What would happen in Hong Kong after the 1997 transfer of its political sovereignty from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China? For organizational leaders in Hong Kong, this was more than an academic issue. As the handover approached, they faced an impending discontinuity in their environment. Although the Chinese are renowned for their business success amidst environmental uncertainty, little is known about information management in Chinese organisations. Given that the ethnic Chinese constituted a vast majority of both the general population and organisational leaders in pre-handover Hong Kong, it was an attractive context for strategic intelligence research. The study considered how Hong Kong Chinese chief executive officers (CEOs) perceived the pre-handover business environment, and how they acquired and used information about that environment. A multiple method design was employed to extend an existing body of management literature on environmental scanning. Eight case studies across four industries complemented a survey of 53 CEOs in the printing and securities industries. The questionnaire was designed to determine 1) the levels of perceived uncertainty in six distinct sectors of the business environment, and 2) the environmental scanning conducted in response to the perceived uncertainty. Quantitative analysis revealed many similarities but also several significant differences from both previous studies in the West and between the two industries in Hong Kong. The case studies examined how CEOs acquired and used information about the external environment as they attended to specific strategic issues. The cases provided empirical grounding for an explanatory theory of information management and indicated that the handover was not a uniform or even universal source of environmental uncertainty. Specific cultural, institutional, and competitive factors were found to influence the environmental perceptions, scanning behaviours and information management activities of Hong Kong Chinese chief executives.

This Thesis uses Italian panel micro-data to investigate the intertemporal wage covariance structure and the extent of transition probabilities at the bottom of the wage distribution, producing new and original evidence on the degree of persistence of cross-sectional wage differentials over individual life-cycles and on the features of the process governing wage mobility across low-pay thresholds. Chapter 1 presents a survey of the debate generated by the rise of wage inequality observed in many industrialised economies and stresses how longitudinal analyses of wage persistence and mobility shed light on the long term impact of rising cross-sectional dispersion; a survey of the two research areas to which this Thesis contributes, i.e. variance components models of the wage covariance structure and econometric modelling of transition probabilities, is also presented. Variance components models of the wage covariance structure are estimated in Chapters 2 and 3, where two unbalanced panels drawn from the Social Security archive on the 1974-88 and 1979-95 intervals (respectively) are analysed by applying the minimum distance technique. Chapter 2 shows that while permanent wage profiles converged within the overall wage distribution, divergence can be detected for white collar workers, suggesting that the former could have been imparted by the egalitarian wage policies of the late 1970s. Results from Chapter 3 indicate that the rising wage inequality observed in Italy over the 1980s and the early 1990s permanently affected the evolution of wage profiles especially during the second half of the 1980s; on the other hand, increases in the relative importance of wage volatility are shown to characterise the first half of the 1990s, thus mirroring the higher labour market “flexibility" of recent years. The Chapter also takes into account the relationship between covariance structure components and observable workers characteristics; in particular, a model which shifts the parameters of interest with respect to workers’ occupations is developed, finding that permanent differentials arise from the wage distribution of white collar workers. A bivariate probit model with endogenous switching is developed in Chapter 4 to analyse low-wage mobility taking the endogeneity of starting wage states into account, using survey data from the Bank of Italy. Results indicate the appropriateness of such a framework, the correlation between state and transition probabilities being statistically significant. While workers’ attributes are found to have a limited impact on the probability of leaving low-pay, a considerable share of aggregate low-pay persistence appears to be the consequence of true state dependence, i.e. the experience of low-pay raises, per se, the likelihood that the phenomenon occur in the future. Chapter 5 checks the robustness of these conclusions to the presence of endogenous attrition from the wage distribution over time by augmenting the model with a third equation for the probability of belonging to the balanced sample. The computational difficulties posed by the required evaluation of trivariate normal integrals are overcome by implementing simulation estimation techniques. Results indicate that exits from the wage distribution over time are an ignorable source of sample selection for the estimation of low-pay transition probabilities on these data, thus pointing towards the robustness of the findings of Chapter 4 to this generalization of the model.

