Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-128). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-255). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9963445.

Thesis (M.S.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p.38-40) and index.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-12T20:32:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoJaneCorona1.pdf: 532184 bytes, checksum: a53b4267cd73d65206ffcddc3f08fe64 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-11-14 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The purpose of this research is to analyze financial services salespeople work at retail bank branches regarding marketing and sales practices, and their perception of their jobs. We search for aspects of alienation at work and for role conflict and role ambiguity. Research was made at private banking institutions aiming to identify the main marketing practices utilized to sell products and services. Besides that, we made a research among sales contact workers of different banks trying to identify the categories under analysis. We chose the exploratory and descriptive methods under a qualitative approach that deepens the comprehension of the phenomena, instead of quantifying it. The results were obtained trough primary and secondary sources, open interviews and questionnaires. We based our research on literature and specialized publications. The results were classified before being analyzed and interpreted. The scenery of challenges in financial markets such as: globalization, technology, changes in government regulations and in consumer profile, forced organizations to adapt their strategies. Company s efforts to control performance and commitment of its employees show the subjective aspects of the work. Customer contact employees are particularly vulnerable to short term pressure from management to meet sales quotas. As a result, they may be tempted to ignore the best interest of their customers and focus on immediate results to maintain their jobs. In the process of searching for new clients and accounts and at the same time increase revenues, they are susceptible to tension and stress. The development of studies concerning the negative aspects of job on workers is related to changes in the working management and process occurred in the last decade. Pressure on meeting sales goals and on reducing costs puts service and quality of working life on a second plan. Some aspects of the theory of alienation such as powerlessness and normlessness were identified and the results also showed characteristics of ambiguity and role conflict related to the job. Uncertainty about stability and sense of precariousness dominates the scenery mainly at service sector and banks. Customer dissatisfaction with financials services is greater than in any other sector, except perhaps for public health care, telephone companies or public security. / O presente estudo objetiva analisar o trabalho dos gerentes encarregados do contato com clientes em agências bancárias sob o aspecto das práticas de marketing e vendas e a percepção dos mesmos sobre o exercício de sua função. Busca identificar aspectos de alienação no trabalho e de conflito e ambigüidade de papel. Foram aplicadas pesquisas em instituições bancárias privadas nacionais e estrangeiras para levantamento das principais práticas adotadas para venda e divulgação de produtos e serviços. Também foram feitos levantamentos entre os gerentes de diferentes instituições para identificar os aspectos estudados. Optou-se pela pesquisa exploratória e descritiva, na forma qualitativa cujo objetivo principal é aprofundar a compreensão dos fenômenos mais que sua quantificação. Os dados foram obtidos através de fontes primárias e secundárias, por meio de entrevistas abertas e questionários fechados. Contou-se com apoio de material teórico e publicações especializadas. Para o tratamento dos dados procedeu-se ao ordenamento de forma qualitativa, através de análise e interpretação de modo estruturado e quantitativo. Foram utilizadas estatísticas descritivas para análise exploratória, resumir e exibir os dados colhidos. O cenário de desafios no setor financeiro: globalização, tecnologia, alterações na legislação, mudança no perfil do consumidor, obrigou as instituições a adaptar sua estratégia. O esforço da administração em controlar o desempenho e envolver o funcionário no comprometimento com a organização, cada vez mais mostra o aspecto de subjetividade que se oculta no trabalho. Os funcionários de contato com clientes estão particularmente vulneráveis a pressões para vendas e resultados imediatos e, em conseqüência, tendem a ignorar o interesse imediato de seus clientes e se concentrar em gerar receitas para manter seus empregos. Ao buscar novos clientes, abrir contas e aumentar as receitas, estão sujeitos à tensão e estresse. O avanço nas questões concernentes aos efeitos negativos do trabalho sobre os indivíduos relaciona-se às mudanças ocorridas nos processos de trabalho e de gestão ocorridas na ultima década. A pressão pelo cumprimento de metas e por redução de custos coloca o serviço e a qualidade de vida no trabalho em segundo plano. Aspectos de alienação como impotência e ausência de normas foram identificados assim como ambigüidade no exercício da função e conflito de papel. A incerteza quanto à permanência e o sentido de precariedade dominam a cena no setor de serviços, principalmente bancário. A insatisfação dos clientes com os serviços do setor se destaca em relação a qualquer outro, com exceção talvez dos hospitais públicos, empresas de telefonia e segurança pública.

