Notre travail de recherche a consisté à examiner : comment l’E—Banking affecte la performance des agences commerciales ? Et quel rôle joue le SI bancaire, notamment le SI des processus commerciaux, par rapport à l’E-Banking ? Nous nous positionnons dans le courant de recherche de l’t-Évaluation en nous basant sur la théorie de ressources, l’appr0che processuelle et le modèle ISSM. 161 responsables d’agences, œuvrant dans dix banques tunisiennes, ont évalué les actifs, les valeurs (d’usage et d’échange) de leur Sl ainsi que les fonctionnalités de l’E Banking. Des outils de mesure ont été élaborés et validés : fonctionnalités E-banking, qualité des actifs SI (information, services et système informatique), valeurs du SI(usage : GRC et Marketing ventes ; échange avec : les clients, les fournisseurs et les partenaires). Notre approche processuelle en cinq étapes assure une bonne explication de nos construits latents : actifs SI, valeurs d’usage, valeurs d’échange, contribution du SI à la performance individuelle et organisationnelle).Notre modèle structurel explique 17% de la performance des agences avec un GoF de 46%.Les liens entre les fonctionnalités E—Banking et le SI bancaire soulèvent plusieurs dilemmes auxquels des recherches futures devraient pouvoir répondre. / Our research consists in examining: How does the E-Banking affects the performance of commercial agencies? And what role does the banking SI, including the SI business processes with respect to the E—Banking? We position ourselves in the field of research assessment based on the theory of resources, process- based approach and the ISSM model. 161 heads of agencies, working in ten Tunisian banks have valued the assets, values (usage and exchange) of their IT as well as the functionality of the E-banking. Measurement tools have been developed and validated: E—banking functionality, asset quality IS (information services and computer system), the values of IS (usage: GRC and Marketing & sales; exchange with: customers, suppliers and partners). Our five-step process approach provides a good explanation of our latent constructs: active IS usage values, exchange values, IS contribution to individual and organizational performance).Our structural model explains 17% of the performance of the agencies with GoF 46%. The links between the E-Banking features and bank IS raises several dilemmas for which future research should be able to respond.

This case study examines the factors that shaped the identity and landscape of a small island-urban-village between the north and south forks of the Middle River and north of an urban area in Broward County, Florida. The purpose of the study is to understand how Wilton Manors was transformed from a “whites only” enclave to the contemporary upscale, diverse, and third gayest city in the U.S. by positing that a dichotomy for urban places exists between their exchange value as seen by Logan and Molotch and the use value produced through everyday activity according to Lefebvre. Qualitative methods were used to gather evidence for reaching conclusions about the relationship among the worldview of residents, the tension between exchange value and use value in the restructuration of the city, and the transformation of Wilton Manors at the end of the 1990s. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 contemporary participants. In addition, thirteen taped CDs of selected members of founding families, previously taped in the 1970s, were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. My findings indicate that Wilton Manors’ residents share a common worldview which incorporates social inclusion as a use value, and individual agency in the community. This shared worldview can be traced to selected city pioneers whose civic mindedness helped shape city identity and laid the foundation for future restructuration. Currently, residents’ quality of life reflected in the city’s use value is more significant than exchange value as a primary force in the decisions that are made about the city’s development. With innovative ideas, buildings emulating the new urban mixed-use design, and a reputation as the third gayest city in the United States, Wilton Manors reflects a worldview where residents protect use value as primary over market value in the decisions they make that shape their city but not without contestation.

