Despite the globalization and cultures’ convergence, it is scholarly recognized that cross-cultural issues are important in a business context, especially for companies extending their activities internationally. However, existing theory does not provide an explicit answer of how cultural differences between countries influence customers’ perception of different aspects of marketing communication mix. That is why the underlying task of the current paper is to investigate if cross-cultural differences within the same geographic region are big enough to affect customers’ perception of marketing communication mix used. To facilitate a data collection, Central and Eastern European region represented by Ukraine and Czech Republic were chosen. As a reference tourism industry was used, due to its’ current significance, scale and global nature. Data was collected by conducting secondary and primary research, both having quantitative nature. Secondary data was collected through statistical offices and official on-line sources. For the primary research purposes a questionnaire survey was conducted among pre-defined target audience in Czech Republic and Ukraine. 300 responses obtained provided a solid basis for the further analysis.  Based on the relevant theory and secondary research findings four hypotheses were developed to address the research question “Does cross-cultural differences within Central and Eastern Europe affect the marketing communication mix in a specific industry?”. The study results provided that cultural differences exist not only between different regions, but also found within the same geographic region. When considered from marketing perspective, they are significant enough to influence customers’ preferences and perceptions of different aspects of marketing communication mix. The results obtained are specific for a particular case, so they can not be applied to some other countries. However, when it comes to marketing communication perceptions, the results can be used as guidelines by other industries then tourism

Strategic decision makers typically use a wide range of communication and information media in complex, uncertain and often ambiguous or politically charged organizational contexts. However, little help is available in ensuring that their information behaviour is efficient and effective. This study evaluates the use of information systems (IS) as communication media in strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs), focusing on strategic information processing, and how context affects its performance. The analysed strategic decisions (n = 113) were taken in the time period between 2000 and 2008 in large Western organisations. The aim of this investigation was to look at the link between the use of IS during the decision-making process and the performance of the SDMP, taking into account internal and external contextual factors. Using existing information processing theory and research on the SDMP as a theoretical basis, hypotheses were developed and environmental contingencies and political information behaviour were selected as moderating effects on the relationship of IS use and the performance of strategic decisions. A survey and complementary semi-structured interviews were conducted, which studied particular strategic decisions through quantitative and qualitative methods. Results provide support for a number of the study's hypotheses; however, several interesting findings regarding contextual factors, such as information anarchy and environmental munificence/hostility, do not support the hypotheses. Implications for theory and practice concerning information behaviour and its context are discussed.

As global competition is increasingly intensified, radical innovation has become more and more important for corporations in high-velocity industries. Thanks to the advances of information systems and communication media, corporations can easily reach out to experts all over the world and form project teams dedicated to the innovation effort. However, research shows that while some innovation teams are very successful in achieving significant breakthroughs, many struggle to make their collaborations work. In this dissertation, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the collaboration challenges that an innovation team faces. By considering the simultaneous needs for differentiation and integration in the innovation effort and taking a communication/ interpretive perspective, we develop a theoretical model to investigate how the processes of differentiation and integration are shaped through team communication and influence an innovation team's collaboration outcomes. Specifically, we delineate four structural properties of team communication to capture these two processes - the number of issue streams explored, the number of attention switches initiated, the conceptual linkage between issue streams, and the level of deliberation after each attention switch - and identify four categories of factors that influence the development of these two processes - team composition, semi-structures, communication contexts, and communication environments. We conduct a case study as a preliminary test of our theoretical model, and find that the model provides comprehensive explanations for the collaboration dynamics and issues of these teams. We believe such a theoretical model can contribute to a better understanding of the complexity involved in an innovation project and bring fresh insights to the design of information systems for supporting an innovation team.

