Relações de poder na sociedade em rede, emergência, nomadismo e coletivos digitais. Estudo inserido na Área de Concentração Interfaces Sociais da Comunicação, na Linha de Pesquisa Educomunicação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Comunicação (PPGCOM) da Universidade de São Paulo. A pesquisa trata dos critérios de reputação em trabalho coletivo mediado denominado texto coletivo desenvolvido por alunos do Programa de Pós- Graduação em Ciências da Comunicação (PPGCOM) da Escola de Comunicação e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, constituindo-se em um estudo de caso na disciplina Criando Comunidades Virtuais de Aprendizagem e Prática, em vigor desde o ano de 2001. Estudo longitudinal, exploratório, o método é etnográfico utilizando técnicas de coleta de dados quantitativas (questionário fechado) e qualitativas observação participante e coleta de depoimentos. Os resultados apontam para os seguintes critérios de reputação: a) o envolvimento dos participantes na atividade de produção coletivo; b) a influência do conhecimento de cultura digital e ferramentas da web (literacia digital); c) perfil do aluno e característica pessoais que despertam a confiança e o compartilhamento de conhecimento por parte dos outros colegas. / Powerelationships in network society: emergence, nomadism and digital colectives. This research belongs to Graduate Program of Communication Sciences in School of Arts at University of São Paulo/Brazil. The study deals about the emergence of reputation\'s criteria on a collaborative mediated work - a collective text - written by graduate students of Graduated Program of Communication Sciences in School of Arts and Communication from University of Sao Paulo/ Brazil. The students were taking part at a discipline named Building Virtual Learning Communities and Practice being offered on the graduated program since 2001. Exploratory and longitudinal, this study adopted an etnographic perspective through quantitative methods (surveys) and qualitative methods testimonys and participant observation. The results are pointting to the emergence of the following reputation\'s criteria: a) student\'s motivation and envolvement in the collaborative work b) the influence of digital literacy c) the influence of contigencial\'s factors like profile, charisma, and trust by the other students during the collaborative work.

O objetivo da presente tese consiste na determinação de novas estruturas de governança capazes de fornecer os incentivos e controles necessários para a sustentação de estratégias de diferenciação de produto na cadeia produtiva de frutas, legumes e verduras frescos (FLV), focalizando o papel do varejo moderno na definição e adoção de padrões e classificações privados que visam aumentar a coordenação vertical da cadeia. A tese mostrará que as novas estratégias adotadas pelo varejo moderno utilizam como mecanismo de coordenação das transações com produtores e consumidores a criação de padrões privados próprios, que têm como objetivo principal informar a qualidade desejada dos produtos comercializados aos produtores e, ao mesmo tempo, atender às exigências de qualidade do consumidor. Novas estruturas de governança surgem buscando sustentar tais transações. A conjunção de mecanismos de sinalização, credibilidade e o efeito reputação constituem o fator chave para a efetividade do padrão privado como mecanismo de coordenação ao longo da cadeia. / The thesis’ objective consists in the determination of new governance structures capable of providing the necessary incentives and controls to the maintenance of product’s differentiation strategies in the fresh fruits and vegetables (FFV) productive chain, focusing the role of the modern retailers in the definition and adoption of private standards and classifications that intend to increase the chain’s vertical coordination. The thesis will show that the new strategies adopted by the modern retailers use the creation of private standards as a coordination mechanism of the transactions with producers and consumers, under the main objective of providing information to the producers about the commercialized products’ desirable quality and, simultaneously, fill up the consumer’s quality demands. New governance structures arise in the search of sustain to these transactions. The conjunction of signalizing mechanisms, credibility and reputation effect is the key factor to the effectiveness of the private standards as a coordination mechanism along the chain.

