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In 1976, while Chilean people endured an atrocious dictatorship, a group of economists saw the opportunity to test their ideas. With the congress in ruins and political opposition persecuted, the Chicago Boys led by Milton Friedman started a radical intervention of the whole economy (Harvey, 2005; Fuentes, 2021). Reforms not only included the privatisation of natural resources and key industries, but also the intervention of every educational space. Business schools were, consequently, a main focus of interest (Errázuriz Tagle, 2017). Thirty years after the recovery of democracy in 1990, many of them keep a staunch commitment with the ideological guidelines implemented back then. In the last decade, however, new generations have come to question this consensus. This ethnography explores the contemporary political quarrels of an elite business school in Chile. Rancière's philosophy is used as an experimental methodology that allow to bring marginalised voices to the front. By carrying on a "reconstruction of practices" of those who stand against the school's police order, the school is revealed as a highly politicised space. Findings are divided into three chapters. The first one narrates the successful feminist action of May 2018, where a group of students occupied upper management's offices demanding a sexual harassment protocol. The second chapter offers an overview of the school's policing mechanisms. The obsessive promotion of "excellence", the leitmotiv of the school, results in a disjointed social fabric where isolation and mental health issues arise. The third chapter profiles the school's consensus on meritocracy and economic mobility. Facing this consensus around the role of the individual, dissident students and academics undertake the mission of finding creative ways to put their knowledge at the service of the people's needs.

This research addresses the critical and urgent imperative to create value from transformational change programmes which is economically viable, ecologically sustainable and equitable across stakeholders in a world of increasingly finite resources. Three essential prerequisites are needed to realise intentional value from change: effective strategy, efficient execution and coherent linkage between them to ensure that the right things are done the right way. However, widespread failure of programmes to deliver stakeholder value is evidenced. Rather than inadequate methods and techniques, it is argued that patterns of flawed causal thinking and behaviour operating at a Meta level account for the failure. The patterns map to fractured interfaces between change programme disciplines. It is proposed that these flaws can be corrected by applying a simple, precise and rigorous approach centred on value and grounded in causality. A new value theory is proposed comprising principles which map to failure patterns, supported by a learning-centric framework. The research draws together convergent findings from experiential learning, literature research, subject expert interviews and rapid prototyping using dynamic simulation. The approach is developed and validated through case studies under a Critical Realism philosophical foundation. There exists an opportunity to affect a shift towards sustainable, equitable growth which creates a flourishing society, by harnessing technological breakthroughs deployed effectively using advances across neuroscience and learning. It is proposed that Value Productivity, which combines efficiency and effectiveness to integrate economy with prosperous wellbeing, provides a basis to realise this potential and can be implemented through the Value Management approach developed in this research.

Recognising the importance of audit committees as a major tool to increase confidence in financial statements, the Minister of Commerce in Saudi Arabia issued a resolution in January 1994 requiring all public companies to mandate the establishment of audit committees. This research seeks to explore the role of audit committees in Saudi Arabia and investigate whether the actual practice among these corporations is consistent with the best practice that was advocated from the recommendations of both academic and professional literatures. The intention was to survey audit committee members, internal auditors and external auditors about the effectiveness of audit committees. The questionnaire was adopted as the main instrument (followed by some interviews) to collect data in Saudi Arabia. There was a concern between the respondents that audit committees have little benefit in achieving what they were expected to do. The resolution of the Ministry of Commerce (1994) did not clearly explain the relationship between audit committees with the external and internal auditors, scope of work to be undertaken, independence, expertise, transparency, and the required qualifications and knowledge for audit committee members. There is an obvious problem with this resolution because it is too brief and there are no explanatory/guidance notes to accompany it. Therefore, a number of steps should be taken to transform the concept from a good idea on paper to a reality in practice. Ministry of Commerce should follow up its concern by issuing further clarification of what corporations must do exactly to implement the resolution.

