The main contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate that collective bargaining represents a fundamental source of flexibility and security for the labour market. This original finding emerges from a comparative analysis of bargaining arrangements in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector in three countries – Italy, Denmark, and the UK – with a detailed examination of arrangements at company level in two of these – Italy and Denmark. The sector chosen for the analysis is a solid manufacturing industry exposed to international competition and characterised by a long tradition of collaboration between the social partners. A focus on collective bargaining which is both multi-level and comparative enabled this research to establish: first, that sector level industrial relations institutions account for the degree of within-country homogeneity in the content of firm level agreements over issues of flexibility and security; and second, that the degree of cross-company heterogeneity is conditioned primarily by firm-level contingencies – both union density and organisational characteristics. This means that at company level both institutional structures and non-institutional variables play an important role. Significantly, the increasing attention paid at EU level to policies aimed at achieving greater flexibility while protecting the level of security for the workforce, and the ineffectiveness of the Member States to fully embrace such a policy paradigm, have required academic debate on flexicurity to look beyond public policies and legal regulation as sources of flexibility and security for the labour market. In line with this stream of research the thesis shows that sector level bargaining institutions act as beneficial constraints on company level negotiations over flexibility and security. In light of this it is argued that the flexicurity literature has not only overlooked the role of collective bargaining in shaping different regimes of flexibility and security, it has also ignored a further form of security: the procedural security that a well-functioning multi-employer system provides to lower bargaining levels. Furthermore, by paying exclusive attention to collective bargaining institutions, the research responded to the challenge of offering a clearer account of the context within which the notion of flexicurity is deployed.

The contemporary view of identity in entrepreneurship accepts its dynamic nature and its multidimensional structure. Some scholars have illustrated how identity tensions may stimulate identity work in different settings, but they do not offer a satisfactory understanding of how multiple identities of an entrepreneur interact to promote identity work. One setting where identity work is prolific is in the initial stages of the venture when individuals have recently transitioned into entrepreneurship. However, detailed accounts of the identity struggles of the entrepreneur in this stage has not found favour in the entrepreneurship literature. More specifically, studies investigating identity conflict and coherence of entrepreneurs do not provide a satisfactory understanding of identity work derived from the complexity of the existence of multiple identities. The question therefore arises - How do entrepreneurs engage in identity work in response to identity demands caused by multiple identities? To address this research gap I study entrepreneurs that have recently started a venture in the creative industries. The founding stage is chosen to facilitate the observation of intense identity work, while the creative industries as an extreme setting facilitates our observation of multiple sub-identities of the entrepreneur. Though a two-year qualitative longitudinal study of 15 creative entrepreneurs, I provide new insight into identity work of entrepreneurs in light of multiple identities. Drawing on my analysis of the data, I present three articles. In the first, I examine the process of identity work through a staged model, and propose identity routes and tactics of entrepreneurs as they journey through identity disruption and equilibrium. Here, I recognise the impact of the entrepreneurs’ affects in this process. In the second article, I analyse how conflicts between specific identities of the entrepreneur are normalised by investigating dirty work in the context of entrepreneurship. And finally in article three I offer a more rounded discussion to types of trigger for identity work by examining the impact of self-defined critical incidents on identity work of entrepreneurs. Here I discuss the role of sensemaking in internalising the impacts from these critical incidents and find that a single incident can have multiple impacts. The examination of identity work in light of multiple identities is concluded with a discussion of the contributions of the thesis towards the current gaps in identity work literature as identified by scholars.

