Academic studies of sustainable fashion, and the discourses of actors in business and policy, under-define fashion as a system by treating the social and ecological aspects of fashion separately. This reduces the potential for academic findings to provide knowledge useful for transformation of the fashion system and obstructs desired outcomes from policy and business responses to fashion’s negative social and environmental impacts. Understanding how fashion works as a system presents a challenge to transdisciplinary efforts for transformation towards sustainability. In this Licentiate, I explore ways to look at fashion using a feminist critical realist social-ecological system approach. I develop a theoretical framework to understand the fashion system, and particularly to understand what is keeping it unsustainable. I view fashion as a ‘nested’ social-ecological system with inseparable social and biophysical parts.  I use a feminist lens characterized by diversity; this draws attention to gaps, what is known, missing and absent. To show that social aspects and material aspects are intertwined and cannot be studied independently of each other, I use critical realism as a metatheory. I bring its idea of a stratified reality and the model of the four-planar social being to the social-ecological system approach that forms the core of my work. I combine Ostrom’s frequently used general framework for analysing social-ecological systems with a policy-oriented framework for sustainable development. Drawing from these two frameworks I develop a five principles for a strategy framework for sustainable fashion. In summary, applying the strategy framework within the theoretical framework enables thinking more deeply about the structure and implications of knowledge contributions when taking a social-ecological perspective on actions for sustainability.  The two papers in this licentiate thesis examine the effects of ontological standpoints that allow environmental impacts of textile fibres to be analysed in isolation from the cultural and social aspects of fashion.    Paper 1, ‘Making Resilient Decisions for Sustainable Circularity of Fashion’, is recently published in the journal Circular Economy and Sustainability (Palm et al. 2021). It aimed to show how current circularity responses to global sustainability challenges have so far fallen short. The current path of the expanding fashion industry is fraught with accelerated material throughputs and increased disposal and waste, contributing to human-driven environmental changes at planetary scale. In addition the fashion industry has issues of poor working conditions, modern-day slavery, and justice. By representing a Driver – State – Response framework as an adaptive cycle of a social-ecological system, it makes it clear that reducing planetary pressure from the global fashion and textiles industry requires greater recognition of the system’s social drivers. This paper was a step towards the iterative development of my sustainable fashion framework.   Paper 2, ‘Reviewing and defining the concept of Sustainable Fashion: a critical social-ecological approach’, is included as an early-stage draft manuscript. It aims to provide a starting point for discussions towards a coherent science-business-policy definition of the concept of sustainable fashion itself. Using the five theoretically grounded principles of my strategy framework, I examine the manifold definitions related to sustainable fashion such as eco fashion, green fashion, ethical fashion, slow fashion, organic fashion and cradle-to-cradle-fashion. Critical realism’s idea of absence structures this paper.  This thesis contributes to knowledge of what a nested inseparable social-ecological system fashion is, enriching ontological descriptions for resilience research more generally.  Also, it provides concrete guidance for transdisciplinary efforts with business and policy working to decrease fashion’s negative impacts on humans and the planet, by showing that fruitful responses pay attention to social activities beyond the industry value chain, not just material flows within. Finally,  I hope my research serves as a contribution to propaedeutics of the field of sustainable fashion, i.e. giving an introductory understanding of the reality and the possibilities of fashion for people and planet. / <p>The work presented here was part of a consortium research project between Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, initiated and funded by H&amp;M Group, the Swedish public limited company. Celinda Palm, Sarah Cornell and Tiina Häyhä’s employment was part-funded through this project.</p>

