Doctoral academy

Title: “I feel safe when I’m working with her”: Sex workers’ experiences of management and wider work relations.

Abstract:
Sex workers’ relationships with third parties are assumed, both in legislation and in the public imagination, to solely be exploitative or controlling (May et al., 2000; Hickle and Roe-Sepowitz, 2016), yet sex workers’ experiences with criminalised third parties are severely under-researched. This means that the nature of these relationships, what shapes them, and how they are experienced by sex workers is largely unknown. However, the relationships between and actions of third parties and sex workers are legislated based on these assumptions, meaning that selling direct sexual services is only legal if done completely alone and without support.

The underpinning research for this thesis is made up of a survey of 185 current full-service sex workers in England, in a variety of work environments, on their experiences with and as third parties. The first major finding is that the majority of (criminalised) third parties in the UK are sex workers themselves – mainly acting in the role of colleagues, rather than managers or others in a position of power over workers. Second, it finds that sex workers have a mix of positive, negative and neutral experiences with third parties. These findings necessitate a more nuanced understandings of the relationships between third parties and sex workers. Specifically, contrary to existing public and legal imaginaries which represent third parties as having total control over workers, third parties generally do not have the power to prevent sex workers from leaving their work relationships and workplaces. This is corroborated by the finding that sex workers in street-based work, premises, clubs, agencies and independent indoor work are not distinct groups, but instead commonly move between these different work areas. Contrary to common understandings, this displays high levels of labour mobility power use (Smith, 2006; Alberti, 2014), showing workers’ ability to make changes to their work situations, with sex workers leaving certain work environments and third parties in favour of others considered to offer better or more suitable conditions. Third, sex workers overwhelmingly feel their working conditions and relationships with third parties can be improved through legal change. The majority of participants argues for the decriminalisation of some or all third parties in order to improve their access to labour rights, and their safety and wellbeing at work.

The overarching thesis is that the majority of third party relationships are better theorised with the novel concept of ‘wider work relations’. This allows us to conceptually distinguish between third parties in managerial positions and wider work relations – third parties who do not hold managerial power or control over workers. Reconceptualising the relationships between sex workers and third parties this way makes it clear that workers would benefit from the decriminalisation of third parties, since third party criminalisation makes workplaces insecure and increases precarity amongst sex workers, thus restricting their agency to work in a manner of their choosing.

Lilith was supervised by Dr Kate Hardy, Dr Gabriella Alberti, and Dr Xanthe Whittaker.

Lilith will also be taking on a new role as a CERIC post-doctoral researcher October.

Title: ‘Resolving and Preventing Workers’ Collective Actions: A Typological Analysis of Government Strategies towards Labour Disputes in China’
 
Abstract:
The thesis examines the Chinese state’s strategies for resolving and preventing collective labour disputes. Key findings of the thesis are threefold. Firstly, focusing on workers’ demands, the thesis identified three types of collective labour disputes in China: disputes over unpaid wages (UW); disputes over compensation at the termination of employment (CTE); and disputes over better working conditions (BWC). Each type of dispute is characterised by workers’ different cognitive liberation, interests, organisation, mobilisation patterns, and forms of collective actions. Secondly, administrative and legal measures, evaluative mediation, and facilitative mediation are three key strategies taken by the Chinese state to resolve UW, CTE and BWC disputes, respectively. Moreover, the Chinese state has been shifting its UW dispute prevention strategy from ‘formalistic’ to effective prevention, while most of its CTE and BWC dispute prevention measures (mainly, collective consultation and tripartite consultation) are implemented in a ‘formalistic’ manner. Finally, the thesis argues that the Chinese state’s choice of dispute resolution and prevention strategies is significantly influenced by the nature of workers’ collective actions and the state’s logic of balancing priorities between economic growth and social stability.

Fengjie was supervised by Professor Mark Stuart and Dr Charles Umney.

Thesis title:

The effect of intra-workplace pay inequality on employee trust in managers and workplace performance: The interplay of fairness perceptions, shared values, and collective employee voice.

Short Synopsis:

Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level in half a century. Research on the macro level has consistently found a negative relationship between income inequality and trust in others. Investigating the effect on trust is crucial, because trust – both in society and within organisations – can be seen was the glue that keeps us together. In his PhD, Felix was motivated to find out if similar relationships also play out on the meso level and, if so, what factors might be responsible for them.

