Esta dissertaÃÃo objetiva identificar a contribuiÃÃo da visÃo baseada em recursos (VBR) para a anÃlise das estratÃgias de marketing voltadas para o pÃblico de baixa renda (BR), tendo como objeto de pesquisa uma instituiÃÃo financeira. A dissertaÃÃo se viabilizou mediante um produto de microcrÃdito chamado Crediamigo, do Banco do Nordeste do Brasil S/A, dirigido ao mercado-alvo da base da pirÃmide. Para se identificar essas contribuiÃÃes da visÃo baseada em recursos, foi construÃda a estrutura de anÃlise VRIO para as estratÃgias de marketing do Crediamigo, evidenciadas por trÃs diferentes grupos de colaboradores: tÃcnicos do programa, tÃcnicos de comunicaÃÃo e assessores de crÃdito. A pesquisa de natureza qualitativa adotou como estratÃgia de pesquisa um estudo de caso exploratÃriodescritivo, que identificou as estratÃgias de marketing utilizadas e as analisou pela Ãtica da visÃo baseada em recursos. Os instrumentos de coleta de dados utilizados foram pesquisa documental, registros em arquivos e entrevistas. Nestas fontes de evidÃncias se constatou que o produto à voltado em sua maioria para a BR. Definido entÃo o pÃblico-alvo, a etapa seguinte foi identificar as principais estratÃgias de marketing utilizadas pelos tÃcnicos do programa, por meio de uma entrevista em grupo, na qual se construiu o mix de marketing, utilizando-se um questionÃrio com perguntas abertas. Para a evidenciaÃÃo dessas estratÃgias junto aos tÃcnicos de comunicaÃÃo, utilizou-se o mesmo processo empregado para os tÃcnicos do programa; jà para a evidenciaÃÃo com os assessores de crÃdito, aplicou-se um questionÃrio com questÃes estruturadas de mÃltipla escolha e resposta Ãnica, em escala ordinal. Finalmente se elaborou a anÃlise VRIO, com a construÃÃo de sua estrutura, mediante questionÃrios dicotÃmicos aplicados aos tÃcnicos do programa. Das trinta e cinco estratÃgias levantadas inicialmente, sete foram evidenciadas pelos trÃs grupos. E a estrutura de anÃlise VRIO dessas sete estratÃgias demonstra que trÃs delas apresentam vantagem competitiva sustentada, performance econÃmica superior à normal e sÃo consideradas pontos fortes e competÃncias distintivas sustentadas e as outras quatro apresentam igualdade competitiva, performance econÃmica normal, porÃm sÃo consideradas pontos fortes porque agregam vendas ou reduzem custos. Concluindo, a VBR, quando utilizada para a anÃlise de competitividade e sustentabilidade, contribui para o fortalecimento das organizaÃÃes, na medida em que possibilita a permanente readequaÃÃo de suas estratÃgias, as mudanÃas internas e externas, com as devidas inovaÃÃes, permanentes e necessÃrias, sobretudo em mercado de margem de lucro pequena, porÃm com alta escala, como à o caso da baixa renda / The dissertationâs objective is to identify the contribution of the resource-based view (RBV) to the analysis of the marketing strategies directed to low-income consumers, having a financial institution as the object of the research. This dissertation has been developed based on a microcredit product titled Crediamigo from Banco do Nordeste do Brasil S/A (BNB), which targets the base of the pyramid market. In order to identify these contributions based on the resource-based view a VRIO framework analysis has been built for the Crediamigoâs marketing strategies, which are evidenced through three different partnering groups: program technicians, communication technicians and credit advisers. The research of qualitative nature has adopted as a research strategy an exploratory-descriptive case study which identified and analyzed the marketing strategies employed through the lenses of the resource-based view. The data collecting instruments used were documentary research, file registries and interviews. Supported by these sources of evidence it was observed that the product is mainly devoted to the low-income consumers. Once defined the target public, the next phase was to identify the main marketing strategies used by the program technicians through group interview, in which a marketing mix was designed using opened questions. To evidence these strategies with the communication technicians the same process employed with the program technicians was applied. On the other hand, for the evidencing with the credit advisers, a multiple-choice structured questions with single answers in ordinal scale was used. Lastly a VRIO framework analysis was performed through dichotomic questions applied to the program technicians. Out of the thirty five strategies identified in the beginning, seven were evidenced by the three groups. And the VRIO framework analysis of these seven strategies shows that three of them present sustained competitive advantages, economic performance above normal and are considered strong points and have sustained distinctive competencies, while the other four present competitive parity, normal economic performance, but are still consider strong points because they either increase sales or reduce costs. Therefore, the use of RBV for the analysis of competitiveness and sustainability contributes to the strengthening of the organizations as it allows the adjustment of their strategies to internal and external changes with the permanent and required innovations, above all, in markets with reduced profit margins but with great scale, as it is the case with low-income consumers.

