An increasing number of countries have shifted, or are shifting, towards the knowledge-based economy. For these countries, including Malaysia, the quality of knowledge workers is extremely important in determining the pace and success of such transition. Thus, training is often carried out to improve the skills of knowledge workers at the workplace. But despite its importance, research on knowledge worker training is extremely limited. This study seeks to partially fill this gap in the literature by investigating three aspects of knowledge worker training in Malaysia. Using an online survey, data is collected from a sample of companies and knowledge workers in MSC Malaysia. In the first part of the study, the role of foreign ownership on the provision of, and participation in training in MSC Malaysia, is examined. Here the questions of whether or not there are any differences between the quantity and quality of training provided by local and foreign MSC-status companies and whether or not there are any differences in training participation between knowledge workers working at both entities are investigated. After establishing that some variations in training do exist between local and foreign companies in MSC Malaysia, the second part of the study examines in more detail the determinants of training among companies in MSC Malaysia. It particularly investigates the factors that affect the occurrence and magnitude of training by MSC-status companies as a whole To complement these findings, the final part of the study investigates the impact of training on the knowledge workers’ earnings, productivity and career advancement. Due to the nature of the data set, however, the issue of endogeneity of training and selectivity bias are not addressed in the analyses of wage effects of training while productivity is measured subjectively via the knowledge workers’ perceptions of the effect on ability to perform job tasks. The third analysis on career advancement is further divided into the impacts of training on the knowledge workers’ likelihood of receiving a promotion and searching for a new job.

This thesis explores the issues around stress in the UK Health Service, with a particular focus on stress in the Hospice Service and the benefits of a group coaching intervention for this staff group. Section A provides an introduction to the thesis, explaining the rationale behind the choice of research and how the different sections link together. Section B reports on the research aspects of this thesis which exists of three phases. Phase 1 is a cross-sectional study to assess the levels of stress and the main work-stressors as experienced by members of staff working within two hospices in the UK. Phase 2 is a qualitative study using two focus groups, one at each hospice, to obtain a deeper understanding of the findings of phase 1. Phase 3 is an evaluation of a brief group coaching intervention for stress management, which has been informed by the findings of phase 1 and 2. The theoretical framework of the coaching intervention was Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC). Section C of the thesis presents a case study of a one-to-one stress-coaching intervention. This study also uses CBC as its theoretical framework and uses the same coaching format as was used in the group coaching session described in section B. Using the same model for both the group and one-to-one coaching intervention provides an opportunity to explore the versatility and usefulness of CBC within the context of stress coaching. The critical literature review presented in section D of the thesis examines the effectiveness of traditional stress management programmes used within the nursing profession, which provides a base-line for the development of an effective coaching intervention. The findings of this thesis add to the current understanding of stress in the UK hospice service and provide the foundations of a new approach to staff support and stress management within the Health Service using a CBC coaching model.

Bibliography: p. [187]-227.

My thesis has a dual focus. It is an account of both the journey of my inquiry, and the outcome of that inquiry. The Professional Doctorate, for which this work is submitted, emphasises practice development and at all times I have kept a watchful eye on my progress towards becoming a 'scholarly professional'. I am a facilitator - this means taking a variety of roles, including group leader, supervisor, coach, mentor, change agent. I use the term 'facilitator' as shorthand for all of these. My thesis makes a contribution to practical knowledge in relation to the subject matter and the methodology. My main focus is the practice of group facilitation, especially the way that a facilitator can work in a distress free manner, when the presence of the facilitator is apparent and distinct through an individual signature. I take the optimistic stance that facilitator presence can be developed, and have gathered a range of ideas that may support the practitioner in this respect, predominantly drawn from my own experiential and theoretical learning. With regard to autoethnography, the issue of judgement criteria is a particular offering. I see the whole of my thesis as autoethnographic, and have navigated a fine line between doing autoethnography, and finding out what an autoethnography is. In fully committing to this methodology, I take on the responsibility of writing from my own experience, whilst incorporating insights from the work of predecessors and peers.

