Since Vietnam became an official member of WTO in 2006, enterprises need to pay attention and invest in their management capacities in order to build robust strategies and improve their competitive advantage. The application of self-assessment (SA), an advanced management tool, based on a business excellence model (BEM) has been recognised as improving organisational performance by providing a referenced framework and a common language to direct organisations’ focus on improvement and to assist them to deliver both financial and nonfinancial performance enhancement. This study focuses on the investigation of BEM-based selfassessment experiences of two Vietnamese enterprises. The two case study companies, both in the garment and textile industry, undertook SA using a simple EFQM questionnaire tool. Subsequently, this study used semi-structured interviews with senior managers in order to gather data evaluating the benefits of SA to the companies and to identify factors influencing the success of the implementations. Template analysis and Nvivo software were used for the data analysis. Findings provide several insights into how SA outcomes benefit Vietnamese enterprises. Firstly, out of six intended benefits of this SA tool identified in the literature, managers strongly confirmed only one — the benefit of helping them to identify their current position and to determine future directions and priorities — as being useful in improving company performance. Two additional benefits were confirmed relating to the use of SA in identifying the company’s strengths and weaknesses and in enhancing organisational learning and awareness. In relation to factors influencing the success of implementation, several were identified as being crucial: a lack of scorer understanding of SA and BEM knowledge; a risk of emphasis on high scores; and the unique ‘encouraging scoring’ style in Vietnam. Significantly, training was regarded as crucial in overcoming these difficulties, and was as important to managers as top level commitment for successful SA. The research confirms that SA is useful for Vietnamese companies in enabling benefits which should enhance performance. However, training is crucial in overcoming implementation issues which may impact on success. Whilst benchmarking is normally closely associated with SA and BEM, it had limited relevance in the case companies due to the prevalence of high-scoring, which limited the usefulness of comparisons, and the current low levels of comparative data available in Vietnam.

This study considers the impact of two examples of the Working without Walls (WwW) design initiative in the public sector. The Working without Walls (WwW) (2003) and updated Working beyond Walls (WbW) (2008) papers describe the government’s initiatives in workspace redesign. These aim to encourage employee participation, relationship enhancement and improve communication, as well as to reflect organisational strategy and build team identities. These aims resonate with the public sector modernisation reforms aimed to create effective, responsive and accountable services. At the same time an increasingly common approach across sectors has been the adoption of learning organisation principles as a method of creating a culture of interactive behaviour, innovation and knowledge creation. Many public sector agencies are developing strategies to empower employees and create a culture of shared learning and decision making, moving away from the traditional functional and bureaucratic management styles. Within this emergent policy context, this thesis investigates the extent to which the WwW model has facilitated learning through workplace redesign. The study investigates literature from public sector management, organisation theory, learning organisation and workplace design disciplines in order to guide the investigation. Two case studies of organisations who piloted the WwW approach were investigated. The case studies highlight individuals' experience of working in these new working environments, whilst also reflecting the enablers and barriers that research participants have faced. Analysis demonstrates that the critical success factors for facilitating learning through workplace redesign include the removal of many features of bureaucratic organisation and implementation of detailed cultural change programmes. The study has enabled the development of a change strategy which is designed to guide other public sector organisations implementing workplace redesign initiatives as a facilitator of innovation.

