This thesis investigates the structural transformation of the Japanese business system. Internal decay of the system, caused by the unprecedented length of a recession through the 1990s and reluctance to transform has resulted in a decline of bank-led governance and the deterioration of a cross-holding structure. Concurrently, external pressure was imposed by a dramatic increase of foreign ownership; advocates of convergence theory which adopts a single optimal strategy of increasing profitability. They are also critics of Japanese non-liberal capitalism, urging Japanese firms to transcend into the structure of liberalist Anglo-American governance. Investigations for this thesis suggest these internal and external pressures did not steer Japanese firms to abandon their core competencies of sustaining human resources and the willingness to compete. The seniority method, once thought to have been terminated with the introduction of meritocracy, was kept virtually intact by preserving a grading system. The core structure of their human resource management (HRM) was not overturned, despite pressures imposed by foreign shareholders, because Japanese firms did not discard their institutional capabilities " they may want to be able to use for comparative and competitive advantage in future. The study reveals that many Japanese firms partially moved towards Anglo-American governance, but continued to maintain their competencies at their core. This hybridization indicates Japanese governance may be undergoing a period of stress and transformation that will see the adoption of some of the features of Anglo-American corporate governance, although there is little evidence that it is likely to converge completely with the Anglo-American system in its current configuration (Kester, 1996). Moreover, the study suggests that the Anglo-American model, based on liberal capitalism, is not sufficient to induce the paradigm shift necessary for Japanese firms to carry out a transformation in their systems.

The research reported in this doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the corporate finance literature, in the context of capital structure and dividend policy decisions by UK firms, by focusing on three main issues: empirical testing of the pecking order theory of capital structure; simultaneous determination of capital structure and dividend policy; and simultaneous determination of debt, dividend policy and insider ownership. The methodology of the study involves a review of the relevant theoretical and empirical literature, specification of relevant models, data collection, estimation and testing of the models, and interpretation of the empirical results. Hence, the thesis is structured into six chapters, comprising an introduction, four stand-alone papers and a conclusion. The first paper critically reviews the main theory and empirical findings of capital structure and dividend policy; some promising research ideas are identified. The second paper tests the pecking order theory on UK firms; my results suggest a 'new pecking order' of internal funds, equity financing and debt financing as a last resort. The third paper empirically tests the simultaneous effects of capital structure and dividend policy on UK firms using a system equation model. The last empirical paper extends the idea to include the insider ownership into consideration. The main conclusions of the thesis are produced in chapter six together with some promising research ideas for extending the work in this study.

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This research examines the determinants of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China at multi-levels - country, industry and corporate levels. The wave of cross-border M&As has received extensive attention both from practitioners and academic, to consider: (i) what determines their pattern and in particular, what influences their behaviour over time, and (ii) what influences mangers' considerations on international acquisition strategy. However, little attention has been paid to the first problem due to a concentration on the wave pattern within industrial economies as well as the small proportion of cross-border transactions in emerging markets. Moreover, past research on international acquisition at corporate-level suffers a lot from the fragmented perspectives which do not integrate systematically with a number of theoretical schools, industrial organisation, institutional theory, human resource, finance and economics. Considering China as an unexplored market for this topic, this research firstly tries to identify the determinants at country- and industry-levels. This research integrates domestic merger, industrial organisation and FDI perspective and employs two panel databases to model the behaviour, at country and industry levels, of cross-border M&As in China, for the period 1990-2003 and 1991-2003 respectively. Drawn upon the panel data analysis, this research confirms that cross-border M&As in China are linked with several economic fundamentals (Le. market size, growth potential, labour costs, risk and cultural distance) that are identified in previous empirical studies as well while the relationship with financial variables is less convincing due to the incomplete financial market for acquisition transactions in China. This research also shows that deregulation in industrial sectors is a critical determinant to explain the differences in the acquisition activity across industries. The restructuring of industry, particularly in the aspect of reducing the number of state-owned enterprises and strengthening the preferable policy for foreign investment, encourages more acquisition activities in those sectors with fast paced and determined actions.

