n 2014, Ireland launched its first National Plan on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), published with the key objective of setting out a framework to foster best practice in CSR among enterprises and organisations in Ireland. In addition, the plan sought to raise the profile of CSR in Ireland. Against this backdrop, there has been an increased interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among both scholars and practitioners. Much of the academic debate has focused on the role of business in society, what constitutes the social responsibilities of firms, the link between CSR and financial performance and, more recently, the link between CSR and corporate strategy. Furthermore, it is not clear how such aspects of CSR are integrated in the minds of those carrying out the work. In other words, how CSR integrates with strategy for those CSR decision makers or managers within the firm. The thesis seeks to establish the key components of CSR and their relationship to strategy in the minds of these managers, through the Whittington Generic Perspectives on Strategy Model (1993). This framework forms the basis of the cognitive mapping of thirty one managers operating in Ireland, across diverse sectors. In addition, this thesis argues for a typology or framework for four distinct theme profiles, in relation to the relative importance of CSR components in the minds of these managers. The four theme profiles are as follows: Outcomes and Stakeholders Focus, Outcomes Only Focus, Values Focus and Business Objectives Focus.

This study examines how disabled people become entrepreneurs, using the concept of ‘entrepreneurial identity’ as a theoretical lens for explaining the effects of disability on venture creation. The original theoretical contribution is a novel conceptualisation of entrepreneurial identity, one that applies to all entrepreneurs whilst including the experiences of disabled people and people with long-term impairments and health conditions. Drawing on a critical realist philosophy, and a stratified, emergent ontology, entrepreneurial identity is defined as a personal power to create a new venture that succeeds in the marketplace. Entrepreneurial identity, as a causal power, is a tendency that may be possessed unexercised, exercised unrealised and realised unperceived. Although most people have the potential to become an entrepreneur, not everyone can, or is motivated to, exercise that power because of other countervailing powers – personal, material and social. Theorising identity as a causal power can account for both stability and change in identity formation, in contrast to studies that define entrepreneurial identity in terms of fixed characteristics determining behaviour, or as a dynamic process encompassing narrative performances. The empirical material comprises entrepreneur and stakeholder interview data, online visual data and shadowing field notes. The analysis reveals that the emergence of entrepreneurial identity presupposes three lower-level personal powers that must be exercised simultaneously: (1) the power to conceive of a new venture idea; (2) the power to commit to venture creation; and (3) the power to acquire new venture legitimacy. Depending on circumstances, disability can both enable and constrain individual capacity to realise the three powers, with implications for venture creation. The findings highlight the role of human relations with nature and the material culture of artefacts as well as society in the emergence of entrepreneurial identity. This novel theoretical framework is more inclusive in terms of the multiplicity of mechanisms at different identity strata and levels of reality that it can examine whilst accommodating the alternative approaches.