The thesis starts by examining how organisations deploy strategy and performance measurement systems and reviews how well they fink to the employee appraisal process. Many organisations are still failing to provide the linkage that employees require to fully exploit their potential. Whilst companies have processes for strategy and appraisal construction, objective setting and support structures, including communications the research found that these lacked the effectiveness necessary to motivate employees. For strategy to become truly meaningful to employees' personal goals and objectives must be aligned with the organisational objectives. The methodology design detailed in this thesis assisted the research in determining that none of the current strategy and performance measurement models or frameworks was able to combine strategy and appraisal processes in to an integrated system that was effective. A strategy deployment process was developed which creates this link to the employe e's appraisal system, ensuring that the actions of the individual are inline with the company goals. Four process requirements were identified in the model construction. The strategy deployment process is a new business model to integrate strategy and performance measurement systems to the appraisal process. This provides a greater understanding of the competencies required by management and the employees of the organisation. All businesses need to align their strategies, operations, competencies and resources in order to achieve the organisational objectives but to gain the maximum from these the culture of the company has to be flexible and encouraging to achieve this. To ensure that cultural flexibility is sustained the research found that organisations should have: strategy aligned communication links, effective leadership and a coaching environment. From the beginning of the research, criteria for the evaluation of the quality of the research were developed. The thesis concludes with the evaluation of the research against these criteria. The results obtained demonstrate that the research has satisfactorily fulfilled academic requirements and has reached the standards outlined in the methodology.

This thesis introduce Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) to explain and predict the corporate failure event. After critically reviewing the relevant literature, it is argued that refinements of existing models, which are mostly mechanical, and the construction of new ones using similar techniques, are likely to yield nothing more than marginal benefits to the users. However, users will benefit from the development of statistically sound but easy-to-comprehend models, which will assist them in making an informed decision regarding the financial health of the companies in question. Scaling techniques enable the construction of robust and user-friendly bankruptcy models as they offer pictorial representations of the results, via which the user can visualise the underlying relationships in the data. The research begins with the application of logit analysis and neural networks (NNs), and the investigation of the usefulness of operating cash flows in bankruptcy models, reflecting the recent popularity of NNs, the increased interest in cash flow reporting in the UK and the scarcity of recent UK failure studies. The NN model is not found to be superior to the logit model and empirical evidence shows that operating cash flow variables can add significantly to the explanatory power of accrual-based models. The second study of the thesis proposes classic MDS as an alternative to conventional techniques. The MDS approach has the advantage of visualising the main features of the data in the form of statistical maps, which lend themselves to intuitive interpretation, while keeping a strong theoretical basis. The methodology is demonstrated using a recent sample of UK companies, while a future-dated holdout sample is employed to illustrate how MDS can aid practitioners when assessing the financial health of a company. Three-way scaling analysis is introduced in the third study to examine the differences in the financial structure of a large sample of UK companies over a number of years. The results indicate that the most important determinants of a company's financial health are its capital structure, the profitability/operating cash flow position and the ratios that relate to the shareholders' return.

This research investigates the phenomenon of strategic management accounting in multinational companies. It seeks to understand strategic management accounting processes in use in a particular organisational context. Multinational companies are an important phenomenon of our time and researching strategic management accounting in such a setting promises rich insights into its use in a complex environment. Little is known to date on how strategic management accounting is undertaken in organisations and this research contributes to that field of knowledge. Premised on an interpretive theoretical orientation, this research involves a grounded theory study (Strauss and Corbin, 1990, 1998) based on data collected in a large multinational company in Germany. The research establishes the importance of management accounting for the assessment of strategic situations. It was found that sense making was the main activity underlying strategic management accounting processes. Sense making was defined as involving the understanding of diverse situations, thereby finding and demonstrating their meaning to the company and individuals inside the company. The importance of sense making arose from the presence of a multiplicity of relevant aspects in the organisation's internal and external contexts, all of which had to be taken into account for the assessment of strategic situations. This put a premium on information, professional management accounting and interdisciplinary know-how, and a feel for the game, which intervened in sense making activities. As a consequence, there was found to be a need for an enhanced management accounting skills profile. This research contributes to interpretive accounting research by providing incremental evidence of a particular phenomenon, strategic management accounting, in a particular setting. It presents rich insights into the use of management accounting in the case site, while also analysing the particular environment of its use, thereby contributing to an emergent understanding of accounting in organisational contexts.