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree in Master of Technology: Education, Durban University of Technology, 2009. / This study investigated key factors impacting on blended learning delivery with particular focus on socio-cultural and human-computer-interface issues, in the hope that the outcome of this enquiry might contribute positively towards the empowerment of learners and facilitators alike. The study involved a group of first year students enrolled in a Communications Skills Course offered by the (then) Department of English and Communication at the Durban University of Technology. The PRINTS Project, a webquest around which the course activities were based, provided an example of a blended delivery course in practice. While the teaching paradigm used in the course was constructivist, the research orientation employed in this project was critical realist. Critical realism focuses on transformation through praxis and also lends itself to modelling, which provides a way to understand the factors at play within a social system. In the preliminary stages of the research, an exploratory empirical (i.e. applied) model of blended learning delivery was formulated from a theoretical model of course delivery in order to assess which factors in blended learning were systemic and which were variables. The investigation then sought to uncover key factors impacting on the blended delivery system, utilising both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The findings were analysed in terms of the empirical model to gain an understanding of any factors that might be seen to either enhance or inhibit learning in blended delivery mode. The result was that certain core issues in blended learning and teaching could be clarified, including the use, advantages and disadvantages of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a learning environment. The notion of the digital divide could also be reconceptualised, and the relationship between literacy (be it academic, professional or social), power and culture could be further elucidated, drawing specific attention to the South African educational environment. The notion of iv culture and its relevance in a blended delivery environment was also further clarified, since the findings of this research project suggested how and why certain key socio-cultural factors might impact, as both enhancers and inhibitors, on the blended learning delivery system.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental impacts of Business Social Responsibility (BSR) of the tourism industry in South Africa with a special focus on the Western Cape region. The study was based on the premise that little is known regarding the role and contribution of BSR of the tourism sector to the three critical challenges: poverty, unemployment and inequality that South Africa is facing. The effectiveness of South African tourism policies in guiding the industry and the extend of compliance were assessed. Extensive relevant literature was reviewed, providing a framework for the analysis and interpretation of the research findings. Different types of tourism businesses, 307 in total, were surveyed in the Western Cape Province using stratified sampling. Government tourism departments and community organisations were identified as the key informants. Mixed research methods were applied, allowing for various tools and techniques to be used. Research data was analysed using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research findings were analysed and interpreted using theoretical realism and neoliberalism frameworks. The findings indicated that the government developed a series of regulations and procedures to guide the tourism sector. Key role players and international investors design and implement BSR activities with complete disregard of intended community stakeholders. There is little or no significant participation in the design stage of intended stakeholders. Targeted communities are not able to raise critical issues largely because of poverty and unemployment. Though there are regulations such as B-BBEE, employment equity, BSR policies governing various tourism businesses have largely ignored these regulations. Attracting investors has been a major concern for the government with little concern of the nature of activities, impacts and their contributions on reducing the triple challenges in the country. This study contends that the current policies and regulatory frameworks are much too market friendly. Hence, the tourism industry has largely been able to implement policies that favours market goals. Some tourism BSR policies are aligned to the province’s institutional framework while others are not, indicating a lack of sustainable development. A model is proposed to improve the implementation of tourism BSR activities and policies / Geography / D. Phil. (Geography)

The thesis presents an analysis of the themes of the city, the journey and the pilgrim in the well known danish novel Havoc by Tom Kristiensen. The introductory part of the thesis includes a brief summary of the changes in the image of the city in the 19th and 20th century works of art and literature. Furthermore, it also focuses on the man-city relationship and stresses its reciprocity and the important role of the city in the process of the formation of individual identity. The following part of the thesis analyses the theme of the city in Havoc and focuses mainly on the influence, which the main character's feeling of alientation has on the depiction of the city in the novel. Another discussed topic is the main character's decision to intentedly reach the bottom of his existence, which is interpreted as the result of the post-world war I. urge to question and reassess the foundations of the society and its principels and values. The thesis compares and contrasts the main character's deroute with other famous litterary journeys and pilgrimages. Furthemore, it also analyses the predominant patterns of the main charcter's movement through the city and interprets its spiral course as emblematic of the main charatcer's search of identity. The final part of the thesis explores the importance of the...

Social media today is a dominant communication tool, which structures not only our social interactions but also filter the information users are getting displayed. The big social media platforms use our interaction data to analyse our behaviour and sell the data for commercial interest. But not only the pure interaction data is valuable for these platforms. Also hidden information, which can be derived from our interactive networks, about our social structures, social classifications and social status are gathered and monetised. This research attempts on the one hand to uncover some of these methods used by social media platforms, and on the other hand, also wants to show how useful these new methods can be for research on social phenomena. Therefore, this study goes beyond the confining limits of traditional sociology, where either qualitative or quantitative methods are applied. Following the idea of Critical Realism, the positivist and constructivist methods are applied in combination in order to provide thick accounts of the studied material. In this study, varying socioeconomic classification systems (like the Sinus-Milieu models) are investigated and evaluated against the background of Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural and social forms of capital. The present study uses a mixed method approach (Social Network Analysis and Sentiment Analysis) to analyse quantitative data from Twitter conversations which were collected during the Austrian EU Election 2019. In conclusion, one could say that the overall purpose of this study is to demonstrate the usefulness of Critical Realism for social media research, since this approach can create a thicker account of the studied material than other, more traditional methods. This undertaking is demonstrated by the findings of the study. These findings are the building of specific sub-clusters of EU candidates which are not related to the same political background and traditional demographics but whose relation can be detected and described using Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital. As a mean for gathering empirical data, Twitter turned out to be a useful and accessible tool for this study.

