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This dissertation examines the likelihood of worker-firm separations in the context of Great Britain and Greece by using high quality databases upon the personnel records from two firms in the banking industry, one British and one Greek. Duration models are estimated to examine employee turnover in relation to a number of predictor variables, well established in the literature, at a comparative level between the national settings. The available data for the British bank cover the period of 1989-2001, while comparative data are available for the Greek organisation over the same period. These longitudinal data provide information relevant to each firm 's workforce in accordance to demographics, and workers' occupational, organisational and external environment characteristics. The analysis of the data is unde11aken through both the formulation of parametric Weibull) and non-parametric (Cox) duration (survival) models, exploring the effect of particular determinants on employee turnover over time. I also estimate competing risk models identifying the different outcomes of/reasons for worker-firm separations over time. The analysis also captures the effect of unobserved heterogeneity across workers as approached by the Heckman-Singer model. A focal point of the study is the findings on workers' performance and turnover indicating that it is sustained, rather than instantaneous, performance that is linked to separations. In common with some earlier studies, I found qualified support for a u-shaped relationship between performance and separations, but only in the case of the British data. I provide further evidence of the well documented suggestion in the literature towards the negative effect of age to turnover behaviour. Both of the banks under investigation experienced substantial reorganisation activity over the time period considered, and I found that the year following this was characterised by increased separation propensities. While some findings are consistent across the firms in the two countries studied, I found that single men are more likely than their female counterparts to quit in the bank based in Britain, but less likely to quit in that based in Greece. Although age appeared to be also related non-linearly to turnover, the propensities of British workers to be separated from the bank start to increase at an earlier point than their Greek counterparts. My suggestions on why incompatible evidence is derived across the datasets were based on withstanding differences in culture, institutional arrangements and labour market characteristics between the countries.

The study was designed to explore the distinctive attributes of firms' resources and their relationship with sustained competitive advantage (SCA). The emphasis is on the Human Resource-Based View (HRBV) of the firm and the strategic and managerial conditions under which human resources are a potential source of SCA. The objectives can be stated more specifically as follow: o To develop a resource-based view model of the firm that adequately describes the role of human resources, their management and human resource practices in the attainment of sustained competitive advantage. o To empirically test this model and in so doing estimate the contribution of human resources, their management and human resource practices to sustained competitive advantage. o To revise the HRBV model in the light of the empirical findings. Chapters I to 4 develop an HRBV model and its context. Chapters 5 to 8 deal with its empirical evaluation. Chapter 9 presents the conclusions of the empirical evaluation and revisions.

This research study aims to explore the current practices, policies and roles of training and development (T&D) within Jordanian banking organisations. It is an exploration of all the issues concerning T&D practices in terms of how the T&D process is conducted (how training needs are assessed, how T&D is delivered and how T&D programmes are evaluated); exploring top managers', T&D and HRM personnel's attitudes towards the importance of T&D in improving employees and organisational performance and the strategic position and roles of T&D in their organisations. This study aims to investigate all the problems and challenges that face T&D activities and searches for practical suggestions to improve the effectiveness of these activities. Finally, it aims to contribute to the understanding of HRD in differing cultural contexts. This research is mainly focused on top managers', T&D and HRM attitudes and viewpoints (perception) towards the research objectives. The research has adopted a multi-methods approach. The data were gathered through a combination of semi-structured interviews with 15 top managers and a survey questionnaire addressed to the persons responsible for T&D within the targeted organisations. All Jordanian banking organisations were targeted in this study rather than a representative sample of these organisations; however, a purposive sampling strategy was used in choosing the participants of this study. In total, 15 top managers and 38 T&D and HRM managers took part in the study. The study reveals that, in the majority of the organisations, there is an absence of systematic employee training needs assessment and of effective procedures for evaluation. The banks prefer to send their employees to external training providers rather than train them in the banks. The most commonly used delivery method is off-the-job training, namely lectures, seminars and case studies. T&D is not characterised by strategic human resource development criteria (SHRD) and it plays a reactive rather than a proactive role in these organisations. T&D improves employees' skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, but it does not increase employees' commitment and satisfaction. Also, T&D does not impact on profit, innovation and change, sales, absenteeism, turnover rate, job satisfaction and cost saving in their organisations, but it increases customer satisfaction, quality service and productivity. T&D faces many problems: lack of motivation among employees to attend T&D programmes; inaccurate TNA processes; poor training planning in terms of contents and delivery methods; sending inappropriate persons to the training programmes and lack of on-the-job training. To improve T&D effectiveness the researcher recommends many actions and decisions which need to be undertaken, as shown in sections 6.10,7.6 and 8.2.4. Finally, this study contributes to knowledge on the academic and practical levels as one of the first attempts at empirically investigating the nature and the extent of strategic T&D activities in Jordanian banks, identifying the main concerns and problems which face T&D activities, in addition to recognizing the vital roles of T&D in improving the organisations' performances. Thus, it raises the general understanding of the current T&D practices and management in Jordanian banks. It has brought together a large body of knowledge in management T&D, T&D in Arab countries, strategic T&D and T&D and performance relevant literature and unifies diverse schools of thoughts into one integrative perspective. This research integrates, refines and extends the empirical work conducted in the field of T&D in developing countries, since there is a lack of such studies. It raises some of the implications for managers and consultants, such as considering employees' motivation, enthusiasm and willingness, T&D time, the importance of incentive reward when managing T&D. This study provides useful guidelines in the form of the critical elements and factors that can enhance success in T&D in terms of TNA, training implementation, methods and evaluation process. The study also proposes several directions for future research.

