Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-144).

Thesis (MComm)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Knowledge is generally regarded as a new competitive business resource in the information age. The leveraging of this resource has therefore become a significant concern of knowledge management. Knowledge management is not culturally neutral, however, and there seem to be differences between Western and Eastern knowledge management practices. In order to address these differences and determine their cultural roots, a comparative analysis of the cultural influences on knowledge management approaches in Western and Eastern corporations is needed. To fulfil this objective, it was firstly necessary to clarify the basic concept of knowledge, knowledge management and some relevant cultural issues. Secondly, specific Western and Eastern corporations were chosen as case studies, and their knowledge management approaches were analysed. In a third step, a comparative analysis was done between Western knowledge and Eastern knowledge management practices. The culturally determining factors are presented. In the second part of the study, the relationship between knowledge management and cultural issues was discussed. Since knowledge management is still in its infancy, this means that a common language is being established. Although the importance of corporate culture has been recognised, national cultural influences on knowledge management practices still need considerable scholarly attention. In the third part of the study, three national cultures were chosen to represent the Western and Eastern cultures. America and Sweden represent Western culture, while Japan represents Eastern culture. Several corporations, including IBM, Skandia, Toshiba, Sharp, were presented as case studies and their knowledge management approaches were analysed, e.g. tacit knowledge management focus, explicit knowledge management focus, knowledge creation, knowledge reuse, internal acquirement of knowledge, external acquirement of knowledge, etc. Based on the analysis of the Western and Eastern corporations' knowledge management practices, a comparative analysis was conducted to identify the role that national culture plays in corporate knowledge management. In the last part of the study, the conclusions indicated that national cultures do influence knowledge managers in their choice or omission of certain approaches to knowledge management. Following from this conclusion, several future research suggestions were proffered. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Kennis word oor die algemeen as 'n nuwe mededingende bron van die inligtingsera beskou. Die invloed van hierdie bron het dus 'n betekenisvolle aangeleentheid vir kennisbestuur geword. Kennisbestuur is egter nie kultureel-neutraal nie en daar is toenemende bewyse van verskille tussen Westerse en Oosterse kennisbestuurpraktyke. 'n Vergelykende analise van kultuurinvloede op die kennisbestuurbenaderings van Westerse en Oosterse ondernemings is nodig om hierdie verskille te bepaal en hul grondslae te ondersoek. Om aan hierdie doelstelling te voldoen was dit nodig om eers die basiese kennis- en kennisbestuurbegrippe en fundamentele kultuurdimensies te verklaar. Tweedens is spesifieke Westerse en Oosterse ondernemings gekies as gevallestudies en is hul onderskeie kennisbestuurbenaderings geanaliseer. Derdens is 'n vergelykende analise van Westerse en Oosterse kennisbestuurpraktyke gemaak. In die tweede gedeelte van hierdie studie word die verhouding tussen kennisbestuur en kulturele kwessies ontleed. Aangesien kennisbestuur nog in sy kinderskoene staan beteken dit dat 'n gemeenskaplike terminologie gebou moet word. Alhoewel die belangrikheid van korporatiewe kultuur al herken is, benodig die invloede van 'n nasionale kultuur op bestuurspraktyke nog aandag. In die derde gedeelte van hierdie studie word drie lande as die verteenwoordigers van Westerse en Oosterse kulture gekies. Amerika en Swede verteenwoordig Westerse kultuur, terwyl Japan Oosterse kultuur verteenwoordig. Verskeie ondernemings soos IBM, Skandia en Toshiba word as gevallestudies behandel en hul kennisbestuurbenaderings word geanaliseer, bv. onuitgesproke kennisbestuurfokus, eksplisiete kennisbestuurfokus, kennisskepping, kennisherverbruik, interne kennisverkryging en eksterne kennisverkryging. 'n Vergelykende analise, gebaseer op die onderskeie analises van Westerse en Oosterse kennisbestuurpraktyke, word gedoen om die rol van nasionale kultuur in korporatiewe kennisbestuur te identifiseer. Die bevindings, gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings van die studie toon dat kennisbestuurders wel deur hul nasionale kultuur beïnvloed word in hul keuse, al dan nie, van sekere benaderings tot kennisbestuur. Verskeie voorstelle vir toekomstige navorsing, afgelei van die gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings, word hierna voorgelê.

