This thesis is a contribution to our understanding of business groups in the small busi-ness sector. Specifically, its aim is to verify to what extent the consideration of entrepre-neurial processes can advance our understanding of this phenomenon. A ‘business group’ is a set of companies which are legally distinct but belong to the same person or people. Despite the significant presence of business groups in the small business sector, most of the literature on business groups addresses large groups. This study demonstrates that the available theories of business groups – the financial and the diversification theories – are not able to explain the presence and characteristics of business groups in the small business sector. Given the little work done on the issue, the research strategy involves the use of both, quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative methods are used to test propositions deduced from available models of business groups; qualitative methods, based on case studies and direct interviews, are used to get new insights about the phenomenon and develop theoretical propositions. Quantitative analyses refer to the population of Italian business groups; case studies and interviews refer to a sample of business groups in the Marche region (Italy). The business group is an organizational form used by portfolio entrepreneurs to grow and diversify the businesses under their control. By using cross sectional and longitudinal analyses this study shows that in the small business sector diversification is a substitute strategy for growth in the original business. Moreover, this study demonstrates that the diversification theory is not able to explain the setting up of a business group as in most cases the degree of diversification observed in small groups is very low. The thesis demonstrates that entrepreneurial processes associated with the exploitation of new business opportunities by portfolio entrepreneurs play a crucial role in explaining the formation and characteristics of business groups. The start-up phase is critical for the success of a new business as it requires complete dedication of time and attention by the entrepreneur to continuously adjust the planned actions to the unforeseen events and un-predictable contingencies that are typical of this phase. The legal autonomy granted to the new venture helps focus resources and monitor results. In addition to this and more than anything else, legal autonomy allows entrepreneurs to modify the ownership structure of the new business and give minority shares to people involved in the start-up. The financial explanation of business groups stresses the importance of legal autonomy as a way for manipulating the ownership structure of new businesses, to raise outside equity. The thesis demonstrates that the causal relationship is the opposite of that hypothesised by the financial explanation: it is not so much the aim of raising outside equity that determines the involvement of external shareholders as the need to involve and motivate people in the start up of the new business that induces entrepreneurs to sell minority shares in it, thus enlarging the entrepreneurial team. By involving other people in the start-up of new ventures, portfolio entrepreneurs enhance their ability to enter new businesses while retaining ownership and control of the ones already established. The empirical analysis revealed the existence of three different patterns: joint venture with established entrepreneurs, employee involvement and intrapreneurship. The first is when new ventures are set up with other established entrepreneurs. The second is when the entrepreneur gives a share of the new company to an employee to secure his/her involvement in the start-up of a new venture (employee involvement). The third is when the new business is established as a result of the inspiration of an ‘intrapreneurial’ employee who takes major responsibility for the development of the business. As well as the discovery and analysis of these three forms, the thesis provides a theoretical explanation of entrepreneurial team development in business groups, based on the problems faced by portfolio entrepreneurs in allocating time and attention between the running of established businesses and the exploitation of new business opportunities. By integrating the latter explanation with other models of business groups the thesis provides a more general framework for understanding the formation and dynamics of business groups in the small business sector. The thesis also provides contributions to explain the formation and dynamics of entrepreneurial teams in a multi business context and in situations where there is a ‘dominant’ or ‘lead’ entrepreneur and one or more ‘associate’ or ‘sub’ entrepreneurs. Studying the formation and evolution of business groups poses several methodological problems, as groups are complex systems, characterised by the presence of several companies, different architectural structures and a multi-business context. The thesis provides methodological contributions on the ways to represent the current structure of business groups and on how to analyse their evolution over time.

