In the context of a closer relationship between voluntary organizations and state funding bodies, the purpose of this thesis is to provide an understanding of how this relationship can reshape work organization and employee commitment in the voluntary sector. In doing so, the research is divided into two phases, each with distinct theoretical frameworks. Overall, the thesis finds an intensifying influence from state bodies on the sector in relation to HR policies, practice and work organization. Voluntary organizations are not passive in this relationship and there remain circumstances where they can resist unwanted changes to the employment relationship. At the same time, where voluntary organizations alter, for the worse, terms and conditions of employment in response to state pressure this is seen as having considerable detrimental consequences on employee commitment. This is despite the existence of strong value-based orientations to work within the sector.

The UK Civil Service has undergone significant organizational change. This thesis examines the use of lean systems of work within the Civil Service and the response of the PCS trade union and its membership. Through a case study approach, this research examines management's use of lean focussing on several large central government departments. The thesis argues that rather than view lean as a set of business improvement techniques lean must be seen within the context of the specific political-economic context of the UK. The thesis confirms the argument that lean systems are premised on management control of the labour process. The thesis contributes to the conceptual understanding of lean working by showing that it is manifested in four different ways each linked by Civil Service management's capacity to control the state labour process at a workplace level. The thesis also examines the impact of lean on the skills of civil servants including those engaged in quasi-legal decision making. The thesis demonstrates that Civil Service work has been subject to deskilling. Using a 'skill in the job' conceptualisation, the research finds that although elements of job complexity are retained, the levels of job autonomy exercised by civil servants have been significantly reduced. This deskilling is linked to management's attempts to control the state labour process. Finally, the thesis argues that the union's capacity to respond to lean is constrained by the employment compromise by which the union's response is often one of monitoring rather than contesting organizational change. The thesis uses a 'productive model' approach to locate lean within the political-economic infrastructure of the UK and the state labour process. The research was undertaken using a qualitative approach utilising semi-structured interviews to collect data from trade union members and representatives working in the Civil Service.

In order to cope with unexpected service challenges, it is probably inevitable that frontline employees need to exercise extra-role behaviour during service encounters. According to Organ (2006), such extra-role behaviour is described as Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). Baum (2006) and Cheung (2006) suggest that the nature of organizational culture can foster and encourage this notion of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) within a company. However, it has been argued that organisational culture studies still remain limited in service operations (e.g. Chen et al., 2012). The case organisation for this qualitative study is of one of Fortune magazine's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, ranking 91 in 2014, and from an employment perspective, is used to shed light on the unique culture that underlines the execution of extra-role behaviour and how organisational culture can impact upon OCB. Frontline employees were selected from Room Divisions of three hotels located in England and the Republic of Ireland. Semi-structured interviews were employed as the research method and template analysis (King, 2014) was adopted for the process of data analysis. From a qualitative perspective, the contribution of this thesis is an attempt to uncover factors embedded within organisational culture in order to contribute in an understanding of frontline staff's OCB. Extending previous research that studied the relationship between organisational culture and employee performance (e.g. Ro and Chen, 2011), this research argues that organisational culture plays a key role influencing frontline employee performance with a focus on managerial empowerment, organisational politics, and trust. Extending Cheung et al.'s (2012) research in terms of managerial empowerment and employee productivity, the present study suggests that managerial empowerment has an impact upon OCB. This research suggests that OCB can be fostered and developed in a positive and open political work environment. Cheung et al. (2012) argue that trust is seen as a key factor enabling managerial empowerment. Extending Cheung et al.'s (2012) argument, the present study supports the argument that trust is a key consideration in fostering OCB. Finally, this study addresses the implementations of managerial approaches in developing and fostering frontline employee OCB in the upscale hotel sector.

Despite women's progress in the workplace over the last four decades, they remain under-represented in management, occupying only around a third of all management jobs. In addition, there are even fewer women on the higher rungs of the management career ladder, even though some women now do reach the top of organizations. Much of the research that has examined women's under-representation has focused on developing frameworks with which to identify the elements in organizations that constitute barriers to women's progression, so that these in turn can be overcome. Although there has been an acknowledgement of the effect of systemic factors on women's progression in management, there is a lack of a framework with which to analyse them. The aim of this research is to address this gap by synthesising the business systems literature together existing gender based frameworks in order to provide a new and extended approach to the study of women in management. This study was located in three sectors in Scotland, the Labour Movement, Local Government and Financial Services. A total of fifty-three interviews were carried out, comprising thirty-six senior women managers and seventeen background and elite interviews, making a total of fifty-three interviews. The study found that business systems, like organizations exhibit patterns of institutionalised gender discrimination, which constitute that business system's gender inequality regime. The study also found that business systems institutions as well as shaping organizations are also engaged in a co-constitutive process with organizations and actors.

