Our concern is with control problems which arise in connection wi th a discrete time Markov chain model for a graded manpower system. In this model, the members of an organisation are classified into distinct classes. As time passes, they move from one class to another, or to the outside world, in a random way governed by fixed transition probabilities. The emphasis is, then, placed on examining means of reaching and then retaining the structure best adapted to the aims of the organisation, with the assumption that only the recruitment flows are subject to control. Attainability and maintainability have received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, much of the work has been concerned with deterministic analysis, in the sense that average values are used in place of random variables. We adopt, instead, a stochastic approach to the study of these forms of control. We present some of the problems encountered when evaluating probabilities related to the distribution of stock numbers at different steps and we give a detailed numerical comparison of different recruitment strategies. An iterative method is developed to compute exact values of the probabilities of attaining and maintaining a structure in one step. It is designed for the special but very important case of systems in which promotion is only possible to the next highest grade. Its efficiency makes possible the use of exact results in the comparison of the recruitment strategies, which was formerly accomplished by means of simulation techniques only. As to the comparison itself, it emerges that the strategy which, at each step, steers the system as far as possible towards the goal is superior to all deterministic strategies. Also, this strategy is shown to come close to providing the highest level of control that is possible.

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This research explores the reformed UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) as an institution addressing a changed world, and as an illustration of evolving global food security governance. The research sets out to answer the extent to which the CFS is realising its reform objectives and how it is positioning itself within a changing architecture of global food security governance. Informed by literature on global governance and embedded neoliberalism, the inquiry centres around three case studies – Civil Society Mechanism, Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, and the Global Strategic Framework – which serve to highlight the operationalization of key reform objectives while simultaneously providing insight into broader policy processes and dynamics. Data was collected through document analysis, participant observation, and interviews. The resulting analysis provides clear evidence of the impact of enhanced participation on policy outcomes and concludes that the policy recommendations emerging from the CFS are amongst the most comprehensive and useful in terms of applicability and uptake at the national and regional level. The analysis also reveals that despite its methods, outcomes and mandate, the CFS is being systematically undermined by other actors seeking to maintain influence and sustain neoliberal hegemony across food security policies at the global level. The research contributes to global governance theory by describing the functioning of a mechanisms that can address democratic deficits in global governance while elucidating related opportunities and challenges. The research also contributes to scholarship on global food security policy by challenging the application of previous analyses to the contemporary reality. The research addresses limitations in global governance literature by mapping the complexity of social and political relations across sites of negotiation, contestation and compromise between actors. The policy implications derived from this thesis focus on the need to further problematize food security and for policies to target structural causes of food insecurity. Building on the experiences of the CFS, this thesis concludes that transparent, participatory mechanisms need to be created which acknowledge, and seek to rectify, existing imbalances in power relations in policy-making processes.

Broader transformations in the economy are linked to a changing spatial organisation for economic activity, particularly in industries imbued with a high creative content, although there are competing explanations regarding the nature of this logic. This thesis explores the ways in which space and place matter to the creative industries sector. In particular, it examines the logic guiding concentration in the centre as opposed to decentralisation to more peripheral sites within a transforming regional city negotiating its place in the knowledge economy. There has been a significant policy thrust from formerly industrial cities to build a share in this sector, often touted as a panacea for urban decline, but critical evidence regarding the possibilities for this is hard to find. The research employs a mixed methods approach, which is applied to the case study of Greater Manchester. The study firstly probes the spatial pattern of creative industry activity there and selected two sectors with a somewhat different distribution: advertising, and film and television. Contextual information is gathered from a range of documentary evidence. Semi-structured interviews with 28 firms and 18 policymakers and other stakeholders are used to probe the determinants affecting the decisions regarding firm location. Three dominant determinants of location were identified by the research: the availability and cost of space, place reputation and transport connectivity. The empirical findings further suggested that there were a set of firm characteristics guiding location choices relating to the size, profile, age and activities of the firms. It was found that the city centre still provided a considerable pull related to traditional agglomeration advantages, including access to skilled labour and strong transport connectivity, as well as a sense of place brand. Location outside the city centre was chiefly prompted by the cost and size of business premises or was made possible by the place reputation advantages not holding for more routine, less growth-orientated or locally-focused firms. The study also identified evidence of displacement and industrial gentrification and the recent regeneration of the city centre had exacerbated these processes. There was some divergence from the existing literature regarding the importance of proximity for knowledge sharing and spillovers, for which little evidence was found by the interviews.

