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Yes / Gaining access in fieldwork is crucial to the success of research, and may often be problematic because it involves working in complex social situations. This paper examines the intricacies of access, conceptualizing it as a fluid, temporal and political process that requires sensitivity to social issues and to potential ethical choices faced by both researchers and organization members. Our contribution lies in offering ways in which researchers can reflexively negotiate the challenges of access by: 1. Underscoring the complex and relational nature of access by conceptualizing three relational perspectives – instrumental, transactional and relational – proposing the latter as a strategy for developing a diplomatic sensitivity to the politics of access; 2. Explicating the political, ethical and emergent nature of access by framing it as an ongoing process of immersion, backstage dramas, and deception; and 3. Offering a number of relational micropractices to help researchers negotiate the complexities of access. We illustrate the challenges of gaining and maintaining access through examples from the literature and from Rafael’s attempts to gain access to carry out fieldwork in a Police Force.

ABSTRACT Providing equitable learning opportunities for all students has been a persistent issue for some time. This is evident by the science achievement gap that still exists between male and female students as well as between White and many non-White student populations (NCES, 2007, 2009, 2009b) and an underrepresentation of female, African-American, Hispanic, and Native Americans in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related careers (NCES, 2009b). In addition to gender and ethnicity, socioeconomic status and linguistic differences are also factors that can marginalize students in the science classroom. One factor attributed to the achievement gap and low participation in STEM career is equitable access to resources including textbooks, laboratory equipment, qualified science teachers, and type of instruction. Extensive literature supports authentic science as one way of improving science learning. However, the majority of students do not have access to this type of resource. Additionally, extensive literature posits that culturally relevant pedagogy is one way of improving education. This study examines students' participation in an authentic science experience and argues that this is one way of providing culturally relevant pedagogy in science classrooms. The purpose of this study was to better understand how marginalized students were affected by their participation in an authentic science experience, within the context of an algae biofuel project. Accordingly, an interpretivist approach was taken. Data were collected from pre/post surveys and tests, semi-structured interviews, student journals, and classroom observations. Data analysis used a mixed methods approach. The data from this study were analyzed to better understand whether students perceived the experience to be one of authentic science, as well as how students science identities, perceptions about who can do science, attitudes toward science, and learning of science practices were affected by participation in an authentic science experience. Findings indicated that participation in an authentic science experience has a positive effect on science identities, scientist perceptions, science attitudes, and learning of science and is one approach to mitigating the effects of marginalization in the science classroom. Additional findings indicated that a relationship between the authenticity of the experience and the outcomes (science identity, perceptions about who can do science, science attitudes, and learning of science). This study provides empirical evidence to support authentic science learning as a means of improving students' learning, attitudes, and identities with respect to science. This study endorses authentic science experiences for all students, marginalized included. This has implications for how we prepare future and support current science teachers. In addition, this study shows how this model can be used to effectively implement science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

