The decline in global oil prices is considered an impetus for Nigeria to diversify into non-oil export as an additional means of generating growth. Horticultural products’ export (HPE) has been suggested as a means through which Nigeria could increase its foreign exchange earnings along similar lines as other African economies, such as Kenya and Ethiopia. However, to achieve competitive advantage in HPE necessitates participation in global horticulture value chains. Meanwhile, there are preconditions to gainful participation such as compliance with stringent food safety and quality standards, importing countries’ regulations, buyers’ specifications and other international trade regulatory standards, in addition to employing practices that can enhance market penetration. The aim of this study is to explore the potential for increasing horticultural products’ export from Nigeria. The study has employed a single-case embedded design and multiple perspectives of five stakeholder groups were explored through interviews (a focus group, in-depth and telephone interviews) in addition to direct observations and archival records. These multiple sources of evidence have enabled this study to provide valid evidence of the barriers inhibiting HPE from Nigeria. The empirical findings show that there are multi-layered issues which require that a deliberate resolution must be made to position Nigeria’s horticulture sub-sector to participate in global horticulture value chains. The main barriers identified are the existing institutional framework, infrastructure and logistics issues, market penetration issues, stakeholders' inadequacy, food safety and quality concerns, high cost of finance, export operational challenges, neglect of agriculture and the current airline market structure. While recognising there are a number of hurdles to overcome while participating in global horticulture value chains, the thesis concludes by outlining a number of recommendations to strategically improve HPE, emphasising that the onus for improvement lies on the Nigerian government and its institutions, private organisations and stakeholders who are seeking to increase the export of horticultural products from Nigeria.

In recent times the learning organisation concept has become a popular topic of research interest. A review of the literature revealed three areas of research concern. First that theory concerning the learning organisation, and organisational learning, is over-reliant on the "positivist" standpoint and methodologies, and that resulting descriptions and models of the learning organisation are mostly idealised rather than 'real' representations of the proposed phenomena. Secondly, that theory and models of the learning organisation are relatively uninformative when it comes to explaining the proposed relationship between individual and collective learning, and how one translates into the other. Thirdly, that issues to do with organisational learning in the small firm remain under-investigated, and that the literature offers little explanation concerning the subject of small firm learning, and the growth process. Responding to calls for research into these areas of research concern, this thesis contains an account of a case study investigation into aspects of small firm learning. The aim of the investigation was to stimulate new research by generating grounded research themes, ideas, questions, and hypotheses concerning aspects of learning organisation theory. Working within a consultancy context, and adopting a case study approach, qualitative data was obtained during interviews with people in three small, but growing businesses. Grounded theory methods were then used to conduct a thematic analysis of the data. Outcome of the investigation are as follows. There is grounded thematic support for the assertion that people in small firms have a need, and are able to engage in transformational learning. In particular, the findings support the making of a two-part proposition concerning small firm learning and the changing individual-organisation relationship. First, that the small firm can be usefully construed as a network of informal communities, wherein people interact to meet their own, sometimes competing needs, and to learn how to do what needs to be done. Secondly, that the way people negotiate and agree to form and engage in these informal communities of practice can be usefully explained in terms of an ongoing process of psychological contracting. Another outcome of the investigation is that it was possible to explore the value of using grounded theory methodology during a dual research and consultancy role. This part of the investigation is also described and discussed. Finally, the case for wider investigations to test the emergent two-part proposition concerning small firm learning, and the changing individual-organisation relationship, is argued.

No description available.

