The purpose of this Master’s thesis was to examine emerging adults’ perceptions and experiences of contribution. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen emerging adults (n= 10 female, n= 5 male) between the ages of 18 to 24 (M= 22.8, SD= 1.61). Participants were recruited through purposive (n= 7) and snowball (n= 8) sampling, where key informants (e.g., program directors, managers) from well-established community organizations helped in the referral of eligible participants. The findings revealed six major themes: (a) contribution is multifaceted, (b) multiple motivations for contributing, (c) social agents play a critical role, (d) early exposure is an important factor, (e) sport can play a key role in becoming a contributing citizen, and (f) contribution fosters the development of assets. Overall, the results from this Master’s thesis illustrate various factors that play a role in youth becoming contributing citizens as an emerging adult. Furthermore, the findings can enhance both research and applied work within the field of positive youth development, particularly related to the 5 C’s model proposed by Lerner. Keywords: positive youth development, contribution, community, motivation, social agents, sport, developmental assets

Social commerce is a growing field due to the popularity of social media. Research on social commerce stresses the benefits of utilizing social media or Web 2.0 technologies for business because user contribution, participation and collaboration, which are characteristics of Web 2.0, fuel business vitalization. Nevertheless, there is a lack of academic research on social commerce, and in what little research there is, the coverage is circumscribed. One of the challenges is conceptualization of social commerce due to various definitions made from researchers’ different perspectives and different positions on social commerce. This also led to the limitation of scope of research. In addition, there is still a need for identifying technological features and business goals for social commerce. Therefore, this research primarily encompasses establishing the concept of social commerce and identifying its implementation methods. To amount to those two primary goals, the research objectives are to understand the factors that affect social commerce implementation; to identify and investigate applicable Web 2.0 technologies that enable social commerce activities; and to investigate the business goals that can be achieved by social commerce implementation. Ultimately, the research aims to address methods of implementation. Consequently, the achievement of this research is that first, the concept of social commerce has been established by refining several definitions from the literature. Second, social commerce activities and business goals were identified and categorized based on the marketing funnel concept and the new customer life cycle model. Third, applicable Web 2.0 technologies were identified from the literature and other functionalities were also seized from real cases. Finally, the concept of social commerce has been demonstrated by implementing selected various commerce applications

The objective of this thesis is to describe an operative controlling in the division, reveal its deficiencies in margin recording and propose improvements to the system. Further, to calculate the amount of administrative expenses of the division in years 2006 -- 2008 (including the plan for 2009) and evaluate its progression regarding the incomes. The thesis is divided into two parts- The first part forms a theoretic basis in the area of price splitting, calculation and operative controlling. The second part is focused on actual problems in operative controlling of Dalkia Česká Republika, a.s. -- Divize Praha.

Discogs  is  a crowdsourced  online  discography  that  has  become  one  the  largest music databases   and   marketplace   used   by   collectors   and   enthusiasts. To   learn   about   what motivates Discogs community users to contribute, the answers provided by the respondents(n=135)   to an   online   survey with   Likert-scaled   items   measuring different types   of motivations  and  some  open-ended  questions were analysed.  The  results  suggested that Discogs contributors are primarily driven by altruistic reasons (intrinsic motivation) followed by  pragmatism  (extrinsic  motivation).   While  sellers  contributed to  the  database mostly  to sell in the Marketplace, they were equally motivated by intrinsic factors, with similar rates to respondents who  did  not  have  economic  interests  in  the  website. Open-ended  questions indicated  that  conflicts  with  other  users  could  decrease  the  motivation  to  contribute.  In addition,   respondents   revealed   that during   their   trajectory   ascontributors,   intrinsic motivation increased over time. Also, experience and expertise were the reasons why some contributors had roles recognised by other members in the Discogs community

In the debate on how to present and prevent climate change, the opinions have been conflicted. Some argue that a pessimistic projection will trigger a doomsday-effect and others argue that an optimistic projection enhances the risk of remaining passive. However, there is a fine line between what is too optimistic and too pessimistic. With the basis from choice architecture and the Zero Contribution Thesis, this study has dealt with how, and if, different projections could influence people's attitudes through nudges. By conducting two surveys which project different outcomes of climate change, one pessimistic, and one optimistic, this study aims at contributing to a greater understanding of how the use of communication can influence peoples’ attitudes and commitment towards climate change. When being a choice architect and constructing a nudge, it is crucial to carefully consider the design of the nudge since it is vital to understand that small details have a significant effect on the choices a person makes. By making small changes in our everyday life, we can reduce the impact of our ecological footprint. With the results it can be concluded that a purely pessimistic or optimistic projection may not be the most effective method when trying to influence environmentally friendly behaviour. Therefore, it could be beneficial to use a combination of both an optimistic- and pessimistic- projection of climate change. Furthermore, nudges could be considered as a legitimate policy tool when trying to create environmentally friendly behaviour.