This research attempts to build a model to evaluate the economic development level of cities using a set of factors associated to the concepts of competitiveness and attractiveness. Traditionally competitiveness has only been related to rankings with a very limited contribution to regional and urban economics. At the same time, the concept of attractiveness is gaining more attention from economists who now define it in terms of competition for capital, people and government resources. Attractiveness is now linked to stages of economic growth to provide a broader framework to analyse the process in which cities are immersed to reach a higher standards of quality of life for their inhabitants. It is claimed that cities do compete with each not just for resources or people, but also for great events, resources from international organisations and institutions, prizes, infrastructure of high calibre, and even for an image among the public. On the other, attracting investment is not just reduced to companies from any economic sector. The theory suggests that making the city more attractive implies a competitive process to create the appropriate conditions for business to work in a stable environment. “Redefining” the cities’ image is useless if it is not accompanied by a total reengineering of the government’s activities, where support for business plays an important role. The empirical analysis begins with the presentation of the economic asymmetries among the sample of 40 Mexican cities. It is concluded that the economic policies of the central government in the last ten years have benefited those places which were already rich. Evidence is presented using the factors and variables of competitiveness and attractiveness with secondary data in order to illustrate the magnitude of the asymmetries among cities. In the second part of the analysis, two econometric models are presented. The first one intends to “capture” the variance of the 72 variables used in the experiment. The objective is to build an equation portraying urban economic development. However, as it was expected, the high statistical correlation among the variables led to a model including only 9, very few if the model is intended for simulating the impacts of decisions made by local authorities. The second model is constructed using all the factors and variables with the idea of being able to simulate as many as possible urban policies in a dynamic context. The results provided by the model are consistent with the results presented in the first part of the empirical analysis and seem to fit well the data for the sample selected.

This thesis investigates empirically the effects of the corporate income tax in an open economy. The analysis is carried out using linear panel-data regression methods. The first chapter studies the incidence of the corporate income tax. It introduces a model with location-specific rents which distinguishes between a direct effect and an indirect effect of the corporate income tax on labour. The former occurs when an increase in the corporate tax reduces the rent over which the employees and the company bargain. This reduces the bargained wage. The latter effect is the result highlighted in previous literature wherein an increase in the corporate tax reduces the stock of capital and consequently wages. Chapter 1 estimates the direct effect using accounting data from over 55,000 companies located in nine OECD countries (1996{2003) and finds that the tax is largely shifted to the labour force. Chapter 2 shows that measured productivity of multinational firms is overestimated in low-tax countries (and vice versa), because multinationals manipulate the value of sales upwards and the costs of intermediate inputs downwards. The analysis is carried out using accounts from about 16,000 firms located in 10 OECD countries (1998{2004). The results show that a 10 percentage points cut in the statutory corporate tax rate induces multinationals to increase their measured total factor productivity by about 10 per cent. Chapter 3 investigates the effect of tax haven operations in a corporate group. Using accounting data for about 3,400 corporate groups in 15 OECD countries (2003{2007), the study finds that tax haven operations reduce the tax liabilities of multinational companies by 7.4 per cent in the long run (at the mean). Also, the ETR of a corporate group with tax haven subsidiaries is one percentage point lower than the ETR of entities without such operations. Chapter 3 also finds that the marginal ETR of companies headquartered in a jurisdiction with a territorial system is lower than the marginal ETR of companies headquartered in jurisdictions adopting a worldwide taxation system.

The thesis is an analytical study of the structure and activities of the International Transport Workers' Federation(ITF) from 1945 to 1965.It gives particular attention to the nature of the ITF's memberships, especially its expansion to the United States and to the Third World; to the ITF's political stance in a period of enormous international tension and to the interrelationship of both those factors. The ITF was founded in 1896 and there are few substantial transport workers' unions which are not yet affiliated. It has long been recognized as the most effective of all the international trade union organizations. The ITF made a significant contribution to the Allied war effort in the Second World War and its membership in every branch of the international transport industry took on great strategic importance during the Cold War. The thesis is based on original research, making special use of the ITF's extensive archives at the Modern Records Centre of the University of Warwick. There is a close and critical focus on the ITFs political engagement, exemplified by its controversial part in countering communist influence in European ports in the early 1950s at the time of the introduction of the European Recovery Programme (the Marshall Plan). This discussion is, however, set in the context of the ITF's structures and its broader social and industrial concerns, such as the defence of trade union and civil rights and assistance to transport workers' unions in the newly de-colonized developing countries. The conclusions draw out the main findings of the research and discuss the dearth of academic literature on the international trade union movement, and especially the almost total neglect of 'International Trade Secretariats', organizations such as the ITF which group together national trade unions in specific industries and services. On this basis, it surveys a poorly served theoretical field and outlines implications for future theoretical analysis.