To investigate this, Felix studied the relationship between pay inequality and employee trust in managers at the workplace level using the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study – a large scale employer-employee matched survey representative of workplaces in Britain.

Using machine learning algorithms, the findings suggest that, contrary to the macro level, the relationship between intra-workplace pay inequality and employee trust in managers is non-linear, following an inversely U-shaped pattern. Simply put, the relationship is positive for small and moderate levels of pay inequality. However, once pay inequality passes a threshold, any increase in pay inequality is associated with lower levels of employee trust in managers. The found underlying mechanisms for this relationship were an employee’s fairness perception and shared organisational values. Institutional arrangements influenced these results. In workplaces with collective bargaining agreements, the relationship was similar to the inverse “U”, whilst in workplaces without collective bargaining, the relationship was rather negative.

Ultimately, this research theoretically proposed and found empirical evidence for the role of individual perceptions of inequality – fair or unfair – which are shaped by an individual’s underlying value system. These perceptions in turn can, on average, be linked to actual levels of pay inequality. The same level of intra-workplace pay inequality maybe be experienced and perceived differently depending on the institutional features that shape other dimensions of fairness and trust in the social exchange between employees and managers; in this case collective employee voice proxied by collective bargaining agreements. To deal with unfairness related to pay, employees are likely to withdraw labour effort, to restore a fair balance between inputs and outcomes, which is suggested by the inversely U-shaped relationship between pay inequality and workplace level labour productivity.

Felix was supervised by Professor Andy Charlwood and Dr Danat Valiade.

The making and mobilisation of interests: Doing representation in sex worker rights activism in Germany

Representation is frequently the subject of debate within the sex worker rights movement, as activists are often sex workers in more privileged positions compared to the rest of the sex working population. Sex worker rights activists have been criticised for being too privileged to understand and speak up for the rights of less privileged sex workers, to the point that their activism has even been discredited from outside as well as within the movement. Therefore, the question arises as to what extent more privileged sex workers in activist roles are able to represent more marginalised and precariously-situated sex workers.

To address this issue, I expand on the concept of representation that has thus far been applied in social movement studies and in the labour union literature to understand how collective action happens or how movement leaders relate to their constituents. In the literature so far, representation has been understood as a one-dimensional process in which the interests of the broader population are a given and vocalised by a particular group acting on behalf of this population. As an alternative to this, I re-conceptualise representation as a process that is constructed by both those seeking to represent and those being represented, whereby interests are shaped and roles are constructed that enable sex worker rights activists to take action and make demands as representatives of the broader sex working population.

Based on interviews, focus groups and participant-observation designed and carried out according to a feminist participatory research-oriented methodology, this study examines the internal processes of activism to expose previously overlooked dimensions of representation and mobilisation. The study shows that representation is constructed through internal processes of activism that absorb the input of sex workers outside of formal activist organisations who may not actively participate in movement activities. This shows how needs and interests of sex workers are accounted for and vocalised even when those bearing these needs and interests are not always physically or actively present in activism.

Supervised by Kate Hardy, Liz Oliver and Ian Greenwood.

The UK Living Wage Campaign - Experiences of Employers, Workers, and Advocates

This thesis examines the impact on the UK employment landscape of the UK Living Wage campaign, and the campaign’s role as an industrial relations actor within Britain. The project’s focus ranges from a national exploration of how higher wages and improved working conditions are fought for in the twenty-first century, to the organisational impact of the adoption of the Living Wage for employers, to the lived experiences of the workers that are paid the Living Wage. The thesis argues that the UK Living Wage movement demonstrates a significant evolution of how higher pay and improved working conditions are campaigned for and regulated within the UK labour market and industrial relations landscape, as the role of traditional trade unions continues to be challenged through the growing involvement of civil society organisations, and in the changing norms of what constitutes corporate social responsibility in the twenty-first century.

