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This thesis presents a framework to explain Internet acceptance by the television business and its impact on the traditional television business. This study applies an integrated research model, grounded on the theoretical constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and diffusion of innovation theory (DIT), guided by past learnings (Yu and Tao, 2009) on advancement of TAM for businesses in the post decision stage. Thereafter, it uses explanatory sequential mixed methods to test the hypotheses and finalise the framework. Television business is an area where very few studies have been conducted. While earlier studies (Borders, 2003; Chan-Olmsted and Ha, 2003; Wirtz et al., 2013; Lugmayr and Zotto, 2016) identify Internet acceptance as having an impact on television but these studies have been piece meal attempts to investigate one or the other part of television business. This thesis is unique because it comprehensively identifies the factors affecting Internet acceptance and the impact of Internet acceptance on the traditional television business. The thesis is conducted in India which globally ranks among the top three geographies in terms of both television and Internet usage. It starts with a longitudinal study conducted over four years comparing viewership data of the top twenty-five television channels and their Internet products. Observations from the quantitative phase are used as input for the elite interviews with twenty-one CEOs in the television business. These CEOs collectively manage business at Two Hundred And Forty Two television channels which is more than Eighty percent of total Indian television business, making this a significant study. Learnings of the longitudinal study and elite interviews are integrated to present a framework that explains the factors influencing the decisions of television CEOs and the impact of Internet acceptance. The CEOs have a well-defined process of accepting the Internet, but they have not invested in research on Internet acceptance. This thesis is significant for working professionals, as television is typified within learning school of management (Oliver, 2013), where past learning impacts future strategies. This thesis revalidates the findings of earlier research (Teece, 2010) that, in media management, Internet companies devastate traditional business models but at the same time struggle to create their own business model. This thesis also revalidates (Chan-Olmsted and Ha, 2003) that television channels use the Internet only to complement the television stations' core products as a support function. There is limited or no use of the Internet in cost or revenue functions. Consequently, there is not much of strategy in Internet acceptance. It is only about launching same or similar products on the Internet as the competitors. A key finding of this thesis is identifying over the top (OTT) player as the new trend from amongst different Internet products. Large television conglomerates have launched self-owned, separate OTT players as they consider it to be a broadcast business. In contrast, small television broadcasters have not launched their own players but are entering alliances, as they consider this to be an alternative distribution pipeline. Post launching Internet, viewership of the same television content on Internet products is found to significantly impact the television business, ratifying earlier findings (Dimmick et al., 2004; Logan, 2011 ; Cha, 2013; Goncalves et al., 2014; Doyle, 2016). Another key finding of this thesis is the moderating impact of the nature of content. Earlier studies (Picard, 2005; D'Arma, 2011) contrast two categories of television - those with a shelf life and those with no shelf life, which is corroborated by this thesis. In case of television channels with live content, viewership on the Internet is positively correlated to viewership on television. However, for channels having content with a shelf life, viewership on the Internet is negatively correlated to viewership on television. This thesis also makes several recommendations for future research. OTT is identified as a burgeoning area of study that requires a deeper understanding of strategy evolution, by player size and by geography. There is also a need to replicate this study in other geographies, as there may be differences in the way the television industry is structured. Overall, the explanatory sequential mixed methods analysis is found to be useful in understanding Internet acceptance and its impact, and can be duplicated to study Internet acceptance in other industry verticals.

