This research is concerned with natural disasters located in developing countries. Designing a structured capability to properly and fully respond to such disasters is its principle remit. For many developing countries, the relative impact that a disaster has depends on the response offered. Therefore, the first focus of the research was to determine, through consultations with experienced disaster response professionals, where they believe the management of disaster responses can best be enhanced. Their answer was two-fold: multi-agency co-ordination, as literally thousands of governmental and non-governmental agencies can be involved in large-scale disaster responses; and community engagement, as too often it is the case that disaster response agencies cause new problems by imposing solutions on local people instead of working in partnership with them. To develop an appreciation of how multi-agency co-ordination and community engagement could be integrated into a new model of disaster response, a systems approach was adopted. Systems approaches seek to develop multi-faceted understandings of problematic situations in order to propose more holistic solutions or ways forward than might be possible through a more traditional ‘command and control’ management philosophy. Taking advice from the disaster response professionals involved in the study, the research focused on developing an ideal ‘blueprint’ for a new organisation, to be located within the United Nations, with the authority to co-ordinate disaster response activities. The Viable System Model (a systems approach to organisational design) was used to develop the blueprint, and this was used, not only to demonstrate how multiple agencies could be co-ordinated, but also to show how community engagement could be integrated into the co-ordination efforts. The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is therefore to both systems methodology (showing how the VSM could be utilised for the integration of multi-agency coordination and community engagement) as well as, potentially, to future deliberations among governments and aid agencies wanting to improve the delivery of international disaster response efforts.

An increasingly turbulent and unpredictable consumer landscape is posing unprecedented challenges for the modern marketer. Faced with a highly fragmented and cynical consumer base, aggressive competitive strategies, a constantly evolving digital and cyber world, and economic volatility characterising the modern macro environment, marketers are under increasing pressure to align their strategic positioning with “consumer hearts and minds”. Compounding this rise in consumer complexity is the development and salience of dual and multiple consumer identities, largely as a result of the growth in online and social media communities. Against this backdrop the Marketing Science Institute (MSI), the global voice and agenda setting body for marketing research priorities, has proposed placing consumer engagement (CE) at the forefront of marketing strategy, identifying the need to understand how to engage through innovation and design. Whilst academics and practitioners alike have acknowledged the importance of consumer engagement, describing it as the ‘holy grail’ for unlocking consumer behaviour, there is still a lack of consensus as to its conceptualisation and therefore its relationship with other marketing constructs. The salience of the online and digital consumer further compounds the difficulty in formulating a CE framework that is integrative and cross contextual. For instance, the construct of interactivity has considerable overlap with CE when applied to the online and digital domain. This study therefore moves away from the predominantly adopted exploratory approach to CE investigation, to provide empirical research into consumer engagement’s conceptualisation online and clarify the nature of the relationship between CE and interactivity. A post-positivist critical realist ontology was used to guide the research process, with the initial qualitative stage conducting twenty-eight semi-structured interviews - nine with consumers, eight with academics and eleven with marketing and communications practitioners, possessing online and digital expertise. The subsequent main quantitative phase then surveyed 600 online UK consumers, yielding 496 usable responses. Interview data suggested the centricity of emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimensions in consumer engagement’s structure; highlighted the antecedent nature of interactivity in developing CE online; and identified potential moderators to the CE-interactivity relationship. The framework developed for quantitative validation was therefore based on these initial findings. The survey data was subject to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling, satisfaction of goodness of fit indices, reliability and validity testing, and rival model comparison. The most pertinent finding of this research is establishing the CE-interactivity link; with the interactivity constructs of customisation, communication, control and speed of response all being found to be antecedents of CE, in order of influence. The findings also confirm consumer engagement’s multi-dimensionality; highlighting the online CE facets to be emotional CE (emotion and experience) and cognitive & behavioural CE (learning & insight and co-creation). Gender, satisfaction & trust and tolerance are also identified as moderating factors in the CE-interactivity relationship. Contributions are made through investigation of consumer engagement in the e-retailing context; providing further insight into CE’s relationship within a nomological network of already established relationship marketing constructs; large scale quantitative validation of the proposed CE-interactivity framework; and through a multi-stakeholder approach to data collection, helping to bridge the academic-practitioner divide (Gambetti et al., 2012). The investigation concludes with an in-depth discussion about the managerial implications, as well as providing an overview of the studies key limitations, contributions and recommendations for future research.

