Background: The business market today is characterized by tough competition amongst the competitors to capture consumers’ interest and money. One marketing tool companies can use to achieve this is the company’s image. The customer buys not only a product, but also the image that the company or the product is associated with. To reach the desired corporate image companies need to be aware of the signals they are sending out and how and what to communicate to the market. They need to look within themselves and their internal factors, since the signals are created within the company. Purpose: To examine how different structures of organisations can influence a company’s internal image and thereby leave a contribution to the knowledge of a business’ internal image. Research Method: Empirical studies have been accomplished through interviews with employees on different positions at Nexus. A case study approach was used to give a more complete depiction of the company. Conclusion: A splinter within an organization can be seen through its image, which affects the external image. Uncertainty in the structure of the organization will also be exposed to the environment, which will lead to a splintered picture of the organization. Two important factors when creating an image are business culture and information/communication. These factors will together generate a united transmission of the company and its values.

This project examines the level of accuracy that can be achieved in precision positioning by using built-in sensors in an Android smartphone. The project is focused in estimating the position of the phone inside a building where the GPS signal is bad or unavailable. The approach is sensor-fusion: by using data from the device’s different sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope and wireless adapter, the position is determined. The results show that the technique is promising for future handheld indoor navigation systems that can be used in malls, museums, large office buildings, hospitals, etc.

This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008. CASE STUDY I looks at knowledge management bloggers in order to better understand how bloggers form communities. In this case study, it will be shown that blogs group thematically and in temporal bursts. These bursts of thematic activity allow for movement in and out of a community, as well as act as a bridge between different weblog communities. CASE STUDY II examines two pseudonymous bloggers in order to better understand how presentation and identity is understood in blogging. It will be shown in CASE STUDY II that social identity in weblog communities is negotiated through blogging practices such as transparency in writing and truthful presentation. CASE STUDY III delves further into social identity by examining a community of academic bloggers and how traditional, institutionalized expectations influence social identity over time, and if this influence differs in the core and periphery of the community. It will be shown in CASE STUDY III that there is indeed a difference in how social identity is negotiated and performed between core and periphery members of a weblog community. Finally, a model towards an integrated approach to researching blogs is put forth.

An innovative wastewater treatment technology was developed to recover renewable resources, such as water, energy and nutrients, from sewage. First, a novel synthetic sewage was evaluated for its suitability to serve as an alternative substrate for lab-scale wastewater treatment (WWT) research. Based on granular dried cat food, Complex Organic Particulate Artificial Sewage (COPAS) is a commercially-available, flexible, and easy to preserve feed. Characteristics of COPAS, namely chemical composition, disintegration/dissolution kinetics, and anaerobic biodegradability, were determined. Anaerobic bioassays indicate that COPAS is highly biodegradable at the concentration used to simulate household sewage (1000 mg/L), with more than 72% of the theoretical methane content reached after 30 d of incubation. Results indicate that COPAS is a suitable substrate as a surrogate of domestic sewage. In the second stage of the research, a lab-scale, 10L gas-lift anaerobic membrane bioreactor (Gl-AnMBR) was designed, fabricated and tested. The AnMBR is a hybrid treatment technology that combines anaerobic biological treatment with low-pressure membrane filtration. Although AnMBR has been used in many instances for the treatment of high strength industrial or agricultural wastewater, relatively little has been reported about its application for the treatment of domestic sewage and further conversion and recovery of resources embedded in sewage, such as energy and nutrient enriched water. The 10L column reactor uses a tubular PVDF ultrafiltration membrane (with biogas as sparge gas) for sludge/water separation. COPAS was used as synthetic feed (at 1000 mg/L) to represent household wastewater. The configuration showed excellent removal efficiencies of organic matter (up to 98% and 95% in COD and TOC removal, respectively) while producing energy in the form of methane at quantities suitable for maintaining membrane scrubbing (4.5 L/d of biogas). Soluble nutrients were recovered in the effluent in the forms of NH4, (9.1±4.2 mg/L), NO3 (2.2±0.9 mg/L) and PO4 (20±7.13 mg/L). The energy footprint (net energy) of this reactor was evaluated and the energy requirements per volume of permeate produced was found to be in the range of -1.2 to 0.7 kWh/m3, depending on final conversion of methane to electric or thermal energy respectively. These values could potentially be improved towards energy surplus (-2.3 to -0.5 kWh/m3) if applied to plant scale operation, which would employ more efficient pumps than those used in the lab. Results from this study suggest that the Gl-AnMBR can be applied as a sustainable treatment tool for resource recovery from sewage, which can further be optimized for large scale operation. In the final stage of this research, further resource recovery from sewage was investigated by coupling the Gl-AnMBR with an innovative gas-lift algal photo MBR (APMBR). To our knowledge, this is the first reported application of membranes (in particular gas-lift tubular) for separation of algal cells from effluent in a continuous-flow photobioreactor. Nutrient rich effluent (9 mg/L NH4-N and 20 mg/L PO4-P) from the Gl-AnMBR treating domestic wastewater was used as substrate to grow the biofuel producing microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana (Cs). The initial set of operational conditions tested in this study (HRT of 24 hours, operational flux of 4.5 LMH, air-lift flow rate (Qa) of 0.1 L/min and 0.1 bars of membrane inlet pressure), achieved 100% removal efficiencies for NH4 and PO4. Flux remained constant during the experimental period which demonstrated the efficacy of gas lift as a membrane fouling control strategy for an algae bioreactor. Because the algae is photoautotrophic, little removal of organic carbon was expected nor observed. Further studies are required to better understand the fate and cycling of carbon in the APMBR. Limited information is available in the literature regarding biofuel-producing, algal photo MBRs utilizing anaerobic effluents as feedstock, which makes this study an important step in understanding the design and performance of combined anaerobic/algal biotechnology for large scale application of wastewater resource recovery.

