The intention of this thesis is to explore the professionalisation of the management of the country house estate during the long nineteenth century through a meticulous examination of the archives at Welbeck Abbey and Holkham Hall. It uniquely surveys the impact of these changing dynamics of management through four broadly defined themes. Firstly it examines the concept of the patriotic landowner and the ways in which this affected farming practice. Secondly it investigates the characteristics of the expanding agricultural press and questions whether this corpus of knowledge contributed to professionalisation. Thirdly it considers the factors which contributed to the changing face of land management including: mechanisation, scientific farming, and agricultural experimentation, the dissemination of knowledge through agricultural shows and societies and increasing legislation. Fourthly it studies how changes within the landscape impacted on estate management and the ways in which this changed the characteristics of estate management. This is the first detailed micro-study relating to the changing dynamics of professionalisation. Previous studies have lacked detail or depth. The diary of William Gould and the correspondence of William Cripwell both agents at Welbeck form the basis of this study and create a historical perspective which is missing from the limited amount of previous research into this subject. Despite the lack of formalised training, by the beginning of the twentieth century the land agent was classed as a professional and this thesis for the first time starts to provide the answers as to why and how this change occurred.

My intention in undertaking this thesis was to examine the interaction relationship between Strategic Alliances (SA) and Strategic HRM (SHRM) in Chinese context. In addition, I was also interested in investigating whether different types of SA will have different influences on enterprises' HRM and on employees' personal feelings. An extensive literature review revealed a considerable number on studies of SA or on studies of SHRM. However, there is limited literature on the interaction relationship between SA and SHRM, particularly in China. I was interest in fulfill these huge research gaps and link these two significant fields together. In my case studies located in the manufactory and hotel industries in different cities in China. I conducted both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including a questionnaire survey and interviews. The analysis of my fieldwork results indicated that SA and SHRM have close link. After SA with foreign partners, the enterprise's HRM will become more strategic (central, formal and fair) and more strategic HRM will strength enterprise's SA. In addition, my fieldwork results also indicated that different types of SA will have different effects on enterprise' HRM. Cooperative joint venture (ClY) has more positive effects on HRM than equity joint venture (EJY). My research also presents that after SA employees' personal feelings becomes more positive to their organization. Employees' commitment, satisfaction, motivation and job security increased and employees are more like to work in foreign managed enterprises Finally, as my findings led me to the conclusion that the relationship between SA and SHRM form three virtuous circle. The first circle comprises interaction between SAs and SHRM. The second comprises interaction between SAs and employees' personal feelings about their jobs and employing organisation. The third circle comprises interaction between employees' personal feelings and SHRM. I argued that the interaction in these circles is continuous and that three circles are virtuous circles. I also argued that national level, industry level and enterprise level factors will affect on these three virtuous circles

