This thesis adopts a supply-­‐side approach to understanding poor law expenditure. It investigates the reasons for variations in relief spending by poor law unions, the local government organisations responsible for poor relief in England and Wales from -./0 to -2/3, and makes important new contributions to the historiography of the new poor law in three key ways: First, it emphasises the signi/icance of different types of places. As indoor relief grew, particularly in urban settings, the poor law was increasingly important in local economies as a buyer of goods and services. Second, it shows that these transactions were socially embedded, based as they were on relationships between administrators and suppliers. Third, it demonstrates that these social transactions could affect the local costs of buying goods, and thereby the relief policies and practices which shaped paupers’ experiences. Using geographical information systems techniques, it develops a spatial understanding of relief and suggests new ways of measuring the costs and types of poor law practices. It queries the conception of a north-­‐south divide in generosity of relief and suggests that paupers saw greater differences between rural and urban unions. Moreover, it argues that variations in relief practices need to be understood in the context of local 'inancial management. It analyses the ways in which unions contracted for provisions, and relates relief expenditure to local costs of goods. By investigating the supply of goods to unions across England and Wales it demonstrates the social signi3icance of the poor law for local economies, not just in terms of its impact on poverty, but also as a consumer of goods and a source of revenue for businesses.

Over the past fifteen years, new technologies have enabled the evolution of e-business and as new trends on web based applications develop at a very fast pace, projects to implement new and adapt existing e-business systems are becoming more complex in their structure. At the same time, organizations involved as stakeholders are becoming more demanding in the delivery of fast, accurate and timely results. Where interconnected e-business systems, such as Value-Added-Communities, are concerned the key criteria of success, in addition to the quality of the technical work, are the timely completion of the project and an accurate estimate of the launch time. Given the nature of such e-business development projects, estimating their duration cannot be based on traditional estimation methods that target the estimation of human effort originally and then attempt to convert this to cost and duration. This research explores a new approach aiming to improve the accuracy of estimates for e-business development projects, obtained at the early stages of the project. The key objective is to modify the estimation by analogy approach by using risk as the key element that along with project size and complexity are used to identify analogues and determine analogies amongst projects. The author established the behaviour of risk with the variation of certain project attributes that define a project’s size and complexity at the very early stages of the project, before detailed requirements are identified. The variation of risk was subsequently employed, with a modification to the estimation by analogy method, to establish analogies on suitably identified analogues to the project to be estimated. The ISBSG project data repository has been used as source for potential analogue projects in testing the proposed method. Four project cases were considered. New estimates have been obtained using the modified estimation approach method and the results were compared to the original estimates for the projects, obtained using traditional methods. Results obtained within the context of this research are encouraging and suggest that there is credibility to the proposed modification. The accuracy of the estimates is within acceptable tolerance levels and shows signs that it can improve on the quality of estimates obtained from traditional methods when applied to e-business development projects. More research is required though to expand and fully exploit the potential of this approach. In particular the author believes that the approach could be further fine tuned for improved accuracy of the estimated duration. This risk based estimation by analogy approach could then be applied to other types of projects which share characteristics with e-business projects such as, demands for short time development, complex interactions of stakeholders and accuracy in the time of completion. Types of projects where the proposed method could possibly be utilized are web services implementation, computer games development and cloud computing projects.

