The aim of this research study is to examine the impact of Saudi Arabian culture on corporate governance (CG) and its regulatory compliance with respect to the protection of minority shareholders’ interests. The protection of minority shareholders is a primary concern in the area of CG and particularly as defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) principles. In Saudi Arabia, CG is a newly introduced regime. Its set of CG principles was initially issued after the first market crash in 2006, which signified the need for appropriate CG standards in Saudi Arabia because minority shareholders suffered catastrophic losses. Moreover, CG legislation in Saudi Arabia is still slowly moving from voluntary to obligatory because family-owned firms, which is the dominant form of incorporation, are stifling corporate growth by their reluctance to open their equity to outside shareholders, as argued by the OECD report of Koldertsova (2011). Hence, the conceptual framework for understanding how Saudi Culture affects minorities is based upon Hofstede’s (1980-2010) Cultural Value Dimension (CVD) model linking societal constructs with the legal and political milieu. Thus, this research sets out to examine this link in relevance to Saudi Culture. In addition, this undertaking will extend, via the second research question, to uncover other factors, such as the legal and political, influencing the level of compliance of listed Saudi corporations with the OECD principles with respect to the protection of minority shareholder rights. The findings of this study provides significant correlations between each of Hofstede’s CVDs: Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Femininity, and Long Term Orientation and the quality of the exercise of minority shareholders’ rights as defined by the OECD’s principles of CG in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the distribution of each CV dimension was found not to be the same when comparing groups of Majority and Minority shareholders. Hence, the significant correlations expose two different subcultures: an active culture pertaining to Majority shareholders and a passive culture pertaining to Minority shareholders in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the current legal environment guiding the CG procedures in Saudi Arabia was found to attach a low level of significance to minority shareholders in terms of: ease of litigation, establishment of specialised courts, appointment of competent qualified judges in CG commercial cases, and creation of awareness programmes for minority shareholders’ rights. In addition, the lack of a solid constitution was found to weaken popular pressure to safeguard shareholders' rights and promote a block-holding model of corporate control. Hence, due to governmental institutions falling short on their responsibilities, Saudi controlling families can practically be considered as an institution, as indicated by Institutional Theory, and this familial institution is likely to continue to manifest itself in the governance of emerging economic systems such as Saudi Arabia's as its survival is dependent on the institutional context.

This research explores perceptions of the context, contribution, challenges and critical success factors in the adoption of sustainability footprint strategy amongst Scottish SMEs. Critics of sustainability footprint measurement insist that by nature it records historical impact and does not incorporate the views of future generations and are a luxury for most firms except those achieving near monopolistic profits. Recent UK greenhouse gas policy initiatives are specifically targeted at large organisations and do not provide the institutional support required to assist SME's in greenhouse gas emissions reporting. Despite overwhelming evidence as to the benefits of sustainability footprint tools such as carbon footprints very few companies set emissions targets. Surprisingly still there is limited research conducted as to the benefits of sustainability footprint tools to SMEs and their perceptions as to its contribution to business success. Interviewees highlight that case study Scottish SMEs are driven to implement sustainability footprints to pre-empt future GHG legislation, process improvement, cost reduction, senior management commitment, emissions reduction, CSR and waste reduction. However the emphasis on GHG emissions has contributed to “carbon myopia” an exclusive focus on carbon footprint measurement. This research supports the view of senior management commitment as critical to the success of sustainability footprint measurement initiatives but policymakers also have an enabling role by ensuring fair competition, access to grants, mandatory guidelines for SMEs, tax incentives, fines, legislation, emissions league table and carbon reporting as a pre-qualification criteria for government tenders. Scottish SME interviewees adopt a sustainability negative perceptual orientation suggesting barriers to placing sustainability on the agenda such as implementation cost, lack of knowledge, sustainability competing with other issues on the agenda, time constraints, the transience of sustainability, inability to recoup carbon footprint costs, failure to recognise benefits, generational issues and communication Scottish SME case studies however reveal an ambivalent “love hate” relationship amongst interviewees with sustainability which varies depending on the proximity of the individual to the economic, social or environmental issue. Thereby underlining the importance of management's ability to influence stakeholders to remain sustainability positive in orientation through training, instruction and supervision that promotes sustainable behaviour. The Sustainable Strategic Growth Framework is proposed as a solution to the Sustainability/CSR Dilemma and to align employee behaviour with sustainability objectives.

