The aim of this study was to explore the phenomenon of feeling unsure as viewed from the humanbecoming school of thought. From the humanbecoming perspective feeling unsure is a universal lived experience of health and quality of life. The purposes of this study were to understand the lived experience of feeling unsure from the humanbecoming perspective, to enhance understanding of the lived experience of feeling unsure as an essence of health and quality of life, to discover the structure of the lived experience of feeling unsure, to add to the body of knowledge on the phenomenon of feeling unsure, and to contribute to expand the theory of humanbecoming. The Parse research methodology was used to guide this study and answer the question: Whqt is the structure of the lived experience of feeling unsure? Ten persons living in community accepted to participate in this study. The processes of dialogical engagement, extraction-synthesis, and heuristic interpretation we re used for data gathering and analysis. The central finding of this study is Feeling unsure is wavering irresolutely with discerning ponderings arising in venturing with trepidations, while revering alliances. The findings of this study emerged as new knowledge that extend the theory of humanbecoming and enhance the understanding of the lived experience of feeling unsure.

Modern product design projects are often challenged by their interdisciplinary nature, increasing product complexity and time pressure. The challenge for product designers is to recall all relevant design aspects that are potentially applicable and important for the product to be designed at the right time. The negligence of certain design aspects may result in increased development costs and in inferior products. A recommended way to handle complexity in the design process is to work systematically, with checklists and guidelines offering a possibility to support product designers in this task. However, design guidelines that provide a comprehensive and generically content that support product designers holistically in their design projects are not readily available. Moreover, in-depth evaluations of the role, use, usefulness and usability of design guidelines are quite rare in the current literature. Therefore, the research study presented in this thesis sought to accomplish two tasks: the generation of a comprehensive set of generic and practically aimed product design guidelines in a paper-copy format that holistically supports product designers in their often complex design projects; and the evaluation of these generated design guidelines with the purpose of determining their role, use, usefulness and usability for product designers. A comprehensive and generically applicable set of product design guidelines in a ready-to-use paper-copy format that holistically provides in-depth information for the product design aspects that need to be considered during a design process was generated. Besides, a research study, using questionnaires and interviews, with product design students and professional product designers in New Zealand was carried out with the purpose of determining the role, use, usefulness and usability of the generated design guidelines for designers. As a consequence, valuable insights into the role of the guidelines as practitioners� design tool for professional designers and noteworthy findings about the role of the guidelines as educational tool for novice designers were obtained. The findings suggested that the use of guidelines as a tool in the design process is generally not very prevalent due to the designers� lack of knowledge about the benefits, location and accessibility of useful product design guidelines. Furthermore, it has been found that the designers used the generated guidelines sporadically and driven by their interest or demand in the design aspects applicable to their projects. In terms of the guidelines� usefulness it has been identified that the guidelines evaluated were generically applicable to different projects and provided a specific in-depth content. The guidelines have also been found to be quite useful as educational, planning, management and evaluation tool for novice and professional designers. However, in terms of the guidelines� usability, several problems were determined that made the generated guidelines too inefficient to be beneficial for the participants, especially for the professional designers. Accordingly, it has been concluded that a change of the guidelines� format into a digital interactive format, is likely to solve most of the identified problems and provide a useful and usable tool for product designers respectively.

Australia is not only the driest continent, but its streams are among the most variable in the world. To date in Australia there has been no large-scale study of Australia’s low flow hydrologic characteristics, and consequently there is a fundamental need to develop methods that can be readily used to assess the hydrology during times of low flow. This thesis describes the development and derivation of a methodology for the estimation of low flow characteristics and yield in small ungauged rural catchments. The methodology has been applied to 184 catchments located in New South Wales and Victoria, in south-eastern Australia. A systems approach was adopted in which multivariate techniques were used to develop relationships between low flow parameters and climatic and land information data. The low flow and yield parameters considered include: descriptive statistics of monthly and annual flows, ratio of baseflow to total streamflow volumes, streamflow recession constants, flow duration curves for daily, monthly and annual durations, low flow frequency curves for durations from 1 to 284 days, duration of low flow spells below a given threshold, deficiency volume of low flow spells below a given threshold, estimate of storage to satisfy a specified draft at a given level of reliability, and parameters of a simple rainfall-runoff model for conversion of daily rainfall to monthly streamflow volumes.

