Two broad themes emerge from the study. The first relates to the character of 'independent' schools and raises some questions about their supposed autonomy. The second theme concerns the notion of 'new public management' and whether it is a concept appropriate for analysing change in practice in purported private sector institutions and whether private sector bodies can ever by subject to NPM measures.

The last ten years have seen major changes in the organisation and delivery of primary healthcare services in the England and Wales and this has had considerable implications for consumers of these services in rural parts of the country. This thesis seeks to explore the effects of these structural changes in the delivery mechanisms of primary healthcare services in relation to rural areas of Wales within a context of concomitant restructuring of rural society and restructuring and re-organisation of service delivery in the health sector which draws on 'theories of the firm' literature, for example the development of vertical integration of various primary healthcare services. A key element of primary healthcare service delivery in a rural context is related to the levels of accessibility to such services experienced by the individuals, or 'consumers' of healthcare. This thesis adopts a largely positivist approach to the analysis of spatial and temporal patterns of healthcare delivery in Wales over the last decade, although echoes of the structuralist approach emerge in relation to particular aspects of the analysis. In operationalising this theoretical context a Geographical Information Systems approach is employed to visualise and analyse the spatial organisation and temporal variation of primary healthcare delivery across rural Wales through a longitudinal study of primary healthcare services in Wales 1996 and 2004. Depth is added to this national level analysis of rural Wales by developing a case study of one Unitary Authority in rural Wales, Gwynedd, which acts as focus for more in-depth analysis of the spatial and temporal changes in rural primary healthcare over the study period

This thesis is centred on the analysis of how the different groups of specialist experts that make up theoretical physics at large communicate and transmit knowledge between themselves. The analysis is carried out using two sociological frameworks: the Studies in Expertise and Experience (SEE) approach Collins and Evans, and mechanisms of sociological and institutional trust in the general sociology of science literature. I argue that the communication process is carried out in two ways: through interactional expertise that is based on deep comprehension when the interaction is between micro-cultures that are sociologically closely connected, and through lower forms of knowledge relying on trust for the micro-cultures that are sociologically far apart. Because the SEE framework is strongly based on the transmission of tacit knowledge, an analysis of the importance of tacit knowledge in theoretical physics is carried out to support the SEE analysis, and specific types of tacit knowledge are closely examined to understand how they shape theoretical physics practice. I argue that `physical intuition', one of the guiding principles of all theoretical activity, is in fact a type of tacit knowledge -somatic tacit knowledge- that is well known within social studies of science. The end result is a description of physics that highlights the importance of sociological mechanisms that hold the discipline together, and that permit knowledge to flow from the empirical to the theoretical poles of physics practice. The thesis is supported by unstructured interview material and by the author's prolonged interaction within theoretical physics professional circles

Despite the intensive exploitation of minerals in Wassa West in Western Ghana over the years, poverty and deprivation continue to escalate within the community. The people suffer from mining-related activities and infrastructural development seems to be minimal. Considering the negative impacts and development failures associated with extractive industries, the question arises as to whether support for extractive industries in Ghana is consistent with the government's contention that mining would propel the nation to a state of economic development and reduce poverty in local communities. The study espouses the conflicting claims in this development strategy and their variants and provides an avenue for further discussions on the issue in respect of its place in development and international business. The primary purpose is to achieve insight into the policy questions and issues they pose for resource endowed countries. The issue here will be how to forge a consistent paradigm, which makes economic sense, and which takes the complexity of social reality into consideration. The study, thus, documents how internationally generated policies have impacted on the lives of local people in Wassa West, in particular, and Ghana as a whole. It draws on the new dynamic that is created when local and global interact, as is inevitable when a multinational corporation begins operations in rural communities. In assessing the situation in Wassa West, the study incorporated a variety of ethnographic and qualitative methods of data collection, including a wide range of documentary sources. The thesis concludes that it is important to re-think the paradigm that sees foreign investment as a sine qua non for development.

