eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The purpose of this thesis is to examine the use of external resources in order to expand the boundaries of professional competencies. This means external resources can be used for example in strategy making decisions or for performance analysis purposes. This topic is examined with the help of an IT-based analysis tool in the context of football. ACADEMIC BACKGROUNG AND METHODOLOGY The literature part is mainly based on Resource-Based View (RBV), as it provides interesting insights on how a firm’s resource base should be managed so that the resources can generate a competitive advantage to the firm. Still, neither RBV nor other strategic management theories are able to provide unambiguous solutions, how the use of external resources, such as analysts or fans of an organization, should be organized. This thesis is set to fill that research gap. However, the more there are external resources used for analysis purposes, the more there are heterogeneity and uncertainty. Thus, there is a positive relationship between heterogeneity and uncertainty. Heterogeneity means the broad scale of analyses by external resources and uncertainty stems from the difficulty to draw conclusions from a vast set of analyses. In this thesis I examine, does the use of an IT-based analysis tool lower the uncertainty but maintain the heterogeneity, because the IT-based analysis tool codes, structures and shares the information to external resources. In addition, I examine that by controlling the form of cooperation and level of experience of external resources, can the uncertainty be further lowered without lowering the original level of heterogeneity. In the context of the experiments the ITbased tool is represented by a video analysis tool. I examine these issues by executing two, exploratory experiments and conduct interviews with key persons. Thus, the methodology of this thesis is based on case-methodology. FINDINGS The findings of this study suggest that the use of video analysis improves the quality of the evaluations by external resources. It is recommended to use experienced external resources, who have a proven track record and are professionals within the field, for analysis purposes. Also those persons, who know the methods of the organization, are able to provide useful and innovative analyses when they accomplish the analysis in co-operation. The study suggests that the use of those resources, who do not know the organization or are not professionals, is not recommended. Keywords: Resource-Based View, Heterogeneity, Uncertainty, Video-based tools, Resources