resources in Uruguay are due to the rapid proliferation of changes in land use, accelerated by the main vulnerability causing shocks in production and with implications on prices: the climate variability. A key finding, however, was that the proliferation of Eucalyptus grandis in Uruguay has created a dependency by compensating the losses in production based on other flowerings. Furthermore, the emergence of pests has brought risk of losing colonies and increasing costs in treatment and prevention. Natural assets set the main constraint over sustainability of beekeeping in Uruguay, but possibilities to compensate smallholders was found among social assets, which clearly were not optimized at their current levels. This notion largely represents the main conclusion in this thesis: horizontal contractualization of the beekeepers through collective action is the only strategy with a reasonable balance between revenues and risks. In all other scenarios, the risks are likely to become unbearable, unless an external agent would be willing to guarantee the risks up to some point to initiate the process. Collective action was found as a precondition of vertical contractualization, which could include affiliation in voluntary certification schemes. Fairtrade International was predominantly found as a more attractive scheme, but could in this context benefit only a large cooperative with already good resources. Affiliation in a certification scheme, however, would not remove the main constraints faced by the sector in Uruguay, which are the decreasing production per hive and the costs running relatively faster than the prices received, resulting in a decreasing profitability. Whereas more beekeepers are excluded from the chain, the ones remaining practice beekeeping largely based on love and tradition. Future research is suggested to take a more sophisticated approach to cost-benefit analyses to support further decision-making on the level of the beekeepers, as well as on the level of policy-makers. In addition, prospective approaches to develop and assess the potential of systems such as payments for ecosystem services in the context of beekeeping are highly recommended.

The paper industry environment is going through changes. Traditionally in the Western Europe and the North America the paper consumption has increased along with the economic and population growth. Despite the growth of these indicators, the newsprint consumption in North America has been declining since the late 1980's and the magazine paper consumptions have also started to decline. Also in the Western Europe signs of maturing can be seen. The paper consumption growth is assumed to be happening elsewhere. The purpose of this study is to estimate potential magazine paper consumption of three different socio-economic environments up to 2020. In this study the focus was on three country groups, clusters, which the assignment company had formed with grouping analysis. In the theoretical background of the study the previous studies of paper demand and the methods used were examined. Also the paper grades and their end-uses were studied. The empirical part of this study was conducted by using both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Trend-analysis was used in quantitative part and PESTE-analysis was used in qualitative part. Through these analysis the key drivers of each cluster where identified and the development trend of consumption was estimated with the help of the analysis and the lifecycle model used by the company. Based on the socio-economic factors, the consumption is on a positive growth track but the speed of the growth cannot be estimated due to the influence of media substitution among others.