Zugl.: Köln, Universiẗat, Diss., 1999 u.d.T.: Martens, Knuth: Beteiligungsfinanzierung, asymmetrische Information und Managementüberwachung durch den Aufsichtsrat.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-268)

Zugl.: Weimar, Bauhausuniv., Diss., 2003

Tidigare forskning kring de två aktörerna hotell och onlineresebyråer har koncentrerats runt intäktsoptimering samt konsumentbeteende gällande omdömen relaterat till onlineresebyråer. Det råder däremot en avsaknad gällande tidigare forskning runt hotellens strategiska marknadsföringsbeslut i och med att de ansluter sig till olika onlineresebyråer. Syftet med studien är att få en insikt i hur hotellen arbetar med sin marknadsföring gentemot onlineresebyråerna. Vidare besvaras frågeställningen om vad effekten blir när hotellen lämnar över delar av sin marknadsföring till onlineresebyråerna. I studien tillämpades ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt där fem telefonintervjuer genomfördes. Resultaten indikerar på att hotellen i studien inkluderar onlineresebyråerna i delar av sina marknadsföringsstrategier och att det i viss bemärkelse kan vara positivt men å andra sidan kan medföra vissa risker för de olika hotellen. / Previous research on the two actors’ hotels and online travel agencies has been concentrated around revenue management as well as consumer behavior regarding ratings related to online travel agencies. There is, however, a lack of research regarding hotels’ strategic marketing decision when joining online travel agencies. The purpose of this study is to explain how hotels approach their marketing strategies in relation to online travel agencies. Furthermore, the paper answers the question; what are the effects for hotels, when handing over part of their marketing to online travel agencies. The study applied a qualitative approach where five telephone interviews were conducted. The results indicate that the hotels in the study include online travel agencies in parts of their marketing strategies, and that in some regards can be positive but on the other hand, can lead to certain risks for the hotels.

The purpose of this thesis was to conduct qualitative and semi-structured interviews with officials at the Ethiopian Federal Ethics and Anticorruption Commission (FEACC) in order to describe its strategies and efforts in curbing corruption in Ethiopia. My interview questions were based on a comprehensive analytical framework, drawn from the experience of seminal scholars within the study of corruption as well as three empirical cases of successful anticorruption agencies (ACAs). Therefore, this study is a rare, bordering to unique, attempt to combine established research with empirics in order to study the Ethiopian case and by offering a method for carrying out future studies with similar aims. The result of my fieldwork paints a detailed picture of FEACC operations and their strengths and weaknesses in carrying out FEACC's mandate. Consequently, I am able to assess FEACC's capacity building needs as well as offering suggestions for future research concerning the furthering our knowledge about how to design and implement anticorruption strategies and efforts.

This thesis brings together eighteenth-century attitudes to the abduction of women portrayed by the law, by newspapers, and in fiction. I focus attention on the interest these different forms of narrative share in scrutinizing women’s behaviour and argue that the abduction plot is more important than its status as a stock literary convention would imply. Rather, it is a pliant, complex, and nuanced motif that allows writers the space to explore the difficult and contradictory position of women and attitudes to sexual relations. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part comprises two chapters that look at abduction from an historical perspective. The first chapter examines the legal context of abduction as a criminal act and the second chapter examines the social context of ‘abduction’ as a euphemism for a sexual adventure. This part includes preliminary analysis of abduction plots in Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788) and Ann Radcliffe’s The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: A Highland Story (1789). The second part comprises three chapters in which I read a range of novels for their abduction plots and scenes. Chapter three focusses on reviewing and on lesser known novels that are not widely read today. It examines the uneasy dialogue between novels and the way they were conveyed to readers. I argue that reviewing presents a discourse of aggression towards women. Chapter four considers abduction plots in domestic fiction focussing on a short story from Eliza Haywood’s The Female Spectator (1744-46), Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54), and Sarah Fielding’s The History of Ophelia (1760). Chapter five considers the gothic abduction plot in Frances Burney’s Camilla, or a Picture of Youth (1796), Charlotte Smith’s The Young Philosopher (1798) and Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791). I take an historicist approach and underpin my analysis of fictional abduction plots with newspaper research that suggests ‘abduction’ had a meaning in social and cultural discourse that associated it with gossip and innuendo. This research demonstrates that newspapers played an important role in establishing the ambiguity of ‘abduction’ in the public consciousness. I argue that this journalistic discourse contributed to the suppression of abduction as a violent crime that endangered women. I suggest that the introduction of comprehensive reviewing created the space for a discourse of aggression to flourish. Many reviews are short, pithy comments criticising a novel as derivative, badly written, and immoral. I argue that a series of reviews appearing on a single page gives the impression that violence towards women is a normal everyday occurrence and abduction is a familiar hazard on the road to domestic felicity. I conclude that ‘abduction’ is a porous term in which disparate ideas – sexual aggression, violent crime, and euphemistic social commentary – are held in tension with each other. This tension enables a complex interpretation of what at first appears to be a simple narrative of violent male aggression and female culpability. The ambiguity this tension creates reveals the abduction plot as a versatile motif that challenges the social hierarchy and posits an alternative narrative for women.

