This study investigates the effective measurement of employee commitment within the Nigerian banking sector. The relevance of the research originates from various research findings that shows that in most organisations, evidence abounds of employees' emotional and physiological distancing of themselves from their organisation even when the pay is highly competitive. In addition, there are also evidences of inconsistencies in research outcomes when Western commitment scale is employed within non-Western organisation. This study is therefore aimed at filling literature gaps on identified inconsistencies from the use of Western scales in measuring commitment in non-Western organisations and also to comprehend employee commitment behaviour in organisations within non-Western culture. In exploring the above issues, this research developed a 28-item, 7-point Likert scaled questionnaire, distributed to 200 participants with a 42% response rate. The research also employed exploratory factor analysis in the form of PCA and Varimax for factor extraction and scale reduction and Cronbach's Coefficient alpha internal consistency measure for reliability assessment. To take the study a step further, the scale was additionally subjected to statistical test using One Way ANOVA, Pearson's Chi-Square test, and Spearman' s rank order correlation in measuring employee commitment behaviours, using two variables: income and age. The outcome from the study was two-fold. The 28 items were reduced to 18 usable items with 3-factor extractions representing three components of commitment. Scale reliability was also measured. The first outcome shows that the scale is indeed a culturally suitable and usable (valid and reliable) scale for the assessment of employee commitment to their organisation in Nigeria with an alpha score of .930, evidence of strong scale reliability. The second outcome was from the test aimed at assessing the behavioural aspect of employee commitment to their organisation in relation to the two variables income and age. The outcome shows that the higher income earning Nigerian employees (employees within the income band 1.1 million and above), and employees within the age group 31-35 are likely to be less committed to their organisations than their counterparts. The study concludes with the view that to effectively measure employee commitment to organisations in non-Western Nigerian cultures, requires the development and use of an appropriate and culturally motivated usable and suitable (consistent and dependable) scale. The conclusions are also discussed in terms of the links between income, age and commitment. It identified that high income and age are not necessarily indicators of commitment; rather some factors associated with culture might have stronger influence on employee expression of commitment to their organisation.

The study compares the total number of dwellings in Newcastle-upon-Tyne according to the 1991 Census and the local authority Housing Department. This is to assess whether the explanation of the differences at the local scale, can contribute to the understanding of Census underenumeration at the national scale. The significance of dwelling figures is established by reference to Census underenumeration, the Estimating with Confidence (EwC) project, housing need and government finance. The study also draws on literature about GIS in local government in order to highlight the need for the local analysis of dwelling figures for research and policy purposes, and to demonstrate the benefits of integrating Census and local authority data. The study describes the processes of data collection, integration and interpretation from both the Census and local authority sources. Total residential dwellings, occupied council stock and total vacant dwellings from both sources are compared and the differences are standardised. The standardised differences are then mapped (using z- scores) at the District scale and at Housing Area, Housing Neighbourhood, Ward and ED resolutions. Areas with large differences above or below the expected differences are highlighted and their characteristics are noted. The observed differences are then correlated with some of the characteristic of the areas in the form of dwelling structure, tenure, imputed residents and accommodation not used as main residence. These characteristics are then compared with those of areas with EwC non-response adjustment figures. The correlation analysis is carried out at two scales with the same resolution. This includes all the EDs in the City, then focuses on the EDs within Benwell and Scotswood Wards. This is to highlight the significant associations, specific to these Wards. Benwell and Scotswood are selected because of their patterns of vacancy differences, which are found to be in contrast to the city-wide pattern. The Census excess of vacancies in these Wards are also found to be greater than those in other Wards and greater (more than 1.4 standard deviations) than the city-wide expected average difference. The correlation analysis at the City scale finds that EDs with higher Census vacancy counts than the local authority data, share similar characteristics with EDs containing high EwC non-response adjustment figures. These are EDs with greater number of flats in residential buildings and local authority rented dwellings. In Benwell and Scotswood this pattern changes to greater number of flats in commercial buildings, converted flats and privately rented dwellings. The last stage of the study explains the differences in the selected variables using the individual property records (ED profiles). The study finds that at District (City) scale, the Census counts of total residential dwellings and occupied council stock are slightly higher than those from the local authority data. The Census vacancy figures however, are significantly less than local authority figures, mainly due to definitional differences and data collection methods used. The opposite pattern of higher Census vacancy figures is observed in Benwell and Scotswood. The reason for this is found to be due to vacant dwellings awaiting demolition, which were included in the 1991 Census vacancy figures but not in the local authority datasets. An example of how different definitions and data collection methods caused the observed differences. The study illustrates that the comparison of local authority and Census data can highlight areas with large differences (in vacant, occupied council stock or total residential dwelling counts) through data standardisation. The characteristics of these areas are found to be similar to those of areas reported as difficult to enumerate, in the national studies of Census underenumeration. The study also illustrates that these differences can be associated with Census non-response an...

