Assessing performance, quality, and excellence in services are critical topics in the literature. As such, this thesis evaluates aspects related to conceptualisations and measurement models across different disciplinary perspectives. This thesis develops, and validates a multiple-item scale for Modelling service excellence in the UK retail banking sector, according to the perceptions of customers. The scale development method follows Churchill’s (1979) well founded process, and is informed by Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988), and Rossiter’s (2002) guidelines. The model estimates whether the hypothesised antecedents are considered valid for identifying banks which provide excellent services. The findings reveal that reputation, rates, innovation, and technology significantly determine service excellence. This thesis was undertaken in a critical timing, between 2007 and 2012. During that time, the economy and particularly, the banking sector faced a major credit crunch and crisis of confidence in the sector per se. The crisis caused banks to rethink their competitive positioning by re-assessing their strengths (Akdag et al. 2011). Hence, initiating a differentiation between quality and excellence in services was essential. Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature by offering an integrated solution to assessing service excellence, from concept definition and differentiation, to scale development and validation. A new definition of services excellence is introduced and components of services excellence are identified. Hence, distinguishing between service quality and service excellence. Furthermore, the relationship between service excellence and its determinants is explored. Based on an updated set of antecedents and corresponding items, the measurement model provided in this thesis is considered as one of the best available options, realised by testing the postulated hypothesis and the alternative model testing.

Construction waste generation is a global issue in the sustainable construction context and several studies have been performed in different parts of the world to develop methods and tools for waste prevention, reduction, reuse and recycling. Most of these studies adopted a linear approach by focussing on a specific project phase, such as design, procurement or construction. However, there is a consensus in the literature that factors causing construction waste span across the project life cycle and recent researchers emphasised the need for a more integrated lifecycle approach to holistically assess and evaluate causes of waste to suggest recommendations to reduce lifecycle construction waste generation. Over recent years, the UK government has been investing billions of pounds in new and refurbished healthcare projects, where the healthcare buildings are often referred to, in literature, as complex buildings. This large investment has created a number of sustainability issues including water consumption, CO2 emissions, energy consumption, and more significantly construction waste generation. However, no significant research has been undertaken to propose a systematic construction waste minimisation mechanism for healthcare construction projects. Therefore, this research aims to develop a lifecycle construction waste minimisation framework for healthcare projects (HC-WMF). In order to identify the research problem and construction waste generation issues peculiar to healthcare projects, nine preliminary interviews were conducted with healthcare clients (N=3), architects (N=3), and contractors (N=3). The findings revealed that healthcare projects generate high rates of waste compared to other building projects throughout the project lifecycle, identified complex features that have an effect on waste generation, and identified particular causes of construction waste in healthcare projects. A further in-depth study based on four case studies was undertaken to understand the impact of waste generation due to the causes of waste, the relationship between complex features in healthcare projects and the causes of waste, and best waste minimisation practices to be implemented throughout a healthcare project lifecycle to address construction waste causes. Three interviews (client, architect, and contractor) from each case study were undertaken during the data collection stage. A Healthcare Construction Waste Minimisation Framework (HC-WMF) and Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) were then developed based on the findings of the literature review, preliminary data collection study and case studies, and adoption of the key concepts of problem solving methodology. This HC-WMF comprised six waste minimisation strategies (project documents management, stakeholders waste awareness, communication and coordination, buildability, materials selection and procurement, and change management) to be followed throughout the lifecycle stages of a healthcare project. SAT provides a means to assess the effectiveness in implementing HC-WMF and to obtain feedback and learning outcomes for continuous further improvements. In order to validate the developed HC-WMF and SAT a validation questionnaire (N=26) and validation interviews (N=4) were conducted. The validation results showed that the HC-WMF and SAT would be very useful in reducing construction waste generation from healthcare projects. The research contributes to construction waste minimisation research introducing a novel approach to lifecycle waste reduction. Also, the research revealed the complex features in healthcare projects that affect construction waste generation, causes and origins of waste peculiar to healthcare projects, and best waste minimisation strategies to implement to reduce construction waste generation from healthcare projects. Most importantly, through HC-WMF, this research produced a set of guidelines to be followed throughout the healthcare project lifecycle to reduce construction waste generation. The study has made recommendations which, if adopted, will lead to significant improvements in sustainable healthcare construction due to construction waste minimisation. The content should be of interest to clients, designers, and contractors dealing with construction waste minimisation and sustainable construction in healthcare projects. Key words: Construction waste, Healthcare, Causes of waste, Healthcare complexities, Waste minimisation, UK.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which selected aspects of sport policy in Japan and also UK/England are influenced by international forces. The objectives which underpin the research aim are to analyse the characteristics of the domestic policy areas and identify the varying degree of impact of external influences on domestic sport policy. The thesis examines the interactions between domestic and international factors that shape elite sport policy and anti-doping policy and seeks to identify how domestic institutional values and ideas have been shaped by global influences. Importantly, by analysing the nature and mechanisms of global influence that are manifest at the domestic level, it is intended to identify varying degree of impact external to national policy. To achieve the above objectives, a qualitative methodology and related documentary research methods are adopted in the empirical investigations. Policy document analysis and semi-structured interviews are employed. The cases of UK (or England where appropriate) are introduced in order to generate a deeper understanding of the development of Japanese elite sport and anti-doping policy. The thesis draws on a range of theoretical frameworks, including international relations theory, international regime theory and globalisation, to analyse the empirical data. By adopting these theoretical frameworks, it is aimed to identify the possible characteristics of international policy regimes in the policy areas of elite sport and anti-doping.

