New Zealand Post is in a declining market with mail and has recently expanded its parcel and courier capabilities through the addition of significant global logistics capability. The Corporate and Business segment also identified potential opportunity in moving further in the value chain of the retail supply chain to cover helping businesses find and grow customers. Early stage research identified that many businesses felt they needed to grow by exporting but they found his to be very challenging. Some had tried and withdrawn from markets and others hadn’t known how to start. A proposed new business unit which would be a turn-key business solution helping New Zealand businesses connect with international customers and successfully delivering their products to those customers, was the solution to this need, the working title of which is ‘Grow Group’. The goal of this project was to incubate with a small number of businesses to gain sufficient knowledge to determine if there is a sizeable enough market and margin to build a profitable business and establish if New Zealand Post can build sufficient IP to lead such a business.

In the current research of managerial practice diffusion, discussions on how to understand and manage diffusion changes have been made primarily by drawing on institutional, rhetorical and systems theories for the reason that each of them seems to suggest a “mechanism” for diffusion. For instance, institutional theory suggests that diffusion is a changing process during which an organisation will continuously adapt itself to the outside environment in order to keep itself survival. Based on a rhetorical perspective, for which rhetoric plays an important role in diffusion, the achievement of a practice's diffusion/adoption relies on a three-period rhetorical justification which follows a Pathos-Logos-Ethos sequence. In the domain of systems theories, if diffusion is taken as a social system's reproduction, communication thus has a unique position in constituting such a system through autopoiesis (self-creation). Through comparing the above diffusion “mechanisms” suggested by different theories, it is found that some understandings for diffusion are shared in common. For example, a practice has to be legitimised in order to be diffused; communications for diffusions involve a process of filtering and creating meanings. Moreover, through analysing these “mechanisms”, the advantages and inadequacies of each can be recognised. Based on the analysis, the most outstanding issue identified is that for understanding and managing diffusion changes, a constitutive ontology that enables explorations on both people and diffusion circumstances (i.e. an organisation and its environment) is required. In this thesis, such an ontology is believed to be a social-constructionist-based one. A social-constructionist perspective assumes that the concepts of object and subject are connected in a “duality” rather than a “dualism”, and according to which, a practice is constituted during its diffusion, or in other words, it is constituted in people's action of teaching and learning this practice. Furthermore, such a constitutive process is accomplished in people's diffusion communications, which simultaneously construct a circumstance that either enables or constrains a diffusion change. In the discussion of how a constitutive communication works for diffusion, “communication duality” is defined in the sense that communication is a diffusion tool for justifying a practice which can be structured in a rhetorical way; it also selects and processes meanings of a practice relying on people's existing knowledgeabilities as a sensemaking-sensegiving (SM-SG) process. Consequently, an incorporated practice diffusion model based on a social-constructionist perspective is built which aims to suggest how a diffusion change can be enacted as well as how it can be analysed in practical terms. In the light of social constructionism, for which a researcher's ontology and epistemology jointly build each other, this thesis applies a self-ethnography strategy which follows a “SISI” (Survey-Immerse-Share-Integrate) methodology to analyse a real case of practice diffusion. The author's personal insights from this study suggest how a practice diffusion can be improved, as well as how a diffusion model can be enriched. In addition, the author's self-reflections on this research present how a communication research for practice diffusion could “constitute” a practice, and hence to help or inhibit its diffusion.

