How do people determine satisfaction in their relationships? One way may be to engage in bottom-up processing and rely on sexual satisfaction to arrive at an overall evaluation of the relationship. Another way may be to engage in top-down processing and allow the overall relationship satisfaction to color the perceptions of sexual satisfaction. The current study more rigorously examined the causal relationship between sexual and marital satisfaction through multilevel cross-lagged regression analyses of 8 waves of marital and sexual satisfaction reported by 72 newlywed couples over the first five years of marriage. Consistent with bottom-up processing, initial sexual satisfaction predicted subsequent marital satisfaction. Also, consistent with top-down processing, initial marital satisfaction predicted subsequent sexual satisfaction. The current findings extend theoretical perspectives on the relationship between sexual satisfaction and suggest that both causal paths be considered in future research and clinical practice.

Problem: The developing business market and the pressure it puts on business gives rise to new fields of business within SCM and logistics. Third party logistics (TPL) services have grown rapidly in importance as an alternative to vertical business integration. The emergence of TPL has brought about interest in the topic by academia, but recent literature reviews express a need for research on TPL relationships where both buyer and provider perspectives are viewed simultaneously, since a majority of previous research has been conducted more from a single organisational viewpoint. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how providers and buyers in TPL relationships adapt and cooperate to develop mutually beneficial and long-term relationships, as well as investigating their willingness and attitudes in this concern. Method: The thesis combines an explanatory and exploratory classification, and performs a qualitative, mono method study of viewpoints on TPL relationships from Swedish and Norwegian providers and buyers that currently are in a TPL relationship. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with four providers and three buyers. The findings are analysed and interpreted in light of a theoretical framework developed from the literature review, which in the analysis is applied in a TPL context to extend the understanding of TPL relationships. Conclusions: Willingness to adapt and cooperate in TPL relationships is connected with the parties’ perceived potential for economic gain and also with being able to trust the other party. Buyers emphasise the need for providers to have knowledge about the buyers’ business. Providers emphasise the need for buyers to be knowledgeable about their own business and for the buyer to fits their solutions. Attitudes: Both parties emphasise communication as crucial for the development of mutual benefits. Buyers adapt to providers’ standards as far as possible. Providers seem to want buyers to adapt to their solutions to gain economies of scale, and therefore appear reluctant to make relationship-specific investments. The use of contracts in the TPL context appears to contradict literature in that contracts work as a foundation for building trust, as well as for reducing opportunistic and operational risk. In practice, both providers and buyers highlight the use of integrated IT-solutions as a means of adapting to each other. Regular operational meetings are emphasised as part of the practical cooperation to develop the relationship’s future and to discuss day-to-day issues.

The aim of this research is to find social factors in Chinese academic immigrants’ conversion to Christianity using the perspectives of symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory. The research data are drawn from observation and interviews. Fourteen Chinese student converts were interviewed. The analysis focuses on the interaction between recruits and Christians. Results supported the idea that religious conversion happens progressively. Affective bonds are essential for the religious conversion of Chinese academic immigrants. Chinese Christian converts experienced five stages. First, they develop affective commitment to Christians close to them and regard them as their reference group. Second, an emergent generalized other is internalized in recruits’ minds through recruits’ acceptance of symbolic language in Christianity and interaction with Chinese Christians. Third, recruits understand the Bible with the perspective of Christians. Fourth, as the socially defined reality reinforces their beliefs and the affective bonds develop, recruits confess their sins and decide to believe in God. Finally, recruits strengthen their understanding of Christianity by intensifying interactions with Chinese Christians.

With the coming of digital times, global competition resulted in every industry expanding their requirements in supply chain integration and enterprise resource planning. The importance of information system integration industries also increases with time. When all kind of industries continues to integrate supply chain and establish cooperative partnerships, trying to exploit cooperation to acquire more competencies in the market, we want to know whether the information system integration industries establish their cooperative relationship. Therefore, our study tried to review the actives and relationship between integrators by the systems integration service process. Through the theory¡¦s guiding, we attend to induce the factors of inter-firm cooperation in system integration industries. We use multiple case study to design our research¡Aand select three cases to study. Semi-structural interview is used to collect needed data to understand the true cooperative relationship between integrators. According to transaction cost theory, resource-base theory and social exchange theory, we propose some theoretical propositions to guiding the real cases analysis. The conclusions not only describe the real cooperation in Taiwan system integration industries, but also induce several factors of cooperative relationship between integrators, including product characteristics, transaction cost, resource, trust and guanxi. Moreover, the transaction cost is the most important element in the cooperative relationship between information system integrators.

