Large uncertainties remain in estimating the anthropogenic fraction of mineral dust and the climatic impact of dust aerosol, partly due to a poor understanding of the dust source dynamics under the influence of climate variability and human-induced land-cover/land-use change (LCLUC). So far, the dust dynamics and linkage to climate and LCLUC in Central Asia have received little attention from the aerosol research community. This thesis comprises a comprehensive study of the dust dynamics in Central Asia focusing on 1) the seasonality of erosion threshold and dust emission affected by soil moisture, vegetation phenology and surface roughness, 2) the dust interannual variability and connections with large-scale climate variation (ENSO) through effects on the atmospheric circulation, precipitation, vegetation dynamics and drought, and 3) the impact of dust aerosol on surface radiative balance and photosynthetically active radiation, and possible effect on dryland ecosystems. A coupled dust model and multi-year ground and satellite observations of dust frequency, dust loading, and atmospheric and land conditions are used in this study. We find the threshold friction velocity significantly varies in space and time in response to soil moisture seasonality, surface roughness heterogeneity and vegetation phenology. Spring is associated a higher threshold friction velocity than summer, due to wetter soils and more vegetation cover. As a result, although more frequent strong winds occur during spring, spring dust emission is less than summer by 46.8% (or 60.4 Mt). Ignoring the dependence of the threshold friction velocity on the surface characteristics leads to biased spatial distribution and seasonality of dust emission. There is a strong linkage between dust and ENSO in Central Asia: La Nina years produce drought condition and enhance the dust activity. A decline in the strong wind frequency during 1999−2012 results in a decreasing trend in the modeled dust emission, at a rate of -7.81±2.73 Mt yr-1, as well as a decreasing trend in the ground observed dust frequency index, at a rate of -0.14±0.04%. We estimate that 58.4% of dust emission is caused by human activity during the 1999−2012 period. Our estimates suggest human plays an important role in the region’s dust budget through agriculture and water resource usage.

The following thesis has five main objectives: - 1. To describe the role and position of women in clerical work in the period circa 1870 to 1914. 2. To understand the origins of the role and position of women in clerical work hierarchies and to offer reasons for this role and position. 3. To use and link theoretical perspectives which are useful in helping us to understand the origins of the role and position of women in clerical work. 4. To consider the impact of wider social structure upon the roles and position of women in clerical work. 5. To develop an overall framework for understanding the role and position of women in society and in work. These objectives will now be briefly expanded. 1. To describe the role and position of women in clerical work in the period circa 1870 to 1914. Throughout the thesis considerable space is given to describing the actual work, status and market situations of female clerks. This descriptive element is the background against which the theoretical framework is developed and tested. It also offers us some appreciation of what work was actually like for female clerks in the 1870 to 1914 period, and allows us to compare their conditions with late twentieth century clerks. 2. To understand the origins of the role and position of women, in clerical work hierarchies and to offer reasons for this role and position The thesis seeks to investigate the historical process through which females entered clerical work over the period 1870 to 1914. It seeks to assess the role of economic environment in drawing women into clerical work, and the changing 'status' of those women who become clerks. The thesis notes the 'status' of clerical work in the 1870-1914 period and how the perception of such work was changing. 3. To utilise and link theoretical perspectives which are useful in helping us to understand the origins of the role and position of women in clerical work The central objective of the thesis is to offer a theoretical framework for the analysis and comprehension of women's role and position within clerical work. In order to achieve this two approaches to the study of historical development are drawn on. Firstly, the concept of patriarchy; secondly elements of the labour process debate. It is argued throughout the thesis, but particularly in chapters six to eight, that within the context of clerical work, the 'gender dimension' is of crucial significance in determining the nature of female office work; their pay and conditions of work; their job prospects and opportunities; the determination of 'skill' in the office; control within the office. In short, the existence of a Patriarchal frame of reference has contributed to the structuration of and divisions within the clerical labour force. 4. To consider the impact of wider social structure upon the role and position of women in clerical work Intimately linked to objective three, the thesis aims to consider the impact of wider social structure and values on the role and position of women in clerical work. The importance of wider social values concerning the role and position of women within society is considered and related to the structuration of employment. The thesis argues that wider social structure and values are of crucial importance in determining the role and position of women within clerical work. 5. To develop an overall framework for understanding the role and position of women in society and in work The overall objective of this thesis is to contribute to the body of literature which seeks to understand the manner in which female employment patternsare determined, in part, by patriarchal social relations; that is, relations between men and women. It offers no assessment of how to overcome this problem, but, through recognition of the interrelationship between economic or capitalist development and patriarchal social relations in the clerical work context, the thesis aims to inform and educate on the subtlety and insidiousness of this relationship.

