Society views and treats women who are single differently than women who are not single. This practice of stereotyping and discrimination towards singles is called singlism. The purpose of this qualitative study was to use grounded theory methodology to explore and explain how women experience singlism and what explains how women experience singlism. Social constructionism, cognitive dissonance theory, and social identity theory were used as conceptual foundations in explaining how society constructs the status of single women, how single women are viewed and treated, and how single women manage their single social identity. The participants of the study included women over the age of 18 who self-identified as single and as having experienced singlism. Semistructured interviews, memoing, and member checking were used to collect data. Initial, focused, and theoretical coding procedures were used to manage the data, and a content analysis of the textual data was performed. Findings from the data suggest women respond to singlism by experiencing feelings, adopting beliefs, and participating in behaviors. A woman's experience of negative or angry feelings, adopting beliefs supporting or opposing to singlism, and participating in behaviors to support or oppose singlism is explained by her internalization of singlism, and of the ideology of family and marriage. Social action is needed to counteract singlism. This necessitates an identity shift to reframe single as a positive social identity which begins by raising awareness about singlism. The findings of this study may promote positive social change by raising awareness about singlism.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:17:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Aline de Carvalho Abdelnur.pdf: 1525676 bytes, checksum: 7ac17f7946c4f9d21776abe2bdcead58 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-11-13 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Skinner (1969/1980) described rules as contingency specifying stimuli with discriminative stimulus function. Based on this assumption, behavior analysts led much experimental research on rule-governed behavior and other possible behavioral functions of rules have not been investigated. Nevertheless a conceptual debate has started within Behavior Analysis about other functions of rules. This work is an experimental investigation on the function-altering effects of rules proposed in this conceptual debate. Another objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the statement of deadlines and consequences, alone or combined, on the behavior of Kindergarten children, when the opportunity to respond was immediate or delayed. Twenty children, aged from 4 to 5 years, were assigned into two experimental groups, following baseline. The study had two Parts. In Part I, rules with either a deadline OR a consequence for the specified response (or compliance) were studied. Group I was exposed to a sequence of experimental conditions that always started with immediate opportunity to respond. Group II was exposed to the same conditions, but always starting with delayed opportunity to respond. In Part II, attended 12 children, and rules specified both deadlines and consequences, always with immediate opportunity for the Group I and delayed opportunity for the Group II. The results demonstrate the function-altering function exerted by rules that specify deadlines and consequences, as well as extend other researchers data quantity and generality. Significant results were also obtained in terms of compliance with rules, under conditions of deadlines and / or consequences not previously investigated / Regras foram descritas por Skinner (1969/1980) como estímulos especificadores de contingências com função de estímulo discriminativo. A partir desta formulação, os analistas do comportamento conduziram muitas pesquisas experimentais sobre comportamento governado por regras, mas outras possíveis funções comportamentais de regras não foram investigadas. No entanto, foi iniciado um debate conceitual acerca de outras funções que as regras poderiam exercer. Este estudo caracteriza-se como uma investigação experimental dos efeitos alteradores de função de outros estímulos que as regras podem exercer. Outro objetivo deste estudo foi investigar os efeitos da declaração de prazos e consequências, isolados ou em combinação, sobre o comportamento de crianças da pré-escola, quando a oportunidade para seguir a regra era imediata ou atrasada. Participaram 20 crianças com idade entre 4 e 5 anos, que foram divididas em dois grupos experimentais, após a fase de linha-de-base. O estudo teve duas partes. Na Parte I, eram declaradas regras que especificavam apenas um prazo ou apenas uma consequência para a emissão da resposta especificada. O Grupo I foi exposto a uma sequência de condições experimentais que se iniciava sempre com oportunidade imediata para responder. O Grupo II foi exposto às mesmas condições, mas sempre iniciando com oportunidade atrasada para responder. Na Parte II, da qual participaram 12 crianças, eram declaradas regras que especificavam tanto um prazo como uma consequência, sempre com oportunidade imediata para responder para o Grupo I e oportunidade atrasada para o Grupo II. Os resultados obtidos atestam a função alteradora de função exercida por regras que especificam prazos e consequências, assim como permitem ampliar a quantidade e a generalidade de dados obtidos por outros pesquisadores. Resultados significativos em termos de seguimento, em condições de prazo e /ou consequência não investigadas anteriormente também foram obtidos

