O conhecimento é visto por muitos como o principal ativo das organizações na atualidade. Entre as empresas que primeiro tiveram essa percepção e se lançaram ao desenvolvimento e uso de práticas de gestão do conhecimento estão as empresas de consultoria. Essas empresas, genericamente designadas como empresas de serviços profissionais, além do pioneirismo na gestão do conhecimento, enfrentam uma série de mudanças internas e externas, da mesma forma que muitas das demais empresas de serviços profissionais. O tema desta tese explora a intersecção dos dois temas: discutindo aspectos da gestão do conhecimento em empresas de consultoria. O ponto de partida escolhido é o modelo estratégia - aprendizagem - competências. Em poucas palavras, o modelo advoga que as estratégias da organização moldam as suas competências, que por sua vez guiam as suas escolhas estratégicas. O vínculo é estabelecido através da capacidade de aprendizagem que a organização possui. Tomando esse argumento, este trabalho elabora sua discussão em dois estágios. No primeiro parte-se de uma proposição encontrada na literatura que argumenta que a estratégia de produto/mercado de uma organização guia sua estratégia de gestão do conhecimento. Essa proposição é analisada à luz de um estudo qualitativo em sete empresas de consultoria. Dado o apoio limitado que se encontrou, desenvolveu-se um segundo estágio de pesquisa, com o desenvolvimento de um quadro de análise mais abrangente para se entender o uso dos processos de gestão do conhecimento. Esse quadro foi avaliado através de um segundo estudo qualitativo em três grandes empresas de consultoria, que usa entrevistas com 29 profissionais de escritórios localizados em dois países. Os resultados indicam que as competências existentes na organização são tão influentes no uso de práticas de gestão do conhecimento quanto suas escolhas estratégicas. / Knowledge management has received much attention in the last few years, as knowledge is increasingly seen as the core asset to organizations. Consulting firms are among the leading organizations in the development and use of knowledge management processes and systems. At the same time, those firms, broadly classified as professional service firms (PSF), are, as most of the PSF, undergoing several and deep changes. This dissertation places itself in the intersection of these two fields of research, analysing knowledge management processes in consulting firms. The study\'s starting point is the strategy-learning-competence model, which proposes that an organization strategic choices shape its competencies, as well as its competencies guide its strategy formulation processes, closing a self-reinforcing cycle. As the driving force that makes the cycle to be closed, stand the learning capabilities of the organization. Thus, learning links strategy to competencies. Drawing on this argument, this dissertation engages itself in a two-stage study. In the first, it takes one proposition found in the literature that claims that a firm\'s market strategy shapes its knowledge management processes. Using a qualitative study, it investigates the proposition on seven consulting firms. Since the linkage is found not to be not as strong as claimed, a second stage unfolds, developing a more comprehensive framework to explain the use of knowledge management practices. Theframework is used in a second qualitative study within three consulting firms that gathers data from 29 interviews with consultants from two countries. Results indicate that firm\'s existing competencies are as strong as market strategy in shaping knowledge management practices.

