Thesis (Ph. D.)--American University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 303-311).

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in Europe's economy. Since SMEs have distinct organisational practices and structures (e.g. owner-run, continuity over several generations, regional engagement), their intellectual capital (IC) differs from large enterprises. However, there is little research on IC in SMEs. Placing special attention on the craft industry, this research aims at closing this gap. It will present a cross-disciplinary review of research on craft to explore the role of knowledge and human capital in the craft industry. The findings point to overall characteristics which can guide future research and inform policy-making in the craft industry.

The study assess the roles played by cooperative societies’ savings and loans services on members’ economic condition, standard of living and in meeting participants financial needs in rural locations where there is no bank nor other formal financial providers. Using a combination of interview, focus group discussion and questionnaire techniques, the study covers the activities of cooperative societies located in rural communities and villages outside the state capital and local government headquarters where there is no electricity, water and tarred road in Ogun State, Nigeria. From its findings, this study identified and discussed potential areas for the improvement of cooperative societies that could be of benefit to rural finance providers and the cooperative members. The study is the first empirical investigation in Nigeria that focuses on the relevance of cooperative societies on members’ standard of living in rural communities and villages. The study shed light on how rural communities function – how their relationships develop, how individual esteem is increased, how interdependence grows, how hierarchies are maintained – and how this is facilitated in part by the loan-making of members promoted cooperatives. It has also provided more evidence on the importance of land ownership, and how this is enhanced when rural communities have access to cheap and affordable loans. It has also provided insights into the development of rural businesses, how complex they are, and how they require more input than the financing received through cooperative loans. The study breaks new ground in informal cooperative functioning, community development and rural finance research by providing a distinction between standard of living and quality of life variables in measuring the economic condition of rural dwellers, and the production of circle of social capital theory that the role of cooperatives to the members involve financial capital, physical capital and social capital which are interrelated. This helps to appropriately identify the roles of cooperative societies in rural finance to increase in household income, ownership of household assets and acquisition of enterprise assets. However, participation in the cooperative does not lead to enterprise profitability, while rural financial needs are more accessible from cooperatives than other sources.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Exeter, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 442-468).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 504-551).

Questo lavoro di ricerca poggia sulla solida convinzione che sia necessario un salto di qualità sia negli investimenti in capitale intellettuale che nelle pratiche di gestione manageriale, al fine di attivare un processo di crescita di lungo corso che duri nel tempo. Dal momento che l'economia della conoscenza riveste una sempre maggiore importanza, questo studio ha verificato gli effetti che le pratiche HR e le capacità di rinnovamento possono esercitare sul capitale intellettuale al fine di creare un vantaggio competitivo sostenibile. Il modello adottato ha considerato il capitale intellettuale come la somma di tre componenti: capitale umano, capitale relazionale e capitale strutturale. In un ambiente dinamico, come l'attuale, il capitale intellettuale può essere il fattore chiave per ottenere un vantaggio competitivo sostenibile, dal momento che è raro, di valore e difficile da imitare o sostituire. Per questa ragione, il presente studio ha esaminato gli elementi decisivi per la gestione del capitale intellettuale in un ambiente competitivo turbolento valutando l'impatto delle componenti del capitale intellettuale sulla soddisfazione dei dipendenti e la qualità del servizio. I dati analizzati nell'ambito di questa ricerca sono stati raccolti attraverso questionari a cui hanno risposto varie realtà operanti nel settore finanziario in Italia e alcuni dei loro partner, operanti nel settore ICT, specializzati in attività ad alta intensità di capitale umano come lo sviluppo di applicazioni informatiche. Sono state individuati alcuni importanti risultati. In primo luogo, le capacità di rinnovamento mediano la relazione tra le pratiche HR e le componenti del capitale intellettuale. In secondo luogo, il capitale umano ha un impatto positivo diretto sulla qualità del servizio. In terzo luogo, il capitale strutturale influenza positivamente la soddisfazione dei collaboratori. Quindi, la soddisfazione dei collaboratori e la qualità del servizio sono alimentati e sostenuti da differenti fattori chiave: il capitale strutturale e il capitale umano rispettivamente. Da una prospettiva pratica e manageriale questi risultati sono molto interessanti al fine di deliberare l'allocazione delle risorse aziendali per ottenere delle configurazioni di capitale intellettuale efficaci. Le ricerche future potrebbero indagare i contribuiti dei differenti portatori d'interesse sugli antecedenti e conseguenti del capitale intellettuale valutando la capacità di produrre valore e, come conseguenza, la soddisfazione dei portatori d'interesse adottando un approccio di tipo managing-for-stakeholders. I fornitori e i clienti rivestono un ruolo centrale nelle dinamiche aziendali e per questo meritano particolare attenzione negli studi che saranno svolti nel prossimo futuro. / This work is rooted in the conviction that our economies need both better investments in intellectual capital and better management practices in order to achieve higher long-term growth. Starting acknowledging the increasing importance of the knowledge economy phenomenon, this study assessed the effects that HR practices and renewal capability can exert on firm’s intellectual capital in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage. The adopted model has considered intellectual capital as the sum of three components: human capital, relational capital and structural capital. In a dynamic environment, such as today’s competitive arena, intellectual capital can be the key factor to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage, because it is rare, valuable and difficult to imitate or substitute. For this reason, the present study has examined the key drivers to manage intellectual capital in a turbulent environment evaluating the impact of firm’s intellectual capital components on employees’ satisfaction and service quality. This research has gathered data through surveys of various Italian business units operating in the financial sector and some of their ICT partners specialised in human capital-intensive activities such as software development. A set of findings has been generated. First, renewal capability mediates the relationships between HR practices and all intellectual capital components. Second, human capital has a direct positive relationship with service quality. Third, structural capital has a direct positive relationship with employees’ satisfaction. Hence, employees’ satisfaction and service quality are nurtured and fostered by different crucial drivers: structural capital and human capital respectively. From a managerial and practical perspective these findings are very interesting in order to deliberating the allocation of firms’ resources to obtain effective intellectual capital configurations. Future researches may investigate the contributions of different stakeholders to the antecedents of intellectual capital as well as the contributions to its consequences in order to produce value and, in turn, stakeholders’ satisfaction adopting a managing-for-stakeholders approach. Suppliers and customers play a central role and for this reason they deserve particular attention in future studies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the important factors that affect graduate employment such as human capital, social capital and university career services. It focuses on the graduate labour market in the UK and uses mixed methods. While quantitative data derive from a survey, qualitative data come from interviews and secondary sources in a case study. The survey includes 947 university graduates and qualitative data consist of 8 interviews, internal and external reports. The findings show that the level of human capital and social capital affect the way graduates find a job and the use of social capital in job searches varies by ethnicity, age and academic level. However, gender and academic discipline do not affect the use of social capital in the UK graduate labour market. Moreover, the study shows that university career services can play an important role in job searches. Overall, however, direct application and online career services are two most widely used methods to find a job. The originality of the research is twofold. Firstly, it illustrates the relationship between two important components in graduates’ job search processes: human capital and social capital. Secondly, it examines the role of an institution: university career services and displays the importance of institutional approaches in building a bridge between students and employers.