Supervised by Mark Stuart, Kate Hardy and Gabriella Alberti

Interpreting gender equality initiatives: a discourse analytic study in higher education institutions

My doctoral thesis examines women’s continued underrepresentation in leadership roles in higher education institutions by exploring leaders’ constructions of gender equality initiatives. The thesis highlights how leaders contribute to the creation and maintenance of existing organizational culture. The study specifically combines critically-oriented approaches to discourse analysis with the identification of dominant interpretative repertoires to theorize the relationship between leaders’ text and talk and women’s underrepresentation. My research contributes to existing literature by identifying conflicting accounts of the values that underpin equality initiatives and by identifying how leaders use pre-existing discourses to legitimize unmeritocratic practices. This demonstrates complex connections embedded within gender (in)equality, discourse, and institutional leadership. When taken together, the findings illustrate that participants construct the need for transformative cultural change while resisting initiatives that lead to this change. This is referred to as the intervention paradox. Thus, although a vocal commitment to gender equality is identified, the paradox that underpins this commitment has ideological consequences for how initiatives are presented by leaders and decision makers. The thesis suggests that this paradox contributes to, and is constitutive of, a process of means-ends decoupling, where the means (initiatives) participants promote are disconnected from the ends (goals). This shows that leaders and stakeholders mobilize their discourse to construct gender equality initiatives in a way that promotes and legitimizes their effective commitment to change, and adheres to the overall goals of ‘gender equality’ in institutions, while simultaneously employing discursive strategies that work to maintain and (re)produce the existing status quo.

Supervised by Professor Jennifer Tomlinson and Professor Jean Clark

My PhD explored how institutional and policy-led changes impacted the organisation of apprenticeships at the workplace level in England and Germany. Centred on two in-depth case studies in the chemical sector, it drew on 45 semi-structured interviews apprentices, managers, union representatives, training providers, labour market institutions and other associated actors.

My PhD integrated different social, political and cultural schools of thought within the apprenticeship literatures, challenging previous accounts which typically studied apprenticeships in a vacuum. In particular, my research examined how wider institutional and policy-led changes impacted apprentices’ identities and agency in their transition into work, the politics of apprentices’ skill formation within the workplace and apprentices’ learning experiences within their respective workplace cultures.

Arguing that previous studies have privileged certain actors over others, my research provided an inclusive and empirical multi-level account of how policy was implemented in practice by foregrounding the perspectives of all relevant apprenticeship actors. Departing from previous technocratic perspectives, my study also advocated for a comparative approach that recognises the institutional differences between apprenticeships but also embraces complexity and change.  

Supervised by Professor Mark Stuart and Dr Vera Trappmann

In a taxi, stuck or going places? A Bourdieusian intersectional analysis of the employment habitus of Pakistani taxi drivers in the UK

My PhD is an ethnographic research about occupational segregation focussing on British Pakistani men working as taxi drivers. Almost one in four Pakistani men in the UK drive taxis for a living (EHRC, 2010). This figure has doubled from one in eight in 1991, and is high for British Pakistani men compared to ‘one in a hundred of the whole population’ (McEvoy and Haveez, 2009). For ethnic minorities working in low-paid occupations, occupational segregation can lead to inequality (Blackwell, 2003), and it has a long-lasting effect on intergenerational mobility (Corak, 2013). A largely masculine occupation, taxi driving is a rarely studied occupation, and has mostly been considered as a ‘marginal form of self-employment’ (McEvoy and Haveez, 2009) or an ‘immigrant’s job’ (Waterman and Kosmin, 1986). The study aimed to identify the structural and cultural factors affecting ethnic minorities in accessing standard employment in the British labour market and to understand how such (self) employment decisions are made. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction and feminist scholarly work on intersectionality, this study explored to what extent taxi driving is a choice or whether there are factors that constrain the employment opportunities for the men in this ethnic group. The central contribution advanced in my thesis is the nuances of the structure-agency debate in sociology through the case of Pakistani taxi drivers in the UK, by integrating intersectionality to the framework in the field of work and employment. A new metaphor for structure is offered as a CAGE like structure, as the intersection of class, affiliation (religious), gender and ethnicity, forming the habitus of Pakistani taxi drivers, affects the life chances and shapes the occupational choices of individuals. This has implications for policy and practice in terms of education, support in the early career years, and better practices to eradicate structural racism in the labour market.

Supervised by Jane Holgate and Gabriella Albert

Title: The Impact of Restructuring, Liberalisation and Privatisation on Employment Relations in Developing Economies: A case study of the Nigerian Electricity Distribution Sector.

