The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the management of one of Britain's most important multination companies, J & P Coats Ltd., for the time period 1890-1960, a topic which has not hitherto fore been examined in detail. In particular, the thesis will look at the firm's financial and accounting systems, insofar as the surviving records permit, going on to examine the system of committees by means of which the enterprise was controlled and directed over the time concerned. The thesis reveals that the financial system run by the company reflects the tight control exercised by the committee system, and indeed, was indispensable to it. As a theoretical focus, the study compares what is found with the writings of Alfred D. Chandler Jnr., who held that, in general, British family capital and management of businesses inhibited their growth and development as compared with firms in the USA, in particular. The thesis concludes that Coats did not fit this interpretation, and was highly successful in spite of departing from the M-Form organisational structure regarded by Chandler as the key to the success of large American enterprises. The thesis also highlights some errors made by Chandler in his discussion of J & P Coats. Chapter One deals with the sources used for the study as well as the theoretical focus, and provides a literature review. Chapter Two gives a short prehistory of J & P Coats up to 1890. Chapter Three sets the scene for the main part of the study by providing, for the first time, an outline business history of the firm between 1890 and 1960. Accounting systems and financial management arrangements are considered in Chapter Four, followed in Chapter Five by a detailed study of the management committees used to run J & P Coats. Chapter Six contains a final discussion and conclusions. It is clear from the above that the thesis makes a major contribution to knowledge in several ways. It provides the first in-depth study of the management of one of Britain's largest and most successful multinational companies, clarifying the relationships between organisational structure and financial arrangements. At the same time it provides evidence which further destabilises the theories of Chandler, concluding that Coats' approach to management, although in some ways unique, was appropriate to its aims.

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This research attempts to establish that landscapes can support and enhance a business identity program. Previous environmental perception research has investigated affective and cognitive responses to natural landscapes, but little, if any, research has explored the area of meaning in a business landscape. Consequently, this study develops a theoretical framework from which to demonstrate a business identity in the landscape. In an effort to structure a framework for both affective and cognitive meanings in business environments, this study draws on past environmental perception research that focuses on affective responses to molar environments. From out of this research design, affective and cognitive dimensions are identified that allow testing of business identities in the environment. Findings show that landscapes can support and enhance an overall business identity program. The study concludes with a discussion of future research that might further the benefits of landscapes to the business community.

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This thesis concerns the collapse of Houston based Enron Corporation and its ongoing economic, political and legal implications. Specifically, I investigate spaces of corporate fraud to broadly ask, how is fraud located in the varied spatial contexts of the firm? My goal is to demonstrate that the corporation is contingent upon social, cultural and material relationships across space. In this regard, I explore three distinct corporate spaces. They include (1) financial statements, where I discuss Enron’s financial performances in two spatial contexts, what the public saw, and what went on in private, (2) the bodies of workers, where I consider the gendered exposure of Enron’s fraud to the public, and (3) the spaces of the courtroom where I document how the corporation, as a non-bodied entity, became embodied in a courtroom context. In each case, I demonstrate how fraud is situated differently, and in each case, I suggest the implications of corporate fraud play out with differing results for those involved. The research for this thesis involved an archeological and ethnographic approach towards gathering and analyzing narratives around Enron’s downfall. This means I rely on financial documents and other important papers published by the former company, semi-structured interviews with former Enron employees, interviews with key media persons documenting the Enron story, participant-observation of the criminal trial against former CEOs (Chief Executive Officer) Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, media analysis of news articles and other popular culture texts, and finally, journaling. Far from being solely a homo economicus, a rational economic actor guided by capitalist imperatives to extract profit, my data suggests that the corporation is constituted through cultural, social and material agents that are unstable and breakdown. With this, I suggest the use of a new metaphor for the corporation, the corporation as a body. The body I conceive is conceptually drawn from feminist post-structural theory. It is open, porous and embodied. This new metaphor enables me to draw on the corporation’s diverse embodiments as important constitutive moments of corporate fraud.

Šio darbo tikslas yra nustatyti veiksnius, kurie įtakoją organizacijos reputaciją. Siekiant darbo tikslų atskleidimo iš pradžių buvos analizuojamos diferencijuotos ir analoginės mokyklų autorių mintys, ko pasėkoje buvo prieita prie teoretikų kaip Balmer, Bromley, Fombrun (diferencijuotos mokyklos atstovai), reputacijos koncepcijos, kuri pažymi, kad organizacijos reputacija yra įmonės ankstesnių veiksmų ir pasekmių atspindys, kuris parodo organizacijos gebėjimą paskirstyti rezultatą publikai. Ji laiko atžvilgiu yra ilgalaikiškesnė nei įvaizdis. Tuo tarpu įvaizdis gali būti greitai keičiamas ir melagingas, be to reputacija yra siejama publikos patirtimi su organizacija. Darbe taip pat atlikta organizacijos įvaizdžio ir identiteto koncepcijų analizė bei palyginimas su organizacijos reputacija, kadangi šios sąvokos yra glaudžiai susijusios ir dažnai painiojamos tarpusavyje. Organizacijos įvaizdis tai vidinės ir išorinės organizacijos publikos nuomonių bei pažiūrų visuma, o įmonės identitetas yra organizacijos savęs pristatymas, priklausantis nuo charakteristikų, kurios organizaciją pateikia savo elgesio pavyzdžiu, simbolių ir ryšių pagalba. Esminis skirtumas tarp šių koncepcijų yra tas, kad organizacijos identitetas tai būdas, kuriuo organizacijos nariai vertina savo organizaciją, įvaizdis tai būdas, kuriuo organizacija prisistato visuomenei ir reputacija tai būdas kuriuo visuomenė vertina organizaciją. Remiantis „Financial times“ bei „Fortune“, išskirti šeši pagrindiniai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the factors that have an influence over the reputation of organization. In order to achieve the goals of the paper the analysis of the authors’ thoughts from differential and analog schools has been made. The outcome of Balmer, Bromley, Fombrun (the representatives of differential school) is the concepts of reputation that signify that the reputation of organization is the result of past actions and that shows the capability of organization to allocate the result to the public. Reputation is more sustained than the image in terms of time. In addition image can be changed quickly and can be untrue; reputation on the other hand is more associated with the experience of organization. The analysis of organizational image and identity concepts has been made and a comparison with organizational reputation has been done. This has been done because these two concepts are associated and sometimes understood as synonyms. The image of organization is the summation of the inner and external public opinions; the identity is the presentation of organization, dependable on the characteristics that represent the organization by using symbols, examples and communications. The main difference between these concepts is that the identity of organization is a mean by which the members of organization value the organizations; the image is a mean by which organization presents itself to the society; reputation is a mean by which the society values the... [to full text]

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