This research investigates the links between operations strategy, business environment, operations resources and business performance of retail firms in China. A framework integrating operations strategy with business environment and operations resources was developed based on existing literature. A triangulation strategy that combines quantitative (questionnaire survey) and qualitative (case studies) methods was employed. The framework was tested using "Survey data from 106 retail firms in China. Multivariate statistical analysis was primarily used as the quantitative method to analyse the questionnaire data. In addition, qualitative studies were performed using five case studies of retail firms in China. The interview data were examined using both within- and cross-case analysis methods. The framework proposed in this research was supported by both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Strong relationships between business environmental factors (such as business cost, competitive hostility, and environmental dynamism), operations strategy, and performance were observed. This research further found that operations resources (such as retail technology applications, human resources, and relationships with customers and suppliers) played an important role in helping retailers develop effective operations strategies and improve performance. This research contributes to the understanding of operations strategy on two fronts. On a theoretical front, this research fills a gap in the existing literature: 1) by examining integrated operations strategy using the resource-based and market-driven views; and 2) by focusing on the service (retail) sector in China. On a practical front, this research provides managerial implications that can help retail firms develop their operations strategies to compete in a competitive and dynamic market.

This thesis explores cross-cultural management from an employee's perspective. It investigates how Chinese employees make sense of their selves in relation to their expatriate managers and to their work in multinational companies (MNCs). After three decades of reforms, China has become a major player in the global economy. Many MNCs have established businesses there. Their operations in China have presented human resource management challenges. To date, most relevant studies were based solely on managerial responses, where the voice of the employees is often marginalised or absent. This study seeks to position the research subject, Chinese employees, at the centre of the discursive space of this thesis, where their previously deprived voice will be accounted for. The methodology is derived from hermeneutics. In-depth interviews with Chinese employees working in MNCs were conducted. Seven themes have emerged from interviews, which broadly fall into the following: supervisor-supervisee relationship, working in MNCs, and the organisational practice. The findings show that "harmony" and "respect" were most valued by the interviewees when they handled differences with their managers. The interviewees perceived that competent supervisors would show "care and concern" and "trust" to subordinates. Additionally, the findings suggest that "development opportunities offered by the MNC" and "fairness exercised in the MNC" were the main reasons for them to join MNCs. The findings also indicate that "less complicated human relationship" was the most attractive aspect about their companies. Drawing from the notion of self from both western and Chinese perspectives to interpret the findings, the thesis reveals possible limits of research often conducted by researchers following conventional (western) conceptual frameworks. The thesis produces insights by following ideas from Chinese sources. While the data is interpreted from a western perspective, there lies its limit. An attempt to re-interpret the data from a Chinese perspective generates further layers of meaning. The latter would be missed, if western conceptual frameworks alone were applied. This study contributes to our understanding of the research subject. Valuable insights are gained into managing Chinese employees; and, practical implications are considered. Regarding methodology, the study lends support to a central position of postcolonial writers, namely, non-western subjects be allowed to speak in their own terms so that their lived experience is no longer unjustly ignored. As the 'self' is constituted by being in relation with the ‘other', the study arrives at a self-other integration, and suggests that such integration be pursued in future research. The integration requires researchers to, firstly, question what is lacking in interpreting non-western subjects from conventional theoretical frameworks, and secondly, to experiment with alternative frameworks so as to initiate dialogues. In attempting such dialogues, supplementary explanations and understanding about the subject can be sought and, indeed, recovered.

