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The Athena Swan (AS) charter was established in 2005 as a benchmark charter to address gender inequality issues in UK higher education institutions. In addition to providing a framework for implementing equality and diversity policies and practices among participating members, the bronze, silver and gold awards given by the AS certify participating institution's commitment to and progress towards gender equality initiatives. Despite the increasing significance of the AS benchmark in the UK higher education sector, studies have seldom examined how the impact reported in the studies has shaped the lived experiences of the institutional members. This is especially important for women academics in their early- and mid-career stages in Science, whose voices are rarely recorded in relation to their daily life in AS-accredited departments. Therefore, this thesis adopts a Straussian grounded theory approach using a case study to examine the impact of AS accreditation on the lived experiences of early- and mid-career academics in Science disciplines in a department recognised as excellent in terms of successfully implementing Athena Swan principles within its culture. This thesis empirically contributes to the literature on the impact of AS accreditation by showing that despite the case study department being recognised as excellent by the AS benchmark charter, the lived experiences of the early- and mid-career academics do not reflect the AS principles of inclusivity in their workspaces. Moreover, AS accreditation can be seen as window dressing with limited impact on the real-life experiences of early- and mid-career researchers. The AS gold action plans, without understanding the specific needs of the postdoctoral researchers, have resulted in its failure to improve the everyday working lives of early- and mid-career researchers who explained the loss of faith in gender equality initiatives like Athena Swan. Thus, in the context of this thesis, it is argued that the Athena Swan has, essentially, failed as an instrument to improve gender equality in academia Furthermore, this thesis has wider implications for performative theory in relation to subcultural spaces wherein the departmental culture was found to be weak in promoting values of inclusion and support across the subcultures. Thus, the spaces become performative for women, requiring them to perform the ideal scientist role in accordance with the hegemonic norms in their subcultural spaces, suggesting that the AS accreditation of the department has not challenged the ideal scientist norm in Science disciplines.

This research discusses the concept of guanxi, and how guanxi affects international co-operation between Chinese and UK higher education institutions in the arts. This study uses Foucault's philosophy of dispositif to build a new theoretical model called the guanxi dispositif (GD) model, which is an original idea that comprises a combination of Western and Eastern philosophies and discourse analysis. The research questions posed are: RQ1. How deep is the involvement of guanxi in co-operative categories in arts related HEIs? RQ2. How widely of guanxi's involvement in the area? RQ3. How do higher education organisations use guanxi in their relationships with their partner institutions in the Arts and Humanities? In order to answer these questions, pragmatic paradigm and Methods-Strands Matrix (MM) research designs were used to build the fieldwork of this research, which was largely composed of questionnaires and interviews employed in a quality-quantity-quality process to analyse meta-inference. The findings suggest that: 1) guanxi exists in most forms of international co-operation conducted by Chinese people in higher education institutions; 2) guanxi increase the efficiency of co-operation, especially in relationship setup; 3) Chinese people tend to use guanxi in international co-operation, and Western practitioners prove willing to use it more during China-related collaborations; 4) guanxi exists in a simplified but not weakened form in modern China. Future studies should continue to test the theoretical framework of the guanxi dispositif (GD) model formulated by this research.

This research explores the impact of multiple institutional logics (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999) or the macro-level values that guide appropriate behaviours in the auditing profession on individual auditors and their professional identities. Due to national deregulation, globalisation, and market competition, there has been an increase in commercialism and business focus in the auditing profession (Hanlon, 1996; Crittenden et al., 2003; Sikka, 2015; Guo, 2016). The study employed an interpretivist, qualitative approach with 27 semi-structured interviews and participant-produced drawings (Kearney and Hyle, 2004) of statutory, external auditors from small, medium, and big-four audit firms in the UK. The findings demonstrated the coexistence of three institutional logics including the technical, ethical, and commercial logics, highlighting tensions and complementarity of the multiple logics as experienced by individual auditors. This thesis argues that there are differences between the technical and ethical logics, traditionally combined under the umbrella of a professional logic in the current literature (Gendron, 2002). Participants negotiated tensions among multiple institutional logics by identifying with certain logic(s) and distancing from the other logic(s) or by compartmentalising their identification with different logics across time. Findings extend the understanding of how institutional logics may complement one another through presenting three types of complementarity including the facilitating, by-product, and stand-alone nature. Next, this research found that individual auditors constructed three forms of professional identities in relation to multiple institutional logics including a guardian of public interests, an advisor, and a value-added watchdog. Various forms of identity work were performed to construct, reconstruct, revise, and secure these identities. The main institutional logics shaping these identities were the ethical and/or commercial logics. Finally, this thesis also has a methodological contribution regarding the use of participant-produced drawing to conceptualise abstract ideas, stimulate further discussion, and understand institutional logics and identities of individuals at the microlevel.

