Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly important with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. This thesis investigates systems support for web browsing in a multimodal interface. Specifically, we outline the design and implementation of a software framework that integrates hyperlink and voice interaction. This enables the user to engage in out-of-turn interactions to personalize access at an information site. For the developer, the framework enables the creation of sites that adapt to the needs of users, yet permits fine-grained control over what interactions to support. Design methodology, implementation details, and two case studies are presented. / Master of Science

This essay contributes to the broader academic field aiming to understand China's foreign policy objectives. It highlights the BRI as a manifestation of certain Tianxia ideas and challenges existing assumptions in the IR field. It explores discourse on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) within global governance, focusing on the possible traceability of ideas of Tianxia in Chinese president Xi Jinping’s discourse to international audiences. Drawing on Zhao Tingyang's modernised version of Tianxia, the essay asks how the BRI is positioned and if ideas of Tianxia are traceable, if so, how? The questions are explored through qualitative content analysis of fourteen speeches from international forums and other public gatherings. Moving beyond mainstream IR theories, the essay departs from the small pool of research treating Tianxia as a framework to understand foreign policy. Findings suggest the BRI is positioned under the broad themes: Beneficial partnerships, Peaceful rise, Harmony, and Coexistence, and aligns with Zhao’s version of Tianxia. The essay argues that promotion of global institutions, mutual benefit, and inclusive governance in particular reflect Tianxia. The concept ‘true multilateralism’ emerges as a key phrase encapsulating modern Tianxia ideals in Xi’s discourse warranting more exploration in future BRI scholarship.

The problem of this study is to find the causes for lack of initiative in a group of second grade pupils in the Era School, and to discover, from reading books and magazine articles, what techniques are most successful in developing initiative in the children.

This work is a case study focused on the practices of a comprehensive college access program that serves students in south Los Angeles that has maintained a high school graduation rate of 100% and a college matriculation rate of 98% since 1997. This study sought to utilize the voice and experience of students of color to discern the factors that are most effective in helping urban students of color and in turn, inform the future work of the college access community. The study was driven by the following research questions: a) which practices of a south Los Angeles college access program most impact a student's ability to matriculate to college? and b) How can the epistemology of urban students inform the work of college access programs? Through observations, interviews, journal exercises and document review, this study ranked the practices in order of importance according to the participants, and identified that structure and accountability are essential to the success of this college access program. In addition, the study revealed that the students of this program succeed academically because the program, provides students with structure, access and guidance; because it immerses its students in a college-going culture; because it offers access to academic and cultural resources; because it sets high academic expectations; because it engages the family of origin and creates a family within the program; and because it enhances the self-concept of its students: college access programs see students as scholars. Using funds of knowledge as a framework, this study also introduced the original term, “masked epistemologies” which refers to the shared experiences of college access students once they enter college. The concept of masked epistemologies refers to the experience of students who enter college via a college access program, who go on to feel like her ways of knowing, shaped by the unique experience of being a high achieving student participant of a college access program from an urban setting, are disregarded in the new, unknown terrain of college, and must be masked or concealed, only to be revealed in environments considered safe. The students’ epistemologies go from being highly praised and admired, to being ignored to the point of invisibility. This study found that students of this college access program struggle with adapting to the social realm of college because they have not been exposed to class differences throughout their tenure in the program.

Diverse ägyptologische Großprojekte (TLA: http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla; Ramses: http://ramses.ulg.ac.be/; Rubensohn: http://elephantine.smb.museum/; Karnak: http://www.cfeetk.cnrs.fr/karnak/) erstellen annotierte Korpora. Für einen Datenaustausch ist ein standardisiertes Austauschformat, das auf TEI beruht, dringend erforderlich. Dazu haben sich diese Großprojekte zusammengeschlossen, um einen gemeinsamen Vorschlag zu erarbeiten. In unserem Vortrag möchten wir den aktuellen Stand der Diskussion präsentieren: Was ist der Basistext in der Auszeichnung: hieroglyphische Annotation oder die Umschrift des Textes? Wie geht man mit den verschiedenen Schriftformaten um? Können die Metadatenangaben im Header mithilfe gemeinsamer Thesauri standardisiert werden? Was wird inline, was wird stand-off annotiert?

