The literature on bank efficiency in transition economies (TEs) is neither exhaustive nor conclusive. It mainly investigates bank efficiency in relation to bank size and ownership. However, to the best of our knowledge, it ignores several important dimensions related to the banking sector in TEs: euroization, macroprudential policy and different types of risk. By exploring the relationships between bank efficiency, euroization, macroprudential policy and different types of risk in TEs, this research fills this gap. The relationship between bank efficiency, euroization and bank risk is explored empirically through the estimation of a cost efficiency frontier using time-varying stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) whilst controlling initially for euroization at country level and then at bank level, using the BankScope database and euroization data collected by the author. The findings suggest that euroization at country level is a driver of bank efficiency in TEs, and that different risks are important in the context bank efficiency in TEs. Furthermore, it was shown that efficiency in TEs has varied over period and it has been affected by the Global Financial Crisis. The initial research is extended through the qualitative analysis of the phenomena of euroization at bank level in selected South East European countries, which again to the best of our knowledge, is the first such research. The investigation is conducted through semi-structured interviews of risk managers of banks at different levels of seniority. The main finding of this analysis is that macroprudential policy, widely considered a useful response to global financial crisis, is an important determinant of euroization. To explore this further an econometric investigation of the impact of macroprudential policy on the level of credit euroization in TEs, an aspect ignored in the literature, is undertaken. Additionally, the empirical literature on credit euroization is limited as most studies focus on deposit euroization, assuming that credit euroization mirrors it, although the latter is larger in most TEs. The analysis is conducted employing dynamic and autoregressive panel techniques, using data on macroprudential policy from the IMF and central banks. Thus, this study fills a gap in this literature by investigating the determinants of credit euroization, including the impact of macroprudential policy. Although this is a first attempt at such an investigation, it supports the importance of these policies in driving down the level of euroization in TEs.

Over the last 30 years, China has moved to establish itself as a global economic superpower. This has contributed to the Chinese luxury market becoming one of the largest emerging markets on the world stage in the last two decades. However, the market is still at a formative stage and knowledge about the motivations behind the Chinese consumers’ buying behaviour and factors influencing commitment toward luxury brands is understandably limited. This study investigates consumers luxury consumption behaviour through the evaluation of the antecedents and consequence of brand commitment toward Western luxury brands in this environment. Quantitative data has been gathered via a self-completed but research supported questionnaire that sought to capture the perception of 494 Chinese consumers located in Beijing within four shopping malls dealing in luxury brands. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling have been used to analyse this primary data. The findings reveal that brand affect, brand trust and luxury customer value positively influence Chinese consumers’ brand commitment, with luxury customer value consistently acting as the most important predictor. Brand commitment afforded by consumers influences their willingness to pay more, but not their future purchase intentions. Brand affect, brand trust and luxury customer value also have a positive relationship with purchase intentions and willingness to pay more for the luxury brands. This study updates the luxury customer value structure, emotional value, social value and symbolic value in an emerging luxury market context, expanding upon previous studies through the dependent conceptualisation of luxury customer value. This study establishes a new research model which provides a greater insight into brand commitment, its antecedents and outcomes. This study affords a basis for future luxury brand consumption research in the Tier 2/3 cities in mainland China, as the market emerges from the Tier 1 context presented here.

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In 2003 a national agreement between government, employers and workforce unions introduced significant changes to the school workforce. A key outcome was a significant increase in the number of Teaching Assistants (TAs), who could take on some aspects of the work of teachers. However, there is very little empirical data about TAs, most of what is available is based upon limited datasets. Most previous analyses presume that they are an homogenous group, thus ignoring the possibility that there may be important differences in the types of TA and their deployment. The research reported in this thesis documents the history of TAs and explores their current role. It is argued that a typology of TA roles can be derived, which can help their future deployment in schools and form the basis for the development of a career pathway specific to TAs. The national agreement was to lead to a new ‗professionalism‘ (DfES 2003) and this research provides new empirical analysis which specifically explores the extent to which TAs have become ‗professional‘ in the light of these reforms. In pursuing this objective the concept of professionalism in relation to TAs is critically appraised by examining the views of TAs and the teachers and CPD leaders they work with. It is argued that these perspectives on professionalism and professional status impact upon how schools deploy TAs. It is also argued that these perspectives lead to specific patterns of remuneration and working conditions which are different from those anticipated by orthodox labour market theory. A proposition supported by analyses of TAs‘ pay and job satisfaction. This thesis identifies that there has been an uncoupling of the factors normally associated with pay and satisfaction at work, leading to a mutually reinforcing relationship between pay and satisfaction which generates inertia and has the effect of negatively disadvantaging TAs in employment.

