From Chunqiu and Zuozhuan to Shiji, women have experienced a downgrade of their formal status in historical records. In Shiji, women, the wives of dukes, lost their formal equality with their duke husbands in terms of being written into state history, as we see in Chunqiu. Their activities, including marriage, returning home, visits, and death, disappeared from Sima Qian’s history for the Spring and Autumn period, which focuses on the activities of male members of ruling lineages. A positive representation of women’s wisdom, eloquence, and authority is no longer in the interest of nor taken as a ritual part of history writing in Shiji. In the terms of representation of women, especially those from the Spring and Autumn period, in Zuozhuan and Shiji, Zuozhuan gave fuller representation of women than Shiji and its attitude toward women was more positive in comparison to the latter. First, Zuozhuan in many examples presented women as having authority, agency and initiative; in the Shiji versions of these stories, the roles of women were reduced in order to strengthen the agency of and focalization through the male members of a ruling lineage toward a goal of a linear logic of succession. Second, Shiji stressed the disruptive role of women in state affairs by intensively preserving the stories in Zuozhuan that associated women with political disasters and emergencies. Third, Zuozhuan had a non-gendered approach to the effect of women’s wisdom, knowledge and eloquence; it left space for complexity of characterization for women. In contrast, Shiji and Lienü Zhuan, where these stories in Zuozhuan were transmitted, emphasized a patterned understanding of women and produced gender role types. With the representation of women in Shiji, the effect of the agency of women in history is patterned. In Shiji, women’s agency is more closely connected to political disasters and negative political situations. In the limited representation of positive heroines, their good roles came from their virtue in being self-restrictive and submissive. It implies as a historical teaching in Shiji that the limitation of the political autonomy of women is a way to promise the success of lineage and tradition.

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abstract: Scholars have highlighted the role of disturbance and crisis, including disasters, in enabling systemic change towards sustainability. However, there are relatively few empirical studies on how individuals and organizations are able to utilize disasters as opportunities for change towards sustainability. This dissertation addresses three questions applied to two case studies: First, what changes were pursued in the aftermath of disasters, and to what extent did these changes contribute to sustainability? Second, how were people (and their organizations) able to pursue change towards sustainability? Third, what can be learned about seeing and seizing opportunities for change towards sustainability in disaster contexts and about sustaining those introduced changes over time? The research entailed the creation of a theoretical framework, synthesizing literature from disaster studies and sustainability transition studies, to enable cross-case comparison and the appraisal of sustainability outcomes (Chapter 1). The framework was applied to two empirical case studies of post-disaster recovery: the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia (Chapter 2), and the 2010-2012 series of earthquakes in the greater Christchurch area, New Zealand (Chapter 3). The research revealed no systemic change towards sustainability in either case, although change towards sustainability was pursued in various areas, such as housing, educating, caring, and engaging in governance. Opportunities for sustainability emerged at different points following the disaster; change processes are ongoing. The sustainability changes were supported by “Sustainability Change Agents” (SCAs): people who were able to see and seize opportunities for change towards sustainability in the midst of disaster. SCAs were characterized as individuals with various attributes, starting with an ability to perceive opportunities, catalyze others to support this risk-taking endeavor, and stay in the endurance race. The study concludes with some recommendations for interventions to inform pre-disaster sustainability planning. These avenues include a toolbox and a curricular approach that would educate and enable students as future professionals to see and seize opportunities for change towards sustainability in disaster contexts (Chapter 4). / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2016