This study presents an analysis of detour operations as a concept of congestion management. Since a large portion of traffic delay emanates from traffic incidents, the goal of the study was to alleviate incident-induced impacts on freeways by diverting congested traffic on to adjacent roadway facilities. To balance the demand between freeway and arterial systems, optimization was required through Integrated Corridor Management (ICM). This thesis examines the justification and optimization of dynamic traffic routing strategies. Previous studies have justified detour operations based solely on traffic simulation results. This study quantifies the impacts from freeway incidents on a parallel arterial roadway using a data-driven signal processing technique, with operating speeds adopted as a performance measure. Results show that rerouting traffic to an adjacent arterial road, due to a freeway incident, can mitigate the mobility of the corridor with a probability of up to 88% depending on the type of incident and occurrence time. Results also indicate that diverting traffic during off-peak hours, especially for minor incidents, provides minimal mobility benefits. A secondary focus of this study explored the optimum dynamic traffic diversion, to an adjacent arterial roadway, from incident-induced freeway congestion to better utilize the freeway’s available corridor capacity. VISSIM, a microsimulation tool, was employed to simulate a freeway incident and measure the performance of detour operations. A 23 full factorial central composite design was used to establish a relationship between the performance of the detour operation and three control factors: incident duration, diversion rate, and demand level. The resulting regression equation predicts the corridor delay with over 83% accuracy. The findings of this study can potentially serve as a building block in the understanding and development of future ICM systems and incident management plans.

RESUME A partir de lanalyse des incidents des FSOs de type CALM Soft Yoke de Vietsovpetro aux gisements White Tiger (Tigre Blanc) et Dragon, on saperçoit du besoin de développer des structures offshore (y compris les FPSOs) installées et opérées «en sécurité» dans les conditions spéciales des états de mer du Vietnam, où apparaissent de nombreux vents violents et de fréquents typhons tropicaux. Dans le cadre de cette thèse, une recherche générale sur les systèmes dancrage des FPSO a été réalisée en considérant divers problèmes : efforts hydrodynamiques du second ordre, réponses dynamiques aléatoires des systèmes dancrage des FPSO, analyses du dommage de fatigue aléatoire et estimation de la durée de vie des lignes dancrage. Plus spécialement, une étude plus approfondie avec un nouveau concept a été proposée pour estimer la fiabilité totale dun système de lignes d'ancrage des FSPO. La fiabilité totale a été déterminée selon les conditions de mer extrêmes (ULS), elle diminue avec le temps à cause de la prise en compte de l'accumulation du dommage en fatigue des lignes d'ancrage (FLS). Dans la dernière part de thèse, cette méthode a été appliquée aux conditions de mer sévères du Vietnam, surtout dans les états limites extrêmes, prenant en compte l'accumulation du dommage en fatigue. En application numérique, deux FSOs existants au Vietnam ont été analysés. Le contenu principal des études de la thèse a également contribué à réaliser un Projet National de Recherche du Vietnam (intitulé code KC.09.15/06-10), dont lun des membres est lauteur de cette thèse./ ABSTRACT From analyzing incidents of the CALM Yoke FSOs of Vietsovpetro in the White Tiger and Dragon fields, we can identify the need to develop offshore structures (including FPSO) installed and operated in safety in most severe Vietnamese sea states, with many and frequent strong winds and tropical typhoons. In this thesis, a general research on the FPSO mooring systems has been carried out by considering various problems: second order hydrodynamic efforts, random dynamic responses of the FPSO mooring systems, analyzing random damage of fatigue and estimating the durability of the mooring lines. In particular, a thorough study with a new concept was proposed to estimate the total reliability of FSPO mooring line systems. The total reliability was estimated for extreme sea conditions (ULS), which decreases with the time due to the accumulation of the damage by fatigue of the moorings lines (FLS). In the last part of thesis, this method was applied to the severe sea conditions of Vietnam, especially considering the ultimate limit states and taking into account the accumulation of the fatigue damage. For numerical application, two FSOs existing now in Vietnam were analyzed. The main studies in this thesis have also contributed to develop a National Research Project in Vietnam (entitled code KC.09.15/06-10), in which the author acts as a research team member.