Ethnographers of the workplace have concentrated their attention upon workgroups at the microscopic level - social interaction at the workplace - often involving little discussion of the macroscopic context of the economic and the political. My objective in this study is to give the working lives of the workers studied a context deriving from the situational aspects of the ethnography, and to highlight the dynamic historical processes through which those working lives proceed in the workplace, at a time of significant social change. Much traditional academic sociology of the workplace, in particular, interactionist studies, have given too little attention to ongoing historical processes, structures of power, and material interests which provide a context for the social activity of individuals and groups at work. This study attempts to go some way towards rectifying the deficiency. The study is about the work lives of the gas meter readers and slot meter collectors of a large city conurbation in the southern half of England that I call Eastborough. I joined the meter readers on a temporary basis and even before I became a meter reader I kept a diary of daily events, thereafter I recorded my workday experiences, conversations with the public, and with other meter readers and collectors. I became, almost imperceptibly, a 'covert' participant observer, spending several subsequent years sharing the daily work experiences, first of the meter readers, then the slot collectors. Part one introduces the conceptual framework of the study, linked to the historical and organizational changes outlined in chapter one. The difficulties and problems of studying isolated workers is also raised. Part two consists of a detailed discussion of the daily work lives of the meter readers and collectors. The experiences of the author as a meter reader, and later a collector, is used to demonstrate the ways in which the problems of studying isolated workers were handled. Part three examines the experiences of work intensification related to the introduction- of different working methods and the themes of contestation and acceptance of the changes. Part four continues on the topic of organizational change introduced in part three, but debates it within the context of a substantial shift in political and economic circumstances. Finally, the conceptual themes raised in part one are evaluated within the framework of the historical and organizational changes, and the impact of these upon the workers degree of individualism or collectivity in confronting them. They are assessed in the light of differences in the labour process which resulted from the introduction of the new working methods discussed in part three.

The world of manufacturing organisations has changed considerably in the past few years which give rise to three research areas which constitute the context of what i have called The New Manufacturing 1. What is the current state of affairs in the trading relationships between partners in the supply chains and what would be a best practice model for such relationships? 2. What is the impact on the strategy process of the changes in the trading relationships and focus on cross-functional and cross-organisational business processes? 3. How do you integrate the new competitive factors of speed and flexibility with the need for agility and re-invention and implementation of world class lean manufacturing practices? The portfolio is divided into three distinct parts. The first part develops the ‘external context’ of manufacturing organisations by analysing the trends in trading relationships between supply chain partners through a EU funded research project on European automotive industry. The second part explores the link between the ‘internal’ and the ‘external’ context by developing the concept of ‘re­positioning’ as a new dimension to existing strategy development approaches. The third part explores the ‘internal context’ and seeks new solutions to issues in strategy formulation and manufacturing systems design, using ‘time’ and ‘turbulence’ as key change drivers along with the traditional ‘focus’ approach. The analysis of the ‘external context’ uses a cohesive ‘best practice’ model incorporating 11 characteristics as the fixed point comparator for analysing 24 supply chains in 6 car assemblers. The findings show significant changes in both the ‘structural’ and ‘relationship management’ characteristics such as greater outsourcing and systems purchase, single sourcing at part number level, greater design and development delegation by the vehicle manufacturers, open book costing, leaner manufacturing pipeline and long term contracts. A key finding is the emergence of ‘multi-customer’ suppliers - suppliers with close, non-adversarial relationships with a number of key customers. This multi-customer structural feature was investigated using four theoretical trading structures in a detailed case study of an automotive supplier and was found to reflect characteristics of all four. The changes in the supply chains underlined the need for a ‘re-positioning’ methodology for suppliers hoping to change their ‘value boundary’, in addition to existing strategy formulation methods, which did not address this specific requirement. Thus the second part of the portfolio proposes a new ‘re­positioning’ methodology, which represents the link between the external and the internal context, which was then validated through a study of a supplier who had ‘re-positioned’ and through application in two SMEs. The ‘internal context’ analysis represents the major part of the portfolio, and was carried out at two companies using approaches and techniques new to the companies. In one of them, a new process focused strategy formulation was used to develop strategic goals for the two key processes. In the same company, a complete manufacturing analysis was carried out using ‘time’ as the strategic driver, as part of an overall ‘systems’ approach, which was a major change for the company. As a result, a number of changes were proposed of which some have been implemented and a key success has been the reduction of manufacturing lead time from over 6 weeks to 3 weeks or less with corresponding reduction in inventory. At the other company, the project scope was limited to improving performance of machining cells. Again using ‘time’ as a key driver of change as part of a ‘systems’ approach, a number of new practices were introduced which led to improvement in lead times, inventory and service levels for pilot components. A key innovation in both companies was the development of the concept of ‘turbulence' to analyse manufacturing issues which was then integrated with the well known ‘focus’ approach and the more recent ‘time compression’ into a generic multi-dimensional approach to the design of manufacturing systems.