Based on a retrospective survey of science and engineering (S&E) PhDs from a UK research-based university with 7-10 years job histories and the design-based non-parametric analysing methods, this thesis drew on theories on careers, organisational knowledge and learning and labour markets to explore the interrelationship between knowledge flow and careers of science and engineering PhDs. The results showed that employment outside the conventional technical occupations is the main destination for the survey respondents. This labour market segment is not only successful at retaining its members, but is also the destination of the other career types. Furthermore, S&E PhDs in the conventional technical occupations draw quite a lot of knowledge from S&E doctoral training in their jobs, even from the subject-specific dimension of it. By contrast, members in employment outside the conventional technical occupations are less likely to perceive knowledge and skills from doctoral training to be useful in their jobs, and when they do, the emphasis is more on general analytical skills and problem solving capabilities.The results also revealed the distinctive labour market features of different S&E PhD labour market segments: the sharp contrast of the core and peripheral workers in academic/public research, the highly hybrid labour market form in employment outside the conventional technical occupations and the relatively more structured labour market features in technical positions in private sector manufacturing. Regardless of the differences, nonetheless, as a whole, organisational life is still a prominent feature of the S&E PhD labour markets. Furthermore, the extent to which fluid job mobility contributes to S&E PhDs' individual knowledge flow depends on the types of knowledge under discussion. The emerging occupations associated with the knowledge economy are characterised by high inter-organisational mobility and by an emphasis of sector-specific and general knowledge. However, even for sector-specific and general knowledge, we have demonstrated that to a certain extent, these types of knowledge and skills are sticky to organisations. Hence, S&E PhD experts and knowledge workers' careers and individual knowledge flow are not really boundaryless but moderately localised within organisations.

This portfolio identifies a lacuna in the ways most mainstream management literature speaks of change. This literature focuses predominantly on the activities of 'planning', 'implementing' and 'evaluating' change in organizations, while largely overlooking the situated and embodied experience of actually becoming changed. I propose that this type of experience lies at the heart of organizational change. My research focuses on such experiences, addressing the questions of what characterizes them, what are the conditions that enable them, and what is involved in a practice that attempts to generate and sustain them. Building on Complex Responsive Process Theory, which claims that all change is constituted by shifts in the patterning of local interactions, I am proposing that the study of the qualities of ordinary, everyday 'experiences of transformation', which take place in conversational interactions between organizational members, is crucial to our understanding of how change happens. These qualities involve fleeting and elusive shifts of awareness and energy. What I am suggesting 'transforms' in such experiences is the complex interweaving of meaning, sense of self or identity, and ways of interacting and speaking. I argue that these shifts both create, and are created by, the responsive engagement with the complex, puzzling and ambiguous aspects of lived experiences of interaction. My narratives are concerned with the ways in which new meaning and novel directions of 'going on together' emerge paradoxically within the very experience of the fragmentation and dissolving of our usual, taken for granted understanding and sense of self. This often happens as we agree to encounter the 'otherness' of others in a conversational setting in which all the disconcerting, troubling and moving ramifications of that encounter are allowed to play out. In crafting an approach to change which resonates more with our everyday organizational lives, my narratives call attention to the details of such experiences: their textured richness and complex multi-facetedness. I propose that learning to carefully notice and engage with such experiences offers both deeper insights into the nature of change, and generates more nuanced, subtle, and ultimately effective, ways of working with change processes.

A wide range of Human Resources (HR) processes and information can now be managed and devolved to line managers and employees using e-HRM (‘electronic Human Resource Management’). E-HRM has been defined as “An umbrella term covering all possible integration mechanisms and contents between HRM and information technologies, aiming at creating value within and across organisations for targeted employees and management.” (Bondarouk & Ruel, 2009, p.507). Contemporary e-HRM technologies contain powerful functionality that can support organisations in reducing the cost and improving the quality of Human Resource service delivery, as well as enabling higher productivity and providing strategic capability. The aim of this dissertation is to explore why the development of e-HRM has been relatively immature, given that organisations tend to take an ‘automating’ approach that focuses primarily on administrative efficiency. The central thesis is that future development of e-HRM depends on two factors; firstly, that stronger links between e-HRM and competitive advantage at the organisational level must be defined and exploited; and secondly that shared frames of reference with regard to technology are critical to gaining the support of investors in e-HRM. The dissertation explores the wider context of e-HRM and its relationship to contemporary themes such as HR transformation, service delivery models, the growth of the internet and changing employee and managerial workplace expectations. Various definitions of e-HRM are explored, together with a literature review that categorises and summarises e-HRM literature over a twenty-one year period, concluding that there has been inadequate focus on understanding how e-HRM creates value. The dissertation makes a key contribution to practice through the e-HRM Value Model, a framework for defining, understanding and articulating how e-HRM creates organisational value. Its focus is on the outcomes of e-HRM rather than its characteristics, proposing that only three forms of outcomes can be derived from e-HRM: Operational HR cost reduction, improved people management / productivity and increased strategic capability. It represents a means of defining not only the value outcomes of e-HRM, but also the linkages between value potential, value conversion and value outcomes, providing a practical framework for defining the linkages between e-HRM and competitive advantage, as well as the basis for a diagnostic tool. The dissertation makes a contribution to knowledge through the analysis and subsequent synthesis of a wide-ranging literature review and interviews with fortysix managers and line managers across fifteen organisations that were planning for or had implemented e-HRM. It concludes with a series of proposed reasons for the slow progress towards greater strategic use of e-HRM, based on a technological frames approach with regard to the Nature of Technology, Technology in Use and Technology Strategy. The dissertation argues that unless HR professionals are themselves able to make sense of e-HRM and articulate the benefits in terms of competitive advantage, e-HRM development is likely to remain immature. Further research opportunities to develop and test the model are identified, together with an assessment of the implications for e-HRM management.

