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This study attempts to characterise what is particular about the style of management and the nature of management jobs in France. In essence, the research sets out to explore the following themes: - Is Crozier right - just how formal, hierarchic and bureaucratic is French management? To what extent is French management education responsible for the singularities of French management? How do socio-cultural factors affect the French management style? Is there a convergence of national management styles, a universal model which transcends national boundaries? What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of French management? These questions are answered in part in terms of the 1iterature and in terms of the evidence from non-participant observation and direct interviewing. The study ties together several disciplines which have often been treated separately - management, sociology, anthropology - to give a better overall picture of the interaction between French management and society.

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One of the challenges for a manager in a creative profession is how to turn the creative energy of the designers into profitable energy for the company. Creativity and productivity are frequently seen as opposing forces, therefore trying to simultaneously nurture both the innovation and the efficiency of a creative design team can become a frustrating balancing act for managers of these organisations. This research demonstrates how the performance of creative people can be aligned to the commercial goals of a design organisation, and that the perceived clash between creativity and productivity is a result of an incompatibility between the creative style of the company and the management techniques being employed. Executives and employees from fifteen organisations of varying levels of success and creativity, across a spectrum of creative design professions, were interviewed regarding how they accommodate a range of productivity and creativity indicators. In analysing the findings qualitatively, it was discovered that rather than one fixed answer to this question, a range of management techniques are applied and many different creative styles are employed. The research findings show that identifying the creative style of the organisation and the appropriate management technique to match is critical in overcoming this perceived paradox. It provides a diagnostic tool for the creative design organisation to enable them to establish where they are on a spectrum of creativity, or decide where they want to be strategically, and then either adapt or adopt an appropriate management technique to complement rather than constrain their creative style. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

The problem undertaken is a study of certain basic techniques of office management as they apply to the efficient supervision of a small office. The study deals with such fundamental functions of management as the selection and guidance of office personnel, the handling of correspondence and transcription, the manipulation of office files, and the choice of equipment and supplies within the range of a limited budget. It is a survey of existing office practices.

Leadership development is adopted as a strategy to become a learning organisation. The emphasis on leadership or transfer of leadership training is perceived as central to the development of a learning organisation, which is the only sustainable competitive advantage in response to an increasingly unpredictable business environment. Leadership development may be seen as oriented towards building capacity in anticipation of unforeseen challenges. In this vein, developing leadership behaviours/capabilities might be a priority for successful organisations. This suggests that organisations should be able to develop their leaders by ensuring the harmony between the requirements of corporate strategy and the context in which they work. Given the fact that leadership is such essential part of organisational development, the methods for developing the leadership behaviours/capabilities must be present. Without defining leadership behaviours/capabilities, and their development methods, organisations may fail to optimize the outcomes of their leadership. This indicates the importance for understanding how leadership development (LD) is approached. Consequently, this study explores how LD occurs and what factors influence this phenomenon in the Arab context using evidence from Syria, and develops an integrated model to support the introduction of LD to organisations operating in the Syrian/Arab context. This study utilises a qualitative multiple-case design to understand and explain the character of and the influence on LD in the Arab world using evidence from Syria. Specifically, the study was based upon a sample of three cases of for-profit companies. Research data was gathered through 36 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the middle and top management levels. The findings reveal that LD occurs through the process that begins once a company identifies its leadership needs. This occurs by analysing internal/external environment to select the leadership behaviours/capabilities required, and their development methods. It was noted that this process seems to be similar among the three companies, but the type of behaviour/capabilities required tends to be context specific. Additionally, the findings reveal that there were two types of factors that influence LD at the three companies: Factors were seen as determinant factors through which the decisions of whether to introduce LD were made; and factors influencing the successful application of LD. The findings also reveal that there is a dynamic interaction between the mechanism used for understanding the weakness to identify leadership needs from one side and the context in which the companies operate from the other side. This relationship poses the basis for each company to select what fits its internal/external needs. This was evident through the types of behaviours/capabilities required and the purpose of each development method adopted by each company for developing the behaviours/capabilities required. The findings provide several contributions, but the major contribution is the discovery of how LD is applied in an Arab context, what behaviours/capabilities and development methods work best with for-profit companies in this context, how companies operating in an Arab context identify leadership needs for development, and what factors they perceive as determinants of LD and what factors influence the implications of LD. The study makes an additional contribution by developing an empirical model for introducing LD in an Arab context using evidence from Syria. The model was based on the data obtained from the field study. This could be appropriate for the Syrian/Arab context from one side that shares the same traditional characteristics, and companies working in these contexts (Arab) from the other side.