How are companies responsible for helping to ensure orderly financial markets? In economic theory, the question is redundant, because orderly markets result from normal business activity, with support from regulators. Within the last few years, however, several episodes have suggested differently. Citigroup investment bank was fined for destabilising bond markets, despite being absolved of criminal conduct. Sovereign wealth funds were compelled to sign a code-of-conduct, to safeguard "free and open markets", despite having brought economic benefits globally. The US and UK governments described the most profitable financial decade in generations as an "age of irresponsibility", after it led to a crisis. These three episodes are the empirical focus of this thesis. The thesis develops a grounded theory of corporate market responsibility (CMR)- an expectation by regulators and other actors that firms will help to regulate systemic risk in financial markets through discretionary activities that supplement regulatory requirements. This expectation explains the controversies, and may help us to anticipate and understand similar episodes in future. Further, it is argued that observing CMR conduct - which relates to risk management, investment policy, and proactive improvement - decreases regulatory risk for financial firms, while not observing it increases regulatory risk. The primary reason for this is that CMR conduct is perceived to reduce systemic risk, and state actors regard market governance as a shared responsibility with firms. In addition to framing these controversies, CMR theory contributes to our understanding of several concepts in decentralised governance and regulatory capitalism. It illustrates a substantive model of meta-regulation - that is, the regulation of corporate self-regulation. As such, it illustrates substantive limits for private authority and its legitimacy. The observation of CMR also reveals new dimensions of sociological processes in financial governance, particularly markets' social embedded ness, and actors' reliance on performative market models. Finally, CMR illustrates a governance model combining incentives with ethics, as regulators seek to de-legitimise regulatory arbitrage by firms. The analysis concludes by arguing that CMR is increasingly relevant for other substantive contexts such as the hedge funds industry and private markets like 'dark pools'.

Drawing on the transcripts of 47 semi-structured interviews with HR practitioners in local government in the English Midlands, this thesis explores what Beech (2008) calls the ‘route to meaning construction of the self’ of HR practitioners as they navigate discourses of HRM and public sector reform in the pursuit of ‘professional’ identity and organizational legitimacy. Through the use of discourse analysis, the study makes three key contributions: firstly, it challenges the dichotomous characterisation of a ‘modernising’ public sector and identifies a discursive pragmatism, whereby public sector employees craft a workable identity reconciling ‘old’ public sector talk with a tempered public sector ‘reform’ discourse to forge ‘third way’ discourses. Secondly, it challenges the notion of ‘strategic’ legitimacy as the only means by which a plausible organizational identity might be constructed for the HR function, with the denigrated ‘administrative’ HR role rewritten as a problem solving and pragmatic orientation. Finally, it concludes that HR legitimacy will remain elusive whilst HR’s identity, particularly in relation to line management, is constructed through gendered and sexualised discourses. The title of the thesis, drawing on the words of interviewees, represents alternative conceptions of the HR function: legitimated through recourse to ‘professionalism’ and partnership talk, or managerial cipher, in thrall to public sector managerialization, particularly through the construction of HR’s role and identity in gendered and sexualised terms.

The plain packaging of tobacco products, the disposal of hazardous waste and the management of toxic chemicals are all areas of health, safety and environmental (HSE) regulation which have faced legal challenges by private corporations under international investment agreements established as a means of promoting and protecting inward investment. How these legal challenges are made possible by the international trade and investment regime, and what lasting impact they are having on the regulatory autonomy of governments is the focus of this research. This empirical work seeks to understand the impact of International Investment Agreements (IIAs) on national regulatory autonomy. By probing trends in regulation as well as the level of awareness of IIAs by government regulators, this research aims to identify the likelihood of constrained regulatory decision making or ‘regulatory chill’ amongst those governments who have faced challenges, or the threat of challenges, to their regulatory measures under IIAs. It will also consider whether any chilling effect is more likely in a developing country versus a developed country environment. This research engages with the relevant international relations literature which looks at the impact of the international integration of markets and trends in globalization on the policy autonomy of national governments. More particularly it looks not only at whether globalization leads to the erosion of national policy autonomy, but whether this manifestation of globalization (ie: increasing numbers of negotiated IIAs with private corporate access to binding investor-state arbitration) leads to the erosion of national policy autonomy in the form of forced regulatory restraint or chill. There has been a proliferation of bilateral and regional rules on investment and with worldwide levels of investment expected to reach $1.8 Trillion by 2015, these agreements are arguably relevant to the overall trade and investment system. In this context, this research will contribute to existing academic literature with respect to the impact of trade and investment agreements on state policymaking autonomy within both developed and developing countries and will make recommendations in the area of trade and investment policy development and negotiations, including the role of investment provisions and investor-state dispute settlement in future bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.