This thesis investigates ideas of interiority and thought in relation to the building of self identity. I express them through the visual means of text and photography, resulting in a conceptual self-portrait by way of installation. Concerned with what thought terrain might look like and the way information perceived though the senses is stored, I explore the overdetermined evidence provoked by the unconscious. By the study of my own inner monologue in response to everyday rituals, I bring attention to the fragmented and overwhelming anxieties, fears, associations and fabrications of the mind - moments that often go unnoticed, but help concretize my experience of being in the world. The thesis is made up of 80% practice and 20% written exegesis.

This thesis explores how locally-constructed agency, based on what we really care about, can be developed within and thence beyond localities. At issue is the need for new forms of connectedness and belonging in the globally-based network society. Globally-based communications and media technologies create new networks and mobilities that stretch and fragment existing socio-economic, administrative and ecological systems and with this, older, local and national forms of sociality. Such social upheavals are apt to drive people into defensive and divisive "us" against "them" forms of belonging. Local communities are then called on almost daily to fix these problems, but scarcely exist as connected effective agents on their own account. The thesis examines how official institutions (policy and academic) can help undo one-way global-local flows, by supporting new forms of local-local and local-through-to-global agency. A transdisciplinary methodology, developed in this thesis, performatively demonstrates productive, new local-academic-policy connections. Research included a fully participatory process that blends theoretical concepts (social, aesthetic, literary and film), with film and interactive technologies. A microcosm or simulation of locality was created through DVD film and an interactive research website. Through the shared use of screen interfaces, over one hundred co-detectives or co-researchers from hugely diverse backgrounds collaborated to search for, help reveal, and test out ways that local inhabitants could more effectively connect and co-create a filmed narrative of the kind of place that all would like to inhabit. A "network locality" development narrative is here piloted as a counterpoint to the global network society. Based on inclusive co-construction of locally grounded technology - and aesthetic-based communities - new possibilities of belonging around engagement in locally grounded civic-cosmopolitan projects are demonstrated.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business. / The discourse on knowledge management (KM) has emerged relatively recently in the field of management. Organisational and strategic theories have been developed which seek to explain the existence, boundaries, structure, management and competitive advantage of organisations based on knowledge. These theories are consistent with one thread from the overall discourse which argues that the management of knowledge within an organisation is an important activity required for maintaining competitive advantage in a hypercompetitive external environment. Despite the extensive interest in this area, there is sti11limited agreement even about some of its fundamental principles. This plurality of perspectives is due to the diversity of disciplines, theories and objectives with which the area is enriched by both academics and practitioners alike. Many independent KM initiatives have also been proposed for managerial use under the KM umbrella. Such activities include meetings, mentoring schemes, training, job rotation, site visits, conferences and exhibitions, and internal and external collaborations. Many of these initiatives are relatively autonomous and independent concepts. Generally these concepts have been first identified in the practitioner literature and it is unclear where they fit within academic frameworks. In particular, the relationship between KM initiatives and important related academic concepts such as knowledge transfer, organisationalleaming, knowledge creation and innovation is not clear. This lack of agreement, clarity and cohesion in the KM discourse naturally suggests the following research problem: What is the relationship between KM initiatives, organisationalleaming, knowledge transfer, knowledge creation innovation? Taking an organisation and strategic management theory perspective, an exploratory framework for understanding and explaining KM is developed within this thesis. Theoretically, this framework draws together perspectives from the resource-based view of the firm, organisational learning and innovation literatures to propose that the two fundamental KM processes are knowledge transfer and creation. Knowledge transfer supports learning and the utilisation of available internal and external knowledge resources within an organisation. Through knowledge transfer and learning, new knowledge can be created and organisational innovation takes place. These two processes are then integrated into Whittington, Pettigrew et al.'s (1999) framework for organisational change. Various