O comportamento político é uma característica da vida nas organizações, no entanto é preciso reconhecer que diferentes gestores são mais ou menos efetivos no uso desse comportamento, como consequência de suas habilidades. A competência política é vista como fator crítico para a efetividade e o desenvolvimento da carreira de lideranças. Esta pesquisa visa compreender melhor essa competência, sua relação com o desenvolvimento na carreira, o aumento da reputação e a atribuição de legitimidade das lideranças no contexto das organizações brasileiras. Para tanto, foram utilizados métodos mistos (quantitativo e qualitativo). A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em duas etapas, sendo a primeira a validação de questionário pré-existente em inglês para o português, o qual possibilita a avaliação da competência política (obtiveram-se 200 questionários válidos). Na segunda etapa, foram realizadas entrevistas com 21 gestores, com um roteiro de 12 perguntas abertas e aplicação do questionário. As questões foram elaboradas com o objetivo de identificar como as organizações e os gestores brasileiros percebem o ambiente político e como eles se sentem em relação ao aspecto político da função do gestor e se as lideranças brasileiras se consideram politicamente competentes e como elas são percebidas por seus pares e superiores nesse quesito. Buscou-se ainda verificar se a competência política é reconhecida como uma competência importante e positiva para os gestores. Para tanto, explorou-se a perspectiva positiva da política nas organizações, nos sistemas de carreira e na liderança. Outro ponto avaliado foi se as descrições feitas pelos entrevistados a respeito da reputação e legitimidade podem ser associadas à caracterização de lideranças consideradas politicamente competentes. Embora a visão mais comum da política seja negativa, os resultados mostraram que os profissionais brasileiros reconhecem o ambiente político nas empresas, seus aspectos positivos e a importância da competência política no desenvolvimento de suas carreiras. Na conclusão, discutiram-se as contribuições da pesquisa, suas limitações e sugestões de estudos futuros. / Although political behaviour is an intrinsic characteristic of organizations, it is necessary to recognize that different managers can use such a competence more or less effectively, according to their personal abilities. Political Skill is perceived as an essential aspect for the efficiency and the development of the leadership career. This research looks at such a competence and its relation to aspects as career development, increase in reputation and granting leadership legitimacy in the context of Brazilian organizations. To this end, mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) were used. The research was carried in two stages, and the first one was the approval of a pre-existing questionnaire, translated from English into Portuguese, which allows the evaluation of political skill (we obtained 200 valid questionnaires). At the second stage, interviews were made with 21 managers, and they included a script of 12 open questions, as well as the completion of the questionnaire. The questions were created with the objective of identifying how Brazilian organizations and managers perceive the political environment and how they feel about the political aspect of the manager\'s role. Another debated issue was if Brazilian leaders consider themselves politically competent and how they are seen by their peers and superiors with regards to this matter. Besides that, another goal was to verify whether a political skill is recognized as an important and positive competence for managers. To do so, we looked into the positive outlook of politics in organizations, career systems and leadership. In addition, we evaluated whether the interviewees\' descriptions of reputation and legitimacy could be associated with the characterization of politically skilled leaderships. Even though most were under negative impressions regarding politics, the results showed that Brazilian professionals recognize the political environment in companies, their positive aspects and the importance of political skill in the development of their careers. In the conclusion further contributions of the research will be discussed, as well as its limitations and suggestions for future studies.