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The aim of this study is to compare the cognitive maps of different socio-economic status groups living in Ankara. In-group and inter-group relations of divergent socio-economic status groups are the main focus of the study. In this perspective, perceptions of urban social space are examined in order to comprehend the in-group and inter-relations. Discussions are held both at city level and neighborhood level. These discussions are based on the research that was conducted between September 2003- February 2004 in the neighborhoods of Ankara / namely, Mamak, as a lower class neighborhood, Ke&ccedil / i&ouml / ren, Batikent, Yeni Mahalle, as lower-middle class neighborhoods, Gazi Osman PaSa, Bah&ccedil / eli, &Uuml / mitk&ouml / y, Bilkent, Oran as middle class and upper-middle class neighborhoods. I studied with an accidental sample of 39 urbanites living in these neighborhoods of Ankara. In order to determine the socio-economic status of the respondents, Murat G&uuml / ven&ccedil / &rsquo / s (2001a) spatial differentiation and socio-economic status map was used as a guide. While examining the perceptions of urban social space, spatial behavior patterns and urban daily activities, this study aims to clarify definitions of &lsquo / us&rsquo / and &lsquo / other&rsquo / , which inevitably create divisions in social geography of Ankara. Tensions between different socio-economic status groups reinforce these divisions in the city space of Ankara. Especially, limited social interaction between different socio-economic status groups in urban social space has crucial role in the construction of the boundaries between various divisions.

Women who live in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside experience some of the most devastating health problems among residents of British Columbia. While crack cocaine use has been associated with many of these problems, we lack an understanding of how women who use crack cocaine experience these health problems and what they do to manage them. Informed by tenets of intersectionality and social geography, a critical ethnographic approach was used to examine the scope of health concerns experienced by women who are street-involved and use crack cocaine, the strategies they used to manage their health, and the social, economic, political, personal, and historical contexts that influenced these experiences. Data were collected over a seventeen month period and included a cross sectional survey (n=126), participant observations, and interviews (n=53). The women described experiencing poor physical and mental health throughout their lives; many of which were preventable. Respiratory problems, anxiety, sadness and insomnia were the most frequent concerns reported. They endured severe economic deprivation, unstable and unsanitary housing, and relentless violence and public scrutiny across a variety of contexts including their homes and on the street. These experiences were further influenced by structural and interpersonal relations of power operating within the health care, legal, and welfare systems. The women engaged in a several strategies to mitigate the harmful effects of factors that influenced their health including: (a) managing limited financial resources; (b) negotiating the health care system; (c) managing substance use; and (d) managing on your own. These strategies were influenced by the types of concerns experienced, perceptions of their most pressing concern, the nature of interpersonal relations with health care providers, and the limited social and economic resources available. Changes in the organizational policies and practices of the welfare, legal, and health care systems are needed to improve women’s health. Possible strategies include increased access to welfare and safe, affordable housing, safer alternatives to income, and improved collaboration between illness prevention and law enforcement programming. New approaches are required that build on women’s considerable strengths and are sensitive to ways in which gender, race, and class can disrupt opportunities to access services.

