The manufacture of cloth, which in later centuries dominated-the whole economy of Gloucestershire, was already firmly established in the-county in the early Middle Ages. Wool from the great sheep-runs of the Cotswolds had much to do with the rise of the industry. There, was more pride than accuracy in the old boast "In Europe the best wool is the English, In England the best wool is the Cotswold", but only Herefordshire wool commanded a higher price. Though great quantities were carried off from Gloucestershire by-agents of the Bardi and the Peruzzi, whose annual tours of the monastic houses of the west provided the raw material for the skilled weavers of the cities of northern, Italy, a certain proportion must always have been retained for local use. The Italians were gradually ousted by English buyers, and in the fifteenth century the Grevels, Fortheys and their fellow merchants of the Staple derived great wealth from the export of wool to Flanders. But from the time of Edward III spasmodic efforts were made to discourage or prohibit the export of raw wool and to promote the manufacture of cloth, and when the Tudor period began the county was as well known for its broadcloth as for its wool.

With the abundance of functionally-similar Web-Services, the offered or agreed-on qualities are becoming decisive factors in attracting private as well as corporate customers to a given service, among all others. Nevertheless, the state-of-art in handling qualities, in this emerging service paradigm, remains largely bound to the aspects of technology and their standards (e.g. time-response, availability, throughputs). However, current approaches still ignore capital domain-based business qualities and management concerns (e.g. customer profiles, business deadlines). The main objective of this thesis is to leverage the handling of quality and management issues in service-driven business applications toward the intuitive business level supported by a precise and flexible conceptualisation. Thus, instead of addressing qualities using just rigid IT-SLA (service-level agreements) as followed by Web Services technology and standards, we propose to cope with more abstract and domain-dependent and adaptive qualities in an intuitive, yet conceptual, manner. The approach is centred on evolving business rules and policies for management, with a clean separation of functionalities as specific rules. At the conceptual level, we propose specialised architectural connectors called management laws that we also separate from coordination laws for functionality issues. We further propose a smooth and compliant mapping of the conceptualisation toward service technology, using existing rule-based standards.

This is a report of research on the application of service classifications in studying productivity management aspects and issues in the service industries. After identifying certain gaps in the literature, a new empirical approach has been introduced. Through a review of literature, the complexity of research on service productivity and its relationship with quality was observed and confirmed. It was found that productivity management is an appropriate context for studying and illustrating the new approach to service classification. Twelve service sectors were selected to cover the range of different types of service clusters. The research methodology was heavily built on an inductive approach based on in-depth interviews, although a significant part of the research was carried out using quantitative analysis. Quantitative analysis was done to find the most appropriate service dimensions that could be used as bases for service classifications for productivity management studies. Among the studied service dimensions, as proposed by the literature, it was found that the dimension of Front/back value added, initially proposed by David Maister, was the most appropriate one to be used as the basis for service classification schemes for productivity management purposes. Through qualitative analysis of data a number of key factors in terms of service productivity management and their features were found. A service classification scheme was proposed, with no regard to service dimensions. The features of 'productivity friendly' services were studied. The factors that can reduce the need for trade off between productivity and quality were explored. The contribution of this research can be summarised in two areas. A new approach to service classification has been proposed, that is derived from empirical study. A number of services are compared in terms of productivity management aspects, resulting in development of a number of models, to illustrate the general trend of services in the area of productivity management, including interactions with quality management.

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The company promoter has a very poor reputation, in part a legacy of the fall from grace of celebrity figures who made headlines over a long period with a succession of frauds or high-profile bankruptcies. Their companies failed and investors lost heavily. The real-life architects (Baron Grant, John Sadleir, Horatio Bottomley and many others) in turn influenced the creation of a cast of fictional characters, from Merdle in Little Dorrit, through Melmotte in The Way We Live Now to Ponderevo in Tono-Bungay and beyond. The 1890s were the promoter's heyday, particularly the second half, coinciding with the mushrooming of a specialist financial press that enjoyed a symbiotic and often corrupt relationship with the promoters - extracting hush money to suppress critical articles or bungs for uncritical puffery - in a world where the insider was king, and accepted without question. The confrontational milieu of competition on all sides and an unhealthy promoter/press relationship tended to reinforce negative perceptions about the promoter. His success rate was low, and many went bankrupt: the word 'promoter' appears most frequently in the Financial Times from its inception through to the Great War in paragraphs headed something like 'Failure of a Company Promoter'. Subsequent commentators have focused on the charismatic but flawed celebrities and on the large numbers of companies wound-up each year, inferring large-scale fraud. We argue that the majority of promoters were not engaged in fraud. True, they may not have had great success, but this was more 'cock-up than conspiracy'. The contrast needs to be drawn between the occasional meteoric figures and the less well-known promoters, pictured in 1914 by the Financial Times travelling nervously by taximeter cab to a bankruptcy meeting.