This study identifies the characteristics of seven key principles of good/corporate governance at three levels: as notions that originated in business; in their applications to sport through systematic review; and in relation to the interpretations given to them in the Olympic Movement. The aims of this study are, thus, to establish and utilise the IOC s definitions/interpretations and operationalisations of corporate and/or good governance developed in a western framework and apply to a non-western NOC, the Korean Olympic Committee (KOC). This study adopts critical realist assumptions which give rise to the hypothesis that both the regularities of the Korean society and its unobservable social structures have an impact on the corporate governance of the KOC. It also uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine each interviewee s discourse in order to identify the knowledge embraced by it and to interpret social practice(s) and the exercise of power. CDA is employed in relation to four selected events follows: the KOC/KSC merger, budgetary planning, the recruitment of staff in terms of gender and disability equity and the processes used for selecting the KOC President and the Chef de Mission. The unobservable deep structure is shown to be real domain in Korean society by the social practices exhibited in the four events. The government and, in particular, the State President represent the highest and most influential authority in decision-making on Korean sports policy. That power relationship coupled with the pre-existing structure of the KOC/KSC s financial dependency on the government has resulted in a situation where the government has been able to interfere greatly in the KOC/KSC s overall decision-making on sports policy including the election of the President of the KOC. The KOC/KSC President is the most influential stakeholder in the decision-making within the organisation including the selection of Chef de Mission. As the pre-existing structure of cultural expectations determines that women should usually quit their jobs after marriage and that people with disabilities are incapable of working, the strongly male with abilities-dominated organisational culture has resulted in a social phenomenon whereby few females or people with impairments have succeeded in being promoted to senior positions. From the macro-level perspective, the first KOC/KSC merger accomplished on the orders of the State President shows the dominance of economic power as suggested in Marxist influenced forms of analysis. The incumbent KOC President, who is at the pinnacle of the business elite, contributed to the KOC/KSC merger, which illustrates the aspect of elitism. In connection with the budgetary process, this may be viewed as evidence of the existence of a neo-corporatist structure in which the state plays a central role and acts in a unitary way with the involvement of a limited number of actors. With respect to the meso-level perspective, the aspect of clientelism is exhibited since the government habitually appoints its political aides to be the heads of various sporting organisations. Concerning political governance, it becomes obvious that the government has direct control over KOC/KSC s policy. In terms of systemic governance, the relations among the domestic stakeholders of the KOC are more likely to follow a hierarchical type of governance, as the government has adopted the highest position and the National Federations are under the control of the KOC/KSC. With reference to Lukes (1974) second dimension of power this can be evidenced in the context of the non-decision making roles of women and the disabled. The IOC s interpretations of the key principles of corporate governance in a western framework are applied to the KOC. Accountability, responsibility, transparency and democracy are established but the KOC s governance practices are not equivalent, while effectiveness and efficiency are interpreted as the same ways of the IOC s. In general, power centralisation is apparent throughout the Korean cultural context. The KOC s power structure and organisational culture is likely to be concentrated to the KOC President within the organisation and broadly, the Korean government enjoys its power centralisation decision-making in the Korean context which gives rise to a peculiarly Korean way of interpreting and applying the principles of corporate governance. In such circumstances, nevertheless, where the KOC is making an effort to align its practices with the IOC s recommendations as much as possible, the indication is that the KOC is on course to reflect the IOC s governance practices.

This thesis answers the question “Why does security cooperation occur between Western states?”. The basic answer is: “Because most state actors do not want their states to integrate”. In other words, cooperation occurs as a coping mechanism, as an imperfect substitute for integration. But the thesis does not only investigate the reasons for cooperation, what Aristotle called the final cause. The thesis also examines the material, formal and efficient causes of cooperation. Such an unorthodox causal explanation of cooperation is based on a Critical Realist philosophy of social science. The application of this philosophy to the empirical study of International Relation is rare, making this thesis original. Beyond the philosophy of social science, the thesis' research design, many of the cases, and much of the data are also rarely used. The research design is an embedded multiple-case study. The states studied are the United States of America, France and Luxembourg. Within each state, the embedded subcases are three types of state security organisations: the armed forces, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Rarely have these three types of security organisations been compared. Similarly, Luxembourg is seldom studied. Comparing different types of states and different types of state security organisations has not only allowed the main research question to be answered. It has also allowed temporal, spatial, national, and functional variation in cooperation to be identified and theorised. The empirical evidence studied includes participant observation (at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and documents (e.g. state policy documents, annual reports by organisations, reports by parliaments and non-governmental organisations, autobiographies, books by investigative journalists, articles by newspapers and magazines). The thesis is also based on a score of elite interviews (e.g. with ambassadors, diplomatic liaisons, ministerial advisors, foreign ministry officers, military commanders, etc.), and the careful study of both declassified and classified archival records.

