Communities of repair in Kampala salvage phones; they bring dead ones back to life and rework recycled ones to operate with unfamiliar networks. How do these communities of repair congeal around the mobile phone? How do they form and develop? How is 'repair' understood and negotiated? The 'moment' of mobile phone repair exposes the multi-layered physical and social relationships that underpin mobile telephony in Kampala. Mobile phone workshops provide a rich and productive terrain for thinking about both the sociality and materiality of human-technology relations. Multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork of markets and small, informal businesses will enable the detailed exploration of socio-technical assemblages of mobile phone 'maintenance' and 'repair'. Perhaps the Kampalan 'repair cultures' can also suggest some new approaches towards computing and telephony in mature markets globally, particularly with reference to the growing problem of e-waste. The Ugandan proliferation of mobile repair businesses gives an insight into a new paradigm for computing, where hard and software are left more radically open to upgrade, and companies move towards a role of service provision (Graham and Thrift 2007: 19).

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a familiar part of the world of work. And as technology in general becomes increasingly sophisticated, ICT is in most cases, a means by which organisations and employers attempt to get everyday workplace tasks carried out more efficiently, saving on time and resources, and very often replacing some of the tasks carried out by experts themselves. I used ethnographic research methods to explore firsthand how my respondents, from a diverse range of professional backgrounds, use ICT in the workplace, to either replace or enhance, the jobs that they do. My thesis draws upon the philosophy of Heidegger, by using his theoretical ideas to investigate how my respondents encounter ICT at work in various ways. The application of Heidegger's ideas to this modern context, has enabled me to develop two fundamental arguments in this thesis. My first argument is that experts have a practical grasp of the jobs they do at work. Following Heidegger, and others, I call this kind of practical understanding know-how. I argue that know-how demonstrates the kind of understanding that is fundamental for my respondents to carry out their jobs, and is one which cannot simply be extracted and programmed into or replaced by an ICT system. In fact, attempts to extract expertise, I argue, result in a deficient mode of understanding and can ultimately be inferior in carrying out the tasks at work. The second argument in this thesis also draws upon Heidegger's philosophy, but in this case focuses on the way in which my respondents communicate via mediating technology (various forms of ICT specifically used for communicating with others). Here, mediating technology seemingly replaces or enhances how workers are able to communicate with others in the workplace, by using for example, email, telephones and video conferencing, rather than communicating with them face-to-face, whereby they are bodily-present with others. I argue that contemporary advances in ICT have had varying effects, on work environments and experiences of work because of distancing in communicative processes. My arguments drawing on Heidegger's ideas, are supported by the primary data I gathered from a series of ethnographic interviews with my nine respondents and from participant observation with one respondent in particular (a commercial aeroplane pilot), who took me to an aviation base to fly on a small aeroplane, and also aboard a simulated aeroplane used for training pilots.

A screenplay is sometimes said to be a blueprint for a film, and its genesis and development is therefore important to our understanding of how films are created. Film business studies has traditionally avoided close study of the screenplay development process, perhaps as a result of the film studies emphasis on analysing the text of the completed film, and the auteur theory emphasis on the importance of the director; both of which may have marginalised the study of development and the creativity of development practitioners. Professional screenplay development is a team activity, with creative collaboration between screenwriters, producers, development executives, financiers, and directors. So how does power and creative control shift between members of this team, especially as people arrive or leave? And how does this multiple authorship affect the auteur theory idea that the director is the creative author of the film? This research sets out to open debates around the process and nature of the business of script development, and consider how development practitioners experience, collaborate and participate in the process of screenplay development in the UK today. It uses original interviews, observation and hermeneutic reflection; and asks how cross-disciplinary ideas around creativity, managing creative people, motivation, organisational culture, and team theory could be used to consider how the creative team of writer, producer, director and development executive can work effectively together. It proposes new theories, including defining the independent film value chain and the commitment matrix, analysing changing power relationships during development, and establishing new typologies around film categories and their relationship to funding. The core of this PhD by Prior Publication is the book The Screenplay Business: managing creativity and script development in the film industry. The supporting paper explores the contexts of film industry studies; the film value chain; auteurship and screenplay studies.

