This thesis focuses on the participation of worker representatives in the management of health and safety at workplace level in Britain and Germany. Case studies were carried out in both the public and private sectors, largely based on semi-structured interviews with key personnel in the regulation of safety, but also involving the analysis of company and sectoral information on accident prevention, the observation of meetings and information briefings at various organisational levels, and the use of questionnaires in two cases. The main aims of the research have been to illuminate the tensions inherent in attempts to guarantee safe workplaces and to prevent accidents through analysis of the functions and contributions that worker representatives, union officials and managers make within formal and informal practices of involvement and participation. The reason behind a cross-national perspective lay in the similarities that exist in the regulation of health and safety, and the radical differences in the structures of trade union and workplace representation that exist in the two countries. I found that employment in the public and private sectors embodies different conceptions of both the extent and quality of work pressure. Within this, capital intensive workplaces are more likely to obscure fundamental tensions between the pursuit of profit and the provision of safe working conditions. The role of management is of central importance in screening and shaping the particular way in which involvement (statutory/non-statutory; formal/informal) in safety regulation takes place. In each workplace, formal mechanisms for participation were marginalised, albeit in different ways. Furthermore, I found that extensions to the basic floor of rights in the regulation of health and safety were dependent on a range of factors external to the specific nature of protective legislation itself. In particular, the control of work, and the pace of work especially, seems to act as a critical factor in the relationship between hazard generation/prevention on the one hand, and forms of participation and involvement in safety regulation on the other. I argue in the thesis that safety regulation is inherently a collective issue. The research shows the different ways in which disaggregative factors obstruct the expression of collective interests in health and safety management. Both management and workers are heterogeneous groups, onto which it is difficult to apply simple notions of interest. In addition, forms of collective regulation of workplace safety must co-exist with the highly individualised context in which accidents, and the blame for accidents, take place. Furthermore, effective participation in safety management depends on the degree to which safety can be made t1visible 11 alongside more traditional industrial relations agenda items such as pay. Finally, I argue that the mutually reinforcing relationship between the two channels of worker representation in Germany has been overstated in the existing literature, with this research pointing to a more clear-cut separation of functions between the two bodies, and to the existence of an imbalance in the legitimacy of the two bodies in safety participation at workplace level. Furthermore, cumulative-type relationships in the regulation of safety appear to depend more on the particular working, organisational and sectoral environment in which management takes place in each country, than on the formal legislative provisions for participation that separate Germany from Britain.

This thesis is a study into the nature of knowledge-intensive firm defined here as professional service firms providing tailored services to corporate clients and relying heavily on the problem solving capacity of their employees. This thesis attempts to strike a balance between a straightforward and overtly empirical piece of work which presupposes the meaning of knowledge work and an abstract contribution which questions, explores and attempts to reframe our understanding of the prevailing concept of knowledge work and of the knowledge-intensive firm. Three exceptionally successful contemporary firms are studied as potential exemplars of this seemingly new organisational form. The cases are examined from three overlapping and integrated perspectives. First, a structure and design perspective is adopted. The existing literature on the structure and design of these firms is examined and developed into an ideal type (Weber, 1978) which is subsequently used in the interviewing of employees. A more processual/contextual/alternative perspective on knowledge work is then adopted and combined with the related concept of community is applied to the study of the three cases. Finally, drawing on the historical case of early Irish monasticism, a premodern knowledge-intensive institutional form, the sense of the interrelationship between structure and community is elaborated upon and, along with some peculiarly monastic angles, applied to the three cases. The overall conclusion is that contemporary KIFs represent "plural forms" (Jeffrey, 1991) in the sense that they use different internal and external control mechanism simultaneously for the same function. While the operations of these firms are complex and unusual, the claim of a new paradigm of management underpinning these firms is rejected.

