This PhD thesis was motivated by the simple observation that the objectives of distinct supply chain managers are often conflicting. This problem is usually addressed via supply chain contracts that are designed to align the incentives of the different supply chain partners to the overall benefit of the entire supply chain, when seen as a whole. In this way, the long-term prosperity and viability of all the firms that participate in the supply chain can be ensured. In order to study the efficiency of different supply chain contracts in attaining the theoretical optimum performance, there exist a number of standard normative models that predict the decisions of perfectly rational decision makers. But supply chain partners might in reality not make the perfectly rational decisions that these theoretical models predict. This may be because they may lack the required information, or experience cognitive limitations and individual preferences or have only a finite amount of time available. For this reason, they might have to settle at satisficing choices. The result of these ‘boundedly rational’ decisions is a real world of different than expected interactions. Since in this world the standard normative models retain limited predictive power, this PhD thesis aims to explore the true efficiency of the simplest supply chain contract that can exist, namely, the wholesale price contract. In addition, this PhD thesis provides some useful recommendations that aim to help supply chain managers make price and order quantity decisions that would be better aligned with the interests of the overall supply chain. To this end, this study applies an original approach that supplements experiments with human subjects with Agent Based Simulation experiments. In greater detail, informal pilot sessions with volunteers were first conducted, during which knowledge of the underlying decision making processes was elicited. Appropriate Agent Based Simulation models were subsequently built based on this understanding. Later on human subjects were asked to interact with specially designed versions of these Agent Based Simulation models in the laboratory, so that their consecutive decisions over time could be recorded. Statistical models were then fitted to these data sets of decisions. The last stage of this approach was to simulate in the corresponding Agent Based Simulation models all possible combinations of decision models, so that statically accurate conclusions could be inferred. This approach has been replicated for both the simple newsvendor setting and the beer distribution game. The results that are obtained indicate that the overall efficiency of the wholesale price contract differs significantly from the theoretical prediction of the corresponding standard normative models. It varies greatly and depends largely on the interplay between the pricing and ordering strategies that the interacting supply chain partners adopt. In view of this, real world echelon managers are advised to use prices as an effective mechanism to control demand and, also, keep their total supply chain profits in mind when making their respective decisions.

This thesis sets out to solve a paradox: maintaining a high level of employees' affective commitment to the organisation is assumed to be a critical factor for successful downsizing, but downsizing tends to reduce employees' affective commitment to the organisation. In seeking to resolve this paradox, the thesis aims to provide insights into how employees' affective commitment to the organisation under downsizing can be managed. The thesis first explores the mechanism through which downsizing exerts its influence on employees' affective commitment to the organisation, i.e. it examines whether downsizing affects employees' affective commitment to the organisation directly and/or indirectly through employees' daily work experiences, and seeks to determine which impact is stronger. Then, it examines whether employees' affective commitment to the organisation is really important in terms of organisational citizenship behaviour. Finally, the thesis identifies the determinants of employees' affective commitment to the organisation and investigates how and why these determinants have such effects. The results of the research show that the indirect impact of downsizing on employees' affective commitment to the organisation is much stronger than its direct impact. That is, employees' affective commitment to the organisation is slightly reduced by downsizing, but it can be maintained or enhanced if the change of employees' daily work experiences caused by downsizing is favourable to them. Moreover, employees' affective commitment to the organisation appears to be very important in terms of organisational citizenship behaviour. Finally, employees' daily work experiences affect employees' affective commitment to the organisation through their impacts on the three mediating variables (organisation-based self-esteem, perceived organisational support, and self efficacy). The results also show that organisation-based self-esteem is the key mediating variable.

