Project Report (M.Pub.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Project Report (Master of Publishing Program) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

State failure in Zimbabwe has had a profound impact on the labour market. As job opportunities in the formal sector have shrunk due to the contraction of the economy, the informal sector has been showing rapid growth. The restructuring of the labour market has resulted in an informal sector that is much bigger than the formal sector, a drastic reversal of the situation that existed just after the country’s independence in 1980. This growth in the informal sector has had the effect of keeping the reported unemployment figure in Zimbabwe at below 10 per cent. While this figure has been met with disbelief and derision both within and outside Zimbabwe, it is based on the application of the international definition of employment (ILO, 2008). This study analyses the impact of state failure on a segment of the informal sector - the urban informal sector self-employed and analyses how urban selfemployment has grown and developed in a context of state failure. This study also explores how this segment of the informal economy has responded to and been impacted by the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe. The study found that state failure has had a large impact on the urban informal sector selfemployed in a number of ways. This impact has largely been in the form of (a) opportunities in filling the gap left by the collapse of the formal sector after the imposition of price and foreign exchange controls; (b) increased competition from new, more educated, entrants who were opting out of (or could not get jobs in) the formal sector; (c) increases in the number of people employed by informal enterprises (the majority of whom were non-family members); (d) the crisis/failing state’s increasing inability to enforce zoning and tax regulations. The findings suggest that there have been a lot of new entrants into the informal sector. These new entrants seem to be younger and more educated. These new entrants seem to have made strategic decisions on location, types of products they sell and the way they run their enterprises. The urban informal sector self-employed workers are not a homogeneous group. They exhibit differences in a number of areas for example, their age, the activities they are engaged in, their level of education, and the location they operate from. Zimbabwe’s price and exchange control policies exacted a heavy toll on the private sector with many formal enterprises collapsing as a result of these controls. These controls and the collapse of many formal sector enterprises presented numerous opportunities for economic rents and arbitrage. Although most of the respondents in the sample were generally happy with informal sector work, there were some who had clearly disproportionately benefited from state failure. While the study does indicate that the urban informal sector self-employed entrepreneurs do absorb a number of unemployed people, with the informal sector thus playing a distributional safety-net role not only for the enterprise owners but also for their employees, the number of people employed per enterprise seems to be too low to substantiate the view of the informal sector being a significant employer in the economy (even a failing one). The study concludes that the context of crisis/failed state has clearly created some opportunities for a segment of the population. These findings are largely inconsistent with a view that conceptualises the informal sector as an undifferentiated employer of last resort marked by low wages and difficult working conditions. While the informal sector is playing an ameliorative role as an income-generating safety net for most self-employed workers in Harare, the comparatively well-educated respondents selling high end products in the suburbs seem to have actually benefited from the conditions of state failure. The low salaries coupled with job insecurity in the formal sector have meant that the informal sector is increasingly viewed as a more preferable employment option, particularly for entrepreneurs. The returns from this type of activity have even encouraged a number of formal sector workers to increasingly participate in the informal sector to make ends meet. In a country where a formal sector worker’s salary can barely cover the rent, let alone food and other expenses, the informal sector entrepreneurs in this study perceived themselves to be comparatively wealthy. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

In summary, the original contribution to knowledge of this research-based thesis lies in the fact that, as far as can be determined from published sources, this is the first exploration into an area of complex cultural behaviour and family business enterprise, notably within the Singapore context and Chinese women managers. / The purpose of this study was to provide an exploratory study on the possible influence of the Chinese culture on Chinese women managers who are managing their family owned businesses in Singapore, to make a contribution to the research literature in the area of research design and to generate suggestions for future research. / There was only limited research literature published in this area. A review of this limited literature on the Chinese culture and Chinese women managers failed to provide a clear perspective on the use of any specific method to determine the cultural influence on Chinese women managers. Moreover, most