This thesis draws on work done as part of a joint research project on industrial networks in Hungary and Slovenia, in which I participated in studying the types and depth of cooperation between buyers and suppliers [Dyker et al. 2003]. The theoretical motivation for this study is that industrial ties between firms are socially embedded and that this social embeddedness needs to be considered in order to understand the process by which the economies of the post-socialist countries of Europe are integrating into European production networks. We chose Slovenia as a country that has benefited from a continuity of industrial ties and a familiarity in working with Western European companies dating already from the pre-transition period. The top managers of 47 companies in the engineering industries (NACE 29-35) were interviewed about cooperation with their buyers and suppliers. These industries are extremely important to the economy, especially in terms of exports, and our interviews cover a good fraction of these companies. We investigate the specifics of the business environment of companies in Slovenia, and examine how these specifics affect buyer-supplier relations. The research hypothesis is that the current business environment in place and operating in Slovenia has observable effects on inter-firm relations. Differences in business cultures arise not only because of differences in the tangible legal and economic institutions in place, but also from historically produced common understandings and practices which have become entrenched in the everyday interactions of business people. In testing this hypothesis we focused on companies in the complex manufacturing industries, which would most likely benefit from both upstream and downstream interfirm cooperation, and considered how the operating environment affects the consequent forms of cooperative ties. We find that legacies are at least as important as ownership forms in determining company behaviour

This thesis attempts to explain the evolution and survival of joint ventures in the transitional Chinese economy. Since China 'opened its doors' to foreign direct investment in 1979, the inflows of capital, technology, and management skills via joint ventures have contributed significantly to its economic development. Joint ventures were unquestionably regarded as the most feasible and also the only possible strategy for legitimate foreign direct investment. However, evidence is presented showing that in the 1990s, in line with China's ongoing economic reform, significant changes took place in the country's institutional and economic environment. Hence, the changes in its business environment had a strong impact on China's foreign direct investment. The findings of this study show that China's transitional economy has had a significant impact on the relaxation of state control over foreign direct investment and has seriously affected joint venture partners' initial power relationships and interdependency. The new power relationships between venture partners have driven dramatic changes in joint venture partners' strategies, ownership structure, and operational management. As a result, this study further indicate that the changes in China's business environment, although not the only dominant factor, have exacerbated joint ventures' internal difficulties and further affected joint venture partners' strategic choices, which in turn has led to a rapid evolution of China-based joint ventures. This study contributes to both the theoretical and practical understanding of the evolution of China-based joint ventures as they have adapted under China's economic transition and indicates an additional exit way out to a joint venture's eventual destination, rather than termination or dissolution. This study also offers areas for future research.

This study aims to examine the impact of cultural distance on the management issues of international joint ventures QJVs). Previous IJV research, which used Hofstede's five dimensions or Kogut and Singh's (1980) formula to examine the impact of cultural distance on IJVs, tendered mixed and conflicting results. Two models are built to link the relationships between culture and IN management issues (i. e. management styles, conflict resolution strategies, role stress, and performance) by the perspectives of parent firms and IN general managers. A conceptual model explores the relationships between the three dimensions (i. e. three party's perspectives, four approaches of performance measure, and long-term orientation). Furthermore, a replication examines the Lin and Germain's (1980) model of linking context variables, conflict resolution strategies and IJV performance. Hypotheses are tested by the primary data collected by an international mail questionnaire from a sample of 165 IJV general managers in China and foreign parent firms in Japan and Taiwan. First, IJV management issues are found significantly different between the two national groups by ANOVA test. Second, it is found that cultural similarity and Hofstede's five dimensions have weak relationships with IJV management issues. Third, the link between the three dimensions of performance measure is proved by confirmative factor analysis. Finally, Lin and Germain's findings are weakly supported by this replication using LISREL test.

This research considers the applicability of Maslow's theory of human motivation (1943) to ancillary staff in UK National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and Universities (HE). It has been undertaken in response to a request made by managers in these sectors for evidence-based research that could be applied in practice. Maslow's model of motivation was selected to structure the research, to allow systematic consideration of the nature of staffs motivation and thus also to examine the applicability of the model to ancillary staff. Previous investigations of the theory in the work setting have concentrated on managerial and professional workers, hence one of the contributions to knowledge that this PhD makes is the originality of the workers included. By researching the sample and designing a tool to test the appropriateness of Maslow's theory, new understanding is added to Maslovian psychology, motivation theory and organisational behaviour. Traditionally research into the motivation of lower waged workers has focussed upon financial rewards (e.g. Thornley, 1996; Unison, 1997) and disregarded other sources. This research challenges such models and explores untapped elements of motivation in ancillary workers that can have practical use for those sponsoring the work and other employers. Two main premises of Maslow's theory are considered for their appropriateness to the ancillary staff. The first relates to the structure of human motivation into five types of needs that increase in complexity. The second explains the dynamic relationship between these needs determined by their level of satisfaction and importance. Primary data was largely gathered from NHS ancillary staff using a questionnaire that was then validated in focus groups. The design, application and results of each method are considered in the thesis for testing the appropriateness of Maslow's model. Repeating the questionnaire with a further group of HE ancillary staff examined the reliability of the findings and conclusions made, as did consideration of the data according to gender and work role. Three of Maslow's five classifications of human motivation were found in the ancillary staff, along with a further need confirmed in each analysis. Safety, Love & Belongingness and Esteem needs were confirmed in the satisfaction and importance analyses, and Self-Actualisation was to some extent established in the importance investigations. An Institutional Safety need was also repeated that consisted of trade union related items and considered staffs safety in their working terms and conditions. The process of motivation proposed by Maslow was not however supported.