No description available.

The turn of the millennium bore witness to a phenomenon: the use of promotion trailers for a variety of products. Both stage theatre and the publishing industries came under the media spotlight for using trailers to promote their wares throwing into sharp contrast the normativity of film trailers. Despite increased academic study of the film trailer, few have considered the trailer outside the industrial context of the film industry. Coupled with this trend in focus, is the tendency within the literature to suggest that the trailer exists as a unique form because they exist in the same medium as the product that promote. Added to this is the tendency to rely on an a priori definition that is not explored fully. By way of intervention with these key issues, this thesis considers the aesthetics and emergence of the trailer in entertainment industries other than film and serves as a counterpoint to the cinema centric imbalance within the study of the trailer. Using a corpus of audiovisual texts identified as trailers through UK press websites, this thesis draws from the popular understanding of the trailer in order to explore the historical and industrial trajectory of these other forms of trailer. Taking the form of case studies organised by the industry in which the trailer's product operates this thesis explores the historical context in which the trailer emerged and the aesthetic trends at work in the current trailer therein. In exploring both the history and the aesthetic representation of the trailer in the industry this thesis moves the study of trailers away from repetitive debates surrounding the film industry and opens up the possibility of trailers as a cultural phenomenon and simultaneous marketing trend. Through providing a grounded understanding of the trailer's use within contemporary entertainment industries, the thesis argues that the term 'trailer' has moved beyond advertising for films. It suggests the trailer has come to typify promotion for any product that is at its core, is an experience. In doing so thesis presents a much needed counterpoint and challenge to cinema-centric analysis of the trailer.

The telecommunications sector faces rapid technology changes, which require huge capital investment, changes in rules and regulations, changes in customer behaviour and increasing customer demand. This rapid development directs how the telecommunication service operators deploy their strategies and network infrastructure and continue to evolve their business models. A unique requirement of the telecom industry is the need to manage and deploy planned, unplanned and emergency resources concurrently. The ‘dynamic capabilities’ (DC) approach can be used as a framework to respond to this critical requirement for both managers and researchers. This study has a particular focus on dynamic reconfiguration capabilities (DRC), as these play a critical role in the deployment of strategy. The current literature shows clear limitations regarding how DRC emerge and how they can be used to manage concurrent strategy approaches, which are relevant to the telecommunications sector. Five case studies from a telecommunication service provider are used in this research. Three types of data were collected, namely: 23 interviews, 10 direct observations and over 120 documents. A two-stage coding process is conducted for each case, and causal network diagrams are used to extract findings. A cross-case analysis enabled the identification of the empirical practices relating to the research questions. Findings from the case studies confirm the relevance of several practices previously highlighted in the literature. They also revealed additional practices that support the DRC lifecycle. The case studies are performing most of the practices outlined in the theory of the DRC lifecycle framework, with different degrees of emphasis, especially in the deployment phase. This research extends the current theory by identifying the role of DRC in deploying concurrent strategic approaches. It extends the resource-based view (RBV) and agility theories, which fail to adequately address long-term plans, and collapse when the market is very dynamic. Furthermore, it contributes to the DC literature by identifying the organisational practices that support development, deployment and improvement in the telecommunication industry. Also, it addresses an important gap in the literature by providing organisational practices and evidence of the DRC role to support the concurrent approaches to strategy deployment in the telecommunication industry.

