The goal of this thesis is to identify the underlying impairments in aphasic disorders of auditory comprehension and repetition. The findings are interpreted within a cognitive neuropsychological framework. Models of normal language processing are discussed in the light of this evidence. Information processing models of the lexicon attempt to specify the stages of processing necessary for auditory comprehension, as well as different routes by which words can be repeated. Twenty fluent aphasic patients were used in the study. It was found that the patients did show qualitative differences in auditory word comprehension. Five levels of impairment were identified: word-sound deafness, word-for deafness, word-meaning deafness, a central semantic disorder and a disorder specific to abstract words. It was concluded that abstract words are more sensitive to impairment than concrete words. Word imageability was investigated in more detail in a number of experiments with a word meaning deaf patient (DRB). It was shown that his impairment is one of access from the input lexicon to the semantic system. The impairment results in under-specification in the semantic system, and an extremely robust effect of imageability in DRB's ability to comprehend and repeat auditorily presented words. This effect is not item-specific. Intriguingly, the results also suggest that DRB has an anomia for words of low imageability. In a subsequent section, the patients' abilities in repetition are investigated. Two routes for repetition are identified, a sub-lexical and a lexical/semantic route. Phonologically related errors arising in the former route tend to be non-words, occur particularly on longer words, and the errors tend to be in the final position of the string. Phonological errors arising in the lexical/semantic route are real words, tend to be higher in frequency than the stimulus items, and occur particularly on shorter words. The relationship between repetition and auditory short term memory is considered by further experiments with DRB. It is argued that sub-lexical repetition utilises the auditory short term memory system. DRB's sub-lexical repetition and his immediate serial recall are enhanced by lip read information. A model of repetition and auditory short-term memory is presented. It is argued that the system requires different input and output phonological codes, suggesting separate input and output lexicons. With the specification of how lexical information supports immediate serial recall, it is argued that there is no requirement for a direct, lexical, non-semantic route in repetition.

This thesis investigates one of the crucial issues currently facing the European financial institutions, in particular, banks and insurance companies. Currently in Europe, the banks are engaging into insurance business, and, the insurance companies, to a lesser effect, are engaging into banking business. These cross-business activities have broken down the long tradition of separation of these two financial industries, and have raised many questions. But there is little evidence on this issue, theoretically as well as empirically. This thesis is a kind of interdisciplinary approach and it has two parts. In the first part, the thesis examines various interfaces that exist between the European banks and insurance companies from two perspectives: banks' perspective as well as insurance companies' perspective. (Chapter two and three respectively). Based on industrial economic theory, organisation theory, the strategy & international business theory, and the regulation theory, a historical analysis is employed for the examination of these various interfaces. The thesis also examines the traditional relationships and traditional distribution channels of banks as well as insurance companies and the development of their current changing patterns. Driving forces for these changing interfaces and the regulation concerning changes of interface are also considered in the thesis (Chapter four). The EC Directives on banking and insurance are also given their due weight for this examination. One of the major contributions in the first part is to make a theoretical development of this new area, and the creation of 'bancassurance' and 'assurancebank' data that is scarce and can be invaluable for further research and development on this issue. Some of these data are used in the second part of the thesis. In the second part of the thesis, two sets of empirical tests are conducted. The first test is the test of return and risk effects on European bank holding companies diversification into various insurance business, namely life assurance underwriting, general insurance underwriting, and insurance broking business. The second test is opposite to the first one, i.e. the test of return and risk effects on European insurance holding companies diversification into banking business (Chapter five and six respectively). Based on finance literature, econometric work is employed for these tests. The results of the first test shows that banks significantly increase their risk in underwriting of life as well as underwriting of general insurance business. Expansion in life underwriting significantly increases returns but the effect on return from expanding in general insurance underwriting is not significant. The most profitable expansion is into insurance broking business since our results indicate a significant positive effect on return with no adverse effects on risk. On the other hand, the results of the second test shows that the insurance companies bankruptcy risk although increases, two other risk measurements indicate significant risk reduction, and the return in this case does not have significant effect. This suggests that only the cross-business distribution activities should be permitted and the cross-business underwriting activities should be restricted in order to reduce the probability of bankruptcies.