of this available literature was not written by a Chinese Singaporean for the Chinese women in Singapore, whereby the proper contextual interpretations may be necessary to form a more complete understanding of the possible issues facing these women managers. / Since culture is not easily quantifiable and can be altered by the exposure to external factors, the research was designed to explore only a portion of the Chinese women managers in Singapore using a list of questions. By limiting the research to lower educated Chinese women with only one business outlet in Singapore, the researcher has intentions to keep the research participants in one homogenous group as much as possible. It is probable that the other categories of Chinese women managers such as the higher educated or those with multiple business outlets may exhibit similar behavioural patterns as those of the targeted group for this research. However, there is a risk that the behavioural pattern of this other group may be dissimilar and their inclusion may skew and distort the research findings. / A preliminary survey was carried out on a group of research participants using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was derived in order to ensure a uniform interview process for each research participant. The sample size was kept small based on a sampling technique known as purposeful sampling. The 'negotiated outcome' method was used, whereby the findings from the interviews were shared with the research participant in order to obtain their concurrence and to correct any error in the interpretation of the data. The information from this initial survey was analysed in order to identify commonalities and a second questionnaire was constructed based on the findings from the initial survey. / The second survey, or verification study, was carried out in a series of interviews on another set of research participants. Again, the purposeful sampling method was used to keep the sample size small and, thus, to keep the data manageable. The data from the verification survey was summarised and analysed. From the analysis, it was found that there were at least two aspects of the Chinese culture that was found to have an influence on the Chinese women managers. These two aspects are a) Greener Pastures for their Children and b) Lower Education Expectations. / In the first case, it was found that most of the Chinese women managers did not have any intention to hand over their business to their children, citing a common reason, that is the expectation that their children will fare better if they were to seek their career elsewhere instead of staying within the family business and perpetuating it. It was argued that the primary reason for this behaviour was that the Chinese women managers had earlier set low targets for their businesses and is subsequently discouraging their children from taking over the business out of motherly concern. / If the Chinese women managers have set lower business goals for themselves, and then expecting their children to pursue their career elsewhere because of this, it will mean there was no plan to maximize the business in the first place. And, if there was no plan or desire to maximize the business, then the ability of the business to achieve its full potential will not be possible. / The second finding was that many of these Chinese women managers had lower education expectations of themselves compared to their male siblings. This was likely to be an old cultural artifact that the Chinese women have failed to discard from the end of the Han dynasty. But by keeping to this mindset, the Chinese women are limiting themselves from attaining the highest academic achievements, and as a result they are being limited from experiencing their full potential. / This belief and practice is still observed in Singapore in this day and age. It this is allowed to propagate, future generations of Chinese Singapore women may be brought up with similar mindsets. This will have long term and far reaching impacts on the economy of the nation because a portion of the female population would not have been given the opportunity to pursue their academic qualifications to the maximum. / It is important, therefore, that the findings of this research be made known to the Chinese women in Singapore so as to create an awareness of this part of the Chinese culture that is silently propagated. This awareness will create a consciousness that, if proper assistance is provided, enable the present generation of Chinese Singaporean to nurture their children differently in order to avoid propagating such mindsets. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2005

In summary, the original contribution to knowledge of this research-based thesis lies in the fact that, as far as can be determined from published sources, this is the first exploration into an area of complex cultural behaviour and family business enterprise, notably within the Singapore context and Chinese women managers. / The purpose of this study was to provide an exploratory study on the possible influence of the Chinese culture on Chinese women managers who are managing their family owned businesses in Singapore, to make a contribution to the research literature in the area of research design and to generate suggestions for future research. / There was only limited research literature published in this area. A review of this limited literature on the Chinese culture and Chinese women managers failed to provide a clear perspective on the use of any specific