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Consumers are identity seekers and makers, and also they are storytellers and help seekers. This research develops a consumer-centric perspective to investigate the vocal performance aspect of the consumers’ retail experiences, by focusing on how customers narrate and exchange their life stories with sales people to co-create personalised and unique shopping experiences in retail stores. In-depth interviews and observations were conducted in order to: first, explore in detail consumers’ rich stock of sociocultural operant resources that are deployed and collaborated. Second, produce a specific process map on how resources are integrated through the consumer-to-sales person interaction. Third, discover various outcomes that are developed through the story swapping perspective of human interaction. The findings suggest that: first, the utilisation of life story swapping aspect of vocal performance provides a platform for the consumers to deploy personal resources that are enriched with everyday life and practices. Second, role playing and switching can facilitate the value-in-use process, and thus to convert the consumers’ life experiences into meanings, identity, and solutions. Finally, the story swapping associated outcomes provide a consumer-centric point of view in looking into the customer’s side of benefits gaining as well as the retailer’s side of relationship building and maintaining. An important contribution of this research is the notion that it extends the Service-Dominant Logic perspective to develop a better understanding of the relationship between the consumer’s stock of sociocultural operant resources and the co-creation of experience in the retail environment. In particular, it explores and examines the roles of the consumer-to-sales person interaction in facilitating the value-in-use process.

My enquiry starts when I experience the suffering of young people in care, and realise I do not have the knowledge to help them. I find that traditional ways of knowing in western culture – Christian theistic religion and classical Newtonian science – do not provide me with the knowledge required to resolve this ignorance. Intuitively, I feel there must be more effective ways of knowing. This thesis records my search for a way of knowing that enables me to find meaning in a world where such suffering is possible. This search has taken me to many places. Intellectually, my sources of theory and information include the social sciences, philosophy, depth and transpersonal psychology, eastern and western religions, quantum physics, and a science of consciousness. Professionally, I have moved from social work, to education, and then to the development of my own business. In engaging with an ‘experiment in depth’, I develop a meditative and journaling practice which connects me to a sense of a loving dynamic energy with limitless creative potential. I realise that over time, through being ‘true to myself’, my connection with this source provides me with a spiritual resilience which enables me to retain equanimity within life’s challenges. The hypothesis that feels meaningful and makes most sense of my experience is that I am involved in an evolution of consciousness, where the story of humanity is the story of ‘self-disclosure of spirit’ (Ferrer 2002). My experience of synchronicity provides evidence of a principle of interconnection and integration between psyche and matter, inner and outer, theory and action, science and spirituality. Through telling my personal story, I offer an emergent methodology that includes both narrative inquiry and action research. I generate a living theory which offers ‘spiritual resilience gained through connection with a loving dynamic energy’ as an original standard of judgment.

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This thesis examines the factors that influence the profitability of micro-life insurance firms in Nigeria and South Africa. In particular, the joint impact of cost efficiency, ownership structure, leverage and reinsurance together with other institutional factors, on the profitability of commercial micro-life insurance providers are investigated. The cost efficiency estimates are derived using two main frontier efficiency estimation techniques; data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) in a first-stage analysis. Furthermore, a panel data feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) estimator, which helps to simultaneously control for the presence of heteroskedasticity and serial correlation in the sample data, is employed to test the research hypotheses. Using the FGLS estimator in a panel of 61 firms over the period covering 2005 and 2010, the study supports as well as contradicts the results of prior studies. The present study finds that the economic insights derived using either DEA or SFA in the computation of cost efficiency, as well as its components - technical and allocative efficiency- are relatively similar. The empirical results further suggest that cost efficiency which is positively associated with profitability is significant for the business success of micro-life insurers. Furthermore, empirical evidence indicates that the increasing use of leverage helps to improve profitability, while the increasing use of reinsurance reduces profitability. Contrary to expectations, the interaction between reinsurance and leverage decreases the profitability of micro-life insurance firms. The empirical results reveal no statistically significant relation between ownership structure and the profitability of micro-life insurers for all the stock-ownership forms considered. On the other hand, the study finds that firm-specific effects such as the company size, product mix, length of time of operations in the market (age), and macro-economic factors such as the average annual interest rates, are significant drivers of the profitability of micro-life insurers. The present study contributes potentially valuable insights on the performance of micro-life insurance operations, and its conclusions could be of interest and relevance to local and multinational insurers and reinsurers, industry regulators and other interested parties such as multinational investors.