Este trabalho pretende, sob a ótica das mais recentes descobertas no campo da identidade das nações, estudar como os conceitos de estereótipo e de reputação são observados e aplicados à realidade dos países, além de avaliar o papel que algumas organizações internacionais desempenham no processo cognitivo de construção do entendimento sobre regiões distantes e, por vezes, pouco conhecidas das pessoas. Para atingir este intento, o experimento realizado adota, como método, o instrumento de mensuração da imagem de países criado por Passow, Fehlmann e Grahlow. Às descobertas destes autores, foram introduzidas algumas modificações para possibilitar a inclusão de uma âncora. Objetiva-se conhecer a imagem desfrutada pelo Uruguai sob o ponto de vista de cidadãos franceses e a imagem desfrutada pela Letônia sob o ponto de vista de cidadãos brasileiros, bem como verificar se suas percepções sobre tais nações podem ser alteradas pela influência das âncoras Mercosul e União Européia. As análises do teste empírico dividem-se em três partes. As duas primeiras versam sobre a comparação, para um mesmo país, dos grupos que responderam o formulário com e sem a âncora, o que se viabiliza por meio de testes de igualdade de média e de variância e pela análise da participação porcentual de cada nota para o conjunto que compõe o retrato final desenhado pelos participantes da pesquisa. Por fim, é feito um cotejo entre o Uruguai e a Letônia, a fim de conhecer qual das nações goza de uma melhor imagem junto aos entrevistados nas dimensões: física, ambiente para negócios, econômica, liderança, cultural, social e emocional. O gerenciamento da imagem de um país, enfatizando seus aspectos positivos e amenizando os efeitos de pontos negativos, passa necessariamente pela sua detecção e entendimento, podendo lhe gerar como benefício uma melhora na qualidade dos relacionamentos com o resto do globo. / The scope of this paper is to study, from the perspective of the latest studies on national identity, how the concepts of stereotype and reputation are taken into account and applied to the countries reality, further assessing the role played by some international organizations in the cognitive process of acquiring knowledge of remote regions which may also be, occasionally, poorly known by the people. In order to attain this aim, the method adopted by the conducted experiment is the instrument for measuring countries image, developed by Passow, Fehlmann e Grahlow. Some modifications were introduced to these authors discoveries so that an anchor could be included. The purpose is to learn of Uruguays image from the point of view of French citizens and of Latvias image from the point of view of Brazilian citizens, as well as examine if their perception of such nations can be altered by the influence of Mercosur and European Union anchors. The analyses of the empirical test are divided in three parts: The first two deal with the comparison, for the same country, between the groups that responded to the form with and without the anchor, which is made feasible by means of mean and variance equality tests and by analyzing the percentage of relevance of each grade for the set which establishes the final panel drawn by the participants of this research. Finally, a comparison between Uruguay and Latvia is made by way of knowing which nation enjoys a better image in the respondents point of view in terms of: physical characteristics, environment for business, leadership, and economic, cultural, social and emotional aspects. Managing a countrys image, by emphasizing its positive features and mitigating the effects of negative subjects, is strictly related to the detection and understanding of such matters, what can bring as benefit the improvement of the nations relationships worldwide.

This doctoral research aims to investigate the reputation building process of companies and to examine the applicability of western-developed theories about the uses of corporate reputation in a non-western context. It is the first study that synthesises three theories (value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication) to examine the strategic consequences of the uses of corporate reputation. Corporate reputation is an attribute or a set of attributes ascribed to a firm and inferred from the firm’s past actions. It is the belief of market participants about a firm’s strategic character (Weigelt and Camerer, 1988). Also, corporate reputation is the public’s cumulative judgement of a firm over time (Roberts and Dowling, 2002). The review of theoretical literature indicates the uses of corporate reputation by business organizations can be theorized along six dominant paradigmatic perspectives: 1-public relations; 2-marketing; 3-management, 4-economic; 5-sociological; 6-finance and accounting. The uses of corporate reputation in these six paradigms are comprehensively discussed. The objective of this study is to establish the use of corporate reputation in the development of brand image strategy. A review of the uses of the concept of corporate reputation is discussed in detail in chapter 2. The review of the literature also identified a research gap by showing that scarce research has been conducted on how these three main functions (value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication) affect a company’s brand positioning strategy. The following research question thus is proposed: How do (Taiwanese pharmaceutical) companies use their corporate reputation to develop a brand image