This thesis tries to establish a functional relationship between the supply and supply price of labour, product-mix and choice of technology in British agriculture during the period 1700-1870. The desiderata, increased production and lower unit production costs were in many respects incompatible with those of full-employment and greater social welfare. Historians have been primarily concerned with just one aspect of this problem, namely structural unemployment during the winter months. This is to ignore that the chief limiting factor on increased production may often have been the capacity of the labour force during the summer work-bottlenecks. This thesis argues that over a large part of the proto-industrial period (1790-1870), British agriculture was afflicted by sometimes very serious labour shortages in the summer work peaks. It goes on to a detailed case-study of labour supply and technological change in the corn harvest, the farm operation which historically has always created the exceptional demand for labour, and in which labour shortages were soonest likely to develop. It demonstrates that initially, at least, and for some time after 1851, when reaping machinery became available, the majority of farmers obtained their labour and labour cost-savings not through mechanization but by a more intensive use of labour (the more thorough exploitation of child and female labour, greater dependence on migrant harvesters and the introduction of piecework), and, when the supply of labour became inelastic, by the 'intermediate technology’ of improved hand tools, in particular the substitution of the faster-working scythe and heavy hook for the traditional sickle and reap hook. The advantages of this strategy were that it conserved capital, that it did not disrupt other work schedules, and perhaps most important, that it averted unemployment over what for the majority of farm labourers and their families was the key earnings period of the year. It met the requirements for a technology which was discontinuous enough to guarantee production and flexible enough to guarantee employment. The conclusion is that there is a phase of economic development in which factor proportions render a scythe economically and socially more useful than a reaping machine.

This thesis examines the development and implementation of Housing Action Trust (HAT) policy, with a particular emphasis on the theme of choice. When first announced, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Nick Ridley, argued that HATs would form the ‘cutting edge’ of the Government's urban regenerationin itiatives. In practice, as only six HATs were ever established, they became something much more marginal and experimental. HAT policy therefore represents a curious episode in the development of housing policy in England. The 1980s Conservative Government's political ideology had been particularly influenced by the New Right and their critique of the welfare state, which inter alia called for the removal of the local authority monopoly in the rented housing sector through the demunicipalisation of local authority housing. The first policy instrument to demunicipalise council housing was a statutory right-to-buy (RTB) for council tenants introduced in 1980. During the late 1980s, three further exit mechanisms were introduced: Tenants' Choice, HATs and voluntary transfers. Proposals for HATs were met with fierce opposition from the Labour party, local authorities and tenants. None of the first six areas intended to be designated as HATs were implemented. In March 1991, however, the first successful HAT ballot occurred in Hull, followed by a second in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in July 1991 and a third in Liverpool in August, 1992. In total six HATs were established. Chapter Two outlines the research agenda. Chapter Three discusses the major developments in housing policy during the 1980s. Building on Chapters One and Three, Chapter Four focuses specifically on HAT policy. Chapters Five to Seven examine HAT practice, with each Chapter focusing on one of the first three HATs. Chapter Eight draws conclusions.

The 1990s witnessed an increased interest in issues of governance and accountability in U.K. companies. In the wake of a series of governance reports (e.g. Cadbury, 1992; Greenbury, 1995; Hampel, 1998), U.K. companies have significantly altered their governance characteristics. The objective of this thesis is to examine the utilisation of governance mechanisms by U.K. companies immediately prior to the beginning of this governance revolution. My first objective is to ascertain the extent to which board composition and leadership, managerial ownership and external shareholder control were substitutes or complements in the overall governance strategies employed by large quoted companies at the beginning of the 1990s. My second objective is to examine the relationship between internal and external governance mechanisms. This is accomplished in two ways. First, I investigate the internal governance characteristics of takeover targets and a matched sample of non-targets to ascertain the influence of internal governance characteristics at various stages of the takeover process. The motivation for this investigation is a perception in the governance literature that takeovers represent a governance mechanism of last resort exercised only when internal governance structures are ineffective in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. Second, I examine the governance characteristics of mutual and proprietary insurance companies. In mutual insurance companies, the functions of owner and policyholder are merged which eliminates the prospect of governance either through takeovers or through the ownership of substantial proportion of equity. The absence of these two governance mechanisms suggests that mutual insurers may place greater reliance on internal governance such as more intensive monitoring by the board of directors. In the case of large quoted companies, I find a significant substitution between the monitoring potential of both external and internal ownership and the utilisation of non-executive directors. I also find that companies with greater nonexecutive representation on their boards are more likely to acquire the complementary monitoring of directors' and officers' insurance and demand more extensive auditing. Managerial ownership is the dominant influence on the takeover process. Hostile and unsuccessful bids are associated with lower levels of managerial ownership while friendly and successful bids are associated with high ownership levels. I also find some evidence that hostile targets possess less independent boards compared to a matched sample of non-targets. In the case of insurance companies, I find that mutuals place greater emphasis on non-executive directors than their proprietary counterparts. Overall, my empirical analysis suggests that, at the beginning of the 1990s, U.K. companies emphasised different governance mechanisms depending on the specific monitoring problems they faced.