Thesis advisor: Philp E. Strahan / This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine the interactions among credit market innovation, corporate finance, and information intermediaries. In the first essay, I study the role of credit default swaps (CDS) in reducing credit supply frictions for corporate borrowers. I find that firms whose CDS is included in a major CDS index--the CDX North American Investment Grade index--have significantly lower cost of debt, and in response rely more heavily on debt for external financing. To address the potential endogeneity of index addition, I use a regression discontinuity design by exploiting the index inclusion rule, which allows me to compare firms that are just above and below the index inclusion cutoff. I show that index inclusion improves the liquidity of underlying single-name CDSs, which enables constituent firms' debtholders to better hedge their credit risk exposure. My findings suggest that CDS market benefits investment-grade borrowers by alleviating the supply-side frictions in credit markets. In the second essay, we investigate the role of proxy advisory firms in shareholder voting. Proxy advisory firms have become important players in corporate governance, but the extent of their influence over shareholder votes is debated. We estimate the effect of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations on voting outcomes by exploiting exogenous variation in ISS recommendations generated by a cutoff rule in its voting guidelines. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that in 2010-2011, a negative ISS recommendation on a say-on-pay proposal leads to a 25 percentage point reduction in say-on-pay voting support, suggesting strong influence over shareholder votes. We also use our setting to examine the informational role of ISS recommendations. In the third essay, I examine how Moody's ratings have responded to the introduction of Credit Default Swap (CDS) market--an important innovation in credit markets in the past decade. I find that ratings quality of CDS firms, measured as default predictive power, improved significantly after the onset of CDS trading, consistent with a disciplining role of the CDS market. I show that ratings become more accurate in terms of less failure to warn (i.e. rating a defaulter too high) which is not accompanied by a rise of false alarms. In addition, rating downgrades are significantly more likely to be preceded by negative outlook or a watch for downgrade. The results are robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading. Overall, the evidence suggests that, in response to the CDS market developments, Moody's ratings become better at differentiating bad issuers from good ones as opposed to a "cookie-cutter'' approach to more conservative ratings. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Nas últimas décadas, o cenário empresarial mundial tem presenciado profundas modificações que afetam diretamente as empresas e definem novas formas de atuação no mercado. Por um lado, pode-se identificar a posição de destaque ocupada pelos consumidores, ávidos por produtos e serviços de alta qualidade e que de fato atendam às suas necessidades. Por outro, destaca-se o fenômeno da globalização dos mercados e seu reflexo na concorrência entre as empresas, que agora passa a ser mundial. Além disto, esta troca de paradigmas traz em seu bojo mudanças nos fatores definidores de competitividade para as empresas. Esta situação desfavorece, sobretudo, as micro e pequenas empresas (MPE\'s), que muitas vezes não contam com capacidade competitiva necessária para se adaptarem a esta nova era. Para sobreviver às condições impostas pela economia vigente, observa-se o surgimento de novas formas de organização industrial, com destaque às que estimulam a cooperação entre empresas de um mesmo setor ou de setores complementares, dentre os quais destacam-se os chamados aglomerados ou clusters. Pelas suas características, a presença em um cluster possibilita às MPE\'s incrementos em seus processos produtivos, tanto em termos de volume de produção quanto em termos de aumento de possibilidades tecnológicas, através do compartilhamento de meios produtivos e de investimentos na busca por melhores tecnologias, sejam elas de produto, de processo ou de gestão. De acordo com este cenário, o objetivo desta tese consiste em desenvolver uma análise da competitividade das MPE\'s do cluster alimentício do município de Marília/SP, possibilitando identificar ações a serem tomadas para aumento da competitividade deste conjunto de empresas. Para a realização desta análise foi elaborado um modelo geral adotado na pesquisa, considerando as particularidades do cluster em questão: a predominância de MPE\'s e as características da indústria alimentícia. / In the last decades, the managerial scenery in the world has been witnessing deep modifications that affect the companies directly and define its new forms of performance in the market. On one side, it can be verified the prominent position occupied by the consumers, avid for products and services of high quality and that in fact assist to their needs. On other side, it can be stand out the phenomenon of the globalization of the markets, enlarging the horizons of the companies for besides the national limits, increasing, with that, the competition among them. Besides this, this change of paradigms in its core some changes in the factors that define the competitiveness for a company. This situation disfavors, above all the small firms, that don\'t have necessary competitive capacity for adapt itself to this new era. Thus, to survive to the conditions imposed by the effective economy, these firms create new ways of industrial organization that stimulate cooperation among companies that belongs to the same sector or to the complementary sectors, which can be stand out as agglomerates or clusters. For its characteristics, the presence in a cluster facilitates to the MPE\'s increments in its productive processes, so much in terms of production volume as in terms of increase of technological possibilities, through the share alike of productive means and of investments in the search for better technologies, be them of product, of process or of administration. In agreement with this scenery, the objective of this consists of developing an analysis of the competitiveness of MPE\'s agroindustrial cluster in the municipal district of Marília/SP, facilitating to identify actions to be taken for the competitiveness increasing of this group of companies. For the accomplishment of this analysis a general model adopted in the research was elaborated, considering the particularities of the cluster in subject: the predominance of ) MPE\'s and the characteristics of the nutritious industry.

