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Using accounting records and financial data, a business history of the Lancashire textile industry from 1870 to 1914 is presented. Issues of technology and industry structure, which have attracted a great deal of comment are first re-addressed. The discussion is then widened to include other aspects of the industry which have previously been neglected, namely the social processes of capital accumulation with reference to those evolving relationships between managers and shareholders which, in the context of broader economic change, helped forge the special characteristics of Lancashire capitalism. The industry is found to be generally healthy and competitive, although its fortunes were dangerously dependent on the overseas value of the pound. Whilst the original technologies of the industrial revolution were maturing, the alternative twentieth century means of automated throughput had still not been developed. External economies and flexibility associated with vertical specialisation thus continued to outweigh those of integrated throughput production. Meanwhile a transformation of the industry occurred in terms of its ownership, as the previously influential small shareholder was forced to surrender influence to a rising class of promotional and financial capitalists, a trend accentuated by, inter alia, a very serious stock exchange crash in the 1890s which forced many to sell their holdings. A shift of industry value added from labour to capital and record profits after 1900 are identified. These attracted capital into cotton and reinforced the position of the newer owners of the industry. Important features of their behaviour are examined, primarily their ability to construct impressive business empires through personal shareholdings and interference in day to day management, and their corresponding reluctance to establish professional management hierarchies, which, although increasingly common in other industries, were compromised by preference for individual, and not corporate, accumulation. Characterised as they were by their easy access to financial resources, these new capitalists might well have made sweeping changes to industry structure and technology had they chosen to do so. However, although ring spinning was found to be in general more profitable, the basis of that superiority was an extension of the process of increased specialisation. All specialised companies, whether ring spinners, mule spinners, or weavers, tended to do much better than their vertically integrated counterparts in the period after 1900. Evidence from this period has implications for our understanding of subsequent developments. If the industry could have been restructured before 1914, then so it could have been after the First World War when it arguably became more necessary. Pre 1914 technical constraints are identified and it is also noted that it was in the inter-war period that the means to remove them were fully developed. However, considering technical issues in conjunction with characteristics of capital ownership, it is concluded that, as the industry failed to attract investment when profit signals turned negative, for example in the 1890s, and attracted a lot of capital in the booms of the early 1900s, any constraint did exist to prevent restructuring it was financial rather than organisational. The process and character of capital accumulation is therefore advanced as a crucial ingredient of our understanding of business history. In short, the established financial, technical, and organisational structure, when combined with buoyant overseas monetary and trading conditions, is found to have created the synthesis of a profitable industry; when external conditions changed, financial, technical, and organisational constraints became important but in that strict and steeply descending order. Lancashire was highly vulnerable to the world market; that vulnerability was accentuated by the way in which capital was created. It was the social process of capital accumulation which was the principal determinant of the development, and perhaps therefore ultimately the decline, of a once great industry.

This thesis considers work undertaken in the area of the management of construction project risk. The construction industry in Britain is undergoing a radical change; new markets are opening up as traditional ones close, and the nature of contracts are changing with the increasing popularity of design-build and the development of the Government's Private Finance Initiative. These changes have left many construction companies moving into markets in which they have little experience or entering into contracts which allocate risks to them which have previously been held by others. Since the traditional method of managing risks was by using the experience and judgment of managers, this has left many companies in a dangerous position, selecting projects with little knowledge of the risks the company is already exposed to, the extent to which the company wants the project, or the change that project will make to the risk profile. An investigation into the formal approach to risk management, developed over the last few decades as a way of progressing from the purely experience based approach, concludes that although several of the techniques offer an improvement, the overall approach does not consider the company. Projects are treated as independent entities rather than temporary parts of the company's ongoing activities. A system is produced which builds on the already identified organisational hierarchy of a company. Two risk models are produced, one for use at the project level, which considers the sources of uncertainty in the project, and one for use at the company level, which combines the uncertain impacts of the projects it is undertaking, those it is pursuing, and those which it expects will be available in the future. The models have been tested and validated using data collected from projects in their tendering stage. The results of the tests are presented and the findings discussed. Conclusions drawn from the work and recommendations for future work are presented.

