Ubiquitous media communications technology necessitates democratic and critical media literacy education for developing an active 21st century polity. This study analyzed the context of democratic and critical media competencies in national curriculum standards across Australia, England, and the United States. This, based on Lefebvre’s (1991) conception of conceived space, where standards operate as manifest educational policy and as a basis for establishing good practice. The study employed a multi-theoretical approach to textual analysis, within Bereday’s (1964) comparative structure of inquiry. A critical policy lens supported the contextualization of ideological influences that frame democratic and critical media literacies in standards, per Bay-Cheng, Fitz, Alizaga, and Zucker’s (2015) neoliberal subscales. A purposive sample of civics and citizenship, English/English language arts, and media arts/studies was employed. Differences across three main indicators were identified: socio-cultural and youth-based concerns, personal growth via media production and other skills development, and reasoning and communication skills improvement. The neoliberal influences on curricular standards were subsequently explored across three emerging themes: identity politics, problem-based and critical inquiry experiences, and the inclusion of digital new media in curriculum inquiry. Though recognized in the countries’ standards as multifaceted and complex, each obfuscates identity in some way. Both England and the United States inadequately confront race, class, gender, socio-economic status, cultural commodification, and youthbased issues. Though not overtly neoliberal, the Australian standards present identity hegemonically. The role of media is somewhat siloed from the curriculum’s conceptions of identity and active citizenship across all three countries. The English standards are least adept at developing learners’ understandings of the influence of media on identity development, whereas both England and the United States over-emphasize text to the neglect of new media understandings. An apolitical view of media literacy, accompanied by techno-economic terminology, is pervasive in U.S. standards. Despite a counter-critical approach to the framing of its curriculum priorities, Australia presents the most balanced view of democratic/critical media citizenship. England’s standards reflect neoliberal-communitarian citizenship and largely neglect critical questioning. Whereas the United States takes a similarly cosmopolitan view of citizenship to Australia and England, the standards fail to comprehensively explore the links between digital democracy and political engagement. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The study on luxury consumers is always connected to their drives behind consumption. Why people buy luxury products is an interesting question. This thesis investigates influencing forces behind luxury consumer behavior, in a comparative case study on Chinese and Finnish consumers. Luxury consumption is not a new phenomenon, but in some countries, like China and Finland, the luxury market is still growing since many brands are newly entering these markets. At the same time, new generations have become luxury consumers so these markets are quickly changing.Researches have been made on luxury consumer behaviour in China and Finland. However, there is a lack of updated information available about this subject, especially about Finnish luxury consumers. Furthermore, the driving forces behind the luxury consumption are not the same in different countries. In a competitive industry like luxury fashion, the marketing tactics have to be adapted to specific market conditions in order to succeed. The purpose of this thesis is to gain updated information about Chinese and Finnish luxury consumers and investigate forces behind their luxury consumption. The study focuses on three important influencing forces including culture, motivation and brand equity of Chinese and Finnish luxury consumers.The investigation shows that Chinese luxury consumers, in terms of culture, are more collective and have higher power distance than Finnish consumers; other's influence and emotion have greater impact on Chinese luxury consumers than that on Finnish consumers; in comparison with Chinese consumers, Finnish consumers are more easily motivated to buy luxuries for special time such as holidays or for giving gifts; Chinese luxury consumers are shown to have lower brand loyalty, awareness and association than Finnish consumers. / Program: Master in Fashion Management with specialisation in Fashion Marketing and Retailing

<p>The research explores the marketing strategies for Chinese local hotels after doing the comparative study and analyzing the operations of Accor and Jin Jiang based on the Marketing Mix theory. The improving strategies are varied, which includes the product, promotion, etc. Offering guidance for the whole Chinese local hotels are the ultimate objective of the research.</p>

This paper presents a comparison of optimization algorithms for constrained damping (CLD) patches’ layout to minimize the maximum vibration response of the odd modes, which constitutes the dominant acoustic radiation, of a simply-supported beam excited by a harmonic transverse force. An analytical model based on Euler-Bernoulli beam assumptions is derived first to relate the displacement response of the beam with bonded CLD patches and their layout. Four different nonlinear optimization methods/algorithms are then respectively used to optimize the CLD patches’ locations and lengths with aim of minimum displacement amplitude at middle of the beam. The considered methods include subproblem approximation method, the first-order method, sequential quadratic programming (SQP) and genetic algorithm (GA). The efficiency of each considered optimization method is evaluated and also compared in terms of obtained optimal beam displacement. The results show that GA is most efficient in obtaining the best optimum for this optimization problem in spite of highest computation efforts required to improve its stability. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The research explores the marketing strategies for Chinese local hotels after doing the comparative study and analyzing the operations of Accor and Jin Jiang based on the Marketing Mix theory. The improving strategies are varied, which includes the product, promotion, etc. Offering guidance for the whole Chinese local hotels are the ultimate objective of the research.