Abstract Organisations need to have the ability to recruit and retain appropriate knowledge workers in order to create an inflow of knowledge and skills to develop and maintain their competitiveness. High technology organisations, particularly, rely on knowledge workers to transfer human capital into intellectual capital by turning technological knowledge into products. Taiwan is renowned for information and communication technology (ICT) product design and manufacture. This research uses Taiwan’s high technology industry as a sample to examine the recruitment, selection and retention practices for knowledge workers. Three organisation ownership types exist in Taiwan’s context: Taiwanese-owned,foreign-owned and non-private. This study asks: what are the current recruitment, selection and retention practices for knowledge workers in Taiwan’s high technology industry? Are there any differences in the three types of ownership group? Do ownership groups influence knowledge workers’ decisions to join or stay in their organisations? To answer these questions, a quantitative survey was conducted from September 2009 to March 2010, and two hundred valid questionnaire responses were collected (a response rate: 67%). Additionally, interviews were conducted with human resource managers in 10 organisations under various ownerships to collect information that was unobtainable in the questionnaire survey. This research contributes empirical evidence about the current recruitment/selection and retention practices for knowledge workers in Taiwan’s high technology industry. The results showed that organisations within various ownership groups preferred to use different practices. Taiwanese-owned firms predominantly used on-line agents to recruit knowledge workers and relied on employee ownership bonus programmes to attract and retain knowledge workers. Foreign-owned firms, significantly, used head hunters. They provided their knowledge workers with high base salaries, challenging and interesting work, and influential power over work-related decisions. Non-private organisations were significantly different in their adoption of company websites. They offered good training programmes, opportunities to access new technology, and attractive work-life balance, reflecting their research-oriented ethos.

Greece is typical of the European experience vis-a-vis fertility decline. Its total fertility rates (TFR) fell below the population replacement level of 2.1 in 1981 and now remains at 1.3. A review of the fertility policy debates in Europe and in Greece, in particular, reveals that policy debates and discourses are biased with unfounded assumptions and judgements regarding causes and consequences of fertility decline. A review of existing literature and the researcher's own empirical work presents sufficient evidence to support this conclusion. In addition, a comparison of such political and institutional perspectives with the fertility experiences and perspectives of a sample population in Greece finds that the institutional perspectives are not always adequately informed of the ground realities. It is therefore concluded that significant informational gaps are present in Greek fertility policy debates. It is also theorised that such knowledge vacuums are one of the reasons why policy initiatives fail to deliver.

Sustainable social housing provision (SSHP) has become very important over the last few decades for the main objective of meeting housing needs. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that SSHP has not been practiced successfully. A growing body of the literature shows that lack of an acceptable definition of social housing could contribute to the lack of political will for achieving SSHP. The overall aim of this research is to develop ‘a framework for implementing SSHP’. The aim was achieved through research objectives, including a critical review of the concept and identification of types of social housing and proposes a definition for describing it; examine the concept of sustainable development (SD) and its requirements for achieving sustainability in social housing provision (SHP); and examine the key constituents, barriers and recommendations for improving SSHP from economic, environmental and social perspectives. The methodology adopted for this research comprises a combination of the review of the extant literature, a qualitative content analysis and a quantitative questionnaire survey. The contents of the selected documents were grouped into three main categories – constituents, barriers and recommendations for implementing SSHP with economic, environmental and social key factors as sub-groups for each. Data gathered through the questionnaire survey were obtained from housing authorities (public sector) and housing associations (non-profit private sector) as social housing practitioners in England and were analysed using various statistical analysis, including ANOVA. Findings from the study assisted in ranking the key constituents, barriers and recommendations for the implementation of SSHP from economic, environmental and social perspectives, which are categorised into most critical, critical and less critical for achieving sustainability in SHP. The main factors that dominate SSHP include: affordability, adequate provision, adequate funding, economic design and planning, use of environmental friendly materials, effective land use, use of the renewable energy, reduction of waste, promotion of social cohesion, security of lives and property, etc. The outcome was used to develop a framework for improving the implementation of SSHP, which has been tested and validated. Although SD has become a dominant focus of research activities in recent years, studies undertaken for the development of a framework that tied constituents with barriers and recommendations for implementing SSHP are rare. The framework of this type can help to address various sustainability issues that militate against the achievement of sustainability in SHP. In order to achieve SSHP, the role of stakeholders, including social housing practitioners, governments/agencies, financial institutions and end-users are significant. The study concluded that there is a need to develop a framework for implementing SSHP with a strong recommendation that stakeholders should effectively address sustainability issues in SHP.