In this thesis, we endeavour to explore the characteristics and the role of exceptionally innovative small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) within the UK system of innovation. The focus is placed on 'serial' and 'persistent' innovators, defined as independent companies with an unusually high frequency of innovation over time. The aim of the thesis is to identify such companies and analyse those factors, both internal and external to the enterprise, which influence such a sustained stream of innovation within SMEs. Persistence in innovation is an important element within the discussion on the properties of the patterns of innovative activities and industry dynamics. In this thesis, we propose three main empirical studies which look at rather unexplored areas in the literature on persistent innovation, focusing on the presence and the specific characteristics of small persistent and serial innovators and the role of cumulated knowledge capabilities in explaining the presence and the extent of such phenomenon. In particular, we follow a multidimensional approach, investigating the related and yet different phenomena of persistent and serial innovation through different perspectives built upon empirical evidence from patent data as well as innovation surveys. Our intended contribution to the literature is centred around the presence of persistent and serial innovation across small companies, the role played by elements internal and external to the enterprise in sustaining their innovation activity and, finally, the extent and the determinants of technological diversification across small serial innovators. Additionally, we explore differences and similarities across firm size. The first study explores the effect that specific patterns of innovative activity and firm-specific technology characteristics exert on the rate of innovation of serial innovators. Then, it offers a comparative perspective observing the differences between small and large serial innovators. In particular, we test the hypothesis that the specific qualities of cumulativeness, described in terms of dynamic economies of scale and dynamic increasing returns, play a central role in defining the differences across firm size. Analysing patent counts and citation-weighted patent counts with a negative binomial GEE model, this study provides evidence that serial small innovators benefit from technological regimes characterized by patterns of creative accumulation and from combinative capabilities based on accumulated internal knowledge competencies as sources of both technological learning and creation. The second study investigates the presence and the determinants of technological diversification across small serial innovators. After presenting stylised facts on the relationship between serial innovators and technological diversification, we focus on the elements that may bring small innovative firms to engage in the costly process of technological diversification, analysing the trade-off that is likely to take place between the need to explore new technological opportunities and the significant element of path dependency delineated by the specific core technological competencies that usually characterise small innovative companies. Using a fractional response model for panel data estimated within a GEE framework, we find that increasing technological opportunities present an inverted U relationship with diversification, while technological trajectories defined by coherence in both technological search and core competencies support specialization. The third study addresses the question of whether there is persistence in innovative activities across UK companies. In particular, we analyse the presence of persistent innovation through a panel dataset obtained from three successive rounds of the UK Innovation Survey, covering the period of time between the year 2002 and the year 2008. Explicitly accounting for unobserved firm heterogeneity, we provide evidence of persistence in innovation for both large and small companies. Moreover, our findings confirm that important interaction effects exist between the effect exerted by the presence of persistent innovation, in the form of dynamic increasing returns within the process of knowledge accumulation, and technological intensity inherent to firms' innovation activity, at least among small companies.