Since 1952 students at English universities have received grants towards covering the cost of their university education. Nevertheless, in September 1998, students for the first time were expected to contribute towards the cost of their undergraduate education in the form of tuition fees. More recently, the student contribution has increased to the point where in 2012 students will be paying a major contribution to their undergraduate tuition fees and by many people may be considered as ‘customers’ of education. The aim of this marketing thesis is to investigate how ‘Discrete Choice Experiments’ provide an alternative approach within consumer behaviour theory to estimating course level decision making in English Higher Education. To do this, it introduces the marketisation of the English Higher Education sector, and explores the consumer behaviour literature in the areas of student choice and consumer reservation price. Whilst the attributes that influence student choice of university have been explored, explicit research has failed to use discrete choice theory to examine the attributes that influence choice of course. Furthermore, despite the practical importance of knowing how much prospective students would pay for their undergraduate course, there remains limited research into estimating consumer reservation price in the marketing field. This thesis establishes a preliminary model which provides a greater insight into the attributes and levels that have a significant influence on student choice of course. This model is then used to underpin the primary research conducted within this thesis using a discrete choice experiment. The sample population was Years 12 and 13 students based at two North-east secondary schools. Although the study was restricted to only focusing on the North east of England, findings reveal students are willing to pay more for degree course that have better access to good quality student accommodation and have a higher number of teaching hours. This suggests that universities that offer newly refurbished accommodation and offer greater levels of contact time could justify charging higher fees. Based on the findings of the discrete choice experiment the contributions to theory and methodology of this thesis are the development of a checklist containing the factors to consider when constructing a discrete choice experiment along with the application of a discrete choice experiment contextualised for the English Higher Education sector. Moreover this provides a basis for future discrete choice experiment research in the marketing field.

This research explores the challenges faced by hotels in Malaysia, in formulating and implementing strategic human resource management (SHRM). The study addresses the lack of empirical research into SHRM in Malaysian hotels at a time of rapid growth in the Malaysian tourism industry. Building on current debates regarding strategic HRM, including SHRM and business strategy integration, and the role of HR as a strategic partner, this research explores the relationship between human resource management and business strategies, and the challenges of HRM strategy realisation. The thesis has a particular focus on Recruitment and Selection, and Training and Development, as these two functions lie at the heart of how businesses access and develop the critical skills required to implement SHRM initiatives. The study is conducted from a constructivist ontological stance coupled with an interpretivist epistemology. A set of three semi-structured interviews, involving the Chief Executive Officer, HR professional and line manager, were conducted in five leading hotels. Three additional interviews were conducted to gain feedback on the study’s topic from individuals with HR and/or hotel industry expertise. Data were analysed using a priori and data driven coding following King’s (2004) template analysis method. This research reveals challenges in formulating and implementing strategic HRM exist within Malaysian hotels from three analytical levels, namely, organisational, industry and societal. The challenges include the readiness of HR as a strategic partner, the absence of clearly-defined HR-related key performance indicators, labour scarcity, and government policies relating to labour and education. Although this exploratory research may not be generalisable to all Malaysian hotels, its insights into SHRM challenges may be transferable to other similar hotels and resorts. Discussion of the practical implications of the study’s results highlight the actions recommended as necessary for the three target audiences, namely, Hotel Managers (which include CEOs/General Managers, HR professionals and line managers), the Malaysian Association of Hotels, and the Government, to improve professional practice pertaining to strategic human resource management in Malaysian hotels.

There is a large body of literature on what strategies are, and how they are formed in organisations. Building upon the two traditional approaches of deliberate and emergent strategy, recent studies have suggested that strategy formation should seek to integrate various processes, especially in different contexts. In the area of strategy formation in the higher education sector, however, it remains the case that some strategic researchers advocate more deliberate planning while others favour emergent strategy formation. Literature on strategy formation is in large part theoretical rather than empirical, especially in the private higher education sector. To fill the gap, the purpose of this study is to identify how strategy formation takes place in Malaysian Private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The main objectives of this research are to examine the key reasons behind typical strategy formation activities, and whether HEI leaders in Malaysia believe that the actions taken are effective in achieving their strategic objectives. This study takes a unique research approach to investigating strategy formation processes. Informed by subtle realism ontology and social constructionism epistemology, symbolic interactionism is employed to inform the research’s theoretical perspective. Consistent with this research philosophy, ethnography is employed in this study. To ensure the high quality of this research, reflexivity is also used as an important methodology to evaluate the whole research process. A total of eight in-depth interviews were conducted amongst Malaysian Private HEI leaders, all of them key strategic decision makers and who have been involved in strategy formation at their institutions. The findings of this study suggest that strategy formation in the HEI industry in Malaysia is more emergent than deliberate, reflecting the dynamic environment and unique features of Malaysian HEIs. Some important patterns, including logical incrementalism, the political /generative process and cultural/symbolic process, were discovered in relation to emergent strategy formation processes. These emergent approaches were however not employed entirely independently, but were combined with externally imposed deliberate strategy processes. This study further explores why this is the case, and identifies the key reasons why certain strategy processes have had to be adapted in the Malaysian Private Higher Education sector. These are to be found mainly in the external environment, namely uncertainty, scarcity of information, and the significant influence of the MOHE (Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education). In addition, the study identifies three moderating factors in relation to the choice of strategy formation process: multidivisional versus simple/small insitutions; main versus subsidiary level campuses; and collective versus high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance cultures in HEI organisations. This research has been designed with the intention of bringing new insights to strategy formation in different contexts. Its conclusions make substantial contributions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Theoretically, the study extends the mainstream of strategy formation literature into the context of private higher education in an Asian context (in this case Malaysia). For practitioners, the findings confirm that strategic decision makers face no easy task. Strategy formation is a complex process, and is highly dependent on the given context. Practitioners may use multiple strategy formation processes, balancing more emergent and deliberate thought. The findings also signal the importance of understanding the rich reality of strategy formation, which requires practitioners to have an open mind.