Knowledge withholding intentions (KWI), defined as the likelihood an individual will give less than full effort on knowledge contribution. If every member withholds knowledge in a software development team, it results in poor project performance. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence knowledge withholding intentions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model based Social Cognitive Theory and extends it with Social Exchange Theory to analyze the antecedents of knowledge withholding intentions from personal cognitions and contextual factors. Furthermore, the contextual influencers are subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding with a comprehensive view. Through a survey of 227 participants who have experience in software development, task interdependence, procedural justice, leader-member exchange, team-member exchange were found to have negative influences on knowledge withholding intentions. On the contrary, knowledge withholding outcome expectations and knowledge withholding self-efficacy were found to have positive influences on knowledge withholding intentions.

This study focuses on the conflict process in a multi-culture team and discusses those factors which bring the conflict to next stage. In this study, 6 participators in Global MBA program which was formed by National Sun Yat-Sen Univiersity in Taiwan, University Victoria in Canada, and Johannes Kepler University in Austria were interviewed. By using narrative inquiry as research method, the study integrates different perspectives and analyzes factors behind this case. The result shows that if the interpersonal relationship is based on social-exchange theory, every participator provides one¡¦s good exchange with owned culture, but culture and value differences turn the goodness into misunderstandings. The expectation of one side wasn¡¦t met by the other side. The inefficient social exchange finally became subliminal conflict. In addition, peer support and mental balance play important roles in the process, and both of them are impacted by culture. The similarity of cultures connects people from different countries and builds up peer support which raises the subliminal conflicts to the surface. The difference of the cultures makes it more difficult to understand other¡¦s kindness. Both sides can¡¦t achieve mental balance, so it moves the conflict process back to previous stage and repeats itself. Finally, the attitude after conflict incident is the key factor to end up the conflict. Positive attitude helps participators to create more cultural understanding and solve the problem. On the contrary, negative attitude comes with rude behavior and brings down the organization. The study provides the empirical experience of the conflict process and further discussion which can be practiced in the cross-culture management and conflict management in the future.

How do people determine satisfaction in their relationships? One way may be to engage in bottom-up processing and rely on sexual satisfaction to arrive at an overall evaluation of the relationship. Another way may be to engage in top-down processing and allow the overall relationship satisfaction to color the perceptions of sexual satisfaction. The current study more rigorously examined the causal relationship between sexual and marital satisfaction through multilevel cross-lagged regression analyses of 8 waves of marital and sexual satisfaction reported by 72 newlywed couples over the first five years of marriage. Consistent with bottom-up processing, initial sexual satisfaction predicted subsequent marital satisfaction. Also, consistent with top-down processing, initial marital satisfaction predicted subsequent sexual satisfaction. The current findings extend theoretical perspectives on the relationship between sexual satisfaction and suggest that both causal paths be considered in future research and clinical practice.

De senaste åren har den internationella turismen ökat explosionsartat och den förväntas fortsätta öka på samma vis. Detta medför både positiv och negativ påverkan på destinationen och för lokalbefolkningen. För att turismen skall vara långsiktigt hållbar är det viktigt att inbegripa turisternas perspektiv på destinationspåverkan. Tidigare forskning har främst varit fokuserad på lokalbefolkningens syn på turismen, och därför behövs vidare forskning från turisternas synvinkel. Föreliggande uppsats har som syfte att undersöka hur svenska turister uppfattar destinationspåverkan inom de tre hållbarhetssfärerna ekonomi, sociokultur och ekologi. Vidare syftar uppsatsen till att undersöka eventuella skillnader i upplevelser mellan de två turistgrupperna massturister och alternativturister. Undersökningen har gjorts med hjälp av en enkätundersökning administrerad på Internet. Enkäten har spridits på sociala medier med hjälp av ett snöbollsurval som avser spegla diverse varianser i populationen. Teorierna Social Exchange Theory och Self-Serving Bias har använts för att beskriva turism och turisters aktioner. Resultaten har analyserats statistiskt i programmet SPSS, genom att göra T-Test. Resultatet visar att turisterna anser att den ekonomiska påverkan från den allmänna turismen är positiv, medan den ekologiska påverkan är negativ och på det sociokulturella planet finns en bred spridning mellan positivt och negativt. De uppfattar också sin egen resa som positivt ekonomiskt och sociokulturellt men den ekologiska sfären anses inte påverkas speciellt mycket av deras egen resa. Vidare redovisas mycket svaga skillnader mellan olika turisttypers svar om destinationspåverkan, däremot tydliga skillnader i uppfattning om sin egen resa i förhållande till den allmänna turismen.