Walking in the countryside is an increasingly popular pursuit in Britain. Much previous research within the social sciences has tended to concentrate on the physiological benefits, barriers or facilitators to walking. This thesis explores particular walkers’ complex motivations for and modes of walking, their individual engagements with certain types of (northern) landscapes and the significance of specific kinds of visual images, traditions and wider practices of looking. Constructions and discourses of landscape are considered in relation to the persistence of certain ideas and aesthetic traditions as well as and in relation to current concerns about individual health and social well-being. The research is multi-disciplinary and engages with studies of art history and visual culture, cultural geography, anthropology and sociology. Visual studies research methods are used to explore individual interpretations and experiences of landscapes, and how the circulation and consumption of particular kinds of images might inform attitudes to walks and walking. Walkers’ views and attitudes have been investigated using an ethnographic approach. In-depth qualitative interviews (including photo elicitation) have been undertaken with walkers who regularly walked five or more miles in the countryside either in organised groups, on their own or with friends and family, in order to capture how walking is perceived, felt, and made sense of. A grounded theory approach has been used for the interviews, building on theories that emerged from systematic comparative analysis, and were grounded in the fieldwork. Overall the thesis observes a marked persistence of and some striking similarities between particular ideas, cultural traditions and interpretations of walking in and ways of looking at types of countryside from the Romantic period to the present day.

This research is located in the aftermath of Argentina’s economic collapse in December 2001. In broad terms, it questions how subaltern or marginalised populations contest disadvantage in an environment of economic meltdown. Following the economic crash, unprecedented levels of unemployment, poverty and social marginalisation generated a variety of organic ‘survival’ responses. These initiatives took various forms and adopted differing approaches, including confrontational activity of piquetero organisations, whilst more institutional or structured actions of co-operative projects formed from workplace recovery. A further response was cartoneo, the practice of gathering and selling recyclable waste. Working as a cartonero, or waste gatherer was generally adopted as a last resort strategy by desperately poor, marginalised individuals from predominantly informal and semi-formal settlements in peripheral areas of the Greater Buenos Aires Province (GBA) and other urban areas nationally. Possibly taking their lead from the broader trends in co-operative organisation, numbers of waste gatherers, or cartoneros, banded together to form co-operatives. The subject of this thesis is one such project, the Tren Blanco co-operative, established in Villa Independencia, an impoverished shanty town in José León Suárez, San Martín department, GBA. The topic was selected on the basis of the opportunity it afforded to present a subaltern study and bottom–up account of the event from the perspective of the protagonists. Appropriate to this aim, the focal aspect of the study was obtained by a qualitative oral approach of informal and semi-structured interviews combined with ethnographic observation conducted between July and August 2007. Secondary resource materials, including academic literature and other media sources, were used to provide a contextualisation of the event within both the broader context of Argentina’s socio-economic history and the more specific context of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century history. Literature on the subject of social responses to Argentina’s economic crisis is limited. Research into the specific phenomenon of cartonero co-operatives is even sparser. As such, this study contributes to the body of Argentine socio-economic history in both the broad and more specific sense. This work is valuable in that it provides an alternative reading to traditionally top-down recording common to some historiographical traditions and accounts. However, the core value of this research is that it provides an original contribution to knowledge by considering the meaning and human relevance of work and co-operative organisation in a marginal community in the chronological and geographical context of early twenty-first-century Argentina.

Women who live in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside experience some of the most devastating health problems among residents of British Columbia. While crack cocaine use has been associated with many of these problems, we lack an understanding of how women who use crack cocaine experience these health problems and what they do to manage them. Informed by tenets of intersectionality and social geography, a critical ethnographic approach was used to examine the scope of health concerns experienced by women who are street-involved and use crack cocaine, the strategies they used to manage their health, and the social, economic, political, personal, and historical contexts that influenced these experiences. Data were collected over a seventeen month period and included a cross sectional survey (n=126), participant observations, and interviews (n=53). The women described experiencing poor physical and mental health throughout their lives; many of which were preventable. Respiratory problems, anxiety, sadness and insomnia were the most frequent concerns reported. They endured severe economic deprivation, unstable and unsanitary housing, and relentless violence and public scrutiny across a variety of contexts including their homes and on the street. These experiences were further influenced by structural and interpersonal relations of power operating within the health care, legal, and welfare systems. The women engaged in a several strategies to mitigate the harmful effects of factors that influenced their health including: (a) managing limited financial resources; (b) negotiating the health care system; (c) managing substance use; and (d) managing on your own. These strategies were influenced by the types of concerns experienced, perceptions of their most pressing concern, the nature of interpersonal relations with health care providers, and the limited social and economic resources available. Changes in the organizational policies and practices of the welfare, legal, and health care systems are needed to improve women’s health. Possible strategies include increased access to welfare and safe, affordable housing, safer alternatives to income, and improved collaboration between illness prevention and law enforcement programming. New approaches are required that build on women’s considerable strengths and are sensitive to ways in which gender, race, and class can disrupt opportunities to access services. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

