This study explored the extent to which contextual differences affected the organisational dynamics of mental health teams. Organisational dynamics in mental health teams were explored by studying teams with similar primary tasks who worked in differing contexts. A psychodynamic methodology for exploring organisational dynamics was used to explain the operation of mental health teams in terms of psychodynamic theory. Five case studies were conducted in mental health services that were differentiated by their proximity to patients and to the organisation. They were also differentiated by specific differences in patients' level of illness, experience of staff and the facilities provided to do the work. This enabled organisational. dynamics to be related to structural elements of mental health service design. The design of mental health services, for people with severe mental illnesses, has grown to reflect other parts of the health service in terms of service structures whilst the behaviours of staff reflects the psychological difficulties their patients face. Patients experience disturbed intrapsychic boundaries that entail splitting off and projecting of aspects of their ego to the extent that internal processes are experienced as external. Staff split off madness or failure and locate it in the patient so that both groups are caught in a hostile stand off. Organisational defences were enacted in different ways in different parts of the service. The ward offered a high action environment where newly trained staff could feel effective through the administration of medication that was forced if necessary. Staff retreated to the office and their experience was compared to being in a city under siege. The specialist department offered staff more control over their exposure to patients to the extent that very few patients were seen and service ideals went unchallenged. The hostel faced staff with the boredom that results from working with people whose condition goes unchanged over long periods of time. In this environment staff took over daily rituals in place of the residents. The community mental health team were responsible for the wellbeing of their patients although they saw them only for brief periods. They ventured out into unpredictable environments to administer their care. The final case involved a primary care team and this case was used in the consideration of potential effectiveness of new mental health service designs. It was concluded that, without consideration of the impact of changes to service structures on the unconscious processes of the staff, seemingly rational structural changes could have unintended negative consequences on organisational dynamics and therefore on the treatment that patients receive.

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Business and IT strategic alignment is increasingly acknowledged as a key factor in organisational performance. To measure performance, strategic alignment has two central approaches, which are process and content. Research in this regard has usually been concerned with either strategy process or strategy content, but this has only produced an unclear understanding of the impact of business and IT alignment on performance, Several studies investigating organisational performance have been carried out from the perspective of strategic alignment content. A major drawback of all of the strategy alignment studies is that they overlook process perspective. Relatively few attempts have been made at investigating the strategic alignment process. Logically, these studies might have been more useful if the authors had included both strategic perspectives as mechanisms needed to enable a better understanding of business and IT alignment and its impact on performance. Therefore, the aim of my research is to integrate the content and process of strategic alignment from a multi-level learning perspective to better understand the impact on business performance. The rationale behind combining strategy content and strategy process is the quest to understand the intertwined concepts connected to performance; strategic content is influenced by process, while process strategies are, in turn, sensitive to content. Therefore, this research presents organisational learning (OL) as a mechanism to integrate the process and content of strategic alignment from a multi-level learning perspective. The main goal of multi-level theorising in organisational learning is to identify elements that assist in achieving a unified understanding of phenomena that occur across all levels in organisations. The framework of Business and IT Alignment from Multi-level Learning Perspective (BITA-MLP) defines strategic alignment at various levels, viewing it as a strategy process that interacts with the exploration and exploitation perspectives of strategy content. Strategic alignment from a multi-level learning perspective includes knowledge creation, knowledge interpretation, knowledge sharing and knowledge utilisation as a process. Strategy content refers to exploration that engages the knowledge of individuals, groups and the organisation to trigger changes in non-human elements such as strategy, structure, culture and infrastructure. In addition, exploitation reflects the effect of the knowledge embedded in non-human elements on individuals, groups and the organisation. We collected and used evidence from a number of organisations to design and test the instruments or our framework. Several companies engaged in different economic activities were used as case studies to lessen industry-based bias and to ensure individuals interviewed held as diverse perceptions as possible and that a wide a range of strategy levels and content types was included. Evidence collected in this regard came from different sources including surveys, interviews and documentation. The triangulation of sources has allowed us to identify deficient capabilities that each company needs to work on if they are to satisfactorily align their business and IT strategies and be rewarded by achieving better business performance.