It is widely acknowledged that discipline at work is a neglected area of study in the context of contemporary employee relations. Within the workplace the handling of discipline is largely prescribed by formal rules that are captured in policies, applied through procedures and then interpreted by the actors who facilitate this process. This thesis argues that an empirical understanding of the disciplinary process can only be achieved if it includes an appreciation of the nature of the relationship that is established during the disciplinary process and that this is crucial for us to develop a full understanding of the dynamics that take place within this activity and between these functions. It contends that throughout the process of disciplinary handling there exists a highly contested terrain (Edwards, 1979) that is constantly contended by the various actors that play out this vital role in relation to aspects of power, control and consent.

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In this thesis, we design advanced interference management techniques for future wireless networks under the availability of perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI). We do so by considering a generalized imperfect CSI model where the variance of the channel estimation error depends on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). First, we analyze the performance of standard linear precoders, namely channel inversion (CI) and regularized CI (RCI), in downlink of cellular networks by deriving the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of each user subject to both perfect and imperfect CSI. In this case, novel bounds on the asymptotic performance of linear precoders are derived, which determine howmuch accurate CSI should be to achieve a certain quality of service (QoS). By relying on the knowledge of error variance in advance, we propose an adaptive RCI technique to further improve the performance of standard RCI subject to CSI mismatch. We further consider transmit-power efficient design of wireless cellular networks. We propose two novel linear precoding techniques which can notably decrease the deployed power at transmit side in order to secure the same average output SINR at each user compared to standard linear precoders like CI and RCI. We also address a more sophisticated interference scenario, i.e., wireless interference networks, wherein each of the K transmitters communicates with its corresponding receiver while causing interference to the others. The most representative interference management technique in this case is interference alignment (IA). Unlike standard techniques like time division multiple access (TDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA) where the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) is one, with IA, the achievable DoF scales up with the number of users. Therefore, in this thesis, we quantify the asymptotic performance of IA under a generalized CSI mismatch model by deriving novel bounds on asymptotic mean loss in sum rate and the achievable DoF. We also propose novel least squares (LS) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) based IA techniques which are able to outperform standard IA schemes under perfect and imperfect CSI. Furthermore, we consider the implementation of IA in coordinated networks which enable us to decrease the number of deployed antennas in order to secure the same achievable DoF compared to standard IA techniques.

This dissertation sets out to investigate the management of relationships in British-Chinese business settings. Whilst set in the frameworks of politeness theory and accommodation theory, this dissertation studies the management of relationships in British-Chinese business interactions from a more comprehensive perspective. It examines the sociocultural as well as the communicative behaviour of the interactions between British and Chinese business people, to explore how relationship issues were handled and how communicative as well as cultural/sociocultural strategies affected the management of relationships. This work is based primarily on research conducted in Britain during November-December 1996, June 1997, and November 1997, when three Chinese delegations were visiting a local engineering company in the southeast of England. For the purpose of this study, three kinds of data were collected: 1) video recordings of authentic meetings between British business people and their Chinese clients (including training sessions); 2) comments from subsequent interviews and playback sessions held with the British and Chinese participants; 3) field notes. This study has shown that a variety of aspects can be held accountable for the management of relationships in intercultural settings. On a macro level, linguistic features alone can not adequately explain the process of negotiating relationships in fonnal intercultural settings, it also involves the non-linguistic perspective. From a linguistic perspective, attending to face needs is not the sole agent for relational management. Accommodation and respect for sociality rights also play an important part in it. The thesis attempts to distinguish the self-claimed face (self-image) and the perceived face (public self-image) and explore their respective functions in the management ofrelationships. The research also claims that group face is more likely to surface in group-versus-group. individual (group identity marked)-versus-group, or individual (group identity marked)-versus-individual (group identity marked or unmarked) settings. This study also argues that communication accommodation theory should incorporate convergence, maintenance or divergence along the line of culture specific behaviour. It proposes a new conceptualisation of CAT that should involve both speech and non-speech accommodative features. This study shows that a wider range of perspectives are needed in order to investigate intercultural communication.