Masters in Public Administration - MPA / South Africa has undergone a process of dramatic change since the first democratic elections of 1994, notably so in the area of gender equity in public life. The struggles and demands of women during the constitutional process have resulted in an unprecedented 31,5 % representation of women in Parliament, the highest in Africa.

The purpose of this study was to examine how institutional culture promoted or impeded the implementation of round one and two NSF ADVANCE initiatives designed to improve academic climates for women in science and engineering. This study was conducted in two phases. In phase one, 35 participants from 18 institutions were interviewed to answer three research questions. Participants identified a policy, process, or program designed to improve academic cultures for women in science and engineering fields. Participants also identified strategies that promoted the implementation of these efforts, and discussed factors that impeded these efforts. In phase two, site visits were conducted at two institutions to answer a fourth research question. How did institutional culture shape the design and implementation of faculty search processes? Policies, processes, and programs were implemented by participants at the institutional, departmental, and individual levels and included family friendly and dual career policies at the institutional level, improved departmental faculty search and climate improvement processes, and mentoring programs and training for department heads at the individual level. Communication and leadership strategies were key to the successful implementation of policies, processes, and programs designed to achieve institutional transformation. Communication strategies involved shaping change messages to reach varied audiences often with the argument that change efforts would improve the climate for everyone not just women faculty members. Administrative and faculty leaders from multiple levels proved important to change efforts. Institutional culture shaped initiatives to improve faculty search processes. Faculty leaders in both settings used data to persuade faculty members of the need for change. At one site, data that included national availability information was critical to advancing the change agenda. At the other site, social science data that illustrated gender bias was persuasive. Faculty members who were effective as change agents were those who were credible with their peers in that setting. / Ph. D.

This study examined how employees at a Florida medical facility felt regarding the upcoming change to a paperless system and whether a training program administered by the organization was effective in reducing anxiety, increasing understanding of the need for the change, increasing employee confidence using the new computer system, changing employee perceptions of the new system, and helping employees view the change as an organizational improvement. The results indicated that the training program marginally reduced anxiety, but did not significantly increase user confidence or understanding of the need for the change. While participants viewed the change as an organizational improvement, this view was only superficial. When means were examined by occupation, age group and gender, pre-training results indicated that the medical staff and older participants exhibited the most anxiety, understood the reason for the change the least and had the lowest confidence in their ability to use the practice management system. These same participants appeared to benefit the most from the training program. They reported reduced anxiety and increased confidence using the innovation. Post-training, younger participants and those who identified their occupation as "other" indicated increased anxiety levels and slight reductions in their confidence using the practice management system. The medical staff and older participants appeared to benefit the most from the training program.

This paper discusses the changes of economic activities of ethnic Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City under different political regimes with different institutions. The thesis applied qualitative research methods with in-depth interviews, collected and analysed data from documents. The research result shows that under different social and political institutions, which are changed from French colonial period to the two different political systems during Vietnam War with the Communism in the North and the Capitalism in the South, and the socialist system carried out in the whole country after 1975, to the Doi Moi period after 1986, the Vietnamese Chinese conduct different economic activities in terms of business and trust in social relations. Before 1975, the Vietnamese Chinese traded heavily with the same ethnic group. The in-group business practices were changed after the institutional change after 1975, which pushed them to work more closely with other ethnic groups. The concept toward ¡§trust¡¨ (Xinyong) in Vietnamese Chinese community is gradually changed in accordance with the changes of social and political institutions.

The religious landscape in Sweden has changed in recent years as a result of secularization processes, individualization, and migration. This has led to religion occupying new places in society and one such place is media. The visibility of religion in the media creates space for debate about what role religion should play in different context, which in this thesis applies to school. Since 2018, there has been a debate in the media regarding the being or non-being of independent confessional schools. This bachelor thesis aims to examine the arguments that appear in the criticism versus the defense of independent confessional schools in debate articles in Sweden. Debate articles from the Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and Expressen are examined with qualitative text analysis. The result shows that the most common arguments among those who want to ban independent confessional schools are: religious indoctrination, segregation, and extremism. From the other side of the debate are the ones who defend independent confessional schools and the most common arguments from this side are: freedom of religion, corresponds to the Swedish curriculum, and integration. Further, an additional aim is to analyze how the debate can be understood using the theoretical concepts of narrative, institutional and cultural transformation processes in mediatization theory. The analysis shows that there are signs of these transformation processes in the debate articles. Many of the debate articles on the ban side are structured according to media logics where one perspective is set against another to provoke reactions from the readers, which expresses the narrative transformation process. The institutional transformation process is reflected in how actors from different institutions communicate in the debate, where political actors control the debate and religious actors adapt accordingly. The cultural transformation process is made visible by seeing how the debate relates to the surrounding society which is characterized by secular norms on one hand and increased religious diversity on the other.