The aim of this thesis is to deepen understanding of how agency conflict arises in the governance of family businesses. The constructs were proposed arising from empirical research, involving four case studies of different Brazilian family-owned companies, which were analysed inductively. Next, data from the literature was used to validate those constructs, which became part of the proposed Family Business Agency Conflict Model and to suggest articulated hypotheses. This model identifies factors that can potentially increase, and those which can mitigate, tensions between the actors involved representing family, ownership and management within family-owned firms. It was subsequently tested through a survey of 152 family-owned firms of varying size, which belonged to different economic sectors and regions of Brazil. Structural equation modelling was used to test the empirical validity of the model, with reference to hypotheses concerning the variables which influence agency conflict. The model was found to predict 38 per cent of the variance in agency conflict. Four variables were found which explain directly the agency conflict in family businesses: strategic alignment, social alignment, trust and impartiality. Therefore, the findings of this research besides focusing on the usual procedural aspects of governance, such as disclosure and control, include behavioural elements which constitute a step ahead in the study of corporate governance in family business.

This thesis examined whether the viewpoint from which an action was observed could modulate the behavioural and neural activity of the observer. Chapter 2 presents motion capture data from a manual prehension task which manipulated observed reach height. Actions were observed from two allocentric viewpoints. The data revealed no differences between viewpoints, but did reveal effects of relative spatial direction congruency. Chapter 3 further examined these direction congruency effects. Using simple arm movements, observed task and direction congruency were split. The data revealed effects of direction congruency dependent on observed action viewpoint. Chapter 4 presents experiments further examining the effects of observed action viewpoint. The data suggest participants considered observed actions in terms of agency; participants responded faster when observing egocentrically framed actions compared to allocentrically framed actions. Chapter 5 further examined this using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The data suggest that stronger representations of observed actions are present for egocentric actions compared to allocentric actions. Collectively, this thesis demonstrates that relative spatial direction kinematics are a key factor in action observation, and that the viewpoint from which an action is observed can modulate participant behavioural responses and brain activity, as participants distinguish between egocentrically and allocentrically framed actions.

Many millions of people watch television weather forecasts everyday, but a detailed analysis of the information such forecasts convey and how and why viewers watch them has not previously been undertaken. New technology is presenting television stations with both challenges and opportunities. Viewers no longer have to rely on watching a forecast at a time dictated by the television station, they can now choose when, where and how to watch forecasts. This thesis reviews the visual presentation of weather forecasts from paintings of the 14th Century to the latest on-demand technology. Viewers are surveyed to assess their recall of weather forecasts and their preferences for how information should be presented, displayed and broadcast in order to maximise audience figures and the financial attractiveness of the television weather forecast to potential sponsors or licence fee payers. Using the results of the research, a proposal is made for the creation of an internet based television weather channel.

Introduction: Cleft lip and palate (CL/P) is characterised as a birth defect or congenital anomaly which occurs in one in every 500-700 births globally. This research study explores the subjective, phenomenological experiences of eight women with CL/P using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to determine how women experience and manage living with CL/P and to consider implications for counselling psychology. Quantitative and qualitative studies indicate the overall low psychological impact of being born with CL/P, but also show disparities and contradictions. This author was born with CL/P. Method: Ethical approval was obtained. Semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions were used. Eight women born with CL/P were recruited using purposive sampling. Participant accounts of their lived experiences were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interviews took 73 to 120 minutes, (mean 90 minutes). Analysis Four themes were identified: 'The threatened self' explores the complexity inherent in the development of identity; 'being different to others' explores interpersonal experiences of participants; 'facing challenges' explores challenges and 'wishing things had been better' explores experiences which participants share as a means of acting as advocates for others. Discussion: My research supports existing CL/P literature. 'Wishing things had been better' has not been explored previously. I found that meaning-making is important for individuals with CL/P. I consider that it would be beneficial for CL/P to be conceptualised as a long-term condition requiring psychological support, and if adult CL/P should have improved access to support, including psychological, for key life events. I designed a check-list of issues to consider when working with a client with CL/P. This research has demonstrated that women's experiences of living with CL/P are multi-faceted and demonstrates a duality of experience in which being born with and living with CL/P throughout life may be thought of as both 'not a problem' and 'a problem' at different stages of life.