O mercado de vinhos no Brasil teve sua condição competitiva modificada, principalmente a partir da década de 1990 com a abertura comercial. Com isso, as vinícolas precisaram buscar formas mais eficientes de gerir seus recursos e capacidades, bem como de buscar a melhoria da qualidade de seus produtos por meio da inovação de produtos e processos e a transmissão de uma imagem de qualidade e credibilidade ao consumidor. Dentre as mais de 600 vinícolas do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, destaca-se a Casa Valduga como uma das mais emblemáticas representantes da busca pela qualidade e sofisticação deste novo vinho brasileiro. Um dos produtos de destaque da vinícola é o Storia, considerado seu vinho ícone. Tal produto necessitou da utilização conjunta de vários recursos e capacidades pela empresa, não apenas para criá-lo, mas também para que ele pudesse ser reconhecido e valorizado pelo seu valor de uso. Assim, o seu terroir, bem como as rotinas agrícolas e o expertise do enólogo e do responsável pelo marketing possibilitaram a criação do Storia. Outro aspecto importante que se destaca no aumento da percepção do valor de uso do produto é a reputação da empresa, bem como seus relacionamentos estratégicos, principalmente com os formadores de opinião, jornalistas e experts da área. Tal questão é favorecida pelas empresas apoiadoras da vinícola, tais como os representantes comerciais, a assessoria de imprensa e as escolas de degustação. Desta forma, trata-se o presente estudo de uma pesquisa qualitativa com finalidades exploratórias e descritivas, procurando, dentro da abordagem estratégica da Visão Baseada em Recursos (VBR), propor um framework integrativo capaz de abarcar a condição competitiva da Casa Valduga, bem como de suas empresas apoiadoras. O framework engloba também aspectos da idiossincrasia do consumidor no uso do valor do produto, ou seja, a sua cocriação. Além disso, também é utilizada a escultura social de Joseph Beuys como uma maneira de aproximar cada vez mais o lado do consumidor com a produção. Assim, um vinho não apenas será excelente por causa da indústria ou de aspectos técnicos de produção, mas também por fatores subjetivos relacionados ao consumo e às particularidades e contextos de uso e interação do cliente-consumidor com o produto e as empresas que, direta ou indiretamente, participam da cadeia produtiva do vinho. / Since the 1990’s, with the ingress of imported goods in Brazil, the national wine industry has experienced situations of growing and professionalization. Among more than 600 wineries, Casa Valduga stands out as a premium winery. A family business, which for three generations has been dedicating itself to growing grapes and producing fine wines in the Serra Gaucha, the company seeks to combine technology, expertise and innovation with design elements to create sophistication and high quality products. Its product line ranges from the icon wine Storia, awarded as the best merlot red wine in the country, to white wines, sparkling wines, and rosés. The Resource-Based View (RBV) has been considered an increasingly dominant approach to strategy. However, in the past ten years efforts have been made in order to link it with consumer perception and participation in value creation. In this direction, this study aims to structure an integrative framework with the participatory art and social sculpture of Joseph Beuys. For Beuys, an artist is not simply the one who creates the work of art, but also the one who provides the conditions for public interaction, thus helping in the construction of art. The same seems to be happening with goods. Consumers are the arbiters of value and it is them, with their experience, that examine its "profit". The research is a detailed case study, where forty five consumers and professionals connected, directly or indirectly, to the management, the production and the marketing of the winery were interviewed. A semi-structured interview with a questionnaire was used as the main form of primary data collection, as well as nonparticipant observation. The research also makes use of secondary data coming from the company's website and other institutions linked to the sector, as well as journals and magazines. The data are analyzed using content analysis and converged by triangulation. The results show the terroir, the agricultural routine, the expertise of the winemaker, and marketing strategies as the determinants for the creation of Storia. In turn, reputation, strategic relationship and Villa Valduga are the resources that support a perception of high value of use. Thus, a wine will be considered excellent not only because of the technical production aspects, but also the subjective and contextual factors related with the consumption.