This research examines in detail the ability (logic) of organisations to adopt commodity work business processes. Four case studies taken from within one major UK retailer, Boots The Chemists, examines how a single work business process, that of call centres, has been developed in each of four different internal business ventures by studying the process, decision, and alignment logic applied in each case. The research approach adopts qualitative and interpretative analysis that includes longitudinal case studies. This multiple case study approach has an embedded design incorporating the components of work business processes as subunits to enhance insight. Data was collected predominantly from interviews supported by archive material, documents, and direct observation. Overlapping cross case, and within case analysis was undertaken, using Activity Records, Strategic Choice Analysis, and concepts supported by Actor Network Theory. While it might be expected that broadly similar processes located in the same overall business context would adopt similar solutions in terms of commoditisation, governance, and resourcing (architecture), the research found that in the four cases four quite different approaches were taken. It is concluded that while the core processes were the same across the cases, (i) the detail of the process, (ii) the variation in the contexts, (iii) the logic of the decision process as they evolved, and (iv) the view of the actors involved (as to whether each element could be treated as a commodity) combined together to lead to quite different approaches in each case. Moreover as time progressed and experience was gained and the situation evolved, actors changed their views (alignment) resulting in changes to the business process. There appeared to be little transfer of knowledge across different parts of the organisation.

This thesis analyzes the postwar political economy of the global photography industry, i.e. camera/lens and film, up to 1995 and finds that the Japanese industry has met unprecedented success. The question addressed in this thesis is: who drove the success of the Japanese photography industry, the government or firms? The words 'rivalry' and 'cooperation' are used in this thesis because they most aptly describe the three main relationships in the photography industry during the postwar period: bureaucrat-politician, government-industry and firm-firm. Cooperation and rivalry always existed in these relationships, but one often took precedence over the other. The camera/lens makers in Japan's photography industry benefited from cooperative relationships through export promotion and import protection policies from 1950 to 1973. Export promotion was effective because Japanese camera/lens firms began to 'export' to US military postal exchanges in Japan during the Allied Occupation (1945-1952). After that time, the US market was wide open to Japanese exports due to Japan's balance of payments problems and America's mounting security concerns in Asia. Exports of cameras/lenses to the US and Europe expanded throughout the 1950s and 1960s, while photographic film manufacturers (who also produced cameras/lenses) caught up technologically and enjoyed a protected domestic market for film. After 1974, rivalry increased in the three main relationships primarily due to changes in the international trading regime and within Japan. In particular, firm-firm rivalry in cameras/lenses and film grew throughout the 1970s and intensified during the 1980s as new technological advances raised the stakes for global market shares. This thesis shows that some firms have been successful despite government involvement in the industry, while others have been successful because of it. Cooperation between the government and industry was important in the early years because of the tight controls placed on industry (up to the early 1970s). But the influence of the government waned as the firms within the photography industry went global and rivalry among firms increased. Additional sectoral studies of Japan's early export industries (e.g. sewing machines, bicycles, clocks/watches) are needed to provide additional evidence of the extent to which there was cooperation and/or rivalry in the three main relationships in Japan's postwar political economy.

Technological innovation and globalisation are driving profound economic, political and cultural changes. There is a widespread acknowledgement that organisations need to be more strategically flexible to cope with increased levels of competition and market change. The research reported here has two objectives. The first is that of identifying the causes of strategic flexibility in organisations, and the second being to implement methods of improving strategic flexibility. A model of decision-making behaviour has been developed, which identifies the areas of individual and group decision-making behaviour that affect strategic flexibility. The model has general applicability. A significant cause of strategic inflexibility is a behavioural. dysfunction in individuals that produces a much wider dysfunction in the organisation. The same model also provides the basis for the evaluation and improvement of such behaviours. This has led to the development of processes and tools to reduce the barriers to adopting high quality decision-making behaviour. However, individual behavioural. change, while being an essential foundation, is insufficient on its own to achieve high rates of organisational and technological adaptation at low levels of disruption. The second objective has been to implement a systematic process for integrating all players in a strategically flexible organisation. In the absence of a consistent, systematic process, particularly for organisational and technological innovation, a design model of the business has been originated and developed. This has been shown to be applicable to a wide range of organisational cultures and integrates recent trends in organisational thinking. Individual innovations in processes and tools, which have been central to the development and introduction of the design model, have been implemented in an organisation. These innovations are in the areas of innovation management, portfolio management, product targeting and target agreement, and are described to achieve wider application. The concept of the brand has been shown to be a powerful 'attractor' to develop an organisation's fundamental relationship with its environment in the long, medium and short term. Because the values of a brand represent basic human motivational values, they provide stability for long term planning and can align internal decision-making values, innovation and core competencies to the benefit of the organisation and their workers, their customers and the wider environment. The research work has shown that an organisation can meet the simultaneous requirements of design speed, knowledge reuse, semi-independent decision-making and creativity at the lowest possible level of the organisation. The concepts and tools are therefore valuable in supporting a step-change in the performance of conventional and virtual organisations. The modular partitioning of organisations, products and processes is compatible with the design model of the business, -and the strategies are synergistic. While modularity in a traditional organisation. could lead to decay and loss of strategic flexibility, its integration within the design model framework supports a dynamically unstable, but continuously innovative and long-lived organisation.