La théorie du commerce international commença à prendre en compte les firmes dans le début des années 1980. Suite à l’échec des théories traditionnelles à expliquer l’importance du commerce intra-branche, des modèles de concurrence monopolistique (Krugman 1979,1980) et oligopolistique (Brander, 1981) ont été développés. Ces deux approches sont regroupées sous le terme "nouvelle théorie du commerce international". Ainsi qu’il sera expliqué infra, la concurrence oligopolistique est restée négligée dans les trente dernières années, alors que la concurrence monopolistique est devenu le cadre standard. Par rapport aux théories traditionnelles, ces deux types de modèles apportent un changement majeur : la présence des firmes. Néanmoins une différence non moins majeure existe entre concurrence oligopolistique et monopolistique. Alors que la firme est capable d’agir stratégiquement quand elle est en concurrence oligopolistique, elle reste représentative dans un cadre de concurrence monopolistique. Cette différence explique partiellement le fait que le cadre oligopolistique fut délaissé. Alors que la première motivation de la nouvelle théorie du commerce fut de proposer une explication aux flux de commerce intra-branche, l’intuition selon laquelle les firmes doivent être prises en compte fut remis à l’ordre du jour par une littérature empirique des années1990-2000.Grâce à l’émergence de données d’entreprises, nous avons découvert que seules une faible partie des entreprises exportent et que la probabilité de participer ou non au commerce n’est pas aléatoire. En effet, la probabilité d’exporter et la productivité sont fortement corrélées. De plus, parmi les exportateurs, il y a également une forte hétérogénéité. Un des faits les mieux acceptés par les économistes est que les exportations d’un pays sont très concentrées sur quelques (grosses) entreprises. Melitz (2003) en a proposé une explication théorique. En introduisant des firmes hétérogènes dans un modèle à la Krugman, ce modèle prédit, contrairement à la nouvelle théorie du commerce international, que seule une fraction des entreprises exporteront - les plus productives. Cette approche théorique devint rapidement le nouveau cadre standard de la littérature et est également connu sous le nom de "nouvelle nouvelle théorie du commerce international". La présente thèse vise d’abord à prendre part au débat concernant la pertinence de cette nouvelle approche théorique eu égard aux stratégies des firmes à l’exportation. Ensuite, elle essaie de plaider, parmi d’autres, pour un retour des interactions stratégiques dans les modèles de commerce international afin d’affiner notre compréhension des exportations et des firmes multinationales. [...] / Firms were introduced into trade theory in the early 1980s. After traditional trade theory failed to explain the importance of intra-industry trade, monopolistic competition (Krugman, 1979, 1980) and oligopolistic competition(Brander,1981)models were developed. These two approaches are in fact grouped under the label "new trade theory". As will be explained further, oligopolistic competition was quite neglected in the last thirty years, while monopolistic competition became the standard framework in the trade literature. These two frame works share a common feature which represents a major change compared to previous perfect competition models: the presence of firms. Nevertheless, a notable difference between the two is that firms are representative in the monopolistic competition framework, while they are able to act strategically in an oligopolistic setting. This partly explains why the former has been the most used. While the first motivation of new trade theory was to provide a rationale for trade patterns, the intuition that firms had to be taken into account was supported by a broad strand of empirical literature in the 1990s-2000s. Thanks to the emergence of firm-level data, trade economists discovered that only a handful of firms are responsible for the bulk of international trade. The most important feature, and probably the best known and most discussed by trade economists, is that firms’ participation in trade is far from random. Only the most productive ones export. Beyond this comparison between exporters and non-exporters, there is also much heterogeneity among exporters themselves. This fact found a rationale thanks to Melitz (2003) who introduced heterogeneous firms into a monopolistic competition model à la Krugman. This model became the most used in trade and is the cornerstone of "new new trade theory". The present Ph.D. dissertation first tries to take part in the debate about the relevance of monopolistic competition models in new new trade theory with respect to exporting firms’ strategies. Second, this dissertation tries to contribute to showing the need to put strategic interactions back into trade models in order to enhance our understanding of exporting and multinational firms. [...]