Researchers have identified a wide range of factors that affect organisational creativity. The leadership behaviour of top managers is one of the most important. However, few studies have empirically examined the relationship between the leadership behaviour of these leaders and creativity at the organisational level. In this study, a style of leadership labelled “entrepreneurial” is considered in the context of Chinese SMEs, by considering its potential to create an environment in which creative activities can flourish. The entrepreneurial leader is central to the enterprise, creating visionary scenarios and facilitating a group of capable members to enact their vision, further fostering organisational creativity. As organisational creativity is important for business success, there is a significant need for research into the impact of entrepreneurial leadership. The study identifies gaps in the literature. First, a number of studies have contributed significant insights into the antecedents of employee creative behaviours and performance, but predominantly concentrate on the level of the individual employee. Hence, an investigation into the antecedents of organisational creativity beyond this level is needed. Second, the field of entrepreneurial leadership remains in the embryonic stages of conceptual and theoretical development. Considering leadership as one of the antecedents of organisational creativity, existing research mainly focuses on the mainstreams of leadership style as the determinant. Third, SMEs, as the major incubator of entrepreneurial leadership, provide a valuable research environment as they foster organisational creativity. Fourth, there is a dearth of literature on the mechanisms through which creativity may be enhanced in Chinese SMEs. Therefore, further research has a valuable contribution to make to the field. More specifically, this dissertation considers the following three research questions: RQ1: What are the characteristics exhibited by the entrepreneurial leaders to facilitate creativity in Chinese SMEs? RQ2: Do entrepreneurial leader’s behaviours enhance SME’s creativity performance? RQ3: How do these entrepreneurial leadership behaviours affect an SME’s creativity, which in turns stimulates their firm performance? Based on these research questions, the researcher further set a range of specific objectives: 1. To develop a model of entrepreneurial leadership in SMEs; 2. To understand entrepreneurial leaders’ background and behavioural characteristics as well as their firms’ creative capabilities and performance within the targeted sample in Chinese SME context; 3. To identify the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial leadership influences SMEs’ creativity; 4. To investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and Chinese SMEs’ creativity as well as their firm performance. To move forward with these aims, a theoretical model of entrepreneurial leadership is developed and the manner in which the entrepreneurial leadership styles of top managers directly and indirectly affect creativity within SMEs is investigated. A mixed methods research approach is applied, including a combination of a qualitative study (case study) and a quantitative study (questionnaire survey). In the qualitative study, case studies of four firms (in Zhejiang) were conducted and interviews were carried out with the firms’ top leaders and managers. The qualitative analysis creates an item pool for the scale development of entrepreneurial leadership in SMEs context. In the quantitative study, a pilot study was first conducted with a sample of 274 employees from various industries. Afterwards the scale of entrepreneurial leadership in SMEs context was validated and finalised. The sample for the final questionnaire survey was 139 Chinese SMEs in Zhejiang Province in various industries. The top leader and two middle managers from each firm were invited to participate in the surveys. Therefore, two survey questionnaires were used to collect data (one was designed for the top leaders and the other was for the managers). The findings support a direct and positive link between a style of leadership that has been labeled as “entrepreneurial” and organisational creativity. They also indicate that entrepreneurial leadership has significant and positive relations with empowerment, organisation-based psychological ownership, and employee’s entrepreneurial behaviour. Empowerment and employee’s entrepreneurial behaviour have been found to have a significant and positive relationship with organisational creativity, but organisation-based psychological ownership has an insignificant relation with organisational creativity. Moreover, the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on empowerment in the context of an SME is moderated by the level of trust such that the relationship will be stronger when trust is high rather than low. Furthermore, the findings also support the positive relationship between organisational creativity of an SME its performance. Three contributions are made to the leadership literature. First, successful business performance in the 21st century environment needs a new form of leadership, and entrepreneurial leadership may be able to provide it. Second, by examining empowerment, organisation-based psychological ownership, and employee’s entrepreneurial behaviour as mediating variables, the study enhances understanding of the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial leadership promotes organisational creativity as well as firm performance. Third, this study contributes to the understanding of the applicability of leadership in the Chinese context, helping advance entrepreneurial leadership research in emerging market economies. The findings may help entrepreneurial leaders to recognise the influence of their unique cultural heritage and organisational context on their leadership styles. This study discusses the implications of the findings and identifies possible directions for future research.

This thesis studies how individuals use digital media to manage connectivity and accomplish work across digital and physical spaces in modern organisations, ultimately conceptualising this new type of work as a new digital nomadic practice. Increased digitisation and the need for more flexible work styles have pressured organisations to adopt new digital media and to redesign their workplaces. Existing research provides some theoretical understanding of this phenomena, however it is scattered across multiple disciplines and lack a broader all-encompassing view of the concept. This study addresses this gap with deeper and more holistic theoretical engagement in order to better capture and explain new work practices within organisations today. Exploring the salient aspects of digital nomadic practices, the study builds on the emergent literature on connectivity to understand the ways and means of staying connected. It also draws on the technology adoption and affordance literature to review how individuals use the capabilities of multiple digital media that provide the potential for a particular action. Overall the study aims to i) understand how individuals conduct their work practices in physical and digital spaces, ii) identify how individuals use digital media to stay connected, and iii) understand how individuals manage connectivity. It draws on a single case study of a multinational IT organisation in the UK. The research follows a qualitative approach and inductively driven strategy. The study focuses on the dimensions of connectivity, digital media use, and follows digital nomad’s work ‘within and between’ the digital and physical spaces. The findings of this exploratory case study show that digital nomads use the new digital media in a way it precluded them from being overly connected and allowed them to manage connectivity across multiple, operational, social and organisational levels. It identified the digital media choice by drawing on a theory of nested affordances in order to capture media choice in a dynamic way, which happens at different levels, as digital media coexist together and provide combination of various affordances. These findings contribute to knowledge of how individuals choose digital media to manage their connectivity in digital and physical spaces, and particularly inform the study of digital media adoption and technological affordances.

