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Aim: Gain insight into how a relationship occur between trust in a virtual team’s e-leader and the satisfaction of the individual virtual team members. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten virtual team members and one e- leader. By the means of grounded theory data from the interviews were analysed. Findings and results are further presented and discussed as distinct themes found in the empirical data. Result & Conclusions: We searched for a relationship between trust in the e-leader and the individual virtual team members’ satisfaction. Our findings show that the individual team members’ trust in the e-leader is influencing the feeling of satisfaction in their working environment. The three cues identified to build trust which in turn yields satisfaction in an organisational setting, first relationship and communication, second team spirit, third individual focus. Suggestions for future research: We suggest a longitudinal approach for further research to understand the long term effects and benefits for the organisation from the relationship between trust and satisfaction. We also believe the result can benefit from studies conducted in other businesses where the competitive landscape and, or setup may differ. Contribution of the thesis: The thesis contributes to an understanding of what trust in the e-leader contributes to in a virtual team in regards to its individual team members and their satisfaction.

Several theorists have argued that organisations can increase performance through formalised cooperation with other important organisations (Baum & Oliver 1991). This notion of “institutional linkages” is appealing as it uses linkages as a proxy for legitimacy awarded to organisations for adherence to exogenous expectations. However, this operationalization also has its limitations. For what is the role of institutional linkages in groups of organisations where a majority of them – or all – are linked? Baum & Oliver (1991) provide meagre advice for what is to expect beyond the point of organisations being legitimate (linked) or not. But if organisations that hold (at least) one institutional linkage perform better than unlinked organisations, should not organisations that have multiple linkages also perform better than those who have but a single one? Intuitively, this seems reasonable. But considering that institutional linkages are associated with costs in terms of additional administration, audit and fees, it is not obvious that organisations desire ‘as many linkages as possible’. Using data for 339 aid organisations in Sweden, this study suggests developing the theoretical concept of institutional linkages, arguing that the number of institutional linkages serves as a prediction of organisational performance. Although further inquiry is needed to determine whether this effect persists as the number of linkages continues to increase, the findings suggest that organisations will strive towards having more institutional linkages than competing organisations.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This research sought to understand the knowledge management (KM) practices in use by networked southern non-profit organisations (NPOs), which directly or indirectly impact on their effectiveness. It explores the realm of NPOs, and the concepts of organisational effectiveness (OE) and KM, with the aim of identifying their interrelationships from a theoretical and practical perspective. The three organisations studied are the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), South Africa NGO Network (SANGONet) and Women’s Network (Women’sNet). Using a conceptually formulated research framework, data gathered was analysed to examine the KM concepts of people capacity, systems and procedures, information and knowledge flow and stakeholder relations within and across all three case studies and their use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) as an enabler. The research concludes with an integrated framework, an addition to the existing body of knowledge on KM theory with key elements for a KM system for effectiveness for networked southern NPOs.

Cette recherche porte sur les transformations des cultures professionnelles des employés de banque à partir d’une étude qualitative d’une entreprise publique du secteur financier au Brésil. Ces transformations sont analysées en rapport aux changements politiques, économiques et organisationnels, y compris sur les dispositifs de formation, survenus dans le processus de restructuration du secteur dans les années 1986-1997. L’objet d’étude s’inscrivant dans une organisation il a fallu le recours à la sociologie du travail, des organisations et des entreprises, notamment les démarches de l’analyse stratégique en liaison avec celles de l’analyse culturelle de l’entreprise. Lors de l’analyse des transformations dans les formes de socialisation au travail des employés de banque, la dimension biographique qui est apparue dans les entretiens a conduit à utiliser aussi les schémas interprétatifs des études sur les modèles culturelles et identitaires / The purpose of this research is to study the transformation process on socialization forms among bank workers, their professional cultures, through a qualitative approach of a public financial company of Brazil. These transformations were analyzed from its political, economic and organizational changes, as well as the human resources and qualifying politics during the restructure process of financial sector in the period from 1986 to 1997. Based on contributions from the sociology of work and sociology of organizations, this study was carried out by a methodological approach of the strategic analysis and cultural analysis of the public company. During the analysis of bank workers cultural transformations, the importance of biographical reports conducted us to adopt also the interpretative schemes of cultural and identity studies. The empirical analysis was done in two levels. First, the organizational which included the company conduction view points and the workers representation about the changes into the social context of the company. Second, the analysis of the consequences of those changes in the attitudes, perceptions and feelings of the bank workers under their work relationships. 38 bank workers were researched through various methodological approaches that included: primary sources (reports, projects, studies, data and journals from directory and also the work representatives) and semi structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed by the decomposition of main themes based on their comprehension and interpretation.