There is still limited knowledge available on how SME and midcap firms perform financing decisions and on what such a decision is based on. The literature revealed that capital structure theories can only partly explain parameters that determine financing decisions, particularly in a bank dominated lending environment like in Germany. Academic research tried to expand towards a broader and more strategic approach regarding a financing strategy and towards behavioural bias of a company's management. Furthermore, existing research tried to identify an interaction between business strategy and financing strategy but failed to identify a causal direction so far. The present research provides a unique research approach to bridge this gap as it introduces a new aspect into the discussion on the decision for a financing instrument and whether a formulated financing strategy is followed. Based on a case study approach that combines manager interviews, document analysis and calculation of key financial ratios, the research explores the management's decision in a specific situation, the refinancing of standard mezzanine. Firms that used standard mezzanine had to perform a decent refinancing decision between the years 2011 and 2014 as there was no exact substitute instrument available in financing markets anymore. The results showed that a financing strategy exists in the cases explored, but elements and form varied across cases. In addition, the cases indicated that behavioural bias on management level might exist, based on identified inefficiencies and delays. However, these inefficiencies cannot be primarily assigned to owner-managers as done by previous research. Furthermore, a causal direction between business strategy and financing strategy could be indicated in the cases investigated. The results led to the development of a financing strategy typology, based on existing types of business strategies that might help to explain financing decisions. A template for a holistic financing strategy has been designed based on the investigations that allows midcap firms to establish and implement their own financing strategy (or adjust their existing strategy). The holistic framework provides core elements and financing principles as well as a prototype financing process that help to avoid the identified inefficiencies in their financing processes.

The subject of thesis Process management and its use in optimization is drafting process change in real company and its subsequent implementation. The work focuses on the steps important to the change process, their explanation and subsequent use in practical part. Thesis is divided into two main parts. First part is a theoretical background of the process management and a development of this sector, explanation of key concepts closely related with process management to a description of a specific methods, which play a role in the process of company management.Next part is a practical part where most of the theoretical background was used. Practical work itself is a real-world example of the banking environment, where was actually implemented. Because of a limited possibility to publish the practical part, I do not mention a particular company and the data used for the preparation example are type data - these are not real data. However, the implementation of process changes was set this way and works now, and since it was the optimization, it is therefore expected that this change will bring its savings in the future. Since the implementation of the changes has already occurred, even this assumption was fulfilled and set change of process still generates its savings.

<p> The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to explore how African American Online doctor of management students perceived engaging support to maintain motivation throughout the dissertation writing process. The study involved collecting and analyzing data from 10 African American online doctoral students who matriculated into an online doctor of management program or had completed the dissertation writing process. Participants shared perspectives on support through narrative storytelling and answered open-ended questions that described individual perceptions of engaging support to maintain motivation during the dissertation writing process. The general research question was as follows: How do African American online doctoral of management students engage support to maintain motivation during the dissertation witting process? Four themes emerged from the findings. The four themes were faith based support, collaborative coaches versus autonomous coaches, traditional faculty support versus nontraditional support, and chair lack of encouragement versus encouragement. The major implication was support to maintain motivation in an online learning environment must include communications and socialization on an ongoing basis during the dissertation writing process. Doctor of management organizational doctoral program leaders may use this study to examine doctoral student support issues, chairs&rsquo; encouragement strategies, and the need for dissertation coaching. The conceptual framework for this qualitative narrative inquiry was Bandura&rsquo;s (1997) self-efficacy theory, Atkinson&rsquo;s (1957) expectancy value theory, and Vygotsky&rsquo;s (1978) social constructivist theory.</p><p>

Morale is a commonly used term both in business and society but the concept of morale is relatively poorly defined and understood. In a recent paper Liefooghe et al. (2004) expressed surprise that "when reviewing the literature, no strong theory to explain morale as such is in evidence, nor are there many empirical studies that offer solid ground to advise organisations"(p 1). This thesis aims to provide these theories and this empirical evidence in order to produce a better understanding of morale. This research identifies a number of deficiencies in the current understanding of morale. These range from elision with other concepts to disagreement about whether it is an individual or group phenomenon. In this study, four principal domains are examined: (i) what morale is; (ii) how it differs from other concepts; (iii) the antecedents of morale and (iv) its consequences. A mixed methods approach was adopted combining idiographic and nomothetic research. The idiographic phase of the research adopted a Straussian (1998) grounded theory approach, involving data collection from seven different organisations. The data was accrued from a combination of site visits, informal contacts, external research, and 203 semi-structured interviews which were supplemented with psychometric instruments. The data were then coded and analysed. Morale could be readily differentiated from other concepts and emerged as a phenomenon with three dimensions: affective, future/goal and interpersonal. It was also viewed as a single phenomenon which was generalisable across situations and rooted in the individual although perceived members of the group exerted considerable influence. The antecedents of morale impacted on the three dimensions outlined above. Its consequences were the zeal with which tasks are undertaken, creativity and engagement. The nomothetic element of the research developed a number of measurement scales, grounded in the qualitative phase. These allowed morale to be differentiated from other phenomena and offered insights into individual and group perceptions of morale and the influence of personality variables. Further quantitative research confirmed the three dimensional structure of the concept. The results of these two phases were then integrated to provide a picture of the phenomenon of morale, differentiate it from other concepts and elucidate its antecedents and consequences. An appraisal of the limitations of the research is also made. Finally the implications of this research for both academic researchers and practitioners are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

The main goal of this thesis is proposal and implementation of the support of decision making with help of Business Inteligence tools in bank environment for deparment of the risk management. The proposal include enlargement of the current used dimensions with new ones. Designed system should fully replace contemporary system and extend possibilities of obtaining informations from data resources and improve the quality of decision making. Designed system will be part of portfolio quality review of multiple business products. The next goal of this work is to analyse current trends in Business Inteligence and analyse the usage of BI in banking. Further analyse the support of BI from operative to strategic decision making. The goals are achieved on the basis of analyses accessible relevant electronic and printed resources, further from knowledge and experience of bank's analysts from deparment of the risk management and BI. Further from service documentation and further from my work experience in deparment of the risk management and from implementation of credit scoring projects. As the personal contribution of the author is possible to consider the demonstration of the usage of BI in bank risk management and at the same time the proposal of one possible way of solving implementation of the supports of decision making in bank's environment.

