This thesis is a post-structuralist – ‘logics’/discourse analytic – account of the 2006-2011 struggle over plans to make the Health Professions Council (HPC) statutory regulator of the field of counselling and psychotherapy. I contextualise the plans in relation to the Government’s parallel Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme and the Skills for Health (SfH) project to map competencies within the field. These projects, along with HPC regulation, promised to render practice safe and effective. However, the HPC plans were seen by some as a threat to diversity within the field and were met with resistance from the (especially formed) Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy Against State Regulation. I assess these competing evaluations and argue that the HPC plans would have advanced a ‘transactional’ orientated regime, in which the field would have been assimilated to a more ‘consumerist’ and ‘transactional’ mould, and that in contrast, the Alliance were seeking to defend a more ‘contextual’ and ‘relational’ conceptualisation of practice in which expertise tends to be seen as co-created between client and practitioner. The HPC adopted a series of bald strategies to marginalise opposition voices, conditioned in part by structural features of the policy making process and supported by a ‘problem minority’ narrative in which inherent uncertainties about what counts as good and effective talking therapy are eclipsed from view by a near-exclusive focus on a minority of unethical and incompetent practitioners. The Alliance, for its part, I argue tended at times to espouse a position close to talking therapy ‘exceptionalism’, thus eclipsing similarities with more contextual healthcare imaginaries. Policy implications for regulation and policy making process are drawn out. More broadly my account contributes to literature which questions both the democratizing credentials and the often supposed ‘inevitability’ of the highly calculative forms of regulation and audit which are installed across the health and social care professions and which have constituted the so called rise of the regulatory state in recent decades.

This thesis examines the ways in which user-generated content (UGC) has been used by BBC journalists to cover the conflict in Syria, and how journalistic working practices have altered. The data collection methods included a content analysis of news reports about Syria which aired on BBC World News TV from 2011 to 2014, staff interviews and newsroom observations. Syria has been a challenging story to report as often news organisations have had very little, if any, presence in the country, forcing journalists to rely on UGC produced inside the country to depict events. Results show the task of sourcing UGC and putting it through a verification process involved a steep learning curve for many BBC journalists during the Arab uprisings and remains a complex process. Journalists and producers had to adapt to new ways of locating content, particularly on digital platforms, developing new skills to enable them to carry out ‘social media newsgathering’. In doing so they harnessed expertise from across the BBC, including BBC Arabic and BBC Monitoring. These changes have happened as the BBC has created more digital news products. However, there were systematic failings in the ways that BBC News passed on information about the UGC used in its news reports to its audiences, particularly verification warnings and the crediting of content. While journalists have become more social media and technology savvy, UGC is still not fully understood by BBC newsrooms, though it is regularly used to cover breaking stories and news. This thesis contributes to a body of literature examining how UGC is used by news outlets and also revisits established theories to consider the extent to which journalists continue to be information gatekeepers or ‘gatewatchers’ when audiences have access to news on numerous social, mobile and digital platforms.

Practice teachers within the UK National Health Service have had an unstable history during which their status has fluctuated. They belong to that category of occupations where there is a dual role identity, the practice teacher element being subordinate or secondary to a clinical role which is often aligned to additional leadership and management responsibilities. The secondary nature of the role contributes to the liminal status of this small professional group and this affects the professional identity of practice teachers and the extent to which the role can maintain itself and achieve recognition. This study seeks to reconcile identity and socio-material theory in order to offer innovative and original insights into how the practice teachers dual professional identity develops and how they learn and enact their role. This study develops empirical insights into the role and attributes of practice teachers and the context in which they work in order to produce a body of knowledge which could inform their preparation for the role. One to one interviews were carried out with ten practice teachers, four managers and eight specialist community nursing students in one region of the UK. In addition a focus group interview was conducted with six specialist community nurse educators drawn from a national organisation, and one to one interviews were conducted with the chair of a body representing nurse educators and a regulatory body representative. The analysis was framed by the socio-material literature and this illuminated the broader range of factors influencing learning and their impact upon professional roles. The findings suggest that health service reforms in recent years have led to the development of an efficiency driven model of health care and this impinges upon practice teacher roles and practice learning. The evidence indicated an absence of an infrastructure to support the practice teacher role in all its aspects and as a consequence the role is ambiguous and diffuse. A range of differing socio-material factors influence the specific localised contexts in which practice teachers experience and learn their role. As a consequence practice teacher roles are assembled in different ways and they are thus not a homogenous group. A corollary of this is that the professional identity of practice teachers is unstable and they have struggled to develop a shared identity. The findings depict practice teachers who have a capacity for self-determination and who are proactive in attempting to establish a more stable professional identity.

