This study focuses on the cybernetic complementarity of stability and change in family therapy. Stability and change involve both the client and therapist, and is a selfreferential process where the observer is part of that which is observed. One couple was involved in ten therapy sessions. During the action research cycles of planning, acting and reflecting, the principles of systems theory, cybernetics and second cybernetics were implemented. A team consisting of one lecturer and two students were actively involved throughout all the phases of the research process. During therapy, the therapist focused on stability to facilitate change in the structure of the couple's organizational system. The research served as a good example of how punctuation of two complementarity processes (stability and change) can enable and empower clients to autonomously reflect on their own behaviour, and to make decisions regarding patterns they would like or feel ready to change. / Social Science (Mental Health) / Thesis (M. Soc. Science)--University of South Africa, 2001. / M.A. (Social Science (Mental Health))

Thesis (M.Tech.: Commercial Administration)- Dept. of Office Management and Technology, Durban Institute of Technology, 2004 x, 100, [21] leaves / This study aimed to identify the factors that affect change in attitudes of managers reaching positions of authority in Higher Educational Institutions. Traditionally, managers sat in their office and managed organizations. Today the market place demands something different and there is greater emphasis on leadership qualities for those in positions of authority. Today, leaders are needed who have sound principles, ethics, sound values, integrity, human and communication skills. Individuals in leadership positions who lack the skills listed, experience problems leading and managing a modern organization.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate how the complementary concepts of stability and change could manifest during the therapeutic process, specifically with clients showing the symptom of dependency. The study is guided by a literature study on systems/cybernetic theory with a focus on the cybernetic complementarity of stability and change. A brief description is provided of the symptom of dependency from a more traditional lineal perspective as well as a non-lineal (systemic) perspective. A single case study is utilized to describe how both stability and change could manifest in the therapeutic process. From this description the relevance and usefulness of addressing both stability and change during the therapeutic process emerge and are outlined. / Social Work / M. A. (Social Science Mental Health)

Titel: “Ska vi ha sex?” - En kvalitativ studie om mottagandet av Brottsoffermyndighetens kampanj “Av fri vilja”     Författare: Emma Nilsson & Amanda Forsberg   Kurs, termin och år: Examensarbete C-uppsats MK094G, VT19   Antal ord i uppsatsen: 14 241   Problemformulering och syfte: I juli 2018 ändrades sexualbrottslagsstiftningen i Sverige och arbetet med att implementera den så kallade “samtyckeslagen” påbörjades. Brottsoffermyndigheten har fått i uppdrag att implementera lagändringen och gör detta i form av kampanjen “Av fri vilja”. Idag kämpar olika slags organisationer med att nå fram genom det oändliga kommunikationsbruset där allt fler kanaler och budskap tävlar om människors uppmärksamhet. För att lyckas förändra människors attityder gentemot utvalda fenomen är det avgörande för organisationer att skapa budskap som går igenom bruset, fastnar hos mottagaren, blir ihågkommet och slutligen förändrar mottagarens attityd enligt sändarens önskemål. Studien undersöker hur genus påverkar mottagandet av Brottsoffermyndighetens kampanj “Av fri vilja”.   Metod och material: För att effektivt kunna besvara studiens syfte och frågeställningar har det konstruerats fokusgrupper för att undersöka attityder gentemot samtycke före och efter ett stimuli i form av Brottsoffermyndighetens kampanjfilmer “Av fri vilja”. Urvalet bestod av unga vuxna mellan 18-25 år. Deltagarna i fokusgrupperna har sedan fått ta del av en enkät som har undersökt relationen till kampanjens ambassadörer samt i vilken grad budskapet fastnar och blir ihågkommet av mottagarna.   Huvudresultat: Resultatet visade att det finns indikationer för vissa skillnader i hur män respektive kvinnor påverkas av kampanjen. Även om det finns vissa motsägelser gentemot de teoretiska resonemangen så visar resultatet i huvudsak att tidigare medvetenhet om och engagemang för samtycke kan avgöra hur kampanjen tas emot. Detta beror i stor grad på genus då de kvinnliga deltagarna har haft ett större intresse för samtycke än de manliga deltagarna.