Success in strategic management is not only based on the planning view for strategy formulation but also the need to consider strategy implementation. From a strategic planning view, this thesis identifies the six insufficiencies of strategic management: (a) strategy is implemented by means of people, whose behaviour cannot be determined by a plan; (b) strategy needs wide communication in an organization; (c) strategy formulation is separated from implementation; (d) the strategic planning process may contribute to only part of the organization; (e) planning neglects the dynamic environment and interactive influence of relationships; (f) performance measurement neglects qualitative data such as employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and stakeholders’ performance (Kaplan and Norton, 2004). This research proposes a pluralistic approach –a six-view model consists of roots, stem, and flowers and fruits - the six-views, including logic and language, learning, cultural, political, ethical and planning views as the roots of critical systems thinking for promoting strategic management, which combines formulation and implementation with fuzzy logic by a robust planning, leadership style, participation of organizational members, and stakeholders’ cooperation to overcome the current deficiencies of the planning view particularly in line with the Taiwanese background. This six-views model is also called the “roots theory”, because the source of these views are organizational roots which range from leadership, a company culture built to cohere employees’ beliefs, engages wide communication in different departments, encourages team learning and innovative ideas, and has mutual trust with suppliers and customers, even stakeholders. The stems of the roots theory offers the foresight of a competitive environment with Five-forces analysis to identify the stage of the product life cycle in strategic business units (SBUs) for promoting supply chain operation. Performance evaluation identifies the results of strategy implementation, which includes employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and stakeholders’ performance as flowers and fruits of a tree. Effective strategic management results from combining the six-views because strategies fail when strategy is not implemented well (Bossidy and Charan, 2002; Joyce et al., 2003; Kim and Mauborgne, 2005; Kaplan and Norton, 2008). Neilson et al. (2008) point out that enterprises fail at execution because they go straight to structure reorganization and neglect the most powerful drivers of effectiveness - decision rights and information flow. The research was conducted in three interrelated phases. First, the nature of strategic management and different views of strategic management were identified by means of a literature review. Each view of strategic management was shown to be insufficient by Mintzberg’s (1987a) five Ps; and another P (partners’ expectations) came from this research for strategy formulation, so that an integrated thinking approach (Cummings and Daellenbach, 2009) incorporating six-views was needed for effective strategic management. Moreover, two tools of management such as critical systems thinking and fuzzy logic approaches were examined to assess how well they can promote strategic management in organizations. Second, a questionnaire was developed to unveil the current situations of strategic management and confirm the six-views model in Taiwanese companies. The questionnaire was sent to two hundred Taiwanese companies and produced sixty-three usable responses. The SAS package was employed to analyse the data. Simultaneously, senior managers were interviewed from seven manufacturing industries and eight service firms to discover the deeper concerns of strategic management in Taiwanese companies. Finally, four companies were selected as case studies to practically research, to support the interpretation of the results and to induct a novel model of strategic management. Some of the significant findings of the data analysis were that: factor analysis determined that the list of the six-views naturally separated into six distinct groups with Eigenvalue more than one; Duncan’s test showed that the overall companies in the learning, planning and six-views belonged to “Ranking A”. The six-views and the logic and language view were positioned in “Ranking B”. The logic language, cultural and ethical views belonged to “Ranking C”. The political view, however, was placed in “Ranking D” and it had a significantly lower rating compared with the other views. From multiple linear regression analysis, this research revealed that the priority order of significant influence variables were the cultural view, learning view, planning view, and logic and language view to promote strategic management and multi-collinearity was not severe. In fact, descriptive statistics and Eastern and Western management literature disclosed that the political and ethical views can contribute to effective strategic management. Therefore, this thesis applied six-views to promote strategy formulation and implementation. The multiple linear regression analysis of the six-views model disclosed that the six-views can be used as roots to enhance supply chain operation further to achieve better organizational performance in Taiwanese companies. The audit of the six-views by fuzzy logic found that the planning view is perceived as promoting the most effective strategy formulation; however, the integrated five-views for implementation is not strong enough to improve strategic management. Companies A1, A2, A3, and A4 possess strong six-views; they should adopt development strategy. The results of the test showed employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and stakeholders’ performancewhere employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction were directly correlated for four companies. In terms of characteristics of industry, the result of strategic management with the six-views linked to stakeholders’ performance with stakeholders’expectations and corporate social issues was consistent with a positive tendency as manufacturing industries, companies A1-A2, and service firms, companies A3-A4. In addition, it is worth mentioning that companies A1, A2 and A4 did not conduct an ideal social political arena of stakeholders’ groups when compared with company A3. In conclusion, the planning view has gained wide acceptance for Taiwanese companies wishing to successfully achieve strategy formulation, but implementation shows insufficiencies. Therefore, this research proposes the six-views model for complementing the lack of a planning view and expands existent theory of the planning view, highlighting the “people” for implementing strategy, especially as related to Taiwanese companies. The roots theory is based on both the theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence, that the analysis of the six-views should play a major role in promoting effective strategic management. The research findings are discussed and recommendations for further research are also proposed.