This Doctor of Education thesis uses Action Research to address the means which organisations can use to evaluate the impact of management development on their organisations. The author has devised a choice-based consultancy tool, the Yates Options Model for Evaluation which, amongst other things, incorporates the concept of the learning organisation as a key element and, using action research procedures, the thesis explores and confirms the value of this concept in the process of evaluating organisational effectiveness. By using the consultancy tool to carry out evaluation in two organisations, one public and one private, insights are drawn into the consultancy process itself, the value of the Model and the way in which action research serves to illuminate both. Each organisation made its choices within the Model and studies of staff opinion were carried out to establish where the organisation lay in terms of the development of the learning organisation. All of the experiences of carrying out those studies formed the research data along with interviews with key participants to establish the value of the Model. The thesis finds that choice-based models of consulting empower client organisations to evaluate their management development in line with their own objectives and through means of their choosing. This process brings clients to the heart of the consulting exercise and increases their sense of ownership of the results of the organisational evaluation and management development.

This thesis is about creating a better understanding of value creation. It proposes 'the value cube', a new framework to describe, how organisations should align and manage their operations, resources, capabilities and competencies with their value propositions to create value. This thesis started with an exploratory analysis in value; as a result several unsolved issues, inconsistencies and weaknesses of current solutions were identified. Based on those, this research proposed two value dimensions - Hard and Soft Value. The value matrix was created by bringing together the two value dimensions and the propositions from Treacy and Wiersema (1996). As a result, six value propositions emerged, To describe the functionality of each value proposition in greater depth, the value matrix was extended into a cube: 'the value cube'. Empirical evidence provided through eight case studies and a workshop-study validates the value cube, establishes the appropriate unit of analysis an d the value cube's footprints. The five research questions of this research conclude that: (1) Value can be deployed in 'hard value' and 'soft value'. (2) The six value propositions of the value cube are valid and two of them 'simplifiers' and 'socialisors' are novel. Thus, the value propositions of the value cube offer a wider scope and flexibility than current frameworks, to describe and/or classify business performance. (3) The value cube can be applied to 'business unit level' or 'whole organisation'; however the application of the value cube at business unit level seems to be more sensible. (4) Therefore, a single organisation can have more than one value proposition. (5) The value cube provides general guidelines or 'footprints' of value creation for its six value propositions. From the beginning of this research, criteria for the evaluation of the quality of the research were developed. demonstrate that this research has satisfactory fulfilled the criteria. Consequently, this Consequently, this research reached the quality standards of constructive/pure research.

This thesis explores the potential impact of the Internet and international entrepreneurship on the export performance of UK based Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) operating in the following sectors: food and beverages, textiles, clothing and fur, biotechnology and instrumentation, and computers and office machinery. The findings reveal that, in general, UK based SMEs are moderately committed to Internet technologies and that their owner/managers are innovative, moderately proactive and risk takers. The findings also show that the export performance of SMEs is influenced by a mix of entrepreneurs characteristics (i.e. perceptions of growth, profits and costs of exporting, level of education, work responsibility, work experience and proactivity) and the level of Internet commitment of the firm (i.e. email and Intranet, interconnectivity, Internet information, perceived external Internet benefits and promotion on the Web). These antecedents reflect the current environment w here globalisation and advances in information and communication technology (ICT) put pressure on SMEs and give them hope to participate more effectively in international markets. Also, this result gives support to the Resource Based View (RBV) and indicates that UK based SMEs export performance is highly attributed to the resources and competencies at the owner/managers level (i.e. owner/managers social psychological characteristics and entrepreneurial orientation behaviour) and at the level of the firm (i.e. level of Internet commitment). Moreover, the results give some support to the incremental internationalisation process, where almost half of the firms are following the conventional models of internationalisation and export to the psychically close country, namely the USA. Also, the findings support the 'born global' phenomenon where half the firms investigated have started internationalising either from, or shortly after, inception. Four categories of UK based SMEs were identified and recommendations made according to the firm level of Internet use (high versus low) and owner/managers entrepreneurial orientation behaviour (high versus low). Implications for policy makers evolved around targeting different SMEs with different export promotion assistance schemes and international business education programmes, raising awareness about the global scope of Internet e-commerce in helping SMEs enter and succeed in export markets, and fostering networking among firms interested in international markets.

