Nowadays, there is an increasing data availability. Smartphones, wearable devices, social media, web browsing information and sales recordings are only few of the newly available information sources. Analysing this kind of information is an important step towards understanding human behaviour. In this dissertation, I propose novel techniques for uncovering the complex dependencies between factors extracted from raw sensor data and real-world phenomena and I demonstrate the potential of utilising the vast amount of human digital traces in order to better understand human behaviour and factors influenced by it. In particular, two main problems are considered: 1) whether there is a dependency between social media data and traded assets prices and 2) how smartphone sensor data can be used to understand factors that influence our stress level. In this thesis, I focus on uncovering the structural dependencies among factors of interest rather than on the detection of mere correlation. Special attention is given on enhancing the reliability of the findings by developing techniques that can better handle the specific characteristics of the examined datasets. Although the developed approaches are motivated by specific problems related to human-generated sensor data, they are general and can be applied in any dataset with similar characteristics.

Despite growth in research investigating online consumer behaviour there appears to be a lack of study focusing specifically on how consumers are involved within online settings. Involvement is defined as the perceived relevance of a stimulus object such as a product to the individual consumer (Zaichkowsky, 1984). The study of consumer involvement is valuable as it is believed to be important mediator of consumer behaviour (e.g. Slater and Armstrong, 2010; Knox, Walker and Marshall, 1994). This study explores member involvement with Online Brand Communities (OBCs) focusing specifically on two questions: (1) What is involving about OBCs? (2) How are members involved with OBCs? The study employs a netnographic methodology consisting of participant observation of two OBCs over a nine month period. Based on the findings from the observation data two conceptual models relating to the characteristics and development of member involvement with the OBC are presented. The ‘Typology of Online Community Involvement’ model identifies four distinct types of member involvement with the OBC: (1) utilitarian involvement, (2) social involvement, (3) ego-related involvement, and (4) affective involvement. The ‘Journey of Member Involvement with the OBC’ model charts the different pathways that members who are involved with the OBC may undertake during their membership. The findings provide deeper insights into online consumer behaviour such as triggers that prompt members’ initial and continued involvement with OBCs. Recommendations for management focus on developing tools and strategies that help cultivate and sustain member involvement with the OBC.

Mental health services are under continuous pressure to develop multidisciplinary service models in response to government policy. Mental health professionals, however, continue to be trained in isolation with little preparation for working within a multidisciplinary environment. This thesis explored the development of professional identification amongst nine students in their first year of qualifying training. It focussed on their understanding of their role and the roles of other mental health professionals, specifically nursing, social work and occupational therapy. It also focused on the impact of interprofessional education (IPE) and work-based placements. The research undertaken in this thesis was framed by a social constructionist approach and utilised semi-structured interview data collection methods, discourse analysis and the analysis of course syllabii to explore student experiences. The findings indicate that there may be benefits that can be achieved through IPE regarding enabling students to understand their professional roles within the broader context of health and social care. IPE can offer a means of preparing social work, nursing and OT students for the multidisciplinary team environments that they will be required to work within should they choose to work in mental health services. This thesis suggests that the impact of placement experiences within the first year of study on identity and knowledge of own roles and those of other professions, whether in MDTs or uni-disciplinary teams is significant. These findings indicate that consideration should be given by education providers to the weight and significance of the first practice based experiences, as a potent learning and development experience that can shape professional identity and understanding.

Existing National System of Innovation (NSI) literature mainly focuses on the impact of NSI on national-level or sectoral-level innovations. Whether and how NSI impacts firm-level innovation still lacks comprehensive theoretical exploration. This study aims to address the knowledge gap by developing a theoretical framework to analyse and evaluate how two aspects of institutions in China’s NSI might contribute to the development of a firm’s innovation through bottom-up learning (BUL). The two aspects of institutions in focus are corporate governance and the firm’s access to capital. This research adopts a multiple case study method. 37 in-depth interviews in seven leading firms in China’s automobile and railway equipment sectors were carried out. The case samples included central State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), local SOEs and private firms. The author performed multiple case analyses to identify and examine the impact of corporate governance along with the firm’s access to capital, and how these factors influence the likelihood of the firm’s adoption of BUL practices. This study fills the research gap in three ways. First, by expanding the Corporate Governance and Financial (CG&F) framework by Tylecote and colleagues (Tylecote and Conesa, 1999) this study establishes how NSI shapes a firm’s BUL choices for innovation depending on four institutional factors: (1) whether the top manager of a firm is an insider or outsider, (2) the length of employment of the top manager, (3) the firm’s access to capital, and (4) the level of competition faced by the firm. Second, based on the analysis of the above four factors, a new finding is that central and local SOEs should be separately considered because the institutional conditions they face for BUL for innovation are different. Third, to support the analysis between NSI and BUL, the study operationalises the concept of BUL by systematically introducing five underlying practices.