In an attempt to understand the performance measurement systems, this study utilises the contingency theory theoretical framework to examine the contingent relationships between several contextual factors and the usage of financial and non-financial performance measures for performance measurements and evaluation purposes. The contextual factors consist of business strategy, organisational structure, perceived environmental uncertainty, intensity of competition, organisation size, total quality management and just in time manufacturing approaches. This study also investigates the implications of fit (internal consistency) between the above contextual factors and the extent of performance measurement diversity usage on organisational effectiveness (i.e. organisational performance and level of satisfaction). Nine performance measurement categories are investigated including: financial, customer, operational, innovation, employee, supplier, environment, quality and community categories. During the 1990s and until recently, considerable publicity and interest has been given to the balanced scorecard approach (BSC). This study also gathers empirical data to investigate various issues relating to BSC approach. The major aims of the study are to examine how the manufacturing companies are dealing with this approach and to determine the extent to which the above contextual factors influence the extent of balanced scorecard usage. The findings are based on a questionnaire mailed to a target sample of 900 UK manufacturing companies with an annual sales turnover in excess of £50 million. A total of 163 usable responses were received representing a response rate of 19.7%. For the purpose of data analysis, the study utilises descriptive statistics and multivariate statistics (i.e. structural equation modelling using EQS 5.7 and multiple regression). The results of the descriptive analysis show that financial, customer, operational and quality performance categories are extensively used for performance measurements and evaluation purposes. Other non-financial performance categories (i.e. innovation, supplier, employee, and environment) are also used but to a lesser extent. Despite the popularity of the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach, only a minority of companies (30%) reported using it in their performance measurement systems. The findings also emphasise the inconsistency between companies following the BSC approach, particularly the number and types of perspectives used. The results of structural equation modelling suggest a strong support for the cost strategy, formalisation, regulatory aspects of perceived environmental uncertainty, size, aspects relating to the intensity of competition and the extent of the use of both total quality management and just in time manufacturing approaches have a significant influence on the extent of performance measurement diversity usage (i.e. financial and non-financial performance measures). The results also indicate that the different approaches to fit utilised in this study (i.e. bivariate and systems approaches), based on structural equation modelling, result in insightful findings relating to the contingent relationships between the anticipated contextual factors, the extent of performance measurement diversity usage and organisational effectiveness. The results using multiple regression indicate that formalisation, raw material aspects of perceived environmental uncertainty, size and the extent of the use of total quality management significantly influence the extent of balanced scorecard usage. A distinguishing feature of this study is that it extends previous BSC studies in determining the extent of balanced scorecard usage. The results suggest that using financial and non-financial performance measures does not necessarily imply that the companies are really balanced scorecard users. This finding therefore raises implications for future balanced scorecard researchers, and by drawing off contingency theory literature, it overcomes some of the deficiencies of previous research relating to balanced scorecard approach. Finally, this study contributes to the literature by utilising the structural equation modelling method, which has several advantages over other multivariate data analysis.

This research study aims to explore the current practices, policies and roles of training and development (T&D) within Jordanian banking organisations. It is an exploration of all the issues concerning T&D practices in terms of how the T&D process is conducted (how training needs are assessed, how T&D is delivered and how T&D programmes are evaluated); exploring top managers', T&D and HRM personnel's attitudes towards the importance of T&D in improving employees and organisational performance and the strategic position and roles of T&D in their organisations. This study aims to investigate all the problems and challenges that face T&D activities and searches for practical suggestions to improve the effectiveness of these activities. Finally, it aims to contribute to the understanding of HRD in differing cultural contexts. This research is mainly focused on top managers', T&D and HRM attitudes and viewpoints (perception) towards the research objectives. The research has adopted a multi-methods approach. The data were gathered through a combination of semi-structured interviews with 15 top managers and a survey questionnaire addressed to the persons responsible for T&D within the targeted organisations. All Jordanian banking organisations were targeted in this study rather than a representative sample of these organisations; however, a purposive sampling strategy was used in choosing the participants of this study. In total, 15 top managers and 38 T&D and HRM managers took part in the study. The study reveals that, in the majority of the organisations, there is an absence of systematic employee training needs assessment and of effective procedures for evaluation. The banks prefer to send their employees to external training providers rather than train them in the banks. The most commonly used delivery method is off-the-job training, namely lectures, seminars and case studies. T&D is not characterised by strategic human resource development criteria (SHRD) and it plays a reactive rather than a proactive role in these organisations. T&D improves employees' skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, but it does not increase employees' commitment and satisfaction. Also, T&D does not impact on profit, innovation and change, sales, absenteeism, turnover rate, job satisfaction and cost saving in their organisations, but it increases customer satisfaction, quality service and productivity. T&D faces many problems: lack of motivation among employees to attend T&D programmes; inaccurate TNA processes; poor training planning in terms of contents and delivery methods; sending inappropriate persons to the training programmes and lack of on-the-job training. To improve T&D effectiveness the researcher recommends many actions and decisions which need to be undertaken, as shown in sections 6.10,7.6 and 8.2.4. Finally, this study contributes to knowledge on the academic and practical levels as one of the first attempts at empirically investigating the nature and the extent of strategic T&D activities in Jordanian banks, identifying the main concerns and problems which face T&D activities, in addition to recognizing the vital roles of T&D in improving the organisations' performances. Thus, it raises the general understanding of the current T&D practices and management in Jordanian banks. It has brought together a large body of knowledge in management T&D, T&D in Arab countries, strategic T&D and T&D and performance relevant literature and unifies diverse schools of thoughts into one integrative perspective. This research integrates, refines and extends the empirical work conducted in the field of T&D in developing countries, since there is a lack of such studies. It raises some of the implications for managers and consultants, such as considering employees' motivation, enthusiasm and willingness, T&D time, the importance of incentive reward when managing T&D. This study provides useful guidelines in the form of the critical elements and factors that can enhance success in T&D in terms of TNA, training implementation, methods and evaluation process. The study also proposes several directions for future research.

