Don Bosco Technical School in Phnom Penh is a typical example of a long-running non-profit institution in Cambodia. In this part of the world it is plainly called an NGO – a non-governmental organization. It provides vocational skills training education to some four hundred out-of-school youth every year. And yet it does not charge for tuition; nay more it even provides free lunch at noon. So how does Don Bosco Technical School survive this monetary based and profit oriented society? What are its sustainability secrets?This capstone project strives to look at the institution from a business perspective with organizational behavior, strategic planning, and human resource management as criteria.To achieve this, the process will include: •A critical evaluation of its organic strategic plan through a thorough analysis of its strategic documents like: logical framework, organizational charts, and programming sheets.•A structured interview of key employees gauging factors such as: their job satisfaction, job fit, and job identification with organizational values. •An in-depth analysis of its human resource management through observation of operations and investigation of corresponding documents like: salary scales, contracts, policies and procedures.The results of the study show that Don Bosco’s main strength lies in the staff’s strong commitment to the mission of the organization thereby providing the motivation to continue the work in spite of financial odds. On the other hand it has room for improvement in terms of organizing a more formal human resource management system due to its institutionalizing trend and for sustained sustainability of its work.

Risk became popular among management theorists, with many proposing ways to manage all sorts of risks. Some countries require corporations to implement risk management as stand-alone or even integrated element within improved internal control frameworks. As result, several national standards were developed over the last 20 years, but just one arose as truly international solution: ISO 31000. Little has been published on integrated risk management at airlines and the use of industry-wide standards has never been consistently explored before. Two industry-specific standards exist, but their limited scope led to little adherence by airlines. To cover this gap,this thesis analysed the wider picture of integrated airline risk management practices, aiming at identifying improvement areas to propose an adaptation of the ISO 31000 risk management framework. Several empirical methods (including a survey to publications by the ToplOO airlines, and interviews to airline risk managers, experts and practitioners) showed that only six airlines reported using ISO 31000, with two others citing its predecessor, AS/NZS 4360. Many vaguely referred to COSO, customised models or didn't mention any framework. It is unclear why only few airlines use ISO 31000, when other industries applied it successfully before. Therefore, to help disseminating ISO 31000 among airlines, a customised framework has been designed that proposes a truly holistic industry-specific approach, not focussing on individual risk sources. It integrates risk management along the airlines' entire value chain and involves relevant stakeholders in the airlines' internal risk management efforts. The proposal's validation process showed that, while being ambitious in its goals, the customised framework is complete and concise, providing valuable input for airlines using other risk management models. It has been considered particularly suitable for those airlines thinking of launching risk management initiatives. Given that a fundamental culture change is needed, the timeframe for implementation should be generous, allowing for several process iterations and revisions.

Everest and Blanc (E&B) is at a crossroad. It grew from a ‘mom and pop’ operation into a small professional firm and plateaued. Thus, there is a desire to bring about operation efficiency, followed by expansion of the company. In order to be successful, a systematic decision making process is necessary to ensure a high probability of success, and able to pinpoint dysfunctions early for improvement. In addition, implementing processes need careful consideration and progress monitoring. This study was founded on these premises using M2 mode research methodology to establish an optimal structural course of action by surveying paradigms of management theories and concepts. The study began with an exposition on research methodologies and focused on the M2 research mode. It continued on with considering operations topics (micro concerns), extending to general issues (macro concerns) in conjunction with management theories and concepts. Finally a decision making model was shaped and applied to E&B. During the process, several important decisions were made, grounded on the findings on the research, such as relocating the corporate office anticipating expansion. Overall, the changes introduced, the process of change, the decision-making process, and implementation were all effective. The decision making model, SOMM, Strato Operation Management Model, is an extension of both Ansoff’s and Anthony’s management models together with the decision-making process. The emphasis is on the relationship of the system structure’s characteristics where it is symbolized by a matryoshka representing the three management modules (Strategic Management, Management Control and Planning and Tactical Operation) nesting within each other. Relating to the overall strategic and management control and planning competency, the workhorse is a combination of defensive and offensive approaches together with evaluation methodologies to capture emerging and unintended strategies and to control performance; whereas the tactical operation process is to bring about efficiency and effectiveness. These are new knowledge and policies cast into members of E&B. It is, therefore, fundamental that careful interventions are necessary to cause changes by motivation and to align goal congruency. Further, the inquiry had specifically focused on the needs of E&B, it did not preclude application to other organizations. For academics, it may be an engaging topic for further empirical studies advancing knowledge in management and operations. With respect to a wider world application, it was also concluded that the findings for E&B are applicable and adaptable to other professional and business concerns as innovative tools to their problems and issues.