Changing trends in customer preference, competitors’ offerings, new technologies and development techniques may disrupt a firm from its current leading market position and may favor other firms that prioritize innovation. Once a market opportunity is identified (i.e., find an answer to the ‘what to do’ question), firms need to engage in a series of activities and information processing to determine an appropriate way to monetize that opportunity – that is, firms need to find an answer to the ‘how to do’ question. Alternately, a firm may first identify a technological opportunity (i.e. find an answer to the ‘how to do’) and then find a market opportunity (i.e. find an answer to the ‘what to do’ question) to make use of the technological opportunity. Two scales that measure the capabilities of firms to address the following two questions – ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do’ - were reported; these were labelled as market-scanning capability (MktScan) and technology-scanning capability (TechScan); and these two scales were also tested in a broader research model. In turbulent environments, marketing and R&D become more challenging, since they face an uncertain future. Firms need to learn systemic scanning and decoding of apparently random changes in their business environment and imagine a pattern that makes sense. One cannot plan for uncertainty. A better strategy is to be prepared for it. One way to prepare is to develop the capabilities that would help the firm to become more adaptive. Drucker (1992) also argued that instead of planning for the long term that is uncertain, firms needed to become adaptive to tackle uncertainty. The ability of a firm to adapt to the changes depends on its ability to sense the nature of the changes in its business environment and respond to those. Sense-and-respond framework (Haeckel 1999; Haeckel 2000; Day and Schoemaker 2006) was proposed to emphasize the identification of weak signals (Ansoff 1975) to tackle increased uncertainty in business environment. In current days, effectiveness of firm’s activities often depends on the richness of its sources of information and its capability to process the collected information to identify the patterns of change happening in its business environments. Information processing may happen in two dimensions: in market dimension and in technology dimension. Firms’ capabilities for information collecting and processing in these two dimensions were measured using two firm-level constructs. These are market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability. Resource-based theory helped to understand how firms use their tangible and intangible resources to compete in the market. Specific problem-solving aspects of the processes, activities, and cultural norms enable firms to make decisions about engaging the available resources and capabilities in ways that maximize customer value, by realizing the identified opportunities into product and service offerings. This research identified the characteristic strength of this problem-solving approach of firms – collecting information both internally and externally about possible market opportunities and technological options, organization-wide processing of that information, and taking actions to respond using insights gained – as two latent constructs called ‘market-scanning capability’ and ‘technology-scanning capability’. The concepts of ‘market-scanning capability’ and ‘technology-scanning capability’ were first defined and then, scales were developed to enable researchers and managers to measure these firm-level constructs. Next, the predictive roles of these capabilities on firm performance were examined. Empirical analysis for scale development and validation of the research model were performed with data collected through a web-based survey of Canadian manufacturing firms. Firm performance was captured in two stages – first, by product innovation performance, and second, by overall firm performance. Product innovation performance was used as an intermediate performance measure to examine the direct influence on it of market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability, and then, to relate product innovation performance to final business outcome measured using ‘overall firm performance’ scale. The study validated the notion of resource-based theory by supporting the belief that higher levels of market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability would lead to improved product innovation performance. The role of environmental turbulence was also examined for its possible moderating effect. Two measures of environmental turbulence, namely, technology and market turbulence were used to test the moderation effect. The technology turbulence construct was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between technology-scanning capability and product innovation performance, indicating that firms needed to focus more attention on the changes in the technology landscape when turbulence in the technological field was perceived to be higher, in order to keep the same level of product innovation performance. Insight gained from the study contributed to a knowledge-base that might be useful to both practitioners and researchers. The combination of TechScan and MktScan scales could be used as a benchmark tool by managers to assess firms’ readiness to take advantage of the opportunities that existed. On the theoretical side, the study contributed to the understanding by showing that both market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability had direct and indirect influences on firm performance. Also, it was found that the indirect influence of a certain scanning capability became important when firms were pre-disposed to emphasize the other scanning capability.