strategy? The research hypotheses based on three theories (value-based theory, resource-based theory and integrated marketing communication theory) appear in Chapter 3. The research question is constructed theoretically, and then a conceptual model, which begins with three antecedents of corporate reputation and simultaneously illustrates the outcomes of their use, are discussed. The construct of the uses of corporate reputation has three dimensions: value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication. Each of these three dimensions includes several items. The items were proposed based on the previous researchers’ summaries and the qualitative interview. The researcher will then depict the proposed research conceptual framework and a number of hypotheses that will be further investigated and tested. Then the quantative study was completed by providing the data analysis and the results were explained. A multi-stage procedure was involved in this research. First, data examination and screening to prepare for subsequent quantitative analyses and then the descriptive statistics were presented. Second, a reliability test was performed on measurement scales to ensure that they achieve an acceptable level of reliability for further analysis. The resulting solutions were then re-assessed using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, PLS (Partial Least Squares) was used to test the hypothesized relationships between the research constructs as postulated in the conceptual model, and to assess the overall goodness-of-fit between the proposed model and the collected data set. The researcher then discusses the validation of the measurement model and the research findings. The findings are then further discussed in terms of the contribution to marketing theory and relevance to marketing managers. Then the items of adapted scales were subjected to several rounds of adjustments and were finally found to possess acceptable measurement properties. Reliability and construct validity tests indicated that all scales satisfied widely accepted criteria such as the minimum reliability of 0.7. The results of scale purification will be discussed. And an evaluation of the research hypotheses and their significance are summarized, the findings of all hypotheses testing will be reviewed and compared with previous research. According to the research findings, the hypotheses that value creation, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation, brand differentiation and brand positioning are all accepted. The hypotheses that strategic resource, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation and brand differentiation are rejected. However, the hypothesis that strategic resource, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand positioning is accepted. The hypotheses that corporate communication, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation and brand differentiation are both accepted. The hypothesis that corporate communication, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand positioning is partially supported. Finally, the hypothesis that the (see in Table 5.18) moderating effect of price policy on corporate reputation has a positive impact on brand image strategy is partially but negatively supported. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the study of corporate reputation of firms in the Taiwanese pharmaceutical industry from the robustness of the qualitative and quantitative data collection.

As the amount of valuable data that the average person owns increases, there is a growing need for personal low cost backup services. A variety of methods have been developed to fulfill this need, from cloud based backup services to cooperative methods where users share spare resources to store each other’s data, either using a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to store data among a large number of diverse peers, or a friend-to-friend (F2F) network to store data among a smaller number of trusted friends. There are several advantages to each method, but they all have issues that can make them unsuitable for this task. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the possibility of avoiding these issues by creating a hybrid system that stores files using a combination of cloud storage and trust aware P2P and F2F networks. This should also give the user greater control over the distribution of files and make it more resilient towards malicious peers. A simple file storage system was designed that uses a combined P2P and F2F network together with a reputation system for determining how trustworthy a peer is based on its past behavior, as well as having the option of falling back on cloud storage. The user decides for each file how much data shall be stored using normal peers, friend peers, and cloud storage, and any requirements that the peers used must fulfill. A partial implementation of the system was created as part of a simulator used to evaluate how well the combined P2P and F2F networks and reputation system behaves in various circumstances, and using different distribution policies. While it is difficult to compare the performance of this system to that of other backup and file storage systems without more thorough testing, the results obtained show that it is in fact possible to construct a trustaware hybrid system, that it should perform better than a pure P2P or F2F system, and that it should perform well even if a majority of all peers were to act maliciously.