La question de l’évaluation des performances dans les services publics est devenue une question importante dans notre société actuelle. Dans les économies industrielles et agricoles, le concept de productivité était un des concepts clé pour mesurer la performance car il décrit un rendement technique posant peu de difficultés pour des produits standardisés. Cependant, l’avènement de l’économie des services a contribué à remettre en cause, sinon la pertinence de ce concept, du moins ses méthodes de mesure car le « produit réel » des services est souvent difficile à saisir. L’objectif de la thèse est d’étudier cette question de la productivité dans les services afin de rendre compte des difficultés rencontrées et de montrer que celles-ci sont exacerbées pour les services publics, et notamment locaux, en raison des spécificités propres à ces services. Pour cela, nous tenterons d’établir un bilan des différents débats sur cette problématique. Puis nous réaliserons une investigation empirique dans les services publics locaux du Nord-Pas-de-Calais avec trois objectifs principaux : identifier les principaux « produits » des ces services, recenser les indicateurs de performance utilisés et leurs limites et recenser les stratégies mises en œuvre pour améliorer la performance. A l’aide des entretiens et de nos recherches, nous tenterons de proposer de nouveaux indicateurs pour évaluer la performance de ces services ainsi que de nouvelles stratégies d’amélioration des performances. / The performance evaluation in public services has become an important issue in our society today. In industrial and agricultural economies, the concept of productivity was one of the key concepts to measure the performance because it describes a technical performance that poses few problems when dealing with standardized products. However, the advent of the service economy has helped to undermine, if not the relevance of this concept, at least its measurement methods. Indeed, in services, the "real product" is often difficult to grasp. The aim of this subject is to study the productivity issue in services activities to account for the difficulties encountered. We try also to show that this application of this concept presents news obstacles in regard to public services, including local public services, because the specificities of these services. For this, we will try to take stock of various debates on the issue of productivity in services. Then we will take an empirical investigation on the local public services of Nord-Pas-de-Calais area with three main objectives: identify the main "products" in these services, identify performance indicators used and their limits and identify strategies implemented to improve performance. With helps of meetings and researches, we will try to propose new indicators to evaluate the performance of services and new strategies to improve performances.

This thesis explores the impact of volunteer tourism on the international tourist engaging in volunteer work in South Africa. A staged methodological design is adopted in this research. The first stage provides conceptual clarification of the term volunteer tourism, using grounded theory. Then a quasi-experimental study was carried out to collect data from volunteer tourists undertaking community and wildlife (including conservation) projects in South Africa. It consists of a standardised web-based personality inventory (IPIP-NEO) completed prior to, post, and one to two years following the volunteer vacation to measure personality changes in 15 core traits. A control group was used to enhance the validity of the scientific method. Thereafter, personal interviews were conducted to gain insight into the volunteering experience and any resulting changes in the volunteers’ day-to-day lives. This study’s findings point to significant changes in seven traits; some of these traits have not been previously identified by the literature and therefore broaden our understanding of the impact on the tourist. Additionally, while confirming some of the changes found in other studies, the findings of this study also point to some significant contrasts. Many of the changes identified were evident in the volunteer’s daily lives through their ‘personal circumstances’, ‘behaviour’, ‘emotions’, ‘confidence’, ‘values’, ‘knowledge or skills’ and ‘attitudes’. The experiences which the volunteers attributed to their changes were: active, involved, responsible, participatory, immersive and interactive, and whether they met volunteers’ expectations; influenced by: age, gender, project type and length of stay. The findings address a number of shortcomings in the volunteer tourism literature by providing statistical evidence of change; a better understanding of how change appears in participants’ everyday lives; and identifies some additional elements that influence change in the visitor, adding to knowledge of Engagement Theory. These findings can therefore contribute theoretically; and practically to tourism marketing, program design and volunteer satisfaction.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-235) / ix, 235 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Develops a coherent theoretical framework to analyse the formulation of grain procurement policy for the entire history of the PRC. An optimization model is constructed to capture Chinese policy makers' preferences regarding the competing objectives of sectoral income distribition and food security, as well as the factors governing the trade-off between thes two objectives and the choice of policy instruments. Also analyses the impacts of China's accession to WTO on its grain sector. To explain the numerous failures of China's grain policy, studies the problems arising from policy formulation and implementation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 2003

