This study describes how firms in the agro processing industry within South Africa vary in terms of their types of innovation based on whether or not the firm exports into a developed context or supplies only into the local South African market. In conjunction with this the research attempts to describe who these firms engage with in order to develop their most significant innovations. Empirically this research set out to establish whether or not exporting firms differed considerably with regards to how they innovate relative to firms which only supply into the regional domestic market. This could provide insights as to whether either group could learn from one another and develop a collaborative relationship whereby a mutually reinforcing innovative model could be developed to support overall industry growth. The central argument here is, given that the agro processing industry employs a large portion of the South African work force, any innovations which can create long term sustainable volume growth for the industry need to be taken advantage of. Thus not only does the South African agro processing industry need to develop innovative networks domestically but also internationally.Chi squared and t-test were run on the responses of the firms belonging to the export or domestic categories. The results overwhelmingly suggest that in respect of innovativeness, the domestic suppliers do not differ from those that opt to export into the developed world. However the firms belonging to the domestic group differ considerably with regards to who they collaborate with for their innovations when compared to the export group. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Inom samhällsplanering och samhällsstyrning sker det ständigt förändringar. Privata aktörers medverkan har blivit en viktig faktor för planering och det diskuteras på flertal håll om hur näringslivet kan eller ska involveras mer i planering. Näringslivet ses oftare som en medspelare som dessutom börjar bli alltmer närvarande i planeringen i olika avseenden. Detta blir aktuellt får vårt studieobjekt “Fastighetsägare BID Sofielund” som bygger på en sådan samverkan mellan privat och offentlig sektor. I exempelvis USA har BID-processer kommit långt jämfört med Sverige. Det är också i Nordamerika som samverkansformen Business Improvement District formades. Eftersom BID är en ny samverkansform inom svensk stadsplanering blir det särskilt intressant för oss att undersöka. Vår uppsats syftar till att undersöka och förstå hur denna BID-samverkan motiveras i praktiken. Detta gör vi genom en fallstudie av den BID-samverkansprocess som fortgår i Sofielund i Malmö. Intervjuer har använts som tekniker för att genomföra studien och de resultat som framkom av vår undersökning visade att BID som styrningsform motiveras på flertal sätt vilket kan bero på att BID som styrningsform är ny i svensk kontext. Vi har även fått fram ett resultat som tyder på att BIDs är ett uttryck för den neoliberala paradigm som härskar i planeringen och ett uttryck för en viss typ av governancestyrning. Slutsatser vi drar från vår undersökning är å ena sidan att BID Sofielund kan innebära en positiv utveckling för området med sänkt kriminalitet och med seriösa fastighetsvärdar som bidrar till att utveckla stadsdelen, å andra sidan kan vi urskilja en risk för att gentrifiering och liknande processer kan ske i området i och med BID Sofielunds arbete. / In community planning, there are constant changes. The involvement of private actors has become an important factor in planning processes, and it is discussed in many contexts how commercial and industrial life can or should be involved more in planning. The business world becomes more often a co-creator within urban and regional planning in various aspects. This is the case, for our study object "Fastighetsägare BID Sofielund" that is based on such cooperation between the private and public sectors. For example, in the United States, this has been ongoing for a long time in comparison with Sweden. It is also in North America that the business improvement district was formed. Since BID is a new form of cooperation within Swedish city planning, it is particularly interesting for us to study. Our paper aims to investigate and understand how this BID collaboration is motivated in practice. This is done by a case study of the BID collaboration process in Sofielund, Malmö. Interviews have been used as a technique to complete the study and the results of our survey showed that BID as a form of governance is motivated in several ways, which may be due to the fact that BID as a form of governance is new in Swedish context. We have also provided a result that suggests that BIDs are an expression of the neoliberal paradigm that rules in the planning field and an expression of a certain type of governance. The conclusions we make from our study is that BID Sofielund can lead to a positive development for the area with reduced crime and with serious property owners that helps to develop the area, on the other hand, we can interpret a risk of gentrification and similar processes that could take place in the area through BID Sofielund's work.

This thesis consists of a collection of poems and a critical preface. The preface examines the collaborative process as integral to art-making. Using a range of poems and prosody essays as support, I argue that reciprocal relationships are intrinsic to poetry, providing a model for actual collaboration. I also examine my own collaboration with a visual artist, which resulted in many of the poems in this collection.