As with other forms of green crime, timber trafficking is frequently overlooked by traditional criminology. This research is an exploratory investigation into the problem of timber trafficking in Vietnam, which aims to obtain a detailed understanding of the typology of, victimisation from, and key factors driving this crime. To achieve this aim, 41 semi-structured interviews with seven different cohorts (environmental police, investigative police, forest protection officers, commune authorities, forest-based inhabitants, timber traders, and green NGO staff) were conducted. Over one hundred pages of official documents (criminal case records, operational reports, and conference papers), and more than two hundred relevant newspapers were collected and analysed to enhance and triangulate the primary data. This research reveals a multifaceted typology of timber trafficking in Vietnam, comprising five different components: harvesting, transporting, trading, supporting, and processing. Each of these components is further constituted by distinctive, parallel forms of illicit operation. There are, for example, three parallel forms of illegal timber harvesting, termed small-scale, medium-scale and large-scale (SSITH, MSITH and LSITH). While having certain overlaps, in general SSITH, MSITH and LSITH are fundamentally distinctive not only in terms of the volumes of illicit timber they produce and the methods of illegally felling trees they employ, as typically identified in the previous studies, but more importantly in terms of the harvesters‘ attributes, their motivations, and the sophistication and security implications of the criminal operations. It is thus argued that the typology of illegal timber harvesting in this research challenges the typical classification in the existing literature, and offers an alternative way of understanding more comprehensively the dynamic of illegal logging. Regarding the victimisation from timber trafficking, due to the employment of a broad conceptual framework of human security, it is revealed that timber trafficking has substantial harmful impacts on all seven elements of human security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. These impacts are closely interconnected, but vary between different groups of victims. These findings culminate in the proposal that there are three main typical characteristics of green victimisation: suffering hierarchy, victim-offender overlap, and multidimensionality. Additionally, the employment of a human security paradigm in this research leads to another proposal that it is highly achievable and productive to integrate perspectives from the field of security studies into the discipline of green criminology, for the purpose of systematically examining green victimisation. Finally, this research offers five solutions to control timber trafficking in the context of Vietnam, by refining the current policy framework of forest governance and improving the efficiency of law enforcement.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a concept which has developed over the past five decades through a range of fields. It is based on the premise that modifications to the built and natural environment can reduce both crime and fear, and improve the overall quality of life. CPTED relies on the cooperation of a variety of agencies; however, research has revealed important inherent difficulties regarding multi-agency working and that current practice is neither sustainable nor does it consider social characteristics which may impact upon crime and the effectiveness of CPTED initiatives. Criticisms of diverse factors relating to CPTED have been expressed but how robust such criticisms are and if suitable resolutions exist has not been explored. Using a mixed methods approach, this PhD seeks to improve and update the CPTED concept by addressing issues of communication and collaboration between CPTED stakeholders, and suggests robust ways of enhancing the social context within CPTED planning. The research answers the following fundamental questions: what are the underlying problems of the CPTED concept and how did they come to fruition; and can the approach to CPTED planning be re-examined and updated to reduce the inherent underlying difficulties and improve the transferability and practical application of CPTED initiatives. The research highlights language and definition inconsistencies in the CPTED framework, transferability and engagement issues between CPTED stakeholders and an unestablished but vital link between CPTED and social sustainability and context. The thesis delivers three major academic contributions to new knowledge. It firmly identifies failings in the CPTED concept since its inception to present; it proposes an updated framework which is theoretically driven, and represents a holistic catchment of all CPTED knowledge; and it makes a solid link between crime prevention and the sustainable development of communities highlighting its importance for context analysis.