This research empirically examines the relationship between stock market development and economic growth in the context of Nigeria. The question guiding this study is focused on whether the development of the stock market has had an impact on economic growth in Nigeria. The thesis examines the long run causal relationship between the stock market and economic growth. It uses one bank and three measures of stock market development: the loans to deposit ratio of banks, Market capitalisation ratio, value traded to market capitalisation ratio as well as value traded to GDP ratio. Essentially the study uses the endogenous growth theory as a basis of its theoretical foundation. The study exploits time series analysis techniques to test for the existence of a relationship and, where one is found to exist, the casual nature of that relationship. The study particularly applies Multivariate vector autoregressive models (VAR) and Vector Error Correction Models (VECM) in testing for the existence of a relationship. The evidence obtained from the study shows the existence of co-integration between the stock market development and economic growth in the short as well as the long run. This suggests that stock market development has impacted on economic growth in Nigeria. The Granger causality test findings indicate the presence of a bi-directional relationship between stock market development and economic growth. The findings of the study support the view that stock market development and economic growth in Nigeria are complementary and any improvements in the stock market would have a positive impact on economic growth in Nigeria. The findings also support the hypothesis of endogenous growth models that financial development causes higher economic growth. The contribution of this study lies in the fact that it provides additional evidence on the ongoing debate of the impact stock markets on the economic growth process within a specific country.

In order to grow, the pharmaceutical sector has had to heavily rely on both formal and informal innovation networks. However, many analysts consider that the industry has not achieved its growth potential and suggest that this is in part due to the inherent organisational barriers to knowledge transfer that exist in the pharmaceutical sector. This thesis provides a critical review of the knowledge transfer literature; with particular reference to absorptive capacity, social capital and external knowledge transfer meta-routines. The study takes a pragmatic critical realist approach, using a two stage critical incident technique to elucidate the micro-foundations of problem solving routines as a proxy for knowledge transfer. Thematic analysis on the resulting narratives identifies routinized patterns of information seeking behaviour, reveals the micro-foundations of template use and provides insights into how scientists recognise value in the knowledge that they find. The study answers calls to research the role of the individual in organisational routines; to uncover the micro-foundations of external absorptive capacity and to determine how value is recognised in new knowledge. A model is proposed that suggests that recognising the value of new knowledge is a construct that is influenced by factors which affect the perceived information quality, the relative subjectivity of the solution and the source’s social-identity. The value of knowledge is also further corroborated with the support of other materials or through a wider stakeholder involvement. The study has adopted a ‘strategy-as-practice’ approach and contributes to organisational practice by examining how informal external knowledge transfer through problem solving in a biopharmaceutical organisation is accomplished. These insights enable the author to suggest a number of managerial strategies by which pharmaceutical managers might recognise, optimise and facilitate the use of informal networks; whilst protecting their intellectual property and maintaining the potential for innovation.