Although Organisational Development (OD) has become a feature of large contemporary organisations there remains a lack of OD research in the Middle East. A number of factors exist within Arab countries that could facilitate or inhibit OD interventions, thereby questioning the validity and generalisability of Western theories and models when applied to the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to explore different aspects of OD in public sector organisations in the UAE. The research aims to determine the attitudes of leaders and employees towards OD interventions and resulting change within a traditional organization. It also examines problems of achieving fundamental attitude change in the top management of traditional organisations. Additionally, it also contributes towards Human Resource Development thinking on the context, role and impact of OD interventions and identifies practical challenges confronting leaders in transforming traditional public sector organisations into project-oriented organizations. The research utilises a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) approach. The findings of the study indicate that ISO implementation as an OD intervention can help traditional organisations to transform into a project-based organisations by improving overall effectiveness, reducing costs, improving the overall service quality. Other useful findings include managing resistance to change, institutionalising change, and training the employees to implement ISO as an OD intervention. The study has some limitations including small sample size; time available with respondents; and questionnaire response rate. Nevertheless, this research contributes to our knowledge of the utilization of ISO interventions for Organisation Development and offers some practical evidence-based strategies for transforming traditional public sector organisations into project based organisations.

This thesis compares the level of employee voice operating between two companies from the same industrial sector, one being a large multinational and the other a SME with a view to evaluate if size is a determinant. The findings are that whilst the level of voice is not statistically significantly associated with size and is not very different between the two organisations, size is not the direct determinant, it is other factors often connected with size that control it; namely the degree of formality and proceduralism. The very procedural nature of the organisation in the multinational appears to be a key factor retarding the involvement by employees whilst in the SME it is the lack of procedures designed to encourage participation which appears to be a factor retarding employee voice. Furthermore, both companies suffer from an absence of direct involvement of shop floor personnel due to the absence of team meetings, for differing reasons; a lack of confidence in the ability of team leaders in the SME and the lack of their permanent allocation to teams in the MNE. It is stressed that these findings can only be assumed correct for these two particular companies but the research strategy could usefully be applied to other pairs of company differing in size but from different sectors and using longitudinal studies, rather than this type of cross-sectional study. There is however a warning that before any useful data can be accumulated regarding productivity and other operational outcomes, meaningful measures of potential outcomes must be in place or designed and agreement on how any such operational improvements are to be attributed to the level of employee voice and engagement by employees.

The link between organisational change and corruption has been largely neglected in the literature, despite myriad studies conducted by researchers in many different fields on both phenomena. To fill the gap, this study provides empirical evidence about the interplay between organisational change and corruption. Case study is employed as a research strategy. The organisational change initiative being studied is the reformation or modernisation of a tax authority. The empirical data include 21 interviews, 21 drawings (from two focus groups), and 10 photographs. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the interviews and visual data. The main finding of this study is that there is interplay between organisational change and corruption, in which change does not only affect corruption, but also that corruption affects organisational change. On one side of the interplay, this study shows that instead of inducing corruption (as suggested in the literature), organisational change can reduce corruption. In addition to literal accounts, metaphors have been used to show that organisational change has reduced the space for corruption, changed employees' involvement in corruption, and shifted the nature of corruption from systemic to individual. However, this finding cannot be separated from the context, i.e., the pre-existed corruption prior to change. This overlooked context explains why the findings of this study are different to the previous studies’. On the other side of the interplay, which has been unexplored, this study contributes by showing that corruption, both pre- and post-change, can affect organisational change (and employees' emotions) positively and negatively. Pre-change corruption can trigger employees' willingness to change. The factors that influence these positive reactions are dissonant feelings, spiritual awareness, and employees’ involuntary involvement in past corruption. The finding also shows that post-change corruption triggers employees’ negative emotions in the form of collective shame, hurt, and injured pride. The use of visual methods in this study has provided an alternative way to study organisational change and, in particular, corruption, which has hitherto been dominated by quantitative methods. It is found that different forms of information are provided by the interviews and visual data. Drawings provide more negative accounts. Perhaps this demonstrates the potential ability of the drawing technique in unveiling such accounts. Other findings show that drawings produced different types of metaphors than those from the interviews. However, as suggested in this study, the use of metaphors is strongly related to context. This finding reinforces the finding mentioned earlier about the important role of context in the study of organisational change management.