This thesis examines the inter-firm management of product development between a vehicle manufacturer and six component suppliers actively participating in the design and development process. It introduces the notion of design chain management, in a similar way to the supply chain concept has been used to describe logistics and purchasing relationships. This concept enables the product development process to be considered at the inter-firm level between supplier and vehicle manufacturer. Specifically, the research investigates: the nature of the inter-firm design process; the changing requirements of the inter-firm relationship; and the mechanisms that promote inter-firm design transactions. There is an extensive literature review, integrating related themes in product development; coordination mechanisms; inter-firm relationships; information processing; and supplier involvement. This review develops the key components for managing design at the inter-firm level, which forms the basis for an empirical examination of one UK vehicle manufacturer and six of its component suppliers. The empirical part consists of in-depth analyses of the design management process within each case study, and across the buyer-supplier relationship. The research presents a classification of suppliers involved in product development based on their relative responsibility for design, and the position each enters the product development process. The thesis concludes that the core suppliers involved in early exchanges of design information require more attention to long-term structural mechanisms, such as supplier development initiatives, than to the use of CAD/CAM or ED!. In particular, suppliers are investing in placing their own staff permanently within their customer premises, in the form of guest (resident) engineers, and this is an area in need of further research. In addition, there is a need for post-project reviews at both the vehicle programme level and the individual system and component level. As project management is devolved to the supply base, the ability to project manage both internally and externally will determine those firms able to compete effectively in the market place.

This study is about the organisation and government of the General Municipal and Boilermakers' from 1970 to 1985. Its focus is, as far as is known, unique in that it concentrates primarily on government at the regional level, examining the GMB's Birmingham, Liverpool and Northern regions. Rather than focusing explicitly on the policy issues related to recent legislation, it analyses the wider issues of power and participation relevant to the debate on union democracy. The thesis adopts an eclectic approach to union democracy, synthesising previous approaches within the framework of the vertical and horizontal dispersion of decision making developed by Undy et al, which is given a prescriptive dimension. The regional focus, and secondary focuses on intervening variables within the framework, are principally examined through conducting structured interviews with members and officers at all levels of the union. The research work is divided into four chapters, which follow chapters reviewing the literature and presenting the research focus, and giving an historical overview of the union up until the research period commences. The first examines the national level changes since 1970 and membership participation in the national political system. The other three chapters have a specific regional focus analysing regional variations in membership growth and participation at the local level; the locus of regional power and variations in participation in regional government; and membership participation in collective bargaining. The research contributes to knowledge of trade union government at the regional level; an almost completely explored and, it is argued, an important area which requires further research. It demonstrates the significant extent of regional variations within a single union and shows how these have led to markedly different levels of membership participation in decision making structures in the three regions. It shows that the commonly held view that GMB regional secretaries are barons of their own area is misplaced, noting constraints which prevent oligarchic domination of regions. It also highlights the pervasive, but long since neglected, influence of union constitutional provisions as a factor affecting union democracy. Finally, it suggests that the eclectic framework could be usefully adopted by future contributions to union democracy research.

