Discourses of Innovation and Development: Insights from Ethnographic Case Studies in Bangladesh and India

In the 1990s, the topics of development and poverty, once dominated by development economists, appeared on the radar of management, organizational studies and innovation scholars. A huge variety of terms, some historical like ‘appropriate technology’ and some others totally new like ‘frugal innovation’, ‘Jugaad innovation’ and ‘inclusive innovation’ began to populate the business and management literature. Concurrently, the field of development studies became progressively hybridised with elements from business and innovation studies. This thesis contributes to the analysis of this ‘cross-pollination’ between the discourses of development and the discourses of Innovation. The research discusses how the meaning of innovation, an interpretively flexible and contested ‘buzzword’ with the capacity to shelter multiple political agendas, is constructed within the discourses and practices of development to support and further the values and interests of those actors who employ it. By telling the stories of four different communities of practitioners in Bangladesh and India, this thesis validates, on one hand, some of the conclusions of the extant literature concerning innovation in resource-constrained environments. On the other hand, it provides original insights about the construction of the discourse of innovation and technical change in situated practices. The cases confirm that innovation can and does spring from resource-constrained conditions, where it is often driven and shaped not only by malfunctioning formal and informal institutions, market mechanisms and a weak private sector, but also by traditional knowledge, empathy and cultural motives. At the same time, the findings reveal that technological innovation is neither necessary nor sufficient to reverse the causes of poverty and exclusion, historically major targets for development. In certain circumstances, innovation can even reinforce unequal power relationships by favouring those who already enjoy privileged positions in the community. In three of the four cases analysed, the discourse of innovation attempt to transform the social practices of ‘the beneficiaries’, promoting all the features typical of neoliberal agenda such as competitiveness, ownership, productivity, efficiency and market-oriented production, while at the same time dismissing pre-existing or alternative subsistence patterns of life and nonmarketable solutions. These dynamics present within an emergent, hegemonic discourse of ‘Inclusive business’, which is inspired by the desire to include people within the framework of the market economy, fighting the informal economy and, ultimately, erasing subsistence. What emerges from the research is that discourses of social justice and political transformation have been marginalised, if not completely neglected, in discourses of innovation and development. The thesis, however, describes that the meaning of innovation in the context of development remains contested. There exist countervailing voices that, despite being a minority, have and continue to open up the debate about the value of innovation and technological change as an instrument for social transformation

A critical analysis of the defining features of problem structuring methods

This thesis seeks to explore if there is a defining philosophy, theory and methodology underpinning problem structuring methods (PSMs). PSMs are a class of qualitative Operational Research (OR) approach for making progress with ill-structured problems. The development of each of the established approaches was in relative isolation with little research cutting across all PSMs. There are no agreed standards or characteristics for an approach to be considered a PSM. This creates a problem for the increasing number of newly developed qualitative OR approaches which share many common features with the established PSMs but are not recognised as such. To close this gap the thesis conducts analysis of the literature identifying these common features. To understand the diversity of theory and methodology of PSMs this thesis theoretically and methodologically develops the existing qualitative OR approach WASAN and positions it alongside the existing PSMs. Bridging the gap between established PSMs and other qualitative approaches will identify the qualifying features of PSMs, how to identify these features in other approaches and how theory development in one approach can be transferred to other PSMs. Next the thesis develops the qualitative OR approach WASAN through an action research program. The problem context is a UK Police Force who are aiming to reduce wasted time in their emergency contact centre. The researcher modelled four individual systems in customer contact using WASAN. WASAN considers how behaviour of an upstream system can increase waste production in the system being modelled. The research analysed the individual models and the interaction between models. The research project shows how to identify the features of PSMs in an approach; the process of developing a bespoke approach into a generic approach; and, the commonality of an underpinning framework between WASAN and the existing PSMs through the transferability of theoretical contributions

When Establishment and Social Movements Fail: Exploring the Populist Candidacies of the 2016 American Presidential Primaries

This paper takes a second look at the 2016 American Presidential Primaries from the perspective of asking what the American people were really after then they chose to ultimately support populism. Media reports and editorial discussions all pointed to a base that was somehow backing misogyny and racism. My research points to an alternative. Populism and social movement theory suggest that the success of anti-establishment candidacies is not credited to populists alone; in the case of 2016, it had support in the credibility and political opportunity left by social movements past. And so to investigate this historic battle between the establishment and anti-establishment candidacies, we can look to what populism and social movements have in common, and how they merge during the framing process. Within this context, this research seeks to answer how the anti-establishment candidates of the 2016 American Primaries framed a battle against \u27the establishment\u27 – within an establishment arena and won. By seeing populism as more of a logic as opposed to an ideology, we can eliminate a partisan lens in the study of what happened in 2016. By seeing populism as a strategy when added to a collective action frame of a social movement, we can analyze how it was used to mobilize voters to action. By using populism and social movement theory, we can add further context to what voters were experiencing in 2016. This study uses a populist master frame analysis of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Primary debates, which ultimately illustrates the efficacy of populist messaging while exposing the weaknesses of the establishment rhetorical response. Findings suggest that populist candidates unearthed deep insecurities in 2016, specifically in areas concerning the economy, foreign policy, and within the identities affected by loss, discrimination and threats to human rights