Whistle-blowing has garnered widespread attention in many countries, including the U.K. Whistle-blowing has been seen as one of the most effective ways to cater with illegal and unethical practices in organisations. Whistle-blowing describes the action of a worker disclosing (internally or externally) questionable practices, from within an organisation, to the parties that can take remedial actions. Nevertheless, whistleblowing is a risky action where the worker might lose his/her job for making the disclosure. In the early years of whistle-blowing practice, not much whistle-blowing protection legislation has been introduced. In the U.K. whistle-blowing protection legislation, known as the Public Interest Disclosure Act, was only enacted in 1998. Since then, various amendments to the Act have been made to give better protection to whistle-blowers. Many other policies have been introduced by policy makers in an effort to encourage whistle-blowing practice. Nevertheless, it is still an action that an individual might be disinclined to undertake. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that influence internal auditors in the U.K. to blow the whistle. Seven individual-level, independent variables (attitude, injunctive norm, descriptive norm, perceived behavioural control, self-efficacy, organisational professional conflict and awareness of the whistle-blowing protection legislation) are examined for their relationship with the dependent variable (intention to blow the whistle). Moral intensity is examined for its moderating effect on the relationships that exist between the seven independent variables and the dependent variable. Multiple regression analysis found positive and significant relationships involving six independent variables and the dependent variable. The six independent variables are attitude, injunctive norm, perceived behavioural control, self-efficacy, organisational-professional conflict and awareness of whistle-blowing protection legislation. The moderated multiple regressions found significant moderating effects of moral intensity in a relationship between injunctive norm and whistle-blowing intention, and descriptive norm and whistle-blowing intention. Overall, the findings suggest that, individual-level variables also play significant role in determining internal auditors’ intention to blow the whistle. Relative to individuallevel variables, organizational-level and situational level variables have received much attention among researchers in the past. Therefore, the findings suggest that future researches should also put emphasis and consideration on individual-level variables along with organizational and situational level variables in their future work. Also, intention to whistle-blow among internal auditors in the U.K. is high especially in a scenario involving a wrongdoing that may harm public safety than in scenario involving falsified invoices and collusion and tiers of hierarchy. The spirit of whistle-blowing can be infused if more efforts were taken by government, media and many other parties. The efforts include promoting the encouragement for whistle-blowing and institutionalise effective whistle-blowing policies and procedures in organizations.

