According to some commentary, employees are empowered by simple, flexible and lightweight social software such as blogs and wikis. Using such software, it is claimed they will be able to connect and collaborate beyond boundaries and to benefit organisations in innovation and growth. Extending such claims, commentators also argue that social software challenges existing ways of networking, communicating and collaborating and is likely to cause disruption to some organisations. However, a literature search reveals that it is still unclear for both researchers and practitioners how social software can be exploited for work purposes, and what are the grounds for its adoption. Systematic investigation of the adoption of social software for work collaboration is found to be absent in academic writing. Organisations continue experimenting on social software, seeking ways to encourage their employees to adopt the tools, and expect to benefit from self-organised, distributed collaboration. This technology adoption is a contingent process. The way members use social software is embedded within the social interaction process, group characteristics, tasks and environments. Adaptive structuration theory (AST) is adopted for social software-supported collaboration in a way that emphasised its value as a contextual analysis approach. A conceptual framework was developed from the researcher's experiential knowledge, AST and empirical evidence, and then revised with the findings from exploratory studies. The main theoretical insights induced from empirical evidence are: influence from 'meta-users', e.g., supervisors and managers, affects both users' use intention and behaviour. Social structures embedded in social capital can enable or inhibit the adoption of social software. Nevertheless, new social structures do emerge from online conversations. Additionally, the results show that task-technology fit has little relevance to social software adoption. A case study approach with mixed methods is adopted in this study. Social network analysis and statistical analysis provide complementary support to qualitative analysis. The UK public sector was chosen as the research context. Individuals are knowledge workers in distributed and cross-boundary groups. The asynchronous social software applications studied are blogs and wikis.

This thesis deals with consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with UK GAAP and compares selected areas with the approach according to IFRS. The thesis describes development of UK accounting legislation from its beginnings to its current form focusing mainly on consolidation. It also outlines content of the key accounting standards that are relevant for the subject. The emphasis is put on use of the full consolidation method in preparing consolidated financial statements. The thesis also deals with accounting for investments in associates and joint ventures. Therefore it is necessary to define the criteria according to which it can be assessed whether an entity controls another entity. Another field of study is dedicated to new standards coming into effect for accounting periods commencing on or after January 1st, 2015. Benefits of changes that are incorporated in the new standards are subsequently evaluated. The aim of this thesis is to describe development of rules for preparation of consolidated financial statements in accordance with UK GAAP and to assess to what extent is UK GAAP affected by global convergence of accounting systems.

This paper explores the use of the social networking site, Facebook, by the GenerationX cohort (those born 1966-1980 inclusive) currently living in the United Kingdom(identified as a somewhat under-studied group to date). Utilising a ‘Uses &Gratifications Theory’ and ‘(Media) Dependency Theory’ approach and the quantitativeempirical data collection method of an extensive online ‘self-fill’ questionnaire, a totalof 233 individuals from this cohort voluntarily provided the sought-after information,with data collected during early September 2018. An expanded version of Denis McQuail, Jay G. Blumler and J.R. Brown’s 1972 mediagratifications groups/descriptors is proposed and used for this paper’s analysis of results(see section 6.2.4) while a new single media term,‘online collaborative network’, isrecommended by the author as an alternative to current myriad of ‘social media’,‘social networking [site]’ and ‘collaborative media’ all used for the likes of Facebook(see section 9.2.2). Key project results suggest that the UK Generation X cohort spend an average of 75minutes per day using Facebook; that the most-utilised access method is via a mobilephone (89.7%); that the top two ‘uses’ of the social network are both passive ones(‘Scrolling through the homepage News Feed’ and ‘Spending time viewingPhotos/Videos uploaded by others’) and that the top three gratifications obtained fromFacebook use are ‘Contact with Friends’, ‘Contact with Family’ and (to) ‘Pass Time’. Additionally, results provide an interesting and potentially shocking overview ofexclusive dependency upon Facebook for the satisfaction of particular media needs,including the maintenance of contact with certain friends (87.6%) and certain familymembers (61.4%) and, worryingly, as an only source of news (15%).