Health care is an unusual issue for collective bargaining. It was forced onto the bargaining agendas of some unions in South Africa by a combination of failing and racially discriminatory public sector health care and inflationary private sector health care. Sick Funds arc industry-specific health insurance schemes in South Africa, which give their members access to specific and limited private sector medical benefits, sick pay and sometimes maternity pay. They are jointly funded and managed by employer and trade union representatives, through the collective bargaining structures of Industrial Councils. This research, a case study of three Sick Funds for clothing and leather workers, and a more elaborate health insurance scheme for workers in the public transport sector, examines the process of restructuring the content and delivery of medical services, and the management of the schemes. This is done in the context of dramatic political developments on the national stage from 1992, through the period of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, to 1996. The membership of the Sick Funds was highly homogeneous, comprising low-paid black workers, predominantly women. Recommendations for reform and expansion of the Sick Funds focused particularly on a shift from reliance on contracted doctors to the establishment of a network of neighbourhood-based worker health centres, with medical staff employed directly by the Funds. The other major recommendation was the extension of benefits to dependants for the first time. The fourth case highlights the difficult process of transforming a much more elaborate scheme in a complex multi-union situation in a large publicly owned company facing privatisation. Membership of the transport scheme was much more heterogeneous: overwhelmingly male and predominantly black, there was a substantial minority of white members and a far greater range of income. The argument is that under certain conditions, trade unions can transform existing arrangements for health care for their members, imprinting a trade union character on both the services and their management. The projects achieved their aims to varying degrees. The thesis explores the conditions for success and failure. The studies do not produce a model, which can be extracted from its context and applied generally. The argument is that struggle is part of the model. Nevertheless, these projects raise crucial questions about proposals for mandatory social health insurance and have important implications for the national project of restructuring the health system for equity.

This la an ethnography of Jamaica Migration to them UK. The purpose of the study la to locate migrants' views within the spectrum of migration debates; thereby bridging the gap between theories of migration and the perception/ experiences/stories of migrants. The continued remigration ambitions of the majority of this group of first generation labour migrants, despite forty years of residence in the UK, leads one to pool« the thesis that they are reluctant settlers. The sstudy explores this thesis, by highlighting and examining the social and economic context of labour migration from Jamaica to the UK during the 1940’ a to 1965 period. A number of theoretical dimensions are explored, relating to:- (1) Intricate macro and micro dynamic expelling factors in Jamaica (2) the socio- politico-economic factors surrounding the implosion and incorporation of African-Caribbean migrants into the British economy; (3) the employment characteristics of these migrant labourers, in terms of resource utility, actual and potential application within the receiving country, and remuneration for the migrants. By looking at various theoretical debates and raising sometimes 'controversial' issues- an attempt is made to come to grips with the basic pproblem of migration when it relates to groups of people who are perceived to be extremely different from the natives This study has come at an opportune time am it will inform and contribute to contemporary debates about the increasing politicisation and institutionalisation of racism and xenophobia, particularly in the climate of European Community consolidationn towards 1992. This by Implication la an attempt to ensure that the migrants’ view la not overlooked ln the above mentioned preparations and consolidations.

This thesis deals about the organization and planning of the petrochemical industries in Brazil with a special emphasis on the North East petrochemical 'pole' (see 2.2), an industrial project whose core industries are settled in the Municipality of Camacari. That pole is the leading industrial development project in the region, headed by the government and having specific social and regional objectives. The thesis examines the policies adopted to attain those objectives and the progress made so far. The effects of the pole on the whole region being very limited, the thesis makes an analysis of the changes which occurred at Camagari after the implementation of the pole and relates those changes to the overall needs of the region. The main findings give a credit to the planning efforts in making a pole fully integrated with the use of regional feed-stocks, but point to failures in the policies designed to turn that pole into a catalyst of regional development. The policies adopted were more suited to create an industrial enclave, rather than develop an industrial pole.

