Canadian management, like most other things Canadian, shows definite signs of its cultural antecedents in Britain and France, and the proximity of Canada to the United States. It would be unrealistic to deny these influences, but it would be inaccurate to say that Canadian management is merely a product of the country's past, or its current proximity to the United States. Canadian management is a house which can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, and it is through familiarizing oneself with the front, back, and both sides, getting up on the roof, and then peering in through the windows that one develops a comprehensive view. No one single perspective, no matter how detailed, can offer a complete picture of what Canadian management is all about. Canadian managers are often thought of by Europeans as being similar to their American counterparts, which is understandable considering the size of the United States' economy compared to the Canadian economy. However, there are subtle, and not so subtle distinctions between management in the two societies, and it is my aim to capture and record the distinctions and to summarize them in a manner which allows one to see the unique characteristics of Canadian management. My primary goal was to record and comment on the aspects of Canadian management which make it unique. This goal was approached in a variety of 5 detail the social and ways. For example, Chapters 4 and economic environment, past and present, which increases one's understanding'of the context that both influences Canadian managers, and in which they operate on a daily basis. In contrast to these macro level factors that influence Canadian management, a more detailed look was taken at the education of Canadian managers in Chapter 6, and the influences that education has on management style were discussed.

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The presupposition that accounting is capable of producing representations which correspond with a reality wholly anterior and exterior to them - widely privileged in accounting and other texts - is analysed and challenged in the thesis. A range of analytical methods are used. The first is the deconstruction of ã text from different discursive levels which assert the possibility of correspondence through accounting representations. These texts are directly analysed and subjected to their own proof criterion of correspondence. The aim is to show that each text defers the point at which the purely extra-accounting is deemed to have been fully grasped. No pure, or pre-discursive, position from which an account could begin is located. In each text there is an endless supplementarity. The terminus of correspondence is never reached. The second method of analysis employed is an examination of the advocacy and implantation of accounting change in the name of accounting's alleged correspondence capabilities in the UK Civil Service. More than a decade of advocacy is considered. Some of the pressures for the accounting change considered are located by an analysis of the different, indeed conflicting, purposes for which accounting is advanced by the advocates and compared with an explanation of change which would be consistent with a correspondence characterisation. The evidence provided by the advocates for their claims about the possibility of correspondence is examined and shown to point to yet other discourses. The third approach is participant observation of the functioning of accounting in organizational actions in a private sector manufacturing firm. The construction of accounting representations and some constitutive effects are explored and contrasted with the depiction of accounting as correspondence. Drawing on the contribution of each of the critiques of accounting as correspondence, the thesis concludes that representations are not of pre-existing referents but what is brought into being.

This research examines, at the corporate level, the strategic behaviour of retailer internationalisation. The primary purpose is to increase our knowledge as empirical research has not kept pace with the growth of retailer internationalisation. In fact it has not really started. The previous documentary research has been fragmented and descriptive rather than analytical. This has created an urgent need for an exploratory, yet analytical empirical investigation into retailer internationalisation. Consequently, this study attempts to answer the following questions: Vhat is (a) the extent and characteristics of U.K. retailers with international retail interests, (b) the major motives for retailer internationalisation, (c) obstacles to retailer internationalisation, (d) the factors important when operating in international retail markets, (e) the organisational and decision maker characteristics associated with retailer internationalisation, (f) the relationship of the preceding constructs with the extent of retailer internationalisation and (g) the interrelationships between the predictive constructs and their impact on retailer internationalisation. These questions, by drawing on the literature of other disciplines, were summarised into an exploratory conceptualisation. This was made operative by interviewing senior representatives from 42 U.K. retailers with international interests. The study revealed: the heterogeneous nature of U.K retailers with international retail interests, evidence that retailers internationalised in response to growth orientated and proactive motives and motives stemming from the international appeal and innovativeness of their retail formula, the diminishing and increasing permeabilty of obstacles to retailer internationalisation and a reliance upon various factors to aid competitive differentiation and the performance of retail operations in international markets. Support was also found for elements of an international orientation amongst retail decision makers, an incremental approach to decision making in retailer internationalisation, a large degree of claimed marketing orientation, the presence of certain characteristics associated with corporate entrepreneurship, the possession of accumulated learning experience, the absence of an international orientation at the corporate level and retailer internationalisation being a strategic option for retailers of all sizes. Additionally, the predictors of retailer internationalisation were factored and it was possible to identify various underlying dimensions. These were used to predict the extent of retailer internationalisation. Provisional support was also found for four pioneering models of the interrelationships among the predictors and their impact upon retailer internationalisation.Overall the study represented a ground clearing exercise by developing initial but tentative theorising into retailer internationalisation. The research has numerous implications for future research directions and management practice. It should be welcomed by practitioners and academics alike, given the growth and increasing importance of this strategic behaviour and the embryonic nature of theorising into the subject.

