Inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is believed to be a carrier of advanced knowledge to host countries, but how regional factors might impact FDI spillover effects is still uncertain. Meanwhile, regional industrial structure, i.e. specialization and diversity, has been frequently discussed in the literature, but there is no consensus about which type of industrial structure can promote regional innovation. In this thesis, the above two streams of literature are integrated and a theoretical model is proposed in which regional FDI and industrial structure are hypothesized to have direct and interactive effects on regional innovativeness. Provincial- and firm-level panel datasets (2000-2010) were compiled for empirical analyses. The results indicate that a foreign presence is beneficial for both regional and firm innovation capability while these associations are contingent on the level of industrial structure, namely the degree of specialization and diversity. A greater level of regional specialization is less likely to facilitate regional innovators to gain positive spillovers from FDI while an increase in diversity is more likely to reinforce the positive effects of foreign presence on regional innovativeness. As China has become the biggest FDI recipient country in the world in recent years and the Chinese industrial structure has been changing rapidly during the last few decades, an empirical study in the Chinese context would be ideal to examine the debate on the roles of industrial structure and FDI in promoting regional innovativeness. Overall, this research aims to advance the understanding about the moderating role of regional industrial structure in affecting the spillover effect of FDI on regional and firm innovation. The findings not only provide empirical evidence for the specialization versus diversity debate, but also highlight the essential role of contextual factors in facilitating regional innovativeness.

This thesis uses a new institutional sociology perspective to examine financial risk management practices adopted by Saudi listed companies and identify the factors that influence these practices. In Islamic shariah law, using conventional derivatives is prohibited and so this thesis aims to determine if there is an institutional logic within the organisational field and a community of practice that results from networks of actors. The study also, examines the effect of different types of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures on the adoption of risk management practices by Saudi listed companies. For this purpose, two pieces of empirical work are employed, (i) semi- structured interviews; and (ii) statistical tests. The interviews were held with 22 treasury managers of Saudi listed companies in 2011 to explore their perspectives of financial risk management practices. The second empirical work uses binary logistic regression to test the factors that might affect the adoption of financial risk management practices of 132 listed companies using publicly available data in 2011. Most of the previous studies relating to financial risk management practices have been undertaken in developing countries Therefore, there is a need to expand the scope of existing research by investigating such practices in Islamic countries to test the relevance of existing theory there and to enrich the risk financial management literature. This thesis investigate 12 factors: (the influence of political factors, cultural factors, and the competitive environment in Saudi society as well as nine institutional characteristics, comprising: firm size; profitability; leverage; being an Islamic company; auditor type; industrial sector; ownership structure; number of subsidiaries and exports) to identify to what extent they affect the financial risk management practices in the organisational field. The main findings indicate that Saudi listed companies hedge more interest rate risk than other financial risks, using conventional derivatives contracts which are prohibited in Islam. This finding is surprising in a country such as Saudi Arabia that is regulated and dominated by Shariah law. The political, cultural and competitive environments also affect the financial risk management practices in the organisational field. In addition, firm size in Saudi Arabia is related to interest rate risk and foreign exchange rate risk; also more leveraged companies and companies audited by Big-4 firms hedge interest rate risk. In addition, Islamic companies depend on Islamic derivatives that are available to hedge financial risk. Furthermore, the profitability of companies, industrial sector and their ownership structure has little influence on the risk management practices in Saudi listed companies. Finally, having subsidiaries and exports also affects hedging practices. It seems that actors are involved in similar networks and that considerable boundary-spanning takes place across these networks especially by treasury managers. This results in several different communities of practice with different organisational logics.

This PhD thesis is an exploratory study examining the practices of Corporate Social and Environmental Disclosure (CSED) in the annual reports of the manufacturing sector in Jordan over the period 2010-2012. The study is based mainly on empirical investigation of the level and patterns of CSED practices by 66 industrial companies listed in the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). In addition, it focuses on analysing determinants of the practices of CSED by firms in the manufacturing sector. This study is concerned with the common area between functionalist and interpretive paradigms. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed as a mixed practical approach to collect, analyse and interpret the required data. Specifically, the disclosure index was selected as an appropriate approach to extract quantitative data regarding CSED practices. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were used as a qualitative method to explore the stakeholders' perceptions of the impact of local external factors on CSED practices. The Random-Effect Model was the most appropriate analysis technique to analyse possible relationships between internal factors and the level of CSED, and the stakeholders' views were evaluated through the use of open critical discussion to ascertain the effect of the local contextual factors on the practices of CSED. The results showed the existence of unsatisfactory levels in the practices of CSED during the survey period. Furthermore, the results of the random effect model indicated that the firm size, audit firm and type of financial market were all significant. However, this result of type of financial market coefficients indicated an inverse relationship in explaining the level of CSED practices. Moreover, stakeholders’ views regarding the effect of the external factors on CSED practices showed that the political system, legal system, cultural values and economic development are also significant factors in explaining CSED practices in the corporate annual reports.

