The purpose of this research project is to explore and identify the specifics of system, society and dominance (SSD) effects on the management practices of Bangladeshi apparel suppliers, with a particular focus on their recruitment and selection practices. Supplier firms’ responses to structural forces were viewed by examining their strategic choices and actions. The study used an analytical framework based on concepts of social capital and the private regulation of social compliance standards, in conjunction with the original SSD framework, as a holistic approach to understand supplier firms’ changing management practices. Primary research in Bangladesh was undertaken through case studies, individual interviews, content analysis of recruitment advertisements and other secondary sources. Through a detailed review of the findings in this study, a ‘multilevel analysis’ of structural forces on suppliers’ firms is established. Findings of this research project reveal a mixture of international and local influences on actions observed in supplier firms. It is found that the interactions of societal and dominance effects are complex and variable in outcomes for management development in the Bangladeshi garment sector. Analysis shows that superficial change to managerial practices is apparent in many respects, but the degree of real or substantive concrete change in the recruitment and development of workplace managers is very much influenced by the relative strength of the local norms of social relations. The actual (as opposed to claimed) practices are mediated through local actors’ (employers) strategic choices in response to international forces, and are both a function and a consequence of local social norms and established local expectations. The study has laid the foundation of future research in a number of directions through contributions made at an empirical, theoretical and conceptual level. At an empirical level, the study’s contribution to the literature lies in its focus on the dominance effects flowing from lead firms within an international supply chain to their independent suppliers located in a developing country. This study draws out an under-researched topic of human resource management (HRM) practices in Bangladesh, applies the SSD framework and therefore complements research conducted in developed economies. It shows that firms in developing countries are particularly influenced by multiple and different actors of the global value chain and not just a single nation state or single dominant industry. At a theoretical level this research project has elaborated the understanding of the SSD effects through the identification of regulation in its different forms as elements within the SSD framework. Findings contribute to understanding the specific ways in which dominance effects work in individual workplaces. Through the pressure of international buyers’ private regulation of supplier firms, the creation of more formalised HR practices was found to be an indirect result of dominance effects. The incorporation of social capital as a focal point in the SSD effects offers a new insight or concept into the understanding of social capital in a broad context. The study draws on social capital and its significance in unpacking the meaning of societal effects on HR practices and employment relations.

Circulation and revenue declines affecting the newspaper industry are causing changes in the way local newspapers are run. Journalism has been withdrawing from communities and some local newspapers have closed. The resulting gap in local news and information has been called a news black hole. This research takes one such news black hole – Port Talbot – and examines it longitudinally from the point of view of: 1) the quantity and quality of news in the 39 years before and the four years after the 2009 newspaper closure; 2) changes in newsgathering and journalism practices; 3) the community’s ability to access the information, representation and scrutiny normally associated with fourth estate journalism; and 4) the community’s civic and democratic behaviour before and after the closure. It builds on Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, theorising the existence of local public geo-spheres, and that damage to these at the local level may entail damage to the whole public sphere. This multi-method study finds that the quantity of local news halved after the closure of the newspaper, and that its quality declined from the 1990s onwards. Although the loss of the newspaper was important, so was the gradual withdrawal of journalism from the town, marked by steep declines in journalist numbers and the closure of district newspaper offices. It also finds newsgathering has become more distant from communities and is more likely to use press releases and high status or official sources, and less local and less likely to be witnessed by a journalist. It finds the community under-informed, under-represented, and unable to access timely local information or gain adequate access to scrutiny. The democratic measure of election turnout in particular declined from around the time the district offices closed. Together, these findings suggest damage to the local public sphere in the town.

