Existing research into leadership has relied on individualistic theories which do not provide a satisfactory understanding of the leadership process, particularly in organisations where focus has moved away from vertical, hierarchical leadership, towards more distributed or emergent models (Avery, 2004; Dess & Picken, 2000; Denis, Lamothe & Langley, 2001). It is assumed that individuals will emerge as leaders, and be viewed as effective, when they are rewarded as prototypical, or representative, of the group they are attempting to lead (Hogg, 2001b; Hogg & Terry, 2000), and when they exhibit stereotypical leadership behaviours (Lord, Brown, Harvey & Hall, 2001a; Offermann, Kennedy, & Wirtz, 1994). To date, research has assumed that the two identity concepts are compatible, with little consideration given to groups whose professional identity is dissonant with expected leadership stereotypes. The question therefore arises: how does professional identity influence ability of individuals to construct a leadership identity, when those identities are orthogonal? To address this research gap I focus on leadership in nursing, a profession who have traditionally been defined by their subordination to doctors (Abbott, 1988; Allen, 1997; Campbell-Heider & Pollock, 1987). Combining real-time participant observation of two leadership development programmes with over 60 hours of longitudinal semi-structured interviews from 32 participants, I provide new insights into the chronic identity conflicts encountered by subordinate professionals, and the identity work they use to overcome those conflicts. Drawing on my analysis I develop a typology of four resulting identity constructions, with differing levels of leadership influence and identity conflict. In doing so I illuminate the processes through which subordinate professionals mediate de-coupled identities, challenging the assumption that the existence of a group identity is always beneficial and complementary to leadership behaviours (Hogg, 2001a), and highlight an arena where it can actually be detrimental to the emergence of a leadership identity.

What are the benefits of involving decision makers in simulation model development? Do decision makers learn more about their problem if they are involved in model development than if they had been excluded? This thesis presents an experiment which compares decision maker learning outcomes and process in two different types of discrete-event simulation (DES) study. The first is a traditional simulation project where decision makers take the role of domain experts and are involved in the building of a simulation model through to its use. The second is where a model is reused rather than built. Sixty four undergraduate participants were individually involved in one of three experimental conditions: development of an A&E simulation model and its subsequent use; development of the same model, but with less time for model use; or were presented with the model already developed and asked to reuse it. Participants of each condition were then allowed to run the model, change variables and review results in an attempt to improve the performance of the system. Learning was measured at two levels: attitude change, to infer learning about a business problem, and transfer of learning, to infer a deeper learning. Results indicated that, firstly, model building aided participant's discovery of aspects of the problem that were previously unconsidered. However, attitudes about these novel aspects of the problem were only converted to transferable knowledge when experimentation was not limited. Secondly, participants that reused the model learnt about the model through quick cycles of experimentation followed by validation, although these tended to be focused on factors with which participants were most familiar. In fact, model reuse participants learnt more following this approach than by scrutinizing the results of each scenario in detail. Little empirical evidence exists to support the discussions and the view that involvement in model building aids learning. This thesis contributes to this debate by providing insight into the mechanisms that in uence learning. Moreover, results suggest that learning from experimentation when reusing a model is also valid, although the process followed may be different. Of course, there are limitations to the approach used to perform the comparison. For instance, the experiment uses novice decision makers and measures attitude immediately after the experiment. Refl ection on such points is used to aid the generation of testable hypotheses that can be explored in future research.

Non timber forest products are the neglected resource of Scotland’s woodlands, used by many, but with little provision in law, policy or management. Drawing on new research conducted in Scotland, and comparative studies in Finland, the Pacific Northwest USA and Canada, this thesis examines issues relating to the practice, politics and ecology of NTFPs. The methodological approaches used in the field research are set out in Chapter One. Chapters Two to Five explore the perspectives of stakeholder groups, who either use NTFPs directly or who influence the availability of resources and the ability of others to access them. The first of these groups is harvesters, with Chapter Two examining how issues of legal pluralism or the coexistence of both legal and customary rights for harvesting has resulted in the dominance of common practice over management and policy. Chapter Three discusses buying and processing activity, focussing on its contribution to both livelihood and lifestyle and its position ‘somewhere in between’ commercial and non-commercial benefit. The influence of land managers is examined in Chapter Four, reviewing the contrast between the privileged knowledge that enables harvesters to use resources, and the reliance on professionalised knowledge that renders land managers comparatively powerless. In Chapter Five the influence of organisations is explored, particularly in relation to the difficulty of accommodating the interests of such disparate groups without formal channels for representation. The thesis concludes by addressing policy and management concerns, both practical and ideological, and considering mechanisms for the management of NTFPs as a resource. It demands that ethical questions over benefits, values and rights be addressed, as well as issues surrounding sustainability and resource use. The conclusion seeks to present a new system for the self-governance of NTFP resources by the stakeholders themselves.