Thesis advisor: James E. Anderson / Thesis advisor: Rosen Valchev / The effect of uncertainty on firms' behavior and on the macroeconomy is generally negative in the literature. Extensive research has also demonstrated that financial frictions limit the extent of firms' activities and growth prospects. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I study both empirically and theoretically how a specific type of uncertainty, exchange rate uncertainty, interacts with financial frictions to affect the behavior of exporting firms. In line with the existing literature, I find in the first chapter that exports of manufacturing sectors in which firms are more financially constrained decrease by more in times of high uncertainty. Having more tangible capital, which can potentially be used as collateral, makes the effect of uncertainty less negative, especially im sectors where firms are large. Relying more on external financing, on the other hand, makes the effect more negative and affects sectors with small firms more. Current theoretical models have little to say about the effect of uncertainty on heterogeneous firms. To address this issue, I introduce in the second chapter a model of financially-constrained heterogeneous exporting firms in which credit conditions depend on the degree of exchange rate uncertainty. Firms in different sectors face different types of financial constraints, and are therefore differently affected by uncertainty. I use the calibrated model to evaluate potential policies that could be implemented to alleviate the negative effect of exchange rate uncertainty on exports. The uncovered interest parity puzzle is the empirical finding that countries with higher risk-free interest rates tend to see their currencies appreciate in the short run. Typical two-country macroeconomic models instead predict that high interest-rate currencies depreciate, with arbitrage opportunities eliminating profitable carry trade strategies. The international finance literature responded to this puzzle by providing several alternative theoretical models able to explain the puzzle. In the third chapter of this dissertation, I study how the predictions of two of these alternative models - the habit model of Verdelhan (2010) and the distorted belief model of Gourinchas and Tornell (2004) - are affected when re-cast in a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework. I investigate how the mechanisms rely on specific parameter values in order to find under which conditions, if any, they can explain the UIP puzzle. In addition, I obtain business cycle moments from model simulations and compare them to the moments obtained from a standard two-country DSGE model and from the data. My results show that for the first model, the habit model, the UIP results disappear under realistic calibrations. For the second model, the distorted beliefs model, UIP properties remain under some calibrations. In addition, business cycle predictions remain close to empirical evidence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo pesquisar os processos não estruturados que suportam a formação de empreendedores. A literatura contemporânea sobre administração e gestão dá a conhecer que crises de continuidade nas organizações seriam minimizadas se essas contassem com maior espírito empreendedor em suas lideranças e equipes. Subentende-se, então, que as organizações deveriam formar empreendedores, tarefa de alta complexidade, que demanda conceituação e ambiente interno para ser realizada. Uma das conceituações possíveis é considerar o empreendedorismo como resultante de um conjunto de competências, que, por definição, são passíveis de serem adquiridas. A teoria da cognição tem fornecido novas abordagens para o entendimento de como competências individuais e conhecimento são absorvidos por pessoas em formação. Aplicada ao tema do empreendedorismo, a teoria da cognição também explica como os empreendedores agem e quais são os modelos mentais (crenças e aprendizados) que dão suporte à sua ação. Uma amostra de cinco empresas familiares, em fase de sucessão de liderança foi selecionada para esta pesquisa, que é exploratória e qualitativa. O ambiente interno das organizações também foi avaliado, assim como as atitudes empreendedoras dos gestores destas organizações. Como contraponto, as características de personalidade de cada respondente também foram avaliadas por um instrumento projetivo. Segundo o resultado encontrado, pode-se afirmar que existe um processo de formação dos sucessores, usado de forma intuitiva pelos fundadores das organizações. Esse processo pode ser estruturado e repetido, sob certas condições, em organizações que desejem formar empreendedores internos. As características de personalidade exercem influência relativamente pequena, tanto na escolha dos sucessores como no processo de formação e no ambiente interno. / The objective is to research the unstructured processes which support the development of entrepreneurs. Contemporary literature on administration and management evidences that continuity crises in the organizations would be minimized if the latter could count on a higher entrepreneurial spirit in it leaderships and teams. It is hence inferred that organizations should work towards developing entrepreneurs, a highly complex task, which demands conceptualization and an internal environment in order to be carried out. One of the possible conceptualizations consists of considering entrepreneurship as a result of a set of skills. By definition, it is possible to acquire skills. Cognition theory has provided new approaches to the understanding of how knowledge and individual skills are assimilated by people in professional development. Applied to the notion of entrepreneurship, cognition theory also explains how the entrepreneurs act and which the mental models (beliefs and learning) that support their actions are. A sample of five family businesses, in the process of succession, has been selected for this research, which is exploratory and qualitative. The organizations’ internal environment has also been evaluated, along with the entrepreneurial attitudes of their managers. As a counterpoint, personality traits of each respondent have been analyzed by a projective method. As a result, it can be stated that there is a successors’ development process, employed intuitively by the organizations’ founders. This process can be structured and repeated, under certain conditions, in organizations willing to work on the development of internal entrepreneurs. Personality traits exert a relatively small influence, both in the choice of the successors and in the professional development process and internal environment.