disparate KM initiatives are also positioned within the developed framework based on whether they facilitate knowledge transfer by altering organisational boundaries, processes or structures. The essence of the developed framework is represented pictorially by a research model. This research model depicts the framework's key concepts and the relationships between them. It also begins to represent some of the complex dimensionality inherent in the framework. The research model is explored empirically using data from the Business Longitudinal Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Responses from 3014 Australian businesses surveyed yearly from 1994 to 1998 are analysed using chi-squared and logistical regression statistical techniques. This sample consists of 1344 small and 1670 medium businesses across eleven industries. In empirically exploring the research model, some of the dimensionality of the framework is explored. However, the process also provides a confirmatory function by providing empirical support for many of the aspects of the framework. Statistical support was found for all elements of the research model. Odds ratios for the various KM initiatives examined ranged from 1.292 to 3.554. These results confirm the value of these initiatives for facilitating the transfer of knowledge. They also suggest that the dimensionality of these constructs represented in the model should be explored further. Of all the KM initiatives, research and development emerged as the most effective initiative for facilitating knowledge transfer and creation. This finding suggests that research and development should be the very first initiative considered by managers looking to implement a KM program. It also suggests that future research on knowledge transfer and creation should pay particular attention to this particular initiative. The logistical regression analysis demonstrated that changing organisational boundaries, processes and structures all contribute to facilitating knowledge transfer which lead to knowledge creation. These results provided support for the most important contribution of the thesis. This contribution was the development of an integrated and exploratory conceptual framework which can serve as a foundation stone for the field of KM.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business. / The discourse on knowledge management (KM) has emerged relatively recently in the field of management. Organisational and strategic theories have been developed which seek to explain the existence, boundaries, structure, management and competitive advantage of organisations based on knowledge. These theories are consistent with one thread from the overall discourse which argues that the management of knowledge within an organisation is an important activity required for maintaining competitive advantage in a hypercompetitive external environment. Despite the extensive interest in this area, there is sti11limited agreement even about some of its fundamental principles. This plurality of perspectives is due to the diversity of disciplines, theories and objectives with which the area is enriched by both academics and practitioners alike. Many independent KM initiatives have also been proposed for managerial use under the KM umbrella. Such activities include meetings, mentoring schemes, training, job rotation, site visits, conferences and exhibitions, and internal and external collaborations. Many of these initiatives are relatively autonomous and independent concepts. Generally these concepts have been first identified in the practitioner literature and it is unclear where they fit within academic frameworks. In particular, the relationship between KM initiatives and important related academic concepts such as knowledge transfer, organisationalleaming, knowledge creation and innovation is not clear. This lack of agreement, clarity and cohesion in the KM discourse naturally suggests the following research problem: What is the relationship between KM initiatives, organisationalleaming, knowledge transfer, knowledge creation innovation? Taking an organisation and strategic management theory perspective, an exploratory framework for understanding and explaining KM is developed within this thesis. Theoretically, this framework draws together perspectives from the resource-based view of the firm, organisational learning and innovation literatures to propose that the two fundamental KM processes are knowledge transfer and creation. Knowledge transfer supports learning and the utilisation of available internal and external knowledge resources within an organisation. Through knowledge transfer and learning, new knowledge can be created and organisational innovation takes place. These two processes are then integrated into Whittington, Pettigrew et al.'s (1999) framework for organisational change. Various disparate KM initiatives are also positioned within the developed framework based on whether they facilitate knowledge transfer by altering organisational boundaries, processes or structures. The essence of the developed framework is represented pictorially by a research model. This research model depicts the framework's key concepts and the relationships between them. It also begins to represent some of the complex dimensionality inherent in the