This thesis uses the opinions of U.K. business managers about past and future trends in key economic variables to test a number of basic economic theories of firm behaviour: the decision to hire labour, to expand production, and to change prices. Individual qualitative responses from the Confederation of British Industry's quarterly Industrial Trends Survey from September 1982 to January 1984 are used to determine if firms act on expectations in the manner predicted by economic theory, that is, firms should adjust their behaviour in accordance to expected changes in external business conditions. Access to individual firms' responses over consecutive surveys results in data on both plans and expectations formulated in one period, and the realizations of those plans and expectations in the next period. The qualitative responses are used in ordered probit and conditional log-linear models to determine how expectations of external factors shape a firm's plan, as well as to determine why a firm did not follow through on its plan. Overall, the role of expectations in economic decision-making are confirmed. Firms plan to hire and to raise production if demand conditions are expected to improve, and vice versa. Firms plan to raise prices if cost conditions are expected to worsen, and vice versa. The fulfillment of plans is contingent on "errors" in forecasting external conditions. Firms adjust their plans in the manner that economic theory predicts if conditions differ from what was originally predicted. These conclusions applied whether the data was all firms in the sample (roughly 9000) or a special sub-sample of firms (roughly 550) which responded to all six quarterly surveys.

The study examines the impact of corporate takeover activities upon managerial and non-managerial remuneration in the acquiring companies. A regression model is empirically tested on a large panel data from LSE FT-All Share Index list for the period 1980 through 1992. The data is collected through DATASTREAM (361 companies) and also supplemented by a survey conducted by the researcher on Executive Share Options in a sample of organisations size 79 companies. The remuneration measures are regressed separately onto a common set of exogenous variables which measure corporate acquisition activities, size, performance and governance. The model thus is also employed to provide an explanation of the impact of corporate size, performance and governance upon managerial and non-managerial remuneration. The relationship is examined using Arellano and Bond's Generalised Method of Moments estimators after accounting for some of the statistical problems encountered when modelling the data. The findings of this study reveal that corporate size and acquisition activities are significantly related to managerial remuneration. The results also suggest that non-managerial remuneration is not significantly related to corporate acquisition but instead to corporate size, performance and governance.

This thesis researches the problem of building design understanding in rapidly changing environments. Although evolutionary prototyping has been proposed before as a solution, little serious investigation has been undertaken into its practical and theoretical adequacy. This thesis assesses the evolutionary development approach and on the basis of the findings of an exploratory case study conducted in a large car manufacturer company, proposes a new perspective in this approach. It combines the planned organisational change theory and semiotics which respectively underpin implementation management and design understanding. The cornerstone of the proposed perspective is a semantic analysis technique which complements evolutionary prototyping. The perspective builds on three cycles of planned change model: a vision cycle providing easy access to design knowledge, an action cycle supporting modular development of prototypes based on the semantics of design knowledge, and a fusion cycle institutionalising design understanding. An explanatory empirical study conducted in a management consultancy, provides a first step towards a subjective validation of the proposed approach. A conceptual training process is suggested as a means of partnership between designer and user. This process provides a way for both user and designer to find a common designation for the terms they share in their communication, and to build a shared meaning and interpretation of actions in the workplace.

The objective of this thesis is to clarify the complex notion of flexibility and to explore the impact of Interorganisational Information Systems (IOS) on the flexibility of organisations. Previous studies have shown that while the utilisation of IOS can contribute significantly to organisational flexibility, it does not provide equal benefits to all trading partners. Although flexibility is increasingly becoming more important for the survivability and competitiveness of organisations, its meaning is still ambiguous and a rigorous conceptualisation of the notion is lacking in the literature. Most researchers examining the impact of technology on organisational flexibility identify technological as well as organisational issues influencing flexibility, but fail to analyse flexibility as a dynamic concept embedded in the social context. Moreover, they mainly focus on the flexibility of the individual firm, paying less attention to flexibility as a property of the interaction between firms. This research proposes an interpretive approach and examines the notion of flexibility by including a thorough investigation of the organisational context within which it is embedded. Since IOS involve interaction between different organisations, issues of cooperation and relationships with trading partners are also considered. Therefore, the concept of flexibility is viewed from both an organisational and an interorganisational (business network) level, referring to the interaction of trading partners. A synthesized research framework, based on previous research and the theoretical perspectives of appreciative systems thinking and web models, enables us to perceive flexibility as a multidimensional and dynamic concept, embedded in and shaped by the organisational/interorganisational context. In the proposed framework, flexibility is presented not only as the ability of the organisation/business network to respond to environmental disturbances, but also as its capability to evolve and to change over time. A multiple case design in a grocery retail-supply chain in Greece, comprising three suppliers and four retailers, provides the empirical data to support the argument of this thesis. The analysis of the data relates differences in organisational contexts to variations in the flexibility achieved by the organisations. It shows that IOS can provide constraints even for the more competent organisations and illustrates how the interaction with trading partners may influence the flexibility achieved at an organisational level. It finally demonstrates the dynamic nature of flexibility, it describes the relation between its different dimensions and discusses their change and evolution, following and influencing the changes of the organisational and interorganisational contexts.

