Establishing discipline in the contemporary classroom is a challenge to most educators. The real challenge lies in the implementation of discipline measures and procedures that uphold order in the classroom with understanding and compassion and more importantly, in the development of self-discipline in learners. The researcher adopted a qualitative approach to understand the phenomenon classroom discipline and to answer the research questions that sought to explore the meaning that is attached to the word “discipline” by individual educators, the challenges that educators are faced with in their classrooms, as well as the discipline strategies that they employ to establish discipline. A case study involving three high schools was conducted. Data was collected through interviews and observations. It has emerged in the findings that educators face a daily struggle in terms of establishing discipline in their classrooms; educators attach different meanings to the word “discipline” and the meaning that individual educators attach to “discipline” impacts on their choice of discipline strategies. Most of the discipline strategies employed by educators are control-oriented and thus hinge on rewards and punishment. The study also revealed that when these control-oriented strategies are employed to establish discipline, learners engage in various coping mechanisms, which ultimately render these strategies ineffective, and thus minimise any chance the child has to develop self-discipline. Essentially, learners who have been coerced usually show very little self-control when they are outside the influence of the controller. Recommendations based on findings and conclusions of this study are discussed and revolve mainly around the use of proactive discipline strategies that are geared to promote self-discipline and thus inner control. The recommendations outline proactive discipline strategies that could be employed by educators to establish discipline in their classrooms and suggest the creation of a good educator-learners relationship, the empowerment of learners to be in charge of their behaviour, responsibility training, inculcation of values, character development, modelling good behaviour, and strengthening of partnership with parents and other support structures in behaviour management. Benchmarking for best practices with other schools and conducting internal workshops for educators to share classroom discipline issues and solutions, as well as skills development programmes for training and development of educators are recommended. The study hopes to contribute to the existing body of knowledge and will be useful to educators by enabling them to find more constructive ways of building a culture of discipline among learners. It will also help educators develop personal systems of discipline tailored to their individual philosophies as well as to the needs and social realities of their schools and communities. / Dissertation (MEd (Education Management, Law and Policy Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

La administración estratégica y sus diferentes herramientas aplicadas a los procesos dentro de una organización han sido fundamentales para establecer objetivos y lineamientos de acción para los directivos. Esta investigación presenta y analiza investigaciones relevantes sobre las principales características y beneficios del proceso de administración estratégica y las técnicas que se implementan para lograr estrategias deliberadas que ofrece esta metodología. Por otro lado, la búsqueda de competitividad por parte de las organizaciones, mediante la aplicación de estrategias oportunas, hará que los directivos adopten habilidades que les permita afrontar los cambios en el mercado y generar ventajas competitivas. Este trabajo compara las técnicas de la administración estratégica con la teoría de estrategia competitiva, analizando cada una de las características principales de ambas corrientes; por un lado, las estrategias deliberadas establecidas en un período de largo plazo, frente a situaciones de incertidumbre y cambios en el mercado que refiere la teoría de aplicación de estrategias emergentes en el corto plazo. / Strategic management and its different tools applied to processes within an organization has been fundamental in establishing objectives and action guidelines for managers. This research presents and analyzes relevant research on the main characteristics and benefits of the strategic management process and the techniques that are implemented to achieve deliberate strategies offered by this methodology. On the other hand, the search for competitiveness by organizations, through the application of timely strategies, will make managers adopt skills that allow them to face changes in the market and generate competitive advantages. This paper compares the techniques of strategic management with the theory of competitive strategy, analyzing each of the main characteristics of both currents; On the one hand, the deliberate strategies established in a long-term period, in the face of situations of uncertainty and changes in the market referred by the theory of application of emerging strategies in the short term. / Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

Background: Today as awareness about sustainable development increases, more attention is drawn towards sustainability strategies of the companies. However, prior research has not investigated the formulation and implementation of sustainability strategies within companies of different size and scope as existing studies are skewed towards the perspectives of large firms even though SMEs mark up more than 90% of the market.  Purpose: The main objective of this study is to gain an in-depth understanding of sustainability strategy formulation and implementation within the cosmetics industry from the perspectives of both MNCs and SMEs.   Method: To fulfil the purpose of the study, exploratory qualitative research is performed, using a multiple-case study design where several cases are selected to develop a more in-depth understanding of the research topic.  Conclusion: Based on the collected data, it can be concluded that sustainability strategies are initially driven by an environmentally conscious founder who has translated personal beliefs into the organizational culture. Furthermore, the analysis results show the relationship between the driver of sustainability with formulation and implementation mechanisms applied within the company.

