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This thesis consists of three self-contained experimental studies focusing on conformity behavior in the leader appointment process, self-group risk preferences of elected leaders and performance feedback mechanisms. In Chapter 1, I investigate discrimination against women in election settings and whether group dynamics undermine women’s chances to become leaders. I conduct a voting experiment which tests the effect of the candidate’s gender on voting behavior, and the role of conformity. Consistent with the predictions of a simple model, subjects tend to vote for candidates who exhibit similar (risk) preferences. Information on the gender of the candidates mitigates proximity concerns of the voter especially in favor of the male candidate. Yet, there is no conclusive result for the gender bias. The results also confirm that conformity is a significant factor in group decision-making. In Chapter 2, I analyze the mechanism which induces the difference between self and group risk attitudes of elected leaders. I focus on two motivations: a “leadership effect”, that is created by the competition and the sense of responsibility of the leadership status, and a “group concern” of the leader. The results show that elected leaders significantly become more risk-seeking when deciding on behalf of a group compared to their individual decisions. Meeting the expectations of group members seems the main driver of this observed behavioral change. In Chapter 3, in a setting where feedback is given strategically by a supervisor, we theoretically and experimentally analyze how employees interpret the received feedback in forming beliefs of themselves and whether feedback communicates the iv actual performance information truthfully. We found that information transmission occurs only in verifiable feedback mechanisms and private-verifiable is the most informative mechanism. We observed lying-aversion among principles: the results indicate a lying cost, and there is a tendency to send the true information where lying is profitable.

The thesis contributes to generating an understanding of the role of management accounting practices in shaping efficiency in a Colombian Utility Conglomerate (CUC) . Data for the thesis was derived from multiple sources including interviews, non-participative observations and document analysis, reports and archives about CUC, which has helped to understand the studied phenomenon. The thesis, which builds on structuration theory (Giddens 1984, Giddens 1993), delineates the interplay between social structures and agency at CUC, the way this interplay led to the reproduction of the very notion of efficiency. In addition, the thesis extends the work of Englund and Gerdin (2008) by illustrating how management accounting practices can be analytical constructs integrating not only situated recurrent (inter-)actions but also the structural principles that underline those practices. Thus, the thesis analyses the influence of the managerial autonomy, the long-term financial approach and the technostructure in shaping efficiency at CUC (Aristizábal et al. 1988, López 2005, Varela 2011). Additionally, the thesis analyses the broader influence of the School of Mines and multilateral development banks to enable an understanding of why management accounting practices shape efficiency at CUC. The approach of structuration theory applied enables move beyond how efficiency is understood within New Public Management reforms, to consider the way how CUC manages to adapt the structural adjustments as demanded by multilateral development banks. The empirical insights show that in CUC efficiency is constructed more as a corporate value exercised through management accounting practices rather than being an exclusive indicator calculated through input/output relationships. The analysis unfolds how CUC creatively undertook the changes and adjustments to enable a public company to work with the profitability criteria prevailing in private enterprises. In this way, the thesis demonstrates how social structures related to utility companies as profitable businesses and public utilities as economic commodities are reproduced through management accounting practices in a public company within a Latin-American emerging economy.

Equality and Diversity (E&D) training is currently a widely used practice which aims to improve E&D in workplaces, including universities. There has been considerable research on contemporary E&D training from the perspective of management studies, with an interest in evaluation of efficacy. However, E&D training has been a neglected topic in the sociology of education, and there have been few studies illuminating what happens in E&D training using ethnographic data. This thesis begins to fill that gap with an in-depth ethnographic exploration of present day E&D training for staff at universities. In this thesis, I ask how the prevalence of E&D training came about, and what exactly happens in E&D training? I place contemporary E&D training in its socio-historical context by tracing the historical roots of E&D as a practice. I show that those roots lie in the social psychology of the 1920s in the USA, which was beginning to operationalise the concepts of attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices. These psychological ideas are intertwined with the development of E&D training and continue to be significant components of training today. Tracing this history to the UK shows that training has grown as a response to police racism, and extended to become a technique for responding to other forms of oppression such as sexism and disablism. The ethnographic research was undertaken at universities in England and Wales. The findings show that E&D training in its current form usually attempts to cover several axes of oppression during one half-day session. The pedagogic techniques used are primarily didactic teaching and small group discussions, while the curriculum is dominated by two forms of knowledge – legal and psychological. Where the law forms the curriculum of the training, I argue that the complexity of the Equality Act 2010 makes it difficult to use the concepts and vocabulary of the Act to convey a consistent analysis of discrimination. Where psychological concepts inform the training, psychology is used to claim that everyone inevitably has prejudices and biases. I argue that as well as depoliticising the concept of discrimination, this can be understood as a way of navigating around trainees’ anxieties about being identified with the discursive figure of the ‘bigot’. I argue that neither approach effectively overcomes the pedagogic challenges of E&D training.