Rapid population aging driven by increasing life expectancy and falling birthrates has resulted in substantial increases in the old-age dependency ratio and decreases in the ratio of workers to retirees in all developed nations. In this context, some policymakers look to the support role of the family to moderate the effects of potentially shrinking public support. Yet, relatively little is known about the flow of transfers between family generations across the life cycle or the influence of public policy on the size and timing of those transfers. A core objective of this dissertation is to study the nature and net value of family transfers, defined in terms of the financial value of various types of transfers parents give to children (e.g., money, care and help, grandchild care, and co-residence) net of the value of the same types transfers they receive from children. Data for this study come primarily from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, and the sample includes 36,095 parent-child dyads from 11 European countries representing social democratic, conservative, and traditional welfare-state regimes. Time transfers are monetized using information on minimum and average hourly wages. The net value of intergenerational family transfers over the adult life cycle is estimated using piecewise linear spline regression. The findings reveal that intergenerational family transfers are nontrivial across mature European welfare states. Their net value follows a nonlinear pattern of positive transfers from parents to grown children until advanced old age when the net value declines sharply and ultimately becomes negative--the point at which the generational exchange starts mostly to benefit parents. The transition starts later and is less pronounced across more generous welfare states in Northern Europe, while the opposite is true of less generous welfare states in Southern Europe. Transfer behavior of parents and grown children across Europe is most consistent with the need for help and ability to give. The results demonstrate that assessments of the effects of public policies affecting intergenerational redistribution of resources would benefit from taking into account how family members of different generations redistribute resources due to changes in those policies. / text

Tourism has emerged as one of the most dynamic sectors in many countries; as one outcome, it has generated widespread hope that this particular industry can bring prosperity to numerous developing nations. Conversely, there is substantial suspicion of its capacity to bring equitable benefits to the poor. A recent proposition is to strengthen the tourism-poverty nexus by placing tourism at the heart of poverty reduction strategies. This thesis explores the application of this new and relatively untested approach. It does so by conducting a case study of the impact of heritage tourism, a community-based and poverty-focused tourism initiative, implemented in Anse La Raye, the most impoverished rural community in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Obviously a single case study cannot justify sweeping generalizations, but it can perhaps serve at least to raise a number of useful policy questions that might also have some broader application.The findings reveal that poverty-focused tourism development initiatives can positively impact the lives of the rural poor, under certain circumstances. Some observable effects included the creation of useful community infrastructure, linkages of direct and indirect employment benefits and consequent income generation. Notwithstanding these successes, this limited research piece suggests that, despite their nearly exclusive and commendable focus on the livelihood of the poor, pro-poor approaches to tourism also have limitations [for example, seasonal and part-time employment, and leakages] and certainly cannot be regarded as a panacea for reducing poverty in any poverty stricken region. Nonetheless, it is believed that St. Lucia, at least, can learn from the experiences of Anse La Raye as it further refines its tourism development policies in quest of further development targets.

