This thesis is concerned with understanding the way in which knowledge creation was sustained over time within a particular type of knowledge intensive firm referred to as an expert consultancy. Expert consultancies are differentiated from generalist management consultancies in terms of their knowledge intensity i.e. the high levels of expertise of the workforce and their focus on the development of highly customised creative and innovative solutions rather than on the diffusion and implementation of pre-packaged 'best practice' solutions. Two longitudinal case studies were conducted in expert consultancies and a critical interpretative approach, characteristic of the constructivist paradigm was adopted for their analysis. Processes of knowledge creation are intrinsically complex and unpredictable. The leaders of such finns then are perpetually seeking ways to manage the fundamental tensions that exist between autonomy and control and efficiency and uncertainty. A retrospective historical analysis was developed of the way in which knowledge creation occurred and the organisational conditions that served to shape the process over time within both firms. The organisational conditions that were considered included not only structural aspects of the firm but also cultural and social conditions. Any changes that had occurred over time with regard to the way in which knowledge creation occurred were considered in relation to the organisational conditions that may have stimulated such changes in order to develop this analysis. The research found that a number of distinctive structural conditions contributed to sustaining processes of knowledge creation over time, including profit satisficing behaviour, an absence of professional management, and a resource rich environment. Critically, a strong yet ambiguous culture was found to be important for sustaining processes of knowledge creation. Organisational ambiguity promoted quasi-normative control, regulating individuals' dual identities as both 'consultant' and 'expert'. Quasi-normative control promoted both creative and selfdisciplining behaviour such that processes of knowledge creation occurred in ways that were ultimately efficient for the finn. These findings represent a new contribution to knowledge with regards to organisational culture and the management of knowledge workers and will hopefully stimulate further research in this area.

This thesis is concerned with the question of how the return to investment in human capital, as represented by the attainment of professional status, has changed over time in Great Britain. In addition it is concerned with differences between different professional groups. Because of data limitations a very simple methodological approach is adopted building upon work by previous researchers. This uses age earnings profiles at a point in time as a guide to the future earnings associated with different career profiles. The main developments to the conventional methodology are concerned with adjustments to' these profiles to reflect differences in the characteristics of different professions. Previous work in this area for Great Britain has been limited in both the time period covered and the types of qualification and profession considered. The major contribution of the present study is to provide a perspective on how rates of return have altered over time and to compare differences between different professions. The main finding is that there has been a dramatic secular decline in rates of return from around 176 per cent in 1955 to 76 per cent by 1975. This has been common to most professions. The explanation for this phenomenon is argued to be in broad changes in the balance of supply and demand for highly qualified persons. Another important finding is that social as opposed to private rates of return show a similar pattern over time although there are some marked differences in rankings between different professions for the two measures of return. It is argued that a regular monitoring of rates of return to entering different professions would provide a valuable guide to important policy decisions regarding the pay of people employed in the public sector and on the identification of restrictive practices in professional labour markets.

Strategic projects form the core of corporate growth, change and wealth creation, which enable a firm to achieve and sustain long-term success. However, a traditional engineering perspective on project management still seems to dominate. In general terms, manages are fully aware of some traditional techniques, such as NPV, but these can undervalue a strategic project. They occasionally apply techniques for controlling projects, and often lack a practical understanding of recently developed techniques. The purpose of these recently developed techniques is to create a project's value from the outset, and to drive a firm to superior performance and aspiration. The current research project aims to explore the role of techniques in facilitating successful strategic project management, and the elements involved in it, as applied to the UK upstream oil and gas sector. At first, the existing literature on successful strategic project management is reviewed, with major emphasis given to the techniques applied to managing projects. The proposed methodology follows a triangular approach. First, exploratory interviews essentially describe fifty multidisciplinary elements involved in strategic project management. Second, an exploratory deskwork explores the extent to which techniques address, in theory, these elements. Third, a main survey describes the elements managers pay considerable attention to, searches for the elements that are believed to explain a strategic project's success and identifies the techniques that often address each element in practice. Finally, follow-up interviews validate some questionnaire findings. As a result, sets of techniques for successful strategic project management are proposed, and validated through assessment sheets. The present study represents an embryo for future investigation in the project management field. First, it explores the gap between elements that are believed to explain a project's success and those that managers pay most attention to in managing strategic projects. Finally, it suggests that the convergence of financial, environmental (green) and internal business issues might be a healthy route for the UK upstream oil and gas sector towards successful strategic project management.