This research explores the opportunity for administrative reform in the government of Bahrain. In particular it offers an awareness and better understanding of how political elites construe and enact the principles of “NPM” in public sector organisations,explores the institutional capability of Bahrain’s public sector to initiate and sustain reform, and develops a conceptual model of reform applicable to Bahrain. In order to do so, it investigates the drivers of administrative change in Bahrain, examines how elements of NPM express themselves in management practice in Bahrain’s public sector organisations, and identifies facilitators and challenges to reform. Taking an interpretive approach, data was collected through a survey of ministries and semi-structured interviews with change leaders. Moreover, a case study was undertaken in the attempt to introduce a Performance and Programme Budgeting System (PPBS) in ministries, as a test case for an NPM-oriented initiative transferred outside its origin context. Drivers of reform were found to include, first and foremost, internal and external socio-economic forces, such as globalisation and demographic change, and, secondly, pressure from citizens for greater transparency and responsiveness. NPM elements expressed themselves to varying degrees in five key dimensions: organisational structure, the decision-making process, a movement to customer-driven, output-based funding,improvement of HRM performance and, finally, quality management in pursuit of efficiency in public services. However, certain constraints, including a lack of commitment from the political-administrative leadership and a lack of the prerequisite preparation, have impeded implementation. The research builds upon and extends existing theorising about NPM and draws practical implications for subsequent reform initiatives, in Bahrain and beyond.

This thesis aims to investigate the emergence and evolution of Malaysian-based firms and identify the factors that influence the organisation's international expansion process. This study reviews different streams of literature on the internationalisation process of firms and developing country multinational enterprises, highlighting the necessity to maintain a balance between exploiting existing resources and accumulating new competencies. Drawing upon extensive field research of three case studies of notable Malaysian-based multinational firms namely, Petroliam Nasional Berhad, TM Berhad, and Sime Darby Berhad, this study attempts to explains how symbiosis of internationalisation knowledge and experience, technological competence, and business network connections (including government support) is pivotal to the emergence and international expansion of Malaysian-based multinational firms. The findings of the research indicate that these corporations did not follow the sequential pattern of internationalisation process. Rather, internationalisation processes and expansions are diverse and complex, often reflecting areas of specialisation of the firm, or its internal growth processes. The factors influencing internationalisation tends to be firm specific and associated with the capabilities, competencies and resources of the associated firms. The study attempts to explain the growth and expansion of the three case Malaysian firms and shed light on the relatively unexplored area of outward direct investment by these corporations, thereby contributing to the existing literature on multinational corporations from developing countries. This study is an empirical contribution concerning the developmental process of multinational corporations from Malaysia.

The main objective of this study was to investigate and produce results of value in determining the merits of market orientation, trust and performance within the London African and Asian ethnic minority micro businesses (EMMBs). Searches of the literature established that previous studies concentrated on trust and market orientation, or market orientation and performance. Market orientation, trust and performance were selected as variables based on the literature review and in-depth interviews. The aim was to examine the extent to which market orientation influences trust, then performance of the EMMBs in London. Exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted then surveys designed and pilot tested, before circulating to participating ethnic minority micro businesses. The statistical methods included the use of inferential statistics such as frequencies, means, correlations, regression analysis, and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's sample adequacy tests. Factor analysis was performed to generate new classifications. Six hypotheses were tested. From the findings, the EMMBs mainly carry ethnic products and serve ethnic markets. The results established that ethnic minorities discriminated amongst themselves, paid little attention to their competitors, had an a-la-carte attitude to marketing, more often than not employed members of their ethnic group, and tried to create jobs for their families. The EMMBs were found to relate better with their customers and employees than with banks and suppliers. Furthermore, EMMBs did not use mainstream business support agencies, but used their own community support groups. They had a distrust of the authorities, few adopted new technology, and performance was better when using non-financial measures than when financial measures were used. In terms of the relationship between market orientation, trust and performance, there was a stronger relationship between trust and performance than between market orientation and performance. Trust was found to mediate performance. This study has generated a better understanding of the organization and cultures present in these EMMBs, which are unique in their own ways and contribute actively and significantly to the market and economic activities of the London boroughs where they are located. If taken into consideration, the important factors isolated by this research could result in positive improvements for those planning to undertake more effective ethnic minority business, and advance knowledge in the area of ethnic entrepreneurial trading.

