Cette thèse contient trois chapitres principaux qui traitent des questions sur les inégalités horizontales et la pauvreté au Vietnam. Dans le premier chapitre, j'évalue l'efficacité d'un des programmes de réduction de la pauvreté les plus importants au Vietnam dans le cadre de la participation communautaire. Le deuxième chapitre examine si les écarts de revenu par genre et ethnicité existent sur le marché du travail du Vietnam et (le cas échéant) quelle partie des écarts peut s'expliquer par les différences dans les dotations et les rendements sur les dotations. Enfin, j'explore les disparités dans le capital social et le réseau social et le rôle des réseaux sociaux dans la lutte contre les chocs parmi les minorités et la majorité ethniques. / My thesis contains three main chapters which handle the questions about horizontal inequalities and poverty in Vietnam. In the first chapter, I assess the effectiveness of one of the most important poverty reduction program in Vietnam under the community participation perspective. The second chapter examine whether gender and ethnic earning gaps exist in the Vietnam’s labour market and how much of these gaps (if any) could be explained by the differences in endowments and returns to endowments. Lastly, I explore the disparities in social capital and social network and the role of social networks in coping with shocks between ethnic minority and majority.

Spatial and temporal patterns of urban vegetation have been widely studied since the mid-twentieth century, but these studies have focused mainly on northern hemisphere countries, and little research has been conducted in developing countries. Urban vegetation is characterized by the presence of species that are adapted to the particular environmental conditions of cities, and a high diversity of exotic species. This occurs due to a combination of factors: on one hand, it is possible to find wild vegetation (weeds) on abandoned lands or those with little intervention, as well as on walls and buildings. On the other hand, there is also an enormous variety of ornamental and mainly exotic species, which have been cultivated by humans. The processes of species selection performed individually or collectively are a major determinant of the diversity of urban vegetation and flora. Individual decisions relate to private spaces such as residential gardens whose owners manage the vegetation according to their preferences and interests. Collective decisions relate to public spaces, which, by their nature, are subject to the action of multiple stakeholders. At the collective level, decision-making occurs in the context of processes involving local governments, other state agencies, NGOs and various interest groups present in the city. Each of these actors has its own vision on the role of urban vegetation, their preferences and criteria for the selection and management. This study aims to investigate the processes of decision-making responsible for the current composition of the vegetation in public spaces of the Metropolitan Area of Santiago (MAS). Through this research is expected to identify the criteria for the selection of species to be planted in public spaces, the reasons that explain the predominance of certain species, and the difference between parks managed by different public agencies in MAS. The research assumes that the various public and private actors involved in the planting and management of vegetation in public spaces, act guided by criteria and preferences that are finally expressed in the observed patterns of urban vegetation. For this purpose, the conceptual framework of governance is used, understood as the process of decision-making concerning public affairs, which involves multiple agents or interests including government agencies, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups. The overarching objectives of this Thesis are: a) To contribute to the knowledge of interactions between governance system and urban vegetation patterns in metropolitan areas of developing countries, recognizing both social and environmental processes interacting. b) Contribute to urban planning and policies by generating knowledge relevant to decision- making regarding urban vegetation. A robust knowledge of the factors defining the composition and structure of urban vegetation is essential to design effective policies for increasing vegetation cover, with consequent environmental and social benefits.

The master thesis focuses on the virtual social network sites which are concern to be exceptionally actual issue. Moreover the thesis deals with social networks in tourism. The number of various social networks about travelling is high. However, only the community of CouchSurfing (hospitality exchange network) was chosen for the research purposes of the thesis. The research included in the thesis focuses on CouchSurfing because is the greatest hospitality exchange site in these days. It includes user from all over the world and community of Czech users as well. The focal point of the research was also on Czech community only. With the aim of approaching the theme gradually the thesis begins with the theoretical framework. The framework is structured into several chapters which include insight to the social networks and alternative tourism from different perspectives. The social theory, the sociological paradigms, the changes in value-system in the society and the technological development of web 2.0 are discussed in the theoretical part. The aim of the thesis research was to compare two different groups of participants of tourism (mainly young people) - the tourists who are not joining the CouchSurfing community and the tourists who are registered. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were...

The rise of 'information disorder' that undermine Western political principles has become one of the key political concerns in current Europe and United States and led to searching for new solutions how to fight the spread of mis- and dis-information. While the nature of this danger is still subject to much debate, we can already observe a rise of new experts explaining the threat of information war and how to deal with it. This research looks at how this novel problematization of security affects the politics of security expertise. Or, who gains power in this 'battle for truth'? Building on sociological approaches in security studies, this thesis focuses on the Czech Republic as a country that has become very active in the fight against disinformation and analyses the network of actors recognized as providing security expertise on information warfare. Based on social network analysis, the research maps the structure of social relations among actors recognized as experts and points out the empowerment of think-tanks and journalists, who build their expertise by bringing together their social capital, bridging knowledge of Russian politics and the new media environment, and introducing new practices to make the society resilient towards information warfare.

The aim of this study is to describe and compare the personal journeys of minors and adults immigrants into the Swedish society as well as their way into their first jobs. A qualitative approach was used in this study along with six semi-structed interviews, three of the interviewees immigrated to Sweden as minors and the other three as adults. The study’s theoretical framework covers Diaz (1993) seven dimensions of the integration process, which symbolizes a basic and mediated integration. Previous research were used in conjunction with the study's theoretical frame of reference in the section of analysis. The results indicate that the integration among individuals who came to Sweden as minors was easier, for example when it came to getting to their first jobs. However, the introduction of a new culture and society has been a challenge for all the interviewees, each individual learned to deal with it indifferent ways.