This study investigates the relationship (or correlation) between the performance of employees and their remuneration in the United Kindgom (UK) food industry. Within the study, remuneration systems which involve a correlation between the performance of employees and their remuneration are referred to as Performance Related Remuneration (PRR). Since the early 1980's, the use of performance based remuneration within UK organisations has increased to a level never witnessed before. Such remuneration systems have generally been employed as part of a wider management strategy to improve employee and organisational performance. In the companies of the 1990's, it has become `normal' to find part of the total remuneration package tied to individual, group or organisational performance. There are many systems of PRR in use in the 1990's and these include various forms of merit pay, profit related pay, payment by results, commission, profit sharing and employee share ownership plans. This thesis is motivated by the increasing use of performance based remuneration systems and focuses on the use of such systems within one specific industry - the UK food industry. The aim of the thesis is to identify trends relating to the use of PRR within the industry and in particular examine the extent to which PRR is used, why such systems are used, the various systems in operation, and the way in which the various systems are implemented and managed. The first part of the thesis contains a substantive literature review which examines several important aspects of PRR. The remainder of the thesis is concerned with the data gathered on the use of PRR within the UK food industry.

This study explores the phenomenon of the social construction of IS investment evaluation in the financial services industry. The extensive literature on information systems (IS) evaluation stretches back more than thirty years and it is widely agreed that IS evaluation is an important and complex issue. Constructivist evaluation, which serves to develop the interpretivist strand of the literature, concentrates on the notion that evaluations are the outcomes of an interaction and argumentation process between various interested parties. The purpose of this research is to shed further light on the IS investment evaluation area. Explaining the practice of IS evaluation within the dynamic and technologically sophisticated financial services industry would benefit academics and financial services firms alike. This context is relatively neglected in the existing literature. The chosen case study reflects the demands in the financial services industry to upgrade their infrastructure in order to manage an ever increasing number of transactions, as well as increased regulation. The fieldwork produced extensive data concerning traditional trading, brokerage, high frequency algorithmic trading and transaction clearing. The rapid rise of derivative transactions during the last few years caused problems in terms of clearing and managing the transactions. At the same time, hedge funds‘ growing demand for low latency execution services and changes in regulations increased, pressuring firms in the industry to invest heavily. Actor-network theory (ANT) is used in order to describe and explain the formation of networks between human and non-human actors. The theory‘s specific vocabulary allows IS evaluation to be seen in a new light and the study uses ANT analysis to produce insight into the longstanding problem of IS evaluation, human and non-human interactions and roles within the context if IT investment appraisal. Building on ANT, this thesis is an in-depth case study of the employment process of an IT evaluation method at a global financial services company.

Although much has been written about knowledge management and information systems, there is little empirical evidence of their actual effect on organisational performance and their interrelationship. Aiming at addressing this gap, this thesis investigates the relationships between knowledge management capabilities, information and communication technologies (ICT) capabilities and organizational performance in SMEs. Drawing mainly on the knowledge-based view (KBV) theory, this study suggests that knowledge management capabilities and ICT capabilities are potential sources of competitive advantage and, thus, those firms possessing these capabilities will achieve superior organisational performance. Building upon the KBV and other complementary theories such as the dynamic capabilities and evolutionary theories, a conceptual model is developed, which a range of research questions and hypotheses emerge from. These hypotheses are tested on a sample of 159 manufacturer SMEs within the mechanical engineering sector and located in the UK, using diverse statistical techniques. The results suggest that knowledge management capabilities have a significant and positive impact on innovation, responsiveness and adaptability, while they barely influence results such as success, market share, growth and profitability. On the other hand, both human and technical capabilities regarding ICT have an impact on all types of performance indicators. Interrelationships between knowledge management and ICT capabilities are found, supporting the idea of capabilities complementarity. The level of turbulence which firms undergo has also been found an important influence on innovation, responsiveness and adaptability. Based on these findings, practitioners and policy makers are given advice about which aspects they should focus on, in order to implement knowledge management practices and manage ICT successfully.

Performance improvement is an activity that all organisations must undertake to gain competitive advantage or simplify to maintain parity with the progress of competitors. Such improvement efforts are frequently undertaken in an ad-hoc manner. These are usually ineffective, with projects failing to improve the aspects of the organisation that deliver customer value, and inefficient with resources being wasted. In response to this situation a methodology was developed to aid business processes diagnosis and to design appropriate improvement projects that possess the potential to deliver exceptional improvement. The methodology was designed using time as the key performance metric for analysing business processes and practices. The time-based approach makes the methodology powerful yet simple. The simplicity enable users from within a company to adopt and apply the methodology, a feature that gives the methodology considerable strength. Applications of the methodology in twenty-five organisations found it effective in providing insightful analysis and designing solutions that, when implemented, led to significant performance improvements. The methodology demonstrated a high level of generality, having been applied in organisations as diverse as multinational corporations and Small and Medium sized Enterprises, SMEs, across both manufacturing and service business sectors. Application of the methodology uncovered the need to find better approaches to supply chain modelling and to managing programmes of performance improvement projects. In response, two new techniques were developed and validated. The first was the Time-based Supply Model. This device models the effectiveness of the processes that thread together supply networks using time as the key performance measure. The second was a structured idea-management system for performance improvement projects that uses a stage-gate approach to programme management. Combining this approach with the time-based methodology produced the Performance Improvement Model. This device provides a structure for managing the strategic direction and resource allocation of multiple performance improvement projects.

