In our current and continuously globalising world, opportunities do not have borders any more. This fact encourages the rise of international immigrant entrepreneurs who are not afraid of leaving their home country in order to exploit opportunities in foreign territories. Indeed, these opportunities do not come with ready-made instructions. Therefore, it challenges entrepreneurs to evolve in an unpredictable environment and to leverage contingencies to make their business prosper. An intensive use of their social capital, network, self-efficacy, empathy and a creative use of their resources figure in among the key success factors of a venture, especially in the early stage of its life. Based on previous literature reviews regarding entrepreneurship, international entrepreneurship, immigrant entrepreneurship and a longitudinal case study from 2008–2015 which uses an auto-ethnographic approach to analyze the data, we have been able to determine key characteristics of the international immigrant entrepreneur’s behavior and illustrate how effectual principles dictate their actions. This paper aims to contribute to the discussions concerning immigrant entrepreneurship, give some insights regarding the entrepreneurial journey and encourage more persons to embrace this path, especially students.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe different strategic roles of the sales manager in key account management. This thesis looks at the different strategic roles of the key account management (KAM) from the perspective of the sales manager. Previous researches have mainly based on fact that sales manager responds to top-management, and key account manager responds to sales manager. Sales manager is typically seen as key account manager’s direct superior and at the same time, sales manager is responsible for key account manager’s performance to the top-management. According Flaherty and others (2012) sales literature follows a top-down approach and based on sales management specific behaviors to improve poor performance. Nevertheless, today’s research has had more nuances that sales manager’s and key account managers job is more collaboration. Reality of today’s sales manager role have changed from top-down, leader-centered paradigm to more like collaboration which comes a vast network of complex relationships (Flaherty and others 2012). This thesis tries to show that sales manager’s role is not only to be key account managers superior. Key account manager’s and sales manager’s dynamic relationship is unnerved in previous researches. Actually, key account manager and sales manager has intense interaction and the information flows one to another and also they both effect on each other’s performance. Sales manager and key account manager, as a conclusion, can be seen as team more than monitored — supervisor partners. According Flaherty and others (2012) reality of today’s sales manager role have changed from top-down, leader- centered paradigm to more like collaboration which comes a vast network of complex relationships. The findings from the interview shows the same; all the interviewees said that nowadays sales managers should collaborate with KAMs. Still, there are seen the effect of regulations, rules and laws which change the style of leadership. Also sales manager take part on operative work. The previous academic literature stated that sales manager position is like invisible. That means sales manager won’t take part that much on operative work. In every interview the result was that operative work with customers is one part of every sales manager job in practice. Motivating KAMs to perform better is important. In a sales oriented organizations everybody knows how much the expected sales target are for KAM’s and at the same time sales manager need to provide all the needed rules that KAM’s could achieve those sales targets. Also this thesis finds out that organizational culture could effect on sales manager’s performance. It could create boundaries between sales manager and KAM but also it could provide framework which help everyday operations in the organization.

Prior research on capability upgrading in developing country firms has emphasised the importance of gaining legitimacy in the public domain. For technology-based firms this implies disclosure of knowledge assets through patents and scientific publications. In the absence of a managed approach to intellectual property (IP) protection, this disclosure often takes place in a desultory manner with disappointing results. Therefore, this research focuses on the formalisation of IP as a key indicator of the evolution of a developing country technology-based MNC using Sasol as a case study. The paucity of research into South African firms compared to the abundance of literature on the evolution of firms from other developing countries provides further justification for this study. Patent and publication data associated with Sasol (1955-2005) was analysed using multidimensional scaling and multiple regression techniques in order to examine the nature of disclosure. Patent value was estimated using forward citations and an adaptation of Putnam’s Value Index, while journal impact factors served as a proxy for the value of scientific publications. The role of international connections was investigated by examining co-authorships. The evidence suggests that formalisation of IP promotes an awareness of the purpose of disclosure, enhancing indigenous capability to appropriate returns from R&D and gain legitimacy within the global research community. This evolutionary trajectory may be accelerated by leveraging international research connections. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / "A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Laws, Graduate Department of Law, University of Toronto." Adviser: Ian Lee.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Gdańsk University, 2006. / "DUV Wirtschaftswissenschaften". Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of South Carolina, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-245).