Research on prejudice against older workers often tacitly subscribes to outdated attitude theory and rarely attempts to examine methodological questions about the effect of measurement strategy on results. This thesis compared empirically the validity of the tripartite and unitary models of attitudes in relation to prejudice towards (a) older teachers, and (b) the employment of older teachers. In addition, two alternative measurement strategies for assessing stereotypes of older teachers were compared (a 15-item rating scale versus a free-response measure). A postal questionnaire survey was conducted on a random sample of members of the National Union of Teachers (n=285) in May 2008. Two equivalent questionnaire versions were constructed that differed only with respect to the measurement strategy for assessing stereotypical beliefs of older teachers (aged 50+). The validity of the tripartite theory of attitudes was tested using hierarchical regression analyses that examined the ability to predict reported attitudes towards older teachers and the employment of older teacher on the basis of (a) stereotypical beliefs of the target group alone, and (b) a combination of stereotypical beliefs, and affective and behavioural associates of the target group. Prediction of attitudes was significantly improved above the level afforded by stereotypical beliefs alone by adding both affective and behavioural information to the regression model, supporting the validity of the tripartite model of attitudes. Measurement strategy was found to have a significant effect on the positivity of stereotypical beliefs elicited (r = -0.515), with the average response valence on the stereotypical beliefs rating scale being significantly less positive than the average response valence on the free-response measure. The content of the rating-scale measure was also found not to be representative of naturally elicited stereotype categories. The theoretical and methodological implications for attitude research in organisations were discussed.

The purpose of this thesis is to review a number of academic perspectives on the practice of risk management in primarily widely-held (i.e. quoted) firms. In particular the currently dominant modern finance approach is criticised on the grounds that it offers an overly narrow view of corporate risk management behaviour. The core of the modern finance approach is that risk management is said to exist as a means to alleviate the adverse impact of various financial and capital market based agency and transactions costs that prevent the firm's stakeholders from achieving a Pareto efficient distribution of risk amongst themselves. However, in what follows it is argued that the presence of such agency or transactions costs do not provide a complete rationale for corporate risk management. Indeed fruitful research is already being done in the areas of organisational behaviour, sociology and psychology. Yet, what remains to be fully explored is the short run economic impact of risk management on a firm. In view of this a new economic framework for risk management is proposed based on the twin economic concepts of risk related "pure penalties" (which represent an unambiguous cost to a firm) and "technological nonlinearities" (which can affect the structure of a fine's revenue, cost and production functions). Both of these phenomena can have a significant effect on the expected profits of a firm. Moreover, it is demonstrated that there are numerous scenarios in which risk management may be used by an expected profit maximising firm.

Application of agent-based modelling technology (ABM) to disaster management has to date been limited in nature. Existing research has concentrated on extending the model structures and agent architectures of complex algorithms to test robustness and extensibility of this simulation approach. Less attention has been brought to bear on testing the current state-of-the-art in ABM for modelling real-life systems. This thesis aims to take first steps in remedying this gap. It focuses on identifying the practical and conceptual issues which preclude wider utilisation of ABM in disaster management. It identifies that insufficient attention is put on incorporating real-life information and domain knowledge into model definitions. This research first proposes a methodology by which some of these issues may be overcome, and consequently tests and evaluates it through implementation of InSiM (Incident Simulation Model), which depicts reaction of pedestrians to a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear) explosion in a city centre. A number of steps are conducted to obtain real-life information related to human response to CBRN incidents. This information is then used for design and parameterisation of InSiM which is implemented in three configurations. In order to identify the effects use of real-life data have on the simulation results each configuration incorporates the information at different level of complexity. The effects are assessed by comparison of the generated dispersion patterns of agents along the city centre. However, use of conventional statistical goodness-of-fit tests for assessing the degree of the difference was challenged by inhomogeneous nature of the data. Hence, alternative approaches are also adopted so that results can be qualitatively assessed. Nevertheless, the evaluation reveals significant differences at global and local level. This research highlights that incorporation of real-life information and domain knowledge into ABM is not without problems. Each time a problem was addressed, additional issues began to emerge. Most of these challenges were related to generalisation of the complex real-life systems that the model represents. Therefore, further investigations are needed at every methodological step before ABM can fully realise its potential to support disaster management.

