This thesis investigates the relationships between surveillance, acts of resistance to surveillance and their respective roles in the contemporary social order. The context for this investigation is the contemporary ‘information society’. This is characterised by globally networked information and communication technologies, and is represented most plainly by one medium in particular: the Internet. The Internet has historically been a contested domain; it represents, for some, the cornerstone of civil liberties yet at the same time it is highly regulated and susceptible to control. The significant social, cultural, economic and political impacts of the Internet include the proliferation of techniques of digital surveillance. However, while the Internet has facilitated the growth of these practices, it has also created new opportunities for resistance to surveillance. By attending to the social dynamics and mechanics of resistance, we can generate more nuanced and subtle understandings of the ways in which social control is being performed. A framework of nodal governance steers this research. Consequently, this study locates these dynamics within three specific sites: online civil society, the regulatory process and the media. These cases demonstrate how a range of social actors, across a variety of settings, are implicated in the dynamics of digital surveillance and resistance. An innovative, multi-strategy approach to the fieldwork, including computational social science methods, captures these emergent dynamics as they are played out. The analysis of the data is guided by a theoretical preoccupation with control that serves to illustrate its plural and fluid character. Central to this are social and technological networks as forms of organisation and communication that facilitate surveillance and resistance. The thesis concludes that contemporary social control is an inherently socio-technical process, shaped primarily by dynamics of digital surveillance and resistance.

In this thesis, we evaluate consumer purchase behaviour from the perspective of heuristic decision making. Heuristic decision processes are quick and easy mental shortcuts, adopted by individuals to reduce the amount of time spent in decision making. In particular, we examine those heuristics which are caused by framing – prospect theory and mental accounting, and examine these within price related decision scenarios. The impact of price framing on consumer behaviour has been studied under the broad umbrella of reference price, which suggests that decision makers use reference points as standards of comparison when making a purchase decision. We investigate four reference points - a retailer's past prices, a competitor's current prices, a competitor's past prices, and consumers' expectation of immediate future price changes, to further our understanding of the impact of price framing on mental accounting, and in turn, contribute to the growing body of reference price literature in Marketing research. We carry out experiments in which levels of price frame and monetary outcomes are manipulated in repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Our results show that where these reference points are clearly specified in decision problems, price framing significantly affects consumers' perceptions of monetary gains derived through discounts, and leads to reversals in consumer preferences. We also found that monetary losses were not sensitive to price frame manipulations.

Finding ways to reintegrate ex-prisoners into Jamaican society is a pressing but complex social, economic and moral issue. This is due, not least, to the financial costs of prison recidivism and growing concern over the Jamaican state’s capacity to meet the needs of a large number of its citizens subject to forced repatriation to their homeland by overseas jurisdictions due to their offending. The absence of a mature and reliable evidence base about the extent and nature of criminal recidivism in Jamaica also contributes to the challenges faced by policy makers and service providers seeking to reduce incidence of crime. This is in part related to the dearth of research on what is a sizeable and multi-faceted subject matter which has impeded a more decisive and progressive political and policy response. While there are generic criminological themes in regard to recidivism, desistance and reintegration of offenders that cross international boundaries (see Harriott 2000; Headley 2006), there remains the not inconsiderable challenge of identifying culturally specific features that bear upon crime and the policies and programmes that might encourage sustained abstinence from offending and which could be better served by a distinctive Caribbean criminological epistemology. To that end, this exploratory study seeks to offer insights into the social worlds of male and female offenders in Jamaica in order to better understand what they deem to be the influences that led them to crime and those which might at least assist them in desisting from law-breaking. The study is based upon a largely qualitative research design comprising semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Some 54 inmates participated who had received more than one prison sentence and in that sense are termed here a ‘recidivist’, albeit the contested nature of this term and related key concepts such as desistance and reintegration will be subject to scrutiny in the early chapters of this thesis. One other inmate who could not be regarded a prison recidivist mainly because he was awaiting trial on this his second time in prison was interviewed in prison and added to the study. All 55 interviews and most focus groups were conducted with persons being held in three of Jamaica’s maximum security correctional facilities. In addition, eighteen other individuals who had managed to stay out of prison following their release were interviewed within the community. A further set of interviews were conducted with 17 organisational leaders and spokespeople representing state and voluntary agencies engaged in the process of offender reintegration. Their perspectives reveal illuminating contrasts with those provided by the ex-prisoners about the likely ingredients of an effective return to a life without serious offending. The findings will hopefully assist policy makers and professionals in thinking about the steps that might be taken to tackle Jamaica’s high rate of serious crime. As the findings will suggest, such steps must involve a renewed understanding, sense of belief and commitment towards effective reintegration. Additionally, there needs to be a more robust conviction that persons leaving prison can indeed change but that they face embedded hostility and exclusion from a number of quarters. This study provides insights into why ex-prisoners believe that there is resistance amongst influential others in the community to accepting them as ‘reformed’. Such perspectives should assist local agencies in better understanding the impact of negative community attitudes and point to ways to counter social exclusion and help promote effective reintegration. Moreover, the findings point to the importance of strategies at national and local level that can bestow upon ex-prisoners a more meaningful sense of belonging and positive citizenship that can help reinforce the reintegration process. Throughout, the voices and experiences of the ex-prisoners come to the fore to challenge accepted policy and criminological wisdoms and to point out the need for more creative and determined initiatives to help people from prison find a new and better future.