Early childhood environments can offer valuable opportunities for student collaboration. Social interactions allow students to practice listening to each other and learn how to work together. This study focused on the roles and perspectives of early childhood educators related to student collaboration in the classroom. Six educators from one elementary school in New Hampshire participated in two focus group discussions, the first of which included a presentation on student collaboration with first graders. Participants also completed four concept maps highlighting their perspectives about student collaboration and one written reflection comparing their perspectives before and after engaging in the focus group discussions. Participants’ awareness of strategies for student collaboration grew through these discussions among peers. Implications of the study include providing opportunities for educators to engage in discussions that examine their approaches for planning, preparing, and offering a variety of collaborative activities throughout the day.

I’m a music producer that is active in several different subgenres in electronic dance music (EDM). A music producer is a person that oversees the recording process, most often the creative side and decides how everything should sound like. You can compare it to a film director. During the last decade, the role as a music producer has progressed into a factotum position, which means you usually have several different roles yourself: you can be a songwriter, mixing engineer, recording engineer and even a singer. Another thing that has changed is the workplace. It’s common nowadays that people are sitting at home and producing their own beats/songs. This is foremost possible because of how the technology has evolved and made everything smaller and more efficient. If you rewind back 25 years this was an impossible task. You needed big studios, with big rooms to record drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals, and a huge mixing table with big tape machines to record it all. Nowadays you have everything you need with a laptop, an audio interface and with access to the internet. You can easily find pre-recorded vocals, hire vocalists online, buy sample packs with drum loops and make your own melody sounds with virtual synthesizers. There’re also huge digital libraries with sounds that real instrumentalists recorded which you can use to create your own chord progressions or melodies. So, you basically have everything you need to make a big dance record with only a simple laptop sitting in your own garage in the Bronx. It’s also easy to get in touch with other artists, producers and singers through social media and other sites on the web. In my essay I want to explore how the process looks like when you are collaborating with others online. It could be between other producers, singers, songwriters or even instrumentalists. How do you start a collab? Are there any pros and cons with collaborating? I also would like to examine what people do if they are having trouble getting along while collaborating. How do you maintain a good chemistry with the others? And if your creative process differs compared to when you are writing music by yourselves.

Kooperativt lärande, KL, är ett arbetssätt som fokuserar på strukturerat samarbete där elever arbetar mot gemensamma mål. Syftet med studien är att öka kunskaperna om några behöriga F-3 lärares beskrivningar om det kooperativa lärandets betydelse för elevers språkutveckling och lärande i ämnet svenska. Frågeställningarna behandlar hur lärare beskriver att de organiserar KL för elevers språkutveckling och lärande, samt vilka möjligheter och utmaningar KL kan innebära för elevers språkutveckling och lärande. Studien utgår från sociokulturell teori vilket innebär att lärande sker genom interaktion. För att undersöka studiens frågeställningar genomfördes kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med behöriga lärare i årskurs F-3 som använder KL i sin undervisning. Resultatet visar att även om de intervjuade lärarna beskriver arbetssättet som tidskrävande och att det kan innebära utmaningar för elever i sociala svårigheter menar de också att KL leder till mer elevaktivitet. Studien har även synliggjort att KL har potential att främja elevers språkutveckling och lärande.

Affiliate councils provide a platform for professional connectedness in ways that are often more difficult to achieve through national memberships. Through professional endeavors, affiliate councils provide opportunities for collaboration, networking, and engagement. Although the benefits of affiliate councils are clear, they can often be difficult to sustain when councils have a small infrastructure. Through roundtable discussions, the current project will share avenues by which the Southeastern Council on Family Relations, the southeastern affiliate of the National Council on Family Relations, has been successful in maintaining their mission to provide a network for collaboration among family professionals. This roundtable discussion will also explore areas of improvement within the affiliate council’s effort to fulfill their mission and will prompt attendees to engage in a meaningful exchange on the ways in which barriers to affiliate council success can be overcome.

