This thesis contributes to the developing field of the critical theory of organisation. It presents a critical inquiry into the ideological nature of (neo)Human Relations management theory and its strategies for the management of subjectivity and organisational culture. The introductory chapters discuss the meta-theoretical grounds and contexts for the development of the thesis. Chapter 1 responds to the epistemological challenges put forward by post- Modernism highlighting the basic trajectory and underlying values of the thesis. Chapter 2 discusses the development of critical organisation theory so far, with respect to the discussions of subjectivity and culture. This includes a discussion of aspects of the work of Foucault, (neo)Marxist Theory, Labour Process Theory and critical social psychology as they have been taken up by organisational studies of subjectivity and culture. Chapter 3 clarifies the use of the concept of ideology and outlines the research strategy for the concrete study of (neo)Human Relations management as ideological. This involves a 'depth hermeneutic' research strategy, made up of the 3 components of (1) A Social Analysis, (2) A Discourse Analysis, and (3) An Interpretation of Meaning. As the 'Social Analysis' component of this 'depth hermeneutic', chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 highlights the work of Herbert Marcuse, exploring his critical social psychology; his notion of 'new forms of control'; his discussions of the relationship between culture, language and power; and his discussions of the rationalisation process leading to the rationalisation of culture and power relations. This is followed by both the 'Discourse Analysis' and 'Interpretation of Meaning' components of the 'depth hermeneutic' method. Chapter 8 offers an account of the historical emergence of the management discourses around subjectivity and culture and identifies its leading authors. Chapter 9 offers a critical interpretation of meaning of this discourse in the light of Marcuse's social analysis which highlights the ideological nature of (neo)Human Relations management.

Once a Cinderella subject, the employment of people aged 50 and above (often referred to in the literature as 'older workers') has become an issue of major prominence in recent years. This is no more evident than in the passage of the Age Regulations (October 2006) and with it, New Labour's pledge to encourage age diversity in the workplace. Older people are thus being encouraged to re-enter the labour market through schemes such as the New Deal 50 plus and Pathways to Work or to take up volunteering under the rubric of 'active citizenship'. There is now a variety of ways in which people approaching later life would, on the face of it, be able to access work, education and training opportunities. However, past research and current data suggest that there are a number of barriers to the take up of such opportunities. For instance, research has shown that older workers receive lower performance ratings than their younger counterparts (Saks and Waldman, 1998). The suggestion here is that negative stereotypes regarding an individual's chronological age may override employers' appraisal of their older workers. Ageism has been cited as the main barrier to employability and occupational progression for the majority of older workers. Past research in this field has highlighted the discriminatory power of economic myths and stereotypes concerning the work ability of older age groups (for example Taylor and Walker, 1998). The picture to emerge is that older workers are perceived by employers to be less productive, harder to train, and more expensive and difficult to manage than younger workers. It is therefore hoped that policy intervention will have the long term effect of supporting older age groups who have consistently been undervalued and often discarded by employers for simply being 'too old'. Laudable aims, but are employers ready to listen? Moreover are older people (and society at large) ready to refuse to conform to, or accept, negative images of their age group? This research considers the nature and salience of ageism in the UK labour market. It also asks whether ageism alone is enough to explain the extent of the discrimination experienced by older women and men. It looks at these issues through the eyes of older people themselves and the organisations that impact upon their lives in an effort to understand the barriers they face in the realm of work and employment. Qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented from older individuals and employers across the UK. Analysis of the data supports the existence of ageism in the workplace. It also reveals a gender dimension to the ageism experienced, which works to the detriment of older women and, in a qualitatively different way, older men as well. Yet self-reported examples of ageism were often more implicit than explicit, based around wider cultural stereotypes about people of a certain age. These findings are, of course, in accordance with much related past theory and research. Yet in contrast to previous work, consideration is also given to the part played by individual difference and to broader societal and psychological influences (i.e. life satisfaction). Such an approach indicates that older peoples' experiences of employment are more complex than previously assumed. For example, individuals' experiences of gender and age discrimination are not static, nor isolated from wider personal, historical and social contexts in which they had grown up and grown older. It is therefore argued that the study of ageism should be broadened out and linked to a variety of factors that concern how we as individuals and a society view old age.

