In today’s constantly changing, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail market environment, it is imperative that retailers should focus on creating a pleasant shopping experience to differentiate their stores in order to achieve a competitive advantage. One of the strategies to achieve competitive advantage can be human variables. This study focused on the influence of human variables on consumers’ shopping experience in FMCG retail stores in Ekurhuleni. Therefore, this study expands the existing knowledge of human variables in the FMCG retail environment. Human variables in the context of this study comprise other customers and sales associates. Each of these human variables is made up of sub-variables. The sub-variables of other customers include crowding and social relations. On the other hand, the sub-variables of sales associates are sales associates’ availability, physical attributes of sales associates and behavioural attributes of sales associates. This empirical study was conducted with 400 FMCG retail stores consumers of the ages between 18 and 60 who reside in Ekurhuleni. The study followed a descriptive research design and quantitative approach in order to address the research objectives. A convenience sampling method and a mall-intercept survey by means of self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in which the Likert scale statements in question 2 - 6 (see Appendix B) measuring different sub-variables of other customers and sales associates were subjected to a Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation. The results of the final EFA involved 13 Likert scale items. The test were conducted to validate the measures of human variables. The Principal Axis Factoring revealed five factors. These factors were social relations, behavioural attributes, crowding, physical attributes and sales associates’ availability. Therefore, reliability tests were conducted on the final items measuring the human variables. The results of this research study indicate that social relations, sales associates’ availability, physical attributes of sales associates and behavioural attributes of sales associates influence consumers’ shopping experience in FMCG retail stores in Ekurhuleni. However, the consumers felt neutral with regard to crowding. The test results of a chi-square for equal proportion revealed that all the five hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5) were supported as the proportions of consumers with regard to the influence of these sub-variables on their shopping experience were statistically different. Furthermore, ANOVA and F-test results for testing whether there were differences between demographics indicated that H1a, H2b and H5c were supported because there were statistically significant differences between genders with regard to the influence of crowding, between age groups regarding social relations, as well as between racial groups with regard to the influence of behavioural attributes of sales associates on consumers’ shopping experience. / Business Management / M. Com (Business Management)

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My thesis studies Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth to redress the unjust neglect of Hartley’s work, and to reach a more positive understanding of Dorothy’s conflicted literary relationship with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I provide a complete reassessment of the often narrowly read prose and poetry of these two critically marginalized figures, and also investigate the relationships that affected their lives, literary self-constructions, and reception; in this way, I restore a more accurate account of Hartley and Dorothy as independent and original writers, and also highlight both the inhibiting and cathartic affects of writing from within a familial literary context. My analysis of the writings of Hartley and Dorothy and the dialogues in which they engage with the works of STC and William, argues that both Hartley and Dorothy developed a strong relational poetics in their endeavour to demarcate their independent subjectivities. Furthermore, through a survey of the significance of the sibling bond – literal and figurative – in the texts and lives of all these writers, I demonstrate a theory of influence which recognizes lateral, rather than paternal, kinship as the most influential relationship. I thus conclude that authorial identity is not fundamentally predetermined by, and dependent on, gender or literary inheritance, but is more significantly governed by domestic environment, familial readership, and immediate kinship. My thesis challenges the long-standing misconceptions that Hartley was unable to achieve a strong poetic identity in STC’s shadow, and that Dorothy’s independent authorial endeavour was primarily thwarted by gender. To replace these misreadings, I foreground the successful literary independence of both writers: my approach reinstates Hartley Coleridge’s literary standing as a major poet who bridged Romanticism and Victorian literature, and promotes Dorothy Wordsworth as one of the finest descriptive writers of nature and relationship.

This study is a cultural and political analysis of the emergence and deterioration of the relationship between George Washington and Thomas Paine. It is informed by modern studies in Atlantic history and culture. It presents the falling out of the two Founding Fathers as a reflection of two competing political cultures, as well as a function of the class aspirations of Washington and Paine. It chronologically examines the two men's interaction with one another from the early days of the American Revolution to the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. Along the way this study highlights the dynamics that characterized the Washington-Paine relationship and shows how the two men worked together to further their own agendas. This study also points to Thomas Paine's involvement with a web of Democratic Societies in America and to Washington's increasing wariness and suspicion of these Societies as agents of insurrection.

This dissertation examines Elizabeth Robinson Montagu's relationships with three men: her husband, Edward Montagu; George Lyttelton, first baron Lyttelton; and William Pulteney, earl of Bath to show how these relationships were structured and how Elizabeth Montagu negotiated them in order to forward her own intellectual interests. Montagu's relationship with her husband Edward and her friendships with Lord Lyttelton and Lord Bath supplied her with important outlets for intellectual and political expression. Scholarly work on Montagu's friendships with other intellectual women has demonstrated how Montagu drew on the support of female friends in her literary ambitions, but at the same time, it has obscured her equally important male relationships. Without discounting the importance of female friendship to Montagu's intellectual life, this study demonstrates that Montagu's relationships with Bath, Lyttleton, and her husband were at least as important to her as those with women, and that her male friendships and relationships offered her entry into the political sphere. Elizabeth Montagu was greatly interested in the political debates of her day and she contributed to the political process in the various ways open to her as an elite woman and female intellectual. Within the context of these male friendships, Montagu had an opportunity to discuss political philosophy as well as practical politics; as a result, she developed her own political positions. It is clear that contemporary gender conventions limited the boundaries of Montagu's intellectual and political concerns and that she felt the need to position her interests and activities in ways that did not appear transgressive in order to follow her own inclinations. Montagu represented her interest in the political realm as an extension of family duty and expression of female tenderness. In this manner, Montagu was able to forward her own opinions without appearing to cross conventional gender boundaries.