method to determine the cultural influence on Chinese women managers. Moreover, most of this available literature was not written by a Chinese Singaporean for the Chinese women in Singapore, whereby the proper contextual interpretations may be necessary to form a more complete understanding of the possible issues facing these women managers. / Since culture is not easily quantifiable and can be altered by the exposure to external factors, the research was designed to explore only a portion of the Chinese women managers in Singapore using a list of questions. By limiting the research to lower educated Chinese women with only one business outlet in Singapore, the researcher has intentions to keep the research participants in one homogenous group as much as possible. It is probable that the other categories of Chinese women managers such as the higher educated or those with multiple business outlets may exhibit similar behavioural patterns as those of the targeted group for this research. However, there is a risk that the behavioural pattern of this other group may be dissimilar and their inclusion may skew and distort the research findings. / A preliminary survey was carried out on a group of research participants using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was derived in order to ensure a uniform interview process for each research participant. The sample size was kept small based on a sampling technique known as purposeful sampling. The 'negotiated outcome' method was used, whereby the findings from the interviews were shared with the research participant in order to obtain their concurrence and to correct any error in the interpretation of the data. The information from this initial survey was analysed in order to identify commonalities and a second questionnaire was constructed based on the findings from the initial survey. / The second survey, or verification study, was carried out in a series of interviews on another set of research participants. Again, the purposeful sampling method was used to keep the sample size small and, thus, to keep the data manageable. The data from the verification survey was summarised and analysed. From the analysis, it was found that there were at least two aspects of the Chinese culture that was found to have an influence on the Chinese women managers. These two aspects are a) Greener Pastures for their Children and b) Lower Education Expectations. / In the first case, it was found that most of the Chinese women managers did not have any intention to hand over their business to their children, citing a common reason, that is the expectation that their children will fare better if they were to seek their career elsewhere instead of staying within the family business and perpetuating it. It was argued that the primary reason for this behaviour was that the Chinese women managers had earlier set low targets for their businesses and is subsequently discouraging their children from taking over the business out of motherly concern. / If the Chinese women managers have set lower business goals for themselves, and then expecting their children to pursue their career elsewhere because of this, it will mean there was no plan to maximize the business in the first place. And, if there was no plan or desire to maximize the business, then the ability of the business to achieve its full potential will not be possible. / The second finding was that many of these Chinese women managers had lower education expectations of themselves compared to their male siblings. This was likely to be an old cultural artifact that the Chinese women have failed to discard from the end of the Han dynasty. But by keeping to this mindset, the Chinese women are limiting themselves from attaining the highest academic achievements, and as a result they are being limited from experiencing their full potential. / This belief and practice is still observed in Singapore in this day and age. It this is allowed to propagate, future generations of Chinese Singapore women may be brought up with similar mindsets. This will have long term and far reaching impacts on the economy of the nation because a portion of the female population would not have been given the opportunity to pursue their academic qualifications to the maximum. / It is important, therefore, that the findings of this research be made known to the Chinese women in Singapore so as to create an awareness of this part of the Chinese culture that is silently propagated. This awareness will create a consciousness that, if proper assistance is provided, enable the present generation of Chinese Singaporean to nurture their children differently in order to avoid propagating such mindsets. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2005