The purpose of this intervention study was to explore how the community volunteers from the Supporting Home Environments in Beating Adversity (SHEBA) research project – in two high-risk school communities in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan area – valued their social networks. The broader SHEBA participatory and action research project focused on how community volunteers, using their own resources, collaborated with schools in their communities to develop support plans for their communities. I selected interpretivism as the meta-theory for the study and utilised Participatory Reflection and Action (PRA) as the methodological paradigm and research design. The empirical part of this study was conducted in 2012. The data for the study were collected from 35 purposively selected volunteers who, at the time of the study, were involved in volunteer work at schools in their communities. All 35 volunteers participated in one workshop and one brainstorming session. Data were generated through a participatory workshop and follow-up brainstorming session and captured by means of posters and field notes. Inductive thematic analysis was used as the means of interpretation and I related the results to Lin’s Network Theory of Social Capital in interpreting the results. The results of the study suggest that the social networks of the volunteers were valued highly by them in dealing with the various challenges in their communities. The findings suggest also that the community volunteers invested themselves continuously in preserving their social support networks by reaching out to one another in times of crisis and by responding to each other’s needs by supporting one another. The findings suggest further that the volunteers maintained their social support networks by reinforcing the values that held them together and directed them in their efforts to support one another and their communities. The volunteers in the study attributed significant value to each other as sources of support and knowledge. They were able to meet their challenges together by learning from and identifying each other as resources. Modern communication media such as mobile phones were very important to the volunteers in maintaining their support networks with their colleagues and communicating with their communities. I therefore concluded that interventions in high-risk communities should be aimed at assisting community volunteers to gain access to and use such technologies effectively and appropriately in their networking. The value the community volunteers in the SHEBA project attributed to their social networks was clear from the benefits they derived from these networks. The findings of the study suggest that the social networks of the volunteers enhanced their sense of personal wellbeing as well as their sense of social belongingness. I concluded that social support networks could contribute significantly towards people’s overall wellbeing and that community interventions should adopt a holistic approach in high-risk communities thereby enhancing people’s hedonic, eudemonic, and social wellbeing. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

As online learning is an important part of higher education, the effectiveness of online learning has been tested with different methods. Although the literature regarding online learning effectiveness has been related to various factors, a more comprehensive review of the factors may result in broader understanding of online learning effectiveness. Therefore the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among online learning effectiveness, interactivity, collaboration, communication media, and group trust. A student survey based on online learning effectiveness, interactivity, collaboration, communication media, group trust, and demographic information was used in this study. All these variables were used as predictor variables. A total of 401 responses were received during summer 2013 from a southeastern university. Different models were compared by using multiple linear regression. Results of the best predicting model showed interactivity was the strongest predictor of online learning effectiveness, followed by previous online grades, age, employment status, number of online courses taken, and ethnicity. These predictors explained 38% of the variances in online learning effectiveness. Findings of this study provide valuable information for online instructors and university administrators.

Strategic decision makers typically use a wide range of communication and information media in complex, uncertain and often ambiguous or politically charged organizational contexts. However, little help is available in ensuring that their information behaviour is efficient and effective. This study evaluates the use of information systems (IS) as communication media in strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs), focusing on strategic information processing, and how context affects its performance. The analysed strategic decisions (n = 113) were taken in the time period between 2000 and 2008 in large Western organisations. The aim of this investigation was to look at the link between the use of IS during the decision-making process and the performance of the SDMP, taking into account internal and external contextual factors. Using existing information processing theory and research on the SDMP as a theoretical basis, hypotheses were developed and environmental contingencies and political information behaviour were selected as moderating effects on the relationship of IS use and the performance of strategic decisions. A survey and complementary semi-structured interviews were conducted, which studied particular strategic decisions through quantitative and qualitative methods. Results provide support for a number of the study¿s hypotheses; however, several interesting findings regarding contextual factors, such as information anarchy and environmental munificence/hostility, do not support the hypotheses. Implications for theory and practice concerning information behaviour and its context are discussed.