The overarching aim of this study is to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of multiple institutional logics on the formation and maintenance of public-private (mixed-type) inter-organisational networks (hereafter IONs), in which various inter-organisational relations (hereafter IORs) of a focal organisation are embedded. This study seeks to understand how multiple logics shape the inter-organisational management controls (IOMCs) which are deployed by a focal organisation to manage, control and coordinate its numerous IORs. In doing so, the institutional logics approach, in conjunction with a ‘whole network’ perspective, is deployed and an explanatory case study design is adopted. An investment portfolio of a public pension fund, which is a hybrid organisation operating under conditions of institutional complexity, is used as an illustrative case of an ION. Investment portfolios, composed of various investments and IORs, are engines of the ION’s evolution. However, due to the limited number of studies on IONs, our knowledge about how IONs emerge and are sustained in practice is very limited. The originality of the present research is threefold. Firstly, this thesis contributes to the developing body of management accounting literature on IOMCs in mixed-type IORs and IONs. Secondly, it provides insights into to the emerging body of literature deploying the institutional logics approach to explain the peculiarities of different management controls used by various organisations in in-situ contexts. Lastly, it expands our understanding of the impact of the institutional realm of developing countries on IORs, IONs, and the IOMCs deployed within them; thereby contributing to the limited management accounting research undertaken in such environments.

The purpose of this study is to explore how students' nurse identity has developed over the years and the particular role that disciplinary power has had in shaping it. The research focus was the School of Nursing in Jersey from 1924-2015. The study site included the wider social space where nurse education occurred at the School of Nursing; that is the classroom, the practice area and the nurses' home. The study attempts to fill a gap in local nursing history by creating a unique record while also considering the wider social influences on how students develop a nurse identity. The primary data comprises interviews with fifteen (n=15) participants who provide an historical account of their experiences as students. Interview transcripts and diary narratives with a further four (n=4) former nursing students from the earlier period are also included. These are supplemented with documentary archive material in the form of hospital student nurse records, newspaper archives, Societe Jersiaise archives, personal correspondence and photographs. Foucault's (1979) concept of panopticism was used to explore how the functioning of disciplinary power promoted the notion of docility and shaped the developing nurse identity of students. The Foucauldian framework provided a sociological analysis of disciplinary power and how the unconscious conditioning of students created the "docile body". The main themes identified relate to freedom (or not) of choice in choosing a career, shifting modes of control, control through the use of time, knowing your place, sister's "gaze" as a panoptical figure, living and working by the rules, fear of punishment, the gendered nature of nursing as an occupation, medical dominance, and the support from fellow students. The technologies of surveillance, normalising judgement and examination were employed to understand how, as student nurses, the participants internalised the values, beliefs and behaviours experienced in the School of Nursing. Tracing these technologies of discipline from the beginnings of the School of Nursing to its present day amounts to what in Foucauldian terms is a history of the objectification of the present. Findings indicate that discipline was a means of constructing experience and served to shape the identity of the participants as student nurses. It was easier to recognise Foucault's (1979, 1995) concept of panopticism in the traditional nurses' accounts; how this applied to the contemporary setting was less obvious but nonetheless apparent. While there has been more discreet monitoring of students in recent years, the methods of surveillance remain rooted in Foucault's (1979, 1995) representation of panopticism and the construction of the "docile body". Control was exerted over their lives in the classroom and on the wards. As students the participants began to regulate their own behaviour and discipline themselves. The historical perceptions of what it means to be a "good nurse" impacted on their developing identity across the years. The unconscious conditioning of the students served to create the "docile body" of the student nurse and this impacted on the development of an identity. Having identified the importance of the influence of disciplinary power, further research exploring this among student nurses in the contemporary university setting could make a positive contribution to understanding how this moulds a nurse identity.