In International Political Economy (IPE), feminist perspectives that highlight the centrality of gender relations to the functioning of the global economy have remained largely at the margins of the discipline. This is particularly the case in studies of the multinational firm, where the focus on the relative power of states vis a vis the rising power ofMNCs dominates debates. Although some scholars have sought to evaluate the impact ofMNCs on host societies, this analysis has largely been undertaken in gender neutral terms. The supposed gender-neutrality of multinational investment is reflected more widely in liberal accounts of economic development and globalisation that assume that the incorporation of local societies into the global market economy is a positive force for developmental and "progressive" change. Hence the MNC is regarded as an agent ofglobalisation, and the employment of women in MNCs leads the way for the progressive undermining of "backward" patriarchal attitudes. This thesis rejects this Western-centric discourse of the "progressive firm", suggesting that neither firms nor the global market economy can be perceived in such gender neutral terms. Using case study research, it is suggested that the firm can be seen as drawing upon and benefiting from gender and ethnic divisions deeply embedded in the local political economy of host states. This thesis, therefore, highlights the important role of gender in Wlderstanding the operations of a firm's overseas investment strategy. The case study firm selected for this thesis is a garment sector firm that has invested in Malaysia. The garment sector has traditionally been reliant on low wage female labour, and the thesis observes how this reliance led to the firm moving offshore in order to seek out new sources of cheap labour for the most labour intensive parts of its production process. But the thesis also draws attention to the role of the Malaysian state in adopting a model of economic development based largely upon the attraction ofFDI into labour-intensive sectors where female labour dominates. So ifFDI is a gendered process (both in terms of the firm's decision to move offshore and in terms of the policies implemented to attract FDI into a developing country), then what are the mechanisms through which this process takes place? This thesis suggests that an analysis of recruitment strategies and practices at the case study firm provides the sort of detail that enables us to examine exactly how the firm engages with the local society that it invests into - in particular how company recruitment strategies enable the firm to mobilise the sort of low paid workers required for labour intensive garment sector production. Thus despite the many advantages that factory employment may bring to women workers, by focusing on the operations of the firm itself (rather than the actual experiences of women workers as many gender and development scholars have done), it can be observed that the firm derives considerable benefit from the operation of gendered divisions oflabour and thus women remain stratified into low paid assembly line work.

This thesis pursued three objectives: (1) to identify policies and practices which are related to the retention of professionals and managers with critical skills; (2) to document why and how these policies and practices have changed in relation to the business strategy; and (3) to assess whether the organisation's skill supply patterns constitute a strategy, that is, explicit, consistent and coordinated efforts supporting the business strategy. Guided by a contextual theoretical framework and methodology, the researcher undertook a pilot stuay of two Canadian high technology firms, and followed with three case studies of large UK-based high technology organisations with an R&D Division. The findings indicated the importance of hard benefits (compensation) as a necessary condition for recruitment and retention, and the complementary impact of twelve soft benefits (job characteristics and other factors tied to the work, organisational and social environments) with special relevance for retention. Lifetime employment as a policy and as the dominant skills supply pattern proved to be resistant to change. The HRM context (comprising the history of the organisation, managerial and professional cultures, the personnel function, and workforce planning) was found to inhibit skill initiatives, but certain features became less negative over time. In particular, the cumulative effect of recruitment of new skills over several years altered the internal labour market such that many employees supported new ways of doing business. Skills were found to be solidly embedded in the work and social organisation, and high levels of energy were required to modify the organisation-wide skillbase. Both single lever and multiple lever SKISSs were identified. b1iddle managers proved to be potential key actors in obtaining skill advantages for the entire R&D Division. Top management paid attention to skill issues under extreme circumstances such as a shift from the public to private sector, and a change of mission. The thesis leads to a number of policy recommendations and avenues for future research.

The location of productive activities and the emergence of clustering dynamics has been an important research topic since the early works of Weber (1929) and Marshall (1920 and 1921). This thesis aims at relating the processes of firms' location decision and the development of high-tech clusters within an encompassing theoretical and empirical framework. The thesis shows the empirical relevance of the clustering of high-tech sectors and highlights the importance of the issue through the construction and use of an original database on the location of high-tech establishments and employment (at two different geographical levels) in four major industrialised countries. It also contains a critical review of a number of different streams of theoretical and empirical literature which are directly connected, or which have been explicitly put in connection by the author, with the topic of study. In the thesis we develop a composite modelling framework for analysing firms' location decisions and the growth of high-tech clusters, and we empirically test a number of crucial hypotheses in order to draw some guidelines for economic policy. The models presented in the theoretical chapter derive from two different streams of literature. The first derives from the analysis of population ecology, the second from the theory of innovation diffusion. These modelling frameworks have stressed the existence of a critical mass and a maximum dimension of the cluster and their effects on the early and late phases of development within the "life cycle" of a cluster. They also highlighted the role of rank, stock, order and epidemics effects in the location decision of an individual firm which has to decide whether to locate into a developing cluster. The empirical evidence presented in the thesis has focused on the crucial elements of the location process by verifying the empirical relevance of different locational factors, has stressed the relative importance of agglomeration versus scale economies in determining the industrial specialisation of an area, and has measured the competitive effects which arise between the development of different clusters and the synergistic effects which are generated within the cluster. Finally the thesis presents empirical evidence which shows that local competition and industrial specialisation are the key elements for the success of an industrial cluster. A final chapter extracts some crucial policy conclusions on the role of entry versus growth policies, on the different development path that an industrial cluster may follow depending on the excludability condition, presents an original taxonomy of specific policies, applies some of these findings to a brief survey of the phenomenon of science parks and finally produces a series of guidelines for policy makers. The conclusion summarises the results obtained in the thesis and present a brief agenda for future research.