Esta tese mapeia o espaço social do jornalismo de educação brasileiro. Trata-se de trabalho exploratório que se propõe a descrever um universo não estudado no país e pouco abordado no mundo. Lança luz sobre um de seus principais atores o jornalista de educação por meio de uma análise sociológica multifocal que compreende três escalas de observação (macro, meso e micro). Apoia-se no referencial teórico das teorias de socialização para responder às seguintes perguntas de pesquisa: como se caracterizam as lutas e jogos que se desenrolam no espaço do jornalismo de educação, quem é o jornalista de educação brasileiro e como este constrói sua identidade profissional. Parte-se da hipótese de que, para analisar a dinâmica do jornalismo de educação, é preciso compreender sua relação com outros espaços do universo jornalístico e do universo do poder, a estrutura das relações profissionais de seu espaço social, os sentidos em jogo ao longo da história e as trajetórias de socialização dos agentes. O trabalho de terreno resultou em informações quantitativas e qualitativas a partir de três instrumentos de coleta de dados: um survey, que contou com a participação de 92 dos 96 profissionais que compunham a população pesquisada, uma série de entrevistas semiestruturadas com 12 respondentes e uma socioanálise de uma redação jornalística. A análise aponta para um espaço social pouco autônomo, de instituições fracas e altamente sujeito a pressões externas. Como consequência, a organização do espaço não se dá em função do grau de especialização em educação. Identificam-se diferentes vetores de hierarquização, que apontam para uma multiplicidade de perfis identitários e para a marginalização dos profissionais mais especializados. Argumenta-se que essa configuração se deve a uma especificidade do contexto social brasileiro: um modelo societal que denominamos de modernidade intermitente, que fragiliza instituições e amplifica a necessidade de autofabricação dos sujeitos. Estes têm o desafio de enfrentar, com recursos próprios e individuais, as provas impostas ao longo de suas trajetórias. / This thesis maps the social space of the Brazilian education journalism. It is an exploratory work, which intends to describe a universe not yet studied in Brazil and poorly explored in the world. It sheds light upon one of its main actors the education journalist , using a multifocal sociological analysis, which comprises three scales of observation (macro, meso and micro). It relies on the theoretical framework of the theories of socialization to answer the following questions of research: how the disputes and the social games that take place in the space of education journalism are characterized, who is the Brazilian education journalist and how he/she builds his/her professional identity. The hypothesis proposed hereby is that, in order to analyze the dynamics of education journalism, one has to understand its relation with other spaces of the journalistic universe and the power universe, the structure of the professional relations within its social space, the senses at stake throughout its history and the agents trajectories of socialization. Fieldwork resulted both in quantitative and qualitative information extracted from three different instruments of data collection: a survey that comprised answers from 92 out of the 96 professionals of the researched population, a series of semi-structured interviews with 12 subjects and a socio-analysis of an education newsroom. The analysis points at a social space poorly autonomous, with weak institutions and heavily subjected to external pressures. Therefore, the organization of that space is not linked to the degree of specialization in education. One identifies different hierarchy vectors, which point to a multitude of identity profiles and to the marginalization of the most specialized professionals. One argues that this configuration is due to a specificity in the Brazilian context: a process that we call intermittent modernity, that weakens institutions and amplifies the subjects need of auto-fabrication. As a result, they must face the proofs throughout their trajectories relying mostly on their own individual resources.

Humans rely on all their senses when interacting with others in order to communicate and collaborate efficiently. In mediated interaction the communication channel is more or less constrained, and humans have to cope with the fact that they cannot get all the information that they get in face-to-face interaction. The particular concern in this thesis is how humans are affected by different multimodal interfaces when they are collaborating with another person in a shared virtual environment. One aspect considered is how different modalities affect social presence, i.e. people’s ability to perceive the other person’s intentions and emotions. Another aspect investigated is how different modalities affect people’s notion of being present in a virtual environment that feels realistic and meaningful. Finally, this thesis attempts to understand how human behavior and efficiency in task performance are affected when using different modalities for collaboration. In the experiment presented in articles A and B, a shared virtual environment that provided touch feedback was used, making it possible to feel the shape, weight and softness of objects as well as collisions between objects and forces produced by another person. The effects of touch feedback on people’s task performance, perceived social presence, perceived presence and perceived task performance were investigated in tasks where people manipulated objects together. Voice communication was possible during the collaboration. Touch feedback improved task performance significantly, making it both faster and more precise. People reported significantly higher levels of presence and perceived performance, but no difference was found in the perceived social presence between the visual only condition and the condition with touch feedback. In article C an experiment is presented, where people performed a decision making task in a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) using avatar representations. They communicated either by text-chat, a telephone connection or a video conference system when collaborating in the CVE. Both perceived social presence and perceived presence were significantly lower in the CVE text-chat condition than in the CVE telephone and CVE video conference conditions. The number of words and the tempo in the dialogue as well as the task completion time differed significantly for persons that collaborated using CVE text-chat compared to those that used a telephone or a video conference in the CVE. The tempo in the dialogue was also found to be significantly higher when people communicated using a telephone compared to a video conference system in CVEs. In a follow-up experiment people performed the same task using a website instead, with no avatar but with the same information content as before. Subjects communicated either by telephone or a video conference iv system. Results from the follow-up experiment showed that people that used a telephone completed tasks significantly faster than those that used a video conference system, and that the tempo in the dialogue was significantly higher in the web environments than in the CVEs. Handing over objects is a common event during collaboration in face-to face interaction. In the experiment presented in article D and E, the effects of providing touch feedback was investigated in a shared virtual environment in which subjects passed a series of cubic objects to each other and tapped them at target areas. Subjects could not communicate verbally during the experiment. The framework of Fitts’ law was applied and it was hypothesized that object hand off constituted a collaboratively performed Fitts’ law task, with target distance to target size ratio as a fundamental performance determinant. Results showed that task completion time indeed linearly increased with Fitts’ index of difficulty, both with and without touch feedback. The error rate was significantly lower in the condition with touch feedback than in the condition with only visual feedback. It was also found that touch feedback significantly increased people’s perceived presence, social presence and perceived performance in the virtual environment. The results presented in article A and E analyzed together, suggest that when voice communication is provided the effect of touch feedback on social presence might be overshadowed. However, when verbal communication is not possible, touch proves to be important for social presence. / QC 20100630