This study investigates the corporate use of leasing in the UK, incorporating into the analysis advances in capital structure theory. Prior to the mid-1990s, research in the area largely adopted the approach set out by Modigliani and Miller [1963], the assumption being the validity of perfect capital markets with the existence of corporate taxes. Such an approach underlay the influential leasing models of Myers, Dill and Bautista [1976] and the tax-based rationales for long-term leasing finance. This analysis was developed on two main fronts: by utilising more comprehensive measures for the firm's tax liability; and, more fundamentally, by looking at issues arising from the environment in which leasing operates, in particular focusing on company and asset characteristics as determinants of the decision to use finance and operating leases. A core sample of non-financial companies taken from the FT-All Share Index for the period 1993-5 was used, together with a smaller sample of companies recording operating lease commitments and, via a series of univariate and multivariate analyses, utilised a number of variables proxying for asset and firm characteristics. The results highlight the multifaceted nature of the leasing decision in the UK today and are a reflection of the changing fiscal and legislative environment in which leasing operates. The traditional tax-based hypothesis of the use of finance leases was only marginally supported. The study also confirmed the substitutional relationship between finance leases and corporate debt finance. Finally, firm and asset characteristics such as the size, liquidity and profitability of a company, were also shown to be influential determinants of the use of finance leases. The use of operating leases, meanwhile appeared not to be influenced by a company's use of debt finance, nor of the lessee's tax position, appearing instead to be inversely related to size and liquidity.

This thesis explores how and why organizational knowledge emerges. An underdeveloped branch of evolutionary theory called memetics, which applies to social evolution, is used as a theoretical back-drop. Evolutionary theory is an explanation of knowledge that assumes knowledge emerges in a system without foresight, making the system infinitely self-sustaining. This thesis explores the dynamics of knowledge emergence during social interactions. This is done on the basis that knowledge is created through social exchange and social exchange has to happen before knowledge can become embedded in minds and embodied in artefacts and anyway the knowledge stock of any social system can never be known as it is forever changing. The research is exploratory in that the theory, the research strategy and the empirical element of the thesis are all very novel. Two empirical settings are explored: 'un-managed' Internet chat rooms and a 'managed' organizational setting, with the aim of being able to compare these settings to determine how management can affect the emergence of knowledge. In order to be able to compare the emergence of knowledge within these settings knowledge emergence is described and explained. Knowledge emergence is decribed in terms of both content, specifically variety of content; and process, specifically the nature of the steps involved in adding that variety. Knowledge emergence is explained by characterising the system in which knowledge emerges. The system attributes of community interactivity, differential retention dynamics, rules of knowledge emergence and reflexivity are shown to be responsible for knowledge emergence. In comparing the three cases within each setting and the two settings, it is shown that each case of knowledge emergence has its own unique 'fingerprint'. which is more or less similar to others. aUsing these comparisons in association with the theory, the thesis elucidates the system attributes and concludes that the systemis beyond perfect control, but the system attributes are more or less controllable and hence more or less manageable. Community interactivity and retention dynamics are difficult to manage whereas rules of emergence and reflexivity are more manageable.