Judicial Independence in Pakistan: A Case Study of Lawyers’ Movement, 2007-2009

This study focuses on a social movement, the Lawyers’ Moment 2007-2009 of Pakistan, a transitioning democracy, which brought vast changes in its judicial system, especially in terms of its judicial independence. There are three main research questions in this study: 1) the status of judicial independence before the Lawyers’ Movement; 2) was judicial independence a major goal in the Lawyers’ Movement? and 3) did the Lawyers’ Movement alter the status of judicial independence? The research methodology used to explore the answers to these questions also has three main sources: 1) the literature which explains some areas of scholarship in social movements and their impacts, including, cause-lawyering, political development, and the judicialization of politics; 2) opinions and observations of 30 elites directly connected with the Lawyers’ Movement including lawyers, jurisprudents, retired judges of superior courts, academicians, parliamentarians, politicians, media persons, and the representatives of civil society; and 3) a survey completed by these 30 elites indicating the status of judicial independence before and after the Lawyers’ Movement. The research findings in this study clearly show an overall political development in the country along with a significant change/improvement in the judicial system, in particular, the independence of judiciary after the historic Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan

Vocabulary of agency: development and assessment of a generic conceptual framework to guide action-oriented research in multiple domains

The study has produced a generic conceptual framework for action-oriented research to guide such research in multiple domains of application. The conceptual framework has been expressed in terms of the "vocabulary of agency." It contains the notions of agency, enhancing agency, resource, roles, mobility, form of interaction, agency-enhancing device, local learning, global learning, operational coupling, etc. The conceptual framework has been subjected to a multi-stage process of assessment. The assessment shows that the conceptual framework has a certain generality in addressing a whole range of issues being discussed in management systems thinking and action research fields. Besides, the framework also seems capable of functioning as an effective guide in designing and conducting action-oriented research projects in several domains of application. The framework is expected to facilitate transfer of insights from research fields which investigate complex, interactive, and collective phenomena. It is also expected to guide action-oriented research in the direction of increasing the general capacity to bring forth new and useful resources in multiple domains

Participatory planning, evaluation and institutional dynamics in African Natural Resource Management

One among other possible approaches towards integrated and adaptive Natural Resource Management (NRM) is participatory planning. Participatory planning entails engaging relevant stakeholders in the identification of environmental issues and the planning of actions to be implemented in order to address these issues. It is now widely acknowledged that plans resulting from participatory planning processes for NRM are more likely to be implemented and sustainable when supported by adequate institutions. However, the extent to which participatory planning processes are able to deliver expected outcomes, and to trigger institutional dynamics, is still largely unknown. The main research question of this PhD is “How can participatory planning processes for NRM trigger suitable institutional dynamics to more sustainably address social and environmental issues of concern in a given context?“ This research question is addressed through two lenses: a methodological lens, looking at the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of participatory planning processes for NRM, and an institutional lens, looking at institutional dynamics and their drivers. Two participatory planning processes were analysed, in the Rwenzori region in Uganda and the Fogera woreda (district) in Ethiopia. This thesis provides four main additions to knowledge. First, it bridges the theory-practice gap in the M&E of participatory processes by proposing combined descriptive and analytical frameworks. M&E frameworks used in practice are generally ready-to-use grids of criteria which are not adapted to the specificity of the case, while frameworks proposed in the literature are often resource-demanding and face the reluctance of practitioners. To my knowledge, no existing approaches have suggested combining both an easy-to-use descriptive framework and an adaptive analytical framework in order to bridge the theory-practice gap in the M&E of participatory processes. Second, this thesis draws from a wide range of social and management sciences to support participation scholars to undertake their “research journey” with more confidence. Most existing studies remain well within one or the other corpus, preventing scholars seeking to draw from both social and management sciences to understand and compare approaches. This thesis provides a typology which helps participation scholars to clarify their underlying assumptions and to identify which research approaches they can draw from to monitor and evaluate their participatory processes. Third, it provides an original contribution to the emerging literature on “critical institutionalism” by exploring a practical application of the institutional bricolage approach. In the past, institutional bricolage has mainly been used for in-depth analysis of institutional changes but no studies investigated how it could be voluntarily triggered through an intervention such as a participatory process. Finally, this thesis uses the process-tracing method to identify contextual and procedural drivers in institutional emergence and change. To my knowledge, no previous concrete application of the process tracing method had been made in the literature to identify concrete drivers of institutional dynamics

The practice of physiotherapy : Theoretical and contextual reflections.

This thesis is an examination of the practice of physiotherapy, an exploration of the context within which the profession of physiotherapy developed and an identification of the theoretical frameworks within which it is practised. The experiences of physiotherapists and nurses working in particular settings at a specific point in the development of the profession provided a starting point for the study. Physiotherapy, a profession openly dependent for a significant part of its history on medicine for its practice and knowledge base, is contextualised with reference to the development of a medical hegemony, the changing role of women in society, and the development of specialisms within physiotherapy.A methodological framework was developed through the use of a naturalistic design which places the researcher within the study and legitimises personal perspectives. Knowledge of the field prior to the study, fieldwork observations, and findings from two sets of interviews generated the data which provided the framework for an exploration of the theoretical base for the practice of physiotherapy.The thesis concludes by examining the components of context and theory which are fundamental to the practice of theory, and places them within a new framework. This new framework or paradigm is based on a re-evaluation of the concept of holism and goes back to the origins of this model which developed amidst the chaos of post-Boer was South Africa. The meaning of holism has been changed to make it nearer the concept of summative dualism which fits well with key concepts of balance, harmony and homeostasis. True holism is about movement and change and this is proposed as an appropriate model on which to base a paradigm for physiotherapy