This research examines formal planning systems as an aspect of control processes in five major international organisations. The sample organisations are in the oil and chemical industries, and represent a variety of ownership (state and private) and of Head Office locations (North America, Europe and East Asia). Study was undertaken at the Head Office location of each organisation, and in some cases, in foreign sub-units also. The study was conducted in three phases: I Detailed case studies, based on in-depth interviews. The basic conceptual framework for the case studies was drawn from normative and descriptive theory in the area of Formal Planning Systems and the Contingency Theory of Management Control. II Based on the case studies, grounded hypotheses were developed. Some of these were tested using a large sample questionnaire survey in fifteen strategic business units drawn from three organisations. The samples spanned four countries in two continents. It was designed to replicate and extend the classic methodology of Hofstede for investigating national culture, and interesting points of agreement and disagreement with Hofstede's method and his results were found. III To clarify the results of the questionnaire, and to generate further hypotheses, a small sample of follow up interviews was undertaken in the three organisations. The main findings are as follows: a) Some technical aspects of Hofstede's method have been clarified, and his statistical method improved on. b) Some of Hofstede's findings have been replicated. In the case of one country in East Asia, they have been shown to apply only to a specific racial group within the country. c) A new instrument has been piloted, which measures attitudes to a number of process issues that have been omitted from most previous research in Planning and Management Control (ie. conflict resolution, uncertainty absorption, degree of decentralisation, signs of dysfunctional behaviour, etc).

In Germany, business start-up persons in the service sector have experienced some difficulty in obtaining classical finance for start-up projects. Despite their importance for the national economy, these service-oriented entrepreneurs often lack expertise in financial management. Furthermore, no proven business models for start-up-specific financing requirements are available in the service sector to guide founders of new businesses. In an attempt to close this gap, the author develops an "entrepreneurial finance management (EFM) field of activity". This EFM-business model provides a description of the EFM-environment and the EFM-courses of action for business start-up persons in the service sector. Nine German business start-up persons are interviewed by means of a guide-supported expert survey. The collected data is analysed by applying a grounded theory strategy. The inductively generated patterns are synthesized and used to elaborate and to develop existing approaches to entrepreneurial finance. By doing this, it is hoped that they can be made more compatible with the needs of business start-up persons in the service sector in the German context. The detailed findings presented here show the target parameters of founders of business in the service sector (such as start-up motives, financial objectives and financial management strategies); the essential conditions (characterization and tasks of the financial manager, funding requirements of start-up service enterprises, and start-up financing); and the design parameters (CPDS-methods and instruments).

Corporate Political Strategies are the corporate attempts to influence the government in making or adjusting public policies, so that such policies align with the firms' business strategy. Some examples of corporate political activities used by firms are lobbying, providing support for political campaigns, hiring managers from the government to work for the company, advocacy advertising on a particular issue position, and conducting political education programmes. Overall, research on the interactions between businesses and the government has been advancing rapidly in the past decades, and is likely to continue, as firms are being faced with new challenges and new types of participants such as international media and non-governmental organisations that have more diverse and unaligned interests, purposes and preferences than in previous eras. This study examines the determinants of political strategies of foreign firms' subsidiaries in emerging economies, by focusing on the context of India. The major contribution of the study has been to theorise the effects of resource tangibility, product diversification and business ties on the political strategies of foreign firms' subsidiaries in emerging economies, using the resource dependence theory as lens. The study has used the 'decision tree' formulation model of political strategy, which emphasizes that the overall political strategy consists of a sequence of decisions on the choices concerning approach, participation and type of strategy. The results are based on a sample of 105 foreign firms' subsidiaries operating in India. The empirical evidence supports the hypotheses concerning the effects of resource tangibility on the approach and type of political strategy, and the effects of product diversification and business ties on the approach and participation; although the effect of product diversification on participation level is not supported.

This thesis examines share price performance of firms after mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in some major EU M&A markets. In particular, they are the UK, French and German M&A markets. The thesis performs a full empirical survey covering not only both the short and long run share price performance, but also both domestic and cross-border acquisitions. In addition, the thesis pays attention to the long run performance of the acquirers of private target firms. Based on a sample in the three selected M&A markets over the period 1992-2003, the thesis shows that, in the short run, target firm shareholders receive on average positive excess returns while acquirers receive on average zero or slightly positive excess returns. This is in line with other studies in this area. In addition, amongst other things, UK target firm shareholders receive substantially higher excess returns than continental-EU target firm shareholders. In the case of the UK sample, there is some evidence that in the long run domestic acquirers on average experience negative buy-and-hold-abnormal-returns and cross-border acquirers are likely to experience insignificant buy-and-hold-abnormal-returns. When I gather all types of UK acquirers together, the evidence shows that overall acquisitions by UK acquirers yield negative profits in the long run. The thesis also shows that UK overlapping acquirers outperform UK non-overlapping acquirers in certain circumstances. On the other hand, the results of the French sample in general suggest no under- or over-performance in the long run. In Germany, there is some evidence for under-performance in the long run. The thesis reveals that, in the long run, UK acquirers of cross-border M&As experience higher share price performance than those of domestic M&As. Other factors, such as means of payment, tender offer, market-to-book-value, leverage ratio, and market value are found to be important determinants for the short and/or the long run share price performance. Overall, this thesis performs a comprehensive empirical study to examine the profitability of firms after M&As and explore the determinants of the profitability.

