Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This doctoral thesis is called “Marriages, Microscopes and Missions: Three Women in Postwar Australia.” It takes the form of three stories and a research essay. The stories examine the lives of three Australian women in the decades following the Second World War, while the research essay discusses those lives and the influences that guided and informed the creative writing process. The stories are set in times that encompassed the White Australia Policy, fear of Communism, the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, the sexual revolution and the recent Northern Territory “Intervention.” After the war, women were expected to fit back into the roles prescribed for them before the war. “Populate or Perish” was the catchcry. A single woman was expected, because of her biology, to marry and start a family at a time when marriage often meant losing her job. But the war had changed women. Those who had had wartime jobs or joined the armed forces remembered the freedom, the pay packet and the realisation that they could do the job as well as a man. The old stereotype of women as handmaidens to men seemed out of step with the way women now saw themselves. But with men still in charge there was bound to be conflict ahead. The first story, “The Doctor’s Wife,” looks at a married woman in coastal New South Wales living the prescribed “dream.” The second, “The Drug Analyst,” shows a Sydney-based career woman attempting to live on her own terms. The third, “The Minister’s Maid,” explores the changing role of an Aboriginal woman in a remote semitraditional Northern Territory community. As each story unfolds within its own culture, physical landscape and carrying its history of conflict, the pressures placed on each woman to conform to her society’s expectations, become apparent. In one way or another, the women in these stories are part of my family. While they sometimes find their identities and self esteem under threat, each is sustained by her strong connection to family and community. At this time in our history, finding a sense of belonging is sometimes a difficult task for young people, both white and black Australians. Perhaps that is why family stories are important. They establish our identity and give us a place in history, a sense of belonging to an ongoing, unfolding narrative.

Women and men are equal by law in Bangladesh, but the societal reality shows a different picture. By illuminating the obstacles women face when entering and choosing an engineering and science program and what enables women to overcome obstacles, this thesis aims to answer why there are fewer women than men at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).     This thesis was a field study conducted at BUET. Questionnaires was handed out to get a broader perspective of women’s experiences within science and engineering while the interviews aimed to get an in-depth perspective of women’s own experiences being in science and engineering. The empirical data has been analysed using the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), the domestic responsibilities model and previous research about social norms within science and engineering and female networks. The thesis concludes that there are two main explanatory factors why there are fewer women than men studying science and engineering at BUET. Those factors are the social construct that science and engineering programs are more appropriate for men and that families do not have a beneficial Socioeconomic Status (SES) to allow women to study. The main factor enabling women to study and pursue an engineering and science program is family support.

This research project explores how we can apply Emerging Design Landscapes such as Critical Design and Collective Creativity, in combination with traditional fields of visual communication to address societal challenges in cooperation with society. In particular, this paper aims to question the visual representation of nuclear warfare, and how we could utilize Peircean Semiotics to better understand set representation. The design outcome is a critical board game that at its core aims to create a discussion around the visual representation of nuclear warfare today and act as a learning platform that would help its user better understand the practice of semiosis.

abstract: By collecting and analyzing more than two million tweets, U.S. House Representatives’ voting records in 111th and 113th Congress, and data from other resources I study several aspects of adoption and use of Twitter by Representatives. In the first chapter, I study the overall impact of Twitter use by Representatives on their political orientation and their political alignment with their constituents. The findings show that Representatives who adopted Twitter moved closer to their constituents in terms of political orientation. By using supervised machine learning and text mining techniques, I shift the focus to synthesizing the actual content shared by Representatives on Twitter to evaluate their effects on Representatives’ political polarization in the second chapter. I found support for the effects of repeated expressions and peer influence in Representatives’ political polarization. Last but not least, by employing a recently developed dynamic network model (separable temporal exponential-family random graph model), I study the effects of homophily on formation and dissolution of Representatives’ Twitter communications in the third chapter. The results signal the presence of demographic homophily and value homophily in Representatives’ Twitter communications networks. These three studies altogether provide a comprehensive picture about the overall consequences and dynamics of use of online social networking platforms by Representatives. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016