Over the past 20 years, governments in many countries around the world have sought to implement governance mechanisms to measure and assess the performance of public service organisations. As a consequence, public service organisations, especially those considered as poorly-performing organisations, have been subjected to unprecedented pressure to improve their performance and sustain performance improvement as a continuous process. However, efforts of public managers to improve the performance of their organisations have been undertaken without “comprehensive theories and rigorous evidence on this issue” (Boyne, 2006: 366). This thesis takes up the challenge of providing robust evidence on the factors associated with the performance improvement of public organisations. We propose that the notion of organisational capabilities offers a promising way to meet this challenge. From this standpoint, this research sought to identify the organisational capabilities whose development and use explain a public service organisation’s ability to improve its performance and sustain good performance in the long run. The empirical analysis was conducted in a population of hospital trusts in England. We firstly applied longitudinal and comparative case studies method into two acute hospitals trusts: one case of a successful performance improvement and one case of less-successful performance improvement. The purpose was to examine how the development (or lack of) a set of capabilities over time accounted for the differences in the performance outcome and trajectory of the two cases. Our findings identified the following capabilities as advantageous for achieving a sustained performance: collective leadership; action-oriented culture; effective clinical-managerial relationship; supportive external context; performance / finance control capability; coordination capability of the key delivery process; sensing capability and learning capability. We then employed quantitative method over the population of acute hospital trusts in England to explore the relationship between complementarities of capabilities and performance. The results demonstrated that only when in combination does the presence of the capabilities yield positive and significant association with performance. In other words, the presence of the whole system of the capabilities increases the trusts’ performance, while partial presence of a set of capabilities is either not significantly associated with, or even detrimental to, the trusts’ performance.

The study examines the importance of competitive advantage and change in a dynamic environment. The purpose of the study is to explore how AAI could remain relevant and competitive in the market and examines how regularly changing its approaches to programme delivery could be used to meet needs of the community. The study also focused on the impact of AAI’s pace of change and how the pace impacted on the organization’s effectiveness and quality of programmed delivery. AAI relied on its past successful programmes to address the need of communities in many new countries. However, previously successful programmes did not prove popular when rolled in new markets. AAI programmes are suffering substantial withdrawals from beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are withdrawing from AAI programmes, complaining that the programme delivery approaches were not competitive and innovative. Many new organizations being formed are competing not just for beneficiary markets, but for financial resources (funding), skills and new ideas of delivering programmes. Traditional government type donors are being overtaken by a new crop of donors that is in favour of funding competitive and innovative organizations. Traditional aid organizations are losing market share to smaller agencies. The organizational structure of AAI appears not to support effective and efficient delivery of programmes. With no senior manager at the helm of the department, coordinating activities, sustaining competitive advantage and managing change within the programme department remained a challenge for the organization. A frastruated staff compliments exacerbated the situation. Employee turnover at the key and tactical levels resulted in the department operating without adequate staff and key personnel. This made coordination and cooperation amongst units very difficult. Various programme units operated in silos and mixed messages were sent to community resulting in the community being unhappy with AAI. Community felt that AAI did not consult with them when deciding on how to meet their needs. Community members felt that AAI was taking unilateral decisions and did not care about their feedback and the quality of the programmes delivered. This study further examines how AAI has suffered due to its inability to respond to the needs of community and its failure to adapt to the changing business environment. It reveals how innovation and adaptability is critical for retaining competitive advantage. It reveals how capabilities once built can be eroded by competition through copying. It concludes by revealing the importance of dynamic capabilities in sustaining competitive advantage as well as the need to change in response to the market. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

Campaigning has become an important area of work for development NGOs (NGDOs). How political, in terms of public mobilising to confront authority, has it become? What frameworks can we best use to study this? Based on precedents such as della Porta and Diani's suggestion (2006) that social movement (SM) theory can be enlarged as a theory of collective action, I borrow six SM concepts – frames, repertoires, networks, mobilising structures, identity and political opportunities-threats. I then combine them with NGDO campaigning literature themes to explore those questions in a case study of ActionAid's Tax Justice Campaign (TJC) in Nigeria and the UK. ActionAid's TJC operates through two campaign formats – a single-issue format with one international claim and a multiple-issue format with claims specific to each level. Both formats exist in tension for campaign resources, yet combine to expose international and domestic causes of poverty in low-income countries. This example illustrates ActionAid's campaigning style: walking a tightrope to balance tensions and opportunities in its idea of ‘campaigning'. This style also includes embracing moderate and radical supporter views on poverty and a structure of sponsorship and service-delivery programmes with campaigning accompanying them. For example, financial supporters mobilise towards confronting authorities alongside direct campaigner recruitment. Other NGDOs share this, with other ActionAid campaign features, which together shapes an understanding towards the idea of NGDO political action. I suggest that my findings contribute to both NGDO campaigning and SM theory. To NGDO campaign actors, SM theory provides a new vocabulary to study NGDO campaigning, particularly little explored dimensions in NGDO campaign literature such as state/authority confrontation and political identity. To SM theory, my findings offer an empirical contribution which helps position campaigning NGDOs as another type of contentious actor. At a practice level, ActionAid's multiple-issue campaigning may help prevent local tokenism in international campaigns.