How does material production become socially recognised in capitalism? This is a fundamental question to be addressed in capitalist production, since material production takes place privately and independently in a global and atomistic system. This thesis shows that the question is tackled by Marx in the first three chapters of Capital. The process of social recognition of material production is that of the realisation of work carried out privately and independently as part of the social labour. For Marx this occurs through the private and independent work becoming objective social labour as the substance of the value of commodities, and through the latter finding its necessary developed mercantile expression in the price form of commodities. Therefore, private and independent work becomes social labour through the recognition of its product as equivalent to a certain amount of money. The thesis argues that Marx's answer is powerfully insightful but flawed because it did not succeed in fully characterising the historical specificity of commodity. Commodity is not merely the differentiated unity of use value and value but of use value and mercantile use value, and of labour value and mercantile value. The former dialectic is immediate and distinguishes between the utility of commodity as a direct means of consumption or production and that as a means of exchange, fully determining the behaviour of the private and independent commodity producer. The latter dialectic is objective and distinguishes between commodity as the embodiment of the social labour necessary to reproduce it and as the embodiment of command over social labour, enabling the adjustment of the productive structure. Both dialectics are mediated by the mercantile form of value, which allows the indirect expression of labour value as the gravitational force of the system. The theory of commodity offered in this thesis, unlike that of Marx, consistently hinges on the atomistic private and independent commodity producer. The thesis shows that commodity production is the organisation of society's labour for its material reproduction, just as in any previous mode of production. The discovery of the generic aspect of commodity production breaks the false immediate link between production and supply, and that between the labour theory of value and both the supply-side-determined theory of price and the single-factor theory of production. The thesis also shows that the mercantile form of value is what allows society's labour to become an objective and autonomous materially abstract substance regulating the adjustment of the productive system under the form of material signals. This is the specific aspect of a global mode of production comprised of free and independent individuals. The mercantile form of value is thus Adam Smith's invisible hand. Finally, the thesis analyses some implications of the framework with regard to the analysis of monetary phenomena, capital accumulation and sustainable development, and reviews the most popular Marxian topic in Economics: the transformation of values into prices of production.

The focus of this thesis is on describing and analysing recently graduated physicians’ and engineers’ experiences of the relationship between the professional education programs and the respective professional practices. The aim is to explore the professionals’ reasons for their educational and career choices, what they learn in professional education, the demands they encounter in the workplace, and the perceived needs and opportunities for learning and further development in their professional practices. This study is based on a comparative design and the empirical data have been collected in interviews with physicians and master’s level engineers in information technology. The theoretical framework is structured around three parts, consisting of theories of professionalisation, theories concerned with the functions of higher education, and theories concerned with the concepts of knowledge, competence and qualifications. There is a close relationship between the process of professionalisation, the authority of the professions, the legitimacy of professional knowledge, and the higher education institutions. The results indicate that theory and practice are intimately integrated in the physicians’ professional education, whereas the engineers’ experiences of the educational program are characterised by little overlap between theory and practice. Furthermore, the physicians emphasise the importance of theoretical specialist knowledge and socio-communicative competence while the engineers instead stress the importance of generalist competence. The educational knowledge base is relatively static for both physicians and engineers. However, whereas there is a correspondence between the educational and the professional knowledge base in the case of the physicians they are only a loosely coupled in the case of the engineers. This can be attributed to the changing nature of the engineers’ professional knowledge base, which is characterised by constant change. The physicians regard their professional education as a rational preparation for the world of work. Although education does provide a general foundation for further professional development and learning, the engineers associate their professional education more with a symbolic ritual. For physicians, the formal credentials are a legal requirement to practise the profession. Education is regarded as constituting an important credential also for the engineers as it increases individual employability. The physicians tend to emphasise the use value of the educational program, while the engineers instead stress the exchange value of their educational program.