Introduction: Dental professionals have opportunities to advise patients on harms associated with alcohol misuse. However, it is not known how this might be undertaken or whether advice in dental settings is effective. Methods: This thesis complies with the first three stages of the Medical Research Council’s framework for the design of interventions to improve health. The first theoretical stage comprises a systematic literature search. The second Phase I/modelling stage comprises qualitative research, using thematic analysis, to determine barriers to brief alcohol interventions (BAIs) in dental settings. The third stage consists of a Phase II exploratory randomised controlled trial. 106 out of 2300 patients were recruited over eight weeks from a South Wales dental practice and screened for alcohol misuse. 47 patients scored positive for misuse; 26 were randomised to an intervention group, 21 to control conditions. Findings: The literature identified a paucity of research on BAI effectiveness in primary dental care settings. It identified motivational interviewing (MI) as an effective intervention in secondary dental care and the Modified-Single Alcohol Screening Question (M-SASQ) as a reliable screening tool. Qualitative research identified evidence of dissonance between the views of dental professionals and patients. Dental professionals felt alcohol misuse prevention was not relevant to their role, whereas patients felt it should be part of dental care. In the exploratory trial, there was some evidence that there is potential for patients to be screened and treated for alcohol misuse in a primary dental care setting. However, recruitment and retention rates were poor. As a result, there was not enough definite evidence to conclude whether it was truly feasible to screen and treat patients for alcohol misuse in a general dental practice setting. Conclusions Further work is needed before a Phase III definitive trial can be designed. In particular, methods in improving recruitment and retention rates need to be explored.

This thesis contributes to the sociology and anthropology of data by examining the techniques and devices that are deployed to frame data as part of methodological, ethical, economic, digital, journalistic and artistic practices. The thesis starts by tracing the lineage of the concept of frame as part of the traditions of cybernetic anthropology, artificial intelligence, social interactionism and science and technology studies to delineate a conceptual framework that can account for the contextualisation of data. Empirically, the project focuses on two data leaks and repurposes the materials that emerged from these as case studies that render visible how different techniques and devices make possible the formation of two distinctive data types: personal data and prices. The first case study examines the making and unmaking of search keywords as personal and it is based on the materials that arose from the leak of a search engine database in 2006. This case study looks at how techniques like reidentification demonstrations and data sequencing have contributed to define search keywords as being about and capable of signalling persons while also investigating how ethical devices like informed consent and anonymisation work to depersonalise data instead. The second case study compares compositional against disaggregated framings of prices and it is based on the materials that became available as a consequence of the attempted disclosure of the databases used to estimate a national inflation indicator in Argentina since 2006. This case study explores how product identification and data aggregation techniques contribute to frame the fluctuation of prices as part of the measurement and communication of national statistics while also studying digital scraping and imaging as devices that frame the observation and interpretation of retail price variation for financial use.

