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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Aftershock : a cultural analysis of the Canberra Hospital implosion.

Blom, Kaaren Rhona, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Centre for Cultural Research January 2007 (has links)
The death of a child spectator at the implosion of the Royal Canberra Hospital on 13 July 1997 was an accident that had a profound impact on the local community, prompting a significant cursive response. Promoted as a public spectacle, the implosion was planned as an orchestrated collision between past and future that would enable an instantaneous obliteration of past in order to create a site of future opportunities. When it resulted instead in a failed demolition and the death of a child, the reversal of popular expectation precipitated not only shock, grief and guilt, but also a widespread state of ontological instability. If a certain fascination with death and disaster had contributed to the event’s popular appeal before the implosion, it was compounded by feelings of guilt and shame in the event’s tragic aftermath. Those feelings, shared by public and journalists alike, were given expression in the mediated discursive space of the Canberra Times and other media outlets, resulting in an extensive rhetorical performance of witness, therapy and argument. In this thesis, I use the diversity of voices that are held together in the discursive web that forms the textual fabric of this study’s empirical data, not to create a historical, single perspective narrative, but to go some way in re-creating the event, and the immediate response to it, by allowing that discourse to be re-voiced. As the product of extensive cultural labour on the parts of those who produced it, the implosion discourse, of which this thesis is now a part, stands as a significant corpus of commemorative work. This discourse is evidence of an engaged polity – one that transcended the passive role prescribed for it of an audience as consumers of entertainment to become, through its own labour, agents, creators and performers of meaning. My central thesis is that it is in this cultural performance that the true practice of ‘community’ can be discerned. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
2

An investigation into the integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques for addressing systemic complexity in the context of organisational strategic decision-making

McLucas, Alan Charles, Civil Engineering, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW January 2001 (has links)
System dynamics modelling has been used for around 40 years to address complex, systemic, dynamic problems, those often described as wicked. But, system dynamics modelling is not an exact science and arguments about the most suitable techniques to use in which circumstances, continues. The nature of these wicked problems is investigated through a series of case studies where poor situational awareness among stakeholders was identified. This was found to be an underlying cause for management failure, suggesting need for better ways of recognising and managing wicked problem situations. Human cognition is considered both as a limitation and enabler to decision-making in wicked problem environments. Naturalistic and deliberate decision-making are reviewed. The thesis identifies the need for integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Case study results and a review of the literature led to identification of a set of principles of method to be applied in an integrated framework, the aim being to develop an improved way of addressing wicked problems. These principles were applied to a series of cases in an action research setting. However, organisational and political barriers were encountered. This limited the exploitation and investigation of cases to varying degrees. In response to a need identified in the literature review and the case studies, a tool is designed to facilitate analysis of multi-factorial, non-linear causality. This unique tool and its use to assist in problem conceptualisation, and as an aid to testing alternate strategies, are demonstrated. Further investigation is needed in relation to the veracity of combining causal influences using this tool and system dynamics, broadly. System dynamics modelling was found to have utility needed to support analysis of wicked problems. However, failure in a particular modelling project occurred when it was found necessary to rely on human judgement in estimating values to be input into the models. This was found to be problematic and unacceptably risky for sponsors of the modelling effort. Finally, this work has also identified that further study is required into: the use of human judgement in decision-making and the validity of system dynamics models that rely on the quantification of human judgement.
3

An investigation into the integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques for addressing systemic complexity in the context of organisational strategic decision-making

McLucas, Alan Charles, Civil Engineering, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW January 2001 (has links)
System dynamics modelling has been used for around 40 years to address complex, systemic, dynamic problems, those often described as wicked. But, system dynamics modelling is not an exact science and arguments about the most suitable techniques to use in which circumstances, continues. The nature of these wicked problems is investigated through a series of case studies where poor situational awareness among stakeholders was identified. This was found to be an underlying cause for management failure, suggesting need for better ways of recognising and managing wicked problem situations. Human cognition is considered both as a limitation and enabler to decision-making in wicked problem environments. Naturalistic and deliberate decision-making are reviewed. The thesis identifies the need for integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Case study results and a review of the literature led to identification of a set of principles of method to be applied in an integrated framework, the aim being to develop an improved way of addressing wicked problems. These principles were applied to a series of cases in an action research setting. However, organisational and political barriers were encountered. This limited the exploitation and investigation of cases to varying degrees. In response to a need identified in the literature review and the case studies, a tool is designed to facilitate analysis of multi-factorial, non-linear causality. This unique tool and its use to assist in problem conceptualisation, and as an aid to testing alternate strategies, are demonstrated. Further investigation is needed in relation to the veracity of combining causal influences using this tool and system dynamics, broadly. System dynamics modelling was found to have utility needed to support analysis of wicked problems. However, failure in a particular modelling project occurred when it was found necessary to rely on human judgement in estimating values to be input into the models. This was found to be problematic and unacceptably risky for sponsors of the modelling effort. Finally, this work has also identified that further study is required into: the use of human judgement in decision-making and the validity of system dynamics models that rely on the quantification of human judgement.

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