871 |
Ägarstruktur : Hur påverkar det företags hållbarhetsredovisning?Gustafsson, Pauline, Topolovec, Caroline January 2016 (has links)
Bakgrund: Svenska företag har visat sig vara bland de bästa i världen på hållbarhetsredovisning. Tidigare studier har försökt hitta förklaringsfaktorer för att definiera vilka faktorer som ökar den mängd hållbarhetsupplysningar företag rapporterar frivilligt. Ägarstrukturens påverkan på hållbarhetsredovisning är ett relativt outforskat område och ska därför förklaras i den här studien. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom en kvantitativ metod förklara hur ägarstrukturer påverkar hållbarhetsredovisning hos Large-Cap- och Mid-Cap företag noterade på Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. Metod: Ämnet har testats utifrån skapandet av hypoteser och empiriska observationer. En innehållsanalys har gjorts genom granskning av 173 företags års- och hållbarhetsredovisningar, noterade på Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. Hållbarhetsredovisningen har studerat dels utifrån det ekonomiska perspektivet och dels utifrån det miljö och samhällsmässiga perspektivet. Resultat/slutsats: Utifrån vår analys av de olika ägarstrukturerna och deras påverkan på hållbarhetsredovisning har slutsatsen blivit att det inte finns något större samband mellan de två. Bidrag/framtida forskning: Ägarstrukturens förklaringsgrad visade sig vara låg då få signifikanta samband fanns mellan ägarstrukturer och hur de redovisar hållbarhet. Framtida forskningsförslag är att genom en kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod jämföra skillnader gällande hållbarhet som företag redovisar och deras faktiska hållbarhetsaktivitet.
|
872 |
Narrating Me and the Discourse of Being Dealt With : Student’s democratic inclusion and execution of personalagency through the self narrative in art and media education.Schonfeld, Ida January 2016 (has links)
This paper is about how students, specifically those who have become marginalized becauseof neuro psychological divergences, depression and one case of narcolepsy, may, by usingself narration in art and media education, promote agency in order to develop the capability ofself advocating. Children must develop a perspective of themselves within society and itssocial structures in order to participate in the discourses concerning themselves as is theirdemocratic right according to the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child.Educators of art and media are in a position to accommodate the intellectual developmentleading towards a meta perspective, by integrating the autobiographical into the ordinarycurriculum. Learning through storytelling is a method that can be applied in both visual artsand media to this end.The artistic manifestation of this work: seven students who attended Nikeungdom, an alternative high school program which does not lead to a degree, were asked toshare their life stories offering insight into how the autobiographical, narrating the self, can beaccessed and why it can be developmentally meaningful. These stories manifested in anedited audio file in which the students told about their journey through the educational systemand their experiences of performing in ways that do not fit inside “the box”. The audio filewas played as sound graffiti from speakers hidden in a tree outside of Konstfack, theeducational institution I attended. This symbolizes divergent students’ exclusion fromrepresenting themselves within formal institutions. The graffiti, subtle and subversive, is alsomade to be played outside of the Board of Education and the psychological institutions thatare supposed to care for these peoples’ development and wellbeing; their social inclusion. Theinstitutions that are in place to form children’s lives exclude these children’s own voices, theyare not enabled to represent themselves. The fact that there was no audience prepared to takethe time and make the effort to listen to the compilation of stories told by these outsiders wasmeaningful for the work. It was also important that the audio piece was not orchestrated as anextravaganza using showmanship to attract attention. It is the job of the authorities, theinstitutions, the politicians, the teachers and psychologists to listen and hear actively,encouraging social inclusion and self-representation within the governing institutions.
|
873 |
Heritage Greens Consumption: A Qualitative Exploration of Cultural Agency in the Southern Arizona Food SystemDe Koker, Teresa Rene, De Koker, Teresa Rene January 2016 (has links)
Throughout history, wild green vegetables have played a significant role in human diets around the world, coevolving alongside agriculture and changing land use patterns (Wilson, 1990). Wild greens such as purslane (Portulaca oleracea), lambquarters (Chenopodium spp.) and amaranth (Amaranthus spp.), wild ancestors of crop plants, are prehistoric foods that are cultural and nutritional mainstays in many parts of the world including the Arizona-Mexico borderland region. While consumption of these foods is commonplace on the Mexican side of the border, on the American side their use is less frequent. In this study, I explore the patterns of and barriers to consumption of wild green vegetables by Latinos living in the Arizona (AZ)-Mexico (MX) borderland city of Tucson, AZ. I use Weber's rationalization theory, as well as human agency theory, to guide my exploration of how the dominant food system contributes to dietary acculturation and the loss of agency among Latinos living in Tucson. In-depth interviews and naturalistic observations are employed across a diverse array of market settings, which include a farmers' market, several carnicerias (Mexican butcher shops), a corner store/tortilleria with procurers and purveyors of Latino and indigenous foods, and a more conventional supermarket. The findings reveal a reduction in knowledge and consumption of heritage greens by Latinos concurrent to their adoption of more mainstream American foods. I consider this pattern and its various implications in the context of the rationalization of the dominant U.S. food system, which leads to a dynamic that favors efficiency and productivity over authenticity and aesthetics.
