The Student RAG Community Service (SRCS), a unique non-governmental organisation (NGO) of the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, aims to support and to enable other NGOs to function independently. For this reason, the communication between the SRCS and these NGOs is viewed from the sub discipline of development communication, with the participative approach currently being perceived as the normative approach to communication for development. Communication between the SRCS and representatives of the NGOs should therefore conform to the principles of the participative approach to development communication to contribute to empowerment and development. The principles of the participative approach that was identified as relevant to this study are participation, dialogue, cultural sensitivity, to enable the community to be self-reliant and community development. This study is qualitative in nature and the research methods used to gather information about the nature of communication between the SRCS and the representatives of the projects are qualitative content analysis, partially structured interviews and observer–participant reporting. Although this study has focused only on early child development projects, the nature of these projects and their communication varied to a large extent. The overall conclusion of this study is that there are gaps in the participative communication between the SRCS and the representatives of all the researched projects. The type of communication between the SRCS and early childhood development projects did not conform to the principles of cultural sensitivity, community development and the enablement of the community to be self-reliant. These gaps are attributed in part to the present documentation of the SRCS (2010 annual report, portfolio descriptions, transfer reports and minutes of 2010’s and 2011’s meetings) as well as the fact that this NGO’s training guidelines do not emphasise the importance of participatory principles, and do not offer sufficient training in the implementation of these principles to its various members. Although the results indicate that the communication between the SRCS and the representatives of the projects presently does not conform to the principles of participative communication, the organisation is committed to addressing these gaps in future. / Thesis (MA (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The Student RAG Community Service (SRCS), a unique non-governmental organisation (NGO) of the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, aims to support and to enable other NGOs to function independently. For this reason, the communication between the SRCS and these NGOs is viewed from the sub discipline of development communication, with the participative approach currently being perceived as the normative approach to communication for development. Communication between the SRCS and representatives of the NGOs should therefore conform to the principles of the participative approach to development communication to contribute to empowerment and development. The principles of the participative approach that was identified as relevant to this study are participation, dialogue, cultural sensitivity, to enable the community to be self-reliant and community development. This study is qualitative in nature and the research methods used to gather information about the nature of communication between the SRCS and the representatives of the projects are qualitative content analysis, partially structured interviews and observer–participant reporting. Although this study has focused only on early child development projects, the nature of these projects and their communication varied to a large extent. The overall conclusion of this study is that there are gaps in the participative communication between the SRCS and the representatives of all the researched projects. The type of communication between the SRCS and early childhood development projects did not conform to the principles of cultural sensitivity, community development and the enablement of the community to be self-reliant. These gaps are attributed in part to the present documentation of the SRCS (2010 annual report, portfolio descriptions, transfer reports and minutes of 2010’s and 2011’s meetings) as well as the fact that this NGO’s training guidelines do not emphasise the importance of participatory principles, and do not offer sufficient training in the implementation of these principles to its various members. Although the results indicate that the communication between the SRCS and the representatives of the projects presently does not conform to the principles of participative communication, the organisation is committed to addressing these gaps in future. / Thesis (MA (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

No description available.

ABSTRACT: This thesis tries to understand and explain the problems facing African international organizations in peacekeeping operations. The focus is on the case of the intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Ivory Coast. The analysis will also discuss, in order to permit comparative analysis, the intervention of this same organization in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau. This case study in comparative perspective can help to mitigate the disadvantage of a case study, whose main weakness is the problem of generalization from the results of one case. The literature in International Relations and peacekeeping operations is used to develop some hypotheses that we will try to test in this dissertation, specifically: the internal difficulties of international organizations; the problems of lessons learned in terms of peacekeeping operations; the balance of power between and the pursuit of the national interest by members states of the organization; the key role of international and foreign actors, such as former colonial masters, in the peace process; and finally, the problem of coordination between different actors. To answer to the research question, the dissertation will be written in the form of a story with different concentric circles. First, for the internal international organizations difficulties, we will use the functionalist approach which is one of the best theorizations of this issue. However, these internal obstacles are only the tip of the iceberg of the problem because behind the organization