This thesis examines some strategic interactions between financial, labour and industrial contracts signed by the manager of a firm with different stakeholders. It investigates the strategic effects of contractual or institutional arrangements when the firm faces commitment problems. The general introduction briefly surveys the relevant literatures on the methodology, modern theories of the firm, commitment problems and interactions between markets through the firm. The second chapter focusses on interactions between labour markets and the market for corporate control. It argues that the possibility of takeovers may affect the economic consequences of union power in wage negotiations: while union power increases wage flexibility and the firm's capacity to invest in the absence of takeovers, it decreases them when takeovers are allowed. Various takeover defence mechanisms are compared. The third chapter analyzes the impact of competition among downstream firms on a supplier's investment and on her incentive to vertically integrate. Tougher competition decreases the downstream industry profit, but improves the supplier's negotiation position. In particular, the supplier is better off encouraging competition when the downstream firms have high bargaining power. We analyze the interactions between downstream competition and vertical integration. The fourth chapter (joint with Dr. Antoine Faure-Grimaud, LSE) analyzes the financing decisions of a monopolist facing a buyer whose valuation is private information. It develops the idea that a high level of (renegotiable) debt, by increasing the scope for liquidation, may induce the high valuation buyer to buy early at a high price and thus increase the monopolist's expected profit. The benefit from the strategic use of debt increases with the durability of the good.

This thesis is focused on gaining a deeper understanding of the phenomena of employees' engagement at work, along with, exploring its antecedents and consequences within the confines of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United Arab Emirates. Employee engagement has garnered lots of interest in the last two decades in both the academic and the practitioner communities particularly, with respect to large corporations. However, research in small- and medium-sized firms has somewhat lagged behind. Given that the practical interest in employee engagement at work has outstripped the available academic evidence, the current work seeks to answer the fundamental questions like how can engagement be increased and how and why it benefits individuals and organisations. Hence, a three-component model of employee engagement was proposed whose academic significance stems from two facts. First, engagement as a construct was studied through the theoretical lens of the social exchange theory which is underpinned by the concept of the reciprocity norm that governs the interactions at the workplace. The less formal structure of SMEs enabled the understanding of a bidirectional transaction and its implications on the phenomenon of engagement. Second, given the paradigm shift in the UAE's economy from a fuel-based model to a service-based model made it worthy to examine what was happening in 90% of the registered businesses. According to the Department of Economic Development, SMEs account for 92% of the economic contribution in the non-oil sector and employs up to 86% of the workforce in the UAE. Although the concept of employee engagement has grown in popularity, it has undergone significant development in terms of definition, measurement and conceptualisation while the research in the academic community has lagged behind. Having an in-depth review of the existing engagement literature from psychology, human resources, organisational behaviour and management fields, the author recognised that there was a need for not only theory verification (to test the predetermined factors in a new context) but also theory generation (uncovering of any additional factors) with respect to the concept of engagement. Based on this, a mixed methodology approach was adopted for the purpose of this study. Both survey design and detailed one-to-one interviews were utilised to investigate the relationships among antecedents and consequences of employee engagement in the SME setting. In particular, this study provided a theory-based empirical evidence regarding whether the relation with the employer, the relation with colleagues, the provision of performance feedback and good conditions in workplace affect employee engagement. Furthermore, the study also investigated how employee engagement directly and indirectly leads to better job performance, lower intention to leave, increase organisational commitment and reduction in employee cynical behaviour. The sample size comprised of 341 surveys (SME employees) and 56 interviews with employees and owners/managers respectively.

Whilst much focus in recent years has been given to the learning process involved in Experiential Learning (ELT) and related Action Learning (AL) theories, very little academic study has been given to the contextual elements that surround them. Using the practical setting of an experiential learning team event, this thesis considers the academic ambiguities relating to such contextual elements, and examines the possible impact these can have on the overall development experience. Experiential learning team events are primarily designed to provide a series of action centred challenges which can support both individual and team development. The research firstly considers ELT together with AL and their relationship with related theories including: humanist, team, personality, cognitive and social. From this broad-base review, four contextual factors emerge which were considered suitable for further study: sponsor role, subcultures, facilitation and personality profiling. The empirical study focused on a three day residential experiential learning team event, with six teams of eight managers taking part. The managers were all from one company, a petrochemical organisation employing 3000 people, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Data was collected from a series of questionnaires, observations and focus group sessions. Findings identified that the sponsor role can prove to be a strong influence, particularly through attendance of events and supporting follow up actions. Subcultures proved to have a positive effect, which was in contrast to the more negative impacts highlighted by the majority of academics. Using individual personality profiling to provide a balanced representation across teams proved insignificant. Comparing teams with a balance of personality types with those of a more unbalanced composition revealed that individuals can adapt their personality preference to match contextual requirements. The role of the facilitator and the style they adopted in supporting the event proved to be a strong influence. The empowering style was seen to be particularly effective in supporting the principles of ELT and AL. Given the findings of this study, the implications clearly indicate that for future ELT and AL research: the sponsor role can prove a strong contributory factor to the learning experience and should not be ignored; the diversity of subcultures can be used in a constructive way given common purpose and values are in place; the facilitator role can prove a positive influence provided the style of support is in keeping with the principles of ELT and AL for individual empowerment.

