The impact of uncertainty in the commercialization lifecycle of new technologies is a complex phenomenon. Technologies are research intensive and exposed to uncertainty regarding their successful development and functionality. Further these technologies have to be absorbed by volatile markets in order to be commercialized. These different forms of uncertainty are of primary importance for decision makers but have not been thoroughly studied in previous technology commercialization research and put under one theoretical framework. The main focus of this thesis is to comprehend the recently growing trend among universities and public research organizations to commercialize their research activities from an empirical and theoretical perspective. More particularly the thesis focuses on the life cycle of two main commercialization streams namely the entry and exit of university spinouts, which are companies that evolve from intellectual property developed within academic institutions as well as the licensing and licensing termination of inventions. The main focus of the thesis therefore analysesmarket and technological uncertainty and explains the conditions under which spinout formation, spinout failure, licensing and licensing failure occur by putting them under the theoretical framework of real option theory.

It is a requirement of the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) award of the University of Glasgow that the candidate undertakes a research which is relevant to the strategic development of his employing organisation.The overall aim of the DBA thesis is to conduct a critical and strategic analysis of the environment in which the candidate's organisation operates, and to demonstrate how this analysis might inform and contribute to the organisation's stragic planning and development. In this particular case the author is an employee of the Uganda Management Institute. In order to achive the above general objective and in conformity with the University of Glasgow DBA requirements, the author examined the environment through a series of five (5) Learning Goals. While handling each Learning Goal, a firm eye was directed towards its implications for Uganda Management Institute (UMI)strategy. In the final analysis, the views through those different Learning Goals(or lenses)were integrated to provide a more holistic appraisal of UMI's strategy. The following are the Learning Goals which were examined: 1. To conduct an initial strategic analysis of the business environment in which the Uganda Management Institute(UMI) operates which analysis should support the organisational goal. 2. To undertake a programme of study in reserch methods and data analysis likely to be relevant to the other Learning Goals. 3. To evaluate the context of the structural adjustment programmes(SAPs), past and contemporary, affecting the economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and in particular the Ugandan economy. 4. To undertake a study of the structure, characteristics and performance of the market in Uganda for human resources and the related labour relations institutions and mechanisms. 5. To conduct a strategic analysis of the external, global environment in which the Uganda Management Institute will have to compete and survive.

The final limitation was related to the difficulty of conducting the focus group in such a conservative country, particularly when the participants were women, as was the case in this research. Suggestions are made for further studies that could enrich the literature in this area. These are, firstly, that the differential relevance and importance of the different dimensions of the COO and branded product constructs for different products and different consumers’ require further examination. Secondly, methodologically, more comprehensive analytical models could be used and, lastly, a full re-modelling of the research model utilised in this study is suggested.

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.

Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) is the largest and oldest business support scheme currently operating in Scotland. It provides grants to firms undertaking capital investment projects in economically deprived EU designated ‘Assisted Areas’. As a component of regional policy, the scheme is principally designed to safeguard and generate employment in the Assisted Areas. Many of the grants are given to help foreign firms to set up in Scotland. The aim of this thesis is to estimate the impact of receipt of these grants on plant performance as measured by productivity and survival. The main econometric problem to be confronted when estimating the impact of grants is self-selection bias. Because plants self-select into the treated group, the treated group will have different characteristics from the untreated group which would lead to differences in performance had neither group received treatment. This creates difficulties in estimating the impact of treatment as a simple comparison of a variable across treated and untreated groups will not measure the causal impact of treatment. This problem was dealt with using propensity score matching and instrumental variables. The dataset was created by linking a register of plants that received an RSA grant into the longitudinal ARD which contains the necessary range of financial variables for empirical analysis. This part of the thesis was crucial as failure to identify a high percentage of plants that received a grant in the ARD would seriously undermine the empirical analyses. In the end, a higher proportion of plants that received a grant were linked with the ARD than has been previously achieved using these databases. In the first empirical chapter, the growth of labour productivity and TFP between 1994 and 2004 in Scottish manufacturing plants was decomposed to reveal the contribution of plants that receive an RSA grant. This showed that RSA-assisted plants made a small but positive contribution to both measures of productivity growth. The latter two empirical chapters showed that receipt of an RSA grant had no statistically significant impact on either the TFP or the survival probability of Scottish manufacturing plants between 1984 and 2004 in any of the industries considered. This is a major concern as it casts doubt on whether the jobs created and safeguarded by an RSA grant will endure.

This research considers the transfer and institutionalisation of a corporate governance practice to the Asia-Pacific subsidiaries and joint ventures of two UK listed MNEs. The practice under consideration is a risk based system of internal control (RBSIC) that follows the recommendations made in Internal Control: Guidance for Directors on the Combined Code more generally known as the Turnbull Report or guidelines. The main contributions are three-fold. They focus on corporate governance practices below board level; the transfer of corporate governance practices across international borders; and the role of managerial agency as a key influence over institutionalisation. Through the combination of semi-structured interviews, documentation provided by the companies and secondary sources including academic papers, books and news services two case studies were developed – one main case study, consisting of eight embedded case studies – Excelsior; and a supporting case study consisting of two embedded case studies – Landmark. Three key themes emerged: First, although the degree of institutionalisation of the RBSIC differed across cases, the overarching picture was one of ceremonial adoption that had been achieved without the relatively high level of implementation proposed by Kostova and Roth (2002). Secondly, the successful institutionalisation of the RBSIC resides primarily in the individual employees at the recipient business unit. However, the transfer is embedded inside a specific national context that to differing degrees, depending on the differences between the source of the RBSIC and the individual recipient business units, interacts with three practice-specific sub-variables – causal ambiguity, practice-specific absorptive capacity and motivation of the practice recipient. Thirdly, due to over reliance on the regional RBSIC team responsible for the institutionalisation of the practice, their role as gatekeeper, standing between the source of the knowledge (corporate headquarters) and the recipient (Asia-Pacific business units), was unexpectedly a barrier to the development and institutionalisation of the practice.