This research, based upon both survey data and case studies at five workplaces over several years, investigates the patterns and character of non-manual unions' workplace organisations and the factors influencing then. The first part of the study, taking manual unions as its point of reference, considers what characteristics of workplace organisations can be identified, why different patterns have developed and how the impact of such organisations can be assessed. In subsequent parts the findings of research in the non-manual sphere are examined. Previous writers on non-manual workers have claimed to perceive major differences between non-manual and manual trade unionism. The assumption being that non-manual workers will have distinctive attitudes towards unions since they have been traditionally regarded as individualistic and anti-trade unionism. This thesis discusses and provides answers to the two main questions arising from the manual/non-manual trade union distinction: firstly, what similarities and differences between non-manual and manual workplace trade unionism can be identified and secondly, how can such similarities and differences be explained? In marked contrast to the claims that major differences exist, the case studies and survey data demonstrate that non-manual and manual workplace trade unionism is essentially similar. The research investigates how the organisation of non-manual trade unions at the workplace is equipped to meet the challenges posed by economic recession and technical change. Central to the analysis of union organisation are two key factors. Firstly, the nature and relative importance of its membership. Secondly, the degree to which its organisational structure is developed. These two factors, and their interrelationship, play a significant role in explaining union activity in the workplace. The conclusions reveal weaknesses and shortcomings in non-manual union workplace organisation and suggest ways unions could adapt to meet the challenges of the latter part of the twentieth century.

This study is an attempt to highlight the relative importance of unemployment in France in the 1930s, despite the very low rate of aggregate unemployment. It has been shown that even if one accepts the official unemployment figures, they disguised a very large structural imbalance within the unemployed group. There was great variation in the incidence of unemployment among the sub-groups of the population and the economy, and the duration of unemployment for those affected was very high, even by international standards. This preponderance of long-term unemployment necessitated government action, of which three policies are studied in this Thesis: the public works programmes of 1932- 1936, the repatriation of foreign workers and the 40-hour week. Using both archival and quantitative analysis, examination of the effectiveness of the policies concerned in reducing unemployment has been undertaken. The results show that the government’s anti-unemployment policies did reduce unemployment, but their effectiveness was compromised by the hostility of employers to the legislation regarding foreign workers and hours of work and by the government’s own policy of remaining on the gold standard. The battles over the implementation of these measures are as important as the measures themselves, and raise questions about the ability of governments to affect the workings of the labour market when it does not directly implement the policies itself.

Despite a growing interest in processes of diffusion within organisations and some understanding of the social processes of creating and enacting external and internal IT innovations, little empirical research has studied potentially relevant intra-organisational diffusion dynamics underlying the movement of innovations adopted at an organisational level, into the front-line practices of organisational subunits. Furthermore, we know even less about the diffusion processes of non-transactional digital innovations, such as enterprise social networking (ESN). ESNs embedded “ideology of openness” and its nontransactional nature particularly create social tensions that largely run against the grain of organisational rationality and efficiency, pervade key organisational processes and lead to wide variations in how organisational actors interpret and appropriate ESN features within organisations. The goal of this research is to theorize about the institutional mechanisms and processes by which these highly flexible digital innovations become misaligned, aligned and diffused at the micro-level of everyday work, as well as the enabling and precipitating dynamics that condition and trigger these mechanisms. This theorization involved a longitudinal exploration of how different communities of actors in a globally distributed technology services firm appropriated an ESN platform over a four year period, and how managerial intervention shaped appropriation outcomes. These dynamics can be understood through a rhetorical legitimation lens as a process where organisational actors with competing interests use strategic communications, to legitimate and enable the generation of collective meanings around distinctly different IT features and practices. Findings indicate that the core internal diffusion process was intra-organisational theorizing around ESN. Intra-organisational theorizing was an on-going process of elaborating and refining the organisational level theorization for ESN to suit front- line employees in their immediate contexts. In this way, it gradually helped to standardize and scale the ESNs features and functions as it was appropriated by different communities of actors (infusion). In each infusion, intra-organisational theorizing unfolded in three cumulative and relatively sequential phases of legitimation: (1) rationale framing (2) value advertising, and (3) motivating engagement, which were instrumental for respectively managing political, technical and cultural institutional misalignments, and promoting intra-group meaning making. On the other hand, negotiation and inter-group meaning-making was enabled by strategically grafting on other intra-organisational theorizations, and co-opting people, ESN functions, and practices from other infusions. Further, these legitimation processes unfolded as a sequence of primarily pragmatic pathos and logos appeals. In particular, early and on-going logos appeals helped to de-legitimate established, competing technologies, and directly enabled legitimation and collective meaning-making around ESN.