The thesis examines the role of regional labour councils in local employment generation. It specifically analyses the case of an Australian regional labour council, the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC), between 1981 and 1996. The Illawarra region was the centre of SCLC activity. It was an industrialised region that experienced high levels of unemployment in the period. These were greater than the State and national averages, which reflected a geographical concentration of unemployment in certain regions in Australia. The SCLC attempted to address this issue, as it was part of the union structure that was specifically focused on the regional level and on regional concerns. The study argues that the SCLC developed a local employment generation strategy and it examines how and why this was adopted and pursued. It finds that the SCLC was well placed at the regional level and was well resourced with a capacity to influence the external environment through its utilisation of both political and industrial methods in a period of agreeable internal relations. The research identifies the development of its local employment generation strategy. Sometimes the SCLC pursued its strategy in a manner of ad hoc decision-making and muddling through, while at other times it involved characteristic and distinctive regular patterns. The thesis concludes by evaluating the SCLC�s strategy of local employment generation and by exploring the applicability of the general trade union literature on methods and strategy to regional labour councils.

The main purpose of this study is to identify the major driving factors that determine the environmental commitments and certification ownership of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. Turkey has been undergoing major economic and environmental developments since 1990ies. SMEs play a significant role in the Turkish economy, constituting 99.8% of total enterprises in number. Even though most managers overlook their firms&rsquo / particular impacts, SMEs&rsquo / cumulative effect on natural environment is significant. According to previous research, regulations, community, competitors, suppliers, consumers and media have been found to be the main external determinants that affect a manager&rsquo / s attitudes about the environment and therefore his or her firm&rsquo / s environmental commitments / whereas managers&rsquo / beliefs about the environment, their confidence in their firm&rsquo / s abilities and resources and their environmental governance principles are the internal determinants. In line with previous research findings, this study tries to examine the effects of these factors along with the demographic characteristics of the manager&rsquo / s. As the results of the questionnaire distributed to 80 SME managers in Ankara suggest, institutional and social pressures and manager&rsquo / s confidence in him/herself and his/her firm&rsquo / s abilities showed to have significant influence on the firm&rsquo / s environmental commitments, along with the size of the company and the education level of the manager. In addition to that, external pressures and size are also major factors driving SMEs to obtain environmental certifications.

This dissertation is divided into an introductory chapter and four essays. Chapter one discusses the importance of the study and describes the development and growth of the market as well. The first part (Chapters 2 & 3) examines stock returns behaviour and trading activity around earnings announcements. The second part (Chapters 4 & 5) examines price impact asymmetry and the price effects of block trades in the market microstructure context. Each essay addresses some aspects of market microstructure and stock returns behaviour in order to aid researchers, investors and regulators to understand a market which lacks research coverage. The research provides empirical evidence on issues such as the efficiency of the market, information asymmetry, liquidity and price impact of block trades. In first part of the thesis, event study and regression analysis were used to measure the price reaction around earnings announcements and to examine trading activity, information asymmetry and liquidity. In second part the determinants of the price impact of block trades were examined with regard to trade size, market condition and time of the day effects using transaction data. Liquidity and information asymmetry issues of block trades were also studied in this part.

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The research objective of this thesis is to re-examine womens labour in the eighteenth-century English sewing trades. Several aspects womens working lives in the sewing trades are explored in three sections. The first section examines diversity within the sewing trades, employment opportunities, working conditions and quality of life. The second focuses on garment construction practices and techniques. The third discusses social standings of needlewomen, and consumer economy issues as they pertained to the needletrades. Methods employed include building upon prior scholarship of womens work and aspects of pre-industrial English garment trades, primary source material, and object-based research using garment artefacts from the Museum of London, England, Berrington Hall, and the Royal Ontario Museum. The research findings indicate that pre-industrial English needlewomens working lives were highly nuanced, their skills more sophisticated than generally believed, and their role within the burgeoning consumer society worthy of further in-depth investigation. / Clothing and Textiles

