Since the mid-1990s, New Zealand has become a popular study destination for international students. In its neo-liberal knowledge economy policies including an export education policy, international education agenda, and skilled immigration policy, international students are conceptualised as ideal policy subjects: free, rational and self-interested knowledge consumers and globally available human resources. International postgraduates are expected to contribute to New Zealand’s knowledge economy with their knowledge and skills. However, both the statistics and empirical research suggest that these students’ experiences do not always coincide with the policy expectations owing to the involvement of multiple political and non-political factors and actors including international students themselves. Cultural differences in particular, generate extra challenges for these policies to recruit and serve international students and retain international graduates from non-Western cultural backgrounds including those from Mainland China. The gap between the policy intentions and these students’ experiences draws our attention to the roles of multiple regimes of government and individual students as active agencies in overseas study and raises the question of how the two aspects can converge to achieve a ‘good’ overseas study in a complicated culture-crossing policy environment. This thesis takes a post-structuralist approach and uses an adapted Foucauldian conceptual framework that develops the concept of governmentality to explore the experiences of a group of postgraduate Chinese international students studying at two New Zealand universities. It combines documentary research, an online survey and 56 in-depth interviews for data collection with culturally informed discursive, Foucauldian descriptive statistical and Foucauldian narrative analyses of data. The findings show that the convergence between New Zealand’s knowledge economy policies and Chinese students’ experiences of ‘good’ overseas study is not straightforward. This thesis argues that Chinese international students are not made and governed by a singular political power like the New Zealand Government but by multiple regimes of practices through which these students are assembled. Chinese cultural mechanisms such as filial piety, reciprocity and loyalty, play a crucial role in constituting the field of international education and assembling regimes of subjectification. Moreover, these cultural mechanisms are not only embodied in governmental technologies themselves as technical means, but also activated through the coexistence of multiple rationalities, the hybridisation of regimes of subjectification and cross-cultural applications of these technologies. This thesis helps explain both ways in which Chinese students get ‘made into’ subjects who are willing to constitute themselves as international students obliged to come to New Zealand and contribute to the knowledge economy and also the constellations of factors motivating them to move away from on-going, constant and regular engagement with New Zealand as a knowledge economy. With its findings, the thesis attempts not only to provide valuable policy recommendations but also to contribute to sociological understandings of the global governance of border-crossing population movements and comparative studies in the sociology of education.

This study contributes to theory and public policy in Canada and globally. It uses mixed methodology and triangulation of evidence through policy documents(Bovey,Rae,Drummond),empirical studies and surveys(ranking,NSSE data,regression), CAUT/AUCC and Statistics Canada sources and qualitative sources - writings of university presidents (Bok,Kerr,Fallis),researchers (Rajagopal, Clark et al.)as well,talks with sessionals,teaching assistants and administrators. The framework consists of Altbach's four factors - democratization, the knowledge economy, globalisation and competition and three ideal types for university development - entrepreneurial, liberal education and deliberative. The thesis contrasts classical college with the modern university system. The results show strong evidence for research domination, mission drift and shift towards the entrepreneurial model. Quality is compromised by lowering requirements, compressed courses, less study time, large classes taught by sessionals and TAs, grade inflation and consumerist behaviour, while critical thinking and moral development are neglected.

Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / The knowledge economy is regarded by many authorities and policymakers as a significant and burgeoning aspect of the global economy. Yet there is no adequate theory of the production and exchange of knowledge; there is no adequate microeconomics of knowledge. In his 1995 work, titled Information Space, Max Boisot responds to this theoretical challenge by undertaking a bold and insightful project to lay the groundwork for just such an economics of knowledge. Boisot’s project entails two outcomes: an interwoven set of paradigmatic-ontological antecedents as a philosophical foundation; and a general theoretical framework, the Information-space (I-space), for understanding the economising principles that underlie the creation and distribution of information and knowledge. Boisot does not put forward an economics of knowledge per se. Rather, he sets out to lay the philosophical and general theoretical foundations for such an economic theory. Among Boisot’s paradigmatic-ontological antecedents is a commitment to evolutionary thinking. This is extended and adopted as a more specific commitment in the explication of the I-space. Thus, Boisot’s commitment to evolution is not trivial, and the I-space should be evolutionary in a strict sense. This thesis focuses on the I-space as an evolutionary framework and is a conceptual assessment of the I-space in relation to generalized Darwinism as the dominant contemporary conception of what it means to be evolutionary. The I-space is taken seriously as an explanatory framework, but it is assessed on its own terms as a general theory that is not amenable to a Popperian refutationist assessment. Thus, the I-space is construed as a putative evolutionary explanatory framework for an economics of knowledge. Contemporary evolutionary thinking has a long history, and is both pluralistic and polemical. However, a generalized Darwinian framework is discernable in the various applications of Darwinism in biology, evolutionary economics and evolutionary epistemology, and in the discourse of generalized Darwinism. The derivation – or extraction – of such a framework and its set of criteria is, nevertheless, a challenging task since it is not always clear what evolution and Darwinism entail conceptually, and there is no unanimity of opinion in the literature. This thesis is an attempt to identify the core logical criteria of generalized Darwinism that may be used to assess the I-space as a putative global evolutionary explanation. Though it does incorporate, or satisfy, many of the criteria identified, the I-space fails to satisfy two of them, and this thesis therefore concludes that the I-space is not a global generalized Darwinian framework. Firstly, and most importantly in terms of the conceptual hierarchy of generalized Darwinism, the I-space defines ex ante a finite set of attributes – degree of abstraction and degree of codification – as constitutive of global fitness. In other words, it regards the traits of abstraction and codification to be both necessary and sufficient to explain the differential diffusion of knowledge. Although evolutionary theory is of predictive value in local evolutionary situations, it is argued in this thesis that it is inadmissible in a global Darwinian evolutionary situation to specify ex ante the selection criteria in terms of a finite set of traits and to predict global evolutionary outcomes on that basis. In doing so, the I-space ignores the inherent contingency of the evolutionary process. More specifically, it ignores the contingency of knowledge creation and diffusion in a varied and changing environment, and makes exogenous to the I-space other factors that may also be of selective significance. Secondly, and closely related, is that the I-space does not define populations according to shared exposure to selection pressure; rather, knowledge is stratified according to shared attributes along the I-space dimensions of abstraction and codification. This presents a conceptual problem for the I-space, since it is conceivable that knowledge objects of the same degree of abstraction and codification may be directed at entirely different phenomenal domains and thus cannot be taken to be competing; conversely, knowledge objects of different degrees of abstraction and codification may be directed at the same phenomena and should thus be taken as competing. The primary implication of this outcome is that, from a Darwinian point of view, the I-space, as a local evolutionary explanation, cannot serve as a general theory for an evolutionary economics of knowledge. It may give rise to other local theories, but it will not support the development of an economics of knowledge that would operate at a higher level of generality than the I-space. A second implication, also from a strict Darwinian point of view, is that evolutionary general theory may be explanatory, but it may not be predictive; evolutionary theories may indeed predict at the local level, but not at the global level. The final implication is that the search for a microeconomics of knowledge continues, and will become more urgent as the knowledge economy unfolds, and as our ability to quantify it improves.

Globalization has motivated universities to calibrate institutional responses for strategic purposes. Yet, specific challenges remain for Ukrainian National Research Universities insofar as the interplay between global and (post-)Soviet knowledge discourses reveal a dual framework, whereby adaptive responses to globalization and entrenched state-centered logics run parallel, and often in conflict, with one another. This study took a critical approach to identify and interpret how the phenomenon of internationalization manifested in the development of strategic partnerships, was translated and re-contextualized into structural innovations, and resulted in systemic institutional change. The thesis delves into the institutional behaviour of three flagship universities in Kyiv, Ukraine and their respective doctoral schools. The selected universities – Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv – represent a mixture of organizational types which fall into one or more of the three education archetypes, including the Humboldtian, Soviet and Anglo-American models. These governance models allow for differentiation of institutional interpretations of internationalization and a means of capturing the various ways in which university actors negotiate their spaces of action and translate higher education discourses into practice. The analysis addresses issues of ‘hybridity’ which is not evident in this categorization. The study attempts to problematize internationalization anew by shifting focus on non-linear accounts of the phenomenon in order to comprehend the complex, multi-faceted and often contradictory ways the process plays out across different university landscapes. The inquiry employs conceptualizations combining the Delta Cycle for Internationalization (Rumbley 2010) and a new institutional approach (North 1990). The study is structured as a single-case embedded case study design as described by Yin (2015). Data were collected via 45 semi-structured interviews with university actors and higher education stakeholder agencies, including: senior administrators, mid-level leaders, faculty members and doctoral candidates. The data were supported by scholarly literature, official documents, reports, strategy papers, grey materials, policy statements, field notes. as well as university and ministerial websites. These data were analyzed for content and triangulated according to a modified content analysis approach. This study expands and contributes knowledge on the internationalization of higher education by distinguishing variations of how the phenomenon manifested within different university settings. It examines the place of the university as an organization that not only produces and disseminates knowledge, but assimilates and adapts global knowledge to national needs. Finally, the inquiry explores internationalization as an academic innovation and a process of institutional change which shapes academic identities and legitimizes the university as a global actor.