This thesis consists of three essays that address the question, whether the dynamics of investing in the developed markets are applicable in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) frontier markets following the emerging market’s experience. The first essay (chapter 3) explores the existence of herding behaviour among investors in a sample of 10 frontier markets. The study employs the cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) test for detecting presence of herding behaviour. The findings reveal the presence of herd formation during the period under study in all markets. Furthermore, the evidence shows a non-existence of herding during periods of extreme market conditions. Moreover, the South African market does not seem to motivate herding in other African markets. The second essay examines the impact of corporate governance practices of the East African Community (EAC) listed companies on performance. The present study employs the fixed-effects (FE) and the random-effects (RE) – two-stage least square – instrumental variable (RE-2SLS-IV) regression models to analyse data from a sample of 47 firms. The empirical investigation shows that the size of the board has a positive impact on market values but a negative effect on operating performance. The essay also documents that the largest investors, most of whom are strategic investors too, have an adverse effect on market values, whereas they have little or no effect on improving operating performance. The result also suggests foreigners and civil servants (or politicians) board members to impact positively on operating performance. The third study is an examination of the influence of psychological factors on retail investors’ trading behaviour at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE). The study employed a survey approach. The main finding is that retail investors in the market are prone to several behavioural biases. Perceived trading knowledge and perceived experience, for example, affect both the trading frequency and portfolio diversification. The tendency to focus on attention grabbing stocks explains why retail investors at the DSE prefer domestic over foreign stocks and the extent of diversifying their portfolios. The tendency to exhibit the disposition effect is mainly explained by gender, extrapolation of past performance, and perceived competence.

<p> El objetivo de esta disertaci&oacute;n fue investigar si las instituciones de microfinanzas (IMFs) extranjeras que se ven atra&iacute;das por entrar en el mercado de microcr&eacute;ditos de EE. UU. por sus atractivos o ventajas de localizaci&oacute;n, deber&iacute;an glocalizar sus pol&iacute;ticas de microcr&eacute;ditos como consecuencia de que en EE. UU. no se cumpla que las mujeres son mejor riesgo de microcr&eacute;ditos que los hombres, y que no haya diferencia en la conducta de rembolso de los micropr&eacute;stamos entre hombres y mujeres. Como objetivos adicionales se indag&oacute;, si esa conducta de pago de mujeres y hombres se relaciona con factores como su edad, etnia, nivel acad&eacute;mico, estado civil o con caracter&iacute;sticas de los microcr&eacute;ditos como prop&oacute;sitos, montos y plazos de pagos. Se utiliz&oacute; una encuesta enviada por correo electr&oacute;nico a 203 organizaciones de microfinanzas, obteni&eacute;ndose un 17.73% de respuestas. Se pudo establecer que no hay una diferencia significativa entre la puntualidad de pago de los microcr&eacute;ditos de las mujeres y los hombres. En EE. UU. no existen, como en otros pa&iacute;ses, fuertes incentivos, motivaciones o presiones externas distintas a aquellas que tambi&eacute;n tienen los hombres, que influencien a las mujeres a pagar sus microcr&eacute;ditos mejor que los hombres. Luego, las IMFs internacionales que se vean atra&iacute;das a entrar en el mercado de EE. UU. deber&iacute;an glocalizar sus pol&iacute;ticas de microcr&eacute;ditos en relaci&oacute;n a las mujeres. Igualmente, en el dise&ntilde;o de sus productos y en sus pol&iacute;ticas de otorgamiento de microcr&eacute;ditos deber&iacute;an considerar las variables que est&aacute;n afectando la puntualidad del pago de los microcr&eacute;ditos, glocalizando sus productos introduciendo variantes que les ayuden a obtener una mayor puntualidad en los rembolsos de mujeres y hombres. Se necesita m&aacute;s investigaci&oacute;n sobre la pr&aacute;ctica de las microfinanzas en EE. UU.</p><p>