Recently Alan Andreasen (2003) argued that social marketing is in the 'growth phase' of development following four decades of research and practice. During this same time period, marketing has also witnessed new theoretical ideas and practices that have evolved from the influence of new interactive technologies such as the internet. Only limited scholarly work however has been undertaken to draw these marketing sub-disciplinary areas together. The research undertaken in this thesis bridges this gap and explores the role of the internet as means to further extend social marketing theory and practice. Three research questions informed the study. The first of these questions focused on how internet users describe their experiences of the internet as an everyday technology. The second question investigated the different profiles of internet users' opinions, attitudes and actions, and the third question examined how social marketing can be more responsive to internet user behaviour. To address these research questions the research design used both qualitative methods of focus groups and in-depth interviews together with Q methodology to quantitatively represent the structure and form of individual users' subjective disposition towards the internet. Although Q methodology is relatively absent from marketing literature, it was a useful method for identifying types of people with similar experiences and views of the advantages and disadvantages of internet interactions and relationships. The research process in the study was operationalised using a three-study design. The first study drew on sixteen interviews and two focus groups with internet users, the second study involved Q sorting with thirty-two internet users, and the third study engaged interviews with twenty social change agents. This study of internet users is embedded in a particular theoretical and epistemological position. Three issues are relevant. First, a social constructionist epistemology is engaged. This emphasises that technology is a social process, patterned by the condition of its creation and use, and informed by human choices and actions. Second, the research is situated across disciplinary boundaries. Marketing practitioners initially adopted a commercial, albeit simplistic, lens when considering the value of social aspects, such as virtual communities and the social networks of connection that link internet users into longer term relationships and exchanges of knowledge, emotion and shared confidences online. However, the intangible non-material resources shared between customers, organisations and other users online are of import to understanding the value of the internet for social marketing strategy. This required looking beyond the social marketing theory and research, to the literature on the sociology of technology. The third way in which this research is different epistemologically and theoretically is in its interpretive focus. Accordingly, the thesis contributes to the shift in academic focus towards critical marketing, which Hastings and Saren (2003) argue provides a more detailed critique and understanding of social marketing processes and outcomes. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a strategy map for online social marketing. The map is derived from findings from the three studies. Study 1 explained that the internet is a social and personal technology which has been incorporated into users' everyday lives and activities. Study 2 identified different profiles of internet user opinions, attitudes and actions and interpreted these as internet user segments described as: the Internet Communitarian, the Information Networker and the Individualised Networker. Study 3 delineated the findings from the downstream users' perspective and presented a strategy map derived from the experiences of upstream internet users. Three principles inform this strategy map. First, social marketers need to adopt customer-centric marketing. Secondly, they should apply an exchange continuum that embraces a relational perspective. Thirdly, social marketers using the internet should plan online strategies that focus on the internet as a recombinant technology that can be "remade" by individual users' needs and desires. Several identified limitations of the study should be considered when reviewing this study. Firstly, the study's interpretive methodological focus precludes quantification and generalisablity to larger populations. Secondly, sample bias in terms of age and gender demographics was evident. Thirdly, a further limitation of the study is the nature of the technology under investigation in this thesis: the recency, and hence the salience of the findings, are mitigated by the fact that the internet is a dynamic technology. Finally, the generalised rather than particularised perspective on social issues and problems adopted in this study as a means of discussing social marketing, may also be seen as a limitation. This research is of significance to both an academic and practitioner audience. In terms of scholarly significance, the study is important theoretically and methodologically. Social marketing theory has a well established view of the customer as an operand resource. This thesis is significant as it demonstrates the need to conceptualise customers as more than simply 'targets' of social marketing campaigns. It illustrates how social change customers become operant resources who produce effects, based on their sharing behaviours, and make online contributions to behaviour-change processes that give target audiences (operand resources) a sense that they can enact the behaviour. As well, the evolving customer roles -- user, social actor, co-creator, resource -- theorised from the study findings inform a shifting exchange continuum involving 'transactions' to 'relationships'. Finally, this research is of theoretical significance in elucidating the conceptualisation of the continuous-process perspective which reveals that exchanges are not just the discrete, 'transactional' variety, but rather are long in duration and reflect an ongoing relationship-development process. Methodologically, the study has also demonstrated the potential value of Q methodology as a means of revealing subjective experiences and perspectives, which are the foundation of social products regularly dealt with by social marketers. For social marketing practitioners the study also demonstrates the need for engaging a more holistic view of the internet and its customers to facilitate social change campaigns. This, however, does not negate the fact that there may be potential challenges and unintended consequences facing social marketers in engaging the internet.

One way of exploring musical identity, as a phenomenon, is to listen to the life stories of musicians. This research interpreted the narratives of undergraduate students of Western Art Music at a South African tertiary institution and described the experiences and the lives of these music students, and the meanings that they attribute to their identities. The participating music students described what they perceive as real-life experiences and defined their views on human self-definition with reference to their chosen study field. The research approach entails a philosophical framework of hermeneutic interpretivism. Such a non-positivist approach sees the lived experiences of the music students not on their own, but as depending on interpretation by the researcher to establish the meanings these students gave to musical identity. The methodology includes a qualitative approach which was done from a narrative perspective through personal storytelling and a thematic analysis of the data. Data triangulation ensures verification of findings by the author and individual participants agreed upon the interpretations of the researcher of their narrations. Participating music students confirmed that personal storytelling assisted them in understanding their musicianship in a better way, as well as gave them a clearer perspective on personal musical experiences. The influence of practising and performing on musical identity was described, but the interaction with music teachers was found to be a significant influential factor on musical identity. The perceptions of South African society in general, with reference to Western Art Music, were found to be detrimental to the musical identities of these students. Musical identities were found to be interwoven in relationships, embedded in the realities of the field of music education and existing deep in the inner selves of these music students. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Music / DMus / Unrestricted

