In my practice experience and exploration of literature, I discovered that there are limited examples and research about organisations that aim to change from a charity to a social enterprise. In addition to this, there are limited knowledge and understanding about what social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are and a lack of frameworks that will enable one to know a social enterprise and social entrepreneur when you see one. This research, therefore, is an exploration of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in practice, arriving at working definitions and frameworks. It examines the process, experiences and challenges that come with an organisation - Age Concern Bexley - changing from a charity to a social enterprise. The research then shares the experiences and the challenges that come with such organisational change The research also examines and exposes my role and experiences - as the Chief Executive, social entrepreneur, leader and change agent, during this period. The research then provides an insight into the self-discovery, self evaluation and reflections of a social entrepreneur in practice, especially from the insider practitioners' perspective, thereby enabling seeing social enterprise and social entrepreneurship from the lens of a social entrepreneur. This research does not look into the issues surrounding governance during this change; as recent researches concluded that governance have little impact in this context( Young,2006). My view is that governance is importany and relevant; although the experience during this research does highlight that it was not a major issue. However,I would recommend it as an area of and for future research. The research combines empiricism and rationalism with iterations. In the research, I applied methodical pluralism as overarching research methodology by applying a portfolio of methodologies, using different methods to gather necessary data from different sources. The research contributest o practice with the establishment of a social enterprise service at Age Concern Bexley whilst also developing a set of high-level challenges that organisations that aim to explore social enterprise need to be aware of and how to manage them. The research contributes to theory by arriving at a working definition and framework of social enterprise. It also provides a better understanding of social entrepreneurship in practice and the role of a social entrepreneur as a leader and change agent. Other contributions to theory are the employment of metaphors to explain organisational change,the application of socio-psychological theory of labelling to explain the deviancy of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship and argument for sector differentiation, that is, social enterprise as a distinct sector. Some other contributions to practice are the showcasing of social enterprise in practice, the establishment of Bexley Social Enterprise Consortium, the establishment of an international development social enterprise organisation - Hephzibah - and the aim of establishing a social enterprise academy in Nigeria. These are to enable me put into further practice, what I have learnt through this research. The research concludes that the practice of social enterprise is here to stay, that social entrepreneurial organisations need social entrepreneurs in leadership and that it will be challenging for existing charities to convert in totality to social enterprises. 12

This qualitative research investigated, on a longitudinal basis, two issues with regard to a small family business owned and managed by a husband and wife. Firstly, it considered why non-family employees sought to remain with the company despite breach of their psychological contracts following a dispute with the family members and the significantly hostile work environment that ensued. Secondly, it investigated the coping strategies adopted by employees to make the work environment more tolerable to them. Undertaken from an insider perspective, and using semi-structured interviews and participant observation to collect data, overlaying the study are insights and reflections on the challenges and difficulties faced by a manager researcher in undertaking research into sensitive issues within their own workplace. The research has made a contribution to under researched areas within the family business literature. Specifically, it has identified new factors which moderate perceptions of breach and violation of the psychological contract and encourage staff to remain with the company. These are, firstly, the way that work is organised, offering scope for individual responsibility to relatively junior members of staff and for the expression of individual identity and, secondly, the development of group unity. The research also found that staff have adopted a number of coping strategies, such as talk, unity and managing work practices and their time commitment, to deal with the hostility towards them in the workplace. The motivation of employees behind these strategies has been identified as being to survive, to exercise a degree of control over their work environment and their contribution to it and to assert a degree of identity. Finally, the research has contributed to personal and professional practice through identifying the vulnerability of employees in small and family businesses in the absence of developed HR policies and procedures.

Conducted within the UK-based subsidiaries of three global organizations, this research examines the perceived outcomes experienced by HR managers and line managers associated with the proposed implementation, and actual use, of e-HR. The research settings are the UK operations of Cable & Wireless Global, Schlumberger and T-Mobile. Both qualitative and quantitative data are used in a multiple case study approach, which leads to the development of a theoretical framework that attempts to illustrate the relationship linking HR strategy with e-HR outcomes. These data provide partial support for the model's validity but also show the need for a more dynamic understanding of the links between e-HR variables and the importance of context in explaining differences between line managers' acceptance of e-HR. This research attempts to bridge academia and practice; to provide new academic insights into the world of e-HR and to translate this in ways that allow a useful contribution to practice.