The aim of the thesis was to analyse the employee policy tools in a selected organisation and, if necessary, propose possible changes leading to the desired condition. The work is divided into two parts. In the practical part was the synthesis of scientific publications on the topic of Human Resource Management. The practical part contains the analysis of the activities covered by employee policy in the chosen company and suggestions for changes to improve its condition.

The research focuses on investigating the relationship between individuals’ career adaptability, employability attributes and retention factors within the context of talent retention in the 21st century workplace. A quantitative research approach was followed, and a probability sample of (N = 337) of single (42.7%), African (53.4%), female (65.9%), individuals between the ages of 26-40 years (57.4%), who are part time employees (50.7%), mostly at staff level (54.0%) were utilised. Correlational analysis indicated differences between the variables of CAI, EAS and RFMS. Inferential statistics showed a strong relationship between the variables of career adaptability, employability attributes and retention factors. Stepwise hierarchical regression analysis showed that age, gender, race, marital status and job level, their career adaptability and employability attributes significantly and positively predict retention factors. Test for mean differences revealed that males and females differed significantly in terms of their career adaptability, employability attributes and retention factors. Recommendations are suggested for use by human resource professionals in terms of retention practices. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business management)

The topic of this diploma thesis is Corporate Culture and Personnel Activities in a Selected Business. The aim of the thesis is to characterize the corporate culture with the help of specification of its crucial cultural dimensions in connection with the personal activities and proposing changes leading to the desired state in the selected business. The research was carried out at the company of an engineer Jan Hutkay. The thesis is divided into four main parts - literary research, aim and methodology of work, characteristics of the current state in the business and discussion, summarized evaluation and proposals for changes. Literary research is focused on explanation of important terms related to corporate culture and personnel activities. It is followed by the summarization of the aim of the work and the research methods. Quantitative research methods used in the work included the questionnaire survey in the form of the Personnel Activity Questionnaire and the VSM 94 a 2013 tests. Among the qualitative methods used for the purposes of the thesis belong observations, unstructured interviews and Color Semantic Differential Tests were used from qualitative methods. The current situation in the company was characterized by the analysis of the individual questionnaires, which was supplemented with the information obtained through interviews and observations. After a thorough analysis and interconnection of the results of all research methods, it has been found out that corporate culture tends to deserve the dimensions of low power distance, femininity, collectivism, and acceptance of risks and changes. The undesirable resultant dimensions include the short-term business orientation and the dimension of indulgence. The final part of the thesis focuses on designing measures that stabilize the desired cultural dimensions and, above all, change the undesirable cultural dimensions. The results of the personnel activities' questionnaire which identified the main shortcomings and problems were used to suggest specific changes. The introduction of the proposed changes directs the enterprise closer to the knowledge economy, which improves its performance and competitiveness.

Les mutations récentes du capitalisme, où la « connaissance » tend à remplacer les ressources naturelles et le travail physique comme outils de croissance économique, transforment en profondeur les villes contemporaines. Dans ce contexte, les villes dites « post-fordistes » adaptent leurs structures productives, spatiales et socio-organisationnelles aux exigences de la nouvelle économie. L'une des manifestations les plus claires de ces mutations réside dans la multiplication de grands projets développés au cœur des villes : « Districts Technologiques », « Districts de l'Innovation », « Cités du Design », « Cités du Multimédia », « Quartier des Sciences », « Quartiers de la Création ou de l'Innovation » etc. Pour comprendre ce phénomène nous avons réalisé une analyse comparative de quatre projets mis en œuvre dans trois villes : Barcelone (22@barcelona), Buenos Aires (Distrito Tecnológico ; Distrito de Diseño) et Grenoble (projet GIANT /Presqu'île). A travers cette étude nous avons cherché à répondre à deux questions fondamentales. Ces projets préfigurent-ils l'émergence d'un nouveau « Modèle Territorial de l'Innovation » (MTI), le modèle des « Systèmes Urbains Cognitifs » (SUC) ? Dans quelle mesure les caractéristiques distinctives des SUC font de ces sites des supports privilégiés de production et de diffusion d'innovations ? / Over the last decade, cities have been adjusting their production, spatial and socio-organisational structures to the requirements of the new economy. There has been a plethora of “technology districts”, “creative clusters and cyberdistricts” – all built on the same type of model, that of “Urban Cognitive Systems” (UCS). The assumption behind these UCSs involves creating a new theoretical framework and then testing out the ability of UCSs to establish themselves as an ideal way for localities to produce and add value to the process of innovation. This empirical work involves comparative analysis of four UCSs established in three cities, Barcelona (22@Barcelona), Buenos Aires (Distrito Tecnológico ; Distrito de Diseño) and Grenoble (GIANT / Presqu'île scientifique).