|
874 |
The Role of Internal Audits within Financial Institutions in SwedenBaric, Zeljka January 2016 (has links)
Corporate governance is a highly discussed topic in financial circles. Recent corporate failures have triggered regulatory reforms where the internal audit was given a stronger position. However, this regulatory evolution also brought challenges to internal audit activity. The growing demands and pressure from stakeholders have placed internal auditors in a difficult position of having to serve several stakeholders and sometimes inconsistent ones with different agendas. That is why the aim of this thesis was to examine how regulations have impacted the internal audit within financial institutions with a special focus on internal auditors’ relations with their stakeholders. In order to achieve the aims of this study, qualitative interviews were conducted as they were considered most suitable in order to uncover a deeper meaning and significance regarding the topic. The findings in this study indicate that internal auditing activity within financial institutions faces a multitude of challenges. Beyond having to deal with traditional duties, these institutions now have to incorporate mandatory audits from regulators within their scope of practise as well. This steers them in a direction where they have to satisfy the needs of yet another stakeholder.
|
875 |
Worker responses to work reorganisation in a deep-level gold mining workplace : perspectives from the rock-facePhakathi, T. T. January 2011 (has links)
In the early 1990s, South Africa’s re-entry into the competitive global marketplace and the first non-racial elections brought significant changes to an industry previously plagued by the racialisation of the labour process. South Africa’s post-apartheid work order led to the restructuring of the gold mining workplace, with a greatly increased emphasis on efficiency, productivity and equity. This period saw a number of gold mines reorganising work through new forms of working practices aimed at creating new kinds of workers who could identify with the goals of the company by expending rather than withdrawing effort at the point of production. There was a shift in the attitude of worker responses to managerial practices, from coercion to consent in the day-to-day running of the production process. This thesis examines worker responses to the reorganisation of work and their impact on worker and workplace productivity in a deep-level gold mine. At the core of this thesis are the perceptions, views, experiences and reactions displayed by underground work teams to management initiatives. The thesis highlights the significance of worker agency in managerially defined work structures – the capacity of underground gold miners to reshape and adapt management strategies in ways that make sense and enable them to maintain control over production and the effort-bargain. The findings presented in this thesis, particularly the gold miners’ informal or coping strategy of making a plan (planisa), reveal that underground work teams are not merely passive or docile reactors to management initiatives. They find opportunity to manipulate (and where necessary, avoid) new forms of management control in a variety of innovative ways that enable them to reassert their power and autonomy over their working day. Underground gold miners are not simply appendages to nor alienated beings in the production process but are able to take control of the production process, independent of management prescriptions, in ways which may embody resistance, consent or a subtle combination of the two. The thesis calls attention to workers’ subjective orientation, agency and resilience to new work structures – not just as recipients but also as shapers of such new work structures within the politics, limits and contradictions of capitalist production systems.
|
876 |
International perceptions and African agency : Uganda and its donors 1986-2010Fisher, Jonathan January 2011 (has links)
This thesis investigates the place of African states in the international system and seeks to understand what space exists for aid-dependent governments to exercise agency in relations with donors. In exploring these issues I focus on the case of Uganda’s NRM regime which has enjoyed very substantial international support despite its increasingly authoritarian nature, destabilising regional policy and questionable human rights record. The two central questions posed are therefore: ‘why has Uganda benefited from such uncritical international support and what role has the NRM regime itself played in bringing about this situation?’ The thesis also compares Uganda’s experience to those of Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda to demonstrate the broader relevance of these questions. I argue that donors have taken a lenient approach to Uganda because they perceive it as valuable as an economic success story, an ally in the ‘War on Terror’ and a guarantor of regional stability. The study stresses, however, that these perceptions are just that: perceptions. They do not necessarily reflect reality nor are they formed without input from Africa, as some inadvertently suggest. Indeed, the principal contention of this thesis is that these three donor perceptions of Uganda have been actively constructed, moulded, managed and bolstered by Kampala itself in an effort to shore-up international support. Using a variety of ‘image management’ strategies the regime has succeeded in convincing its donors to see it as a valuable ally worth supporting. The same is true of the Rwandan and Ethiopian governments, I suggest, but not of the Kenyan. In doing so, the thesis contends, Kampala has carved out a subtle but substantial degree of agency in relations with donors and this raises important questions for scholars and policy-makers.