The thesis examines the role of regional labour councils in local employment generation. It specifically analyses the case of an Australian regional labour council, the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC), between 1981 and 1996. The Illawarra region was the centre of SCLC activity. It was an industrialised region that experienced high levels of unemployment in the period. These were greater than the State and national averages, which reflected a geographical concentration of unemployment in certain regions in Australia. The SCLC attempted to address this issue, as it was part of the union structure that was specifically focused on the regional level and on regional concerns. The study argues that the SCLC developed a local employment generation strategy and it examines how and why this was adopted and pursued. It finds that the SCLC was well placed at the regional level and was well resourced with a capacity to influence the external environment through its utilisation of both political and industrial methods in a period of agreeable internal relations. The research identifies the development of its local employment generation strategy. Sometimes the SCLC pursued its strategy in a manner of ad hoc decision-making and muddling through, while at other times it involved characteristic and distinctive regular patterns. The thesis concludes by evaluating the SCLC�s strategy of local employment generation and by exploring the applicability of the general trade union literature on methods and strategy to regional labour councils.

Aim: This research attempts to understand the interrelation between strategy, performance measurement and management systems (PMMS) and human behaviour. Literature and the researcher’s experience suggest that PMMS most of the time do not deliver the expected results. In the specific case the focus is on a medium-sized company in Sweden which has experienced operational troubles with respect to delivery, which in turn has impacted financial performance. The research proposes a toolbox approach to introduce and align strategy, performance management and behavioural aspects. Methodology: The research enquires about how existing performance measurement and management is influencing the behaviour of employees and managers of this organization. The actions taken during the management of the crisis and the results which were achieved are described. The method and methodology are based on constructivism in order to obtain information about the impact of the strategy, performance measurement and management systems and behaviour. Literature research provided significant conceptual frameworks for both the implementation of strategy and consequent measurement and management systems as well as human behaviour in an organizational environment, summarized in a revised conceptual framework deduced from previous research. This research brings these two fields together to examine the interrelation of both within the researched organization. The researcher is part of the system and also influences the participants and this cannot be separated from each other. The research is less concerned with a wider validity due to the uniqueness of the case. The work might be used as reference for researchers and practitioners to compare their specific situation and derive ideas how to approach them. Based on the findings, previous research is validated, and a process introduced which enables the organization to align strategy, performance measurement and management systems and behaviour. To obtain the primary data the research uses a semi structured interviewing method of both individual and focus groups interviews. The primary data is the thematically coded with NVIVO. Results: Literature suggests that the introduction of PMMS and addressing behavioural aspects are widely separate issues. In introducing new PMMS, literature often refers to “creating buy-in” or “engaging” employees but does not advise on how to address behavioural aspects. Behavioural research deals with the motivation of employees but mostly cannot establish a link between performance management and measurement systems and behaviour. In this specific research, it was found that there is validity of motivational theory with regard to human behaviour, which strongly influences the performance measurement and management of the company. The impact of motivators may have opposite effects than expected because in this specific case the PMMS of the corporate office for the local unit did not change but nevertheless financial performance improved significantly. Contribution to knowledge: A conception framework was derived from literature attempting to interrelate Strategy, PMMS and behaviour. The primary research confirmed this framework and partially validated previous research and theories. Based on the findings from literature a revised conceptual framework is proposed to link behaviour to PMMS.

This research aims to investigate the effects of creolisation (in a manifestation of cultural change, cultural mixing and ethnicity) on consumer behaviour and fashion supply chain management in a Thai retailing context. In this study, creolisation is the process of cultural crossover that appears when local culture has been influenced and integrated with foreign culture. This doctoral study develops a theoretical and conceptual framework that addresses the main question of how creolisation impacts on Thai fashion consumers, retailers and their supply chain. Based on reviewing literature, there is lack of studies exploring the relationship between creolisation, consumer behaviour and fashion supply chain management in Thailand. It is expected that the study will complete this gap by providing the empirical findings to the literature. The study was based on the scientific realism position with a deductive (Thai fashion consumers) and an inductive (Thai fashion retailers and their supply chain) approach to gain a detailed understanding of their relationships. This also relates to mixed methods approach, including the three main methods used. Quantitative questionnaire surveys were conducted with Thai fashion consumers, whereas qualitative interviews and document analysis were used to collect the data from Thai fashion retailers and manufacturers. In terms of data analysis, the data from questionnaire survey were analysed by descriptive statistics and multiple-regression analysis, whereas the interviews data and document analysis were analysed by directed content analysis. In particular, the literature review and the findings from qualitative interviews were used to construct hypotheses to be tested in the quantitative analysis. Overall findings were integrated in the interpretation stage based on the suggested conceptual framework. Furthermore, the triangulation approach was considered to validate the research findings on the relationship between creolisation, Thai fashion consumer behaviour and Thai fashion supply chain management. The study contributes to the extant literature by providing not only new insights into its deficiencies, but also developing a suggested conceptual framework to inform practice. In particular, Thai fashion retailers may have interest in the suggested conceptual framework and apply it in order to enhance an understanding of the relationship between creolisation, consumer behaviour and supply chain management. Moreover, the findings could contribute to the responsiveness strategy in fashion supply chain management. In terms of research methodology, the study also contributes to a methodological foundation of supply chain management research. There is the using of mixed methods approach which integrates a quantitative method and qualitative method in order to investigate the effects of creolisation on consumer behaviour and fashion supply chain management in Thailand.