This study explores processes people use in creating value for themselves, using time and over time. It draws on an empirical study of cycling to identify the detailed and often paradoxical ways in which value-in-use is experienced and constructed. The outcomes contribute to our understanding of how perspectives of time and value interrelate, with implications for time-based theories of value; for positioning of commercial goods and services; and policies and practices affecting leisure activities. Value has enjoyed a long and complex intellectual history across many fields. Within marketing there has been some concentration on ‘exchange value’ and this has influenced a range of views on Consumer Behaviour. More complex constructions of value have emerged, such as Holbrook’s (1999) consumer value and Vargo and Lusch’s (2004; 2008) value-in-use. There have been calls for more research into the processes of creating value and this thesis responds to those calls, exploring those processes through participation and interview. Value is entwined with time. Experienced, it requires time, and the duration of the experience can increase or intensify value or change its nature. Experiences are anticipated and remembered, ‘distorting’ or developing the value of an event. The aim of this work is to explore processes people use in creating value for themselves using time and over time, addressing the broad question of how a return to a perspective of value-in-use can help inform understanding of the relationship between value and time for individuals. In line with this exploratory and theory-building aim, an interpretive approach informed by Grounded Theory was adopted. This involved fieldwork over two years, developing from a range of initial data collection through observations to formal and detailed analysis of 15 interviews with two groups of cyclists. One group centred on old bicycles, one on cycling advocacy. The contribution from this study is in two parts. First, it describes how alignment of value and time perspectives can usefully shed light onto the relationship between time and value for individuals. Examples include episodic valuation and non-linear chronologies. These offer alternatives to established forms of clock time exchange, value through ownership, Discounted Utility, and ex-ante, ex-post valuations. Second, it offers detailed operationalisation of these alternatives through three emergent themes: disposition, moments and remembering with objects. These examples include the roles of objects in projecting into the past and future, and constructs such as Reference Moments set as an alternative to Moments of Truth. This exploratory study leads towards future work testing and evaluating the constructs and assertions, and more broadly towards closer investigation into ways in which experiences are combined, recalled and projected. Commercially, the results could be used by businesses in the design and promotion of goods and services to improve efficiency and the nature of the experience. The constructs could inform recycling policy and the selection of mementos for older people facing radical disposition.

This research has investigated the current application of management accounting practices in Saudi and non-Saudi manufacturing firms that operate in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and the internal and external contingent aspects that prompted these firms to adopt or not to adopt advanced management accounting practices. In order to achieve the aforementioned aims, a mixed methodology was used, with a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews being used as instruments for collecting the required data. Three types of statistical analysis were used (descriptive, bivariate and multivariate) to analyse the data obtained from the returned questionnaires (158 out of 260). Analysis of the descriptive parts of the questionnaires has shown that Saudi and non-Saudi manufacturing firms are still loyal to their traditional management accounting practices, such as the extensive use of one accounting system for several purposes, traditional allocation methods, traditional decision-making tools, standard costing systems, traditional budgeting, and traditional financial measures. At the same time, the analysis has shown that there is slow move toward adopting new trends in management accounting among these firms, mainly due to satisfaction with traditional management accounting practices and a lack of relevant skill regarding the advanced management accounting practices. The bivariate results have shown that adoption of advanced management accounting practices by Saudi and non-Saudi manufacturing firms is subject to certain contingent aspects, such as perceived environmental uncertainty, competition, size and firm strategy, but not product range or number. The same statistical test has shown that there is a partial relationship between the extent of adoption of advanced management accounting practices, culture, and advanced manufacturing technologies. The results of the multivariate test have shown that adoption of advanced management accounting practices by Saudi and non-Saudi manufacturing firms is related to only three predictors, which are size, number of products, and prospector strategy. Theoretical analysis of the interviews has revealed that adoption of advanced management accounting practices is due to perceived environmental uncertainty, price and quality competition, size, number of products, culture, and firm strategy, but not advanced manufacturing technology. Also, analysis of the interviews has confirmed the descriptive finding regarding the heavy use of traditional management accounting practices. The research concludes by emphasising that the case of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia follows the mainstream in regards to the limited acceptance of advanced management accounting practices and the fact that adoption of these practices is due to certain internal and external contingent drivers.