The study explores the puzzle that despite the growing corporate representation at EU level, large firms from Eastern Europe are under-represented in Brussels. It investigates the Europeanization process of corporate lobbying from a comparative capitalism perspective, through the case study of Hungary and the shadow case of the UK. I argue that the theorisation of EU lobbying requires a firm-centred approach and the integration of managerial choice into the framework of analysis. Findings show that firms in Hungary develop top-level, network-based lobbying strategies that are not professionalized. As this type of strategy is non-transposable to the EU level, it creates a ‘golden cage’ for domestic businesses. I find indeed that the ‘door’ of the golden cage is open to foreign firms, but creates a barrier of entry, whereas networks ‘lock in’ local firms and thus create a ‘barrier of exit’. Besides I argue that the organizational arrangement of lobbying also has a direct impact on firms’ Europeanization ability. The findings suggest that firms rely on their domestic lobbying strategies in their Europeanization process and try to transpose their domestic lobbying structures to the EU level. Consequently, those firms that originate from institutional contexts, where the domestic environment supports the professionalization of lobbying, will find it easier to Europeanize than those, which come from states where networks and informal relationships dominate interest representation. Hence I argue that the institutional environment in Hungary has a direct impact on domestic firms’ EU level lobbying engagement. This study suggests that if we were to consider the absence of Eastern European firms from Brussels and hence the unequal representation of Eastern and Western firms as a problem in terms of 'democratic' deficit, the solution to this problem would have to look beyond Brussels, because the reasons for the absence may lay in the domestic system.

A weak corporate governance system and high ownership concentration with dominant family shareholders, in particular, were claimed by the World Bank to be the main causes of the 1997 financial crisis in Thailand. Consequently, the Thai government embarked on a high-profile program of corporate governance reforms in order to regain investor confidence in the capital market. This thesis aims to provide systematic, empirical evidence on whether the ownership structure was really the key reason for the crisis and if the reforms have worked as well as they were intended to. Focused on the period from 1994 to 2007, the first study within this thesis examines the impact of ownership structure on accounting and market performance. The second study examines the impact of ownership structure and other corporate governance mechanisms (such as the board of directors, CEO characteristics and external auditors) on managers’ opportunistic accounting discretion, as measured by unsigned discretionary accruals and revenues. The third study examines how investors perceive the impact of these governance structures. All three studies take into account whether the reforms helped to improve corporate governance. The key findings of the first and second studies support the notion of an alignment effect, suggesting that high levels of ownership help to motivate most types of large shareholders to participate in the monitoring of firms. They suggest that high ownership concentration, especially by families, enhances firm performance and limits the use of managers’ opportunistic accounting discretion. Other types of large shareholders appear to have only played a significant role before the reforms, suggesting that the reforms might have reduced the motivation or ability of blockholders to participate in monitoring. There is evidence that boards of directors failed to enhance firm performance and to limit the use of accounting discretion before and after the reforms. The third study suggests that investors have an extremely negative perception of government and foreign company investors and, in turn, underestimate the performance of firms with high ownership by these shareholders. Investors also have negative perceptions of the size and independence of boards before the reforms. It appears that the reforms helped to mitigate their negative perception of boards, even though board efficiency did not significantly improve following the reforms. The three sets of results contribute to our understanding of the particularities of corporate governance systems in emerging capital markets such as Thailand, which contradicts the view of the World Bank. Thailand’s corporate governance reforms have been partly successful in remedying investors’ loss of confidence in some key corporate governance structures. However, further understanding of key governance structures by policy makers and more efficient monitoring processes by regulators are needed in order to ensure that these mechanisms are applicable and function as efficiently as they are intended to in practice.