The so-called digital economy has been growing exponentially in the emerging economies and it is expected to continue growing around the globe. For this reason, many governments are funding support programmes (e.g. Start-up America in the USA, the UK’s Tech City, and Brazil Startup) to both encourage and facilitate the creation of Digital Start-ups (DSs), defined here as recentlycreated enterprises that produce solely digital products or services. Whilst in some regions there is some evidence that these efforts are starting to pay off, the majority of DSs that have grown to become global digital enterprises remain concentrated in the United States and Europe. In the case of Latin America, the digital economy already accounts for between 2-3.2% of GDP. Nonetheless, most e-commerce transactions occur through platforms based in the United States, with a scarcity of examples of Latin American DSs (LADSs) that have grown to become large digital firms. Despite this, the literature has paid little attention to the relationship that exists between the institutional environment and LADS’s agency. The few extant studies that do exist have focused on either institutional or infrastructure constraints and public policies, or business models and resource analysis. To address this knowledge gap, this research studied LADSs in the four largest Latin American countries (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia), representing three-quarters of the region’s GDP, in order to answer the following questions: How do environmental pressures influence the development of LADSs? How do LADSs respond to these pressures and seize potential business opportunities? The research followed a critical realist philosophical foundation and was operationalised through a qualitative exploratory field study of forty organisations, including DSs, accelerators, investors, government agencies, and not-for-profits. Geel’s (2014) Triple Embeddedness Framework (TEF) was chosen as the theoretical framework to guide this research and integrates constructs from the Lean Start-up method (LSM), which was widely adopted by the LADSs to develop their business models. This study provides empirical support for the constructs outlined in the TEF, identifies crucial shortcomings in LSM, and uncovers new constructs that are necessary to accommodate the DSs’ digital properties, which result in tensions between their embeddedness in the institutional environment, their hybrid embeddedness in a product-sector industry and a digital industry, and their embeddedness in a multi-level organisational field that creates a core-periphery relationship between Latin America and the United States. Therefore, a new framework, entitled DIME, is proposed to assist e-entrepreneurs when developing digital business models to achieve the right firm-environment-fit in Latin America. The findings of this study will also contribute to future research, and to guide policy makers interested in fostering the development of the digital economy in emerging economies.

This dissertation arose from a need to derive an inclusive model for describing the historical meanings of progressive education. It considers reform rhetoric published in two widely distributed and accessible journals in Ontario, The School and The Canadian School Journal, between 1919 and 1942. These sources brought together a wide variety of educationists in the province, including teachers, school board representatives, members of the Department of Education, inspectors, and the staff of teacher training institutions, and were forums for the exploration of new and progressive educational ideas. Various conceptions and interpretations of what progressive education would entail were published side by side, in parallel. This dissertation describes the rhetoric of progressive education, which concerned three domains—active learning, individualized instruction, and the linking of schools to contemporary society—and considers the distinctions within this language. Further, this dissertation argues that progressivist ideas were interpreted and represented in different ways according to conceptual orientation and context. Three distinct interpretations of progressive education are described in this thesis. The first progressivist orientation was primarily concerned with child study and developmental psychology; the second concerned social efficiency and industrial order; the third concerned social meliorism and cooperation. Hence, I draw not only on three different domains of progressivist rhetoric, but also on three distinct orientations to reform. What emerges is a description of how different progressivists understood and represented Ontario’s transforming schools, in a context affected by the forces of modernity, world war, and economic depression. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2009-06-14 19:00:04.184

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree in Master of Technology: Education, Durban University of Technology, 2009. / This study investigated key factors impacting on blended learning delivery with particular focus on socio-cultural and human-computer-interface issues, in the hope that the outcome of this enquiry might contribute positively towards the empowerment of learners and facilitators alike. The study involved a group of first year students enrolled in a Communications Skills Course offered by the (then) Department of English and Communication at the Durban University of Technology. The PRINTS Project, a webquest around which the course activities were based, provided an example of a blended delivery course in practice. While the teaching paradigm used in the course was constructivist, the research orientation employed in this project was critical realist. Critical realism focuses on transformation through praxis and also lends itself to modelling, which provides a way to understand the factors at play within a social system. In the preliminary stages of the research, an exploratory empirical (i.e. applied) model of blended learning delivery was formulated from a theoretical model of course delivery in order to assess which factors in blended learning were systemic and which were variables. The investigation then sought to uncover key factors impacting on the blended delivery system, utilising both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The findings were analysed in terms of the empirical model to gain an understanding of any factors that might be seen to either enhance or inhibit learning in blended delivery mode. The result was that certain core issues in blended learning and teaching could be clarified, including the use, advantages and disadvantages of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a learning environment. The notion of the digital divide could also be reconceptualised, and the relationship between literacy (be it academic, professional or social), power and culture could be further elucidated, drawing specific attention to the South African educational environment. The notion of iv culture and its relevance in a blended delivery environment was also further clarified, since the findings of this research project suggested how and why certain key socio-cultural factors might impact, as both enhancers and inhibitors, on the blended learning delivery system.