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The purpose of this study is to describe South Sudanese refugee women's perceptions of access to, use of, and their culture's influence on their access to and use of healthcare after resettling in the United States. Background: The prolonged civil-war and famine in the African nation of Sudan has displaced millions of women and children over the last two decades. Refugee women who are resettled to the United States must make adjustments to learn how to live in American society and culture. There is little known about healthcare access and use by South Sudanese refugee women in the United States. Conceptual Framework: The theory of Cultural Universality and Diversity was the conceptual framework guiding the study. Methods: Qualitative description method was used to describe Sudanese refugee women's perception of their access to, use of, and cultural influences on access and use of healthcare after resettling in the United States. Results: South Sudanese refugee women's perception of accessing healthcare is understood through themes: Women's means of accessing healthcare, types of healthcare institution. Perception of healthcare use is understood through the relationship between these themes: Care of self, concerns of the women, and the experience of using healthcare. Perception of cultural influence on accessing and using of healthcare is understood through these themes: Coping, South Sudanese healthcare culture, and role of family. Implications: The findings of this study may facilitate understanding healthcare access and use by refugee women. The knowledge from this study can lead to the development of culturally congruent interventions for resettled refugee women, in hopes of improving their access to and use of healthcare.

The present study focuses on 24 personal narratives told by eight highly proficient bilingual L1-Russian, L2-English speakers (NRS) in comparison to 24 personal narratives told by eight native English speakers (NES) in an effort to not only discover any structural differences that may be revealed through statistical analysis, but also to discover evidence of previously documented Russian and American cultural schema in the narratives through qualitative inquiry and narrative analysis. Although much has been written concerning Russian culture, cross-linguistic differences between Russian and English, and Russian English language learners these concepts have never been synthesized and applied to a study of Russian-English bilingual narratives in English in order to discover if the cultural schema and linguistic tendencies from L1 are maintained in the second language. The statistical structural analysis included in this study did not reveal any differences between the NES and NRS narratives. On the other hand qualitative analysis of cultural schemas revealed significant transfer of Russian cultural schema in the Native Russian Speaker participants' L2 narrative production. The Russian speakers were found to maintain their distinctly Russian emotional expression. Influence of cultural schema on L2 production was also visible in the thematic differences between the two sets of stories. The NES responses to each prompt were thematically quite similar, and differed noticeably from the themes of the NRS stories. Similarly, Hofstede's dimensions of national culture also revealed some differences between the two groups. However, theRussian cultural schema proposed by Croft, triplicity, was not found to be moreprominent in the NRS narratives than in the NES ones. In conclusion, the Native Russian Speakers in this study showed significant transfer of their L1 cultural schema when speaking their L2. The findings of this study have revealed the high likelihood of influence and transfer of cultural schema, even when bilingual English language speakers have achieved a very high level of English language mastery. However, this cultural influence on L2 production does not impinge on competence of bilingual speakers when speaking English.

For most of Rwanda's post-independence past, the country has been marked by ethnic feuding, mass population movements and long exiles in neighbouring countries, and civil wars that culminated in the genocide in 1994. As this research shows in its review of literature of the history of Rwanda's post-independence period, the civil wars of those with ethnically-differentiated access to power and wealth have had social-, cultural- and economic effects. How has foreign culture - acquired by Rwandaliens - affected indigenous Rwandan culture, and its influence thereof on the present leadership styles? This thesis assesses the most common leadership styles in companies / organisations in Rwanda, in order to build a theory of the predominant leadership styles and culture in Rwanda in the context of the post-genocide era.

Conflict management style preference and use of mediation within the Black population in the United States (US) is not well understood. The purpose of this study is to find out if there is a significant difference in conflict management style preference and use of mediation by African Americans and Afro-Caribbean (Jamaicans) living in the United States. Based on Hofstede's theory of individualism-collectivism cultural orientation, the US culture emphasizes individualism while Jamaica’s culture emphasizes collectivism. Responses were collected from 108 African American and Jamaican respondents anonymously, of which 96 were deemed usable. The Rahim (1983) Organizational Conflict Management Style Inventory was used to collect data on the five styles and was analyzed with the appropriate statistic test. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the text-based data gathered from the two open-ended questions at the end of the survey. The thematic analysis revealed two major themes: personal and workplace relationship conflict situations. It is recommended that future study includes three groups of Blacks instead of two groups. The preferred conflict management style from the combined group result is the compromising style. A significant difference was found in the obliging and compromising conflict management styles between African Americans and Jamaicans. No significant difference was found between the groups’ conflict management style and willingness to use mediation. The open-ended questions and individual textual description of conflict experience and willingness to use mediation were used to clarify the quantitative results and provide a better understanding of the similarities and differences among people of African descent from different cultural orientations.

There is widespread concern in many Western countries over the declining levels of uptake of science at the upper levels of high school. In contrast, Taiwanese senior high school students have a greater tendency to choose science rather than social studies and achieve highly in international comparative tests. The well-developed technology industries in Taiwan also suggest that science education in Taiwan has been a success. However, the attitude toward school science, unlike the promotion of scientific attitudes, has received little attention in Taiwanese schools. This paper firstly investigates 729 students’ attitudes toward both school and real-world science. The results show that the high level of uptake of science is not strongly associated with positive attitudes towards science as a subject. Few differences were found in the affective responses to school science between the Natural Sciences programme (NSP) and Social Studies Programme (SSP) students, with only a minority expressing a positive attitude to science in both cases. The research findings challenge the simplistic linking of attitudes and uptake in this context. This research then seeks to understand this unusual phenomenon by exploring the nature of and influences on students’ subject choice decision-making. Through focus group discussions with students and interviews, this research explores the sources of students’ perceptions of science and social studies, identifying influences derived from the teaching of school science itself but also those arising from ‘external’ contexts of wider society, including cultural and economic influences. The results show highly complex relationships between students and the surrounding actors, i.e. parents, teachers and the media. The findings also demonstrate possible explanations why students are doing well in school science and in industry but have not produced prominent discoveries or achievements in the world’s academic research. Drawing on Taiwan’s distinctive socio-cultural context, this research provides a different perspective from that in western science education research literature on the factors that shape science uptake.