As a consequence of globalisation, port performance has become increasingly important for international trade. Different port regions perform differently. The aim of this research is to identify factors that determine port performance and choice in a comparative study between two case ports in Europe and Asia. Specifically, this research aims to examine factor differences between two European and Asian ports‘ contexts; to identify the key factors that drive port performance and choice; to investigate the differences in importance and performance among the factors; to analyse how the importance and performance of factors varies for different ports; to analyse the role a port hinterland plays in port performance and choice; and to illustrate the usefulness of key findings for port stakeholders. The construct of importance factors is based on the literature. The research methodology was that of mixed methods to collect both qualitative and quantitative data in two port regions (China and UK) and was carried out in two phases. Phase one comprised semi-structured in-depth interviews. Phase two consisted of questionnaire-based surveys to validate the factors influencing port performance. The questionnaire surveys were distributed to port experts from 500 organisations and had a 50.8% response rate. Thematic analysis was used for qualitative data analysis of the data from the interviews. Methods for analysis of the data from the questionnaires included descriptive analysis, factor analysis, t-test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, importance-performance analysis and other statistical validation and significance tests. The findings of this research suggest that ports wishing to outperform competitors can do so by improving the factors that are of high importance but currently perform poorly. This could also be achieved by improving performances on shipping services, shipping prices, overall logistics cost, logistics services and government support in descending order which is based on factor evaluation in this research. The thesis further analyses this result within the context of urgent, salient and basic factors based on IPA, including explicit & implicit importance. Shipping services and cost have a critical effect on port performance. Differences in port charges are the most significant differences in factor importance at the case ports of the Humber and Xiamen. Government support has the most significant differences in factor performance between the two case ports. This research is not without limitations. The analysis was restricted to two port regions in China and the UK and data used in this research were mainly generated from interviews and questionnaire surveys, responses to which are to some extent subjective.

Research purpose: Environmental issues have become a regular debate within social, business and political arenas. The need to combine social, environmental and economic systems to achieve a sustainable future (Triple Bottom Line), is gaining prominence within many international development projects. The study of traditional business Environmental Management Systems (EMS) leads to the observation that such systems place primary emphasis upon economic and environmental factors. The project begins with the proposal that an EMS built by an organisations employees' has a greater potential to identify practical environmental impacts and reduce social resistance to change.Methods: This thesis details the development of a seven-stage framework for environmental change referred to as Socio-Environmental Cohesion for Sustainability (SECS). The framework is trialled within a case study organisation (OrgX) using an interpretivist philosophy of social constructionism to guide the research. An action research project is conducted with the researcher acting as an observing participant of the change process. The developed framework follows a multimethodology design of organisational engagement, with strong emphasis placed upon the social values that can drive environmental management practices. The combination of cybernetic and social tools of organisational analysis is shown to provide a unique approach to environmental strategy design; Viable Systems Model, Team Syntegrity, Cultural Analysis, Social Network Analysis.Results: The Cultural and Social Network Analyses provide evidence of an informal environmental network (EWG) contained within OrgX, and identify the core social environmental values of the employee group. A Team Syntegrity workshop is performed and develops a bottom-up participatory approach to environmental strategy designs between the EWG and business management. Following the workshop, OrgX is shown to implement 56% of the developed environmental strategy within eight months. The Viable Systems Model is used to diagnose the organisations structure, which is then combined with the Social Network Analysis to establish the outreach of the EWG.Conclusions: The recognition of the informal environmental network as an official management committee, improvements to operational efficiency and practical benefits to onsite biodiversity, indicates that the SECS framework is capable of addressing all aspects of the Triple Bottom Line.