Against the background of several theoretical and methodological criticisms on country of origin (COO) effects research, integrating the Means-End-Chain (MEC), this study investigated the effect of MEC based product COO images on elite consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions towards local and foreign made products, across hedonic and utilitarian products when buying for personal use vs. as a gift for a friend. The effect of two antecedents (consumer ethnocentrism and consumer need for uniqueness) on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions were also investigated. The data for the study was gathered via a sequential mixed methods study comprised of two phase pilot study (30 qualitative laddering interviews + quantitative survey with 261 elite consumers) and a primary study with a self-administered survey conducted in Sri Lanka among 311 elite professionals. The qualitative data were analysed employing standard MEC laddering data analysis procedure. Hierarchical regression analysis and paired sample t-tests were used to analyse the quantitative data. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in elite Sri Lankan consumers’ MEC based product images, attitudes and purchase intentions towards local versus foreign made products. Differences were also found between foreign COOs and across hedonic versus utilitarian product categories and purchase occasions. The MEC-based product COO images were found to have a significant ability to predict elite consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. No significant effects of consumer ethnocentrism or consumer need for uniqueness were found on attitudes or purchase intentions. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of COO by asserting that COO is a relevant research area and providing a richer understanding of how elite consumers in an emerging market utilise COO as a means to achieve their desired end goals or values. From a managerial perspective, it indicates that COO needs to be managed carefully by companies as COO based product images are developed in MEC based sequence and these images differ across product categories and purchase occasions.

The accurate prediction of software development cost at early stage of development life-cycle may have a vital economic impact and provide fundamental information for management decision making. However, it is not well understood in practice how to optimally utilize historical software project data for the construction of cost predictions. This is because the analysis of historical data sets for software cost estimation leads to many practical difficulties. In addition, there has been little research done to prove the benefits. To overcome these limitations, this research proposes a preliminary data analysis framework, which is an extension of Maxwell's study. The proposed framework is based on a set of statistical analysis methods such as correlation analysis, stepwise ANOVA, univariate analysis, etc. and provides a formal basis for the erection of cost prediction models from his¬torical data sets. The proposed framework is empirically evaluated against commonly used prediction methods, namely Ordinary Least-Square Regression (OLS), Robust Regression (RR), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN), and is also applied to both heterogeneous and homogeneous data sets. Formal statistical significance testing was performed for the comparisons. The results from the comparative evaluation suggest that the proposed preliminary data analysis framework is capable to construct more accurate prediction models for all selected prediction techniques. The framework processed predictor variables are statistic significant, at 95% confidence level for both parametric techniques (OLS and RR) and one non-parametric technique (CART). Both the heterogeneous data set and homogenous data set benefit from the application of the proposed framework for improving project effort prediction accuracy. The homogeneous data set is more effective after being processed by the framework. Overall, the evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed framework has an excellent applicability. Further research could focus on two main purposes: First, improve the applicability by integrating missing data techniques such as listwise deletion (LD), mean imputation (MI), etc., for handling missing values in historical data sets. Second, apply benchmarking to enable comparisons, i.e. allowing companies to compare themselves with respect to their productivity or quality.

The thesis is about the spread of technology in the economy. More specifically it concerns the adoption decisions of individual firms. The basic relationships between technology and the economy are outlined along with the main theories employed to explain them. A diffusion-centred typology of technology is constructed building on existing work. Following that, a review of literature on diffusion and its associated measuring and modelling techniques is undertaken. Valid determinants of diffusion are identified in empirical literature. The above theoretical framework is used to analyse the technological performance of the Greek economy. Traditional technology policy is looked at and a 'technological map' of Greece is constructed. The map presents an overview of the current situation with regards to the diffusion and creation of innovations. The main country-specific factors affecting the process of diffusion are also identified. Informed by both theory and Greek reality a methodology is presented for an original survey in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The empirical part focuses on the stage of diffusion concerning individual adoption decisions. An accompanying econometric model (logit) is used to explain the adoption of Internet Enabled Personal Computers (IEPCs) by SMEs. Results suggest that learning effects, the perceived availability of financial capital, perceived threat from competition, perceptions regarding the technology's life expectancy and linkages with multinational enterprises (MNEs) are strongly associated with instances of adoption. The author contributes an original insight into the adoption determinants pertinent to the Greek context. Finally, the findings of the survey and its empirical analysis are combined with secondary sources to construct tentative policy suggestions.