La problématique de cette thèse porte sur les impacts du marché de capacité français sur le déploiement des énergies renouvelables en présence d'incertitude. Ce marché est mis en place en France dans le but de couvrir les fortes pointes de consommation électrique. Il demande aux fournisseurs d’assurer la consommation de leurs clients lors de ces pointes en achetant des garanties auprès des producteurs d’électricité. Ce mécanisme rémunère la capacité disponible durant les périodes de tension entre offre et demande, et sa valorisation dépend de sa contribution à la sécurité d’approvisionnement. Du fait de leur nature intermittente, la rémunération des énergies renouvelables est plus incertaine que pour les autres moyens de production électrique. Cette thèse étudie l'adéquation entre un objectif de sécurité d'approvisionnement et un objectif de déploiement des énergies renouvelables, deux visées du gouvernement français. / The problematic of this thesis focuses on the impacts of the French capacity marketon the deployment of renewable energies in the presence of uncertainty. This marketis set up in France in order to cover high peaks in electricity consumption. It asks suppliers to ensure the consumption of their customers at these peaks by buying guarantees from electricity producers. This mechanism compensates for theavailable capacity during periods of tension between supply and demand, and itsvaluation depends on its contribution to security of supply. Due to their intermittent nature, the remuneration of renewable energies is more uncertain than for other means of electricity production. This thesis studies the adequacy between a goal of security of supply and a goal of deployment of renewable energies, two aims of the French government.

Este artículo sigue los flujos de documentación que se producen alrededor de un estudio técnico de ingeniería para la construcción de una vía de evitamiento por el pueblo de Ollantaytambo. En contraste con el énfasis de Max Weber sobre los documentos como instrumentos de racionalización y transparencia, y el enfoque más reciente sobre los documentos como artefactos estéticos e instancias institucionales, yo presto atención a las maneras en que los documentos se implican en la producción de lo político. Indico que los modos en que circulan, acumulando connotaciones múltiples mientras viajan, no generaban claridad, sino una indeterminación que se incrementaba, y sugiero que la calidad política de los documentos tiene que ver precisamente con su carácter dual, pues implican al mismo tiempo la normatividad (con su promesa de justicia y claridad) y el juego de intereses poco limpios. Su promesa dual de certidumbre y ambivalencia era clave para la apertura de espacios de disensión y posibilidad política en el proyecto. / This paper follows the political life of documents produced in relation to a World Bank-funded road engineering technical study in the Peruvian Andes. By contrast with Weber’s emphasis on documents as instruments of rationalisation and transparency, and the more recent focus on documents as aesthetic artefacts and instances of institutional form, I attend to the ambiguous political processes enacted through document flows. I suggest that the ways in which project documents circulated, accumulating multiple connotations as they travelled, generated not clarity, but rather increasing indeterminacy, arguing that their political quality had to do precisely with their dual character, calling up at once normativity (and its promise of justice and order) and the play of unscrupulous «interests». I argue that their dual promise of clarity and ambivalence was key to the opening up of spaces of political possibility in the project.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explain whether the conceptualized model of consumer confusion regarding the multiple number of brands and products also applies to the increasing number of eco-labels. The study also examined how the attitudes were affected if confusion occurred amongst the consumers. More specifically, whether consumer confusion leads to negative attitudes. Theoretical Framework: The conceptualized model of consumer confusion, including the three dimensions of ambiguity, information overload and similarity was used in this research.In addition, theories regarding attitudes and indicators that affect consumer’s attitudes werepresented and used for the analysis. Methodological Framework: This research took an explanatory and deductive approach. The research was carried out with a quantitative method including three hypotheses derived from the literature. Data was collected through a questionnaire that was spread online on social media. The gathered data was coded accordingly in order to get the results from the frequencies, descriptive statistics, correlation and the regression analysis. Empirical Results: It was discovered that the respondents were confused by eco-labels and eco-labelled products regarding all the three dimensions of the conceptualized model of consumer confusion. However, the fact that the attitudes towards eco-labels and eco-labelled products were very positive, led to a rejection of all the three hypotheses. Consequently, supportive questions from the questionnaire and the demographic details of the sample served as additional support to further discuss the results of the study. Conclusions: This study showed that the conceptualized model of consumer confusion also applies to eco-labels. However, the consumers still had positive attitudes towards eco-labels and eco-labelled products which could be seen as contradictory. Nevertheless, positive beliefs about eco-labels and its effects and demographic details were found to have an impact on the positive attitudes.