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T11:13:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_7929_Dissertação Isaac Final-PDF.pdf: 1685206 bytes, checksum: cd0df1926926f53e9e7e4d8b252da08a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-10-24 / O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar a relação existente entre remuneração executiva e desempenho em companhias brasileiras de capital aberto listadas na BM&FBOVESPA. A linha teórica parte do pressuposto que o contrato de incentivos corrobora com o alinhamento de interesses entre acionistas e executivos e atua como um mecanismo de governança corporativa a fim de direcionar os esforços dos executivos para maximização de valor da companhia. A amostra foi composta pelas 100 companhias mais líquidas listadas em quantidade de negociações de ações na BM&FBOVESPA durante o período 2010-2012, totalizando 296 observações. Os dados foram extraídos dos Formulários de Referência disponibilizados pela CVM e a partir dos softwares Economática® e Thomson Reuters ®. Foram estabelecidas oito hipóteses de pesquisa e estimados modelos de regressão linear múltipla com a técnica de dados em painel desbalanceado, empregando como variável dependente a remuneração total e a remuneração média individual e como regressores variáveis concernentes ao desempenho operacional, valor de mercado, tamanho, estrutura de propriedade, governança corporativa, além de variáveis de controle. Para verificar os fatores que explicam a utilização de stock options, programa de bônus e maior percentual de remuneração variável foram estimados modelos de regressão logit. Os resultados demonstram que, na amostra selecionada, existe relação positiva entre remuneração executiva e valor de mercado. Verificou-se também que os setores de mineração, química, petróleo e gás exercem influência positiva na remuneração executiva. Não obstante, exerce relação inversa com a remuneração total à concentração acionária, o controle acionário público e o fato da companhia pertencer ao nível 2 ou novo mercado conforme classificação da BMF&BOVESPA. O maior valor de mercado influencia na utilização de stock options, assim como no emprego de bônus, sendo que este também é impactado pelo maior desempenho contábil. Foram empregados também testes de robustez com estimações por efeitos aleatórios, regressões com erros-padrão robustos clusterizados, modelos dinâmicos e os resultados foram similares. Desse modo, conclui-se que há indícios de que a remuneração executiva e os planos de incentivos estão relacionados com a maximização de valor da companhia, a despeito o desempenho operacional apresentou associação negativa com a remuneração executiva.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur narrativ påverkar agency i spel. För att kunna analysera och beskriva narrativen i artefakten användes narratologisk terminologi och analys. Spelgenrer togs upp för att konkretisera artefaktens design och koppla den till spel för konsumentmarknaden. Frågeställningen för studien löd: Hur påverkas en spelares uppfattning av agency i ett spel av den narrativa kontexten? En kvalitativ forskningsmetod där strukturerade intervjuer och fältobservation användes. Deltagare testade två versioner av en artefakt och resultaten mellan de två urvalsgrupperna analyserades sedan. Resultaten visade att den narrativa kontexten inte påverkade spelares uppfattning av agency på ett märkbart sätt. Artefakten fick dock majoriteten av deltagarna att uppleva agency vilket tyder på att narrativ kontext inte är viktigt för att skapa agency genom spel. Vidare forskning kan göras med liknande experiment med och utan explicita narrativ och med andra typer av artefakter för att få fram mer specifika resultat.

M.Com. (International Accounting) / Without me trying to rewrite history or steal the thunder from many historians, it was William Pollard who said: “without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable” (Brainyquote, 2014). In the words of the famous George Bernard Shaw, “progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” (Brainyquote, 2014). These truths equally apply to accounting practice. Over the past few years, many factors have contributed to changes in accounting practice.

Commercial Agency Contract The subject of this thesis is the commercial agency contract, as regulated by Sections 2483 to 2520 of Act No 89/2012, the Civil Code, as amended, giving businesses the opportunity not only to net new customers, but also to raise general awareness of their merchandise or services. Under a commercial agency contract, a commercial agent - as an independent business entity - undertakes to engage long term in activities for the other party (the principal) aimed at the sealing of a certain type of deal by the principal or at negotiating deals in the name and on behalf of the principal. Under a commercial agency contract, the principal, for its part, agrees to pay the commercial agent commission for the activities carried out. Against this background, a commercial agency contract gives a business the opportunity to make use of a third party who, unlike an employee, is autonomous yet works with the business and acts in its interests. This thesis intends to deliver a lucid analysis and description of a commercial agency contract from the perspective of current legislation set out in the Civil Code, the enactment of which endowed the concept of commercial agency (compared to the previous provisions on commercial agency set out in Sections 652 to 672a of Act No 513/1991, the...