This thesis analyzes the market for executive and non-executive directors of firms with particular emphasis on the role of human capital such as industry expertise. The first chapter analyzes how the human capital of CEOs affects corporate decision making and ultimately corporate performance. Analyzing diversifying mergers and acquisitions, it shows that CEO characteristics matter for the bidders' performance in takeovers. When the bidding CEO has experience in the target's industry, the abnormal announcement returns are between two and three times higher than those generated by a CEO who is new to that industry. We provide evidence that this performance is mainly driven by an experienced CEO's ability to capture a larger fraction of the surplus. Industry experts redistribute surplus in favor of their share- holders by negotiating better deals and by paying a lower premium. We also ?nd that industry expert CEOs select low surplus deals on average. We argue that this evidence is consistent with industry experts having superior negotiation ability. The second chapter analyzes the determinants of the board structure (including human capital, such as industry expertise) in banks. We show that country charac- teristics explain most of the cross-sectional variation in bank board independence. In contrast, country characteristics have little explanatory power for the fraction of outside bank directors with experience in the banking industry. Exploiting the time-series dimension of the sample, we show that changes in bank characteristics are not robustly associated with changes in board independence, while changes in board experience are positively related to changes in bank size and negatively re- lated to changes in performance. The evidence suggests that country-speci?c laws and regulations a?ect the composition of boards of banks mainly through require- ments for director independence. The third chapter analyzes the careers of top executive directors. Using a sam- ple of board members of the largest US companies, I provide exhaustive descriptive statistics on several dimensions of their careers. For instance, I am analyzing the career paths of CEOs with respect to their industry experience and their promotion within and between ?rms. Investigating CEO turnovers in detail, I report several new ?ndings that raise potential questions for future research. Moreover, it also analyzes how changes in the market environment such as shocks to certain indus- tries a?ect their career progression. I show that individuals whose industries are performing badly are less likely to be promoted to a CEO position. These ?ndings suggest that luck is not only a?ecting CEO pay but also who is promoted to a CEO position at ?rst. A promising route for future research might be a more rigorous analysis of the within-?rm dynamics of executive careers.

The question that this thesis addresses is how western European countries with regulated labour markets managed to reduce their unemployment rates in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the accounts in mainstream economics literature have been trying to explain this turnaround in performance in terms of labour market reforms that were undertaken in the direction of deregulation and by stressing potential interactions between such reforms in labour market policies, backing their claims with econometric evidence that is usually not robust. This thesis takes a different approach both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, it develops the hypothesis that in open economies, coordinated collective wage bargaining can lead to moderate wage/price outcomes in the presence of conservative/stability oriented macroeconomic policies even in the presence of generous labour market protection policies. Moreover, in countries with regulated labour markets, the effectiveness of moderate bargaining outcomes and labour market reforms in combating unemployment will depend on the size and openness of the economy: the smaller and more open an economy is, the more effective moderate bargaining outcomes and labour market reforms will be in reducing the equilibrium rate of unemployment. This hypothesis is an alternative to the ‘deregulation thesis’ rather than a competing one. This hypothesis is explored and further qualified in this thesis through qualitative comparative analysis-QCA with fuzzy-sets and the detailed study of the cases of the Netherlands and Germany in the 1980s and the 1990s. The upshot of the analysis of this thesis is that the effects of labour market policies and institutions on labour market performance should be considered within the context of macro-level institutions (e.g. macroeconomic policies) and characteristics (e.g. openness to trade) if we want to accurately assess the need to reform them.

The reform of pay systems in China has received growing attention from scholars over the past two decades. However, despite the great attention given to the business sector in China, one significant category among the pay studies in the Chinese public sector has been missing. In recent years, the Chinese government has started to implement a new wave of reform in the national payment system: performance related pay in the public service units (PSU, “shiye danwei”), which form a cluster of public service providers operating alongside core government and separate from other state-owned or statesponsored organisations. Compared to the extensive discussion of public sector pay in Western countries, there has to date been no academic research on pay systems in the Chinese PSU sector, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the key changes in and challenges to its human resource management in different organizations. This thesis conducted in-depth case studies on the pay system reforms in six state schools and in one publishing organization, exploring a range of research objectives which draw on the New Economics of Personnel (NEP) theory and such motivation theories as expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, agency theory, cognitive evaluation theory and equity theory. The case study results were found to be consistent with the NEP predictions. The two cases indicate that, although the principle of linking pay to individual performance has been well accepted by employees across PSUs, performance related pay was better implemented and more successful in the publishing organization than the state schools. The introduction of performance related pay in schools does not appear to have achieved the government’s objective of encouraging higher performance but did have other positive consequences such as retaining teachers in rural areas and possibly balancing the teaching resource in the longer run in addition to some unintended outcomes at the same time.