Brand alliance, or co-branding, is a strategic brand management strategy involving short-term and or long-term cooperative marketing activities between two or more individual brands. Research on brand alliances demonstrates that co-branding creates an interdependent relationship that is beneficial to the individual brands in the partnership. Although brand alliances represent a viable business opportunity for both brands, it is an inherently risky strategy. In a brand partnership, a negative event involving one brand can potentially spill over to the partner brand, as well to the co-branded product. There are several illustrations of the above in the industry - Ford was boycotted following Firestone's tyre recall crisis. Lego received negative publicity amidst Shell's controversial plans to drill in the Artic, and more recently Visa was drawn into the corruption scandal involving FIFA. Even though such controversies are increasingly common and create undesirable media attention for the brands in an alliance, knowledge on the risks associated with co-branding is sparse. The lack of knowledge is due to the paucity of empirical research in the area. The literature overlooks crises facing corporate brands in an alliance. Moreover, existing knowledge does not go beyond investigating the impact on negative events on consumers' attitudes toward the partner brands in an alliance. In particular, the literature is silent on how one partner's transgression can impact consumers' evaluations of the co-branding initiative jointly created by two corporate brands. Little is also known about the factors that could diminish negative spill over effects in co-branding crises. Aiming to address the above gaps in the literature, the thesis examines the impact of brand crises on consumers' evaluations of corporate brands in alliances. Consistent with a positivism philosophical orientation, the thesis draws on well-established theories in order to develop a set of research hypotheses. The overarching theoretical underpinning of the thesis is provided by Balance theory, well-established in the domain of social psychology. The theory elucidates how consumers' motivations for consistency influence their post-crises responses. The research is also informed by other theories emanating from social psychology. For instance, Negativity Effect explains that negativity looms larger than positivity, thus, consumers are liely to attach significant weight to negative brand information when evaluating a brand following a crisis. In addition, Attribution theory suggests that consumers will make inferences about crisis responsibility by evaluating available information about the crisis, and Social Judgement theory elucidates the bias underlying the way consumers are likely to process such information following a crisis. The thesis employs a quantitative research design to test the research hypotheses. For generalisability purposes, a scenario-based experiment was conducted across three brand crisis types - Accidental, Preventable and Victim. In a preventable crisis, the inappropriate actions of the corporate brand result in a breach of law, whereas in an accidental crisis, the unintentional actions of the corporate brand create a crisis. In a victim crisis, however, the organisation itself is also perceived as a victim of the crisis. The data were collected via a self-administered online questionnaire embedding three real-life crisis scenarios, representing each crisis type. Respondents were recruited from a reputed online consumer panel representative of the UK population. The research hypotheses were tested employing Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Three phases of pre-testing (n=420) and a pilot study (n=83) established the ecological validity of the findings and the psychometric properties of the measures. In the main study, altogether 1,235 valid responses were obtained (Accidental context n=379; Preventable context n=422; Victim context n=414). The results show that brand crises in corporate brand alliances negatively impact consumers' attitudes toward the culpable brand which, in turn, spills over to the co-branded product. Attitudes toward the non-culpable brand, however, are not negatively affected by the crisis. The findings also suggest that spill over effects are contingent upon perceived attribution; that is, consumers who perceive the culpable brand as being responsible for the crisis (i.e. internal attribution) evaluate the culpable brand and the co-branding initiative more negatively that consumers who perceive the cause to be outside the brand's control (i.e. external attribution). The findings also suggest that consumers with a higher level of commitment to the culpable brand are less likely to make internal attributions. Finally, the thesis shows that consumers' post crisis attitudes toward the culpable brand and the co-branded product can be enhanced if they are exposed to recovery information that attempts to diminish the culpable brand's role in the crisis. The thesis offers a multi-domain understanding of consumer responses to corporate brand alliances in crisis. It extends knowledge in the domains of consumer behaviour, brand management, organisational crisis and social psychology. The thesis pushes the boundaries of knowledge by making three main theoretical contributions. First, it introduces a novel approach to understanding consumer motivations for processing information in brand alliances. Through the lens of Balance theory, the study shows that consumers' perceptions of alliances are contingent upon how the evaluation of each brand fits together. Second, drawing upon Attribution and Social Judgement theories, the study demonstrates the role of brand crisis attribution and brand commitment in explaining consumers' evaluations of crises in corporate bran alliances. Third, the thesis advances the understanding of negative spill over effects in brand alliances by providing empirical evidence that crises in corporate brand alliances lead to negative signals about the culpable partner brand which, in turn, spill over to the co-branded product. Further, the thesis informs managerial understanding of the risks associated with brand alliance strategies, and offers empirically-grounded recommendations for marketing practice. First, the thesis provides insights and useful benchmarks to marketers seeking to design effective brand communication strategies following a crisis. Second, it demonstrates that investing in brand commitment is crucial for mitigating the impact of a crisis. Third, it provides actionable guidelines to managers with regard to partner selection, and planning for occurrences of crises in corporate brand alliances. The thesis investigated consumer responses to corporate brand alliances, while accounting for the focal role of attribution. Several other variables that could influence the phenomenon under investigation are identified. For example, the severity of a crisis and the media's interest and coverage of a crisis might explain why perceptions and attitudes toward the alliance are altered following a crisis. Moreover, while the use of three crisis types enhance the generalisability of the thesis' findings, generalisations can be further enhanced by replicating the present research across different countries, products or service contexts. Further, the thesis employs cross-sectional data to investigate the impact of brand crises on consumers' perceptions of brand alliances. In the real world, however, brand crises can extend over a period. Future research could employ longitudinal data to investigate how consumers' post crisis perceptions of the culpable brand, the partner brand and the co-branded product, change over time. The above present fruitful avenues for further research.

