The overall research question originated through the question “how did the underground economy in the lobster fishery arise and why”. In the mid-1990s, a growing underground economy was uncovered by chance in the Atlantic Canada lobster fishery. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police proceeds of crime unit found a series of large money transfers into a Royal Bank branch in Halifax, they thought that drug money was being moved. It turned out to have been cash sales of lobster. This represents $40 to $60 million in lost tax revenue, and a similar challenge for the common resource model for lobster fisheries management. To help answer the research question I examined the history and structure of the Atlantic Canadian lobster fishery, the impact of government and non-government policies and interactions with the lobster fishery and examined the tax evasion, statistical fraud detection and collusion/market power literature. The literature review gave rise to a number of potential variables for inclusion in a model that would serve to predict illegal and underreported activity in the lobster fishery. First, Benford’s Law was tested as a possible variable for inclusion. Non-conformity with Benford’s Law was observed in both the lobster fishery in LFA33 and LFA34 plus the snowcrab fishery. However, non conformance with Benford’s Law does not mean that there is certainty of fraud or human manipulation. Second, a market power screen was applied to the lobster fishery. Quantitative support for community-based differences in compliance with fisheries regulations has been demonstrated there is value in including a market power indicator variable as a variable of interest in the model. Last logistic panel data models were developed and tested. The outcome of the model building process were two models that have a better than chance discriminatory ability and a reasonable classification of transactions that may lead to sanctions. Model 4 was significant but was not able to classify licensees that were more likely to have sanctions. A factor analysis showed that there were three factors for each of the transactional and licensee models. For licensee models,sanctions were not loading on the same factor as the Benford’s Law and market power independent variables. In the case of the underground economy of the Atlantic Canadian lobster fishery, the Government of Canada has information and a fresh analysis of the information that may enable them to better target audits or inspections. There is no illusion that the information will, in sports parlance, “win the championship” however, it is hoped that with this analysis and continued improvement that the Government of Canada will outperform those that seek to evade tax and fisheries policy.

This thesis investigates the nature and management of manufacturing trade-offs. It examines the properties and features of trade-offs in the context of manufacturing systems and the ways that operations management may deal with them. The need for such an investigation stems from (a) the increasing interest in trade-offs, (b) the implicit use of trade-offs in many recent popular operations literature, (c) the interest in the dynamic competencies literature and (d) the apparent lack of trade-offs methods or an overall framework. This study reflects the need to extend the trade-offs research from its present descriptive focus to an explanatory and hopefully more elucidating focus. This research is based on a number of case studies of manufacturing companies in Great Britain and Brazil. Data concerning their trade-offs were collected mainly through the examination of documents, observations of shop-floor activities and interviews with the systems' key operations managers. Following analysis identified the major data within and across the cases about the properties, features and management of trade-offs. This investigation suggests mainly that trade-offs between MSDs do exist; that their structure can be visualised as base, pivot and function; that they are contingent and dynamic; that their performance is different from their importance; that these depend on a range of external and internal factors; that one can improve trade-offs through alternative strategies and that flexibility may have a pivotal role in this process. The major original contributions of this explanatory, in-depth investigation are (a) the development of a trade-offs model that may be more accurate and useful than previous models in the literature; (b) the distinction between the performance and importance of trade-offs; (c) the taxonomy of trade-offs management strategies and (d) the identification of the role of flexibility in trade-offs management, with emphasis on the distinction between the ideas of flexibility and variety in that context.