The development of Youth Justice in the UK since the early 1990s has been informed by the belief that the family plays a key role in youth offending. In 1998 the parenting order was introduced, based on the assumption that interventions to improve parenting will have a positive effect upon offending. The availability of the order was extended in 2005, reflecting the view that parents who do not undertake parenting support are being wilfully negligent of their responsibilities and must be made to take the help offered. In this thesis the assumptions justifying the parenting order and its extensions are questioned. Evidence suggests that although parenting is influential, it is one of many factors associated with the onset of or desistence from offending. Furthermore, as this thesis highlights, parents likely to receive parenting orders are often experiencing several personal and environmental 'stressors', creating high levels of need. These situational pressures and high level of need, this thesis argues, are likely to make it difficult for them to be effective in their role, or to gain long term benefit from attending a parenting programme. Furthermore, many parents have histories of unsuccessfully seeking assistance from 'helping agencies', refuting the assumption of wilful neglect. This thesis considers the advantages and limitations of parenting work as a form of crime prevention and specifically looks at the use of the parenting order. An argument is presented for a wider, more holistic approach to parenting work than that offered by the parenting order as a form of crime prevention and for providing assistance to families earlier.

This thesis discusses how the restructuring of the UK television industry in the 1980s and 1990s has affected learning and skills development in the sector. It is based on 71 semi-structured interviews with television freelancers and key informants in the industry, and a case study of a small regional independent company developed through semi-structured interviews and three months of participant observation. To investigate the current learning and skills development mechanisms, this thesis engages with community-based learning theories. These are discussed in relation to industry characteristics such as commissioning and independent production and labour market realities related to freelance work and educational provision. The findings reveal that the traditional on the job learning mechanisms within communities of practice are challenged under the new structural context characterised by unrestricted entry and progression and short-term projects within an uncertain employment context. Commercial pressures affect both the access to learning opportunities and the learning experience, mainly because of the lack of legitimate and gradual experiential learning possibilities, short-term involvement in the industry under pressures to perform. The thesis also discusses the realities of the work in a small regional independent production company as well as its benefits and limitations as a venue for community-based learning. This thesis concludes with several policy recommendations which address some of the main challenges to the sustainable skills development in UK television. These recommendations subscribe to the need for introducing legitimate traineeships, entry rules and detaching learning from the commercial pressures in the sector.

