The 2007-2008 financial crash and the looming climate change and global warming have heightened interest in sustainable investment. But whether the shift is as a result of the financial crash or a desire to preserve the environment, a sustainable investment might be desirable. However, to maintain this interest and to motivate investors in indulging in sustainability, there is the need to show the possibility of yielding positive returns. The main objective of the thesis is to investigate whether the sustainable investment can lead to higher returns. The thesis focuses primarily on incorporating sustainability into Markowitz portfolio optimization. It looks into the essence of sustainability and its impact on companies by comparing different concepts. The analysis is based on the 30 constituent stocks from the Dow Jones industrial average or simply the Dow. The constituents stocks of the Dow, from 2007-12-31 to 2018-12-31 are investigated. The thesis compares the cumulative return of the Dow with the sustainable stocks in the Dow based on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating. The results are then compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average denoted by the symbol (^DJI) which is considered as the benchmark for my analysis. The constituent stocks are then optimized based on the Markowitz mean-variance framework and a conclusion is drawn from the constituent stocks, ESG, environmental, governance and social asset results. It was realized that the portfolio returns for stocks selected based on their environmental and governance ratings were the highest performers. This could be due to the fact that most investors base their investment selection on the environmental and governance performance of companies and the demand for stocks in that category could have gone up over the period, contributing significantly to their performance.

In studying organisational change in Air Seychelles, the context, content and process of change together with the interconnections of the airline and the tourism industry in Seychelles through time is explored. The literature review shows that the substantive issues of interest to this study, contextualism as a theory of methods in management research, requires a case based research in particular with regards to the following gaps in the literature: the integration of inner and outer perspectives on sustaining competitive advantage, and conceptual insights on how strategy links firms and their environment. The study adopted a contextual and processual framework to build a theoretical perspective of competitive advantage. The study contributes to the field of strategic management and tourism development in Seychelles in the following ways: firstly, the development of a contextual and processual framework to explain the transformation of firms over time; secondly, the development of an understanding of the historical context of the tourism industry and its interactions with other sectors of the Seychelles economy; thirdly, developing an understanding of how Air Seychelles developed its resources and capabilities to sustain competitive advantage; fourthly, linking change processes and action to performance and in a sense developing an understanding on strategy implementation of strategic management practice in Air Seychelles. The study sheds some light on strategy formation and implementation at the firm level, and the dynamics between the firm and the industry. The findings suggest that firms respond opportunistically to external discontinuities in a dynamic environment - the entrepreneurial leadership of a firm prepares and support managers to operate under conditions of great uncertainty and ambiguity and allows them to behave opportunistically. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / DBL / Thesis (D. B. L.)

In studying organisational change in Air Seychelles, the context, content and process of change together with the interconnections of the airline and the tourism industry in Seychelles through time is explored. The literature review shows that the substantive issues of interest to this study, contextualism as a theory of methods in management research, requires a case based research in particular with regards to the following gaps in the literature: the integration of inner and outer perspectives on sustaining competitive advantage, and conceptual insights on how strategy links firms and their environment. The study adopted a contextual and processual framework to build a theoretical perspective of competitive advantage. The study contributes to the field of strategic management and tourism development in Seychelles in the following ways: firstly, the development of a contextual and processual framework to explain the transformation of firms over time; secondly, the development of an understanding of the historical context of the tourism industry and its interactions with other sectors of the Seychelles economy; thirdly, developing an understanding of how Air Seychelles developed its resources and capabilities to sustain competitive advantage; fourthly, linking change processes and action to performance and in a sense developing an understanding on strategy implementation of strategic management practice in Air Seychelles. The study sheds some light on strategy formation and implementation at the firm level, and the dynamics between the firm and the industry. The findings suggest that firms respond opportunistically to external discontinuities in a dynamic environment - the entrepreneurial leadership of a firm prepares and support managers to operate under conditions of great uncertainty and ambiguity and allows them to behave opportunistically. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / DBL / Thesis (D. B. L.)