Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological condition which affects motor control, in almost all cases involving speech, and is frequently of many years duration. Much is known about speech production but less of the psychosocial consequences of the speech impairment (dysarthria). Accounts of people with dysarthria have shown that its impact on quality of social participation can be varied and profound. However, level of participation has not been investigated. Reduction in social activity and social networks has been found following onset of other neurogenic communication disorders. In Parkinson's disease there is some evidence of social activity reduction but this has not been studied in relation to severity of dysarthria. Social anxiety has been found to be raised in speakers with other speech production impairments and this may be a contributor to reduction in social engagement. Investigation of social variables is of importance in understanding relationships within a biopsychosocial model of health which underpins intervention for therapies for communication disorders. Aims The study aimed to investigate the impact of dysarthria on social participation and whether presence of dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD) resulted in changes to social anxiety, social networks and social activity. It further sought to investigate whether severity of dysarthria resulted in changes to the same variables. Method A group of 43 mild-moderately dysarthric speakers with PD were recruited. Exclusion criteria were applied to control for cognitive impairment, depression, apathy, movement disability and co-occurring neurological and communication impairment. A group of 30 non-neurologically impaired participants were recruited matched for age, sex, socioeconomic status and educational attainment. Participants with PD were further grouped using measures of sentence intelligibility and motor speech impairment into higher and lower functioning groups. All participants completed a social anxiety questionnaire, a social activity checklist and detailed their social network. Group data were compared to address the research questions. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with all participants to explore change to social life and perceptions of causes of change. Results Participants reported a range of changes to interaction and social engagement arising from speech and other impairments and also from intra and interpersonal contextual factors. Quantitative data showed that presence of dysarthria was associated with social anxiety and avoidance but not changes to social activity level or social network size. Greater severity of dysarthria was associated with deterioration in social activities and social network. There was wide individual variation on these variables. Outcomes Impact of dysarthria may be significant and unrelated to severity of impairment and satisfaction with level of activity is low in dysarthric speakers. Mild - moderately dysarthric speakers with PD may experience social anxiety in particular types of social situation. Moderately dysarthric speakers may experience loss of social capital in terms of quantitative changes in social networks and social activities. Motor speech impairment was a better predictor of social functioning than intelligibility in this sample. It is possible that a threshold for change lies at a more severe level of speech involvement. How speakers with PD perceive and experience their social interactions is discussed and limitations to the research are considered. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the ICF framework and the concept of social capital.

Diante da crescente competição no mercado e as mudanças constantes que vêm ocorrendo, as empresas tiveram que elaborar novas estratégias e pensar a partir de novas lentes. A nova estruturação das organizações como a formação de redes e arranjos produtivos, é consequência dessas mudanças que as organizações vêm enfrentando devido ao mundo globalizado e a concorrência que aumenta a cada dia. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo investigar como os atratores sociais moldam as dinâmicas organizacionais em Arranjos Produtivos Locais. A pesquisa teve como objeto de estudo os APL\'s de Ibitinga, Juruaia e Grande ABC. A metodologia teve abordagem qualitativa com caráter exploratório, e quanto aos meios é classificada como pesquisa documental, pesquisa de campo e estudo de múltiplos casos. Os dados foram coletados por meio de entrevistas baseada na ténica de incidente crítico e coleta documental. Para a análise de dados foi utilizada a técnica de análise de conteúdo e análise documental. Foi identificado o sistema técnico como o principal atrator social, com particular destaque à importância das lideranças e dos sistemas sociais no desenvolvimento e aperfeiçoamento dos arranjos produtivos em tela. / In front of the market competition\'s increases and its constant changes that have been occurring, companies had to develop new strategies and think from new point of view. The new organization structuring like build networking and productive arrangements, is consequence of changes that those organizations are facing due the globalization and the competition that increases day by day. In this context, this paper has an objective investigate how the social attractors fits the organizational dynamics on Local Productive Arrangements. The research has Ibitinga, Juruaia and Grande ABC\'s LPAs as study object. The methodology has qualitative approach with an exploratory character, and as to means classified as documental research, field research and multiple cases. The data was collected through interview based on the critical incident technique and documentary collection technique. To the data analysis was used the technique of content analysis and documental analysis. Was identified the technical system as the main social attractor, with particular emphasis to the importance of the leadership and the social systems on development and improvement of the productive arrangements in the screen.

