The power and influence of the individual techniques of Lean Production (L.P.) and Six Sigma (S.S.) are well recognised as successful manufacturing Continuous Improvement (C.I.) and Change Management (C.M.) methodologies. Both techniques are able to be successfully introduced and applied in the manufacturing companies of the UK with both techniques having a history of successful performance improvement. The hypothesis the research attempts to test is founded upon the limitations of the independent adoption of the techniques in contrast to the development of a more powerful Lean Sigma synergy, blending both techniques in a combined approach. The tools used individually limit the potential and pace of the manufacturing business development with both improvement systems having hard limits and constraining boundaries that the fundamentalist supporters are unable or unwilling to question. This research aims to prove that the cocktail of the techniques known as Lean Sigma (L.S.) can significantly improve the ability of the manufacturing business to accelerate the C.I. process whilst maintaining a more structured and disciplined roll out process that combines the creative waste reduction of L.P. and the statistical improvement and management techniques of S.S. Breaking down the constraints and hard limits of the individual techniques by harnessing the most powerful and influential elements of the two systems to produce a significantly more holistic C.I. programme that delivers the penetration and flexibility of Lean combined with the structure and rigour of Six Sigma. This research follows the migration from the C.I. methodology of Total Quality Management (T.Q.M.) to the acceptance of Lean Sigma in a UK manufacturing case study and is supported by three satellite UK longitudinal manufacturing case studies. The resultant case study analysis attempts to uncover evidence to defend the criticism that the two techniques are mutually exclusive and furthermore that they have a significant combined and complementary impact on the case study businesses that have accepted the dual attack strategy of Lean Sigma. By the process of becoming partial embedded in each of the case studies the researcher has experienced the longitudinal change process first hand and plotted the nuances in each of the studies, comparing and contrasting the differing approaches to the adoption of the methodologies and the roll out strategies. The findings of the research highlight the increased impact of the combined approach in areas as diverse as workforce commitment, floor space utilisation, machine up time, reduced labour requirements reduced tooling costs, component quality improvements, health and safety advances, process efficiency and cost reduction activity.

This comparative study explored the process by which SMEs innovate in embedded and arm’s length relationships. In particular, this research asked how the nature of problem-solving, knowledge creation, innovation drivers and innovation outcomes differ in arm’s length and embedded (collaborative) ties. Contemporary strategy research recommends organizations manage close collaborative relationships to innovate and achieve a competitive advantage; however these relationships are resource intensive, prone to failure and often fail to provide an adequate return on investment. By investigating the under-researched innovative potential of low maintenance arm’s length relationships this research aimed to inform more sustainable SME innovation strategy, as these organizations are especially vulnerable to the perils of close collaboration. This thesis followed a qualitative research design utilizing a mono-method strategy of enquiry and conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with senior engineers, designers, MDs and management level staff across 10 north east-based manufacturing SMEs. The main findings based on thematic analysis of the data highlight that knowledge creation occurs via externalization, combination and internalization modes in arm’s length ties, whilst embedded ties also facilitate socialization knowledge creation. Incremental process innovation was most typically associated with collaborative relationships which often tended to be driven by isomorphic pressures, these pressures also manifest during initial problem-solving activity. In contrast, arm’s length ties were associated with both radical and incremental product innovation and the identification of new markets; this activity was exploratory in nature and primarily explained via organizational learning theory. These findings provide an alternative solution to addressing the challenges of networked SME innovation and help orientate future research into more sustainable innovation strategy.

This thesis explores how governance arrangements relate to the succession process in family businesses. This is achieved through considering how governance ‘works’ in family businesses and the challenges that family businesses face with the succession process. Academic literature has suggested research into governance of family firms is underdeveloped (Lubatkin, Schulze, Ling, & Dino, 2005; Steier, Chrisman, & Chua, 2004). Similarly, codes of governance for non-listed firms have only been present in the professional literature for the past seven years (ecoDa, 2010; IoD, 2010). The codes emphasise the importance of the succession process which remains the most difficult period for family firms (Cabrera-Suarez, Saa-Perez, & Garcia-Almeida, 2001; Dunn, 1999; Handler, 1994; Lansberg, 1988; Morris, Williams, Allen, & Avila, 1997; Yan & Sorenson, 2006). In more recent times, the media has begun to discuss the need for improvements in the management and governance of family firms (Bloom, 2017). For these reasons a study that explores governance arrangements in family firms and how they relate to the succession processes is important. The research is underpinned by a constructionist ontology and a social constructionist epistemology. The data were collected through 16 individual face-to-face, semi-structured interviews, with seven family businesses, from a range of industry backgrounds across the United Kingdom. An inductive, thematic approach was taken enabling themes to emerge from the data analysis. The emergent focus of the findings was an overarching concern for control, both in terms of governance arrangements and the succession process. A theoretical model is presented that shows how ‘moderate’ levels of control lead to ‘optimal’ circumstances for the succession process in family firms. The Family Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientation (FIRO) model (Danes, Rueter, Kwon and Dohery, 2002; Haberman and Danes, 2007) is used as an explanatory framework to propose that ‘optimal’ circumstances are characterised by ‘collaborative’ interpersonal relationships within the family firm. The research findings and the subsequent theoretical model that has been developed are important because they expand knowledge regarding the relationship between governance and the succession process in family firms. It provides family business members, family business consultants and researchers with a fresh perspective on how to approach governance arrangements and potentially control the challenges that arise during the succession process.