The restrictive listing requirements imposed by the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange results in the listing of high quality companies, while at the same time provides a higher degree of investor protection. These requirements can however be an obstacle for small and growing companies to go public and raise capital. Thus AIM has developed in order to facilitate the growth of these companies by its lighter listing requirements. This thesis is focused on three outcomes of the lighter listing requirements of AIM. First, AIM companies have a high ownership concentration and lower investor protection, thus enabling blockholders to have a significant impact on their value. This thesis finds that non-managerial and managerial blockholders have quadratic and cubic relationships with firm value respectively. Also, both types of blockholder increase the value of the firm until the first break point which is approximately 30 percent. This is almost exactly the point that the LSE defines as a cut-off point at which the blockholder is regarded as a controlling shareholder. Second, companies moving from the Main market to the AIM impair their information environment when entering the AIM; the information environment is measured by the stock’s liquidity and volatility. This thesis finds that firms experience lower trading activity and lower trading volume, which results in lower liquidity and volatility than matched companies that remain in the Main Market. Third, IPOs listing in the AIM are underpriced in order to compensate for risk. However, the level of underpricing can be alleviated by appointing a reputable Nomad. Underpricing facilitates IPOs to achieve higher aftermarket liquidity in two ways: First, directly by attracting investor attention; and second by diversifying ownership. However, aftermarket liquidity is evident for a longer period than other markets because of a longer lock up period.

The current extremely volatile business world requires firms to deal with a wide range of risks that pose threats to their organisations. The poor practices of risk management, based on Traditional Risk Management (TRM), was cited time and time again in the aftermath of the recent Global Crisis. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) has been advocated as a solution to the problems of TRM. The aim is to centralise the management of risk within the organisation and ensure that the board deals with the risk. Hence strategic, external, internal, operational, compliance and reputational risk are dealt with jointly. In doing so, it is expected that ERM will bring value creation to firms. One of the main limitations facing researchers is the lack of a good standardised measurement of ERM implementation; therefore, it has not been possible to establish whether ERM does actually bring benefit to firms. In addition, many companies have set up ERM initiatives, but they lack a clear understanding of the factors that will lead to successful ERM implementation. The remaining unanswered problematic situation has led to two unanswered questions that will determine whether the solution to ERM implementation is avoiding potential pitfalls and improving business sustainability. Firstly, does ERM implementation have an impact on firm performance? And secondly, which is the firm-specific characteristic that leads to better ERM implementation level? This thesis answers the aforementioned questions by proposing a reliable ERM measurement method, and then testing whether firms that adopt ERM actually improve financial performance and determine the influential factor of ERM implementation. The proposed method for measuring ERM implementation is based on the components developed from the current ERM frameworks, where contribution scoring can be standardised to measure ERM implementation level. To demonstrate its viability, data was collected from publicly listed firms in Thailand and was then compared to three alternative methodologies: cluster analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS). The results show that the proposed method did well compared to the alternatives, both statistically and in prediction performance. The relationship between the proposed ERM measurement and firm performance is then considered by taking appropriate control variables into account, such as the firm’s size and characteristics, industry effects, sales growth and the external environment: technology, market uncertainty, as well as economic factors. By using data from the Thailand Stock Exchange, it was found that implementing ERM could improve firm performance in term of Tobin's Q, ROE and ROA. The results show that ERM and firm performance are related. For the influential factor of ERM implementation, the empirical results show that a firm’s size and economic factors have a statistically positive relationship with a high level of ERM implementation, while lower ERM scores show more revenue volatility than those who have well-implemented ERMs. Furthermore, technology and growth are positively related to each ERM in the scoring system considered.

A chemical supply chain (CSC) presents a network that integrates suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers into one system. The hazards arising from the internal system and the surrounding environment may cause disturbances to material, information and financial flows. Therefore, supply chain members have to implement a variety of methods to prepare for, respond to and recover from potential damages caused by different kinds of hazards. A large number of studies have been devoted to extending the current knowledge and enhancing the implementation of chemical supply chain risk management (CSCRM), to improve both safety and reliability of the CSCRM systems. However, the majority of existing risk management methods fail to address the complex interactions and dynamic feedback effects in the systems, which could significantly affect the risk management outcomes. In order to bridge the gaps, a new CSCRM method based on System Dynamics (SD) is proposed to accommodate the need to describe the connections between risks and their associated changes of system behaviour. The novelty of this method lies not only on providing a valid description of a real system, but also on addressing the interactions of the hazardous events and managerial activities in the systems. In doing so, the risk effects are quantified and assessed in different supply chain levels. Based upon the flexibility of SD modelling processes, the model developer can modify the developed model throughout the model life cycle. Instead of directly assessing different risks and providing arbitrary decisions, the obtained numerical results can offer supportive information for assessing potential risk reduction measures and continuously improving the CSC system performance. To demonstrate the applicability of the newly proposed method, a reputed specialty chemical transportation service provider in China is used and analysed through modelling and simulating the chemical supply chain transportation (CSCT) operations in various scenarios. It offers policy makers and operators insights into the risk-affected CSC operations and CSCRM decision-making processes, thus helping them develop rational risk reduction decisions in a dynamic environment.