published_or_final_version / Paediatrics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Both the public and private sectors currently encounter the telescoping urgency for effective cross-cultural coventuring in business, educational and personal arenas. Existing descriptive models for organizing cultural information are either simplistic and superficial or so complex as to be inaccessible or overwhelm the user. This study uses Saunders' theory of model construction as an informing hypothesis to develop a model for cross-cultural coventuring. An integral part of this conception is a definition of culture which uses Villemain's insightful concept of qualitative meaning. Integrating this type of meaning within Saunders' Inquiry Cube allows for categories through which even the most subtle and unarticulated variables making up the human enterprise and the value base of those cherished and celebrated human ideals can be sorted, classified, and set into a taxonomic design. This hierarchical pattern provides direction and parameters for greater cross-cultural exploration. The methodological sequence of the Cultural Inquiry Cube is further translated to a psychological sequence which is more readily comprehensible to the learner. The greatest potential for widespread use of this model seems to be in microcomputer applications. Compact disc technology including CD-ROM and CD-I promises accessibility not possible heretofore.

No description available.

Attachment theory addresses the young child’s biological and psychological need to elicit their mother’s protection and care, and seeks to explain the emotional bond that forms between them in the early years of life. Several researchers have pointed out that the Western concept of attachment might be less relevant for Japanese parent-child dyads because Japanese child-rearing ideals are based on the concept of ‘amae’ (emotional one-ness between mother and child), whereas attachment theory emphasises the link between attachment and independence/autonomy. Research to date, however, has not yet directly addressed the possible association between maternal amae attitudes and attachment patterns in Japanese mother-child dyads. This is, in part, due to the current lack of any assessment tool to measure mothers’ responses to their child’s amae behaviours. Japanese attachment patterns have also not yet been investigated using the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST: Green et al., 2000), a doll-play attachment measurement for children aged between 4 and 8 years old which has been used in Western contexts. This doctoral thesis consists of three cross-cultural empirical studies which address this gap in the current literature. In the first study, a 39-item prototype amae attitude scale (AAS) was constructed based on responses from Japanese focus groups and an earlier study of amae behaviours (Vereijken et al., 1997). The scale was subsequently completed by Japanese and British mothers. Japanese mothers were found to be more tolerant in general than British mothers of their child’s amae behaviours, in all 4 sub-categories explored (pure, asking, frustrated, and anxious amae), with cultural differences most marked in maternal attitudes towards their children’s anxious-amae behaviour. The second study addressed two questions: whether attachment behaviours differ in Japanese and British 4-5 year olds (measured with the MCAST) and whether there is a relationship between children’s MCAST attachment classifications and maternal attitudes towards children’s amae behaviours (measured with the AAS) in Japanese and British dyads. Contrary to what has been found in some of the previous Japanese Strange Situation studies, the distribution of MCAST attachment classifications was similar in the two countries. As predicted from the results of study 1, the AAS scores of Japanese mothers also indicated that they were significantly more tolerant of their child’s amae behaviours than their British counterparts. This was true for both mothers of securely and insecurely attached children. A tendency for mothers of securely attached children to have less tolerant attitudes towards children’s amae behaviours than those of insecurely attached children was found in both countries. A cultural difference also emerged in the way children expressed the maternal needs of the child doll during the mildly stressful scenarios in the MCAST. The third study examined actual mother-child interaction in both countries, measuring the mother’s emotional availability to the child (using the Emotional Availability Scale: Biringen, 2000) and relating this to both maternal AAS and child MCAST data. The results showed that emotional availability scores and attachment classification patterns did not differ across cultures. Analysis of the home observations also indicated that children from both cultures who were classified as insecurely attached (ambivalent and disorganised type) in the MCAST tended to show more amae behaviours towards their mothers than children classified as securely attached. Together, these three studies suggest that children in both counties show similar attachment patterns and that it is not only Japanese children who express amae behaviours towards their mothers. In fact, amae relates to attachment security in both cultures, although the way it is expressed and maternal attitudes towards such behaviours differ across cultures.

No description available.

No description available.