This thesis examines jointly the domestic and international market activities of United Kingdom (UK) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The study seeks to extend the foundational arguments of international business and international entrepreneurship on differences between domestic and international market activities. It is shown that despite its foundational nature, this theme has received limited and fragmentary research attention. Moreover, none of the theme-related studies identified had applied the resource-based view (RBV) to explain performance, despite the fact that performance is a construct of fundamental research interest and the RBV largely guides management inquiry into the performance determinants. Drawing on the RBV, this research seeks to make a unique contribution towards the holistic understanding of firm performance by uncovering the effects of domestic and international firm resources and market learning on both domestic and international performance. This research pursues a positivist and mixed-method approach, combining qualitative case studies and a large-scale quantitative survey on UK SMEs. The qualitative research phase consists of six case studies, whereas the quantitative phase is based upon a sample of 307 SMEs. The statistical technique of linear multiple regression analysis is employed to analyse this sample and discover whether the hypotheses of this research are supported. The quantitative phase is central and the qualitative phase aims at pre-understanding and facilitating the research process. Hence, the case study research assists the hypothesis development and the interpretation of the survey findings in retrospect. The findings of this research have significant implications for theory and practice. Firstly, domestic and international resources and market learning are found to influence positively domestic and international performance, respectively. A valuable finding for future research on firm market learning processes is that these resources effects seem to be much stronger than the respective market learning ones. Secondly, international resources are found to have a lesser impact on domestic SME performance compared to the effects of domestic resources on domestic performance. Respectively, domestic resources are indicated to have a lesser impact on international performance. Conversely, the equivalent effects of market learning are not established. Lastly, it is intriguing that: a. a positive relationship between domestic resources and international performance is not supported; and b. a negative relationship between international resources and domestic performance is partially supported. These contributions provide a fuller understanding of the complex relationship between domestic and international market activities, and should stimulate further research on this important theme.