This study examines the intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices in the annual reports of 100 listed UK firms selected from sectors considered to be IC-intensive. It also investigates the possible determinants of such disclosure practices from the three perspectives of corporate governance structure, company characteristics and market factors. IC disclosures were captured using content analysis, and were measured by a disclosure index, supported by word count and percentage of word count metrics to assess the variety, volume and focus of IC disclosure respectively, at both overall and subcategory levels. The presentational formats and locations of IC disclosures were also recorded. The results indicate that the UK firms sampled provide considerable IC information in their annual reports, mainly in text form, with popular use of numerical information, while the use of graphs and pictures for many IC elements remains low. The distribution of IC disclosures, captured in three categories, varies by the three measures of disclosure applied. IC information was found in virtually all sections of the annual report and was most concentrated in the Operating and Financial Review section. IC terms typically used in the academic literature do not feature in the sampled annual reports. The results of the statistical analyses based on the three measures of IC disclosure indicate significant associations with a number of corporate governance factors (i.e. board composition, share concentration, audit committee size and frequency of meeting, board directors' shareholding, audit committee directors' shareholding, and board directors with cross-directorships), company characteristics (i.e. firm size, profitability, and listing age), and market factors (i.e. 'hidden value', share price volatility, share turnover, and multiple listing). These findings offer support for a number of theories, such as information asymmetry, agency and signalling theory. The influence of these explanatory factors on human, structural and relational capital disclosures, based on all three disclosure measure metrics, as well as on the format of IC disclosure, was also explored. The study also finds that its IC framework is more effective than a less detailed framework used in prior studies for the purpose of examining IC disclosure practice and its determinants. The study contributes to the further advancement of the state of knowledge in relation to IC disclosure both empirically and methodologically. It provides information users, preparers, regulatory bodies and academics with a state-of-the-art understanding of IC disclosure practices in the annual report. The transparent content analysis process enables future replication and comparison of results. The rigorous measurements of IC disclosure, the greater specificity of disclosure about the location and presentational format, and the more detailed IC research framework can be usefully applied by other studies. By examining the relationship between explanatory factors and IC disclosure, it helps shareholders and other groups of information users as well as the regulatory bodies to identify factors that may encourage IC disclosure in the annual report.

This research tested the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and mood states prior to performance, using two culturally diverse populations and using a mixed methodology. The objective was to explore whether there were cultural differences between the two samples thereafter exploring whether EI can be enhanced in the two cultures, using a psychological skills intervention. Phase 1 and 2 used the BRUMS-32 (Terry et al., 1999), and the EIS (Schutte et al., 1998) to investigate mood states and EI among a sample of UK wheelchair basketball players (phase 1: n = 51), and Ghanaian footballers (phase 2: n = 70). Five semi-structured interviews were also completed in phase 1. In phase 3 interventions (goal-setting, self-talk, relaxation and daily diaries) were used to enhance EI in a sample of UK wheelchair basketball players (n = 6) and Ghanaian football players (n = 8). Self-talk questionnaires, daily diaries, EIS and structured interviews were used to collect data during the intervention. Phase 1 MANOVA results showed that EI was related to mood states associated with optimal and dysfunctional performance (Wilks' Lambda 8.7 = .01, F = 74.76, P = .00, Partial Eta2 = .99) and indicated that optimism and utilisation of emotions contributed significantly to variation in mood by performance. Four key themes emerged from semi-structured interviews: antecedents of emotions; emotion and performance; emotional intelligence; and coping with emotions. Results suggested that EI correlated with performance. Phase 2, MANOVA results showed that EI was related to mood states associated with optimal and dysfunctional performance (Wilks' Lambda 8.40 = .50, F = 7.82, P < .00, Partial Eta2 = .50) and indicated that emotion regulation and appraisal of other‟s emotions contributed significantly to variations in mood by performance. When seen collectively, results of phase 1 and 2 indicate that there were cultural differences between the two populations.Phase 3 indicated that in both populations EI could be enhanced for some of the participants. Culture could be an explanation for the intervention only partially working. The EI theory or the EIS may only work in the culture it was developed in as it did not seem to detect changes in the Ghanaian sample.