This study explores the uptake of the Investors in People Standard, the UK's national standard for good staff development practice, in the Higher Education sector. It examines the reasons why there has been such a slow rate of achievement of the Standard in this sector, the differences between pre and post 1992 Universities and the potential benefits to those who do achieve it. This exploration is located within an analysis of the changing landscape and culture of HE, the relatively few research studies that have been conducted on the Standard, and the staff development literature in higher education. The Standard lies at the heart of Government plans to increase the skills and productivity of the UK's workforce and a decade after its launch over 60% of large employers have achieved the Standard. Yet, despite support from HE stakeholders like HEFCE, QAA, HESDA and Universities UK, and a strong recommendations that the Standard be adopted to improve poor staff development practices in HE, only 13 universities have achieved the Standard, one pre-1992 university and 12 post-1992 universities. The reasons for this are explored through a three stage research design - a narrative based on the experience of one post-1992 university working towards the Standard, statistical analysis of uptake and achievement of the Standard and an in-depth analysis of semi-structured interviews of a range of academic, support and consultant staff. Three significant findings were as follows. Firstly, Universities perceived academically-orientated benchmarks, like the RAE and subject review, to be more important than staff development benchmarks like the Standard and consequently gave them higher priority. Secondly, the Standard, linked as it is to the growing trend of managerialism in the sector, was seen to be in conflict with a 'traditional' academic culture. Thirdly, post-1992 universities and service departments in pre-1992 universities, were perceived to have a more corporate culture that made it easier for them to commit to and achieve the Standard.

The aim of this thesis is to propose a new approach to the analysis and visualisation of reforms in procurement and project management systems within the UK construction industry. The subject matter chosen was inspired by the publication of the Latham Report (Latham, 1994) and personal experience within the construction industry within one of the roles currently in transition. Certain limitations within existing methodologies employed by those who have sought to analyse construction procurement and management (for example, Higgin and Jessop, 1965; Masterman, 1992; Franks, 1998 and Cleland and King, 1983), are identified. These limitations are associated with the interdependence of roles, appropriateness of detail, uniformity of presentation and the difficulty of quantification in the context of a non-linear, complex, iterative, interactive, non-hierarchical process that construction comprises. Conceptually the research draws together Winch's model of the construction project team as a temporary project coalition (Winch, 1983:36) and Williamson's nexus of treaties (in Aoki, 1992:1). The research proposes that current dramatic changes in procurement and management strategies might be observed and analysed if the construction project is conceptualised as a network of relationships existing between the firms that comprise the project coalition. These relationships are contractual, those associated with performance incentives and those associated with information exchanges (the latter classified into the main functions that the project team must perform - design development, cost and progress management). It is proposed that social network analysis (SNA) be used to investigate these networks. Following a pilot study involving the BAA "Genesis" project, four case studies were carried out. Two control studies involved traditional procurement; a further two represented projects utilising partnering, supply chain management and work clusters, and involving two of the UK's largest and most innovative clients. Analysis of the data focussed upon the use of centrality (a measure of prominence within a network), as a means of quantifying changing roles within the coalition and the relationships between the firms providing these roles. The research established that SNA is a very effective tool for research into procurement and management. Findings suggest that the changing prominence of existing roles and the evolution of certain hybrid roles are readily quantified and graphically represented using SNA; centrality is ideally suited to look into the leverage that project actors exert within the construction project supply chain; findings challenge some existing views on the desirability and nature of fragmentation within the UK construction industry; findings also suggest that the two new procurement projects deal with the governance of their respective coalitions in very different ways; a single, prominent actor is needed to manage the supply chain; traditional construction roles are changing rapidly - cost management, design dislocation and the new role of cluster leader are all important issues.

This thesis is a study of organising practices and cultural identities amongst those at the top of charity shop organisations ('Heads'). Its main argument is that people's personal identities are crucial in shaping their material practices and therefore the subsequent economic outcomes of these practices. Those wishing to understand the aspects of life conventionally referred to as 'economic' can learn much by investigating the identification processes of the people involved. Similarly, if policy-makers (governmental or organisational) wish to achieve certain 'economic' outcomes, their policies should address processes of identification. This argument is examined using research into material practices and identity processes in charity shop organisations, in particular the Heads. The thesis questions how the rapid professionalisation of charity shops in the 1980s and 1990s was related to the identifications of a certain generation of charity shop Heads. Using participant-observation fieldwork of three charity shop organisations and semi-structured interviews with twenty charity shop Heads, it develops theories of identity and theories of professionalism. To theories of identity it adds a five-level understanding of selfhood; a distinction between three separate identification processes; the suggestion that personal, organisational and sectoral identities are related and co-emergent; and the argument that identities must be studied as 'produced-in-interaction' as well as received from 'external' discourses. To theories of professionalism it proposes a move beyond the limited view of 'a professional' as a member of an expert occupational group, towards 'professional' as a fluid but powerfully normative description that can be applied to all organisational actors and activities. Finally, the thesis offers support for its main argument and policy recommendations for those working with charity shop organisations; and addresses the spatialised nature of identity processes.