Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1931. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 123-128.

Thesis--Copenhagen. / At head of title: H. Topsøe-Jensen. "Liste over forkortelser" (bibliography): p. [8].

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-240). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This thesis examines the American official propaganda campaign on the Vietnam war, and its impact on both the British Government, America's main non-combatant ally, and British public opinion, from the time of the escalation of the war, in February 1965, to mid-1966. Concentrating on Administration statements, the study assesses the Administration's knowledge of events in South Vietnam and its secret planning on the war, compares this knowledge and planning with its propaganda, and evaluates the truth and accuracy of Administration propaganda. An assessment is also made of U.S. propaganda techniques and the utility of American official propaganda themes. The thesis then examines the information on the war that was available to the British public on a daily basis in the British press. The role of the press during the war is assessed both as an information medium, and as an audience for American official propaganda - an audience which then disseminated its own analyses of the war and U.S. propaganda. The British Labour Government's reaction and opinion on the war is traced in relation to its own policy of support for its U.S. ally, and the domestic political difficulties that this policy caused. British public opinion on the war during this period is evaluated through public opinion polls, and press accounts of opposition to the war, including accounts of demonstrations. The theme of this thesis is that when the war began escalating in February 1965, the British Government, the public, and much of the press, supported 135. involvement in Vietnam. But by mid-1966, the British Government had dissociated from the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam's oil storage depots, henceforth offering qualified support to its ally; the British public no longer supported U.S. action in Vietnam; and sections of the British press opposed U.S. involvement. The British Government's dissociation was a blow to the U.S. Administration, and thus the American official propaganda campaign had failed to retain the desired degree of support from its British ally.

The overriding concern of a multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious Malaysia has always been with inter-ethnic conflict and resolution. It is therefore little wonder that the Malaysian education system is seen arxl utilised by the State as an important social institution where certain ideas, values and symbols can be transmitted to students, the country's future generations, with the primary objective of fostering ethnic harmony in schools in particular and in the country in general. nd it is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine what kinds of images, ideas, values and symbols that are being selected and promoted (and at the same time, excluding other items, images, ideas) in the reading materials of school students, which collectively are deemed as constructing Malaysia's 'national identity'. The textual analysis shows that the majority of these school texts tend to give heavy emphasis on Malay culture and interests, thus indicating that the construction of the 'national identity' is largely informed arid influenced by the State's policies such as the Malay-biased national culture policy and the New Economic Policy. In addition, the study also examines other related institutions such as the Ministry of Education (i.e. its Textbook Bureau) and the book publishing industry as a whole to see how they relate to the formation in the school texts of the kind of 'national identity' that is largely defined and sanctioned by the State. A group of 150 students were interviewed to ascertain their social and political consciousness. Their responses on the whole tend to suggest that the school texts are capable of creating, if not reinforcing, sub-national loyalties or ethnic sentiments among the students, the kind of consciousness that could seriously compete with arid challenge the nationalist project of creating a 'national identity'. In other words, national unity could be threatened.