Commodity prices have been more volatile in recent years. The volatility of prices widely impacts throughout the majority of stakeholder in commodity supply chains. Natural Rubber (NR) is one of the main exporting commodities in Thailand where millions of small farmers rely mainly on the NR producing to generate income for their living and children’s education. The existing literature relevant to commodity Price Risk Management (PRM) is dominated by developed countries in which markets have well-developed infrastructures. Although some research has been conducted in developing countries, most of it focuses on farmers or exporters whilst intermediaries who play a vital role as a middle tier in the supply chain are absent. In NR supply chains, the intermediaries are likely to be the ones who are exposed to the highest risk from price volatility. Their profit margins have diminished due to increasing market power of farmers and their greater accessibility to price information via the internet and mobile phone. Therefore, when NR prices become more fluctuated, the impact on Rubber Business Intermediary (RBI) businesses is even higher than beforehand. This research aims to explore the PRM strategies adopted, and to understand the PRM practiced by RBIs when it comes to managing their business in the south of Thailand. A qualitative method is used as a research approach in this study. 24 RBIs in seven provinces, including the three biggest NR producing provinces in Thailand, were targetted using semi-structured interview and pre-interview questionnaire methods. The interview data was analysed using the template analysis method and NVivo computer software. The findings highlight that the PRM strategies involved in the practices of RBIs are fragmented. This is due to the nature of the uncertainty in business circumstance, and the variety of the RBI’s personal profiles. The PRM strategies adopted by different types of RBIs are varied, as there are various supply chain structures. Moreover, there are even differences in their use amongst the same type of RBIs. This is mainly caused by the diversity in resources and PRM capability on the part of the RBIs. Furthermore, this research also reveals the lack of the advanced PRM tools in the industry for RBIs. They rely mainly upon informal methods provided by their business partners. It is worth noting that these tools, such as a forward contract, are selectively provided to RBIs depending on their relationships and market powers. The accessibility to available PRM tools has a strong linkage to PRM strategies adopted by RBIs. Eventually, adopted PRM strategies incorporated with decisions in risk taking and market channel selection help to determine their business performance. The research concludes by proposing a conceptual model of PRM in practice that is considered to be original and contributes to the industries involved with high-volume and low-margin trading. This research also has implications to novice or existing RBIs, other stakeholders in NR supply chains, such as producers or processors, and policymakers who require more understanding in PRM in practice.

Non-Western immigrants are a growing segment in European societies and represent a huge potential to marketers. From a marketing perspective, understanding the similarities and differences between the culture of the host and immigrant communities is important. It is necessary information for targeting these audiences effectively and also for developing products and services that fit their needs and values. This study is particularly interested in the impact of acculturation on Domestic (Turkish) and Mainstream (Dutch) consumption of food and entertainment. This study seeks to address the impact of bidimensional acculturation on consumer behaviour by determining relevant acculturation life domains i.e. private and public life, ethnic identity, media usage and culture value priorities. Two stages of quantitative data analysis were designed. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied to provide data reduction and simplification. EFA has reduced the variables considered in this study to a smaller set of factors in which the implied underlying data structure is identified and defined. Part two involved a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), based on 530 usable questionnaires. The proposed research model was assessed for validity and reliability and the associated relationship paths quantified. Turkish Language (TL) emerged as the most substantial predictor of Domestic Consumer Behaviour, followed by Attachment Turkish Culture and Family Ties (ATCFT) and Turkish Identification Social Interaction (TSI). Turkish Friends and Peers have a substantial impact on ATCFT. Dutch Acculturation Social Interactions (DSI) and Dutch Acculturation Family Ties (DFT) emerged as predictors of Dutch Consumer Behaviour. Furthermore, Dutch Acculturation Media & Language is mediated by DSI on Mainstream consumption. One key finding is that Turkish Social Interactions have a positive and significant impact on Mainstream consumption. Contrary, Attachment Turkish Culture & Family Ties has a negative impact. This study’s contribution to knowledge is the impact acculturation life domains by exploring the bidimensional effects on consumption of products aligned with heritage and host cultures. This research highlights the importance of considering the distinction between life domains.

