Abstract / Multinational corporations have played a significant role for e-learning systems’ penetration in Africa. This study sought to explore how e-learning systems are accepted and used by a multinational corporation in Africa. The multinational company focuses in building materials and construction. The qualitative research approach utilizing the exploratory and analytical case study design was employed in this study. The research participants comprised of managers who are employees of a multinational corporation, and they were purposively sampled from Middle East Africa region. Research instruments used were interviews guide and questionnaires on e-learning and its use by a multinational corporation operating in Africa. The results revealed that e-learning systems play a pivotal role in transforming education in Africa. The study also found that for a prosperous e-learning strategy in Africa, there is requisite for leadership transformation, team building, and easy access to information. In addition, there is also a need for commercial transformation, and understanding of company goals, induction of new members, and promotion of a learning culture, collaboration, and guidance. Finally, the study considered the various e-learning systems application challenges in Africa. These were found to range from the lack of technological awareness by learners, lack of time by the working class, poor connectivity, high setup costs, language barriers, as well as the lack of customised gadgets for e-learning. / School of Computing / M.Sc. (Computing)

This research offers an insightful view of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), its relation to Internationalisation and Performance of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in three Emerging Markets; China, Malaysia and South Africa. 21 MNEs are reviewed, seven from each emerging market, over the research timeframe of 2005 to 2010. The issue at hand revolves around a thorough review of the internationalisation modes of the selected MNEs into various regions around the world and measuring their performance variables. The internationalisation modes were analysed against MNE EO, and the relation between their EO and their internationalisation. The method of the data collection utilised was mixed, obtaining all results from published MNE annual reports over the period of review and utilised both qualitative and quantitative data analysis in the research. Qualitative data was thematically analysed and coded for quantitative statistical analysis, whilst the financial data was statistically analysed accordingly. EO is highly interlinked with MNE internationalisation, as the very least on a construct level. EO strategies have shown support in correlating with MNE performance measures, but have differed between the emerging markets reviewed. It has shown that MNE focus with regard to EO strategy and internationalisation differs, with varying effects on their success. This is an area of academic research that has received very little, if any, review prior to this research. It offers bountiful opportunities to build on, and insightful findings that may be further reviewed.

One key to CSR’s success has been its fuzzy definition, whereby its meaning is constantly (re)defined by practice and through the dialectical relationship between companies and their stakeholders. This thesis focuses upon the influence of MNOCs’ socio-political field upon their CSR (rather than upon specific CSR projects), from a critical realist perspective, contributing to existing research in three key ways. Firstly, I present original explanatory models that outline the practice of CSR in Colombia and Venezuela. From these models, I develop further models that categorise the types of CSR practiced in each country. I argue that Colombia follows a conventional model of private-led CSR; by contrast, the Venezuelan model pushes the boundaries of more traditional CSR definitions. Given the government’s dirigiste approach, I categorise the Venezuelan model as an example of a new form of CSR, that I call Regulated CSR (RCSR), noting the inherent contradictions of regulating to increase responsibility. Secondly, I produce original research on MNOCs’ CSR reports, examining how MNOCs’ agency is affected by global socio-political discourses. Paradoxically, whilst CSR is an important element of corporate communication, many MNOCs only disclose limited CSR-related information. Thirdly, this thesis contributes to the growing discussion of CSR’s role within the neoliberal paradigm. I argue that CSR is not and cannot be a panacea for social absences and can have negative social effects. Therefore, appropriate regulation is necessary, starting with greater corporate transparency at an international level to level-up MNOCs’ practices, and national oversight of MNOCs’ CSR budgets and practices.