The 1980s saw a turn by corporations towards shareholder value, based on the arguments of neoclassical economics and finance where maximising shareholder value is framed as the optimal outcome for the firm and for society as a whole. While the financialization literature has critiqued the rise of shareholder value, there have been relatively few, long-term, single-company case studies of how the pressure from capital markets to deliver shareholder value impinges on individual giant firm strategy. Furthermore, there have been no cases which have studied individual banks. This research explores two research questions which addresses these gaps. The first research question explores how the concepts of bricolage and conjuncture can offer a critical perspective of shareholder value and studies the case of Lloyds bank. Lloyds adopted shareholder value in the early 1980s with a focus on return on equity and shareholder return. This period seen Lloyds grow from the smallest of four UK clearing banks, to the largest bank in the world by market capitalisation in 1998. However, within ten years, it was on the verge of near collapse after agreeing to acquire HBoS, and reliant on a bailout by the UK state in the form of direct capital and liquidity support and other guarantees A second research question then re-orients the analysis to explore how the Basel regulatory capital rules play a central role in shareholder value bricolage, from their introduction in the 1980s - through to the post crisis period in 2016. Basel has been presented as a form of calculative practice by regulators and scholars who draw on econometric studies of what is 'safe' capital in the banking system and set capital requirements accordingly. Using conjuncture and bricolage, this research argues the rules do not capture outcomes which follow as management attempt to deliver shareholder value. As well as presenting an account of the Basel rules and how they are adopted in an organisational context, the study presents a critical perspective to inform policymakers and regulators of the problems with the current Basel framework which has a narrow calculative field of vision. Finally, this research challenges the notion that shareholder value driven banking is optimal for wider society through demonstrating a set of problematic case outcomes and presents recommendations for a new co-ordinated policy and regulatory response. The aim is to contribute to more socially useful, de-financialized and safer forms of banking, enabling banking to contribute (and not exacerbate) to the societal challenges ahead in the 2020s and beyond.

This thesis explores the roles that elites and citizens have in influencing the processes of financialization. The thesis' observation on financialization is underpinned by the theory of financial citizenship development, the process of expanding rights of ordinary citizens to have access to financial markets and skills, regardless of their profession, educational background, or income status. Using a cultural political economy approach, the research in this thesis has been conducted to address two objectives. Firstly, the thesis responds to limitations in existing financialization studies which tends to focus on Anglo-American or European contexts. In doing so, the thesis highlights the argument that financialization is diverse and shaped by localised factors. Secondly, the thesis observes financialization from a multidimensional perspective. As such, the research conducted pays attention to financial citizenship and the responsibilities and actions of the actors involved in its development, more importantly, elites and citizens. To highlight the localised nature of financialization, the thesis considers the colonial histories of Malaysia and its impact on financial citizenship development. The stock market has been chosen as a site for observation due to its role in facilitating financial citizenship development along nation building objectives during Malaysia's postcolonial and post-independence periods. A mixed methods research has been employed to address the thesis' research questions. A combination of secondary data analysis and sequential semi-structured interviews with 13 high-ranking elites and 30 financial citizens (citizens who are actively investing in the stock market) was used to arrive at the thesis' analysis and discussions. This thesis' findings extend existing understanding of financial citizenship development by providing empirical analysis that problematises its democratic notion. Firstly, specific to Malaysia is the combination of elites preparing citizens to become individualised, self-acting actors; while at the same time aspiring for nation building goals. The misrecognition of financial citizenship as a simultaneous solution for nation building and the betterment of citizens' lives is that it still does not address the existing inequalities in the Malaysian financial system. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates that financial citizens also play important roles in financial citizenship development; although, their behaviours might not perfectly align with the kind of outcomes envisioned by elites and are sometimes conducted in resistance of the elites themselves. Instead, the case of Malaysian financial citizens demonstrates that their influences in financial citizenship development are characterised by social and cultural conditions.

