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Towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century the economic downturn increases the significance of creativity and innovation to business success. As the seed of innovation or fuel for the innovation engine creativity is important throughout the process in distinguishing successful innovations. However, many organisations struggle to transform the rhetoric of creativity and innovation into reality because of a lack of understanding of what this means or how to achieve this. Fragmentation of existing research leads to ambiguous evidence with a danger of spurious relationships or confounding of factors that is inadequate to advance theoretical understanding and inform practice. This investigation provides a number of valuable contributions to overcome such limitations through systemic analysis of individual, social and organisational factors that support creativity based on a research strategy of multiple case studies and employing quantitative and qualitative techniques. Empirical investigation employing both the KEYS assessment of creative climate and personality characteristics is rare. Findings reinforce the contribution for four of five factors deemed most important to supporting creativity together with the Openness to Experience personality dimension. The presentation of a general linear model explains 47% variance based on Organisational Encouragement, Challenging Work, Work Group Support, Organisational Impediments, and Openness to Experience. Alternative models suggest Openness to experience moderates the significance of climate factors. For individuals very high on this personality dimension the interaction of Challenging Work and Work Group Support contributes 60% variance in creativity. Qualitative investigation extends the variance contributed by the general linear models to include the significance of shared understanding and meaning, the need for continuous active stimulation and supportive mechanisms, passion or love for one’s work and freedom to voice ideas. Finally, synthesis of creativity theories with HRM and HRD extend and advance theory and practice in a number of ways that have implications for the limitations of KEYS and for models of SHRM. Results extend existing knowledge and understanding of facilitation and implications are explored in-depth for organisations aspiring to creativity and innovation.

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Unsafe water, as many recent outbreaks have shown, has the potential to cause widespread illness and even death. Water Safety Plans (WSPs) are advocated as the best way of ensuring good safe drinking water using a risk management approach. Using a case study approach to generate qualitative data, organisational culture and WSP development in water suppliers of varying size, development and structure was studied to look for examples of best practice or barriers to effective implementation. Despite WSPs being promoted since 2004, suppliers are still experiencing challenges in implementation, with deeper organisational culture barriers prevalent such as: lack of awareness and recognition; uncertainty; complacency; poor internal relationships; competing priorities; and contrasting internal cultures, in addition to the commonly espoused reasons of a lack of time or resources. Concern was raised that the public health motivator of WSPs was becoming lost, as a wide range of additional ‘added value’ drivers and benefits were identified such as cost savings or commercial drivers. This was echoed in broader organisational missions and drivers identified; whilst may employees still identified quality and public health as important, more formal declarations often prioritised other areas. In response to identified organisational culture barriers, a ‘taxonomy’ of positive cultural attributes and a number of practical tools were developed that may assist suppliers in developing a supportive organisational culture for sustainable WSP implementation. These positive elements included: managerial commitment; learning culture; effective internal and external relationships; accountability; open reporting culture; continual improvement culture; empowerment of staff; organisational commitment; proactivity; leadership and advocacy; mindfulness of public health; image and competitiveness. A number of recommendations can be made to those wishing to implement WSPs. Primarily, it is urged that organisational culture and how it can impact on effective WSP implementation should be considered. Perceived lack of time and resources may actually be representative of deeper cultural barriers, and recognise that WSP implementation is more than just following a set of instructions, it will require instilling a water safety ‘culture’ within the organisation.