This thesis presents the results of an investigation into the development of quality management in Thailand. The research was conducted in order to draw up an overall picture of quality progress in Thai industry, to provide useful insights for Thai companies and policy-makers, as well as to compare Thailand with other developing countries. This research has adopted an integrated approach to research methodology comprising both survey and case study methods. Four linked empirical research projects were conducted to obtain an insight into quality management, particularly the ISO 9000 series of quality systems standards, Total Quality Management (TQM), and a 'foundation level' quality system, within Thai industry. The in-depth study of ISO 9000 implementation identifies the driving forces encouraging Thai industry to pursue ISO 9000; four types of ISO 9000 implementation process; implementation factors and obstacles; the impact of implementation process and future plans after a company has achieved ISO 9000 registration. The study of TQM implementation in companies located in Thailand reveals that the companies studied have each adopted different, but successful, approaches to TQM implementation. The Thai Foundation Quality System Standard (TFQSS) has been proved to be suitable for Thai SMEs. Findings from the four individual research project together provide some new insights into the development and implementation of quality management in a Thai perspective. As a result of the study, a TQM framework was developed. The framework identifies three broad dimensions of quality management in a Thai organisation, which are: - Three aspects of quality management; Five stages of development; and Four implementation paradigms. An organisation that wishes to embark on a quality journey can examine its status against the framework in order to start, or to improve a particular aspect that is found to be unsatisfactory. After identifying some criteria for the assessment of national quality development, a simple model of quality management in developing countries is proposed to depict comparative characteristics of quality management within these countries. It is concluded that, among developing countries in South and East Asian region, Thailand is in the middle of the spectrum of development.

Quality circles are a form of group activity designed to impact on attitudes to work and to improve company performance. This study notes the introduction and rise in importance of this phenomenon in UK industry and sets out to examine the concept in operation. The quality circle is defined and explored and its aims and objectives are examined. The literature on quality circles is reviewed and is found to comprise mainly anecdotal articles written for management journals, although the amount of rigorous research is growing. Its place in wider management theory is then considered, focussing on a number of key areas which the quality circle can be said to span. The second part of the thesis describes the case study of quality circles in action at an electronics firm, which was the backbone of the three year research programme. A number of hypotheses were developed and they are discussed in turn. A research methodology was subsequently devised to throw light on the most significant of these hypotheses, using three main techniques - attitude survey, interview and group process observation. The resultant data is described and presented in tables to be found in the appendices. Conclusions are drawn about the quality circle programme under scrutiny. It was not thought prudent to generalise too far, but a number of less specific conclusions are expressed, together with suggestions for further work in the field which would generate useful results.

The European Social Fund (ESF) provides funding for vocational training projects for unemployed women aged over 25. This research traces the development of ESF policies and interpretations from within the European Commission and the British government from 1958 to 1993. The position of women within the European and British labour markets provides the basis of the evaluation of the ESF's aim to increase employability through training linked to the needs of the labour market. The study is based on a gender, class and race analysis from within a perspective of British socialist feminism. The research follows an inductive, essentially grounded-theory method of research, where each stage is determined by the emergent dominant category of the previous stage. There are three stages: firstly, interviews with the women 'workers' on an ESF funded vocational training project for unemployed women. The non-traditional manual skills training provision was typical of many such projects throughout the 1980s. Secondly, a document based study of policy documents and interpretations. The third stage concentrates on the position of women within the European and British labour markets. The finding is that working-class women are trained for occupations of continual decline, and are not trained for the growth occupations of new technology. Neither are they trained towards improving their hierarchical position. The discourse of equal opportunities emerges as a central theme throughout the thesis, from the case study onwards. The final analysis of its impact on vocational training policy is that equal opportunities policies, whilst providing access to specific non-traditional manual skills, nevertheless, through the inherent lack of class analysis, actually closes or hinders access to other training and employment opportunities, thereby meeting both the needs of capitalism and of patriarchy.

This thesis is concerned with computable general equilibrium modelling and evaluation of agricultural policy in a global context. Particular emphasis has been given to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, reform of which was an important element in the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round (UR), and which is to be subject to further reforms under Agenda 2000. Nevertheless, attention has also been given to modelling the effects of other Uruguay Round outcomes in manufactures and services, so that the reform of the CAP can be assessed within the liberalised global setting. Chapter 1 describes the UR agreement in general, and the Agricultural Agreement in detail. Chapter 2 discusses the construction of computable general equilibrium models. This informs the consideration given in Chapter 3 to the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and to results from several papers that use the model for the analysis of the UR, as well as other UR CGE models. The GTAP version 2 database is examined in Chapter 4 (the latest version, released in June 1998, is covered in Chapter 7). Chapter 5 gives attention to the finer detail of the standard GTAP model, and describes the modifications and extensions made to this model, such as the modelling of partiallyspecific- factors and endogenous subsidy rates and a means of decomposing welfare changes in the GTAP model. Chapter 6 presents the resuUs from modelling the Uruguay Round with the aggregation and model developed in Chapters 4 and 5. The main resuUs for these simulations show that the global welfare gain and regional gains to the EU, the USA and Japan are comparable to studies discussed in Chapter 3. Chapters 7 and 8 use the most recent GTAP database, which gives wider coverage of regions, sectors and factors than the version used in earlier chapters. Chapter 7 augments the model of Chapter 5 with production quotas for milk and sugar, explicit modelling of compensation and headage payment, intervention prices and support buying, and detailed representation of the EU export subsidy commitments. Chapter 8 reports the resuUs of simulations using this in a model 'projected' to 2005. The main resuUs are that the UR leads to welfare losses in the EU, which are partially reduced through Agenda 2000, and that in all scenarios, the redistributional impacts of reforms are far greater than the overall welfare changes. Finally, Chapter 9 offers some conclusions and suggestions for future research.

