This thesis examines Norma Cantú's Canícula and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake from the framework of transnationalism characterized by migration, transculturation, and hybridity. With the application of postcolonial theories, related to identity and space, it identifies the space between different cultural and national borders, as liminal space in which the immigrant characters diverge and intersect, ultimately constituting a form of hybrid and transnational identities. While most immigrant writers still explore the themes of complexities of lifestyles, cultural dislocation, and the conflicts of assimilation, and portray their characters as torn between respecting their family traditions and an Americanized way of life, my reading of these two immigrant writers goes beyond this conventional wisdom about the alienated postcolonial subject. Through a comparative analysis of the major themes in Canícula and The Namesake that center on issues of cultural and national border crossing, this thesis contends that Cantú and Lahiri attempt to construct transnational identities for immigrants, while locating and stabilizing them in the United States. Given the nature of the mobility of people and their cultures across nations, both writers deterritorialize the definite national and cultural identities suggesting that individuals cannot confine themselves within the narrow concept of national and cultural boundaries in this globalized world. A comparison between the transnational identity of the 1950s in Canícula and that of the 1970s through the twenty-first century in The Namesake demonstrates that identities are becoming more transnational and global due to the development of technologies, transportation, and global connections between people. In this regard, this thesis attempts to offer a re-vision of the contemporary United States not as a static and insular territory but a participant in transnational relations.

This thesis is concerned with explicating the role of language in mobilising action through management emails. Situated within the context of organisational change in a globalised manufacturing business, the project is framed by behavioural observations from management scholars Palmer and Hardy (2000) of mobilisation strategies that utilise linguistic resources since they: (a) involve a sense of obligation or inclination in directives; (b) show how co-operation will produce mutual benefits; (c) construct desired actions as legitimate, beneficial or inevitable; and (d) use past or anticipated meanings, for or against certain actions. Systemic Functional Linguistics is the underlying framework employed to provide a theoretically principled account of the intuitively derived observations from Palmer and Hardy (2000) which are applied to a sample of twenty-seven email texts, through corpus- and text-based analysis. A major finding is that the representation of action is enacted interpersonally through the verbal group. This view complements experientially dominated accounts of the verbal group which focus on the tense system. Further, action is found to be motivated through the negotiation of evaluative stance. By relating the grammar of the verbal group as well as other resources to the discourse semantics of Appraisal, modulation (of obligation or inclination) is found to be enabled by both negative as well as positive judgements of capacity. Specifically, judgements of capacity are re-interpreted as invocations of high obligation as managers seek to mobilise (further) positive performance. The analysis demonstrates that elements in the verbal group (complex) and Appraisal co-opt action through enabling positioning of the writer, in terms of assessing and grading categorical meanings, manipulating interpersonal time, or foregrounding solidarity. A significant contribution to the thesis is an extension of the system of GRADUATION: FOCUS (Hood, 2004a) through the demonstration of how resources of the verbal group negotiate expectations of appearances and achievements. This study has also extended the resources of GRADUATION: FORCE by applying it to the management context. The practical contribution of the study is that these insights may more explicitly inform management training and enable managers to participate more effectively within their community of practice.

This thesis explores the role of comfort in adventure leisure and in recreational SCUBA diving in particular. In this chapter the study’s central elements of comfort, constraints and negotiation will be introduced. Human engagement with marine locations provides background to the evolution of SCUBA diving as a leisure activity. The concept of comfort is then introduced, with attention given to what comfort means from a range of disciplines. Following this, the use of the term comfort in adventure, leisure and tourism research is reviewed. Divers’ constraints to comfort are also briefly examined here in this introduction, to build understanding of how comfort can be experienced during adventure, and SCUBA diving. Leisure constraints-negotiation research is discussed briefly and linked to SCUBA diving experiences. The objectives of this study are then presented prior to introducing the qualitative research paradigm that guides the research, and the thesis outline.

