New Product Development (NPD) has long been the critical source of sustainable competitive advantage, growth and value generation of a firm. This research focuses on inter-firm participation to examine NPD performance within the manufacturing domain. Leveraging the Resource-Based View, this study offers a comprehensive view to explore the impacts of key customer participation and key supplier participation on innovations and the association between innovations and NPD performance. In addition, I enrich my model framework to include both absorptive capacity (ACAP) and desorptive capacity (DCAP) to examine their influences between inter-firm participation and innovations. The results exhibit that key customer participation has a significant positive effect on innovations and NPD performance while ACAP helps to strengthen the relationship between key customer participation and innovations. On the contrary, key supplier participation shows insignificant impacts on innovations and NPD performance, and DCAP reveals no influence on the relationship between key supplier participation and innovations. This study presents theoretical contributions to the literature and practical insights to manufacturers on the importance of key customer participation in innovations and NPD performance.

In this thesis, I investigate the impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on takeover activities and on the sensitivity between company’s annual report readability and takeover activities using the China data. The takeover activities examined in this thesis include the likelihood of takeover, the likelihood of takeover completion, the takeover premium, the method of payment and the magnitude of the takeover announcement return. Results show that although takeovers are less likely to occur and carry a lower bid premium under EPU, they tend to complete through cash payments once initiated. Nonetheless, the announcement effects of takeovers occurred during the uncertainty periods tends to be smaller than during other periods.

As for the impact of EPU on the sensitivity between report readability and the takeover activities, I find that EPU weakens the acquirer report readability sensitivity to the takeover likelihood; the takeover success likelihood, the takeover premium to some extent and the market announcement effect; but not to the payment method. My study hence contributes to the EPU literature, the M&A literature, as well as the readability literature.

In a densely built area like Hong Kong, property management services (PMS) are essential. These may include financial management, facilities repair, maintenance, and a range of other services, but the most prominent is security. Security guards’ work is sedentary, and most of them work more than 10 hours per shift. In single-block residential buildings, most security guards are older adults. Research shows that long hours of sedentary work may result in health problems, especially back pain, which affects job performance and can lead to burnout. However, no policies aim to improve security guards’ work situations, and property management companies (PMCs) may be reluctant to provide exceptional care or lack resources to do so.

A workplace exercise program for security guards, especially those employed in single-block residential buildings, could improve these workers’ health and wellbeing without additional cost. To study this idea, I used self-determination theory (SDT) to design an intervention bundle that could motivate security guards to exercise. I integrated the Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R Model) to determine how providing job resources and reducing job demands might influence the effectiveness of the need-based intervention bundle. I found that the intervention bundle encouraged security guards to exercise more, and those who did experienced a significant reduction in their pain level. Therefore, PMCs that promote workplace exercise for security guards could improve these employees’ well-being at little cost.

Brands globally seek innovative means for attracting consumers because user engagement promotes brand recognition and loyalty. Web 2.0 technologies have ushered in the social media sphere, where social media content in the forms of text, calls, audio and video can promote communication and narrative transportation. This study determined how storytelling factors may impact user engagement (likes) with short video marketing content.

A literature review revealed that few studies have focused on how storytelling factors affect user engagement through short video stories. The literature review is supplemented by a summary of practical reviews on the constructs and measurement indicators of the role of storytelling factors in this context. The study tested the identified constructs and estimated the relationships between them.

Further, 11 initial constructs were identified in this study: 4 independent variables, related to the four storytelling factors; 3 moderators, related to the brand category and execution approach (i.e., informational or emotional); 4 dependent variables, of which the key dependent variable was the number of likes.

This thesis examines the relationship between company annual report size and various takeover outcomes using the China sample for the 2009-2019 period. The file size proxied by six variables is positively related to the likelihood of a takeover, its success, the use of cash as the payment means, and the bid premium. Although it also tends to be positively related to the bidder’s announcement returns, it is negatively related to the target’s returns. Lastly, the bidder’s annual report size is found to increase the bidder’s likelihood to be a target but lower its likelihood to be a bidder again in subsequent takeover activities. All these results are consistent with the adverse effects of hard-to-read annual reports found in the readability literature.