we have conflicts of interest between different member states and the intervention of former colonial masters that realists and the neo-marxists would anticipate. Nevertheless, these tend to emphasize more on states. As a consequence, they cannot help us to solve the huge issue of coordination between different actors. To respond to this problem, we turn to the model of multi-level governance and demonstrate its value in analysing this case. For the case of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone, we will use both primary and secondary literatures. However, for the case of Guinea Bissau, we will use only secondary literature. RESUME: Cette thèse vise à comprendre et à expliquer les difficultés des organisations internationales africaines dans le domaine du maintien de la paix. La question est étudiée par le moyen d’une étude de cas mais dans une perspective comparative. Car elle permet d’atténuer l’inconvénient majeur de l’étude de cas qui est la question de la généralisation. En effet, nous analyserons les difficultés de la communauté économique des États d’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) dans la gestion de la crise ivoirienne en utilisant les interventions de cette même organisation au Libéria, en Sierra Leone et en Guinée Bissau pour la comparaison à des fins d’apprentissages. La littérature en Relations internationales et sur le maintien de la paix nous a suggéré les hypothèses suivantes que nous testerons : les difficultés intrinsèques des organisations internationales; les difficultés d’apprentissage de ces mêmes organisations dans le domaine du maintien de la paix; les jeux de puissances et d’intérêt entre États membres de l’organisation internationale; la confiscation incomplète des relations internationales ouest africaines par des acteurs, des enjeux et des intérêts étrangers; enfin, il y a la difficulté de la coordination des actions entre les différents acteurs impliqués dans les processus de résolution des crises. Nous répondrons à la question de recherche en forme de récit avec des cercles concentriques. D’abord pour aborder les difficultés intrinsèques, nous convoquerons les fonctionnalistes qui ont théorisé le mieux la question des organisations internationales. Mais, on s’est vite rendu compte que ces difficultés n’étaient que la face visible de l’iceberg et que derrière l’organisation se cachent des jeux de puissances et d’intérêt, mais aussi l’ingérence des anciennes puissances coloniales que les réalistes et les néo-marxistes avaient prévues. Mais ces derniers mettent surtout l’emphase sur l’État. Ce qui ne permet pas de résoudre la lancinante question de la pluralité des acteurs, des conflits de logiques et de l’articulation des efforts des différents intervenants que l’approche de la gouvernance à paliers multiples permet de prévoir. Pour la Côte d’Ivoire, le Libéria et la Sierra Leone nous utiliserons à la fois de la littérature primaire et secondaire. Mais pour la Guinée Bissau, nous nous appuierons uniquement sur de la littérature secondaire.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University. Macquarie Graduate School of Management. / Bibliography: p. 286-324. / The contribution of this thesis is to present a framework to analyse firms controlled by more than one board. The literature survey of Chapter 2 revealed that there is little recognition of this phenomenon and no accepted way to investigate firms governed by multiple control centres described as a "compound board". The framework is developed in Chapter 3. The historical emergence of compound boards is outlined in Chapter 4 with examples of their architecture described in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 7 shows how the framework provides insights not available from other theories of the firm and how selfyes governance can be furthered by utilising contrary human attributes of competition/co-operation, trust/suspicion and self-interest/altruism. / The framework is described as transaction byte analysis (TBA) as it is based on the limited and inconsistent ability of humans to transact units of information described as "bytes". TBA identifies cybernetic principles and strategies that can mitigate human limitations in processing bytes. These provide organisational design criteria for firms to obtain operating advantages. As information is a common element in varies theories of the firm, TBA relates and subsumes them while allowing any type of organisation to be analysed. / Propositions are presented in Chapter 7 for illustrating how TBA provides insights into explaining: (i) why non-trivial employee owned industrial firms have more than one board; (ii) why self-regulation and self-governance of non-trivial firms cannot be assured without a compound board; (iii) how compound boards can simplify the role, knowledge, duties and liabilities of directors; (iv) the competitive advantages of appropriate compound boards in relation to unitary control systems; (v) how to compare and evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of firms with different ownership and control structures; (vi) how to compare the relative efficacy of hierarchical and non-hierarchical firms be they in the private or public sector. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / x, 324 p. ill

The business environment of the 21st century is rapidly changing. Customers demand are diversifying, governments enforce stricter environmental regulations and start-ups are entering with disruptive business models. Traditional industrial organisations need to adapt to compete on a market revolving around time-to-market actions. One solution for this is to do an agile transformation. This thesis investigates the agile transformation process of traditional organisations through a case study. The objective is to identify find the main success drivers and key challenges in stated transformation. The research was designed to do a qualitative, interview based case study in the automotive and aerospace industries involving four companies from an interpretivistic paradigm. In addition, two companies from insurance and banking and four agile coaches were also part of the case study to establish generalisability. The theoretical and empirical findings succeed to find three main success drivers: management support, identifying the “Why?” and “How?”, and three key challenges: structural legacies, cultural legacies and