My PhD presents a detailed analysis of the restructuring, liberalisation and privatisation of a public enterprise and its employment relations implications within the context of a sub-Saharan African country, Nigeria. The study contextualises this investigation through an assessment of how the historical trajectory of reforms in the Nigerian Electricity Distribution Sector (NEDS) from 1940 to 2013, the underlining political interest that informed the reforms and the development of employment relations in the sector (1940s and 1990s), influenced the pace, design and implementation of the privatisation process (1999-2013), the Labour Based Agreement (an agreement between the government and union pre-privatisation which guaranteed job security and continued union involvement in the employment relations of the sector post-privatisation) in 2011 and the union’s responses during and post-privatisation.

While there are many comparative accounts of privatisation and employment relations, more academic interest is required to understand how a trade union’s conceptualisation of a strategic response during the privatisation process influences employment outcomes between survivors of privatisation and recruits in sub-Saharan African context. In order to explore this, the study employs a qualitative and embedded case study strategy that involved document analysis, 117 semi-structured interviews and diagrammatic with actors at the macro (policy and union representatives) and meso levels (survivors and recruits). The findings demonstrate that privatisation and the employment relations in the NEDS initially reflected government aspirations for a positive policy change that would improve efficiency in the sector and employment relations processes. However, the study concludes that the political interference in the process and the inability of the union to conceptualise a strategic response to the process resulted in a post-privatisation outcomes that allowed for a  multi-level employment relations with a near absence of collective bargaining which directly contrasted the ostensible intent of the Labour Based Agreement. Therefore, privatisation and implementation of the LBA depended not only on the political objective to privatise and institutional limitations within the political economy, but the union’s inability to conceptualise an effective strategic response to the process.

Supervised by Dr Ian Greenwood and Professor Robert MacKenzie

Understanding stress management intervention success: A case study-based analysis of what works and why

My thesis investigates the process behind stress management interventions (SMIs). This includes the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions (both formative and summative), along with exploring the roles of involved stakeholders. Although there exists a plethora of studies around work-related stress across several disciplines, they are predominantly focused on the effects of stress on individuals, organisations and society, highlighting the various costs which are associated with it. However, studies on SMIs are less common, particularly ones with detailed accounts of the SMI process. As a result, this hinders our understanding of which SMIs work for whom in what context (Biron, 2012), making it difficult for forthcoming studies to benefit from the results. A multiple case study research, of a higher education institute (Russell University) and an Arm’s Length (ALMO) housing association (Bravo City Homes), was conducted to address what the literature has neglected. Specifically, it examined the various steps of the SMI process, highlighting the key roles of the involved stakeholders, while contrasting the effects that context had across two different sectors. This was done through forty semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders from both organisations to gain retrospective insight into the SMI processes, understand their role and what they perceived it to be, and to evaluate what helped and hindered the success of SMIs. It was found that giving each step of the research process sufficient attention from each of the relevant stakeholders was key. The lack of communication around who the relevant stakeholders were significantly hindered the interventions. Managers, in particular, were found to be crucial to SMI success by supporting the interventions and enhancing communication. Other stakeholders whose roles were found to be vital were Human Resources and trade unions, which have also been neglected in the literature.

Interested to know more? You can find my whole thesis here: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24856/

Supervised by Chris Forde and Jo Ingold

My thesis research examines the relationships between commodification, cooperation and conflict through the experiences of workers in the London hospitality industry. I am interested in the intersections of Marxist political economy, the study of the labour process, and the effects of technology on work and employment relations. I aim to conduct future research on digital platforms, automation and value production in service work.

Supervised by David Spencer, Mark Stuart, Kate Hardy

The Development of Strategic Human Resource Management in the Chinese Financial Services Sector: Understanding the Roles of External Economic Factors and the State