The present study abstract wealth is concentrated around relative questions to the production of territories of the abstract work/wealth, having as crucial mechanism to materialize them the different geographic development and agreement, that provides structuring space arrangements of the extended reproduction of the capital, of the contratrend to the fall in the tax of the profit and magnifying of the surplus value. As initial reflection an analysis of the paper of the State in the reproduction of the system of the capital and in the development of propeller mechanisms of the space arrangements was developed, that foment possible trends to the exploration of the workmanship hand, when uncurling of the capitalist production and the guarantee of the circulation and consumption. The action of the State is basic for the maintenance and the guarantee of the productive reorganization of the capital that since the decade of seventy comes becoming the work more superfluous, thus creating a contingent of precarious human beings. Accenting the dehumanizing character of the capital the State contains from its institutional-coercive apparatus the conflicts of classroom that if they accent, in the mat of a society increasingly bellicose. Inside of this context capitalism and development if it keeps accenting the levels of exploration of the hand of workmanship in the world scale, searching to provide conditions so that the capitalists reach profits above of the average tax: the superprofits. To reach such intentions the capital in its movement of globalization searchs to use to advantage itself of the dynamics to scale of the different geographic development, creating and if appropriating of conditions that less allow to its future domain on the force of work or the kidnapping it of asset of the favored populations, through the financial capital and of the scheduled crises to promote accumulation by dispossession and the maintenance distorted for bubbles of the profit tax. However the production of the different geographic development, being essential mechanism for the maintenance of the sociometabolism of the capital, does not leave of globalize the inherent contradictions to the production of merchandises, merchandises now desubstantialized, that in the bulge of this development wealth produces abstract and the territory conforms that it. All the geography of the end in itself of the system of the capital is produced objectifying the capture of everything what it exists to convert into value of exchange. The geographic face of the system of the capital is to universalization the value of exchange tendency, not meaning that the existence of the spaces of use in counterpoint to the exchange spaces cannot exist.. / O presente estudo concentra-se em torno de questões relativas à produção de territórios do trabalho/riqueza abstrata(o), tendo como mecanismo crucial para concretizá-los o desenvolvimento geográfico desigual e combinado, que proporciona arranjos espaciais estruturantes da reprodução ampliada do capital, da contratendência à queda na taxa do lucro e de ampliação da mais-valia. Como reflexão inicial foi desenvolvida uma análise do papel do Estado na reprodução do sistema do capital e no desenvolvimento de mecanismos propulsores dos arranjos espaciais, que fomentam possíveis tendências à exploração da mão de obra, ao desenrolar da produção capitalista e a garantia da circulação e consumo. A ação do Estado é fundamental para a manutenção e a garantia da reestruturação produtiva do capital que desde a década de setenta vem tornando o trabalho cada vez mais supérfluo, criando assim um contingente de seres humanos precarizados. Acentuando o caráter desumanizador do capital o Estado contém a partir de seu aparato institucional-coercivo os conflitos de classe que se acentuam, na esteira se uma sociedade cada vez mais belicosa. Dentro desse contexto capitalismo e desenvolvimento se mantém acentuando os níveis de exploração da mão de obra na escala mundo, buscando proporcionar condições para que os capitalistas alcancem lucros acima da taxa média: os superlucros. Para alcançar tais propósitos o capital no seu movimento de mundialização busca aproveitar-se da dinâmica escalar do desenvolvimento geográfico desigual, criando e se apropriando de condições que a permitam o seu domínio futuro sobre a força de trabalho ou o seqüestro de ativos das populações menos favorecidas, através do capital financeiro e das crises orquestradas para promover acumulação por despossessão e a manutenção distorcida por bolhas da taxa de lucro. Todavia a produção do desenvolvimento geográfico desigual, sendo mecanismo vital para a manutenção do sociometabolismo do capital, não deixa de mundializar as contradições inerentes à produção de mercadorias, agora mercadorias dessubstancializadas, que no bojo desse desenvolvimento produz riqueza abstrata e o território que o conforma. Toda a geografia do fim em si do sistema do capital é produzida objetivando a captura de tudo o que existe para converter em valor de troca. A face geográfica do sistema do capital é universalizar tendencialmente o valor de troca, não significando que a existência dos espaços de uso em contraponto aos espaços de troca não possam existir.

Employing Cornish Cultures for Community Resilience. Can cultural distinctiveness be used to strengthen community bonds, boost morale and equip and motivate people socially and economically? Using the witness of people in Cornwall and comparative experiences, this discussion combines a review of how cultures are commodified and portrayed with reflections on well-being and ‘emotional prosperity’. Cornwall is a relatively poor European region with a cultural identity that inspires an established ethno-cultural movement and is the symbolic basis of community awareness and aspiration, as well as the subject of contested identities and representations. At the heart of this is an array of cultures that is identified as Cornish, including a distinct post-industrial inheritance, the Cornish Language and Celtic Revivalism. Cultural difference has long been a resource for cultural industries and tourism and discussion of using culture for regeneration has accordingly concentrated almost exclusively on these sectors but an emergent ‘regional distinctiveness agenda’ is beginning to present Cornish cultures as an asset for use in branding and marketing other sectors. All of these uses ultimately involve commodification but culture potentially has a far wider role to play in fostering economic, social, cultural and environmental resilience. This research therefore uses multidisciplinary approaches to broaden the discussion to include culture’s primary emotional and social uses. It explores the possibility that enhancing these uses could help to tackle economic and social disadvantage and to build more cohesive communities. The discussion centres on four linked themes: multiple forms of capital; discourse, narrative and myth; human need, emotion and well-being; representation and intervention. Cultural, social, symbolic and human capital are related to collective status and well-being through consideration of cultural practices, repertoires and knowledge. These are explored with discussion of accompanying representations and discourses and their social, emotional and economic implications so as to allow tentative suggestions for intervention in policy and representation. A key conclusion is that culture may be used proactively to increase ‘emotional capital’.