Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-222). / Conventional market orientation philosophy holds that behavioural and philosophical/cultural aspects of marketing are fundamental to an organisation. Prior research on strategic orientation in marketing research has focused on the construct of market orientation, which has been shown to have strong positive relations on business performance. In the present research, the effects of market orientation on performance are assessed concurrently with two other types of strategic orientation: technology orientation and learning orientation. In addition, we assess the mediating properties of entrepreneurship and innovativeness on the relationship of these three types of strategic orientation on business performance.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-79). / The past two decades have seen numerous changes in ideas that inform the tourism industry. In part this is as a result of the introduction of principles of sustainability in tourism which endeavours to address key concerns in tourism including socio-economic inequity and environmental degradation. This dissertation seeks to understand these changes by evaluating the influence of responsible tourism on livelihoods and natural resource management. Malealea Lodge in Lesotho is used as a case study. The objectives of this study elucidate the influence of responsible tourism on livelihoods and naturalresource management, and how these two themes are integrated through responsible tourism practice. The study seeks to understand the nature and extent of the influence of tourism on both the well-being of social and natural systems in a rural, developing society. It further aims to inform entrepreneurs who are keen to improve their tour operations so as to practice responsible tourism. Primary data for this research was collected from a sample of fifty interviewees involving those who were directly involved in a tour operation at Malealea; those indirectly involved; and from those living in the surrounding area who were not involved in the operation in any way. Structured interviews were utilised for data collection. The results show that those directly involved with Malealea Lodge were able to enhance their skills through various education programs offered by the Lodge and were able toearn money to complement other sources of income. Alcohol abuse, child labour and uncontrollable children are reported as the most common negative impacts of the lodge on the host community. Most importantly, evidence of the integration of livelihoods and natural resource management in Malealea is limited. This conclusion is reached despite the fact that the management of the Lodge have established a few projects in an effort to address natural resources use and management concerns.

Convergence trade, by definition, is buying an asset now to be delivered at some date in the future and selling a similar asset, to be delivered at the same future date, at a higher price. In this paper, implementation of bond convergence trade is explored in the South African market. This is in spite of the features of the South African bond market. The South African bond market is significantly different from markets where bond convergence trade has previously been tested. Duration was subsequently introduced in identifying similarities between bonds, and this is the major difference introduced compared to prior work in the literature. The results showed that the trades give, on average, negative returns. However, further investigation into the impact of interest rates not only on the trade, but over the period of investigation and future expected interest rates, is required, before the results can be appropriately interpreted.

This study seeks to establish if companies use derivatives and if so what kinds of derivatives. It does not seek to establish the reasons for derivative usage as is commonly done in Wharton Survey Style study.

The study has produced a generic conceptual framework for action-oriented research to guide such research in multiple domains of application. The conceptual framework has been expressed in terms of the "vocabulary of agency." It contains the notions of agency, enhancing agency, resource, roles, mobility, form of interaction, agency-enhancing device, local learning, global learning, operational coupling, etc. The conceptual framework has been subjected to a multi-stage process of assessment. The assessment shows that the conceptual framework has a certain generality in addressing a whole range of issues being discussed in management systems thinking and action research fields. Besides, the framework also seems capable of functioning as an effective guide in designing and conducting action-oriented research projects in several domains of application. The framework is expected to facilitate transfer of insights from research fields which investigate complex, interactive, and collective phenomena. It is also expected to guide action-oriented research in the direction of increasing the general capacity to bring forth new and useful resources in multiple domains.

Enterprise education is a mandatory part of the national curriculum, and all secondary schools in England must provide some kind of enterprise education for pupils. This ranges from work experience and enterprise programmes delivered by voluntary organisations, to economic literacy classes. The aims and objectives of these programmes are many and varied, making the task of evaluating them fraught with difficulties. Indeed, many evaluation studies of enterprise initiatives in general, have been criticised for a lack of scientific rigour. If there is inadequate empirical evidence about the efficacy of these programmes, then how do schools decide which ones to choose? How do programme providers develop their content and reach intended target populations? Worse, how do policy makers make decisions based on the varied and often contradictory aims and objectives of enterprise initiatives, about the design and development their policies? The aim of this research is to try and help to answer some of these questions by developing a methodology for evaluation studies that could be widely used on enterprise education programmes. By using the same methodology, comparisons can be made between different programmes, and take into account the differential impacts on different populations. Specifically, the main objective was to develop a robust programme evaluation tool, which could be widely used to evaluate enterprise education programmes targeted at young people in schools. This research involved the design and piloting of an attitude scale to measure enterprise potential in young people still at school. The development of the scale involved following accepted procedures for scale development, including reliability and validity testing. Two pilot studies are reported in this thesis, along with a longitudinal evaluation of a year-long Young Enterprise Company Programme. By using the attitude scale it was possible to design a methodology using pre-and posttesting, with control groups. Scores on the attitude scale were then compared using a series of statistical tests. This approach was thus able to overcome many of the criticisms frequently made of evaluations of enterprise initiatives. The scale enables researchers to take into account other moderating factors, which may influence attitudes towards enterprise. For policy makers the scale can provide evidence of the efficacy of different types of enterprise education programmes for different target groups, thus helping to identify how best to target resources and investment. The attitude scale can also highlight the potential impact of contextual and demographic factors such as type of school, ethnic background, and a family background of business ownership.