As externships evolved from their vocational education roots into the university setting, both the course purposes and the expectations of student changed toward deeper learning. While the students’ responsibility for gaining knowledge has increased, teaching methods designed by educators to prepare students for more critically evaluated outcomes has not evolved at the same pace. Educators still grapple over how educational design can combine the structured teacher-centered learning strategy used in university classrooms with the learner-centered approach students typically utilize in for-profit culinary workplaces. This dissertation is about culinary externships in the urban environment. The study examined the roles, reasoning, and behavior of culinary externship stakeholders: student externs, externship sites via their externship supervisors, and educators who facilitate externships under the academic rules and guidelines of both culinary bachelor programs and the rigor demanded by higher education. Further, the study explored what factors encouraged and empowered students to acquire durable knowledge from their externship experiences and the forms of social capital they use to invest in their experience, as well as the conditions that failed to secure durable knowledge from the externship. The findings indicate that each stakeholder approaches an externship from their own working perspectives. Further, the ability of students to socialize, utilize agency to achieve their personal ends, bear the sole weight of evaluation, and acquire practical work experience prior to the externship yielded the best outcomes. Additional questions are posed and answered within the study.

Despite increased diversity noted in undergraduate education in recent years (Antonio, 2003), students from non-majority groups continue to be underrepresented in graduate school. Many research studies (Perna, 2000, 2004; Perna & Titus, 2005; Rowan-Kenyon, 2007; Walpole, 2003, 2007b) have used measures of cultural and social capital to increase the explanatory power of the traditional econometric framework in college choice models, but have not used these sociological variables as a primary focus. The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the influence of cultural capital and social capital on the decision of bachelor’s degree completers to enter graduate school and ultimately to degree achievement. The study is an extension of Perna’s 2004 work, which examined similar relationships of cultural and social capital variables via use of the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/97 study. Based on Walpole’s findings (2003), variables related to socioeconomic status (SES) were also included in my analysis. The data used to answer the research questions were collected as part of a longitudinal study, the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/03. Participants in the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/03 study were students in the U.S. who earned a bachelor’s degree during the 1992-1993 academic year, representing a population of 1.2 million individuals (Choy, Bradburn, & Carroll, 2008). My findings revealed that measures of cultural and social capital have a significant influence on graduate school enrollment and degree completion. Among low SES students (as designated by family income) cultural and social capital variables substantially increased the likelihood of graduate degree attainment.

In 1992, the Government of Botswana appointed a National Commission to review the education system and advise how it could promote human resource development to address the country’s socio-economic challenges. The Commission identified the need to diversify the labour market and shift towards occupational groupings based on skills, attitudes and competence. However, fifteen years on, Botswana’s dependence on diamond mining, coupled with immigration from neighbouring countries and a mismatch of skills supply and demand has resulted in a pool of labour exceeding the number of jobs available. Access, opportunity and social inclusion therefore represent major challenges, since large numbers of under and un-utilised people imply a heavy socioeconomic burden. This thesis employed a Problem Based Methodology within the framework of a Project Cycle Management approach to develop a project for an Adult Basic Vocational Education and Training (ABVET) programme as a contribution towards the development of human and social capital in Botswana.