The theme of this thesis is to design a managing system of a particular group of financial advisors through managing a development of competences. In this work, you will learn about financial advisory field, the broker group and the specific business team, for which the proposal was created. To be successful as a financial advisor, an associate needs to master variety of competences. The ability to manage the work results is especially connected with manager's skills to control the team members' capability of achieving the targeted results and therefore his ability of controlling their competence levels. The suggested competence model is created for needs of the particular business team and is based on objective methods. The model is further used as a management tool. This is allowed by adding a rule of use and an evaluation system. The design of the system implementation contains a recommendation for introduction into the firm and a financial evaluation of the implementation investments.

Toute législation en matière économique se doit d’être souple et adaptée àl’évolution du monde des affaires. Le droit des sociétés OHADA, de même que celui français,n’échappe pas à ce principe. Très rigide à l’origine, et caractérisé par un ordre publicomniprésent, le droit des sociétés commerciales OHADA est gagné par le mouvement decontractualisation des sociétés, apparu en France depuis les années 1990. Le droit des contratss’est avéré un excellent moyen pour les praticiens d’apporter de la flexibilité au droit dessociétés. Les aménagements conventionnels, ou conventions sociétaires ou encore pactesd’actionnaires permettront aux associés d’adapter les règles légales sociétaires aux besoins deleurs activités économiques. Cession de titres sociaux, droit de vote, pouvoir de représentationdans la société, règlement des différends sont autant de domaines où se manifeste la libertécontractuelle des associés. Au-delà du caractère rigide du droit des sociétés français etOHADA, cette étude permet de rendre compte de l’importance de ces espaces de liberté dontdisposent les associés. Ces pactes d’actionnaires, statutaires ou extrastatutaires, devront êtreencadrés par des critères précis de validité. Aussi, l’efficacité de ces aménagements dépendraen grande partie de la sanction applicable en cas d’inexécution par une des parties de sesobligations. Le dynamisme de la pratique et de la jurisprudence française permettrad’éprouver les solutions posées par le législateur OHADA en la matière. Cette étude participeainsi de l’élaboration d’un régime juridique adapté, permettant de sécuriser ces aménagementsconventionnels, signe d’une contractualisation du droit des société / Any legislation concerning economic matters is expected to be flexible and adaptedto the evolution of business. Company law in the OHADA (Harmonizing Business Law inAfrica Organization) as well as French company law, cannot be excluded from this principal.Although it was very strict to begin with, and characterized by omnipresent public order,company law in the OHADA was caught up by the contractualization movement whichappeared in France in the 1990s. Contract law turned out to be a perfect means forpractitioners to bring flexibility to company law. Contracting adjustments, companyconventions or even shareholder agreements enable shareholders to adapt their legal companyrules to their economic needs. Transferring titles, voting partners, ensuring the power ofrepresentation inside the company, or settling disagreements, are some examples amongst thevariety of situations where the contracting freedom of partners can be seen. Despite therigorous characteristic of French and OHADA company law, this study puts forward theimportance of spaces of freedom that partners can use. These shareholders agreements, eitherstatutory or extra statutory, will be dependent on precise validity criteria. Consequently, theefficiency of these adjustments will mainly depend on the sanction implemented when one ofthe parties does not execute the required obligation. The strength of both the practice andFrench case law will enable to test the proposals set down by the OHADA legislator.Therefore this study will contribute to the development of an adapted judicial system whichwill permit to secure these contracting agreements, as signs of the contractualization ofcompany law

Expanding urbanization, climate change, and population growth contribute to increased transmission and spread of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses), many of which cause severe disease in humans. Pathogenic arboviruses include dengue, Zika, tick-borne encephalitis, and sindbis viruses, which together threaten more than half the global population. Thus, there is a constant need for safe, specific, and sensitive molecular tests to identify early-stage infections for accurate diagnosis and molecular epidemiological data for disease prevention and control. The study tested the biosafety of using FTA™ cards when working with pathogenic arboviruses by conducting an infectivity assay using sindbis virus. Conditions for RNA extraction and storage of arboviruses on FTA were analyzed by measuring viral RNA (vRNA) stability using a SYBR-Green, Pan-Flavi RT-qPCR method composed of degenerate primers able to detect a variety of flaviviruses. Data from a Pan-Flavi RT-qPCR study comprising of 222 clinical blood and serum samples collected from a 2018 dengue virus outbreak in Hanoi (Vietnam) was analyzed to establish applicability of FTA for molecular epidemiology and diagnosis. Results showed that sindbis virus infectivity was inhibited by FTA-adsorption. FTA-adsorbed arboviruses were extracted with the highest yield using Trizol extraction and were preserved at storage at 4-20ºC for up to 30 days. The results showed that clinical blood samples acquired higher yields of vRNA for molecular testing than serum samples and that it may be possible to perform sequencing for genomic analysis. The study suggests that FTA cards may facilitate the storage and transportation of adsorbed arboviruses for downstream molecular epidemiological and diagnostic tests.

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