This thesis develops a framework for enhancing current financial reporting of intangibles related information in knowledge intensive industries informed by the particular needs and requirements of the users of such reports. Four financial statements user groups (investment fund managers, CFOs of companies, credit institutions and auditors) were interviewed to obtain an understanding of their views of the usefulness of current financial statements. Following these initial interviews, questionnaires were sent out and related interviews conducted to identify factors that would be useful for improving current financial reporting practice related to intangibles. These factors were used to build a new intangibles disclosure framework or ‘model’. This new ‘model’ was then validated with financial statements users and a representative of an accounting standards setter1 in respect of its acceptability and usefulness. This study also explored the question of appropriate methodology for examining and developing financial accounting theory. Financial accounting research is currently undertaken in the two different fields of normative and positive accounting theory. Both have different views on what is deemed as commonly acceptable research methodologies to contribute to current knowledge. Unfortunately, neither field supports the development of financial accounting standards based on qualitative empirical research methodologies founded on the views of users of such financial accounting standards. This thesis provides evidence for the need to establish a new branch of financial accounting research: conditional-normative accounting research. In addition, this thesis also provides a process by which this new branch of financial accounting research can be operationalised. This thesis contributes to the current knowledge in three ways: It proposes a new user-based intangibles disclosure framework model for knowledge intensive industries which was developed and validated based on qualitative empirical research methodology. It contributes to the establishment of a new branch of financial accounting theory which is referred to by Mattessich (1995) as conditional-normative accounting theory. The latter consists of financial accounting norms and policy recommendations developed through the application of qualitative empirical research methodologies. It provides a process by which the concept of conditional-normative accounting theory can be operationalised in research practice.

<p> In the United States, the high turnover rate of registered nurses and indications of a future shortage of registered nurses is detrimental to healthcare organizations. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine whether, in hospitals, work engagement and job satisfaction predicted registered nurse turnover intention. The theoretical framework was Fishbein and Ajzen&rsquo;s theory of reasoned action. Probability sampling was used to identify 155 participants, all full-time registered nurses with 2 or more years of employment in New York hospitals. Data, obtained from surveys, were analyzed via multiple linear regression. The results revealed that only job satisfaction predicted turnover intention among the nurses sampled, (<i>F</i> (5,154) = 12.008, <i> p</i> &lt;.001. <i>R²</i> = .287. The results indicated that low work engagement is not necessarily an indication of job dissatisfaction or of an individual&rsquo;s intention to leave a job. Leaders of healthcare organizations might lower nurse turnover intention by focusing on improving job satisfaction. Specifically, by addressing the issues identified from regular job satisfaction surveys, and by a greater emphasis on creating a satisfying workplace, overall job satisfaction might be increased. The potential increased stability of the registered nurse workforce and the potential cost savings resulting from lower turnover could contribute to positive social change by improving the delivery of health services and by enhancing the healthcare experiences of patients, their families, and the surrounding communities.</p><p>

In this thesis the maintenance scheduling optimization problem of a multi-component system is formulated as a multi-objective stochastic dynamic problem, which is solved by first transforming the multi-objective formulation into a single-objective one via the weighted-sum method, and then using an iterated two-stage stochastic linear programming approach to solve the stochastic problem. The main application is the maintenance of a commercial gas turbine aero-engine. The model determines optimal opportunistic replacement schedules considering both deterministic and stochastic engine configurations. The proposed methodology provides maintenance planners with a decision tool that simultaneously minimizes the expected total cost of providing the maintenance service, and the expected total number of service interruptions due to maintenance during a finite horizon. The analysis presented in this thesis considers the indentured configuration of a modular aero-engine and investigates the sensitivity of the solutions to variations in a number of critical parameters.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrence of pre-merger accrual and real-based earnings management in UK mergers and acquisitions and to examine the effect of these practices on the firm's share performance around the announcement date of the bid. The sample consists of 225 UK public acquirers engaged successfully in merger and acquisition activities between 1990 and 2009. The findings of this study are consistent with those of Erickson and Wang (1999), Louis (2004), and Botsari and Meeks (2008) in providing significant evidence of upward pre-merger accrual-based earnings management by stock-financed acquirers. This study extends its analysis by comparing the magnitude of pre-merger accrual-based earnings management in pre- and post-Higgs periods. The results reveal that stock-financed acquirers in the post-Higgs period show a lower magnitude of pre-merger accrual-based earnings management than that in the pre-Higgs period. The study also examines real manipulation and I find that cash bidders engage in pre-merger real earnings manipulation through lower discretionary expenses, possibly to enhance cash availability for the bid. The results indicate that this is more prevalent in the post-Higgs era. The findings in this study confirm that the recommendations set out in Higgs Report play a crucial role in mitigating accrual-based earnings management activities for UK stock-financed bidders. However, no such evidence is found for real account manipulation. In examining the impact of both accrual and real manipulation on the share performance around the merger announcement date, I find that there is significant positive impact of the pre-merger accrual-based earnings management on the share's performance for UK stock-financed acquiring firms, but not for cash-financed ones. This positive relation is statistically significant for stock-financed acquirers before the Higgs Report period while it is insignificant in the post-Higgs era. I also find that, among the three real earnings management measures (abnormal cash flows from operations, abnormal production costs, and abnormal discretionary expenses), there is a significant positive relation between pre-merger abnormal discretionary expenses and share performance for stock acquirers only. On the contrary, the reduction in discretionary expenses level is associated with an increase in the share value for cash-financing acquirers. Overall, the evidence in this study shows that the effects of real earnings management on the market performance of stock acquirers around the announcement date of the bid are significantly less than the effects of accrual earnings management.

