Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 168-189.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1941. / Lithoprinted. Vita. Bibliography: p. 257-263.

Thesis (doctoral)--Technische Universität, Darmstadt, 2003/2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-290) and index.

ABSTRACT “Almost all places are in trouble, but some are in more trouble than others" Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) contend that all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies that perhaps frustrated by lack of pure strategy capacity to sell to governments, have fallen into the habit of i Sibonokuhle GUMPO - 34462481 pandering to this misconception and simply selling logos and slogans to any government prepared to buy them (Anholt, 2003). However faced with the urgent need to address the crippling impact of a negative image, countries like Zimbabwe cannot simply wait and expect things to turn out for the better. Kotler et al (1993) stress that places are not able to respond to negative images concerning their nations as quickly as negative perceptions are built, be it through media, word of mouth or other channels. As a result the importance of a pro-active response cannot be overemphasized. This study explores the current negative image of Zimbabwe and tries to define the root or source of this negative image. Having defined or spelt out what is thought to be the problem, the researcher than explores possible ways of how the stakeholders of Zimbabwe can rebrand their country reflecting on known success stories. Kotler et al (1993) contend that the central tenet of marketing places is that in spite of the powerful internal and external forces that buffet them, places have within their collective resources and people the capacity to improve their relative competitive positions. Zimbabweans in general believe that their situation has been sensationalised by the media and is not a reflection of what is on the ground. By adopting a proactive stance in rebranding their country, Zimbabweans will perhaps finally realise that when it comes to image, “being in possession of the truth is not enough, the truth has to be sold” (Anholt,all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies ABSTRACT “Almost all places are in trouble, but some are in more trouble than others" Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) contend that all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies that perhaps frustrated by lack of pure strategy capacity to sell to governments, have fallen into the habit of i Sibonokuhle GUMPO - 34462481 pandering to this misconception and simply selling logos and slogans to any government prepared to buy them (Anholt, 2003). However faced with the urgent need to address the crippling impact of a negative image, countries like Zimbabwe cannot simply wait and expect things to turn out for the better. Kotler et al (1993) stress that places are not able to respond to negative images concerning their nations as quickly as negative perceptions are built, be it through media, word of mouth or other channels. As a result the importance of a pro-active response cannot be overemphasized. This study explores the current negative image of Zimbabwe and tries to define the root or source of this negative image. Having defined or spelt out what is thought to be the problem, the researcher than explores possible ways of how the stakeholders of Zimbabwe can rebrand their country reflecting on known success stories. Kotler et al (1993) contend that the central tenet of marketing places is that in spite of the powerful internal and external forces that buffet them, places have within their collective resources and people the capacity to improve their relative competitive positions. Zimbabweans in general believe that their situation has been sensationalised by the media and is not a reflection of what is on the ground. By adopting a proactive stance in rebranding their country, Zimbabweans will perhaps finally realise that when it comes to image, “being in possession of the truth is not enough, the truth has to be sold” (Anholt, / Graduate School of Business Leadership / MBL

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The evolution of policy regarding the black bourgeoisie -- Issues in the struggle for black capitalism -- The roles and effects of NAFCOC (National African Federation Chamber of Commerce) and FABCOS (Foundation of Business and Consumer Service) -- The development of black capitalists in the urban areas -- Constraints on, and the performances of black entrepreneurs -- 'Normalisation' of the economic playing field. / South Africa