As principais empresas do setor de moda, que têm atuação global, têm procurado expandir para os chamados mercados emergentes desde o fim dos anos 90, haja vista que, os seus mercados habituais estavam saturados e o Brasil com isso tem sido invadido por essas grandes empresas através de investimentos diretos, franquias e licenciamentos. No país encontram um ambiente bastante favorável para iniciar suas operações com um mercado consumidor em crescimento. As empresas brasileiras de moda, que primam pelo design, originalidade e diferenciação, sentindo que o mercado nacional está extremamente concorrido com a chegada destas empresas, iniciaram um processo de internacionalização de suas marcas, ofertando seus produtos em busca de novos mercados e adotando diferentes estratégias de entrada nos mercados internacionais. O objetivo principal deste trabalho foi investigar como se processa o desenvolvimento de produtos em empresas brasileiras de moda que estão se internacionalizando. Para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, foi realizado um estudo multicasos com três importantes empresas brasileiras atuantes no setor de moda. Os resultados mostraram que as empresas são influenciadas pelas tendências internacionais de moda, mas estão lançando suas coleções nos mercados internacionais, no mesmo momento que as grandes marcas de moda internacionais. Mostraram também que as empresas estão produzindo produtos do mesmo nível de qualidade que estas marcas, graças à qualidade dos fornecedores brasileiros e o acesso a fornecedores internacionais. / The main companies of the fashion sector, that have global performance, have been looking for extending their markets towards the ones named emergent markets, since the end of the 90s, and as their usual markets were saturated, Brazil has been invaded by those important companies through direct investment, franchises and licenses. They meet here a very favorable environment to start their productions with a growing consumer market. The Brazilian fashion firms, which excel at their design, originality and differentiation, feeling the national market as extremely competitive with the arrival of those companies, started a process of internationalization of their brands, offering their products in the search for new markets and adopting different strategies to get into them. The main objective of this work was to investigate how is processed the development of products in the Brazilian fashion firms that are being internationalized. As a way of developing the work, it was done a multicases study with three important Brazilian firms of the fashion scene. The results showed that these firms are influenced by the international fashion trends, but they are introducing their collections on the international market at the same time of the famous international brands. They also showed that they are manufacturing products of the same quality level of these brands, thanks to the quality of Brazilian suppliers and to the access to international suppliers as well.

O conhecimento é visto por muitos como o principal ativo das organizações na atualidade. Entre as empresas que primeiro tiveram essa percepção e se lançaram ao desenvolvimento e uso de práticas de gestão do conhecimento estão as empresas de consultoria. Essas empresas, genericamente designadas como empresas de serviços profissionais, além do pioneirismo na gestão do conhecimento, enfrentam uma série de mudanças internas e externas, da mesma forma que muitas das demais empresas de serviços profissionais. O tema desta tese explora a intersecção dos dois temas: discutindo aspectos da gestão do conhecimento em empresas de consultoria. O ponto de partida escolhido é o modelo estratégia - aprendizagem - competências. Em poucas palavras, o modelo advoga que as estratégias da organização moldam as suas competências, que por sua vez guiam as suas escolhas estratégicas. O vínculo é estabelecido através da capacidade de aprendizagem que a organização possui. Tomando esse argumento, este trabalho elabora sua discussão em dois estágios. No primeiro parte-se de uma proposição encontrada na literatura que argumenta que a estratégia de produto/mercado de uma organização guia sua estratégia de gestão do conhecimento. Essa proposição é analisada à luz de um estudo qualitativo em sete empresas de consultoria. Dado o apoio limitado que se encontrou, desenvolveu-se um segundo estágio de pesquisa, com o desenvolvimento de um quadro de análise mais abrangente para se entender o uso dos processos de gestão do conhecimento. Esse quadro foi avaliado através de um segundo estudo qualitativo em três grandes empresas de consultoria, que usa entrevistas com 29 profissionais de escritórios localizados em dois países. Os resultados indicam que as competências existentes na organização são tão influentes no uso de práticas de gestão do conhecimento quanto suas escolhas estratégicas. / Knowledge management has received much attention in the last few years, as knowledge is increasingly seen as the core asset to organizations. Consulting firms are among the leading organizations in the development and use of knowledge management processes and systems. At the same time, those firms, broadly classified as professional service firms (PSF), are, as most of the PSF, undergoing