This study explores online consumer complaining behaviour (CCB) on Facebook. The main objectives are: (1) to understand how Facebook is being used as a medium for consumer complaining, and (2) to understand why consumers complain on Facebook. An interpretative research position and multi-method qualitative design was adopted. Netnography, a form of online ethnography, is employed as the research design. First, participant-observational methods examined posts and discussions on Facebook’s official company pages, user-created pages/groups and user profiles. Then, online in-depth interviews were conducted with 37 consumers who were identified through online observations. These interviews were conducted in three forms: text-based, video-based, and email interviewing. The findings shed light on the nature (i.e. customs and manners) of online complaining on Facebook, consumers’ interactions with other consumers and companies, the role of Facebook in the complaint process, consumers’ objectives for complaining on Facebook, and outcomes of these. A key contribution of this study is the development of two models: ‘Integrated Model of CCB’ which aims to explain the organisation of complaining actions by integrating existing CCB theories and ‘Model of online CCB on Facebook’ which describes the range of online complaining actions on Facebook. On the basis of the findings of this study, research implications and recommendations for the management are suggested.

This thesis examines how the disruptive innovation of e-commerce took hold among small retailers in the South of England in the first decade of the 21st century. It describes empirically how a regional business-to-business market—providing e-commerce business services (EBS) to retail start-ups and small firms—emerged and operated, and how the goods traded in this market were evaluated. This market can be defined as an entrepreneurial market for an innovation because the market goods (EBS) constitute an innovation to be adopted by micro-enterprises as means of production to enable them to retail their own goods online to consumers. The study investigates two practical problems that concern the construction and operation of entrepreneurial markets for innovations: 1) how small firms as buyers of productive means evaluate complex, intangible market goods (such as EBS), given their lack of resources for conducting such evaluations; and 2) how policy makers and market makers address the market failure that is perceived to hinder the emergence of entrepreneurial markets. At the same time, this research also addresses the theoretical issues of how to define entrepreneurship, innovation, and markets and how to conceptualise the relationships between them, by empirically tracing and articulating the connections between the activities, objects, and places that constitute these phenomena. Actor-network theory (ANT) was utilised as a research approach to study an ecommerce community across two English counties, using ethnographic methods to collect data via participant observation, interviews, and documents between 2006 and 2010. ANT's material-semiotic method was deployed to trace the emergence, transformations, and workings of the socio-material network of institutions, policies, and technical artefacts that have enabled the functioning of this regional entrepreneurial market for EBS. Industry events such seminars, workshops, and conferences emerged as important marketplaces for establishing—through various trials—the qualities of buyers, sellers, and the EBS.

Access to family-friendly working time arrangements is unequally spread both within and between workplaces, leaving many working parents with difficulties in combining employment with family responsibilities. The British and German governments have started to address this problem, but have done so in different ways. Focusing on time allocation in the work/family interface and its implications for gender and employment relations, this thesis explores the differences between the British and German government strategies to improve access to family-friendly working time arrangements for working parents, and how variation can be explained. As the flexibility requirements of employers and employees often diverge and can be in conflict, the thesis further investigates to what extent the German and British policy strategies were designed to empower working parents to access the time flexibility they need. It applies an empowerment perspective to the analysis of policy choice and design and draws on the policy making literature to analyse cross-national variation. Between 1997 and 2005, the incoming centre-left New Labour and ‘Red-Green’ governments both introduced information campaigns and employment rights to improve access. The lack of economic incentives for the provision and take-up of family-friendly working time arrangements reduced the overall empowering potential of the British and German strategies. Although similar at the level of policy choice, employment rights and information campaigns varied at the level of policy design with different implications for access. The thesis concludes that family-friendly working time policy did not achieve a significant redistribution of control over working time to employees in either of the two countries. This can be in part explained by a strong employer lobby and opportunities to influence policy choice and design, but also by the ‘competitive advantage’ of childcare services over family-friendly working time policy, directing government resources to more ‘employer-friendly’ reconciliation policies.