|
877 |
Collaborative management, differential discourse, and youth engagement; a case study of Auyuittuq National Park, NunavutBrown, Amy D. 20 September 2016 (has links)
The collaborative management arrangements in place for Nunavut’s National Parks demonstrated a shifting trend in Canadian resource management, where Indigenous
people are increasingly involved in the governance of traditional lands. This work
considered the arrangement in place for Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut, by exploring
the effect that differential discourse had on policy formation and implementation. To
focus the research on a single management issue youth engagement was selected for
consideration. Employing a qualitative case study strategy of inquiry, data was collected
by conducting 50 interviews and 7 focus groups in the park adjacent community of
Pangnirtung. The project findings indicated that the Parks Canada Agency’s discourse
maintained a dominant position within the management process, such that many of the
youth engagement strategies implemented did not account for Inuit cultural practices. As
a consequence of this omission, many of the implemented methods were unintuitive to
the community, and in some cases served as a barrier to youth participation. / October 2016
|
878 |
Variations on charisma : Shakespeare's saintly, villain, and lustful leadersHannachi, Madiha 08 1900 (has links)
Variations on Charisma: Shakespeare’s Saintly, Villain, and Lustful Leaders est une étude des mécanismes du leadership charismatique dans Henry V, Richard III et Antoine et Cléopâtre de William Shakespeare, respectivement. Le mémoire explore certains outils, tels que la rhétorique, l'ironie et resignification, qui permettent aux dirigeants de gagner l'amour des disciples, la reconnaissance, et même la crainte. Cette thèse ne traitera pas avec l'essence du charisme en tant que telle, mais plutôt avec les techniques de leadership charismatique.
Dans le premier chapitre, j'ai étudié le caractère du roi Harry dans trois différents aspects: en tant que chef militaire, en tant que chef spirituel, et comme un leader politique. Parmi les techniques de leadership charismatique qui déploie Henry V de gagner l'amour de ses disciples et de dévouement est rhétorique. La capacité de livrer le discours à droite dans la conjoncture à droite et à convaincre les adeptes, même dans les moments de difficultés formes sa force clé comme une figure centrale dans la pièce.
Le deuxième chapitre traite du leadership charismatique Richard III, qui est évaluée sur le plan éthique parce qu'elle est acquise grâce à assassiner. J'ai essayé d'examiner les relations possibles qui pourraient exister entre le charisme et l'agence moral. Dans ce chapitre, j'ai soulevé des questions sur la mesure dans laquelle le charisme est d'ordre éthique et comment un chef de file, qui usurpes alimentation via assassiner, est charismatique. Une technique qui renforce le leadership charismatique de Richard est l'ironie. Richard III déploie l'ironie de gagner la complicité du public.
Dans le troisième chapitre, l'accent est mis sur le caractère de Cléopâtre. La question soulevée dans le chapitre concerne la relation entre le charisme et la lutte pour une identité féminine orientale. politique sexuelle de Cléopâtre est également au cœur de mon étude, car il est revu et de nouveaux sens de Shakespeare d'une manière qui souligne les qualités charismatiques de Cléopâtre.
Mots clés: le charisme, la rhétorique, l'agence morale, resignification, William Shakespeare / Variations on Charisma: Shakespeare’s Saintly, Villain, and Lustful Leaders is an investigation of the mechanisms of charismatic leadership in Shakespeare’s Henry V, Richard III, and Antony and Cleopatra respectively. It explores certain tools, such as rhetoric, irony, and resignification, which allow the leaders to gain the followers’ love, recognition, and even awe. This thesis will not deal with the essence of charisma as such but rather with the techniques of charismatic leadership.
In the first chapter, I have studied the character of King Harry in three different aspects: as a military leader, as a spiritual leader, and as a political leader. Among the techniques of charismatic leadership which Henry V deploys to gain his followers’ love and devotion is rhetoric. The ability to deliver the right discourse in the right conjuncture and to persuade the followers even in the moments of hardship forms his key strength as a central figure in the play.