Changing trends in customer preference, competitors’ offerings, new technologies and development techniques may disrupt a firm from its current leading market position and may favor other firms that prioritize innovation. Once a market opportunity is identified (i.e., find an answer to the ‘what to do’ question), firms need to engage in a series of activities and information processing to determine an appropriate way to monetize that opportunity – that is, firms need to find an answer to the ‘how to do’ question. Alternately, a firm may first identify a technological opportunity (i.e. find an answer to the ‘how to do’) and then find a market opportunity (i.e. find an answer to the ‘what to do’ question) to make use of the technological opportunity. Two scales that measure the capabilities of firms to address the following two questions – ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do’ - were reported; these were labelled as market-scanning capability (MktScan) and technology-scanning capability (TechScan); and these two scales were also tested in a broader research model. In turbulent environments, marketing and R&D become more challenging, since they face an uncertain future. Firms need to learn systemic scanning and decoding of apparently random changes in their business environment and imagine a pattern that makes sense. One cannot plan for uncertainty. A better strategy is to be prepared for it. One way to prepare is to develop the capabilities that would help the firm to become more adaptive. Drucker (1992) also argued that instead of planning for the long term that is uncertain, firms needed to become adaptive to tackle uncertainty. The ability of a firm to adapt to the changes depends on its ability to sense the nature of the changes in its business environment and respond to those. Sense-and-respond framework (Haeckel 1999; Haeckel 2000; Day and Schoemaker 2006) was proposed to emphasize the identification of weak signals (Ansoff 1975) to tackle increased uncertainty in business environment. In current days, effectiveness of firm’s activities often depends on the richness of its sources of information and its capability to process the collected information to identify the patterns of change happening in its business environments. Information processing may happen in two dimensions: in market dimension and in technology dimension. Firms’ capabilities for information collecting and processing in these two dimensions were measured using two firm-level constructs. These are market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability. Resource-based theory helped to understand how firms use their tangible and intangible resources to compete in the market. Specific problem-solving aspects of the processes, activities, and cultural norms enable firms to make decisions about engaging the available resources and capabilities in ways that maximize customer value, by realizing the identified opportunities into product and service offerings. This research identified the characteristic strength of this problem-solving approach of firms – collecting information both internally and externally about possible market opportunities and technological options, organization-wide processing of that information, and taking actions to respond using insights gained – as two latent constructs called ‘market-scanning capability’ and ‘technology-scanning capability’. The concepts of ‘market-scanning capability’ and ‘technology-scanning capability’ were first defined and then, scales were developed to enable researchers and managers to measure these firm-level constructs. Next, the predictive roles of these capabilities on firm performance were examined. Empirical analysis for scale development and validation of the research model were performed with data collected through a web-based survey of Canadian manufacturing firms. Firm performance was captured in two stages – first, by product innovation performance, and second, by overall firm performance. Product innovation performance was used as an intermediate performance measure to examine the direct influence on it of market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability, and then, to relate product innovation performance to final business outcome measured using ‘overall firm performance’ scale. The study validated the notion of resource-based theory by supporting the belief that higher levels of market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability would lead to improved product innovation performance. The role of environmental turbulence was also examined for its possible moderating effect. Two measures of environmental turbulence, namely, technology and market turbulence were used to test the moderation effect. The technology turbulence construct was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between technology-scanning capability and product innovation performance, indicating that firms needed to focus more attention on the changes in the technology landscape when turbulence in the technological field was perceived to be higher, in order to keep the same level of product innovation performance. Insight gained from the study contributed to a knowledge-base that might be useful to both practitioners and researchers. The combination of TechScan and MktScan scales could be used as a benchmark tool by managers to assess firms’ readiness to take advantage of the opportunities that existed. On the theoretical side, the study contributed to the understanding by showing that both market-scanning capability and technology-scanning capability had direct and indirect influences on firm performance. Also, it was found that the indirect influence of a certain scanning capability became important when firms were pre-disposed to emphasize the other scanning capability.

