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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is viewed traditionally by many critics and scholars alike more or less, if not entirely, as Joyce’s autobiographical novel. The identity of the narrator and his relationship to the focalizer and the narrative text are aspects that have thus not been sufficiently examined and explored. An analysis of the passage when Stephen clarifies to himself his relationship to words which makes possible the revelation of his calling as an artist will reveal the intimacy of the narrator and Stephen, indicating they are one and the same. But it will also disclose the structure of the narration of Portrait to be the result of Stephen’s very discovery of the meaning of words to him. And the view of Stephen as a narrator, as well as the main focalizer, turns Portrait into a work of fictional autobiography. His thoughts and contemplations monopolize the narration, granting him exclusive authority over the presentation of his story. Furthermore, the suggestion in the title of the novel that he is also the writer begs the question of reliability. Can Stephen’s story be trusted, or is Portrait a fabrication of his childhood in order to convince the world that he really was born to become an artist? The opening and ending of the novel suggest that the narrative is not “based on a true story” of Stephen’s life but instead that it is composed in the fantasy world which Stephen withdraws into as his meagre output does not meet his expectations. Thus Stephen writes his first novel entitled A Portrait with which he hopes to achieve the fame and receive the recognition he desires. But Stephen is still a struggling artist when the narrative finishes, hence the ambiguous ending as Stephen is the novel itself, its inconclusive narrative. Stephen’s A Portrait is a glorious act of self-creation.

Saturated markets and a competitive business climate create pressure on organisation to find new ways to remain competitive and differentiated towards competitors. One new strategy is to adapt a more service oriented business, and more specifically a concept call solutions. Solutions is about moving from only selling e.g. products or single services, to offer a whole solution to cover more needs, an offer usually created together with the customers. This demand on the market together with limited research on the concept of solution, makes it an interesting area to study. The purpose with the study was to describe the whole solution process between the supplying firm and the customer. In order to do so, a longitudinal, dynamic model based on extant literature was developed, which consisted of three stages and 11 important factors throughout these three stages. The primary data collection came from interviews with managers from five companies, all experienced within the area of solution strategy. Out of the eleven theoretical factors, four factors were explicitly highlighted as most important.

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This thesis focuses on contribution of users in innovation activities. Through the case analysis of a mid-small sized tech company specialized in technology testing, we study one of the main innovative projects, undertaken for a client. Employing interviews and questionnaires throughout our research, we identify characteristics of client-users who contribute substantially in the ideation development and testing of the new innovation. The company deviating from their routinized testing activities, integrate the knowledge generated by those users in a particular way. We observe, analyze and make a critique upon those knowledge integration strategies, implemented by the company at this stage. The study highlights how the firm responds to the stimulus of those users involvement, aiming to give an interpretation of the phenomenon.

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This thesis reviews the UK life insurance industry comprehensively in terms of performance and business behaviour. One major contribution of the thesis is to challenge the conventional view on evaluation of investment funds from a shareholders’ perspective. The accounting valuation techniques to evaluate investment from the policyholder’s perspective have not been advanced to the same extent as methods designed to evaluate investment from the shareholder’s perspective, due partly to the accounting complexity of the investment management. Against this context, the thesis develops a valuation method on the basis that policyholders’ basic expectation that their saved funds shall be invested with value growth higher than inflation in the real goods market, and the thesis takes this as the benchmark to assess the reported value of policyholders’ assets. The thesis employs this valuation to assess the performance of different life assurance products (conventional vs. modern) and examine whether the transformation (from conventional to modern) has any impact on insurer performance and behaviour. The thesis also examines whether product diversification impacts realised and unrealised investment income homogenously; the result suggests that the effect of product diversification on performance varies across different measurements of realised and unrealised gain. The second major contribution of the thesis is to test the validity of different output proxies and compare efficiency scores based ranking for competitive firms to the value creation based ranking. Overall, the thesis suggests that different output proxies give consistently similar ranking for competitive firms, and cost efficiency based on different proxies are closely related to conventional measurers of firm performance and value creation in terms of value and ranking.

