In the last 20 years, coaching has enjoyed immense growth, responding to demands from organisations and individuals. Limited research suggests that clients value coaching. In particular the coachee values the relationship with, and the qualities of, the coach in their collaborative work. To aid this process many believe that effective matching should play an important role in successful relationships. However the process of matching is under-researched particularly from the perspective of the client. The aim of this study is to address this gap in the coaching literature and to respond to the practical need of organisations and coaches to gain better understanding of how coachees experience the matching process in an organisational leadership context. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology this study explores the experiences of coachees at different stages of a leadership coaching journey. It aims to gain a greater insight into the psychological factors influencing how coachees choose their coaches and how their view on this choice changes through the duration of the coaching experience. Purposive sampling was used to identify eight leaders from five different organisations who were about to undertake matching as a precursor to taking part in a coaching experience. Of the eight participants five were men, three were women, with an age range between 30 to 55 years old. The theoretical contribution of this research is in providing a more detailed understanding of the real experiences of those involved in receiving leadership coaching and how this perspective sheds new light on what matters to the coachee and when. A number of important themes emerged. Firstly, the different levels of understanding and meaning attached to coaching, and how the meaning attached had an impact on what coachees requested from their coach and coaching. Equally noticeable was the change in what mattered to coachees. At the start of choosing a coach, the coachee’s focus was on objective requirements and concepts such as the knowledge, experience and gender of the coach. When they were experiencing coaching they had a greater appreciation of the subjective elements of the work and the relationship, placing much greater emphasis on issues such as Trust and ‘Touch’. Importantly the value of encouraging ‘Chemistry Meetings’ to help coachees inform their decision was strongly supported in the findings. This study also draws attention to the importance of choice being offered to the coachee when coaches are being selected for them. Overall it is argued that more can be done to empower and educate the coachee to make a more informed and thought-through decision when choosing their coach.

This study presented a framework to explain corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSD) in terms of determinants and consequences. The study is dealing with quantity and quality of CSD in both annual and stand alone reports. The framework is based on legitimacy theory as appropriate theoretical background for CSD, and the main idea in this theoretical framework is that CSD is a function of social pressure on companies concerning their social responsibility. The framework has started with explain the level of social pressure at the country level to explain the differences of the level of CSD among countries. It is argued that the interaction between economic level, culture and the level of corporate governance determine the level of social pressure in a given country. The level of CSD at the company level is determined according to two dimensions; the degree of social pressure that face each company and how each company responses to this pressure. It is argued that, on one hand, the interaction between corporate characteristics and media coverage of the company determine the degree of social pressure that face a company and on the other hand corporate governance mechanisms determine how each company responses to pressure. The last point in framework explains that the direct consequence for CSD is improving corporate social reputation. The empirical results support, to large extent, the framework. At a country level, both cultural values and economic level determine the level of social responsibility disclosure in the country. Concerning determinants of CSD at a company level, it appears that quantity of CSD, and to lesser extent quality of CSD, can be determined according to the following variables: corporate size, type of activity, media pressure, board size, the presence of corporate responsibility committee as a board committee, and ownership diffusion. With regard to the consequences of CSD, the empirical evidence indicates that CSD significantly influences corporate social reputation, while it has no impact on corporate market value.