People with learning disabilities (PWLD) are a vulnerable group who frequently experience exclusion within society generally, do not often participate in research, and are usually left out of citizenship theorising. Observing the position of PWLD through a citizenship lens is useful in both highlighting the injustice suffered, the flaws of normative understandings of a concept that promises universal inclusion, and asks what form of citizenship do PWLD consider valuable. This thesis provides a narrative account of a group of PWLD perceptions and experiences of normative understandings of citizenship. Independence and participation in this normative sense are juxtaposed with the findings that the participants valued feelings of autonomy and inclusion above such normative acts, which are aligned with neoliberal assumptions whereby self-sufficiency, economic contributions and a normative conception of independence are revered. The citizenship of PWLD is in need of both recognition and redistributive address. The recognition of difference, positive representations, and the need for institutional respect for PWLD are found to be required on the one hand, and redistributive measures addressing economic marginalisation and being in a position where, as a group, PWLD are unable to achieve goals in line with a neoliberal value system. The thesis concludes that in order for PWLD to experience true inclusion it is necessary to remove discussions of citizenship from expectations in relation to the economy and the ability of the individual to meet neoliberal goals. This is a radical assertion, however, the research findings indicate that a focus on redistribution is central to the true inclusion of PWLD.

Whilst extensive research has been conducted on prisoners’ families in the last twenty years, it has mainly focused on the effects of parental imprisonment on either the children, their non-imprisoned carers, or women partners of male prisoners. While research concludes that imprisonment has far-reaching effects on families in general, less is known about the impact of parental incarceration on family relationships and, more specifically, on how different relationships within the same family unit are affected. The purpose of this study, which was conducted in Romania, is to explore the effects of family relationships on children of prisoners in particular. In doing so, children’s and mothers’ perspectives are analysed with respect to how fathers’ incarceration has affected them at the individual level. It then explores the impact of fathers’ imprisonment on the mother-child and mother-father relationships, highlighting their effects on children’s wellbeing. Parenting practices are also discussed in the context of parental imprisonment. The findings drawn from 15 interviews with children and 16 interviews with mothers suggest that fathers’ incarceration affects not only children and mothers separately, but also the relationships within the family. The relationship between the child and his/her mother goes through changes in terms of emotional support, communication, trust and freedom (for teenagers), and household responsibilities. Mothers’ and children’s narratives on the marital relationship before and during incarceration reveal that parents’ relationships are mainly focused on the children’s wellbeing and the household and that children have positive views on parenthood. However, this narrative differences where where children and mothers were victimized by the incarcerated father prior to imprisonment. The findings of the study are further explored using Bowlby’s (1969, 1973, 1980) attachment theory andBelsky’s (1984) model of competent parental functioning. The thesis concludes with ideas for future research, and implications for theory and policies.