O conhecimento tem se mostrado como uma importante fonte de vantagem competitiva para as organizações. Por isso, as empresas buscam, cada vez mais, mecanismos que alavanquem os processos de geração, gestão e disseminação do conhecimento organizacional. Uma das ferramentas, que pode potencializar a transformação do conhecimento em vantagens competitivas, é a universidade corporativa. Nesse contexto, as franquias surgem como um dos objetos de estudos que podem ajudar a explicar esta relação, pois desenvolver e compartilhar conhecimento são aspectos vitais para o franchising. Dessa forma, o principal objetivo deste trabalho é identificar elementos que possam influenciar na geração de vantagens competitivas pela implantação e gestão de universidades corporativas no franchising. Para atingir esses objetivos, foi desenvolvida uma revisão teórica focada nos conceitos de vantagens competitivas, universidades corporativas e franchising. O primeiro esforço mostrou que existe uma lacuna teórica no tema, indicando a necessidade de se realizar um estudo de campo para aprofundar o conhecimento sobre o fenômeno estudado. O estudo de caso, em conjunto com entrevistas em profundidade, foram os métodos escolhidos para realizar o objetivo proposto. Foram realizadas dez entrevistas em profundidade com especialistas em educação corporativa e no franchising, sendo levantadas informações secundárias dos processos de educação do Giraffas e das Universidades Corporativas do Banco do Brasil, Ernest Young do Brasil, Cacau Show e McDonald\'s do Brasil. Para as duas últimas empresas foram desenvolvidos estudos de caso, levantando-se informações comparativas dos seus principais concorrentes. Dessa forma, também foram analisadas informações da Chocolates Brasil, Kopenhagen, Bob\'s e Subway. As principais conclusões do trabalho foram: as universidades corporativas podem impactar de forma expressiva no desenvolvimento de vantagens competitivas no franchising; apesar de as franquias promoverem diversas ações educacionais, as universidades corporativas ajudam a organizar de forma estratégica essas ações, gerando, nos casos estudados, mais impactos que as ações isoladas; as ações que mais geram resultados e barreiras à imitação são as relacionadas à disseminação do conhecimento tácito; a relação entre unidades próprias e franqueadas parece ser importante para se estabelecer estratégias educacionais da rede; a avaliação dos impactos dos treinamentos nos resultados operacionais e financeiros é uma grande dificuldade observada; a literatura preconiza uma relação entre unidades próprias e franqueadas nos estágios de maior maturidade do negócio que não foi observada nos casos estudados; também não foram observadas uma preocupação acentuada com o envolvimento de outros stakeholders e com a busca efetiva de modelos de autofinanciamento. / Knowledge has been shown to be an important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Therefore, companies increasingly seek mechanisms that leverage the processes of generation, management and dissemination of organizational knowledge. One of the tools that can enhance the transformation of knowledge into competitive advantages is the corporate university. In this context, franchises emerge as one of the objects of study that may help explain this relationship, for developing and sharing knowledge are vital for franchising. Thus, the main objective of this work is to identify elements that can influence the generation of competitive advantages for the implementation and management of corporate universities in franchising. To achieve these goals, it developed a focused literature review on the concepts of competitive advantage, corporate universities and franchising. This first effort proved that there is a theoretical gap in the topic, indicating the need to carry out a field study to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon studied. The case study, in conjunction with in-depth interviews were the methods chosen to achieve the proposed objective. Ten interviews were conducted in depth with experts in corporate education and franchising, being lifted secondary information from Giraffas education processes and from the corporate universities of Banco do Brasil, Ernest Young of Brazil, Cacau Show and McDonald\'s Brazil, for the last two companies was developed case studies, rising comparative information of its main competitors. In this way, were also analyzed informations from Chocolates Brazil, Kopenhagen, Bob\'s and Subway. The main conclusions were: corporate universities can impact in a significant way in the development of competitive advantages in franchising; despite franchises promote various educational activities, corporate universities help organize strategically these actions, generating, in the cases studied, more impact than isolated actions; actions that generate more results and barriers to imitation are related to the dissemination of tacit knowledge; the relationship between owned and franchised units appears to be important to establish educational strategies of the franchising network; evaluating the impact of training on operating and financial results is a great difficulty observed; the literature reports a relationship between owned and franchised units in the stages of greater maturity of the business that was not observed in this study; They were also not observed a concern about the involvement of other stakeholders and the effective search of auto financing models.