This thesis is concerned with understanding the role and utilisation of cost engineering knowledge for generating cost estimates with respect to long life cycle, complex hardware products. lt examines whether there is a formal structure to the reasoning process of experts as they use judgement and whether this process can be represented within a model. The aim is to develop a framework that formalises cost engineering knowledge to facilitate its reuse. A literature review examines the role of expert knowledge and judgement for generating cost estimates. The review identifies that there are mixed views on how knowledge is used and managed. Using an industrial case study approach, the author identifies the cost estimation practices for a new military air system. The study establishes that it is essential to capture assumptions and associated rationale to facilitate knowledge reuse. Experts use an analogy based reasoning process to make judgments and assumptions. The reasoning process became the focus of detailed studies using experts from across industry, resulting in a generic model. The model, known as an inference structure, was implemented within a software tool. This provided a formalised framework to represent, capture, and reuse assumptions and associated rationale. The thesis concludes that assumptions and rationale need to be captured during the development of cost estimates to facilitate knowledge reuse. There is a formal, generic reasoning process that experts use when applying their judgement. The results provide industry with a structured, consistent approach to the formalisation and reuse of cost engineering knowledge. By adopting this approach, companies can develop consistent estimates that will in turn improve decision-making across industry.

Drawing on insights from the corporate finance and industrial economics literatures, this thesis combines different empirical strategies and econometric techniques to study the role of capital-market imperfections on the financial and operational activities of firms. The thesis is mainly composed of three different but interlinked empirical chapters as summarized below using an unbalanced panel data on 1122 UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange during the period 1981 to 2009. Stochastic Frontier Analysis to Corporate Efficiency : Using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), long run and short run corporate efficiencies are predicted in this chapter focusing on value and profit maximization approach respectively. The estimation results reveal that, an average firm in the sample achieves 74.5% of it's best performing peer's market value and 86.6% of it's best performing peer's profit and both of them are highly significant in the analysis. The inverse of these serve as proxies of agency costs and significantly related to the chosen explanatory variables. The general conception that larger firms are more efficient remains valid in this study. The long run market value efficiency supports the agency cost of outside equity and the short run profit efficiency supports the agency cost of outside debt hypothesis. Also there is a positive rank correlation between these two efficiencies which confirms that an average firm in the UK suffers from inefficiency or agency conflicts to a certain extent, no matter whether the firm is driven by short run or long run growth perspectives. Corporate Efficiency, Credit Status and Investment : The endogenous switching regression models (SRM) incorporating the predicted corporate efficiencies are estimated in this chapter in an effort to clarify the role of cash flow in examining the impact of capital-market imperfections. It is revealed that a financially constrained firm is more likely to be smaller, younger, deficient in capturing better investment opportunities, reserves higher safety stock, pays low dividends, has less collaterizable assets and less external debt. Moreover, a firm's constrained credit status changes with the improvement of it's efficiency. The results further reveal that financially constrained firm's investment is comparatively more sensitive to cash flow, but this sensitivity is negatively and significantly related with corporate efficiency. These results point to the fact that high investment sensitivity to cash flow may not be solely driven by measurement error in investment opportunity, but may still be interpreted as a consequence of imperfect substitutability between internal and external financing arising from the capital market imperfections. Financial constraints and the dynamics of firm size and growth : Differential quantitative effects of cash flow on growth among firms facing different degrees of financial constraints are found in this chapter using the generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimations and the results are consistent with financial constraints arising from capital market imperfections. The results in general reject Gibrat's "Law of Proportionate Effects" and smaller and younger firms are found to grow faster. The estimated results indicate a substantially greater sensitivity of growth to cash flow for firm years facing the most binding financial constraints on their growth. Furthermore, these firms can actually expand their size more than the extent of increase in cash flow they may have supporting the leverage effect hypothesis. The estimated impact decreases monotonically thereafter as financial constraints become less binding allowing the firms to finance successively bigger portion of their growth through external financing.

