<p><strong><p>Abstract</p><p>Attitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian’s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden. We used three theories to explain our aim. These are Jürgen Habermas theory of social communication, theory about professions and Christian Grönroos theory of Service Management.</p><p>We found that our informants both see the physical meeting with the library and the social exchanges with the librarians as important parts of the user’s experience of the library.</p><p>The three libraries that we visited work in different ways to improve their customer service. One library has developed a policy for concrete ways to improve the social exchange with the library user. Another library is working with a policy and the third library handle attitude questions more implicit in the daily work and in a specialised group. We could see that the informants who worked at the library which had a policy and an under-standing of the importance of customer service as a central part of the organisation regarded those questions as being very important. Some informants could not see how customer service could get improved in another way than just discussing these issues in groups, meetings or in connection to seminars.</p><p>The changing of attitudes of members of the staff can be complicated however because it, at some level, is about individual changes. We believe that a person has to be motivated to make these changes. To improve this motivation the organisation has to create opportunities for the staff to critically reflect upon their working situa-tion. In that way we believe that the staff can experience security and motivation to do a good job which then has a positive impact on the customer service provided. The acknowledgement of the importance of customer service within an organization has to engage everybody and the whole organisation at all its levels.</p><p>We think that customer service in the library setting will become more important in the future as a response to the technical evolution and all the automated elements in our society. The importance of actual meetings in-crease as our society increasingly communicates via digital means.</p></strong></p>

Aim:  To describe and develop understanding of  the patient’s first encounter with the involved persons at the scene of an accident and at the emergency department; with a special focus on describing the meaning of emergency care of patients in these caring contexts.  Method: The thesis uses a reflective lifeworld research (RLR) approach founded on phenomenological philosophy. The purpose with this approach is to describe the essential meaning and the variations of a phenomenon. Interviews with a lifeworld perspective were used for data collection and analyzed according to the RLR approach for searching for the essence of the phenomenon.  The four essences in the studies (I-IV) establish a general structure for the phenomenon. Findings:  Emergency care is characterized by an organisation, whose goal and resources are focused on life-saving, and that encounters a human being with needs of emergency care as well as existential support. The responsibility in emergency care means an intertwining of doing and being.  The one who is in charge takes responsibility for performing or “doing” medical actions, and by “being” close and present in the situation the patient can at the same time feel an existential support. The responsibility for the injured or ill body is handed over to a chain of persons with more and more specialized competence and resources. This hand-over entails a relief for all involved but fails in one link in the chain, namely to explicitly hand back  the responsibility to the patient.  When the patient’s condition allows the distance to be larger the responsibility pales and the existential support decreases. A gap between doing and being arises where the patient is left to regain control and independence. The intertwining of doing and being, which appears as soon as the one in charge is close and present to the patient, facilitates the hand-over to the patient who in a natural way is able to receive the responsibility with possibilities to be able to conclude the encounter. Conclusions: A new understanding of emergency care appears which entails more than just life support measures.  Emergency care includes different ways of communication in order to hand over the responsibility and complete the care chain back to the patient in a safe way. The results highlight the importance of empowering patients with a confirming, communicative contact throughout the whole caring process in order for them to retain their identity. There are also implications for educating students and personnel in inter-professional communication and work. In order to assist the intertwining between doing and being there are needs for the development of supportive structures for inter-professional reflection, which in turn would improve the interaction between patients and professionals in their encounter.

The study sought to explore the emerging adult sibling dyad through qualitativeinquiry. By doing so, the collected data bring new meaning to why and how emerging adult siblings communicate. Also, by including both siblings, this study sought to highlight a different perspective of sibling communication. Extant research on the emerging adulthood stage of life is limited. The current study explored the sibling dyad during this phase of life, and three themes emerged: siblings become friends, changes during emerging adulthood, conflict negotiation, and taking a parental role.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 155 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: At a glance, journalists and public relations practitioners appear to have a dysfunctional relationship, despite having many professional similarities. Both groups use comparable skill sets in their jobs, including writing, information gathering, and making decisions based on news values. Both groups often work with each other in their professional positions; journalists look to public relations practitioners for sources and news tips, while public relations practitioners look to journalists to help send organizational messages to publics. To better understand the issues of trust in this unique working relationship, ten journalists and ten government public information officers from the Tampa Bay, Florida area were interviewed about their perceptions of the integrity, dependability, and competence of their professional counterparts. Using a coorientational lens, themes derived from the comments of both groups were compared for accuracy and agreement. / ABSTRACT: The results indicated that both journalists and public relations practitioners were slow to generalize positive or negative experiences to other individuals or organizations, and that they mostly understood the professional ethics and motivation of the other occupation. However, once an established trust was broken in a relationship, participants universally described that it could not be regained. By comparing themes between the two groups, the data indicated that there were more issues of true consensus than any other situation. Both journalists and government communicators indicated a mutual respect for their professional counterparts and a shared appreciation for the principle of open government, though the data suggested that the two sides were unaware of this agreement. This exploratory qualitative analysis uncovered several interesting trust-related issues in this unique working relationship, many of which are worthy of additional research and exploration. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Diss. : Philosophische Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft II : München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität : 1989.