Approximately a third of the population of Calcutta live in slums and an estimated 43% live below the poverty level. This work examines the connections between three types of slums or low income settlements within the metropolitan area and investigates how recent attempts at improving one type, the Calcutta bustees, has affected the urban poor. Bustees are rented rooms in legal, traditionally designed, single storey buildings within the city. Since 1971 a large scale improvement Metropolitan programme has been implemented by the Calcutta Development Authority with the objectives of improving the health and sanitation, as well as the employment prospects, of bustee dwellers. However the bustees occupy valuable urban land in a city of severe shortage. Intra-urban migration, created by the natural increase of bustee tenants, is exacerbated by increasing land prices. Rent control exists but rather than offer protection it appears to be driving the real cost of obtaining accommodation underground, demands for large key money payments and evictions of sitting tenants have been reported. Some bustee landlords are rebuilding their properties into expensive, middle class apartment blocks. This has meant that those who were targeted for help have actually moved out of the area, often to settlements with far worse facilities than the bustees. Some moved to suburban slums far away from their work, while others became illegal squatters in the city close to job opportunities. Poor people are therefore moving out of the city to peripheral, legal, rented slums where there is space - but no employment, infrastructure, or services. As they seek accommodation in the suburbs, rents there are beginning to rise sharply. Suburban residents are suffering from the 'domino effect' of rising costs. They are priced out of the area and join the illegal squatter settlements back in the city. This study questions the appropriateness of area based investment strategies for the long term benefit of the urban poor.

Organisations, especially those with a business or commercial focus, have always had an interest in knowledge and learning whether they have used these terms to describe their internal processes or not. The acquisition and use of knowledge to create products and services has always been at the heart of any business venture, as has the development of the necessary skills and other actions within the workforce to deliver these products and services. It is only within the last twenty years that there has been any concerted effort to understand the processes that lead to the development of knowledge and that encourage and foster learning. This research examines the dynamics of knowledge development and its relation to learning in the team setting of one professional service company based in London. Using a grounded theory approach a detailed examination of the knowledge development activities in three teams is carried out, as they work on three projects with different external clients. Data is collected from the interaction of team members during set team meetings and from the way ideas are initiated and developed over the life of the project. This is supported by detailed examination of the business and organisational literature. The research provides insights into the way individual contributions to team discussions aid knowledge development as well as developing a picture of the nature of knowledge development - its dynamics and morphology. Detailed descriptions, models and visual representations are used to record the results of the research. The research as a whole has a methodology that is replicable and provides hypotheses that can be tested by other researchers. It also offers insights of value to those managers, consultants and other professionals involved in knowledge development in organisations.

Over recent decades there have been dramatic changes in the employment patterns of men and women, with particularly significant increases in employment rates among mothers. Government policy has also increasingly given attention to encouraging parents, particularly lone mothers, into work, with a focus on paid work as a defence against poverty. These trends and policy changes affect the everyday lives of both parents and children, and give rise to questions about the potential impact that parental employment patterns have on children and young people. The main aim of this thesis was to investigate any relationships between patterns of parental employment and young people's educational and emotional well-being. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey and its associated Youth Panel, logistic regression techniques were used to assess the association between parental employment patterns and a number of outcomes. A forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1983) approach was adopted to contextualise and explain the relationships between parental employment patterns and outcomes for young people. The main conclusions are that parental employment and unemployment impact upon young people's outcomes in a number of ways, with different mechanisms observed for different outcomes. Young people living in a currently workless household were more likely to have poorer educational outcomes (truancy, leaving school at age 16), operating through the impact on family socio-economic circumstances (financial capital). Maternal part-time employment appeared to offer young people some protection against poor emotional well-being, operating through a mechanism of social capital. The influence of parental employment patterns on the formation of educational attitudes and expectations appeared to operate through a mechanism of cultural norms and expectations (cultural capital). Understanding the impact of parental employment patterns on outcomes for adolescents, using this recent data source, offers a key contribution to the literature and to policy debates.