Ethnicity has always been regarded as a central issue in Malaysia’s socio-political and economic spheres. Whilst it is true that the country has been able to sustain a relatively stable political economy, at least since the Malay-Sino Riot of 1969, Malaysian inter-ethnic relationships remain fragile and delicate. This thesis explores the importance of ethnicity for Malaysians by focusing on the relationships between Malay and Chinese students in Penang and Glasgow. Drawing upon data acquired from fifty-five interviews, observations and secondary data analysis, the thesis locates the importance of ethnicity within a dialectical relationship between the State (Malaysia’s societal structures of family, education, occupation and politics) and the everyday actors (understanding, experiences and challenges). In this way, the thesis presents an analysis of the complex ways in which ethnic identification and categorisation are practised at the macro-structural level, and explores their intersection with a wide range of individual and collective identities. The thesis also seeks to challenge the identity of the Malaysian ethnic and nation-state epistemology, arguing that the knowledge which it produces contributes to the formulation and maintenance of ethnic boundaries in the Malaysian everyday understanding. In contrast to the primordial understanding of ethnicity, this thesis argues from an instrumentalist standpoint for an understanding that the boundaries were socially constructed for instrumental ends led by the State elites. The findings suggest that the importance of ethnicity in Malaysia is beyond the everyday manifestation of identity. It involves several overlapping concerns of the boundaries – religious and cultural – which by habitus were built to become the essence of Malay-ness and Chinese-ness. Its practicality, however, is contextual and situational depending on locations, needs, regionality and interlocutors. The results were seen in the diversity of choices made by respondents in their spouse or partner preferences, social networks, education, occupation and political views.

Health inequalities are known to be prevalent in Britain. Though testing hypothesised pathways between socio-economic position and biological markers of health, this thesis aims to improve understanding of how socio-economic inequality becomes health inequality and how physiology is affected by socio-economic position. Using Understanding Society data, access is gained to a range of biomarkers collected cross-sectionally from an adult age range. Methods such as regressions, decompositions and mixed-models are used to identify mediators of SEP’s association with grip strength, self-reported type two diabetes, glycated haemoglobin and lung function. The mediators explored are material deprivation and exposures, psychosocial stress and health behaviours. Using retrospective socio-economic position measures, consideration is paid to the timing of disadvantage, while the wide age range enables identification of when inequalities emerge. Disadvantaged socio-economic position in childhood and adulthood were negatively associated with grip strength, though the gradient does not emerge until mid-adulthood. Health behaviours only slightly mediated this association and childhood socio-economic position continued to be important in adulthood. Support was found for mediation of socio-economic position’s association with self-reported type two diabetes, but not with glycated haemoglobin. The mediation was mainly via obesity with no significant mediation through material deprivation, psychosocial stress or health behaviours. Inequalities in lung function were observable at all adult ages and appeared to worsen with increasing age. Material exposures and health behaviours mediated this. Childhood socio-economic position was important in adulthood and moderated the effect of some exposures and health behaviours. This thesis finds that early disadvantage can have lasting effects. The lack of support for mediation in some outcomes suggests the need to address social inequalities directly, while the identification of mediating mechanisms in other outcomes indicates ways to alleviate these processes.

This thesis presents detailed accounts of policymaking in contemporary risk communication arenas where strong power dynamics are at play, but which have hitherto lacked theoretical depth and empirical validation. Specifically, it expands on the understanding of how policy decisions are made where there is a weak evidential base and where multiple interpretations, power dynamics and values are brought to bear on public health risk issues. The aim of the study is to understand the role of power and expertise in public health risk communication as it relates to policy making. This research describes case studies and relied largely upon published sources of data because it was determined that these captured stakeholder inputs, reflected the debates, drew differentially on evidence and experts, would provide greater insight to each of the cases and were more readily comparable across cases. These sources included published peer reviewed articles, press releases, statements and official documents from government departments and organisations, reports from non-governmental organisations, scientific committee reports, media and newspaper sources. The findings indicate that public health risk communication as it relates to policy making is a process embedded in institutional, productive and structural dimensions of power. This suggests that there are several underlying (and salient) mechanisms of power that shape how risk is communicated and in particular, whose expertise is called upon and whose voices are heard. Further analysis of the cases indicates that ‘power’ in public health risk communication may be expressed through technical expertise, control of communication and creation of trust (through scientific credibility) such that an argument (within a set of risk arguments) may become amplified (or dominant) in the policy context. These findings are conceptualised into a new model - a policy evaluation risk communication (PERC) framework by identifying key themes that shape social amplification (or attenuation) of risk. The study contributes to the growing literature on risk communication by advancing knowledge about the role of power and expertise. Testing of the PERC framework further enabled this study to extend the existing conceptualisation of social amplification of risk framework (SARF) from the power and expertise perspective, and to inform the critique of the framework in extant literature. The study also shed light on policy making in situations of risk and uncertainty. Further research should aim at using primary data (such as elite interviews) in investigating the role of power and expertise in risk communication.