The continuous desire to improve health and safety in UK construction has in recent years been challenged to adopt offsite strategies in order to address the poor health and safety record of construction. Despite the benefits of using offsite there has been little research on the actual benefits and disadvantages of the effect of offsite on occupational health and safety. This is important given that the UK government has promoted the use of offsite to improve health and safety performance. This thesis provides a strategy for the management of offsite risk and a risk management tool has been developed. The study investigated offsite manufacturers views on offsite activities and risks in comparison with insitu activities and risks. This was achieved through three phases: phase I comprised two expert group interviews, phase II involved ergonomic audits and phase III consisted of three semi-structured interviews with three offsite manufacturers. The thesis identified that there are significant health and safety benefits of offsite. The benefits relate to specific activities within the offsite categories and context studied. Examples include the elimination of work at height, reduction in noise, reduction in work in confined space, reduction in congested work with trade overlap and greater control over work in the factory. The research revealed that there are still potential health and safety risks with offsite. Examples include; transportation and delivery of units of large size and weight with associated high consequence craneage and handling risks (unit fall and hand injury), whole body vibration, cuts, MSDs, RSIs, fumes and slips trips and falls. There appears to be little in the literature to support the identification of offsite risk issues. The study identified strategies to eliminate and reduce offsite residual risks. The case study investigated solutions to further reduce residual risks, which were further explored in phase III the semi-structured interviews. The solutions are grouped into four approaches: process change, workplace environment designing out risks, automation and the use of tools. An offsite risk management tool was developed which transfers knowledge from the study to provide awareness and management of offsite risk. The thesis provides a contribution to knowledge by providing a better understanding of offsite risks, offsite residual risks and strategies used to reduce residual risks.

This developmental research study concerned how trainers, drawn mainly from the commercial (pharmaceutical) sector of the field of clinical research, shared understandings of practice in a professionally localised community, as part of their continuing professional development. Trainers in this community had a heterogeneous range of identities including full-time and part-time trainers: clinical research trainers, training managers; clinical research managers, clinical research associates, compliance managers, auditors and others. The main aim was to explain conditions shaping this community and its concept of practice. The study involved observing practice from an interlocutory position, using Cultural- Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), to reveal the cultural complexity of the concept of practice within this community. Two competing rationalities, expressed within contrasting pedagogies with associated cultural standards of compliance or conscience, were established for training:- • as a restricted technical function focussed on the transmissive delivery of content, or • as an expansive approach to organisational learning focussed on deliberative enquiry. These competing rationalities reflected the struggle of an emergent profession to establish autonomy of standards, with implications for the field of practice and wider society: establishing the moral order through a culture of conscience, based on standards of excellence or because a system of regulatory governance dominates the drive to uphold standards through a culture of compliance. A conceptual-analytical framework, substantiated by empirical evidence, was proposed to describe and analyse the concept of practice embodied in the community’s object of activity. Through demonstrating CHAT at the level of declarative conceptions, procedural models, and social discourses/interactions, a link was established between the dominant concept of practice (expressed within a transmissive pedagogy) in the community and the larger sociocultural context (compliance culture rooted in the system of regulatory governance). The contribution of this study is to show how CHAT can be applied with theoretically formulated and empirically tested evaluative tools, to reveal the richness of human experience and the complexity of human activity in terms of its cognitive and cooperative social elements, identified as objective regularities unique to the activity system under investigation.

The research evaluates the implementation of the Framework Agreements on Telework and Work-related Stress in Belgium, Denmark, UK, and Czech Republic and in the banking and local Government sectors within these countries. Further, it evaluates the various factors that explain divergent implementation outcomes in countries and sectors. It develops two benchmarks to assess the efficacy of the Agreements as modes of European social partner ‘soft’ law governance; a benchmark that assesses the procedural implementation of the Agreements, and a benchmark that assess the substantive implementation of the Agreements. A multi-level governance theoretical approach is also adopted. It emerged that ‘effective’ procedural implementation of the Agreements largely occurred in Belgium and Czech Republic, but did not occur to the same degree in Denmark and UK. It also emerged that the substantive effect of the Agreements was patchy and that the substantive impact of the Telework Agreement was greater than that of the Work-related Stress Agreement. Although structural factors were important in explaining divergent implementation outcomes, it also emerged that it was primarily policy and actor related factors that explained divergent national and sectoral implementation outcomes. The research ends with a rather skeptical evaluation of the Agreements as modes of European social partner ‘soft’ law governance.