This research focuses on the Implementation of IT systems and public sector and national ID card projects in particular. Such projects have high expectations but low success rates. The study Investigated the factors contributing to IT projects failure through on extensive review of the existing literature. This was enriched and tested by close Involvement with the UAE national ID card project, surveys and In depth interviews with senior managers from other ID card projects and presentations and attendance at over 50 conferences on this subject. Many of the factors leading to either success or failure identified in many practical studies could be addressed through a well designed project management methodology. Based on the literature, practical experience, observations and feedback from practitioners a project management methodology; named PROMOTE - PROject Management Of Technology Endeavours - was developed and tested for the planning and Implementing large scale IT projects mainly In a government context. The US$200+ million dollar national ID programme In the United Arab Emirates was the main test vehicle. Its Innovations include a hybrid systems development/project management customer based philosophy, a number of new tools and techniques and the Introduction of a mentor for the project manager. To help assess the general applicability of the methodology it was also tested In the Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain national ID initiatives. The methodology phases were refined several times (and other phases were added) to address the problems Identified from UAE project, the literature, the experiences reported at GCC committee meetings and from other large scale Implementations around the world (from conferences and study visits to other countries). From the testing conducted, the methodology is believed to add a significant contribution to the field of IT projects Implementation and In Increasing the success chances of such projects. Such success should have a profound Impact on government services. The study also recognises that a better understanding of the new methodology and its contributions Is only possible through further research and application In other large scale IT projects. This should allow the extension of the applicability of this methodology to a much wider spectrum.

Mentshlichkeit – Yiddish for the ‘art of being a good hu(man)’ - is offered as an invitation to participate in practices that may have the power to dispel the haunting of a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 1995). Inspired by ‘Action Research’, what Reason & Bradbury call inquiry into the ‘quality of our acting’, the author uses futuristic narrative, interwoven with discussion and dialogue, to see if it is possible to reflect and act generatively, as a man who is mindful of feminism’s challenge that ‘the personal is political’ (Reason and Bradbury 2001). Within a post-modern discourse, the author heads towards the irony and discomfort to be found in a text that explores goodness and masculinity in the same breath. But he is not alone, like some hero on a quest – rather he is inspired by the voices of challenge and support he hears in the course of his roles in diverse communities: as a Jew, a facilitator/consultant at Roffey Park Institute and a father. It is my intention to playfully invite you into this story; to see if it moves you, if it usefully meets your own experience and helps you consider your own action, within the paradoxes and dilemmas you face. Too often we can disappear within the words we write. It is my intention to ‘show up’, and as a man to meet the challenge of feminism, to live within this territory and act with some awareness of its contours. The characters in this story are inspired by the people I encounter, who remind me I am not ‘selfmade’, and that we men, in the words of Philip Corrigan, may usefully ‘re-member our bodies’ (Corrigan 1988). Ultimately this is a human-scale story, designed to provoke good conversations. I look forward to hearing what you would like to discuss.

The techniques currently used to model risk and manage the safety of the UK railway network are not aligned to the mechanism by which catastrophic accidents occur in this industry. In this thesis, a new risk modelling method is proposed to resolve this problem. Catastrophic accidents can occur as the result of multiple failures occurring to all of the various defences put in place to prevent them. The UK railway industry is prone to this mechanism of accident occurrence, as many different technical, operational and organizational defences are used to prevent accidents. The railway network exists over a wide geographic area, with similar accidents possible at many different locations. The risk from these accidents is extremely variable and depends on the underlying conditions at each particular location, such as the state of assets or the speed of trains. When unfavourable conditions coincide the probability of multiple failures of planned defences increases and a 'risk hotspot' arises. Ideal requirements for modelling risk are proposed, taking account of the need to manage multiple defences of conceptually different type and the existence of risk hotspots. The requirements are not met by current risk modelling techniques although some of the requirements have been addressed experimentally, and in other industries and countries. It is proposed to meet these requirements using Bayesian Networks to supplement and extend fault and event tree analysis, the traditional techniques used for risk modelling in the UK railway industry. Application of the method is demonstrated using a case study: the building of a model of derailment risk on the UK railway network. The proposed method provides a means of better integrating industry wide analysis and risk modelling with the safety management tasks and safety related decisions that are undertaken by safety managers in the industry.