This is an exploration of process-oriented dialogue and how it is applied in group work and conflict facilitation. It encompasses a range of group-work applications, beginning with an investigation of useful approaches in bringing opposing parties together in dialogue situations. From there it unfolds the ways in which dialogue, in the midst of conflict, contributes to greater understanding of others' positions, and the creation of community spirit. A number of dynamics inherent in conflicting situations are explored, including the belief systems and dynamics present which deter parties from coming together to dialogue after conflict, whether interventions can help shift the attitudes of conflicting parties, whether discussion of the conflict can be useful, and the role of the facilitator. Models of conflict resolution, community building, and dialogue are introduced, and the Process Work model of group work is explored. Various case studies are described, along with surveys from two groups. The findings are analysed in the light of different paradigms and the application of process-oriented ideologies and methods and their effectiveness are critiqued / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of the thesis is to provide an empirical study of a Sino-foreign joint venture negotiation model that integrates strategies from western literature into a Chinese environment and cultural context. The findings and recommendations of the study aim to help foreign negotiators penetrate the important Chinese market through a systematic approach emerging from this Sino-foreign joint venture negotiation model. The thesis provides a holistic view on Sino-foreign joint venture negotiation. Case study method was determined as the best methodology. The suitability of the Sino-foreign joint venture negotiation model and the research protocol of this study were demonstrated via 5 in-depth interviews and a pilot test before the actual fieldwork. The major findings of this thesis suggest that foreign negotiators need to manage complex areas such as the Chinese environment, the company requirements of both organisations and the Chinese negotiating process. Besides, the foreign negotiators need to equip themselves with Problem Solving Attitude (PSA) and an understanding of Chinese cultural concepts, such as guanxi, face, renqing, reciprocity and trust so as to make the negotiation effective. Different strategies emerge at different stages of the process and there is no direct relationship between successful negotiation and joint venture outcomes. A model and strategies for joint venture establishment in China are provided, but the model itself has no predictive power on joint venture outcomes such as profit satisfaction. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Service-oriented architectures (SOA), and in particular Web services, have quickly become a popular technology to connect applications both within and across enterprise boundaries. However, as services are increasingly used to implement critical functionality, security has become an important concern impeding the widespread adoption of SOA. Trust negotiation is an approach to access control that may be applied in scenarios where service requesters are often unknown in advance, such as for services available via the public Internet. Rather than relying on requesters' identities, trust negotiation makes access decisions based on the level of trust established between the requester and the provider in a negotiation, during which the parties exchange credentials, which are signed assertions that describe some attributes of the owner. However, managing the evolution of trust negotiation policies is a difficult problem that has not been sufficiently addressed to date. Access control policies have a lifecycle, and they are revised based on applicable business policies. Additionally, because a trust relationship established in a trust negotiation may be long lasting, their evolution must also be managed. Simply allowing a negotiation to continue according to an old policy may be undesirable, especially if new important constraints have been added. In this thesis, we introduce a model-driven trust negotiation framework for service-oriented applications. The framework employs a model for trust negotiation, based on state machines, that allows automated generation of the control structures necessary to enforce trust negotiation policies from the visual model of the policy. Our policy model also supports lifecycle management. We provide sets of operations to modify policies and to manage ongoing negotiations, and operators for identifying and managing impacts of changes to trust negotiation policies on ongoing trust negotiations. The framework presented in the thesis has been implemented in the Trust-Serv prototype, which leverages industry specifications such as WS-Security and WS-Trust to offer a container-centric mechanism for deploying trust negotiation that is transparent to the services being protected.

In this thesis I investigate the process of international negotiation to resolve a serious dispute between Australia and East Timor over offshore oil and gas, which arose after East Timor’s transition to independence in 1999. The central aim is to uncover and analyse the dynamics of the negotiations, and to explain how outcomes were determined. The question of negotiated outcomes is of special significance given the extent to which East Timor was able to move Australia beyond its preferred outcome. In this case, the seemingly weaker party was able to overcome a more powerful bargaining opponent. My aim in writing this thesis is to explain why that was possible and how it was achieved.

The thesis examines the role of regional labour councils in local employment generation. It specifically analyses the case of an Australian regional labour council, the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC), between 1981 and 1996. The Illawarra region was the centre of SCLC activity. It was an industrialised region that experienced high levels of unemployment in the period. These were greater than the State and national averages, which reflected a geographical concentration of unemployment in certain regions in Australia. The SCLC attempted to address this issue, as it was part of the union structure that was specifically focused on the regional level and on regional concerns. The study argues that the SCLC developed a local employment generation strategy and it examines how and why this was adopted and pursued. It finds that the SCLC was well placed at the regional level and was well resourced with a capacity to influence the external environment through its utilisation of both political and industrial methods in a period of agreeable internal relations. The research identifies the development of its local employment generation strategy. Sometimes the SCLC pursued its strategy in a manner of ad hoc decision-making and muddling through, while at other times it involved characteristic and distinctive regular patterns. The thesis concludes by evaluating the SCLC�s strategy of local employment generation and by exploring the applicability of the general trade union literature on methods and strategy to regional labour councils.

<p>In the international climate change negotiations it has been hard to find a sustainable agreement about how to address the anthropogenic impacts on the climate. This is because the issue is very complicated and comprises many social and economic aspects. Because of the struggling in the international negotiations is it necessary to analyze how the climate change issue is understood in different regions and countries of the world. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how actors within the climate policy sphere in China frame the climate change issue. In the near future, China will become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and with a population of 1.3 billion people; China is one of the key countries in the international climate negations. The thesis analyses how two key actor groups - decision makers and scientists connected to the Chinese climate change administration - frame the climate change issue in semi-structured interviews. The respondents frame the climate change issue as a large obstacle for a future Chinese development, both economically and socially. To address climate change in China the respondents think that technology innovations and transfer of technology from the developed countries will be very important. Therefore the respondents think it is vitally important to continue with the international climate negotiations in the future.</p>

<p>This study has been written to increase our knowledge about Sino-Western business relations and to understand how to successfully embark in China. It aims to create a deeper context understanding of the Chinese consumer and the Chinese market – in order to successfully manage your business in China. A qualitative case study methodology is used, involving the abductive method and a hermeneutic approach. Appropriate interviewees have been selected, i.e. those having valid and reliable insights and experiences to this study. The empirical results are portrayed as short stories along with reflections, to enlighten key findings in the research. Results of the investigation show that a willingness to understand and being humble are key in the creation of a successful business relationship with the Chinese. Certainly, the importance of guanxi and trust are tremendous. Thus, learn the rules and play by them – use them to your advantage. Show empathy and patience and trust the universal law of reciprocity. Indeed, as we understand the underlying forces, the cultural values and traditions, we appreciate how to effectively communicate with the Chinese and ultimately how to deliver value to create a healthy business relationship in our marketing efforts. A plethora of stories are presented that illuminate various situations that experienced Western business managers have encountered, and how to manage these. Key findings in this research may benefit not only academics, as new theory is introduced, but also everyone interested in China and aiming to create a healthy Sino-Western relationship. Finally, top managerial implications are presented that are of relevance to readers both intending to and already doing business in China. Some of the most important ones advise us to remain patient, to gather all the information possible and to never underestimate the Chinese.</p>