http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/138 2026-04-21T16:49:07Z 2026-04-21T16:49:07Z Aldwais, Naif http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6722 2026-04-10T08:10:34Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Integrating project risk management into enterprise risk management Authors: Aldwais, Naif Abstract: Project Risk Management (PRM) with its long-standing presence in both the literature and the project profession is a formal methodology for managing risks at the project level and focuses primarily on project objectives. In contrast, Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) deals with risks at the organisational level, encompassing strategic, operational, reporting, and compliance objectives (Coso, 2004). The disparities in objectives and scope pose difficulties in integrating these two systems. PRM empowers project managers to make decisions within their project's the scope of an individual project, while ERM's requirement for interdisciplinary expertise enables a holistic view of risks across the total projects, departments, and functions, fostering a comprehensive understanding that is unattainable when risks are managed in isolation. The evolution of risk perception, from an objective quantitative hazard to a subjective qualitative assessment influenced by cultural and human values, is evident in the risk management literature. While a positivist perspective dominates PRM, rooted in mathematical predictability, ERM acknowledges the need for subjectivity in managing uncertainties arising from a broader internal and external environment. Nevertheless, integrating PRM into ERM can yield benefits by enhancing risk awareness and fostering strong collaboration among projects throughout the organisation. This integration facilitates the incorporation of risk considerations into broader business decision-making processes, aligning them with organisational objectives (Agarwal & Virine, 2019). Additionally, ERM contributes to improving PRM by enhancing the communication of project risk information, aiding management in making better-informed decisions and handling project risks more effectively (Zhao et al., 2015). Consequently, this research advocates for the incorporation of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory into these organisational risk management systems to accommodate the two distinct perspectives on risk, facilitating their integration to support decision making processes. Stemming from a critical realism mindset, a qualitative methodological approach is adopted, employing three case studies in Saudi and British companies within the oil, petrochemical, and hospitality industries. Semi-structured interviews, supported by documentary analysis form the basis of data collection. A deductive analysis, guided by the Institute for Risk Management's (IRM) successful risk culture criteria, was used to examine the risk cultures of the three organisations. Additionally, an inductive exploration of their risk governance structures was conducted to understand and explain their roles in integrating (PRM) and (ERM). The findings reveal that Key cultural attributes such as openness, compliance, continuous learning, and adaptability were crucial for fostering a unified approach to risk management aiding the integration of PRM and ERM. Similarly, adaptable risk governance structures that consider their environment’s needs played an important role in shaping the risk governance structures that facilitate the integration. In contrast, siloed and closed risk cultures coupled with rigid governance structures hindered the integration of the two systems. Organisations with adaptive risk governance structures and open risk cultures showed alignment with their values, which acknowledged and responded to the complexities of their internal and external environments. Description: PhD Thesis

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Jiang, Yiheng http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6664 2026-01-23T12:08:46Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Shares Valuation Throughout the IPO Procedure: A Perspective from Game Theory Authors: Jiang, Yiheng Abstract: Ever since the appearance of economic activities, the idea of game theory has been closely connected to the development of economic framework and applications. For years, the game theory, as an economic topic, has been rarely applied in the research regarding the financial market. As one of the most intriguing topics in the financial market, asset valuation has consistently developed with theoretical knowledge. The initial public offering (IPO) which has been regarded as the most lucrative equity investment, the share valuation is the pivotal issue of the financial service industry. As observed in my industrial interviews, pricing the shares for the IPO is not the skill of the valuation, but the art of the valuation. The first essay is mainly focus on the IPO contract designing issue of the company which initiates the IPO. Different from the conventional one-by-one contract design, the first essay proposes the cross application of the auction theory and bargaining theory to facilitate the channel coordination. Compared with the conventional bargaining theory which commonly uses the ‘price’ as the strategic variable, here uses the ‘quantity’ as the strategic variable. This strategic variable setting will make the bargaining more suitable to the practical situation in the IPO. In the model, there will be two different types of contracts, the first is the customised type and the standardised type. The customised contract enables the seller and the underwriter to reach their own contract while the standardised contract refers to identical contract for every underwriter. The research finds that the different strategic variable setting would shape the initial demand function in great degree, while the seller and the underwriters will have different preferences toward the types of the contract based on their relative bargaining power. As for the auction setting, if all the underwriters are risk-neutral, then the equilibrium result would be the same regardless of the auction types. But for the future planning of the seller, the seller tends to adapt the second price auction which could better help the seller to get the insight regarding the true valuations. The second essay is concentrating on the area of the facilitation of channels. For different negotiation mechanisms, the bargaining parties usually consider themselves. Under the assumption that each participant is rational, the bargaining results tend to be beneficial for individual participant. This would result in the low efficiency throughout the whole channel. In articles that discuss the possible solution of improve the channel efficiency, some possible methods have been proposed including side payment, buyback contract etc. However, the fundamental idea of the channel efficiency improvement remains untouched. In the essay, it has been found that once the model has been set, the total profit that can be earned by all participants is set. What side payment act throughout the channel coordination is first create a bigger pie and split the pie based on the relative negotiation power of participants. In another word, the side payment helps both participants to be better off compared to the initial independent bargaining situation, but the individual participant cannot fully enjoy the incremental profit, and the partial profit sacrificed under the side payment condition is dependent upon relative bargaining power. The third essay is concerning the bargaining situation regarding the seller and the underwriter when the market demand is a stochastic information and remains private to the underwriter. The bargaining mechanisms concern price matching and simultaneous negotiation. The model comprises belief construction procedure regarding the underwriter and offer proposition process under an alternating negotiation mechanism. The model illustrates the appropriate disclosure behaviour of the underwriter and preferences of the seller regarding the negotiation mechanism has certain deviations compared with the circumstance of the certain market demand base. The existence of the outside option could help the seller to avoid the exploitation from the underwriter who possess the private information. This essay provides managerial insights to both the seller and underwriters regarding the appropriate behaviours throughout the bargaining procedure that comprises stochastic elements. Description: PhD Thesis