This study adopts an historical approach to explore the impact of coalmining on the town of Doncaster. It finds that although Doncaster was not a typical mining town nevertheless coal's impact was widespread, and extended beyond direct employment to impact on socio-political factors including the town's external image. Whilst the study explores the impact over the entire one hundred years of mining around Doncaster, the rationale and focus of the study is an assessment of the legacy of the local mining industry, and the extent to which it has inhibited the town's economic competitiveness in what is today called an enterprise economy. In this regard the study contributes to a wider understanding of the nature of change in old industrial regions as well as considering the efficacy of current regional enterprise policy. In particular the study has explored the extent to which path contingency captures the transition from growth to decline in former industrial regions, more adequately than does that of path dependency (Hudson, 2005). The key distinction drawn between the two concepts is human agency which is identified as operating at a range of decision-making levels. Analysis comes through two related case studies which show that the coal industry provided the basis for diversification in to new products and markets offering the possibility to extend the industry's lifecycle and that of towns such as Doncaster which had come to depend on it. It is shown the fact that these opportunities were not taken was due to institutional failure associated with cognitive lock-in. This rather than any specifically industry or place-based factor explains the nature of Doncaster's decline.

The published work and Commentary that comprise this PhD thesis examine the field of business events, with particular focus on the shifting relationships between supply and demand in the business events market that have arisen as a result of the ongoing technological and demographic changes in the external macro-environment within which this market operates. The extant body of research into the market for business events such as conferences, meetings and other face-to-face gatherings pales in comparison with the extensive volume of investigations undertaken by the research community focusing on leisure tourism, cultural events and sports events. Nevertheless, this comparative neglect of the business events market cannot be justified when we take into account the essential role played by such events in the efficient functioning and development of the commercial, political, and intellectual activities of those who attend them, as well as the considerable economic benefits that business events bring to the venues and destinations in which they are held. The high-spending, high-yield nature of business events is the key factor behind the intense competition that exists between supply-side stakeholders in this sector. In the 21st century, as competition among the expanding supply of conference venues and destinations has intensified, the case to be made for conducting research that focuses on the effective functioning of the business events market has become increasingly compelling. Following a discussion of the research context within which my research activities took place, this Commentary gives details of the specific research objectives that guided my own investigations. It then identifies the pragmatism paradigm as the approach adopted in my research, a stance which supports the use of the mixed methods approach that I employed in connection with my data collection, and one which reflected my desire to produce socially useful knowledge. This is followed by a critical reflection on my research publications in this area. It comprises a portfolio of 25 publications, dated from 1992 to 2014. In different empirical contexts, and using a varied range of research methodologies, appropriate to the different research questions, this Commentary takes as its primary focus the impacts of technological and demographic factors on the marketing of conference venues and destinations, as well as on the design of business events. The Commentary highlights the original nature of my research in this field as well as its contribution to the ongoing discussions in academic and practitioner domains on the subject of how the business events industry must evolve in order to provide value to a new generation of participants living in a world increasingly shaped by advances in electronically-mediated communication.

This thesis focuses on the creation of private environmental and social regulation through the interaction of non-state actors in the US market for gold jewellery. By investigating the role of business actors in the development of private regulation through their cooperation and contestation with civil society activists, this study brings a business power lens to the study of non-state institution-building. It focuses on a new case and elaborates on current understandings of ‘industry opportunity structures’ (IOSs), taking a model built for the study of social movements and applying it to business actors. It seeks to treat agents from the private sector as political actors in their own right and traces the effects of industry structures on the emergence, development, and impact of the political mobilisation of ethical, specialty, and diversified jewellers. It argues that business actors face different opportunities for political leverage during the private institution-building process depending on the nature of the firm within which they are embedded. It helps explain the variation observed in firm responses to activist contestation while informing debates over the broader implications of the increasing emergence of private regulation in the global economy. Business actors are embedded agents, subject to the constraints of industry structures and market forces. Opportunities for business actors to mobilise firm resources for political purposes varies with the opportunity window available to them, which expands or contracts with the politicisation of the market. Therefore, contrary to previous interpretations, civil society contestation can actually empower institutional entrepreneurs from the private sector to shape the regulatory landscape. While market forces privilege ‘business interests’, and business power safeguards the autonomy of industry, through learning and leadership there appears to be a cumulative effect to contentious politics that has the potential to ratchet-up private regulation in both its depth and breadth of coverage.

