Changes in the business environment have in recent years exceeded expectations and challenged the way organisations manage their businesses. Increased concentration in the marketplace following significant changes to the barriers to entry has resulted in organisations seeking to deliver competitive advantage in different ways. Some organisations have tried to strip away at non-core capabilities, redesign their processes and acquire competitors fiercely. Ultimately most of these changes have impacted the employees within the organisations. This systems science research explores the competency approach to employee management. It identifies the environmental changes that have led to such an approach including those within the field of Human Resource Management and discusses the impact of these changes on managing the performance of employees. The thesis explores the recent trend of adopting a competency strategy to concentrate employee behaviour on specific organisational capabilities. The research surveyed Human Resource directors in the UK to gauge their opinion of the difficulties and successes associated with adopting a competency strategy. A Systemic Competency Framework was developed which was initially validated with two case studies. The Systemic Competency Framework proposes a five-stage process that guides Human Resource practitioners through the design, implementation and management of a competency strategy both in an evaluative and design context.

Change is the subject matter for this thesis which reports on a research programme that has investigated the issue of effective and sustainable organisational change. Organisational change possesses an almost obsessive interest for many organisational and behavioural scholars. Nevertheless, it has been observed that a majority of organisational change initiatives fail, or fail to realise the promise intended by the managers who institute such programmes. This research programme, and the associated thesis, has recognised that organisational change is both enigmatic and paradoxical as it is a 'constant' feature of organisational life. The research has been directed towards understanding the paradoxical and enigmatic nature of organisational change by developing a Systemic Theory of Organisational Change (STOC) that is, itself, grounded in Critical Systems Thinking (CST). This STOC will provide a sound theoretical underpinning as a necessary feature of organisational learning that, in turn, will create the sufficient conditions for effective and sustainable organisational change. The research work has created an ontological and epistemological framework through which to understand the complex nature of organisational change. Additionally, the programme has attempted to explicitly incorporate the dynamic of time associated with change initiatives. Traditional approaches to managing organisational change have treated change in single event mode. This research has deliberately shown that change is a continuous process and must be dealt with as such if the output of a change programme is to be effective and sustainable. The thesis has explored the phenomena of change in some depth. It has been shown that change is complex in terms of the'ordee of change. Indeed, it has been argued, and demonstrated during the research, that, as a phenomena it comprises first, second, and third order change. First order change is associated with internal system change; second order change is associated with radical total system change; and third order change is destructive in nature. Having developed a systemic understanding of change, the thesis shows how this can be understood in terms of forms and paths of change using critical pluralist approaches. This led to the development of a Critical Pluralist Intervention Methodology (CPIM), grounded in the STOC, as meta-methodology designed to bring about first or second order change in organisational situations. Both the STOC and the CPIM were developed and tested in action research mode in five interventions in complex organisational change situations over a period of several years. This thesis claims to make contribution to the subject fields of organisational analysis and systems thinking.

The prominent themes of the research are total domestic outsourcing and the role of the IT function. The latter has been an issue for researchers and practitioners since the early days of information systems. The role of IT has changed considerably over the years, from basic administrative data processing to the central focus of enabling strategic processes. The literature reveals the considerable changes that have taken place over the last 30 years in the role of the IT function. The IT department over the years has moved from a traditional manufacturing role, where the department would be involved in software development and maintenance, computer operations, and technical services, to a more services orientated role. In addition, IT outsourcing has grown over the past thirty years to become a major industry. It usually involves some transfer of assets and staff to the vendor. The concept of IT outsourcing has changed over the years from a tactical option for the IT function to, in some cases, a significant part of a long-term strategy to structure and manage organisations. As such, it has often had a considerable influence on the role of the IT function. Although much has been written about IT sourcing strategy, there is a gap in the literature regarding in-depth case studies of the impact of IT outsourcing on the IT function, seen within various levels of the organisation, from senior management down to operations, and everyday users. Similarly, there are few studies that consider IT outsourcing in the context of other competitive and industrial forces that are affecting the management and operation of large organisations. This research comprises a detailed case study of the implementation of large-scale domestic IT outsourcing within the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It utilises Activity Theory as a lens to examine the implementation from the perspective of various stakeholder groups at different levels within the organisation in order to address the research question: “What is the influence of total domestic IT outsourcing on the role of the IT function?” The central contributions of the thesis are within the methodological and theoretical areas. The in-depth case study of a large organisation with a rich culture draws out interesting data, and the use of Activity Theory analyses the data in a novel way. The total domestic outsourcing affects not only the role of the IT function, but the entire organisation. It leads to huge transfers of staff and assets, restructures, redundancies and changes to everyday processes

