Luxury hotels are service workplaces with high aesthetic, emotional and affective expectations. However, from a critical perspective, hotel workplaces and their labour processes, including issues of control and resistance from below, remain relatively unexplored. Little research has directly examined the subjectivities, perceptions, critical thoughts, plots, interactions and responses of workers in both the hotel’s ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’. Therefore, consistent with the concerns of Labour Process Theory (LPT) and theories of aesthetic, emotional and affective labour, this thesis examines workplace control and resistance through an ethnographic study of a luxury hotel in Cyprus. A number of influences, such as employee relations, immigrant mobility and labour markets, seasonality and management attitude, are also discussed in relation to worker resistance or consent. Also, in seeking to contribute to a more detailed examination of resistance, this thesis provides an extensive A to Z catalogue of oppositional forms and practices. My observations produced rich findings that revealed how a number of managerial strategies and mechanisms are in place to monitor, process and discipline worker performance. My evidence advocates that workers challenge the labour process through various forms of opposition, sometimes hidden and sometimes confrontational. Even though some resistance was fragmented by elements of consent, at other times it was challenging, effective and continuous. It also suggests that resistance in an organization can be mapped as a continuum and each practice should not be examined singularly or unconnectedly, but in relation to the previous practices that generated this practices, as well as those that followed. In this direction, even hidden and passive forms of resistance are important because they can produce an escalating effect that may lead to more confrontational resistance.

This thesis addressed the training transfer problem contributing to knowledge by introducing the concept of high transfer, proposing a new definition for high transfer and presenting the High Transfer System. It enriched existing literature and explored organisational factors and antecedents of transfer by embedding training in the technical HR system and the social system in the organisation, which, if properly enacted, can activate employee intrinsic job satisfaction, mutual gains and employee discretionary effort for high transfer. Thus, it accounted for the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of high transfer on the job in the dynamic organisational contexts in which people work. The High Transfer System is aimed to build employee ability, increase their motivation and provide them with opportunities to participate at work, leading to high transfer, if it is introduced in a pre-existing favourable organisational context and is effectively enacted by the manager. Data were generated from 21 individuals in two companies through face-to-face qualitative interviews. An interpretivist framework was used to capture the subjective experience of individuals at work and the personal meanings they attach to the factors affecting transfer and its antecedents. The recorded data were translated from Greek into English, transcribed to text using Microsoft Word, coded and thematically analysed producing six themes. The High Transfer System was built based on the principles of Grounded Theory. Participants’ responses stressed the value of on-the-job transfer for individual and organisational performance in service organisations. They revealed that transfer is affected by several technical and social factors which account not only for the use of newly trained skills on the job but also for the transfer of an individual’s previous skills, experience and tacit knowledge. Data showed that transfer is about individual change which effectively takes place in a system of reciprocal social relationships and interrelated factors affecting not only the skills but also the personalities and emotions of employees who are trained, as well as their managers and peers.

This thesis seeks to broaden the nature of anti-colonial thinking in organisation theory through a strategy of ‘reading and rediscovery’ of prominent African anti-colonial writers and activists portraying them as serious organisation theorists. By reading these theorists, I show some of the depth and sweep of their thinking, hoping to prompt a new appreciation of them today. To read these figures as organisation theorists opens up organisation theory not just to African thinking and history, but also to a range of organisations that often do not show up in the canon of organisation studies. This allows us to see a colourful organisation theory that reflects multiple realities, a postcolonial critique of organisation development of organisation theory, and opens up the western academy to Africa as subject rather than object. Here is a different consciousness of identity and subjectivity, a virtue made of structures (Nkrumah), a radical change and transformation of the individual and group (Cabral’s bottom-up cultural change), and of organisation and social formation of the state (Du Bois, Padmore, James, Cabral, Fanon). This colourful approach is distinct from current postcolonial organisational analysis and ‘management in Africa’ literatures. I test this thesis by observing a case study of contemporary African thinking on organisation at the most general level of society, ubuntu. Ubuntu today straddles the theory and practice of African cosmology, and the calculating world of private firms in a profit-taking market in South Africa. Can its mixture of theory and practice and political ambition fulfil the hopes of this earlier generation? Finally, this is also a disciplinary project, challenging organisation studies to examine its borders and limits, for I am seeking at a very personal level, as a southern African of Nguni origin, to write myself into the consciousness and praxis of that discipline of organisation theory.