Thesis advisor: Brian D. Robinette / The proliferation in recent decades of “stewardship model” approaches for developing a theology of creation, which places human beings at the center of the cosmos as caretakers or managers of the divine oikos, is the result of an intentional effort to correct overtly problematic “dominion model” approaches that have contributed both to reifying a sense of human sovereignty and the resulting environmental degradation. However, the first part of this dissertation argues that the stewardship model of creation actually operates under many of the same problematic presuppositions as the dominion model, and therefore does not offer a correction but rather a tacit re-inscription of the very same pitfalls. After close consideration and analysis of the stewardship model, this dissertation identifies scriptural, theological, and philosophical sources to support the adoption of a “kinship” or “community of creation” model. Drawing on postcolonial theorists and theologians as key critical and constructive interlocutors, this project then proposes the concept of “planetarity” as a framework for conceiving of the relationship between human and other-than-human creation, as well as the relationship between the whole of creation and the Creator, in a new way. This theoretical framework invites a theological supplément, which, this dissertation argues, is found best in the writings of the medieval Franciscan tradition. Several distinctive characteristics of the Franciscan theological tradition offer key constructive contributions. Among these themes are the foundational sense of the interrelatedness, mutuality, and intended harmony of creation within the early spiritual texts and later Franciscan theological and philosophical writings; John Duns Scotus’s distinctive principle of individuation; the alternative appropriation of Peter John Olivi’s category of usus pauper for use in navigating the tension between creation’s intrinsic and instrumental value; and the application of a Franciscan understanding of the virtue of pietas as a proposal for environmental praxis. The result is what can be called a postcolonial Franciscan theology of creation imagined in terms of planetarity as reconceived in a theological key. It is a constructive and non-anthropocentric response to the need for a new conceptualization of the doctrine of creation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

A atualidade é marcada pela velocidade de informações e maior contato social promovido pela facilidade e acessibilidade das mídias digitais e pela influência considerável na criatividade dos alunos de cursos superiores em moda. A construção do conjunto de conhecimentos para o processo criativo na área de moda é o tema abordado nesta pesquisa e objetiva colher dados de quais informações os estudantes acessam e como lidam com esse processo a fim de construírem seu repertório para a pesquisa. Para isso foram feitas análises bibliográficas dos processos de criação em artes, design e moda; da influência das mídias digitais; e do estudo de caso dos alunos de Design de Moda da UTFPR-Apucarana. Este trabalho visa contribuir para o processo de criação e consequentemente o desenvolvimento de produto de moda inovador. / Today is considerably marked by the speed of information and greater social contact promoted by the facility and accessibility of the digital media and the considerable influence on the creativity of students of higher education courses in fashion. The construction of the set of knowledge for the creative process in fashion, is the topic of this research and aims to collect data from which students access information and how to deal with this process in order to build their repertoire for research. Through bibliographic analysis of the creation processes in arts, design and fashion, the influence of digital media and the case study of students of Fashion Design UTFPR-of Apucarana. This work aims to contribute to the process of creation and consequently the product development of innovative fashion.

Over the last fifty years Western Christianity has been criticized as a cause and enabler of Earth's ecological crisis. This criticism is based on the conclusion that Christianity promotes a spiritual-material dualism and that the material side of life has little sacred value. It is also based on the observed hesitancy of many Christians to embrace modern scientific understandings of creation, especially evolution. Some Christian writers have responded by accepting modern cosmology and evolution, and advocating for a sacramental creation spirituality, oftentimes supported by fresh readings of earlier Christian writings. This dissertation looks at Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662 CE), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464 CE), and Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955 CE). Teilhard attests to an experience of natural sacrament in perceiving an increasingly transfigured creation, meaning the glory of God is ever more perceptible as a timely conscious insight into creation and as an emergent aspect of cosmogenesis and evolution moving toward Christ-Omega, the end and fulfillment of all creation. The teachings of Maximus readily support this sacramental view of creation by affirming a universal, ontological, and "real" presence of the Logos of God. A theological insight of Nicholas's doctrine of learned ignorance is that the Christian God always incarnates, transfigures, fulfills, and exceeds the entire cosmos. Together the teachings of Maximus and Nicholas support Teilhard's call for a theology of a Creator God robust enough to encompass the most expansive and complicated propositions about creation made by science, while remaining as close as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The integrated teachings of these three figures suggest an ontological consecration of creation. This consecration inspires sacramental experiences of God in and through creation that complement the sacramental experience of Christ in the Eucharist. Over the evolutional time frame, these sacraments converge as one and the same sacrament at Christ-Omega. The complementary and ultimately convergent relationship between these sacramental experiences supports the ethical conclusion that just as one receives and responds to Christ present in the elements of the communion table, so one ought to receive and respond to oneself, one's neighbors, and all creation as the universal consecrated neighborhood.