During the last decades, immigration to Sweden has increased. As a result of this, a larger number of individuals are growing up with two languages. This means that the field of bilingualism has emerged as topic of relevance in Sociology, as well as other disciplines of Social Sciences. Bilingualism has been studied from different perspectives in Linguistics. However, in Sociology, focus has been mostly on the questions of integration, culture and ethnicity, where language has been seen as one of many aspects. I argue that bilingualism is an important social phenomenon in its own right, since it shapes the everyday lives of bilingual individuals and changes the landscape of our society. Using Grounded Theory, bilingualism in the everyday life is analyzed and explored, using material from qualitative interviews with ten individuals who have grown up with Swedish and one other language. It is here suggested that bilingualism in the everyday life can be understood as a process of handling ambivalence. This process takes place between the social context and the self and is influenced by and influences them both. A central part of this process is bilingualism seen simultaneously as tension and as resource.

It is now widely recognized that society’s over-reliance on the automobile contributes to environmental problems, especially in urban areas. Nevertheless, efforts to bring about modal shifts through transportation demand management strategies typically have had limited success. As a result, transportation research is increasingly focused on understanding the decision-making process of travel behaviour changes including mode choice and automobile ownership. The purpose of this study is to explore how individuals arrive at a decision to live either car-free or car-lite. Using a grounded-theory approach, this thesis explores the factors involved in a car-free/car-lite decision and the manner in which those factors work together to create the decision making process(es). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 driving members of a car-sharing organization, each of whom made a decision to go car-lite (car-sharing is their additional vehicle) or car-free (car-sharing is their primary vehicle). Five main interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: finances, personal values and attitudes, personal history, perceived accessibility and situational life events. In particular, the participants’ experiences reinforce the importance of situation life events in the decision-making process, a factor not commonly identified in behaviour change theory. Additionally, the participants’ narratives illustrate that intention is created from an individual’s inclination and ability to make a travel behaviour change. However, translation from intention into action appears to be conditionally dependent on contextual and/or situational changes, most often in the form of situational life events, that provide a push into or out of the decision-making process. Findings underscore the importance of life events as catalysts for bringing travel behaviour in line with an individual’s sense of what is important and what is possible. This research illustrates the relevance of qualitative work in advancing transportation research – particularly in understanding human travel decisions. While the current transportation-planning paradigm is appropriate for making short-term forecasts, we must recognize that non-linear, non-utilitarian, long-term, often qualitative factors, such as those identified in this research, are not exogenous to travel decision making. Results also provide a basis for reflecting on the appropriateness of various metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of transportation demand management initiatives.

Recreational shopping has long been of interest to business academics and practitioners, but research on it has been underdeveloped in the leisure field. Although the leisure literature and business literature represent distinct perspectives, there appears to be many significant parallels between recreational shopping and leisure. The purpose of this study was to examine the intrinsic meanings of shopping; to explore the experiential aspects of the recreational shopping experience (including the influences of the retail environment on individuals who regularly engage in recreational shopping). This study took place in Toronto, Ontario. The sample included five female self-proclaimed recreational shoppers. The researcher accompanied each participant on a shopping excursion which took place at a shopping mall selected by the participant. Data were collected through three qualitative methods. First, participant observation involved the researcher walking alongside the participant as she shopped. Following the shopping session, the researcher conducted an in-depth face-to-face interview with each participant; the interview was guided by a set of open-ended questions. In addition, this study utilized photo-elicitation in which the participants were asked to photograph ‘anything’ that made an impression during their visit to the mall. The photographs offered tangible illustrations of shopping experiences and were used as a catalyst for discussion during the interviews. The data was analyzed using Grounded Theory coding which lead to the identification of two main themes and six respective subthemes. The emergent themes are all connected to the key idea that shoppers are motivated by their expectations and desires when they partake in the recreational shopping activity. Shopping offers numerous opportunities that provide immediate hedonic pleasure as well as intrinsic rewards. Such opportunities often include, the ‘before and after’ phases of experiences of acquisition and unexpected discoveries, the positive interactions which occur both inside and outside a retail environment, and lastly, the individual’s use of shopping as a means of self-expression and a tool to manage their self image. Satisfaction, spontaneity, familiarity, mastery, accomplishment, and feelings of escape were all present in these shopping experiences. The findings also described the role of shopping malls as a leisure space and as facilitators of recreational shopping activities. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that shopping can offer a profound leisure experience for many people and the activity should not only be researched in terms of just ‘recreational shopping’ or ‘utilitarian shopping.’ Rather, the findings indicate several overlaps between the two types of shopping and further research is needed to more fully understand the complexities of the activity.

