Work-family research in Chinese societies often directly adopts the Western work-family model and rarely attempts to consider cultural differences in the importance of employees’ parents. Researchers infrequently address the role of parents in the work-family field. The aim of this thesis was to understand the influence of employees’ parents on work-family balance and its related outcomes in a Chinese society, Taiwan. A multi-method approach was employed consisting of three studies. First, the nature of the influence of employees’ parents in Taiwan was explored through interviews, followed by an online questionnaire survey with Taiwanese employees to examine the relationships between the influence of employees’ parents, work-family balance, organisational behaviour and wellbeing. Third, a secondary data analysis was used to provide triangulations for the findings of the questionnaire survey. The interview study explored the influence of employees’ parents as six types of demand and six types of support. It also found that parent demand had a negative effect on employees’ work-family balance, while parent support had a positive effect. In the questionnaire survey, parent demand and parent support measures were developed. Using these measures, the relationships between the influence of employees’ parents, work-family balance and outcomes were tested using regression analyses. The results showed that parent demand and parent support were significantly related to work-family balance. In addition, the structural models revealed mechanisms for predicting two types of outcome variables. For organisational behaviour, a full mediation model was identified, showing that the influence of parents had only indirect relationships (through the work-family balance variables) with job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and turnover intention. For wellbeing, a partial mediation model was identified, showing that the influence of parents had both indirect as well as direct relationships with life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression. Last, the analysis of secondary data also showed that parent demand and parent support had significant impacts on employees’ work-family balance, which supports the results of the questionnaire survey. The implications for work-family research were discussed.

Following the Fall of France in 1940, the nation’s industry was fundamentally reorganised under the Vichy regime. This thesis traces the history of the keystones of this New Industrial Order, the Organisation Committees, by focusing on the organisation of the French steel industry between the end of the Third Republic in 1940 and the establishment of the Fourth Republic in 1946. It challenges traditional views by showing that the Committees were created largely to facilitate economic collaboration with Nazi Germany. It also demonstrates that these institutions were run by a new group of technocratic managers from French industry and that they willingly oversaw production for the Third Reich insofar as it remained advantageous to French steel firms. By extending the period of study beyond the end of the Vichy regime, this thesis casts light on why the leaders of the Resistance decided to maintain these problematic institutions and provides the first detailed account of how the bodies were reformed following the Liberation of France. Finally, it reveals that although the Organisation Committees were formally abolished in 1946, Jean Monnet created parallel bodies, named Modernisation Commissions, which took over the functions and carried on the work of Vichy’s Committees under the auspices of the Monnet Plan. By demonstrating the continuities of institutions and individuals in French industrial organisation from 1940 to 1946, or l’entre-deux-républiques, this thesis contributes to the history of Vichy and post-war France and re-evaluates the origins of the Monnet Plan and of the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner to today’s European Union.

The overall research question originated through the question “how did the underground economy in the lobster fishery arise and why”. In the mid-1990s, a growing underground economy was uncovered by chance in the Atlantic Canada lobster fishery. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police proceeds of crime unit found a series of large money transfers into a Royal Bank branch in Halifax, they thought that drug money was being moved. It turned out to have been cash sales of lobster. This represents $40 to $60 million in lost tax revenue, and a similar challenge for the common resource model for lobster fisheries management. To help answer the research question I examined the history and structure of the Atlantic Canadian lobster fishery, the impact of government and non-government policies and interactions with the lobster fishery and examined the tax evasion, statistical fraud detection and collusion/market power literature. The literature review gave rise to a number of potential variables for inclusion in a model that would serve to predict illegal and underreported activity in the lobster fishery. First, Benford’s Law was tested as a possible variable for inclusion. Non-conformity with Benford’s Law was observed in both the lobster fishery in LFA33 and LFA34 plus the snowcrab fishery. However, non conformance with Benford’s Law does not mean that there is certainty of fraud or human manipulation. Second, a market power screen was applied to the lobster fishery. Quantitative support for community-based differences in compliance with fisheries regulations has been demonstrated there is value in including a market power indicator variable as a variable of interest in the model. Last logistic panel data models were developed and tested. The outcome of the model building process were two models that have a better than chance discriminatory ability and a reasonable classification of transactions that may lead to sanctions. Model 4 was significant but was not able to classify licensees that were more likely to have sanctions. A factor analysis showed that there were three factors for each of the transactional and licensee models. For licensee models,sanctions were not loading on the same factor as the Benford’s Law and market power independent variables. In the case of the underground economy of the Atlantic Canadian lobster fishery, the Government of Canada has information and a fresh analysis of the information that may enable them to better target audits or inspections. There is no illusion that the information will, in sports parlance, “win the championship” however, it is hoped that with this analysis and continued improvement that the Government of Canada will outperform those that seek to evade tax and fisheries policy.