The 2007 financial crisis created a problem regarding the best way to regulate the UK's banks. The previous regulatory system failed to see the crisis coming and was unsuccessful at anticipating or intervening to prevent what became an expensive state and taxpayer bailout. The nature of pre-crisis self-steering or light touch regulation was bound up in politics and policy, neoclassical economic theory and the mainstream practice of risk management in banks. Mainstream practitioners in these fields were under pressure to re- regulate banking. This doctoral research provides a critique of arguably the two most important regulatory responses post financial crisis: structural and prudential regulation. Specific focus is given to the way banks are organised via the Independent Commission on Banking's Vickers Report and its concept of hybrid-ring fencing, together with Basel III's algorithm for managing the way banks have arbitraged capital adequacy and risk weighted assets historically. Finally, a natural experiment is undertaken by way of a case study to assess the politicisation of the Basel III process of de-risk and recapitalise and its impact on Lloyds Banking Group plc. A further critique on how the behaviour of senior bank managers can change during crises is revealed. Through a theoretical reconceptualisation, this novel research pushes against the functional description of bank management behaviour in mainstream financial management textbooks and asks whether a broader definition is warranted. A multidisciplinary framework and approach to research was adopted through literature of politics, financialisation and heterodox economics. This design proved useful in allowing a critical interpretation of the limits of post-crisis regulation to unfold, alongside a broader recognition of the regulatory impact on the stability of UK banks and the financial system. A methodological framework of mixed methods and pragmatism supported a sequential-exploratory research design. This enabled a qualitative and quantitative approach to developing research questions, data collection, data analysis and its interpretation. Different types of data were analysed in developing the critique: primary data from ultra elite semi-structured interviews, and secondary data from a rich database of publicly available documentary sources, such as reports from politics, regulators, academia and industry, together with financial data from bank management presentations, audited accounts, regulatory disclosures and small firm company returns. Research findings expose the limited nature of structural and prudential regulation on UK banks. Revealed is what can be described as a complex politicised management of re-regulation post-crisis through conduits of legal statute, quasi state bodies and intervention, long held and deep seated institutional arrangements that allow meso-corporatism through epistemic community, and regulatory problem solving guided by sympathy towards the status quo of mainstream approaches to economics and scientised risk management. Also uncovered is the way elites in bank management act as bricoleurs and continue to benefit from the disintermediation of post-crisis prudential regulation. Empirical evidence is disclosed that reveals personal enrichment of the manager from a taxpayer owned bank. There is a clear on-going tension and disconnect at the conjunction of crisis event and mainstream response by regulators and regulation, whilst firms and managers react to be compliant but continue acting as bricoleurs in the struggle to gain competitive advantage via arbitrage. Alternatives are required to solve these problems rather than utilising the limited approach of historic frameworks and substituting parts of a broken machine.

In this research project, I proposed two sets of research questions: 1) What is the role of finance, and the phenomenon of financialisation, in the growing Chinese economy? Furthermore, what role does the trust industry play in the financialisation process? 2) How do Chinese trust companies respond to the conjunctural conditions in the financialising economy that are created by regulation and unexpected internal and external events, such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the rise of discourse on shadow banking in post-crisis bank regulation? I conducted a literature review and presented my theoretical framework under the frame-conjuncture-bricolage framework, since diversification is a form of bricolage in the context of the regulation and reform of Chinese trust companies and the financialisation of the Chinese economy. I adopted a case study research design as an appropriate qualitative approach for this research. My findings support the conclusions that: 1) the financialisation and financial bricolage framework applies to the trust industry and trust companies in China; 2) conjunctural conditions in the financialising economy are created by regulation and unexpected internal and external events; 3) trust companies in China respond to conjunctural opportunities by taking bricolage in product diversification and financial innovation. By addressing both sets of research questions through the integration of the mainstream literature on diversification and the financial innovation framework, this study analyses the financialisation of the Chinese economy, conjuncture and financial bricolage in a non-banking industry (i.e., the trust industry) in an emerging economy (i.e., China) and, thus, contributes to the extension and enrichment of the scope of literature on financial innovation and financialisation. While prior research has not yet applied this framework to studying product diversification and financial innovation of the trust industry in China, my research can fill a gap in literature on the evolution of the Chinese financial system in addition to contributing to mainstream research on product diversification and financial innovation. Furthermore, my research also suggests that, the conjunctural perspective and financial innovation as bricolage could equip managers in financial sectors with more realistic analytical and practical tools.

