Thesis (Master of Military Art and Science)-Army Command and General Staff College, 2007. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Jan 12, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Originally published as the author's thesis--Freiburg Universität, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also issued online.

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Jordan has strived to manage a large-scale anti-corruption initiative for the public sector since 2006. Despite the implementation of laws and bodies mandated to address corruption, public trust of government remains low and the country’s position on international corruption rankings has not improved. This study seeks to investigate how the implementation of a large-scale anti-corruption initiative impacts the organizational culture of the country’s public sector. It proposes that wasta, a unique Arab phenomenon that promotes the values of loyalty, represents the most significant barrier to penetrating what is essentially a normalized culture of corruption in the Government of Jordan. The organizational culture theory model was adopted as the theoretical framework because of its ability to account for differences in culture where promoted values do not necessarily correspond with employee actions. Because literature in this area is rare, a qualitative exploratory methodology was chosen. Based on data saturation, a total of 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted on-site in Jordan with mid-level managers identified using snowball sampling. The results prove the theoretical proposal to be accurate and show that wasta has evolved to the deepest level of organizational culture. The results are sub-divided into two major themes: culture and leadership. The results show that wasta is a deeply held and engrained part of organizational culture and that it is difficult for anti-corruption efforts to change this culture in the Jordanian public sector. The thesis also demonstrate how leadership can be both something negative or something positive in the fight against wasta depending on how it is used.. The findings carry implications for public administration, foreign policy, and society as a whole especially with regard to the development of more effective anti-corruption strategies in Jordan and abroad. The specific contribution to knowledge of this thesis is the examination of how organizational cultural reforms impact public-sector organizations in the Middle Eastern context given the influence of wasta, which is not discussed in the literature but remains important for the field. Future research should consider the views of a wider variety of stakeholders, as well as the impact of wasta on organizational characteristics including performance and delivery of public services.

This paper presents a detailed discussion of the Kronecker product of matrices. It begins with the definition and some basic properties of the Kronecker product. Statements will be proven that reveal information concerning the eigenvalues, singular values, rank, trace, and determinant of the Kronecker product of two matrices. The Kronecker product will then be employed to solve linear matrix equations. An investigation of the commutativity of the Kronecker product will be carried out using permutation matrices. The Jordan - Canonical form of a Kronecker product will be examined. Variations such as the Kronecker sum and generalized Kronecker product will be introduced. The paper concludes with an application of the Kronecker product to large least squares approximations.

We study canonical forms for Hamiltonian and symplectic matrices or pencils under equivalence transformations which keep the class invariant. In contrast to other canonical forms our forms are as close as possible to a triangular structure in the same class. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Hamiltonian and symplectic triangular Jordan, Kronecker and Schur forms. The presented results generalize results of Lin and Ho [17] and simplify the proofs presented there.

Scholars and experts speak of a political apathy and a lack of political engagement in Jordan. In conventional studies of political engagement a large part of the actual everyday engagement of “the ordinary” is overlooked as it does not conform to the prevailing view of political or civic engagement.  Everyday politics as a field has developed as a response to this lacking view of political engagement or political behavior. The aim of the thesis is to find everyday political behaviors performed by Jordanian individuals. Additionally, everyday religious aspects according to the lived religion theory are discussed in relation to everyday politics as found.  A number of everyday political behaviors and everyday religious aspects of these were found through observations and interviews during two months of fieldwork in Amman, Jordan. Such behaviors were e.g. operating within the informal sector, relying on family and friends for money and labor, and derogatory joking about the regime. Religious aspects of these behaviors were e.g. explicit religious reasons for the behaviors, physical religious artifacts, and religious language.

This study examines political engagement among Syrian students at the University of Jordan who are either refugees, asylum seekers or children of Jordanian mothers. By adopting Ekman and Amnå’s conceptualization of political participation and analysing 15 semi-structured interviews, I find that the Syrian students are both engaged in manifest and latent forms of political participation. The engagement is mostly canalised through individual activities rather than collective activities. Most importantly, the engagement is less common in domestic issues than non-domestic issues. When the students are engaged in domestic issues, it is mostly in latent forms of political participation and in private activities not risking revealing their opinions to the general public. Interestingly, I find that the students are interested in Jordan public affairs but that this interest is not transformed into political action aiming to affect Jordanian political decisions. The pattern of political participation in several ways corresponds with the students’ perceptions of risks. The Syrian students associate political engagement in Jordan with perceived risks such as being deported back to Syria or facing racism. Respondents expressed that they were not politically engaged because of the risks that it could entail and engagement in activities connected to Jordan public affairs seems to be perceived as more of a risk compared to being engaged in non-domestic issues. This seems to be particularly true for activities carried out in public. My findings are important as they shed light on political engagement in authoritarian contexts in the Global South and among marginalised non-citizens.

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Bab edh-Dhra is the most extensively excavated cemetery from Early Bronze Age, Jordan. Despite thorough study, the social structure and existence of social inequality remain unclear. This was addressed using osteological evidence of physiological stress to compare between family tombs. In societies exhibiting social inequality, individuals of lower status experience higher levels of stress. Evidence of physiological stress (femoral length, LEH, metabolic disorders, periosteal reactions, cribra orbitalia, and porotic hyperostosis) was recorded using standard methods for 250 adults. The artifact counts in this study have been previously published. Differences in the frequency of stress indicators were compared using chi-square tests. The results show no difference in the frequency of stress indicators between tombs and no correlation between artifacts and frequency of stress indicators. This indicates that families at Bab edh-Dhra experienced similar stress levels and low inequality. This may be due to cultural practices, subsistence methods or lack of data.