News interviews are core within current practices of journalism. They point to the existence of a mediated public space and bolster the concept of democratic accountability. This research investigates what impact these concepts have on the news interviews broadcast by the Today programme (BBC Radio 4) and how interaction within them invoked the public. The programme has a responsibility to uphold the democratic life of the UK, making it a compelling focus of research. The case study examined in this thesis is the broadcast of news interviews concerning the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) and how they shaped representations of the biomedical techniques contained within the legislation. In particular, research investigated what the news interviews reveal about the biological citizen: a specific configuration of citizenship increasingly important in the twenty first century. The research method is Conversation Analysis and the news interviews as broadcast are the empirical data on which findings are based. The study contributes to the understanding of the method through the investigation of the structural organisation of the news interviews and how this affected interaction. Findings suggest that the news interviews on the Today programme highlights the political dimensions of the HFEA 2008, that interviewees were predominantly MPs or public figures and that the gender ratio is skewed towards male voices. It points to the fact that the programme prefers news interviews that contain two interviewees, as this promotes adversarial encounters within interaction. Research also establishes how interviewers have at their disposal a range of devices, such as third party citations, which they use within questions in order to achieve a neutral posture. A further set of findings uncovers the need of interviewees to maintain a positive image of themselves, employing politeness strategies in order to co-operate when answering a question.

This thesis took a multilevel approach in investigating the subject of workplace conflict within an NHS organisation. The various levels investigated within the hierarchy were nursing ward managers, senior nurses and the executives. Overlaid on the conceptual multilevel model devised initially by De Dreu and Gelfand (2007) were placed the sources and consequences of conflict which were identified within this study. A mixed method explorative design was taken to frame the evaluation, which utilised two methods; a survey of thirty-six ward managers who participated in a single training day on conflict management and eight semi-structured interviews. The training was designed and delivered in-house within a large NHS organisation in Wales. The staff population of this NHS organisation is around 14,500 and a sample of thirty-six ward managers participated in the single training day and received a pre-questionnaire on the day. They also completed a Thomas and Kilmann (1974) conflict management style questionnaire. Four weeks after the training day, the same group were asked to complete a post-questionnaire, which was returned by thirty of the participants. Pre and post analyses were undertaken of the likert scale indicators reporting participant confidence in managing conflict. The Wilcoxon signed rank test revealed some significant differences in confidence levels within the group. Four members of the group were then interviewed using a semi-structured approach; subsequently, two senior nurses who line-manage the ward managers within this organisation and two executives were also interviewed. Results were themed and comparisons were drawn out and theorised. This study adds to the existing literature as it identifies that ward managers need to have support in the workplace and ‘sign-posting’ to resources that can help them manage workplace conflict. ‘Time’ was also a consideration noted within this study as managers talked about the need to identify a ‘good time’ to have potential conflict and not being rushed in having to resolve it. The outcome of the research generated a systematic approach to understanding workplace conflict: this was called the Conflict Application Tool (CAT) and has been implemented in the organisation where the research took place.

Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programmes offer UK-government and EU-funded support and resettlement packages to asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to aid return to their countries of origin. These programmes have attracted criticism: in particular, a questioning of the return as ‘voluntary’. This study investigates how social inequality is discursively maintained and challenged within AVR, particularly in relation to two of its central aspects: the voluntariness of the programmes and clients’ opportunities to make informed decisions about return. I combine a discursive analysis of institutional written texts and ethnographic interviews with staff, with observations from the two organisations involved – the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Refugee Action. Through an analysis of rhetorical-discursive devices, I show how power relationships are maintained and challenged, providing the institutional context for the client caseworker relationship. However, by exploring caseworkers’ positioning regarding ideological motivations for return and the gatekeeping relationship, I show how institutional, caseworker, and client power is negotiated and challenged by caseworkers. Addressing multilingualism, I show how caseworkers’ negotiation of top-down multilingualism and clients’ superdiversity may shape the environment in which clients are able to make informed decisions about return. I evidence how caseworkers are resourceful in challenging linguistic inequality, considering communicative strategies to increase clients’ opportunities to access information. The findings in this research provide detailed discursive evidence of how AVR occupies an ideologically contested space, but how caseworkers are able to effectively negotiate this space to offer impartial advice for people returning. This research considers how this client-institution relationship, and the voluntariness of return, is complicated both by the mixed motivations underpinning AVR programmes, and the superdiversity of clients. I consider what this may mean regarding problems of trust within the AVR programmes,and the difficulties the Home Office may face in its decision to bring the programmes inhouse from January 2016.