The increasing trends of logistics outsourcing have forced logistics service providers (LSPs) to more effectively leverage their productive resources to provide superior service performance. The current logistics literature has identified some strategic logistics resources and their performance impacts but there is a lack of knowledge on the combined effects of such resources. The main objective of this research is to identify logistics resources - called resource-based logistics (RBL) – acquired by LSPs and to examine the impacts of RBL on logistics performance. Based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory, this research develops constructs and measurements for logistics resources (RBL) and logistics performance (LP) and further examines the impacts of RBL on logistics performance in terms of customer service innovation (customer service and service innovation) and cost leadership. Based on data from interviews and a survey of 123 Malaysian LSPs, factor analyses were used to establish five groups of logistics resources - technology, physical, management, relational and organizational resources, contributing to the development of constructs and measurements for logistics resources from the LSP perspective. While simple regression analyses suggest that each RBL was positively associated with customer service innovation and cost leadership, further stepwise regression analyses suggest customer service innovation was enhanced when organizational and technology resources were bundled together. These two resources largely mediated the relationships between physical, relational and management expertise and customer service innovation. Similarly, the analyses suggest that cost leadership was enhanced when organizational and management expertise resources were bundled together; these two resources mediated the relationships between technological, physical, and relational resources and cost leadership. The implications of the results for theory and practice are significant. This research provides empirical evidence for the development of a theoretical model for logistics resources grounded in RBV theory. The detailed bundling and mediating effects of logistics resources represent novel empirical evidence needed to enhance the understanding of LSP performance. This research recommends that LSPs should embark on developing capabilities in the five RBL. Especially, logistics managers should focus on developing and bundling their organizational, management and technology resources more effectively. In addition this research proposes a theoretical model for future research into the competitive advantage of LSPs.

This thesis addresses the implementation and application of integrated marketing communications (hereinafter referred to as 'IMC'). The thesis is located within the field of marketing communications and focuses on IMC perceptions and practices within large global and national companies located in the UK and Germany. The aim of this thesis is to understand how and to what extent IMC has developed and is practiced in the selected firms. This study takes the perspective that IMC can only be understood via social actors i. e. via marketing and communication practitioners - including brand managers, and senior executives, as they are the people who possess the practical knowledge of complex business settings in relation to their own business and/or its related brands. As such, these practitioners have the ability and managerial capacity to design and implement integrated approaches to marketing communications. In a qualitative two phase research design, interviews and case studies are the chosen methods that allow this investigation to access the research problem. The design of this thesis is as follows: 1. Current marketing communication and IMC literature is reviewed which serves to identify research gaps. 2. During the first phase, data was collected from 10 large national and global companies located in Germany and 15 similar firms located in the UK. Four different industries were selected: service, retail, consumer durable and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). 3. In the second phase of the research design, three extensive case studies with fast-moving consumer goods companies were carried out in relation to IMC perceptions and practices. The case firms included two multinational firms i.e. SABMiller and Imperial Tobacco, and one very rapidly growing strategic business unit, namely Tryton Foods, which is a subsidiary of a national UK firm. 4. An interpretive theory building approach was used. The qualitative data analysis was guided by the principles of content analysis. Based on the empirical findings of the research, the final outcome of this thesis complements and advances current knowledge about marketing communications and particularly in relation to integrated marketing communications. A significant outcome of this research is that IMC is purely client-led. In addition, it is found that the majority of participating firms have only recently started to implement IMC, and indeed, that current IMC practices can be further advanced and augmented. At least in business-to-consumer industries, firms need to listen more actively to the needs and wants of their customers in order to be able to create consumer-driven marketing communication approaches.