My research and publications over the past 25 years can be related to two major themes: building up the case for business ethics education in UK Business schools, and the development of a virtue ethics approach to institution building in business and management. My business ethics research papers have been focused on the exploration and use of virtue theory as an approach to applied ethics in the context of business and organisational life, exploring subjects such as loyalty, codes of conduct, executive remuneration, job security, health hazards, service work, shareholder responsibilities, temperance, maritime piracy. Virtue theory is a useful framework to approach ethical issues in work organizations. First, this is because its emphasis on the shared values in a community (rather than a set of universal rules) lends itself to understanding ethical standards within communities of practice or professions. Second, because of its emphasis on moral education and development, virtue ethics has useful purchase on issues around management and professional development. These two themes were combined in the study of corporate governance and accountability. The relationship between business and society is a complex phenomenon and requires a multi-disciplinary approach to understand its full ramifications. My book, Corporate Governance and Accountability is an analysis and a synthesis of the politics of corporate governance and draws upon economics, management, law, politics, ethics, and sociology to examine the representative institution of business in our society, the company. An analysis is made of how its legal form has changed over the years in response to social drivers and political imperatives. The book attempts to track the nature and course of these developments and tries to understand the present situation, and then attempts to give some insights into how companies may be expected to develop in the future. The perspective of the study, although multi-disciplinary, in many aspects is perhaps, in the final analysis, predominantly political, because it is the relationship of the company to society that is the major focus of the analysis. In this respect, a major theme of the study is to examine to what extent the corporate form changed in response to socio-political factors as well as economic factors.

The background to this study relates to the policy of the Chinese government to encourage university graduates to become entrepreneurs as a means of addressing unemployment in China. Far less than the expected number of university graduates however engage in an entrepreneurial career which leads one to question the effectiveness of this policy initiative. A number of critical issues arise. First, although the government’s policy incentives may have a positive impact on the take-up of entrepreneurial careers, there is insufficient research to justify the kind of support currently being implemented by the Chinese government. Second, while some studies have shown that one’s social network is a significant attribute in the decision to become an entrepreneur, the empirical evidence is mixed. Other studies have shown that entrepreneurial cognition is a crucial antecedent to whether people choose to become entrepreneurs. Few studies however have examined the relationship between one’s social network and cognition, and their relationship to how entrepreneurial intentions are formed. In addressing these gaps, the thesis investigates how the characteristics of an individual’s social network affect the formation of his or her entrepreneurial intentions directly and via entrepreneurial cognition. The findings of this study contribute to the literature in three respects. The first contribution comes from the argument that one’s social network properties and in particular, one’s entrepreneurial social network, directly influence cognition during the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. The second contribution reveals alternative measures and hence explanations of entrepreneurship in relation to one’s social capital, one’s social network characteristics and other factors. The third contribution rests on the analytical approach, which uses the technics of structural equation modeling (SEM) to reveal the relationship between critical realism and conceptions. As the analysis show, SEM is an appropriate and effective approach to the confirmatory analysis. Essentially, it enables integrating knowledge and by drawing together parameter variables and latent variables, it offers concurrent understanding of the critical insight of the focal problem of why some people choose to be entrepreneurs.

This thesis is concerned with gender segregation in entrepreneurship – a phenomenon that is termed here entrepreneurial segregation. Researchers studying occupational segregation have established that sex segregated social networks and gender stereotyping play an integral role in driving sex segregation in employment. Since women are embedded in female-dominated networks and men move in male-dominated circles, they inevitably receive job leads (resources) from members of the same sex. In addition, because of gender stereotyping, those supplying the job leads (resource providers) offer job seekers information about jobs in sectors that are perceived as appropriate for the jobseekerʼs gender. Drawing on this knowledge, Bourdieuian social capital theory and gender role congruency theory, this thesis examines the social networks of men and women entrepreneurs in gender congruent and incongruent business sectors, with the express purpose of uncovering whether an inability to secure business resources poses inhibitive effects on business development of entrepreneurs in gender atypical sectors. Taking an inclusive approach, the purpose of the study was to identify and explain any detriment in resource acquisition experienced by women business owners by comparing their experiences in different industries with those of men. 255 New York City based entrepreneurs operating firms in two maledominated industries (construction and sound recording), one femaledominated industry (childcare) and one integrated industry (publishing) completed an online survey based on the Dutch Resource Generator social network tool. Respondents indicated the specific resources they were able and unable to secure through their networks, the sex of, and relationship to each resource provider, and their experiences of gender stereotyping. A mixture of bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses (Mann Whitney and Kruskal Wallis tests, multiple regression and discriminant function analyses) was used to examine the data. The findings revealed that the ability to mobilize resources is strongly influenced by the sex composition of entrepreneursʼ networks, and an interaction between the sex of the business owner and the gender-domination of the industry in which he or she operates. In the female-dominated childcare industry, women were just as successful as men in their attempts to secure resources. Women operating businesses in male-dominated sectors suffered in terms of their ability to obtain resources, particularly financial resources. Men owners of childcare firms did not suffer in the same way, even though they reported relatively high levels of discrimination against them by staff, customers, suppliers and colleagues. Networking strategy had little impact on the ability of nontraditional women to secure resources. This suggests that nontraditional women are locked into a kind of networking bind, a phenomenon that is dubbed the segregation-stereotyping bind.