This study has a single main objective: the investigation of factors that enable the transfer of situated learning at the workplace. This objective is achieved by first carrying out an exploration of ‘transfer of learning at the workplace’ and the existing notions pertaining to this field. This search led to the discovery of a number of models that so far have mainly been used for the transfer of formal learning. A proposed model was developed as a framework for data collection and analysis with the intention of pinning down ‘some’ aspects of situated learning at the workplace. The research methods employed, namely empirical data for descriptive statistics and qualitative data offered the possibility of exploring two emerging research questions focusing on how the application of informal learning can be promoted at the workplace and what contextual factors can encourage and facilitate the transfer of learning. Two small-medium-sized firms in the Information Technology sector were used for the study. Offering insight in the understanding of informal learning at the workplace, this research ultimately concludes that the extent to which situated learning is successfully transferred at the workplace is dependent on a number of factors at individual and organisational levels. A suggested typology builds on the situated learning transfer model and the research findings from the study to further support findings related to the enhancement of the application of learning within the workplace. The research concludes that a great deal of learning takes place in informal settings at the workplace. It was also confirmed that factors related to the individual and the organisation impinge on how this learning is then applied. Focusing on situated learning at the workplace, especially on the study of factors that facilitate the application of this learning makes this study original since it does not specifically and solely address transfer or training from formal learning interventions similarly to most research carried out in the past.

This thesis examines accounts of the labour market experiences of second-generation Irish to determine if their work histories replicate parental career patterns. For two centuries a narrow range of sectors absorbed waves of Irish migrants, with occupational patterns clustered in gendered and stereotyped roles in construction and nursing, yet their descendants careers have not been scrutinised in any depth. Despite being the largest ethnic minority group in Britain there has been no systematic collection of statistics for the Irish as a multi-generational ethnic group, hence the second-generation rarely figure in official data. Consequently, conceptions of ethnicity predicated on the black/white dualism of race and assumed assimilation have ignored the Irish experience. Data was collected via depth interviews which considered participants work histories. A biographical approach sought to reveal and understand individuals’ lives in terms of their distinctiveness within their social context. Photo-elicitation techniques were used to obtain additional perspectives of participants’ social existence. Interviews were transcribed in full and analysed using a tripartite approach where data was read literally, interpretively and reflexively. Findings are categorised on two dimensions: identity & ethnicity and labour market experiences. Cultural persistence of Irishness is apparent, but not matched by external markers of ethnicity. Forced inclusion masked the ethnic origins of participants so that unlike their parents, the second-generation do not keep their heads down at work, identifying instead a propensity to speak out in the workplace. Three possible drivers were advanced to explain such behaviour: Catholicism, the legacy of colonialism and the fact that participants’ origins are camouflaged. Labour market positioning revealed a highly qualified group, spread across a range of sectors. A small number of participants worked in ethnic niche occupations. Of these a significant proportion had replicated parental career patterns and the majority of those working in construction had inherited family businesses.

This thesis explores the formation of female shopfloor workers’ collective identity in the Global South. It raises the question of why female shopfloor workers in Sri Lanka’s apparel industry are called lamai (little ones) and what role HRM plays in this process – of (un)doing the workers’ collective identity as lamai. It revisits the identity construction process by locating it beyond the organizational actors’ work-identity narratives. By (re)conceptualizing HRM as a ‘web of texts’it problematizes the rhetoric–reality dualism in HRM and so dissects the role of the language(s) of HRM in the formation of work identities. For this the thesis embarks on a reading journey, informed by poststructuralist discourse analysis, and renarrates (un)doing the lamai identity as in different texts which it generates in multiple research settings in Sri Lanka’s apparel industry. During this journey it shows how (un)doing the lamai identity becomes a ‘collective burden’ of actors in both wider society as well as the industry itself. It argues that the lamai identity is a ‘double-bind’ phenomenon which amalgamates the workers’ gender and their class in order to form a third ‘object’ – i.e., childrenized female labour – out of fusion with the signifier lamai. So it elucidates how the same signifier lamai marks the workers’ resistance to doing their identity as lamai while at the same time doing the identity itself. In conclusion, the thesis argues that doing female shopfloor workers’ collective identity as lamai creates an ethical paradox within which adult workers become lamai. It nonetheless shows how this childrenization process is legitimized by the language(s) of HRM. Therefore, it concludes that the language(s) of HRM is not rhetoric but an inextricable part of the reality of HRM.