To explain and challenge the growing level of income inequality in organisations, this thesis collected and analysed corpora of texts about pay in UK universities from the press, remuneration committees and trade unions. Deploying the methodology of critical discourse analysis, it describes the contents of arguments as discourse types, interprets the reasoning behind arguments as genres of organisation theories and explains the common-sense assumptions ordering arguments as ideological values. Seeking answers, the analysis groups 30,038 data fragments into 74 first-order discourse types, 7 aggregate genres of organisation theories and 9 ideological values across three corpora of texts. Finding from the press suggested that actors drew upon the same set of organisation theories regardless of whether they were discursively challenging or defending the legitimacy of income inequality. This made it unfeasible to halt the level of income inequality because the underlying ideological values of competition, quantification and economic rationality only required the organisations to conform to unclear methodological processes. Thus, it is only possible to challenge the legitimacy of income inequality by proposing new members' resources, which objectified the exact contingencies for when it was appropriate. This insight lead to the creation of a new genre of organisation theory, which proposed paying employees relative to their comparative sacrifices. Findings from remuneration committees suggested that their members drew upon organisation theories to legitimise income inequality, which related to the ideological values of economic science, individualism and capitalistic hierarchy. However, how these ideological values constructed the legitimacy of their decisions lacked a substantiate rationality because the neoliberal model of capitalism was a source of legitimacy within itself. As such, the foundations of legitimacy were critiqued and a 2x2 matrix consisting of a process-outcome axis and pragmatic-moral axis was introduced. Applying this matrix to this corpus of text meant that none of these genres of organisation theories reasoned based on outcomes. Therefore, a new genre of organisation was proposed which focused on the income distribution shape for organisations. Findings from trade unions suggested that their representatives drew upon the same set of organisation theories to reinforce their own legitimacy in addition to interrogating the legitimacy of universities. These organisational theories were then related to the ideological values of performativity, exchange relations and freedom that hegemonically legitimised income inequality. Meanwhile, it was interpreted that trade unions relied on the neoliberal model of capitalism for their existence and were encouraging employees to participate in markets that only served the interests of employers. Therefore, a new members' resource was proposed, which conceptualised why sacrifice was a moral and pragmatic process for distributing pay to employees in comparison with other macro-economic frameworks. The findings from these three corpora of texts explained and challenged the social practices that were creating income inequality growth. Essentially, the ideological values of neoliberalism ordered discourse so that there was no reason to reduce the level of income inequality according to the dominate members' resources. Therefore, to change these social practices three new discourses were proposed which challenged the level of income inequality by illustrating the false consciousness embodied within their reasoning.

Dubai’s rapid double-digit economic growth was severely challenged by the global financial crisis of 2007, which raised many concerns questioning the sustainability of the Dubai model of economic development and the viability of the emirate’s economic managerial practices. Although the economic landscape of Dubai has experienced a significant transformation over the last two decades, from a basic traditional economy of US $17.9 billion in 2001 to a diversified non-oil dependent economy of US $ 86.7 billion in 2012, there are few convincing empirical academic studies to assess and explain the Dubai model of economic development. This doctoral research provides a crucial assessment of the Dubai model in light of its political and socio-cultural contexts. For this purpose, a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that stems from the literature of economic geography, cultural economy and managerialism, has been designed in order to critically interpret the mechanism of the emirate’s economic practices in today’s global capitalism. This involves a methodological approach based on the study of narratives and performance to explain Dubai’s narratives and macro-economic performance. The multidisciplinary theoretical framework adopted is useful in analysing the Dubai model as an alternative to the discipline of mainstream economics, which ignores cultural and social dimensions and conditions that not only influence but also shape a given economic landscape. The research was undertaken by analysing a wide range of data, including intensive macro-economic statistics, financial and economic reports, international and local press, as well as conducting empirical in-depth elite interviews with fifty-six key stakeholders in the economy of Dubai: senior government officials, representatives of financial institutions, senior managers in the private non-financial sector, and academics. The research findings reveal that although the political and socio-cultural contexts naturally support Dubai's economic model, institutional and managerial problems were also exposed following the global financial crisis and the property shock of 2007. Dubai represents a financialized economy in which the government has adopted a hybrid model of government-driven developments and corporate managerial features within an environment that encourages commercial liberalism and market capitalism. However, despite this financialized economy, tensions remain in Dubai's pursuit of these goals. Finally, the research stresses the need for appropriate government mechanisms to foster oversight over economic performance and long-term sustainable economic development.