The current financial climate has created an unsympathetic environment for companies to trade. The economic shift has highlighted the fragility in which companies are financed, operate, and how they identify, analyse and attempt to neutralise financial distress. Given that the potential options available to a company are dependent on the conclusions drawn from the examination of the distress it has become imperative to determine at what point a company is in trouble. In conjunction with satisfying this point, effort must also be placed on defining “financial distress” and considering how this has had a bearing on the implementation of a rescue strategy. The array of problems that companies face do not all need to be fatal, and hence not all companies that have problems have to be liquidated. Corporate rescue is a variable term. How it is applied depends on a number of factors that range from the identity of the company to the philosophy and character of the insolvency practitioner. Currently corporate rescue follows a formal mechanism known as administration. This process is increasingly coming under challenge from an alternative model that addresses the fact that administration can be a lengthy and expensive process. This alternative model known as prepacked administration (“pre-packs”) offers to conduct “rescue proceedings” in secret and often result in selling the company to members of the existing management. How the prepack model operates and conflicts with many of the UK’s traditional principles such as transparency and fairness highlights the tension within the profession as well as a lack of legislative guidance on the matter. This thesis aims to consider a number of issues: to assess the characteristics evident within the UK’s corporate rescue model and determine whether they comply with the theoretical principles of rescue; to examine the relationship between corporate rescue theory and government policy and how this has developed within the current economic environment; to determine whether the UK’s rescue model, when evaluated in light of the efficiency rule, can be classed as a true rescue model; and to ascertain whether prepacks offer a viable and legitimate solution to the inadequacies of the current law governing corporate rescue. Chapter One will introduce the corporate rescue concept and set out the research questions and aims that will be examined in this thesis. The second chapter will take a closer look at the fundamental principles and characteristics that are essential to the UK’s corporate rescue model and help shed light onto how the rescue regime came to being endorsed. Chapter Three is constituted by two parts. The first part sets out to examine how rescue is implemented in practice, taking a look at the different philosophical divides in corporate rescue and the influence of the Cork report. The second part focuses on the role and duties of the insolvency practitioner, in particular the wide discretion afforded to them and how they may use this to their advantage. Chapter Four explores the theoretical concepts of efficiency and the relationship that this has with the UK’s administration process. The penultimate Chapter introduces the alternative “rescue” measure which this thesis will class at the pragmatic response to the inadequacies of the current corporate insolvency legislation. Finally Chapter Six reflects on the research questions and aims set out in Chapter One and highlights any areas that would benefit from further research.

When Economic Value Added (EVA™) was first promoted by the patent-holders, Stern Stewart and Company, it was hailed as an innovation in management accounting. The suggestion was that this measure could be used as the basis for the management control system within the firm, covering planning, control, investment decision making and remuneration determination. Many firms introduced the EVA system. New Zealand, in particular, was exposed to the EVA methodology through the publication in 1996 of a Value-Based Reporting Protocol that was recommended for state-owned enterprises. This study adopts a longitudinal perspective to examine the experience of three large companies in New Zealand, who implemented EVA in the late 1990s. These companies are ex-nationalised firms; two are state-owned enterprises and one is listed. The firms implemented EVA in the late 1990s and continued to use it as the management control system for a period of 10-15 years. The evidence is gathered from a questionnaire conducted in 1999, interviews conducted in 2001 and 2011, and supporting documentary evidence. It covers the entire ‘life cycle’ of EVA, from initial implementation, through its evolution to the eventual decline. Three different theoretical frameworks are developed from three academic disciplines and applied in an original context to analyse this EVA evidence. The first is the discovery theory framework, drawing from the economics literature base. This framework is used to consider whether EVA can be regarded as a discovery process within the organisation, to discover the source of value that is known to exist in these ex-nationalised firms. The second, from the management literature, is used to investigate whether EVA can be viewed as a management model in the firm. Finally, contingency theory as applied in management accounting is extended to a longitudinal perspective to analyse the variables that were important at each stage of the EVA life cycle. A central theme of each framework was the information provided and the incentives created by the measure. The thesis provides original contributions to the evidence on EVA, including why EVA needed to evolve and why it eventually failed. Further contributions are the suggestions for development and extension of each framework and the synthesising of the frameworks. Finally, implications for practitioners and policy makers are considered.