The rate of development for large-scale wind energy in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is a complex issue such that the various actors of the surrounding policy community (decision-makers, influential stakeholders, and the attentive public) cannot reach consensus. Inaction on resource and environmental issues like this one is often the result of complexity, either the inherent complexity of the problem being targeted or the complexity of the communicated information surrounding the problem. Inherent complexity is managed chiefly by central decision-makers and influential stakeholders of the policy community, while information complexity must be dealt with primarily by the attentive public of the policy community. This thesis uses a case study of large-scale wind energy development in Saskatchewan to explore complexity as a root cause of environmental inaction. In manuscript style, this thesis investigates two types of environmental complexity and two segments of the wind energy policy community. Through an exploration of barriers to wind energy expansion in Saskatchewan, the first manuscript focuses on the complexity of environmental problems themselves as dealt with by decision-makers and other influential policy actors. Interviews were conducted with a range of experts and stakeholders where participants were asked to describe barriers to development in each of six categories: agreement, knowledge, technology, economic, social, and political barriers. A number of key issues are identified: disagreement regarding the balance between environment and economy, contradictory knowledge about the benefits of wind energy, conflicting faith in technology to accommodate high levels of wind energy, unquantified non-economic benefits of wind energy, lack of social interest in and support for wind energy, and lagging provincial political leadership on the issue of wind energy. Perhaps more importantly, the interviews reveal that experts disagreed on many facets of the wind energy issue, which demonstrates that the complexity of the issue makes consensus and any resulting action difficult to accomplish. Intuitive solutions for managing complexity through the more effective reconciliation of disagreement are also suggested. The second manuscript focuses on the complexity of environmental information by examining policy information regarding wind energy implementation in Saskatchewan for complications that might reduce understanding about and participation in the issue by the attentive public. Through a review of publicly available reports, articles, and documents, four complexity-related problems are uncovered: non-intuitive information, misreported information, obsolete information, and absent information. Such occurrences may well be problematic for environmental policy information in general, so intuitive solutions involving clarification and elaboration are suggested for managing each one. Together, the two manuscripts illustrate that both inherent and information complexity can be problems for environmental issues, especially when one causes or feeds back into the other. Results from this thesis provide a way of thinking about environmental complexity and understanding environmental inaction as managed by policy communities.

This qualitative study explored conflict resolutions in everyday setting by applying grounded theory method to data on real-life conflict experiences. The data represent 53 graduate students (27 male and 26 female) of 20 different nationalities. After careful coding, we found seven categories. By applying a dimensional analysis model, we not only identified that ¢wpreparation for resolving conflict¡ü is the central phenomenon but also explored how conflict origins, casual condition, contextual condition, intervening condition, resolution strategies and consequences are related to the central phenomenon and the dynamics among themselves. This helped in developing a grounded formal theory that provide a detailed picture of the complex process of conflict resolution in everyday setting by covering its origins, dynamics, resolution strategies, consequences, and effects in different contexts. Detailed explanations with ample examples from the data were provided. Implications for future researchers and practical implications are discussed.

