This dissertation outlines a mixed-methods investigation of work-life balance, examining the construct from an ecological systems theory perspective. This necessitated research at the individual, group, organisational and wider societal levels and included three studies: two using quantitative methodology and one using qualitative. The quantitative phase included two studies that examined the experience of the home-work interface from the perspective of the employee, examining the impact of demographic differences, job design and organisational work-life balance culture on both their work-life balance satisfaction and actual outcomes of work and home domain interaction. This revealed the key role of demographic differences in employees’ satisfaction with work-life balance culture and the moderating role of work locus of control in the relationship between negative domain interaction outcomes and self-reported wellbeing. The qualitative phase involved interviews with senior organisational stakeholders involved in the formulation and deployment of work-life balance policy. Thematic analysis of interview scripts revealed their implicit and explicit limited categorisation of employees when considering work-life balance needs; the gendered nature of their flexible working policies; the key role of line managers in the interpretation and implementation of policy; the impact of communication technology on the interface between work and home domains and the very limited extent of evaluation carried out on flexible-working policies. Taken together, the data paint a complex but illuminating contemporary picture of the nature of work-life balance in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and support the adoption of an ecological systems perspective when examining work-life balance.

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This thesis is concerned with the role of state-owned companies and labour unions in influencing research and development (R&D) activity in two related contexts: when firms act as independent competitors, and when firms collaborate in their investments by forming a research network, but still remain competitors in the product market. The first chapter investigates the use of R&D subsidies, both in a mixed and a private market. We show that the socially optimal R&D subsidy is positive and increasing in the degree of technological spillovers both in a private and in a mixed duopoly, although it is lower for the former than for the latter. A comparative statics analysis of welfare levels reveals that privatisation is likely to be welfare reducing, at least for a relatively small number of private firms.

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Two fundamental aims motivated this research: (a) to determine whether in the nursing profession, there existed a condition which could legitimately he classified under the generic heading of nurses' militancy, and (b) if evidence is available to make this a meaningful concept, then place the empirical findings into a theoretical model, which is generated from the research data itself. The approach to this study was mainly by documentary analysis. In this connection, a study was made of the history of the profession, followed by a review of the literature of the concepts of 'profession' and 'white-collar unionism'. 'Key' and other informants, together with other sources, were used to make a detailed study of every claim submitted by the Staff Side of the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council for the period 1960 to 1972. These claims formed the basis for an investigation of the various manifestations of militancy by nurses during this period, together with an analysis of the interactive effect they exerted on the participating nurses' organisations. A comparative study of nurses' salaries, as a component of the market situation, was undertaken, and this was facilitated by an analysis of Government Statistics. Finally, a model generated from the research data itself was postulated. This asserted that within the profession of nursing a synthesis of 'union' and 'profession' had been occurring in such a way that the emerging image held by nurses in the '70's of union and professional organisation was no longer as divergent as hitherto had been the case. In the hope that this specific model could be extended to make a contribution to a theory of professional militancy, grounded in generalisation about the content and structure of such behaviour the hypothesis was tested against the organisational forms of other comparable groups.

In this Ph.D. thesis I attempt to investigate in more depth, important topics in labour economics for the UK economy. In the first two chapters, I explore the effect of involuntary job separations on earnings and on aggregate productivity in the UK. In the third chapter, I investigate the efficiency of matchings between firms and workers in the UK’s labour market. I highlight the efficiency of formal and informal channels during searching and finding a job. More specifically in the first chapter, I exploit household data for the UK economy to estimate the magnitude and the temporal pattern of displaced workers earnings for the UK economy. By linking the British Household Panel Survey” with the Understanding Society” dataset, I have been able to extract a unique dataset of worker’s employment histories for the UK from 1990 to 2011. In this chapter, I estimate the contribution of wage cuts and of the reductions in hours of working on the earning losses that are observed after a job separation. From the empirical estimations, I observe the following results: short run income losses for displaced workers with an unemployment flow after a displacement are about 19 percent and are reduced from 18 to 15 percent the following 3 years. The losses are higher for college educated workers than that with lower eduction. Finally, after decomposing income, a remarkable result is that these losses are mainly driven by cuts in wages (80%-90%) and not by reduction in the hours of working. In the second chapter, I exploit the effect of involuntary job separations on aggregate productivity for the UK economy (as output per hour worked). More specifically, human capital has been found to be important for aggregate productivity, and large individual human capital losses are associated with job displacements. I investigate the role of involuntary job separations (since displacements have increased during the 2008 financial crisis) on the UK’s productivity puzzle. By using the same dataset as in Chapter 1, I observe the following results: displacements of high tenured workers (more than 2 years in the same job prior to the separation) can explain on average the 27 percent of the post-crisis gap, if aggregate labour productivity had followed the path of the pre-2008 trend. Furthermore, almost the 78 percent of this effect can be explained by the drop in wages of college educated workers and the rest 22 percent by the drop in wages of non-college educated workers. Finally, in the last chapter of this Ph.D. thesis, I empirically examine the workers’ choice of using different channels of search during seeking for a job. I focus on the UK’s labour market where the usage of referrals as a search channel is by 50% lower than that in the US. I estimate matching functions for 6 different channels and also introduce a new method in the literature which handles better possible endogeneity issues. By using the “Quarterly Labour Force Survey” and the “Vacancy Survey” datasets, the results show that the most efficient channel are referrals and the second most efficient one is the channel “Job advertisements”. The channel with the lower matching efficiency is “Jobcenter, jobmarket or training and employment agency office”.