Neighbourhood Policing (N.P.) was first described and presented in two undergraduate theses at the City University, London. An experimental system was designed to test the N.P. propositions and implementation of evaluated trials followed at selected London and Surrey police divisions between 1982 and 1986. From this origin, the Metropolitan and Surrey Police organisations developed their present geographical policing systems. The duration of the change process exceeded ten years from specification to widespread and effective implementation of the N.P. principles. The period of change is argued to be associated with the process and management of change in police organisations, rather than features of the N.P. project itself. It is argued that design of the N.P. system was an appropriate and practical derivation of an accurate systems analysis of the policing 'problem situation'. Change in police organisations is the focus of this research, using the N.P. project as an empirical study. A systems based, multidisciplinary approach is adopted to review the N.P. project and evaluations, as well as to analyse the nature of organisational change in the context of policing systems. Chapter One introduces the subject and specifies the research objectives. Chapters Two and Three describe details of the policing environment, the N.P. concepts, the elements of the policing system and the N.P. systems evaluation concept. Chapter Four reviews the project evaluation material and advances a critical analysis of the findings. Chapters Five, Six and Seven analyse the process of change within policing systems, examining both organisational issues and human characteristics. Heuristic models of the processes, dynamics and complexity of change are proposed. Chapter eight concludes that the systems approach, the systems analysis and the systemic design of N.P. are all appropriate to contemporary policing. The implementation processes and the subsequent evaluations of N.P. are argued to have made less than adequate contributions to the successful achievement of major organisational change. The research concludes by advancing a number of principles for change management in police organisations.

Income inequalities and subjective well-being have been increasingly identified in the literature as important measures of socio-economic cohesion. This is particularly relevant for developing economies that are typically characterised by strong population growth and relatively low incomes per head. Although in those economies a considerable share of resources is derived from rural areas, data availability for these regions is often an issue which precludes important insights into the overall socio-economic tissue of the developing world. This dissertation seeks to advance our knowledge on various aspects of inequalities and well-being with particular emphasis on rural Pakistan. At the core of the present monograph lie three chapters that deal with income inequality, subjective well-being as well as physical well-being (i.e. health). The empirical analysis is based on a unique survey dataset that covers the four provinces of rural Pakistan. The dissertation seeks to contribute to the existing literature in several dimensions. We decompose overall income inequality by its different types to disentangle which sources of income are inequality-increasing and which ones reduce socio-economic divergence. The empirical measurement and assessment of both subjective and physical well-being in rural Pakistan is a rather novel aspect. We introduce and examine different well-being measures as indicators of (subjective) poverty and find that well-being in rural areas is largely driven by financial factors. When it comes to health, however, overall results are less clear-cut. The thesis is therefore able to offer several policy recommendations for important socio-economic factors in rural Pakistan. On a more general note, some of the results discussed might also illuminate the policy debate in other geographic areas with similar characteristics.

The principle objective of this study is to examine the culture of networks that are implicated in the production of culture, specifically as it pertains to artists' design and use of digitally networked information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the production of artworks. The analysis in this study seeks to reveal a better understanding of the working practices that underpin artists' creative engagements with new media while recognising the significance of discursive continuities that inform such engagements. Theoretically, a case is presented for combining several theoretical perspectives into a multilayered conceptual framework for examining the circulation of power as it relates both to artistic creativity and to technological innovation. The former is accomplished through a critical assessment of the production of culture theoretical tradition. In calling upon concepts of discursive conduct as a means of developing relations of power, the concept of maverickness is proposed to understand how certain artists do not necessarily bring about change in an art world but instead dedicate themselves to the production of artistic creativity through a contention among various conventions. The latter is problematised drawing upon theories of mediation to develop a model of the conversion and classification of new media standards into art world conventions. A novel methodological approach is developed based on the development of multiple biographical threads of an individual and of a technology within a single case study of an art world network. Empirically, the thesis contributes insights into the diverse end contingent collective work practices involved in the design and use of ICTs by artists for the production of artworks. The findings suggest that individual artists are able to develop designer roles consistent with their situated understandings of creative conduct for modifying aspects of the ICT infrastructure despite shifting technological and social new media standards. However, in order to coordinate such roles within wider collective social structures, artists also initiate forms of mediation, articulation, and classification work that extend beyond the production of artworks and into attempts at programming art world networks within which such artworks were produced and distributed.