Thesis advisor: Peter N. Ireland / This dissertation deals with the macroeconomic implications of fiscal policy in small open economies with a particular emphasis on emerging economies. I use both empirical and theoretical approaches to distinguish key difference in the design of fiscal policy between emerging and developed economies. I also analyze the macroeconomic consequences of differences in the conduct of fiscal policy. Thus, the dissertation is focused on the interplay between fiscal policy and business cycle dynamics. Recent policy challenges in developed economies, such as monetary authorities grappling with the zero lower bound on short run nominal rates and fiscal stimulus packages emerging as an important policy tool, have sparked renewed academic interest in the topic of fiscal policy and business cycles. Institutional and macroeconomic features in emerging economies make the macroeconomic aspects of fiscal policy an important research agenda and one to which this dissertation contributes. A number of papers have documented fiscal policy pro-cyclicality in terms of stronger co-movement between government expenditure and macroeconomic fundamentals in emerging and developing economies. This feature of the data raises 2 important questions: 1) does fiscal policy reinforce the macroeconomic cycle in these countries leading to heighten macroeconomic volatility ("when it rains, it pours"), and 2) is the fiscal stance in these economies due to unique macroeconomic features or is it the consequence of institutional and political imperfections? The first chapter, titled "When it rains, it pours": fiscal policy, credit constraints and business cycles in emerging and developed economies, sets out to answer these questions by comparatively studying a group of developed and emerging economies. I estimate a panel structural vector autoregressive model to investigate if government consumption expenditure responds more pro-cyclically to fundamentals and what role international financial conditions play for the fiscal stance and for the volatility of the cycle in emerging and developed economies. My findings suggest that the response to output fluctuations is not systematically different for emerging governments relative to their developed counterparts. However, emerging governments curtail spending in response to increases in the sovereign borrowing rate which forces their consumption expenditure to act more pro-cyclically. I find evidence of higher fiscal discretion in emerging economies. However, the efficacy of government consumption expenditure is substantially lower in emerging than in developed economies. Thus, fiscal policy ends up being responsible for a lower share of business cycle volatility in emerging than in developed economies. In the second chapter, titled Estimating the Dynamics of Fiscal Financing in Emerging Economies, I propose a strategy for estimating the government financing rule for an emerging economy. The estimation uses the structural VAR impulse responses obtained in the previous chapter to discipline the parameters of a small open economy real business cycle model with a public sector. The parameters can be split into two groups: those influencing the effectiveness of fiscal policy and the parameters governing the financing of the exogenous stream of government consumption. The empirical response to interest rate shocks puts restrictions on the first group of parameters governing the size of the multiplier. The empirical response to a government consumption shock can be used to obtain estimates of the fiscal policy rule. I construct a model with a role for both interest rate shocks and government consumption shocks. A natural estimation approach in this case is impulse response matching. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

In today???s highly competitive business environment, client perceived value has become increasingly important to practitioners and business researchers as it is believed to be central to client decision-making, satisfaction and client retention. However, there are few insights as to what constitutes client perceived value and what are its antecedents, especially in the context of international, professional business-to-business (B2B) services. This study thus addressed two key questions: (i) what are the antecedents of client perceived value in an international, professional B2B service setting?; and (ii) how do these determinants influence client perceived performance and value under different contingency conditions (e.g., perceptions of country-oforigin (COO) and client experience)? The research was undertaken in two phases: Phase 1 included a literature review covering services marketing, international marketing, resource-based theory, contingency theory as well as an exploratory research amongst eight dyadic case studies. The objectives were to identify the key variables that contribute to client perceived performance and value; to fine tune the key constructs adopted from the literature; and to verify the linkage between the resource-based view (RBV) of a firm and client perceived value. By drawing on the theories mentioned above, and the results from the exploratory research, a conceptual model and a series of hypotheses were developed. The data used to test the model in Phase 2 was collected from 218 client firms in both Malaysia and Thailand. The data was collected through a mail survey with a net response rate of 32.9%, and was analysed via structural equation modelling, regression analysis and subgroup analysis. The results show that the key antecedents of perceived performance which in turn drives client value, included technical skills, customer orientation, innovation and firm reputation. The findings also suggest that COO moderates the relationships between these antecedents and perceived performance, while client experience moderates the association between perceived performance and value. The results provide a better understanding of value perceived by the B2B clients in an international setting. The academic contributions of this thesis are: the linkage of RBV and the services paradigm in an international context; the understanding of client perceived value and its antecedents; and the establishment of metric equivalence of measures employed across two countries (Malaysia and Thailand). Finally, the managerial contributions include guidance for exporting firms in terms of resource allocation to achieve competitive advantage; utilising the COO effect in promotion; and managing client value perceptions in international markets.