In spite of decades of research into corporate turnaround strategies, corporate failures persist. Knowledge of remedies appears to be a necessary but insufficient condition for turnaround. There exists yet a serious gap in extant knowledge on what motivates managers to choose or avoid well-documented restructuring strategies. Further, extant research has focused predominantly on severely distressed firms. Though contributing immensely to corporate management out of a crisis, it throws little light in the direction of management to avoid a crisis, and thus avoidance of economic value destruction. Also, no large sample analysis has properly tested the general effectiveness of prescribed turnaround strategies. This research attempts to fill these empirical gaps by exploring three key research questions: I. What are the determinants of restructuring strategy choice in response to performance decline 2. How effective are the prescribed turnaround strategies in contributing to corporate turnaround from performance decline? 3. Are the turnaround strategies equally applicable and effective to both poorly performing and financially distressed firms? We integrate the disparate studies to date and devise a coherent framework for performance decline research and corporate restructuring. We also design a comprehensive strategy determinants framework for explaining the firm strategy selection process corporating the impact of lenders, owners, corporate governance structure and control factors. We employ the standard event study methodology to examine effectiveness of strategies. We then separate implementation success from other sources of strategy effectiveness- choice, timing and intensity of restructuring strategies. We also explore differences in the determinants and effectiveness of strategies between two samples comprising nearly 300 poorly performing and 200 financially distressed firms, as a function of the extent of firms' performance decline. Our results show that turnaround strategy choices are significantly influenced by the complex interplay of the ownership structure, corporate governance and lender monitoring of the firms in decline. While there is agreement among stakeholders on certain strategies there is also evidence of conflict of interests. The results also show the somewhat detrimental effects of dominance by certain stakeholder groups. However, no support for managerial inaction as a contributor to non-recovery from performance decline iss found. Instead of being paralysed by inertia, managers of on recovery firms appear to take vigorous and intensive restructuring actions. Our results suggest the root cause of non-recovery is bad implementation of restructuring strategies. Although pursuing similar strategies, non-recovery firms' managers are perceivedb y the markett o be far lesse ffective in their implementationst han those of recovery fin-ns. Comparative analysis of poorly performing and financially distressed firms reveals a striking similarity in determinants of strategy choice but some differencesi n the impact of restructurings trategieso n corporatet urnaround.

The first objective of the research presented in this thesis, was to perform an investigation into the challenges of business performance measurement. The second objective of the research was to respond to these challenges, by articulating a Soft Systemic approach to business performance measurement. To meet the objectives of the research, the project draws on two key areas: a review of literature about measurement in different fields of study; and three real world action research case studies. The work in these areas is presented in this thesis, the main topics of which are: - Identifying specific challenges to measurement in the area of business performance measurement. - Identifying a number of generic causes of complexity in measurement situations; and introducing a new measurement classification based on the complexity of measurement situations. - Using the new classification of measurement situations to critique the traditional approach to measurement; and thereby identifying situations, such as business performance measurement, where a new approach to measurement is needed. -Proposing a set of Soft Systemic principles to measurement; and showing that this Soft Systemic approach is significantly different to the traditional approach. -Showing that the Soft Systemic approach is more suitable to the complex challenges of business performance measurement. -Translating the Soft Systemic approach into a practical framework, the Soft Systemic Performance Measurement Framework (SSPMF), to assist measurement practitioners in business performance measurement; and validating that framework in case study work.