This thesis attempts to make original contributions on the empirical relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm financial performance in a variety of ways. First, I investigate the wealth-protective effects of socially responsible firm behaviour by examining its association with equity risk for an extensive panel data sample of S&P 500 companies. Special consideration is given to downside risk and investor utility. The main findings are that corporate social responsibility is negatively but weakly related to systematic firm risk and corporate social irresponsibility is positively and strongly related to financial risk. However, the risk-return trade- off appears to be such that no clear utility gain or loss can be realized by investing in firms characterised by specific levels of social and environmental performance. Overall volatility conditions are shown to play a moderating role in the nature and strength of the corporate social performance-risk relationship. I then extend the research framework to the corporate bond market and provide evidence of a negative link between corporate social performance and credit risk as well as corporate spreads. Additional analysis shows that this relationship is more pronounced in recent years and for bonds with higher maturities and either high or very low ratings. Although the moderating nature of volatility conditions found for stocks is not repeated in the bond market, the results are robust across industrial categorisations, despite the differences in their risk profiles. The final empirical study explores the impact that positive social corporate actions have on the financial effects of negative/harmful social corporate actions and vice versa. When considering the phenomenon at the firm level using multiple regression analysis, no statistically significant link is detected. However, when pools and portfolios of firms are constructed, a U -shaped relationship becomes noticeable, with firms that engage solely in corporate socially responsible or socially irresponsible behaviour outperforming those engaging in both, especially in the case of the diversity and employee relations dimensions where all possible assessments of financial performance point towards a curvilinear link. iii.

To understand how an organisation functions effectively it is necessary to look at both the formal firm and the informal firm. It is widely acknowledged that the formal and informal aspects of an organisation interact. However, little empirical work has investigated the nature of this interaction. This study aims to conceptualise the relationship between the formal and the informal firms and the effect of the informal firm on employee performance. The formal firm is defined as the explicitly documented policies and procedures which dictate how the firm should operate. The informal firm is defined as the socially derived ways of performing tasks. A social capital framework is employed to study the formal and informal firms as it is through their connections with others that employees develop the informal firm. A highly standardised, major retail organisation was the population for this study. The formal firm was therefore a constant across stores, facilitating study of the informal firm. Data collection was both quantitative and qualitative, by means of questionnaires presented to employees within semi-structured interviews, interviews with managers and in-store observations. Data analysis involved multiple linear regressions, content analysis and case studies. This thesis makes a contribution in the following four respects. First, three relationships between the formal and informal firms are conceptualised. Second, empirical evidence is provided for the importance of the informal firm in both determining how employees perform their job tasks and affecting the implementation of formal policy. Third, even in such a standardised organisation the dual role of the departmental manager was highlighted. Fourth, it is proposed that social capital and the informal firm be included in the HR-performance chain to contribute to 'unlocking the black box' (Purcell et al, 2003). The informal firm is a fact of life in any organisation. Understanding its interaction with the formal firm as well as its effect on formal policy success provides a source of internal competitive advantage to managers. Social relationships among the workforce affect how tasks are completed within an organisation and the attainment of organisational goals.

The Iraqi industrial public sector companies are the backbone of the Iraqi national industry. These companies adopted restructuring as their strategic choice to face the changes in the nature of their business environment that occurred after 2003. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how restructuring choices of these companies were made. In the strategic choice-making literature, there are two opposite lines of research to understand how strategic choices are made. One is that the business environment of the organisation shapes its strategic choices, while the second argues that top managers of the organisation play a crucial role in determining these strategic choices. In an attempt to explore the role of both the business environment and decision makers in shaping the restructuring choices in Iraq, I realised that the way strategic choice• making literature had theorised around the drivers of strategic choice-making did not help me to fully understand what I was observing. I realised that there is a gap between these theories, which have been generated in western contexts and the reality of decision-making in Iraq that need further understanding. To attempt to fill this gap, I tried to bridge what I had been observing in my fieldwork on the characteristics of the Iraqi context. 43 elite interviews and 5 ethnographic interviews were utilised to collect the data and ensure credibility. Based on the data analysis that followed, two key themes emerged. Whereas the first of them relates to the visible drivers of restructuring choice-making in the context of the Iraqi industrial public sector companies, the second focuses on the hidden drivers of this process. Based on the findings of this study, I concluded that the personal and factional goals played a significant role in determining and shaping the restructuring choices of these companies.

This thesis investigates the interactional properties and sequential organization of tasks. The analysis is framed around the notion that tasks can be investigated from a task as- workplan or task-in-process perspective. However, past and current interpretations of tasks have been taken primarily from a task-as-workplan perspective. The point of departure for this thesis is not only the emphasis put on task-in-process, but also the reconciliation of both perspectives. That is, this thesis examines whether a task does what it is claimed to do. The difference between what is planned, and what occurs, is at the heart of construct validity. This assumption will be investigated by analyzing the relationship between task-as-workplan and turn-taking and repair. The findings demonstrate that although task-as-workplan can influence interaction, the decision to talk in a particular way or form occurs during task-in-process. Specifically, the participatory structure of tasks, which distributes referential information to tasktakers, limits turn-taking and repair opportunities. For example, the ability to initiate and maintain the floor in tasks is largely dependent on the amount of information each tasktaker is provided. Despite this influence, considerable task-in-process variation occurs. It is later claimed that in order to provide a comprehensive picture of task-based interaction, both perspectives must be taken into consideration. This requires researchers to adopt a more holistic and detailed approach to the investigation of task-based interaction.

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