This case study focuses on the intentions of public sector transformation. In particular, on a Swedish public authority, the National Rail Administration (NRA) this is studied and analysed. As in other parts of the Swedish public sector, the management of this authority is planning and executing ‘marketisation’ reforms. Parts of NRA’s monopoly are to be ended and to be guided by the market. The aim of the study is to examine how conflicts between management and employees are shaped according to the changes taking place. Firstly, the study assesses how management interprets the new demands put upon the organisation and translates them into action. These actions illustrated as changes from 'monopoly to market' in order to be a legitimate business competitor; from ‘bureaucracy to flexibility’ in order to enhance competence and changing employees' identities from 'technique to tactic' in order to serve the customer properly The study then examines the management-driven implementation of these reforms; and how the employees respond to the changes from a resistance perspective. The discussion highlights what happens when the new management-driven organising principles meet the old, technology-oriented principles of employees. This contributes to a deepened understanding of why organisational changes made in the name of ‘market’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘customer’ meet resistance in the public sector. From a resistance perspective the changes are understood as ‘rationalisation’, work intensification’ and increased ‘individual control’, which per se leads to undermining of the traditional safety culture and technical skills. The customer orientation is met with highly ironic attitudes and interpreted as ‘infantilisation’ of the employees. The concluding remarks are that conflict and antagonism is ever present in organisations and in this case manifest in three domains, legitimating, restructuring and revaluating, and between management perspective and resistance perspective.

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Retailers in rural Saskatchewan are having to contend with two predominant trendsrural and retail restructuring. Decreasing rural populations, increased consumer mobility, and the chronic instability of primary industries such as agriculture and forestry continue to impact rural communities in the province. The growing presence of multinational corporations, the drive for economies of scale, and the centralization of services into larger urban centers are all influencing the retail sector, particularly in rural areas. In response to these trends, retail co-operatives operating in Northern and Central Saskatchewan have joined a larger urban-based co-op in Prince Albert to form a regional co-operative. Co-operative theory suggests this regional structure may create internal obstacles for co-ops that differ from those of private firms, as co-operatives must consider the implications of reorganization on membership structures and member relations. While most of the empirical investigation has focused on large agricultural co-operatives, less attention has been afforded to consumer co-operatives.<p>Through interviews with the delegates and managers of the Prince Albert Co-operative Association (PACA), this study examines how a multi-branch consumer co-operative has adapted to the present rural and retail milieu. It investigates the new relationships that have emerged among the key stakeholders including members, delegates, and managers as well as the new relations between the major structures, namely the branches and the central body. The research is a starting point for understanding how member and enterprise interests are mediated, communicated, and coordinated within a regional co-operative. Delegates are the focal point of the study as they play an integral role in all of these relations. The findings of the study suggest that while new relationships do form within a multi-branch system, the primary relationship between members and their local co-op branch remains relatively unaffected. Further, the study on the PACA adds to Fairtloughs (2005) work on business structural forms called triarchies. It is argued that the integration of hierarchies, heterachies and responsible autonomy in the form of a federated network reinforces the staying power of the co-op in smaller communities.

This paper examines tracking stock issuances, a relatively uncommon method of equity restructuring. I utilize likely the entire population of tracking stock issuances on US exchanges – from the first ever in October 1984 to the most recent one in November 2009 – in order to analyze the effect that they have on the shortrun excess returns of issuing companies. I analyze the excess returns of companies that issue tracking stock that trade in the US, one year before and one year after completion of their restructuring. The results of this paper indicate that companies perform worse relative to a benchmark market index in the year following their tracking stock restructuring. However, it is important to note that the number of observations studied is relatively small, as there have been only 41 issuances of tracking stock since the first recorded case. This suggests that more data and greater research are necessary in order to more accurately measure the effects of tracking stock restructurings. With the limited data available, I find that there is a statistically significant decrease in excess stock returns following tracking stock issuances.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

Retailers in rural Saskatchewan are having to contend with two predominant trendsrural and retail restructuring. Decreasing rural populations, increased consumer mobility, and the chronic instability of primary industries such as agriculture and forestry continue to impact rural communities in the province. The growing presence of multinational corporations, the drive for economies of scale, and the centralization of services into larger urban centers are all influencing the retail sector, particularly in rural areas. In response to these trends, retail co-operatives operating in Northern and Central Saskatchewan have joined a larger urban-based co-op in Prince Albert to form a regional co-operative. Co-operative theory suggests this regional structure may create internal obstacles for co-ops that differ from those of private firms, as co-operatives must consider the implications of reorganization on membership structures and member relations. While most of the empirical investigation has focused on large agricultural co-operatives, less attention has been afforded to consumer co-operatives.<p>Through interviews with the delegates and managers of the Prince Albert Co-operative Association (PACA), this study examines how a multi-branch consumer co-operative has adapted to the present rural and retail milieu. It investigates the new relationships that have emerged among the key stakeholders including members, delegates, and managers as well as the new relations between the major structures, namely the branches and the central body. The research is a starting point for understanding how member and enterprise interests are mediated, communicated, and coordinated within a regional co-operative. Delegates are the focal point of the study as they play an integral role in all of these relations. The findings of the study suggest that while new relationships do form within a multi-branch system, the primary relationship between members and their local co-op branch remains relatively unaffected. Further, the study on the PACA adds to Fairtloughs (2005) work on business structural forms called triarchies. It is argued that the integration of hierarchies, heterachies and responsible autonomy in the form of a federated network reinforces the staying power of the co-op in smaller communities.