This thesis that I am submitting to the department of Insurance and Investment studies at the City University Business School is essentially a report on the development, formation, operation and effects of the NSSS to the local Zimbabwean market. The NSSS is a quasi- independent government company that operates under the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) whose formation was to provide a framework for the provision of various social security benefits by such organisations as the NSSS. This thesis is divided into three broad parts. The first part draws from an historical experience of the development of social insurance in general and Zimbabwean oldage insurance in particular. This part is the basis of understanding the foundation and philosophy behind the formation and expansion of the social security programmes as strong economic and political tools across the modem world. The second segment of this report is the focus on political and economic theories that seek to explain the existence of social insurance in various economies. The last part of the thesis is a particular study of the Zimbabwean pensions market following the introduction of the NSSS and draws from household survey and original source material that has not previously been subject to analysis. This study has paid particular attention to the forces that have played crucial roles in shaping the development of the NSSS. Contrary to what we expected at the beginning of this study, the NSSS has had little adverse effect to the private schemes and general perception in risk taking behaviour, particularly to the middle class. The NSSS has in fact, had a marginal and effective positive effect in changing people's attitude towards the risk of longevity and long-term loss of income due to perils otherwise insured under the national scheme. This study has also shown that there was inadequate consultation prior to the formation of the NSSS and that political interests took priority over economic considerations. The scepticism and forces of suspicion within the market are explained within the framework of this thesis.

This exploratory study examines the communication media choice of managers. Despite a substantial body of theories on media choice, inadequacies are apparent in the literature particularly in relation to modem communication technologies. A field study approach was adopted to explore some of these inadequacies and to study the media choice of subject from a manager background. Overall, within the limitations and confines of this exploratory study, this thesis has made the following contributions. First, this thesis identifies and has demonstrate at the unduly narrow focus on task equivocality in prior media choice studies has undermined the study's ability to explain the observed media choice. There is a need to consider the full range of task characteristics in explaining the communication media choice process. Second, Information Richness Theory( IRT) has enjoyed acceptance information systems researchers throughout the last decade,b ut recent unfavourable empirical evidence has precipitated a shift away from it and a search for a new theory. The application of social interaction theories responded to the problem of media richness/social presence by postulating that media selection, like most tasks in organisations, is influenced by a combination of social forces. This means that , while the media richness/social presence scale matching tasks with media would apply in most cases, it is perfectly predictable that some groups or individuals will define either tasks or media traits differently, thus explaining the problems with media richness/social presence theories. Third, drawing together ideas in the literature a broad overview of the media choice process is developed into a comprehensive framework model. A novel aspect of this framework is, to find whether Information richness and Social interaction theories directly influence media choice; or the Social interaction theories influence media choice indirectly through the Information richness theory.

During the past two decades, the trend towards diversification by large corporations in the advanced industrialised nations has been a transition from diversification to specialisation. However, there is little evidence of these same trends being duplicated in the emerging-market countries. Are large business enterprises in the emerging market countries slow in responding to the new strategic logic or is there some justification for such discrepancy'? The study provides the rationale to support a contingency theory of diversification. Diversification strategy is an outcome of not only a firm's resource base and the characteristics of industries, but also depends upon the level of development and transactional efficiency of resource markets within the country and the role of inter-firm collaboration. The study follows a resource-based approach to corporate strategy. The study is based on a qualitative case study approach. The empirical analysis is based on two levels. First, I examined the overall diversification strategies of the 20 largest Thai business groups. Second, I conducted detailed case studies of the diversification decisions of three Thai business groups focusing specifically upon diversification into the telecommunications sector. The case studies are constructed around three companies that diversified into the telecommunications industry in Thailand during the same period. Data from another 13 diversifying companies and five public organisations also provide additional sources of empirical evidence. The empirical evidence shows that diversification into a business which may not be operationally related to the core business -a concept which has lost favour in many of the Anglo-Saxon countries - makes strategic sense in the business environment of the emerging market countries. Essentially, the 'general' theory of diversification holds true in many cases. The key is a) to recognise the different characteristics of markets for resources and the strategic resources in different parts of the world, and b) to understand that strategic resources do not depend on just availability of resources in the market and internal resources within the firm, but also the role of inter-firm collaboration. Differences in business environment raises the question of whether a single diversification strategy is universally applicable.