This thesis considers how to establish respect for labour rights. It aims to inform the analysis of compliance problems and create a diagnostic approach to implementing labour rights. The ultimate goal is to provide insight into the interventions necessary to progressively implement labour rights as defined in international law. The project creates a conceptual framing of labour rights by joining two theoretical approaches: institutions theory and compliance theory. Drawing on institutions theory from political economy, the thesis reframes labour rights regulations, as holistic institutions comprised of rules, norms and actual behaviours, the so-called ‘rules of the game’ in employment. In this context, problems in implementing labour rights are understood as employment practices that are embedded in a web of formal and informal rules governing work within society. Once, reframed in institutional terms, employment practices that violate labour rights can then be analyzed and shortcomings identified using compliance theory. Compliance theory is well suited to institutional approaches because it, like institutions theory treats norms, rules and behaviours as critical components in achieving compliance. The thesis integrates the framework into a diagnostic methodology and tool for comparison of labour rights compliance among the countries that are parties to the Dominican Republic, Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). It applies the methodology to two cases. The first case examines obligatory overtime and trafficking and the second focuses on freedom of association. The analyses are based on publicly available documentary evidence from distinct perspectives such as the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU), the United States State Department Human Rights Reports and ILO Committee of Experts reports and observations. The thesis concludes that the diagnostic methodology can help to uncover institutional patterns associated with labour rights compliance problems as well as problems with the international legal norms themselves.

This thesis studies the role of a craft guild as a training organisation. The study looks at the London Dyers’ Company binding and joining records over 150 years, available from the mid seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. The study initially deals with transmission of knowledge from master to apprentice, a single generation. It then looks at factors associated with chains of transmission over several generations, taking advantage of available occupational specialization data. The Dyers’ Company records of membership are estimated to be at least 94 percent complete from 1710-1792, and probably similarly complete in the earlier period 1660-1710. In 1750, 93 percent and in 1792 81 percent of dyers in livery companies were members of the Dyers’ Company. In those same years, 34 percent in the livery of the Dyers’ Company were not practicing dyers. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the dynamics of the Dyers’ Company from binding and joining information. The apprentice binding data includes information about families of apprentices, their places of residence, their father’s occupation, along with what premia were paid when they were bound. Information is presented about time as a journeyman, about how many apprentices an individual master bound in a lifetime, and about women apprentices and women who bound apprentices. Scattered information about specialized dyeing occupations allowed categorisation of chains of transmission by occupation. One specialty, calico printing, potentially the most innovative of any in the dyeing trade, was not fully represented in the Dyers’ Company records. Sixty one percent of all chains were no more than three generations long. Chains involving silk dyers were more often longer than those involving dyers with no stated specialty. Long chains might either be evidence of technological conservatism, a more technically difficult craft, greater use of innovation, or increased economic activity.

The aim of my thesis is to investigate workers’ reactions to transnational market reform in a Soviet-era factory in the Republic of Moldova. The thesis finds that there are varying, blurred responses of contestation and consent to market modernisation in the context of one factory, the Rezina Cement Plant of Egrafal Group Ltd., one of Moldova’s first major European transnational-corporate (TNC) private enterprises. Language plays a critical role in workers’ responses, since language is important to Egrafal Ltd.’s goal of market integration and capitalist labour reform. However, corporate language expectations frequently clash with the language that was previously embedded in Moldova’s industrial workscape. As a result, the thesis argues that workers adopt, resist or modify factory reforms through what I call linguistic styles or situational performative modes linked with ideas of modernity, markets and mutuality. The thesis goes on to argue that employees’ spatial status location in the plant, irrespective of job skill and income, corresponds to employees’ differing linguistic modalities and differing tendencies towards protest and accommodation in response to factory restructuring. Workers in the top strata of the factory’s Administration Building speak multiple languages, long for cosmopolitan lifestyles and benefit from high integration into corporate-market structures. Many achieved job mobility in the plant since socialism and now accommodate to capitalism and corporate styles through linguistic codeswitching. The middle strata of ethno-linguistic minorities in Administration’s laboratory and the lower strata on the shop floor lack corporate-backed linguistic capital and are on the fringe of modernisation; both are highly job insecure and protest capitalist change by way of what appears to be traditional language usage, but is in fact a contemporary response to liberal-economic change. This finding leads the study to conclude that workers’ fragmented linguistic-based reactions to market reform do not entail real protectionist collectivism, as Polanyi would have envisioned (Polanyi 1944, 150), nor enduring moral-economic protest along the lines of E.P. Thompson (1971). This is for the very reason of workers’ competing modernist longings and job insecurity – alienating workers from each other whilst drawing them back to local ties – which effectively keeps workers in perpetual oscillation between markets and mutuality.