This thesis examines the role played by credit ratings in explaining corporate capital structure choice during a period characterized by a major adverse loan supply shock. Recent literature has argued that supply–side factors are potentially as important as demand–side forces in determining corporate leverage. This is based on the premise that debt markets are segmented and that those firms that have access to the private debt markets do not necessarily have access to the public debt markets. The question of access to debt finance has become a major issue for public policy makers in several developed economies during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The UK economy has been subjected to a period of severe tightening of credit market conditions resulting in a significant reduction in the availability of bank credit to the corporate sector. An important question is whether the contraction in the flow of bank credit to firms has affected firms equally or whether firms with access to alternative sources of debt finance have been able to mitigate the effect of adverse changes to the cost and availability of bank credit. To investigate this issue, this thesis employs data over a 20 year period that includes two recessions and three noticeable periods of credit market tightening. Despite the fact that a severe recession has accompanied the 2007-2009 financial crisis we argue that the underlying forces driving the weakness in bank lending to the corporate sector are mainly supply side rather than demand side factors. In this thesis we use the possession of a credit rating as an indicator of access to the public debt markets. This thesis attempts to examine the relationship between credit ratings and capital structure of UK non-financial firms over the period from 1989 to 2010. The thesis consists of three empirical chapters, chapters 4, 5 and 6, each of which provide distinct and unique empirical evidence on the impact of possessing a credit rating on the capital structure decision of a large sample of UK non-financial firms. Chapter 4 examines whether the possession of a credit rating has an impact on a firm's leverage ratio. Until recently the primary focus of the majority of previous empirical studies on capital structure choice was the demand side determinants of leverage, while little attention has been given supply side factors that might open up access to alternative sources of debt capital. The issue of access to alternative sources of debt capital has received special attention in the wake of 2007-2009 financial crisis when banks significantly cut back on loans and many firms without access to public debt market, became credit-constrained. A credit rating benefits firms not only by providing access to local public bond markets, but having a rating from one of the major agencies (S&P or Fitch) gives an opportunity to issue bonds in the international debt capital markets. For U.K. firms this is especially important, since a rating can “open the door” to the U.S. capital market – the largest and most liquid source of debt capital. The empirical analysis in this chapter utilises data over a 22 year period from 1989 to 2010. In line with recent empirical literature (Faulkender & Petersen, 2006; Kisgen, 2007; Leary, 2009) public debt market access is measured by the possession of a credit rating and firm size dummies. Using both pooled OLS and panel regression techniques the results in this chapter indicate that firms with access to public debt markets have higher leverage ratios after controlling for demand-side determinants of capital structure. The empirical results demonstrate that supply side factors are an important determinant of capital structure choice for UK non-financial firms. The results suggest that for the full sample of firms the possession of a rating increases leverage by around 4 per cent for UK firms over the period 1989 through to 2010. When we restrict our sample to rated firms and those in the bottom 30 per cent of the firm size distribution the effect of having a rating on leverage is much greater, with the rating coefficient ranging between 5.7 and 7.2 per cent. When we control for endogeneity of having a rating our results remain qualitatively similar. After instrumenting for having a rating we find that the coefficient is around 5.5-6.7 per cent. When controlling for self-selection bias we find that rated firms have around 5 per cent higher leverage. The chapter provides empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that the possession of a credit rating is associated with higher leverage ratios. The results are robust to the methods of estimation and controlling for endogeneity between possessing a credit rating and leverage. The empirical analysis in chapter 5 extends the work of Faulkender & Petersen (2006) and Leary (2009) by controlling for the effect of credit quality when examining the relationship between having a credit rating and the leverage ratio. In this chapter we examine whether the positive relationship between having a credit rating and the leverage ratio in Chapter 4 is driven by the potential reverse causality between credit quality and the leverage ratio. In this chapter we distinguish between investment grade and speculative grade firms. Our results show that both investment grade and speculative grade firms possess higher levels of leverage than non-rated firms. This suggests that our results are not driven by the speculative grade firms in our sample. However, we do find that speculative grade firms have about 9 percentage points higher leverage ratios than investment grade firms. Two-stage econometric analysis shows that our results hold even after controlling for the effect of credit quality. The impact on leverage is still higher for firms with a speculative grade. The results in chapter 5 show that non-investment grade firms have approximately 6-8 percentage points higher leverage than firms with an investment grade. In this chapter we also examine whether there is a non-linear relationship between level of credit rating and leverage, with higher levels of leverage observed for mid-rated relative to their higher and lower rated peers. Our results do not provide support for the existence of a non-linear relationship between credit rating level and leverage. In chapter 6 we argue that bond market access is potentially more important to firms during a contraction in bank loan supply when firms without access to bond markets might find themselves constrained in the amount of debt capital they can raise. The 2007-2009 financial crisis and the resulting contraction in the flow of bank credit to the UK corporate sector demonstrated that access to diversified sources of debt funding had never been more important. In this chapter the period we investigate is interesting as it exhibits significant variation in credit market conditions with this variation being greater than the periods examined in previous studies. The key finding of this chapter is that the leverage difference between firms with and without access is greater during periods of credit market tightening and smaller when credit conditions are loose. The results show that debt market segmentation did not matter when credit conditions were loose, such as the period 2004 to 2007 prior to the financial crisis, as banks were willingly providing loans to the UK corporate sector. However, in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, firms that could not switch from bank to bond market debt found themselves most severely financially constrained. Consistent with Bank of England evidence, which reports that smaller firms have suffered disproportionately in terms of the cost and availability of bank credit during the financial crisis, we find that positive access effects on leverage are greatest when we compare firms with access against the smallest firms in our sample.

