Modeindustrin har en enorm inverkan på miljö och människans hälsa. Konsumenter har dock begränsade kunskaper om hur modeföretag arbetar med hållbarhet. Millennials som har visat störst intresse för hållbarhet önskar därför transparent information från modeföretagen gällande deras hållbarhetsarbete. Syftet med studien är att undersöka huruvida millennials attityd och intention till att handla på modeföretag förändras när de får ny kunskap om företags hållbarhetsarbete. Det har gjorts fyra fokusgrupper kombinerat med experiment för att se om det fanns en förändrad kognition, attityd och intention när respondenterna exponeras för företags kommunikation om hållbarhet. Studien visar att attityden och intention till att handla på modeföretag förändras när kognitionen om hur företag arbetar med hållbarhet förändras. Millennials ställer sig positiva till företags kommunikation om hållbarhet som leder till en större benägenhet till att handla hos dessa företag. Resultatet indikerar på att modeföretag gynnas av att vara transparenta och tydligt kommunicera om deras hållbarhetsarbete.

In recent decades, the growth of international trade and delocalisation been increasing with the advent of globalisation and nationalisation. Consequently, a proliferation of hybrid or bi-national products has emerged in the research of international marketing. A large body of studies agree that country of origin (COO) plays an important role on product evaluation, since a product consists of an array of information cues, and intrinsic (physical appearance) and extrinsic (price, brand or COO) compositions. There is a strong evidence that consumers usually use COO as one of the most important cues when making a judgement about a product. However, bi-national products raise a particular issue because they are associated to both country of manufacture (COM) and country of design (COD) constructs. The interaction effects between both cues are found to have a more powerlful effect than when only cue is presented (Bertoli and Resciniti, 2012). This study intends to decompose the COO construct into COM and COD constructs. Moreover, the roles of COM and COD on customers’ purchase intentions are investigated in order to provides practical implications for the sportswear industry, as well as consumption insights relating to the emerging market, Thailand. This research provides an in-depth examination of COM, COD and product involvement on consumers’ purchase intentions and customer perceived value (CPV). Thus, the research measures the effects of product familiarity in order to infer how consumers use country-related information in purchase decision-making. In addition, the research clarifies the role of CPV, which remains unclear regarding how consumers develop a product’s value through informational cues (COM and COD). Moreover, the previous research have only examined the outcomes of perceived quality as influenced by COO. Hence, this research intends to bring all dimensions of CPV to investigate whether the combined effects of COM and COD can have either a positive or a negative impact on customer’s value. A model of CPV is developed by Sweeney and Soutat (2001), which consists of quality, social, price and emotional values. A quantitative approach using experimental research design was conducted in Bangkok, Thailand for the purposes of this study, with a pilot test to ascertain the variables used in the main experiment: product involvement, favourable/least favourable COM and COD images. The experiment was designed to measure the relationship between constructs, of a high involvement product, namely sports trainers, and a low involvement product, namely sports t-shirt. The US and China were selected as the most and the least favourite COD, resepectively. Meanwhile, Japan and China were selected as the most and least favourite COM, respectively. Data analysis techniques such as analysis of varaince (ANOVA), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and t-test were employed for hypothesis testing. The results of this research demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the interaction effects of country image and product involvement. The study confirms that COD is the salient cue for the evaluation of sportswear products in emerging countries. However, the level of product involvement does not influence the consumer’s decisions when COD and COM are both presented. Thus, the roles of COM, COD and product invovlement play an important role in evaluating overall CPV. The key contribution of this research is in its practical, theoretical and methodological implications to international marketing communications toward the sportswear industry. It offers the insights of two informational cues (COM and COD) to explain the phenomenon of bi-national products for unknown or new products.