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of any country could be a source of providing professionals to the country in many fields. By doing so, HEIs could play a pivotal role in the economic growth of the country. In Pakistan, it seems that, in the wake of this realization, steps have been taken to reform Higher Education. Drawing on the Triple I model of educational change covering Initiation, Implementation and Institutionalization (Fullan, 2007) this study focuses on the planning and implementation of reforms in the Education system of Pakistan at higher education level that have been introduced by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) since its inception in 2002. Kennedy’s model of hierarchical subsystems affecting innovation and Chin and Benne’s (1985) description of strategies for implementing change also provided guidelines for analyzing the changes in education in the country to highlight the role that the authorities expect the language teacher to play in the process of implementing these changes. A qualitative method is followed in this study to gather data from English language teachers at three universities of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A questionnaire was developed to look into the perceptions of English language teachers regarding the impact of these reforms. This was followed up by interviews. Responses from 28 teachers were received through questionnaire out of which 9 teachers were interviewed for detailed analysis of their perceptions. Thematic Content analysis was used to analyze and interpret the data. Some of the most significant changes that the respondents reported knowledge of included the introduction of Semester System, extending the Bachelors degree to four years from two years, promotion of research culture, and increased teachers’ autonomy in classroom practices. Implications of these reforms for English teachers’ professional development were also explored. The data indicate that the teachers generally have a positive attitude towards the changes. However, the data also show concerns that teachers have about the practical effectiveness of these changes in improving English language teaching and learning in Pakistani Universities. Some of the areas of concern are worries regarding resources, the assessment system, the number of qualified teachers, and instability in the educational policy. They are concerned about the training facilities and quality of the professional training available to them. Moreover, they report that training opportunities for their professional development are not available to all the teachers equally. Despite the HEC claims of providing regular training opportunities, the majority of the teachers did not receive any formal training in the last three years, while some teachers were able to access these opportunities multiple times. Through the recent reforms HEC has empowered the teachers in conducting the learning/teacher processes but this extra power has reduced their accountability and they can exercise these powers without any check on them. This empowerment is limited to the classroom and there appears to be no or minimal involvement in decision making at the top level of policy making. Such lack of involvement in the policy decisions seems to be generating a lack of sense of ownership among the teachers (Fullan 2003a:6). Although Quality Enhancement Cells have been developed in the universities to assure the desired quality of education, they might need a more active role to contribute in achieving the level of enhancement in education expected from them. Based on the perceptions of the respondents of this study and the review of the relevant literature, it is argued that it is unlikely for the reforms to be institutionalized if teachers are not given the right kind of awareness at the initiation stage and are not prepared at the implementation stage to cope with the challenge of a complex process. The teachers participating in this study, in general, have positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards most of the changes, in spite of some reservations. It could also be interesting to see if the power centers of the Pakistani Higher Education appreciate this enthusiasm and channel it for a strong Higher Education system in the country.

This piece of research explored young children’s (3-8 years) interpretation and understanding of well-being. The majority of research on well-being has been with adults and older children, with a distinct gap in younger children’s perspective being included. Where subjective well-being has been part of research, it has tended to be an add-on to the more weighty and identifiable data from government statistics and pre-determined objective measures. Subjective well-being is prominent in this piece of research, thus securing young children’s perspectives. The research was undertaken with forty children across four year-groups in one large urban community Infant school in the East of England. Drawings, paintings or photographs together with their narrative explanations, were collected from the children. Eight children then categorised the data, ordering it by frequency and importance. The final categorisation resulted in six key themes from the children: 1.Family, 2.Doing things with Family, 3.Being outside, 4.Pets and animals, 5, Activities, games and toys, 6. Friends. The researcher analysed the data using Barthes (1973, 1977) visual semiotic approach alongside a developmental perspective (Einarsdottir et al 2009), then thematic analysis. The researcher’s key themes were 1.Key relationships, 2.Sense of self, and 3.Outdoor world, which encapsulated the children’s themes and ideas. The importance of key relationships to young children has implications for time spent with family having greater status. It was also evident that young children are developing a sense of self, and need support, validation, and time from key people for this to be successful. The outdoor world was also significant, which needs recognition, provision and value attributed to it. The elements that make young children feel well and happy, need recognition and promotion by adults and professionals. Children’s perspectives need greater prominence in the policy domain. This piece of research demonstrated that young children are able to interpret and understand well-being, with the findings showing differences, or differences in degree of emphasis, to those put forward by older children and adults.