Quality management (QM) has without doubt been one of the leading management fashions of the 1990s. QM programmes derive from a growing belief during the 1980s that commercial success comes not simply from low cost competitiveness but from high and reliable quality. The aim is to foster the commitment of employees across the organisation to quality in terms of product and service delivery, and to create a culture of "continuous improvement".

This thesis critically reviews and evaluates theories of organisational knowledge and knowledge-related activities. Specifically, it assesses and synthesises relevant theories and thoughts to develop a conceptual model of the knowledge integration process. Empirical evidence, collected from two organisations- Boots The Chemists and NatWest Global Financial Markets is also exploited as a means of building a grounded theory of knowledge integration This theory explains the processes of knowledge integration within the context of crossfunctional project teams. It also considers the general factors that influence these processes, as well as the dynamic interrelationships between the proposed processes. The theory provides a framework not only for future research to systematically examine and test knowledge integration processes within different organisations, but also allows management to continuously anticipate knowledge integration activities within their own organisations. Based on a social construction perspective, this thesis demonstrates that knowledge integration is more than merely the representation of intellectual activities underlying the planning, redesign and implementation stages of a cross-functional programme. It also argues that cross-functional knowledge integration is a continuous process in which programme participants establish emotional alignment through social interaction. This research contributes to studies of organisational knowledge and knowledge-related activities by providing an explorative account that synthesises existing literature with empirical evidence. Secondly, this research contributes to the theoretical development of knowledge integration by focusing on its processes rather than just its outcomes and implications which have been the main concern of other researchers. Finally, the development of a cross-functional knowledge integration theory contributes to the consolidation of the intellectual and emotional dimensions of knowledge-related activities that have in the past been treated in isolation.

The main objective of this exploratory study was to add to the almost non-existent Thai literature on women in management. Three key themes were pursued throughout the study, i. e., the representation of Thai women in management, their work versus family responsibilities, and the barriers they encounter in ascending the managerial hierarchy. The study was conducted in three distinct phases. First, a survey questionnaire was distributed to 536 male and female middle-level managers across diverse organizations in Bangkok. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 67 women managers. It was likely that those in public sector organizations differed in their background and work experiences from their counterparts in private firms, hence data was collected from women managers in the two sectors and comparisons made. Lastly, structured interviews were held with 25 Human Resource/Line managers from a crosssection of firms in which the women managers worked. The study found that the women who have succeeded in these organizations are the ones who have very similar backgrounds and attitudes to the men. They work the same long hours, and have the same interest in furthering their careers as men. Therefore we cannot explain women's career barriers in terms of individual characteristics, such as their motivation or commitment to work. The results suggest that organizational structures and processes are central to an understanding of the ways Thai women are marginalized and excluded from managerial positions. For instance, women were clustered in relatively few occupations, received less in terms of earnings and training, had smaller spans of management, and less authority for final decisions than men. During interviews, women managers mentioned that the negative attitudes of male managers and gender biases in organizational practices, were barriers they had frequently encountered. The data also revealed that the contradictory and ambiguous values that underlie women's role as wife-mother at home and manager at work, necessitated a constant struggle for balance and remarkable personal sacrifices on the part of Thai women managers. By way of conclusion this dissertation submits that there is not a single cause that constrains women's advancement but rather a pattern of cultural, social and legal factors that characterizes the general situation of women managers in Thailand. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for women in management are discussed and future directions for research in this area are suggested.

No description available.