No description available.

This thesis addresses the commercialization decisions of academic scientists. Although there is a great deal of research on environmental, university and individual determinants of the formal technology transfer mechanisms, this thesis addresses a gap in the literature by studying how technology characteristics affect the selection of university technology transfer mechanisms. For this purpose the insights from main theoretical sources were combined: a) the economics of technological change and b) the diffusion of innovations theory and a conceptual framework that considers eight characteristics of technology was developed. The technology characteristics derived from the two theoretical sources are: pervasiveness, tacitness, complexity, system dependence, relative advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability. These characteristics were then related to the choice of four technology transfer mechanisms by academic scientists. The study covers UK university scientists who have been involved in commercialization between 2005 and 2015. In the first stage, qualitative data were collected through 14 semi-structured interviews. The qualitative data analysis confirmed the predictive power of most factors in the conceptual framework and six new variables were also as potential predictors: patentability, inimitability, effectiveness of patents for the technology, capital intensity, independence, and technology dynamism. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and the quantitative data from 331 academic inventors were used to verify the result of the qualitative study. The quantitative data analysis suggests that the technologies that lead to the formation of a new company (either through formal or informal spin-offs) are complex and academics perceive higher profitability resulting from the commercialization of the technology. More novel or more system dependent technologies lead to the formation of formal university spin-offs and the technologies that are less novel or less system dependent are more likely to be transferred to a new company via informal spin-offs or to an existing company via licensing or consulting activity. In addition, when technologies are more capital intensive or patents are more effective for protection of them from imitation, they are more likely to be transferred formally via licensing or formal university spin-offs. The data analysis also confirms that higher dynamism associated with a technology leads to the creation of informal spin-offs and less patentability of a technology significantly predicts the engagement of academics in consulting activity. The thesis concludes with implication for theory and practices.

This research investigates why some individuals make better decisions in risky investments than others and what individual/socio-demographic characteristics influence in making these decisions. Three research questions with nineteen hypotheses were developed for the investigation. The first research question was (RQ1) Which demographic factors (gender, age, ethnicity, education, and investment experience), decision making styles and personality traits affect financial risk tolerance, financial literacy and risky decision making? Second research questionw as (RQ2) Is there any significant relationship between financial risk tolerance, financial literacy and risky decision making? And the third and last research question was (RQ3) Which combination of demographic factors (gender, age, ethnicity, education, and investment experience), decision making styles and personality traits predict financial risk tolerance score and financial literacy score? The investigation included two risk decisions making experimental tasks i.e. Iowa gambling task (IGT) and the balloon analogue risk task (BART) and an online questionnaire in which 244 UK respondents participated. The participants included professional (71%) and nonprofessional (29%) investors. Mixed factor ANOVA, one way ANOVA, Pearson correlation and multiple regression were used to analyse the data. (RQ1) There were no significant differences in the gambling task performance based on financial knowledge, investment experience, personality traits and demographics. There were significant differences in basic and advances financial literacy based on gender, age and investment experience. (RQ2) The results of the mixed factor ANOVA showed that there was no significant main effect of financial risk tolerance on the Iowa gambling task performance but a significant interaction was found to be present. Thus, financial risk tolerance high or low does not affect the risky decision-making task performance. The results of mixed factor ANOVA results show that same level of perceived financial knowledge and actual financial literacy was significantly related to better performance on the Iowa gambling task. Therefore, overconfidence or under confidence about one's level of financial understanding affects performance on risky decision-making tasks. (RQ3) 28% variability in the financial risk tolerance score is explained by the predictors gender, financial literacy score, spontaneous decision style, extraversion and investment experience. The regression model showed that gender, financial risk tolerance score, rational decision making, intuitive decision making and investment experience cause 38% variability in financial literacy score. The participants did learn to make better selections in the gambling task but still majority 56% of them displayed impaired performance. Based on the findings of the research it is recommended that the importance of financial literacy and investment experience should be considered when the financial consultants prepare the investors profile. It is also recommended that the assumptions for measuring healthy performance on the Iowa gambling task should be evaluated carefully when applied to healthy participants in such a way that the individual differences are also incorporated.