Michael Lipsky states through his theory of street-level bureaucracy that teachers, among other street-level occupations, often work under a heavy workload due to parameters built into their occupations characteristics and limited resources. Lipsky says that street-level bureaucrats therefor under the influence of their works natural discretion tend to use client-processing strategies to lighten the pressure to make their work situation bearable. Teachers in Sweden is an occupational group that has an important societal function in educating children, teenagers and young adults for their future social lives. At the same time as they work under a heavy workload. This essay aims to see if teachers in Sweden uses the three client-processing strategies tension between capability and objectives, private goal definition and defense against discretion to modify their work and students, to make their work situation more bearable. This is tested quantitively through Pearsons chi2 test of independence and regression analysis. The conclusion is that even though a tendency towards the use of client-processing strategies can be seen in the results, one cannot conclude that this is actually the case and that further studies has to be done to be able to give a more accurate response to the question.

Today's organizations struggle to remain competitive due to challenges regarding changing technology and customer expectations. Although many organizations strive to digitally transform their business, they still fail due to digital incompetence, unpreparedness and ignorance. Thus, the thesis aims to investigate how to transform organizations into digital businesses, the required competencies of digital leaders and the interaction between digital leadership and digital transformation strategies. For this purpose, we conduct a systematic literature review to build a conceptual framework that, by hypotheses and propositions, may serve as a point of departure for future empirical research. With this model, we propose that leaders with higher levels of digital leadership, in terms of management skills, customer skills, digital skills and organizational skills, have a positive influence on the establishment of digital transformation strategies. Thus, this thesis contributes to an understanding of digital leadership, digital transformation strategies and the interlinkages between these.

In the fast pace of the development of the Internet and the increased use of it more and more people use interactive platforms to connect with each other. The increased opportunity and ability to share content with people around the globe has led to the emergence of eWOM. eWOM means that consumers generate content that is consumption-related and mainly directed towards other consumers. Today, social media sites are the biggest source to eWOM. Consumers are actively searching for eWOM in order to gain information and reduce uncertainty, as a part of their purchasing process. In general, consumers tend to trust consumer generated content more than marketer generated content. Therefore, eWOM becomes a crucial component to business performance.  Negative eWOM has been shown to affect the purchase intentions, loyalty and trust in a negative way, which eventually affects the turnover for a company. Negative eWOM has further been seen to have a larger impact on consumers, compared to positive eWOM. These consequences emphasize the importance of marketers being aware of negative eWOM and have strategies to manage it. The subject of eWOM has been acknowledged by practitioners and researchers. However, despite the increased interest in eWOM and its effects on business performance, there are still research gaps on how to proactively and reactively avoid and manage negative eWOM.  The purpose of this study was to examine and understand what strategies companies use in order to avoid and manage negative eWOM on company owned and external interactive platforms. To fill the identified research gaps, this study took an inductive approach and the authors conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. The sample was purposively selected to include respondents within different companies that had knowledge about the companies’ strategies and approach towards managing negative eWOM. The sample consisted of companies of different sizes, which provided different perspectives and rich information of how companies can approach negative eWOM. A thematic analysis was conducted in order to analyze the empirical data and present relevant findings from the data collection.  As a result of the thematic analysis, two global themes were identified: proactive strategies and reactive strategies. Within the global theme proactive strategies, five sub- themes were found: observation, detect critical potential scenarios and questions, communicate expectations, encourage feedback and facilitate contact. Within the global theme reactive strategies, six sub-themes were found: acknowledge or leave, do not delete, accommodative, defensive, answer in public, drive to private, and humorous and cleverly. These themes laid the foundation for a final conceptual model. The findings of this study suggest that marketers in retail use different proactive strategies to avoid negative eWOM from occurring in the first place. Moreover, the findings of this study show that marketers in retail, depending on the content of the negative eWOM and the platform it is taking place on, also use different reactive strategies to manage negative eWOM. The results also show that what strategy to use is to a large extent dependent on the individual’s subjective ability to interpret the negative eWOM.