To cope with constant changes in the economic environment, organizations continuously strive to implement appropriate business models that will contribute to increased productivity, reduced costs and a competitive advantage. Organisations need however to choose among different business models and select the option that offer the greatest potential to improve their service delivery, reducing costs and enable them to focus on their core business. This study conceptualized the shared services business model, by focusing on key factors, such as the rationale for implementing a shared services unit over other business models, establishing the processes followed by the banking industry with the implementation of a human capital shared services model, identifying the advantages versus disadvantages of the implementation of the model and to provide recommendations for the development and implementation of shared services models within specific organisational context. The researcher conducted mixed method research to address the research problem which incorporated both qualitative and quantitative research. In the study research was conducted in three phases. During the first phase exploratory research was conducted, consisting of desk study research and industry reports as well as surveys, periodicals and academic publications.During the second phase qualitative research was conducted, through semi-structured interviews. Findings from this research phase were used during the third phase, which was a quantitative study, whereby information gathered from the interviews informed the design of questionnaires. It is evident from the results that there were many similarities between the analyses of the interviews and questionnaires in relation to the literature review. Many commonalities amongst the three banks were identified during the implementation process and in many instances corroborated statements by key authors during the literature review. Both the interviews and analysis of the questionnaires confirmed cost savings, improved customer services and standardization as benefits of a shared services model. It was concluded that the implementation of a human capital shared services model within the banking sector in South Africa contribute positively to each of the banks used in the sample, both from a cost perspective as improvement of efficiencies. It was further concluded that the processes, systems and people involved in the implementation process are critical to successful implementation. Based on the information gathered the researcher recommends that a project team be appointed from inception to finalization of the implementation of a shared services model, which will be required to deal with the planning phase, feasibility study and the full implementation plan relating to the implementation of the model. In practice, this study will provide shared services managers with insights with regards to the implementation process to be followed for implementing a human capital shared services model. It can also provide valuable insight to management with regard to important or key factors to consider, ensuring the effective implementation of the model. Findings of this study may also be extended to other organizations in South Africa, considering the implementation of the shared services model. / Graduate School for Business Leadership / Thesis (M.B.A.)

To cope with constant changes in the economic environment, organizations continuously strive to implement appropriate business models that will contribute to increased productivity, reduced costs and a competitive advantage. Organisations need however to choose among different business models and select the option that offer the greatest potential to improve their service delivery, reducing costs and enable them to focus on their core business. This study conceptualized the shared services business model, by focusing on key factors, such as the rationale for implementing a shared services unit over other business models, establishing the processes followed by the banking industry with the implementation of a human capital shared services model, identifying the advantages versus disadvantages of the implementation of the model and to provide recommendations for the development and implementation of shared services models within specific organisational context. The researcher conducted mixed method research to address the research problem which incorporated both qualitative and quantitative research. In the study research was conducted in three phases. During the first phase exploratory research was conducted, consisting of desk study research and industry reports as well as surveys, periodicals and academic publications.During the second phase qualitative research was conducted, through semi-structured interviews. Findings from this research phase were used during the third phase, which was a quantitative study, whereby information gathered from the interviews informed the design of questionnaires. It is evident from the results that there were many similarities between the analyses of the interviews and questionnaires in relation to the literature review. Many commonalities amongst the three banks were identified during the implementation process and in many instances corroborated statements by key authors during the literature review. Both the interviews and analysis of the questionnaires confirmed cost savings, improved customer services and standardization as benefits of a shared services model. It was concluded that the implementation of a human capital shared services model within the banking sector in South Africa contribute positively to each of the banks used in the sample, both from a cost perspective as improvement of efficiencies. It was further concluded that the processes, systems and people involved in the implementation process are critical to successful implementation. Based on the information gathered the researcher recommends that a project team be appointed from inception to finalization of the implementation of a shared services model, which will be required to deal with the planning phase, feasibility study and the full implementation plan relating to the implementation of the model. In practice, this study will provide shared services managers with insights with regards to the implementation process to be followed for implementing a human capital shared services model. It can also provide valuable insight to management with regard to important or key factors to consider, ensuring the effective implementation of the model. Findings of this study may also be extended to other organizations in South Africa, considering the implementation of the shared services model. / Graduate School for Business Leadership / M. Tech. (Business Administration)