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In recent years companies across different sectors have been facing a new competitive environment, characterized by an increase in the number of competitors, shorter product cycles and changing customer demand. In order to cope with these challenges and to achieve competitive advantage, companies are engaged in alliances and partnerships with other organizations and closer collaboration with suppliers and customers. Accordingly companies have turned their attention towards improving the management of their supply chains to achieve competitive advantage. One way to improve the management of supply chain is through process integration, which offers potential benefits such as cost reduction, creation of value by increasing profits, market share and strengthening competitive position. E-business has been considered by both researchers and companies as an option to construct supply chain integration. However evidence found in the e-business and supply chain literature shows a number of technical and organizational challenges faced by organizations regarding the use and adoption of e-business for the improvement of supply chain management (SCM). One of the organizational challenges is the necessity to change business processes to support the successful adoption and use of e-business technologies. This challenge has been highlighted in the supply chain and e-business literature to be at the core of a successful adoption and use of e-business. A literature search and review was conducted to find a methodology to conduct business process redesign (BPR) to adopt e-business for SCM improvement. From the review it was found that although a number of methodologies exist on business process redesign, supply chain redesign and e-business process design there is a lack of an integrated methodology to conduct business process redesign to support e-business adoption for supply chain management improvement. Through an inductive approach of pattern recognition from reviewing different methodologies (Kettinger, Teng and Guha, 1997) in three different domains: business process redesign, supply chain redesign and e-business process design, a methodology embedded within an action research approach to conduct business process redesign is proposed to support e-business technologies adoption for supply chain management improvement. This proposed BPR methodology can potentially be adapted to any company on any sector, this is possible due to the type of techniques and methods employed in the methodology which can be used on any BPR project to support the adoption of e-business for the improvement of supply chain management. This methodology is tested and validated through a practical application in an independent Airline Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) provider giving as a result a redesign of the component services process. This methodology will require further validation; however results from its application in an independent airline MRO provider show it can clearly guide and produce a business process redesign to support e-business adoption for supply chain management improvement.

The work was conceived as an attempt to document an aspect of what has been called the rise of the "corporate economy" or of "managerial capitalism" (or, less informatively, the "new industrial revolution"): that is the relative decline of market relations within the system of industrial capitalism and the corresponding growth of economic activity within large corporations. Though this process of change began in Britain in the late nineteenth century, it advanced more slowly than the contemporaneous movement in the United States. Hence, it is argued, the interwar years saw the crucial developments in the structure of industry in Britain, though these have been underestimated because of the absence of a reliable descriptive study of this period. Attention is focussed on the role of mergers in this structural change, since a merger, being a discrete event in the biography of a firm, throws the causes of these developments into clear relief. The study is designed as a critical gloss on economic generalisations about the rise of large scale enterprise based on the propensity to monopolise, an explanation with no diachronic significance; and on the crude technolo- gical and economic determinisms dominating the historical writing which add little to Philip Snowden's classic statement that "trusts ... are inevitable. They will continue, whatever obstacles we attempt to put in their path". [continued in text ...]