As climate change becomes more destructive to our planet, some governments have taken action towards a more sustainable future. One being the UK, where a Climate Emergency was declared in 2019, which affects public corporations and news outlets. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how do news reports portray natural disasters from an eco-linguistic perspective. This qualitative study focuses on analysing data regarding the 2019-2020 wildfires in Australia through the linguistic choices made in the texts by incorporating a combination of corpus linguistics, eco-linguistics and media discourse. The corpus under investigation consists of 41,055 words collected from 4 different UK-based news outlets. In order to analyse the data, I chose three search words (fire, climate and animal) to further investigate by using both corpus- and eco-linguistics. The results showcase a consistent pattern within the selected search words: fire and climate are portrayed as threats whereas animals are portrayed as victims. Yet, the most remarkable finding is regarding climate, as it is viewed as a cause rather than an effect caused by human actions. This study is a step towards a better understanding of climate change in news reporting; providing an insight on what the discourse is lacking but should be included.

This study aims to contribute to an understanding of how the credibility of asylum-seekers is being assessed in the UK; how narratives are valued by decision-makers and tribunal judges, how applicants’ credibility is determined, and what issues may be found with this process. I conducted interviews with seven lawyers who represent asylum-seekers, one decision-maker and one retired tribunal judge to establish their perspectives on the assessment of credibility in the UK. I then analysed these results through the theoretical framework of the sociology of law, focusing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. I firstly examined specific problematic areas in the practice of credibility assessment, before going on to explore broader contextual factors which may help to explain such issues. This study found that the greatest problems with credibility assessment in practice were demanding expectations of asylum-seekers and misapplication of the government guidelines on credibility, miscommunications and mistranslations, and a lack of considered reasoning in decision-making. These issues were shown to be driven by five main factors: a culture of disbelief, a lack of resources, information and communication issues, ineffective guidelines and the inherently subjective nature of credibility. The results of this study bring into question the neutrality and efficacy of the current system of credibility assessment in practice and its capacity to protect those fleeing persecution under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Littoral warfare implies a disproportionate advantage to the coastal navy or “defending” side. Small navies sometimes lean on larger navies in doctrinal production. A coastal navy’s goals, methods and capabilities can be considered thought to be different from that of a larger navy’s regarding in regards to littoral warfare. This paper answers the question “What does littoral warfare mean for different types of states?”. An ideal type analysis was used to answer the question, and the doctrines of Sweden (type A state), USA (type B), and the UK (type B) were analysed in regards to the research question. This paper found inds that each type of state viewed littoral warfare in regards to themselves, from their own perspective; a type A state can be seen as a defender and a type B state as an aggressor. In the context of littoral warfare context, each the types of states employed different goals, methods and means as pertaining to littoral warfare.

No description available.

The European Union is claimed to exercise significant soft power in world politics due to its numerous ‘soft power resources’ (Nye, 2004: 11) that make it attractive to international audiences. A puzzle arises, however, when we notice that despite its vast ‘resources’, the EU fails to attract the British public, as demonstrated by the recent ‘Brexit’ referendum and the low support for the Union in the UK already before it. In this paper, I challenge the dominant resource-centric understanding of the EU’s soft power by adopting a constructivist approach that links attraction between subjects to perceived collective identity between them. By studying implicit frames in the British ‘identity discourse’, I discover the EU only weakly represented in the United Kingdom’s construction of the ‘self’. Based on my results, I argue that the EU fails to attract Britons, because they perceive their country to have little collective identity with the Union.My results demonstrate that when it comes to studying soft power, the focus needs to be on the audience’s perception. Also, more attention needs to be paid to the EU’s attractiveness to its own populations particularly these days, when the Union appears threatened by increased Euroscepticism in the member states.