The explanation of social behaviour requires an understanding of individual orientations to social issues as these exist relative to others. This thesis argues that whilst the attitude concept and social representations have illuminated certain aspects of social behaviour, both are handicapped by a restricted focus. The former’s focus on the evaluation of attitude objects excludes a reference to wider societal processes. The latter provides an account of societal contingencies, but excludes an explanation of individual orientations towards objects and issues in the social environment. This thesis postulates the point of view concept to bridge this gap, that provides an explanation of social behaviour at the situational level. This complements attitude and social representations in a nested, multilevel explanation of social behaviour. The point of view is defined as an outlook towards a social event, expressed as a claim, which can be supported by an argument of opinion based on a system of knowledge from which it derives its logic. It reflects an individual’s orientation towards a social object, relative to others. This thesis has demonstrated, in a series of empirical studies, that the point of view can be typified in three categories. A monological point of view is closed to another’s perspective. A dialogical point of view acknowledges another’s perspective but dismisses it as wrong. A metalogical point of view acknowledges the relativity of its’ perspective, and concedes to an alternative the possibility of being right. These different types were demonstrated to be characterised by differences in positioning and in individuals’ capacity to fit a given social reality. Such relational outcomes accrue as a function of the socio-cognitive structure of points of view in relation with another perspective. This thesis demonstrates that points of view, alongside attitudes and social representations, provides a multilevel explanation of social behaviour

One of the striking features of modern globalization is the rising prominence of international law as governing institution for state-market relations. Nowhere has this been as pronounced as in the international investment regime. Although hardly known to anyone but specialized international lawyers merely 15 years ago, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have today become some of the most potent legal tools underwriting economic globalization. This thesis seeks to explain why developing countries adopted investment treaties as part of their governing apparatus. The study combines econometric analysis with archival work as well as insights from more than one hundred interviews with decision-makers in the international investment regime. On this basis, it finds ‘traditional’ explanatory models of international policy diffusion insufficient to account for the BIT-movement. Instead, both qualitative and econometric evidence strongly indicates that a bounded rationality framework is best suited to explain the popularity of BITs in the developing world. Although careful cost-benefit considerations drove some developing countries to adopt investment treaties, this was rare. By overestimating the benefits of BITs and ignoring the risks, developing country governments often saw the treaties as merely ‘tokens of goodwill’. Many thereby sacrificed their sovereignty more by chance than by design, and it was typically not until they were hit by their first claim, officials realised that the treaties were enforceable in both principle and fact. The thesis is relevant to a wide range of literature. Apart from being the first comprehensive international relations study on investment treaties, its multimethod approach provides a robust and nuanced view of the drivers of international policy diffusion. Moreover, the study is the first major work in international political economy literature applying insights on systematic – and thus predictable – cognitive heuristics found in the behavioural economics discipline.

Urban transport projects redistribute accessibility and environmental quality across the city, potentially creating disadvantages for some social groups. This thesis investigates whether these effects are cumulative or compensatory in the case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, analysing inequalities in the light of competing principles of social justice. The novelty of this research lies in the interpretation of local environmental effects as factors restraining the mobility of pedestrians. We propose a series of GIS-based indicators, including community severance and noise exposure of pedestrians on the way to work and walking around their neighbourhoods. We found that projects giving priority to private transport have a disproportionate effect on the pedestrian environment of the elderly and low-qualified populations. The analysis addresses two of the most pressing issues in transport equity analysis. The first is the spatial heterogeneity in patterns of inequality. We estimate relationships between socio-economic variables and indicators of the local effects of transport using alternative comparison areas, defined in terms of centrality and commuting destinations. We found that the social distribution of those effects is sensitive to location and spatial scale. The second issue is the nature of the processes leading to inequalities. We show that accessibility and pedestrian mobility have an influence on neighbourhood socio-economic recomposition and on patterns of settlement in newly developed areas. We also analyse the implications of integrating distributive concerns in transport planning. In the design of the optimal route alignment for a new road, these concerns may increase aggregate community severance costs. In the application of traffic restriction policies, there are trade-offs between the welfare of different groups of concern in terms of time to work and pedestrian exposure to noise. In both cases, the achievement of equity may not be compatible with the party-political interests of the policy-maker.