Este trabalho é uma tentativa de análise da estrutura de Grande sertão: veredas, de João Guimarães Rosa, a partir do conceito de tragédia apresentado por Aristóteles em sua Poética. Nesse livro, Aristóteles diz que, na tragédia, a estrutura interna do texto - a "composição dos fatos", o mythos - aponta para a "peripécia", o desenlace, na qual acontece o "reconhecimento trágico": a passagem do ignorar ao saber, a partir dos sentimentos trágicos, "terror e piedade", gerados pela trama dos acontecimentos, das imagens poéticas. Em Grande sertão: veredas, a elaboração do tema da "matéria vertente", ligada à tentativa de "armar o ponto dum fato", dá à estrutura do livro uma caracterização trágica no sentido aristotélico. Riobaldo narrador conta a um interlocutor, o senhor, suas experiências de jagunçopersonagem, encontrando dificuldades de narrar ao esbarrar nos aspectos ambíguos, vertentes das coisas de que fala. A ambigüidade presente em todo o livro é a trama dos fatos de Grande sertão: veredas que representa a figura ambígua de Diadorim e que anuncia a reviravolta final, a morte dele e a descoberta de seu segredo: com o desenlace é que há o reconhecimento que a ambigüidade não é só tema, mas estrutura da obra, ou seja, Riobaldo tem sua maneira de narrar mergulhada em uma visão de mundo marcada pela experiência de dor e de prazer com Reinaldo-Diadorim. Assim, a ambigüidade, em Grande sertão: veredas, analisada sob o ponto de vista de estruturação trágica, é forma de construção que vincula estrutura e sentido interno do texto. / This work tries to analyze the structure of Guimarães Rosa's Grande sertão: veredas (GSV) based on Aristotle's Poetics concept of tragedy. In his book Aristotle argues that the internal structure of a tragic text - the "the arrangement of incidents", the mythos or plot - points to a "peripeteia", a reversal of the protagonist's fortune, in which there is a "tragic recognition": the passage from ignorance to knowledge by the tragic feelings of "terror and pity" generated by the structure of incidents, of poetic images. In GSV, the elaboration of the theme of the "pouring matter" (matéria vertente) related to the attempt to "set the point of a fact" gives the structure of the book a tragic character in the Aristotelian sense. Riobaldo-narrator tells an interlocutor, sir, his experiences as jagunço (ruffian or kind of hired-assassin) character, finding it difficult to tell the story because of the ambiguous aspects, "pouring" from the things he tells. The ambiguity present along the book is the structure of incidents of GSV that represents the ambiguous character of Diadorim and that announces the final reversal, his death and the revealing of his secret: the resolution brings along the recognition that the ambiguity is not only the theme, but the structure of the text, that is, Riobaldo has his way of telling embedded in a way of seeing the world marked by experiences of pain and pleasure with Reinaldo-Diadorim. This being so, the ambiguity in Guimarães Rosa's GSV, from the point of view of the tragic structuring, is a form of construction that links structure and internal meaning of the text.