Loewenstein and his colleagues found divergent preferences for outcomes assessed in isolation versus those embedded in a sequence, i.e. discounting isolated future outcomes versus preferences for increasing and constant sequences. They also found long intervals (i.e. the difference between time delays) rather than long time delays (i.e. the temporal distance from the present) had a detrimental effect on preference for improvement. This thesis proposes a descriptive model of sequence preferences, namely the contrasts model, which acknowledges the difference between interval and delay. The idea is that delay and interval are two different kinds of variables. Delay is non-relational and describes characteristics of individual outcomes, whereas interval is relational and describes characteristics of outcomes in relation to one another. Built on this idea, the contrasts model assumes that the value of a sequence consists of a non-relational part (the endowment value), which is a function of delay and nominal value of the component outcomes and a relational part (the contrast value), which is a function of the signed value difference between the outcomes, their interval and domain relatedness (i.e. whether or not the outcomes share the same domain). Delay and interval influence the endowment and the contrast respectively. Empirical investigations provide evidence for the contrasts model. Decision makers are capable of distinguishing between influences of delay and interval even when the two coincide and exert conflicting influences. Experiments using both money and non-monetary outcomes also show that preferences for improvement can be made more pronounced by shortening intervals and/or enhancing relatedness between the outcomes.

This thesis investigates the contribution of management and leadership development (MLD) for middle managers. Its central hypothesis is that MLD plays an important role in enabling strategic change through middle managers, but that greater contextualisation is required to understand the precise nature of its effects and its limitations. The thesis builds on organisational contingency theory (Mintzberg 1979) to develop and test a model of changes to middle management roles and associated outcomes of MLD. The thesis differentiates between the MLD options of management development, leader development and leadership development (Day 2001) and hypothesises a range of MLD outcomes across organisational types. For its empirical base, the thesis focuses on public service organisations (PSOs), in which substantial investments in MLD have been made at all levels of management in recent years. Three case studies show how, as PSOs seek greater flexibility, the devolution of a broader range of responsibilities to middle managers creates various development needs according to different directions of organisational change. The thesis finds that: i) when the machine bureaucracy divisionalises, investment in line management training makes a significant contribution to organisational stability, while leader development is most effective in the customer-facing divisions of the business; ii) when the safety bureaucracy professionalises, investment in competence-based management development and leader development can successfully promote more participatory forms of management, but that the potential for political obstacles to MLD is accentuated; and iii) when the professional bureaucracy adhocratises, investment in MLD makes a significant contribution to balancing ongoing organisational effectiveness with the building of adaptive capacity for the future. The thesis adds to academic knowledge of MLD options and their expected outcomes. The thesis also develops the academic literature by contextualising changes to middle management roles and explaining the contingent role of MLD in organisational change.