It is widely agreed that the current industrial zones (IZs) in Egypt are not sustainable and face insurmountable environmental problems. This research is guided by an argument considering that the problem is in the founding process of the current IZs and, hence, future industrial development in Egypt is prone to the same destiny, if it is going to follow the current process, that lacks theorisation. This research, therefore, stemmed out of a concern to understand the process which gives shape to these IZs, and the factors which govern this process. This is the first crucial step, this research has contributed to, towards sustainability of the future industrial development. The importance of taking this step increased after the 25th of January Revolution that has put Egypt on the way towards democracy and progress after an authoritarian era of governing under which the country had been deteriorating. Out of this concern, the research theoretically investigated the current position of the Egyptian industry from industrial ecology (IE) and governance for sustainable development (SD) perspective. Further, a pilot study was conducted, making use of a preliminary conceptual framework for sustainable IZs which the research developed from literature on IE and governance for SD. While the investigation fell short of providing a full understanding of the process, it was found that Egypt has recently made some legal and institutional arrangements to incorporate sustainability. However, the debate on the seriousness and effectiveness of these arrangements had been quite contradictory. It was also found that the whole founding process of IZs is complex and controlled by the government, where the planning phase is the best to allow for participation of partners, as highly called for by the international debate on IE. The importance of the role of planning in guiding the implementation of IE in communities is also internationally highlighted. Therefore, the research set out to, through empirical investigation, understand realities of only the current planning process and its governing factors. To help do that, this research constructed an in-depth conceptual framework of the planning process through which IE could be normatively implemented. The framework guided the empirical qualitative study which depended on a multi-stage, multi-method approach with a case study design in its core. Three case studies, representing the Industrial Developer Program, the most recent program expected to influence the future industrial development and the most advanced case to adopt sympathetic approaches to IE and SD concepts, were chosen. Semi-structured interviews with involved key partners and experts, primary and secondary documentary data sources, and observations were utilised. The official and actual planning processes, synthesized in this research, are found to be unsustainable. Despite the partial involvement, doubted in its purposes, of industrial developers in the process, the IZs planning is conducted through a top down process that suffers from centrality and government monopoly of decision-making in most of the steps. This top down process has been strengthened by diminishing the role of regional level, that is supposed to connect the national level to the local one back and forth to empower the participatory planning approach. Regarding the factors influencing the current process, it is found that the authoritarian nature of the previous regime has deeply/negatively influenced the context, shaping the planning process. Authoritarianism has created a set of other factors that has flawed the context making it chaotic and disabling for the implementation of SD/IE. The research concludes by reflecting on the international debate on IE, presenting, thereafter, a new list of barriers to IE implementation.

This thesis not only contributes to the literature on corporate governance, but also has important implications and recommendations for policy makers and corporate practitioners in transitional economic and political contexts.

Senegalese fishermen have significantly expanded their mobility into the eastern Atlantic Ocean since the early 1980s. Fishermen have been crossing international maritime borders and organising long sea journeys, in part as a response to the decrease in fishing resources in Senegalese waters. From the early 2000s, they began carrying West African migrants on the maritime routes from Senegal to Spain, diversifying into irregular maritime migration or ‘people smuggling’. Fishermen’s fishing techniques and the migration flows they have facilitated are well documented. We have a good understanding, too, of the push-and-pull factors shaping these maritime migration patterns. Thus far, the social and political meanings of fishermen’s maritime mobility and cross-border movements have been comparatively neglected. This thesis argues that these mobility patterns are connected, revealing links between regional fisheries and mobilities and international migration flows that create distinctive maritime geographies. Drawing on participant observations and narratives collected in 69 in-depth interviews, my analysis explores the ways in which power and knowledge shape the at-sea experiences of Senegalese fishermen. For them, mobility is more than a response to the decrease in fish resources. By deploying their mobility, fishermen seek to recover control over their maritime and social environments. To map the maritime geographies this mobility co-creates, I examine three spaces. First, I chart the social and political mechanisms of fishermen’s mobility in Senegal, examining the gendered and local meanings of their movements. Second, I examine these mechanisms at the regional level – at the Senegal–Mauritania border and in the waters off Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. Finally, I track fishermen’s routes to the Canary Islands. By attending to fishermen’s accounts, I demonstrate the many ways in which they appropriate the ocean space, shape the geographies of maritime borderlands and rationalise their navigation. I reveal how their maritime mobility opens up multiple opportunities for fishermen to negotiate with – and reshape – the power relations that structure their social, political and natural environments.