No description available.

The aim of the study has been to highlight men's experiences of their violence against their former partners. The questions that answered the purpose of the study have focused on the reasons why men tend to use violence against their partners and whether they subsequently take responsibility for their violence and if so, how this is the case. The study is of a qualitative approach and is based on five interviews with men who have been treated for their violent behavior. The theories that the study leans towards are the social psychological and sociological perspectives with a focus on social heritage and the social learning theory. The study's empirical data and the causes of the violence is also linked to the external factors of the ecological perspective, such as drugs, alcohol, economic vulnerability and crime. Other theoretical perspectives and explanatory models that are used to explain men's acts of violence against their former partner are the disfavor perspective in the individual psychological perspective, the gender power perspective and system theory explanatory models. The result of the study indicate that the causes of men's violence against women are often explained as the woman's own fault when the man often believes that the woman has provoked him to take violence. Many times, however, there are several different reasons for men's violence against women who are interwoven in several different theoretical explanatory models. Many of the men in the study still do not take responsibility for their acts of violence and do not want to identify themselves as a women abusers, even though they have been treated and in therapy for the violence against their former partner. However, some of the men in the study also found that the treatment helped them understand the causes of the violence and that they also have a responsibility as it comes to the violence they subjected their former partners to. / Studiens syfte har varit att belysa mäns erfarenheter av sitt våld mot sina tidigare partners. Frågeställningarna som besvarat studiens syfte har fokuserat på orsakerna kring varför män brukar våld mot sina partners och huruvida de i efterhand tar ansvar för sitt våld och hur i så fall detta ter sig. Studien är av kvalitativ ansats och grundar sig på fem intervjuer med män som har gått i behandling för sitt våldsamma beteende. De teorier som studien lutar sig mot är de socialpsykologiska och sociologiska perspektiven med fokus på det sociala arvet samt den sociala inlärningsteorin. Studiens empiri och orsakerna till våldet kopplas även samman med det ekologiska perspektivet och då med fokus på de yttre faktorerna så som droger, alkohol, ekonomisk utsatthet och kriminalitet. Andra teoretiska perspektiv och förklaringsmodeller som används för att förklara männens våldshandlingar gentemot sin före detta partner är vanmaktsperspektivet, det individualpsykologiska perspektivet och könsmaktsperspektivet. Studiens resultat pekar på att orsakerna till mäns våld mot kvinnor ofta förklaras som kvinnans eget fel då mannen många gånger anser att kvinnan har provocerat honom till att ta till våld. Många gånger kan det dock finnas flera olika orsaker till mäns våld mot kvinnor som är sammanvävda i flera olika teoretiska förklaringsmodeller. Flera av männen i studien tar fortfarande inte ansvar för sina våldshandlingar och vill inte identifiera sig som kvinnomisshandlare, trots att de gått i behandling och i terapi för våldet mot sin tidigare partner. Vissa av männen i studien tyckte dock att behandlingen hjälpte dem till att förstå orsakerna till våldet och att de även har ett ansvar då det kommer till våldet som de utsatt sina tidigare partners för.