Domestic burglars have presented a motivational mixture of acquisitive gain and interpersonal transaction but have often been differentiated by levels of perceived competence, acknowledging skills accrued through experience, often in neglect of the psychological underpinnings. In parallel, McAdams (1997) stressed the experiential nature of personal narratives, suggesting that a psychological and behavioural development could be tracked across offending histories. Offender narratives research however, has often centred on single crimes or brief periods of offending and has yet to fully address developmental processes. The thesis therefore, examined how levels of maturity, quantitative and qualitative aspects of previous offending and previous domain-specific experience affected development in domestic burglar behaviours, within a framework of narrative-based behavioural themes. Behaviours recorded by police in 673 solved domestic burglaries were utilized, together with the burglars’ prior offending records. Extensive Smallest space analysis revealed that for maturity, the adaptive theme was dominant, particularly in younger burglars, while the less task-focused expressive theme increased in percentage in older offenders. This was opposite to the linear, novice-to-expert ascension anticipated in experience- based typologies. Domestic burglary experience prompted expediency in adaptive offenders, continually developing aptitude in conservatives, but no form of development in expressives. Maturity produced a small degree of age-related behavioural change, while burglary experience led to perceptual and procedural developments, within task-focused themes only. Experience did not correlate with maturity, resulting in the conclusion that previous allusions to experience had in truth, been differentiations in narrative roles, the dominant behavioural influencer. This revised interpretation of behavioural development held substantial implications for the understanding of domestic burglar behaviour, and the effects of maturity and experience. Equally, the thesis presented a valuable fresh insight into domestic burglary narrative roles, which remained consistent with McAdams’ developmental framework.

Clinical leadership, along with other means such as whole system working and multi-disciplinary teams, has been promoted as an important method of engaging clinicians in reform and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare. Consequently, a key human resource strategy within NHS Scotland has been to invest in training and development to build clinical leadership capacity across the organisation. However, clinical leadership is a contested concept, with no readily accepted definition and is subject to debate between competing professional and managerial logics and identities. As such there has been little investigation into how clinical leaders’ identities are developed at an individual, relational and collective level, how such identity construction affects the development of clinical leaders, and how learning from such development can be transferred back into healthcare organisations. Thus, this thesis investigates the impact that development programmes can have on participants’ identities, through their human capital and social capital, and the organisational factors that influence the degree of learning transfer. Focusing on a phenomenological case study of an eighteen-month ‘flagship’ leadership development programme for senior clinical leaders across NHS Scotland, the thesis explores the notion of development programmes as ‘identity workspaces’ (Petriglieri, 2011) where participants can step back from their daily routines to reflect and work on their identities and examines whether such workspaces are seen as useful by participants and their managers. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, observation of key events and analysis of relevant policy, programme and participant documents. The longitudinal study, undertaken between December 2008 and May 2011, examines the processes, practices, and tensions underpinning leader and leadership identity development. It highlights the importance of studying not only how identities are constructed, maintained and regulated, but also how past identities are deconstructed and unlearned, and the emotional and psychological effects that these processes can have on clinicians. These data supported the view that identities are formed within social and discursive contexts and evolve and change over time in relation to an individual’s experiences and changes in the wider environment. They also provided support for the claim that leadership programmes can play an important role in the social construction of a leader’s identity as they initiate bonding, brokering, bridging, and legitimising activities which enhance their social capital and reaffirm their identity at a relational and collective level. However, for this identity to be embedded and sustained over time, individuals require a degree of autonomy to implement change as this both reinforces their own sense of self as a leader and encourages others to act reciprocally. Furthermore, developmental support was seen as necessary by participants to encourage a common understanding of leadership which enables the construction of leadership identities at a relational and collective level. Lastly, by examining how clinicians participating on the programme understood and enacted their dual-role, the thesis explores the diverse meaning attributed to the notion of clinical leadership. It considers the internal and external challenges facing clinical leaders and proposes that it is important for clinical leaders to assume a dual-professional identity that allows them to move from being a clinician to a professional clinical leader who combines clinical and leadership expertise. Thus, the thesis provides a contribution to the relatively limited academic literature on clinical leadership and professional leadership development more generally and adds to research on identity work, social identity theory and intellectual capital. In particular, it emphasises that working on and changing ones’ professional identity is not an easy process as it involves first deconstructing and unlearning past notions, beliefs and behaviours before a new sense of selves can be reconstructed. The research took place within a dynamic policy context that encompasses recent work on engaging clinicians in leadership, embedding strong clinical governance and accountability, and overcoming the economic challenges facing public services both in Scotland and the UK. The thesis makes a contribution to practice by informing ongoing policy relevant debates on leadership development and the value of clinical leadership as well as other dual-professional identities in the Scottish National Health Service and the Scottish Government.