This research addresses to some of the fundamental problems in systems science. The aim of this study is to: (1) provide a general conceptual framework for systems evolution; (2) develop a formal model for evolving systems based on dynamical systems theory; (3) analyse the evolving behaviour of various systems by using the formal model so far developed. First of all, it is argued that a system which can be recognized by an observer as a system, is characterised by some emergent properties at a certain level of discourse. These properties are the results of the interactions between the system as components but not reducible to the individual or summative properties of those components. Any system is such an emergent and organized whole, and this whole can be defined and described as an emergent attractor. To maintain the wholeness in a changing environment, an open system may undergo radical changes both in its structure and function. The process of change is what is called of systems evolution. On reviewing the existing theories of self-organization, such as "Theory of Dissipative Structure", "Synergetics", "Hypercycle", "Cellular Automata", "Random Boolean Network" et al., a general conceptual framework for systems evolution has been outlined and it is based on the concept of emergent attractor for open systems. The emphasis is placed on the structural aspect of the process of change. Modem mathematical dynamical systems theory, with the study of nonlinear dynamics as its core, can provide (a) the concept of "attractor" to describe a system as an organized whole; (b) simple geometrical models of complex behaviour, (c) a complete taxonomy of attractors and bifurcation patterns; (d) a mathematical rationale for the explanations of evolutionary processes. Based on this belief, a formal model of evolving systems has been developed by using the language of mathematical dynamical systems theory (DST). Attractors and emergent attractors are formally defined. It is argued that the state of any systems can be described by one of the four fundamental types of attractors ( i. e. point attractor, periodic attractor, quasiperiodic attractor, chaotic attractor) at a certain level. The evolving behaviour of open systems can be analyzed by looking at the loss of structural stability in the systems. For a full analysis of systems evolution, the emphasis is put on the nonlinear inner dynamics which governs evolving systems. In trying to apply this conceptual framework and formal model, the evolving behaviour of various systems at different levels have been discussed. Among them are Benard cells in hydrodynamics, Brusselator in chemical systems, replicator systems in biology (hypercycle), predator-prey-food systems in ecology, and artificial neural networks. The complex dynamical behaviour of these systems, like the existence of various types of attractors and the occurrences of bifurcation when the environment changes, have been discussed. In most of the examples, the results in previous studies are cited directly and they are only re-interpreted by using the conceptual framework and the formal model developed in this research. In the study of artificial neural networks, a simple cellular automata network with only three neurons has been constructed and the activation dynamics has been analysed according to the formal model. Different attractors representing different dynamical behaviour of this network have been identified (point, periodic, quasiperiodic, and chaotic attractor). Similar discussions have been applied to a coupled Wilson-Cowan net. It is believed that the study of systems evolution is one of those attempts to bring systems science out of its primitive stage in which it ought not to be.

There has been a significant increase in interest in the area of organisational change over the past thirty years. A multitude of approaches and methodologies have been proposed, developed and applied by organisational and management theorists, as well as systems and social scientists. Business practitioners and consultants have also not been hesitant in devising their own approaches to organisational change - undoubtedly attracted by the lucrative commercial gains they are capable of generating. It is the author's belief that much of this work focuses upon issues of change management: how to initiate, control and implement effective change within organisations. Yet the proliferation of such approaches in recent years belies an acute lack of any clear understanding of the very nature and essence of change itself. This thesis seeks to explore the concept of change, as it is manifested and described across the sciences. Firstly, it surveys the organisational change literature, highlighting the dearth of research devoted to analysing change from a conceptual and theoretical perspective. A cross discipline approach based upon General Systems Theory is proposed, as a means of further investigating the phenomenon and concept of change. The basic premise being that a deeper understanding of what change is, will better inform and guide our attempts to manage it. In applying the approach, a number of views, definitions, paradigms and phenomena of change are examined from across the natural, physical and social sciences. The recurring themes, principles and unifying ideas from this review are used to construct an initial change framework. This framework is not meant to be prescriptive, but rather is proposed as a qualitative analytical and descriptive tool with which to study change within organisations. To this end, two organisational case studies are documented, during which the framework is applied in an attempt to assess its analytical utility. The thesis concludes with some suggestions for further research, including ways in which the framework can be developed conceptually, and further applied practically within an organisational context.

Despite advances in project management techniques and greatly improved levels of experience in managing major projects, a significant number of these projects still experience serious problems during implementation resulting in unacceptable loss of functionality with related cost and schedule growth, and sometimes outright cancellation. Research has shown that major contributors to these problems are systematic and can be associated with project size, complexity, technical uncertainty, schedule duration and urgency, physical and social environment, and government and politics. Several authors advocate that the application of systems problem solving methods and techniques during project definition could resolve these systematic problems and should be used to augment traditional project management approaches. This research is concerned with bringing together two important models, one concerned with traditional project definition (the Morris Model) and the other concerned with systems engineering (the M'Pherson Model), and harmonising the result with other systems methods and techniques to form a comprehensive model (to be called the MM Model) for defining major projects for successful implementation. The Morris Model is introduced in Chapter 2 as part of a study into the nature of major projects and what makes them successful or problematic. As part of the study, a compendium of project success criteria is compiled for later testing of the MM Model. Chapter 3 concentrates on discovering how systems methods and techniques, including those that can be categorised under the soft systems banner, could be used in project problem solving. The M'Pherson Model is introduced during the path through the Chapter. An important step in the early life of a project is the approval stage. If decisions regarding a project's viability are to be meaningful, appropriate information for gooddecision making must be generated during the project definition. Project approval is the subject of Chapter 4. The MM Model for project definition is formulated in Chapter 5 and tested firstly against the compiled compendium of project success criteria and, secondly, against three careful selected case studies; British Rail's Advanced Passenger Train, Thames Water's London Water Ring Main, and the Rolls Royce RB 211 Aero-engine. The first case study represents a cancelled project, the second a highly successful project, and the third a project that experienced extreme problems but resulted in a highly successful product. Finally, in Chapter 9 the author provides a reader's guide to the formulation of the MM Model, discusses the extent to which the objectives have been achieved, the contribution to knowledge and possible areas for further work.

