Small-scale fisheries account for one third of the global fisheries catch and employ the majority of fishers, yet they are under-represented in terms of the science focused on fisheries management and the application of this. The sustainability of small-scale fisheries is crucial to end the global fisheries crisis and ensure food security in coastal areas. This thesis aimed at contributing to the better integration of the ecological and social side of small-scale fisheries in order to move towards sustainability. Using a quantitative linguistic approach, the meanings of sustainability were explored across the fisheries science literature and a holistic and unambiguous definition of sustainability was proposed as “the continuous existence of the socio-ecological fishery system, in such a way that it provides goods and services now and in the future, without depleting natural resources, and the sustainable processes that make both possible”. The thesis compared the meaning and breadth of the sustainability concept in fisheries science literature with the criteria used in fisheries sustainability standards. Twelve core criteria were identified. While a consensus on criteria contributes to transparency towards the consumer, it is also cause for concern because the sustainability standards largely ignored human and social aspects. To assess fisheries from the human or social perspective, this thesis adapted a formal conflict analysis approach from research on peace and war and applied it to an English small-scale fishery with co-management arrangements in place and a UK offshore fishery that is centrally managed. The analysis was based on the line of thinking that the understanding of and way towards sustainability is determined by a societal dialogue and that conflict indicates that this dialogue is facing difficulties. Conflict, which is omnipresent in fisheries but not used as an analytical tool, proved to be a multifaceted phenomenon and an informative indicator to study and assess social sustainability in fisheries, albeit it was not correlated to biological sustainability of fish stocks. The thesis finally integrates the review of the sustainability meanings, the comparison of eco-certification schemes, and the insights from the conflict analysis to determine and discuss their suitability for assessing sustainability of small-scale fisheries. It is finally concluded that sustainability of small-scale fisheries could be furthered by moving away from managing outcomes towards enabling cooperative relationships.

Organisations seek new technology and new ways of doing things. In so doing, they could obtain competitive advantages through innovation (Porter, 1990). A number of research demonstrates that successful innovations rely on the search for and obtaining new ideas or information from various sources (e.g. Clark et al., 1992; Tidd et al., 2001; Parker and Vaidya, 2001), and on creating and applying new knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; von Krogh et a l., 2000). Therefore, innovation and knowledge flow are closely related. Knowledge sharing is important for firms innovative performance (Spencer, 2003). However, there are many factors affecting knowledge flow and thus causing problem s for innovation. For instance, the types of knowledge are found as one of the factors affecting the ease of knowledge sharing (Dixon, 2002; Hanson, 1999; Howells, 1996). Certain type of knowledge (i.e. tacit knowledge) tends to be more difficult to share than other types of knowledge. Structural positions and relations between organisations are also the factors influencing knowledge flow. Research demonstrates that firms, better connected with various external organisations and groups, are able to gain more innovation resources through the social networks and social capital (Burt, 1992; Conway, 1997; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Thereby, social networks and utilisation of social capital are crucial for knowledge flow and innovation.

The traditional reasons advanced for the determination of equity contribution by JV partners include: the JVs contractual duration, cultural distance, competitive intensity local partner state ownership, country risk, and local partner alignment (Pan 1996). This thesis examines the determinations of the contractual equity contribution between a partners' equity contribution, the nature of their strategic assets, and their place in the value chain in in joint ventures (JVs), in particular international joint ventures.

In consideration of the mounting importance o(firm growth in today's economy, there was a vital necessity to address ) a gap in the growth literature as a matter of priority. Over the duration of this research project, a review of the relevant literatures revealed that existing research on firm growth was underdeveloped both conceptually and empirically. Consequently, the overall aim of this doctoral study was to gain a greater understanding of firm growth by means of a comparison of the experiences and perspectives of the high-growth firm stakeholders in Northern Ireland in an attempt to build a more comprehensive and holistic picture the construct of firm growth. This involved an exploratory study employing an in-depth qualitative research design providing the opportunity for a greater understanding of the meanings, values and beliefs that the participants attached to their realities of growing a ) business. In-depth interviews and focus groups were the primary sources of empirical evidence used to address the research questions of interest. Drawing on the high growth firm stakeholders' perspectives and experiences which inform this research, the findings indicate that high-growth business leaders and those charged with supporting such firms have several diverse perspectives and experiences of growth. Indeed, the results would appear to suggest that high-growth stakeholders do not necessarily talk about the same thing when referring to growth, highlighting heterogeneity in perspectives. In a similar vein, a gap exists between growth measures commonly employed in the literature and what the business leaders view as actual growth. Another conclusion to emerge from this study was that context matters and must be taken into consideration when studying firm growth. Moreover, this doctoral study posits that stakeholder theory has the potential to make a worthy contribution and offer some insights into the area of firm growth.