configuration of transformation process. Additionally, it was found that current transformations in the selected industries are diverging from change management theories, which emphasises a greater focus on changing mindset, behaviour and culture. Finally, the study contributes with actions as to help companies pursuing agile transformation as well identifying a continuous need for research of agile methods in non-software environments. / Marknaden har under 2000-talet ändrats snabbt. Kunders krav på produkter ökar, statliga miljöregleringar träder i kraft och start-ups går in med disruptiva affärsmodeller. I detta läge behöver traditionella industribolag anpassa för att kunna konkurrera på den nya marknaden som kräver en kortare tid till marknaden. En lösning på detta problem är en agil transformation. Den här uppsatsen undersöker de agila transformationsprocesserna genom en fallstudie. Målsättningen är att identifiera de huvudsakliga framgångsfaktorer samt utmaningar som återfinns i nämnda transformationer. Forskningen designades genom en kvalitativ intervjufallstudie hos fyra företag inom vägfordons- och flygplansindustrin från ett interpretivistiskt forskningsparadigm. Vidare deltog två företag från försäkring och bank samt fyra agila coacher för att kunna etablera generaliserbarhet. De teoretiska och empiriska ramverken lyckades hitta tre stycken framgångsfaktorer: ledarstöd, identifierandet and “Varför?” samt ”Hur?”, samt tre primära utmaningar: strukturella och kulturella arv samt konfigurationen av transformationsprocessen. Vidare fann studien att de nuvarande transformationerna som finns i valda branscher divergerar från förändringsledningsteorierna, som i sin tur betonar ett större fokus på förändring av mindset, beteende och kultur. Slutligen bidrar denna studie med föreslagna åtgärder som hjälper företag som genomgår en transformation och identifierar ett fortsatt behov av att forska kring användandet av agila metoder in icke-mjukvaruområden.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2005. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The focus in this thesis is on sensemaking in organisations and the aim was to offer an interpretation of the thought of Karl E. Weick. The interpretation subsequently consists of a description and discussion of concepts, underlying theories and paradigmatic perspectives that are integrated into and deployed in Weick's sensemaking framework. After a description and definition of sensemaking terms and concepts, it is argued that a process cosmology forms the ground theory in Weick's sensemaking framework. In order to elucidate this interpretation, the organic model of the world of Bergson and Whitehead is introduced. Special attention is given to pragmatism's underlying process ontology and themes which social consructionism, symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology share in common with pragmatism. The aim is to show how these perspectives and themes are taken up in Weick's sensemaking in organisations and organisational theory. A failure to make sense is both consequential and existential. This aspect of Weick's thought is discussed in the context of Bergson's process cosmology. It is followed by a description and discussion of Weick's use of systems theory with special attention given to Weick's concept of 'enactment' . How and why does an organisation becomes what it becomes? This question is addressed in the context of a description and discussion of complexity theory. A core concept in both complexity theory and Weick's thought is self-organisation. The aim is to show how sense making appears on systems level. Finally, this thesis attempts to addresses the question of the relationship between organisation and organising and how both terms is to be understood in terms of Weick's ontological view of the world. This aim is to show that Weick's understanding of "the" organisation (noun) can be conceived of as an abstraction and organisation (verb - 'organising') in terms of relating and as process in becoming and how he thereby gives social construction an ontological twist. The conclusion reached is that, in the type of world Weick describes, it makes sense to make sense. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis fokus op 'sensemaking' in organisasies - om die dubbelsinnige, onduidelike en onverwagse meer duidelik, begryplik and redelik te maak vir persone om te weet wat besig is om te gebeur en gepaste aksies te neem. Die doel was derhalwe 'n interpretasie van die denke van Karl E. Weick. Die interpretasie omvat gevolglik 'n beskrywing en bespreking van konsepte, teorieë en paradigmatiese perspektiewe wat Weick in sy sensemaking raamwerk integreer en ontplooi. Ná 'n definiëring en beskrywing van terme en konsepte word geargumenteer dat 'n proses beskouing van die werklikheid Weick se sensemaking raamwerk onderlê. Hierdie interpretasie word toegelig met 'n bespreking en beskrywing van die organiese model van Bergson en Whitehead, sowel as die proses ontologie onderliggend aan pragmatisme. Gevolglik kom pragmatisme, sosiale konstruksionisme, simboliese interaksionisme en etnometodologie aan die orde. Verskeie temas word beskryf en bespreek in die konteks van sensemaking en organisasie-teorie. 'n Mislukking in sensemaking het newe gevolge en is dit ook eksistensieël van aard. Hierdie aspek van Weick se denke word beskryf en bespreek in die konteks van Bergson se proses kosmologie en word die interpretasie opgevolg met 'n bespreking van sisteem-teorie. Hoe en waarom verander organisasies wanneer hulle verander? Die antwoord op hierdie vraag kom aan die orde in die konteks van 'n bespreking van kompleksiteits-teorie. 'n Kern konsep in beide Weick se sensemaking en kompleksiteits-teorie is self-organisasie. 'n Baie belangrike doel is om aan te dui hoe sensemaking voorkom en plaasvind op sisteem-vlak. Ten slotte poog die tesis om die verband tussen organisasie en organisering in Weick se denke meer verstaanbaar te maak. Die argument hier is dat Weick se verstaan van "die" organisasie (selfstandige naamwoord) as 'n abstraksie en organisasie (werkwoord) in terme van relasies en proses in wording geïnterpreteer kan word, en Weick sodoende 'n ontologiese kinkel in die verstaan van sosiale konstruksionisme teweeg bring. Die slotsom tot waartoe in hierdie studie gekom word is dat, in die wêreld wat Weick beskryf, maak dit 'sense' om 'sense' te maak.

