Goodwill has been in the focus of interest of academics and practitioners for many years now. Research interest has been fuelled by its discretionary nature, the large amounts of its write- downs combined with adverse impact potential on financial statements and loopholes in accounting regulations. This thesis includes three empirical essays on the causes and impact of goodwill impairment write-downs. Its overall objective is to provide a more insightful and comprehensive understanding of the goodwill impairment process. The first empirical essay explores the role of goodwill write-downs in .the rating assessment process. It aims to uncover rating agencies' perception of goodwill using an accounting predictive model on ex post basis and comparing accounting treatments of goodwill as currently or recently applicable under UK GAAP. Results suggest that raters ignore goodwill and its write-downs in their annual rating analyses. While this evidence is consistent with pre- FRS 10 business reality in the UK, it raises questions about the efficiency of impairment regulations on national and international level. The second empirical essay investigates managerial choices related to goodwill impairment in the UK. Findings suggest that while managers are likely to base the decision whether to impair goodwill on financial performance indicators, they might adjust the amount of the impairment charge at their discretion for reporting purposes. The third empirical essay investigates two of the drivers of financial performance (industrial regulation and competition) and their relation to goodwill using a case study approach. The evidence suggests that these two phenomena could provide an early warning indicator to regulators, auditors and financial statement users about goodwill impairment potential of the individual firm or an industry sector. Furthermore, the room for managerial discretion provided by the discount rates in the impairment calculation is explored. Results show that discount rates can be adjusted using commonly accepted parameters in practice to justify a wide range of discount rates and, consequently, a variety of impairment opportunities at the discretion of management.

This thesis explores children's sibling relationships in middle childhood, particularly in relation to looked after children, with the aim of obtaining an 'insider view' from the children's perspective. Foster children's current relationship qualities and processes were considered in the context of their past family experiences and environments, their sibling relationship history, and their expectations of their siblings in the future. The aim was to extend our current understanding of the nature and quality of sibling relationships. The findings are intended to assist social workers and others with a responsibility for assessing children's needs and making decisions about their welfare. Foster children's perceptions of their sibling relationships had two separate but intertwined threads running through: a relationship dimension focusing on the quality of the current siblings relationship, and a family and kinship dimension focusing on siblings as life-long key family and kin. In comparison with the community sample, foster children's sibling relationships were more extreme, reflecting children's disrupted close relationships and adverse family experiences. Relationship aspects, referring to power and status, and sibling attachment relationships, were most salient for foster children. Siblings retained an importance to the foster children, at the level of family and kinship, regardless of the quality of their relationships. They expected their siblings to be part of their lives in adulthood. Because of foster children's smaller networks of other supportive relationships, than was the case for the children in the community, their siblings were even more important to them. For some foster children, particularly where contact with parents was terminated; their siblings were their only family. Based on the findings, a framework was developed for understanding sibling relationships in the context of foster children's adverse family experiences and disrupted close relationships.

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This thesis examines an assumption that has recently permeated social theory, that power and knowledge constitute each other and are mutually reinforcing. Knowledge is an instrument to be used to realise the interests of some group, i. e. is subservient to agency. This assumption is oblivious to the rise of realist social theory which has argued that the facilitating frameworks of social life, structure and culture (which would typically include 'knowledge') must be construed as having a causal influence themselves, regardless of what people make of them or do despite them. These do not automatically satisfy groups' wishes and may hinder them. The power/knowledge thesis has taken greatest hold in the study of prisons; it is argued that the penal reforms instituted in the 19th century were designed to control prisoners so that what seemed like a benevolent regime was actually an efficient mode of control. Thus the ideas that were used to direct the treatment of offenders were a means of power over prisoners. This thesis will incorporate historical material on the development of the prisons and show that supporting ideas of reform was not necessarily an exercise in power, so undercutting the principal thesis of the power/knowledge school. I will draw on recent developments in social theory to show how the interplay between power and knowledge might be better conceived. I will argue that only by estimating the logical connection between ideas can we understand their proper role- how they may facilitate or frustrate action. Thus I will query whether reform ever gained the prominence it did and show that it had always to be balanced by its logical counterpart, deterrence.