The aim of this study is to investigate the nature and prevalence of workplace bullying in the voluntary sector. Also, it attempts to expand the theoretical repertoire by applying RAT in examining the situational antecedents of workplace bullying in this sector. A cross-sectional, in-depth survey using method triangulation was applied. The findings are based on 178 completed questionnaires (response rate=71%) and 22 interviews, from members of 29 voluntary organisations in Leicestershire. A total of 15% of the respondents reported being bullied over the last one year and 28% in the last 5 years. Where comparable, the prevalence of bullying in the voluntary sector was found to be higher than among the NHS trusts, fire service, higher education, manufacturing and civil service sectors, while it is almost parallel to the police service and the post/telecommunications—the sectors which are considered to have high prevalence rates. Detrimental effects in terms of physical/psychological health, work performance, sick leave and personal life were evident. The independent sample t-test shows that the victims of workplace bullying in voluntary organisations reported the least experience of overt behaviour and personal harassment, and the most experience of work-related harassment. Logistic regression reveals only a partial support for a routine activities approach to workplace bullying. Consequently, an alternative situational framework, consisting of RAT and Social Interactionist Perspective, was proposed. Overall, the study identifies some pertinent situational factors, which need to be addressed in order to curb bullying in this sector: management commitment towards a zero-tolerance bullying policy; management training in areas such as conflict resolution, implementing organisational changes, and maintenance of the commitment of a conscientious workforce; meticulous selection of voluntary management committee is recommended; high prevalence of role conflict, role ambiguity and lack of work control need resolving; strained relationship with funding bodies need improvement; and assertiveness training for the workforce is essential.

Creative work is thought to offer a model for the future of all work as we move into a knowledge economy. But in what sense is creative work, itself, creative? This is the central concern of this thesis. Many have argued that our ability to be creative has, ironically, decreased with the rise of creative work. Researchers have suggested that the precarious labour conditions typical of creative work along with the growing role of large corporations in the creative labour market make it all but impossible for creative workers to be experimental and innovative – that is, to be truly creative. However, marking a distinction between creatively producing something and producing something creative, I argue that organising creativity is now an important creative activity in its own right and is intimately related to various ways of representing work. Drawing on ethnographic empirical research and my own experiences as an amateur musician I describe the ways in which working helps a specific group of people to creatively make music and provide an analysis of how positive and negative images of work help to structure and inspire this creativity.

Changes in the nature of work e.g. Location Independent Working and the growth of homeworking, mean that managers and their staff may not work in close proximity and so rarely meet in person. The consequent loss of visibility and physical presence creates specific challenges and constraints in relation to the managers' role in the employment relationship. As previous research has compartmentalised the perspectives of homeworkers and their managers, analysis has always been restrictive, lacking in an all-encompassing view of the employment relationship. Seeking to address this disparity, this research assesses the views of both sides of the employment relationship, thereby exploring the experiences of managers and homeworkers. Using contrasting organisations, this research explores how the practice of management control differs in a homeworking environment. The case study organisations suggest that job role, skill level and organisational size can influence a line manager’s ability to exercise control. Direct control is possible for organisations employing low skilled workers undertaking repetitive tasks. Close electronic monitoring of performance stimulates a cyclical process of resistance and increased management surveillance. For an organisation employing highly skilled autonomous workers, direct control is problematic. Managers become increasingly reliant on external proxies of performance. The objectivity of these external measures is questionable, which consequently reduces the manager’s ability to control performance. As a limited amount of research has investigated the practicalities of managing homeworkers, this research is unique as it has explored the influence of homeworking on a manager’s ability to exercise control. Consequently, these findings will offer new insights into the practice of management control in a homeworking environment. As these findings have uncovered some of the specific challenges of homeworking from a managers and homeworkers perspective, the practicalities of managing homeworkers and the potential advantages and drawbacks of working at home may now be more readily understood.

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