In this PhD by publication, the author’s work concerning what it is to be a psychologist operating - sometimes simultaneously - within different ethical domains will be examined using conference papers, journal publications and book chapters. This material, which spans a period of 20 years, demonstrates a fundamental concern with the normative ethical question of “what we ought to do” as psychologists in complex situations; it will be argued that this work has contributed to the academic debate and influenced policy and thus practice. In order to position the body of work, and to introduce Codes of Ethics (which seek to operationalise ethics within prescribed domains), the thesis begins by introducing normative ethics. It is argued that psychology’s stance is essentially deontological, whilst organisations are utilitarian in orientation. This implicit tension is addressed in the author’s contributions, which are examined within their (historic) academic context using a comparison of the British Psychological Society’s 1985 and the significantly revised 2006 Code of Ethics. These codes, rather than the more usual positioning within one specific literature, are used to provide a coherent narrative concerning the development of the author’s thinking in this domain, though, necessarily, different overlapping academic literatures are accessed depending on context. The cumulative academic contribution of the published work has been to advance ethical ideas in some areas of professional applied psychology. For example, in the 1985 code, the complexity of operating within organisational contexts was barely acknowledged; this has now significantly changed. The body of work examined here has emphasised how psychologists must consciously and deliberately coexist and act The contribution of ethical concepts to the development of professional applied psychology within overlapping, and sometimes competing, professional and organisational ethical contexts, domains and philosophical positions. In this synoptic piece, after the presentation, positioning, and examination of the contribution of extant published material, possible future directions for research and practice are indicated. For instance, preliminary material will be presented suggesting that, in occupational psychology, where complex differing ethical perspectives are present, public ethical debate appears to be relatively neglected; some hypothesis are presented. More theoretically, areas for development include the extension of recent philosophical ethical ideas to these particular domains of applied psychology, including thinking that suggests that ethical considerations precede other kinds of social obligation. Finally, and linking the academic more firmly to practice and policy, a brief theoretical examination of the possible impact of statutory registration on different branches of psychology is briefly attempted, and potential practical and philosophical ethical consequences for UK psychologists and psychology are briefly outlined.

This thesis examines employees' experiences of major organisational change, with an emphasis upon examining how the personality traits Neuroticism and Extraversion, and the personality disposition Work Locus of Control, influence these experiences. The perspective of employees, who are the main recipients of major change initiatives, is not well represented in the literature. Also, despite calls for research that addresses process and context, existing literature on the role of individual differences in relation to organisational change tends to be aprocessual and acontextual. The present research seeks to overcome these shortcomings by adopting a longitudinal, real-time, qualitative approach. The research elicited employees' perceptions of change as a major change programme unfolded, and examined emerging patterns of employees' experiences in relation to contextual and individual difference factors. The research presents a picture of organisational change as unpredictable and emergent. The research findings demonstrate that employees' experiences of change are varied and suggest that these experiences are influenced by many factors at the personal, group and organisational levels. The research shows that a change 'event' will elicit different types of feelings and responses from the same individual over time, as the event unfolds. Patterns of experience were found which suggested that personality factors, and combinations of these factors, influenced the way aspects of change were perceived by employees, and these perceptions appeared to influence employees' responses to change. The present research contributes towards the change management literature by confirming the view that change is 'messy', emergent and unpredictable, and by presenting evidence to show how employees contribute towards the emergent nature of this process. The research contributes towards the work psychology literature by adopting an approach that contextualises research participants' responses, and presents an account of change as an unfolding process. By focusing upon perceptions, the research is able to offer explanations of how individual differences might influence employees' experiences of major organisational change.