My doctorate has sought to understand the roles of economic factors and the state in shaping HRM at organisational level. A single case study of the Chinese financial service sector with multiple firms is used. China is a particularly interesting context to look at as it is a case where economic change and the role of the state are closely connected. It is difficult to decouple these two sets of factors, and it would seem likely in the Chinese case that both could have a profound effect on each other and on systems of HRM. Moreover, most existing models of strategic HRM assume that good ‘fit’ between practices and the environment is possible (as well as fit amongst HRM practices). Also that better fit is desirable and a means through which organisations can improve performance. But what about non-fit? Firms that are moving towards better fit, by definition, have non-fit. Through 59 semi-structured interviews with policy makers, employers and employees from the Chinese financial services sector, the key contribution of the thesis is in its examination of ‘fit’ and ‘non-fit’ of SHRM in Chinese firms. Having non-fit may be temporary, or more permanent. Some non-fit may be systematic, and may actually arise from firms trying to adapt to the external environment, or policies of the state. This would seem particularly likely during periods of rapid change.  Furthermore, is non-fit necessarily a ‘poor’ outcome? Can firms still achieve good or good enough HR outcomes without close fit? My thesis seeks to Illuminate the idea that actively choosing ‘non-fit’ at both strategic and implementation level may enhance the effectiveness of organisational operation under certain circumstances. This non-fit can occur at strategic and more operational levels. I set out what these circumstances are, and how actions of the state in China may actually lead firms towards long-term non-fit in practices, in spite of stated aims of the state to move towards SHRM.

Supervised by Professor Chris Forde and Dr Hugh Cook

Disability inequality and the recruitment process: responding to legal and technological developments

This PhD project investigates how recruitment and selection practices impose social barriers for disabled people in the UK labour market. Despite the growing use of online recruitment methods adopted by employers, current literature has neglected the reactions of job applicants to web-based recruitment and selection practices from an equality perspective, in particular the voices and experiences of disabled jobseekers and their unequal access to the Internet. The study employs a qualitative and emancipatory research design, and consists of semi-structured interviews with disabled jobseekers and employment advisors, and UK employers. The aim of this study has been to represent as genuinely as possible the needs and voices of disabled people and their organisations in order to challenge social arrangements that lead to disability inequality, in recruitment and selection practices via the Internet.

Supervised by Liz Oliver, Jane Holgate and Robert Mackenzie

Career progression in small- and medium-sized law firms: experiences of a diverse workforce

My doctoral research examined how career progression takes place in small and medium-sized firms in the legal profession; the factors affecting this progression; and how and whether diversity within the smaller workforce is managed.

The impetus for this research is that despite the scholarly interest for professional service firms (PSFs), the smaller-sized PSFs remain insufficiently studied regarding diversity issues. Previous studies explore both career advancement and barriers to entry into the law, yet, they have primarily focused on larger companies. The use of intersectionality theory forms an innovative paradigm to examine gendered practices within the smaller law firm context. Data collection comprised 44 semi-structured interviews and document analysis within 4 smaller-sized law practices in Yorkshire. Data analysis using NVivo informs the case study methodology. The principal research contribution is to advance theories of intersectionality to generate more informative HR and diversity management policies; specific to the smaller PSF context.

Supervised by Professor Catherine Cassell and Professor Jennifer Tomlinson

An ethnographic study of the UK Fire and Rescue Service entitled ‘Know and Tell; Understanding Knowledge Transfer in the UK Fire and Rescue Service’

My thesis seeks to make a contribution to both the theoretical and empirical understanding of knowledge transfer in organisations. In particular, it explores and articulates how tacit knowledge is transferred within (and through) communities of practice. It does so via a single longitudinal case study of Northern Fire, the fourth largest Fire and Rescue Service in the UK. There is a paucity of studies on the UK Fire and Rescue Service and the extant literature is sparse. My thesis  offers a unique insight and perspective into how fire fighters construct knowledge and make sense of their everyday reality within communities of practice. Adopting a qualitative ethnographic approach, this research sets out a detailed exposition of the transfer of knowledge throughout Northern Fire. Focus groups of some 58 fire fighters together with 14 semi-structured interviews of senior management, support staff, HR and IT functions were undertaken. In addition, drawing upon Orr’s (1996) ethnographic account of photo-copier repair personnel, participant observation was used to explore the daily working lives of fire fighters.  Participant observation examined how Red Watch, a fictional name given to a group of fire fighters, transferred tacit knowledge and skills as a community of practice. The thesis also explores organisational memory loss. It extends our empirical understanding of how knowledge is both forgotten and retained on a both a voluntary and involuntary basis. 

Supervised by Professor Irena Grugulis and Dr Hugh Cook.

James won the Emerald / EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Award (Highly Commended) for his research in HRM sponsored by Personnel Review.