Research Question: What factors influence customers’ online group buying decision-making in emerging market? Research Purpose: To explore whether the factors of the Social Exchange Theory, market stimuli and e-commerce systems affect customers’ online group buying decision-making in emerging market Method: This research is a quantitative study by using survey as a research strategy. A questionnaire which designed according to theory framework is used to collect data for analysis. The questionnaires are posted in Chinese Baidu PostBar. Conclusion: In the end of data collection, 375 questionnaires have been analyzed. After analyzing empirical data, results for research questions have been answered. According to the analysis and theoretical framework, "reciprocity", "trust", "price", "word of mouth" and "website design" are attributes which have been detected to influence customers ‘online group buying decision-making in China. However, "loyalty "and "logistic services" are not attributes to influence customers ‘online group buying decision-making. / <p>8</p>

This study examines the social representations of Thailand’s tourism development and related social impact, as perceived by respondents from Bangkok, Thailand. Employing social representations theory (SRT) and social exchange theory (SET), this study adopts qualitative methods to obtain respondents’ representations of tourism development in Bangkok. For the study, forty in-depth interviews and four focus-group interviews were conducted with respondents who were either involved or not involved in the tourism industry. The two main issues considered were, firstly, the determination of the concepts used to perceive tourism development and its social impact among Thai people and, secondly, how social exchanges affected these perceptions. The research suggests that there are four clusters of respondents who share common perceptions and certain socio-economic characteristics. Cluster one: respondents in this cluster are highly involved in tourism and are mostly of high socio-economic status. They share perceptions of Thailand’s tourism development as moving slowly forward, but hampered by red-tape management and bureaucratic problems. This cluster views economic impact in a positive light, especially with regard to the country’s increased revenue, and they perceive of culture as a tourism product. This group viewed environmental impact as a global problem and they mostly expressed the view that the tourism industry has a social responsibility to reduce the causes of pollution. Cluster two: respondents in this cluster are not involved in tourism and have a high socio-economic status. They perceive tourism development as having both positive and negative aspects. Economic impacts were represented both positively, in terms of national revenues and job creation, and negatively, in terms of fostering a materialistic society. Generally, this cluster views the social impact of tourism more negatively. Cluster three: respondents in this cluster are in mid-level-management positions in industries both involved and not involved in the tourism industry. They perceive tourism development in both positive and negative terms. They have favourable views of the economic impact of tourism and view Thai culture as a tourism product. Some respondents in this cluster are concerned about the environmental impact of tourism. Cluster four: respondents in this cluster have a low socio-economic status and include those involved and not involved in the tourism industry. This cluster perceived tourism development in positive terms. They predominantly viewed tourism development as a way to modernise society. This study also found six factors that affect individuals’ social representations of tourism development and social impact: personal benefits, socio-economic background, cultural values, personal traits, and socially derived and direct experiences. Of these, four were intrinsic factors—personal traits, direct experiences, individual benefits, and socio-economic backgrounds. The remaining two - socially derived and cultural values - were extrinsic factors. This study found that extrinsic factors are the main sources of individual representations and lead to hegemonic social representations. The significance and contribution of this research lies in two categories—theoretical and practical. From the theoretical angle, this research makes a number of contributions to the body of knowledge of social representation and social exchange. In terms of a practical contribution, these results can assist the Thai government to review the issues raised and ultimately provide more effective management.