This thesis was focussed on volunteering as a social legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (London 2012). The study identified a research gap with regard to the details on the processes through which the volunteering legacy can be achieved, for whom, in what circumstances and over which duration. Therefore, the overall purpose of this research was to explore the processes by which the London 2012 Volunteer Programme (the Games Maker Programme) was used to deliver a desired social legacy in the historical context of sport event volunteering in the UK, such as the XVII Commonwealth Games in Manchester (Manchester 2002), their Pre-Volunteer Programme (PVP) and Manchester Event Volunteers (MEV). This was done by means of examining volunteering experiences and volunteer management practices in the context of the Olympics as the least explored form of the Games-related legacy. The uniqueness and strength of this research was in its empirically grounded and historically informed case study with an embedded single-case design with multiple units of analysis, where the case was the Games Maker Programme and units of analysis – different aspects of the Programme. The study employed critical realism and interpretative constructivism as the basis of its philosophical framework. It used a ‘realist’ approach drawing on the basis of realist evaluation: context + mechanism = outcome (Pawson and Tilley, 1997). Elements of the Programme became the mechanisms activated under certain conditions (contexts) to trigger certain outcomes. A two-layered theoretical framework was applied to help study volunteering in the context of the Olympics. The research utilised the Legacy Cube by Preuss (2007) as an outer layer of the framework to help identify positive and negative, planned and unplanned, tangible and intangible structures associated with a social legacy and analyse them at specific time and space. The Volunteer Process Model by Omoto and Snyder (2002) served as an inner-layer of the framework that helped explore more in-depth personal attributes of London 2012 volunteers (Individual level), processes, experiences and consequences of their involvement, as well as the ingrained nature of volunteering in the institutional and cultural environments (Organisational and Societal levels). Longitudinal time horizon and mixed methods were used to collect a richer and stronger array of evidence to address the research aims and questions. Qualitative evidence included various documents, in-depth semi-structured interviews with volunteers (before and after London 2012) and managers (after London 2012), as well as participant observations carried out by the researcher before and during the Games. These qualitative elements were supplemented with an on-line survey of a broader cross section of volunteers. Thematic analysis was used to make sense of the large volume of data and provide foundations for the results and a subsequent discussion. The findings revealed that the London 2012 Volunteering Strategy had multiple stakeholders and aims, from running an excellent Games-time Volunteer Programme to creating a sustainable social legacy. Competing demands, poor coordination, the confusion over who is responsible for what outcomes, the lack of specific plans on how to achieve these outcomes and external factors related to changes in political environment and worsened socio-economic conditions in the UK contributed to a legacy not being realised to the extent it was hoped for. Therefore, declared commitments to Excellence, Equality and Diversity, One Games, UK-Wide, Exchange, Legacy and Partnership were limited in their capacity. Ultimately, the need to deliver the Games took a priority. Although the Games Maker Programme appeared to achieve its target to recruit, train and manage 70,000 volunteers to work in 3,500 Games-time roles, organisers were not always effective in providing volunteers with the best experience, which largely depended on volunteer roles, placements and a management style of immediate managers and team leaders. It came across as a surprising outcome, given that the successful organisation of the Games was largely in hands of volunteers. Therefore, if the commitment is to have an exemplary Games-time Volunteer Programme, then a priority should be to make those who freely devote their time and effort feel valued and provide them with an array of opportunities and benefits that encourage positive experiences. This, potentially, can contribute to a sustainable volunteering legacy beyond the Games.

This research explores how staff and managers conceptualise disabled people within the work setting. Despite anti-discriminatory legislation and government support schemes disabled people remain disadvantaged in terms of employment. The development of the social model of disability has challenged traditional concepts of disability. At the same time the disability movement has sought equality, including within employment. A key factor in the employment disadvantage of disabled people is held to be the discriminatory attitudes of employers and staff. This research presents a case study of managers and staff within a commercial organisation. To support the data analysis an analytical framework has been developed, utilising existing literature and grounded in Critical Systems Heuristics. The framework identifies different rationalities staff could hold in conceptualising disability within the workplace. A qualitative approach is used, generating rich data around the concepts the study group hold about disability and disabled people in the workplace. The analysis highlights that people hold ambivalent attitudes to disabled people within the workplace. Whilst generally sympathetic to the idea of greater numbers of disabled people in the workplace, they hold specific ideas that act as barriers to achieving this. These include conceptualising disabled people as less capable, anxieties over the impact on co-workers, and viewing work as generally fixed. This thinking is underpinned by how many people conceptualise work as competitive at an organisational and individual level and their perceptions of fairness, requiring disabled people to fit into work and not be treated radically differently to other workers. Rationality over disability and work is conflicted, with general sympathies over disability conflicting with anxieties over the actuality of disabled people in the workplace. It is argued that individuals rationalise this conflicted thinking by conceptualising disabled workers differently to disabled people. This is seen as significant in determining what is held as reasonable when accommodating disabled people, so becoming a driver of the overall approach to disability within the organisation. The research offers an original contribution to knowledge in terms of offering new insights about disability and employment. The research offers a new analytical framework based on rationality and a potential contribution to policy on disability and employment.