A number of information technology schemes have been developed in order to provide people with mental health problems the opportunity to acquire skills in micro-computer technology. Even though positive results have been reported a high incidence of dropouts during the beginning of the training have been found. The research is based on the assumption that in order for a computer training method to be effective in fostering computer skills and confidence to adult novice users with mental health problems has to: (a) bridge the gap between the user's capacities, needs, and preferences and the demands of the computer interfaces and their real task applications; (b) consider the ways adult novice users prefer to learn and the skill acquisition theories; (c) facilitate a goal directed interaction with the computer system; (d) maintain an optimal complexity level across training; and (e) allow flexibility of use. Based on the relevant literature, a methodology model and a set of design propositions and construction guidelines have been derived and have been implemented for the development of Goaldirected, optimal complexity, Flexible & Task oriented (GOFT) training materials for adult, novice users with mental health problems. The GOFT training materials were based on three different models, the one for the creation of a goal directed instruction format and the other two for the organisation of the training, and the estimation of the difficulty level of each new computer operation or real task application. Evaluation of use of the GOFT Training Materials by 34 adult, novice users (aged 18-51) with mental health problems revealed positive results. More specifically, the use of the GOFT training materials as compared to traditional methods resulted in a significant increase in the number of participants at the different training stages (85.3% versus 47.2%; and 44.5% versus 22.2% at three and twelve months respectively), in perfect & regular attendance rate ( 44,12% versus 11.11% & 32.35% versus 16.67%) and in the performance level (means of 3.75 versus 2.67) of the users. The subjective evaluation by the users also revealed significant differences between the GOFT and traditional training materials. In their evaluation the GOFT materials were rated significantly higher in terms of systematic arrangement, personal affect, understandability, task relevance, fitness, sense of control, confidence in using the mastered functions and in supporting goal directed learning approach.

The British and the Danes are equally sceptical in their approach to the European Union. Around half the population of each country is opposed to the closer integration of EU member states. Given that, one would expect British and Danish newspaper coverage of EU events also to be broadly similar. This is, however, not the case. While the UK newspapers take a line that is overwhelmingly Euro-sceptic, the Danish newspapers are almost all pro-European. At the same time, there are differences in reporting approaches and styles in that, although the Danish papers clearly express their Euro-friendly stances in, for example, leader column-c, they nevertheless cover all sides of the debate, and tend to be even-handed in their news reports. This is frequently not the case in their British counterparts. Furthermore, while the UK newspapers tend to report EU news primarily from a domestic standpoint, their Danish counterparts take a more 'international' approach and are more inclined to relate reports to a wider European context. This thesis demonstrates that these dissimilarities are the result of differences in the UK and Denmark in the areas of influence that affect the way journalists choose and handle news stories. These areas of influence, as defined by Paul Voakes, are: individual; small group; orgamsation; competition; occupation; the law; and extra media. Overall, this thesis argues that the effects of these differences are to produce EU coverage in the UK newspaper press that is significantly more unbalanced, distorted and nationalistic than it is in its Danish counterpart and that such skewed reporting is often the result of a conscious abandonment the British press of standard practices for the achievement of a 'fair' and 'accurate' representation of news events.