This diploma thesis is focused on the use of controlling in the company. The selected company will be analyzed during the years 2019 and 2020. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part deals with theoretical knowledge about controlling. The practical part, which contains the method of calculating the multi-level contribution to cover fixed costs and profit generation. The last part contains own suggestions for improvement.

Graduate tax is a concept that was only recently introduced into the public discourse in South Africa. Little is known about how it will be implemented and who will be liable to pay such a tax. The purpose of this study is to examine the proposed introduction of graduate tax for South African tertiary education graduates and the public perception of such a tax. To achieve the objectives of the study, relevant literature was reviewed that explained the concept of a graduate tax and the possible advantages and disadvantages of its imposition. Data collected by means of a questionnaire was analysed, which revealed the public perception of a graduate tax as well as its possible consequences. The analysis of the data collected indicated that graduate tax is perceived as an additional tax to be paid by graduates from tertiary institutions, whereas the literature defined it as a tax paid by tertiary institution graduates who received their tertiary education at no cost. Furthermore, it was found that the imposition of a graduate tax may deter some from pursuing a tertiary degree in order to avoid liability for such tax. The imposition of a graduate tax could also lead to an outflow of skills, as graduates would be likely to seek employment outside South Africa in order to avoid paying graduate tax. It is recommended in this study that more clarity should be given to the public as to what this proposed graduate tax would entail and who would be affected by it. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / am2014 / Taxation / unrestricted

We present, extend, and apply a method to extract the contribution of a subregion of a data set to the global flow. To isolate this contribution, we decompose the flow in the subregion into a potential flow that is induced by the original flow on the boundary and a localized flow. The localized flow is obtained by subtracting the potential flow from the original flow. Since the potential flow is free of both divergence and rotation, the localized flow retains the original features and captures the region-specific flow that contains the local contribution of the considered subdomain to the global flow. In the remainder of the paper, we describe an implementation on unstructured grids in both two and three dimensions for steady and unsteady flow fields. We discuss the application of some widely used feature extraction methods on the localized flow and describe applications like reverse-flow detection using the potential flow. Finally, we show that our algorithm is robust and scalable by applying it to various flow data sets and giving performance figures.

Drawing upon the concept of governance, this dissertation refers to the two most commonly employed mechanisms that ensure high quality knowledge in electronic repositories as expert-governance and community-governance. In three related but distinct essays, the dissertation examines the governance concept, and investigates contributing knowledge to and using knowledge from electronic repositories governed by these two mechanisms. The first essay sets the conceptual foundations of knowledge governance in repositories, and examines the salient aspects of expert- and community-governance that contribute to knowledge quality. The essay adopts an interpretive research methodology and analyzes empirical data collected from a range of organizations using interviews and online questionnaires. Findings suggest that executing governance functions thoroughly, experts' credibility, and experts' ownership of content contribute to knowledge quality in expert-governed repositories; and executing governance functions continuously and by a diverse set of members, and members' involvement in governance contribute to knowledge quality in community-governed repositories. The second essay investigates the factors that influence individuals to make voluntary contributions to expert- and community-governed repositories. This essay employs the same research methodology used in Essay I and suggests that personal benefits is a stronger motivator for contributing to expert-governed, and reciprocity is a stronger motivator for contributing to community-governed repositories when these two repositories are implemented on an individual basis in organizational settings. When the two repositories are implemented simultaneously, two sets of factors influence contribution behaviors: knowledge-based factors include the type, formality, and sensitivity of knowledge; and need-based factors include the need for collaboration, expert validation, and recognition. The third essay investigates knowledge use from expert- and communitygoverned repositories using a positivist perspective. It conducts a controlled experiment drawing upon elaboration likelihood model, and finds that the credibility of a governance mechanism positively affects subjects’ perceptions of knowledge quality as well as their intentions to use knowledge, which in turn affect their actual knowledge use. This essay also conducts within-subject comparisons using repeated measures ANOVA to shed light on subjects’ perceptions of expert- and community-governed knowledge assets.

Under the background of the competitive and dynamic international market, many enterprises started or intended to develop international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) as a strategic posture. For achieving this kind of orientation, leadership behaviours are necessary and shared leadership is put forward to support enterprises to adapt to the fast-changing global market. Moreover, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an essential type of business enterprises, especially in China. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to study how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO in a Chinese SME. As a qualitative research, data were collected by interviews and processed by content analysis. The findings of this research are: (1) shared leadership contributes on the establishment of common IEO thinking at the phase of building the IEO awareness; (2) shared leadership plays a role as explicit support and implicit support on implementing IEO; (3) these contributions of shared leadership are mutually reinforcing and complementary, which result in the reinforcement and complementation between the awareness and the implementation of IEO. These findings contribute to the research in the combination of shared leadership and IEO through studying the effects of shared leadership and the process of IEO development. Moreover, this research enriches the study on the field of SMEs and provides guidance for SME leaders who intend to develop IEO.