This thesis takes a corporate political strategy perspective of antidumping and countervailing duty cases to understand why some firms are more successful at the prosecution of these trade remedy measures. Trade remedy measures are long standing tools of US trade policy and their use has continued to grow globally amongst member countries of the World Trade Organisation. Between 1980 and 2007 a total of 1606 of these trade remedy cases were investigated by the Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission, an average of 41 antidumping and 17 countervailing duty cases a year, with a value of around US$ 63 billion or 0.3% of all US imports. Thirty-seven percent of the cases by number and 54% by value resulted in duties being imposed on the subject imports. This study uses archival material for five recent trade remedy investigations and forty-five semistructured interviews with business interests, trade attorneys and economic consultants that have experience of prosecuting these cases to understand why some firms may be more successful than others at achieving their preferred policy outcome. The imposition of duties is found to be only the simplest measure of success for US firms that file a case and does not capture the range of potential outcomes for foreign firms that face the duties. Successful prosecution of a trade case has been found to be firm specific, as the DOC determination of individual firm duty rates significantly affects what the outcome of case means for each firm in the US and foreign industries. The successful prosecution of US trade remedy cases is argued to be an informational corporate political strategy that is affected by statutory and administrative biases in the execution of the agency investigations, and creates the potential for indirect rent-seeking bias in the outcomes of cases. This informational corporate political strategy is based on three capabilities that firms need to develop, the capability to gather information, the capability to build and shape the administrative record at the agencies to reflect a firm’s policy preferences and the capability to align business practices with the US trade remedy institutions. These three capabilities are enabled by the bundling of corporate political expertise resources, organisational resources, financial resources and reputational resources. Some of these resources are internal to the firms, including staff, money and information, while other resources are external, such as the trade attorneys and economic consultants.

The use of email as a communication and information sharing medium in large, complex, globally distributed engineering projects is widespread; yet there exists little understanding of the content of the emails exchanged and the implications of this content on the design project, design records and contracts. The importance of these issues is underlined by the fact that email records can now be required as evidence in legal disputes. It follows that the overall aim of this research is to assess the role and use of email in engineering design projects. A state-of-the-art review of literature pertaining to email is reported, along with a review of information and communication processes in engineering design projects. The primary contribution of this thesis is the creation of a content based approach for analysing the role and use of email in engineering design projects. This centres on the development and application of a coding scheme to email text, identifying what subject matter an email relates to, why it was sent, and how its content is expressed. Results are then analysed with respect to the frequencies of each code and other variables, including how coding varies between different senders and throughout the project duration. The second key contribution of this thesis is the analysis of emails and content in an engineering setting by applying the aforementioned approach to two case studies. The major case study concerned a large, complex, globally distributed, multimillion pound systems engineering project, from which 16 000 emails were obtained. It was found that emails are mainly used to transfer information but also to support management functions. Emails facilitate design work but little of this takes place explicitly in the email content. Characteristics of a project affect the subject matter or emails but have little effect on why they are sent. User roles and personal preferences also influence email use. If was found that the purposes for sending emails varied over the duration of a project; it was further determined that these changes could be used to identify project progress and design activity. Implications of the findings are identified in relation to: information management, knowledge management, project management, collaboration and email practice. Significantly, emails do contain potentially important design information and because these often support decisions made elsewhere, emails should be integrated with wider records. More consideration and training should be given to the use of project standards for email use and guidelines for composition. Changes in email use over the project duration could be a potential tool for project managers to identify design progress and possible issues in a project.