Esta tese mapeia o espaço social do jornalismo de educação brasileiro. Trata-se de trabalho exploratório que se propõe a descrever um universo não estudado no país e pouco abordado no mundo. Lança luz sobre um de seus principais atores o jornalista de educação por meio de uma análise sociológica multifocal que compreende três escalas de observação (macro, meso e micro). Apoia-se no referencial teórico das teorias de socialização para responder às seguintes perguntas de pesquisa: como se caracterizam as lutas e jogos que se desenrolam no espaço do jornalismo de educação, quem é o jornalista de educação brasileiro e como este constrói sua identidade profissional. Parte-se da hipótese de que, para analisar a dinâmica do jornalismo de educação, é preciso compreender sua relação com outros espaços do universo jornalístico e do universo do poder, a estrutura das relações profissionais de seu espaço social, os sentidos em jogo ao longo da história e as trajetórias de socialização dos agentes. O trabalho de terreno resultou em informações quantitativas e qualitativas a partir de três instrumentos de coleta de dados: um survey, que contou com a participação de 92 dos 96 profissionais que compunham a população pesquisada, uma série de entrevistas semiestruturadas com 12 respondentes e uma socioanálise de uma redação jornalística. A análise aponta para um espaço social pouco autônomo, de instituições fracas e altamente sujeito a pressões externas. Como consequência, a organização do espaço não se dá em função do grau de especialização em educação. Identificam-se diferentes vetores de hierarquização, que apontam para uma multiplicidade de perfis identitários e para a marginalização dos profissionais mais especializados. Argumenta-se que essa configuração se deve a uma especificidade do contexto social brasileiro: um modelo societal que denominamos de modernidade intermitente, que fragiliza instituições e amplifica a necessidade de autofabricação dos sujeitos. Estes têm o desafio de enfrentar, com recursos próprios e individuais, as provas impostas ao longo de suas trajetórias. / This thesis maps the social space of the Brazilian education journalism. It is an exploratory work, which intends to describe a universe not yet studied in Brazil and poorly explored in the world. It sheds light upon one of its main actors the education journalist , using a multifocal sociological analysis, which comprises three scales of observation (macro, meso and micro). It relies on the theoretical framework of the theories of socialization to answer the following questions of research: how the disputes and the social games that take place in the space of education journalism are characterized, who is the Brazilian education journalist and how he/she builds his/her professional identity. The hypothesis proposed hereby is that, in order to analyze the dynamics of education journalism, one has to understand its relation with other spaces of the journalistic universe and the power universe, the structure of the professional relations within its social space, the senses at stake throughout its history and the agents trajectories of socialization. Fieldwork resulted both in quantitative and qualitative information extracted from three different instruments of data collection: a survey that comprised answers from 92 out of the 96 professionals of the researched population, a series of semi-structured interviews with 12 subjects and a socio-analysis of an education newsroom. The analysis points at a social space poorly autonomous, with weak institutions and heavily subjected to external pressures. Therefore, the organization of that space is not linked to the degree of specialization in education. One identifies different hierarchy vectors, which point to a multitude of identity profiles and to the marginalization of the most specialized professionals. One argues that this configuration is due to a specificity in the Brazilian context: a process that we call intermittent modernity, that weakens institutions and amplifies the subjects need of auto-fabrication. As a result, they must face the proofs throughout their trajectories relying mostly on their own individual resources.

The theoretical part of this thesis focuses mainly on crisis communication and its goal is to pinpoint its instruments, principles and regularities. The theoretical part also defines the concept of crisis and offers an adequate guide on what action should management take in individual periods of crisis. Apart from crisis communication and crisis management, it also explains the regularities of media analysis, which is used as an information portfolio for the second, practical part. The result is an evaluation of crisis communication during the events of "babies switched at birth in the hospital of Třebíč" from the hospital's perspective, mostly based on aforementioned media analysis. Adequate recommendations are proposed, based on the results.