The objective of this paper is to explain differences in the economic performance of selected advanced capitalist countries between 1960 and 1980, such as rates of unemployment, level of inflation rates and economic growth rates, with the presence or absence of corporatist arrangements between major interest groups and the State, and with the strength of leftist parties in these nations. In reviewing the literature, I have found basically two approaches to corporatism: ( 1) a 'structural' approach, which emphasizes sociological characteristics of the actors, especially labor unions; and (2) a 'functional' approach, which stresses elements of policy formation and implementation. Using factor analysis, I will create a corporatism score for each country. According to Olson's 'Logic of Collective Action', nations with corporatist arrangements (large and centrally organized interest groups) should do better economically (in terms of growth rates) than nations without these arrangements. However, this application has been criticized, since economic growth would be a relatively automatic function of size and degree of organization of interest groups in a given nation, and would not leave any room for strategic considerations, which can be influenced by political parties. Therefore, I will perform a LISREL analysis for two competing models: (1) an 'additive' model, where I compare the independent effects of corporatist arrangements and leftist parties on strike activity, unemployment rates, inflation rates, and GDP growth rates; and (2) a 'multiplicative' or conditional model, where the effects of corporatism on economic performance depend on the strength of left parties, and vice versa. My findings do not strongly support the 'additive' model, whose policy implications for countries that wish to be more successful economically in terms of growth of GDP would be to pursue more corporatist strategies. With the notable exception of economic growth rates, on which the combined effects of corporatism and left parties have a strong, negative effect, the 'multiplicative' model is far more successful in explaining differences in economic performance among nations: I have found strong negative. indirect effects of this combined index on unemployment and inflation rates. An implication is that those countries with strong left parties and already existing corporatist arrangements could pursue strategies to extend corporatist arrangements with the hope of gain, while countries without strong left parties and corporatist arrangements might abstain from a policy of becoming more corporatist, since absence of strong labor-based parties might impede rather than promote economic growth. They might even try to reduce their extent of corporatism. / Master of Arts

Although there is ample evidence of the heterogeneity of investors' expectations of security returns (Cragg and Malkiel, 1982), few studies have attempted to relate this divergence of investor opinion directly to security returns. Barry and Brown (1984) argue that divergence of investor opinion results from differing levels of estimation risk across securities. Furthermore, their model shows that the OLS estimate of beta, used in most empirical studies requiring excess returns, underadjusts for a security's systematic risk when investors' expectations are highly dispersed and overadjusts when such divergence of opinion is low. This hypothesis is tested in the present study using various measures of divergence of analysts‘ forecasts of earnings per share for individual firms. The results of exhaustive data analysis strongly reject the notion of such a bias in the OLS derived excess returns or in actual returns. Market reaction to revisions in the mean and standard deviation of analysts' firm-specific forecasts of earnings per share is also examined. Security prices do not appear to react in a systematic manner to revisions in the standard deviation of analysts' forecasts. However, there is evidence of a reaction to revisions in the mean of such forecasts both before and after the publication of this information suggesting that new information is contained in consensus forecasts of earnings per share when released to subscribers. / Ph. D.