This dissertation reports the results of case studies on innovation and new product development in eight Scottish food companies and a subsequent triangulation survey of 85 innovative Scottish companies. The case studies are carried out using qualitative research methods and a realistic inductive research strategy. It is found that the case study companies use an informal and cross-functional innovation process, which is independent of the age of enterprise. It is also discovered that these companies develop new products, often luxuriant variants of their existing products, which are mainly indulgences rather than healthy foods and are sold mostly to large retailers. Use of production methods that are amenable to quick changes in final products and networking with customers, suppliers, other food companies and Scottish Enterprise is also observed. Creative people with high innovative proclivity, who often travel to new locations in search of product ideas, drive the process. The case study companies are high-variety-low-volume businesses, possess good understanding of customer needs and circumstances and are able to achieve a good fit between needs of the market and their own resources. Not facing financial constraints, these companies are able to attract and retain talent, needed to develop new products. Continuously learning from their NPD endeavours, they sell their products without any major advertising or marketing effort. The subsequent triangulation survey of 85 innovative Scottish companies, from food as well as non-food sectors, confirms most of the above-mentioned findings. Contrary to the case study results however, the survey discovers that innovative Scottish companies face financial constraints while developing new products, do not sell most of their new products to large retailers or undertake travel to new locations in search of product ideas. The main contributions to knowledge by this research include crystallisation of the new product development practices in Scotland, highlighting difference in product innovation between various sub-groups of enterprises, a new conceptual construct within which all notions and definitions of innovation can be accommodated and identification of a basic flaw in the present innovation policy in Scotland.

This thesis investigates the market rules of the European carbon market (EU ETS) during 2005-2007. We provide theoretical and empirical analyses of banking and borrowing provisions, price drivers and risk hedging strategies attached to tradable quotas, which were introduced to cover the CO2 emissions of around 10,600 installations in Europe.In Chapter 1, we outline the economic and environmental effects of banking and borrowing on tradable permits markets. More specifically, we examine the banking and borrowing provisions adopted in the EU ETS, and the effects of banning banking between Phases I and II on CO2 price changes. We show statistically that the low levels of CO2 prices recorded until the end of Phase I may be explained by the restriction on the inter-period tranfer of allowances, besides the main explanations that were identified by market observers.In Chapter 2, we identify the carbon price drivers since the launch of the EU ETS on January 1, 2005. We emphasize the central role played by the 2005 yearly compliance event imposed by the European Commission in revealing the net short/long position at the installation level in terms of allowances allocated with respect to verified emissions. The main result of this study features that price drivers of CO2 allowances linked to energy market prices and unanticipated weather events vary around institutional events. Moreover, we show the influence of the variation of industrial production in three sectors covered by the EU ETS on CO2 price changes by applying a disentangling analysis, that has also been extended at the country-level.In Chapter 3, we focus on the risk hedging strategies linked to holding CO2 allowances. By using a methodology applied on stock markets, we recover the changes in investors' average risk aversion. This study shows that, during the time period considered, risk aversion has been higher on the carbon market than on the stock market, and that the risk is linked to an increasing price structure after the 2006 compliance event. With reference to Chapter 1, we finally evaluate how banking may be used as a risk management tool in order to cope with political uncertainty on a tradable permits market. We detail an optimal risk-sharing rule, and discuss the possibility of pooling the risk linked to allowance trading between agents.Overall, this thesis highlights the inefficiencies following the creation of the European carbon market that prevented the emergence of a price signal leading to effective emissions reductions by industrials. However, in a changing institutional environment, these inefficiencies do not seem to have been transfered to the period 2008-2012.