This thesis investigates the development of a practice-based approach to youth justice – the Whole System Approach (WSA) in Scotland. Introduced nationally in 2011, the WSA aims to improve long-term outcomes for children and young people in the youth justice system by diverting them away from statutory measures. This PhD focuses on two key strands of the WSA which deal with low to mid-level level offending: Early and Effective Intervention and Diversion from Prosecution. After a punitive period in Scottish youth justice policy in the early 2000s, the WSA signalled a return to welfarist principles based on multi-agency working between statutory and non-statutory organisations. A mixed method case study of the implementation of the approach in one local authority was conducted to provide an in-depth account of the development of Early and Effective Intervention and Diversion from Prosecution; considering these within the local context. Interviews with practitioners involved in these processes on the ground revealed intricacies of the daily implementation of the WSA in practice. Interviews with policy actors enabled perspectives on the national implementation of the WSA particularly around variations in national practice and long-term sustainability. Triangulating referral data on a sample of 65 cases of children and young people alongside interviews provides an illustrative case study of these processes and the use of restorative justice as a disposal in the case study area. Locating this research within an existing body of literature on street-level bureaucracy and criminal justice decision-making, this thesis provides a new perspective on youth justice multi-agency implementation and decision-making. This research found that the translation of the WSA into practice was premised on holistic operational understandings. This thesis provides a unique case study on the implications of increased local autonomy in youth justice within the context of central-local governance reform as well as a narrative of how youth justice practice evolved in a changing political, structural and organisational context. The new multi-agency modes of working under the WSA have led to the sharing of expertise in decision-making, as well as an increase in disposals available to gatekeepers, but have ultimately retained autonomy for decision-making within key youth justice organisations. For 16 and 17-year-olds in transition from the youth to adult system, this thesis sheds light on perceptions of this group and how decision-making rests on their responsibilisation, leaving this group very much at the interface of, and overlapping, two systems. Overall, this thesis has several policy and practice implications, which may serve to take deliberations about youth justice in Scotland forward.

Lifespan variation captures variation in age at death within a population as opposed to the inequality in average health that exists between populations. Higher lifespan variation equates to greater total inequality and is negatively correlated with life expectancy. Lifespan variation has not previously been measured for Scotland, where life expectancy and mortality rates are the worst in Western Europe. Routinely measuring lifespan variation in Scotland contributes to understanding the extent, and changing nature, of mortality inequalities. Lifespan variation estimates were calculated using data from the Human Mortality Database and from Census population estimates, vital events data and the Carstairs Score. Analyses included joinpoint regression, Age-specific decomposition, Monte Carlo simulation, slope index of inequality, relative index of inequality, and Age-cause specific decomposition. Males in Scotland experience the highest level of lifespan variation in Western Europe, increasing since the 1980s: the longest sustained increasing trend found in Western Europe. Increasing mortality rates across working adult ages account for Scotland’s diverging trend. This age pattern of mortality was not evident in England and Wales. Lifespan variation for males in the most deprived quintile was higher in 2011 than in 1981 and the socioeconomic gradient steepened. Premature deaths from external causes of death accounted for an increasing proportion of lifespan variation inequalities. Without tackling the root causes of social inequality Scotland may struggle to reduce total inequality and improve its lifespan variation ranking within Western Europe.

Management accounting and control research in developing countries has neglected gender issues. Focusing on management controls over marginalised female workers in Sri Lankan tea plantations, this thesis tries to fill this gap. It takes a postcolonial feminist perspective to theorise ethnographic accounts of mundane controls. The findings illustrate that there are 'embedded‘ controls through colonial and postcolonial legacies, which made the female workers 'double colonised‘. The notion of subalternity captures these repressive forms of controls in their work as tea pluckers. However, postcolonial transformations created a space for resistance against these controls. This shaped a subaltern agency and emancipation and gave rise to a more enabling form of postcolonial management control. The thesis contributes to debates in postcolonial feminist studies in organisations and management control research in general, and management control research in developing countries, in particular.

Cruise ship workers and cruise ship employment are commonly described in popular literature as the stories of either ‘perfect workers in a dream job’ or ‘exploited workers on sweatships’. However, these popular portrayals tend to overlook the social and economic complexities of the work and the diversity of subjective experiences amongst cruise sector seafarers. To address this gap, this study investigates the social representations of the working lives of seafarers on-board cruise ships. Using the case of Filipino seafarers, one of the nationalities with the largest proportion of workers in the cruise ship sector, this study explores how workers in a globalised industry make sense of their employment experiences in relation to their lives. Q-methodology, a systematic research approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods in studying perspectives, was used to identify shared viewpoints on the working lives of cruise ship employees. Participants were asked to rank-order a set of 48 statements, which represent a range of occupational, organisational and work-related issues that they faced throughout their employment experience, along a fixed grid of agreement/disagreement taking the shape of an inverted pyramid grid (Q-sorts). Participants were also interviewed to elicit the rationales and narratives behind their sorting decisions. Factor analysis of 99 completed Q-sorts yielded four factors which were interpreted as ‘work-views’ or shared and holistic viewpoints on working lives. The accounts of ‘Good-fit’, ‘Troubled’, ‘Professional’ and ‘Ambivalent’ workers capture a more nuanced social representation of the working lives of cruise ship employees than those commonly presented in popular literature. These accounts of the working lives of cruise sector seafarers are discussed, in terms of the concept of work orientation, to highlight the workers’ multiple motivations and expectations of cruise ship employment, and to illustrate the embeddedness of work attitudes in social relationships on-board and in the communities of origin.