Aims: The purpose is to understand the strategy process approach within SMEs to gain a better understanding of how a SME performs the strategy process. The research aims to develop a strategy process framework through the findings of a case study within a SME, by comparing those findings with the existing literature. Methodology: The research paradigm is moderate constructionism that adopts first a deductive approach to obtain the required theoretical knowledge of how strategy process (phases, activities, and tools) function and how they have been used within empirical studies, with a specific focus on case studies in SMEs. This is achieved through the establishment of a conceptual framework of the strategy process including phases and activities. Second, an inductive approach is adopted to induce from the research findings how the strategy process of the SME evolves. This mixture of deductive and inductive approaches is known as abductive. The research adopts an abductive approach culminating in a strategy process framework based on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), the findings of the case study, and the literature. The research strategy is a single case study using semi-structured interviews during which the interviewer conversationally obtained the required information. This was complemented by documentation evidence. The data analysis process used thematic analysis and an enumeration approach. Results: Whilst the literature lays out a systematic, sequential process, the picture presented by the case study in a SME is somewhat different. The SME was involved in several different aspects of strategy as defined in the literature review, including several phases of the strategy process, and the activities within each of these phases. Some activities were more frequently performed than others, in a very ad-hoc manner. Moreover, The SME did not have a coherent strategy process. The process that the SME uses is messy; it is not systematic; it is not sequential and is not clear. These results are incorporated in a revised conceptual framework to reflect the strategy process actuals used within the SME of the present study. The reasons that explain the finding and the need of the framework may be summarized as: Ambiguous communication of information, Inability to manage development, innovation without a flexible approach, a lack of systematic methods for defining strategy, short-term cash flow issues, and high risks in the SME. Originality/value is contribution to knowledge (theory and empirical): First: a comprehensive literature review investigated and extended the strategy process phases and activities literature, by establishment of a conceptual framework of the strategy process including phases and activities. Second: this conceptual framework was revised based on these findings to reflect the strategy process actually emplaced within the SME in the present study, this aided an overall understanding of the theory of the strategy process. Third: due to the lack of formal strategy the SME had much ‘emergent’ strategy, which it failed to deal with effectively. Normatively, it should work to overcome this, by implementing a more coherent and formal approach to the strategy process framework (using the BSC framework with support of other strategic tools [QFD and SWOT analysis]). Fourth: the methodological implementation of the research paradigm of moderate constructionism and validation through crystallization.

Today’s organizations face various challenges that put them at unknown cross-roads full of opportunities as well as hazards. The field of sustainable development has generated a large and growing body of academic literature. However, there is a scarcity of those academic studies relating to the sustainable development of organizations (SDO). It is this gap in knowledge that this research has sought to address and fill by setting out to answer the question as to what factors have been found by scholars of relevant literature to influence SDO. A developed model of systematic review (SR) methodology has been applied in this research. This model comprises phases, criteria, terms and procedures, as well as unpacking the different contexts related to the findings of each reviewed study. 71 relevant studies have been included in the systematic review processes. The search included any academic literature relating to the subject, written in English and published between 1990 and 2011. The factors resulting from the systematic review of relevant studies have been categorized into themes. These factors have then been discussed and identified, and the schools of thought, cultural and business contexts have been taken into consideration. 73 factors influencing SDO are identified in this research. Overall conclusions of the categorization and understanding of different factors of different themes are shown, discussed and illustrated in the last chapter. Some factors appeared in the reviewed studies more frequently than others, and have thus been classified as ‘very important factors’. They include leadership; employees' motivation, reward and satisfaction; satisfying (and excellent services for) customers; innovation; clear mission and vision; employees' involvement and participation, and HR development and activities. Other factors appeared less frequently, but are still considered important factors, while many factors appeared only once or twice in the reviewed studies and have therefore been classified as less important. The implications of the influence of the identified important factors, as well as their relationships and contexts, are discussed showing that for an organization to strive toward SDO, an integrated continuous implementation of at least all the very important factors is required. The theoretical contribution this research has made to the existing body of knowledge is that it is the first academic research to systematically search for and review the factors found by scholars of relevant studies to influence SDO which have not been identified before, providing a new and further understanding of the above mentioned factors. The term SDO (defined as the continuous and long-term development and success of organizations) is also being used and raised for the first time in respect of organizations in a general, rather than environmental context. The methodological contribution is the developed SR model mentioned above. The practical contribution is to provide leaders of different organizations with new and further understanding of the implications and relationships of the factors that influence SDO. Finally, further possible directions for future research (such as relationships between schools and factors or cultural specific studies) and research limitations (i.e. the above mentioned inclusion terms) have been indicated.