The increasing use of the Internet over recent years has forced governments and individuals to utilise Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in the form of electronic government (e-government), more specifically Public Sector Online Services (PSOS) as a subset of egovernment. However, the success of PSOS delivery is dependent on usage and on the growing concerns about the perceived information and service quality of PSOS and their influence on self-efficacy, satisfaction and personal outcome expectation towards ‘continuance intention’ to use the PSOS systems. Retaining current PSOS users is crucial to ensure better utilisation of ICT investments through a regulated process that considers citizens’ personal factors while using PSOS. If the level of PSOS quality is low, citizens are likely to revert to using traditional systems, leaving the new ICT systems underutilised. Few studies have investigated the influences of information and service quality on personal factors, such as self-efficacy, personal outcome expectation and satisfaction, towards intention to continuing to use PSOS. To fill this gap, the present study develops a PSOS quality model by associating it with citizens’ self-efficacy, satisfaction, personal outcome expectation, social influence, prior experience, and continuance intention. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the salient factors influencing citizens’ intention in the context of PSOS use. A research model of eight constructs is developed by integrating Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT), the DeLone and McLean IS success model, and E-S-QUAL. To validate the model, a quantitative-positivist approach methodology is used as the research paradigm; it employs a cross-sectional survey design as well as componentbased structural equation modelling (SEM) by using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) as the data analysis technique. In total, 471 self-administrated questionnaires were found usable for data analysis and 17 hypotheses were formulated and tested. Overall, the modelling demonstrates a good fit with the observed data. The findings show that prior experience, social influence, information quality and services quality are significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use PSOS if these latent constructs are regulated through selfefficacy. The results exhibit positive relationships with the other constructs in the model except social influence and information quality towards personal outcome expectation and satisfaction. Further, the results show that service quality is the most influential variable in the present model. This highlights the vital role of service quality while delivering PSOS. Theoretically, the present study extends the roles of pre-adoption and post-adoption by offering a self-regulating process through self-efficacy as a physical ability. Further, the study reveals the importance of personal outcome expectation (internal stimuli) as well as satisfaction (external stimuli) as cognitive factors that represent personal goal assessments. Practically, the current study offers managers a mechanism in how to deal with end-users on a continuance basis while delivering online service through short- and long-term strategies. In summary, the present study marks a significant contribution in better understanding the utilisation of egovernment systems and can serve to better self-regulate outcomes for both citizens and government. Keywords: electronic service, e-service, electronic government, eGovernment, e-government, service quality, information quality, social influence, self-efficacy, personal outcome expectation, satisfaction, continuance intention.

Developmental stuttering persists in approximately 1% of the United States population. Stuttering has been shown to impact overall quality of life. The present study examines the effects of a Novel Right Brain Intervention on two female participants with persistent developmental stuttering. The aim of the study was to determine whether encouraging greater activation of the right hemisphere, specifically the pre-SMA, via complex left-handed movements, prior to speech production, would lead to a reduced stuttering frequency and severity in people who stutter (PWS). It was hypothesized that each participant would reduce stuttering symptoms and behaviors following the intervention due to the results found in patients with non-fluent aphasia's and neural imaging findings with PWS. Following analysis of speech samples taken from unstructured retell and unfamiliar reading tasks, the results revealed decreases in stuttering and secondary behaviors during the unstructured reading task for Participant 1 and decreases in stuttering and secondary behaviors during the unstructured retell task for Participant 2. The results of this study should be interpreted with caution, as this is a pilot study with multiple limitations. With further research, this method of intervention may become a viable option for those who have not benefited maximally from current intervention methods.

Magister Commercii - MCom / Job Satisfaction and the Intention to Quit are two factors that a synonymous with each other. Various research and studies have been conducted over the years indicting that there is a direct relationship between job satisfaction and intention to quit, suggesting that these factors often result in employees with low levels of job satisfaction resigning from the organisations they are employed at. Therefore the objective of this study was to examine those factors that affect job satisfaction and the intention to quit amongst employees at a small to medium auditing firm in South Africa. Demographic factors such as age, gender, marital status, tenure (length of service), number of dependents and qualification was used to establish the impact it had on employee's job satisfaction levels and their intention to quit. The study was conducted using a quantitative, non-probability, convenience sampling method. The sample group consisted of all permanent employees (N = 350) of an auditing firm with nine (9) offices across South Africa. The one hundred and fifteen (115) participants who voluntarily completed the questionnaires were made up of the CEO, Directors, Managers and employees within the Audit and Assurance, Accounting, Internal Auditing, Consulting and Group Services spectrum. They were required to complete an online biographical questionnaire (BQ), the Work Satisfaction and Motivation Questionnaire (WMQ) as well as the Michigan Organisational Assessment Questionnaire – Intention to Quit (ITQ), was used in order to gather relevant data for the study. Participants were informed that their participation was voluntary, anonymous and strictly confidential. All participants were informed of the purpose of the study and all ethical issues were clarified. Data was analysed by making use of the following data analysis techniques: descriptive, inferential, the Pearson product–moment correlation coefficient and ANOVA statistics. The results indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between job satisfaction and intention to quit amongst the sample of the auditing firms employees. There was also a significant relationship between pay and job satisfaction with a converse relationship between pay and intention to quit. Furthermore, the findings of the current study indicated that when taking into consideration the significant relationship between job satisfaction and intention to quit in relation to various biographic factors, there was no significant difference between different age groups, male or female, number of children (dependents) an employee had, their marital status or the qualifications that they held.However, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between length of services and job satisfaction, but that there was a significant difference when taking into account the impact length of service had on the intention to quit. Recommendations were made and limitations for future research discussed in order to provide insight to the organisation stemming from the current study.

