Downsizing is a widely known phenomenon and has been studied by the researchers quite frequently. This research project treats downsizing as a form of strategic change and focuses on how integrated human resource practices and role of change agent can contribute to the success of downsizing strategy. By success, it is meant here the level of return earned by investing in downsizing strategy. This study considers the economic perspective of downsizing and study downsizing as investment strategy. The idea on which this research is based is that organisations downsize to manage their investments in assets. The most common assets an organisation possesses are capital and financial assets. Downsizing may include change in human assets, physical assets, both human and physical assets. Organisations investment in strategic change of downsizing in expectation of greater financial benefits as compared to the initial costs associated with the downsizing. It is a deductive study with objective stance and positivist philosophy. Methodologically, the use of survey strategy and a combination of analytical procedures including: univaraite, bivariate and multivariate analysis demonstrates that integrated strategic human resource practices and the role of change agent are actually major contributors to earn higher level of returns on downsizing strategy. The findings of the study show that it is not always possible for a well-designed or modified communication strategy – where communication strategy is a part of strategic human resource practices – to communicate organisational downsizing to its stakeholders. The study makes contribution to the body of knowledge theoretically and on the practical side, it contributes to create awareness about the effects of strategic human resource practices and role of change agent at the time of downsizing.

Recent studies in marketing theories have developed the conceptualisation of marketing capabilities in for-profit businesses. Despite the evidence of the importance of marketing capabilities in shaping the direction of marketing in for-profit businesses, only a small amount of research investigating the concept of marketing capabilities in the non-profit organisation context. Building on the existing literature of marketing and non-profit marketing, this research offers an investigation into marketing capabilities and market orientation on performance in non-profit organisation. A quantitative research method was adopted and a survey was used to gather data from the UK-based non-profit organisations. Together with the literature review, research hypotheses and an operational model was developed. The model was tested with a survey which was directed at managers and executives of different UK non-profit organisations. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the survey responses. The structural model showed a good fit with the data and good convergent and discriminant validity as well as reliability stability. This research is the first to formulate and develop the concepts of marketing capabilities and market orientation in the non-profit context. The outcome of this research adds new perspectives to the growing body of non-profit marketing literature, and suggests directions for future research. This research also offers important implications for management bodies in the non-profit organisations and public policy-makers alike.

Although research on lesbian, gay and bisexual people has been recently increased within criminology that which specifically examines or includes transgender identities remains exceedingly rare. There is evidence that transgender individuals and LGB individuals both experience similar types of discrimination; however, there are important differences between those who identify as transgender (one’s gender identity) and those who identity as LGB (one’s sexuality). The present study provides qualitative data from 20 American officers and 19 English and Welsh constables on a particularly under-researched group within criminology: transgender police. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives from criminology, sociology and social psychology, this study examines if gender ideologies and hypermasculinity are monolithic across police cultures. By doing so, the reinforcement of gender binaries which impact gender ideologies and hypermasculinity were perceived as endemic, yet administratively addressable. The purpose of this research is to examine how transgender identities are perceived and how they are treated within policing. This research answers the following research questions: what are police perceptions towards transgender officers, and what are the consequences of these perceptions?; what are the occupational experiences and perceptions of officers who identify as transgender within policing?; and what are the reported positive and negative administrative issues that transgender individuals face within policing?. This research found that cisgender (i.e. non-transgender) police, particularly those who are heterosexual, collectively viewed LGB and transgender identities as violating conventional gender ideologies. Further, this research found that transgender police faced varied amounts of heterosexism and genderism based on how well they were able to conform to masculine or feminine ideals in addition to how their occupational transition was administratively managed. Yet some hopeful themes were found that are promising for the future acceptance of additional transgender identities within policing. For example, administrative improvements, such as supportive supervision and leadership alongside transition policies, can improve the occupational experiences of transgender officers and reduce the frequency of bias incidents, complaints and grievances. Further, it was discovered that officers who work alongside transgender colleagues are more understanding of transgender identities and certain social barriers that they face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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