This research examines how legal practitioners discursively construct corruption from their experience as users of the services of a public institution. In the legal field, corruption is a word rarely used in connection with practitioners, it is substituted with a less felonious alternative, ‘misconduct’. As a result, this research focuses on how legal practitioners talk about their interaction with the public institution, especially their construction of corrupt transactions. Contrary to the popular assumptions that participants in corrupt transactions are unwilling to talk about their involvement, the findings revealed that participants are willing to talk about their involvement in corrupt practice, but mainly through the use of euphemisms. The empirical contribution of this study suggests on one hand that the extensive use of euphemisms in the construction of the self, processes of corrupt interaction and actions, illustrates the significance of language use in the study of corruption. On the other hand, it emphasises the extent of ‘ethical fading’ and moral disengagement amongst professional service users which is due in part to their popular typecasting as victims, and the inherently contradictory principles of practice within the legal field.

This study investigates organisational change in an inter-organisational context, focusing on the dynamics of the changes, including different roles and functions of each contributing organisation and the relationship amongst these organisations. The issue of interorganisational change is considered important conceptually and contextually. Conceptually, whilst organisational change has been studied extensively, studies on the context of interorganisational changes are limited. Importantly, this study takes territoriality as a lens to frame the dynamics of the changes. Territoriality has been extensively studied in the field of anthropology, geography, political and also sociology; but there are limited studies on organisational territoriality. Most existing studies investigate territoriality as an expressed behaviour, to mark and defend territories. In light of this gap, this study offers a different perspective, by framing territoriality not only as an expressed behaviour, but also proposing it as a process in investigating changes in an interorganisational context. Contextually, this study takes the case of an office of an integrated administration system, which is responsible for managing vehicle registration, taxing and insurance. The role of this organisation has been under spotlight, considering its contributing organisations’ position in the post-reform Indonesia. Most reform lessons are further sourced from Western context or from developed countries; hence this study provides evidence on change from a rather different context, by presenting the case of a public organisation in a developing country and from Eastern, or Asian context. To help with the investigation, this study employed a qualitative method, by using an approach informed by grounded theory. In breaking down collected information and mapping the results, the method thus helped to ask questions on who, what actions, what context, what aims, how they did it and also how the conduct was. Data was collected through the use of semi-structured interviews with 16 informants, who were contacted through a snowballing mechanism. Supporting documents were also collected from the organisations involved, as well as publicly available documents, to help with the analysis. In summary, this study argues that territoriality can be seen as a process rather than only an expressed behaviour. In addition, organisational change involves a deterritorialisation process, which without it, a change cannot take place. This strengthens the notion that territoriality is a process. This study also deconstructed the notion of ‘sectorial-ego’, an Indonesian-specific term for silo mentality. This ego represents territoriality as an expressed behaviour and in order to change, public organisations need to be able to manage their territories, by deterritorialising vertical interests and at the same time, compromising their territories horizontally, in the context of interorganisational collaboration.

Internationally, the pharmacy profession’s paradigm of practice has been shifting from a product-oriented role to a patient-oriented role. Despite increasing public interest, there has been a lack of research into the experiences of pharmacists as they make the transition to a patient-oriented role. Furthermore, it is important to understand how individual pharmacists construct their identity in making this transition, as well as how they behave or react within the role prescribed by their work contexts. This issue of analysing identity construction at the personal level, especially in professionals, is one which empirical research has failed adequately to investigate. With a focus on Thailand, this research thus explores how the paradigm shift to a patient-oriented role influences pharmacists’ identity construction in two different work contexts: a public hospital setting and a private drugstore setting. This enables a comparison of how pharmacists construct identities differently in the two contexts, thus highlighting how a particular context influences individuals’ identity construction by providing multi-discursive resources. This thesis employs negotiated order theory and the social arena concept to examine how pharmacists negotiate to establish their role boundaries, and how they engage with the consequences of these role boundaries. It is found that pharmacists construct identities differently, depending on the context in which their role is situated. Consequently, identity construction is influenced by personal identity, role identity and work and family contexts, as well as professional values. In summary, this thesis contributes to currently under-researched areas of the pharmacy profession literature associated, in particular, with identity and negotiation. At the theoretical level, the thesis also sheds light on using negotiated order theory and the social arena concept to examine negotiations in the less institutionalised context of private drugstores. Finally, the thesis offers a more comprehensive model for identity construction, which includes the role of personal identity, role identity, contexts and social interactions to explain how pharmacists construct their identity, and in so doing highlights the dynamics behind the identity construction process.