Despite of the rapid globalisation and international business there has been a growing consensus that the quality of an organisation's human resource is a critical factor in order to manage the change. Economic reform in China has led to rapid business expansion within the region. Chinese policy makers are aware that the development of its managers is crucial to creating competitive advantage in its post-WTO period. Training and education is therefore an important means of management development improving the competencies of managerial personnel with a global view. As a consequence large numbers of Chinese managers have been sent on training and education in the Western countries in order to bring new ideas and approaches to their organisations. This thesis questions whether the training has successfully achieved its objectives and how the effectiveness of such a training intervention can be addressed. It has been widely accepted in the training' community that evaluation of training effectiveness is an essential step in designing a training program. However evaluation is often problematic, particularly when the training seeks to achieve outcomes which are not readily measurable, as is the case in management training and development. Moreover, the involvement of various stakeholders from West and East adds complexity. This research presents a survey study covering 526 stakeholders who are involved in China's overseas management training and development. The approaches to evaluation are explored from a holistic perspective and an evaluation framework which uses stakeholder-based approach is developed for management training and development in a cross-cultural context. Moreover this study addresses the empirical and methodological deficiencies 'of research on Chinese managers' development activities in Western countries. This research therefore contributes not only to theory on evaluation, but also on management training and development in cross-cultural settings. A mixed methods approach by triangulation of quantitative and qualitative information is employed to study training effectiveness from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The findings show important variables affecting Chinese managers' learning in Western countries and factors influencing the transfer of Western management to Chinese organisations. The specific characteristics of China's overseas management training are also examined which lead to the conclusion that the evaluation of a management training intervention should not be regarded as evaluating a training programme, but must be integrating with the processes ofmanagement training and development.

The thesis critically examines the use of competencies in career management, and introduces career competencies as an approach to sustainable career management. An 87-item measure of career competency (CC) was tested on a sample of 632 individuals from different backgrounds. From this, the Career Competencies Indicator (CCI) was developed. The CCI comprises 43 items, measuring seven subscales: goal setting and career planning, self-knowledge, job-related performance effectiveness, career-related skills, knowledge of (office) politics, networking and mentoring and feedback-seeking and self-presentation. Sub-scale alphas were of acceptable level and the factor structure was replicated with two other samples. The impact of CCs on objective career success (OCS) and subjective career success (SCS) was explored, administering the CCI to a sample of 269 police officers and 110 university employees. SCS was measured using Gattiker and Larwood’s (1986) five SCS scales and Greenhaus, Parasuraman and Wormley’s (1990) career satisfaction scale. OCS was assessed as income and number of promotions. The control variables included personality (Saucier, 1994), career salience (Allen & Ortlepp, 2002) and demographics. Discriminant validity was demonstrated between most of the CCI sub-scales and the personality variables. Above-chance similarity between the CCI sub-scales indicated convergent validity. The CCs contributed to SCS and OCS. For four of the SCS variables, this contribution added to the contribution of the control variables. The CCs further mediated the relationship between career salience and career outcomes. To generalise these results, future work should focus on a longitudinal approach considering a range of organisations. The CCI was used as a framework for informal career discussions with twenty-one police officers. The intervention was highly valued by participants. Behavioural changes were reported three months after the intervention. A pre-post approach found no significant differences in the increase of CCs, SCS and OCS between the control and the intervention group, apart from life success which was reportedly higher for the intervention group. However, the interaction plots showed an increase in CCs, SCS and OCS from time1 to time2 for the intervention group, which reached significance for the OCS and some of the SCS variables. The thesis considers the implications of the present findings and suggests avenues for future work. The role of CCs in dealing with the requirements of the new career realities and different ways of promoting CCs are also considered.

In this paper, we draw insights from resource-based theory, institutional theory, and Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural consecration and symbolic capital to propose a concept of Institution-Based Resource (IBR) as a novel source of sustainable competitive advantage. We define an IBR as a valuable and symbolic resource that is consecrated and institutionalized by legitimate consecrating institutions, granted to or attained by individuals and/or firms based on each institution’s merit system, and then used by individuals and firms as a means to achieve their objectives. We also specify three premises of the IBR, detail its benefits to individuals and firms, and explain how the value of IBR can be preserved over time. We regard the IBR as a strategic resource according to the resource-based tradition and argue that an IBR can be converted into different forms of capital, making it a unique source of competitive advantage for individuals and firms. We use a variety of primary and secondary data collection methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and examinations of documentaries, printed materials, and archival records in order to illustrate our concept of the institution-based resource through three case studies: 1) The Role of Couturier and Creator as IBR in the Luxury Fashion Industry, 2) Art Museums’ Consecration of Fashion Designers as Artists, and 3) The Royal Warrant as an IBR. The findings from our research support and highlight the importance of our IBR concept to firms’ strategy and competitive advantage as well as open up many areas for future research.