by Chan Cheuk Tung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-90). / Abstract also in Chinese. / ABSTRACT (IN ENGLISH) --- p.ii / ABSTRACT (IN CHINESE) --- p.iv / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.ix / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.x / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Overview: Neglected Role of Investors' Emotion --- p.1 / Inadequacies in Existing Theory and Research --- p.3 / Significance of Present Study --- p.5 / Chapter II. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.6 / Demographic Studies of Investors --- p.6 / Decision Research on Choice Behavior --- p.7 / Personality Trait / Cognitive Style Approach --- p.7 / Situationist Approach --- p.8 / Interactionist Approach --- p.9 / Summary --- p.10 / Findings in choice behavior research --- p.10 / "Notion of ""Bounded Rationality""" --- p.10 / Frameworks for task and context effects --- p.12 / Decision-making as a Conflict Resolution Process --- p.13 / Generalized Cost/Benefit Analysis - the Emotional Dimension --- p.14 / Summary --- p.16 / Chapter III. --- HYPOTHESES --- p.18 / Information Acquisition --- p.18 / Negative Information --- p.20 / Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.23 / Evaluation and Judgment --- p.25 / Strategies Formulation --- p.28 / Trading Performance --- p.30 / Chapter VI. --- METHODS --- p.32 / Overview --- p.32 / Material and Apparatus Selection --- p.33 / Selection of Music --- p.33 / Selection of Currency Pair --- p.35 / System for Trading Simulation --- p.36 / Selection of News Items --- p.37 / Pretest of Treatments --- p.39 / Subjects --- p.40 / Procedure --- p.41 / Manipulation Check - Pretest --- p.42 / Likert scale Measure --- p.43 / Affect Grid Measure --- p.44 / Convergent Validity of Measures --- p.45 / Summary --- p.46 / Estimation of Power and Optimal Sample Size for the Main Experiment --- p.46 / Main Experiment --- p.46 / Subjects --- p.47 / Procedure --- p.47 / Measures of Studied Variables --- p.48 / Control Variables --- p.49 / Chapter V. --- RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS --- p.51 / Manipulation Checks --- p.51 / Reliability of Mood Measures --- p.51 / Effect of Manipulations --- p.52 / Effects of Control variables --- p.54 / Trading Performance --- p.55 / Information Acquisition --- p.59 / Negative Information --- p.59 / Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.62 / Time Allocation --- p.64 / Summary --- p.66 / Evaluation and Judgment --- p.66 / Decision Time --- p.66 / Decision Complexity --- p.68 / Decision Accuracy --- p.70 / Summary --- p.71 / Strategy Formulation --- p.72 / Use of Cut-loss Order --- p.72 / Use of Limit-profit Order --- p.73 / Investment Size --- p.73 / Summary --- p.75 / Discussion --- p.75 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.78 / Discussion --- p.78 / Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies --- p.80 / Suggestions to Investors --- p.76 / Individual Investors --- p.82 / Institutional Investors --- p.84 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.86 / APPENDICES --- p.91 / Appendix 1 News Selection Phase One: Judges' Rating --- p.91 / Appendix 2 Screen Layouts of the Internet Trading System --- p.92 / Appendix 3 Coding Scheme -Complexity of Reasoning --- p.93 / Appendix 4 Questionnaire --- p.94