How is organizational hybridity constructed at the micro-level? This overarching question is the starting point of this doctoral research. Studies to date suggested institutional entrepreneurs can combine institutional logics to create hybrid organizations. However, simply designing an organization as a hybrid does not a hybrid organization make. Instead, unsettle times within organizations may well provide an opportunity for organizational members, other than founders and entrepreneurs, to deploy available institutional logics as cultural resources. As a consequence, hybridity is constructed as an ongoing process. Yet, little is known about the logics available to organizational members in such settings, how these logics are deployed or with what outcomes to the organization. In this thesis, I adopt a social constructionist perspective to examine the active role played by organizational members at the micro-level, in constructing organizations as hybrids. Such an approach adds to studies challenging assumptions, within the extant literature, that hybridity is imposed upon organizations, potentially negative and requiring responses or management. In order to do so, I explore a recently established Community Interest Company (CIC) to shed light on how organizational members deploy available logics in relation to organizational form and identity. Overall, my empirical research leads me to: first, refine the idea of institutional logics as cultural resources within organizations; and second, show how organizational members affect organizational hybridity by deploying logics and interacting with other organizational members, leading to different outcomes. In doing so, this research answers calls to analyse the role of the micro-level in hybrid organizational research. Furthermore, it addresses gaps in the institutional logics literature related to how, and to what end, logics are used as cultural resources in organizations, and with what organizational outcomes. On a practical note, this research can potentially support members of hybrid organizations to incorporate and balance multiple institutional and organizational aspects, achieving the positive potential of hybridity.

Since the late 1980s many business performance measurement (BPM) frameworks have been developed. These frameworks suggest users to choose their own measures or define different aspects of a company’s operational practice to be measured to improve competitiveness and give an early indication of its future financial performance. However using a framework does not help identifying which operational practices have a direct positive impact on which financial performance indicators. Thus a key challenge for company managers is to find which of their operational practices directly lead to an improvement in which of their financial performance measures. Many studies have examined the impact of different operational practices on financial results in different countries. The findings of those studies are thus context-specific (country, legal, market) and often have limitations in the study methodology. The goal of this study was to develop a BPM framework for UK manufacturing companies based on a positive relationship that the recommended key operational practices have on measures of their financial performance. Initially twenty hypotheses based on the findings from forty earlier studies were formulated. The applicability of these relationships to UK manufacturing companies was tested on a sample of seventy-nine UK manufacturing companies. The sample companies had participated in the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE)’s manufacturing-excellence (MX) Awards between 2006 and 2011 and consists of thirty-one SMEs and forty-eight large firms. To test the hypotheses, the performance scores for the sample in ninety of their operational practices were analysed against eighteen financial ratios, collected from two financial databases (FAME and Amadeus). A longitudinal study compared financial data for five financial years; the year of application for the award and one financial year before and three years after the IMechE assessment. Thus the time delay between having a strong operational practices and realisation of financial benefits could be investigated. In addition if the impact of operational practices on the financial results is persistent over time could be judged. The company data in the ninety operational practices was used as explanatory variables against improvements in each of the eighteen financial outcome variables. To analyse the relationships between these variables, the dataset of the study was split into two parts. The data from companies that have participated in the MX Awards between 2006 and 2010 were used as estimation sample for statistical predictions. Then the data from companies that have participated in the MX Awards in 2011 were used for validation. Initially the Fisher’s exact test was used to find the correlated pair of operational practices and financial ratios. For each of the identified correlated pairs, the exact logistic regression analysis was used to find the dependence of the financial ratios on their correlated operational practices. As a result of these analyses, eleven relationships for SMEs and forty-nine relationships for large companies were identified. These relationships were used to develop BPM frameworks for UK SMEs and another for large UK companies. The framework linked specific operational practices to specific financial measures. To further refine the findings, three supporting studies were used to find potential causal explanations for relationships or lack of relationships identified between the operational practices and financial results in the derived BPM framework. Approach one was based on reviewing earlier studies for causal relationships they had noted. In approach two, key researchers from earlier studies were contacted for their opinion about the findings of this study. In approach three, the BPM relationships identified were discussed with ten manufacturing academics/business consultants in two focus groups sessions and two individual interviews to explore the possible causal reasons behind the relationships identified. This process resulted in the removal of lack of relationships in eight categories of operational practices from the BPM frameworks, as there were insufficient possible explanations to support them. The adopted methodology addressed the key research questions of the study by providing BMP frameworks for large businesses and SMEs in the UK. This study has three main limitations. First, compared to some of the earlier studies, the sample size is smaller and the operational measures used were driven by the needs of the IMechE’s MX-Awards. This can reduce the generalisability of the findings. Secondly, because of this dataset the impact of each of the operational practices was separately analysed. This has two problems including ‘Confounding-bias’ and ‘Multiple comparisons’ which could have influence the identified relationships. Eight categories of operational practices did not have any direct positive impact on financial performance. The data analysis conducted only looked for positive impact, exploring the dataset for negative impact may have revealed more useful information. Thus there is a need for future studies to verify the representativeness of the IMechE dataset and to look for negative correlations.