Management education and development are recognised as highly problematic in advanced industrial societies that have a relatively long tradition of management theory and practice. Problems of developing managerial competence become all the more acute in non-Western societies that require the transfer of managerial know-how from external, mainly Western sources. The focus of this thesis is Continuing Management Education as a vehicle for Management Development with special reference to Bahrain as a transitional society. The investigation serves as a context for evaluating the transferability of selected Western Management theories to non-Western *environments. Special emphasis is placed on the concepts of leadership, motivation and managerial professionalism, following a detailed empirical investigation of the Bahrain management culture at the macro, intermediate and micro levels. A strategy for Continuing Management Education is designed within the broader context of scanning four major management development options available to Bahrain, namely Westernisation, Bahrainisation, Japanisation and Pragmatisation. The latter option is recommended in the light of evidence generated through a collaborative approach involving an extensive survey of the management community. The strategy is applied to Bahrain through evaluating Gulf Polytechnic's Continuing Management Education Programme (COMEP) against it and identifying areas where specific correctives are needed. An explicit attempt is made to develop some guidelines pertinent to cross-cultural management theory transfer with special reference to such variables as specificity of a particular theory, its level of analysis and its methodological structure. At a parallel level, an effort is made to derive pertinent lessons of experience; both in policy terms and on theoretical grounds, out of the Bahrain case by way of a series of tentative generalizations whose applicability extends beyond Bahrain to the Gulf region, the Middle East and possibly other transitional societies. The research is based on a processual-developmental qualitative methodology and amounts to a managerial evaluation of a particular body of management theory and practice. This choice was partly influenced by the author's duality of roles as researcher and director of a major institution of higher learning. A future research agenda is also charted out.

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This study was designed to determine the requisite competencies for entry to transport management in Nigeria and to briefly contrast it with patterns in the United Kingdom using Boyatzis' (1982) model of effective job performance. To accomplish this, a review of United Kingdom and United States literature on management and research findings was conducted to identify and define broad areas of relevant competencies for effective performance of transport managers. A survey instrument consisting of 38 competencies was designed and validated for this study and was sent to a sample of 130 transport personnel managers in Nigeria and 200 in United Kingdom. Personal interviews were also conducted with 20 top level transport executives in Nigeria and United Kingdom respectively. Through a stepwise process, current and requisite competencies were ranked in order of importance and compared for both study areas. Grouped competencies were compared with each other to determine possible relationships. To answer the five research questions developed to address the objectives of the study, paired t-test, Coefficient of congruence, Factor analysis, and Pearson product moment correlation were some of the test statistics used. The study found firstly, that one of the difficulties with the definition of competence is that the term is used to describe very different things. Secondly, the study revealed that 35 competencies were considered important for efficient operation of a transport industry in Nigeria, while the number was 23 in the United Kingdom. This showed significant differences between Nigeria and the United Kingdom in both current competencies and requisite competencies. Thirdly, the study revealed that culture is a very important dimension of managerial competence and that different cultural values and social characteristics result in different kinds of management behaviour and objectives. Fourthly, it revealed that the political and socio-cultural environment affect organisational effectiveness. Finally, the study concludes with a recommendation that management methods be adapted rather than adopted, and that practical universality of management strategies may be a myth.

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This study was conducted out of a need to examine the Quality Management practices of firms from the manufacturing industry sector, a sector which is becoming very important to Malaysia, one of the fastest growing countries of the Pacific-Rim. Since there has not been much research investigating the Quality Management Practices, especially on ISO 9000 and TQM among Malaysian Manufacturing SMEs, this study could be regarded as an exploratory study. SMEs are defined as firms with less than 200 employees. The main aim of this study was to develop a TQM Implementation Model (SMET Model) for SMEs application which considers the effects of quality activities on business performance of the organisations, the current approaches to TQM implementation, the characteristics of the organisations, and the step-by-step TQM implementation approaches which consider Housekeeping (5-S), Production Planning and Control (PP&C), Quality Control Circles (QCC), Quality Improvement Practices Scheme (QIP), Quality Management System (ISO 9000) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) as improvement steps towards TQM. Three main research methods were employed in developing the model: a postal questionnaire survey, structured interviews and practical implementation of the model at a small manufacturing company. 247 responses from the postal questionnaire survey were obtained (38% response rate). Structured interviews were conducted within 23 manufacturing companies to get in-depth views of the implementation of QIP, ISO 9000 and TQM. On the whole, the overall results from this study showed that, the SMET Model is a practical model for the implementation of TQM in SMEs. It considered the needs and limitations of SMEs. In addition, SMET Model Implementation Framework was developed to assist the implementation of SMET Model. The model consists of seven Key Quality Activities, namely 5-S, PP&C, QIP, ISO, TPM and TQM plus a number of supporting Quality Activities. The step change proposed by the model will assist the SMEs in sustaining their quality initiatives such as ISO 9000 and TQM in the long term and also averting failure at the very first attempt. The model has been accepted and currently adopted by SIRIM in promoting quality and productivity awareness among Malaysian SMEs at national level, thus further proving the practicality of the model