This study investigates investor confidence and the macroeconomic factors contributing to the Stock market performance in Pakistan during the period 1997- 2012. We find that: (1) Macro economic variables play an important role in explaining stock market performance in Pakistan. (2) The effects of macroeconomic variables on the stock market performance across different sectors, different firm sizes, and different risk portfolios are somewhat different. (3) Historical stock return volatility significantly influences the current stock market volatility; and historical volatility shocks drive volatility changes in all sectors of the stock market. (4) Investor sentiment exhibits explanatory power in capturing financial market anomalies such as the size, sector momentum effect and betas of the firm. Particularly, there is a positive association between investor confidence and stock returns, and the majority of variations in stock returns are explained by the investor sentiment index. (5) The sensitivities of the stock market performance are different across different industries. (6) The findings also indicate that risky portfolio returns are more sensitive to the investor confidence, and vice versa. (7) Similarly, the large firms are less sensitive, where small firms are highly sensitive to the investors’ confidence. The findings let us to conclude that high risk firms and small firms are hard-to-arbitrage. Our findings facilitate policy-makers and practitioners to understand the importance of investor sentiment and take remedial measures to build confidence among investors.

The National Health Service (NHS) has a chequered history as far as the introduction of new systems are concerned, yet this has not deterred the UK Government from attempting to modernise the organisation through the use of technology. The difficulties of implementing information systems into such a complex and heterogeneous context has attracted significant research from within the Information Systems (IS) discipline, from which we know that persuasion is a fundamental component of the implementation process. However, the exact nature of how and why this persuasion takes place has not been particularly well examined. Persuasion is facilitated through rhetoric, which is an inescapable consequence of human dialogue and engagement. In order to understand how persuasion takes place thus requires an investigation into rhetoric, however this as received little attention from within the discipline of information systems. This study looks to address this through a rhetorical investigation of the introduction of new information systems into the NHS. Situated within the NHS' National Programme for IT, the research adopts an interpretivist approach from which to analysis how key actors utilise rhetoric and thus influence the process of IS implementation. The research looks to answer the question 'How can rhetoric aid in our understanding of information systems implementation in the NHS?’ and ultimately evaluate the suitability of using rhetoric analysis in IS research. Through a combination of individual and group interviews, as well as the observation of meetings and training sessions, the research analysed the effect of ethos, logos and pathos upon stakeholders during their interaction and engagement. Members of the implementation team sought to play upon the clinicians’ sense of duty and thus draw upon the nurses’ emotions, whilst senior clinicians sought to cultivate a collective mostly negative attitude towards the new systems through ethos or the standing with other clinicians. The study concludes that rhetoric provides a useful tool through which to investigation the interactions that take place between key actors involved in the implementation of new systems. Secondly, it can be used to understand how stakeholders are persuaded to use an information system, as well as the persuasive techniques used to generate resistance.

The goal of the research is to support the development of an effective communication strategy within public health through social media. Drawing upon the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), developed by Kasperson et al. (1988) as the theoretical basis, this research explores and compares the use of Twitter by health organisations during health risk events. The research focuses on Twitter as an information channel and its role in the amplification and attenuation of risk events. The empirical research employs a two case comparative case study approach in which data was collected from participants in health organisations in Nova Scotia and Scotland. The data collection method was semi-structured interviews. The interview data was analysed through a thematic analysis to identify the main themes emerging from the data. Lastly, a causal loop diagram was developed to model the interdependencies among factors during a risk event. The research found that health organisations were using Twitter as a means of strengthening risk communication strategies. The use of Twitter had an increasingly important role within communication showing that it had a role in increasing credibility and trust in the organisation; a way of pushing and pulling information and a means of direct communication. However, the participatory, interactive nature of Twitter provided challenges for these organisations. Theoretical contributions are made to the extant body of research relating to SARF, extending the application of the framework to Twitter. Also, more widely, to the field of risk communication identifying that Twitter is a medium through which information can both be pushed and pulled by organisations. Methodological contributions are made by applying causal loop diagramming to SARF. The use of causal loop diagrams enhances the SARF tool-kit providing a tool that models relationships between factors during a risk event. This methodology could be used by others and applied in other areas related to SARF.