This thesis is concerned with the patterns of work and employment within foreign owned multinationals operating in the UK's consumer electronics industry. The focus is on evaluating current debates on whether there has been any changes or shifts in relations between capital and labour, which constitute a new paradigm. There is a growing set of literature which argues that Japanese capitalism is providing new paradigms for work relations which result in highly cooperative associations between worker and employer. Much of the evidence for such claims comes from studies of Japanese owned plants operating in the UK and US. However, there is little depth to such studies, which mainly consist of interviews with managers or questionnaires. Through selection of a case study methodology and by critically assessing the nature of Japanese managerial techniques, this research challenges fundamentally the 'Japanisation' school. Moreover, the thesis provides contradictory findings concerning 'flexibility'. More tentatively, the thesis contributes to debates on labour segmentation based on gender, and on the wider debate around 'new industrial relations'. The research was based on four case studies, three Japanese and one European, but not British, owned plants of large multinational corporations. The headquarters of the Japanese plants were also visited, as were plants in Japan. More than 50 taped interviews were conducted with over 100 managers, workers and trade union officials from the UK and Japan. In addition, factory visits were made at each plant more than once and often with a almost a year between visits. The main findings are that the plants did not display any of thefeatures attributed to 'Japanisation', except with the marginal exception of the European plant. Techniques, such as 'just-in-time' and direct participation between employees and management to the exclusion of unions, were not in evidence. Instead, management was concerned with maximising production runs, minimising change and constantly trying to control workers, who were themselves conscious that for most of them, their work was repetitive boring and, especially for the women, deskilled.

This thesis examines the question of organisational closure. Britain with its economic problems has, over recent years, seen an unprecedented number of factory closures as firms have collapsed or rationalised manufacturing operations in attempts to naintain profitability. Attempts to control inflation have led successive governments to reduce expenditure. Consequently, nationalised industries, local government, the civil service, and education, health and social services have also had to face reductions in manning and other facilities. This research addresses a very real empirical problem which faces contemporary Britain. It focuses on the response to closure. Closure, undoubtedly, represents a traumatic experience for those involved. Despite this, it would appear that many closures go ahead quietly and, from a managerial viewpoint, successfully. In contrast, however, a few closures have provoked well-publicised resistance campaigns. In an attempt to explain why these responses should arise, the research has focused on the management of closure and the power relations of the groups involved. Closure represents an arena in which power and politics are brought into play. Two aspects of power have been found to be significant. Overt power is used when parties are engaged in open conflict. Unobtrusive power, on the other hand, is used more subtlely to legitimise actions so that opposition does not arise. In the case of closure, groups have been found to use devices to legitimise and justify closure, thereby gaining acceptance of it or, in the case of opposition, "delegitimise" it in an attempt to prevent it. The methodology has been qualitative. It is argued that, by collecting unstructured in-depth data from different examples of closure and comparing them, the nuances and subtleties of unobtrusive power have been brought to light and the limited knowledge of closure greatly extended.

Previous studies of trade union structure have relied upon the differentiation of taxonomic types. Descriptively, this method fails to account for the evolutionary development of trade union form. Analytically, the categorisation of unions into ideal types and the accentuation of the pure form have acted to emphasise stasis to the exclusion of the dynamic elements inherent within trade union structural development. In order to overcome these shortcomings this thesis relies upon the identification and analysis of the inter-relationships between trade union structural events. There are four such structural events: mergers, formations, dissolutions and breakaways. The central analytical focus is upon the trade union merger process, its causal influences and its relationship with other structural events. The wave pattern of occurrence observed in aggregate merger activity forms the initial focus. Multivariate analysis is employed to generate a framework within which this pattern is examined. The results of the multivariate analysis suggest a changing relationship between the merger process and its environmental influences during different phases in the institutionalisation of industrial relations. Analyses of the changing shape of merger activity and differences in its form during the two principal merger waves lend further support to the notion that the merger process has undergone an evolutionary development. The inter-relationships between merger activity and other forms of structural events also suggest variation over time. The pattern in these variations is related to existing explanations of merger activity in order that their merits and limitations can be considered. The extraction of elements of these explanations allows for the generation of an alternative account of the developments in merger activity based upon the integration of the extracted elements.