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Growing an online community takes time and effort. Relationships in an online community must be initiated based on trust followed by privacy, and then carefully cultivated. People are using web based social networks more than recent past, but they always want to protect their private data from unknown access; meanwhile also eager to know more people whom they are interested. Among all other system, trust based recommenders have been one of the most used and demanding system which takes the advantage of social trust to generate more accurate predictions. In this work we have proposed for Meven (An Enterprise trust-based profile recommendation with privacy), which uses Social Network Content (User Profiles and trends) with Trust and privacy control policy. The idea of system is to provide Social Networks with the ability to quickly find related information about the users having similar behaviors as the current user. The users will also be able to set the privacy metrics on their profiles so they will not get recommendation of those they feel less important and this is achieved by Privacy metrics. To generate accurate predictions, we defined trust between two users as a strong bond which is computed using different metrics based on user’s activities with respect to different content such as blogging, writing articles, commenting, and liking along with profile information such as organization, region, interests or skills. We have also introduced privacy metric in such a way so that users have full freedom to hide themselves from the recommendation system or they can also have the opportunity to customize their profiles to be visible to certain level of trustworthy users. We have exposed our application as a web service(api) so that any social network web portal can access the recommendations and publish them as a widget in social network.

Innovation as the most important way for firms to retain their long-term competitiveness has been extensively researched lately. In this thesis, the author perceived innovation from the bottom up approach, where innovation spans over a broad spectrum of actors, reaching the initiative at a very low level. From this perspective, although innovation starts from an initial idea within an individual’s mind, the connections and interactions between individuals in a social context are very important for idea generation and innovation implementation. Thus social links and interaction within the enterprise context hold an important role in the firms’ innovation. Enterprise Social Network (ESN), defined as “a set of technologies that creates business value by connecting the members of an organization through profiles, updates, and notifications”, comes as one strategy to facilitate professional social networking activities within firms to support better collaboration and communication. However, nowadays when social networking becomes very popular, theimplementation of ESN appears more of a trend for firms instead of a well planned strategy. Most ESN implementations lack means of evaluation of their impacts towardthe firms’ performance, including innovation. In response to that, this thesis’s aim is to answer the ‘how’ question on ESN support toward 9 innovation climate characteristics and social interaction within firm. In this research, an interpretive research methodology was applied towards a case in a global telecom company, Ericsson, with their ESN called MyNET. As part of the methodology, a survey and interviews were done to assess MyNET users’ experience and opinion in this matter. The social network graph was also used in this methodology as an additional input for the interviews. There were 672 respondents participating in the survey and 10 interviews were conducted. The results show that the targeted goals of MyNET implementation support innovation climate characteristics. The results also show that professional social networking activities supported by MyNET such as individual user profile, add colleague in the social network, share information, ask and answer questions, join community, etc, provide an innovative way for social interaction supporting better communication and collaboration which is important for innovation in a global ompany.

The economic capital, cultural capital especially social capital have significant effect on forming the small-sized Chinese city. This article argues for understandings of the spatial form of capital based on the special context in China and mainly focuses on social network in the scale of neighborhood. Reviews of documentation in the city discussed are exemplified as firsthand data for case study. Furthermore, the qualitative narration concerning five elements of social capital- “social network, trust, security, sense of belonging and participation”-is adopted as useful lens for evaluating the existing situation and better involvement of social capital in space is prompted as an effective solution. An overall assessment of the performance of social capital in the case is concluded and recommendations are presented for future improvement of enhancing social capital onsite.

Idag är det vedertaget att det är vitalt för företag att involvera kunderna i produktutvecklingen för att bättre förstå marknadens behov och maximera värdeskapandet av produkterna. Denna involvering kommer att resultera i en ökad innovationskapacitet för organisationen. Denna fallstudie har för avsikt att besvara forskningsfrågan; hur ska ett medelstort högteknologiskt företag fördela kundinformationsflödet på ett systematiskt tillvägagångssätt för att öka innovationskapaciteten? Forskningsmetodiken består av tre delar; såsom förstudie, social nätverksanalys, samt intern och extern benchmarking. Förstudien består av 21 intervjuer internt i organisationen och det sociala nätverket baseras på en enkät, som 49 individer har besvarat. Benchmarkingen har involverat sex individer från en intern avdelning och två intervjuer med externa företag inom samma bransch. Resultatet tyder på att mängden interaktioner med externa kunder bör reduceras för att systematiskt och strukturerat inhämta kundinformationen. För att öka informationsflödet inom organisationen bör en särskild avdelning, som har daglig kontakt med alla avdelningar, ha en informationsspridande roll som överför informationen från marknadsavdelningen till resterande avdelningar internt. Därtill bör spridningen av kundinformation integreras i den dagliga arbetsprocessen, då det underlättar att anamma och använda informationen i det dagliga arbete. / Nowadays, it is well known that it is highly important to involve the customers in the product development in order to better understand the needs of the market, increase the relations to customers and maximize the value creation of the products. This will result in a higher innovation capacity for the organization. This case study intends to answer the research questions, how to allocate the customer information flow in a systematic approach at a medium size high technology company in order to increase the innovation capacity. The research methodology consists of three different parts including pre study, social network analysis, and internal and external benchmarking. The pre study consists of 21 interviews internally in the organization and the social network analysis is based on a survey, which 49 individuals have answered. The benchmarking involves six employees from another department and two interviews with external companies within the same business. The results indicate that the amount of customer interactions with external parties must be decreased in order to systematically receive and maintain customer information. In order to increase the information flow within the organization a specific department, that have daily contacts with almost all departments, should act as a transmitting function as they would connect marketing with research and development. Furthermore, the customer information should be included in the daily working process as it is easier for the employees to embrace and jointly utilize this information.