Researchers have studied voice onset time (VOT) in a number of languages but there is a scarcity of research on the acquisition of VOT of English, particularly by adult Saudi learners, and on the VOT of Saudi Arabic. The current study aims to fill these gaps. At the same time, we aimed to assess whether key claims of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM) were supported by this kind of data. 31 adult advanced Saudi learners of English and 60 monolinguals (30 native English and 30 Arabic monolinguals) participated in this study. The VOTs of the voiced and voiceless stops were measured followed by three different vowels, in both isolated word and word in sentence contexts. The results show that the learners produced English voiceless stops with aspiration closer to Arabic than to the higher native English VOT values, and voiced stops with pre-voicing, similar to Arabic, rather than with native English short-lag VOT values. Context had an effect in English but vowel did not, while the reverse was true for the learners and Arabic native speakers. Overall, learners' acquisition was modest despite their level and exposure, in that they overwhelmingly resembled Arabic rather than English native speakers. Several hypotheses based on SLM expectations were not confirmed in an unqualified way. However, support was found for learners' phonetic categories being ‘deflected’ away from both L1 and L2 categories. All three groups produced longer positive VOT for aspirated than unaspirated or voiced plosives. All exhibited VOT increasing across places of articulation, front to back for the voiceless stops, but only English native speakers showed this clearly for the voiced stops. Length of residence in UK and daily use of English did not seem to affect nativelikeness of learner VOT.

Many exchange rate papers articulate the view that instabilities constitute a major impediment to exchange rate predictability. In this thesis we implement Bayesian and other techniques to account for such instabilities, and examine some of the main obstacles to exchange rate models' predictive ability. We first consider in Chapter 2 a time-varying parameter model in which fluctuations in exchange rates are related to short-term nominal interest rates ensuing from monetary policy rules, such as Taylor rules. Unlike the existing exchange rate studies, the parameters of our Taylor rules are allowed to change over time, in light of the widespread evidence of shifts in fundamentals - for example in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Focusing on quarterly data frequency from the crisis, we detect forecast improvements upon a random walk (RW) benchmark for at least half, and for as many as seven out of 10, of the currencies considered. Results are stronger when we allow the time-varying parameters of the Taylor rules to differ between countries. In Chapter 3 we look closely at the role of time-variation in parameters and other sources of uncertainty in hindering exchange rate models' predictive power. We apply a Bayesian setup that incorporates the notion that the relevant set of exchange rate determinants and their corresponding coefficients, change over time. Using statistical and economic measures of performance, we first find that predictive models which allow for sudden, rather than smooth, changes in the coefficients yield significant forecast improvements and economic gains at horizons beyond 1-month. At shorter horizons, however, our methods fail to forecast better than the RW. And we identify uncertainty in coefficients' estimation and uncertainty about the precise degree of coefficients variability to incorporate in the models, as the main factors obstructing predictive ability. Chapter 4 focus on the problem of the time-varying predictive ability of economic fundamentals for exchange rates. It uses bootstrap-based methods to uncover the time-specific conditioning information for predicting fluctuations in exchange rates. Employing several metrics for statistical and economic evaluation of forecasting performance, we find that our approach based on pre-selecting and validating fundamentals across bootstrap replications generates more accurate forecasts than the RW. The approach, known as bumping, robustly reveals parsimonious models with out-of-sample predictive power at 1-month horizon; and outperforms alternative methods, including Bayesian, bagging, and standard forecast combinations. Chapter 5 exploits the predictive content of daily commodity prices for monthly commodity-currency exchange rates. It builds on the idea that the effect of daily commodity price fluctuations on commodity currencies is short-lived, and therefore harder to pin down at low frequencies. Using MIxed DAta Sampling (MIDAS) models, and Bayesian estimation methods to account for time-variation in predictive ability, the chapter demonstrates the usefulness of suitably exploiting such short-lived effects in improving exchange rate forecasts. It further shows that the usual low-frequency predictors, such as money supplies and interest rates differentials, typically receive little support from the data at monthly frequency, whereas MIDAS models featuring daily commodity prices are highly likely. The chapter also introduces the random walk Metropolis-Hastings technique as a new tool to estimate MIDAS regressions.