This study investigates the processes of the removal of the death penalty within the Council of Europe and its Member States. An evaluation is conducted of the relationship of sovereignty and the death penalty in this region, and the significance of the Council's attempts to penetrate this relationship is analysed. The foremost motivation of this study is to understand how solid the removal of the death penalty is, and to reveal what can be learned from the legislative activity of the Member States and the various Parliamentary Assembly and Committee of Ministers' enactments, and the case-law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. It is my hope that this study will help ensure that the death penalty remains removed from this European region.

This research examines the utility of the concept of institutional racism in explaining racial disparities in stop and search practice in the UK and US. The concept of institutional racism was introduced in 1960s America. The concept was politically powerful in expanding existing understandings of racial inequalities which focused on individual prejudice and cultural pathology, to showing how racist discourses can become embedded in the structures of social formation. There were a number of analytical weaknesses inherent in the term at its conception. The concept has been utilized at various points of history in the US and UK. The 1999 Macpherson Report brought the concept of institutional racism back to popular usage in the UK, particularly in discussions around discrimination and policing. Macpherson took as evidence of the existence of institutional racism the continued disparities in stop and search use. The power to stop and search people in the street suspected of criminal activity has long been a feature of British and American policing. Research in both countries has continually shown that these powers are being disproportionately exercised against ethnic minorities. Thus this thesis explores whether the concept is useful in explaining disproportionate stop and search outcomes. The research is based on a study of police officers from two forces in the UK and two police departments in the US. It uses semi-structured interviews, observations and draws on official policy documents and statistics. The purpose of the research is to gain an understanding of the circumstances and decision-making by officers as they conduct stop and search and to understand the context in which these decisions take place. The findings reveal that discriminatory outcomes in stop and search are the product of not only the actions of individual officers but also national and local policies and practices. These policies and practices are devised and implemented by social actors. The disproportionate outcomes not only result from racism but also prejudice based on class and gender. The concept of institutional racism reifies individual institutions and obscures the role of social actors in institutions, who shape the policies and practices of an institution. Without an understanding of the contexts in which people draw on race ideas and what features of their social position allows them to assert these ideas into the policies and practices of an institution we are unable to apportion responsibility and build reform agendas. Thus institutional racism fails to explain the disparities in stop and search use in the UK and US.

This thesis draws upon three years spent evaluating the implementation of a Bail Support and Supervision Scheme in one local authority. It describes the development of the scheme within the locality, exploring its relation to the Youth Offending Team and youth court, and their associated liaison groups. In doing so I offer an exploration of theoretical considerations that explain how managerialist policies are translated into localised practice, from which a means to learn from and develop such policy will emerge. I develop a particular strand of activity theory, primarily from within the tradition established by Yrjö Engeström, and demonstrate its usefulness to the examination and understanding of nationally determined yet locally implemented social policies. Using the notions of object trajectory and expansive transformation, I show how local context has impacted upon the idealised object formation arising out of the managerialist policy aims. By exploring activity in the boundary zones between activity systems, I describe a series of material or transitory objects emerging in order to overcome the tensions and contradictions inherent in situated practice, culminating in a reinterpretation of the purpose of the scheme. I conclude by addressing the extent to which local context has altered the intent of the policy in implementation.