In summary, the original contribution to knowledge of this research-based thesis lies in the fact that, as far as can be determined from published sources, this is the first exploration into an area of complex cultural behaviour and family business enterprise, notably within the Singapore context and Chinese women managers. / The purpose of this study was to provide an exploratory study on the possible influence of the Chinese culture on Chinese women managers who are managing their family owned businesses in Singapore, to make a contribution to the research literature in the area of research design and to generate suggestions for future research. / There was only limited research literature published in this area. A review of this limited literature on the Chinese culture and Chinese women managers failed to provide a clear perspective on the use of any specific method to determine the cultural influence on Chinese women managers. Moreover, most of this available literature was not written by a Chinese Singaporean for the Chinese women in Singapore, whereby the proper contextual interpretations may be necessary to form a more complete understanding of the possible issues facing these women managers. / Since culture is not easily quantifiable and can be altered by the exposure to external factors, the research was designed to explore only a portion of the Chinese women managers in Singapore using a list of questions. By limiting the research to lower educated Chinese women with only one business outlet in Singapore, the researcher has intentions to keep the research participants in one homogenous group as much as possible. It is probable that the other categories of Chinese women managers such as the higher educated or those with multiple business outlets may exhibit similar behavioural patterns as those of the targeted group for this research. However, there is a risk that the behavioural pattern of this other group may be dissimilar and their inclusion may skew and distort the research findings. / A preliminary survey was carried out on a group of research participants using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was derived in order to ensure a uniform interview process for each research participant. The sample size was kept small based on a sampling technique known as purposeful sampling. The 'negotiated outcome' method was used, whereby the findings from the interviews were shared with the research participant in order to obtain their concurrence and to correct any error in the interpretation of the data. The information from this initial survey was analysed in order to identify commonalities and a second questionnaire was constructed based on the findings from the initial survey. / The second survey, or verification study, was carried out in a series of interviews on another set of research participants. Again, the purposeful sampling method was used to keep the sample size small and, thus, to keep the data manageable. The data from the verification survey was summarised and analysed. From the analysis, it was found that there were at least two aspects of the Chinese culture that was found to have an influence on the Chinese women managers. These two aspects are a) Greener Pastures for their Children and b) Lower Education Expectations. / In the first case, it was found that most of the Chinese women managers did not have any intention to hand over their business to their children, citing a common reason, that is the expectation that their children will fare better if they were to seek their career elsewhere instead of staying within the family business and perpetuating it. It was argued that the primary reason for this behaviour was that the Chinese women managers had earlier set low targets for their businesses and is subsequently discouraging their children from taking over the business out of motherly concern. / If the Chinese women managers have set lower business goals for themselves, and then expecting their children to pursue their career elsewhere because of this, it will mean there was no plan to maximize the business in the first place. And, if there was no plan or desire to maximize the business, then the ability of the business to achieve its full potential will not be possible. / The second finding was that many of these Chinese women managers had lower education expectations of themselves compared to their male siblings. This was likely to be an old cultural artifact that the Chinese women have failed to discard from the end of the Han dynasty. But by keeping to this mindset, the Chinese women are limiting themselves from attaining the highest academic achievements, and as a result they are being limited from experiencing their full potential. / This belief and practice is still observed in Singapore in this day and age. It this is allowed to propagate, future generations of Chinese Singapore women may be brought up with similar mindsets. This will have long term and far reaching impacts on the economy of the nation because a portion of the female population would not have been given the opportunity to pursue their academic qualifications to the maximum. / It is important, therefore, that the findings of this research be made known to the Chinese women in Singapore so as to create an awareness of this part of the Chinese culture that is silently propagated. This awareness will create a consciousness that, if proper assistance is provided, enable the present generation of Chinese Singaporean to nurture their children differently in order to avoid propagating such mindsets. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2005

