China has attracted considerable attention in recent years with its rise as an international economic power. The year 2008, in particular, brought China into the spotlight through a series of dramatic events, amongst which the Tibet riots in March 2008 (in conjunction with the Olympic torch relay) were arguably the most controversial. This resulted in clashes between competing perspectives both on television screens and on the streets in the form of student protests. This study investigates 1) how the sampled British news media (both mainstream television news and elite press) covered and interpreted the Tibet riots, as well as 2) why British and Chinese students (both having been in the UK when the riots occurred) perceive the riots and issues related to the Tibet Question in different ways. This study finds that the availability of news sources (especially those providing specific details) affected the sampled British news media to a large degree in presenting the ethnically-targeted feature (i.e. the violence mainly targeting Han Chinese-owned businesses and Han Chinese passers-by). The ethnically-targeted feature was also interpreted in various ways by inferring the sources of rioters’ grievances from, for instance, characteristics of the targets and policies that might affect people living in Tibet. This study also finds that while British participants tended to focus on the clashes between protesters and authorities, Chinese participants knew a lot about the scale of the damage and casualties. They also draw on different structures of knowledge and experience to infer the motivations of the rioters, as well as to trace the sources of their discontent. On this basis, this study identifies the factors that have caused differences between British and Chinese participants in their perceptions and understanding of these events.

This research is an illustration of a participatory action research (PAR) with street children with the key research question being, ‘In what ways might I work towards improving my work with street children in Mumbai through participatory action research?’ The empirical work for this thesis has been conducted in the challenging environment of the streets and a drop-in centre in Mumbai, India. At the heart of this participatory action research process has been the ideological belief of ensuring that street children’s own perspectives on their lives are taken into account while carrying out any work with them. Specifically, this research demonstrates how a group of street children were encouraged to reflect on their day-to-day street experiences and talk about them through the use of a multimethod mosaic approach to different kinds of dialogue. As a result I have discovered how the street children became more confident to discuss their lived realities and the efforts they were capable of making in order to address their street-related concerns. I have been committed, as is evident throughout this thesis, to understanding, both, the principles and practices of participation, in difficult contexts. As a result, the driving force behind this research process is the idea of ‘participation’ and its translation into my practical work with street-living children. Closely aligned to this philosophy of participation, have been my personal and professional values, which have influenced this research. The research is organised into a series of seven action-reflection cycles which have enabled me to cumulatively build insight and appreciation. This thesis, therefore, also tells the story of my developing insights on ways of engaging meaningfully with the street children and consequently, positions my ‘living I’ at the centre of this research process. My work in this thesis can be viewed in two parts based on the nature of actions within it. The research begins with my intentional action of learning about the culture and ethics of working sensitively with street children. Building on this, I have then implemented the idea of participation in my empirical work through the committed actions of using visual methods of drawings and photographs as prompts to develop meaningful dialogues with the street children. This thesis also documents the participatory process of using verbal methods of circle time group discussions and problem-posing “why-why?” and problem-solving “how-how?” methods with the street children. This study contributes to widening our understanding and knowledge about developing appropriate participatory approaches of working with street children. Analysis of this thesis puts forward fourteen evidence-based appreciations grounded in the lived realities of my practical research experience that focus upon the key processes of working systematically with street children.

This thesis considers how local authority social workers go about assessing the suitability of lesbians and gay men to foster or adopt children. It also asks how far a stated lesbian or gay sexuality is problematic within this process. A constructionist approach to social enquiry is used, data being generated by interviews with social workers, as well as a case study of a lesbian couple’s adoption application. Dorothy Smith’s ‘institutional ethnography’ is also employed to examine the ‘relations of ruling’ that structure such assessments (Smith, 1987). A continuum of assessment models is proposed in order to show the dominance of ‘on merit’ approaches which prioritise child care skills over sexuality issues. The thesis demonstrates the presence of arguments about the supposed ‘risks’ to children posed by lesbians or gay men. The notion of ‘discrimination’ in assessments is analysed, as are attempts by some social workers to challenge discrimination, and it is argued that small-scale anti-discriminatory measures are inadequate. Constructions of the categories ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are discussed in relation to the ‘good carer of children’, and the thesis proposes the dominance of two versions: the ‘good lesbian’ and the ‘maternal gay man’. The thesis argues that the ‘on merit: prioritisation of child care skills’ model relies upon iii heteronormative ideas, and the case study looks at contested meanings given to the category ‘lesbian’ which are also gendered and raced. The thesis sees ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ as categories of knowledge, and social work assessment as a ‘making sense’ activity in which versions of these are produced. Such everyday practices are problematised in the thesis, and discourse, (black) feminist and queer theories are used to analyse how the assessment is a site for the production of knowledges about sexuality.