Making and being ‘made’ is a paradigm of lived experience applicable to all human beings who have intentions of being made but must also be prepared to execute those intentions. This is a subjective statement and its validation could only be induced from observation of BaSotho females making their unique buildings-as-artefacts, if these women were being ‘made’ through their actions of making then it must also apply to other makers. Prerequisites of this paradigm are that the maker is a free agent who is allowed to have intentions but who is also willing to execute these aims. Effective actions imply that the maker has been prepared mentally and physically, during a constant evolutionary growth of the mind and the body, starting from the stage of being a foetus. Lived experience is phenomenology, a lived gathering of experiences, perceived by all of the senses and integrated by the mind into an accumulated body of knowledge. As the chapters in this thesis illustrate, being ‘made’ was at the future maker’s threshold of consciousness, her primary concern is in making space for affiliation, place for private intimacy, often alone but also at other times with others, place-capacity too, for the spontaneity of appropriation of place and its imponderable use which generate new intentions. All makers of space need to get prepared for their future roles, these roles require a life long interaction with learning. The extent of knowledge affects the depth of intentions as well as its execution. Self confidence is caused by learning and personal experiences, the intensity of lived experiences evolve into a willingness to participate. The making women evolved along a timeline to become the makers of space, but it is not only in the physical requirements of space making that she has to live the experiences, she also has to learn how her interactions within her community affect her future role as maker. Her experience of interpersonal relationships, her Botho moral obligations and societal demands will make her realize the gravity of her responsibilities. Making and being ‘made’; she exists in the present and has a future of lived experiences, when and how reciprocity was accumulated during her life is identified by her existential phenomenology. The creative mind is ‘made’ through action but no sources in literature reviewed mentions that the makers of artefacts made their identity or that reciprocity was sought in the process of making. Execution implies that action has a reciprocal intent, not only to shelter and change the patterns of lived experience, but also to gain rewards for the effort. Approval and praise are such rewards; a sequel for executed intentions, this reward is cognitive and physical. Cognitive because along a time line of lived experience an in depth evolution took place of; self esteem, self confidence, knowledge, insight, increase the depth of intentions, willingness to enact. Physical because along this concurrent time line, only in the execution of intentions does dexterity, agility, ability, control of procedures, manipulation of the dictates of the material – earth. Resulting from a continuous cause to share in a process of effects there evolves an inward psychic and outward agility in the body of the individual; from the yet-to-be-born, to the baby, to the mature woman, ending with the living-dead, Badimo. Reciprocity, an extra sensory perception, affected their identity, self-esteem and knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of their bodies. Reciprocity is a lived experience, phenomenology, that takes place throughout the lifecycle of the makers and especially as makers fulfills their roles within their social and cultural value system. To achieve reciprocity, sometimes unknowingly, the building-asartefact is used as mechanism to substantiate reciprocity between an inward, by the evolution of self, and outward as the evolution of makers. The shaping of identity and sense of self of the maker, through the acts and procedures of making is realized through a reciprocal evolution between self and artefact; self included intuition, talent, and experience of accumulated knowledge, artefact either being executed or existed and is texts of qualities of use. Effective iinteraction with life affecting forces during the required execution of intentions gathered the emotional awareness of reciprocal purpose and meaning in life, self esteem and self confidence cultivated their own personalities. These makers were rewarded within their societal construct; Botho as the African phenomenology of expectations, if their end products resulted in successful physical manifestations of the depth of creativity in mental or psychic preparation. Reciprocity was substantiated within the guidelines of existential phenomenology. During living their experiences humans create them selves by creating and they create because they create them self. Success engenders reciprocity but it can also be lost through personal crises. Reciprocity was the result of most making experiences when: I can do it better, became a continuous quest and personal challenge to innovation within thoughtful lived experience. They achieved the deeper meanings of dwelling, its ‘wetness’ of water. It is inevitably a circular process: in hermeneutic phenomenology there is no possibility of escaping the need to have already understood an artefact-as-home before attempting to explain the process of understanding that product and evaluating its deeper meaning. BaSotho vernacular architecture within the guidelines of hermeneutic phenomenology recorded a cultural continuum as mental and physical reciprocity coupled the vernacular as historical interactive knowledge, to the woman’s timeline as an evolution of interaction, and with the woman achieving reciprocity. This understanding becomes essential while examining how archaeological and actual existing vernacular artefacts formed a reference base that affected and influenced her future intentions for making. Time in a re-iterative progressive process caused the physical manifestation to be evaluated and it then reframed the cognitive insight. The lessons learnt from the BaSotho past are that design has symbolic as well as utilitarian meanings. Evident in the vernacular is the ecological sensitivity of the BaSotho makers with their skill at clustering human habitations in networks of open space becomes vital for the creation of a sustainable future. A life long interaction between the cognitive and physical realms existed. During the evolution of solutions the BaSotho makers adapted form and materials to the conditions of nature; working with natural forms and climatic cycles rather than considering forces as obstacles to overcome has hermeneutic and practical values; used by intentional makers. The cultural identity in the woman made the home, and then the process of home-making ‘made’ the woman; a reciprocal reward. A culture of action: Intentions of bringing manifestations of space into existence create reactions from all the senses. This is true not only of the end product but also during the process of execution. Reciprocity from ontological phenomenology results from her staying in mental and physical control of the process of making with every decision considered, accepted or rejected and her proof of the correct decision evident in the final product and its language spoken to the members of her social construct. The observation of sensorial reciprocity as it presented itself in haptic phenomenology can be induced from the responses she received from users of her buildings-as-artefacts; her manual effort in executing components of her buildings reflected her concerns with the response to all the senses of enjoyment. The hand shapes form and the body delineates space to satisfy a basic need for a place to sleep. Primary data consisted of action photos, each was separated into its phenomenological elements to rediscover true-deeper meanings, and drawings with text recorded these elements. Secondary references in literature were used to validate aspects of the hypothesis, these explained deeper meanings and insights. Action as text: At a threshold of interaction during the process of execution reciprocity is a focused involvement of the whole body, all the senses and mind continuously inform the hand and during its process of execution evaluates and restructures intentions which then appropriately instructs the hand. This haptic phenomenological procedure is inherent to all processes of execution, not only in making space but also in such as making decisions at a board room table. It starts when the maker was a baby, tactile senses are enhanced by skin-to-skin contact, not only of the hand but the whole body becomes an internal and external organ in the perception of positive or negative influences. During the making of space materials continuously dictates and controls the grammar when ice becomes solid water, this metaphor of prescribed procedures of growth is equally appropriate to the processes of achieving spatial accrual. The nature of earth is such a dictate. The quality of a threshold of interaction implies that the depth of reciprocity is dependant on the degree of participation of the makers. Aesthetic phenomenology used a thesaurus of space, place and its formal built synonyms to interpret this unique BaSotho built language symbolically wrapped with its litema. Humans use many practices of language, from verbal to signs. This is relevant to each person who needs to be able to enter into forms of interpersonal discourse at a micro level. Verbal communicative acts are as indicative of intentions as are symbols used at a macro level, this is similarly applicable to the very act of executing communicative intentions. Litema as an art of the earth resulted from an interaction between ontological, haptic and aesthetic phenomena. Interpersonal discourse evolved into a BaSotho culture of community discourse, this evolution caused reciprocity to take place throughout the life cycle of lived experience, from birth till death of the maker, heightened especially when the maker fulfils her roles within her social and cultural constructs. Finally, because the maker of litema is a master of her art, others, say trained architects who make buildings may learn, by carefully studying these buildings-as-artefacts with their symbolic form of language with their essential insights into the process and technique of appropriate response to forces affecting mindsets. It is also usual for the interest in the maker to remain only incidental, observers are often not at all interested in the proof that any particular correspondence exists between the reputable intentions of makers with their acts or that there is a reward in innovation within discovered limitations and the work as it exists. This reward recognize the value of making and being ‘made’ solidified as a multifaceted paradigm of life, living and making. The hypothesis is substantiated. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Architecture / unrestricted

