http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/138 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:39:16 GMT 2026-09-07T11:39:16Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6807 Title: Women in management and leadership in Oman : a comparative analysis of career progression in the public and private sectors Authors: Al Balushi, Mohammed Abstract: This study explores the advancement of Omani women into management and leadership roles, examining their current status and future opportunities in the public and private sectors. This is the first comparative study in Oman to examine how organizations reproduce cultural constraints while creating spaces for women’s career advancement. The main objective is to advance understanding the structural, cultural, and institutional factors shaping Omani women’s career paths. It also investigates the barriers that hinder their access to management and leadership roles and the strategies women use to navigate male-dominated leadership hierarchies. The study answers the focal research question: how and to what degree are Omani public and private sector organizations empowering women to take up management and leadership roles? The methodological approach is interpretivist and the theoretical stance predominantly that of Bourdieusian social theory. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with Omani women at different hierarchical organizational levels and human resource managers, and from organizational documents. Data were analysed using thematic analysis combining the methods championed by Braun and Clarke and Gioia. The analysis is guided by four sub-research questions, one for each empirical chapter. This study makes four main empirical contributions to the literature on gender and leadership in Oman and the Middle East. First, it shows that women’s leadership progression is still hindered by deeply rooted cultural norms and organizational biases despite government efforts to promote gender inclusivity. Second, it finds sectoral differences: public organizations maintain traditional hierarchies while offering cultural acceptance, and private organizations show progressive practices but sustain subtle gender biases. Third, it reveals that economic capital alone is not enough for career progression; instead, strategic accumulation and deployment of social and cultural capital are key to overcoming workplace gender barriers. The thesis deploys the concept of adaptive habitus to show how women modify their behaviours and leadership styles to balance traditional societal expectations with professional aspirations. Fourth, it conceptualises the leadership field as a contested space wherein patriarchal organizational structures, evolving policies and shifting societal attitudes simultaneously create barriers and new opportunities for women’s career mobility. The research extends Bourdieu's capital theory to explain women's leadership and social mobility in Oman, highlighting the importance of recognition and legitimacy within the v dominant organizational and cultural field. It refines the concept of habitus by adding gender as a primary axis of power, revealing that women's habitus is not only shaped by deep-rooted patriarchal expectations, but also that they develop a dual habitus through education, work experience, and policy change. The study demonstrates that social change is subtly dynamic, with new policies, social movements, and global influences constantly changing gendered power structures and creating new opportunities for women's advancement. Description: PhD Thesis Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6807 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6722 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 Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6722 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6664 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 Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6664 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6660 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 Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6660 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z