This thesis studies the crossover between self-discipline and emotion management in an electronic performance monitoring (EPM) setting. The intersection between these two elements is explained in terms of six main themes: control, power and discipline; compliance, conformity and resistance; rationality, performance standards and corrective action; emotional labour and the management of emotions; society, responsibility and accountability; and subjectivity, internalisation and the self. These main themes emerged from interview data and are supported by the literature. A qualitative methodology was adopted to support a social constructionist perspective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from a single case study organisation, and thematic coding was used for analysis. EPM systems installed in the case study call centre are used to control agents’ behaviour, embedding in their minds the importance of controlling and disciplining their own behaviour. They are forced by EPM to manage their own emotions and conform to the rules of the system through self-discipline. Nevertheless, some find it difficult constantly to suppress their emotions and may exhibit resistance. There is a preoccupation with self-correction. Agents internalise the call centre's norms of behavior. The technological environment largely determines the way in which they manage their emotions. They fake their emotions when interacting with callers, supervisors and colleagues, and exercise self-discipline and emotion management to satisfy personal and group expectations. They incorporate the cultural values, motives and beliefs of the EPM context through learning, socialisation and identification. This thesis offers significant theoretical contributions which revolve around the relationship between surveillance-induced self-discipline and emotional labour over time. It aims to alert academics and business people to the problems of emotional labour and to prompt them to make changes to the design, implementation and use of EPM.

This study offers a policy-relevant psychosocial understanding of ways in which regeneration can affect the lives of older people. It examined the experiences of people over sixty in England of local regeneration through an in-depth biographical case-based methodology. The fieldwork was conducted in 2006/07 in Bromley by Bow/London and Burnley Wood/Burnley as two urban areas that had been experiencing substantial - and very different - regeneration activity. A review of the literature indicated that research with a focus on older people in regeneration was limited, and that much scope remained for an in-depth understanding of (older) individuals' experiences of regeneration as a basis for future policy and practice. The study addressed this gap in knowledge through a psychosocial approach. Older people were conceptualised as psychosocial beings in whose experiencing psychic and social dimensions interact. The study drew on the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein and theorists in the British Object Relations tradition, as well as on the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu as a framework for exploring experiences of regeneration in terms of psychic and social, conscious and unconscious dimensions. The interview-based Biographical-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) was adopted as a method capable of yielding the kind of detailed data that can provide the empirical basis of a psychoanalytically-informed psychosocial approach. Sixteen interviews were conducted. Interview analysis involved panels. Three fully developed contrasting case studies are presented in the thesis. Further case material from the remaining interviews that supported or confounded the analysis arising from these three core cases is presented in the form of twelve summary vignettes. The study concludes that local regeneration can work well for older people and their communities where it provides containing structures that facilitate relations of recognition across difference and enable older people to experience a sense of well-being in contemporary mixed communities. It argues that, in addition to sustaining the rights of both older individuals themselves and others, it is crucial that regeneration initiatives foster bonds that unite people across difference. In this, the wider political context can play an important facilitating role by sustaining a reparative politics that places a premium on promoting justice, care and relations of recognition and solidarity. The study adds a psychosocial perspective to a limited body of existing work with a specific focus on regeneration and older people. Involving detailed attention to unconscious mechanisms and defences, it offers a complex understanding of the processes through which regeneration can become a beneficial or negative experience for older people in terms of an interaction of psychic and social dimensions of personal experience. The depth of this understanding has not been matched by policy-focussed research into how well regeneration has ‘worked’. The study thus makes an original contribution to knowledge that can inform future regeneration policy and practice.