In the last four decades, one of the fastest-growing fields of research in economics has been the contractual theory of the firm developed in Coase’s (1937) footsteps. Yet despite what otherwise seems to be a genuine success story the question of the nature of the firm remains an empirical and theoretical challenge, painfully illustrated by the lack of consensus regarding the definition and boundaries of the firm. The argument of this thesis is that many thorny questions that plague the literature, including issues related to ownership, boundaries, and intra-firm authority, are due to the fact that contractual theorists of the firm have generally overlooked a key legal feature of the economic system, without which theories of the firm are like Hamlet without the Prince. An elementary institutional fact about firms and markets is that in order to become a fully operational firm in a modern market economy, an entrepreneur or an association of resource owners need to go through a registration or incorporation procedure by which the legal system creates a separate legal person or legal entity in which ownership rights over assets used in production are vested, in whose name contracts are made, and thanks to which the firm has standing in court. With this assignment of legal personality, the legal system creates the efficiency-enhancing nexus for contracts that literally carries the organizational framework of the firm, and secures its continuity by locking-in the founders’ committed capital, thereby allowing them to pledge assets, raise finance and do business in the firm’s own name. Given the basic principle that only legal persons may own property and have the capacity to contract, and the implication that legally enforceable contracts can only exist between legal persons, it is something of a paradox that the notion of legal personality is absent from the prevailing narrative in the contractual theory of the firm. The thesis examines the reasons behind this state of affairs, and identifies alongside the widespread view among economists that firms can be defined with little or no reference to law, particularly statutory law, the lasting influence of Jensen and Meckling’s (1976) ambiguous dismissal of legal personality as a legal fiction that unavoidably leads to misleading reification. In order to disentangle the issues involved, the thesis puts this argument into historical perspective, and suggests that much can be learned from the corporate personality controversy that in the past has addressed the same questions. As the overview of the history of this debate reveals, the category mistakes that Jensen and Meckling presented as inevitable can be easily avoided once the meaning and functions of legal personality are properly understood. The thesis dispels enduring misunderstandings surrounding the notion of personhood, and proposes a legally-grounded view of the nature and boundaries of the firm that recognizes in law’s provision of legal entity status a fundamental institutional support for the firm while fitting the overall Coasean narrative.

This dissertation offers a perspective through which we can explore the processes of joint development and security interventions in conflict-prone regions. In employing the experiences of the Northern Region of Ghana as my case study, this thesis examines the ways that the rationales of both development and security interventions are articulated in the field of practice. The central argument of the thesis is that most analyses of aid interventions, particularly those stemming from mainstream development literature, rarely interrogate the underlying rationales and assumptions behind the ideas, strategies and discourses employed in aid intervention. Notably, these rationales and assumptions tend to reduce the complexity of development and security challenges, and, as an end result, facilitate the implementation of technical solutions. The translation of development and security discourses and strategies into programmable practices as they encounter a local population is characterized by complex processes. Following the central argument of the thesis, the key research question interrogates the way that the rationales behind development aid and security interventions have been articulated in conflict- prone Northern Region and how they have been received by the local population. With the overarching aim of understanding the complexities associated with the joint articulation of development and security programmes, this study provides a unique and critical analysis of international development and security practices. The study also provides deeper understanding of the broad socio-economic and political contexts for the delivery of aid interventions. I scrutinize the rationales behind these interventions through the critical examination of colonial practices and three contemporary interventions: 1) Region-wide interventions, 2) the UN Human Security Program, and 3) Post-liberal interventions used as a panacea to prevailing implementation challenges. Based on the analysis of archival documents, alongside policy, program, and interview documents, my study reveals the ways that the development-security nexus perpetrates liberal practices in the declared conflict-prone Northern Region of Ghana. I also evaluate the way that the development-security nexus reconstitutes individuals as resilient subjects through practices of empowerment and entrepreneurialism, and demonstrates the contestations, contradictions, and colonial features that characterize interventions in the field of articulation.