This thesis investigates the interplay of context with culture on strategic investment decision (SID) making practises in strategic management accounting, strategic management, cross cultural management and global strategic management research in Singapore using three research questions. These research questions commence from an inter-country perspective on SID making and narrow down to the theme of foreign versus domestic investments. The three research questions are: Research question 1(RQ1): Do strategic management accounting, strategic management and cultural aspects vary across Singaporean companies in SID making? Research Question 2 (RQ 2): Can SID differences be explained by using a four way categorisation of firms? Research Question 3 (RQ3): Do decision making practises for international SIDs differ from domestic SIDs? The first research question aims to determine country versus context specific SID making practises using Singapore as the research context. Having acknowledged unique country specific influences on SID making practises in the analysis conducted using the first research question, the second research question segments the Singaporean SIDs in conjunction with the international SIDs into four contextual categories using unique contextual differences that are highlighted in the analysis. The third research question aims to ascertain unique aspects of SID research that can be applied to global strategic management research. To address RQ3, the findings from RQ1 and RQ2 are consolidated in tandem with global strategic management research in order to distinguish between foreign direct investments versus domestic investments in SID making. Drawing on Singapore as the empirical focus for fieldwork, a multi-tiered case analysis system is used. The methods chapter illustrates the pilot study and thirty case studies that are conducted over two years over three stages with representative companies from the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. In the detailed case study approach taken by the researcher; web-based research, questionnaire modifications, interviews, field visits, factory observations and financial reports collection are duplicated in Stages one to three to ensure comparability with the previous phases. In the discussion section, the dominating themes from the results chapters are used as comparison with multi-country research in order to investigate the three research questions in detail. In total, nineteen expectations that are derived from the literature review covering the dimensions of strategic management accounting, strategic management, cross cultural management and global strategic management are extracted and compared with actual SID making practises exhibited in the 30 case studies. Cultural similarities within the thirty Singaporean SIDs are contrasted with unique cultural features of U.S, U.K, Japanese and German firms using RQ1. Beyond financial variables, culture specific differences are specifically highlighted for the dimensions of intuition, power distance relationships, long term orientation and minimum financial versus strategic emphasis in the Singaporean sample. In RQ1’s analysis, it is found that Singaporean firms exhibit the highest degree of future orientated behaviour, power distance relationships in conjunction with lower levels of assertiveness and in-group collectivism when contrasted with U.K, U.S, Japanese and German firms. However, some contextual differences are apparent within the Singaporean sample which RQ2 seeks to explain. In RQ2’s analysis, the thirty firms are structured into Market Creators, Value Creators, Refocusers and Restructurers where marked distinctions in financial flexibility, financial expectations and attitude towards financial targets are found. Further observations found that firms in the tertiary sector favour readiness in SID making, as compared to planned SID making approaches in the secondary and primary sectors. Hence, it is concluded that culture and context both play important roles in different aspects in SID making. RQ3’s analysis aims to show subtle distinctions between overseas and domestic SIDs. It is found that firms investing in overseas SIDs are inclined to be longer-term in their SID making approach than firms who have a higher propensity to invest in domestic SIDs. The approaches for host country selection differ for the 4 contextual categories. The Market Creators tend to be influenced by the availability of closeknitted partners when investing overseas. In contrast, the Refocusers and Restructurers are highly customer-driven whereas the Value Creators are attracted by the host country’s market potential. From the literature summary of the four unique dimensions pertinent to SID making, a pre-conceptual framework is derived. In the discussion section, the pre-conceptual framework is restructured into a post-conceptual framework where themes common to the Singaporean and multi-country SIDs that have been used for comparative analysis are emphasised. This framework concludes the thesis by combining both contextual and cultural themes using research from the eastern and western contexts.