The Minimum Score Separation Problem (MSSP) is a combinatorial problem that has been introduced in JORS 55 as an open problem in the paper industry arising in conjunction with the cutting-stock problem. During the process of producing boxes, áat papers are prepared for folding by being scored with knives. The problem is to determine if and how a given production pattern of boxes can be arranged such that a certain minimum distance between the knives can be kept. While it was originally suggested to analyse the MSSP as a specific variant of a Generalized Travelling Salesman Problem, the thesis introduces the concept of twin-constrained Hamiltonian cycles and models the MSSP as the problem of finding a twin-constrained Hamiltonian path on a threshold graph (threshold graphs are a specific type of interval graphs). For a given undirected graph G(N,E) with an even node set N and edge set E, and a bijective function b on N that assigns to every node i in N a "twin node" b(i)6=i, we define a new graph G'(N,E') by adding the edges {i,b(i)} to E. The graph G is said to have a twin-constrained Hamiltonian path with respect to b if there exists a Hamiltonian path on G' in which every node has its twin node as its predecessor (or successor). We start with presenting some general Öndings for the construction of matchings, alternating paths, Hamiltonian paths and alternating cycles on threshold graphs. On this basis it is possible to develop criteria that allow for the construction of twin-constrained Hamiltonian paths on threshold graphs and lead to a heuristic that can quickly solve a large percentage of instances of the MSSP. The insights gained in this way can be generalized and lead to an (exact) polynomial time algorithm for the MSSP. Computational experiments for both the heuristic and the polynomial-time algorithm demonstrate the efficiency of our approach to the MSSP. Finally, possible extensions of the approach are presented.

Cognitive elements are some of the most influential features characterizing the “entrepreneurial mind,” yet dominant explanatory frameworks have struggled to clarify how and why entrepreneurs’ behaviors vary so widely from others. Even individuals who come from similar conditions and share the same environment as entrepreneurs differ greatly in their perceptions and behaviors compared to their entrepreneur counterparts. Drawing on and contributing to the theoretical work in social cognitive theory, this research aims to improve the understanding of entrepreneurs’ cognitive processes by exploring Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data, which is the most comprehensive comparative database for entrepreneurship. The first essay analyzes how different experts in entrepreneurship perceive their surrounding environment and opportunities. More specifically, this study discusses how experts who are entrepreneurs perceive their entrepreneurial ecosystem and opportunities differently than non-entrepreneur experts. It is suggested that people act the way they do not only because of different interpretations of the environment but also because of the relative importance they give to context and themselves in their mental frameworks. The second essay analyzes the relationship between optimism about the emergence of future entrepreneurial opportunities and the length of entrepreneurial experience and the ways internal and external motivations can condition this relationship. Results suggest that although entrepreneurs are more optimistic about future business opportunities that non-entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs tend to be less optimistic than novice and potential entrepreneurs. Finally, based on evidence suggesting that entrepreneurs are likely to consider that fostering an innovative orientation is the best approach to increasing firm performance independent of the circumstances, the third study proposes a moderated mediation model of the effect of subjective valuations of innovation on entrepreneurs’ strategic orientation and growth expectations. Entrepreneurs involved in innovative entrepreneurship are more likely to have higher growth expectation, with subjective valuations playing a direct and indirect role in their expectations.

The internationalisation of emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) has been one of the most notable dynamics in international business in recent years. Despite the fact that there has been a growing literature over the last few years, we know very little about how these firms actually organise their work and manage their employees globally. Studies of these infant firms are believed to yield insights about how firms become internationalised and provide us with a unique opportunity to challenge and extend existing international business theory. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a major Chinese firm, this study offers detailed accounts on how the company manages its European subsidiaries and employees. Focussing on the organisational control system, it reveals that Teleman's control system is a highly centralised system with expatriates being placed at the centre, who are motivated by strong corporate culture and a well-designed reward system. This study investigates how such a control system has been developed in a Chinese context. It argues for a dynamic relationship between institutions and corporate actors, and suggests that the control system is the outcome of the company's interactions with the institutional environment in China. An Actor/Institution Interaction Process Model has been developed to capture such a process. This study contribute to the study of MNCs in a number of ways. First, it enhances our understanding of the internationalisation process and behaviours of EMNCs and MNCs in general. Second, with the Actor/Institution Interaction Process Model describing the steps and process by which the interactions between institutions and actors take place, this study opens the mysterious black box of how exactly institutions affect the behaviours of firms. In doing this, the study also demonstrates how studies of EMNCs can contribute to the extension of existing theories in IB.