O trabalho teve como objetivo investigar a agilidade nas contratações de projetos de pesquisa no âmbito do Programa de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento da Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL). A pesquisa foi motivada pela demora na contratação de alguns projetos e pelo insucesso na contratação de outros, com o concorrente acúmulo de recursos a serem investidos. O primeiro objetivo específico foi a identificação das restrições do programa de P&D da ANEEL e seleção daquelas que afetam a contratação de projetos de pesquisa. O segundo objetivo é a proposição de alternativas para aumentar a agilidade na contratação de projetos de pesquisa. O trabalho foi dividido em duas etapas que correspondem aos objetivos específicos e são apresentadas em dois artigos. A primeira procurou investigar as variáveis do problema. A segunda etapa procurou propor alternativas para agilizar o processo de contratação de projetos de pesquisa das empresas. Na primeira etapa foi aplicado método para lidar com problemas sociais complexos ao longo de reuniões específicas. Uma das reuniões foi realizada com especialistas em pesquisa e outra com os envolvidos no programa de pesquisa. As informações foram trabalhadas e validadas com os participantes. Para desenvolver a segunda etapa, foram realizados três estudos de caso em que foram realizadas entrevistas e o mapeamento dos processos de contratação de empresas de diferentes naturezas jurídicas. Os procedimentos buscaram investigar se existiam diferenças na agilidade de contratação entre as empresas, tendo como base de comparação uma configuração específica de projeto, investigar a motivação para tais diferenças e levantar alternativas para disseminar entre as empresas a agilidade nas contratações. Na primeira etapa, as restrições do programa de P&D foram identificadas e a maior parte delas está relacionada com a gestão interna das empresas. Em seguida, estão as restrições relacionadas a contratação de projetos, mais especificamente a questões de propriedade industrial e de equipamentos comprados ou produzidos pelo projeto. Na segunda etapa, foram confirmadas diferenças na agilidade de contratação entre as empresas. A padronização de procedimentos e as relações recorrentes foram identificadas como motivações para tais diferenças. Entre as alternativas encontradas na literatura para tratar as restrições constatadas na primeira etapa, a formação de relações de longo prazo parece beneficiar a celebração de contratos. A formação de comitês para ajustes nos contratos não foi alvo de questionamento na presente pesquisa, mas também pode ser uma alternativa para agilizar a celebração de contratos. A atribuição da propriedade dos resultados para a parceira que mais contribui é alvo de controvérsia por questões legais. A presente pesquisa contribuiu para o campo gerencial ao propor a criação de uma certificação de qualidade para disseminar a padronização de processos, sendo que a padronização não foi abordada na teoria revisada que trata sobre a contratação de projetos de pesquisa. Essa alternativa contribuiria para tratar as restrições encontradas na contratação de projetos entre as empresas e as executoras com benefícios que extrapolam o escopo da presente pesquisa, visto que as instituições de pesquisa envolvidas no programa de P&D ANEEL estão dentre as principais do sistema de pesquisa brasileiro. Propõe-se desenvolver novas pesquisas que evoluam o conhecimento sobre a agilidade de contratação ao investigar os perfis de contratações, os mecanismos de governança utilizados e as diferenças de agilidade obtidas. / The work´s objective was the investigation of research contracting agility in the context of R&D Program for the Brazilian Electric Energy Sector. The research was motivated by the delay on some projects contract negotiation and by others unsuccessful contracting process, while the funds to invest keep growing. The first specific objective was to discover which constraints of the R&D Program for the Brazilian Electric Energy Sector, which guidelines and instructions are established by the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency – ANEEL, affects research projects contracting process. The second objective is the proposition of alternatives to increase contracting agility. The work had two main stages to address the specific objectives and they are presented in two papers. The first stage investigated problem´s topics. The second stage intended to propose alternatives to make the utilities contracting process more agile. The first stage has applied a method for handling complex societal problems. A discussion meeting involved research experts and other the utilities and academy. The information collected was summarized and then validated with the participants. At the second stage, three case studies were developed using interviews and process mapping with public, private and mixed utilities. The procedures applied intended to investigate if there was agility differences in utilities contracting processes, using as reference a specific project configuration, identify the motivation for the differences founded and raise alternatives to make all utilities contracting processes agile. The constraints were identified in the first stage and most of them are related with utilities management. In second place, there are constraints related with project contracting, especially issues about industrial property and equipments developed or bought in the project. At the second stage, contracting agility differences were found. Process standardization and recurrent relationships were identified as possible motivations for these differences. Among the alternatives found in the literature review to handle the constraints identified in the first stage, the long term relationships seems to make contracting easier. The development of committees to adapt contracts during evolution of the collaboration was not in the scope of the present research, but also can be an alternative to make contracting more agile. Share property rights according with technological contribution can be refused because of legal aspects. The present research evolve the management knowledge as it proposes a certification to promote process standardization, besides the standardization was not present in the reviewed theory about research project contracting. This alternative would contribute to handle constraints identified in the contracting experience, with benefits that will exceed the planned scope, as the research institutions in the ANEEL R&D program are among the most importants in the brazilian research system. New researches may expand the knowledge about contracting agility if they investigate contracting configuration, governance mechanisms used and the agility differences obtained.