framework. The research model is explored empirically using data from the Business Longitudinal Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Responses from 3014 Australian businesses surveyed yearly from 1994 to 1998 are analysed using chi-squared and logistical regression statistical techniques. This sample consists of 1344 small and 1670 medium businesses across eleven industries. In empirically exploring the research model, some of the dimensionality of the framework is explored. However, the process also provides a confirmatory function by providing empirical support for many of the aspects of the framework. Statistical support was found for all elements of the research model. Odds ratios for the various KM initiatives examined ranged from 1.292 to 3.554. These results confirm the value of these initiatives for facilitating the transfer of knowledge. They also suggest that the dimensionality of these constructs represented in the model should be explored further. Of all the KM initiatives, research and development emerged as the most effective initiative for facilitating knowledge transfer and creation. This finding suggests that research and development should be the very first initiative considered by managers looking to implement a KM program. It also suggests that future research on knowledge transfer and creation should pay particular attention to this particular initiative. The logistical regression analysis demonstrated that changing organisational boundaries, processes and structures all contribute to facilitating knowledge transfer which lead to knowledge creation. These results provided support for the most important contribution of the thesis. This contribution was the development of an integrated and exploratory conceptual framework which can serve as a foundation stone for the field of KM.

The influence of observations on the outcome of an analysis is of importance in statistical data analysis. A practical and well-established approach to influence analysis is case deletion. However, it has its draw-backs when subsets of observations are jointly influential and offset each other's influence. Another approach is local influence proposed by Cook (1986).The local influence methodology of Cook (1986) is based on the curvature of the likelihood displacement surface formed by model/data perturbations. Wu and Luo (1993a, 1993b) further developed the idea and proposed the study of the perturbation-formed surface of a variable by evaluating the curvature of the surface in addition to its maximum slope. This thesis utilizes the local influence approach to develop influence diagnostic methods for four different topics.Firstly, we proposed a stepwise confirmatory procedure for the detection of multiple outliers in two-way contingency tables. The procedure begins with the identification of a reliable set of candidate outliers by evaluating the derivatives of the perturbation-formed surface of the Pearson goodness-of-fit statistic. An adding-back iterative algorithm is then applied to the candidate set to assess their relative discordancy. Using two real data sets, the proposed procedure is shown to be less susceptible to both masking and swamping problems than residual based measures. In a Monte Carlo study, the local influence diagnostics are also found to outperform standard residual-based methods in terms of efficiency and other criteria.Transformations of covariates are commonly applied in regression analysis. When a parametric transformation family is used, the maximum likelihood estimate of the transformation parameter is often sensitive to minor perturbations of the data. Diagnostics based on the local influence approach are derived to assess the influence ++ / of observations on the covariate transformation parameter in generalized linear models. Three numerical examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed diagnostics. The need for transformation is also addressed in addition to assessing influence on the transformation parameter.A common method of choosing the link function in generalized linear models is to specify a parametric link family indexed by unknown parameters. The maximum likelihood estimates of such link parameters, however, often depend on one or several extreme observations. Diagnostics based on the local influence approach are derived to assess the sensitivity of the parametric link analysis. Two examples demonstrate that the proposed diagnostics can identify jointly influential observations on the link even when masking is present. The application of the diagnostics can also assist us in revising the link parameter and hence the form of the model.The portmanteau statistic is commonly used for testing goodness-of-fit of time series models. However, this lack of fit test may depend on one or several atypical observations in the series. We investigate the sensitivity of the portmanteau statistic in the presence of additive outliers. Diagnostics based on the local influence approach are developed to assess both local and global influence. Three practical examples demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed diagnostics.

Mémoire (M.P.M.O.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1995. / Résumé disponible sur Internet. CaQCU Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.