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This thesis investigates the relationship between self-identity and consumption by discussing the conceptual and measurement issues of consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. The investigation is based on the theories of personality, self-identity, and interpersonal relationship. The self-identity theories (Belk 1988; Cooley 1964; James 1890; Mead 1935) suggest that consumers may use brands to construct, maintain, and enhance their self-identities. Drawing from the literature of personality and self-identity, this thesis repositions the concept of personality for the context of consumption and refers it to self-identity (self-perception) rather than behaviour. This repositioning indicates that consumer personality and brand personality can be examined by the same personality concept. On the basis of the self-identity theories, a positive relationship is expected to exist between consumer personality and brand personality. Moreover, the interpersonal relationship theories (Aron et al. 1991; Rodin 1978; Thibaut and Kelley 1959) indicate that the relationship partners become a part of the self-identity in a close relationship. Therefore, it is hypothesised that the closer the brand personality and consumer personality perceived by the consumers (consumer-brand congruence), the better the brand relationship quality. This study applies a quasi-experiment from a field setting to examine the relationship among consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. A 2 (high and low involvement) x 2 (high and low feeling) factorial design is featured to explore the role of involvement and feeling in the relationship of self-identity and consumption. A total number of 468 observations reveals that consumer and brand personality are strongly and positively related. The greater the consumer-brand congruence is, the better the brand relationship. Minimal moderating effects of involvement and feeling to the relationships between consumer personality and brand personality and between consumer-brand congruence and brand relationship quality are observed. These findings suggest that consumers use brands from various product categories in different situations to maintain their self-identities. The study attempts to make contributions on the theoretical, methodological, and managerial levels. Theoretically, it clarifies the concepts of consumer personality and brand personality, and reaffirms the concept of brand relationship. In this way, some measurement issues of self-identity and brand personality are resolved. The findings suggest that brand personality can be used as a tool to investigate global markets and to facilitate market segmentation and communication. Finally, the limitations of the thesis are recognised and directions for future research are offered.

This thesis reports on a study conducted to investigate the relationship between the integration of mobile telephony services into micro-business processes and perceived enhanced business performance in a developing economy context, with detailed evidence drawn from a sample of 210 micro-businesses in Afghanistan and Cameroon. The research conceptualises, operationalises, and empirically tests an eclectic research model which integrates theory from the literature on the adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), on information economics, on strategic management, on entrepreneurship, and on small business growth and business performance. The research data was collected through a questionnaire, and call data extracted from the mobile phone activity-logs of micro-business owner-managers. This data was supplemented by the use of carefully-chosen photographs. The collected data was analysed using Structural Equation Modelling Techniques (SEM) with the help of AMOS 17 and SPSS statistical packages. The study also used Latent Visual Data Analysis (LVDA) to corroborate the statistical outcomes of this analysis. The results of this study identified the ‘integration of mobile telephony services into micro-business operations’, the ‘entrepreneurial competence of micro-business owner-managers’ and the ‘micro-business environment’ as having a direct influence on perceived enhanced business performance because of their potential to enable substantial cost savings, provide greater integration of the internal and external environments of the business, increase operational flexibility and reduce information asymmetries. The results also identified that ‘micro-business environments’ in Afghanistan and Cameroon tend to have a negative relationship with enhanced business performance if not moderated by the use of mobile telephony services. Finally, given the importance of micro-businesses in stimulating economic growth in developing economies and their relatively high failure rates, and because of the fact that many micro-businesses perceive that the cost of mobile telephony services are ‘high-to-very high’, this research provides greater opportunity for a discussion of the kinds of intervention strategies that could be used to improve the business integration of mobile telephony services and could therefore enhanced business performance.