Managing knowledge has been a broadly successful strategy for many organisations during the last 30 years or so. Harnessing the power of both explicit and tacit knowledge enabled companies such as Apple and Chevron to gain competitive advantage over their competitors. A key requirement for successful knowledge management is however that the individual should be prepared to share their tacit knowledge with others. Knowledge sharing factors in general have been subject to considerable research; however research on sharing knowledge in higher education is rare. This thesis seeks to the address the research gap by examining the factors that influence knowledge sharing between academic in UK universities. The research contributes to the literature by investigating the influence of both organisational and individual factors on knowledge sharing between academics in a departmental context. The research approach has consisted of a two stage mixed methods process where a questionnaire survey of academics preceded a series of interviews. Findings from questionnaires indicated that academics had a generally positive attitude and intention to share knowledge and believed that sharing would improve and extend relationships with colleagues. They were quite neutral about how they were led and had a generally higher level of affiliation to discipline than to institution, and also considered that departmental structure did not encourage sharing. Interview findings suggested that many academics were unhappy with the matrix structure and that there was a lack of clarity regarding roles and responsibilities within their departments. They singled out trust as the most important individual factor to influence knowledge sharing and culture as the most critical organisational factor.

This PhD contributes to the growing body of literature on South Asian women’s entrepreneurship in general, and on women of Pakistani origin in particular. The literature on the latter is comparatively scarce, and research on South Asian women’s entrepreneurship tends to overlook heterogeneity among these women. The research provides useful insights into Pakistani-origin women’s progress into and experiences of small business. An important contribution of this study is to develop new knowledge of Pakistani women’s diverse entrepreneurial roles and strategies in various business environments, such as, home-based, family and independent enterprises. The research draws theoretical insights from Brah’s multi-level framework and the ‘mixed embeddedness’ approach to conceptualise participation of women of Pakistani origin in small business. The analyses illustrate that gender practices and power relations in the family had an impact on Pakistani-origin women’s acquisition of human capital, access to resources and control of their labour, which subsequently affected their ability to exercise power and control in the family and business. The categories of business ‘leaders’ and ‘labourers’ shows that women’s business roles and experiences were diverse and embedded in complex and interwoven contexts, i.e. social, cultural, spatial, material and familial. A few of the businesses managed to ‘break out’ of the ethnic, spatial and sectoral boundaries. However, many others were strongly embedded in the existing ethnic structures. By and large, women’s business roles and performance were determined by their ability to accrue human capital, access to resources, command and control of their labour and ability to exercise power and control. The gender regimes of Pakistani families, communities and the wider British society not only determined performance of women’s business, but also transformed gender relations in many ways. An empowerment matrix I devised depicts changes in gender relations and levels of empowerment through participation in small business. Observation on levels of empowerment was mixed, which is depicted through: positive change/full empowerment, moderate change/empowerment, no change/status quo maintained and negative change/lessening of power.