This research aims to understand why Beyond Budgeting, a management accounting innovation, has not been widely adopted. The traditional budgeting process has been the dominant control mechanism for managing businesses for over 100 years. It has been much criticised over the years and the shortcomings have been extensively documented. There have been attempts to develop and improve the budgeting process or elements of it, with Beyond Budgeting being the most recent heavyweight solution put forward. Beyond Budgeting was announced as a CAM-I project in 1997 and presented at the end of the project as a general management model by Hope & Fraser in 2003. The proponents of Beyond Budgeting report significant benefits from implementing it but despite the criticisms of the traditional budget the adoption level of Beyond Budgeting has been low. During the literature review, theories relevant to the adoption of new management accounting innovations were identified and research questions were derived. The multiphase empirical research took a two phase approach. In the first phase, management accountants worldwide, accessed through the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), were surveyed using a web-based questionnaire which culminated in 185 replies. In the second phase, following the analysis of the questionnaires, semi structured interviews were conducted with 50 respondents who had signalled their willingness to participate. The interviews gave further depth to the research expanding into areas not covered by the survey. From the empirical research it was concluded that although adoption of the concept of Beyond Budgeting as a whole has been low, the constituent parts of Beyond Budgeting are being adopted more widely than previously believed, but often not using the term Beyond Budgeting and also by managers who have not heard of the term. Abandoning the traditional budget, a cornerstone to moving to the concept as a whole, has turned out to be one of the biggest hurdles to its wider dissemination. Regulatory and other stakeholder pressure obliges organisations to compile annual budgets added to which accountants and non-finance managers are comfortable with budgeting and understand it. This has led to certain Beyond Budgeting techniques being introduced while retaining the traditional budget. Practical recommendations to professional bodies for more effective dissemination of innovations in future and a summary of pitfalls hindering the implementation of management accounting innovations make up the contribution to practice. The research contributes to theory by adding to the body of literature on the adoption of Beyond Budgeting, comparing the results with the findings of prior research, underlining the continuing relevance of existing theories by using their explanatory power to underpin the findings, documenting additional insights not found in the literature and by proposing a theoretical framework to document factors preventing the adoption of management accounting innovations.

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Youth enterprise programmes (YEPs) have received substantial government funding and influenced the lives of thousands of young people yet have rarely been the subject of in-depth research. Consequently, there is little evidence on which to assess youth enterprise as a form of public policy. This thesis presents new research to help address this 'gap' in knowledge. This thesis presents a longitudinal study of youth enterprise experiences. It asks what sorts of identities 'disadvantaged' young people hoped to actualise through youth enterprise, how identities are influenced by a YEP and how identities develop through the process of planning, launching, trading in and, often, failing in business. These processes are conceptualised using a novel theoretical framework, the Relational Identity Development Model, which conceptualises identity as emergent from biographical experience and as in relationship with discursive and material structures. The 'disadvantaged' young people in this study hoped to actualise a range of frustrated identifications by starting a YEP business and, so, cannot be understood as simple 'types'. They wrote business plans that can be understood as lifeplans based on the discourse of enterprise as an open route of opportunity. These lifeplans were largely actualised during business launch (although few young people actualised the 'intention' in their business plans to become independent of benefits while trading). When start-up capital was exhausted, YEP participants lacked the material and social resources required to sustain their businesses. Business failure was interpreted in individualised terms, resulting in either devastating self-blame or a belief that, by learning from experience, each individual could employ their personal agency to found a new, profitable business. Business failure most commonly led to planning a new business but, again, these ventures were poorly resourced and seemed likely to fail. Ultimately, then, this thesis challenges the assumption that youth enterprise leads into paid work and argues that, as it stands, youth enterprise cannot be seen as an effective policy of social inclusion.