Essay writing is one of the major academic practices that students are expected to master and display. As there is a paucity of information on the nature of sociocultural influence on second language education in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, this study attempts to contribute to knowledge on writing, in general, and on argument writing, in particular in the sociocultural context of the Vhembe District. The central premise for this study is that the way an environment constrains second language learners or frees them to explore and to learn is constituted by sociocultural factors and this includes pedagogical processes. In sociocultural theory, the argument is that to truly understand the human condition, there is a need to analyse and interpret it within the relevant social, cultural and historical context. This is because a learner’s cognitive, language and academic development are strongly influenced by the sociocultural context in which they live and learn and the effect could be either negative or positive. This is because the identity of a learner is constructed in subtle ways that align an individual’s aspirations with societal goals. In this alignment, learning is performance based, and it also functions as a self-check mechanism in which written discourse illuminates relations, such as the ones between discourse and value systems, which are transmitted through the education system. This study attempts to understand and explain second language writing within the Vhembe sociocultural context. Such understanding has emanated from abstractions from experience, the exploration of the literature reviewed for the purpose, and from the evaluation and interpretation of the students’ engagement in the samples, which have been included in the appendices. The students’ performance in writing was taken as an illustration of sociocultural influences. Using document analysis, observations and abstractions, the study found that students are not proficient in writing in general, because of sociocultural parameters, such as collectivism, weak uncertainty avoidance, a restricted code background, a culture of conserving knowledge, lack of discursive interaction, content orientation and first language literacy. Pedagogy also has an influence on competence, because of the way writing is approached in the learning/teaching situations. Learners seem to have a limited capacity in constructing sentences in the correct tense, use of both metadiscourse and cohesive devices. The study indicates the need to consider learners’ social identity as well as their environment as a way of illustrating the complexity and pertinence of socioculture. This recognition has been given assent through the intervention strategies that are explored and built into the recommendation. The recommendation is that the natural context in which the learners are immersed should be given clarity and should be explored in the English lesson. In this regard, intervention approaches and strategies for learner activities are based on this schema and on collaboration between facilitators of English language learning and content and Mother Tongue facilitators. / Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / English / unrestricted

This study investigates how Canadian youth, nationally recognized as eco-civic leaders, perceive their own sense of agency and their capacity to effect ‘change.’ More specifically, this study explores how these youth are interpreting change (i.e., attitudinal, behavioural, social, political, etc.), and what their perspectives reveal about the relationship between school and community-based environmental learning experiences and their capacity to make change in society. This project explores the notion of ‘student agency’ as it relates to an emerging trend of environmental action learning aimed at active citizenship within the fields of environmental education (EE) and to a lesser extent, civics education. Drawing on different qualitative research methodologies, such as but not limited to narrative inquiry, 34 past recipients/finalists of the Toyota Earth Day Canada Scholarship participated in this study. I used three different dimensions of environmental action learning to construct the conceptual lens through which the findings were interpreted. My findings suggest a critical gap exists between how EE is widely practiced in Canadian schools (i.e., environmentally responsible stewarding), and how it is currently being taken up in recent EE policy and research (i.e., developing capacity to effect broader socio-ecological change). In turn, this research asserts that although we are cultivating ‘good stewards’ and ‘good citizens,’ we are not educating youth toward becoming ‘change agents.’ As such, the majority of youth in this study demonstrate an egocentric perception of their identity and capacity as young eco-civic leaders. Consequently, my research suggests that specific learning conditions, including youth and adults serving as co-participants in community-based action projects aimed at broader social, political, and environmental change, are important in the development of student agency.

Historians of the American South have been diverse in their descriptions of the master-slave relationship over the last half-century, and have engaged in lengthy discussions in an attempt to answer the intricate question of what life was like between slaves and their masters. The phenomenon of slave runaways has perhaps offered the most convincing evidence of the troubles on southern plantations, which has been used in recent decades to emphasize negotiation and agency in the shaping of master-slave relations. The last twenty years have been consequently marked by a plethora of studies that accentuate non-traditional slave holding as it becomes clearer that masters had to compromise with their human chattel. Through an examination 9,975 runaway slave advertisements and 943 testimonies of former slaves, this study illustrates how black bondsmen absented themselves so to negotiate the terms of their working and living conditions. It traces the acts of individual slave runaways in place of broader generalizations that have for a long time contributed to some of the myths and legends of American slavery through examination of the many reasons that slaves chose to stay in bondage.