Submitted by Estagiário SPT BMHS (spt@fgv.br) on 2013-07-30T12:35:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertation Felipe Buchbinder.pdf: 1585162 bytes, checksum: b566d391b5cfffdea11553af4c3fcd3e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Estagiário SPT BMHS (spt@fgv.br) on 2013-07-30T12:36:04Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertation Felipe Buchbinder.pdf: 1585162 bytes, checksum: b566d391b5cfffdea11553af4c3fcd3e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Estagiário SPT BMHS (spt@fgv.br) on 2013-07-30T12:36:22Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertation Felipe Buchbinder.pdf: 1585162 bytes, checksum: b566d391b5cfffdea11553af4c3fcd3e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-07-30T12:36:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertation Felipe Buchbinder.pdf: 1585162 bytes, checksum: b566d391b5cfffdea11553af4c3fcd3e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-08 / Competitive Strategy literature predicts three different mechanisms of performance generation, thus distinguishing between firms that have competitive advantage, firms that have competitive disadvantage or firms that have neither. Nonetheless, previous works in the field have fitted a single normal distribution to model firm performance. Here, we develop a new approach that distinguishes among performance generating mechanisms and allows the identification of firms with competitive advantage or disadvantage. Theorizing on the positive feedback loops by which firms with competitive advantage have facilitated access to acquire new resources, we proposed a distribution we believe data on firm performance should follow. We illustrate our model by assessing its fit to data on firm performance, addressing its theoretical implications and comparing it to previous works.

It has been widely accepted that the banking industry is highly dependent on information technology (IT). Due to its pervasiveness and intertwining nature in most aspects of banking business, IT has also significantly become one of the critical components that facilitate the ability of banking institutions to meet regulatory requirements in an efficient and a cost-effective way. For instance, in the effort to mitigate the activities of money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF), various information on banking customers are timely and accurately gathered and analysed through automation. Furthermore, in many instances, IT systems exclusively built to achieve a similar objective are frequently established, and comparable to most IT implementations in the banking institutions, they are often can be equally regarded as a significant investment as well. Viewed from the longstanding debate on the value of IT investments to organisations, empirical research within the IS domain seemed to have placed less emphasis on the possible contribution of regulatory IT implementations. While it is easy to conceive that these IT deployments were never intended to directly benefit banking business from the outset, a study from this perspective should not be disregarded, but instead, warrant to be equally explored. The rationale for this statement can be attributed to the aforementioned assertion regarding the potentially substantial monetary investments required. In addition to this, it may also be due to the high tendency of stringent regulations being enforced in the future, and hence, could inevitably place a significant demand on organisational resources, and further influence their associated opportunity costs. For that reason, this study has attempted to fill the identified research gaps by conducting an investigation from the standpoint of a topical issue regarding anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AML/CFT) implementation efforts within banking institutions. Utilising a conceptual framework that leverages the resource-based view (RBV) to structurally analyse a list of research objectives, empirical evidence of business benefits and the associated capabilities through organisational AML/CFT efforts have indeed been discovered. The benefits are particularly in the form of having the opportunity to leverage various information and infrastructure that were established for regulatory purposes. Further evidence has also suggested that selected AML/CFT alerts have the potential of providing unique opportunity for the organisation to trigger time-critical event-based marketing activities, resulting in a possible improved competitive positioning (ICP). Importantly, by appreciating the insights obtained through the research, a conceptual framework is proposed, which may aid to structurally assess the possible benefits of any organisational regulatory IT implementations.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a global concern and has been adopted by many largemultinational corporations. Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the mostcommon type of business in the EU including Sweden, yet most research on CSR has beenfocused on large corporations. As SMEs run in various settings and there have been littleempirical studies on CSR in SMEs, the purpose of this study is to fill a part of the researchgap and provide an in-depth look at CSR in SME to investigate specific barriers and/oropportunities to addressing CSR. This study reviews the relevant literature of CSR in SMEs.Through semi-constructed interviews with two small-sized organic product companies inSweden, this study analyzed CSR from an SME perspective in a Swedish context by CSRtheory and Resource-Based View (RBV). According to the findings, the main barrier for CSRfor the case companies is financial recourse constraints, while the main opportunity is theircapability for communication. This study contributes and motivates CSR in SMEs bydemonstrating how they understand CSR, how they communicate with both internal andexternal stakeholders of their best practices, and providing examples to share the experiencesfor SMEs.