Poor quality of information and forecasting create a number of problems for manufacturing companies, such as poor planning of products and insufficient service levels, which leads to increased inventory and stock holding or stockouts and increased total costs. Cussons (UK) Limited is experiencing precisely these problems. Apart from these problems normally associated with forecasting demand for fast moving consumer goods there is an additional problem of reconciling the Western calendar with the Muslim calendar, and a recognition of the effects that Muslim religious holidays, as opposed to Christian religious holidays, have on demand. Muslim religious holidays rotate backwards with regard to the Western calendar, but in fact they occur at known dates and therefore the effect they have on demand for products can be taken into consideration when attempting to forecast demand. An additional problem that influences Cussons' sales in the market is the seasonal pattern of demand. Due to this, there is an increase in demand for Cussons' products during summer months. From the analysis of both data sets it was identified that the warehouse movement data is less variable and more reliable for business forecasting than order data. In this thesis, these forecasting problems are examined as a case study, focusing on these particular problems. To overcome these problems and to improve business forecasting of Cussons' products in the Middle East market, a forecasting strategy has been suggested which will enable Cusson's to reduce the inventories throughout the supply chain and to improve their customer's service. / Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Cussons (UK)Limited.

The implications of introducing shift work and flexible working hours into the UK clothing industry were examined, with special reference to the effects on personnel, plant utilisation and garment costs. A total of 37 garment manufacturing establishments, within 17 companies, were visited; 91 managers (for production and economic data)and 1018 supervisors and operatives, 87% female and 13% male, (for social data) were consulted. The main points arising from the survey are:- 1 . Social (i) The average age and length of service of respondents were respectively 30.4 and 7.1 for women and 40 and 13.9 for men. Nearly three fifths were married and over half of the women had children, most of them at school or pre-school stage. (ii) Over four fifths were committed to some kind of housework; 3 to 5 hours between 17.00 and 24.00 hours were usually spent on this task but about 9% spent more than 5 hours on it. (iii) Over half would be very much bothered by the inability to carry on their individual and/or group social activities. About two thirds would also be concerned by a change in the period of and time for sleep and meal times. Nearly two fifths used public transport for the journey to work. (iv) Only 15% had worked on multiple shifts previous to their present employment and 16% left their previous job because of being on shifts or unsuitable hours. About one fifth worked currently part-time and only 13% wanted to change their existing working system so that they might gain extra convenience and leisure in their working life. (v) The unsolicited personal choice of working systems were mainly shifts (13%), flexible working hours (14%) and part-time day work (30%); working only in school hours appeared to attract the choice of about 40% of the women. (vi) From the points above, it seemed that a high proportion of married female workers, mostly with dependent children and committed to housework, would probably react against shift work. The availability of part-time work together with the normal day work habit acquired would also affect the employees' attitudes towards the acceptance of even flexible working hours. 2. Production (i) The main problems involved with introducing shift work were considered to be sharing of equipment, bonus and piece rate payment and responsibility for quality failures. Dislike of sharing machines by operatives was considered to be a severe problem in sewing section and the extent of this dislike seemed higher in traditional rather than non traditional clothing areas; the operatives' age and length of service appeared to affect their attitudes. The smaller the period of time for each job then the less the problem of sharing payment and responsibility could become. (ii) Introduction of flexible working hours could create the difficulties of shortage and/or excess of supply of work within the production flow with interdependent operations; the extent of the problem could vary with the amount of work in progress and the period of time spent by each operative on the garment and/or its parts. Economic (i) Garment cost elements are material, labour, variable and fixed overheads (survey averages 50.6%, 24.9%, 8% and 16.5%), of which labour and variable overheads would be affected by introducing multiple shifts and only fixed overheads by flexible working hours. There should be a decrease in variable overheads per garment because of sharing a fixed amount of cost between shifts, an increase in labour cost due to shift premium and an increase in fixed overheads because of longer opening hours of the plant on flexible working hours. (ii) The capital employed on plant and machinery, C, could often be divided by the number of shifts so that this could help to increase profitability by a factor of 2 or 3. (iii) General formulae were established, using the most relevant variables, for calculating the profitability and profitability ratios of different working schemes. Generally, if the number of shifts are increased then the profitability of the plant could be very greatly increased. This was well illustrated from the calculated profitability ratios of about 2 and 3 respectively, when industrial survey values were used, for 2 and 3 shift systems replacing a single shift system. Profitability of flexible working hours would, theoretically, be less than that of single shift, but there might be some economic gains, such as reduced rates of labour turnover and absenteeism (which are currently high in the garment industry), arising from the introduction of flexible working hours. / Iranian Ministry of Science and Higher Education and Teheran Polytechnic