The thesis focuses on military crisis management and strategy.

At the start of the twentieth century, Schumpeter (1908; 1912) postulated the basis for a potential revolution in economics by arguing that the entrepreneur acts as the underlying force of economic growth. Despite Schumpeter’s contribution, the central role of entrepreneurship has only been systematically recognised in the literature in the past few years (Santarelli & Vivarelli, 2007). Santarelli and Vivarelli (2007) contended that the most common way to measure entrepreneurship was to focus on entrepreneurial start-up rates. Shane (2009) suggested that achieving job creation and economic growth from entrepreneurship is not a numbers game and entrepreneurship policy should encourage the formation of high quality, high growth companies. Furthermore, DeTienne (2010) stated that the entrepreneurial process does not end with the creation of a new business, but instead with entrepreneurial exit. Considering the crucial role of entrepreneurship, this thesis will look at these issues through three independent but interrelated studies: The first study introduces and assesses a set of measures of the quality of government that has both theoretical and empirical importance. The results confirm that the quality of government demonstrates varying moderating effects on the relationship between institutions and entrepreneurial start-ups. Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour and the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach, the second study looks at entrepreneurs’ growth aspirations in China. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between attitude and growth aspirations and that people who perceive a greater sense of control over the outcomes of their actions are more likely to possess growth aspirations. The results also confirm the positive moderating effects of entrepreneurial ecosystems on the relationship between individual motivational aspects and growth aspirations. The third study first assesses how individual cognitive aspects can contribute to distinctions in exit motives. Second, by adopting resource dependence theory, and institutional theory, this study argues that environmental dynamism and institutional ambiguity exert direct and indirect effects on entrepreneurial exit patterns in China.

