published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Understanding the opportunity identification process represents a core entrepreneurship domain research focus. Many studies focusing on traditional firm performance outcomes neglect the entrepreneurial human and social capital drivers that are linked to opportunity identification. Research on Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) has explored different dynamics associated with the formation of firms emanating from HEIs (e.g. from the perspective of the individual firm; by exploring support and influence offered by the parent organisation; and through analysis of the spinout process). The contribution from the individual entrepreneur in identifying an opportunity for commercialisation has not been fully explored. This study looks at how academic entrepreneurs from HEIs and non-academic entrepreneurs, from the same industrial sector, identify opportunities and accumulate resources for commercialisation during the formation of life-science firms in a geographical life-science cluster in Scotland. Entrepreneurship, studied from a human and social capital perspective, identifies how lead entrepreneurs and other team members use their individual and accumulated experiences to leverage resources. The Resource-Based View (RBV), traditionally used to examine the link between firms’ internal characteristics and competitive advantage, is extended to explore entrepreneurial behaviour during opportunity identification. Emerging themes from extant literature identify entrepreneurial team formation and the external environment as potential resource pools which aid the formation of firms. Using a process-based, case-study research approach, entrepreneurs and team members were interviewed to gather information about the identification of life-science opportunities. A lead entrepreneur’s general human capital, in the form of educational achievement, was found to be a key factor shaping the opportunity identification process. Further, a specific entrepreneurial and scientific human capital was leveraged to circumvent resource barriers. Social capital also facilitated the identification and leverage of scarce resources. Lead entrepreneurs with narrower resource profiles selected a resource munificent sponsored environment to gain access to additional resources. However, a dynamic, yet unreported in empirical research, was revealed from the data. Over time, lead academic entrepreneurs were encouraged to exit sponsored environments to enhance their independence whilst industry entrepreneurs generally sought sponsored environments for physical resources. Theory building ensued during the process of gathering data and analysing the data through comparison and iterating between existing theories.

Homo economicus has dominated mainstream Economics during the last century. One of the main assumptions of this model is that humans maximise their own utility functions. In other words, homo oeconomicus, before taking action, considers the consequences on their own future interests, which are generally assumed to be monetary. This thesis provides experimental results showing that human behaviour often differs from that of homo oeconomicus, particularly in environments where trust and reciprocity are salient concerns. To be precise, this dissertation analyses the employment relationship, focusing particularly on the importance of trust and the role of direct reciprocity in the relationship between managers and workers. Reciprocity is an important contract enforcement device in the presence of incomplete labour contracts. By reciprocity between employer and employee, what is meant is a predisposition, within the institutional context of defined employment tasks, to cooperate with the other party even at personal cost, and a willingness to punish the other party if they violate cooperative norms, even when punishment is costly to the individual. The original contribution of this thesis goes beyond this result and shows the impact of informal employment rules on reciprocity. In particular, it uses experimental methods to identify two distinct governance patterns for employment relationships: the rigid governance structure and the flexible governance structure. The former is characterised by task-centred rules and defines the boundaries of jobs in a much more specific way than the latter, which is characterised by function-centred rules, and gives rise to a more flexible and discretionary model of employment relationships. The most important original experimental result of this thesis is that rigid governance characterised by taskcentred rules and low reciprocity is better suited to one-shot transactions, whereas flexible governance characterised by function-centred rules and a high level of reciprocity is better suited to repeated transactions.

In my thesis I investigate the causes and the effects of the allocation of workers into occupations, sectors, and locations. My analysis is substantially aided by the availability of new data on workers’ talents (or skills). The first chapter of the thesis exploits the fact that workers choose occupations according to their talents in order to study the effects on wages of the declining demand for manufacturing and clerical occupations. This is done by relating the occupational choices and the wages associated with particular talents over two representative cohorts of young workers in the United States between the late 1980s and the late 2000s. The second chapter, which is conjoint work, analyses the effect of an inflow of talent on productivity and output in the academic sector. We exploit the countercyclical relative attractiveness of academia as an employer over the business cycle to study periods of high (recessions) and low (booms) inflow of talent into that sector. Finally, the third chapter shows that government policy in the form of commuting tax breaks has substantial effects on the allocation of workers into jobs and residences. In particular, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 in Germany to estimate commuting costs’ effects on workers’ decisions to change the location of their job and/or their house.