This PhD thesis extends the existing knowledge on resilience in the context of supply chain, specifically by: (1) disentangling resilience, leanness and agility and (2) investigating how resilience along with leanness and agility affects operational performance outcomes. At the first phase, a literature review of practices underlying Lean, Agile and Resilient (LAR) was done, classifying them to the areas of overlap and non-overlap between LAR as regards the practices. Of the many practices identified for each of LAR, there are some that underlie just one of these three while others underlie two of them and even all three. To establish the practitioner need for this research, a survey combined with a focus group of various companies was conducted in the Forum of 2011 at Procter & Gamble, Brussels’ office. The results confirm lack of clear distinction between practices that are part of lean, agile and resilience. Clarifying these concepts is crucial both from theoretical and practical aspects. Theoretically, when it comes to those practices which go under lean and agile, agile and resilience or even the three of LAR, when it comes to have them in statistical models researchers don’t know where exactly these practices should be categorized. Practically, unclear boundaries between these concepts can make implementation of respective practices potentially problematic or confusing for managers. At the second phase, the thesis aims at “disentangle resilience, leanness and agility”. The survey carried out was done online in Germany due to the country’s strong base in manufacturing. Through factor analysis, this part of the research approves the idea of literature that resilience has some practices that purely helps it, while it also has some practices that affect agility and resilience and agility, leanness and resilience. There are some differences in the boundaries of these categorizations between what literature mentions and what industrial managers believe in. At the third phase, the thesis aims to investigate “how resilience along with leanness and agility affects performance outcomes”. The aim is to empirically assess a set of hypotheses that follow not only from the literature, but also from the perceptions of practitioners about LAR resulted from phase two. The model is tested on a sample of Automotive Parts Suppliers (APS) in Iran as the largest automotive industry in the Middle East and 12th in the world, and specifically as an appropriate choice for a resilient-needed environment due to sanctions and volatility of the currency. A survey was used to obtain information and a structural equation model to analyse the data. The model quantitatively explains that while leanness is independent form resilience, agility brings about resilience. On the other hand, the model tests the relations of leanness and resilience on flexibility, delivery, cost and time to recovery performance outcomes. The results show that higher level of resilience will lead to better delivery performance, better cost performance (i.e. helps cost reduction) and better time to recovery performance (i.e. helps time to recovery reduction). The results also show that its effect on flexibility performance is not significant. Regarding leanness, the results confirm that lean positively affect delivery and flexibility performance. In addition, higher level of leanness will lead to better cost performance (i.e. helps cost reduction). The results also reject the hypothesis stating that higher level of leanness will lead to worse recovery performance, inferring that higher level of leanness leads to better time to recovery performance (i.e. helps time to recovery reduction). Finally, there are different theoretical and managerial implications. Theoretically, this research disentangles resilience, agility and leanness. Then, it presents a model that resilience; leanness and agility are modelled not separately but besides each other and quantitatively it investigates how resilience along with leanness and agility affects performance outcomes. From managerial point of view, a need to understand what measures of the three concepts of LAR are related to each area between the three concepts has been answered so managers can prioritize their efforts and seek to balance their efforts across LAR. Overall, the conceptual model that stems from the SEM model gives a useful starting point for supply chain researchers regarding the three approaches in the supply chains.

Theoretical and empirical debates surrounding corporate philanthropy (CP) date back to the 1930s, but have recently grown in line with the importance of corporate social responsibility in the public realm. Through three papers, this thesis adds to these debates by filling gaps in our understanding of CP, relating to the cyclical nature of cash and in-kind giving, how different ways of giving can influence profitability, and the relative importance of the CEO. We do this using a panel of 620 large firms in the UK over 14 years, and 500 US firms over 12 years, enabling us to capture the heterogeneity between firms. Our key theoretical contribution is to state that an integrated theory ought to be developed, which considers the influence of firm costs, strategy and the CEO as factors determining CP. Given the exposed limitations of stakeholder, agency and leadership theories, we propose that a new theory be developed, one which stresses the importance of managerial discretion and values, whilst also considering how firm-level attributes can determine giving.