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One of the major issues associated with taxation are the costs incurred by taxpayers when they comply with their tax obligations, this is particularly important for smaller business taxpayers. Compliance costs are found to be regressive, falling with disproportionate severity on smaller businesses. This trend can be found across the globe and more importantly, in New Zealand. Prior research has shown that the severity of the regressiveness has increased over time. The current, “one-size-fits-all”, approach used in the New Zealand tax system, and others alike, have created undue complexity for small businesses. This study reviews small business tax regimes and concessions currently implemented (or proposed) in different countries to relieve the compliance burden for smaller businesses. Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States have either implemented a separate tax regime, or offers tax concessions to smaller business taxpayers. New Zealand on the other hand, presents minor ad hoc tax concessions for small business taxpayers, but since 2009, there have been proposals to change this system. This study evaluates and compares all the implemented (or proposed) regimes and concessions of the selected countries. Following from the case studies, interviews are conducted with tax professionals that have worked closely with smaller businesses, in order to shed light on the possibility of implementing a similar regime in New Zealand. The findings show that a small business tax regime has many avenues to consider, however, there is general consensus that suggests small business taxation should be kept as simple as possible. This thesis puts forward a baseline for further discussion and development of a small business regime to reduce compliance costs for smaller businesses.

The online trading is growing widely day by day, which makes safety the biggest concern while carrying out trading by electronic means. As many other operations can be done with digital environment and internet, operation that provides identity validation should also be added to the digital environment. When data are transferred, the user should make sure that there are no changes in the original data while transferring them from sender to receiver. And it has also become necessary to authenticate the users often to ensure security and to avoid fraud. There are lot of different ways of online identification, in which digital signature is considered to be one of the powerful way of authentication. So, the online user use digital signature to authenticate the sender and to maintain the integrity of the document sent. In this paper, a study is carried out to identify the usage of digital signature and the perspective of people towards it in developed and developing countries and a survey is taken to support the theory.

ABSTRACT There has been a change in the nature of work over recent decades with an increase in the use of non-standard forms of work. Non-standard work includes for example the use of contractors and sub-contractors. These forms of employment lead to a greater vulnerability of the workforce. These workers are missing out on union representation, training opportunities and basic employment protection. This directly impacts the safety of the workers due to the confusing legislation over duty of care. It is often unclear who is responsible for providing occupational health and safety (OHS) training for these workers. It is for this reason the following report will attempt to gain a better understanding of the policies and regulations surrounding OHS in two countries. Sweden and New Zealand have been chosen as a focus for this research because they represent two different governing systems. The aim of this research was to describe what structures and policies regulate occupational health and safety matters in Sweden and New Zealand comparatively. It was also the aim of this research to seek insight into the policy conversation around OHS training in both Sweden and New Zealand. Three research questions have been used throughout the report to guide the researcher when selecting relevant documents collating the main themes and overall ensuring that the research stays on track. The questions are as follows: What structures and policies regulate occupational health and safety matters in Sweden and New Zealand? What characterises both the Swedish and the New Zealand work environment? What is the policy conversation around OHS training in Sweden and New Zealand? The methodology choosen for this research was a qualitative approach because greater in-depth  understanding for OHS matters were sought after. The research was focused around policy documents from both Sweden and New Zealand. The documents from each country were chosen because of their current and topical relevance to each country. The main findings from this research were grouped into five themes based on key termes identified in both countries documents. The five themes are as follows:  Work Environment and Regulation OHS Training and Attitudes Worker Participation OHS Research Longer Working Life Conclusions were made based on these themes. OHS regulation was found to be adequate in Sweden in contrast to New Zealand. In New Zealand there is a call for major reforms to be made to the OHS legislation because due to its lack of adequate coverage for the current workforce. The term work environment is used in Sweden and includes a more holistic view, compared to the term occupational health and safety which is used in New Zealand and focuses more on safety and the prevention of work-related harm. Inadequate training for safety representatives were found to be an issue both in Sweden and New Zealand. In Sweden safety representatives are entitled to sufficient paid leave to fulfill their duties including training, in contrast to New Zealand where the safety representatives are entitled to only two days paid leave annualy. OHS training was suggested to be a necessary component in many tertiary education programs both in Sweden and New Zealand. The suggestion was made to better prepare prospective managers who will have OHS responsibilities. Worker participation was found to be a necessary component of a well functioning OHS scheme in both the countries. It was not adequately regulated in New Zealand until the implementation of the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2002. In both Sweden and New Zealand new OHS research functions were suggested to be established. The changing nature of work is highlighted as a concern in both countries, because legislation does not adequately cover the new forms of work and is not conducive to OHS.

This cross cultural study compares the fairness perceptions of New Zealand and Malaysian individual taxpayers of their respective income tax systems, and investigates the consequences of those perceptions, together with other important variables, on their compliance behaviour. A theoretical framework was developed based on Equity Theory and the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The study’s hypotheses were tested using the responses to questionnaire surveys (which included two scenarios) and in-depth telephone interviews, which were conducted sequentially in both countries. Partial Least Squares and thematic analysis were used to analyse the surveys and interviews data, respectively. The results suggest that Malaysian taxpayers have significantly better perceptions of fairness of their income tax systems than their New Zealand counterparts, yet New Zealand taxpayers are more compliant. The most consistently important factor in explaining taxpayers’ compliance behaviour across the two countries is their attitude towards compliance, followed by subjective norms. Fairness perceptions, which are highly influenced by their tax knowledge and perceived complexity of the tax system, are also influential, particularly in the understating other incomes scenario. This cross-cultural study demonstrates that regardless of the differences between the two countries under study (in relation to economies, cultures and ethnicities), taxpayers generally respond in quite similar ways when it comes to meeting their tax obligations.