Introduction Community Kitchens (CKs) are one of the main providers of food to low-income families in Peru and may serve to improve the offer of healthier diets. This study aims to determine the prevalence of, and sociodemographic and behavioral factors associated with fruits and vegetables consumption among CKs customers. Methods A cross-sectional study enrolling customers of 48 CKs in two areas of Lima, Peru, was performed. The outcome variable was the self-reported amount of fruits and vegetables consumed (<5 vs. ≥5 servings/day). The exposures were grouped in sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education level, familial income, marital status, and place of birth), and self- reported intention to change eating and exercise related habits in the last four weeks before interview. Poisson regression models were used to estimate prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results Data from 422 persons were analyzed, 328 females (77.9%), mean age 43.7 (±14.5) years. Only 36 (8.5%; 95% CI 5.9%-11.2%) customers reported consuming ≥5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. This pattern was 4-fold more likely among those with higher levels of education (≥12 vs. <7 years) and 64% less common for migrants born outside of Lima relative non-migrants. In terms of intentions to change eating-related habits, those who reported having tried to reduce sugar consumption or to eat more fruits were up to 90% more likely to meet the ≥5 servings/day target. Conclusions A substantial gap in the consumption of ≥5 servings of fruits and vegetables/day has been found among CK customers and apparently it is not dependent of familial income. The profiles reported in this study can inform appropriate strategies to increase healthier eating in this population.