This thesis investigates the nature and management of manufacturing trade-offs. It examines the properties and features of trade-offs in the context of manufacturing systems and the ways that operations management may deal with them. The need for such an investigation stems from (a) the increasing interest in trade-offs, (b) the implicit use of trade-offs in many recent popular operations literature, (c) the interest in the dynamic competencies literature and (d) the apparent lack of trade-offs methods or an overall framework. This study reflects the need to extend the trade-offs research from its present descriptive focus to an explanatory and hopefully more elucidating focus. This research is based on a number of case studies of manufacturing companies in Great Britain and Brazil. Data concerning their trade-offs were collected mainly through the examination of documents, observations of shop-floor activities and interviews with the systems' key operations managers. Following analysis identified the major data within and across the cases about the properties, features and management of trade-offs. This investigation suggests mainly that trade-offs between MSDs do exist; that their structure can be visualised as base, pivot and function; that they are contingent and dynamic; that their performance is different from their importance; that these depend on a range of external and internal factors; that one can improve trade-offs through alternative strategies and that flexibility may have a pivotal role in this process. The major original contributions of this explanatory, in-depth investigation are (a) the development of a trade-offs model that may be more accurate and useful than previous models in the literature; (b) the distinction between the performance and importance of trade-offs; (c) the taxonomy of trade-offs management strategies and (d) the identification of the role of flexibility in trade-offs management, with emphasis on the distinction between the ideas of flexibility and variety in that context.

This study adopts an historical approach to explore the impact of coalmining on the town of Doncaster. It finds that although Doncaster was not a typical mining town nevertheless coal's impact was widespread, and extended beyond direct employment to impact on socio-political factors including the town's external image. Whilst the study explores the impact over the entire one hundred years of mining around Doncaster, the rationale and focus of the study is an assessment of the legacy of the local mining industry, and the extent to which it has inhibited the town's economic competitiveness in what is today called an enterprise economy. In this regard the study contributes to a wider understanding of the nature of change in old industrial regions as well as considering the efficacy of current regional enterprise policy. In particular the study has explored the extent to which path contingency captures the transition from growth to decline in former industrial regions, more adequately than does that of path dependency (Hudson, 2005). The key distinction drawn between the two concepts is human agency which is identified as operating at a range of decision-making levels. Analysis comes through two related case studies which show that the coal industry provided the basis for diversification in to new products and markets offering the possibility to extend the industry's lifecycle and that of towns such as Doncaster which had come to depend on it. It is shown the fact that these opportunities were not taken was due to institutional failure associated with cognitive lock-in. This rather than any specifically industry or place-based factor explains the nature of Doncaster's decline.

Over the past decade the movement of natural gas drilling operations toward more suburban and urban communities has created unique policy challenges for municipalities. Municipal response is manifest in a variety of institutional arrangements, some more enabling than others regarding citizen access to public hearings. This observation lead to the main research question, “How are variations in citizen participation affecting policy outcomes?” The argument is made that institutions affecting citizen participation, in turn affect policy outcomes. If the general public is given access to public hearings, their preferences for longer setbacks will be taken into account and the approved gas wells will have greater distances from neighboring residences – effectively providing for greater safety. Given the paucity of research on the topic of natural gas drilling, the research first begins with the presentation of a theoretical framework to allow for analysis of the highly complex topic of gas well permitting, emphasizing the rule-ordered relationships between the various levels of decision making and provides a typology of collective action arenas currently used by Texas municipalities. The research uses paired case studies of most similar design and employs a mixed methods process for the collection, analysis and interpretation of the municipal level gas well permitting process. The investigation includes a complete census of 185 approved gas wells from four North Texas cities between the years 2002-2012; 20 interviews comprised of city officials and drilling operators; and archival records such as gas well site plans, ordinances, on-line government documents and other public information. The findings reveal that zoning institutions are associated with a 15% longer gas well setback than siting institutions and institutions without waivers are associated with a 20% longer gas well setback than institutions with waiver rules. The practical implications suggest that citizen participation has a positive effect on public safety within gas well permitting decisions.

As interest grows in mitigating atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, there is an increasing need to understand the factors that determine fluxes of carbon (C) to and from the atmosphere. This project quantifies the natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2 on a county scale. In collaboration with the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation's (HBRF's) Sciencelinks Carbon Group, a net C budget for Chittenden County, Vermont has been created, with key C sources and sinks categorized in terms of land use. The primary goal of the budget is to provide up-to-date and accurate decisionmaking information to planners and policy-makers in the county, allowing the most tangible benefits to be gained from mitigation efforts. This project creates and tests a methodology that is easily replicable in any county in the United States. This methodology will facilitate the process of developing county-level C balance data beyond Vermont and the Northeast. This study suggests that Chittenden County is a net sink for C; 1.12 Tg C accumulate per year in the county's biomass and soils while 0.418 Tg C are emitted each year through anthropogenic activity within the county. C emitted in the manufacture of imported products is not considered. This work contributes to a larger ongoing study by the HBRF which compares C emissions and sequestration among seven counties representing different patterns of land use.