Problem/frågeställningar: När företagsledare runt om i världen ska ta beslut uppgår 40% av dessa beslut till att baseras på magkänslan. Ett påstående kring konkurrensfördelar och magkänsla är att ”ett av de största hindren för konkurrensfördelar är att agera enbart på magkänsla eller intuition”. Denna uppsats tar fasta på det påståendet och granskar hur BI, ett verktyg som stödjer företagsledarna i sina beslut, spelar in. Ett synsätt för att studera konkurrensfördelar är det resursbaserade synsättet, där resurser följaktligen är grunden i det som skapar konkurrensfördelar. Kombinationen mellan hur BI stödjer med information för att underlätta beslut och faktumet att magkänsla eller intuition hindrar konkurrensfördelar gör att den här uppsatsen ställer sig frågan ”Hur och varför kan BI ur ett resursbaserat synsätt stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på kort samt lång sikt inom stora företag?” Syfte: Att beskriva samt förklara hur och varför BI ur ett resursbaserat synsätt kan stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på kort samt lång sikt inom stora företag. Teori/modell och metod: Inom den teoretiska referensramen presenteras och diskuteras först definitionen av BI och dess användning. Därefter följer en presentation av det resursbaserade synsättet utifrån en modell byggd av Hart, vilken kompletteras med annan forskning inom det resursbaserade synsättet. Det genererar sedan en egen modell, som därefter byggs på med en BI-del för att utgöra en undersökningsmodell som används vidare i uppsatsen. Tillvägagångssätt: För den här uppsatsen har 18 st företag som har någon form av BI på företaget intervjuats. Utöver att företagen är bland Sveriges 120 största har inga vidare urval sett, vilket har resulterat i respondenter från branscher så som media, teleoperatörer och försäkring. På dessa företag har intervjuer skett med den person som ansetts vara BI-ansvarig. Vissa företag har Controllers som är de som har övergripande ansvaret för BI, medan det på andra företag är IT-chefer eller specifikt BI-ansvariga. Inom metodavsnittet förs även en genomgång kring de intervjufrågor som framtagits. Huvudsakliga resultat/slutsatser: I slutsatserna fastslås bland annat att BI kan stödja och driva på en så kallad patchningsförmåga, vilket innebär att företag är snabba i anpassningen mot marknaden. Därutöver konstateras att en av anledningarna till att BI stöttar skapandet av konkurrensfördelar är dess förmåga att stödja effektivisering, optimering och processinnovation i olika förmågor som senare kan leda till konkurrensfördelar. Dock visar det sig också att BI är sämre på att stödja skapandet av konkurrensfördelar på lång sikt, tack vare avsaknaden av stöttandet till faktorer som gör resurser svåra att imitera. / Problem: When business leaders around the world are about to take a decision, 40% of these decisions are based on gut rather than any rational information. This, together with the claim that “one of the biggest hinders for competitive advantage is acting solely on gut or intuition” leads to the combination of the decision support tool Business Intelligence and competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be seen from numerous perspectives; one of these is the resource-based view, where the resources are the basic pillar for competitive advantage. From this the thesis study question is formulated; “How and why can BI, seen from a resource-based perspective, support the creation of competitive advantage, on short and long term, in large companies?” Purpose: To explain and describe how and why BI, seen from a resource-based perspective, can support the creation of competitive advantage, on short and long term, in large companies. Theory: The theoretical foundation is based upon definitions on BI and what BI really is, together with a presentation and discussion on the resource-based view. Following the BI and resource-based view parts, the research model for this thesis is presented, where a modified resource-based view model for competitive advantage, and a definition collection for BI, is combined. Method: For this thesis, 18 companies where they have some sort of BI solution implemented, has been interviewed. The companies have been selected based from their size, where the 120 largest companies first were contacted with an interview proposal. The companies are based in industries such as media, telephone communications and insurance. On these companies, the individual that is the “BI responsible” has been interviewed, which varies from company to company. BI responsibles could be Controllers, IT Managers or specific BI Managers. Conclusions: In the conclusions part of this thesis the research question is divided into a how part and a why part. One conclusion from the how part, is that BI can both support and drive a so-called patching capability, which means that a company can be faster and more agile in their market adaption. One of the reasons why BI can support competitive advantages from a resource-based view is that it can help to drive efficiency, optimization and process innovation in different capabilities that can lead to competitive advantage. Another conclusion is that despite its abilities to support what drives competitive advantage through the resource-based view, the term for this is mainly short-term, due to the fact that it is not hard to imitate the information, which constitutes the basic resources that BI supports.

