Sweden is one of the European countries that became a main destination for the immigrants and refugees from different countries and from different cultural backgrounds especially from the developing world.        While there seems to be a consensus in the literature that cultural adjustment is needed to integrate immigrants in the host culture, so far, it is not clear how the immigrants in Sweden perceive that need, and how willing and how welcomed they are to adjust to the Swedish culture. Therefore, it becomes necessary to shed light on the debate of the need of cultural adjustment and the major theories in this debate like the assimilation theory and Harrison’s theory, which arguing that immigrants need to culturally adjust to be able to fit in and to integrate in the host culture.        In this sense, the study aims to shed a different light on this debate through the immigrant’s perspective and how they perceive the need for cultural adjustment to integrate in the Swedish culture, and how willing as well as how welcomed they are to adjust to the host culture. A qualitative study was carried out using 18 semi-structured interviews as the primary source of data in the study, while the scope of this study was limited only to Växjö city which makes it difficult to generalize the results of this study.        The findings have revealed that the sample of immigrants in this study have perceived the need for a socio-economic adjustment rather than a cultural one and they feel willing and welcomed by the Swedish culture to make such adjustment as it is crucial and necessary for them to improve the quality of life as well as for social inclusion to be integrated and not excluded or marginalized.        The author suggests further research in this topic by conducting similar research but on a wider scope and with deeper interviews that include a larger number of immigrants to further explore how they perceive the need to adjust to the Swedish society.     Key words: culture, adjustment, integration, assimilation, immigrants.

Computer technology is growing fast in recent years. Modeling technique is used in predicting or in planning engineering works and even in preventing disaster. Modeling is widely used in many domains and unmanned Real-time online operation modeling systems on prediction become popular. Model may become inaccurate due to a number of uncertainties in the approximation and by numerical reasons. Data Assimilation technique is developed to solve this problem. Measured data is used to improve the model results. In this research, the Cressman scheme was chosen as the data assimilation scheme and used for correcting the modeling system. An idealized model was constructed first as Taiwan Strait. In order to test the stability if data assimilation system several geographical variations and data availability cases were designed, eg adding varying bottom topography, an island added in the domain, different measurement data locations. In order to test the model sensibilities an error was inserted to the boundaries. Model results were first corrected with data assimilation system for a period of time, a Harmonic Analysis was, then, used for reanalysis the corrected time series on the boundaries. The new boundary condition is used in the new model run for making predictions. A true topography and island system as Taiwan Strait was tested with the true astronomical tide as the boundary input. The data assimilation system using the Cressman scheme could reduce the RMSE effectively. The factor that affects the efficiency of the data assimilation system is the number and the location of the measurement data.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-198).

Employees face many challenges as they attempt to fulfill the often intense and conflicting expectations of their professional roles within the culture of an organization for which they perform paid work. These demands include traversing a consistent stream of organizational change (Lewis, 2011), navigating complex coworker relationships (Sias, 2009), and meeting the often intense and even abusive demands of organizational managers and leaders (Caldwell & Canuto-Carranco, 2010). As a result of this cultural intensity, organizational members can begin considering exit (Jablin, 1987, 2001) very early in their tenure. This study explores Jablin’s Model of Assimilation (1987, 2001) as a framework for identifying the types of events, observations and concerns that facilitate exit-related sensemaking (Weick, 1995) and, ultimately, a decision to leave an organization. Findings indicate that organizational exit (Jablin, 1987, 2001) is not simply a response to a single “straw that broke the camel’s back” event. Rather, organizational exit is a complex, evolving process resulting from a web of observations and experiences occurring over time within the organization. Based on interviews with 61 people who voluntarily left an organization in a post-recession economy (2010—2014), findings indicate surprising similarities and differences across industries in both the organizational factors leading up to exit and individuals’ exit experiences. By tracing the origins of exit back through the socialization processes experienced by exiting organizational members, this study fills a gap in organizational exit research, defining exit not as a discrete end-stage event, but rather as an ongoing, highly communicative and personalized process based on recursive loops of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) that build over the course of a member’s tenure, resulting in a choice to leave the organization. / text