This thesis presents three studies which explore the effects of individualized human resource management (HRM) practices from recipients’ and non-recipients’ perspectives. The first two studies, focusing on the concept of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), investigate the role of managers’ emotions and employees’ behaviours in translating negotiated i-deals into attainment (Study 1), and how obtained i-deals influence recipients’ work performance positively in the long term (Study 2). In delineating how individualized HRM practices unfold for their recipients, the concept of i-deals is challenged. The third study explores the effects of non-entitlement to flexitime on employees’ overall perceptions of fairness, which in turn shape their affective commitment toward the organization. This study also introduces a contextual condition – the normativeness of flexitime – to understand under what conditions the association between non-entitlement to flexitime and overall fairness perceptions is stronger or weaker. A quantitative methodology is adopted across the three studies. The first two studies draw on two-wave, multi-source data collected in Istanbul, Turkey. The third study is based on the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS, 2011). This thesis makes important theoretical contributions to research on i-deals, flexitime and, more broadly, to individualized HRM. As a practical implication, this thesis underlines that caution is needed when differentiating certain HR practices for a select group of employees.

It is in the interest of many different types of organisations to encourage the adoption of specific products or desirable behaviours. Such goal has been commonly pursued by offering economic incentives to people with the aim of making the desired action more appealing. This type of strategy is based on standard economic theory, which assumes that people behave in ways that maximise only their own economic benefits. However, behavioural scientists have suggested that people frequently make decisions that go against their own benefit and are affected by emotions, biases and social preferences, all of which may lead to the failure of traditional economic incentives. In the present work, prosocial motives are incorporated into the design of incentive schemes by allowing participants to give away part of their rewards to relevant peers. We tested whether such strategy can outperform the traditional “selfish schemes”. Specifically, four experiments using hypothetical scenarios were performed, in which participants’ preferences were elicited by implementing different methodologies. The main variables considered in this research are the number of recipients and the expectations about their reactions, the possibilities of reciprocity, the certainty of the reward, the size and framing of the reward, and the fear of negative evaluations. The results show a substantial proportion of the participants favouring the “unselfish” incentive schemes. Moreover, the expectations about recipients’ reactions were particularly relevant in defining the effectiveness of programmes that incorporate prosocial motives. Findings also suggest that fulfilling others’ expectations allows people to strengthen their self-concept and maintain a positive self-image. This research brings a new perspective in the study of adoption and diffusion processes by incorporating insights and methods from behavioural science, and it considers the role of contextual factors in decision-making processes that have been neglected in the literature. These results can also contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms driving prosocial behaviours and inform the design of initiatives that aim to encourage desirable actions.