Proactive behaviour implies taking initiative and mastering unexpected situations, and hence, is desirable in different situations. The present thesis includes three empirical studies intended to understand the consequences of proactive behaviour, as well as the factors that contribute to proactive behaviour at work and when facing unemployment. More specifically, whether job design, as measured by objective work task analysis, provides conditions conducive to proactivity in the workplace and when facing unemployment. The results of proactive behaviour during unemployment were also of interest. Study I focused on the influence of job design on individuals’ personal initiative and confidence in their ability when facing unemployment. Participants were employees at a downsizing Swedish assembly plant. Confidence in one’s ability mediated the relationship between job design and personal initiative, and personal initiative affected job search behaviour when advised to be dismissed. Study II, a longitudinal exploration, focused on the predictors of re-employment in the same group as in Study I. Men were more than nine times as likely as women to obtain jobs within 15 months. Individuals without children were more than seven times as likely as those with children to find work within 15 months. The desire to change occupation and willingness to relocate also increased the probability of being re-employed, whereas anonymous-passive job-search behaviour and work-related self-efficacy actually decreased the probability of re-employment. The number of job applications did not impact later re-employment. Study III analysed job design as a predictor of group initiative and self-organisational activities in semiautonomous industrial work groups. An input-process-output model showed that group processes such as reflexivity mediated the impact of job design on proactivity in work groups. Taken together, these studies suggest that work task analysis a useful tool, since it provides access to information that cannot be obtained with self-report measures. Job design indirectly affected proactivity both in the face of unemployment, and in industrial work groups. Further, it is worthwhile to continue identifying the antecedents and consequences of proactivity, as this seems to be an important factor regarding work and unemployment.

En så kallad hållbarhetsredovisning har blivit allt mer vanligt att använda sig av hos företag då intressenternas krav på hållbar medvetenhet ökar. Samtidigt har företag en tendens till att försköna verksamheten genom att redovisa för de positiva aspekterna i sina hållbarhetsredovisningar medan negativ information uteblir. Det gör att hållbarhetsredovisningarna framställs mer som ett kommersiellt verktyg för att förbättra företagets rykte och legitimitet, istället för att uppvisa företagets verkliga bild. Av den anledningen har den internationella organisationen Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) utmanat företag med en redovisningsprincip om balans i sina riktlinjer. Principen innebär att det ska finnas en balans mellan positiv och negativ information i hållbarhetsredovisningen. Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att ta reda på hur svenska banker kommunicerar ut sina negativa avslöjanden i sina hållbarhetsredovisningar. En kvalitativ dokumentanalys har använts som metod för att granska åtta svenska bankers hållbarhetsredovisningar. De åtta bankerna upprättar sina hållbarhetsredovisningar i enlighet med GRI:s riktlinjer. I studiens empiriska material har sex strategier kunnat identifieras vid bankernas kommunikation av negativ information. Strategierna som kunnat identifieras tyder på att de svenska bankerna strategiskt kommunicerar ut sina negativa avslöjanden i sina hållbarhetsredovisningar för att behålla eller skapa legitimitet. Med hjälp av den här studien har tidigare forskning stärkts och studien bevisar att flertalet av de identifierade strategier som de svenska bankerna använder, har även tidigare identifierats hos internationella företag i olika branscher. Studiens empiriska material har även kunnat bidra med tillägg till tidigare forskning och en ytterligare strategi som svenska banker använder sig av vid kommunikation av negativa avslöjanden i sina hållbarhetsredovisningar. Trots att tidigare forskning har stärkts tyder det på att de legitimitetsstrategier som tidigare identifierats inte kan generaliseras till samtliga branscher. Den här studiens bidrag till den svenska bankbranschen har således visat att bankerna använder andra sätt att legitimera sina negativa avslöjanden än vad tidigare forskning kunnat visa. / A, so called, sustainability report has become increasingly common to use for companies, in lined with the increased stakeholder demand for sustainable awareness. At the same time, companies tend to beautify the business by reporting positive aspects, while the negative information exclude. This leads to that the sustainability reports appear to be used as a commercial tool, to improve real image. For this reason the international organisation Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has challenged the companies with an accounting principle of balance in their guidelines. According to the principle, it should be a balance between positive and negative information in the sustainability reports. The aim of this study was to find out how the Swedish banks communicate their negative disclosures in their sustainability reports. A qualitative document analysis has been used as a method to examine the eight Swedish banks sustainability reports. The eight banks create the sustainability reports according to GRI’s guidelines. In the empirical material, six strategies where identified in banks communication of negative information. The identified strategies indicate that the Swedish banks strategically communicate their negative disclosures in their sustainability reports, to maintain or create legitimacy. This study has strengthened previous research, and the study proves that most of the identified strategies that the Swedish banks use have previously been identified in international companies in different industries. The empirical material has also been able to contribute addition to previous research and an additional strategy that Swedish banks use when communicating negative disclosures in their sustainability reports. Although previous research has been strengthened, it means that the previously identified legitimacy strategies cannot be generalized to all industries. This study’s contribution to the Swedish banking industry has shown that banks use other ways to legitimize their negative disclosures, than previous research did not afford to do.