several and deep changes. This dissertation places itself in the intersection of these two fields of research, analysing knowledge management processes in consulting firms. The study\'s starting point is the strategy-learning-competence model, which proposes that an organization strategic choices shape its competencies, as well as its competencies guide its strategy formulation processes, closing a self-reinforcing cycle. As the driving force that makes the cycle to be closed, stand the learning capabilities of the organization. Thus, learning links strategy to competencies. Drawing on this argument, this dissertation engages itself in a two-stage study. In the first, it takes one proposition found in the literature that claims that a firm\'s market strategy shapes its knowledge management processes. Using a qualitative study, it investigates the proposition on seven consulting firms. Since the linkage is found not to be not as strong as claimed, a second stage unfolds, developing a more comprehensive framework to explain the use of knowledge management practices. Theframework is used in a second qualitative study within three consulting firms that gathers data from 29 interviews with consultants from two countries. Results indicate that firm\'s existing competencies are as strong as market strategy in shaping knowledge management practices.

Since the late 1970s, China has gradually transformed from a planned system towards a market economy and its private sector has played increasingly important roles in the national development. During the process, Chinese private manufacturing firms made remarkable contribution to advancing reform, driving growth, enhancing export and improving employment. After the early 2000s, China joined in the World Trade Organisation and aimed to further progress its development through globalisation. The deep integration with the global economy has greatly facilitated China’s global competitiveness in manufacturing industries, but it has also brought the country with a series of development challenges. Nowadays, many Chinese private manufacturing firms are encountering various problems and stuck in development predicament. This dissertation tries to explore the question: What are the current development challenges for Chinese private manufacturing firms in globalisation? The research question is relevant to a wide range of theoretical and empirical research in development studies, including firm competition in global value chains, industrial districts in the global economy, large business in global competition and global battles within China. Building on critical reviews on related literature, the dissertation tries to enrich the existing knowledge by investigating the latest development of China’s manufacturing industries, analysing the challenges and responses of Chinese leading private firms of both large and small sizes individually, and discussing how the interaction of foreign and indigenous firms in both domestic and international markets shapes the global competitiveness of Chinese private firms. The dissertation mainly conducts qualitative inquiry and case studies to analyse the research question. Wenzhou is an outstanding pioneer in China to develop private economy and lead economic reform. The dissertation therefore makes in-depth investigation on Wenzhou’s leading firms in the footwear and the electrical equipment industries, to reflect China’s development in globalisation. Based on Wenzhou’s experience, the dissertation summarises the competition situation of Chinese private manufacturing firms in globalisation, concludes their current development challenges and puts forward policy implications for China’s economic reform and industrial upgrade.

In the professional services industry, it is no secret that people are the greatest assets. The investment in human capital is the core of the business, the dividends of which can never be under-estimated. The continued success of the professional services firm therefore lies in being able to retain that investment within the organisation. The current high rate of turnover within the firm, and in the professional services industry, is indeed a big challenge for management. One that necessitates a review into a variety of ways of keeping the talent within the firm. This research study was commissioned to look into one of the proposed initiatives for retaining employees; that of wealth creation. The aim was to source the views of employees on wealth creation as a way of increasing the rate of retention or otherwise as well as identify the preferred structure of such a scheme. The results of the research showed that employees deem financial remuneration to be highly important and would stay with the firm longer if provided with a wealth initiative. There was preference for a short to medium term scheme rather than a long term one, with some particular suggested schemes coming out as preferred favourites than others. Respondents also went further to highlight other factors that were contributing to loss of talent within the firm. The responses from the survey have been comprehensively analysed and recommendations made on the implementation of the wealth creation scheme. / Graduate School for Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)