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Local regeneration partnerships are being actively implemented by the Nigerian government as an innovative policy to deliver public infrastructure and to improve the quality of public services, particularly to improve the living standards of the populace. Nigeria being the biggest economy in Africa has a huge amount of demands for high quality infrastructure projects and public services; this has necessitated socioeconomic reforms that have paved the way for Public Private Partnerships and partnership working. Nonetheless, the complexity of PPP arrangements in Nigeria, as it concerns bureaucratic practices in public institutions; limited competences of partner organisations in partnership arrangements; and opportunistic proponents in the collaboration processes of these partnerships amongst other challenges has constituted a dilemma for the public and private sectors to balance the interests of partner organisations. In this thesis, the collaboration processes that influence, shape and impact on partnership working in Nigerian local regeneration partnerships are studied and the implications that results from these partnership working are explained. A qualitative inductive approach is adopted in this research, using a case study strategy to address the overall research aim. The qualitative study drew on data from 42 in-depth semi- structured interviews with participants from the public and private sector organisations involved in the collaboration processes of five local regeneration partnerships. Utilising the collaborative advantage concept as the guiding theoretical framework, wherein collaborative advantage imply that organisations should only collaborate, when an objective can be met that none of the organisations otherwise could have achieved on their own. The findings of this research revealed that distinct factors within the Nigerian institutional environment have led to PPP policy adoption and implementation, but local context factors act as constraints in the implementation of partnership arrangements such that they have not turned out as expected. Competence gaps and limitations in the capacity of partners to make effective decisions with regards to the management of partnerships and in carrying out the terms of partnership agreements have necessitated the services of PPP consultants and transaction advisers in guiding the partnership process. The findings of this research also indicated that due to institutional and local conditions in Nigeria, partner organisations adapt operating procedures to mitigate against the risks faced in the partnership working. Consequently, the successful delivery of the partnerships goals had implications for the survival of the Nigerian local regeneration partnerships investigated. Furthermore, by utilising the collaborative advantage theory, it emerged from the empirical data that sustainability of partnership agreements, improved interaction among partners and the efficient provision of services are strategic elements of collaborative advantage that could be achieved in partnership working. The research also contributes to knowledge by enhancing the collaborative advantage theory through its application in local regeneration partnerships and within the developing country context of Nigeria. The research delineated that the collaboration elements; mutual interdependence, trust, transparency and accountability have implications on the strategic decisions made during the collaboration processes of the five Nigerian local regeneration partnership arrangements. A conceptual model was developed for deeply understanding collaborative work in Nigerian local regeneration partnerships; this model’s core thus allows its consideration to be applied to various forms of Public Private Partnerships within Nigeria and to a greater extent Public Private Partnership practices in sub-Sahara Africa. Based on the research findings of this study, a number of PPP policy recommendations are presented to raise the effectiveness of collaboration processes in Nigerian local regeneration partnerships.

This thesis is a written account of a qualitiative action research learning study with a group of managers undertaken in a charity that delivered drug and alcohol services in the midlands over a period of 12 months. The charitable trust had experienced unprecedented growth after winning large scale contracts to deliver services in the substance misuse sector. As a result the charity had grown to twice its size in the number of staff that were in the organisation. Whilst there was an emphasis on training and development for practitioner the same did not exists for managers. Neither as it emerged were managers and leaders of the organisation receiving support or supervision. The Cranfield University Training Needs Analysis (2003) in the substance misuse sector undertaken prior to this case study confirmed this nationally. Managers were being driven externally by multiple demands for assurance and data on performance from the NTA and from the commissioners. There was a sense that everyone was working at a fast pace without much time to reflect on what this meant in terms of the development of the charity. Manager’s were also talking about experiencing tensions from within the charity with a lot of confusion as to how to improve their people management practices which was key to a growing workforce within the charitable trust (Parry et al, 2005). A review of the organisational management infrastructure was also underway.