Since Mainland China advocated economic reform in 1978, the government appealed to many Taiwanese firms invested with a purpose of boosting trade and investing in this fast growing market. Some of the Taiwanese firms took this opportunity to expand and attain more profit and gradually developed into partners with major international enterprises in the supply chains. In order to increase the visibility in the world and increase the fundraising scale, numerous overseas Taiwanese firms chose to be listed in capital markets. A drastic change in government policy was seen in Taiwan since 2008. The regulations regarding foreign corporations listing in Taiwan capital markets have been largely loosened, which led to a sudden surge of appetite among successful overseas Taiwanese corporations for returning to Taiwan and be primary listed or secondary listed. This study is focused on overseas Taiwanese corporations based in Mainland China, where most of the primary listed firms operate and manufacture products. The main pragmatic issues discussed in this study include operating, managing, accounting and tax, and customs procedures¡Ketc. with a focus on illustration and analysis of tax related risks these firms encounter due to regulations in Mainland China when doing overseas investment restructuring, equity transfer and so on. This study not only investigate the issues of regulations for primary listing of securities in Taiwan, but also utilize case analysis to depict the development of primary listing oriented overseas investment structure and the frame of controlling of share holder¡¦s stock holding structures. Through practical experiences and diagrams to reveal the overseas operation and trading models in illustrations, the study has generated following verified summaries: 1. Analysis of regulations in China and the risk of taxes when corporations trying to make adjustment of overseas investment structure and transition of stock equity. 2. Study Taiwanese entrepurers or foreign companies, most of them are conglomerates companies or family owned business with centralized stock equity where they have the capability to highly conrol the core copany while they go public with the regard to the ownership and the level of controls in operation. 3. Utilize the formate of stock holding by overseas investment compay or through trust, to fullfill the consideration of equity diversification or reduce the burden of taxation.

Organizational downsizing has been a popular business strategy widely used by enterprises all over the world since the 80¡¦s. Unfortunately, according to the findings of many investigations and researches, the results of downsizing are both positive and negative. Not only the improvements of firms¡¦ performance can¡¦t be ensured, it also brings the devastated consequences to employees. They eventually create chaos to the employees¡¦ families and to the entire society. In order to solve this important issue of the societies, this research reviewed the relative literatures across different research fields, such as organization change, strategy and strategic human resource management field. It found that firm¡¦s dynamic strategy capability and strategic human resource management practices, asserted by strategy and strategic human resource management field as the essential mechanisms for ensuring firm¡¦s competitive advantage, are the two key interventional variables between downsizing strategies and post-downsizing firm performance. Therefore, 110 MNCs and local Taiwanese companies were chosen as the samples to empirically prove the relationships among these variables. The insights and findings in this research may contribute to the theory development in organization change, strategy and strategic human resource management field and to the managerial practice as well.

Restructuring processes provide key dynamics for the development and transformation of industrial structures. Industrial restructuring can be conceptualized by product and/or process innovations including technological improvements and relocation of industry. Such forms of transformation can be investigated by a critical examination of industrial relations. This thesis is motivated from such a consideration of understanding and interpreting industrial transformation in a specific time and space setting. Textile and garment industry is a good case to explore the abovementioned concepts. Firstly global and national dimensions of industry are investigated. It is understood that quota free regulations of trade and relocation of production have been shaping a fierce global competition by which employment, supply and marketing relations change dramatically at the world scale. In such new competitive conditions Turkish textile and garment industry has been losing its growth dynamics in terms of price competition advantage. Secondly Denizli case is investigated. In-depth interviews with firms, related chambers and unions are made during field survey. Thesis argued that Denizli has locked to a passive exporter role. In this lock-in process, the sector could not transform itself by innovative modes of restructuring. The passive exporter role disables region to adopt innovative product strategies and to shift production to other regions where cost cutting opportunities are provided. Industrialists decrease production costs informally including employment unregistered workers. However although survey results point out locked industrial dynamics, Denizli region still have the potential of regional development thanks to its entrepreneurial sprit and rising other economic sectors.

While there has been an ongoing transformation of traditional agriculture and new regulations on agricultural institutional formations and market structures, the aim of this thesis is tracing forward to identify who the losers and the winners of this process would be. The background question is about the new faces of the rural areas and, the study considers what the current importance of agriculture in those areas is and if rural areas as living formations are in transition, then what will be the implications of this restructuring in terms of agriculture. These issues are investigated with reference to the operational structure of cotton sector at Adana and, the cotton producers at the three villages in KarataS District are examined as an unit of concern.