The semiconductor industry relies on knowledge sharing and collaboration between its employees and amongst subsidiary companies to remain competitive in an ever changing, market driven environment. Practise has changed from workers supplying labour to workers supplying knowledge. Technology improvements and investment in automation have provided companies the platform to generate, codify, harness and exploit knowledge as a means of improving organisational performance. This research explores knowledge dynamics in the organisation and specifically looks at knowledge sharing within a subsidiary and among subsidiaries in a multinational corporation. The corporation in question operates its manufacturing facilities as competing business units. The purpose of the research was to establish if this method of organising business units provides the overall corporation with a competitive advantage, or if competing business units inhibits performance preventing or restricting the potential for a competitive advantage for the corporation. To determine how knowledge is shared within the organisation a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted. Senior managers and professional staff across a number of disciplines were interviewed. Knowledge sharing within functional area departments, collaboration between functional area departments, knowledge systems and compliance to knowledge systems were used as determinants to establish the extent of the knowledge dynamic in the subsidiary. The relationship between knowledge sharing and how it impacted the “bottom line” performance of the subsidiary was also considered in an attempt to quantify the impact knowledge sharing has on performance. To determine how knowledge is shared between subsidiaries, two case studies were conducted. The first case study involved a benchmarking visit to allow two of the corporation’s subsidiaries to compare best practice cost systems with multi-disciplines involved. The second case study involved a cross functional team of technical staff to define a manufacturing facility technical yield roadmap. Significant cost, productivity and yield improvement at the site was attributed to the success of collaborative units established at site. Establishing collaborative units was a precursor to setting up a network within the site to promote knowledge sharing in the organisation. The site was cognisant of the impact of effective knowledge sharing and receptive to sharing knowledge on an informal or formal basis. The site put great stock in codified knowledge and invested heavily in automating knowledge based systems. Many barriers to knowledge sharing were identified including compliance to codified procedures, departmental conflicts, viewing knowledge sharing as a burden, variation across automated systems, conflicts caused by the internet as a knowledge source and logistics due to geographical dispersion. Knowledge-led teams overcame many of these barriers. Success bred success to the extent knowledge sharing has become a business process in the organisation. Knowledge sharing is a two way process. It can be a vehicle for trust, respect and improvement. This research has shown knowledge sharing even within competing business units can produce a competitive advantage. An organisation is an accumulation of knowledge. A knowledge-led collaborative approach provides many benefits: it will advance the company, engage staff at all levels and favourably impact the “bottom line”. Knowledge management differentiated the local site from other corporate subsidiaries with the local site demonstrating “best in class” results on its key performance indicators. Encouragingly, there is ample opportunity to improve performance further once knowledge management is fully embedded as a business process across the organisation.

This thesis examines the accounting choices related to goodwill impairment exercised by Malaysian listed companies in the first three years of the implementation of FRS 3 Business Combinations (i.e. 2006/7 to 2008/9). Three aspects of these accounting choices are examined, i.e. disclosure, measurement, and recognition of goodwill impairment. This thesis makes four main contributions. Firstly, it shows how the opportunistic behaviour perspective, previously developed and tested by prior studies using data from listed companies in developed economies (reported to have dispersed ownership), helps explain managerial decisions on the measurement of goodwill impairment in the developing economy of Malaysia (documented to have concentrated ownership). Managerial opportunism is normally discussed in prior studies in the context of agency conflict between managers and shareholders in companies with disperse ownership. Because of the high outside ownership concentration found in the Malaysian listed companies, the empirical result of this thesis suggests that most probably the opportunistic behaviour occurs due to an agency conflict between the controlling shareholders (shareholders outside of the companies) and the minority shareholders. Within this conflict, managers would possibly act on behalf of the controlling shareholders at the expense of the minority shareholders. Secondly, this thesis contributes to research design by developing a disclosure framework. Future researchers could make use of the disclosure framework to identify accounting choices related to goodwill impairment, or to interpret their statistical findings, which this thesis has attempted to do. Thirdly, this thesis presents new results from the empirical evidence related to factors influencing managerial decisions on the measurement of goodwill impairment by Malaysian listed companies. These factors are: managerial ownership, and two different measures of pre-write-off earnings. These results highlight the need for future studies to incorporate these variables, in order to iii provide a more comprehensive model of accounting choices related to goodwill impairment. Finally, this thesis constructs a research setting which aims to capture evidence of a recognition choice related to reporting zero goodwill impairment exercised by Malaysian listed companies. Testing this setting allows the recognition study to make a contribution, by identifying the motives of companies for recognising zero goodwill impairment, which has received limited attention in prior studies. Information concerning these motives is useful to the relevant regulatory bodies overseeing financial reporting standards on goodwill.

Co-production is a term that has gained increased attention as governments seek out new ways for organising and delivering public services which involve citizens. One way of developing co-production is time banking, a form of community currency that has developed in the UK since the 1990s and is gaining increased policy attention with Governments in England and Wales. This research examines the relationship between time banking and co-production within health care. The starting point of the study is two-fold. First there is an interest in the claimed health benefits of time banking and its potential for service delivery. To explore these issues the research specifically examines the mechanisms which generate social capital and social networks through time bank participation to offer a more nuanced analysis of the health outcomes currently found in the literature. Building on this, action research was carried out with health service providers in the South Wales Valleys to examine the applicability of time banking, and therefore co-production to local service delivery. Second, the analysis of these health care interventions seeks to reposition time bank theory. Drawing on the social theory of time the analysis explores how time banking is co-opted into government programmes despite its radical political potential which offers an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism. Consequently the original contribution of this research is the repositioning of current time bank theory to offer a more nuanced understanding of the possible impacts upon health through time banking and a theoretical framework from which to articulate political goals with greater clarity.