A high and increasing proportion of people in the United Kingdom are living with a long-term condition (DH, 2005a). The National Health Service is facing the challenge of increased pressure on its service provision. Government Policy has placed emphasis on supporting individuals to self-care (Department of Health, 2005a, c). However, there are specific challenges associated with living with a long-term condition, and in particular the psychosocial aspects of illness when set alongside a clinical approach to care (Gabe et al, 2004, Bury et al, 2005) It has been argued that disclosure of illness may in itself be a self-care strategy (Munir et al, 2005). However, to date individuals‟ experiences of disclosure of long-term conditions are neither clearly defined nor its role in managing a long-term condition fully understood. The aims of the study were to explore the role of disclosure in the management of a long-term health condition. The study drew on constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) undertaking thirty-five in-depth qualitative interviews (fifteen people living with epilepsy, and twenty people living with type 1 diabetes) recruited from patient support groups and clinical nurse specialist‟s clinics. This study identified that strategies of disclosure are not necessarily fixed but may be subject to change over time. “Learning about disclosure” is an integral part of living with a long-term condition. Three key disclosure roles were identified: (1) access to self-care and social support, (2) non-disclosure (concealment) of the condition to protect one‟s identity from stigma. (3) redressing myths about the condition in advance: to avoid perceived stigma. The findings provide important insights that could enable health care professionals to develop more of an emphasis on including disclosure as an issue when talking to patients about managing type 1 diabetes and epilepsy and this is also relevant to a broad spectrum of long-term conditions.

This thesis concerns young people in the Midlands area of the United Kingdom and the services they receive from children’s rights workers and social workers. Previous research has highlighted difficulties in the implementation of local advocacy for young people in the ‘care system’ but has not explored in detail the impact of relationships between these young people and their professional workers and of differing approaches to the work. This is a qualitative study, based primarily on semi-structured interviews with twenty young people, their rights workers and their social workers. The young people ranged in age from twelve to twenty and most had been in residential or foster care. The study aimed to explore the participants’ views and experiences of social work and advocacy with young people, the professionals’ approaches to the work and their attitudes to, and relationships with, young people. Relational theory, particularly from ethics of care feminist scholarship, has been used to examine the concepts of care and rights in the principles and practice of the professional workers. The study found that young people wanted professional workers who cared about them as individuals and who focused on the process of the work, but they were also concerned about the consequences of rights work. The study suggests that rights workers had a strong care ethic in their individual work with young people, whilst social workers were concerned about managing young people’s care rather than engaging with them individually. The rights workers faced a number of dilemmas in upholding rights principles in practice. The study concludes that polarised principles of rights and care in practice could be unhelpful to work with young people. Consideration of elements of a care ethic alongside rights in both social work and children’s rights work could lead to a more unified discourse that would benefit practice with young people. This would entail a more sophisticated understanding of advocacy and bring care back into social workers’ individual work with young people.

This study, undertaken from a feminist and children’s rights perspective, emerged from the growing body of literature on children’s experiences of domestic abuse, the challenges of childhood studies and the opportunities arising out of the changed socio-political landscape of Scotland since devolution. It examines, with children and young people experiencing domestic abuse, their own solutions to improve help for children and young people, their perspectives on real and tokenistic participation in Scotland’s policy-making and, their self-defined ethical and participatory standards to make sustained participation possible. Combining innovation in methodology and co-production of new knowledge with children and young people, the researcher contributes the three E’s of Enjoyment, Empowerment and Emancipation to ethical principles focussing on safety, and recommends a new ethical approach to consent that recognises children’s agency in their own lives and in deciding their own best interests. A Participatory Action Research Process over five years with 9 of the 48 young people, resulted in young people themselves becoming change agents to begin to tackle the issues that emerged from the wider study’s qualitative first part, also action-orientated through children’s political activism. For example, the lack of help, awareness and stigma attached to domestic abuse was tackled through their production of a public online awareness raising campaign and film; their critique of the previously most revered of services, Women's Aid specialist support, resulted in a multi-million fund and their analysis became the conditions of grant; the lack of respect for and inclusion of young people in policy-making they challenged through defining their terms of engagement which are explored here, sanctioned and legitimised by their emerging 'critical friendship' with Ministers. Unusually the young people participating in the study made a significant impact on Scotland’s domestic abuse policy and practice, as well as repositioning children and young people in the democratic process.