This thesis aims to explore how employer branding in an organization in Korea is understood and constructed by its employees. Three focal research questions are raised: (1) ‘how do employees understand employer branding in the context of an organization in Korea?’(2) ‘which actors are the most influential in the employees’ perceptions of employer branding? and why?’ and (3) ‘how does the organization mediate societal logics and employees’ perceptions as a sensegiver?’ Drawing on a social constructionist approach though semi-structured interviews with employees and managers of a Korean organization, ‘growth obsession’ and ‘immanent individualism’ are identified as contradictory dimensions in employees’ perceptions of employer branding. The coexistence of these contradictory dimensions is understood in terms of contending logics of growth and individualism at the societal level. Employees’ growth obsession shows how deeply employees’ perceptions of employer branding are embedded in the dominant logic of growth. Immanent individualism reflects the coexistence of the growth logic and the alternative logic of individualism, and suggests employees’ agentive capacity in making sense of their organization’s employer branding. This thesis also points out that the organization’s role as a sensegiver is limited, in contrast to the assumption, dominant in the existing literature, of employer branding as an employer-driven strategy. The main theoretical contributions of the thesis lie in extending employer branding literature by illuminating it from the perspective of contending logics. This approach shows how employees’ perceptions of employer branding are tightly coupled with societal logics, and suggests considering the possibility of employees’ agency in enacting or rejecting the implications of these logics. Despite limitations in terms of generalizability, a rich and deep-rooted understanding of employer branding, situated in the context of the organization in Korea, is expected to provide a springboard for a more contextualized approach to employer branding both in the academic area and in practice.

Organisational efforts to bring about social change are riddled with choices. What is the appropriate course of action? Who best to collaborate with? How should finite resources, economic or otherwise, be spent? In this respect, the existence of Social Movement Organisations (SMO) — those entities with goals aimed at changing the state of society or protecting the status quo — is one characterised by great uncertainty. Thus a question of critical import to understanding SMOs’ capacity to bring about change is how do they go about bridging information gaps when faced with strategic decisions? In this thesis I argue that network structure affords SMOs a route to accessing information that may be used to manage uncertainty. My argument is built upon two simple observations: (a) populations of SMOs are constitutive of Social Movement Fields wherein these diverse organisations cooperate, compete and learn from one another through surveillance, comparison and mimicry; and (b) SMOs are embedded in rich webs of relations with peers, both online and offline, that enable and constrain their behaviour by governing access to informational resources that may be used for goal attainment. The core novelty of this thesis arises from my recasting of SMOs’ strategic actions as types of relationship formation in inter-organisational network scenarios that are comparatively overlooked — namely, multiplex and bipartite networks. This approach has the appealing property of making clear the effect of SMOs on each other — a key aspect of the institutional perspective on which this work is built — whilst also allowing me to more squarely address how network structure might guide action. Analytically, this leads me to focus on those micro-level network locales, i.e., the “local neighbourhoods”, within which SMOs are embedded (e.g., triads) as they relate to tie formation vis-á-vis uncertainty reduction. Methodologically, this thesis is also designed to demonstrates the sociological power of statistical models of networks in investigating the dynamics of social movement fields. The core strength of these models is their realistic handling of the constraints/benefits of social actors’ structural positions with respect to their behaviour. This is in stark contrast to the variable-centred (i.e. atomistic) statistical frameworks typical of sociological studies of SMOs (e.g., OLS or logistic regression) which fail to account for these organisations’ interdependence and thus provide poor representations of their agency as strategic actors. Empirically, this work consists of three contained case studies of strategic action: (a) a longitudinal study of tactical implementation in the Palestinian National Movement; (b) a longitudinal study of financial patronage in the US Climate Change Countermovement; and (c) a cross-sectional study of online alliance formation amongst organisational members of the Hardest Hit Coalition, a UKbased anti-austerity issue campaign. Results overwhelmingly support my assertions that information useful in managing uncertainty with respect to strategic action is encoded into oft overlooked network structure. Extant sociological work has simply missed a number of interesting, sometimes counterintuitive, dynamics of Social Movement Fields.