Submitted by Priscilla Araujo (priscilla@ibict.br) on 2017-12-05T19:01:02Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) apropriacao e resistencias _final.pdf: 489863 bytes, checksum: ddb8bf2c08d7f67221fdfce6d4c6201c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-05T19:01:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) apropriacao e resistencias _final.pdf: 489863 bytes, checksum: ddb8bf2c08d7f67221fdfce6d4c6201c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O trabalho disserta sobre a experiência da FLOK Society no Equador, enquanto desdobramento do Plano Nacional do Buen Vivir. O Plano do Buen Vivir 2009-2017 é o plano de governo do segundo mandato de Rafael Correa enquanto presidente do Equador que resgata o conceito ancestral de Sumak Kawsay, de uma vida boa, ou plena. A FLOK, ou o Buen Conocer, advoga que é necessário um bom conhecimento para a construção de uma vida boa, e para isso propõe a criação de uma Economia Social do Conhecimento, em contraposição ao Capitalismo Cognitivo. O trabalho foi baseado em pesquisa bibliográfica como base teórica para o estudo empírico sobre o tema proposto. Foram utilizados textos de David Harvey, Moulier Boutang e entre outros autores, que se concentram em analisar as formas de produção do capitalismo assim como a criação de valor no mundo contemporâneo e como o conhecimento é parte central nesse processo. Além disso, foram realizadas entrevistas com pessoas participantes do projeto (coordenadores, formuladores, acadêmicos) que ajudaram a entender o contexto em que ele se realizava e a sua situação atual. A partir dessa análise pode-se estudar a proposta da FLOK como alternativa às formas de apropriação do conhecimento por parte do capital internacional e imaginar uma sociedade diferente onde o conhecimento livre, aberto e comum é a base da produção coletiva. Propostas dessa magnitude, como não poderia deixar de ser, trazem consigo inúmeras contradições e questionamentos, além é claro de estar submetida aos rumos da política e da economia, tanto em nível nacional quanto em nível internacional. / The work discusses the experience of the FLOK Society in Ecuador, as part of the National Plan for Good Living. The Buen Vivir Plan 2009-2017 is the government plan of Rafael Correa second term as president of Ecuador that rescues the ancestral concept of Sumak Kawsay, of a good, or full life. FLOK, or Buen Conocer, advocates that good knowledge is needed to build a good life, and for this purpose it proposes the creation of a Social Economy of Knowledge, as opposed to Cognitive Capitalism. The work was based on bibliographical research as a theoretical basis for the empirical study on the proposed theme. We used texts by David Harvey, Moulier Boutang and others, who focus on analyzing the forms of production of capitalism as well as the creation of value in the contemporary world and how knowledge is central to this process. In addition, interviews were conducted with people who participated in the project (coordinators, policymakers, academics) who helped to understand the context in which it took place and its current situation. From this analysis, we can study FLOK's proposal as an alternative to the forms of knowledge appropriation by international capital and to imagine a different society where free, open and common knowledge is the basis of collective production. Proposals of this magnitude, as expected, bring with it numerous contradictions and questions, besides being subject to the directions of politics and economics, at national and international level.

This study contributes to theory and public policy in Canada and globally. It uses mixed methodology and triangulation of evidence through policy documents(Bovey,Rae,Drummond),empirical studies and surveys(ranking,NSSE data,regression), CAUT/AUCC and Statistics Canada sources and qualitative sources - writings of university presidents (Bok,Kerr,Fallis),researchers (Rajagopal, Clark et al.)as well,talks with sessionals,teaching assistants and administrators. The framework consists of Altbach's four factors - democratization, the knowledge economy, globalisation and competition and three ideal types for university development - entrepreneurial, liberal education and deliberative. The thesis contrasts classical college with the modern university system. The results show strong evidence for research domination, mission drift and shift towards the entrepreneurial model. Quality is compromised by lowering requirements, compressed courses, less study time, large classes taught by sessionals and TAs, grade inflation and consumerist behaviour, while critical thinking and moral development are neglected.