Can employment restructuring be implemented responsibly? A case study of SteelCo’s ‘Socially Responsible Restructuring’ process

My doctoral research explored the implementation of a responsible restructuring process at a UK subsidiary of a multinational steel company, SteelCo. Responsible restructuring has been proposed as a managerial strategy to ameliorate the negative effects of employment restructuring and redundancy processes on employees, emerging in both academic and European policy literature. The research proceeded through a qualitative case study of SteelCo, following its claims to have conducted a putative ‘socially responsible’ restructuring process wherein 1700 jobs were cut between 2011-2015. The central contribution advanced in my thesis is that the concept of responsible restructuring is more appropriately characterised by a best fit approach, demonstrating a departure away from the prevailing emphasis on best practice approaches in the Strategic HRM literature and associated policy documentation. The findings from the SteelCo research therefore identified a range of contextual variables pertinent to the implementation of responsible restructuring. SteelCo’s responsible restructuring process was thus shaped by the contingencies of local organisational and institutional factors, the particularities of industrial relations, the histories of restructuring and the occupational identity of the workforce.

Supervised by Ian Greenwood, Robert MacKenzie and Jane Holgate

This thesis investigates the impact of the recent economic downturn on the training practices of British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Extant research has paid only limited attention to the impact of the recent recession on training, while the training responses of SMEs to the economic crisis remains an unexplored area. The study focused specifically on SMEs operating in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. The data were gathered through a multi-method approach that included a survey of local SMEs, interviews with key informants from peak-level organisations and a qualitative investigation of small firms themselves.

Supervised by Mark Stuart and Chris Forde.

Title: Negotiation and Egalitarianism in the Sexual Division of Labour

Summary: Extant literature demonstrates that the division of paid and unpaid labour remains heavily gendered among contemporary couples. There are a range of theoretical approaches that help to explain how these gendered arrangements come into fruition, yet relatively few examinations of how these are negotiated, and re-negotiated in practice. This research explores how couples re-negotiate their shares of paid and unpaid work following one partner's redundancy in full-time dual-earning couples. A unique feature is the direct comparison between cases of female redundancy and male redundancy to examine if, and how, the processes of negotiation and outcomes differ depending upon which partner suffers employment loss. Evidence of 'silent bargaining' over relative resources and the subconscious 'doing' of (normative conceptions of) gender was found, coupled with both collaborative, long-term strategising about what is best for the household as a whole, versus more individualistic, instrumental tactics to avoid greater shares of unpaid labour.

Supervisors: Jane Holgate, Jennifer Tomlinson and Mark Stuart

Socio-economic experiences of Central Eastern European migrants in Yorkshire

The project’s aim is to explore working and non-working lives of the accession countries’ citizens in Britain. In particular, I am interested in a number of themes: migrants’ livelihood strategies, interactions with social support groups and the affects of EU citizenship on labour migration from post-communist Central Eastern Europe. Furthermore, on the basis of research findings, I critically examine the view portraying Central Eastern European mobility with the enlarged EU as a predominantly circular and temporary phenomenon. The study employs a qualitative research design – the main bulk of data is expected to be collected via biographical semi-structured interviews.

Supervised by Robert MacKenzie and Chris Forde (LUBS funded).

Getting learning into the bargain: trade union strategies for bargaining over learning in the workplace

 Supervised by Mark Stuart and Hugh Cook.

The Perceptions and Prospects of Future Professionals

This PhD research project explores current perceptions of the meanings and experiences of ‘professional’ work and the ‘professional project’. More specifically, it is focused on the changing profiles and perceptions of trainees in UK accounting firms. The project will utilise insights gained from examinations of national statistics as well as interviews with senior partners and trainees in UK accountancy firms. Contemporary perceptions of professional socialization and organizational and occupational commitment will be investigated. The professional education of accounting trainees, and the varying stages at which this takes place in different employment models, will also be explored.

Supervised by Chris Forde and Robert MacKenzie (ESRC Funded).

My thesis was on The Internal and external vulnerabilities of  high performance work systems.  It focussed on the implementation of strategic HRM practices in the retail sector, the sustainability of high performance work systems during recession and retrenchment, and the interacting dynamics between trade union representation and organisational HRM systems.

Key findings exposed vulnerabilities, both internal and external, of HRM systems to losing their soft outcomes because they are typically derailed by management seeking to increase short-term profit. The thesis demonstrates the channels through which HRM systems are used to improve profitability, which is often through work intensification rather than commitment focussed channels, by illuminating the complex social processes through which this is achieved.  

Supervised by Chris Forde and Rob McKenzie.