To deal with dynamic and uncertain business environments, agile manufacturing is of interest to academics and practitioners. However, in order to achieve agile manufacturing, one of its dimensions is of major importance - manufacturing flexibility. It is not possible to achieve agile manufacturing with ineffective management of manufacturing flexibility. Most firms acknowledge how flexibility can be improved but few can successfully implement it to its full potential. In addition, manufacturing firms today tend to improve and implement manufacturing flexibility at a strategic level. This means higher perception of benefits and better awareness of risks. This research studied the current awareness and practices of manufacturing flexibility improvement in a manufacturing setting, particularly the Thai automotive industry. Through case studies, they can extract more information about the experiences of companies in the planning, implementation and operations of manufacturing flexibility. Thus, the following contributions were made: First, this research will provide comprehensive overviews and insights on various manufacturing flexibility improvements on aspects of pragmatic management perspectives. Second, this research explored the issues or factors taken into account when manufacturing firms, especially Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), improve their flexibility. Third, the research also explored and validated the major problems in achieving manufacturing flexibility and operating issues critical to manufacturing flexibility performance within manufacturing and supply chain aspects, especially suppliers. The underlying concepts to enhance manufacturing flexibility as well as barriers and enhancers of manufacturing flexibility within individuals and between OEMs and suppliers can be then obtained. In consequence, a framework of manufacturing flexibility improvement incorporating key elements from case studies and surveys was derived. Finally, the decision-making framework including managerial guidance and strategic evaluation methodology for better evaluating flexibility improvement strategies and achieving manufacturing flexibility were developed and tested. This is sought to create a formal and rational process that guides manufacturers through the strategic evaluation process in relation to manufacturing flexibility improvement. These can be the basis for follow up research in a specific area within flexibility improvement and enhance the development/deployment of flexibility in automotive and other manufacturing enterprises. Overall, an operations strategy can be well established and the highest level of manufacturing flexibility can be achieved. Hence, the firm can maintain or increase its competitive advantages and profitability under uncertain circumstances of manufacturing and supply chain.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and interpret the professional life of academics in two higher education faculties, one in a Turkish university and the other in a UK Institute of Higher Education. This research employs the ‘culture’ metaphor to provide categories, models, and definitions to structure the longitudinal and contextual processes of the ethnography. ‘Jazz’ is also employed as an aesthetic, linking metaphor throughout the thesis, to illuminate the processes of ethnographic research, highlighting particularly, issues of reflexivity, representation, gender, and paradigm incommensurability. Data collection was by semi-structured interviews; participant observations; document analysis; and informal informant conversations. The resultant research account is subjective, socially constructed, interpretive, idiographic and impressionistic. It is constructed through the surfacing of core themes from qualitative data to create an interpretation of the plurivocal chorus of interviewees set against observational and documentary evidence. Both case studies answer the question ‘what is it like to work as an academic in this faculty?’, and are presented as narratives within an inductive theoretical framework. The study also provides a reflexive commentary, in a set of vignettes, where the author's presence within the text is overtly acknowledged and represented by an ‘I’ characterisation. The thesis attempts to extend the limits of organisational ethnography by applying three interpretive readings to the two ethnographic case studies. The readings are intended to enrich the case studies by: directly addressing the issues of researcher ‘presence’ and reflexivity; ‘empiricising’ the Hatch (1993) cultural dynamics model; and providing a ‘power and gender’ theoretical perspective notably under-deployed in the ‘culture’ literature. The thesis produces significant insight into rule-based bureaucracies and higher-education management behaviour, making suggestions for further research in these fields. The main conclusion, is however, methodological and concerns representational strategies within the ethnographic approach to the study of organisations. The thesis argues that, the combination of case studies and interpretive readings, in creating an idiosyncratic, paradigm-bridging representation of the two professional cultures, achieves additional subtle and penetrative organisational insights unavailable to traditional stand-alone ethnographies. The thesis concludes with an invitation to the reader, as a member of the occupational culture of higher education academics, to ‘sit in’ with the band for the last number and use their own improvisational skills and experience, to create a final ‘interpretation of the ‘culture song’

Seventh, organisational learning is increasingly seen as a central source of a competitive advantage particularly for organisations faced with rapid changes and work in a competitive business environment. The case studies results provide exploratory insights on the ways by which participant companies leverage the capability for collective learning to a sustainable competitive advantage. This study adds to the organisational learning literature by proposing a framework that draws an analytical description for the way by which organisations leverage collective learning to sustainable business success. This evidence should be validated through a future rich empirical study. This framework serves as a general guideline for those wishing to carry out this study.