The second chapter deals with Richard III’s charismatic leadership which is assessed ethically because it is gained through murder. I have tried to examine the possible relations that might exist between charisma and moral agency. In this chapter, I have raised questions about the extent to which charisma is ethical and how a leader, who usurpes power via murder, is charismatic. One technique which reinforces Richard’s charismatic leadership is irony. Richard III deploys irony to gain the audience’s complicity.
In the third chapter, the focus is on the character of Cleopatra. The question raised in the chapter concerns the relationship between charisma and the struggle for an oriental feminine identity. Cleopatra’s sexual politics is also at the heart of my study because it is revisited and resignified by Shakespeare in a way that highlights Cleopatra’s charismatic qualities.
Key words: charisma, rhetoric, moral agency, resignification, William Shakespeare
|
879 |
Damned If You Do--Damned If You Don't: A Queer Woman of Color's Journey of Trauma, Agency, and LeadershipPaz-Amor, Windy 01 January 2015 (has links)
ABSTRACT
Navigating systems of leadership in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in higher education as a Queer Woman of Color can be a challenging and complex process--one that integrates identity, experience, expertise, knowledge, patience, and most importantly the ability to risk; while remaining authentic and professional. It is a balance, which in my own experience and expertise requires constant reflection, evaluation, and adaptation. A negotiation of owning that one has power and agency, while realizing that the many intersecting identities that one holds influences how dominant culture perceives that power and agency. To reach authentic reflection and evaluation in leadership it is critical to examine and investigate one's own vocation to lead and to ask, what leads us and sustains us in that leadership?
This dissertation will offer a counter-narrative of leadership in prose-poetry through a lens of intersectionality outside of the hegemonic or dominant ways that define the parameters of leadership. Through the use of personal narratives reinforced by scholarship using the methodology of Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN), I explore my own experiences of trauma throughout my life that led to agency and inevitably to leadership. I additionally examine the overarching tenants and themes that continue to inform, sustain and strengthen my leadership.
"Damned If You Do--Damned If You Don't" represents a phrase often used amongst marginalized communities that signifies the challenges of navigating one's own power and agency within oppressive dominant systems. This SPN dissertation will be supported by the paradigms of Critical Race Theory (CRT) with a specific focus on Counter-Narrative/Storytelling and Critical Race Gendered Epistemology or Feminist Black/Latino Theory, while also incorporating aspects of positive psychology. It will offer a counter-narrative in leadership that highlights how my multiple intersecting identities, coupled with my life experiences, create meaning and go on to further shape my approach to trauma, agency, and leadership.
As a Queer woman of color in leadership, I find that by honoring and examining my own stories of trauma and agency, and how it led me to leadership. I am better equipped as a professional to honor the narratives, identities, and experiences of those that I serve.
|
880 |
Taming The Elephant: An Examination Of The Identity, Coping Strategies, And Educational Aspirations Of Two Adolescent African American Males Who Live And Attend School In A Predominantly White CommunityBeauregard, Jeremy LyDell 01 January 2016 (has links)
This study is a critical ethnography that examines the relationship between the racial-identity, coping strategies and educational aspirations of two African American males who live (and attend school) in a predominantly White community. The participants reside in a Northeastern state where the African-American population is below 3%. Although they live in different parts of the state, symbols like the Confederate flag were regularly seen inside and outside of both high schools.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the primary interpretive framework used in this study. However, theory from educational psychology and sociology were also included. Through semi-structured interviews, on-site observations, and artifact analysis (e.g. high school transcripts, SAT scores, and samples of creative writing), this research advances the understanding of how being Black in a predominantly White community affected the participants' identity, coping strategies and educational experiences. Similar to how any system functions, the participants' identity, coping strategies and educational aspirations were nested and dependent upon each other. This included a number of balancing and re-enforcing feedback loops. Although this study is qualitative and cannot be generalized, the experiences of the participants were similar. The difference was in their coping strategies.
The predominant culture that currently exists in most communities and educational institutions is deeply embedded in racism. This is systemic. It is time all institutions move forward and embrace diversity. Similar to the earth's resources, race relations must be sustained if we are to create a prosperous world for future generations.
Key Words: achievement, acting-White, agency, aspirations, identity, racism, resilience, stereotyping and self-efficacy.
|
Page generated in 0.3329 seconds