Corporate failure prediction problems are of great interest to researchers as well as creditors, and other interested parties that are likely to rely on corporate financial statements (David et al., 1997). According to Duffy (1999), a large number of major public and private companies have gone failed over the last few years. The recent spectacular failures of such large corporations as Parmalat in Europe, Enron and WorldCom in USA and HIH in Australia are such reminders of the reality: the corporate failures are still ongoing. This study is aimed to develop and validate corporate failure forecasting models using various methodologies. The purpose of these proposed models is to include: (a) assisting banker and investors to intervene in good time to try to prevent company failure; and (b) acting as decision support system for senior management to improve company performance. By reviewing previous studies and researches, totally, 9 types of modelling techniques were adopted in this research, including (i) five types Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) , which are Multi-layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP-NN), Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ), Radial Basis Function Neural (RBFN), Self-Organization Mapping (SOM) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN), (ii) two statistical methods, which are Multivariate Discriminant Analysis (MDA), Logit analysis and (iii) two hybrid systems, Neuro-Fuzzy and Neuro-Genetic models. 2 separate datasets were collected from with certain sampling criterion, dataset I selected from FAME with 50 samples of UK manufacturing companies, while dataset 11 was collected from AMESDUS with 100 samples of European manufacturing companies. In total, 58 models built-up through the 4-stage experiment plan. According to experiment results of 58 developed models, the stand alone MLP-BP classifier shows critical superior prediction ability than other models, with 97.19 % training accuracy and 97.53% testing accuracy, the overall classification accuracy is 100%, in other words, the ANN stand-alone classifier can predict correctly of healthy companies and failed companies from manufacturing industry.

Academic endeavors in international business research have produced a number of convincing studies that argue for the importance of negotiation activities and environments in the process of the global interaction of two international counterparts. Despite the effort and time given to negotiation research, the empirical and academic investigation of the relationship between the influencing factors and the process or outcome of negotiations is still fresh. The issues in negotiation dynamics can be categorized so that they can be explained in a broader group of components defined by characteristics such as individual, strategic, and contextual components, which influence the cooperative process during international M&A negotiations. What are the desirable outcome variables? Those issues still need to be explored due to the very nature of the negotiation activity. Thus, this research empirically tests the effects of attractiveness and personality (i.e., compliance, aggressiveness, and detachement) as the individual components, tactics (i.e., hard, rational, and soft) as the strategic components, and time pressure and relative power (i.e., legitimate, reputational, and informational) as the contextual components on the face-to-face cooperative negotiation process of international M&As, which is intended to ensure satisfaction and strengthen future relationships. We performed regression analysis in SPSS with 11 observable variables, with the cooperative process of negotiation as a dependent variable. Samples were collected through a questionnaire survey of respondents who were experienced in international M&A negotiations with foreign partners. The results showed that variables such as the attractiveness, rational tactics, and reputational power of negotiators have a strong positive influence, and the perceived time pressure and a compliant personality have a strong negative effect on the cooperative atmosphere during face-to-face M&A negotiations. Most hypotheses were supported as we predicted, whereas the negative influence of a compliant personality on the cooperativeness was unexpected. This is due to the broad range of its definition, which includes sensitivity and generosity both in a compliant individual, for instance (Brooks and Rose, 2004). This research contributes to our understanding and discovery of the links assumed based on the previous research. It thereby also contributes to the formulation of a practical strategy before the actual negotiation activity by reviewing the important variables in each category such as the individual, strategic, and contextual components. Methodologically, we overcame the previous limitations of descriptive research and of Kelley’s (1966) simulation study that used student samples, by conducting the survey with experienced international negotiators. With our application of a process-related variable instead of the financial outcome as the dependent variable, we also overcame the traditional perspective of a win-lose pie sum by steering towards a win-win perspective in equilibrium.