This R&D/marketing interface study is of a multi-disciplinary nature. In the study the role of the R&D/marketing interface is re arded as the pursuit of competitive advantage through negotiated exchange process between the two parties. As a result, iportant research constructs are identified with reference to several academic disciplines, including organization theory, innovation studies, marketing and strategic management. These constructs are (a) the environmental constructs, (b) the organizational constructs, and (c) the strategic constructs. A case study methodology is applied to examine the R&D/marketing interface patterns and tendencies found in twelve drug innovation projects. However, the research theoretical framework is not constrained to a particular industry. Thus, on the basis of the framework, the study aims to offer a higher level explanation on why these variations and tendencies regarding the R&D/marketing interface have been observed. The research findings indicate that the twelve drug innovation projects studied in this research belong to three project types. These include a' relatedtechnology and existing-market' t of project, an "unrelated-technology and new-market" type of project and anew-technology and new-market" type of project. The research findings further reveal that the effectiveness and the desired level of the R&D/marketing interface are influenced by both the environmental constructs and the organizational constructs. Meanwhile, several unexpected findings are derived from the research, such as the serious effect of contingent technical problems upon the R&D/marketing interface, the crucial balance between development speed and development risk and so on. The research has resulted in a more precise definition of the R&D/marketing interface in five dimensions. These are (a) the corporate strategic dimension, (b) the corporate technical dimension, (c) the product strategic dimension, (d) the product technical dimension and (e) the operational dimension. These dimensions form a integral part of the R&D/marketing interface. This finding will provide the future research in this field with a crucial link to those academic areas indicated earlier. It will also help top management, marketing managers and R&D managers identify more accurately their responsibilities and detect quickly the weak interface dimensions that need to be strengthened.

A major theme in the IS literature in recent years has been the dramatic impact of changes in technology and the business environment on the roles and skills of IS professionals. The British Computer Society (BCS) and other authorities suggest that roles are becoming broader and that demand is growing for a new breed of hybrid managers who possess a wide range of technical, business and organisational competences. Although it is recognised that there are constraints on developing hybrids, little research has been carried out on the nature of these constraints or on the impact of organisational change on IS roles. It was to fill this gap in the literature, and provide data that would be of value to practising managers, that the research presented in this thesis was undertaken. The main aims of the research were: (i) To explore the impact of change on the roles of a group of systems analysts; (ii) to examine the systems analysts' perception of the effects of change on their role and (iii) to determine whether there were any factors impeding the hybridisation of the analyst's role. Analysts were selected as the focal group for many reasons but mainly that their role requires hybrid competences and they would therefore be a good group to examine the strength of the forces for / against change. The decision to focus on the analysts' perceptions was to gauge individual reactions to change. Since the individual's perception of events is likely to influence their behaviour, it was reasoned that if the analysts' perceived change to have negative consequences, their attitude may be a constraint on hybridisation and on organisational change. It would therefore be of practical value to gain a clearer understanding of the analysts' view of the change process. The case study approach was used to examine the impact of change on the analyst's role. Although other methods could have been used, the case study would permit detailed analysis of the process of organisational change and provide an effective means of accessing the analysts' perceptions of the impact of change. The research was carried out in five organisations: three in the financial services sector and two in the retail sector. The decision to base the research in a number of companies and different sectors was to examine differences between organisations and to illuminate the impact of contextual factors. Financial services and retail organisations were considered an appropriate choice for the research because they tend to rely heavily on IT and have been subject to very rapid sectoral change over the last few years. The BCS maintains that these are the conditions in which hybrid managers are most likely to emerge. If the organisations selected fulfilled the Society's criteria and the roles of the analysts were technically defined, this would point to constraints on hybridisation. To analyse the impact of organisational change on roles a theoretical framework was developed which identified the factors that influence roles and explained the dynamics of the change process. A distinction was drawn between factors in the outer context (macro-environmental, sectoral and occupational factors) and the inner context (the organisation and individual role encumbents). These factors were reconfigured in terms of Lewin's fields of force model to suggest how organisational change and change in roles may come about. Thirty-five systems analysts took part in the research. The impact of change was examined over a period of six years (1989-1995), the average length of the analysts' tenure in the participating companies. Data was collected using a variety of methods, including a self-administered questionnaire, interviews with analysts and their IS and Personnel Managers and examination of company documents. In spite of the dramatic changes that had taken place in the case study organisations, the findings reveal that three continued to define the analyst's role in technical terms. Two had broadened the roles of the analysts but there were still constraints on the extent of change. These constraints included the structure and culture of the organisation, the strategies for managing the IS department/division, the emergence of new occupational groups and the analyst's own orientation to their role. The research suggests that the impact of change on the analyst's role may vary between organisations and reflect the influence of contextual factors; that dramatic organisational change does not necessarily create conditions that are conducive to developing hybrids and that there may be significant constraints on bringing about change in the analyst's role. The thesis provides empirical data on the impact of change on roles and helps to explain some of the reasons companies may be experiencing difficulty developing hybrids. Although it helps to fill a gap in the IS literature, it is suggested that more contextual/interpretive studies are needed on the constraints on hybridisation in different organisations and on different occupational groups.