The investment decision-making process in small manufacturing enterprises: with particular reference to printing and clothing industries.

This research is concerned with the investment decision making process in small manufacturing enterprises in the printing and clothing industries. The focus is on the actual decision-making behaviour of owner-managers. The study uses' Insider accounts' as a qualitative and innovative methodology, which involves in-depth, semi-structured interviews and direct observation,conducted longitudinally in 8 case study companies. It is a research method which includes detailed accounts from the actors themselves, incorporating the actual motives and behaviour of owner-managers based on the philosophy that the 'objects' studied are in fact 'subjects', who produce accounts of their world. The results of the study suggest that owner-manager use 'bootstrapping’ techniques for their investment appraisal instead of formal methods such as those recommended in the financial management literature. Bootstrapping represents an approach to decision making that is grounded in previous experience of key decision-makers and their organisations and the largely informal routines that they develop from this. These techniques include a combination of experience judgement and gut-feeling,budgets and forecasts and the tendering process. The concept of bootstrapping is not simply a way of owner-managers finding a solution to a problem or a sort of 'fire-fighting’ it is a concept of actions grounded in experiential leaming. In this sense, bootstrapping is a particular form of learning behaviour. It is essentially a trial and error learning process which brings knowledge, skills, values and attitudes together and provides owner-managers with an opportunity to evaluate outcomes associated with investment based on previous experience. Therefore, the researcher believes that conceptualising small firm investment decision making within the context of an organisational learning approach holds promise as an explanatory framework for investment behaviour in small firms

Formulation and Implementation of Environmental Strategies in Printing Firms: A Comparison between the U.S. and Germany

This thesis will guide the reader through the investigation process of a research area previously ignored in the research literature: the formulation and implementation of environmental strategies in printing companies. It will address strategies in printing firms, primarily from a cultural and structural point of view, which are formulated and implemented to help protect the environment and to save resources. The investigation will include a review of previous literature regarding strategy, environmental management and technology, and health and safety management. It will introduce the research questions, the methodology, and the analysis of research findings. Through the exploratory case study method, the researcher will show how some printing companies integrate environmental protection within their strategic decision process. The researcher investigated two small and two large printing firms in the U.S. and Germany to learn how company size and cultural background influence environmental strategy formulation and implementation processes. In addition, the researcher wanted to know about the individual competitive context, adapted by Porter and Kramer (2002) that influences each firm in its strategic decision-process. The analysis of the four case studies shows that the environmental strategies of printing companies differ, depending on each individual company and the competitive forces it faces. Though the history of each firm\u27s environmental strategy development is distinctive, all four companies succeeded in creating a competitive edge, gaining a range of common and in some cases individual benefits. Some key factors driving the firms\u27 strategic decision-making processes kept reappearing in the studies: organizational structure, ownership, location, company size, and the history and cultural background of the company. The factor conditions turned out to be the most important element of the competitive context for all four cases. This involves particularly leadership and personal commitment of the members of the firm (employees, the chairman of the board, the CEO, or the mother organization). The demand conditions seemed to be more important to the small firms than to the large firms investigated. All four companies concentrated on process improvements and the resulting increased efficiency and saved resources, thereby reducing environmental impact and saving costs. From the strategy focus and competitive context of each firm it was possible to ascertain its strategy type: emergent or deliberate. Both small firms deliberately use their environmental stance, and thus have formal strategies. The large firms have an informal feel to their environmental initiatives. The overall goal of this thesis research was to provide the printing industry with valuable information regarding the adoption of environmental strategies. The investigator hoped to help close the gap in the printing literature and to encourage more printing companies to start integrating environmental issues in their strategic decisions in order to become more competitive and socially responsible businesses

Translational requirements for manufactured dopaminergic neurons for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease

After decades of research there is now a plethora of cell-based therapies traversing through different phases of clinical trials. However, there remains work to be done regarding optimising the quality and production efficiency of these therapies, as well as economic considerations to validate their commercial viability. This project focuses on the process development of a candidate human embryonic stem cell (hESC) based therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the related health economics. This work set out to identify the key translational requirements for successful, robust and reproducible manufacture of a cell-based therapy for PD, by optimising a preclinical validated differentiation protocol. [Continues.]</div