Trust is an integral feature of human relations, and in turbulent and uncertain times trust serves as a tool that enables organisational members to accept higher levels of risk and increases their willingness to cooperate with each other on a dyadic, group and organisational level. However, the development of trust can be significantly hindered or even obstructed in culturally unfamiliar settings, and between parties who come from different cultural backgrounds. This thesis aims to fill the gap in the literature pertaining to culture’s influence on trust and trust development and the ways in which trust can be formed and enhanced between individuals from different cultural backgrounds. It adopts the ‘mosaic’ conceptualisation of culture in order to overcome the limitations associated with using nationality as a proxy for culture and to address the multiplicity of cultural influences on behaviour. This unravels the etic and emic determinants of culture on trust and its development across cultures. It also accounts for the role of governing contextual factors (i.e. organisational factors and individuals’ cultural intelligence) on this process. Through undertaking a mixed-method approach, data was collected from participants via surveys followed by semi-structured interviews. Data collection took place in Durham, UK, Munich, Germany and Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa from individuals operating in various multinational organisations, and across different organisation levels. This method of data collection resulted in rich and detailed accounts of how individuals adopt different cultural identities and how they develop (dis)trust with their counterpart from a different cultural background. Overall, findings from this research confirm the mosaic conceptualisation of culture and reject the use of nationality as proxy for culture. It further reveals that individuals adopt multiple cultural identities in order to display trusting behaviour in the workplace, where some cultural facets (i.e. Family, Organisation and Profession) are more influential on the trust development process than others (i.e. Nationality, Religion, Political Affiliation, etc.). Trust development is enhanced when dyads share cultural values and is hindered when they encounter conflicting values, and is moderated by their level of cultural intelligence.

Due to the increase in scandals and failures in organisations, public concerns have increased over leadership, and authentic leadership has been promoted as the most feasible response to these concerns (Liu, 2010). However, there seem to be diverse views on what encompasses authentic leadership. Three qualitative studies were therefore conducted in varied settings in order to obtain participants’ understanding of authenticity and the role that impression management played in their understanding of authenticity. Study 1 involved group discussions after the participants were shown two video clips of organisational leaders. Study 2 involved a case study in an organisational setting, where interviews were carried out in addition to participant observation. Study 3 involved interviews with participants from diverse industries, in order to confirm the findings of the first two studies. All the three studies were consistent in the findings indicating that there is not one thing called authenticity and that impression management and authenticity are related. The findings only confirmed what we found in the literature indicating diverse views on what authenticity entailed, and therefore, that there is not one thing called authenticity.

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The recent financial crisis was the largest shock to the financial system in decades. Its implications on banks' performance, corporate image and stakeholders' trust are of a high concern for all interested parties. Banks market capitalisation dropped significantly, risk levels increased and stakeholders’ confidence was shaken. This raises the importance of researching this particular area of primary concern to seek potential approaches intended to help banks to recover through increased disclosures, helping to rebuild trust and manage risk levels. Acknowledging societal needs and having effective dialogue with shareholders and stakeholders regarding banks' social profile as well as risk management practices is likely to reduce the uncertainty gap, shape banks' image and manage trust. These are indeed valuable in the wake of the financial crisis for bank continuity and enhancing shareholder value. I argue that effective corporate governance is likely to encourage more corporate social responsibility (CSR) and risk management (RM) disclosure, which in turn is expected to improve stock prices and reduce return volatility. The study examines potential solutions that assist in the management of the increasing risk levels, shaken confidence and falling market values resulting from the recent financial crisis. It contributes toward better understanding to the influence of internal corporate governance mechanisms on CSR and RM disclosure content and their substantive consequences on shareholder value. Examining a sample of US national commercial banks in the wake of the financial crisis indicates that boards with larger size, higher independence and CEO duality are inclined toward reporting a wider range of CSR and RM disclosures in annual reports, aiming to benefit the bank’s transparency and stakeholders’ long-term mutual relationship. Contrary to CSR disclosures, the number of audit committee financial experts was found to encourage better RM disclosure content implying the difference in influence on voluntary and mandatory disclosures. Insights into the desirable consequences CSR and RM disclosures content have on shareholder value are also evidenced. The study finds evidence supporting the association between CSR disclosure content and stock return indicating investors’ interest in, and consideration of, CSR information when valuing assets and building their trading decisions. The results also suggest that higher RM disclosure score reduces uncertainties of bank risk environment and provides investors with valuable information to assess financial assets and monitor management practices. This was reflected as an improvement to stock return and reduction to return volatility. Thus, effective corporate governance is more tending to enhance shareholder value through encouraging better CSR and RM disclosure content. Corporate governance should sponsor and introduce the perception of doing business responsibly and benefit from RM disclosure as a preventive tool assisting in the management of agency problems and bank risks. The economic consequences of CSR and RM disclosures imply that CSR engagement and reporting is an investment rather than an expense, and RM disclosure is a preventive tool rather than an exercise to comply with legislation requirement. Consequently, considering their content is important for better shareholder value.