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Hardacre, Jill http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6660 2026-01-23T11:20:50Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The Teaching Excellence Framework’s Role in Constituting Gendered Inequalities in the Neoliberal University Authors: Hardacre, Jill Abstract: This thesis builds on feminist literature critiquing gendered practices in the university. Drawing on the feminist new materialist onto-epistemology of Karen Barad, which brings our attention to the productive nature of measurement apparatuses, it explores how neoliberal measurement tools in higher education help (re)constitute gendered inequalities amongst academic staff. Specifically, the research aims to ascertain how the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), a recently introduced measurement tool in the university, intra-acts with neoliberal values, research-intensive university cultures, and gendered norms, to produce gendered inequalities. The research analyses government policy papers surrounding TEF and qualitative provider submissions from the twenty-one Russell Group universities that applied for a TEF accreditation between 2017 to 2019. It analyses these documents using Bacchi’s framework, What is the Problem Represented to Be?, to interrogate and make visible the values and assumptions underpinning TEF and its emergence in its particular shape and form. It further examines how TEF in turn embeds and enacts these values and assumptions across three key aspects of higher education. First, the very nature of the university and its institutional goals and objectives. Second, the conception of teaching excellence within institutions. Third, the academic subject, and the production of ‘valued’ and ‘marginalised’ academic identities. The thesis analyses how these processes intra-act to constitute gendered subjects, practices, and inequalities. It shows three key dimensions of the gendering process. First, that the TEF process represents a continued privileging of ‘objective’ measurement practices, which feminist scholars have argued to be deeply flawed. Second, that TEF (re)produces the devaluation of practices that have historically been feminised. Finally, that the material effects of these practices reinforce patriarchal norms, by homogenising spaces where knowledge is made at the expense of a more inclusive set of values and identities. Description: PhD Thesis

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Williams, John Richard http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6619 2025-12-09T15:24:45Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Discerning industrial acitvity in N.E. England : networks and clusters through the lens of the Internet Authors: Williams, John Richard Abstract: Research on industrial activity has taken many forms over last century as both practitioners and academics alike have sought to gain an understanding of the drivers of the economy in any particular sphere of interest. One facet of this research effort is that associated with the determination of industrial clusters or the particular groupings of economically linked firms and other networked organisations. The tools available to researchers in the field have improved with time but still rely heavily on sources of data gained from databases describing the firm’s activity and other fields of information. Many researchers in this field have noted the shortcomings of such data sources and in particular the indications of a firm’s activity gleaned from its SIC (Standard Industry Classification) code. SICs were originally introduced to enable authorities to understand the make up of basic manufacturing industry and then the supporting service sector but with the passage of time and the introduction of completely new forms of work it has been necessary to expand both the scope and resolution of SICs, a process that invariably lags behind the development of new industry. In the last 15 years the rise of the internet and its vast capacity as an information source has opened up the possibility of gaining new insights into the activity of firms and possibly the ways in which they interact. This research is concerned with an investigation into the usefulness or otherwise, of the internet and the world wide web as serious adjuncts to conventional information sources for the study of industry in general and networks and clustering phenomena in particular. The research looks first at the practicality of using a corpus of regional company URLs from which has been extracted all descriptive text from each firm’s website and which is then stored in a database. This database describing the firm’s activity, markets and connections can then be interrogated to gain an insight into industrial activity across the region. Such an insight is much richer in both detail and depth than that to be obtained from the rather coarse grained SIC approach and its accompanying brief text descriptors. The second part of the research, again following the definitions associated with industrial clusters, is to look at the connections between firms and possible untraded interdependencies. Again this is done using publicly available data sources on the internet by a combination of embedded links, visible connections to external references and web derived in-links, the latter being third parties who reference the firm on their own web site. It has thus been possible to both discern commonalities of firm activity and also to draw some of the visible connecting networks as a result of these investigations which leads to the interesting conclusion that, for the sectors studies in the North East of England at least, we are looking not so much at the clustering of artefacts per se but the clustering of ‘competencies’ in a wide range of sectors that share both common antecedents and current practice in forms of activity requiring strong engineering skills for the design and manufacture of complex structures operating in difficult or even hostile environments. The conclusion overall is that the internet does indeed offer additional insights over more conventional forms of determining industrial clusters but that such insights, at the present time, should be regarded as an adjunct rather than a complete method of analysis in their own right. It is further noted that the tools available for internet search are continually evolving as is the take up and use of corporate websites by all sectors of industry and sizes of the firm. A logical conclusion of this process would be that in the not too distant future the prospects for acquiring information from web based sources will be significantly enhanced. Description: D. B. A. Thesis

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z