This thesis presents findings from a qualitative study of the emergence and early clinical translation of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) in the UK. Drawing from interviews with a range of experts and users I track the enrolment and translation of this new prenatal testing technology across a variety of clinical and social spaces. I show how encounters with NIPD prompt deep critical examination of the moral, social and political implications - not only of the technology - but of the established clinical practices (routine and specialised prenatal testing) and specific policy contexts (prenatal screening programmes) within which NIPD has begun to sediment. I explore how, as NIPD advances at a rapid pace and emerges within a culturally and politically complex context, the technology both aligns with and disrupts routine practices of prenatal screening and diagnosis. I show how, as the technology divides into two major strands - NIPD and NIPT - at an early stage of development, and before becoming naturalised/normalised within the clinic, scientists, clinicians and policy makers attempt to pin down, define and ‘fix’ the technology, drawing upon and engaging in substantive practices of division, categorisation and classification. I explore ambiguities present within such accounts, highlighting dissenting voices and moments of problematisation, and following this, I show how the ‘troubling’ of boundaries prompts much examination of ethical and social concerns. As a location within which interviewees explored more contentious issues, I show how abortion emerged as central to the discussion of NIPD. I proceed to show how institutionalised, professionalised bioethical debate dominates mainstream discourse, and I explain how a particular construction of the informed, individual choice-maker is mobilised in order to locate moral and political responsibility for testing in the hands of individuals, and to distance political/organisational structures from entanglement with problematic concerns. I explore how clinicians and patients respond to this positioning in multiple ways, both assimilating and questioning the mainstream discourse of ‘informed choice’. In conclusion, I highlight the broader (bio)political aspects of NIPD’s emergence and translation within prenatal screening and diagnosis.

The purpose of the study is to explore the engagement and consumption experiences of motorcycling edgeworkers. In understanding motorcyclists’ experiences, the thesis takes the position that participants are now living in new times of an ‘advanced industrialised society’. With a variety of sites, services and goods available for consumption, it is argued that the contemporary high-risk performer is free to subjectively negotiate the meanings of their experiences from the multiplicity of choices available, which has implications for methodology. That is, the study moves away from utilising a standardised methodological approach of developing ‘general high-risk typologies’ or ‘stress-seeking personality types’ towards an approach that stresses its diverse and plural characteristics. Hence, the position is taken that motorcyclists’ experiences are characterised by highly diversified patterns of interests and activities and therefore seeks to understand motorcycling as a complex, reflexive process where riders assign different meanings to their riding experiences. Hence, drawing upon narrative theory, the thesis aims to understand the ‘lived experiences’ of motorcyclists, exploring the personal, social and material context of riders’ lives. That risk-taking involves a complex interplay between sensual or emotional apprehending but also a reflexive understanding of the discursive notions associated with high-risk activities. More specifically, the study adopts what Ussher (1997) and more recently Ussher and Mooney-Somers (2000) describe as a ‘material-discursive intrapsychic perspective’. This considers the manner by which cultural/community understandings impact riders’ accounts of their experiences but also examines the physical/intrapsychic aspects of the activity which are arguably highly i interrelated. The study also seeks to explore motorcyclists’ biographical accounts, examining the diverse ways in which riders draw upon their past in making sense of current motorcycling practice. Using a narrative approach to data collection and analysis, the data presented is collected in thirty-three in-depth narrative interviews. The data was analysed using a voice-centred relational approach to narrative analysis called the ‘Listening Guide’, based on the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Brown and Gillian, 1991, 1992, 1993 and more recently Milnes 2003) and the data is presented in the form of an analysis of narrative themes from the accounts of the riders, however what separates this ‘themed’ analysis is differences amongst the accounts are considered alongside similarities. Finally, in exploring motorcyclists’ individual biographies, the personal narrative accounts given by nine of the riders are presented focusing on key turning points or ‘epiphanies’ in their stories. In order to ‘contextualise the narratives’, participant observation was conducted at a variety of popular motorcyclist enclaves including motorcycle track days, cafés and venues as well as the review of existing popular text such as magazines, papers and specialist motorcycle press. Several conversations also took place with those who deliver the experience such as motorcycle shop owners and track day tutors. The research reveals that riders’ experiences are more diverse and complex than more traditional studies have often suggested. The analysis of the participants’ narratives show that participants draw on both physical/intrapsychic explanations but also on ii community understandings in describing their riding experiences. Hence, it is argued that the materiality of the body, its connections to thrill, desire, to the performance of the activity are all intimately tied to the more discursive factors involved (Ussher 1997). Furthermore, by identifying key turning points in the stories told by the motorcyclists, the diverse ways in which individual riders adapt their motorcycling practice is revealed. The individual accounts show how riders are influenced by their past experience, but also by dominant cultural and/or community understandings which, as acting as cultural resources, guide riders understanding of their experiences. Therefore, in taking a ‘material-discursive intrapsychic perspective,’ the study aims to present a more comprehensive understanding of motorcyclists’ experiences. Particularly concerned with commitments to TCR (Transformative Consumer Research), the research may therefore assist in informing future road safety research and motorcycling initiatives. That is, due to the manner by which participants engage in their activity in an ongoing and reflexive manner, the opportunity exists for those interested in re-directing motorcyclists’ aspirations, such as marketing campaigners or rider education/assessment training schemes, to encourage participants to adopt more safety conscious, responsible riding styles, focusing on competence, wisdom and safety rather than excitement, performance and speed. iii