Not available / text

Abstract Attitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian’s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden. We used three theories to explain our aim. These are Jürgen Habermas theory of social communication, theory about professions and Christian Grönroos theory of Service Management. We found that our informants both see the physical meeting with the library and the social exchanges with the librarians as important parts of the user’s experience of the library. The three libraries that we visited work in different ways to improve their customer service. One library has developed a policy for concrete ways to improve the social exchange with the library user. Another library is working with a policy and the third library handle attitude questions more implicit in the daily work and in a specialised group. We could see that the informants who worked at the library which had a policy and an under-standing of the importance of customer service as a central part of the organisation regarded those questions as being very important. Some informants could not see how customer service could get improved in another way than just discussing these issues in groups, meetings or in connection to seminars. The changing of attitudes of members of the staff can be complicated however because it, at some level, is about individual changes. We believe that a person has to be motivated to make these changes. To improve this motivation the organisation has to create opportunities for the staff to critically reflect upon their working situa-tion. In that way we believe that the staff can experience security and motivation to do a good job which then has a positive impact on the customer service provided. The acknowledgement of the importance of customer service within an organization has to engage everybody and the whole organisation at all its levels. We think that customer service in the library setting will become more important in the future as a response to the technical evolution and all the automated elements in our society. The importance of actual meetings in-crease as our society increasingly communicates via digital means.