This thesis is an empirical investigation of public policy-making and government action in the UK. It presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the work practices of a team of middle-ranking civil servants in DEFRA, the UK government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Analysis relies on data generated over a period of one year of research placement in the Department's headquarters in London, during which the author witnessed, and to an extent participated to, the everyday activities of policy officers. The inquiry is framed around the problem of establishing empirical grounds for the study of public policy-making. The methodology the study uses combines elements of traditional ethnographic studies of work in organisations with the more recent theoretical background informing workplace studies. The interest is first and foremost micro-sociological, with a view of capturing language, discursive practices and practical reasoning and analyse them as local, ongoing accomplishment of office work. An objective of the inquiry is to detail the status of 'sustainable consumption' policies in the United Kingdom during the period of participant observation (2011-2012). The analysis clarifies upon which formal or informal sources of knowledge policymakers drew in designing policies and interventions, and it describes the tasks and the work associated with policy development. Through the analysis of this ‘policy work’, the thesis also provides a larger picture of the ways policies and policy options are progressed or dismissed by the government through the work of Departments. Practices of project management, risk management and knowledge brokerage are considered and examined.

The study examines the emergence of broad-based community organising in the UK and how it informs understanding of civil society and its capacity to effect social and political change. The thesis can be stated simply as follows: Broad-based community organising represents a new and distinct form of civil society-driven politics in the UK, building the power of civil society organisations to more effectively engage in public life to effect social and political change. Deserving of special attention, it is argued, are those civil society organisations which develop sufficient power and legitimacy to act politically in the public sphere, both in contesting and holding the state and market to account and in pushing the boundaries of civility and social justice. Employing a critical social theory paradigm, broad-based community organising is understood as a distinctive political methodology, ontologically rooted in civil society and epistemologically based upon the central concept of power. The body of work provides a coherent, original and significant contribution to knowledge of broad-based community organising within the context of the UK and to broader questions about the nature of civil society and its role in effecting social and political change.

This thesis presents an empirical study of the effects of Customer Ren Orientation on Harmony, Business Relationship, Service Quality and Loyalty in the context of Chinese culture. Ren is a deeply embedded Chinese value in Chinese society. Actually, using Ren to deal with conflicts in various situations in the Chinese community is common. Nowadays, Chinese culture of Ren seems to emerge as a genuine gap that needs to be further investigated for the following reasons. Ren tends to affect business relationships between customers and service providers and consumers’ evaluations of these relationships. Clearly, the research gap is not about having a new model for cultural values but about understanding the identified Chinese cultural value of Ren that affects business practice. This study attempts to attain two objectives. The first objective is to construct a scale for Customer Ren Orientation as a tool for measuring the concept of Customer Ren Orientation because it is not available in the business-to-customer context. The second objective of the study is to develop a conceptual model of Customer Ren Orientation that conceptually correlates Customer Ren Orientation with Harmony, Business Relationship, Service Quality and Loyalty. This model comprises five constructs. The independent variable of Customer Ren Orientation and four dependent variables are used in the study. In other words, Customer Ren Orientation serves as an antecedent of Harmony, Business Relationship and Service Quality. This study starts with a review of the previous literature on the concept of Ren with a specific emphasis on Chinese literature related to the research topic, followed by the discussion of the conceptual model of Customer Ren Orientation and other related constructs such as Harmony, Business Relationship, Service Quality and Loyalty. In addition, a two-stage research design was adopted to gather relevant data using qualitative research and quantitative research. A two-stage research design was used. In the first stage, qualitative research included focus group discussions and expert opinions. In the second stage, quantitative research included the following activities: quasi-experimental design, sampling, questionnaire design, data collection and scale development. A total of 384 respondents successfully completed the interview. The reliability and the validity of the measurement scales used in this research are considered reasonably good quality. The data fit the business model of Customer Ren Orientation well. GFI, CFI, SRMR, RMSEA and normed chi-square (X²/df) showed that the data fit reasonably well with the hypothesised model. The results of the data analysis indicate that all proposed eight hypotheses were supported. In this study, both AMOS and SmartPLS were adopted, and the latter is to deal with the interaction effect and the quadratic effect that cannot be dealt with by AMOS. Finally, this study makes the following important contributions: firstly, there is a strong triangular relationship among Customer Ren Orientation, Harmony and Business Relationship. In other words, without Harmony and Business Relationship, the effect of Customer Ren Orientation on Loyalty will be greatly reduced. Secondly, Harmony has a quadratic effect on Service Quality, and Harmony is a nonlinear form has a direct effect on Service Quality. Thirdly, there is an interaction effect of Customer Ren Orientation and Business Relationship on Service Quality. That is the relationship between Business Relationship and Service Quality which is moderated by Customer Ren Orientation. Lastly, a Customer Ren Orientation scale and a business model of Customer Ren Orientation have been developed on the basis of extant literature review and empirical research.