Chinese-American parents are parenting within two cultures: the mainstream American culture and their heritage Chinese culture. This study examined parental cultural orientations toward the American and Chinese cultures, and the implications for parenting practices among Chinese-American families. Parenting dimensions examined were both culture-general measures (parental warmth, punitive parenting, non-democratic parenting) and culture-specific measure (parental endorsement of family obligations). Data came from a two-wave survey of about 400 Chinese-American families (one target adolescent, mother, and father). First, within each wave, the study examined the concurrent relationships between parenting practices and adolescent depressive symptoms. Second, this study examined, concurrently and longitudinally, whether parental cultural orientations were associated with parenting practices both directly and indirectly through two mediating factors: parents' bicultural management difficulty and depressive symptoms. Analyses were conducted separately for mothers and fathers. First, study findings showed that parenting practices characterized by higher levels of warmth, strong endorsement of family obligations, and lower levels of punitive and non-democratic behaviors were associated with fewer depressive symptoms in adolescents. Second, the study demonstrated significant direct relationships between both Chinese and American orientations and parenting practices. While American orientation was related to effective parenting (more warmth, low punitiveness, low non-democratic parenting), Chinese orientation was related to effective parenting (more warmth, low non-democratic parenting, strong endorsement of family obligations) as well as ineffective parenting (high punitiveness). This study also showed that parents' bicultural management difficulty and depressive symptoms mediated the relationships between acculturation and culture-general parenting measures (warmth, punitiveness, and nondemocratic parenting). It was through these two mediators (bicultural management difficulty and parental depressive symptoms) that (1) Chinese orientation was related to less warmth, high punitive and non-democratic parenting and (2) American orientation was related to more warmth, low punitive and non-democratic parenting. Lastly, there was some evidence of longitudinal relationships (father's American orientation at w1 predicted more warmth at w2; mother's American orientation at w1 predicted low punitiveness at w2 through the mediating factors of bicultural management difficulty and depressive symptoms at w1). The study suggests that parental psychological maladjustment is a promising area for interventions to promote parenting and adolescent development among ChineseAmerican families.

This PhD focuses on the life stories of ten Scottish women retirees. Exploring their subjective experiences of retirement, professional and personal attachments, and sense of belonging, it provides a within-gender analysis by means of intersectionality theory (Yuval-Davis 2011) and thematic narrative analysis (Riessman 2008). Women’s retirement is a largely unexplored phenomenon with a general lack of engagement with subjective experience and a preoccupation with a male, middle-class template in which retirement is considered a discrete transition from employment, triggering loss of identity. Diversity of experience, including the cumulative impact on retirement of personal and professional, as well as socio-political, cultural, organisational and interpersonal factors, and what people do in retirement remain largely unaddressed. The respondents’ belonging, their professional and personal affiliations across the lifespan, was explored. Themes of structure (stereotyping, discrimination and change) and agency (values and emotions) were exposed within and across their narratives. Each retirement was uniquely multifaceted, informed by wide-ranging, constitutive intersectionalities including gender, ageing, generation, ethnicity, class and health. Gender prescribed distinct trajectories of marriage, motherhood and gendered occupation, often resulting in pension poverty and a professional-personal conflict which intensified as they aged. In later life, generational values of community and a desire to be purposeful faced challenge. As opportunities contracted, the respondents remained determined to be useful and purposeful in their ongoing pursuits of employment, volunteering, caring and community work. The male, economic paradigm of retirement emerges as an obsolete construct and in its inability to accommodate differences a source of disadvantage for some women retirees. For these women, retirement neither represented a discrete transition nor loss of identity as they were sustained by their life-long values of doing something worthwhile. Remaining committed to ‘making a difference’, these women never retired in the official sense of the word.

The purpose of this program of research was to determine the value of autonomy for ethnic minorities. Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) has argued that the need for autonomy is universal. Subsequently, it was expected that, across a broad range of ethnicities, autonomous internalization of cultural norms would be associated with well-being. Furthermore, how multicultural individuals integrate their identities was also anticipated to impact on their well-being and their daily functioning. The present thesis is comprised of four studies. Study 1 assessed ethnic minorities' internalization of their host and heritage cultures. The results indicated that autonomous internalization was associated with cultural competence and context specific well-being. Furthermore, coming from an egalitarian heritage culture was associated with greater cultural internalization. Cultural adaptation in both heritage and English-Canadian cultures combined to predict psychological well-being. Finally, the ability to integrate one's heritage and host cultural identities was associated with well-being. / Study 2 and 3 examined the impact of parental autonomy support on heritage culture internalization. Study 2 was comprised of a sample of ethnic minorities living in Canada. Regression analyses revealed that parental autonomy support was related to autonomous internalization of the heritage culture and to higher self- and peer-reported well-being. Study 3 used a sample of Chinese-Malaysian sojourners. The results of study 3 replicated study 2. Sojourners were more likely to have autonomously internalized their heritage culture when they had autonomy supportive parents. Parental autonomy support was also associated with increased well-being. / Study 4 used an event-contingent daily recording strategy to examine the relation of perceived evaluations of a multicultural person's heritage group to the nature and quality of their social interactions. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that the valence of the evaluation of one's heritage culture impacted on the characteristics of the interaction. Moderator analyses revealed that how a person conceptualized their multicultural identity and their level of public collective self-esteem influenced how reactive they were to how their heritage group was being evaluated. Together, these results demonstrate the significance of autonomy and cultural integration for minorities' well-being.

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