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This dissertation consists of three essays broadly centering on external changes and how organizations respond to these change by altering themselves. My investigations focus on knowledge transfer and innovation related firm responses with an emphasis on firms’ especially, Multinational Enterprises’ (MNEs) market strategies such as ownership, governance and location choices and their non-market strategies such as political networking and stakeholder management. I'm particularly interested in emerging countries and the changing institutional environment in those contexts. To study changes occurring in different speeds and varying firm responses to them, I have hand-collected longitudinal datasets for different industries and employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies: my datasets covers both moderately-dynamic industries such as multinational construction and retailing and as well as more knowledge-intensive industries such as multinational pharmaceutical, electronics and computer & software industries. Chapter 1: MNE Legitimacy in the Eyes of the People: Insights from Libya about Surviving Association with an Overthrown Regime In the first chapter, I investigate how firms respond to changes that are less-anticipated and takes place in a rapid fashion. Differentiating between the learning that MNEs accumulate at the host-countries and related learning they transfer from similar locations, this paper is built upon and extend theories about how MNEs, cope with institutional voids and transitions in relation to their political connections, corporate social responsibility strategies and interactions with stakeholders in the emerging countries. In order to do so, I conducted an in-depth qualitative study on how different MNEs with different interaction levels to the Gaddafi Regime, society, tribes and the new government in Libya were affected by the Arab Spring. In this paper, using the Arab Spring as a natural experiment and employing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Fuzzy-set methodology, we build new theory on how MNEs can survive and even thrive during times of fast institutional transitions. We introduce “the legitimacy of the government” as an alternative measure of host-country political environment assessment and suggest that MNEs that deepened, broadened and expanded their political connections and strategies to multiple political actors and complemented them with CSR related activities fare better major institutional changes at the host countries. In addition, the results suggest that host-country only specific learning can lock-in MNEs not to see the changing “tea leaves” if they don't complement it with their recent related experiences from their operations other countries. Chapter 2: The Effect of Different Post-Entry Experiences on Changing Market Entry Choices The second chapter focuses on post-entry operations of multinational retail firms that are required to offer a standardized service for an effective knowledge redeploying, but also need to recombine their HQ knowledge with the knowledge that the subsidiaries possess, to ensure adaptation to the local conditions at the same time. The change, now being the multiple uncertainties related with multinational retail chains’ internationalization into different locations, I first analyze how these firms decide on efficient firm boundaries and positioning after their entry into the host countries, and then investigate effects of these post-entry choices on their performance at the host-countries. Constructing a novel data-set of MNEs post-entry commitments in the host countries, my study reviews MNEs’ behavior after they have entered a foreign country and individually tracks their alteration of its ownership and retail format changes over time within that country starting from 1975 and until 2013. This paper provides a more process-based understanding of MNEs’ choices and strategies at the host countries, which extends the scant literature on mode-dynamics. The empirical results show that; MNEs are more likely to change their governance modes after the negative initial performance rather than after the positive initial performance, however, they tend to act completely in the reverse fashion for their decisions regarding changing their initial format choices at post-entry. I also show that the MNEs that change these initial market entry choices regardless of the initial performance have higher probability of survival at the host countries at post-entry, controlling for the dissimilarity between the home and the host countries and after taking into consideration of the possible selection effect of initial market entry decisions. Chapter 3: Differential Effects of Local, Foreign Firms and Supra-National Institutions on the Pace of Institutional Change in Developing Countries In the third chapter, I track changes in local innovation process and IP regime at the same time in the knowledge intensive patent areas such as pharmaceuticals, computer, software and electronics in developing countries. My focus is on Trade Related Intellectual Property Standards (TRIPS) agreement which was signed between developed and developing countries that made it compulsory in emerging countries the protection of product patents along with the process patents. Developing countries were given a 10-year allowance until January 1, 2005, in order to bring their patent system into line with TRIPS obligations as well as other flexibilities. Interestingly, while some of the developing countries such as India used these flexibilities and waited until the end of the 10-year allowance, some countries such as Brazil, Korea and Turkey ratified the TRIPS agreement and put the new regulations into action right away. We explain the variation in developing countries’ rate of TRIPS compliance by new institutionalism and co-evolutionary perspectives, by presenting a framework that shows effects of different actors within innovation systems on different trajectory and rates of institutional change. The results indicate that higher composition of local firms result in slower change of the IP Regime in developing countries, while higher the Advanced Country Multinationals, faster the change. I also find that supranational institutions such as IMF moderate this relationship. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

No / The anticapitalist protests at Seattle and Genoa are dramatic symbols of a growing collective anger about the of a few multinational corporations. But there is more to anticapitalism than demonstrations: concepts like participatory democracy and economic solidarity form the heart of alternative but equally compelling visions. Hilary Wainwright, writer and long-time political activist, set out on a quest to find out how people are putting such concepts into practice locally and taking control over public power. Her journey starts at home, in east Manchester, where local community groups are testing Tony Blair¿s commitment to ¿community-led¿ regeneration by getting involved in the way government money is spent. In Newcastle, she joins a meeting of homecare workers and their clients to challenge the threat of privatization of homecare services in that city. In Los Angeles she talks to the people behind the community-union coalitions that have had major successes in improving the impoverished bus system and in winning a living wage for employees of firms contracted by the city. And in Porto Alegre she discovers the wider democratic potential of the participatory budget, the basis of investment decisions in many Brazilian cities. Local democracy and ¿people power,¿ it turns out, provided the foundations for a global alternative, as her visit to the World Social Forum reveals.

No / One of the central questions in the literature on MNCs is the extent to which their subsidiaries act and behave as local firms (local isomorphism) versus the extent to which their practices resemble those of the parent company or some other global standard (internal consistency). Drawing on the resource-based view and resource-dependency theory, this paper aims to provide an insight into the interplay of several corporate-level organizational factors that affect the transfer of HRM practices across borders. Data collected from 80 European and US multinationals with subsidiaries in Greece are used to test specific hypotheses. Our results indicate that the level of importance attached to HRM by the MNC's top management and international experience have the highest explanatory power for the transfer of HRM practices, while international competitive strategy, informal control and the presence of expatriates also have a marginally significant influence.

No / In light of current changes in the German industrial relations¿ landscape and the wider and deeper integration of German multinationals into the world economy, this study investigates the relative importance of the country-of-origin effect in employee relations of German affiliates in an Anglo-American setting. The paper addresses important issues that relate to the wider international business domain. The comparative analysis to US affiliates in the UK and British owned firms points to a distinctively German flavored hybrid approach that integrates the best practice elements of the US model with the collective orientation of the German model. This bears a resemblance to an emerging trend in the parent companies¿ home locations. The intra-German analysis revealed that affiliates of multinationals that face pressures for international integration are at the forefront of this development. The findings suggest that this might provide a suitable model of international operation for multinationals from strongly institutionalized countries.