This report explores how, why, and to what ends the Partnership for Sustainable Development is attempting to integrate land use and transportation planning in the United States. Analysis of the Partnership’s organization and operation reveals that while the Partnership Agreement suggests that the goal is policy integration, the vague objectives in the agreement and weak linkages displayed between the Partnership members--the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, and Environmental Protection Agency--are indicative of basic policy coordination. Historical and cultural characteristics of the departments are partly responsible for the gap between the goals and the rhetoric. To understand how integrated planning works the report examines the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Agency's current planning efforts and best practices from the European Union, where integrated planning has occurred for almost 20 years. The report ends with recommendations for the Partnership about how to learn from the experiences of the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Agency and the European Union. / text

Many organisations invest a considerable amount of capital and resources, implementing new techniques to improve their operating performance. Many approaches and techniques are available. New fashionable methods tend to displace older approaches, which may still have value. An effective strategy for selecting and implementing improvement initiatives is an important issue to ensure stakeholder satisfaction. This research aims to investigate quality management and continuous improvement practices, study and analyse several approaches leading to continuous improvement (CI), then construct a framework to assist senior management teams, by providing a decision aid for selecting improvement initiatives. Six key improvement approaches including Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, ISO9001, Business Process Reengineer (BPR), Lean production (Lean), Business Excellence framework (BE) were selected as the focus in this study. The research was carried out in three phases. Phase One established a conceptual background for the adoption of CI initiatives based on qualitative and quantitative studies of the literature. It described the two decision criteria of fashion setting and pay-offs. Phase Two provided empirical studies of the Quality Management (QM) approaches adopted in three case companies in Thailand. Different decision criteria for the selection of CI approaches were identified from these case studies, together with suggestions from fourteen quality experts and two additional case companies. In-depth analyses of each case study plus interviews with quality experts provided a context and guidance in development of the decision-aid framework for selecting CI approaches. Then in Phase Three the decision-aid framework was proposed, verified, and refined in testing with a multinational case company of four different plants in the Asia Pacific region and two groups of Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) using action research and assessment questionnaires. The primary outcome of this research is a decision-aid for selecting CI approaches, which demonstrated high utility in practice. The main contributions of this research are a decision-aid for selecting CI initiatives, which was developed and tested, and a number of advancements to the theory of QM and CI, the theory of management fashion, and the application of operations strategy in the QM context.

This thesis is structured around four empirical chapters examining related issues in corporate governance. The sample of FTSE 350 companies 1995-2005 has unique properties which are exploited to advance our understanding of the executive pay-setting process; the turnover of Chief Executives (CEOs); the market's reaction to shareholder activism and voting behaviour; and the distribution of pay within the boardroom. Chapter two assesses whether remuneration committees facilitate optimal contracting or whether CEOs are able to capture the pay-setting process and inflate their own remuneration. The findings of prior research, which have been mixed, are shown to be sensitive to the econometric specification employed. A comprehensive assessment of non-executive directors' independence is undertaken. Little evidence is found to support a rents capture model. Chapter three applies duration analysis within a competing risks framework to model the tenure and mode of exit of CEOs. The likelihood of forced departure is found to decrease sharply from the fifth year of a CEO's tenure. Some evidence is found to suggest that this is because CEOs who survive beyond year four entrench themselves in their position. Chapter four considers the impact of shareholder activism. Voting dissent appears inconsequential in terms of increasing shareholder returns, reducing CEO pay or increasing the likelihood of CEO dismissal. However, firing the CEO of a poorly performing company improves shareholder returns soon after the CEO's dismissal. Chapter five examines the structure and distribution of pay amongst board members. As a test of tournament theory, the impact of a rival's succession to CEO on the incumbent directors' compensation and likelihood of exit is examined. A rival's succession has a greater impact on the existing directors' likelihood of exit than it does on compensation.

There are many factors influencing the sustainability of Closed-Loop Supply Chain (CLSC), in terms of industrial operation flows and environmental perspectives. This research aims to identify these factors in order to provide a better understanding of the process flows and interactions between the primary and secondary metal manufacturers and remanufacturers. In particular, it focuses on the influences of the Customer, Environment and Technology (CET) factors, with the intention of finding out “the specific approaches and techniques the Chinese metal manufacturers and remanufacturers adopt for sustainable development of the CLSC”. Qualitative case studies were performed in seven companies in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of South China. These companies are Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of primary metal manufacturers, secondary metal remanufacturers, dismantlers, and third party reverse logistics providers. Data and information were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations on sites, in order to analyse the process flows in the supply chains. The key findings include the demonstration of the CLSC networks in the context of the Chinese metal industry, and the development of the process maps and Positioning Tool for case companies to identify themselves in the CLSC. These are theoretical and practical supports for academics and companies to understand the handling of various qualities and quantities of primary and secondary metals. Simultaneously, they assist companies in identifying and positioning themselves in the CLSC in order to define their direction for sustainable development in the long-term.