Water and electricity are fundamentally linked. Policy reforms in both industries, however, do not appear to acknowledge the links nor consider their wider implications. This is clearly unhelpful, particularly as policy makers attempt to develop effective responses to water and energy issues, underpinned by prevailing drought conditions and impending climate change. Against this backdrop, this research has comprehensively analysed the links between water and electricity – termed water-energy nexus – in the context of New South Wales. For this purpose, this research has developed an integrated methodological framework. The philosophical guidance for the development of this framework is provided by Integral Theory, and its analytical foundations rest on a suite of research methods including historical analysis, inputoutput analysis, analysis of price elasticities, and long-term scenario analysis. This research suggests that the historical and inextricable links between water and electricity, in the absence of integrated policies, has given rise to water-energy trade-offs. In the electricity industry, water-intensive coal-fired power stations that dominate base-load capacity in the National Electricity Market has resulted in intra- and inter-jurisdictional water sharing tradeoffs. Intermediate and peak demand technologies, suchas gas-fired, cogeneration and renewables, however, would significantly reduce the industry’s water consumption and carbon emissions. Drought and climate change adaptation responses in the water industry are likely to further increase electricity demand andpotentially contribute to climate change, due to policies that encourage investment in energy-intensive technologies, such as desalination, advanced wastewater treatment and rainwater tanks. Increasing electricity costs due to water shortages and the introduction of emissions trading will futher increase water and electricity prices for end users. Demand management strategies in both industries will assist in curbing price increases, however, their effectiveness is lessened by investment in water- and energy-intensive technologies in both industries. The analysis also demonstrates that strategies to reduce water and electricity consumption of ‘other’ production sectors in New South Wales is overwhelmingly dependent on how deeply a particular sector is embedded in the economy, in terms of its contribution to economic output, income generation and employment growth. Regulation, demand management programs, and water pricing policies, for example, that reduce the water and energy intensity of agriculture and key manufacturing sectors are likely to benefit the wider economy and the Environment. The future implications of the water-energy nexus are examined through long-term scenario analysis for New South Wales for 2031. The analysis demonstrates how policy decisions shape the domain for making philosophical choices by society - in terms of the balance between relying on alternative technologies and market arrangements, with differing implications for water and electricity use, and for instigating behavioural change. Based on these findings, this research puts forward a range of recommendations, essentially arguing for reorienting existing institutional arrangements, government measures and industry activities in a way that would encourage integration between the water and energy policies. Although the context of this research is New South Wales, the findings are equally relevant for other Australian states, which share the same national water and energy policy frameworks. Further, the concepts and frameworks developed in this research are also of value to other countries and regions that are faced with the task of designing appropriate policy responses to redress their water and energy challenges.

Water and electricity are fundamentally linked. Policy reforms in both industries, however, do not appear to acknowledge the links nor consider their wider implications. This is clearly unhelpful, particularly as policy makers attempt to develop effective responses to water and energy issues, underpinned by prevailing drought conditions and impending climate change. Against this backdrop, this research has comprehensively analysed the links between water and electricity – termed water-energy nexus – in the context of New South Wales. For this purpose, this research has developed an integrated methodological framework. The philosophical guidance for the development of this framework is provided by Integral Theory, and its analytical foundations rest on a suite of research methods including historical analysis, inputoutput analysis, analysis of price elasticities, and long-term scenario analysis. This research suggests that the historical and inextricable links between water and electricity, in the absence of integrated policies, has given rise to water-energy trade-offs. In the electricity industry, water-intensive coal-fired power stations that dominate base-load capacity in the National Electricity Market has resulted in intra- and inter-jurisdictional water sharing tradeoffs. Intermediate and peak demand technologies, suchas gas-fired, cogeneration and renewables, however, would significantly reduce the industry’s water consumption and carbon emissions. Drought and climate change adaptation responses in the water industry are likely to further increase electricity demand andpotentially contribute to climate change, due to policies that encourage investment in energy-intensive technologies, such as desalination, advanced wastewater treatment and rainwater tanks. Increasing electricity costs due to water shortages and the introduction of emissions trading will futher increase water and electricity prices for end users. Demand management strategies in both industries will assist in curbing price increases, however, their effectiveness is lessened by investment in water- and energy-intensive technologies in both industries. The analysis also demonstrates that strategies to reduce water and electricity consumption of ‘other’ production sectors in New South Wales is overwhelmingly dependent on how deeply a particular sector is embedded in the economy, in terms of its contribution to economic output, income generation and employment growth. Regulation, demand management programs, and water pricing policies, for example, that reduce the water and energy intensity of agriculture and key manufacturing sectors are likely to benefit the wider economy and the Environment. The future implications of the water-energy nexus are examined through long-term scenario analysis for New South Wales for 2031. The analysis demonstrates how policy decisions shape the domain for making philosophical choices by society - in terms of the balance between relying on alternative technologies and market arrangements, with differing implications for water and electricity use, and for instigating behavioural change. Based on these findings, this research puts forward a range of recommendations, essentially arguing for reorienting existing institutional arrangements, government measures and industry activities in a way that would encourage integration between the water and energy policies. Although the context of this research is New South Wales, the findings are equally relevant for other Australian states, which share the same national water and energy policy frameworks. Further, the concepts and frameworks developed in this research are also of value to other countries and regions that are faced with the task of designing appropriate policy responses to redress their water and energy challenges.