Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2008. / "Publication number: AAT 3333583."

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / Political Science Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 226 p. Includes bibliographical references.

<p> Since the early 2000s, a new type of working environment has developed in which individual workers&mdash;usually in a technology profession&mdash;share office space in a large, open, nontraditional environment that transcends traditional organizational boundaries. These new environments, called coworking spaces, present opportunities for communication, information sharing, and knowledge creation because of their open physical environments, the reduced presence of organizational barriers, and as a result of intentional efforts of the leaders of coworking spaces to encourage collaboration. While there is a substantial body of knowledge focused on how workers share information and build knowledge in traditional workplaces, there is little academic research on these novel coworking environments. This study examines the lived experiences of members of a specific coworking space located in the Phoenix, Arizona area in the United States. </p><p> Through interviews with key informants, this study evaluates the communication channels that members of a coworking space use to share information and uses the Nonaka SECI model to determine the types of information sharing and knowledge creation that happen at the space. </p><p> This study finds that members of the coworking space heavily lean toward using in-person communication and next-generation instant messaging to share information, and that they primarily create knowledge through combining the explicit knowledge of members to create new explicit knowledge. The findings of this study lead to specific implications for researchers to further examine the communication channels used in coworking spaces, especially next-generation instant messaging tools. The researcher also recommends specific steps that leaders of coworking spaces can follow to improve the level of involvement of members of their spaces, and to position non-profit spaces favorably against competing for-profit coworking spaces.</p><p>

<p> Despite decades of advocacy, women still struggle to gain access to public spaces, in particular to spaces of power such as formal governance and decision-making processes, economic sites, and media institutions. Globalization has enabled the emergence of transnational feminist organizing in response to these exclusions, yet scholars have largely not attended to the spaces within which transnational feminist organizing takes place and the implications of those spaces. These spaces matter as they have the potential to both disrupt and reproduce existing power relations and exclusions. This study identified <i>digital space </i> as a site of transnational feminist organizing and explored how digital &lsquo;safe&rsquo; counter-spaces are communicatively constructed and their potentials and limitations for organizing across difference. As an engaged feminist project, this study also had an action goal of creating safer and more inclusive counter-spaces for women to gain a voice and organize collectively. Specifically, this project aimed to contribute to the <i> transformation</i> of such spaces to further enable women&rsquo;s mobilizing and organizing for social change. In this study, I adopted a critical transnational feminist lens and drew on scholarship in the areas of transnational feminist organizing, space, and tension. In line with this study&rsquo;s engaged feminist approach, I conducted what I termed a digital feminist participatory action research (D+FPAR) project involving a collaborative partnership with the digitally based transnational feminist network, World Pulse. Data collection involved multiple qualitative and participatory online methods.</p><p> Findings from this study illuminated the ways digital counter-space is discursively and materially constructed as &lsquo;safe&rsquo; and &lsquo;inclusive&rsquo;, how these constructions produce contradictions, and how both community and staff members respond to these contradictions. First, the digital space was communicatively constituted as safe and inclusive through particular material-discursive practices, through members&rsquo; talk and interaction enabled by the affordances of the digital space, and through interrelations with overlapping digital and physical spaces. Second, contradictions were produced when these material-discursive practices took on different meanings or made difference visible for members based on their identities, locations, or experiences, leaving members feeling simultaneously safe/unsafe and included/excluded. Third, community and staff members enacted a variety of strategies in response to these contradictions that limited and/or enhanced the potentials for organizing across difference and contributed to the ongoing construction of the digital space.</p><p> This study advances scholarship on space, transnational feminist organizing, and tension. In defining and interrogating digital space, this project contributes to theorizing the communicative construction of space, how it interrelates and is embedded with the material, and the ways digital spaces (re)produce and challenge power relations. More specifically, this project contributes to understandings of how materiality intra-acts with discourse in the construction of space to shape possibilities for organizing and produce contradictions, revealing the ways &lsquo;safe&rsquo; counter-spaces are in a constant state of becoming (un)safe. Methodologically, this project contributes to scholarship by introducing D+FPAR, providing tools for collaborative analysis, and expanding reflexive praxis. Additionally, this study also provides practical strategies, co-constructed with participants, for individuals and organizations seeking to design &lsquo;safe&rsquo; digital spaces for voice, participation, and collective action.</p><p>