Drawing on data from Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004, this thesis assesses the uptake of High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs), the factors associated with the uptake of HPWPs and the relationship between HPWPs and performance (also termed the "HPWP-performance link") in small and medium-sized firms. The findings show that medium-sized firms have a higher uptake of HPWPs compared to small firms in general. They also show that the extent of the use of HPWPs in small firms tends to be influenced more by internal than external factors, while the opposite holds true for medium-sized firms. Although the widely reported HPWP-performance link holds in large firms, the findings suggest only a specific bundle of HPWPs seeking to develop opportunities for employees to participate in management decision making and use their skills and abilities at work are related to improved financial performance in small firms. However, neither the overall use of HPWPs nor any specific bundles of practices are associated with better performance in medium-sized firms. In medium-sized firms, some HPWPs are positively associated with performance and some others are negatively associated with performance. These findings suggest the HPWP-performance link in medium-sized firms is distinct from that in small and large firms. Overall, the findings suggest small and medium-sized firms should be analyzed as two distinct groups and the HPWP-performance link is not universal. The lack of a consistent HPWP-performance link in medium-sized firms has important implications for HRM theory, the HR advice that medium-sized firms should be offered, and government support and employment policies targeted at medium-sized firms.

This study seeks to answer the question of how to explain voluntary disclosure of companies listed on an emerging capital market. It intends to investigate the extent of voluntary disclosure especially that of Thai listed companies, and the influence of company characteristics, financial attributes, and corporate governance related factors on voluntary disclosure practices. The objectives of this research are (i) To evaluate voluntary disclosure practices of Thai listed companies over the period 1995 to 2005. (ii) To examine the contribution of company characteristics, financial attributes and corporate governance related factors in explaining variation in the extent of voluntary disclosure. (iii) To investigate perceptions of persons positioned to influence voluntary disclosure in order to obtain further insights into voluntary disclosure practices of Thai listed companies. This study applies an empirical approach to investigate voluntary disclosure practices of Thai listed companies. The quantitative and qualitative methods are employed in order to provide the best understanding of the research problems. This study intends to combine the benefit from obtaining perception towards voluntary disclosure from a semi-structured interview with a quantitative data analysis derived from a self-constructed disclosure index. Results from the qualitative analysis are used to confirm the results and enhance the interpretation of the results from the quantitative analysis. The examination of the extent of voluntary disclosure in corporate annual reports reveals that even among the most actively traded stocks on the SET, there was considerable variability in the amount of information voluntarily disclosed. By using the univariate and multivariate analyses, significant variables that explain variation in voluntary disclosures are found to be company size, type of industry, and CEO/Chairman role duality. The results also suggest that variation in voluntary disclosure could be influenced particularly from differences in time periods, especially period before and after the 1997 financial crisis. Of the three specific information categories, non-financial information is most explained, while financial information is least explained by the variables specified in the model. Results on specific information disclosure tend to support those reported at the overall level. The results also support the relative applicability of disclosure theory, especially the agency theory in explaining variation in voluntary disclosure. The interview findings suggest that voluntary disclosure behaviour is more complicated than previously assumed by the quantitative study. The opinions of preparers, users and regulators help to validate and complement the interpretation of statistical findings. The interviewees reveal some areas that could influence voluntary disclosure decisions which have not been included in the quantitative study. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on voluntary disclosure practices of Thai listed companies, as an example of the emerging capital market in economic transition. Results from statistical analysis, together with perceptions of the influential individuals interviewed, provide a better understanding of voluntary disclosure practices. The examination of voluntary disclosures at the disaggregated level, which has not been observed thoroughly in the Thai context, contributes to in-depth understanding of disclosure behaviour and helps to validate the findings of disclosure at the aggregated level.