This thesis, submitted for the Cranfield DBA programme, examines and explores the impact of gender demography on male and female director’s role interpretations and contributions. The study was inspired by the scarcity of females on corporate boards and a desire to seek an understanding of how women and men contribute to boards. The study brings together the literature on females on boards, and on board roles and processes, revealing that both bodies of literature could benefit from more in-depth understanding of board processes. The thesis reports the results of two empirical studies based on in-depth interviews with male and female non-executive directors on Icelandic corporate boards. The first study of non-executives of male dominated boards supported many of the findings reported in earlier studies. Females were found to be active in critical questioning and pushing for better decision making. Males on the other hand stressed the importance of informal interactions. The study offered an understanding of the exclusion and low social and power status of females on male dominated boards. The second study, conducted two years later, on non-executives on both male dominated as well as gender integrated boards and an all female board, revealed in much more detail the nature of traditional board interactions and the benefits of a more balanced composition or even an all female composition. Males on gender integrated boards adopted the valuable role of questioning and holding management accountable, previously found to be mainly adopted by females. In addition, a shared understanding of roles and purpose between males and females was found to prevail on those boards. The gender integrated boards and the all female board possessed a much higher degree of openness, interaction and trust, resembling to a large extent the description of exemplary boards found in the literature, and the females on those boards were found to be quite confident. Finally, the findings question if the importance of informal relationships can be generalised, as those were found to have no relevance on gender integrated and all female boards. The study adds to the growing body of literature on board roles and processes, and the female board literature, and has significant implications for practice. It reveals the shortcomings of male dominated boards and challenges them to fundamentally change the ways they act and perform. It demonstrates how female non-executive directors bring valuable contributions and that a better gender balance can positively affect the dynamics of the board.

This thesis focuses on an increasingly popular, but little studied organisational communication practice, the deployment of corporate values messages as a means of ‘framing’ reality, and of achieving ‘shared meaning’ in multicultural workplaces, and asks if such practices, based on ethnocentric approaches to business communication, are likely to be effective in culturally diverse contexts. Using a business discourse perspective, and approaching culture as dynamic systems of meaning, the study presents a rich case of values communication in a European multinational, by exploring in detail the meanings employees derive from the organisational values messages, and the relationship between these meanings and the cultural context in which they are constructed. Findings point to two main conclusions: Firstly, that universal values messages do generate multiple employee meanings, but these do not derive from distinct cultural memberships, such as ethnicity or nationality, but rather from the complex interaction between message texts, organisational cultural frames and discourses and cultural identities constructed during interpretation by message users. This finding offers support for a non-essentialist approach to culture in intercultural business communication research, which locates culture not in distinct external influences on communicative action, but in a complex and holistic ‘interculturality’ - the process and outcomes of interacting dynamic cultures, cultural texts, and the communicative action itself.Secondly, findings show that, if the message texts trigger shared cultural frames, shared meanings will also emerge, despite apparent cultural diversity among message readers. This finding challenges the view of much current intercultural and cross-cultural communication scholarship, that the cultural diversity of business audiences is likely to render universal communication practices in multinational businesses ineffective. Instead, it suggests that explicit universal values texts in multinational organisations may indeed contribute to the generation of shared meaning, although this will be mediated by existing, implicit, cultural ‘texts’.

Corporate Identity provides the foundation for an organisation’s Corporate Brand, and managers need to understand how they can align the behaviour of their employees with that identity. In this thesis I argue that employees will align their behaviour with the identity of their organisation when they perceive that identity to be attractive and unique. This argument is supported by theory and research in the areas of Employer Branding and the Social Identity Approach to Organisational Identification. However, little is known about what makes an organisation’s Corporate Identity attractive to its employees. The objective of my research was to address this gap by conducting a comparative case study of six organisations. The identity of each organisation was found to be comprised of five dimensions: Organisation, Employment, Product or Service, Reputation, and Stakeholder Relationships. The attributes that employees considered most attractive were different in each organisation, but when all six cases were considered at once, they encompassed all five dimensions. These results suggest that current conceptualizations of the Employer Brand, which focus solely on employment, may be overly restrictive. They also indicate that the strategy of becoming an Employer of Choice, though widely considered a ‘business imperative’, is unlikely to have the desired effect on employee behaviour; this strategy is based on the assumption that organisations should conform to an ‘ideal blueprint of employment’, but the results clearly indicate that this blueprint does not exist. In order to align the behaviour of their employees with the identity of their organisation, managers should seek to understand the unique identity of their own organisation and to determine what makes that identity attractive to their employees. This may be achieved in an efficient and cost-effective manner by following the methodology outlined in this thesis.

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