The definition of identity varies, and on the Internet it can be difficult to keep track of. Rather than trying to discuss the philosophical question of "who am I?", I like to define your digital identity as the information you place on the Internet (actively or passively). Managing this identity comes down to what information you give out and how to protect and modify that information. This thesis focuses on the latter half, the protection and modification of online identities and only skims the realms of protecting the information given to third parties. A distinct lack of drive in the development of technologies for managing authentication has dogged the Internet for some time. Numerous efforts have been made to simplify administration, but open protocols meant for simplifying the user experience have had little promotion and ended up forgotten or used to simplify administration. The question that needs to be answered, as usual in research, is why? Studies have shown that password fatigue is a very real issue and identity theft is increasing. Companies will always optimise their time and resources, but academics need to focus their work on optimising the user experience. In this thesis, a study of existing work produces a methodology to evaluate previous developments. This aids in determining where progress has been made in previous iterations and how, leading to a new development in identity management focussed on the needs of the end user. Finally, two implementations are created to realise this new form of identity management.

Economic stringencies have compelled Canadian hospitals to examine their administrative effectiveness critically. Improved supplies and inventory procedures adopted by leading industrial corporations, suggest that hospitals might benefit from such systems. Lack of the profit incentive, and the high ratio of wages to total expenses in hospitals, have delayed adoption of modern inventory management techniques. This study examined the economic status of Canadian hospitals, and endeavoured to discover whether a computer-based inventory management system, incorporating short-term statistical demand forecasting, would be feasible and advantageous. Scientific forecasting for inventory management is not used by hospitals. The writer considered which technique would be most suited to their needs, taking account of benefits claimed by industrial users. Samples of demand data were subjected to a variety of simple forecasting methods, including moving averages, exponentially smoothed averages and the Box-Jenkins method. Comparisons were made in terms of relative size of forecast errors; ease of data maintenance, and demands upon hospital clerical staffs. The computer system: BRUFICH facilitated scrutiny of the effect of each technique upon major components of the system. It is concluded that either of two methods would be appropriate: moving averages and double exponential smoothing. The latter, when combined with adaptive control through tracking signals, is easily incorporated within the total inventory system. It requires only a short run of data, tracks trend satisfactorily, and demands little operator intervention. The original system designed by this writer was adopted by the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and has significantly improved their inventory management.

This thesis is concerned with the development of small scale contractors in developing countries. The global trend towards privatisation has led to an increasing interest in the use of the private sector for the construction of buildings and infrastructure. In developing countries large projects are typically undertaken by large foreign contractors however, there are few small scale contractors to undertake small construction projects or maintenance work. The first stage of the study investigated three issues pertinent to the small scale contracting sector: 1. The problems experienced by small scale contractors and the inter-relationship of these problems 2. Contractor development projects to identify their support mechanisms and assess their level of success 3. A review of the construction industry framework in developed and developing countries to highlight the problems caused by their different structures. The second stage of the study proposes the use of a Contractor Support Agency as the most appropriate support mechanism for the development of the indigenous contracting sector and outlines the roles and activities that should be undertaken by the agency. The Contractor Support Agency model is reviewed by experts in the sector and the analysis of the results presented in the thesis. The thesis concludes that the proposed model is broadly correct and discusses small modifications that can be made to enhance its suitability in a range of different situations.

Construction claims are considered by many project participants as one of the most disruptive and unpleasant events of a project (Ho & Liu, 2004). Researchers like Kumaraswamy (1996) argue that claims managers should focus not merely on the significant claims categories but also on the avoidable ones, to minimize the damaging effects on a given project. It becomes apparent that the causes underlying different claims categories have to be identified so that controllability and avoidability may be established. This research examines the issues by looking at the construction industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the second largest single industry after oil and gas sector, where claims and disputes are a major problem in the country. 51 leading construction participants including clients, consultants and contractors alike in the UAE were sampled for the study. The analytical results of the survey were further examined, compared and validated via the analysis of the data collected from 45 construction projects. The main findings of the first phase of study lead to the establishment of an index system called Claim Focus Index (CFI) that further establishes the finding of the 16 most significant types of claims and disputes in the UAE. The study continues to examine the underlying causes of the most significant types of claims and disputes and has identified unique sets of the root causes specific to each significant type of claims and disputes. These shall establish the basis to formulate strategies to focus on avoidability and minimization of claims and disputes.