L'action humanitaire a connu un développement exponentiel au sein de la société internationale au cours de ces dernières années. Multiplication des résolutions humanitaires votées par les Nations unies, mise en place d'une justice pénale internationale chargée de réprimer les violations du droit international humanitaire, émergence de la responsabilité de protéger impliquant un recours à la force à des fins humanitaires, développement des organisations non gouvernementales en sont les manifestations majeures. Toutefois, la portée de ces évolutions récentes de l'action humanitaire tant sur le plan de la normativité que de l'opérationnalité est à relativiser. Si les insuffisances du droit de Genève ont pleinement justifié l'émergence d'un droit de New York, ce droit de nature essentiellement déclaratoire éprouve de réelles difficultés à palier les lacunes du droit de Genève. En outre, la mise en oeuvre contemporaine de l'action humanitaire, soulève de nombreux questionnements juridiques liés aux modalités et aux conditions de mise en oeuvre. La présente étude a pour objet d'analyser les évolutions et les limites du cadre juridique de l'action humanitaire afin de faire des propositions pour améliorer la condition juridique des victimes des catastrophes humanitaires. / Humanitarian action has seen such an exponential growth in international society in recent years that humanitarianism seems to be carrying increasing weight in international relations. Some of the main examples of this phenomenon are the increased number of humanitarian resolutions passed by the United Nations, the creation of an international court of justice to reprimand violations of international humanitarian law, the emergence of a sense of responsibility to ensure protection by means of force for humanitarian purposes, and the development of non-governmental organizations. However, the scope of these recent developments in humanitarianism, on both the normative and operational levels, needs to be put into perspective. Indeed, while the shortcomings of Geneva law fully justify the emergence of New York law, this essentially declaratory law faces real challenges in overcoming the short comings in Geneva law. Further more, humanitarian action as it has been carried out in recent years gives rise to a number of legal questions relating to the conditions under which such action is taken. This study aims at analyzing the developments and limits of the humanitarian action legal framework, in order to put forward proposals for improving the legal position of the victims of humanitarian disasters.

Le travail réalisé dans le cadre de cette thèse propose une démarche de sélection de partenaires (fournisseurs et prestataires) dans une chaîne logistique durable en boucle fermée. Il s’agit d’évaluer les partenaires en fonction de critères économiques, environnementaux, et sociétaux puis de sélectionner ceux qui interviennent dans la chaîne logistique en respectant un ensemble des contraintes. Nous développons une méthode d’évaluation et de classement des partenaires basée sur une approche hybride en utilisant les méthodes AHP et PROMETHEE, dans un environnement flou. Ensuite, nous proposons un modèle mathématique multi-objectif qui permet non seulement de minimiser le coût total de la chaîne logistique, mais également de maximiser la valeur totale de l’approvisionnement, minimiser les émissions de gaz à effet de serre et maximiser le bénéfice sociétal. Nous utilisons une approche max-min pondérée pour résoudre le modèle proposé à l’aide de l’outil de modélisation et d’optimisation GAMS. / Reverse logistics network design is a crucial issue in which it is important to take into account the selection of the most appropriate partner with sustainability concerns. This partner can be a supplier or a third-party reverse logistics provider (3PRLP). However, research works that consider reverse logistics (RL) network design, partner selection, and sustainability issues simultaneously are rather limited till now. This research work proposes an integrated sustainable approach for partner selection and closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network configuration, particularly in the case of outsourcing reverse logistics process to third-party provider. We propose a trade-off between sustainability criteria for both supplier and 3PRL provider selection. A multi-objective mixed-integer programming (MILP) model is also proposed to configure CLSC network and to select the best partners. The model minimizes the total cost of sourcing, and the total greenhouse gas emissions, while it maximizes the total value of reverse logistics, and the number of new job opportunities. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate the proposed approach.