Social capital is a rich topic in the development literature. Despite this, there is an incomplete understanding of how social capital is formed when placed within the enabling or constraining structure of Global Value Chains. While governance of Global Value Chains is well understood as a powerful force that shapes the participation of farmers, the literature to date has not effectively explored the extent to which governance may shape participation among farmers. The aim of this thesis is to explore how, if at all, governance shapes the formation of two types of farmers' social capital: structural and cognitive. Within the context of Peru's Alternative Development Program, where there is a purposeful effort to develop the social capital of farmers, qualitative research was conducted on two case study Global Value Chains: cacao and palm oil. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders across the Global Value Chain, from farmers and collective organisations to exporters and importers. The case studies revealed that governance can be an enabler of structural social capital formation, but its role is shaped by the institutional context and existing attitudes towards social structure. Governance can be an enabler or barrier to cognitive social capital formation, depending on the nature of the governing relationship between buyer and supplier. To date, the literature on social capital formation has typically focused on factors internal to a collective group. The findings in the thesis shed light on the role of exogenous structures on the formation of social capital.

This thesis engages with debates around cultural work and culture-led regeneration by exploring the working conditions encountered and experienced by visual artists who have located in Margate and Folkestone, two towns in Kent (South East England) which have pursued culture-led regeneration. It draws on, and contributes, to critical debates on cultural labour and the conditions of cultural work as well as long-standing debates around culture and creativity as drivers of urban regeneration. It establishes the ways in which artists’ labour is integral to culture-led urban policies, and further critically explores the quality of such work, looking at the conditions under which it proceeds, and the values and meanings individual workers ascribe to it. The thesis demonstrates that culture-led urban strategies represent a locus of economic exploitation for the artists implicated in them. This accords with other studies that provide evidence of artistic, and other forms of cultural, labour as wholly beset by economic and social structures that instrumentalise cultural value, and undermine any intrinsic value or meaning to cultural labour. However, this thesis also provides a ‘defence’ of artists’ work. While noting the continuing inequalities, marginalisation and exclusionary effects of neoliberal working conditions and practices, this thesis demonstrates that creative cultural work is not fully colonised by the market, and that within the cultural industries there remains the possibility of ‘good work’. This thesis concludes that although economic exploitation and insecurity are common, workers are able to draw upon pre-existing cultural discourses that sometimes allow them to produce value and meaning in their work in ways that evade capitalist logics.

This study contributes to the current literature on time, gender, migration, culture and identity by bringing insights into how time is perceived and experienced by Syrian women who are settled and working in the UK. It is a topic that is little known in the extant literature, and that differs in its dynamics form the western literature. The notion of time has been widely debated but with little reference to its impact on the perceptions and individual experiences of migrant women, who engage with culturally different time structures and different time schedules. The spatial experiences of those women represented by their mobility across cultural boundaries seem to be affecting how migrant women perceive and organise time. Throughout the study, the Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological perspective has been adopted to make sense of and interpret the meanings and experiences provided by the participants of this study. This has been selected to allow space for considering and acknowledging the impact of the personal experience and prior knowledge of both the researcher and the researched subjects. Perceptions of time and time experiences have been found to be much diversified across personal, social and cultural contexts which are marked by spatial or geographical boundaries. Also, time structures and time schedules have been institutionally gendered across the cultures of both countries: Syria and the UK, but with varying degrees. Empirically, this study can help work organisations and agencies interested in working with migrant people to understand the diversity of perceptions and experiences of migrant female workers in the UK to enable them offering the care and services tailored to the needs of those migrants. In doing so, this research is hoped to improve the quality of work and social contributions of migrant women in the UK. Methodologically, this phenomenological inquiry contributes to the field of empirical and socio-political knowledge as well as the understanding of moral, aesthetic, and personal welfare debated in the migration literature. It contributes to the understanding of human experiences in relation to the notion of time, in isolation of any concern to predicting or prescribing any theory.