This study sought to establish some ofthe problems that occur during a consultation process between a healthcare worker and a patient, such as intangible and tangible verbal/nonverbal communication problems. Tangible nonverbal problems refer to eye contact, gestures, body posture and facial expression. Tangible verbal problems refer to voice tone/attitude and language and intangible to race, age, gender, education and culture. It was made clear that the problems involved in the consultation process were, in the main, common to other fonns of communication such as that between a reference librarian and a client, customer, visitor or user. The factors that hindered communication were investigated by means of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The sample population was made up of 100 black isiZulu speaking females and seven healthcare workers of a heterogeneous background. The perception ofthe respondents in relation to the above-named factors (language, age, gender, attitude, culture, education, gestures and postures) was sought. The analysis of the results obtained showed that some of the significant factors that are a problem in communication include voice tone/attitude, eye contact, sitting position, gestures, facial expression and language. Patients, for the sake ofeffective concentration and free flow ofinfonnation, preferred healthcare workers who were polite, had a cheerful demeanour and who sat still and straight up (not looking around or standing). This is noted because the majority of the patients acknowledged such healthcare workers and were not satisfied with those who behaved otherwise. For example, in relation to previous consultations (irrespective of the Clinics), out of the 70 respondents who encountered problems, 61 (87%) in despair cited cases of rudeness, of which the majority of such cases related to African healthcare workers. Culture also mattered, when seen in terms of people being able to speak the same language and understand one another, with respect to the contextual meaning of words. As far as eye contact was concerned, it was apparent that adjustments had been made. For example, it was discovered that although it is the Zulu culture to avoid eye contact, especially between the young and the old, Zulu people have come to accept eye contact in a crosscultural South Africa. Their acceptance was also seen as due to the advantages ofeye contact. This was made clear by the fact that ofthe 90 (91%) respondents who acknowledged the fact that the healthcare workers maintained eye contact during the consultation process, 87 (97%) said it was polite as it gave them the assurance that the healthcare workers were paying attention to what they were saying. Among the socio-demographic variables investigated, the gender of the healthcare worker emerged as one ofthe important predictors of effective communication. This is because the majority of the respondents indicated feeling freer with someone of the same gender groupmg. Certain recommendations were made which were considered vital in improving not only the consultation process but any other form of communication, including that between a reference librarian and a client. The main recommendations were that the healthcare workers be polite and endeavour to speak the main language as the patients. Due to the fact that some healthcare workers hurry during consultation, it was recommended that more staff be employed. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Bakalauro baigiamajame darbe atliekamas vadovo bendravimo su pavaldiniais vertinimas paslaugų sektoriuose (Šiaulių miesto valyklose, viešbučiuose, Šiaulių ir Norvegijos skalbyklose). Klausimynas, pagal kurį atlikta darbuotojų apklausa tiriamų paslaugų sektorių įmonėse, parengtas remianti vadybinės literatūros autorių (Jasinavičius, Sokol, 2005; Kasiulis, Barvydienė, 2005; Baršauskienė, Janulevičiūtė, 1999) išskirtomis asmeninėmis vadovo savybėmis, originaliu Costigan ir Schmeidler sudarytu bendravimo klimato (CCI) klausimynu bei lietuvių autorių (Bakanauskienė, Petkevičiūtė, 2003; Misevičius, Urbonienė, 2006) išskirtais bendravimo trukdžiais. Apklausoje dalyvavo 181 respondentų (63 – viešbučių darbuotojų, 65 – valyklos, 26 – Šiaulių skalbyklos, 27 – Norvegijos skalbyklos). Tyrimo metu nustatyta, kad visuose paslaugų sektoriuose išryškėjo trys darbuotojams imponuojančios vadovo asmeninės savybės: santykių šiltumas, nuoširdumas, empatija. Tiriamose paslaugų sferose dominuoja palaikantis bendravimo klimatas, tačiau yra ir gynybinio bendravimo klimato apraiškų. Palaikantį bendravimo klimatą labiausiai stiprina tokie veiksniai kaip „problemų įvardinimas darbuotojams“, „vadovo pagarbus elgesys su pavaldiniais“ ir „vadovo aiškus ir objektyvus situacijos apibūdinimas“. Tuo tarpu gynybinio bendravimo klimato raišką labiausiai stiprina „vadovo asmeninės pozicijos pabrėžimas“ ir per didelis „vadovo asmeninės atsakomybės prisiėmimas už darbo rezultatus“. Tiriamuose paslaugų sektoriuose... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of the paper is to compare supervisor - employee communication patterns in a different type of service providing organizations (laundries, hotels in Šiauliai, Šiauliai washhouse, Norway washhouse). Framework of this study is the personal supervisor characteristics, offered by managerial literature authors (Jasinavičius, Sokol, 2005; Kasiulis, Barvydienė, 2005; Baršauskienė, Janulevičiūtė, 1999) original communication climate inventory (CCI) operationalized by J. I. Costigan and M. A. Schmeidler (1984) and communication barriers, offered by lithuanian authors (Bakanauskienė, Petkevičiūtė, 2003; Misevičius, Urbonienė, 2006). There were 181 respondents involved in this survey (63 - employees from Šiauliai hotels, 65 - employees from Šiauliai laundries, 26 - employees from Šiauliai washhouse, 27 - employees from Norway washhouse). The final results of the survey were grouped and interpreted as well as conclusions made. While carrying out the survey it was found out that sincerity, empathy, warm relationships are the most important personal supervisor characteristics. The results showed that supportive communication climate dominates in all service sectors, but there are some manifestations of the defensive communication climates as well. The most important factors of the supportive climate dominance in the organizations are that supervisors define clearly problems, treat with their employees with respect and characterize situation clearly and objective. The most important... [to full text]

The research reported in this thesis is basically applied in purpose. However the theoretical siqnificance of interactional sociolinquistics is explored by showinq that it is based on a philosophy of science which differs fundamentally from the versions of positivism which have informed linquistics over the years. The research methods consistent with this methodology are also outlined. The applied siqnificance of the sub-field is demonstrated more qenerally at first by examininq its contribution to the understandinq of the relationship between lanquaqe and context. Thereafter the contribution to the understandinq of this relationship is explored in more specific terms by examininq the role of contextual information in the form of culturally-specific interactional styles in the accomplishinq of prejudice and neqative cultural stereotypes in intercultural communication in South Africa. The siqnificance of this explanation is explored further by showinq how such an interactional account fits into a more comprehensive explanation of the causes of discrimination in South Africa, one that includes, also. structural explanations, and explanations in terms of the psycholoqy of individuals. This prepares the way for a consideration of the possible contribution of interactional sociolinquistics to solutions to the problem of discrimination both in South Africa and elsewhere. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1987.