The likelihood that natural resource extraction will deliver benefits to inhabitants of local communities which host the extraction venture has become a salient point in the sub-Saharan African context. It is because although the continent has seen an upsurge in resource extraction activities, the continent still features prominently in the “resource curse” debate. The “resource curse” is a phenomenon where countries which have abundant natural resources such as oil and gas, perform badly in economic development and governance compared to countries with fewer resources (Humphreys et al., 2007). Although the “resource curse” is a global occurrence it is particularly prevalent in resource-rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the prevalence of the resource curse in Africa, international financial institutions, national governments, leaders and inhabitants of the region continue to see the extraction of natural resource as a route out of poverty, especially for local communities which host extraction activities. This thesis focuses on the case of Ghana, a new addition to the bloc of oil-producing countries to assess whether expectations of resource benefits by inhabitants of the oil region will materialise. I used a qualitative approach, so I conducted semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in Ghana’s oil and gas industry. The exploration of the social, economic and environmental impact of oil drilling and exploitation on the study community revealed that contrary to expectations of benefits, no beneficial outcomes accrued to inhabitants of the community. There were instead reports of challenges with fishing activities such as decreased fish catch levels, longer time spent at sea and the presence of seaweed which affected fishing activities negatively. The main conclusion of this thesis is that resource-rich communities who do not have the “power” cannot compel governments of developing countries to institute resource intervention projects for them. This thesis, therefore, recommends that communities must capitalise on elections which gives them “power” over governments.

The concept of service user participation in the delivery of services that affect them has gained momentum over the last thirty years. Children are no exception to this and those in care are subject to greater scrutiny of their lives than their peers. This study considered a key meeting for children in care – the Child in Care Review – and examined the extent to which children and young people are able to participate in these meetings and retain a level of control over their lives. The research, undertaken in one large local authority in England, explored the perspectives of children and young people, Social Workers, Independent Reviewing Officers and Senior Managers in individual qualitative interviews. The interview data was analysed thematically. The study found that young participants who reported a poor relationship with their Social Worker were more likely to feel negatively about their review and most young participants said that they found the review frustrating and stressful. The young participants were very aware of the workload pressures that Social Workers faced and how bureaucratic processes often seemed to translate in to them not receiving a good service. The Social Workers and Independent Reviewing Officers highlighted the importance of children’s participation, but in practice their commitment to the concept seemed minimal. Data would suggest some significant disconnection between Senior Managers’ views and all other participants’ perspectives on the challenges faced by social workers in terms of caseloads and workload pressures. Senior Managers reflected that little seemed to have changed in relation to children’s participation in their reviews over the last twenty-five years. The thesis concludes that as a vehicle for participation the Child in Care Review is still not working well, however the development of children chairing their own reviews offers some hope for the future. This practice could be built upon to ensure that children and young people leave Local Authority care with the best possible chance of becoming confident, stable and empowered adults.

This thesis is an ethnography of care work conducted in two differently priced private residential homes for older people in Southern England. Drawing upon around eight hundred hours of participant observation and interviews undertaken with thirty care workers, I examine the everyday interactions, routines, and rituals of care work. I identify how political-economic factors, working conditions, material resources, and workplace cultures produce particular kinds of care and I consider the contribution which social theory can make to sharpening our understanding of the care industry. I begin by exploring how work is divided-up, scheduled, and allocated to care workers and how, by defining what activities are of value, these forms of organising work shape the content and nature of caregiving. I extend this analysis of the everyday rituals and routines of care work by focusing in particular on care workers’ attitudes and practices concerning hygiene and bodily waste, and dying and death. Here, care workers’ ideas about the private and the public, the dirty and the clean, and the profane and the sacred, are established and reaffirmed by marking out boundaries between materials, spaces, and persons. The research shows how the availability of material resources, by facilitating or impeding such symbolic work, shapes care workers’ ability to show respect and moral regard towards the individuals in their care. Whilst it is undeniable that the funding of care is directly linked to the quality of the service provided, this research argues that we also need a cultural and material architecture of care that is sensitive to our need for moral and symbolic treatment.