Denna studie undersöker hur förskolors utemiljöer är utformande och används för att främja barns lärande och utveckling. Vidare undersöks förskollärares intentioner och syften med utevistelse samt vad de tänker är en god pedagogisk miljö. Studien berör även barns tankar kring utevistelsen. En kvalitativ fallstudie har genomförts med tre deltagande förskolor. De metoder som använts för att samla in empirin är intervjuer, observationer samt samtalspromenader. Empirin har bearbetats med intentionell analys och resultatet visar att förskolors utemiljöers utformning kan variera beroende på var de är belägna. De miljöer förskollärarna inkluderar sin utemiljö är främst den egna utegården samt skogen. Vidare framgår det i resultatet att utemiljön används till fri lek, pedagogisk planerad verksamhet samt motorisk träning. Grundläggande syfte och intentioner hos förskollärarna med utevistelsen är att ge barnen kunskap, skapa relationer till naturen samt som en kompensation till hemmet. Vidare menar förskollärarna att syftet med utevistelsen är av praktiska skäl samt att gynna barns hälsa. En god pedagogisk miljö bör vara variationsrik med kuperad terräng och med mycket vegetation samt platser där barnen kan vistas utifrån sina behov. Resultatet visar att barnen spontant ägnar sig åt motoriska samt sociala lekar när de befinner sig i utemiljön. Genom en systematisk kartläggning och analys av utemiljön och dess användning kan viktiga områden upptäckas och utvecklas för att bidra till barns lärande och utveckling.

Women’s entrepreneurship has garnered substantial research interest over the years. The majority of the previous research investigates nascent entrepreneurship rate, while fewer studies investigate entrepreneurial intentions. This study focuses on the relationship between women's entrepreneurial intentions and institutional and personal variables. This study uses data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Social Institutions and Gender Index databases and covers 43 countries. Both factor analysis and linear regression methodologies are employed. The results show that if women possess higher levels of entrepreneurial skills, have lower levels of fear of failure, and greater social networks, they are more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions. However, the more women have access to land, bank loans, and property other than land, the less likely they desire to become entrepreneurs. Also, social services for women's careers and fair entrepreneurial opportunities for women do not have significant impacts on women's entrepreneurial intentions. The theoretical and empirical implications of the results are discussed.

Employing a sample of 116 female entrepreneurs, this study investigated how work-family issues, including work-family conflict and enrichment, relate to their intention to grow the business that they own or co-own. Results suggest that family-to-work enrichment directly related to female entrepreneurs’ business growth intentions, and important family members seems highly salient to female entrepreneurs’ business growth decisions.