This research investigates the foreign aid policies and practices of donor countries and of Jordan, a middle-income aid recipient country, through an examination of case studies of recent aid provision to Jordan. It examines the bearing of these policies on the effectiveness and efficiency of aid projects. The research concentrated on four case studies carefully chosen by the criteria of different donor nations and policies; and the different nature of the projects that cover the four main areas of development needs for Jordan. The case studies consisted of analysis of documentation and outcomes, and significant interviews with the selected participants. The case studies were chosen to explore the different mission statements, policies and practices and included the GTZ- funded Petra Stone Preservation Project, the USAIDfunded ICT Initiative, the DFID-funded Capacity Building in the Management of Jordan’s Education Services Project, and the JICA-funded Improvement of Water Supply System to Greater Amman Project. The study examines the effectiveness of aid in poor policy environments. It shows that the role of donors in ensuring the effectiveness of the aid they present goes beyond selecting recipients based on their policies and governance. Indeed, foreign aid is not donor-neutral and its effectiveness is not only dependent on the quality of governance and institutions of the recipients. The research demonstrates that a donor’s national interests and the influence of stakeholders determine the course and benefits of aid, and that judgements of success or failure vary between the standpoints of the donor and the recipient. The study investigates the impact of a number of variables on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Those variables include aid project design and delivery mechanisms, and institutional capacity and cultural constraints of aid recipients. The research focuses on relationships between donors and recipients and the differences in interests and objectives. It also looks at the impact of conditionality and tied aid on the sustainable benefits of the aid intervention. ii Although existing literature does address some of these considerations, there is very little direct evidence which links development theory with detailed practical examples. Where such examples are available, they are invariably weighted heavily by evidence which originates with, and is interpreted through, donor perceptions. This study provides a balanced analysis of four initiatives taking account of both donor and recipient expectations, experiences and assessments.