Even though knowledge management has progressed from an embryonic to an increasingly recognized discipline over the course of the last decade, the bulk of studies in knowledge management have been descriptive and focused on definitions and integrating existing definitions. There have been relatively few studies (mostly surveys) that focus on knowledge management in relation to other organizational factors (Zack, McKeen & Singh, 2009), and work in the area of knowledge management and competitive advantage has been found to be theoretically and empirically immature and underdeveloped (Chuang, 2004).   Therefore, aim of this research was to fill in the identified gaps by utilizing the resource-based view of a company to conduct an exploratory qualitative study to provide empirical and practical evidence regarding the relationship between knowledge management and competitive advantage. This was done mainly through interviews with knowledge management academics and practitioners in an attempt to have multiple perspectives on the matter to gain deeper understanding.   From the interviews, a number of observations were made. First, knowledge management can be used strategically to gain competitive advantage but this can only be done by introducing a successful knowledge management initiative. This calls for an implementation approach based on focus and measurement as principles and that takes into account strategy, organizational learning, culture and systems and technology as pre-conditional dimensions for a successful knowledge management project. In addition, these principles and preconditions all have to take the people into consideration as the people play a centre role in this system, being the ones that actually establish, run and maintain these mechanisms.   These findings are then synthesized into a knowledge management implementation model that may serve as a starting point for further research in successful knowledge management implementation. Practitioners may also use these findings and model as a tool for successful knowledge management implementation.

In this paper, I investigate the use of SWOT analysis and the resource based view as tools to elaborate a business plan and in academic research by assessing the two methods’ strengths and weaknesses.   I found that SWOT analysis is useful to structure and prioritise information in a short and concise way. Even though, the information and the information collection methods as well as the concepts and theories used in combinaton with the model and their quality is of the most importance for a proper use of the model.   The resource based view is useful to reflect over which internal resources are the most valuable for the company, even though it can be difficult to assess the most important assets, i.e. the intangible assets. I also found that the fact that the resource based view, which is a explanantory theory, is used as a predicative theory causes uncertainaty and is problematic.

The thesis investigates the nature of the relationship between the banking sector depth and long-term economic growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States, assesses the banking sector development status in each of the States, and underlines the policy implications in the light of the banking-growth nexus and the banking development benchmarking models’ findings for the region by undertaking three projects. The thesis examines the nature of the relationship between banking sector depth and long-term economic growth in the NRBC—as a proxy for the GCC States— vis-à-vis the rest of the world countries. For the empirical investigation, a dynamic panel data approach, i.e. Generalised Method of Moments (GMM), is adopted over the period 1961 to 2013. By utilising mixed effects and System GMM frameworks, the research identifies the countries with the strongest banking-growth relationships and establishes the banking sector development determinants in those countries. Employing a novel benchmarking process, the thesis assesses the status of the banking sector development in each of the GCC member countries and simulates the change in the banking sector depth across the Gulf region over a period of ten years to highlight the potential policy implications for the sector development. The findings of the thesis suggest that the relationship between banking sector depth and long-term economic growth in the NRBC is non-linear, where the relationship between the banking sector depth and economic growth turns from positive to negative beyond certain levels of sector depth. In comparison to other countries, the results indicate that the banking-growth nexus in the NRBC exhibits a smaller total effect magnitude as well as a shorter time between the change in the sector depth and its effect on economic growth. The benchmarking of the banking sectors in the GCC region suggests that in five of the six member countries the banking sectors are underdeveloped. The simulation results predict that the banking sectors will develop further in half of the countries in the region, given their current levels of banking sector development determinants, while two countries require reforms in terms of undertaking regulations and policies to avoid seeing their sector development levels deteriorate. The thesis contributes to theory by confirming findings in the literature and expanding the body of knowledge through novel findings. This research also contributes to policy by demonstrating the significance of the banking sector development for long-term economic growth in the NRBC, providing policymakers in the Gulf States with the status of their banking sectors, and underlining the banking sector depth determinants that ought to be considered when setting regulations and policies that are aimed at developing the banking sector further.