This thesis analyses the dynamics of firm profitability, growth, and exit across different industries. Chapter 1 documents a striking empirical regularity in the joint distribution of firm profitability and firm size which varies systematically across industries: In industries with a high intensity of R&D investments, there is a strong, systematic "negative tail" of small loss-making firms in the profits-size distribution, whereas this "negative tail" is much less pronounced in industries with low R&D intensity. The chapter also proposes a simple reduced form dynamic model which explains the main empirical features by combining two key mechanisms: a real option effect at the business level and a diversification effect at the firm level. The second part of the thesis takes a structural approach. Its focus is on estimating the dynamic evolution of firm productivity which is an unobserved state variable in an underlying structural model. In this model, firms make exit decisions and investment decisions in physical capital and in R&D. Chapter 2 extends the model in Olley & Pakes (1996) to include R&D decisions that stochastically affect future productivity realisations and proves that their invertibility approach still applies. It estimates the distribution of future productivity conditional on current productivity and R&D investments, which is the key stochastic primitive in theoretical models of firm dynamics. Chapter 3 introduces knowledge capital as a second unobserved state variable into the model and extends the invertibility idea and the estimation strategy to the case of two unobserved state variables. Knowledge allows for lagged effects of R&D on productivity while simultaneously accounting for the stochastic nature of R&D. This reconciles the knowledge capital view in the tradition of Griliches (e.g. 1998) with the stochastic approach in the recent literature on firm dynamics.

This thesis presents new results in the theory of organisation under adverse selection, in particular in the theory of informed principal and of collusion. In Chapter 1 we analyze a simple adverse selection model with one principal and one agent. They are both risk neutral and have private information about their type. We assume that the type of the principal is correlated with the one of the agent. The main result of the chapter is that the principal can extract a larger share of the surplus from the agent than in the case where her information is public. In Chapter 2 we study a model of informed principal with private values where the principal is risk neutral and the agent is risk averse. We show that the principal gains by not revealing her type to the agent through the contract offer. Moreover the allocation chosen by the principal embodies more risk for the agent than the standard second best solution. In Chapter 3 we study the delegation of a production process in a three-tier hierarchy. We allow the principal to costlessly monitor the communication, at the sub-contracting stage, between the lower levels of the hierarchy. We study two possible scenarios, one in which the principal observes the menu of sub-contracts offered by the first agent and the other in which she observes the report from the second agent. In both cases the monitoring damages the first agent and reduces production inefficiency. We then study how the agent can change the subcontract offer in an attempt to conceal the information that is monitored by the principal. In Chapter 4 we study a simple model with adverse selection where one principal contracts with two agents that can write collusive agreements. We assume that the principal does not know the distribution of the bargaining power at the side- contracting stage. We show that the bargaining strength of the agents does not affect the collusion proof equilibrium and discuss some possible applications.

Different agents experience different histories and pursue different economic functions. This implies that once a picture of the economic system is taken, a lot of cross-sectional heterogeneity appears. This thesis consists of four essays each one of them makes a case where the intrinsic heterogeneity of the economic system is crucial for understanding macroeconomic performance. Firstly, it shows when and how an increase in the level of business cycle volatility harms the growth process in a Keynesian world where the decision to free resources and to take advantage of them lies on different agents. Secondly, it analyses the effects of an increase in research effort in a Schumpeterian world where innovation requires an entrepreneur to implement a valuable invention. In this context the observed decreasing returns in R&D might be the outcome of lack of entrepreneurial skills rather than any vanishing of investment opportunities. Thirdly, it extends the Solow-Swan growth model allowing for cross-sectional heterogeneity. In doing so it reconciles apparently conflicting results on cross-sectional convergence and stochastic output dynamics. Finally, it argues that cross-sectional heterogeneity is an important transmission mechanism. In the context of a stylized vintage model it is shown how the mechanism generating heterogeneity in the real world also generates persistence in the aggregate fluctuations. Moreover, as aggregate shocks create very high degree of persistence without affecting either the number of firms in the market or technological progress, this degree of persistence is simply attributed to cross-sectional heterogeneity.