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.

Law and State, especially forms of landed property and contract, have played an important mediatory role in the internationalisation of agricultural capital in Ghana. The establishment of cocoa production in Ghana in the late nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century established the predominance of small holder peasant production in Ghanaian agriculture. The production and export of cocoa also established a specific form of internationalisation of agricultural capital in Ghana. This involved the subsumption of peasant commodity producers within the circuit of international capital. Because capital did not directly control production its relations with the peasantry centred around struggles over both the conditions of labour. in the sphere of production and over the realisation of the value of the peasants' product, in the sphere of circulation. These struggles were moulded by legal forms of landed property controlled by the direct producer and the character of the contractual relationship between peasant and the representatives of capital. The transformation induced by cocoa production included changes in forms of landed property, a process in which the colonial state played an important role. These changes have been a significant influence on the subsequent forms of internationalisation of agricultural capital in the post colonial period. The thesis shows through an analysis of the post colonial sugar and oil palm industries the nature of this influence. It also shows ho«- the shift in the proclaimed objectives of the state from the colonial concern with export agriculture to the "nationalist" post colonial goal of seif reliance came to be co-opted by new forms of international capital and the mediatory role of legal forms, especially contract, in this process of co-optation. This work is based mainly on written primary and secondary sources, complemented by intcrviews with some officials of the some of the institutions covered in the thesis. My secondary sources include unpublished essays and thesis, books, articles, reports, studies by companies, government bodies and similar such published material. Most of the primary material used in the parts of the work that deal with the colonial period conic from the British Public Records Office and the Ghana National Archives in Accra. For the post colonial period a substantial part of the primary information was gathered using personal contacts in various state institutions, particularly the Ministry of finance and Economic Planning, the Attorney General Department and the Ghana Investment Centre.

The thesis examines advertising behaviour and quality-setting behaviour at the firm level. In both cases economic theory is used to discover theoretically optimal behaviour patterns which may then be compared with the behaviour patterns exhibited by firms operating in the real world. The 'neoclassical' economic model of advertising is reviewed and a general version embodying the 'marketing mix' concept is developed. Possible means of testing for optimal advertising behaviour at the firm level are discussed. The usual method of testing for optimal advertising behaviour was shown to rely on a method which provided no information about the behaviour of firms, the usual test relies on a 'snapshot' comparison of values of the firm's discretionary variables and parameters of the demand function facing the firm. An alternative method of testing is developed the use of a stock-adjustment approach in conjunction VJith an loptimality rule' allows the construction of a test which views firms' behaviour. The test is applied to advertising data for the five major U. K. motor manufacturers during the period 1958-68. The 'quality' problem is analysed at the model or variety level. The problem of defining 'quality' is discussed, and it is suggested that if 'quality' is suitably defined there will be a useful relationship between the prices and 'qualities' of a varieties of a given product. The possible theoretical bases a price-quality relationship (and hence the 'Hedonic' technique) are analysed and shown to indicate different forms for the price-quality relationship. Appropriate methods of estimating the price-quality relationship are suggested. A model of variety demand allowing for quality differences by incorporating the residuals from the estimated price-quality relationship in the demand function is proposed. Price-quality relationships and demand functions are estimated using data for U.K. passenger cars.

Purpose/objectives: The research deals with establishing a best practice model in SRM for manufacturing companies in the European transportation industry. The objective of the thesis is to identify schools of thought in SRM, to highlight the causal factors for supply disruptions and to outline how supply disruptions can be anticipated, managed and prevented. The identified best practices shall be categorized and utilized to establish a best practice model for the respective sector. The purpose is to show how supply chain resilience can be accomplished in global and complex supply chains by means of proactive SRM. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical part of the research has been conducted with a qualitative and multiple approach over a period of more than two years. The paper examines best practice elements through a systematic literature review combined with semi-structured interviews involving senior managers in SRM in the European transportation industry. Two case studies have been included for confirming or disconfirming the best practice elements. The empirical part has been divided into four phases: (1) verifying or falsifying the appropriateness of the research questions, (2) best practice identification and categorization, (3) confirmation or disconfirmation of best practices in SRM, and (4) refining best practice elements. Findings: The findings represent a significant contribution on how to deal with complex and global supply networks. They will help researchers and practitioners faced with the task of setting up supplier relationships. Furthermore, the findings can be applied when establishing an overall best practice framework and SRM model. Research limitations/implications: The research focuses on establishing a best practice SRM model for multinational manufacturing companies in the European transportation industry. The model has not yet been implemented. Therefore, implementation and application to other industries will have to be the subject of further research.