The Nigerian banking industry plays a critical role in its economy because of a number of jobs generated, contributing to financial stability due to the financial services provided by the banks. As Nigeria becomes tirelessly active in its pursuit of global economic integration and recognition, the entry of international banks in the Nigerian banking industry will increase, therefore, competition will, too. As a result, recognising the importance of competencies and competency frameworks to the bank's performance becomes important in improving the bank’s core competencies and competitiveness. A critical review of the literature reveals that many researchers lay emphasis on the importance of competencies on performance. However, there is a lack of empirical study on competence in Nigerian banks. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of competencies on the performance of Nigerian banks. In order to achieve this aim, the researcher conducted a field survey of ten Nigerian banks and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with the use of qualitative semi-structured interviews. The researcher conducted thirty-one interviews with the staff of the ten selected banks and the CBN. Consequently, the interview data collected was analysed using Nvivo in order to achieve the aim of the research. The findings revealed that Nigerian banks do use competencies which are influencing the performance of the banks. Findings from this research support the findings of other international research on competencies; therefore, suggesting the theory of competency and performance applies to Nigerian banks. This research contributes to existing literature, which highlights the strategic and operational importance of competencies on performance by focusing on Nigerian banks. In conclusion, this research proposes a wider sample size covering all the banks in Nigeria and using both qualitative and quantitative research methods to provide a more accurate finding on the influence of competency in Nigerian banks.

The present research examines how emotional intelligence, cognitive styles and leader-member exchange influence Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB) on different levels (individual level and group level). There is increasing evidence to indicate that individuals’ perceptions and abilities play an essential role in explaining and predicting organisational citizenship behaviours (e.g. Van Dyne and Butler Ellis, 2004; Morrison and Phelps, 1999). The focus of this study is building on this body of research by examining the influence of cognitive style theory, leader-member exchange (LMX) and emotional intelligence (EI) on OCB. Although cognitive style preferences are known to influence one’s attitudes and behaviours toward others (e.g. Kirton, 2003; Charbonneau and Nicol, 2002), no study has previously focused on the relationship between cognitive styles and OCB. Another growing body of literature indicates that emotional intelligence (EI) and cognitive styles can be considered as predictors of the quality of leader member exchange relationships (LMX) (e.g. Allinson et al, 2001; Charbonneau and Nicol, 2002), which positively relate to OCB (e.g. Ilies et al. 2007). However, no previous studies have considered the mediating role of LMX in the relationship between EI, cognitive styles and OCB. Furthermore, no study has yet examined the effects of group level emotional intelligence and group composition in relation to cognitive style diversity on OCB. These are the areas where the present study attempts to make a significant contribution to new knowledge in the field of organisational citizenship behaviour research. Based on the extant literature, a research framework has been developed to identify the relationship between the three factors of cognitive styles, EI and LMX on organisational citizenship behaviours. The overarching purpose of the research is to enhance our understanding of how to cultivate employees’ organisational citizenship behaviours and how to better organize group members into more effective working groups. The research is conducted in the context of Chinese manufacturing firms and employs a quantitative approach using a range of reliable and valid instruments. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and multilevel modelling (MLWIN) are then applied to analyze the relationship between the independent variables (cognitive styles, EI and LMX) and the dependent variable (organisational citizenship behaviours). Results from a final sample size of 865 individuals comprising supervisors and their immediate subordinates are reported. The study successfully determines the relationship between emotional intelligence, LMX, cognitive style and organisational citizenship behaviour. As expected, high level of emotional intelligence leads to higher quality organisational citizenship behaviours at both individual and group levels. Moreover, as hypothesised, the quality of LMX plays a mediating role in the relationship between both leaders’ emotional intelligence and intuitive style and followers’ organisational citizenship behaviours. Practical implications are given and recommendation made for future research.

