The main point of the master’s thesis – scrutinize the international status and position of Kaliningrad oblast. From the historical overview it can be determined that the sovereignty over the territory of the Kaliningrad oblast passed over the course of centuries from the Teutonic Order, to the Duchy of Prussia, to the Kingdom of Prussia, to the Kingdom of Germany, to the enclave of East Prussia and finally to the USSR. The relation of an exclave to its state is of state-legal nature. The legal nature of an enclave is to be viewed from the points of view of the surrounding (enclaving) state, the mainland, and the third states. Since the enclave is an inherent part of the mainland state, it is guided by the mainland’s national politics and legal system that’s why from the point of view of the enclave; this power is the most important one. It was one of the master’s thesis tasks to estimate the factors that caused the establishment of the Kaliningrad oblast on the nowadays map to assess the legal oblast’s status according the Potsdam Agreement and the way it was incorporated in the mother state. After scrutinizing the provisions of the Potsdam Agreement and Treaty of the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany one can state that the legal status of Kaliningrad oblast is to be determined. The borders in the region under consideration have been in flux throughout the last century. Fifty years is a short time span as regards substantial and irreversible changes in public... [to full text]

Die Bewohner von sechs Dörfern der LEADER-Region »Elbe-Röder-Dreieck« wurden zur Versorgungssituation befragt. Im Ergebnis der geführten Interviews wird die jeweilige Versorgung mit Waren des täglichen Bedarfs, die medizinische Versorgung, das Dienstleistungsangebot und die Erreichbarkeit von Versorgungsangeboten außerhalb des Ortes unterschiedlich bewertet. In fünf Dörfern wird Verbesserungsbedarf bei der medizinischen Versorgung und beim Post- und Bankdienstleistungsangebot gesehen. Hingegen ist eine mobile und stationäre Versorgung mit Waren des täglichen Bedarfs in vier Dörfern, in zwei Dörfern aber nur in Form einer mobilen Versorgung derzeit gegeben. In allen Dörfern werden mobile Dienstleistungen mit Haustürservice wie Lieferdienste, Physiotherapie oder Frisör angeboten. Die Befragung ergab zahlreiche Beispiele wie private, gewerbliche und kommunale Initiativen zur Verbesserung der Versorgungslage beitragen können. In unterversorgten ländlichen Regionen ist jedoch eine kleinräumige Nahversorgungsstrategie nötig, um die Grundversorgung zu sichern.

This dissertation focuses on how entrepreneurs learn to acquire entrepreneurial knowledge and competence, which ultimately can open doors to business success. Contemporary critics suggest that programs designed to develop general competence are not sufficiently relevant to these entrepreneurs. On the other hand, scholars and practitioners have recently noticed that external relations in formal learning networks can be a notable opportunity for learning in entrepreneurs. The aim of this dissertation is to elaborate on the processes and outcomes of government supported learning networks among entrepreneurs who work in small and medium sized enterprises. It draws on reports of four separate but interrelated research studies that author conducted. The research described in the dissertation is based on multiple theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and data sources. To gain a full understanding of the experiences of the different network participants, as well as the interactive processes within the learning network, data were collected from multiple sources: interviews, participant observation, and videotaping. The conclusions stated in appended paper 1 and 2 are primarily based on the interviews, but they are also supported by the observations and written material. Paper three focuses on the videos in combination with the interviews. Finally, to complement the qualitative research with insights regarding the relationships among trust, learning, and self-efficacy, the last paper reports the results of a quantitative survey study. The dissertation makes several major contributions to knowledge. First and foremost, by combining entrepreneurship theory and learning theory, it describes the outcomes that can emerge from formal learning networks and shows how these outcomes can have entrepreneurial consequences. Second, it suggests how the learning situation can be characterized and describes an appropriate learning environment for entrepreneurs from small and medium sized enterprises. The research also contributes to theory on how trust in formal learning networks is built and how this trust contributes to entrepreneurial learning. At the same time, it shows that the potential benefits derived from trust cannot be realized without incorporating the entrepreneur’s level of self-efficacy in the analysis. The dissertation concludes by offering suggestions for exploiting learning and business opportunities through the construction and utilization of learning networks.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the theoretical and practical issues associated with the design, execution and analysis of an empirical evaluation of novel process control displays in a collaborative control room environment. An important feature of the thesis is how practical constraints associated with limited access to industry controllers were handled and how convergent lines of evidence were used to achieve the evaluation. As a novel research domain, hydropower systems (HPS) present many design challenges, because controllers must coordinate multiple domains across different time frames. If controllers are to maintain effective situation awareness and if they are to exercise effective control, the displays must integrate controllers’ problem solving across water, generation, market, and transmission concerns and across time frames. However, these needs are ignored in the current displays in a hydropower control room. The two new ecologically-inspired displays, called “Functional Displays”, evaluated in this thesis, are intended to overcome the above shortcomings. The evaluation was done with industry hydropower controllers and coordinators on a medium fidelity simulator which represented the working environment of a large hydropower control room. The core issue of this thesis is how the evaluation was conceptualized, operationalized and analysed given practical constraints arising from limited access to industry controllers, limited capacity of the simulator, and the complexity of the hydropower domain. Of key concern was the design of test scenarios, selection of measures of performance, and data analysis in the face of these constraints. The rationale of the scenario design was to combine representative contingencies within and outside the hydropower scheme, emergent storage problems and different market contexts so that controllers or coordinators would be required to act in different domains. Only by placing controllers in such challenging and time pressured situations could we maximize our chances of seeing the expected benefits of the new display, given the limited length of the experiment. Multiple measures were proposed to capture the quality of in-the-loop coupling between human controllers and the system under various disturbances. The measures of performance include: (1) control quality, which investigates how the new displays tame “temporal complexity” by helping the control team construct a more effective pattern of activities to handle contingencies; and (2) control strategy, which exposes how the new display support the coordination between storage, generation and market to meet the strategic or tangible objectives. The measures of cognition and affect include: (1) situation awareness (SA), which represents controllers’ or coordinators’ degree of cognitive coupling with different time frames and different levels of the hydropower scheme and (2) controllers’ or coordinators’ trust in the supporting displays, and their self-confidence in their own ability to control the hydropower scheme. Through the effort of triangulating the different measures, balancing the elements in designing scenarios, and extracting and integrating raw data from the study, convergent lines of evidence were achieved for evaluation. It was found that the new Functional Displays led the participant teams to a better pattern of work which was reflected in their situation awareness, their discretionary control activity, and the outcome of their control with respect to system productivity and stability. However, limitations of these findings because of the constraints of the experiment are discussed. This research contributes to many theoretical and practical issues in Human-System Interface (HSI). For example, it outlines how some of the principles of ecological interface design (EID) can be used and it highlights the value of using time as a basis for distinguishing interfaces. Moreover, this research provides fruitful insights into the selection and development of measures to assess human control in real world complex work environments. Because a key issue of this thesis is how practical constraints were handled; pragmatic approaches for measuring SA and control were developed. Because industry often performs evaluations under similar intensive constraints, the approaches and solutions developed in this thesis for evaluating novel interfaces could be easily adapted to various industrial settings.