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Bakgrund: Redovisning syftar till att ge en historisk bild av en organisation – ett företag eller en koncern. Skillnaden mellan den bild som baserar sig på redovisningsprinciper (och regler) och en bild, vilken som helst, är jämförbarheten. Goodwillned-skrivningar skapar problem med just jämförbarheten. Det skäl som anges baserar sig på regler stipulerade i IFRS. Skälen som koncerner anger är i sin tur naturligtvis motiverade mer eller mindre väl med utgångspunkt i IFRS men dessa regler innehåller en betydande rymlighet som kan beskrivas i termer av godtycke. Den här uppsatsen undersöker denna rymlighet i termer av regleringen och skälen för nedskrivning som ingen undersökning hittills orienterat sig mot. Syfte: Den här undersökningen syftar till att förtydliga strukturer i skälen till goodwill-nedskivningar som ett exempel på strukturer mellan explicita skäl och regler och underliggande (implicita) tillämpningar och normer. Metod: Metoden som användes var facktextanalys. Företagen i studien är valda utifrån kriterier som är energi- och råvaruföretag, börsnoterade på stockholmsbörsen (NASDAQ OMX Nordic). Resultat: Resultaten redovisas i en tabell där man kan se tendenser. En tendens är att företagen har ett behov av att förklara och försvara sitt agerande. En annan är på normnivån, att man gärna vill vara rationell och ärlig. Det som vidare framträder är ett möjligt samband mellan den explicit formulerade regeln (IFRS) och de skäl som anges. Men detta samband är inte entydigt. Slutsats: Goodwillnedskrivningar förefaller vara svagt institutionaliserat. Godtycket (öppenheten) tycks vara det centrala som bäst förklarar det empirin visat. De skäl som koncernerna ger kopplar inte entydigt till reglerna, istället tycks det som om det finns ett betydande utrymme (godtycke) att utforma en praktisk redovisningsmodell när det gäller nedskrivningarna. / Background: The aim of accounting is to provide a historical view of an organization – a company or concern. The difference between the view that is based on accounting principles (and rules) and a view, any view, is comparability. Goodwill impairment causes a problem with precisely this comparability. The reasons given are based on rules stipulated in IFRS. The reasons that a concerns use are, in turn, motivated more or less well on the basis of IFRS but these rules contain a considerable spaciousness thus the use is arbitrary. This thesis examines the spaciousness in terms of regulation and the reasons for impairment as no study so far has studied this. Aim: This study aims to clarify the structures in the reasons for goodwill impairment as an example of the structures of explicit reasons and rules and implicit applications of standards Method: The method used was specialized text analysis. Concerns in the study are selected based on specific criteria. These concerns are selected based on the commodity and energy industries. The stocks of the concerns are listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (NASDAQ OMX). Results: The results are presented in a table where one can see tendencies: one such tendency is that concerns have a need to explain and defend their impairments. Another tendency is on the normative level, that one wants to be rational and honest. What also emerges is a possible connection between the explicitly formulated rule (IFRS) and the reasons given. But this relationship is not unambiguous. Conclusion: Goodwill impairment appears to be only slightly institutionalized. The arbitrariness (spaciousness) appears to be the key element that explains what our empirical data has shown. The reasons that concerns provide does not clearly link to the regulations, instead it appears that there is a considerable spaciousness (arbitrariness) to the design of a practical accounting model in terms of impairment.

Este trabalho discute a teoria do direito de Ronald Dworkin, desde sua gênese até seus desenvolvimentos mais recentes, com o objetivo específico de aferir a influência que esta sofreu da filosofia política de John Rawls e de sua concepção de justiça. Essa influência foi especialmente sentida na metodologia inicialmente concebida por Dworkin para responder às tradicionais questões de teoria geral do direito, já que estas teriam sido mal resolvidas pelos positivistas. O que se verifica é que tal método se baseia na idéia de equilíbrio reflexivo de Rawls. Essa intensa convergência que inicialmente se verifica é progressivamente afastada na medida em que Dworkin caminha rumo a um liberalismo abrangente, defendendo uma continuidade entre a moralidade política e a ética, e Rawls reinterpreta sua teoria para defender uma limitação desta ao domínio do político. / This paper will discuss Ronald Dworkins legal theory since its genesis till its most recent studies, aiming specifically assess how this theory was influenced by John Rawls political philosophy and his conception of justice. This influence was specially noticed in the methodology first conceived by Dworkin to respond to the traditional issues of jurisprudence, since these ones had been unresolved by the legal positivism. What can be verified is that such method is based on Rawls idea of reflective equilibrium. This strong convergence, that is initially observed, is gradually deviated insofar as Dworkin moves towards to a comprehensive liberalism, defending continuity between morality and ethics, and Rawls reinterprets his theory to defend a limitation of it to the domain of the political.