Thesis "Activists on the Road to Zapatista Territory" gives a resonance of actual results of my research among activists in Chiapas and Germany with contemporary theories. Based in theories of globalization and social movement and in dialogue with fieldwork data, it elaborates proper analytical concepts. These concepts enable to study journeys of activists to the Zapatista territory in Mexican state of Chiapas. Thesis aims to follow concepts of neo- zapatistas networks, which emerged around indigenous Zapatists and spread all over the World. Middle-Class activists from Germany enter these networks while travelling to Chiapas. Thesis scrutinize the nature of six months' journeys of activists and especially focus on transformation of so-called Imaginative knowledge of the World to Experienced knowledge of the World in the context of exoticism, poverty and Zapatista resistence.

The use of online communication media has increased dramatically over recent years, with people from different age groups becoming users of online communication media. Many scholars have become interested in how online communication media influence or even reshape people's social networking practices and social networks. Most existing studies on the impacts of online communication media are based on the observation of online practices of the general population or the younger population, while older adults are rarely taken into consideration. An increasing number of elderly people have become active users of online communication media and they may differ from younger people in many aspects such as networking strategies. Studying the elderly population may therefore enhance our understanding of the utility of online connectivity. Based on 35 in-depth interviews of elderly WeChat users in urban China, which were conducted between December 2017 and March 2019, this study considers two major questions: (1) How do older adults use online communication media to network with their different social relations? (2) How do the online networking practices of older adults influence their social relations? The analysis focuses on two major issues to answer the second question: accessibility and the relational intimacy of social ties. By considering these two questions, this study aims to determine whether older adults become "networked individuals" or just stay "alone together" when they become active users of online communication media. My findings show that how elderly people use online communication media to interact with their social ties is different from younger users and their unique networking strategies have different digital impacts on their social relations. Elderly people often lack opportunities to socialise due to their age-related conditions. Online communication media can reduce their costs of manage social ties and serve an important channel to help many elderly users to (re)connect and develop their social ties, enhancing both the accessibility and relational intimacy of those social ties and help them to become "networked individuals"

Scholars have paid increased attention to the impact of social technologies on organizational communication but have yet to explore how their use has influenced organizational socialization, a process in which organizational newcomers transition into the organization. To fill this gap, this thesis investigates the use of social networking applications, a type of social technology, and its relation to three key processes in organizational socialization: information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. Drawing on the concepts of affordance and paradox, this thesis examines how technological features and human factors such as mobile communication culture, technological frames of users, and organizational contexts shape processes of using social networking applications during organizational entry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese organizational newcomers regarding their experience of using WeChat, the most popular social networking mobile application in China. Findings suggest that WeChat provides communicative opportunities that are otherwise not available in other communication platforms or channels. The participants obtain official and unofficial information from using WeChat. In addition to conventional, direct information seeking, the participants rely on persistence of information afforded by WeChat to indirectly access information. The participants seek information about identity expectations through indirect methods such as observation and experiment with their provisional identities using WeChat Moments. Details of mundane everyday work life and achievements are the most frequently mentioned content for identity construction. For workplace relationship development, the participants develop metaknowledge of their coworkers through browsing their coworkers' posts from WeChat Moments. WeChat work groups provide opportunities for newcomers to initiate and develop relationships with their coworkers with low social costs. Despite that WeChat provides lots of benefits, the participants describe WeChat as a problematic tool in that they could be trapped in paradoxical situations when they are concerned with engagement in organizational communication flows, construction of flexible identities, genres of professional communication enabled by WeChat, and blurred boundaries between professional and personal life. Dealing with these paradoxes provides opportunities for newcomers to learn technology culture of their organizations, reflect on their technological frames, and adjust their expectations and behaviors with respect to WeChat use. This technologically occasioned learning is an unexpected outcome of responding to the paradoxes of using WeChat during organizational entry. This thesis extends organizational communication research to provide an initial exploration of the use of social technologies in organizational socialization, uncovering how social networking sites and applications both enable and constrain information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. It also provides insights into how various individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors influence the perceived affordances of social networking mobile applications and how these factors interact to shape the paradoxical user experience. With their wide adoption in the contemporary workplace, social networking sites and applications have huge potential to help newcomers transition into new organizations and have become an important aspect in organizational socialization. By learning and adapting to the norms of use for social networking sites and applications in new organizations and making sense of paradoxes in their user experience, newcomers can begin to understand the technology culture of their new organization. This thesis argues that it is necessary to reconceptualize organizational socialization, taking into consideration distinctive processes enabled and constrained by social technologies, and to reflect upon how organizational tactics and the design of social technologies can help newcomers to learn, to adapt, and to thrive in their organizations.