The published work and Commentary that comprise this PhD thesis examine the field of business events, with particular focus on the shifting relationships between supply and demand in the business events market that have arisen as a result of the ongoing technological and demographic changes in the external macro-environment within which this market operates. The extant body of research into the market for business events such as conferences, meetings and other face-to-face gatherings pales in comparison with the extensive volume of investigations undertaken by the research community focusing on leisure tourism, cultural events and sports events. Nevertheless, this comparative neglect of the business events market cannot be justified when we take into account the essential role played by such events in the efficient functioning and development of the commercial, political, and intellectual activities of those who attend them, as well as the considerable economic benefits that business events bring to the venues and destinations in which they are held. The high-spending, high-yield nature of business events is the key factor behind the intense competition that exists between supply-side stakeholders in this sector. In the 21st century, as competition among the expanding supply of conference venues and destinations has intensified, the case to be made for conducting research that focuses on the effective functioning of the business events market has become increasingly compelling. Following a discussion of the research context within which my research activities took place, this Commentary gives details of the specific research objectives that guided my own investigations. It then identifies the pragmatism paradigm as the approach adopted in my research, a stance which supports the use of the mixed methods approach that I employed in connection with my data collection, and one which reflected my desire to produce socially useful knowledge. This is followed by a critical reflection on my research publications in this area. It comprises a portfolio of 25 publications, dated from 1992 to 2014. In different empirical contexts, and using a varied range of research methodologies, appropriate to the different research questions, this Commentary takes as its primary focus the impacts of technological and demographic factors on the marketing of conference venues and destinations, as well as on the design of business events. The Commentary highlights the original nature of my research in this field as well as its contribution to the ongoing discussions in academic and practitioner domains on the subject of how the business events industry must evolve in order to provide value to a new generation of participants living in a world increasingly shaped by advances in electronically-mediated communication.

This thesis focuses on the creation of private environmental and social regulation through the interaction of non-state actors in the US market for gold jewellery. By investigating the role of business actors in the development of private regulation through their cooperation and contestation with civil society activists, this study brings a business power lens to the study of non-state institution-building. It focuses on a new case and elaborates on current understandings of ‘industry opportunity structures’ (IOSs), taking a model built for the study of social movements and applying it to business actors. It seeks to treat agents from the private sector as political actors in their own right and traces the effects of industry structures on the emergence, development, and impact of the political mobilisation of ethical, specialty, and diversified jewellers. It argues that business actors face different opportunities for political leverage during the private institution-building process depending on the nature of the firm within which they are embedded. It helps explain the variation observed in firm responses to activist contestation while informing debates over the broader implications of the increasing emergence of private regulation in the global economy. Business actors are embedded agents, subject to the constraints of industry structures and market forces. Opportunities for business actors to mobilise firm resources for political purposes varies with the opportunity window available to them, which expands or contracts with the politicisation of the market. Therefore, contrary to previous interpretations, civil society contestation can actually empower institutional entrepreneurs from the private sector to shape the regulatory landscape. While market forces privilege ‘business interests’, and business power safeguards the autonomy of industry, through learning and leadership there appears to be a cumulative effect to contentious politics that has the potential to ratchet-up private regulation in both its depth and breadth of coverage.

To deal with dynamic and uncertain business environments, agile manufacturing is of interest to academics and practitioners. However, in order to achieve agile manufacturing, one of its dimensions is of major importance - manufacturing flexibility. It is not possible to achieve agile manufacturing with ineffective management of manufacturing flexibility. Most firms acknowledge how flexibility can be improved but few can successfully implement it to its full potential. In addition, manufacturing firms today tend to improve and implement manufacturing flexibility at a strategic level. This means higher perception of benefits and better awareness of risks. This research studied the current awareness and practices of manufacturing flexibility improvement in a manufacturing setting, particularly the Thai automotive industry. Through case studies, they can extract more information about the experiences of companies in the planning, implementation and operations of manufacturing flexibility. Thus, the following contributions were made: First, this research will provide comprehensive overviews and insights on various manufacturing flexibility improvements on aspects of pragmatic management perspectives. Second, this research explored the issues or factors taken into account when manufacturing firms, especially Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), improve their flexibility. Third, the research also explored and validated the major problems in achieving manufacturing flexibility and operating issues critical to manufacturing flexibility performance within manufacturing and supply chain aspects, especially suppliers. The underlying concepts to enhance manufacturing flexibility as well as barriers and enhancers of manufacturing flexibility within individuals and between OEMs and suppliers can be then obtained. In consequence, a framework of manufacturing flexibility improvement incorporating key elements from case studies and surveys was derived. Finally, the decision-making framework including managerial guidance and strategic evaluation methodology for better evaluating flexibility improvement strategies and achieving manufacturing flexibility were developed and tested. This is sought to create a formal and rational process that guides manufacturers through the strategic evaluation process in relation to manufacturing flexibility improvement. These can be the basis for follow up research in a specific area within flexibility improvement and enhance the development/deployment of flexibility in automotive and other manufacturing enterprises. Overall, an operations strategy can be well established and the highest level of manufacturing flexibility can be achieved. Hence, the firm can maintain or increase its competitive advantages and profitability under uncertain circumstances of manufacturing and supply chain.