The conclusions of both Parts One and Two complement and reinforce each other. After outlining the ideals of OR, I set out in Part One to find and scrutinize the philosophical foundations upon which some leading operations researchers have claimed that these ideals could be implemented. In chapters 2, 3, and 4 I argue that adopting (respectively) the positivist, conventionalist and/or idealist philosophies as the theoretical foundations upon which to build an adequate theory of inquiry for the purposes of OR would force it to abandon its ideals. These philosophies are interpreted as attempts on the part of academic operational researchers to stave-off the open-ended ambiguity and anarchy of inquiry which an unqualified interpretation of OR's ideals could engender. These attempts to give substance to the ideals of OR all exert a strong bias against raising questions about the nature of the subject-matter with which OR deals, and it in largely on these grounds that they are rejected in chapter 5 because of the implications which this has for the ideals of OR. One conclusion of Part One is that OR needs protection from such philosophies, and that a realist-type alternative at least provides this. I conclude by raising the doubt whether philosophy can provide much more to OR. The other major conclusion is that OR needs to understand its subject-matter before it can reasonably hope to implement its ideals. Given the general bias which we find in Part One against seriously considering the subject-matter of OR, we enter Part Two with some trepidation. Notwithstanding the philosophical bias against it, it is clear that OR must have a conception of the nature of its subject-matter. However, OR's ideals can just as easily be lost by inadequate attention to this task. In Part Two the biases discovered in Part One come home to roost. The first attempt to provide the ideals of OR with a substance on the basis of which its ideals can be implemented in an objective fray turns out to be just that, i.e., metaphysical 'substance' in the guise of a theory of management. We see in chapter 6 that to the extent to which this theory moves beyond merely asserting that management would 'take care' of OR's need for an objective basis, it presupposes a social theory which would show how social systems by their nature (if properly constructed) embody this objectivity. This move is foreshadowed in chapter 3 where we see Kuhn (who is taken as an exemplar of conventionalist philosophy) finally resorting to this device to prop up his conventionalism, against the growing weight of subjectivity under which it threatened to sag into the jaws of positivism. The social theory on which such claims rest is given detailed consideration in. chapter 7. In chapter 7 I give serious consideration to the possibility that OR's social theory, if it has one at all, will be developed in reaction to what it sees as the "problem of order", because this problem can be seen as but another way of stating its ideals in a specifically social way. Stating OR ideals in this way orients them directly to at least one aspect of the question of the nature of OR's subject-matter. We see that by employing, Durkheim's account of and solution to the social problem of order as a basis for comparison with OR (first as a homomorphism. and later as an isomorphism) that we are able to gain quite a firm grip on OR's social theory (and, hence, its grasp of its subject-matter). We see that this theory, although providing a justification for OR's theory of management (especially in its modern form), it is itself inadequate. The basis of the inadequacy, most fundamentally, is that the theory in question presupposes the very thing, that should be in question, namely, the nature of the social collective. I conclude with a specific illustration of the impact of this theory on the ideal of OR by analysing the inadequate treatment of power and conflict which it allows.

This thesis comprises a theoretical and empirical study of the spread of new techniques within industry (the so-called diffusion process.) The major aim has been to provide an economic explanation for differences between industries in the speed with which they adopt new techniques or innovations. The theoretical underpinning of the study is a general model of the diffusion process based on an explicit theory of individual firms' decision making behaviour in this context. This model is built around the discussions of the early chapters on the technological characteristics of new process innovations and the results of past work on the nature of the adoption decision at the firm level. The empirical part of the thesis is concerned with testing the various predictions generated by the model using data collected on the diffusion of 22 major innovations in various U.K. industries since the war. A number of hypotheses appear to be confirmed: at the individual firm level, behaviour is partly determined by the firm's size; at the industry level, competitive structure and aggregate demand conditions appear to influence the speed of diffusion, and further, the characteristics of the innovations themselves affect not only the speed of diffusion but also the shape of the diffusion growth curve. The thesis constitutes the first large scale empirical study of diffusion in the U.K. industry. Theoretically, it provides the first model of diffusion to be based on economic decision making rather than the mechanistic models of epidemics which have been used previously in this area.

The quality of any finished project in the construction industry relies mainly on the specifications written for that project. The specifications are benchmarks for the quality of the project, which should be referred to during all phases of the project. Successful specifications are normally associated with accuracy, clarity, coverage of all clauses, precession and the effectiveness of the description of the materials and methods of fixing. On the other hand, poor specifications often result in delays in handing-over, escalation of prices due to variations, disputes, high penalties, loss of trust and compromise in the quality of the finished project. The construction industry in Bahrain often suffers from poor specifications. In order to determine the severity of the problem, a questionnaire survey was undertaken to analysis the present standard of specifications used in the construction industry in Bahrain. The outcomes of the survey revealed major setbacks in the standard of the existing specifications such as inappropriate repetition, excessive conflict, unclear and uncompleted clauses with little precession. The majority of respondents called for a change in the situation. Improvement of quality has become a major challenge faced by the construction industry and can involve, reducing cost solving problems of rework, reducing maintenance cost and improving the life cycle value of the buildings. Total Quality Management has become one of the best solutions to overcome the problems, and specification could be used as a gate to introducing TQM to the construction industry. Specifications are approach to setting the standard of quality for any construction project, and used as a tool to get design and construction teams committed to the projects quality standards through all stages of the construction process. The overall afin of Us thesis is to develop a framework for implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) in the construction industry in Bahrain, by developing a dynamic specifications model which will help to improve performance in the construction industry, improve consultant-client- constructor- supplier chain relation, control the budget of the project and reduce disputes, claims and variations in the construction industry.