“If there was only one truth, you could not paint a hundred canvases on a single theme.” Pablo Picasso, 1966 Companies are faced with changing markets, stiffening competition, increasing uncertainty and as a result are thus confronted with a situation that makes it ever more difficult to keep abreast of the latest developments in technology and trends in society. Market intelligence as a methodology of practice provides an organisation with the opportunity to capture competitive information and to transform it into valuable intelligence in order to identify opportunities and threats at an early stage. Systematically reviewing the existing literature on market intelligence and related concepts has shown that, apart from a fragmented state of research worth its while to reconsider, no conceptual framework on market intelligence in the plant building industry is available. An exploratory and qualitative case study that used semi-structured interviews with experts from the industry has led to negotiating a shared sense of understanding and to a refined conceptual framework on plant building market intelligence. The conceptual framework developed consists of three pillars: (1) central intelligence, (2) decentralization to operational divisions and (3) inter-departmental intelligence communities influenced by the characteristics and peculiarities of the very industry. This framework allows for a conceptualization that connects market intelligence to many organizational units and layers, therefore supporting diffusion of intelligence throughout the company. It furthermore fosters exchange of information and knowledge by looking beyond computerized databases, connects with learning processes and builds on integrated analysis frameworks based on social networks as an organic strategy. Significantly, inter-departmental intelligence communities are well suited to provide the connection between intelligence, reflection, action and learning. This is deemed particularly valuable in times where decision making has become ever harder due to turbulent environments, reducing the relevance of plain cost-benefit and probabilistic reasoning approaches.

This study focuses on training needs assessment (TNA) in a Libyan context. It is the first of its kind involving a large Libyan public utility company in relation to investigating training processes and TNA. The study adopts interpretivist and subjectivist paradigms; both are linked to qualitative research. A qualitative and inductive approach was used to generate in-depth data and information from people responsible for training and from those who have received training. A qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews was adopted. One key contribution of the study was the development of a theoretical TNA framework in a Libyan context, which was based on western models (Olivas’s, 2007 model and Vaughn’s, 2005, model) and also on the findings of the present study. This theoretical framework consists of six stages of implementation, to suit the Arab and Libyan cultural context in which needs assessment is undertaken through several steps due to the bureaucratic nature of management and the many hierarchical layers of the organisation. Another contribution was that of the impact of social, personal economic and organisational factors on TNA process and nomination of employees for training. Social factors, e.g., favouritism and ‘Wasta’, are commonplace in the Libyan culture and plays some role in the nomination process, and social relationships (kinship and friendship) seem to affect the managerial performance when identifying employees’ training needs. The study indicates the importance of the individuals’ economic factors, in terms of trainees’ financial gains, especially training overseas. Organisational factors were also found to have an impact on the process of individuals’ needs assessment, in terms of the absence of appropriate regulations or protocols relating to the process of identifying training needs, or overlooking any regulations or protocols, if any, for some reasons, including favouritism. This led to including these factors and issues in the proposed theoretical framework. The study also contributed to our understanding of IHRD and national HRD policies in non-western countries. The study found that two of the factors identified with IHRD; administration and political and economic factors, seem to have an impact of the LGEC’s HRD. It also contributed to the conceptual knowledge in TNA in the field of IHRD, as employees’ requirements for training and development is compared with research from Arab countries. In the Libyan context, several social factors seemed to have intervened in the process of nominating candidates, such as ‘Wasta’, favouritism, kinship and friendship, in addition to management and Ministry officials intervention in this process, which were not found in western literature, and drawing from the empirical data a view was formed of what models and processes form the basis of a public utility sector’s practices in a Libyan context based on centrally planned economy and relatively young, growing educational base but tribally based culture. The study also contributed to our knowledge by having a more appropriate definition of TNA and in terms of a clearer debate about TN analysis and TN assessment, and that TN assessment is not synonymous with TN assessment; rather, TN analysis is perceived as a step of TN assessment.

The importance of international transfer pricing (ITP) has increased alongside the globalisation of business and the increasing importance of international trade and global marketing. During the 1990s,the OECD and numerous different countries (including the United Kingdom and the United States) have published a series of transfer pricing guidelines, rules and regulations. These developments have raised the profile of ITP and increased teh pressures placed on multinational enterprises (MNEs) to ensure that their intra-group transactions reflect arm's length prices.