The introduction of a new appraisal system has been seen as a common practice for firms to map its strategic goals and organizational objectives. Such a practice can be seen as a kind of organizational change. Previous studies on the introduction of new appraisal system tend to adopt a cross-sectional approach to examine the effect of the new appraisal system from various dimensions. In the mean time, how the new appraisal system is forming and how the member of organizations affect the shaping of the appraisal system are basically neglected. In order to fill this gap, this research adopted a longitudinal perspective to examine how a sub-business unit (SBU) of L Company introduced a new appraisal system. We particularly concerns how this new appraisal system is shaping, why the leader of this SBU introduced a new appraisal system, how employees react to the introduction of this new system, how leaders and employees perceive the change of the appraisal system. A grounded approach was implemented to explore the introduction process of this new appraisal system. Action research was used as the main research method. Information was collected from the participation of the introduction of the new appraisal system based on interview, observation, field log, and internal data of the firm. In this study, we find that the introduction of new appraisal system was driven by the change of external environment and the motivation of the leader of the SBU. Additionally, employees would resist the change of the new appraisal system. Such a resistance was caused by the change of routine, the perception of the reasonability and the sense of equities. The new appraisal system, in essence, was the outcome of the communication between the leader and the employees of this SBU. At last, leader and employees viewed appraisal system differently. The leader saw the new appraisal system as a means to realize strategies, while employees tended to perceive the change of appraisal system as a punishment.

The outsourcing business of the call center grew enormously in recent years, but there were only a few studies focused on the outsourcing employees, especially the turnover problems and related issues, which were deeply concerned by call center supervisors. This research aims to comprehend the turnover problems of the outsourcing employees; in addition, what policies the managers of the call centers adopt to solve the turnover problems. This is a one-case study. The qualitative research methodology follows the principles of the grounded theory. Eight supervisors of different call centers in the company were interviewed during April to November in 2003. The data collection and analysis is a long process of hard working. The research findings can be concluded as the following three aspects. The first is that the high turnover rates of outsourcing employees cause serious problems to various call centers. The unstable manpower quality and the lower department morale would generate inconsistent customer services. It turns out the operation costs increase as well as the outsourcing cost. Because of the strong impact to the operation in each call center, supervisors have adopted several approaches in order to solve the turnover problems in the last few years. The most significant improvement is from the following efforts, such as clarifying the basic salary and benefit for the outsourcing employees in the outsourcing contract, training the back-up personnel, and improving the management skills of the vendors. For the second aspect of the research findings, we conclude that the turnover problem is caused by the internal organizational factors and the external organizational factors. The internal factors contain the working environment associated with the climate, and the administration policy or style. The external factors include the personal concerns of outsourcing employees, and the vendor problems. Furthermore, there are two intervening conditions: employees¡¦ personality and working life quality. That would reinforce the influential factors to the turnover problem and action/interaction strategies. Finally, some of the empirical results of this research are consistent to the literatures about the call center operation. By improving recruit process, employee training and encouraging policy, it may lower the turnover rate that may result in a better quality of customer service, and then have the outsourcing cost down.

In the internet era,many small-and-medium enterprises begin to engage in e-commerce field.There have been many legends of internet in many contries for the last decade. Traditional enterprises set up their websites and step in the e-commerce continuously. They try to create new entrepreneurial stories. In the past, only large corporations have the capability to perform global business and operate twenty-four hours a day. Because of the sufficient manpower and financial resources, they are proactive in the marketing and customer service. However the internet technology and e-commerce have transformed the traditional business model. Nowadays, small or median enterprises.also can reach global customers and perform the transactions through the internet for twenty-four hours a day. This thesis is about the small and median enterprises to start the e-commerce by joining the H company that is an ISP vendor in Taiwan. This is a multiple cases research containing six internet companies. The research method is the grounded theory. After the interviews and associated data collection, we analyzed the data according to the three steps of grounded theory; they are open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The internet venture can be described as three stages: starting a business idea, the start-up process, and the internet venture performance. For those internet startups with satisfactory performance, the research summarizes the following characteristics. The entrepreneurs well understand the web skills for internet transaction. Therefore, they pay much attention to the e-business procedures so that they are able to well maintain their websites,and make the best use of the websites to promote their merchandises and to conduct long-term customer¡¦s relationship.On the other hand,for those internet ventures with worse performances, the entrepreneurs usually know little about the e-commerce. They hardly participate their e-shops and have no time to manage their websites. Because they also have low expectation of the e-commerce, they don¡¦t learn the management tactics of inernet venture. For one extreme case, the entrepreneur has never done anything on his website. In this research, it is found that the internet venture performance is positively correlated with the expectation level. The type of merchandise is not the most critical factor to succeed an internet venture. Whenever the entrepreneurs have the higher understanding of the internet technology and the more participation to conduct the e-commerce activities, the performances are always better. Usually, for those startups with proactive entrepreneurs, they have higher possibilities to gain satisfactory financial performance.