The study of critical service incidents has been extensively investigated in service marketing, however, very little attention has been paid to the role that these incidents have in the building, development and maintenance of marketing relationships. This thesis sought to address the deficiency in knowledge on the subject by exploring the critical service incident from a relational exchange perspective, with the members and management of a health and fitness club providing the central focus of the buyer-seller relationship. This investigation adopted a pragmatic philosophy in methodological design, arguing that the research had to be conducted within real time business constraints. Action research was used as an umbrella strategy for this investigation which incorporated a multi-method research design that consisted of; participant observation, in-depth interviews, a management group discussion and a telephone survey to investigate the questions of each research cycle. Whilst existing service marketing literature implies that positive and negative critical service incidents result in the bi-polar outcomes of buyer loyalty or switching respectively, the findings of this research demonstrated that the critical service incident may not be that critical to the development and maintenance of the relationship. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by developing existing relationship marketing theory and making explicit the influence of the critical service incident on the buyer-seller relationship that is implied in service marketing literature. This thesis proposes that the critical service incident, produces buyer inferences, effects and consequences that result in a tendency toward loyalty or switching and that when the duration of the buyer-seller relationship is considered, these evaluative buyer judgements produce a phenomenon termed 'relationship elasticity'.

Relationship marketing (RM) is a concept developed in the Western literature which came to prominence in the 1980s. Few studies have, however, considered RM is an Eastern context and in particular the connection RM has with guanxi, the personal relationship or connections found in Chinese based cultures. This thesis adopts a broad perspective of RM from Western theories to explore the concepts and practices in Taiwanese banks. Using the existing definitions of RM, a number of RM components have been identified in this research which include the aims of RM (creation, enhancement, and maintenance), the RM mix (interaction, emotional contents, customer lifetime values, and customisation), and the outcomes of RM (long-term relationships, profitable relationship, customer share, and relationship termination). This research used in-depth interviews in order to investigate what Taiwanese banks understand about RM and how they implement RM to build customer relationships. 34 interviews were conducted with senior bank managers from 17 Taiwanese banks. All interviews were taped and transcribed. Template analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings suggest that Taiwanese banks have embraced these components when implementing RM. More importantly, guanxi, which is deeply embedded in Chinese culture, also has an influence on both concepts and practices of relationship marketing. As such, Western marketers, who have an understanding of the role of guanxi, could be more effective in implementing RM in Chinese-based economies. One of the key contributions of this thesis is on the development of the RM A.M.O. (RM's Aims, Mix, and Outcomes) framework which provides an overview of RM and the capability of the components. Also, acquiring market share, developing customer share and retaining relationships instead of relationship termination should be considered as part of relationship marketing practices.

The aim of this research is to examine whether the extent of tax compliance by oil producing companies in Nigeria is determined by the knowledge, remuneration and incentives of government tax officials. This study sets out to investigate the extent of compliance of oil and gas (exploration and production) companies with the Petroleum Profits Tax Act and to confirm whether lack of sufficient knowledge of the PPT law and poor remuneration and incentives of government tax officials affect tax administration in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry in Nigeria. An extensive literature review was conducted on the historical and legislative background and the incentives available to petroleum companies in Nigeria. The review also covered theories of taxation, tax administration and compliance, tax reforms, tax avoidance and evasion. The literature review revealed gaps which this study attempts to fill. This research has concepts that require both qualitative and quantitative approaches in its design, data collection and data analyses. Consequently, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted for this study. Face to face interviews were held with experienced regulatory, tax, petroleum companies’ officials and tax and audit practitioners. The researcher uses literature to develop hypotheses which are tested using survey results and backed up by personal interviews. This helps in obtaining results about the behaviour of taxpayers and tax officials in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry in Nigeria. By using a survey, the researcher is able to assess the perceptions of a cross-section of stakeholders in the Nigerian oil industry about the level of compliance with the PPT law. The personal interviews with oil experts provide the benefit of their in-depth knowledge of the oil industry in Nigeria and furnish an understanding of their social world. This research seems to support the perception that the oil producing companies may not be complying fully with the provisions of the Petroleum Profits Tax Act and the Petroleum Act in relation to the payments of royalty and PPT. Interview results suggest that there is a lack of an adequate database of all company taxes paid in Nigeria, minimisation of monthly Royalties and PPT instalments, a dearth of experts on fiscal issues, overwhelming influence of the oil producing companies, poor attitude and inadequate knowledge of the operations of the petroleum industry amongst government tax officials.