Modern product assembly is a demanding challenge due to the high number of parts, machines, tools, techniques and people involved in the process. Many assembly operators, therefore, are exposed to an intense cognitive load and also physically challenged due to a large number of repetitive tasks. Even though modern assembly lines use machines and industrial robots for physically intense, harmful or repetitive tasks, human operators still have some advantages over fully automated systems. This thesis explores how to fuse the strengths of both, industrial robots and human operators, to reduce the difficult challenges for the operators and to improve the general work environment while improving productivity and flexibility of the assembly line. To get first-hand insights of current assembly, I observed the work environments of four different manufacturers around Sweden. I analysed their setups, watched the processes, and got to interview the production managers and operatives to get to know the various challenges of today’s assembly lines. I clustered those insights into development fields and advanced ideas to improve the work environment. Then, I chose the most promising idea and started to prototype it with cardboard mockups. Roleplaying an assembly scenario using the mockups, I learned how to finetune the service and products. Then, I was able to define the complete archetype of the system. With further idea generation in sketches, I developed the form and function of the concluding product. Finally, I created the complete model in a 3D CAD platform and tested its features with CNC milled prototypes. The final result is called COOE. It is a smart table-based assembly system combining the strengths of the machine and the human. It takes human motions and behaviour into account while boosting productivity as a collaborative team.

This study is a retrospective examination of elements that influenced one elementary school staff to initiate and implement a school-wide innovation in their reading program in 1990-91. This school served 315 preschool children through grade three in small town set in the rural countryside. Case study methodology was used to discover how the change was initiated; why the particular program elements were chosen; the role of the staff, the principal, and the parents played in initiating the innovation; and what lessons this school's experience may have for school reform. As the school community planned for the initiation of their new reading program, the "whole language" approach to reading was gaining momentum. The notion of "early intervention" was popularly used to describe a variety of methods educators were using to deal with evidence of reading failure in young children. Their stories describe the challenges this school staff felt as they attempted a year-long initiative to merge phonics and whole language into a holistic approach to reading for grades one through three. Findings were reported around seven central themes emerging from the data collection, including: 1) empowerment, 2) academic improvement, 3) shared vision/beliefs, 4) collaboration, 5) focus on children's needs, 6) site-based decision making, 7) participatory leadership. / Ed. D.

As educators are held accountable for student outcomes more frequently, more stringently, and more fully throughout the school organization, service delivery systems have become a focus. Not only are teachers being held accountable for students' learning, but also principals and other administrators are beginning to feel the pressure from public concerns regarding the education of children in the United States. The quality of student instruction can be addressed through practical service delivery models, while administrators' support of the model chosen for their schools is a pivotal variable for effectiveness and efficiency. Students with identified disabilities are being served more frequently in general education classrooms for all or most of their school day. The percentage of students with disabilities served in heterogeneous classes has increased from 32.8% in 1990-1991 to 44.5% in 1994-1995 (U. S. Department of Education, 1997). The more service delivery options available, the more likely an appropriate education will be delivered to these students with disabilities who are placed in heterogeneous classrooms. Cooperative services between general and special educators such as consultation and co-teaching, which include both direct services to students and indirect services through the classroom teacher, offer unique and malleable options for service delivery. To fully understand the process of administrative support for this innovative model, it is imperative to study the interactions between the innovation, the context in which it is being implemented, and the individuals involved with the innovation (Corbett, Dawson, & Firestone, 1984). The study of a process is difficult because it involves investigating the factors that affect the likelihood that there will be change in the individuals who are involved. It necessitates the need to identify what they do, think, and believe in relation to the demands outlined by an innovation (Fullan, 1982). Researchers suggest the necessity of on-site case studies to gain insight and to investigate processes (Fullan; Hall & Hord, 1987; Huberman & Miles, 1984; Patton, 1990). The intent of this qualitative study is to explore how principals view their ability to support the cooperation between general and special educators for the benefit of students with disabilities. Specifically, the goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the facilitators and inhibitors that principals face when attempting to support this cooperation and to describe methods that principals have used, successfully and unsuccessfully, to avoid barriers to cooperation. Interviews will be conducted with principals who have previously been the special or general educator in a collaborative consultation process, as well as with both general and special educators currently working with this principal. This unusual perspective is designed to give rich descriptive information to educators who choose to use this promising practice of service delivery for at-risk students and students with disabilities at the K-12 level. / Ph. D.