The research was focus on exploring the growth strategy of small and medium business in Taiwan. We are interested in finding the orbit and the logic of Taiwan¡¦ small and medium business, which are growing rapidly and becoming global business recently. However, how to explicit the competitive advantage of business growth is a complicated and tacit task. The methodology of the research applied the grounded theory to do the qualitative analysis. After sampling from Taiwan passive component industry base on the strategic group, we will proceed the in-depth interview with the top management team of the businesses. The first-hand data and information from interview will be analysis, comparative, and coding repeatedly and iteratively. Gradually, the category and abstract concept will be emergent from the outcome of coding. The theory will be constructed from the relation of the concepts until the saturation it reached. The research founded that to catch the "strategic timing fit" was the orbit and the logic of Taiwan¡¦ passive component industry. There were three timing in the rapidly changing and creative environment: a) timing of technological paradigm transition; b) timing of production transition; c) timing of entrance and existence of competitors. The leaders of the firms in the case showed that they built the strategic capabilities and resources within the organization to meet the "strategic timing fit", which was the key factor of rapid growth in the past decade.

Abstract The Chinese government has fulfilled the policy of ¡§revolution opening¡¨ since 1979, and it has taken ¡§outside economy¡¨ and ¡§region incline¡¨ course to fulfill the programming development with ¡§southern, middle, and western¡¨ three-route region. The Chinese government has given the programming development to keep the initiative in its own hands to attract foreign capital, technology, and enterprise management experiences. Such a development has made Chinese economy grow up rapidly, and set up a political economic environment of socialism which has been filled with Chinese characteristics. The Chinese government has carried out the policy of ¡§the ninth five-year national development program prospect goal suggestion¡¨ in 1996. The policy indicates that Shanghai is the nuclear window which can be the connection between China and the world and plans to build Shanghai to be the center of international economy, trade, finance and shipping. Thus, Shanghai has started a diversely development that can attract international enterprises¡¦ investment largely. In the demand of market institution, the process of being developed has faced a serious problem that is a lack of enough enterprise management elites. Education funds and resources, total amounts of high colleges and equipments have shown up the imbalance of the Chinese government. In order to achieve the goal of training professional elites, the Chinese government takes ¡§building nation with technology education¡¨ as a main policy and ¡§distance education¡¨ as a main artifice, and uses communication channel as network and television to train enterprise management elites of ¡§fast, effort-saving, excellent, and few amount¡¨ to make development of human resource in China, which can grow up with Chinese economy at the same time. ¡§Shanghai long-distance education group¡¨ belongs to Shanghai City Government. It is the first long-distance institute allowed by China National Council to set up with grouping. It expands Chinese education resources, merges Shanghai Television University, Shanghai Education TV Company, Shanghai Electric Education Institute, Shanghai Television Secondary Training School, and Shanghai Calculator Assessment Application Office to set up the large information platform, and uses the entire development of Shin-shi Harbor in Shanghai City to provide with the service of elites-training in all kinds of fields, and improve the competitive ability of internationalization after participating in WTO by the way. The thesis takes qualitative research of ¡§grounded theory¡¨ to combine with document probe, personal participation, deep interview, and induces the practical development situation of prospect, mission, goal, and strategy of research objects with ¡§open coding¡¨, ¡§axial coding¡¨, and ¡§selective coding¡¨. The thesis also probes deeply the regulation and market-opening policy of the Chinese government, the evaluation of putting in education market with enterprise resources, vertical and horizontal revolution of internal organization, motivation of learning, position of marketing, institution of competition, effect of internationalization, and potential of development, contrasts with the relationship between dependent and dependent variables to prove those issues near the real situation, and predicts the prospective trend. The thesis is practical and marketable. Besides probing China long-distance education of training enterprise management elites, the thesis also expects to provide Taiwan¡¦s enterprises with some related criterions of investing in China and economic competition and cooperation between Taiwan and China. Moreover, the thesis finds out Chinese electric learning and the market opportunity of electronic commerce. It will be good for integrating the resources between Taiwan and China and it will create a peaceful and prosperous environment.