Children's learning within the home can be characterised by variety in the cognitive, behavioural and affective contributions of both mother and child, as well as by the wider environmental influences on family functioning. The concept of scaffolding may be useful for understanding home learning processes and provide a framework for new knowledge in order to develop a better understanding of what is required for successful learning at home. The research has three main aims based on an adaptation of the Process-Person- Context-Time (PPCT) model of development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The first aim was to investigate the role of the child's behaviour during scaffolding interactions, test the inter-relationship between the child's and mother's behaviours and to identify how variations in these behaviours impact mutual intersubjectivity. The second aim was to examine how person characteristics of the mother and child, along with the home environment, contribute to the process of scaffolding across time. The third aim was to conduct a preliminary study in Russia and to test cross-cultural patterns and their determinants between UK and Russian families. A longitudinal cross-cultural design has been adopted with two-time point measurements in England, approximately seven months apart, and cross-sectional design in Russia. Using non-probability sampling methodology, 68 dyads (children, four - five years old) were recruited for the English sample and 16 dyads took part in the Russian study. The research used cross-informant methodology to collect data during home visits and through observation of scaffolding interactions during simple problem-solving tasks. The results contribute to the base of existing knowledge with a number of findings: 1) the scaffolding process is bidirectional with unique contributions from mother and child; 2) intersubjectivity within the dyad is important in understanding scaffolding interactions across time; 3) individual differences in maternal emotional and social abilities, but not parenting aspects, predict maternal scaffolding behaviour; 4) child's cognitive and emotional abilities explained their behaviour later in time; 5) number of siblings played an important role in the mother's and child's behaviour, while household chaos was not significant; 6) the cultural context plays a unique role in shaping scaffolding practices within families.

This thesis provides an in-depth discussion on banks' capital structure which has drawn very little attention from the literature. It consists of three major empirical essays. The first essay (Chapter III) reviews the major conclusions drawn from the traditional corporate finance literature that has at length examined the capital structures of non-financial firms, while compares their findings with the limited work on the leverage decisions of banking firms. It aims to provide an insight into the factors that actually govern banks' capital choices, cast doubt on whether capital requirements are binding and primarily decide the bank leverage, and introduce the core assumption of this thesis - information asymmetry as an important determinant of capital structure decisions. The second essay (Chapter IV) empirically investigates the effects of information asymmetry on capital structure adjustments of US bank holding companies (BHCs) during 1986 to 2015. By identifying BHCs with bankrupt subsidiaries and arguing that their managers possess better knowledge than market investors concerning the failure of their subsidiaries, this chapter disentangles the real effect of private information on the capital structures of holding banks. The results show that subsidiary failure significantly affects financial policies of the parent companies. Specifically, BHCs increase leverage as early as one year prior to the failure of their subsidiaries, and substantially lower leverage after subsidiary failure. Further tests document that the parent BHCs increase not only debt borrowing but also liquidity assets, and curtail lending in advance to avoid further liquidity and financial constraint problems after their subsidiary failure. Examinations on the dynamic patterns of these BHCs' performance around the subsidiary failure time confirm a smoother performance transition. The third essay (Chapter V) adds to the evidence in Chapter IV and discusses the information asymmetry effect by identifying a different treatment group - BHCs with subsidiaries engaging in M&A activities. The findings lend further support to the core assumption in this thesis. The chapter also finds the indication that financial constraints of BHCs are on average mitigated following their subsidiaries receiving capital infusion following the M&A deals. Overall, this thesis has important implications for the public to understand various incentives that banks may have in making their capital structure decisions.