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-235) / ix, 235 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Develops a coherent theoretical framework to analyse the formulation of grain procurement policy for the entire history of the PRC. An optimization model is constructed to capture Chinese policy makers' preferences regarding the competing objectives of sectoral income distribition and food security, as well as the factors governing the trade-off between thes two objectives and the choice of policy instruments. Also analyses the impacts of China's accession to WTO on its grain sector. To explain the numerous failures of China's grain policy, studies the problems arising from policy formulation and implementation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 2003

L’idée que le football professionnel en Europe est en crise fait très largement consensus parmi les économistes. Dans notre thèse, nous montrons que ce diagnostic suppose de négliger un certain nombre d’éléments constitutifs de l’inscription du football dans le monde économique. C’est pourquoi, nous défendons que, loin d’être en crise, le football professionnel européen est, depuis les années 1980, dans une phase de très forte croissance. Pour ce faire, nous adoptons une démarche mésoéconomique régulationniste et procédons à une analyse systémique et multi-niveaux du football professionnel européen. Nous aboutissons ainsi à la caractérisation d’un « régime économique de fonctionnement » que nous qualifions de « financiarisé » compte tenu de l’instrumentalisation du football par des intérêts financiarisés et de leur influence sur les stratégies des acteurs traditionnels du football. Cette financiarisation du football engendre une forte instabilité de son régime puisque l’activité des clubs implique du déficit et du surendettement. En effet, l’incitation à la performance sportive (ligue ouverte), le fort pouvoir de négociation des joueurs (hold-up) et la souplesse de l’environnement réglementaire du football conduisent les clubs à des niveaux de dépenses élevés. Au contraire des « petits » clubs, cette situation n’est pas problématique pour les « grands » clubs, puisqu’ils sont soutenus par des agents à forte capacité de financement et tirent des revenus élevés de leur participation aux compétitions supranationales. Dans ce contexte, le régime est donc durable : sous l’effet de l’instabilité, les acteurs nouent de nouveaux compromis qui modifient les « dispositifs institutionnels » existants et rendent ainsi pérenne la logique de croissance en vigueur. Il y a donc régulation (au sens de la théorie de la régulation) du football. Il reste toutefois que ces modalités de régulation conduisent à accroître les inégalités entre les clubs et que cela pourrait, à terme, amener à une crise économique majeure du football professionnel européen. / Economists argue that the European professional football is in crisis. This thesis discusses this postulate by testing the relationship between the changes in football and the transformations of modern capitalism. Our methodology is based on a meso-level analysis from the French “Régulation theory” which provides a systemic and multilevel analysis. The thesis thus emphasizes how the progressive integration of financialised interests in football has an influence on the strategies of football traditional stakeholders. It actually shows that the financialisation process of the European professional football leads to growth since the 1980s. However, this growth is rather unstable because losses and indebtedness are part of clubs activity. The incentive for sports performance (open league), the players’ strong bargaining power (hold-up) and the flexibility of the regulatory environment are the main determinants of the clubs’ high spendings. Contrary to the “small” clubs, this situation is not a constraint for the “big” clubs thanks to the financial contributions they obtain from their owners, from their funding partners and from their participation to supranational competitions. In this environment and despite instability, the growth regime remains nevertheless sustainable. The stakeholders create new compromises to reduce imbalances: these compromises are the roots for new institutional arrangements that finally support the growth logic which is in place. There is therefore a “régulation” in European professional football, that is to say a process that contributes to the reproduction of the sector. However, this process paradoxically increases inequalities and may encourage the conditions for a major economic crisis.