Title : Cultural influence on decision making in project team : The case of telecommunication industry Level : Master Thesis of Business Administration: Business Management Authors : Etchu Oben Agborsangaya and Maryam Taheri Supervisor : Professor Akmal Hyder Date: 2013 June Purpose : In the last few decades, the effects of globalisation has changed the way many companies carry out their activities. Greater emphasis are now placed on project management in a dynamic and effective atmosphere. As a result of this, companies try to understand how culture influences decision making in project teams in different countries. The purpose of this research is to investigate how culture influence decision making in project teams through an empirical study of telecommunication industry in Nigeria and Sweden by using Hofstede's framework on cultural dimensions. Research Questions : (1) How does culture influence decision making in project teams? (2) what are the similarities and differences in decision making in project teams between Nigeria and Sweden? Approach : The research design for this study includes literature review and qualitative method. The primary data was collected using semi-structured interviews with project managers and workers in project teams. The secondary data was collected through articles, journals and books. Data from the findings were analysed using coding. Results & Conclusions : It was found that culture influence decision making in project teams. In Nigeria, decision making in teams is more relax type because people try to avoid conflict by not hurting another person’s feelings while in Sweden decision making is more of a participating type in which each member in team has to be consulted and a consensus is arrived at before making the decision. Nigerian team values respect for senior colleagues and prefer hierarchy where codes of conduct exist, formality and inflexibility at work when compared to Sweden. 3 Contribution of the study : We recommend that prospective project managers of the mixed Swedish-Nigerian project team should encourage a participative involvement of all the members of teams in decision making and high degree of flexibility at work. This will lead to an efficient and effective project teams. The fact that this study was based on an important field of studies - project management, we could recommend that the impact of culture on project management could be explored in future research. Key words: Culture, project management cultural influence, decision making, project team, Telecommunication industry, Sweden and Nigeria.

With the technological development of e-commerce and the increasing necessity to use online transactions, more and more online electronic payments systems have appeared to meet global demand. Furthermore, user acceptance of these kinds of systems is different for individuals in different cultures, and culture could be a factor that has great potential impact on predictions of user acceptance. The world has evolved to a degree where transactions occur between different cultural environments. This study aims to provide an understanding of how culture affects users’ intentions of electronic payment systems. Based on the purpose of this study, a questionnaire has been conducted in the interest of collecting data for statistical purposes. To make more sense about the results, a case study on PayEx (an electronic payment system) in Linnaeus University has been conducted through analysing twenty users’ interview records. Finally, this study expands on user acceptance research through looking at the role of culture and social influence. In practice, the results of this study give the thought for accurate forecasting of user acceptance towards electronic payment systems with considering cultural influence.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate how national culture influence internal communication of university.   Methodology: A qualitative approach was chosen to conduct this research. Semi structured interview were taken. Interviews were taken by face to face, skype and phone call. Ethical approach was considered while interpreting the data.   Findings: Our study showed that high power distance has negative impact on internal communication. We found that high power distance creates block between supervisors and subordinates to share information. Thus it creates barriers for effective communication flow and hinders organizations development. Our study also found that power distance is available in both countries but the degree of power distance is varied from one to another. In our study we also found that Individualism and collectivism has effect on internal communication. Our study showed that Individualistic or collectivistic decision making process of university effect internal communication of university in both countries. Previous study suggests that high power distance country tends to be a collectivistic country. Though the result is not always true. However, we found that true in our study.   Contribution: The study adopts employee centric approach to explore the effects of culture on internal communication. This is an important contribution to previous researches that focused on internal communication from different perspectives, inclusion of cultural differences on internal communication has added value to the research field. Moreover, this paper contributes insights in cultural differences as well as employee perspective and by doing so it suggests theorist and practitioners that how internal communication can relate to employee’s engagement in different cultural perspectives.   Limitations: The major limitation of this study was that this study only focused on Hofstede’s power distance and individualism as cultural dimensions. Other dimensions were not focused. Another limitation of this study was the sample size. The sample size is too small to represent the whole population in regards to university perspective.   Suggestions for further research: Additional qualitative or quantitative methods can be required to explore the findings in different aspects. The study focuses on the educational institute. The findings may vary in accordance with the different industry and sectors. The study provides the guidelines regarding the impact of cultural differences on internal communication. Future research could consider other important factors that may have profound impact on internal communication in different settings.

This master thesis compares management accounting (MA) in China and Germany. It starts by analyzing the conceptual development over time. Afterwards, it categorizes the spread of the methods and explains conceptual differences in more detail. Subsequently, macroeconomic factors that have influenced the development of MA are described, evaluated, and future implications for the further development of MA are derived. For this purpose a traditional literature review is used. The MA practice in Germany is further disseminated than in China. Moreover, German management accountants are characterized as business partners while Chinese management accountants are perceived as analysts and inspectors. Other conceptual differences in terms of MA are the data source, the overall orientation, country-specific techniques, and the organizational structure. Most of the differences between German and Chinese MA can be allocated to political, economic, foreign, educational, academic, and cultural influences. The future implications for the further development depend on each factor individually.