D.Comm. / The marketing concept has been widely accepted as the most important component of marketing academia and practice since the 1950s. Over the decades the marketing concept has grown in stature - from being described as the old marketing concept to the new marketing concept. This was an evolutionary process that catapulted the marketing concept to a philosophy of conducting business that is considered the central tenet of a successful organization. The customer became the dead-end of all corporate efforts. However, the elevation of the marketing concept to the position of such unprecedented importance, and the articulation of market orientation as the implementation construct of the marketing concept represented the genesis of modern marketing and paved the way for generations of practitioners, consultants, and academic researchers. Most academic researchers cast doubt on the veracity of the concept among other issues and the marketing concept’s application and applicable areas became sticking points of argument. Despite much research undertaken, albeit mostly in the Western world, the marketing concept’s acceptance in the ICT sector in South Africa is a case in point. The purpose of the study was to test the adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector in South Africa, as envisaged in literature. The major elements of the study were to find the extent of the chosen respondents’ agreements in terms of the 39 questions in a questionnaire that represented the six pillars of the 21st century marketing concept, as defined in this study. Thereafter, the other sections of the questionnaire detailed the practical adoption and implementation of the marketing concept. The last section required of respondents to rank the six pillars of the marketing concept in terms of importance, the purpose being to lay a foundation for developing a framework that would be used for adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector. The major findings indicated that the ICT sector has accepted the marketing concept to an extent and that there are no differences in acceptance between the major subgroups, i.e. (i) services and manufacturing organizations and (ii) subsidiaries of international organizations and local South African organizations. The results show startling revelations about the ICT sector’s management philosophy. A framework for the adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector in South Africa was developed.

This dissertation studies the promise of inclusion in the global information society for marginalized groups in India, a nation that represents a modular case for technology and modernization initiatives in the global South. There has been significant research on the problematic notion of the "digital divide," based on the premise that access to technology will ensure economic and cultural transformations. Combining approaches from the political economy of communication and from cultural studies, my research is located in the growing critical and ethnographic scholarship on technology and modernity in the global South. I examine the institutional and cultural politics of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) initiatives in rapidly globalizing Delhi through a multi-method study that includes archival research and an extended period of fieldwork at the sites of interconnected global and local institutions, markets and communities. Forms of institutions and governance, starting from the colonial period, demonstrate continuities to the evolution of digital inclusion initiatives in the 21st century. Through archival and ethnographic research, I trace the beginnings of public-private partnerships in education and the establishment of the Industrial Training Institutes to 19th century colonial India, when the British Empire sought to strengthen its rule. My ethnographic research also studies the modern, postcolonial state as it changes from the Nehruvian socialist model to a neoliberal one and increasingly becomes a deliverer of social services, enabled by ICT programs. Corporations emerge as important welfare actors through hybrid public-private partnerships. I argue that such new institutional forms renegotiate, reify and occasionally reproduce structural inequalities, especially for low-income and marginalized communities. My project connects institutional politics to the politics of culture. I study the habitus of "new middle-class," corporate professionals in India who comprise the initiators of ICTD projects. In addition, my ethnographic research follows "urban poor Muslim women" and "slum youth" from the doorsteps of the ICT center into their everyday lives to understand policy shifts from subaltern perspectives. My study unpacks concepts of the "digital divide" and "access" in the context of complex histories of gender, class, caste, religion and the politics of urban space in global Delhi.