Over the last few decades the business environment throughout the world has seen several accounting and corporate scandals such as the collapse of Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, and Parmalat. As a result of these ‘scandals’, significant attention has been directed to the issue of ethics in business in general, and in accounting in particular. Several empirical studies have been conducted on the subject of ethical decision making and ethical issues within accounting. Interestingly, most of this research has been done in the USA and the remaining has been conducted mainly in developed countries. Although some of the ethical decision making research has been done in accounting, very little research has been conducted in the area of management accounting. This study addresses this gap by adding empirical evidence related to the association of numerous variables with management accountants’ ethical decision making in one of the developing countries, namely Libya. The purpose of this study is twofold; first, to investigate the impact of those variables (individual variables, organizational variables, and moral intensity dimensions) on the ethical decision making of management accountants and future accountants (i.e. accounting students) in Libya; and second, to determine what types of ethical issue are faced by Libyan management accountants at their workplace. The ethical decision making model adopted in this study hypothesizes that individual variables (e.g., age and gender), organizational variables (e.g., code of ethics and ethical climate), and moral intensity dimensions (e.g., magnitude of consequences) have relationships with the first three stages of ethical decision making (recognition, judgment, and intention) as constructed by Rest (1981). Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire that included four scenarios was used to gather data from a sample of Libyan management accountants and accounting students. Using several advanced statistical techniques (e.g., One-way ANOVA and Hierarchical Multiple Regression), data was analysed and the study hypotheses were tested. The results of this study reveal that, among all the variables examined, personal moral philosophy dimensions had the strongest significant relationship with the three stages of ethical decision making for both samples. Also, moral intensity dimensions explained a significant portion of the variance in management accountants’ ethical decision making stages, whereas only the ethical intention stage of accounting students was significantly associated with moral intensity dimensions, temporal immediacy in particular. Moreover, while no significant relationships were found in relation to the impact of all organizational variables examined, very few significant results were found related to the impact of age, gender, and educational level on ethical decision making stages. Also, Libyan management accountants recognized several issues that have been found in other countries, including the issues of injustice in distributing the company’s resources within companies, the misuse of the company’s equipments, and managers’ use of power to serve personal interest. Encouraging idealistic philosophy and giving more attention to ethics in accounting education are some of the implications of this study. Future research should apply other methods (e.g., interview) to investigate ethical issues in management accounting, including other dimensions of moral intensity and ethical climate components, and include samples from developing countries, especially Muslim countries.

In an attempt to provide a better understanding of the design and use of effective management control systems (MCS) in a developing country, this research study adopts a contingency theory approach to investigate the role of management accounting information (MAI) in facilitating MCS in large manufacturing companies. Drawing the relevant literature on contingency theory, a framework is developed and forms the basis for investigating the possible influence of several contingent variables, including centralisation, formalisation, environmental uncertainty, manufacturing complexity and competitive strategy, on the effectiveness of MCS as well as the potential mediating effect of the usefulness of MAI on these relationships. Based on the findings of a questionnaire-based survey of 54 large manufacturing companies from different industrial sectors in Libya, this study identifies the role of MAI in facilitating MCS in these companies in terms of the four dimensions of scope, timeliness, aggregation and integration. Descriptive and inferential statistical tools are used to analyse the collected data, including independent t-test, correlation, simple and multiple regression. The study also utilises the Preacher and Hayes’s (2004) macro through the SPSS package to investigate mediation regression effects in the MAI/MCS relationship. The results of the descriptive analysis show that more bureaucratic MCS types - characterised as formal, tight, and impersonal controls - have been adopted in large manufacturing companies in Libya to motivate, control and direct different activities. In terms of competitive strategy, no pure cost leaders or differentiators were found; rather the responding companies consider various aspects of cost leadership and product differentiation priorities when shaping their competitive strategy. Apart from manufacturing process complexity, all other contingent variables studied were found to have a significant positive influence on MCS effectiveness in these manufacturing companies. Although each of the four MAI dimensions (i.e. scope, timeliness, aggregation, and integration) explored in this study was perceived useful in relation to planning and problem solving activities, it is the aggregated information that was perceived the most important, available, and, thus, useful information. Very importantly this study found that MAI usefulness accounts for a full (i.e. complete) mediation effect only on the relationship between centralisation and MCS effectiveness, while it accounts for a partial mediating role on the relationship between MCS effectiveness and the other three contingent variables of formalisation, environmental uncertainty, and competitive strategy. On the other hand, the usefulness of MAI transmitted the influence of manufacturing process complexity on MCS effectiveness indicating an indirect effect instead of a mediated relationship. The latter is a significant distinction not usually made in previous studies that examined interaction factors. Thus, this study contributes to the knowledge in this important area by distinguishing between mediation and indirect effects, in particular, and between full and partial mediation effects, in general. Finally, the main limitations of this study are outlined and opportunities for future research are suggested, particularly in relation to considering the moderating effect of a fourth variable on the mediation relationship (i.e. moderated mediation) in the interplay between MAI and management control system design and use.