People with visible facial difference often experience other people reacting negatively to their appearance. For many, this is part of everyday life. Research has identified social support as critical in adaptation processes. This is the case both for those whose facial difference was apparent at birth, and those who experienced injury or illness. There is a lack of a comprehensive theoretical construct for exploring how personal communities provide resources needed by adults to live well with visible facial difference. The combination of semi-structured interviews and creation of personal community maps provided opportunities to explore the interplay between respondent accounts and patterns of relationships people are embedded within. Seventeen adults with visible facial difference and two unaffected ‘significant others’ were interviewed. The findings provide evidence that personal communities are important social spaces for negotiation of resources that enable adults to feel connected, valued and safer within wider communities. Social support was not described as a property of the individual, but as experienced with combinations of people that change according to situation, place, or time. A diversity of personal community patterns were found, largely consistent with findings from Spencer and Pahl (2006), with one variation which increased intimate support. Some personal communities were less supportive and consequently people were at risk of isolation. Processes within personal communities were helpful both in dealing with negative social environments and in helping establish different versions of ‘normal’ life. The importance of focussing on social contexts, when seeking to understand how people live with visible facial differences, is highlighted. / University of Bradford Studentship

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This dissertation explores the interplay between competitive strategy and alliance network structure in explaining firm performance in highly volatile environments (e.g., personal computers or consumer electronics). In particular, I examine the following three questions: (1) Which competitive strategies enable firms to gain superior performance? (2) How do these strategies affect the firm‘s networking behavior and lead to the formation of particular network positions? (3) What optimal combinations of competitive strategies and network structures maximize firm performance? Firms can outperform rivals by pursuing two types of competitive strategies: advantage-creating and advantage-enhancing. Each of these strategies creates different needs, motivations, and opportunities for collaborative activity. Therefore, certain regularities in the firms‘ strategic behavior in the previous period can lead to distinctive and recognizable patterns of networking behavior in the future period, which in turn leads to predictable types of network structure. This study shows that firms with superior advantage-creating strategies become embedded in sparse network structures and are more likely to form non-equity alliances in the future period, whereas firms with strong advantage-enhancing tendencies become embedded in dense network structures with many equity-based alliances in the future period. However, if different strategies lead to formation of different types of network structure, are these tendencies beneficial for firm performance? If not, what is the optimal combination of competitive strategy and network structure that maximizes firm performance? I argue that network structure provides advantageous access to external resources that can both complement (enhance) the internal capabilities of the firm and substitute for the capabilities that a firm is lacking. I find that network structure plays both complementary and substitutive roles. However, my findings suggest dense network structure is more beneficial for firms that have superior either advantage-creating or advantage-enhancing capabilities, whereas firms with inferior internal capabilities can benefit more from a sparse network structure. I tested the proposed dynamic model on a sample of the largest 125 firms from computers and electronics industries that initiated 11,075 competitive actions and were embedded in a larger network of 36,766 alliances over 7 years.

This dissertation provides an analysis of, and critical commentary on, the practice of playfulness as persistent phenomenon in the arts, technology and theory. Its aim is to introduce political reflections on agency through the study of playful technological artefacts, which were largely ignored in the recent discussions on game and play. Following the critical analysis of historic discourses and actual studies of play under differing auspices, and in order to understand play as inherently political agency, this thesis’ research question addresses the immersive effects of playful agency in symbolic exchange systems and in the material consciousness of the player. This thesis conducts an analysis of material cultures, in order to categorise play as technique of an inherent critique of technological culture. It traces the development of contemporary technological objects and their materiality in relation to the application of the concept of affordance in design theory. The author consequently proposes a new category of ‘play affordances’ in order to describe these new requirements of play found in consumer technologies. The structure of the analysis in the distinct chapters is informed by a stringent historic, theoretical and arts analysis and an alternating arts practice. The convergence of these elements leads to insights on further uses, options and perspectives of the research problems discussed, in particular in relation to the requirements of playful interaction in contemporary technologies, which increasingly radicalises the importance of play. The thesis’ hypothesis states that playful practices in arts and technologies provide models for political agency, like the strategic use of Con-Dividualities (Jahrmann 2000). This term describes the concept of shared identities in society or social media consumer technologies, as discussed in historic case studies and the author’s own arts practice, related to the modification of technologies as methodology of arts research. In this way the arts practice and theory of playfulness informs the emergence of a new methodology of research, intervention and participation in society through the arts of play, which is coined as Ludics, as an original outcome of this thesis.