This research explores the business model (BM) evolution process of entrepreneurial companies and investigates the relationship between BM evolution and firm performance. Recently, it has been increasingly recognised that the innovative design (and re-design) of BMs is crucial to the performance of entrepreneurial firms, as BM can be associated with superior value creation and competitive advantage. However, there has been limited theoretical and empirical evidence in relation to the micro-mechanisms behind the BM evolution process and the entrepreneurial outcomes of BM evolution. This research seeks to fill this gap by opening up the ‘black box’ of the BM evolution process, exploring the micro-patterns that facilitate the continuous shaping, changing, and renewing of BMs and examining how BM evolutions create and capture value in a dynamic manner. Drawing together the BM and strategic entrepreneurship literature, this research seeks to understand: (1) how and why companies introduce BM innovations and imitations; (2) how BM innovations and imitations interplay as patterns in the BM evolution process; and (3) how BM evolution patterns affect firm performances. This research adopts a longitudinal multiple case study design that focuses on the emerging phenomenon of BM evolution. Twelve entrepreneurial firms in the Chinese Online Group Buying (OGB) industry were selected for their continuous and intensive developments of BMs and their varying success rates in this highly competitive market. Two rounds of data collection were carried out between 2013 and 2014, which generates 31 interviews with founders/co-founders and in total 5,034 pages of data. Following a three-stage research framework, the data analysis begins by mapping the BM evolution process of the twelve companies and classifying the changes in the BMs into innovations and imitations. The second stage focuses down to the BM level, which addresses the BM evolution as a dynamic process by exploring how BM innovations and imitations unfold and interplay over time. The final stage focuses on the firm level, providing theoretical explanations as to the effects of BM evolution patterns on firm performance. This research provides new insights into the nature of BM evolution by elaborating on the missing link between BM dynamics and firm performance. The findings identify four patterns of BM evolution that have different effects on a firm’s short- and long-term performance. This research contributes to the BM literature by presenting what the BM evolution process actually looks like. Moreover, it takes a step towards the process theory of the interplay between BM innovations and imitations, which addresses the role of companies’ actions, and more importantly, reactions to the competitors. Insights are also given into how entrepreneurial companies achieve and sustain value creation and capture by successfully combining the BM evolution patterns. Finally, the findings on BM evolution contributes to the strategic entrepreneurship literature by increasing the understanding of how companies compete in a more dynamic and complex environment. It reveals that, the achievement of superior firm performance is more than a simple question of whether to innovate or imitate, but rather an integration of innovation and imitation strategies over time. This study concludes with a discussion of the findings and their implications for theory and practice.

This study explores the plausible explanations for corporate social responsibility reporting (hereafter CSRR) practices in Saudi Arabian firms. It investigates the different factors that motivate companies to report their corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) activities from managerial perspectives, as well as the challenges that companies face when reporting their CSR activities. The study also investigates and tries to understand the role of non-corporate actors from the media, academia, NGOs, CSR consultants, and regulators in influencing companies to report their CSR activities and their perceptions of current CSRR practices in Saudi companies. An interpretive approach has been utilised in this research study, with neo-institutional theory, as proposed by DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Scott (2008), employed as the main theoretical framework to interpret the findings. The major limitation of the neo-institutional theory in recognising active role of agents has been addressed through the work of Batillana (2006) and Battilana et al. (2009). Qualitative data collection methods were used to obtain data. A total of 34 semi-structured interviews were conducted and represented the main data collection method. In addition, documentary analysis was used as a secondary source. The findings reveal that institutional motivational factors exemplified in normative and mimetic pressures are the main drivers for CSRR. There is no evidence of coercive pressures. In addition, it is confirmed that in some cases, organizations are not merely “black boxes” in which managers have no role other than complying with the external pressures exerted on organizations, but managers and CEOs can also be drivers for CSRR. The findings also shed light on the different internal and external challenges that companies experience in reporting their CSR activities. Managerial perceptions indicate that these challenges have affected the companies’ CSRR, and sometimes led to the absence of reporting on some CSR issues. Meanwhile, the interviews allowed for identification of the different roles and perceptions of non-corporate actors in CSRR. This study concludes by providing some implications and suggestions for improvements to CSRR practices, and by proposing a number of potential avenues for future research.

Over the last three decades, Chinese society has experienced dramatic social change. China is now turning into a global superpower, both economically and militarily but not necessarily politically. Western media often embarrass Chinese political leaders for their suppression on free speech and deviation from political democracy. This is the wider social context in which this thesis locates its enquiries. The Chinese media are deeply involved in this social transition. This thesis intends to provide an up-to-date investigation into journalistic culture in contemporary China, where journalism undergoes political suppression, commercial imperatives, and technological upgrades. This thesis examines the key tenets of practising journalism. It focuses on three areas: (1) the norms of practising journalism under political suppression, (2) the main forms of and roots of journalistic corruption that have brought forth by media commercialisation, and (3) the changes and continuities in journalistic practices associated with social media. This research is mainly based on six individual interviews and six focus group interviews, carried out between January 2012 and February 2012 in Beijing and Shanghai. The research is also supported by materials gained through personal communication in these cities. The research concludes that self-censorship and journalistic corruption are two prominent features of contemporary Chinese journalism. Social media have brought both changes and continuities to journalistic practices and media control methods. In analysing the factors shaping contemporary journalism, journalists tend to highlight the impact of traditional Chinese culture. This research, however, suggests that culture does not always play a determinative role. Political, economic and cultural factors, alongside other elements, all contribute to shaping journalism. We need a more dynamic and comprehensive perspective in examining journalism, which should be spatial-temporally constructed.