Modern business has made it necessary for International Accounting Standards to be developed, so that we can achieve harmonisation. Accounting has been transmitted in accounting practices from one country to another, generating a specific international accounting system that exhibits both similarities and differences with local accounting practices. The adoption of IAS to the Kuwaiti environment started in 1990. This puts Kuwait among the countries, which implemented IAS at its early stage. This study focuses primarily on measuring accountants', auditors', and external users' attitudes towards using IAS in Kuwait and its consequent difficulties.

An important part of this study is the attempt to reconcile the contradictory findings about mergers and acquisitions reported in the financial economics and the industrial economics literatures. This is done by using both share price and accounting data, an approach not used in previous work. Financial economics characterises the market for corporate control as rival management teams competing for control over corporate assets. Takeovers represent a necesssary external discipline, whereby inferior management is displaced by those with superior management skills. Using share price data, most empirical studies support this characterisation and mergers as efficiencyenhancing transactions. In contrast, studies in the industrial economics literature have used accounting data to show that acquiring firms do not exhibit superior pre-merger performance and that mergers generally result in a decline in profitability post-merger. Results from the first phase of the empirical work tends to support the latter view, with a certain degree of compatibility between results with accounting data and those with share price data. At this stage the disciplinary hypothesis is not supported. Another important part of this study investigates the impact of business and merger cycles on merger outcomes at the level of the firm. This work is prompted by the failure of previous studies to take account of the empirical literature on the modelling of merger cycles. The importance of calendar time is confirmed by the results obtained. The full 1980-90 sample incorporates different phases of the business and merger cycles and the results with both accounting and share price data for this period are similar but rather inconclusive. I lowever, when the sample is divided to reflect different phases of the business and merger cycles a very different picture emerges. In the period 1980-85 when takeover activity was low and competitive pressures in product markets were intense, acquiring firms on average appeared to adopt strategies consistent with the disciplinary hypothesis and delivered wealth gains to shareholders. In contrast, during 1986-90, when merger activity was at record levels and the economy was in an expansionary phase, shareholders of acquiring firms suffer substantial wealth losses, consistent with managerialist strategies. The accounting results corroborate these share price findings: they show that relative to targets and industry norms acquirers in the first sub-sample exhibited superior performance, consistent with the disciplinary hypothesis, while those in the second sub-sample did not. These empirical results also provide an opportunity in the last part of the thesis to examine current UK merger policy. The time dependent nature of private returns suggests that mergers can be both a symptom and a remedy for agency problems. To the extent that such problems have implications for competition and economic efficiency, the results suggest that major shifts in policy are not warranted. However, the results for 1986-90 do suggest that there is a need to redress the information asymmetry between management and shareholders by extending the information disclosure provisions of the City Code. In public policy terms, increasing the information available to the shareholders of acquiring firms could have the desirable property of reducing the number of mergers that destroy value and reduce economic efficiency.

The focus of the work here was an empirical analysis of the aggregate independent demand behaviour for spare parts inventories, principally in the automotive industry. In particular, using the pioneering work of RG Brown (1959), who showed that inventory usage values are often log normally distributed, we set out and developed models that go some considerable way to explaining the underlying stochastic basis for this phenomena, why it occurs and some limiting conditions. The justification for this approach was on the grounds that by providing a more fundamental understanding of the underlying stochastic processes that explain the emergent aggregate demand behaviour, a sound starting point would be provided for developing more sophisticated analytical ways to view an inventory range, as a total entity, for planning and control purposes. The analysis was based on extensive data collected from the DAF Trucks (GB) Ltd. spare parts systems spanning the period 1975 to 1986, together with supporting studies from a number of other systems. The analysis showed that in the systems studied spare parts prices are lognormally distributed and this is most likely to be the result of a stochastic process known as the 'theory of breakage'. Analysis also showed that in the DAF Trucks case aggregated and volumes in very short time periods are distributed as a combined Log Series /Negative Binomial distribution (LSD/NBD). The combined LSD/NBD model of aggregate demand volumes is itself fully explained by a stochastic model known as the Afwedson model, which in turn is derived from more elementary conditions based on the Poisson process. We then demonstrated that if these short period aggregate demand distributions are cumulated period by period they converge to a log normal distribution as the stable long run model of aggregate demand volumes. As a result of the lognormality of prices and volumes the resultant inventory usage values are also log normal. Furthermore from insight into the underlying factors that explain the lognormality we have identified the factors and variables that govern the valueso f the parameterso f the particular log normal models of usage values. - The research protocol used in this work incorporated the law verifying process know as 'retroduction' after work and discussions of Uji Ijiri and Herbert Simon (1977); and to a lesser extent we utilised simulation for validation and verification of the derived models. From the proven log normality of demand volumes and usage values we have demonstrated that a number of related key inventory factors are also lognormal, in particular inventory- item turnover rates. Furthermore our conclusions show that some standard inventory performance measures, such as the inventory wide 'stock turnover rate' and the 'stock to sales' ratio, are poor measures to use in the case of highly skewed inventory variables. Finally we have suggested several potentially fruitful areas for developing improved methods of monitoring inventory performance in a variety of circumstances.