This thesis explores how newly-formed, short-term, multicultural project teams develop ways to manage their interactions in project-team meetings. The research took place within a management integration programme at a multinational company in France. A number of models have been proposed in international business on international teamwork (e.g. small group development processes, international team life-cyles, features of internal team functioning). However, these models provide little or no detail on the interactional processes that team members experience as they move through the different stages of development. Research within applied linguistics and education, on the other hand, provides frameworks for analysing interactional processes. For example, frameworks such as ‘activity types’ and ‘communication of practice’ have posited that communication is regulated by a system of rules and norms as to the expected interpersonal and verbal behaviour. However, when new teams are forming, appropriate behavioural practices need to be created for teams to be operationally effective. Yet, little or no research has explored how this occurs within international teams. In my research I aim to fill this gap by examining the interactional processes of international teams during their formative stages. Using an ethnographic-like case-study method to examine three teams, this study explores the interaction processes that occurred as team members learned to work together, the similarities and differences in the establishment of these processes across teams and the factors that were perceived as playing an influencing role. Key findings from the research are that establishing rules and setting up roles were beneficial to teamwork, while language differences rather hindered operational effectiveness. Other factors that affected the project-team workshops across all teams appeared to be interpersonal team relations and corporate culture and values.

This thesis presents an exploration of how biases stemming from the use of heuristic-‐based reasoning processes influence the internationalisation decisions made by the leaders of Small and Medium-‐Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Three types of internationalisation decisions are specifically addressed in this thesis, namely foreign market selection, entry mode and foreign market exit. The empirical context is that of Scottish SMEs from three main industries, namely Environmental and Recycling, Oil and Gas, and Textiles. Each of the case firms is involved in value-‐adding activities across national borders. The theoretical context is that of internationalising SMEs. The thesis draws on three main strands of the internationalisation literature: the Transaction Cost Approach, the Process Theory of Internationalisation and the International New Venture (INV) approaches. In investigating the decisional processes involved in internationalisation, the thesis takes a Bounded Rationality stance and assumes the use of Heuristics-‐based reasoning (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974) in internationalisation decisions. The level of analysis is the individual decision maker within the internationalising firm. The unit of analysis is the internationalisation decision, which is explored from a reasoning process perspective. A case study strategy is used. Data collection tools are semi-‐structured interviews and repertory grid elicitation. The data is analysed inductively through the construction of causal-‐cognitive maps. Findings show that heuristics are a useful tool to explain the reasoning processes employed in internationalisation decisions. The contribution that this thesis makes to extant literature on the internationalisation of smaller firms is threefold. Firstly, the thesis outlines the processes involved in an array of internationalisation decisions (country selection, entry mode, exit decisions) underpinning the cross-‐national border behaviour of firms. Secondly, by observing the processes of decision-‐making through a cognitive lens, the thesis contributes to the emerging cognitive approach in internationalisation. Thirdly, the thesis contributes to the literature on international entrepreneurial experience by explaining how experiential and vicarious knowledge are leveraged and used in the process of internationalisation decision-‐making. III Propositions are advanced and further research is invited to progress current understanding of the making of internationalisation decisions in SMEs.