This thesis is an attempt to understand the concept of the public sphere through applying it to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This requires understanding the era of the revolution of information and communication technology, as it has affected the structures of the Iranian public sphere. It also aims to understand the Iranian public sphere after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It tries to offer a complete picture of the Iranian public sphere, including its state and society. Here, both the concept of the public sphere and the Iranian public sphere are being used in order to understand each other. The concept of the public sphere, here, is understood as it covers all actions and reactions that occur in a country. Its contemporary model is one which greatly depends on the Internet and uses non-controllable freedoms. The aim is, therefore, to find out the nature of the Iranian public sphere after the Islamic Revolution and describe the role that the agents of both state and society play in the Iranian public sphere. To collect and analyse data, updated documents and methods are used. Thus, the thesis has used different resources including pictorial and online documents. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the collected data. It has partly been gained through online media observation to collect data, and content and discourse analysis to analyse it. Finally, by showing reactivity inside the Iranian public sphere, this thesis suggests that nondemocratic regimes cannot disable the public sphere totally and also the public sphere can be active even under the hegemony of non-democratic powers. However, activity does not necessarily mean strength, as the Iranian public sphere can be considered as active but also weak. That is mainly because most of its activities are fruitless ones.

This study explores the processes of joint working in mental health services, mandated by statute or regulation, between local organisations. The interest in doing so lies in examining the apparent contradiction of using compulsion to stimulate avowedly voluntary activity. A bespoke realist approach, aligning critical realism and aspects of realist evaluation, provided the framework for the study of examples of mandated joint working in two differing sites- aftercare (Section 117, Mental Health Act 1983), delayed transfers of care and the use of police powers (Section 136, Mental Health Act 1983). Nested case studies enabled comparison between two groups of organisations within and across the sites. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary analysis. Differences in implementation of these examples were found between the two sites, which stemmed from the relationships between processes and the contexts in which they were set. The study shows that mandating joint working can be necessary and productive. The study recommends that attention could be usefully given to the governance of complexity and of organisational and professional difference and, more specifically, to the circumstances of people in emotional distress.

Creating and maintaining brand identity is regarded as a formative brand building step with the benefits contributing to the creation of valuable brands. Consequently, research that provides brand identity management insights has the potential to be of considerable academic and managerial interest. Several brand identity frameworks have been published in the brand marketing literature. However, a reliable, valid and parsimonious brand identity scale has yet to be developed. This has restricted the academic community and practitioners from obtaining an empirically informed understanding of the construct’s dimensionality and influence on brand performance. Furthermore, the generic nature of these frameworks does not account for a specific goods or services context. Informed by these issues, a valid, reliable and parsimonious service brand identity scale was developed to reveal the construct’s dimensionality and assess its influence on brand performance in the UK’s IT service sector. A quantitative research design was employed to gather primary data with 421 senior executive working in the UK’s IT service sector. Following a series of pretests and a pilot study, Cronbach’s α and exploratory factor analysis were used to purify the measure. Confirmatory factor analysis then helped verify the exploratory factor structure and establish the psychometric properties of the scale. These analyses find support for a service brand identity scale comprising of five dimensions: employee and client focus, corporate visual identity, brand personality, consistent communications and human resource initiatives. The service brand identity scale is then incorporated into the full structural model to assess the construct’s influence on brand performance. Across the calibration, validation and full samples service brand identity has a positive and significant (p<0.001) influence on brand performance. The discussion outlines how these findings provide partial support for the dimensionality implied by existing conceptual brand identity frameworks. Furthermore, the data provides encouraging results for those that wish to invest in brand identity given the construct’s positive and significant influence on brand performance. Concluding remarks highlight theoretical and managerial implications with limitations and directions for future also being noted.