This thesis examines various issues related to venture capital (VC) firms. The thesis consists of three essays that try to answer the following questions: Do local VC firms benefit from their syndication experience with foreign partners? Do VC firms benefit from their directorships in mature public companies? What do we know about the failure of VC firms? The first essay examines the benefits of cross-border syndication to ‘local’ (in the context of the first essay, Asian) VC firms. The main finding is that, post-syndication, local VC firms invest more in the high-tech industry than they did pre-syndication. I interpret this as a result of enhanced knowledge and confidence in assessing and taking on rather risky investments. Further, local VC firms have a higher likelihood of successful exits from their portfolio companies post-syndication. I interpret these results as being benefits to local VC firms that they derive from syndicating with their foreign partners. Overall, my results indicate that there are tangible benefits for local VC firms from syndicating with international VC partners. These benefits are more pronounced when the foreign partners are from North America or Europe. The second essay examines the benefits to venture capital firms through their directorships in mature public companies. I investigate the benefits to venture capital firms in terms of fundraising and investment performance. First, my empirical results show that venture capital firms raise more funds and set higher fund-raising targets during the post-directorship period. Second, I show that venture capital firms are more likely to exit successfully from their investments post-appointment as a board of director in an S&P 1500 company. Overall, my results indicate that being on the board of mature public companies brings tangible benefits to venture capital firms. The third essay examines the failure of VC firms. Based on a sample of 2,752 VC firms in the United States established between 1980 and 2004, the study finds that almost one-third of VC firms in the sample had gone out of business by the end of 2014. I then investigate the causal factors of VC firm failure. Specifically, I examine VC characteristics (location and year of incorporation) and factors related to VC activities (fundraising, investments, and exits). The empirical results show that VC firms with a higher level of failure tolerance and risk appetite are more likely to fail, whereas VC firms with better fundraising abilities and stronger control rights are less likely to do so.

This study explores the question whether share repurchases are an integral part of US and UK firms’ financial decision-making, or whether they are merely an afterthought and therefore not systematically related to managers’ principal financial decisions, namely dividends, investment and leverage. It aims to address concerns that share repurchases might be detrimental to firms’ ability to create value through investment (FINNOV, 2012) and can lead to the excessive leverage of companies (Foroohar, 2013). As the US and the UK display differences in terms of the legal and institutional environment, the first two chapters focus in the US and the UK respectively. The US findings indicate that share repurchases are driven not merely by free cash flows, but also by decisions about investment and dividends, and both dividends and investments are in turn affected by share repurchases. The fact that these results hold both for the period before and subsequent to the credit crunch suggests that share repurchases have become an essential consideration when managers take financial decisions in large US firms. By contrast, the UK research fails to show a consistent interaction between share repurchases and investment. Moreover, the findings suggest that share repurchases are being used as a complementary form of payout and not as a substitute. Considering the differences in the results from the first and second empirical chapter, the question arises, whether these are due to differences in the sample characteristics, as the size of S&P 500 companies tends to much larger than that of FTSE All Share Index companies, or whether they reflect country-specific institutional differences. This question is explored in the third empirical chapter. This research supports the contention that national differences in terms of regulatory frameworks and the development of financial markets can affect corporate decision-making (e.g. Bennedsen and Nielsen 2010, La Porta et al. 2000). More specifically, country specific factors appear to lead to a lower use of share repurchases in the UK possibly due to the stricter regulatory framework. In addition, UK firms seem to try to maintain higher dividend payout ratios than their US counterparts, which can be attributed to a culture of high dividend payouts. These differences seem to explain the non-integration of share repurchases into UK firms’ financial decision-making. Therefore, without considering country specific factors, it is not feasible to generalise economist concerns that share repurchases can be detrimental to firms’ ability to create value through investment (FINNOV, 2012) and for leading to the excessive leverage of companies (Foroohar, 2011).