German multinational corporations (MNCs) delegate expatriates to their foreign subsidiaries to control important markets and ensure the growth of foreign activities. MNCs expect the best possible performance of expatriate managers in a different cultural setting that often presents unfamiliar working environments as well as social and economic contrasts. Such international assignments do not always end in success. Failed international transfers to foreign operations continue to challenge MNCs, due to the SUbstantial costs associated with expatriate managers' premature returns. Previous studies on expatriate failure have focused extensively on American expatriates assigned to various foreign destinations, often from an organisational perspective and with a bias for quantitative methods. Qualitative research on European expatriate managers remains scarce. This investigation focuses on German female expatriate managers assigned to two popular, yet culturally different, European expatriation destinations - the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. In response to the growing number of women who choose to accept expatriation, German female expatriate failure in international assignments is the focus of the research presented here. Qualitative, in-depth research methods are used to explore the personal experiences of a select sample of five former expatriates assigned to each of the two host countries on long-term international assignments. Narratives from the in-depth interviews provide rich descriptions from the German female employee perspective of the entire expatriation cycle, from initial selection and preparation to the actual assignment period and repatriation. Factors contributing to the decision to withdraw from the international assignments in both culturally diverse host countries are then compared. The results for both groups show that expatriate failure is a cumulation of various factors independent from culture, including multiple missed opportunities to properly prepare for adapting to a new culture. Furthermore, the findings suggest that "expatriate failure", as a descriptive term, is likely to be too narrowly focused on the expatriate managers, as they are not necessarily solely responsible for the failure in the international assignments. The findings presented here have implications both for German MNCs assigning female expatriates to subsidiaries in the UK and Russia, and for current and future expatriate managers with positions in these countries. Overall, the findings of this investigation reveal new knowledge and opportunities to help improve the success of international assignments for both the expatriate manager and the employing organisation. Keywords: culture, female expatriate failure, expatriation, Germany, international assignment failure, qualitative analysis, Russia, United Kingdom

Using a sample of 344 non-financial companies from FTSE All-Share Index over financial year 2002 to 2011, this research investigates the determination of executive compensation in the UK. By questioning the underlying assumptions of the optimal contracting approach, we propose our managerial power hypothesis and peer benchmarking hypotheses in the particular UK context, leading to the first level and the second level integrated compensation models to be set in our study. Drawing on the managerial power approach, we combine managerial power with the traditional optimal contracting model to test the impact of managerial power on the level of executive pay. For this purpose, we construct a set of managerial power indexes combining corporate governance attributes via PCA technique to measure the degree of influence that top executives can exert over the board in the pay negotiation process in the UK context. We find that after controlling for firm characteristics, the level of executive pay is not significantly related to the degree of managerial power. Grounded on prospect theory, we further investigate the widespread use of peer benchmarking in pay setting process from a behavioural perspective by incorporating the behavioural elements in terms of the cognitive biases of framing and loss aversion into our first level integrated compensation model. We find that after controlling for managerial power and firm characteristics, the change in pay is positively related to the pay anomaly adjusting towards peer pay benchmarks, and underpaid CEOs and executives receive higher pay increases in the following year. More importantly, we also find that after controlling for managerial power and firm characteristics, in terms of all CEO pay changes and executive cash pay changes, there is a significant asymmetric pay adjustment between underpaid executives and overpaid executives in the sense that underpaid executives receive significant pay increases in the following year, while overpaid executives only receive insignificant pay decreases in the following year, leading to an upward ratcheting of top executive pay levels overtime. A critical insight generated from our results is that the use of peer benchmarking is strongly driven by the behavioural factors, leading to a systematic increase in top executive pay overtime. Firstly identifying the behavioural motives behind the widely use of peer benchmarking in top executive pay setting in advanced market, we therefore reach the conclusion that the behavioural factors play a key role in the determination of executive compensation. Further discussion reveals that after controlling for managerial power and firm characteristics, the use of peer benchmarking has a significantly negative moderating effect on the pay-performance relation of CEO total pay, indicating that the irrational pay decision behaviour weakens the pay-performance sensitivity of executive compensation. We fully address the endogeneity concerns on the explanatory variables arising from unobservable heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity by applying static and dynamic panel estimation methods. Our results are also robust to several other alternative specifications.

