The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the management of one of Britain's most important multination companies, J & P Coats Ltd., for the time period 1890-1960, a topic which has not hitherto fore been examined in detail. In particular, the thesis will look at the firm's financial and accounting systems, insofar as the surviving records permit, going on to examine the system of committees by means of which the enterprise was controlled and directed over the time concerned. The thesis reveals that the financial system run by the company reflects the tight control exercised by the committee system, and indeed, was indispensable to it. As a theoretical focus, the study compares what is found with the writings of Alfred D. Chandler Jnr., who held that, in general, British family capital and management of businesses inhibited their growth and development as compared with firms in the USA, in particular. The thesis concludes that Coats did not fit this interpretation, and was highly successful in spite of departing from the M-Form organisational structure regarded by Chandler as the key to the success of large American enterprises. The thesis also highlights some errors made by Chandler in his discussion of J & P Coats. Chapter One deals with the sources used for the study as well as the theoretical focus, and provides a literature review. Chapter Two gives a short prehistory of J & P Coats up to 1890. Chapter Three sets the scene for the main part of the study by providing, for the first time, an outline business history of the firm between 1890 and 1960. Accounting systems and financial management arrangements are considered in Chapter Four, followed in Chapter Five by a detailed study of the management committees used to run J & P Coats. Chapter Six contains a final discussion and conclusions. It is clear from the above that the thesis makes a major contribution to knowledge in several ways. It provides the first in-depth study of the management of one of Britain's largest and most successful multinational companies, clarifying the relationships between organisational structure and financial arrangements. At the same time it provides evidence which further destabilises the theories of Chandler, concluding that Coats' approach to management, although in some ways unique, was appropriate to its aims.

The thesis addresses the question of how to establish an appropriate methodology for monitoring sustainable tourism development (STD) in Samoa, an independent small island state in the South Pacific. The theoretical starting point and common thread throughout this study is that sustainable development can and must form the paramount context for STD. The author adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on innovative research in the field of ecology and ecosystem management in order to gain understanding of new and emerging interpretations of sustainability and their implications for STD. Three guiding principles are identified and consequently form the conceptual foundation for the work. That understanding and implementing STD requires: i) a comprehensive systemic approach; ii) a stakeholder-driven focus; and iii) the adaptive capacity to accommodate the non-linear behaviour of complex systems. These principles are tested in the context of the development of a place-based STD monitoring programme in Samoa. In collaboration with the Samoa Visitors Bureau (SVB) and a multidisciplinary stakeholder committee, a set of STD objectives for Samoa were formulated, 20 indicators were identified to monitor progress towards their achievement, and a monitoring programme was established to utilise the results. The objectives and corresponding indicators are broad in their coverage of tourism and sustainable development issues, have stakeholder resonance, and are feasible considering the technical and human capacity currently available in SVB. The monitoring programme also has the flexibility to adapt to change as it inevitably occurs. The work undertaken in Samoa demonstrates that as well as generating timely information on the current state of STD, if a stakeholder approach is adopted, monitoring can also provide the opportunity for considerable social learning, and help bridge the gap between indicator development and indicator use, ensuring indicator results are actually used to change the way tourism is planned, developed and managed.

Organised tours are one of the main ways that tourists experience cultural destinations. They are often described as `a destination bubble', conveying a sense of isolation rather than involvement. The extent to which tour participants interact with and learn about destinations is not well understood, although the acquisition of knowledge is frequently cited as significant in peoples' decisions to travel by this mode. This research investigates cultural tour participants' experiences, and specifically addresses the extent to which participants' images of their destinations change or remain unaltered after their visit, and whether satisfaction from a tour can be linked to the degree of informal learning gained about the route. The concepts of tourism and cultural tourism are explored; definitions of `culture' and theories on how culture is used, transformed and `consumed' by tourists, are presented. The nature of the `cultural route' is examined and two principal types are distinguished: those from antiquity, and tour routes operating in cultural destinations. The organised cultural tour, its origins and development are explored. The empirical research was developed from environmental psychology, employing route mapping to elicit information about tour members' knowledge before and after touring. Judgement and convenience-based sampling were used to select a cultural destination and Ireland was chosen because it presented elements common to many non-specialised tour itineraries in Europe. A multi-method approach combined qualitative and quantitative techniques in the analyses of cognitive maps, and triangulated the findings with those from focused interviews and participant observation. The study successfully accomplished its objectives in finding that tourists' images changed in magnitude as the tour had enforced already well-defined images. In particular, tour members' knowledge of places positioned sequentially along a route tended to increase. The research has contributed significantly to the understanding of tourists' map formation processes and it was found that information sources are particularly important, although information about a destination may be stored in people's memories regardless of whether they have actually visited that dessupplemented by new sources acquired at tour destinations. The thesis concludes by exploring the implications of the primary findings for academic study and the management of the cultural tours sectortination. Indirect sources of information were not usually

This thesis contributes to institutional theories about European business systems through the analysis of one case study: the French asset management industry in the period 1984-1999. It asks how firms in a given business system adapt to changes in their economic and societal environment. The thesis declines the usual focus on issues of convergence and divergence, and suggests investigating organisational adaptation as a key dynamic process within business systems, and it develops a theoretical framework for this purpose. It presents the French model of asset management in the mid-1980s and contrasts it with the Anglo-Saxon model. It then shows that by 1999 French firms had for the most part adopted the dominant patterns of the Anglo-Saxon model. It then explains that if companies can stimulate the constitution of a new organisational field operating with different rules and institutional arrangements, they can depart from the dominant patterns and behaviours of their national environment. In this process, such institutional agents as regulators, professionals, market leaders and consultants, and such calculation tools as performance measurement, benchmark, rating and invitations to tender play a key part in establishing the new rules. Instead of focusing on convergence or on persisting diversities among national business systems, the thesis suggests further investigating the constitution of trans-national entities.

For the last 30 years, an increasing proportion of development assistance funds has been allocated to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), often in OECD countries. The received wisdom is that NGO programmes make an important contribution to development. However, whilst many funds are given to Northern NGOs, increasingly development projects are implemented by Southern NGOs. Many Southern NGOs secure most of their income from Northern NGOs, often with few alternative sources of funds. This study draws on the literature on relations between Northern and Southern NGOs, theories about inter-organisational relationships and six detailed case studies of such relationships in Nairobi (Kenya) to understand current experiences, to explore the problems that exist and to analyse how agencies are responding to their situation. The research findings suggest that Southern NGOs are generally dependent on a small number of Northern NGOs for most of their income. Despite this situation, Southern NGOs seek to secure their autonomy in establishing their goals and activities through three strategies: donor management, donor diversity and donor independence. A further finding is that Northern NGOs are encouraging the formalization of Southern NGO administration, with potential detrimental effects for their relationship with target groups. Northern NGOs are themselves constrained by their need to identify a Southern NGO that shares their objectives. For this reason, half the Northern NGOs contacted in the study are directly initiating or encouraging the formation of new Southern NGOs. In this way, Northern NGOs are influencing the development of the NGO sector as well as the work of individual agencies. Further analysis suggests the existence of three types of relationships between Northern and Southern NGOs, with Northern NGO's attitudes being a critical determining factor: shared values (close alignment of mission), common agenda (time-bound agreements between agencies with mutual respect) and coincidental interest (temporary alliances to address different but overlapping interests).

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