The effect of institutional ownership and ownership concentration on the firm’s stock returns and volatility and financial performance has long been an interesting issue in the international business literature. A lot of debate has been going on regarding the relationship between institutional ownership, ownership concentration, returns, volatility and financial performance. The objective of this thesis is to study the effect of institutional ownership and ownership concentration on firm stock returns and financial performance of the listed companies in the Egyptian Stock Exchange. For this purpose, panel data model is employed. The results from the analysis show that institutional ownership has no effect on ex post stock returns as well as ex ante stock returns. On the contrary, institutional ownership represented by top management and individuals have a negative and significant effect on stock volatility, while employee associations have a positive and significant effect. No significant effect is detected on ex ante risk except for employee associations that have negative and significant effect on ex ante risk. In addition, the results show that institutional ownership has no effect on stock liquidity except employee associations and individuals that have a negative and significant effect on stock liquidity. Finally, the results show that institutional ownership represented by companies, holdings and individuals have negative effect on financial performance represented by ROA and ROE. Also, institutional ownership has no effect on debt to equity ratio except banks that have negative and significant effect and employee associations that have positive and significant effect. The results also show that ownership concentration has no effect on ex post stock returns but it has a positive effect on ex ante stock returns. Also, it has no effect on ex post risk but it has a positive effect on ex ante risk. On the other hand, ownership concentration has a negative and significant effect on stock liquidity. Finally, the results show that ownership concentration has no effect on either financial performance represented by ROA and ROE or debt to equity ratio. As such, the thesis makes an important contribution to the literature, since it tests the impact of ownership type and concentration on ex ante returns and volatility of stocks in Egypt, an emerging country that has been ignored in literature. Also, the analysis extends the literature by decomposing institutional ownership to several types. Moreover, it adds two components of volatility, volatility clustering and persistence, testing their effect on ex post and ex ante risk, which is not dealt by previous studies.

This thesis examines the non-cash compensation paid to the underwriters/brokers during the flotation process and the IPO when-issued dealing market in one of the most successful and international stock exchanges around the world, the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The thesis consists of three essays that try to answer the following questions: Do IPO firms minimise their costs of going public by issuing warrants to their financial advisers? Does the when-issued dealing affect the setting of the offer price? The first essay examines the issue of warrants to brokers as part of their compensation package in non-underwritten offerings on the Alternative Investment Market of the LSE. The main finding is that IPO firms are able to make efficient decisions and choose the contract that minimises their costs. For companies that issue warrants to their brokers the total costs of going public are 22.74% (as a percentage of gross proceeds), but would have been 25.61% had they not issued them. This 2.87% reduction in costs is equivalent to 70.34% of the commission paid to the brokers by the IPO firms. The main source of this decrease in the costs is the lower underpricing the companies incur by granting warrants to their brokers. The second essay examines the use of non-cash compensation in underwritten IPOs. The findings suggest that firms that are cash constrained are more likely to issue warrants to their underwriters. In addition, underwriters appear to have the ability to time the issue of warrants because they include them as part of their compensation package when the market is doing well. Interestingly, warrant issuers are still able to minimise their costs of going public even under a very light regulatory setting underlying the use of non-cash compensation. The third essay examines the when-issued dealing in the Main Market of the LSE for an extensive period of time, 1996 to 2012. The main finding is that, in an institutional setting in which the when-issued dealing commences only after the allocation of shares and the offer price are announced, investors pay ‘rents’ to the underwriters in order to acquire IPO shares that will trade within the when-issued dealing. These ‘rents’ take the form of a higher offer price. In other words the when-issued dealing affects the setting of the offer price. For companies that have a when issued dealing the offer price is £3.4 but would have been 54% lower (£1.55) had these firms not had a when issued dealing.

We report our investigation of how news stories influence the behaviour of tradable financial assets, in particular, equities. We consider the established methods of turning news events into a quantifiable measure and explore the models which connect these measures to financial decision making and risk control. The study of our thesis is built around two practical, as well as, research problems which are determining trading strategies and quantifying trading risk. We have constructed a new measure which takes into consideration (i) the volume of news and (ii) the decaying effect of news sentiment. In this way we derive the impact of aggregated news events for a given asset; we have defined this as the impact score. We also characterise the behaviour of assets using three parameters, which are return, volatility and liquidity, and construct predictive models which incorporate impact scores. The derivation of the impact measure and the characterisation of asset behaviour by introducing liquidity are two innovations reported in this thesis and are claimed to be contributions to knowledge. The impact of news on asset behaviour is explored using two sets of predictive models: the univariate models and the multivariate models. In our univariate predictive models, a universe of 53 assets were considered in order to justify the relationship of news and assets across 9 different sectors. For the multivariate case, we have selected 5 stocks from the financial sector only as this is relevant for the purpose of constructing trading strategies. We have analysed the celebrated Black-Litterman model (1991) and constructed our Bayesian multivariate predictive models such that we can incorporate domain expertise to improve the predictions. Not only does this suggest one of the best ways to choose priors in Bayesian inference for financial models using news sentiment, but it also allows the use of current and synchronised data with market information. This is also a novel aspect of our work and a further contribution to knowledge.