To gain an understanding of children’s social milieu, this study explored international children’s phenomenology about their social networks, stressors, and supports using the ecomap, a graphic tool that maps children’s social relationships and their appraisals of them. Specifically, it addressed the following two research questions using archival ecomap data collected from 816 school-aged children (ages four – 19 years) from 14 cities in 12 countries (Brazil – Manaus, Estonia – Tallinn, Greece – Athens, India – Mumbai, Italy – Padua, Mexico – Xalapa, Romania – Bucharest, Russia – Samara, Slovak Republic – Košice, Sri Lanka – Negombo, Tanzania – Arusha, and the United States – Boston, Massachusetts; Mayagüez, Puerto Rico; New Orleans, Louisiana): (a) What are the characteristics of international children’s social networks, and what cross-cultural patterns exist; and (b) Who and what do children consider their social supports and social stressors, and what cross-cultural patterns emerge? The nature of the ecomap drawings and their associated narratives allowed for a concurrent mixed methods approach to be used to identify cross-cultural phenomenological patterns about the structures (network size, embeddedness, and network composition), functions (stressor and support types), and evaluations (relationship appraisals) of children’s social worlds. Considerable diversity was found in the data, but a number of notable cross-site, cross-gender, and cross-age patterns were identified. In general, children in this sample reported a trimmed mean network size of 7.87 (SD = 3.61), with middle school students reporting the largest (M = 8.78). Embeddedness, measured as the balance of perceived stress and supports (Nastasi & Borja, 2015; Summerville, 2013), also was generally positive, suggesting that children generally perceive themselves to be connected to their social networks. Most commonly reported members included home parent/caregivers, friends/peers, extended family members, and siblings; and across grade levels, sites, and gender, network members were generally appraised positively. When asked about the ways that network members support or trigger distress, youth in this sample described over 50 stress and support themes, most of which related to interpersonal relationships and interactions. The results of the current study not only contributes to the literature on children’s stressors and supports, but also build on Nastasi and colleagues’ Promoting Psychological Well-Being Globally project (PPWBG; Nastasi & Borja, 2015), whose international team collected the ecomap data to understand children’s well-being and the culturally- and developmentally-unique factors that influence them. / 1 / Amanda P Borja

The effects of expertise, such as better recognition of own-race than other-race faces, have been attributed either to poor encoding of configural information (the dual-mode theory) or to representation of faces on dimensions attuned to own-race faces and, hence, inappropriate for coding of other-race faces (the ABC model). Neither framework alone has been able to account for the variety of past results. It is proposed that a composite account derived from the dual-mode theory and the ABC model may offer a more complete explanation of the effects of race. To evaluate the composite account, six experiments using perceptual paradigms were carried out. The structure of face space and the effects of expertise on configural processing were assessed in a dissimilarity perception task (Experiment 1). Caucasian and Chinese participants judged dissimilarity of own-race and other-race faces with various configural distortions relative to their unaltered versions. As predicted by the composite account, face spaces derived from the dissimilarity ratings for own-race and other-race faces were comparable. Consistent with the premise that expertise affects configural coding, Caucasian participants exhibited greater sensitivity to configural changes of own-race than other-race faces. The effects of expertise on configural encoding were further examined in a bizarreness perception paradigm (Experiments 2-4). Caucasian participants rated bizarreness of unaltered and distorted faces rotated from upright to inverted in 15� increments. The distortions involved either simple component alterations (i.e., whitened pupils and blackened teeth), global configural changes (i.e., inverted eyes and mouth), or more local configural transformations (e.g., moving the eyes closer together and upwards, and shifting the mouth down). Similar bizarreness ratings for all faces with component distortions confirmed that expertise does not affect processing of simple component information. Differences in the perceived bizarreness of own-race and other-race faces in the unaltered and global configural distortion conditions corroborated the hypothesis that expertise influences holistic configural encoding. Variations in the perceived bizarreness of faces with more local configural changes, however, indicated that expertise might also affect local configural coding. The effects of expertise on local configural processing were further examined in a discrimination paradigm (Experiments 5 and 6). Participants made same-different decisions with upright and inverted face pairs comprising either two identical faces (same trials) or unaltered and distorted versions of the same face (different trials). To distinguish between holistic and local processing of configural information, partial faces were created in addition to whole faces. Higher accuracy for own-race than other-race faces at both upright and inverted orientations in both whole and partial face conditions substantiated the argument that expertise modulates local configural encoding. Altogether, the present investigation offers direct evidence for the composite account of the effects of race. As ventured by the composite account, the own-race face bias in face perception was shown to be due to variations in configural processing. In addition, the reported experiments support the argument that configural information can be encoded both locally and holistically.