The rate of adoption of renewable energy (RE) production and associated enterprises onfarms in the UK has been lower than expected suggesting that the UK government’s energy, agricultural and climate change objectives may not be achieved. The aim of this research is to investigate why this is the case by assessing the uptake, motivations, constraints and the factors affecting farmers’ RE investment intentions. Building on extant research literature (institutional theory, social cognition theory, theory of planned behaviour and the resource based view) a novel comprehensive and multidimensional model of entrepreneurial intentions was developed and tested using principal component, path and multivariate regression analysis techniques. Data were collected to test the model through a sample of 2000 farmers in the West Midlands Region of the UK. Of the 393 farmers who responded, 14% adopted RE enterprises, with half of adopters reporting slight to significant improvements in farm business performance in 2009. Solar panels were the most popular of the RE technologies available to farmers, compared to biomass related technologies. The study found that the most influential personal level factors contributing to the adoption of RE and associated technologies were cognitive such as the level of education. Of current 338 non-adopters, 66% might decide to invest in RE technologies over the next five years. For these potential adopters, the study shows that the type of tenure, educational attainment and the type of farm business diversification activity in which a farmer is engaged are the most significant personal and farm business situational factors which influence farmers’ RE investment intentions though contrary to expectation current non-adopters assessed the policy support framework more favourably than current adopters. The explanation of this seems to be connected with timing, in that two very positive and encouraging signals in relation to ii Feed in Tariffs (2010) and the Renewable Heat Incentive (2011) were underway or near introduction before this research took place. The study provides the first empirical evidence of the effects of the multidimensional measures of the country’s institutional profile on farmers’ RE investment intentions. Secondly, it clarifies the distinct role played by national formal and informal institutions on farmers’ investment intentions showing that informal institutions and not formal regulatory factors have a direct effect on farmers’ intentions to invest in RE enterprises. Thirdly, the investigation reveals that social acceptability of entrepreneurship in the RE sector is negatively related to investment intentions and moderates the efficacy of formal government policies in influencing entrepreneurial behaviour in the RE sector. The study concludes that any study that relies only on one type of institution will be making significant prediction mistakes. This study provides further support for cognitive based process models of intentions by showing strong significant positive effects of perceived self-efficacy and perceived desirability of RE enterprises on investment intentions. In fact, the study shows that farmers’ attitudes towards RE explain the highest amount of variance in investment intentions over and above the combined effect of external resource and institutional factors. The study illustrates that perceived self-efficacy and perceived desirability of RE enterprises mediate the effect of the rich set of exogenous variables investigated in this study on investment intentions and argues that policy makers need to focus on improving the regulatory, cognitive and normative institutional environments as a way to improve attitudes towards RE and consequently their intentions to invest in these enterprises.

β1i is a major catalytic subunit of the immunoproteasome, an alternative form of the constitutive proteasome, and its upregulation has been demonstrated in a variety of disease states including cancer. Our lab has developed a small molecule inhibitor of β1i, dubbed UK-101. While UK-101 causes apoptosis in cancer cell lines, it was not clear whether this apoptotic effect was directly mediated by its irreversible inhibition of β1i. Since off-target effects are major roadblocks for the development of new and effective pharmaceuticals, target validation studies in this system would assist in the further progression of β1i inhibitors towards preclinical trials. Our hypothesis was that the expression and catalytic activity of β1i is important for the growth and proliferation of the PC-3 prostate cancer cell line, therefore the apoptotic effect seen upon treatment of PC-3 cells with UK-101 was due solely to its covalent inhibition of β1i. To test this hypothesis, a number of complementary approaches were used. The expression of β1i in PC-3 cells was increased by the treatment of these cells with interferon-gamma or tumor necrosis factor-alpha, natural inducers of the immunoproteasome. The expression of β1i in PC-3 cells was decreased using small interfering RNA or short hairpin RNA, in a transient or stable manner, respectively. All of these cells were then treated with UK-101. The efficacy of UK-101 decreased in the interferon-gamma treated cells but did not change in any other the other cell lines, suggesting that UK-101 was not specific for β1i. This was confirmed using a molecular probe of the proteasome and demonstrated that UK-101 bound to other proteasome catalytic subunits. Additional experiments were performed to determine the effect of β1i on the proliferation of PC-3 cells. Simply removing the β1i using small interfering RNA reduces the viability of these cells. Other studies demonstrated that a mutation of β1i which inhibited its catalytic activity reduced the viability of cells when compared to those containing the wild type protein. Overall, our data indicate that β1i is a potential therapeutic target in prostate cancer. Further medicinal chemistry efforts will be required develop UK-101 into a truly selective proteasome inhibitor.

I provide initial evidence that international taxation impacts the magnitude of R&D investments in the UK. Relying on a simple theoretical model, I show that the observed response is consistent with the mispricing of intra-group transactions. My structural estimates suggest that transfer prices for internally provided innovation increase by around three percent in response to a one percentage point increase in foreign taxation. This response is more pronounced than previous estimates of aggregate profit shifting indicate, supporting concerns on the susceptibility of intangible assets to facilitate profit relocation. (author's abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series