M&A is a strategy with a process that greatly revolves around achieving an approved merger, and subsequently being ready to act upon an approval. The strategy’s focuses are on the preparation and the analysis of the merger. A firm that is consistently up-to-date on the information available and on the status of the market, can prosper when opportunities reveal themselves. This paper studies business strategies from the point of view of what might bring growth to firms, based on theory and empirical evidence. Moreover, a case study is used of the firm Smile Tandvård, who actively uses M&A. The study is consisting of a research of the theoretical background, to enable links from several of these theories into the case study, as well as into the analysis. Additionally, was an interview conducted with the accounting manager of Smile Tandvård to get a clear insightinto the firm’s processes. The qualitative part showed the theories, the empirical evidence and the case study aligning in their characteristics, where I could pinpoint certain aspects of Smile Tandvård to the choices a firm has on a market, according to the theories. Moreover, showed the research there being plentiful ways in which you could examine the success of a merger or an acquisition. The direct result or direct returns not being the sole aim when deciding on M&A, and there were competitive advantages to gain. The quantitative test showed there being a correlation between business cycles and the amount of mergers and acquisitions. / Fusioner & Förvärv som strategi, har en process som till stor del handlar om att få förvärvet godkänt, och sedermera kunna agera vid godkännandet. Strategins fokus är på förberedelsen och analysen inför förvärvet. Ett företag som är konsekvent uppdaterat på den tillgängliga informationen och statusen på marknaden, kan uppnå framgångar genom detta när möjligheter uppstår. Denna studie undersöker företagsstrategier från perspektivet av vad som kan ge företag tillväxt, via en bas av teori och empiri. Utöver det, används en fallstudie av Smile Tandvård, som aktivt använder sig av strategin av fusioner & förvärv. Studien består av en research av befintligt teori, för att möjliggöra flera kopplingar till fallstudien, såväl som till analysen. Adderat till det, utfördes en intervju med redovisningschefen hos Smile Tandvård, för att kunna få en klar inblick i företagets processer. Den kvalitativa studien visade att teori, empiri och fallstudien följer och knyter an till varandra i sina kännetecknande drag, vilket möjliggjorde att jag kunde precisera aspekter hos Smile Tandvård som följer de val ett företag ställs inför på en marknad, enligt teorin. Därtill, visade undersökningen att det finns åtskilliga sätt att tolka och granska fusionen eller förvärvets framgång. Med det direkta resultatet eller den direkta avkastningen icke varande det enda ett företag siktar mot vad gällande fusioner och förvärv, det fanns även konkurrensfördelar att vinna. Det kvantitativa testet visade att det fanns en korrelation emellan konjunkturcykler och antalet fusioner & förvärv.

Small business owners who fail to apply effective Internet marketing strategies could negatively affect customers' purchasing decisions, and business profitability and sustainability. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective Internet marketing strategies online fashion jewelry business owners used to maintain or increase profit levels. Competitive advantage theory was the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with 3 online fashion jewelry business owners located in the northeastern region of the United States who were in the same business for more than 5 years and generated at least $100,000 in annual revenue. Additionally, data were collected with a review of company documents pertaining to the profit levels of the businesses. Data were analyzed using word frequency and coding to determine themes. Six key themes emerged from the data: (a) Internet marketing strategies, (b) social media marketing strategies, (c) market research and retargeting strategies, (d) brand building strategies, (e) e-mail marketing strategies, and (f) marketing strategies for customer relationship management. The implications of this study for positive social change include the potential to create jobs and economic growth. The findings of this study could increase the quality of life for stay-at-home parents or assist disadvantaged individuals who host online businesses by offering proven Internet marketing strategies to increase their business longevity, profitability, and potentially lead to stronger and safer communities.

The purpose of the current study was to learn how gender and learning method affect motivation and learning strategies in psychology, counseling, and social work graduate students. The variables of gender, learning method, motivation, and learning strategies are used by the self-regulation model to learning and the theory of independent learning to measure a student's academic success. Increasing the knowledge of these variables will be of interest to academic institutions and to the field of educational psychology because little is known about their interaction. The study's design was factorial quasi-experimental; it used a cross sectional survey consisting of a 2 x 2 factorial design. Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) were used to evaluate the variables. Gender and method of instruction (distance/traditional) served as the independent variables; the dependent variables were comprised of 6 motivation variables and 9 learning variables, as measured by the Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Age/ethnicity served as covariates. A sample of 86 psychology, counseling, and social work learners who were in a master's or doctoral program was used. The results showed significant differences in learning strategies and motivation of graduate learner's between gender. Men were significantly higher than women in control belief (p = .02) and extrinsic goal orientation (p = .01); they were also higher in rehearsal (p = .03), peer learning (p < .01), and help seeking (p = .03). These findings suggest that learning strategies and motivation were not influenced by learning method, but learning strategies and motivation were influenced by gender. These findings could be used to enhance retention and graduation rates as well stimulate future research on the topic.

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