Retailing is back on the research agenda and the analysis of consumption processes is providing a fertile source of insightful geographical literature. Yet despite this interest, the retail workplace remains on the margins of disciplinary concerns. Given this situation, it is time that the retail workplace was reconsidered. The reconsideration within this thesis concentrates on the superstore workplace and attempts to challenge existing applications of labour market segmentation theory. This challenge is driven by an interest in information and communication technology (ICT) and a realisation that these technologies must be understood with reference to human interaction. The empirical analysis centres on one case study, a food-selling superstore in Sheffield. As an empirical link between theory and qualitative analysis, secondary human resource statistics are analysed to provide a guide to segmentation within the store. Qualitative research techniques are used to build an in-depth understanding of different employees activities and experiences. The secondary data suggests that segmentation remains an important framework for organisation within the retail superstore. However, qualitative research illustrates how existing theoretical conceptualisations of the segmented superstore might be problematised by a series of power relationships (dictation, delegation and authority) that are, in part, facilitated by the use of ICTs. These power relationships are in turn reinterpreted within individual worker strategies of manipulation and resistance. Here, workers regularly use ICTs in different ways than the remote head office might have originally intended. It is also suggested that the consent to work for many disadvantaged workers has to be understood by reference to a series of social concerns from outside the workplace (childcare, other domestic relationships, financial survival, lifestyle choice, social experience and self-esteem). These findings suggest a rich vein for additional research and the retail workplace should be pushed to the centre of geographical debate for further analysis.

The purpose in this thesis is to discuss the framework of labour market segmentation and provide a thorough and detailed description of the groups that are distinguished by labour market segmentation. As described by M.J. Piore, the concept of labour market segmentation depicts a labour market that is comprised of a set of three sub -markets or segments distinguished by different labour market characteristics and rules. A conspectus of the literature on the distribution of personal income and the labour market is given to outline the nature and direction of academic economic analysis that led to the development of this concept of labour market segmentation. Before an analysis of the labour market segments is conducted, it is necessary to have data that accommodate such an analysis. To this end, we transformed the 1970 New England Region Public Use Sample Data into a form suitable for our analysis. The data is used in a classification analysis of labour market segmentation. A statistical and illustrative presentation of the techniques of hierarchical classification and discriminant analysis is given. These are the techniques used in the empirical work for developing and analysing the labour market segments in terms of sixty socio- economic factors. The analysis serves to identify the socio- economic factors that distinguish the similarities and differences between the characteristics of the segments in the labour market.

This research focuses on case-study analyses of the process of introducing empowered teams into organisations with a poor industrial relations history. The chosen research methodology is in the ethnographic mode and analogous to grounded theory; data was collected in five case-study organisations. The respondent data is presented for each case study in turn and then analysed in a cross-case manner, highlighting some critical themes/issues identified by respondents who were key to the process of introducing empowered teams into their organisations. Principal among these critical themes/issues were: pre- planning, visioning/directioning, managerial commitment, role clarity, communications, union engagement, skill development and training, reward/money and trust. This researcher interprets the data from within organisations in our chosen context and develops a model aimed at explaining the leadership processes that affect the five critical enabling conditions of shared values, key processes, role clarity, training and employee-centred systems. The model highlights the critical importance of personal and organisational leadership skills within the organisation to facilitate focus on the above enabling conditions and on the key leadership processes of 'articulation' and 'promulgation'. Suggestions are made for possible lines of future research in terms of either replicating this work or in searching for outcomes with respect to operational and/or opportunity potential within an input-process-output model.