Entre espace informé et espace géographiqueNous observons une grande diversité des champs d’application, statuts, fonctions, usages de la e-médiationterritoriale, selon les contextes socio-économiques, politiques, géographiques ou écologiques. Cette hétérogénéitérévèle l'existence d'un lien épistémologiquement fécond entre numérique, espace informé et espace géographique.Cette thèse circonscrit et approfondit ces dimensions complexes, articulées, parfois divergentes, mais qui sont desparamètres essentiels de l’action et du développement territorial. Face aux grands enjeux, socio-économiques,écologiques, sociétaux et multiculturels qui pèsent aujourd’hui plus ou moins uniformément sur le monde, cesdimensions sont essentielles à la construction de modèles de développement spécifiques dans lesquels le numériquetient une place décisive. Plus la e-médiation territoriale se subordonne à la logique fonctionnaliste du branchementdu global vers le local, plus elle favorise l’usage de données territoriales tracées, capturées et marchandisées. Cettestratégie internationale de définition, d’homogénéisation, d’analyse et de traitement massif (big data) des donnéesnumériques territoriales, produit un appauvrissement qualitatif de ces données, induit de nouvelles normativitéspolitiques, limite les recherches théorico-pratiques d’innovations sociales et d’usages, conduisant à unrefroidissement numérique des territoires. La notion centrale de e-médiation, « objet frontière » entre les disciplines,fonctionne dans cette thèse comme une matrice d’interprétation du territoire à partir de laquelle s’élabore un canevasthéorico-pratique. Cette thèse rassemble, analyse et référence des articles, documents, publications, travauxthéoriques, contributions professionnelles, politiques et pratiques, explore ce lien entre espaces informé,géographique et numérique, qui déplace le centre de gravité d’interprétation théorique des territoires, à la mesuredes mutations et des représentations auxquelles ils sont confrontés. Ce canevas, nous l’expérimentons avec leterritoire de la Seine-Saint-Denis sur la base d’un schéma d’intervention numérique qui combine acteurs et actions,innovation technologique et innovation sociale afin de donner du sens aux différentes modalités d’actions dans laperspective du développement durable et du bien commun. Des territoires très éloignés et de cultures différentespourraient, sous certaines conditions méthodologiques, utiliser un tel schéma d’intervention afin d’exprimer etexpérimenter des modèles de développement, et des e-médiations autoriseraient alors des comparaisons inter et intraterritoriales, des analyses fines des contextes historiques, géographiques et sociaux d’émergence, des observationsdétaillées de certains traits ou solutions locales comme globales. / Between informed space and geographical spaceWe observe a wide range of territorial e-mediation’s concrete fields, statutes, functions and uses, according to socioeconomics,political, geographical or ecological contexts. This diversity reveals an epistemologically productivelink between digital, geographical and informized spaces. This thesis aims to circumscribe and deepen thosearticulated, sometimes divergent, complex dimensions, keys parameters of action and territorial development.Indeed, in the face of the major issues, socio-economic, ecological, societal and multicultural that weigh more orless uniformly today on the world, these dimensions of digital territorial mediation, are essential and necessary tobuild specific development models in which digital is one of the most significant. Moreover the higher the territoriale-mediation obeys a logic of branching, from the global to the local, the more it favors the use of territorial data thatare easy to track, capture, analyze and merchandise by the Data-Broker. This relative homogenization and thisqualitative impoverishment of the numerical data available on the territories, can induce new political normativities,limit the theoretical-practical researches on the social and usages innovations and lead to a numerical cooling of theterritories. This central notion of territorial e-mediation, is a « Boundary Objects » operates in this thesis as a amatrix for interpreting territories from which a theoretical-practical frameworks is designed. This thesis collect,analyse, reference, documents, publications, theoretical works, professional contributions, policies and practices onthis link between digital, geographical and informized spaces that is shifting the centre of gravity of territoriestheorical interpretations, proportionate to mutations and représentations that are facing them. For a number of yearswe experiment this framework with the Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris) territory, based on an interventions outline whichcombines stakeholders and actions, technical an social innovations in order to give meaning to the various forms ofaction, in view of sustainable development and common good. Distant territories and from different cultures couldunder certain methodological conditions through e-mediations, use this kind of framework to experiment andexpress their developpment models, comparisons, detailed analysis, the context of emergence, detailed comments,« traits » or solutions.Those mediations would permit