The concepts of organisational learning and the learning organisation have been discussed and debated extensively in the literature, with some writers arguing that many organisations are not relying on continuous learning and development, and react with different strategies to external change, and with others defending the point of view that organisational learning or becoming a learning organisation is key to keeping up with the changes happening in the world, such as globalisation, increased competition and rapid technological advances. This study addresses the above concepts within the context of the hospitality industry, in particular the international hotel industry, and aims to provide some measures and clarity to the question of what the right skills are that help leaders creating the conditions and structures characteristic of a learning organisation, as well as to address the potential gap in the literature around the limited availability of research about the learning organisation and organisational learning in the hospitality industry. The research follows a two-phase case study design, using an organisation in the international hotel industry that had recently introduced a ‘designthinking’ programme, the vehicle through which learning organisation reforms were introduced into the case study organisation with the stated objective to foster innovation and to differentiate the organisation from its competitors, as a research setting. The findings of this study suggest that organisations in the hospitality industry embarking on this journey of becoming a learning organisation should consider the leadership skills and mind-sets as identified in this research for the design of their leadership models, such as the ability to encourage experimentation, reward and foster failure and demonstrating a commitment to learning. This will assist them in the creation of a learning-supportive culture where employees are involved and participate, are empowered to make their own decisions and have trust in leadership to take risks and foster innovation. The study contributes to foster a better understanding by practitioners of the interaction between leadership skills and organisational learning, thus highlighting the importance of those skills and mind-sets in the creation of a learning organisation, and also reveals some interesting findings around the value and applicability of the learning organisation concept in the hotel industry.

The wellbeing of employees is essential to ensure their attraction, retention and performance on the job. Wellbeing consists of affect, life satisfaction and meaning in life. There is evidence to suggest that the satisfaction of basic needs (the intrinsic capabilities that humans have) will increase wellbeing, but there is little understanding of how these needs should be satisfied across work and life. In addition, there is no comprehensive framework of needs which individuals seek to fulfil. The aim of this study is to explore which needs are satisfied in work and life to optimise wellbeing. Scottish primary teachers are considered, due to the engagement but also high stress which teachers can experience. The teaching environment may prevent or enable need satisfaction and this study also seeks to understand what may support or prevent teachers' ability to satisfy needs. A mixed methods approach is used, involving semi-structured interviews with teachers and stakeholders to inform the development of a survey designed to understand the association between need satisfaction and wellbeing. Teachers from across five local authorities in Scotland participated in the survey. A model of need satisfaction in work and life is proposed and developed to address the research questions and hypotheses of this study. The findings support the model, indicating that when equal energy is directed to work and life and needs in both domains are satisfied, wellbeing is optimised. This study identifies important groups of needs, offering insight into areas of satisfaction in work and life. It also suggests that directing more energy to work may not increase the satisfaction of work needs and may impact on the satisfaction of life needs. It explores the enablers and challenges to need satisfaction, offering insight into how teaching interacts with the life domain.

This thesis examines the role of line managers in managing attendance at work, within grocery retailing, providing a comparison between the UK and Cyprus. It explores the sector's political economy, discusses the impact on workplace attendance, explores the manifestations of attendance in the labour process, and examines the role of line managers in managing absence. The empirical evidence draws on qualitative research from four case-study grocery retail organizations in the UK and Cyprus and reports on 91 semi-structured interviews with HR managers, store managers, line managers, union representatives and shop-floor employees. The research evidence highlighted a drop in absence in all the case study organizations. In both countries, the economic crisis, the absence management process and the role of the line managers were major drivers for the employees' decision to attend work regularly, consenting to the attendance control and the shop floor regimes. The labour process analysis adopted in this study suggests that non-attendance as a form of industrial conflict is regarded as muted, while consent to regular attendance is built. Nevertheless, the data illustrated a latent behaviour by workers, across the four organizations, utilizing silent and individual actions to battle over workplace attendance. The research also highlights the role of line managers in managing attendance at work, as well as in negotiating the shop floor order. The thesis discusses the versatile role of the line managers in managing both attendance and the shop floor order, across the four case study organizations. The study also illustrates that the line managers were subjected to forces of control, holding limited authority and discretion. However, they developed tactics to cope and gain control within these processes. The main contributions of this research are the similar organization of food retail work within the UK and Cyprus, the employees' consent to regular attendance, and the 'Rebels of the clock' thesis, which suggests the emergence of 'game playing', as an expression of industrial conflict. Finally, the versatile role of line managers in coercing and negotiating both workplace attendance and shop floor order is suggested, while these actors used informal actions to gain discretion and overcome the top-down control on their role within the attendance management process.