This thesis focuses on a central behavioral paradox in the asset management community. Recent decades have brought an upsurge in initiatives throughout the investment community to voluntarily integrate sustainability issues into investment decisions. The financial crisis has however revealed behavioral inconsistency and deepening irresponsibility. Today, sustainable investments represent USD 10.7 trillion, or 7% of the entire market, of assets under management and it is growing steadily. <p>One important driver of this growth was the emergence of specialized research agencies that standardized measurement of companies’ environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance and sold such information as a tool to evaluate or pressure corporate conducts. More recently, sell-side research, financial news, and market-index providers joined the ESG information market, where they aim to support more mainstream asset managers in integrating ESG information into investment decisions. <p>A dominant assumption has taken hold in a large part of the investment and regulatory circles: asset managers’ use of ESG information will induce a behavioral change so that they automatically integrate companies’ sustainability to investment return concerns. Understandings of what constitutes sustainable investment have been largely practitioner-driven. The academic community took little interest to challenge the assumption. Remarkably, more scholars have come to assume that conformance to institutional pressures to add ESG information to investment strategies will induce more sustainable and long-term behavior of investors and companies. ESG information integration is believed to be a behavioral enabler for mainstream investors to systematically embed sustainability in investment strategies. Because of the assumption, theory building of asset manager intrinsic motivations to engage in sustainable investment remains unexplored. Main contribution of this research is to generate a deep theoretical understanding of asset manager non-conformance to the ESG pressure to engage in sustainable investment. <p>The research starts by questioning the dominant assumptions made in the sustainable investment field. While working in the industry, I witnessed some asset managers’ practices of replacing the externally defined ESG information with their own research based on narratives to better understand investee companies. The research question came out of this experience: why do some asset managers use ESG information to engage in sustainable investment while others do not? Do pressures to integrate ESG information really induce more sustainable behaviors on the part of asset managers? These self-inquiries led to a wide array of literature review to search for conformance and non-conformance drivers. Surprisingly, non-conformance was an under-researched theme. Given the scarcity of the research, I sought a method that would enable grounded theorizing based on asset managers’ own experience and interpretations. <p> Grounded theory research draws on asset manager interviews, archival documents, expert and practitioner consultations and feedback during 2007 and mid-2011. To reflect the global nature of sustainability, I focused on global equity asset managers working in thirteen institutions in three lead markets with most geographically diversified sustainable investment, UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. <p>Theory building from the ground up does not happen in vacuum. I developed a framework to study conformance and non-conformance drivers to facilitate the concept elicitation. The question of conformance and non-conformance has been studied by institutional, resource-based view of the firm, behavioral finance, cognitive and sensemaking theorists but in a disintegrated manner. I enhanced insights by way of aggregating and exploring the drivers. The framework illuminates the viability of both conformers and non-conformers in sustainable investment practices. Both are leadership activities of asset managers based respectively on explicit and implicit motivations. It illustrates short-term and opportunistic motivations of conforming managers, as opposed to long-term and substantial motivations of non-conforming managers to integrate sustainability and return-making in their investment decisions. <p>The research results presented hereafter provide a significant theoretical and empirical contribution. Drawing from insights and perspectives from the practitioners, a grounded theory model of asset manager conformance and non-conformance highlights a pivotal concept of sensemaking capacities. It reveals a counter intuitive pattern of asset manager learning. Non-conforming asset managers have developed a distinctive capacity to integrate sustainability and investment return concerns regardless of public pressures to do so. This distinctive sensemaking capacity, founded on behavioral integration of external expectations with own motivation, goal, competence and know-how, was the strategic resource for the organization. Their behavioral integration of sustainability and return generation is so highly developed, that adding the ESG information in their investment strategy would actually impair their capacity to make sense of sustainability. Indeed, I find that non-conforming asset manager teams have sustained consistent returns and increased client assets throughout the financial crisis. In absence of such behavioral integration and sensemaking capacities, conforming managers failed to sustain consistency or suffered from under-funding. To stay competitive, the latter managers have fervently demonstrated the ESG information use in their investment strategies. However, such explicit demonstration of leadership has not been accompanied by distinctive sensemaking capacities. I find that conforming managers were less capable of integrating sustainability and return-generation, which subsequently reinforced their short-termism and opportunism. <p>The finding of this thesis points to the importance of ‘behavioral integration’ instead of ‘explicit conformance’ of asset managers. The academic community may need to shed a more critical eye on ESG integration by asset managers. Institutional pressures to adopt such information may not induce more sustainable behavior, as ESG know-how is likely to deprive a chance to develop distinctive sensemaking capacities. Furthermore, it may even hurt the sensemaking capacities of managers who have behaviorally integrated sustainability and return-generation. While I hope to trigger a re-think amongst academics how to promote sustainable investment, my findings has theoretical and empirical contributions. The most important theoretical contribution is identification of non-conformance variables to engage intrinsically in sustainable investment. Empirical evidence on non-conformers, corroborated with resource-based view of the firm, also enhances the understanding of non-conformers’ motivation to sustain competitive advantage. <p>Findings also lead to managerial and policy implications. I carried out this research in the midst of the financial crisis, a time of mounting European policy debates how to build investor capacity to induce long-term and sustainable behaviors. The European Commission’s Internal Market Directorate-General is set to publish a directive proposal that mandate ESG information disclosure to companies and ESG reporting by investors. This adds weight to already published procedural measures to strengthen corporate governance at financial institutions. These policy initiatives emerged largely because of expert consultation and anecdotal evidences. In addition to recommendations to specific pieces of legislative proposals, this research makes an overarching policy proposal. The EU Commission needs to reexamine if the current policy measures lead to further symbolic demonstrations of ESG usage without accompanying sustainable behavior at the cost of real economy. EU equally needs to pay more attention to non-conforming asset managers’ distinctive capacities and enabling mechanisms. Reporting burdens may inadvertently impair non-conforming managers’ capacities to sustain long-term performance and may induce a contradictory policy consequence of increased public distrust. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The evolution of policy regarding the black bourgeoisie -- Issues in the struggle for black capitalism -- The roles and effects of NAFCOC (National African Federation Chamber of Commerce) and FABCOS (Foundation of Business and Consumer Service) -- The development of black capitalists in the urban areas -- Constraints on, and the performances of black entrepreneurs -- 'Normalisation' of the economic playing field.