Este trabalho discute a teoria do direito de Ronald Dworkin, desde sua gênese até seus desenvolvimentos mais recentes, com o objetivo específico de aferir a influência que esta sofreu da filosofia política de John Rawls e de sua concepção de justiça. Essa influência foi especialmente sentida na metodologia inicialmente concebida por Dworkin para responder às tradicionais questões de teoria geral do direito, já que estas teriam sido mal resolvidas pelos positivistas. O que se verifica é que tal método se baseia na idéia de equilíbrio reflexivo de Rawls. Essa intensa convergência que inicialmente se verifica é progressivamente afastada na medida em que Dworkin caminha rumo a um liberalismo abrangente, defendendo uma continuidade entre a moralidade política e a ética, e Rawls reinterpreta sua teoria para defender uma limitação desta ao domínio do político. / This paper will discuss Ronald Dworkins legal theory since its genesis till its most recent studies, aiming specifically assess how this theory was influenced by John Rawls political philosophy and his conception of justice. This influence was specially noticed in the methodology first conceived by Dworkin to respond to the traditional issues of jurisprudence, since these ones had been unresolved by the legal positivism. What can be verified is that such method is based on Rawls idea of reflective equilibrium. This strong convergence, that is initially observed, is gradually deviated insofar as Dworkin moves towards to a comprehensive liberalism, defending continuity between morality and ethics, and Rawls reinterprets his theory to defend a limitation of it to the domain of the political.

This thesis examines public participation in regional development in Saudi Arabia at the local government level. The main objective of the study examines the current policies and practices of Riyadh Regional Council with regard to regional development, paying particular attention to the issue of public participation. Key decision-makers and decision locations are identified as focal points of policy development and implementation. The work begins from the premise that public participation is one of the key elements of effective regional policy that has so far been under-researched and consequently under-utilised in the Saudi Arabian context. The research opens by examining the national and cultural context of regional development in Saudi Arabia. It identifies and examines the relationship between policy development and the traditions and constitutional arrangements. These considerations are followed by an interrogation of the literature that reveals a range of concepts and perspectives on regional development and public participation. Of particular relevance to this study is the importance of the ‘institutional turn’ in regional development and the role of public participation in enhancing the functioning of those institutions associated with regional development. Saudi Arabia has an economy that is largely dependent on revenues generated from the export of crude and refined petrochemicals. This places Saudi Arabia in a category of nations that are liable to suffer from the ‘resource curse’. The literature suggests that avoiding this particular phenomenon is in part dependent on having robust institutions. This firmly connects the research problem to previous research and provides a sound rationale for the conduct of the study. / Interpretivism is advanced as a suitable philosophical framework for the conduct of the research. It offers a methodological rationale for a case study investigation that draws on a range of qualitative data sources. Such an approach is especially useful for examining situations that are bound in time and space and can provide theoretical and practical insights that are useful in other contexts. This research presents new insights into how local government in Saudi Arabia can develop strategies for enhancing public participation in the creation of regional development policies and practices. There has been recent rapid economic development in Saudi Arabia that has influenced overall planning directions and development achievements and made it possible for the government to achieve systematic progress in long-term economic diversification into industrialisation, education, health, transport, and communication and social services. Even so, the Saudi Arabian government is concerned about increasing public participation in all areas. The formation of the regional councils in 1992 can be considered as a step towards public participation in the socio-economic development of their regions. However, the findings of this research demonstrate that there is a need for creating new policies and techniques to help regional councils in improving their performance to meet the needs of their citizens, and public participation is a key to achieving this end. To do this it is recommended that the councils should be granted executive and legislative authority to enable them to take adequate decisions and work together with citizens in ways that will increase their participation leading to enhanced transparency and accountability and effective regional development policy. / Following the findings, a set of recommendations are provided to improve the role of Riyadh Regional Council in enhancing public participation in regional development. This thesis closes with suggestions and directions for future research with regard to the potential contribution to the public sector management literature. The findings of this research provide benefits for policy makers to correct, maintain, and eliminate any obstacles facing administrative policies and consequently provide a long-term strategy that could incrementally be implemented in stages throughout time. The research methods, ideas and insights developed here could also be adapted and applied to other nations facing similar issues.