The implementation of environmental management accounting (EMA) in Mittelstand companies is an uncharted area. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the ways, benefits, and disadvantages of implementing EMA in such companies. The choice of the approach and method depended on the following reasons: As the observed phenomena took place inside a company and depended on the attitudes of its members, an interpretivist and qualitative research approach was used that regarded a company as a socially constructed entity. The research was executed with a top-down deductive method starting with a literary review (on Mittelstand-like companies using EMA), and leading to hypotheses concerning the research aim. These assumptions were tested in a qualitative case study using a German Mittelstand company from the printing industry. To this end, the study used the company’s files, personal notes from management meetings, and interviews with experts from the focal company offering the deepest insight in the focal company. The analysis found two different results. Mittelstand companies will have trouble with implementing EMA. However, after having done this, they will only experience benefits and no disadvantages. During the EMA implementation there will probably be delays due to lacking expertise, conservative attitudes, and disturbed channels of information among the staff. However, these obstacles can be overcome with external experts guiding the EMA implementation, and with financial resources to pay them. EMA will then enable a Mittelstand company to track the flows of hazardous and harmless physical entities alike and its associated environmental and conventional costs. With this information the strategic management accounting (SMA) will be able to reduce these costs, to develop eco-friendly products, and to increase its resource efficiency, profits and competitiveness. In a Mittelstand company EMA should therefore be placed at the interface of proper accounting and SMA. FCA, ABC, flow cost accounting, input/output analysis, and EBSC seem to be the optimal methods to track and analyse a company’s physical flows and its related conventional and environmental costs. The former cost type depends on the quantities of the resources, with the latter one depending on the production of waste, the excessive use of water, wood, fuel, electric energy, hazardous chemicals and the process they are used in. To capture these costs it is best to use a set of primary metrics (reflecting the quantities of the resources) and secondary metrics (focussing on the flows and dangers of these resources). Measuring environmental costs of hazardous substances is difficult, since the production processes they are used in depend on chancy circumstances like accidents. Instead, it is also possible to use an EMA that only calculates the amounts of wood, water, waste, fuel, and electric energy needed for the use of hazardous substances. After multiplying these costs with a numerical and empirically obtained factor, the related environmental costs can now be measured both accurately and easily. Such a simplified EMA seems to be a promising method for Mittelstand companies with low technical skills.

This research project, which is limited to German SMEs, deals with the development of a holistic early warning system (EWS) integrating both a quality management system (QMS) and controlling (CO). Most of the concepts designed to identify company risks/crises are focused either on quantitative (operative) or qualitative (strategic) factors. Several authors point out the need for a more holistic approach including both quantitative and qualitative factors. This research, therefore, sought to explore controlling and quality management tools for EWSs in the food production industry, which are appropriate for recognizing risk factors of company failure, outlined by interview and literature review. Concepts and relations were generated with the help of turnaround-, controlling-, and quality management-experts and then confirmed/refined and analyzed by considering how they can be implemented in practice through the application of case study research. This research makes a contribution in the following areas: identification of requirements for an EWS; the exploration of appropriate QM and CO tools for EWS; the proposal of a holistic approach. The EWS, developed during this work, enables companies in the food production industry to tailor the framework for the specific needs of the company. Such a comprehensive, systematic approach (CO + QM) is currently unknown, both in research and also practice. Therefore, the work represents a new, innovative and implementable practical model.