Many users have such experience that after downloading or buying a software product, it does not work well as you anticipated. However, it is lucky to some extent because many other users download malicious software applications from Internet directly. Those problems cause people to think carefully and seriously about reputation of software. As it is said, the software reputation is very important for users to buy or use software applications, especially for those people who have very few knowledge of computer technologies. Many researches provided various kinds of technical methods to verify whether a software product has good reputation or not. This paper mainly focuses on software reputation research based on user experience. Nowadays, one effective way to evaluate experience of users is Web Survey, which has increased in popularity because of its convenience, ease of use, low cost, and quickness in knowing the result of a survey. Web survey is widely used to gather user opinions on various purposes. However, most such systems are too weak to keep reliability, and sometimes with a complete fallacious result. After introducing a number of methodologies, we present a concept design of more reliable web survey system based on user experience of software products that are under estimation. Development tools and some web technologies are discussed, such as PHP and JavaScript that will be used in implementing the web survey system based on concept design of this paper in the future. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a simple and practical dynamic web page development language, and it is widely used as a multipurpose scripting language embedded in HTML (Hypertext Marked Language). JavaScript is a scripting language and is primarily used in the client-side for development of dynamic websites. Therefore, these two technologies are proper to be applied. In order to solve the defined research problems, only proposing a method of web survey is not sufficient. The more significant point is reliability of that designed system. Therefore, Digital Signature technology is introduced and described, which will be used for user verification in the system for strengthening reliability of the web survey. The digital signature is widely used in electronic commerce, and it can authenticate one user’s identity effectively. Another important technology that can increase the reliability of comments from users is Reading Registry. As the “Windows” system is the most popular operation system on personal computers today, we choose to study it in this paper. The registry is a basic database of windows system that records every software applications’ information there. So by reading the information in registry, it is easily known whether a user’s comment is valid or not. If the registry records the under estimation software, it means that user indeed used the software and his/her comments are worth consideration, otherwise the comments are too untruthful to be accepted. Although the web survey system is presented and illustrated by using concept design of this paper, a series of scenarios have been designed to test the real processes of the system. Three main series of scenarios were designed corresponding to digital signature method, registry check method and reputation calculation process respectively. After analyzing the process, those applied methods do strengthen the reliability of the web survey system. Admittedly, there are problems that are not under the control of the system. In the future work, we will carry on studies on them.

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This thesis explores the reputation that the United States has for supporting and promoting three norms related to nuclear weapons: nonproliferation, non-use, and deterrence, while simultaneously examining the impact that United States actions can have on the saliency of the norms themselves. Ultimately, the United States has the ability to considerably impact the saliency of international nuclear norms, and has encouraged other states to accept and abide by them. However, there exists a disparity between the words and actions of the United States. In effect, the United States may “talk the talk” by expressing support and attempting to influence other states to abide by nuclear norms, but has shown a reluctance to “walk the walk” by failing to demonstrate behavior that is in full accordance with the norms. This disparity between words and actions has the ability to damage the United States’ reputation as a leader of nuclear norms, and can ultimately diminish their saliency to the international community.

Title: Using Brand management to establish network relations: How SMEs can work with brand management in order to establish and develop corporate reputation and legitimacy in network relations in a B2B context Authors: Aasberg Pipirs Julius & Carlsson Christoffer Level: Master thesis, 30hp Keywords: Brand management, SME, Legitimacy, Corporate reputation, Network relations Background: Given the crucial role SMEs play in the modern society it is vital that knowledge is evolved that can be used to support and grow these businesses. Using brand management practices SMEs could establish and develop corporate reputation and legitimacy in network relations, which could result in higher chances of long-term survival in a B2B context. Research Question: How does working with brand management among SMEs establish, and develop, corporate reputation and legitimacy, and how do these three concepts affect the process of establishing network relations in a B2B context? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to first investigate how SMEs, in a B2B context, work with brand management and how this can establish and develop corporate reputation and legitimacy. Finally the authors wants to see how these three concepts affect the process of establishing network relations. Method: Based on an abductive research approach, a qualitative research method will be used to study six Swedish SMEs that operate in a B2B context. Primary data will be based on semi-structured interviews with managers at each company. Theoretical Framework: The current literature concerning SME brand management is presented followed by its linkages towards establishing and developing corporate reputation and legitimacy. Finally previous research concerning, the process of establishing network relations among SMEs, its relevance for SMEs, and how brand management, corporate reputation, and legitimacy could affect this process, is presented. Findings & Conclusions: Brand management offers SMEs the tools to communicate and interact with various types of stakeholders, which connects the organization to its external and internal environment. By combining this tool with a dedication of always performing above expectations, SMEs stands to efficiently establish and develop corporate reputation and legitimacy. These two constructs essentially acts as the foundation of that which network relations are built upon.