The genital ambiguity arises within the family and the health team as an emergency; the physical impairment of the child's genitalia impossible to identify whether it is a boy or a girl. From experience in a clinical genetics service, based on listening to parents of children with ambiguous genitalia, the interest of this work arises, which has to analyze how the parents of children with ambiguous genitalia deal with this genetic condition of their children. For the preparation of this work was used as a method to study cases, these built from calls made reports to parents of children with ambiguity. Thus were prepared two clinical case studies from psychoanalysis theoretical framework, covering the research objective. As a result the present study observed by clinical case studies that how every family, mother and father deal with the condition of genital ambiguity of their children occurs in a particular way; through the experiences that parents experience at the birth of these children, promotes particular forms incorporate this genetic condition. As the case studies pointed to each of the families read a particular way, by a doubt, others in the constitution of a family secret, and it is from this background that the subject child is. / A ambiguidade genital surge no contexto familiar e na equipe de saúde como uma emergência; o comprometimento físico da genitália da criança impossibilita identificar se a mesma é um menino ou uma menina. A partir da experiência em um serviço de genética clínica, com base na escuta a pais de crianças com ambiguidade genital, surge o interesse do presente trabalho. O mesmo tem como objetivo analisar de que forma os pais de crianças com ambiguidade genital lidam com esta condição genética de seus filhos. Para a elaboração do presente trabalho foi utilizado como método o estudo de casos, estes construídos a partir de relatos de atendimentos realizados a duas mães. Desta forma foram elaborados dois estudos de casos clínicos a partir do referencial teórico da psicanálise. Os resultados demonstram que cada família lida com a ambiguidade genital de seus filhos de forma particular; uma através da dúvida, outra pela constituição de um segredo familiar.

This thesis improves our understanding of asset prices and returns as it documents a regime shift risk premium in currencies, corrects the estimation bias in the term premium of bond yields, and shows the impact of ambiguity aversion towards parameter uncertainty on equities. The thesis consists of three essays. The first essay "The Yen Risk Premiums: A Story of Regime Shifts in Bond Markets" documents a new monetary mechanism, namely the shift of monetary policies, to account for the forward premium puzzle in the USD-JPY currency pair. The shift of monetary policy regimes is modelled by a regime switching dynamic term structure model where the risk of regime shifts is priced. Our model estimation characterises two policy regimes in the Japanese bond market---a conventional monetary policy regime and an unconventional policy regime of quantitative easing. Using foreign exchange data from 1985 to 2009, we find that the shift of monetary policies generates currency risk: the yen excess return is predicted by the Japanese regime shift premium, and the emergence of the yen carry trade in the mid 1990s is associated with the transition from the conventional to the unconventional monetary policy in Japan. The second essay "Correcting Estimation Bias in Regime Switching Dynamic Term Structure Models" examines the small sample bias in the estimation of a regime switching dynamic term structure model. Using US data from 1971 to 2009, we document two regimes driven by the conditional volatility of bond yields and risk factors. In both regimes, the process of bond yields is highly persistent, which is the source of estimation bias when the sample size is small. After bias correction, the inference about expectations of future policy rates and long-maturity term premia changes dramatically in two high-volatility episodes: the 1979--1982 monetary experiment and the recent financial crisis. Empirical findings are supported by Monte Carlo simulation, which shows that correcting small sample bias leads to more accurate inference about expectations of future policy rates and term premia compared to before bias correction. The third essay "Learning about the Persistence of Recessions under Ambiguity Aversion" incorporates ambiguity aversion into the process of parameter learning and assess the asset pricing implications of the model. Ambiguity is characterised by the unknown parameter that governs the persistence of recessions, and the representative investor learns about this parameter while being ambiguity averse towards parameter uncertainty. We examine model-implied conditional moments and simulated moments of asset prices and returns, and document an uncertainty effect that characterises the difference between learning under ambiguity aversion and learning under standard recursive utility. This uncertainty effect is asymmetric across economic expansions and recessions, and this asymmetry generates in simulation a sharp increase in the equity premium at the onset of recessions, as in the recent financial crisis.