Given the importance of the United Kingdom (UK) charity sector to the UK economy and society, key stakeholders have long demanded increasing transparency and accountability from charities. Particular calls have been made for improvements in annual reporting, including good quality financial and performance reporting. Responding to these legitimate stakeholder needs, successive Statements of Recommended Practice (SORP) for charities have been used to improve accounting and reporting. This thesis examines both the development of these reporting recommendations and the extant reporting practices of UK charities. Using the theoretical lens of stake holder theory (Freeman, 1984; Donaldson and Preston, 1995) and stakeholder salience (Mitchell, Agle and Wood, 1997), this thesis explores: the influence of stake holders on the development of the SORP; the implications of a particular SORP change on transparency to stakeholders; the extent and manner of performance reporting by UK charities and the implications of this for stakeholders; and charity managers' perspectives on accountability and transparency to stakeholders. This research contributes to empirical knowledge on the development of reporting recommendations, on the extent and manner of reporting on performance, (specifically on efficiency and effectiveness) and to the debate on how such reporting should develop in the future. It also contributes to the understanding of stakeholder influences (and particularly salient stakeholder influences) on the development of reporting recomendations and on charity managers' reporting decisions. It argues that, in this not-for-profit context, both ethical and legitimation-orientated motivations are seen in managers' responses to stakeholders, and these may be more complex, and more in tension with each other, than previously suggested. This thesis contributes to the literature on stakeholder salience by exploring salience in a context where stakeholder needs may align, rather than compete, and highlights charities' responses to stake holders perceived as legitimate, even when they may not be salient.

Total Quality Management is considered in this study within the context of Saudi Arabia's industrial diversification strategy and the efforts of the Kingdom to reduce its dependence on oil as the main source of its income. The private sector is expected to play a major role in bringing this about through the development of a sound manufacturing base, capable of satisfying local demand and, in the long run, of gaining access to export markets. However, the success of this policy will, to a large extent, depend on the ability of the private sector to deliver quality products which meet the requirements of local consumers and, more generally, of the present day market. Against this background, we attempt to examine the extent of TQM awareness in Saudi manufacturing and the prospects and difficulties facing its implementation in this industry. The research is based on data obtained through a questionnaire distributed to 282 manufacturing companies established in or around the city of Jeddah and representing seven industrial categories. Analysis of the data revealed that major difficulties remain to be overcome before Saudi manufacturing can be said to have reached the degree of maturity necessary for TQM implementation. These difficulties include a general lack of awareness as to the strategic importance of quality, lack of technical and management know-how, inadequate provision for training and human resource development as well as shortcomings in the organisational systems in place. The policy implications of this situation are then discussed in relation to the Kingdom's overall economic development, highlighting the need for long-term solutions to be provided through the concerted efforts of both the government and the Saudi producers and for greater cooperation between them. Available data on Saudi Arabia relate almost exclusively to the Kingdom's role as an oil exporting giant and to the associated problems of its situation as a single commodity economy. This study can be seen as a modest attempt to redress the balance by concentrating on the non-oil manufacturing sector and on the prospects for its future development.