The selection of freight transport mode in cities like Hong Kong, with little land, is in some respects obvious. The deciding criterion for mode/carrier selection is based on the selection of either the lowest total transport cost or the shortest transit time for the cargo. The peculiar nature of each transport mode, namely; rail, sea, road and air, will definitely earn their own places when shippers need to make a decision on their shipments. The nature of the cargo will also affect the choice of carrier/mode when they are transported in break bulk. Fortunately, the invention of ISO containers in the late 1950s eliminated and overcame the shortfall in some transport modes. With the extensive usage of ISO containers hereafter, shippers can now enjoy a much freer choice of transport mode. When China started its open-door policy in the late 1970s, many local (Hong Kong) manufacturers relocated their factories to the Pearl River Delta (PRD) due to the low labour and land costs. Delivery of shipments was mainly carried out by Hong Kong freight forwarders as they had been in business with the shippers for decades. Road transport was the only mode choice available at that time due to the inflexibilities in other transport modes such as sea and rail. Progressively, these factories were relocated northwards at a later time due to the gradually increasing labour and land costs. Freight forwarders were then faced with a prolonged delivery time due to the stringent Customs regulations in China as well as a progressive increase in the physical distance between the factory and the loading port in Hong Kong. The continuous developments in adjacent ports in Southern China offered freight forwarders an opportunity to revise the route of consignments so that the lowest cost and shortest transit times were achievable. Nowadays, consignments from the PRD region can be transported to the loading ports via at least three transport modes, namely, sea (barge), road (truck) and rail. In addition to physical constraints in the mode/carrier selection, the mode choice in China is further complicated due to the inflexible Customs regulations and government policies on tax rebates. Considerable research has been done on mode and carrier selection for bulk cargo in Western countries. However there is no explicit study on the mode choice in China. This thesis studies factors that will affect the shippers’ mode/carrier choice and ascertains the unique key factors that will affect their mode/carrier choice in the PRD for their overseas consignments. From this study, it was observed that shippers irrespective of the consignment size and cargo value prefer to use a loading port that is reliable and efficienct in operation. This is the first thesis written about carrier mode choice in China applying systematic and rationale methods to express the mode selection criteria in PRD area. The results were achieved by using the pairwise comparison method - Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method so that rigidity of the results is academically accepted. Nevertheless, further study on the mode choice can be carried forward through assessing buying behaviour and the shipper-carrier relationship.

Changing cultural trends and increasing pressures and constraints on everyday life have led to a proliferation in the uptake of adventure pursuits in Western society. People are increasingly drawn to involvement in subcultures of high-risk extremity and adventure, and manufacturers, marketers and the media are commonly reflecting a discourse that ‘commodifies’ adventure experience in their wider cultural products and brands. This growth in the consumption of adventure has created an opportunity, and a necessity, for researchers, academics and practitioners alike to become involved in the development of adventure-leisure research and theory. This study takes the UK motorcycling subculture of adventure consumption as a unit of analysis, and employs a ‘holistic’ cultural approach to investigate meaningful consumption processes within, and relative to it. Specifically, it focuses on the role of consumers in contributing to the cultural world of motorcycling adventure consumption as well as the significance of manufacturers, service suppliers and marketers in producing and conveying it. This is achieved through employment of an ‘interpretive semiology’ research philosophy, in which a number of pioneering semiotic and narrative techniques are used and developed, to identify the key communication codes and myths that drive the construction and movement of meaning within, and relative to this consumption subculture. An ‘outside in’ approach is employed to understand the subculture from a wide crosssection of related discourse, and this is combined with an ‘inside-out’ approach, which focuses on the motorcyclist consumer psyche, on consumer involvement in motorcycling activity and use of signifying props, spaces and stories for the construction and signification of meaningful motorcyclist self-identity. Also this approach examines the role of manufacturers, service suppliers and marketers in constructing and signifying brands that purvey cultural messages and construct categories of motorcycling subculture. The results highlight that although UK motorcycling adventure subculture is enshrined with a very rich cultural heritage, it is dynamic in nature, and cultural changes can be identified by analysis of key cultural communication codes and myths. These codes and myths are influenced, and driven, by an interrelationship that exists between consumers, manufacturers, service suppliers, marketers and wider popular cultural discourse and media. They all exist in the same culturally constituted world and meaning is generated and signified through common market places and market stimuli. Overall, this study provides a contribution to adventure-leisure and interpretive, cultural consumer behaviour research and it employs and develops pioneering semiotic and narrative methodologies. It demonstrates how the field of semiotics, with rich theoretical and sometimes complicated underpinnings, can be applied in this context to achieve significant theoretical and practical implications.