Under the stochastic process known as Gibrat's Law firm growth follows a random walk with no persistence in growth rates and both firm growth rates and the variance of growth rates independent of firm size. Over time, for a fixed population of firms, such a stochastic process gives rise to a lognormal limiting distribution of firm sizes. Utilising an official U.K. regional database of manufacturing plants, the empirical validity of the propositions of Gibrat's Law and the lognormal distribution are examined across three sequential U.K. economic cycles, making use of a range of econometric and statistical methods to assess the sensitivity of the results. Formal statistical tests and non-parametric kernel density estimation methods provide evidence of generally stable aggregate plant size distributions, though frequency exhibiting deviations in the form of positive skewness and leptokurtosis compared to the lognormal distribution. Examination of age and selection effects indicates some right-shift of the plant size distributions with time, though not generally in the form of a simple or consistent evolution towards the lognormal distribution. Plant growth rate distributions are found to often exhibit highly peaked distributions with "fatter tails" than the normal or Laplace distributions. Considerable heterogeneity is observed in both plant size and growth rate distributions across industries. Using a number of econometric model specifications the proposition of equi-proportional plant growth is statistically rejected for aggregate samples with mean reversion observed, a finding robust to corrections for heteroscedasticity and sample selection bias. However, equi-proportional plant growth cannot be rejected for a number of sub-groups. Consistent with previous research, plant growth is found to decline with age. Statistical tests reject the proposition of the variance of plant growth rates being independent of plant size, with a consistent negative relationship identified. Regression approaches suggest the absence of significant plant growth rate persistence effects.

The role of entrepreneurial intentions in explaining entrepreneurial behaviours is well-established on a theoretical basis but there is still a need to examine the diverse and interrelated factors that jointly lead to the formation of entrepreneurial intentions and behaviours. Based on a systematic literature review of entrepreneurial intentions three main research questions emerged related to the applicability of psychological models that determine entrepreneurial intentions and, consequently, behaviours. Following these, this thesis undertakes four empirical studies to address the identified questions. Each study is based on a conceptual model that is examined by implementing appropriate quantitative research methods and reflects on the investment context. The first empirical study examines whether the availability of capital and entrepreneurial motivation impact on entrepreneurial intentions at challenging times such as those encountered during the economic recession in Greece. The study provides insights regarding how the environmental factors interact with background and psychological factors in determining entrepreneurial intentions. In doing so, it extends and tests the ecological validity of Bird’s Entrepreneurial Intentionality Model in the investment context. The second empirical study addresses the motivations and the conditions under which the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) psychological constructs relate and interact. It goes beyond the applicability and ecological validity of the TPB by showing the presence of mediating and moderation effects between and among the psychological constructs in the Greek investment context. The third empirical study examines whether background factors indirectly influence entrepreneurial intentions via psychological constructs and whether the relationships differentiate between cultural backgrounds. The study extends Bird’s Entrepreneurial Intentionality Model using the TPB, and the role of culture, by showing that the availability of capital determines intentions differently when it comes to young individuals from a collectivistic culture (Greece) and individualistic culture (England). ii The objective of the above empirical studies was to advance the understanding of entrepreneurial intentions by approaching intentions as a dependent construct. Under each study the contributions to theory and practice are discussed in detail. Overall, this research concludes that entrepreneurial intentions are formed based on i) background factors concerning individuals’ availability of capital and cultural orientation ii) situational/environmental factors related to the recent economic crisis and iii) psychological factors such as motives, personal attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. The extension of existing psychological models and theories with the incorporation of additional theoretical lenses provides valuable practical implications and recommendations for policy makers in order to boost venture creation and growth activities on a national or international basis.

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