Islamic microfinance is a growing sector that is expected to provide a long-term solution to poverty in the Muslim world, home to more than 600 million poor people. The role of microfinance institutions in poverty alleviation is still debatable, however established literature provides assurance that microfinance does contribute to the development of financial sector and reduction of poverty in developing countries. Nonetheless, the rise of competition in the microfinance sector has forced many microfinance institutions to resort to commercial funding and lending activities, which according to some studies has led microfinance institutions to trade off poverty alleviation objective with commercial goals of profitability and sustainability. This thesis examines the impact of commercialisation push and its subsequent impacts on Islamic microfinance institutions in three empirical chapters. They are a) comparison of financial performance i.e. profitability and sustainability, between Islamic microfinance institutions with conventional microfinance institutions, b) examination of portfolio risk and vulnerability of Islamic microfinance institutions (IMFIs), and finally c) survey of the presence or absence of ‘mission drift’ at IMFIs. The thesis benefits from the latest panel data provided by MIX Market database, which is obtained from the publicly accessible websites at www.mixmarket.org. MIX Market provides reliable dataset for many microfinance institutions from all regions in the world. However, the dataset used for this research covers 1,320 microfinance institutions during the period of 1998 to 2014, from four regions where IMFIs exist, namely East Asia and Pacific, South Asia, Middle East and North Africa and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. IMFIs represent about 2.88 per cent, or only 38 IMFIs, in the dataset from the overall sample. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression to analyse financial performance, portfolio risk, and poverty outreach, the research finds mixed results. Overall, although IMFIs are worse off than their conventional counterparts in terms of financial performance, i.e. lower profitability and high cost, they are relatively better off with outreach to the poor, indicated by lower average loan balance per borrower to income per capita (depth of outreach) and positive number of active borrowers (breadth of outreach). In addition to lower or negative profitability, the first empirical chapter also indicates that IMFIs are operating at higher cost per borrower than conventional MFIs. However, interestingly IMFIs manage to record positive operational self-sufficiency (being a ratio of financial revenue over expenses, or OSS), which is an important indicator of sustainability, in addition to return on assets (ROA). Lower ROA is attributed to higher operational cost, e.g. cost per borrower, while OSS is higher mainly due to irregular funding mechanism of IMFIs. Many of the IMFIs rely on donations or charitable funds and also to a certain extend grants from government and donors. The second empirical chapter explores portfolio and default risk of IMFIs and find that they are facing relatively lower risks than conventional MFIs. The result defies expectation, as IMFIs are face challenging working environment and operate in some of the poorest countries in the world with frequent natural disasters or armed conflicts. They are also less vulnerable despite their clients are from the poorest segment in the society, often with lower educational level, and the nature of Islamic financial products are relatively unknown to most clients. Many of the IMFIs and their clients live in countries considered to be high risk or have histories of instability, either politically or economically. Finally, the third paper examines poverty outreach performance of MFIs to find any evidence of mission drift in Islamic microfinance institutions. Using similar method with the first empirical chapter, the paper finds that there is no clear evidence of mission drift at Islamic microfinance institutions, as indicated by lower Average loan balance per borrower to income/capita and at the same time significantly lower percentage of women borrowers. However, this claim requires more explanations to qualify as convincing evidence. The findings contradict the argument for mission drift, i.e. the presence of higher Average loan balance and lower Percentage of women borrowers. The results do not confirm nor reject the hypothesis that there will be no mission drift at Islamic microfinance institutions. Nonetheless, the results are consistent with literature i.e. there is no clear evidence of mission drift in existing and mostly conventional microfinance institutions. Overall, the regression results of all three empirical chapters of the thesis indicate that IMFIs are still loyal to their primary mission of poverty alleviation, despite operating at a loss and high operational cost. Their relatively positive outreach, in both scale and depth, is complementary to consistently high operational self-sufficiency. Although sustainability is important in microfinance, IMFIs are not currently concerned with sustainability objectives as their funding mechanism can still support their pursuit of poverty alleviation. However, as the drive of commercialisation and intensifying competition continue, especially with many international donors becoming more selective, IMFIs must abandon over-reliance on subsidy or grants. Should their current financial performance persists, i.e. lower return and higher cost, IMFIs may soon discover poverty alleviation mission as liability, not an achievable goal.

This thesis is an exploratory study of the way perceptions and emotions shape the agency of asylum seekers. Using Eritrean asylum seekers that travel to Italy and their perceptions of the Italian asylum system as a case study, it explores how perceptions of Italy and its asylum system shape the strategies of Eritrean asylum seekers at different stages of their migration journey. This research went some way towards developing a notion of agency that also takes into account dimensions (such as the importance of perceptions and emotions) that are sometimes overlooked in forced migration studies, thereby contributing (or so I hope) to a more informed and subtle view of asylum seekers’ movements and of their interaction with their surrounding environment. My fieldwork demonstrates that perceptions and emotions play an important role in shaping asylum seeker agency, and that perceptions are heavily influenced by the circulation of rumours among migrants. The first part of the thesis explores the way perceptions about Italy are produced and re-produced in Eritrea (thereby leading to a set of recurrent expectations), as well as the way the identity formation process happening in Eritrea has led to the emergence of peculiar characteristics that are relevant in explaining Eritrean asylum seekers’ strategies for coping with the challenges of the asylum system. The second part of this project focuses on asylum journeys, and specifically on the various trajectories developed by asylum seekers, on the circulation of rumours and on the way perceptions about destination countries evolve. The last part examines the Italian asylum and reception systems and provides some examples of the strategies adopted by asylum seekers to overcome problems and obstacles; it also explores the factors that shape the agency of Eritrean asylum seekers, especially in relation to the Italian asylum system and to the rules of the Dublin Procedure.