Traditional Business Process Management (BPM) has a number of limitations. The first one is the typical separation between process design and execution, which often causes discrepancies between the processes as they are designed and the way in which they are actually executed. Additionally, because of this separation, valuable first-hand knowledge generated during process execution may remain unused during process design and also prevented to be shared within the organisation. Social BPM, which predicates to integrate social software into the BPM lifecycle, has emerged as an answer to such limitations. Although there have been a number of approaches to Social BPM, they have not been able to address all the issues of traditional BPM. This thesis proposes a novel Social BPM framework in which social tagging is used to capture process knowledge emerging during the enactment and design of the processes. Process knowledge concerns both the type of activities chosen to fulfil a certain goal (i.e. what needs doing), and the skills and experience of users in executing specific tasks (i.e. skills which are needed to do it). Such knowledge is exploited by recommendation tools to support the design and enactment of future process instances. This framework overcomes the limitations of traditional BPM systems as it removes the barrier between the design and execution of the processes and also enables all users to be part of the different phases of the BPM lifecycle. We first provide an analysis of the literature to position our research area, and then we provide an overview of our framework discussing its specification and introducing a static conceptual model of its main entities. This framework is then elaborated further with a more dynamic model of the behaviour and, in particular, of the role and task recommendations, which are supported by social tagging. These mechanisms are then applied in a running example. Finally the framework is evaluated through the implementation of a prototype and its application in a case study. The thesis ends with a discussion about the different evaluation approaches of the proposed framework, limitations of our framework and future research.

TQM has become a competitive strategy for organisations and has been widely implemented throughout the world. Over the previous three decades, there has been a dramatic growth globally in the implementation of total quality management (TQM) in many organisations with the aim of improving the quality of their products and services, and meeting customers‘ needs. Although the literature in the field relates the success of many organisations in the implementation of TQM, it also refers to the fact that there have been some failures or shortcomings and barriers to the implementation of TQM. These failures or barriers to adoption and implementation are due not only to a lack of top management commitment or weak understanding of total quality management, but also encompass organisational cultural factors. The purpose of this research is to assess the level of TQM implementation, and to explore the influence of organisational culture on TQM implementation in Libyan banks. In addition, this research identifies the main obstacles that affect the implementation of TQM in Libyan banks. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve the objectives of the research. A questionnaire was designed to determining the level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks, and to identify the causal relationships between factors, in order to explore the influence of organisational culture on TQM implementation. Complimentary semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and supervisors to gain a greater understanding of some additional issues with regard to TQM practice and organisational culture. The results of data analysis show that the level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks was low. The competing value framework (CVF) as proposed and tested by Denison and Spreitzer (1991) was used to explore the influence of organisational culture types on TQM implementation factors in Libyan banks. The findings showed that group culture and developmental culture had a positive influence on all TQM implementation factors. In addition, hierarchical culture and rational culture did not have any influence on TQM implementation factors in this context. Moreover, the study revealed that some of the obstacles that affected the achievement of a high level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks were: a lack of top management commitment; a lack of training programmes relating to quality management; and a weak focus on customer expectations and satisfaction. The findings of this study make an original contribution to the academic and practical knowledge of TQM. It is the first exploratory study to have assessed TQM implementation, and to have investigated the influence of organisational culture types on TQM implementation in Libyan banks. Besides presenting some recommendations for Libyan banks, the research offers suggestions for further research in this area.

Purpose: It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the importance of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in the economic and social development of a country. In view of their identified importance, this present study aims to develop a clearer understanding of the factors that influence success of small and medium enterprises in Tangier, as perceived by local owner-managers. Design: The initial research framework, which emanated from a systematic literature review, was empirically investigated using a two-stage design, which incorporated both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The rationale behind the two-stage methodology was firstly to avoid common-method bias; and, secondly, to seek to illuminate findings arising from the survey by providing individual insights. Approaches were employed in succession with the findings from the quantitative phase informing the qualitative phase. Initially, a paper and online survey questionnaire was administered to a population of 365 industrial SMEs, identified from the official website of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and New Technologies, the 2010 directory of the Association of the Industrial Zone of Tangier as well as its official website, and the website of the Tangier free zone. This survey was used in order to validate the initial conceptual framework and gain some insights on the perceptions of owner-managers of the factors influencing the performance of SMEs. Following the quantitative phase, fifteen in-depth face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with selected owner-managers of SMEs, forming a judgmental sample, to explore their experiences, beliefs, and attitudes with respect to the drivers of success. Findings & conclusions: The study found that there are three generalized influences on the success of SMEs based on the Tangier entrepreneurs' perceptions: the 'owner-manager attributes' with an emphasis on the language skills factor; partnership working with an emphasis on the financial and networking partnership; and business characteristics with a focus on the location factor, which was mainly associated with the ‘free zones’. The existence of these ‘free zones’ was a key factor in selecting Tangier as a location for this study.