Partnering emerged in the construction industry in the late 1980's and since then has developed into a mainstream management strategy for reducing traditional adversarialism and improving project,performance. The maturation of the approach reached a milestone recently with the publication of the first partnering contract. However the approach is still in its relative infancy and a myriad of definitions exist as to what it is. (Li, Cheng & Love, 2000). It has received considerable attention from practitioners and researchers alike yet it remains an alien approach to many and is consequently difficult to plan and implement. Even the recent partnering contract has been criticised for its complexity, while others believe partnering should remain an approach represented by management style not contractual documentation. The aim of this thesis is to develop a set of practical processes for the strategic development and implementation of partnering arrangements. It aims to develop, through the identification of best practice criteria, generic processes as well as recommend corresponding management techniques for both long term and Project Specific Partnering success. The generic processes can then be tailored to suit specific projects and business objectives. The work represents the first stage in the development of a dear and implementable partnering management tool for the construction industry. The further development required for industrial implementation has also been identified.

The analysis of innovation contained in this thesis differs considerably in both scope and aims from most analyses of innovation. It is important to discuss why the approach taken has been adopted, and to justify its usefulness. There is no absence of analyses of innovation and associated invention. Individual inventions have been examined, notedly by Jewkes and his co-authors (1); analyses have been made of innovation in selected industries, and this has been related to international trade in these industries (2); the detailed antecedents of individual technological innovations have been traced back in time, both for weapon systems and for civilian products (3); the spread of important new techniques, normally associated with large-scale capital investment, has been analysed (4). Much of this work has been done, either directly or indirectly, to answer specific questions of science policy, and these works have been influential factors in the formulation of science policy. The questions which may be answered by such approaches are important. Is money aimed at producing inventions (and, by implication at least, innovation) best invested in establishing large research centres, or in encouraging with suitable fiscal measures individual inventors (5)? What is the relationship between the concentration of an industry and its propensity to innovate? Should government finance be concentrated in closely targetted contracts, or in university research? What should the government attitude be towards industries, such as the pharmaceuticals industry, in which successful products enjoy what may appear super-normal profits while overall heavy research expenditure is incurred (6)?

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This research is concerned with improving the planning process in large construction projects where the management and planning of the preconstruction planning process itself is a significant and complex task. Preconstruction planning in the construction sector has become a complex task requiring substantial collaboration, with ad-hoc teams (especially from design and construction) created to bring all the project resources involved together in a timely manner, to ensure a construction project is completed effectively and efficiently. This, combined with the iterative nature of the planning process, has challenged even the best companies in the industry. Three major weaknesses in current practice were identified in the research: first, the planning preconstruction planning process is heavily reliant on a planner's experience (i.e. a planner develops a new programme of a preconstruction planning through personal determination of the planning tasks and their precedence, starting afresh at the beginning of each project). For large projects this is not only time consuming but subject to the limitations ohhe planner's knowledge and experience, often resulting in simplistic programmes in which many of the dependencies are ignored. Secondly, guesses (i.e. estimates) are frequently made in the planning process, which neither the initial planner nor the downstream planner will later check. They are usually ignored and left until the execution of the plan, when the problems reveal themselves. Finally, the current techniques for the management of preconstruction planning, such as the critical path method and bar charts, cannot account for the iterative nature of the planning process that requires estimations to be made and work to be redone until a satisfactory so lution is developed. As a result, it may be said that preconstruction planning is currently managed poorly. It can be. argued that if preconstruction planning is to be undertaken effectively, it must be better managed and planned.