Title: Sustainability accounting - A qualitative study about the understanding, usefulness and relevance of sustainability reporting based on an employee perspective. Problematization: There has been previous research about sustainability reporting through an external point of view. There is however a gap in research about sustainability reporting from an employee perspective. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a better comprehension of how employees perceive the information presented in sustainability report and if they feel that the report is aimed for them or external stakeholders. Frame of reference: This episode began with previous research about the three qualitative characteristics that are used when creating a financial report. The framework of GRI is also presented. Lastly the stakeholder theory and stakeholder dialogue are introduced. Method: This study has a qualitative approach where 10 semi-structured interviews have been held to collect data. Research: The employees have a better understanding of the information related to the social and environmental issues. Furthermore they only consider the information regarding the environment to be useful in their daily work. The employees believe that the environmental and social part of the report is relevant while the economic could not be assessed by the employees. Conclusions: Diagrams, thorough explanations and knowledge of the subject increased the understanding of the report. The economical part can be further understood if there is more extensive content. The information becomes useful when they can directly use it in their daily work and when they feel that the information is aimed for them. They need to receive the information through meetings for it to be useful for them. They had little previous knowledge of the economical part and were there for not able to assess the relevance of the report's content while the environmental and the social area were relevant because the content has currently been highlighted in newspapers and debates.

Despite the widely acknowledged contention that pollution control measures would be less beneficial than pollution prevention technologies in the long run, pollution control approaches remain a popular solution for organizations seeking, or coerced, to engage in corporate environmentalism. Drawing on the conceptual underpinnings of the Theory of Planned Behaviour as an integrative framework, this study combines the tenets of five major management theories - institutional, stakeholder, planned behaviour, resource-based view, and life-cycle management - to examine how and why small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) embrace dissimilar approaches to implementing green initiatives under different circumstances. This research adopted a nested, multiple-case design to explore why some organizations have been able to obtain beneficial effects from their green initiative implementation while others have not. The findings, based on the experiences of s even SMMEs, which implemented a total of 27 green initiatives in their production operations, reveal that legislative requirements, stakeholders' expectations, organizations' natural environmental orientation, as well as their environmental resource base and capabilities, jointly drive corporate environmental strategies. The case study found that the higher the external pressures, a combination of legislative requirements and stakeholder expectations, the more likely it was for SMMEs to adopt quick-fix, off-the-shelve solutions, which typically carried limited short-term benefits with associated high long-term costs. By contrast, less intense external pressures offer firms the opportunities to explore plausible options and exploit internal resource capabilities to advantage, giving rise to the adoption of more sustainable approaches. The study further discovers that experiential learning, i.e., a firm's ability to learn from its green initiative implementation experience, separates SMMEs capable of capital izing on the values of their implemented green initiatives to gain competitive advantages and redefine competition from those that are immersed in a cognitive lock-in, unable to free themselves from an unproductive green wall. The findings suggest that nurturing organizational learning among environmentally resistive firms could transform them into environmentally responsible enterprises. The study concludes by interpreting its findings into a number of theoretical propositions for theory building in corporate environmental management.

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka behovet av extern revidering, bankernas förväntan och revisionsfirmornas förutsättningar att revidera hållbarhetsinformation. Författarna berör även huruvida nationella och internationella påtryckningar har påverkat hållbarhetsredovisningen.</p><p>Metod som använts är fallstudier med semistrukturerade intervjuer.</p><p>Fallföretag: Handelsbanken, SEB, Swedbank, Deloitte, KPMG och Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers</p><p>Vår studie visade att hållbarhetsredovisningen idag är försumbar ur ett låneperspektiv. Idag klassas redovisningen som ett komplement till den traditionella årsredovisningen, en viktig förutsättning för att höja dess acceptans är extern revidering. Revisionen skulle underlättas av en harmonisering av redovisningsreglerna, då ett problem idag är att det är stora variationer i företags kriterier och riktlinjer, en harmonisering skulle även leda till ökad jämförbarhet företag emellan. Det första steget mot internationell harmonisering har kommit från EU genom moderniseringsdirektivet. Hållbarhetsredovisningen befinner sig ännu i sin linda, men fallföretagen är överrens om att redovisning i flera dimensioner är här för att stanna.</p> / <p>The objective of the thesis is to investigate the need for extern auditing, the bank’s expectations and the accounting firm’s condition of auditing sustainability information. The authors also touch upon whether national and international lobbying has affected the sustainability reporting.</p><p>The method used is case studies with semi structured interviews.</p><p>Case study: Handelsbanken, SEB, Swedbank, Deloitte, KPMG and Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers</p><p>Our study showed that sustainability reporting is negligible from the banks perspective. The reporting today is classified as a complement to the traditional annual report, an important prerequisite to increase the acceptance is external auditing. The auditing would be facilitated by a harmonisation of the accounting rules, as a problem today is the great variations in company’s criterion and guidelines, a harmonisation would also lead to increased comparability between companies. EU has taken the first step towards international harmonisation by their modernization directive. Sustainability reporting is still in its infancy, but the case companies all agree that reporting in several dimensions is here to stay.</p>