No description available.

The aim of this project is the design and evaluation of a framework for knowledge based diagnosis and improvement planning of business processes. The outcome is a soundly based framework that can provide additional leverage within organisations. The study starts from identification of a research gap concerning the methods and concepts available for incorporating knowledge processes and newer knowledge management perspectives into business process improvement initiatives. The methodology adopted for the evaluation of the framework is an action research approach using a case study method, within an extended form of design-based research for a single case, with added validation phases for increased prospective transferability of results. This leads to a staged approach where, firstly, a tentative initial framework is produced from extant literature; secondly, that initial form is exposed to a critique producing an intermediate version; thirdly, the intermediate framework is implemented in the case study company and further developed, based on the feedback, to give a concluding version. Finally, the concluding framework is validated by a panel of experts. Additionally, by reflecting on experience from the case with other data collected in the study, recommended guidelines for implementation are assembled. The principle contribution to theory is the bridging of the research gap identified by introducing a new framework that advances the understanding of the link between knowledge management and business process improvement. The study also contributes an extended design-based research methodology by incorporating the single case and validation phases. The contribution to practice is an implementable and effective framework which will help guide knowledge management support in knowledge-intensive organisations. Potential further research directions are suggested.

This study aims to investigate the degree of compliance by large UK private and public listed companies with the Companies Act 2006 section 417 (6) requirement to disclose KPIs in their annual reports. Specifically, the study investigates the extent of KPI disclosures by 410 UK companies comprising the largest 205 private limited and largest 205 public listed companies. The study also examines whether corporate governance mechanisms and company specific characteristics influence the extent of KPI disclosures in the annual reports of these companies. The extent of KPI disclosures in this study is measured using three indices to quantify KPI disclosures. Some hypotheses for the independent variables were developed and tested using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression method to determine whether corporate governance and company specific characteristics are associated with the extent of KPIs disclosure by private, public listed and the pooled companies. In terms of the extent of disclosure, the results suggest that approximately 51% of private companies and 90% of public listed companies disclose at least one KPI in their annual reports. The OLS regression results indicate that corporate governance mechanisms (proportion of non-executive directors, board size and director share ownership) and company specific characteristics (company size and profitability) are significantly associated with the extent of KPI disclosures by private, public listed and the pooled companies. The frequency of board meetings and multinationality do not significantly explain disclosure extent and comprehensiveness. The overall conclusion of this research is that private companies do not seem to comply with the requirements to disclose KPIs and that corporate governance mechanisms are important in ensuring compliance with the requirement to disclose KPIs. The results have important implications for policy makers and accounting regulators such as the Accounting Standards Board in general, and in particular the Financial Reporting Review Panel (FRRP) which is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that large private and public listed companies comply with extant regulatory framework.

Customer contact service employees in hospitality organisations have a critical role to play in satisfying customers’ expectations. However, it is recognised that hospitality service jobs are often associated with low pay, long and anti-social hours, unstable and seasonal employment, low job status, a lack of career opportunities and poor levels of benefits. In the light of factors such as these, which are likely to militate against high levels of motivation - and consequently to reduce the quality of customer service - addressing hospitality customer service employees’ motivation can be viewed as a priority for hospitality management. Inspirational, motivational leaders can motivate employees to ‘perform beyond expectations’ and previous studies of leadership in hospitality have demonstrated a number of positive outcomes related to the presence of inspirational leaders. No studies have been identified, however, that have measured the specific influence of motivational leadership on hospitality service employees’ job performance. To evaluate the contribution of motivational leadership to employee work motivation, work motivation was measured using both employee attitudes and job performance. Data were collected from a sample of non-supervisory waiting staff in hotel businesses in the UK. In total, two hundred and thirteen usable survey forms were returned from twenty seven UK hotels with table service restaurants. All of the participating organisations were rated as three or four stars and the mean number of non-supervisory waiting staff in these hotels was twenty three. The study finds that motivational leadership, alongside employee perceptions of empowerment and employees’ work orientations, contributes positively to both work attitudes and job performance. The research also finds that motivational leadership enhances employees’ work meaning and understanding of organisational goals (mission clarity). In addition to its empirical dimensions, the research contributes to hospitality studies theory by critically appraising the leadership-related hospitality literature and making recommendations for the future progress of hospitality leadership studies.