Issues on commitment have captured the great interest of organizations and research scholars. The health-service organizations in Singapore are anxious to develop appropriate organizational strategies to enhance their nursing personnel's levels of commitment to the organization and profession, and hope that this may, in one way or other, help to ease the turnover among the nurses currently taking place in the organizations. The current study has, therefore, been carried out to investigate the commitment levels of nurses in the health-service organizations in the Asian Context of Singapore with an attempt to (a) establish the differences between the nurses' level of organizational commitment and professional commitment; (b) determine the effects of the nurses' personal variables on their organizational commitment; and (c) ascertain the relationships between the nurses's overall job satisfaction and their organizational commitment and professional commitment. A total of 2,424 usable questionnaires were collected from nurses in six government hospitals and four private hospitals. The results of the data analysis have indicated that (a) the nurses, irrespective of their organizational affiliation to the public or private sector, tended to show a higher level of commitment to the profession than to the organization; (b) the nurses in the private hospitals did not tend to show more commitment to the organization than their counterparts in the government hospitals; (c) the personal variables of age, tenure and salary level of the nurses in both the government and private hospitals seemed to have created an impact on their organizational commitment, and that of these variables, salary level seemed to have the greatest impact on the organizational commitment, and have an intervening effect on the relationships between age and tenure and the organizational commitment; and (d) the overall job satisfaction of the nurses in the government hospitals seemed to have been related more to their professional commitment than to their organizational commitment, but the overall job satisfaction of the nurses in the private hospitals did not appear to have significant relationships either with their organizational commitment or professional commitment. The possible contributing factors to these findings were analysed;the implications for the health-service and other organizations concerned, and the implications for future studies were discussed.

The objective of this thesis is to consider the role of securitisation undetaken by firms in the financial sector by looking at five different questions related to securitisation. The thesis begins with a comparison of the institutional and market characteristics of securitisation in the US and Europe. The wide gap in their respective securitisation growth rates may be attributed to the presense of US government subsides to securitisation, and more restrictive aspects of banking regulation. After a review of theoretical and empirical work, the thesis addresses a key question: in the absense of subsides, why do depository institutions securitise? Employing UK data, the validity of two hypothesis are tested. These are the comparative advantage hypothesis which treats securitisation as evidence of disinter mediation and the financing hypothesis which argues that depository institutions use securitisation to raise finance. The third question is which banks raise external finance by securitising assets and what are the consequences for shareholder wealth? The role of securitisation in a bank's optimal capital structure is explored. Fourth, the thesis looks at whether there are differences in the pricing behaviour of financial firms which originate assets to finance them through securitisation, and depository institutions which use a variety of funding sources. Finally, the factors which influence the price of asset-backed securities at issue and in the secondary markets are examined. The main findings from the econometric tests are UK data show the financing hypothesis to be superior.