This dissertation addresses a lack of knowledge about chat reference and location-based questions and the implications of this lack of knowledge on chat reference consortia. Chat reference and location-based questions refers to the question-negotiation process in the chat mode of responding to users' location-based questions. In one statewide chat reference consortium, Ask a Librarian, users are able to pose questions to any information provider from 103 participating information agencies. In turn, any agency's information provider is able to respond to questions from any user. This situation creates a scenario whereby in order to respond to a location-based question, an information provider must determine the location or locations in the question to formulate a correct response. Additionally, because local information providers are closer in proximity and more familiar with a location or locations within his or her same county, he or she may provide a higher correct response fill rate to location-based questions than a non-local information providers. This study's methodology utilizes content analysis, quantitative analysis, focus groups, and unobtrusive testing to address research questions that explore the types of location-based questions, the question-negotiation process in the chat mode of responding to these questions, and the correct response fill rate of consortium information providers. Practical recommendations from this study include populating the consortium's knowledge base with local knowledge, especially information about participating information agencies. Findings indicate that chat consortia may overcome the potential weakness of location-based questions (i.e., referral, incorrect response) if participating information agencies improve their online dissemination of local knowledge related to frequently asked location-based questions. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Library and Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2010. / February 24, 2010. / Chat reference consortia, Evaluation, Virtual reference, Digital reference / Includes bibliographical references. / Charles R. McClure, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lisa Jordan, University Representative; Gary Burnett, Committee Member; Ebrahim Randeree, Committee Member.

Baseball was once seen as America's pastime, but somehow lost its way. Baseball was inherently American, and stood for more than a game. Yet a number of events caused baseball to fall from grace. Using Ernest Thayer's poem “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of Republic Sung in the Year 1888” as a frame work, this project identifies three events that caused baseball's fall and three additional events that currently threaten the game, which will be evaluated according to Aristotle's doctrine of the mean. Understanding the game's past and present will help to develop a methodology to apply to threats of the game to ensure baseball's future.&lt;br&gt; To begin, this project identifies three events that originally caused baseball's fall: the Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series, two franchises moving from New York to Los Angles, and the Labor Strike of 1994. Each event creates distance between the game of baseball and its idealized past. The first chapter also propels the following three chapters by viewing the current threats of the game as three imaginary pitches for Casey with the goal of attempting to change his original fate from the poem, in which he struck out.&lt;br&gt; Chapter II, Casey's first imaginary pitch, deals with the steroids crisis. The home run era helped to revitalize the game after the Labor Strike, but the success was short-lived. “The Mitchell Report” was first published on December 13, 2007. The report was the culmination of a 21-month investigation of anabolic steroid-use in baseball, and identified 89 MLB players linked to steroids. Although the records and statistics were put into question, the harshest result of this event was that it called into question the ethics of the baseball – with the ongoing suspicion and a lack of trust toward the game, baseball no longer fosters havens of trust. Additionally, the lack of an immediate response by the league showed a delayed reaction, one of deficiency. This is the first strike to Casey in the imaginary at bat.&lt;br&gt; Perhaps propelled by the Steroid Era, the next event that continues to threaten the game is the sabermetric movement, marked by the publication of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Lewis, 2003). Sabermetrics in general attempt to provide new and more technologically driven metrics to better understand the game. Although learning more about the game is good, dismissing old statistics causes people to lose ground and connection to the past. The over-emphasis of sabermetrics shows excess, again causing Casey to swing too early and miss another pitch. The final event that threatens the game of baseball is the implementation of technology, namely instant replay, into the game, which occurred in 2008. The game of baseball assessed the successes of other sports’ uses of instant replay, withheld implementation over 20 years later than the NFL, and originally made modest additions to the game. The focus on the past helps to preserve tradition and helps to foster a good connection for the game in the present game. With the third pitch, Casey found the balance between deficiency and excess and hit a home run. The final chapter lists ongoing problems to each of the three events identified in Chapters II-IV, provides a detailed critique of progress as understood through Modernity, assesses the ways in which Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean can be used as a philosophical framework to deal with ethical issues, theorizes various uses of this methodology, and finally discusses the ways in which baseball can be preserved for the next century.&lt;br&gt; The afterward revisits the original poem of “Casey at the Bat” and provides an updated version, “Casey’s Hope.” / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD; / Dissertation;

Thesis (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (School of Communication) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.