Situation Awareness (SA) is the aviation term for the construct describing how actors extract meaning and make sense of their dynamically changing environment. Within the aviation domain, it is broadly acknowledged that SA plays a crucial role for pilots in coping with hazardous situations and its loss is cited as a significant factor in aircraft accidents and incidents. A broad range of psychologically based theories has been applied to conceptualise SA. The aim of this research thesis is to develop an alternative, sociologically based approach, largely drawn from Erving Goffman??s (1974) Frame Analysis, and assess whether it can be used to effectively describe, analyse and discuss SA. An open observation method was used to collect data in the flight deck during ten commercial international flight sectors conducted in an advanced wide-body aircraft. A running narrative of flight activity and associated context was recorded from a purposeful sample of flights operated by consenting flight crews. Data was managed in the NVIVO?? qualitative software analysis program. Strips of activity associated with the establishment or maintenance of SA were identified and examined in accordance with key concepts derived from frame analysis. The results show that key concepts drawn from Goffman??s (1974) frame analysis are able to be applied to the coding and discussion of data. Several emergent themes describe distinct SA behaviours relating to frame establishment and maintenance. These behaviours include; frame confirming, questioning, seeking, setting, proposing, clearing, accepting, reviewing and anticipating. Some unique modifications are made to Goffman??s underlying concepts in order to address specific contextual issues emergent in flight deck operations. SA is supported as a meaningful construct in the aviation domain. This thesis establishes that Goffman??s (1974) general theory of frame analysis supports the major underlying concepts of the specific SA construct. Additionally, a method derived from frame analysis is used to examine and analyse the observed intersubjective SA processes. This analysis also develops several unique perspectives concerning flight crew task performance that have wide ranging implications in procedural design, training and airspace integration. Lastly, practitioner based notions of SA are shown to be equivalent to that of ??frame.??

Situation Awareness (SA) is the aviation term for the construct describing how actors extract meaning and make sense of their dynamically changing environment. Within the aviation domain, it is broadly acknowledged that SA plays a crucial role for pilots in coping with hazardous situations and its loss is cited as a significant factor in aircraft accidents and incidents. A broad range of psychologically based theories has been applied to conceptualise SA. The aim of this research thesis is to develop an alternative, sociologically based approach, largely drawn from Erving Goffman??s (1974) Frame Analysis, and assess whether it can be used to effectively describe, analyse and discuss SA. An open observation method was used to collect data in the flight deck during ten commercial international flight sectors conducted in an advanced wide-body aircraft. A running narrative of flight activity and associated context was recorded from a purposeful sample of flights operated by consenting flight crews. Data was managed in the NVIVO?? qualitative software analysis program. Strips of activity associated with the establishment or maintenance of SA were identified and examined in accordance with key concepts derived from frame analysis. The results show that key concepts drawn from Goffman??s (1974) frame analysis are able to be applied to the coding and discussion of data. Several emergent themes describe distinct SA behaviours relating to frame establishment and maintenance. These behaviours include; frame confirming, questioning, seeking, setting, proposing, clearing, accepting, reviewing and anticipating. Some unique modifications are made to Goffman??s underlying concepts in order to address specific contextual issues emergent in flight deck operations. SA is supported as a meaningful construct in the aviation domain. This thesis establishes that Goffman??s (1974) general theory of frame analysis supports the major underlying concepts of the specific SA construct. Additionally, a method derived from frame analysis is used to examine and analyse the observed intersubjective SA processes. This analysis also develops several unique perspectives concerning flight crew task performance that have wide ranging implications in procedural design, training and airspace integration. Lastly, practitioner based notions of SA are shown to be equivalent to that of ??frame.??

Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss., 2004

Zugl.: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2003

Diss. Stockholm : Univ., 2004.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2006.