The development of a practical solution to all-optical buffer remains a challenge for high-speed (> 20 Gbit/s) optical networks. Most of the research in the field has concentrated on building test-bed solutions, however the literature review shows little evidence in the use of mathematical models to aid in the design process. This PhD study is an attempt to design and develop a mathematical model of an all-optical buffer suitable for use within optical time division multiplexed systems. The emphasis is placed on recirculating fibre loop buffers because of their inherent storage advantages. The most critical of these advantages is that the storage delay time is independent of the fibre length. While there is a precedent of employing large recirculating fibre loop architectures to simulate ultra-long haul transmission lines in research projects, their use in short length (< 500m) buffering architectures is not prevalent in the literature. This work finds a niche in this domain where the physical effects of the buffer components (e.g. optical switches) have not been previously documented. In order to optimise the bit error rate performance and characterise its dependence on the physical buffer characteristics, the buffer models are designed and simulated in MATLAB and VPI. The associated mathematical models, developed in this work, are validated by the results produced using these simulation packages. The benefit of this research is reflected in the fact that varying the parameters of the mathematical model effectively simulates the changing of physical device characteristics. Consequently, the designing process becomes less arduous, as lengthy simulation times are now reduced. Moreover, as physical implementation can now be delayed until the buffer design is optimised, production cost may be reduced.

This thesis is a historiography of early cinema in Calcutta and moves away from the received paradigm of ‘national’ cinema to consider the larger transnational framework within which to narrate histories of early cinema. It also positions the city as a critical frame from which early film historiography can be generated. The study maps out the emergence of the Calcutta film industry, from its beginnings in 1897 to the rise of the studios and its stabilisation by the 1930s. In the process the study challenges received film history to reveal a complex, multi-layered and robust film industry in Calcutta that emerged concurrently with Bombay – a narrative that has largely been written out of nationalist discourses of ‘Indian cinema’. The thesis addresses a lacuna in the history of film in South Asia by shifting the focus to Calcutta, from Bombay; by moving away from the film text to focus on institutional history; and by moving from an interrogation of production histories to placing histories of film circulation at the centre of film historiography. This is the first enquiry based on studio records to discuss film history in India in this period. It accesses rare industry documents found in the archives of the Aurora Film Corporation, the oldest surviving film studio in India. The Aurora papers bring to light new evidence on the everyday workings of the film industry in the 1930s, including details of circulation practices and trans-regional networks that inextricably link the three key industries of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras in complex relationships. The Aurora papers also reveal details of transnational circulation amongst the Indian diaspora in the 1930s and broadens the canvas of enquiry into early South Asian cinema. Thereby this study connects the Calcutta industry to other global film production/distribution centres of London and Hollywood, to other film nodes in colonial India – Bombay, Madras, Lahore, Rangoon – and to other film nodes across the Indian Ocean – in Fiji, Singapore, Mombasa and Baghdad.

The market growth of content and data services in the mobile telecoms industry entails the development of complex industry networks or 'ecosystems'. This research stems from the emerging Location-Based Services (LBS) sector, which has suffered the slow-start dynamics that often belie optimistic forecasts of new technologies. An exploratory and generic industry-level model is developed using the system dynamics simulation modelling approach to explain the start-up problem. This serves as a dynamic theory for the emerging LBS industry market where service diffusion is based on the growth of the installed base of an embedded product. Supply-demand interactions occur through complementary bandwagon effects in which benefits accrue from services that complement the main product. Econometric estimation is compared with system dynamics calibration to test a range of diffusion models on historic data, revealing some evidence of bandwagon effects. The model is proposed as a generic structure for market growth in mobile data services in general and as a tentative theory to explain the phenomenon of technology 'hype' cycles. The model leads to broad policy proposals on how to alleviate the start-up problem. Launching products without attending to service quality can mean that consumers become disillusioned whereas ensuring a high quality user experience requires a collaborative and long-term view of ecosystem development. This implies that major players such as handset manufacturers or mobile operators must play a central co-ordinating role. Validation of exploratory models of emerging markets is based more in terms of plausibility and usefulness, given the lack of historic data. A validation framework in the three dimensions of model content, process and outcome provides a holistic and semi-quantitative profile of the utility of generic models. A validation profile is proposed that can be used in a formative role to clarify model purpose and aid planning in model-based interventions.

No description available.