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Orientador: Roberto Alcarria do Nascimento / Banca: Marizilda dos Santos Menezes / Banca: Marcelo Cláudio Tramontano / Resumo: Diante das transformações comportamentais e tecnológicas que afetam a sociedade e alteram os parâmetros de espaço e tempo, propomos aqui uma lente de aumento neste contexto. O foco são as relações entre a moradia, mobiliário e profissional autônomo - arquiteto, engenheiro e designer - que utilizam a casa como local de trabalho. Entender os ambientes de moradia e trabalho e a utilização do mobiliário nesses espaços tornou-se necessário para identificar semelhanças do passado com a atualidade. A análise de fatores que hoje contribuem para a consolidação do trabalho na residência, revela as perdas e os ganhos que o profissional sofre em seu cotidiano com a família, o trabalho e a qualidade de vida. O olhar do usuário para essas questões e para o objeto estudado, que é a "estação de trabalho intelectual ligada a atividades de projeto" nos revela o quão o objeto utilizado está distanciado das necessidades reais do usuário. Trata-se, portanto, de aproximar e esclarecer os pontos falhos dessa relação e propor reflexões, conceitos e diretrizes projetuais para estação de trabalho residencial, adequando-as às necessidades do usuário. / Abstract: Facing the behavior and technological transformation which affect the society and change the parameters of space and time, this paper proposes to focus the relation among dwelling, furniture and self-employed - architects, engineers and designers - who use their houses as a place to work. Understanding the environment where one lives and works, as well as the use of furniture in these spaces, have become important to identify similarities between the past to the present. The analysis of factors that lead us today to the consolidated practice of working at home reveals the losses and gains faced by profissional in his family and work daily routine and life quality. The way the user sees such issues and the object of this study - that is, home office related to design activities - do not reveal how far home office is from the user's real necessities. Therefore, the aim is to approach to end clarify the failures in this relation and to raise reflection, concepts and design guidelines for home office, adjusting them into the user's real necessities. / Mestre

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of a status of individual professional athlete. This issue seems to be easy to resolve as the legal doctrine unanimously classifies individual professional athletes as self-employed. However, further examination provides more detailed view and illustrates the issue is not as unambiguous as one might assume. Thus the aim of the thesis was to analyse the status and sports activity performance of individual professional athlete both theoretically and practically. The analysis of the sports activity performance of single individual professional athletes points out that their performances are different to a great extent. The sports activity performance of some athletes can be even without any doubt considered as a dependent work in terms of labour law. It results in fact that some of individual professional athletes conducts sports activity as self-employed, some of them are employees and some of them even professional soldiers. Every single legal status is connected with various benefits but also with some difficulties. In addition, according to predominant practice and regardless on the nature of their sports activity performance athletes are free to choose their legal status. The thesis also partly concentrates on complex issue of civil liability of athletes...

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:24:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-12-21Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:51:48Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 franceschi_rb_me_bauru.pdf: 1110472 bytes, checksum: ed9ac8d50e06c35b64bad97c18a9691c (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Diante das transformações comportamentais e tecnológicas que afetam a sociedade e alteram os parâmetros de espaço e tempo, propomos aqui uma lente de aumento neste contexto. O foco são as relações entre a moradia, mobiliário e profissional autônomo - arquiteto, engenheiro e designer - que utilizam a casa como local de trabalho. Entender os ambientes de moradia e trabalho e a utilização do mobiliário nesses espaços tornou-se necessário para identificar semelhanças do passado com a atualidade. A análise de fatores que hoje contribuem para a consolidação do trabalho na residência, revela as perdas e os ganhos que o profissional sofre em seu cotidiano com a família, o trabalho e a qualidade de vida. O olhar do usuário para essas questões e para o objeto estudado, que é a estação de trabalho intelectual ligada a atividades de projeto nos revela o quão o objeto utilizado está distanciado das necessidades reais do usuário. Trata-se, portanto, de aproximar e esclarecer os pontos falhos dessa relação e propor reflexões, conceitos e diretrizes projetuais para estação de trabalho residencial, adequando-as às necessidades do usuário. / Facing the behavior and technological transformation which affect the society and change the parameters of space and time, this paper proposes to focus the relation among dwelling, furniture and self-employed - architects, engineers and designers - who use their houses as a place to work. Understanding the environment where one lives and works, as well as the use of furniture in these spaces, have become important to identify similarities between the past to the present. The analysis of factors that lead us today to the consolidated practice of working at home reveals the losses and gains faced by profissional in his family and work daily routine and life quality. The way the user sees such issues and the object of this study - that is, home office related to design activities - do not reveal how far home office is from the user's real necessities. Therefore, the aim is to approach to end clarify the failures in this relation and to raise reflection, concepts and design guidelines for home office, adjusting them into the user's real necessities.