Female entrepreneurship in Western countries has received ample research interest over the last decade. Research about female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) and particularly in Saudi Arabia is, however, still in its infancy. Little is known about the financial and business support resources available to these women, or whether or not the specific needs of female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia are effectively met by the available economic and financial infrastructure. The aim of the present research study is twofold. Firstly, the author attempts to assess the role of non-government and non-profit organisations in providing financial support and business development services (BDS) such as training, information and advice to female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the author attempts to identify the specific needs of female entrepreneurs or women who wish to start a business. These aims are reached by surveying available financial programmes and business development programs (BDS) in Saudi Arabia. This part of the study relies on a thorough review of research literature and the evaluation of available financing and business programmes. Thirdly, primary data are collected from businesswomen in Saudi Arabia who run their own small or medium enterprise or who plan to start their own business in the foreseeable future and have already taken steps to start their own business. The author conducted one-on-one interviews with 30 Saudi business women to identify their needs, personal experiences, and perceived barriers that hinder their ability to run or start a business in Saudi Arabia. The author uses a semi-structured interview format to collect data. The expected results of the research were twofold: (1) the analysis conducted as part of this study is expected to uncover the main difficulties that female entrepreneurs are facing in Saudi Arabia when running their own business; (2) the study’s results provide insights that allow the researcher to determine whether or not the assistance of non-profit organisations is actually helpful in this area. The study’s findings are also expected to have implications for policy makers trying to boost female entrepreneurship. The present study made several significant findings; specifically, female entrepreneurs desire access to better training not only to hone their entrepreneurial skills but also to take advantage of the affordances of modern communication technologies. Secondly, cultural norms and tribalism hold women back from reaching their full potential as entrepreneurs. This not only has negative effects on women’s access to financing, but also on their abilities to access education and other resources. Moreover, the financing options for women are very limited; except for one state-sponsored program women were not aware of other “official channels” they could use to finance their businesses. Non-governmental organizations such as professional organizations for women are still lacking; participants expressed their wish that such organizations would expand their offerings to women. Female entrepreneurs highlighted the importance of social support networks, especially families and male relatives (fathers, husbands) in setting up their business and becoming successful. And lastly, women were motivated to become entrepreneurs out of a desire to become self-sufficient and make a positive contribution to their community. The findings of this study make significant contributions to the scant body of research on female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia in that they shed light on the specific barriers women encounter. Moreover, the study highlights the importance of social support networks in the population of female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and demonstrates how cultural norms, tribalism, and conservative family values permeate Saudi Arabia’s bureaucracy and financial institutions and thus create barriers for women. The major limitation of the study is its qualitative research design. While the author expected to obtain rich qualitative data that helps gain a deeper understanding of female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia, findings of the study cannot be generalized to the entire population of Saudi female entrepreneurs. Moreover, this type of research is also prone to self-report bias. Given the specific cultural context of the study, self-report bias may take on two forms. Women may either overstate or understate their business success or the barriers they experience. Secondly, participants may not be willing to freely speak their mind on the subject under consideration because of social and cultural conventions that prevent them from doing so. The author expects that some answers will have social desirability bias (Creswell, 2009). Building effective rapport and trust with participants will therefore be of paramount importance to obtain unbiased responses. Despite these limitations, the author hopes to make a valuable contribution on which other researchers and policy makers can build. The author provides a comprehensive list of recommendations arising from the findings from the study. The recommendations not only address gaps in research and suggestions for future research but also give practical advice to policy makers, the Saudi government and NGO stakeholders seeking to boost female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia.

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to propose a scale for measuring purchase intention of regional products (REGIOSCALE) to complement the currently used CETSCALE, which was developed to measure ethnocentrism, rather than region-specific purchase intention. Its findings provide insights into the motives of consumers who buy regional products and how such motives are related to individual factors. These include demographic variables as well as regional (within-country) cultural value differences. Design/methodology/approach – This thesis is divided in three parts, each of which will focus on one research question. Firstly, what motivates consumers to purchase regional products? This question is answered by analysing forty semi-structured interviews. Secondly, does the consumer region-centric scale (REGIOSCALE) derived from the interviews have more power to explain consumer motives than the original CETSCALE? This second question is answered by conducting a principal component analysis to start the scale development process of the REGIOSCALE, followed by regression analysis to evaluate which scale is the more significant predictor of consumer motives to purchase regional products based on 1027 surveys. Thirdly, is there a relationship between individual factors (regional cultural values and demographic variables) and the regio-centric scale (REGIOSCALE)? This third question is designed to evaluate what, if any, predictive power individual factors can have on consumer motives to purchase regional products. Answering this consisted of two steps: the first step was to evaluate regional cultural differences by applying the Kruskal-Vallis ChiSQ test based on secondary data, which showed that regional (within-country) cultural value differences exist. The second step was to use a regression analysis based on the 1027 surveys from the second research question to evaluate the relationship between individual factors and the REGIOSCALE. This second step demonstrated that the strongest predictor of consumer motives to purchase regional products in the majority of regions was provided by the cultural value of “Self-Transcendence”. Originality/value – This thesis’ originality and value is threefold. Firstly, it identifies and evaluates consumer motives to purchase regional products in Germany and England, which leads to the development of the new REGIOSCALE. Secondly, it provides empirical evidence that cultural value differences exist on a regional level within countries (not just on a national level). Thirdly, it shows that cultural values can have a significant impact on consumers’ motives to purchase regional products, while consumers’ demographic variables (like age, gender, education level and income) appear not to influence purchase intentions consistently. Findings – The findings are also threefold. Firstly, the REGIOSCALE has a more significant predictive power of consumers’ motives of regional products than the current CETSCALE. Secondly, regional within-country cultural differences exist within Germany and England. Thirdly, consumers’ demographic variables do not show the consistent relationships with consumer motives to purchase regional products that the regional (within-country) cultural value differences do.