The educational environment is very dynamic and challenging with intensifying competition, as well as an increase use of public comparisons between institutions. Therefore, understanding and attempting to improve student satisfaction is becoming critical to educational institutions. In Malaysia, education is a leading industry and plays a vital role in national development. As the private education sector is growing rapidly, there is a mounting interest to use service quality improvement measures to enhance competitiveness. The main aim of this study is to identify and evaluate the drivers that influence business student satisfaction in the Malaysian private educational environment. Specifically, this study seeks to measure the influence that each driver has on business student satisfaction and the importance of each driver to students; identify the underlying dimensions of the satisfaction drivers that influence business student satisfaction; evaluate the influence of factors such as gender, year of study, programme of study, semester grade and nationality on the results; identify areas of service priority towards better allocation of resources; and to discuss the practical implications of the results. A positivist approach is adopted in this study, whereby 1,200 questionnaires have been distributed to undergraduate business students at four private educational institutions in Malaysia. A total of 823 responses were found to be usable for analysis giving a response rate of 69%. This study adopted and extended a “service-product bundle” model to evaluate the satisfaction level and the importance of the specific service attributes at the educational institutions. Results were analysed using SPSS and quadrant analysis. The results revealed that students are satisfied and placed more importance on the physical facilities of an institution, followed by the teaching and learning drivers. Analysis of the underlying dimensions of the satisfaction drivers resulted in the adoption of a 12-factor solution after conducting several trial rotations. Significant differences exist between the demographic factors and six factors. Quadrant analysis conducted showed eight out of the 12 factors require attention by the educational institutions towards better allocation of their resources. This study contributes to the marketing literature by providing an examination of several marketing constructs. This is an important contribution as it provides an improved understanding of student satisfaction and perceptions of the factors linking to the physical facilities and facilitating goods as well as the teaching and learning issues. From the professional practice contributions, this study will benefit the business schools and educational institutions in general as it provides practical information about what and how students of different levels of study; programme of study; gender; nationality; and level of academic performance consider important in their level of satisfaction and perceptions.

Nigeria has consistently ranked 6th amongst oil-producing nations of the world but despite the enormous revenues from the sale of petroleum resources in the past five decades, the country has made little advance in terms of infrastructure, quality of life and the human development index. This has been attributed to endemic levels of corruption through misappropriation of public funds for private use, most of which have been associated with public procurement. The public procurement process in Nigeria has long been associated with corruption which involves misappropriation of public funds for private use. For example, the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index reports for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 indicate that much of public sector corruption in Nigeria is associated with the public procurement process. Between 2010 and 2012, Nigeria’s position on the corruption perception index of 183 countries surveyed by the TI, declined by 9 places to 143, an indication that current initiatives aimed at solving the problem have not been effective. Efforts at improving the practice of public procurement in Nigeria and developing it into a reputable profession cannot be successful without considering the more fundamental question of the factors that may have made corruption in the process resistant to efforts aimed at curbing it. It is this gap that this study hopes to address in order to promote transparency in the process of public procurement in Nigeria. A total of 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted across four organisations. Findings from the interviews were further subjected to verification discussions at two other organisations. Drawing from the case study analysis; greed, lack of inbuilt checks and wide discretionary powers of procurement officers under the direction of management emerged as possible risk factors motivating corruption in the public procurement process thus offering an explanation of the vulnerability of the process to corruption. Building upon the theoretical debates, public procurement-related corruption in Nigeria is contextualised in a framework which proposes a corruption risk-factor vulnerability check-list for the management of public procurement in Nigeria to achieve verifiable transparency and accountability.

The central aim of the thesis is to examine the use of multiple methods in institutional investors‟ engagement in the UK. In pursuit of that aim, the thesis seeks to examine institutional investors‟ engagement through the agency theory framework. Previous research on institutional investors‟ engagement has failed to illuminate the ways in which institutional investors‟ engagement in corporate governance and corporate social responsibility is applying multiple methods to engagement; particularly as a significant amount of institutional investors‟ engagement is conducted discreetly and the data and information relating to their engagement activities is not usually publicly disclosed. Very few researchers investigating institutional investors‟ engagement recognise that dialogue alone is, at times, insufficient and may not produce the results that they expect. Hence, extant research has not examined what path institutional investors take when a particular mode of engagement fails to yield the desired result. This research examines Foreign & Colonial Investments and reveals that, when one method of institutional investors‟ engagement, employed to influence corporate behaviour, is unsuccessful, F&C Investments makes use of another method of engagement to influence corporate behaviour, policies and practices. Hence, the traditional approach to institutional investors‟ engagement is changing. For example, in the past, institutional investors‟ engagement in corporate governance and corporate social responsibility tended to occur separately. Institutional investors‟ engagement in corporate social responsibility was the focus of ethical and religious investors. However, this research clearly shows that institutional investors integrate corporate governance and corporate social responsibility issues in F&C Investments‟ engagement practices. The integrating of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility suggests that the practise of institutional investors‟ engagement may have is advancing. F&C Investments‟ engagement in corporate governance and corporate social responsibility indicates that corporate social responsibility has become mainstream, having progressed beyond the initial realms of religious and ethical investors to become a major aspect of corporate governance.