This study analyses the influence of political conservatism on support for discrimination against domestic labourers and positive attitudes toward socio-spatial segregation in the use of Lima’s beaches in a sample of university undergraduate students. Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) were assessed. Intolerance to ambiguity was evaluated as a measure of cognitive rigidity. A path analysis proposes that SDO and intolerance of ambiguity exert a direct influence on support for discrimination against domestic labourers. Also, SDO and RWA exert a direct influence on positive attitudes toward socio-spatial segregation in the beaches. Finally, a positive correlation between discriminatory attitudes and a positive attitude toward socio-spatial segregation was observed. / En una muestra de estudiantes universitarios, se analiza la influencia de la ideología política conservadora sobre el apoyo al trato discriminatorio hacia las empleadas domésticas y sobre la actitud favorable hacia la segregación socioespacial en el uso de los balnearios de Lima. Se utilizaron medidas de autoritarismo de ala derecha (RWA) y de orientación hacia la dominancia social (SDO). La intolerancia a la ambigüedad se utilizó como indicador de rigidez cognitiva. Un diagrama de sendero propone que la SDO y la intolerancia a la ambigüedad ejercen influencia directa sobre el apoyo al trato discriminatorio hacia las empleadas domésticas. Asimismo, la SDO y el RWA ejercen influencia directa sobre el apoyo hacia la segregación socioespacial en el uso de los balnearios. Se observó, además, una asociación directa entre actitudes discriminatorias frente a las empleadas domésticas y una actitud favorable hacia la segregación socioespacial.

Winterson’s Written on the Body is an experimental and provocative novel that challenges the reader’s mindset as well as society’s heteronormativity by implicitly questioning societal norms and fundamental values. With an unusual protagonist as a point of departure, upper secondary school students in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom can discuss important political and social issues and giving them the chance to become more open-minded and inclusive towards all people regardless of one’s sex, gender, and, or sexuality. This essay shows that Written on the Body with its unusual, queer protagonist challenges the heteronormativity in modern Western societies and instead of solely focusing on students’ language development during their English education, they are invited to interrupt and question set attitudes, behaviours, and traditions in modern Western societies.

The field of study on coopetition has been given a growing emphasis in the recent years by researchers and business practice. Coopetition is a term integrating the notions of cooperation and competition happening as an intensive simultaneous process where actors seek to leverage the value created by other companies in their business network. These complex and paradoxical interactions are acknowledged as needing further research about the effects of coopetition and the different types of coopetitive interactions involved when firms coopete. The business network highlighted in the current study concerned the Swedish Cleantech industry. It offers an interesting ground as Sweden has been investing substantial amounts in environmental protection technologies. Moreover, SMEs in Sweden play an increasingly significant role in the national economy by their rapid technological development. Nonetheless, these SMEs battle to sustain opportunities and are facing many challenges such as lack of key resources, a limited market presence, and liabilities of newness. Thereby, collaboration is essential among Cleantech SMEs in order to overcome these challenges and sustain competitive advantages. This study sets out to fill this gap through the following objectives: by describing the cooperative and competitive activities happening of SMEs inside the Swedish Cleantech industry, by understanding how SMEs select their cooperative relationship with their competitors inside their business network, and by analyzing how coopetition can be implemented by SMEs as a strategy to develop sustainable competitive advantage. This research was conducted through a qualitative case study and semi-structured interviews of seven Swedish SMEs operating in the Cleantech industry. The findings underline that coopetition can be used as a matching strategy between the internal and the external environment of the firm. Further, before coopetition can lead to sustained competitive advantages, companies first need to develop societal advantages in the form of economic value, social value, and natural value.

This thesis is the documentation of an empirical study using quantitative methods to identify variables that are impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa. These variables were extrapolated from surveys, interviews and questionnaires. The learning area Arts and Culture is one of the eight compulsory learning areas for all learners from Grades 4-9 in South Africa. One of the four strands is Music. The research question was formulated on the basis that a perceived problem existed in the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture. This supposition is supported by the literature review. The employment of univariate descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations of two-variable relationships and chi-squared tests to draw inferences about the relationship between categorical variables were adopted to quantify which variables are impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture. Four dominant approaches to Music were defined as key issues: -- Governmental policies on educational reform -- Learning area Arts and Culture -- International viewpoints -- An African perspective on Music The findings on these dominant approaches to Music revealed that the government policy of decentralisation was employed as a mechanism to address the disparities in education. The curriculum implemented, Curriculum 2005, was also employed as a structure to redress the dispersed education system that existed prior to the democratic participation of South African citizens. A comparative analysis of international countries reviewed depicts arts education as an encompassing field with discrete arts disciplines. South Africa, conversely, adopts an integrated approach to the arts in the learning area Arts and Culture. This aligns to an African perspective of Music, having no subject boundaries and with the performing arts disciplines seldom separated in creative thinking. The findings in these dominant approaches to Music led to the further delineation of the research question into three main avenues of inputs: -- human resources -- physical resources -- the societal role of the arts The analysis of the data obtained from the educators indicated that all educators possess a qualification of some kind, but that there is a lack of specialisation in Music. Those who have an arts qualification alluded to the fact that they have a natural bias towards the art form in which they received their training. Statistical analysis proved that the type of school influences the level of implementation, the budget and the accessibility of resources for Music. The research indicates that the response of the learners to the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa is associated with the grade of the learner, the race of the learner and whether the learner acknowledges the value of learning about Music or not. Although school principals view the learning area as an integral part of education, they raised justified concerns pertaining to the learning area. On the basis of the identification and quantification of variables impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa, recommendations are made. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Music / unrestricted