Nowadays, there are two critical concerns in societies such as British: customer defection in the sport clubs and the reduction of well-being. Therefore, sport clubs need to deliver programmes that are helpful to retain existing customers as well as improve customer well-being. Participation in value co-creative behaviours can be supposed as a means of obtaining the mentioned aims. However, literature review revealed that although there are a number of studies regarding the effect of customer participation on loyalty, the findings are debateable. More importantly, the review also indicated a scant research regarding the relationship between value co-creation and well-being (e.g., sport life satisfaction and overall life satisfaction). Further, customers need different types of abilities to contribute to the service delivery process. Identifying and improving influential abilities can help to foster customer service participation. Another knowledge gap in the marketing literature is that determinants of customer value co-creation are not well-documented, especially in the sport service sector. Reviewing of the relevant literature indicated that self-efficacy as an individual factor and role clarity and trust as relational factors may influence participative behaviours. Given the mentioned arguments, a conceptual model was suggested to investigate antecedents and consequences of value co-creation in the sport sector through the lens of service-dominant logic perspective. Moreover, at first a questionnaire was designed by reviewing of the relevant literature to assess the research constructs. Next, as the pre-testing stage 20 informants reviewed and gave feedback about the questionnaire. Then, in the pilot-testing stage 60 fitness club members answered the questionnaire. Data analysis indicated that the designed questionnaire is appropriate for collecting data in the main study stage. As the target population for the main study, data was collected among 346 members of fitness centres through convenience sampling, but only 343 completed questionnaires were usable. Furthermore, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse data. The results of structural model by AMOS confirmed that all intended antecedents (self-efficacy, role clarity, trust) significantly and positively influence value co-creation dimensions (compliance, advocacy, helping other members), except for the effect of self-efficacy on compliance. Role clarity also significantly influenced customer trust. In addition, of the three dimensions of value co-creation only advocacy had significant effect on customer loyalty. As well, while compliance and advocacy had significant impacts on sport life satisfaction, the effect of helping other members on sport life satisfaction was insignificant. Finally, both customer loyalty and overall life satisfaction were significantly and positively influenced by sport life satisfaction. This study contributes to the limited body of empirical research on value co-creation, particularly within the sport service sector. Theoretical implication of the study is that it responds to the research calls to identify determinants and outcomes of customer value co-creation. Importantly, this study not only applies sport life satisfaction as a new concept in the sport marketing research but also reveals that this construct has a mediation effect in the relationship between the research constructs. Therefore, the sport club managers should have special attention to this factor. Another important application of this study for the managers is that customer participation in helping behaviours does not lead to positive outcomes in the context of this study. In sum, the current research investigates a set of factors that enhance customer loyalty and well-being, which nowadays their reduction is a concern in societies. The findings of this study help the fitness centre managers and policy makers to know how to improve customer value co-creation, which dimension of value co-creation is more important, and the mechanism in which customer loyalty and well-being increase.

<p> The following study was done to research how teachers and students are experiencing the one-to one educational model at the high school level. The research questions used to guide the study are as follows: How do teachers and students experience one-to-one learning? What are the implications of using the one-to-one technology model? To research these questions, a case study approach was used. Teachers were interviewed as well as both teachers and students completing surveys about how they experience the one-to-one technology every day. The main topics that were studied were 21st century skills, classroom uses and student engagement, teacher attitudes, training, technology support, costs, and student responsibility. Data was collected and analyzed from teacher interviews, student surveys, and teacher surveys. Data analysis indicated that there are both positive and negative experiences when it comes to using the one-to-one technology model at the high school level. The advantages are student responsibility and student engagement, communication, and convenience. The disadvantages are student responsibility, restrictions, and training. This paper indicates experiences and implications of the model as well as recommendations for its use.</p><p>