Despite a growing literature on business process re-engineering (BPR) principles and prospects, there is little empirical research evaluating the success or failure of BPR initiatives. This is especially so in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) where the potential for BPR benefit may differ significantly from that in their larger counterparts. An examination of the literature on process re-engineering reveals that BPR guidelines derived from the experiences in large organisations are inadequate for SMEs given the different characteristics of SMEs in terms of size, structure, culture, resources and technology. The objective of this research is to develop an appropriate basis of BPR guidelines for SMEs. A pluralistic research method is used due to the exploratory nature of the study and the absence of existing rigorous research in the area. This consists of a questionnaire survey of 116 Taiwan-based SMEs, followed by case studies of eight chosen organisations. The findings from the survey enable the researcher to modify the proposed framework of BPR implementing for SMEs, and the case studies explore the factors that facilitate/inhibit BPR success in SMEs in greater detail. The study reveals an opportunity for SMEs to benefit from BPR efforts, although their BPR initiatives are mainly inter-functional. Re-engineering in SMEs is often a response to positive trends, and is largely dependent upon the owner-manager's perceived benefits and risk-taking attitudes. A strategic vision as well as sound external relations may leverage SMEs' re-engineering efforts to higher business integration, while a lack of financial support and non-standardised IS infrastructure may restrict SMEs' BPR initiatives to functional areas. Employee empowerment, dedication to R&D, and innovative use of IT are intertwined and significantly related to BPR success. The study concludes by outlining the principles of BPR guidelines for SMEs based on a modified framework detailing the BPR environment in SMEs. These include a holistic and strategic view towards BPR, the roles of owner-managers and employees, change issues, and implementing BPR as a process change project.

This paper is the executive summary of the portfolio of the author toward the award of Engineering Doctorate of the Warwick University. The title of the portfolio is the same as the title of this paper, which serves as a tool to integrate the works of the author in the whole portfolio. There are ten other papers in the portfolio besides this one. The development and implementation of the author's model of Strategic Change Management (SCM) in a power supply manufacturing company in Hong Kong leading to Agility (AG) is presented in the paper. SCM developed by the author is a comprehensive and practical model that a company can use to improve various aspects of its business. The author has demonstrated this in the areas of Total Quality Management and IS09000 implementation, technology innovation, supply chain management, renovation of information systems, etc. Three mini research projects are included in the portfolio, including the development of a What-if prototype to tackle a common problem in manufacturing resources planning, the design of power supply products for mass customization, and an empirical study on the factor structures and correlations of employee job satisfaction (SAT), organisation excellence (EX) and agility (AG). The SCM model starts with creating the culture for change, which the author sees as the role for the top management of the organisation. The author presents his experience to create such culture when he was parachuted into his organisation as the chief executive. The second step of SCM is analysing the system. A comprehensive qualitative analysis of the economical, social and cultural environment of the company as well as the market forces is given. The step that follows is the implementation of changes, which is a cycle of setting priority, organising, performance measurement, rewarding winners and reinforcement. Practical approaches to tackle the changes in various stages of the cycle are presented. SCM has helped in transforming the company toward agility, and the stage of agility is named Agility Chain by the author. The result of such transformation is also evaluated from the angles of operations performance, financial performance, stock price appreciation, and the change in market perception. The empirical study of employees perception on SAT, EX and AG indicates strong correlations among the three factor structures, and also indicates that the company is moving toward agility under the author's strategic change management.

The UK housebuilding industry faces the challenge of meeting demands for higher quality and greater choice with a construction process that has not changed for many years and a diminishing pool of skilled labour. The situation is exacerbated by the difficulties of finding sufficient land for development. This has led to a strategic bias amongst housebuilding companies towards land acquisition and asset turnover which results in a lack of customer focus. The sector is therefore vulnerable to new entrants with new technologies and more professional customer care practices. These circumstances present an opportunity for a UK housebuilder to develop competitive advantage by pursuing a strategy of innovation leadership. Such a strategy has proved successful in other sectors such as the automotive industry. This thesis analyses industry trends and lessons from best practice to shape a new competition framework for the UK housebuilding industry of the future. This suggests that research and development, product design, process and project management, relationships with customers, quality and innovation will be of growing strategic importance. Techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard, Strategy Mapping and Technology Roadmapping can help firms to explore options and formulate strategies to compete effectively in changing competitive environments. These tools have been employed to create a strategy for a major UK housebuilding company, balanced across four perspectives: financial; customer; internal business processes; learning and growth. This strategy has been implemented principally through the launch of three new businesses that have stimulated change within the core housebuilding business. Progress has been made in enhancing the company's value proposition downstream of its core business and in improving quality and efficiency through the introduction of off-site manufacturing into upstream operations. Early results suggest that innovation leadership can be an effective strategy for a UK housebuilder but progressive culture change across the industry is a key driver for long-term success.