The embracing of environmental responsibility by for-profit organisations is a latent concern for contemporary social scientists and management scholars. The Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development recently published alarming predictions about the impact of human (and especially business) activities on the environment. Both management theorists and business practitioners failed to create the premise for, and inform the direction to, environmental sustainable development – although their interest in raising this challenge has significantly grown throughout the last decade. A number of Environmental corporate Social Responsibility (ESR) theorists are calling for a paradigm in which ethical or moral concerns are reintegrated in the practice of management. A more holistic and integrative perspective on corporate environmental and economic sustainability, it is argued, would generate improvements in the practice of ESR. Such a perspective is currently lacking; partly owing to the allegiance of theorists to atomistic and ‘outmoded’ ways of thinking. This thesis articulates a framework for ESR which prescribes the integration of environmental concerns in the day-to-day culture, processes and activities of a firm. Existing research suggests that the construct of a holistic and comprehensive view of ESR integration requires considerations both of business imperatives and of individuals’ cognitions. A compatibility framework is discussed, through which the operational and normative drivers for ESR integration are integrated. Four scenarios of compatibility are proposed: trade-off, ambidexterity, synergy and symbiosis. The theoretical discussion extends to the consideration of ESR integration as a managerial challenge whereby individual agents of management endeavour to balance objective rationale with subjective morale/ethics in the quest for a considerate environmental response. To examine this challenge, the present study suggests a new direction for theory based on the concept of syncretism – a perspective which received little attention outside the fields of culture and religion. The syncretistic framework is the main contribution of this thesis; it advocates the reconciliation of economic imperatives and environmental concerns via the reintegration of corporate objective (or systemic) and subjective (or constructionist) contingencies. To develop/refine the theoretical propositions, the thesis provides empirical evidence from thirty-seven interviews with business consultants and managers in a UK Brewery. The managers were interviewed more than once. The findings indicate that systemic pressures are often put forward as constraints to ESR integration; whether this translates into shareholders disapproval, economic instability, market volatility, etc. They tend to impinge on the normative engagement of business practitioners and provoke an incapacity or reluctance to change, understand, learn and lead towards syncretistic reconciliation. The analysis portrays the UK Brewery as an environmentally proactive, multi-level responsive company. Drawing upon the syncretistic framework, the firm’s proactive approach is argued to be impeded by a number of systemic factors. The syncretistic and compatibility frameworks, it is alleged, provide substance to the creation of a holistic theory of ESR integration for understanding the specific, and broader, causal mechanisms that are at play. KEY WORDS: corporate environmental responsibility, syncretism, sustainability, strategy management, business performance.

Since its beginnings in the WWI propaganda machine, public relations (PR)has had a murky image as the influential force at the sidelines of powerful groups in society. Despite this shadowy existence, the predominant professional body for PR, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)has looked to professionalise the industry. This research explores how these tensions and ontradictions play out in the construction of professional identities by examining the on-going construction, contestation and attempted closure of a professional body within a wider web of power relations, and its relationship and resonance with those practicing PR. Utilising a combination of interviews, participant observation and document analysis, the thesis argues that discourses circulating in texts generated by the CIPR constructs the subject position of the PR professional as someone who is committed to continual development and learning through the professional body’s credentialised resources. Nevertheless, this professional subject position isn’t always salient in practitioners’ identity work where the majority of ractitioners draw on alternative discourses that centre on their level of experience and access to powerful networks. The dominant subject position that PR practitioners construct in their identity work is that of shapeshifter: someone who continually adapts their performance of identity with different audiences in order to do their job. This indicates that the CIPR needs to consider how its professional subject position can reflect practitioners’ experience of their work as centring on relationships and adaptation to different contexts. As such, this research contributes to the literature on identities and knowledge work by highlighting the importance of the shapeshifter identity whilst also providing a more nuanced appreciation of how ambiguity operates in knowledge workers’ identity construction. It also contributes to the sociology of the professions by demonstrating that closure and credentialism are not the most salient discourses for the modern professional. Keywords: identities, profession, knowledge work, becoming, PR