During the end of the nineteenth century, breach of promise laws, which had protected unmarried but engaged women for centuries during their vulnerable engagement period, began to come under public scrutiny. The demonization of this legal protection coincided with increased legal agency in other areas of married life for women, but in most historical and critical discussions of this era, breach of promise, also nicknamed Heartbalm, has been overlooked, and the purpose of this dissertation is to examine canonical and non-canonical literature from this period and recontextualize these works in light of breach of promise's historical impact on courting and unmarried couples. Both men and women writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century picked up on the dramatic potential of these lawsuits at a time when the definition of marriage was transitioning from a relationship based on fixed economic gender roles established in the nineteenth century to a relationship of companionship and emotional connection. For many young people, the breach of promise suit insinuated that women sought marriage purely out of financial gain and stability, and as such, women were often branded gold diggers, or worse, for their emotional disconnect with their lovers. By bringing together American literature, cultural and legal histories and headlines from The New York Times, this dissertation also informs readers about the serious social activism at work in what might otherwise appear to be insignificant stories about family conflicts over marriage and family finances. The works of William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Anita Loos, Margaret Deland and others benefit from putting their texts alongside newspaper headlines and case studies from their era because breach of promise was often a covert force in those stories and only careful reading of the texts brings out the complexity of the characters' pre-marriage anxieties. In the films of the 1930s, however, heartbalm was demonized to the point where it now appeared ridiculous, and in 1935, the law was rescinded in a number of states across the country, and effectively dead. As a protection available for young women, however, its absence led to an increase in unmarried women without any legal tool available to hold an absconding lover responsible for his unfulfilled commitments. Though the study ends with this observation, the 1935 arguments mark a complete reversal from the ideology expressed by nineteenth century lawmakers who enforced heartbalm and defended its existence, and as such, this study traces that reversal, and the accompanying changes in social expectations for courting couples as enacted on the pages of American literature and in early American films.

This study is concerned with migration of children/young people from northern to southern cities in Ghana. It focuses attention on the following specific research questions: What are young peoples’ motivations for migration, and negotiations surrounding the decision-making process? What are the precarious employment and living situation associated with young migrants? In what ways do social networks support young migrants in the migration process? What role does migration for work play in the lives of young migrants and their left behind families? What are young migrants’ aspirations for the future? To answer these questions, the study draws on the analytical insights gained from the concept of social navigation and social capital/network literatures, and primary research conducted in Ghana. A key finding from this study demonstrate that young peoples’ migration is closely linked to the unequal spatial development manifested in relative poverty conditions in rural northern Ghana, and the desires of children/young people to work and earn income in the south, where better economic prospect exists. Migration is also propelled by young migrants’ decisions to be free from strained and abusive relationships. It is evident that young migrants’ transitions into the labour market demonstrates their own agency and the important role that their networks can play in providing the finance necessary for travel and to secure work. The experiences of migration vary greatly involving both negative and positive aspects. Their precarious employment situation involves considerable uncertainty and risk, and exploitation by employers and clients. Incomes are low and irregular, which brings additional difficulties in fulfilling daily subsistence needs. Some of these difficulties are mitigated through social networks. These networks are fundamental in the life trajectories of young migrants, right from the time the decision to migrate is taken. However, they are also associated with discrimination and exploitative practices. Findings also reveal that migration offer opportunities for youngsters to see new places, undertake paid work, earn income, save and engage in popular global culture of consumerism and materialism, and sending of remittances to left-behind families. Access to mobile phones facilitates communication with families up north and this helps in maintaining intergenerational relations that are spread across spatial boundaries. Future aspirations of the youngsters centred on desires for better job prospects and greater stability although lack of financial and linking social capital serve as constraints. Overall this study makes an important contribution to the literature by providing new insight on the pathways that migration may be beneficial to young people and their left behind families. The findings suggest that addressing the internal geographical imbalance in development between the north and south is key to tackling the interlinked problems associated with child migration in Ghana. Findings also call for interventions to better strengthen the agency of young migrants in navigating hardships while improving their wellbeing.

This thesis investigates the question of whether judicial review of legislation is a hindrance to democracy. My main claim is that the existing literature on this topic fails to pay adequate regard to the symbolic significance of political institutions, that is, the role that legislatures and courts play in the popular imagination. I argue that we should not view constitutional systems merely as decision-making mechanisms, since a society’s institutional structure will colour its sense of political agency and shape the way in which citizens view their relationships with political officials and with one another. Different constitutional structures accordingly project different visions of constitutionalism and democracy. In particular, I argue, representative government should be viewed not merely as a compromise between equality of input and quality of output, but as a distinctively valuable form of government in its own right. The representative assembly serves as the focal point for public political debate and symbolises a commitment to government through an inclusive process of deliberation. Legislative supremacy – the practice of accepting the enactments of a representative assembly as the decisions of the people as a whole – can therefore allow the law to be seen as the output of the political power of a self-governing people. Judicial review, on the other hand, will tend to signify a set of boundaries around the democratic political process, thus truncating the people’s shared sense of self-government.

This portfolio contains three separate research essays and a reflection that are related through a common theme, that of ethos. The research papers include: (1) an essay on the pedagogical value of Wikipedia when teaching students about developing authorial ethos; (2) a research essay on the value of writing centers employing tutors whose writing is not yet proficient in the standards set for academic discourse; and (3) a research essay on the use of blogs in first-year composition courses as a means of fostering agency, ownership of ideas, audience awareness, and metadiscourse use. These papers represent the variety of research I undertook during the M.A. program as well as my research interests moving toward the future.