Models of employment have become gendered with the 'standard' or masculine model following an unbroken, linear career path whilst the feminine model comprises periods of both full-time and part-time employment as well as intervals of non-participation in the labour market. Commitment to work is defined against these norms with those women who follow the masculine career pattern being said to display greater commitment to work than those who follow an alternative path. It is considered that career progression within an organisational hierarchy is dependent upon following the ‘standard' type of career path, which disadvantages women as historically they have been less likely than men to follow such a path. This thesis argues that there has been an over reliance on such explanations to illustrate and justify women's employment. Such studies patronise women by imposing these explanations on them without work being done to investigate women's own evaluations of their employment. The aim of this research is to examine the working arrangements of a group of highly qualified professional women architects who 'fit' the profile of high commitment to their career by their investment in qualifications. They work in an established 'traditional' profession in what is still very much a 'man's world'. The research aims to go deeper than just to confirm or disconfirm the stereotypes or profile. Within the structural and cultural components that form the profile, it examines the paths the women have taken, how they have progressed through their working and family lives, the choices and sacrifices they have made. In short, it explores not 'what' they have done but 'how' and 'why' they have done it.

There is a widespread presumption in the strategy literature that firms enjoying a competitive advantage in commodity-producing industries do so as a result of following cost leadership strategies. This thesis as monograph re-evaluates that presumption by a detailed exploration of the bases for competitive advantage in the plasterboard industry, one of the most important materials used by the construction industry. It explores price and non-price based methods of competition, plant scale economies, and the influence of order of entry on firm performance. The thesis draws upon detailed industry-, firm- and plant level data collected by the author. These data include time series price, demand and capacity figures for the US and UK, plant factor usage data for 50 plants covering four years, and data relating to 56 attempted entries to the European plasterboard industry. Analytical methods include time series regression methods with ADF and Engle Granger tests. Panel data methods include OLS regression with fixed and variable models. Dummy variable methods are also employed with these approaches. The nature of the relationship between price and supply and demand is used to indicate the character of competition. Price would be expected to reflect the relationship between supply and demand. The study finds that this does occur in the USA where non-price based methods of competition are rarely applied. The UK Industry makes extensive use of bundling methods which result in no discernible relationship between price and supply and demand. The influence of the respective competitive environments is also considered. The study also finds that prices are upwards sticky' In the USA, which has implications for the theories of Means (1935) and Sweezy (1939). A novel theoretical analysis is provided to explain this finding. The study identifies Edgeworth (Maskin and Tirolle, 1988) price cycle behaviour in the UK plasterboard industry. Novel conclusions are drawn regarding the sources and environment which instigate this behaviour. The findings are important as previous empirical work has been confined to the gasoline industry. Panel data methods are used with a uniquely detailed database to identify and quantify manufacturing plant scale economies in labour and energy by functional use. This level of detail has not previously been available to researchers. Evidence of management diseconomies of scale is identified, and also learning effects for new plants. Initial investment costs are examined and found to yield scale economies in both equipment and civil engineering categories of expenditure. These are discussed in the context of scale economy sources. Finally, historical methods (Golder, 2000) are used to study the 56 attempted entries to the 21 industries which comprise the European plasterboard industry. A model is devised to predict the prospect of entry success in relation to factors including order of entry, country regime, resource endowment and demand. A link between order of entry and long-term market share advantage is identified. Evidence is identified to support the proposition that second movers select a cost base to compete with the first mover. The relevance of resource endowment is discussed and the concept of `dominant process' emerges as important factors in the likelihood of entry success.