Cross-sector alliances are increasingly used by social entrepreneurial organizations as sustainable solutions for addressing for complex social issues. However, research into the processes by which organizations develop the dynamic capability to initiate and manage cross-sector alliances has been fragmented and addressed only in a sector specific manner. This study proposes a process model by which social ventures can build cross-sector alliance capability at both the single and portfolio levels. Using two longitudinal case studies of socially entrepreneurial ventures in Canada, the study examines how developing dynamic alliance capability is realized through external learning and entrepreneurial leadership. The findings indicate that to build dynamic alliance capability, organizations engage in opportunity recognition, selection, and commitment. The study contributes to the current debate in dynamic capability literature by providing empirical evidence of the distinct elements that comprise a cross-sector dynamic alliance capability, its dimensions, and the effects of key organizational factors that facilitate or inhibit its development in a moderately changing environment. Although the study is limited in its examination of dynamic alliance capability, it has the potential to inform dynamic capability development in other contexts.

"Accomplishing much is not determined by the possession of splendid talents, but the conscious performance of daily duties" (Adaptation from Prophets & Kings by E.G. White). Knowledge Management emerged in the mid-1990s as a solution to the challenge of managing intellectual assets in the post-industrial era widely known as knowledge economy; which is transforming every sector of the global economy – both private and public. However, the tendency of existing literature to convey Knowledge Management (KM) theories and concepts, and indeed its practices, in predominantly private sector context has created a ‘gap’ and marginalised the transformational impact of this important field. At the same time the slow rate, and, to a large extent, non-adoption of knowledge management practices within the public sector, particularly in developing countries, is a missed opportunity as long as the status quo is not improved. This PhD research traces the emergence of the knowledge economy phenomenon, explores knowledge management as an organisational strategy and focuses on how the public sector in developing economies, especially Ghana, can adopt KM strategies and techniques to enhance public administration and performance. More importantly, a KM practice framework is developed encourage its institutionalisation. Based on the interpretivist research paradigm and a multi-site case study design, seventeen public sector organisations in Ghana and seven in the United Kingdom were studied to collate and synthesize relevant organisational factors and conditions that influence KM. Fifteen factors and conditions were found to provide rationale for KM and to sustain its deployment as a strategic intervention in public sector organisations. These factors and conditions were abstracted into four core categories to define a KM practice framework for the sector. Theoretically, this study is a significant contribution to public sector KM as the developed framework provides context for the field in a new arena. For public administrators in Ghana, it opens up pragmatic strategic options to grow intellectual capabilities to improve efficiency in policy-making and service delivery. Practically, the study is a significant step towards institutionalising KM in Ghana as a direct response to development partners’ calls for efficient public administration and meeting a major component of the New Public Management agenda: public organisations becoming learning institutions.

Research and development (R&D) activities are characterised by unique features and limited mandated accounting disclosure. Hence, R&D investment is one of the most confidential activities creating information asymmetry. Consequently, firms that are involved in R&D activities may try to introduce more voluntary disclosure in order to reduce the information asymmetry and enhance their transparency. Corporate disclosure has been examined in a large number of prior studies over the years. Recently, small numbers of studies have considered research and development voluntary disclosure in annual reports. The current study seeks to introduce helpful insights into the R&D disclosure practices in annual reports. Moreover, it examines the impact of corporate governance on R&D voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of the UK non-financial firms with intensive R&D investments. The sample consists of 505 firm-year observations of the UK non-financial listed firms, which are considered among the high spenders on R&D activities in the UK according to the R&D scoreboards, as published by the Department of Business Innovations and Skills (BIS). Using content analysis, the R&D disclosure score is measured by self-constructed disclosure index. The current study employs two techniques to examine the relationship between the R&D voluntary disclosure and the independent variables: Ordinary Least Square (OLS), and Censored Regression (Tobit). In terms of the level of R&D disclosure in annual reports, the findings reveal that, in average the UK firms introduce about 30% of the examined R&D disclosure index items. Moreover, the deviations in R&D disclosure score according to the industry type are significant. The results also show that, overall R&D disclosure is positively associated with board size and audit committee quality.