Tax evasion represents one of the major problems facing transition and developing economies. It imposes several economic costs: it slows down economic growth; it diverts resources to unproductive activities; it provides an incentive for firms to remain small and invisible; and it generates inequity between the evaders and the honest taxpayers. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the determinants of business tax evasion for transition economies. We do so by adapting the individual theory to the case of businesses; that is by assuming that the behaviour of businesses is similar to the behaviour of individuals, and that the determinants of business tax evasion may be similar, at least qualitatively, to the determinants of tax evasion by individuals or households. More specifically, beyond theoretical and empirical review of the tax evasion literature, this thesis provides three related empirical investigations: a panel investigation of tax evasion at the country level; a pooled-cross section investigation of firm-level behaviour across the transition economies and a cross-section investigation of business tax evasion and tax morale in Kosovo. For the firm-level investigation we use the BEEPS data for the years 1999, 2002 and 2005; and, for the investigation of business tax evasion in Kosovo, we generate primary data by developing a questionnaire and conducting a survey of businesses in Kosovo. Our econometric findings suggest that, first, regardless of the theoretical and previous empirical ambiguity, when it comes to transition economies the relationship between tax rate and tax evasion is positive; second, the macroeconomic environment has only minor effects on business tax evasion, suggesting that the decision to evade or not must depend on other non-economic factors; third, even if a country is performing well in general economic terms, the presence of negative institutional phenomena exert a dominant and immediate influence on the relationship between businesses and government; fourth, business tax morale, as is the case with individuals, has a strong and negative relationship with tax evasion; fifth, moreover, given that the same considerations on morality apply to both individuals and businesses, policies in the individual context apply also to businesses; sixth, lower corruption, higher trust and better treatment of business taxpayers improves significantly both tax morale and tax compliance; and, seventh, because levels of tax evasion vary across firm characteristics, audit strategies should be set accordingly. Finally this thesis provides a set of corresponding policy recommendations intended to reduce either the possibility and/or the inclination to evade.

This thesis investigates how the social dynamics that naturally occur during dissatisfactory incidents in restaurants influence the consumer complaint behaviour process. It further explores what negative emotions consumers experience, how they respond to such dissatisfactory incidents and what stimulates these emotions and responses. Consumer complaint behaviour (CCB) in services is a complex and dynamic process and not a static phenomenon. The emotions and responses are the result of the ongoing evaluations consumers undertake and the continuous human interactions occurring. Although the literature acknowledges the influence of service providers on the CCB responses and negative emotions, little is known about how other customers impact the CCB process. Furthermore, much of the existing research on CCB has been undertaken using purely quantitative approaches that tend to focus on hypothetical scenarios and the measurement of behavioural intentions. This has meant a failing to understand the actual behaviour of the participant, to explore dissatisfying incidents holistically and within their contextual natural settings and to capture the social dynamics and interactions. This thesis has addressed these limitations and assumed a social constructionist paradigm and followed an interpretivist approach. The methodology draws upon the principles of critical incident technique and is multi-method over two phases: qualitative research diaries followed by semistructured interviews. A total of 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Lebanese consumers who shared their subjective accounts of the dissatisfactory incidents they recently experienced in restaurants. The data from the interviews was analysed using template analysis. The findings show that the CCB process within a restaurant context has a social dimension. The continuous human interactions between the consumer, service provider and other customers throughout the dining occasion influence the service failure, cognitive appraisal, negative emotions and CCB responses both directly and indirectly. Furthermore, negative emotions such as feeling fed up and disgust are experienced following a restaurant dissatisfactory incident. The findings also demonstrate that some CCB responses have different variants depending on the context, for example exit and negative word of mouth. Additionally, the findings identified what stimulates both the negative emotions and CCB responses. This study advances the understanding of CCB within services and restaurants in particular by explaining the impact of social dynamics on the CCB process. It presents a model that acknowledges this social aspect and demonstrates its influences. Furthermore it identifies a broad range of negative emotions and CCB responses specific to restaurant dissatisfactory incidents and elaborates on what stimulates them. This study draws attention to the importance of studying CCB in services using an interpretivist approach, as it will result in an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon.