This diploma thesis deals with strategic business management and its support with Business Intelligence tools. The objective of this thesis is to analyze specific company, design a model of metrics suitable for managing this company and implement Business Intelligence solution to monitor chosen metrics. The whole thesis is separated into two basic sections. First section focuses on theory, describes Balanced Scorecard methodology and principles of Business Intelligence tools. Both themes are contextualized in Corporate Performance Management. Second section deals with application of theoretical knowledge in practice - the environment of company. In relevant chapters is the company analyzed by Balanced Scorecard methodology; the second chapter deals with the Business Intelligence solution. The main contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate the utilization of Balanced Scorecard methodology and Business Intelligence technologies in managing a mid-sized company. The solution itself shows the management possibilities of these instruments on observed data and gives a notice to some phenomenons in the company.

This thesis focuses on one key theme, which is to understand the construct of organizational networking behaviors in business-to-business markets. It is concerned with two main issues, which are built into the research program of three empirical studies. The first issue is concerned with a systematic understanding of organizational behaviors in response to the embeddedness and interconnectedness of the network of business relationships that every organization has to deal with. Study 1 of the research program explores the concept termed ‘organizational networking behaviors’. This study adopts an industrial network approach, the central tenet of which is that firms undertake a continuous process of interaction with their important partners in the embedding context of the business network. A multi-informant approach, using semi-structured interviews, was used to collect qualitative data from thirty-one executive managers (in fifteen manufacturing firms in the UK). This study identified information acquisition, opportunity enabling, strong-tie resource mobilization and weak-tie resource mobilization as four types of organizational networking behaviors, which are reflected by their respective sub-types. The resulting conceptualization of organizational networking forms the basis for the operationalization of the construct in Study 2. While Study 1 takes an exploratory qualitative approach, Study 2 deploys a confirmatory quantitative approach since it is necessary to confirm/refute the resulting conceptualization and its types from Study 1. A rigorous scale construction and validation process was followed in this study. The conceptualization of the measurement model was carefully considered based on its theoretical underpinning. A second-order formative measurement structure was conceptualized, which required the employment of a multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) model for the validation of such a measurement model. A dataset of 603 responses was collected and analyzed to confirm the structure of the four types of organizational networking behaviors, which is in line with the results of Study 1.The second issue that the thesis is concerned with is the influences of such organizational networking efforts, which are examined from a firm’s behavioral perspective. Study 3 examines how organizational networking behaviors serve as the driver of a firm’s customer-oriented, competitor-oriented and relationship-oriented behaviors due to the sensing and seizing aspects of networking. It was also hypothesized that a firm’s customer-oriented, competitor-oriented and relationship-oriented behaviors positively affect firm performance. The test of these hypotheses required survey data collection, which was done through an on-line questionnaire. A dataset of 354 responses was collected from UK managers, whose organizations operate in business-to-business markets in either the manufacturing or services sectors. The use of statistical modeling techniques is similar to that of Study 2. The research results indicate that a firm’s network-oriented behaviors positively impact on the development of customer-oriented and competitor-oriented behaviors. They also foster relationship coordination with its important business partners within the network. In addition, the effective management of the firm’s portfolio of relationships is found to mediate the positive impact of network-oriented behaviors on firm profitability.

This diploma thesis concerns the posibility of application Balanced Scorecard in production company management by using Business Intelligence tools. The goals of the thesis is definic strategic goals using Balanced Scorecard method, creation of the metrics from strategic goals and design and implementation of BI application to watt key metrics. The esential concepts concerning Business Intelligence and Balanced Scorecard are defined in the theoretical part of the thesis. Esential principals of BI and basic perspectives of BSC are defined there. Effects and risks of applying Business Intelligence are discussed in the thesis. Strategic goals are defined in the practical part of the thesis. A strategic map is created from the strategic goals in the thesis. Defined strategic goals are used for the creation of the metrics that are used to create the indicators. The indicators are created in the part of the thesis where BI is implemented. Only some metrics were chosen for the implementation of BI. Sorce data is transformed and stored in the multidimensional diabase. These data and indicators are used to create OLAP cube. Then the reports are created from data in this cube. Outputs of the thesis are BSC analysis including strategic map of the goals, BI implementation using MS SQL Server and reports using MS Excel and MS ProClarity.