Purpose – The purpose of this research project is to explore the research question – how does the pursuit of agenda of regulatory reforms, post the crisis, influence governance arrangements at banks and assist them in maintaining resilience during subsequent episodes of crises?Research methodology – The project adopts a comparative case study approach involving a mixture of review of secondary resources and fieldwork interviews across East Asian nations. Findings – The project applied the Minskian Financial Instability Hypothesis to the 1997 East Asian crisis. It explored the macro-economic and policy environment during 1990s for highlighting institutional failures at the heart of the crisis. The interview findings offered contextual setting and diverse perspectives for regulatory reforms aimed at improving bank governance, post the crisis. The experience of case study banks outlined the impact of regulatory reforms on banking business models, post the crisis. The role of post-1997-crisis regulatory reforms in bringing about East Asian resilience, during the 2007 crisis, is thus analysed in the research project. Practical implications – The research project provides emerging economy perspective to regulatory reforms and offers policy-level recommendations for banks, regulatory authorities, corporate borrowers, and statutory auditors in maintaining governance standards conductive to financial stability in the long run. Originality – The project claims originality of application, interpretation and evaluation (which are considered as building blocks for “academic contribution”) of an important academic theory in the context of financial crises – Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis. It integrates the aspects of financial instability, regulatory reforms and bank governance in the context of East Asian financial crisis by introducing the concept of “economic responsibilities” of market participants from emerging economies.

This DBA thesis is an empirical study of the new private pension programme in Thailand, an Employee’s Choice (EC) programme, which is structured as a self-directed defined contribution plan that permits workers to make their own investment decisions for their pension assets. The growing acceptance of the new pension programme is placing greater responsibility for managing pension assets on workers. The shift from committee-directed pension plans to self-directed pension plans has meant that Thai workers now must make investment decisions, such as what type of plan to choose and how to allocate their pension assets among different asset classes. This raises some concerns about the financial literacy of workers and their ability to make informed decisions. This study aims to analyse the effectiveness of this programme by examining empirical evidence from a case study. Specifically, it asks whether workers are able to make appropriate investment decisions for their pension plans as investment theory has suggested. This study has shown that the new pension programme in this case study is effective. Most importantly, the study finds that, regardless of their level of financial literacy, workers are able to make reasonable investment choices as suggested by portfolio and lifecycle investing theories. Specifically, when workers were offered investment options ranging from low risk to high risk, workers are able to choose investment choices consistent with their age and risk tolerance. However, this study finds that financial literacy does matter if workers are asked to make asset allocation decisions instead of choosing between options. The study finds that workers with low levels of financial literacy are likely to allocate less of their pension assets in equities. The findings from this study make several contributions to the growing literature on household finance. In addition, this study has a number of important management implications for pension design. With the simple plan design which offers choices ranging from low risk to high risk, workers appear to make rational investment decisions regardless of their level of financial knowledge. Therefore, the simple plan design could be very useful for workers who have less financial knowledge. This research has also shown that many workers do not plan to review or revise their portfolios as lifecycle theory has suggested. The implication from this study is that the new self-directed pension programme is not effective in the long-run. There is, therefore, a definite need for a better pension design. Innovative pension design should be used in order to minimize workers’ investment mistakes. This study advocates the use of lifecycle funds and recommends policymakers to promote and support the usage of lifecycle funds in the Thai private pension context.