This research project was conducted in response to several calls by marketing scholars and practitioners for a better understanding of the concept of consumer engagement in general and social media based brand communities in particular. The term ‘consumer engagement’ has grown in importance in recent years to describe consumers’ interactive experiences with brands. The popularity of that term was boosted by the rapid penetration of social networking sites which facilitated engagement of consumers through online brand communities embedded in it. This thesis investigates consumer engagement in Facebook brand pages. These pages are considered a form of online brand communities that are created by many companies for marketing purposes. Fast food brand pages in Egypt were used as a context for conducting this research study, where they are extensively used for targeting young consumers. With the purpose of identifying the factors that enhance consumer engagement in these online communities, this study examined consumers’ relationships with brands that initiated these communities as well as consumers’ perceptions inside these communities. Also, it studied the role of these brand pages in fostering consumers’ brand love as well as brand equity dimensions and outcomes. Brand love is an important marketing concept that has been appearing in academic publications recently to describe consumers’ emotional connections with brands. It is becoming widely accepted that consumers’ emotions towards brands, are a key determinant for their consumption behaviour. A mixed method research design incorporating focus groups and online surveys was used to collect data in the current study. The data collection was conducted by drawing a sample from young consumers whose ages are between 18 and 29, and who are active members of official fast food brand pages on Facebook in Egypt. The first phase of this study adopted a series of qualitative focus group discussions with the aim of exploring the nature and dimensionality of consumer engagement from the perspective of young Egyptian consumers. Also, it was useful in exploring the benefits these consumers seek by their engagement in online communities. The second phase was conducted through an online survey that was posted on Facebook brand pages of the fast food chains in Egypt. The aim of the quantitative phase was to test a conceptual framework for the antecedents and outcomes of consumer engagement in social media based brand communities. This framework was developed from an extensive literature review as well as the qualitative discussions. The findings indicated that consumer engagement is a multidimensional concept that consists of emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimensions, as well as several sub-dimensions. Also, three factors related to consumers’ relationships with brands (brand identification, satisfaction and trust) and four factors related to consumers’ perceptions inside the brand communities (critical mass; functional, hedonic and monetary benefits) were identified as antecedents of consumer engagement. Moreover, the study proved the positive effect of consumer engagement on the development of brand love. Furthermore, it indicated a positive influence of brand love on brand equity dimensions and outcomes. The current study contributes theoretically by enhancing our understanding of the concept of consumer engagement, particularly in the context of social media based brand communities in Egypt. More importantly, the inclusion of brand love is expected to contribute to the body of consumer-brand relationships literature. Also, this thesis contributes by providing a measurement scale for consumer engagement in the context of social media. On the other hand, the study provides some practical implications, where it provides some useful guidelines for companies to follow when advertising to young consumers on Facebook brand pages.

This thesis aims to explore how technology start-ups build dynamic capabilities in networking to enable their new venture internationalisation (NVI). Positioned within the theoretical context of international entrepreneurship research, this thesis draws on the strategic management, entrepreneurship, and international business literature. Specifically, this thesis draws on three theoretical perspectives: (1) dynamic capabilities, (2) networking and social capital, and (3) NVI theory. Together this study combines Helfat et al. (2007) asset orchestration framework along with Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998) three dimensions of social capital as a theoretical lens to explore how various networking activities enable or inhibit NVI. Specifically, this thesis explores three overarching network processes, with respect to how international new ventures (INVs) (1) create, (2) extend, and (3) modify their social capital in high-technology markets. The empirical context is Scottish and Australian medical technology start-ups that compete in the global medical technology sector, a distinct sector of the wider life sciences industry. Methodologically, this an interpretivist study, which takes an abductive approach to building theory from longitudinal multiple case study research. The focal actor (i.e. level of analysis) is the INV, while the unit of analysis is the focal actor’s network relationships. Data collection and analysis took place over three iterative phases drawing on multiple primary and secondary data sources and processual analytical techniques. To collect these data, this thesis used semi-structured interviews drawing on the critical incident and narrative sequence techniques along with documents, and observation. This study began with a purposeful sample of eight medical technology start-ups, and as findings emerged, a theoretical sample of four cases, along with visual maps, conceptually ordered displays and case-ordered effects matrices helped focus and refine the cross-case analysis. From the emergent cross-case data analysis, three overarching aggregate categories were found to aggregate eleven second-order themes, which aggregate several first-order concepts. The overarching finding of this thesis is that networking capability development is an affect-based emergent process that enables NVI. Specifically, this thesis makes three contributions to knowledge. The primary contribution of this thesis takes a step towards a process theory of networking capability development. Therefore, this study identifies networking capability as one particular type of dynamic capability that enables NVI. Secondly, this thesis begins to unlock the black box of networking by identifying several networking activities that underpin the network-enhancing, network-delaying, and network-modifying process, which triggers, enables, and accelerates a virtuous cycle of networking capability development. Finally, this thesis argues that learning from delays and nurturing core ties helps shift technology start-ups’ reliance from impersonal relations towards future aspirations to internalise operations. A discussion of these findings then outlines the implications for theory, policy, and practice. This study closes with a discussion on research limitations and recommends new avenues for future research.