Certification schemes have become widely adopted across the coffee industry and are thought to act as a mechanism for reducing poverty, conservation of environmental assets and well-being of agricultural producers and workers. These sustainability credentials also allow retailers and manufacturers to use certifications to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. My research focused on understanding the perceived value of voluntary certification standards in the coffee sector, with particular emphasis on the motivations of key stakeholders to care about social and environmental challenges within the coffee supply chain. By investigating the extent to which certification standards are capable of bridging the geographic and information gap between production and consumption of an agricultural commodity, this research investigates relating to moral motivations of caring-at-a-distance, and highlights limitations of voluntary certification standards to eradicate poverty and achieve large-scale conservation in smallholder-dominated coffee-production landscapes. The standard conceptual model for certification schemes is based on two underlying assumptions. Firstly, consumers are expected to prioritise the sustainability credentials of a product over other attributes such as taste and price. Secondly, certified products attain a price premium which is expected to improve living standards for producers and workers and serve as financial incentives for smallholder communities to protect valuable ecosystems on and around agricultural farmlands. In this thesis, I aimed to test both assumptions through a combination of methodological approaches including questionnaire surveys, participant observation and interviews. The findings show that both assumptions are problematic. On the one hand, in order to be able to supply particular export markets, producers are expected to comply with an increasing number of certification standards. While compliance with these standards provide some improvement in price levels and access to higher-value markets, the cost of complying with certification standards is putting pressure on producers, especially on those who would benefit from certification the most. On the other hand, uptake of certifications is expected to be driven by consumer demand. However, my results suggest that consumer demand for certified products and their interest in the wellbeing of geographically distant people and places might be more limited than previously thought. The findings are consistent with the argument that the perceived sensory quality of a food product often plays a more influential role in consumer decision-making processes than any associated ethical or sustainability claims. While the link between certification standards and product quality is understudied empirically, the industry experts interviewed felt that the quality of certified coffee is mediocre at best and this lack of connection between certification standards and coffee quality limits producers’ ability to improve their livelihoods. My research also highlighted the problematic nature of simplistic conceptions of community-based conservation and development efforts, which fail to consider socio-economic inequalities and complex power relations in resource-poor rural populations. The interviews with key stakeholders in the coffee industry revealed a shift in agenda, where formerly, attitudes to sustainable trading focused more on the social and ethical issues in production communities, to a broader ideal which brings together social responsibility and environmental sustainability into one conceptual framework. The social and environmental principles of certification schemes are increasingly being seen as an essential aspect of sustainable sourcing; however, their rigid market control mechanisms and considerable bureaucracy are gradually becoming seen as unsustainable. Although certification schemes are likely to remain as an important facet of the coffee industry, the emphasis is changing from mere standards compliance to long-term trading relationships based on transparency, traceability and communication between different stakeholders of the supply chain. The findings of this study are consistent with arguments in the literature that currently popular certification schemes (in their present form) cannot cope with all cultural, economic and structural inefficiencies within commodity sectors. While certification schemes can and certainly will continue to develop and evolve, mere reliance on voluntary standards compliance is unlikely to be able to deliver long-term sustainability within the sector. Nonetheless, certifications can be part of a larger toolbox for delivering sustainability outcomes on the ground, provided that the costs and trade-offs of supporting sustainability efforts are consistent with the benefits distributed to all key stakeholder groups along the chain.

This thesis is centred on three core issues in the context of Sri Lanka - the rates of returns to education across individuals in different types of employment, the contributors towards the urban-rural welfare gap for the years 2002 and 2009/10, and finally the determinants of employment and earnings across sectors. First, the rates of returns to education are analysed using an Instrumental Variables approach in order to address the endogeneity bias associated with measuring education. Secondly, the returns to education are estimated at different levels; a convex relationship between education and earnings is observed. Finally, a production function is estimated for agricultural and non-agricultural self-employed households. Higher education shares a positive relationship with non-agricultural output, but a negative relationship with agricultural output. In the second part of the thesis, we first identify the determinants of urban and rural expenditure using an unconditional quantile regression. Next, we examine the urban-rural welfare gap in 2002 and 2009/10 using a variant of the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition; identifying the characteristics and returns to characteristics that contribute towards the welfare gap in both years, and across the expenditure distribution. At a given point in time, the welfare gap is larger between richer urban and rural households relative to poorer households. We find the gap to have fallen considerably between 2002 and 2009/10. The final part in the thesis examines the sectoral choices and earnings. The labour market is disaggregated into 5 sectors. This chapter controls for two forms of possible bias – sample selectivity and endogeneity of education in earnings. The determinants of sector choice are analysed using a multinomial logit. We observe that individuals with the highest levels of education get in to the public and formal private sectors, whereas the least educated are likely to join the informal and agricultural sectors. The earnings functions suggest that the returns to education vary greatly across the sectors.