A country’s human capital has been neglected as a potential determinant of inwards foreign direct investment (FDI), both in theory and empirical research. When human capital has been included in models of the determinants of FDI, it appears simply as a control variable or one of the variables in a “kitchen sink” approach, usually without any theoretical rationale for its inclusion or critical discussion of the measures used. The mis-specification that may result from this is advanced as one of the potential explanations for the very diverse findings in previous literature and the failure of the meta-regression analysis (MRA) reported in this thesis to find an ‘authentic’ effect of human capital on inwards FDI. Accordingly, this research seeks to fill this gap, by identifying the mechanisms through which human capital is expected to attract FDI to European transition economies and drawing conclusions about the most appropriate measures of human capital given the characteristics of the former communist (education) system. The ‘productivity-enhancing’ skills and traits that (foreign) investors are likely to value in such economies are identified and the manner in which these skills are developed is analysed. In the light of this analysis the conventional human capital measures used in empirical analyses are critically assessed. These contributions are used to develop an empirical model for estimating the effect of human capital on inwards FDI at country-, sector- and industry-level in 12 European transition economies during the period 1995-2008. Consistent with the results of previous studies, as suggested by the MRA, no significant effect of traditional volume measures of human capital on FDI inflows/stocks is found. However, some evidence is presented in this thesis indicating that the quality dimension of human capital as measured by cognitive skills proxies may affect inwards FDI in the manufacturing sector. Accordingly, several potential explanations for the findings and some of their implications for future macro-level research focusing on the effects of human capital are explored.

Nowadays, the global supply chain system needs to respond promptly to changes in customer demand and adapt quickly to advancements in technology. Supply chain management becomes an integral approach which links together producers, distributors and customers in collaborative management of the whole system. The variability in orders or inventories in supply chain systems is generally thought to be caused by exogenous random factors such as uncertainties in customer demand or lead time. Studies have shown, however, that orders or inventories may exhibit significant variability, even if customer demand and lead time are deterministic. Most researchers have concentrated on the effects of the ordering policy on supply chain behaviour, while not many have paid attention to the influences of applying different forecasting to supply chain planning. This thesis presents an analysis of the behaviour of a model of a centralised supply chain. The research was conducted within the manufacturing sector and involved the breathing equipment manufacturer Draeger Safety, UK. The modelling process was embedded in the organization and was focused on the client's needs. A simplified model of the Draeger Safety, UK centralised supply chain was developed and validated. The dynamics of the supply chain under the influence of various factors: demand pattern, ordering policy, demand-information sharing, and lead time were observed. Simulation and analysis were performed using system dynamics, non-linear dynamics and control theory. The findings suggest that destructive oscillations of inventory could be generated by internal decision making practices. To reduce the variation in the supply chain system, the adjustment parameters for both inventory and supply line discrepancies should be more comparable in magnitude. Counter- intuitively, in certain fields of decision, sharing demand information can do more harm than good. The linear forecasting ARMA (autoregression and moving average) model and the nonlinear forecasting model Wavelet Neural Network were applied as the supply chain forecasting methods. The performance was tested against supply chain costs. A management microworld was developed, allowing managers to experiment with different decision policies and learn how the supply chain performs.

Russia has been lagging behind most of the developed countries and some of the transition economies in terms of the corporate governance infrastructure (Woodruff, 2004). However, the challenge to develop strategic assets, particularly in the form of oil and gas reserves, produced the need to attract foreign capital and expertise. This in turn has led to a mounting pressure to improve fundamental characteristics of corporate governance such as the regulatory environment, enforcement mechanisms, corporate structure and transparency (Preobragenskaya, 2004). Since strategic assets are at the very heart of the still undiversified Russian economy, it is easy to see how corporate governance has become one of the top priorities on the agenda of national reforms (EU-Russia Roundtable on Corporate Governance, 2006). This study attempts to register the perceived change in the institutional context in Russia through analysing reported corporate disputes. Thematic template analysis is applied to the data on corporate conflicts taken from the English language Russian press. The results of the study suggest a positive change in perception about the role of formal institutions with reference to private entities and a negative change in terms of perception in relation to state entities. This conclusion is based on the comparison of corporate disputes and enforcement practices employed by the parties to corporate disputes reported in 1998 and 2006. On an academic level this study addresses a call in the literature to give more consideration to the particularities of the management environment and the fragility of its social systems in Russia (Kuznetsov & Kuznetsova, 2001) as well as complement understanding of Russian corporate governance by concentrating on the in-depth analysis of company behaviour (Iwasaki, 2007).