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how the strategising of growth-oriented Small Business Owners (SBOs) influences the strategy in their businesses. This thesis describes a ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ (S-as-P) investigation of ten Small Business Owners (SBOs) in Northeast England. Each SBO participated in a confidential ‘one-to-one’ strategy workshop with the author. The workshop format required each SBO to create a strategy map during the videoed session. The research design was intended to be minimally intrusive for members of the small businesses community. The theoretical underpinning in this interpretive study was informed by Structuration Theory (ST). The video data were analysed with CAQDAS software. A template analysis approach was used based upon the symbiotic relationship of agency and structure proposed by ST. Cross-cutting themes were sought across the case companies. The author found that the methodology attracted participation by growth-oriented SBOs. At the meso-level growth-oriented SBOs can be characterised as “strategically aware”, even if their strategy has remained unchanged for a considerable time. This strategic awareness is a manifestation of strategising praxes within the business. SBOs that are not actively changing strategy tend to articulate aspects of their business model which are visible in the firm, the others find difficulty in expressing their strategy in words. The “one-to-one” strategy workshop format used in this study facilitates the articulation of tacit knowledge and hence aids such discussion. This research was focused upon SBOs that had a history of organic-growth, and had been relatively unscathed by the 2008 Banking Crisis aftermath. The participation group were all based in the North East of England. This study contributes to existing S-as-P knowledge by extending the contextual boundary beyond large organisations into the small business domain. The author contrasts, and compares, the S-as-P findings in this study with the extant field that has almost exclusively been devoted to larger scale enterprise. The videoed “one-to-one” strategy workshop design is a methodological contribution that has proven efficacious in both recruiting and studying SBOs with the minimum of intervention disruption for these busy people. The author creates a synthesised model of small business strategising based on findings from this study that may assist future researchers to better engage and understand the strategising of SBOs.

The relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance has been the focal point of corporate governance literature and the subject of a rich empirical literature. However, the current literature is characterised by a lack of uniformity and consensus regarding the nature and direction of this relationship. This thesis aims to contribute to this literature by reviewing the diverse literature on this subject related to developed market economies and by investigating the relationship for small open transition economy, Montenegro. The profound heterogeneity and inconclusiveness of the empirical research on this topic motivated us to undertake a Meta Regression Analysis (MRA) of the wide-ranging econometric studies on the subject in the first part of the thesis. To the best of our knowledge, this MRA is the first study to measure publication selection bias in the empirical literature and to correct for it in deriving quantitative insights into the nature of the relationship of interest. The primary finding of the MRA suggests that both the functional form used in the primary studies to specify the relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance (i.e. linear or non-linear) and the identity of the largest owner matter in assessing the presence of publication bias, authentic empirical effects and the heterogeneity of the findings in this empirical literature. We find that concentrated insider ownership has a positive effect and concentrated outsider ownership a negative effect on firm performance. Furthermore, the pattern of publication bias suggests that researchers have a strong incentive to conform to current prevailing theories. In the second part of the thesis, we use primary data collected and organised by the author to analyse for the first time the impact of ownership concentration on firm performance in Montenegro. The results support the hypothesis that high ownership concentration enables effective monitoring by investors to protect their interests; i.e., in the specific circumstances of transition, ownership structure may be (temporarily) used as a viable substitute for the still-underdeveloped corporate governance framework.

This thesis explores bureaucratic entrepreneurs’ challenges in creating public value in Greek local government, having been subject to a radical fiscal austerity policy reform agenda in 2010-2014. Public administrators from top, middle and front-line levels of management share their perceptions and interpretations of enterprise for creatively coping with financial and societal challenges within a complex and dynamic fiscal austerity context that demands more should be achieved with less. This thesis takes the discussion of public entrepreneurship in local government further. It focuses on aspects of public value creation and collaborative innovation related to the organisational processes and constraints on bureaucratic entrepreneurs seeking to create public value. The theoretical framework that is developed in this thesis conceptualises bureaucratic entrepreneurs within public value, public entrepreneurship and collaborative innovation theories in the process of Greek local government transformation in current times of fiscal austerity. This builds on the importance of a public value perspective in an attempt to bridge boundaries between fiscal austerity politics and requirements for democratic governance. This is explored through a case study research of Greek local government that enables in-depth understanding of bureaucratic entrepreneurs’ use of their innovativeness, risk-taking and pro-activity in the process of identifying and pursuing new opportunities for public value creation. The research findings indicate that the specific fiscal austerity and organisational dynamics prevent collaborative innovation from flourishing; however, these dynamics enable bureaucratic entrepreneurship to emerge as a strategic phenomenon in local government in pursuit of public value. Bureaucratic entrepreneurs are systemically enacted to identify and implement policy, administrative and technological innovations, often unforeseen from the local authorising environment. The findings extend the application of the interactive entrepreneurship-innovation process and contribute to a formal model of public entrepreneurship in local government.