This is a narrative inquiry in which I asked six master's level students at a University in the North of England to reflect on their experience of using social media as the learning platform for part of a taught module. I was motivated by the growing ubiquity of such approaches in higher education and by the need to develop rational, just and sustainable online pedagogies that are alert to both the opportunities and threats of this shift in medium. My research questions, framed from a Bourdieusian perspective were: - To what extent is symbolic violence evident within a social learning network for master's level students at a UK University? - What forms does such symbolic violence take and how are these forms affected by the medium? - What kinds of dispositions, abilities and assets constitute and confer capital in this setting? In answering these questions, I trace symbolic violence in the online exchanges between participants and in the consequences of those exchanges. I develop an index of digital capital to describe the dispositions, abilities and assets that they needed to profit from learning in this way, along with a notion of digital hiatus to describe what happened when they lacked such capital. At the same time, I acknowledge the positive impacts of this approach on some of the participants. I locate this research within the literature on social media use for education and more specifically within the subset of that literature that uses Bourdieu's ideas to explore digital inequality. I also locate it within the institutional context of a post-1992 UK university, the national policy context and the economic context for the growing use of technology in Education. I conclude by reviewing the benefits and limitations of the methodology and theoretical frameworks adopted and by considering the potential uses of my index of digital capital, identifying how this might be explored in future studies.

Mainstreaming gender within reconstruction is vital to enhance sustainable development in disaster affected regions. Promoting needs and concerns of women and men as well as their experience and knowledge in all process of reconstruction can fulfill sustainable post-disaster reconstruction. Studies have found that failure to address gender issues in post-disaster reconstruction will hinder the opportunities of reconstruction to achieve sustainable development. Yet, many cases of reconstruction activities across developing countries failed to promote gender mainstreaming. This research aims to provide policy-relevant findings regarding strategies for mainstreaming gender with the aim of achieving sustainability in post-earthquake reconstruction in Indonesia. The case of gender mainstreaming issues at post-disaster reconstruction at Bantul and Sleman Yogyakarta Indonesia were examined. Multiple case studies were applied to achieve the aim and objectives of the study. Accordingly, the sequential mixed-method approach was used with the primary data collection methods are semi-structure interviews and questionnaires. For analyzing the qualitative data, the study chooses content analysis technique along with descriptive and inferential statistics that be used for quantitative data analysis. This study confirms that women are not only more vulnerable but also have a larger number of vulnerabilities. Women face all dimensions of gender vulnerability during reconstruction. Among the most vulnerable groups are pregnant women, women with disabilities and older women. Despite their vulnerability, women can make a difference during reconstruction through their economic, social and environmental capacities. This study shows that women’s capacities in the economic, social and environmental dimensions not only substantially reduce their families’ and communities’ vulnerability but also enhance the sustainability of their families and communities following an earthquake. This study further shows that gender mainstreaming strategies within sustainable reconstruction should incorporate not only strategies for protecting against gender vulnerabilities but also strategies for promoting gender capacities. Both are fundamental to the achievement of sustainable reconstruction. Further, this study presents key enabling and constraining factors in the mainstreaming gender into sustainable post-disaster reconstruction. These stem from government, non-government organizations, and society. The key enabling factor on the part of government is strong women’s leadership, while the key enabling factor from society is support from active roles for women’s groups. This study shows that adequate technical and financial supports are the key factors from non-government organizations. The key constraining factor from the government is resistance from senior bureaucrats.

Stereotype, as a ubiquitous and persistent social phenomenon, has been a key issue in social psychology for some ninety or so years since Lippmann introduced it into social science in 1922. However, “Stereotypes wear the black hats in social science” (Schneider, 2004:1) and, to some extent, stereotypes themselves have been stereotyped, as the traditionally held view has focused on the negative values of stereotyping and viewed it as a static factor in social perception. In this view, stereotypes were considered to be overgeneralisations, inaccurate assumptions, and the cognitive roots of prejudice even discrimination, which are best avoided. Stereotypes have recently claimed an important place in the field of intergroup relations and intercultural communication, but reciprocal interaction between self- and other- perceptions across different ethnic groups in the cross-cultural context has gone largely un-discussed in cross-cultural pragmatic studies. This thesis is an attempt to fill the void by theoretically situating in cross-cultural pragmatics, and empirically investigating one cross-cultural pairing, i.e., British and Chinese overseas students. Moreover, this work will focus on the conventional but perennial issues in stereotype research, i.e., the accuracy, role and pragmatic functions of stereotyping as realised in an interactive context. A mixed methods research methodology has been employed as a procedure for collecting, analysing, and integrating both qualitative and quantitative data in two consecutive phases: (1) focus group interview; (2) questionnaire survey. The aim is to build a holistic perspective to illuminate the research questions. The objectives are to probe the cross-cultural practitioners’ first-hand stereotypical perceptions of self and others through their interactive practice, generate insights into the impact and pragmatic functions of stereotyping, and thereby shed light on stereotype research. This thesis serves to assess the evidence of ‘kernel of truth’ hypothesis and bridge the divergences between British stereotypes of Chinese people and Chinese stereotypes of themselves and vice-versa. Ultimately, therefore, the stereotyping is demonstrated as pragmatic device to assist interactants in achieving more harmonious and mutually beneficial interactions as what is perceived can help interactants predict, expect, and explain what is meant in specific cultural context.