Les informations négatives sur les produits et les entreprises auxquelles les consommateurs ont accès ne sont pas toujours fiables et claires. Cette thèse étudie comment l'orientation régulatrice des consommateurs influe sur leur réaction par rapport aux informations négatives comme une fonction de l'ambiguïté des informations. Nous suggérons que lorsque les informations négatives sont ambigües, les consommateurs avec une orientation prévention, par rapport à ceux avec une orientation promotion, seront beaucoup plus influencés par les informations et susceptibles de changer en conséquence vers le bas leur attitude envers la marque. En revanche, lorsque les informations négatives sont claires, à la fois les consommateurs orientés promotion et ceux orientés prévention seront très influencés et susceptibles de revoir leur attitude à la baisse par rapport à la marque en question. De plus, nous alléguons que la diagnosticité perçue des informations exerce un rôle médiateur sur les effets proposés. Plus particulièrement, en présence des informations négatives ambiguës, l'orientation prévention (par rapport à l'orientation promotion) a tendance à amplifier la diagnosticité perçue des informations qui, en retour, accentue les effets que les informations négatives auront sur la révision de l'attitude. Quatre études expérimentales ont testé et confirmé ces hypothèses à travers trois scénarios ambigus différents : (1) quand les informations négatives proviennent d'une source dont la crédibilité est incertaine (étude 1), (2) quand la raison pour laquelle un produit défectueux est ambiguë (étude 2) et (3) quand les évaluations de produit sont très contradictoires (études 3a et 3b). / Negative information about products or companies that consumers encounter in the marketplace is not always certain and clear-cut. This dissertation explores how consumers' regulatory focus orientation affects their response to negative information as a function of information ambiguity. We propose that under the situations where ambiguity is present in the negative information, prevention-focused compared to promotion-focused consumers will be more strongly persuaded and exhibit a large downward revision of their attitude toward the brand. In contrast, under the situations where the negative information is unambiguous, both promotion and prevention-focused consumers will be strongly persuaded and revise accordingly their attitude toward the brand. Moreover, we argue that perceived diagnosticity of the information mediates the proposed effect. Specifically, in the presence of ambiguity in negative information, a prevention focus (vs. a promotion focus) leads to an inflated perceived information diagnosticity, which, in turn, accentuates the impact of negative information on judgment revision. Four experimental studies tested and confirmed these propositions in three different ambiguous scenarios: (1) when negative product information comes from a source with uncertain credibility(Study 1); (2) when the cause of a reported product failure is ambiguous(Study2), and (3) when product reviews are highly conflicting (Study 3a and Study 3b).

This thesis aims to present and explore a mathematical model of attitude change within society. Building on the foundations set up by Lave and March [2] and Eriksson and Strimling [1] we propose a model which includes the possibility of having an overt as well as covert opinion by any individual on a given issue. We lay out the verbal and mathematical specifications for our model, interpret them in the framework of discrete-time dynamical systems and simulate the behavior using Matlab programming. Finally, we propose three conjectures based on the results of our simulations and proceed to subject two of them to further analytical treatment.

This thesis examines how cultural perceptions of Wellington’s environment changed from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The historical material shows how clearing the New Zealand landscape of its forest cover in the early settler years reflected a particular cultural perception of the New Zealand bush. By 1900, this cultural perception had changed indicating that not only was the New Zealand landscape different, but New Zealand society had changed. These changes can be seen in the geographic historical accounts of clearing New Zealand’s bush and the parliamentary debates of the 1875 Forest Act, 1885 State Forest Act and the 1903 Scenery Protection Act. The anthropological theories of dwelling, taskscape, phenomenology of landscape and the hybridity of nature are used as a contemporary synthesis of ideas to examine cultural perceptions of the Wellington bush. An anthropological approach is also used to bring together diverse historical material in a way that allows these ideas to be applied. Cultural perceptions of the Wellington landscape can be understood in the way the bush was cleared for pasture, how the landscape was depicted in paintings and photography and in the case study of the establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The thesis argues that cultural perceptions can be appreciated historically by understanding how people lived within the Wellington landscape, and how this was reflected in attitudes towards the New Zealand bush. Cultural perceptions of New Zealand’s bush were a combination of existing cultural attitudes, the practicalities of living within the New Zealand environment and a direct perception of the bush itself. It is the shifting influence of all three of these aspects that determines overall cultural perceptions of the bush in any particular period in New Zealand’s history. The establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush shows how the cultural perception of Wellington’s bush had changed from seeing it as an obstruction covering potential farmland to having a defined place and purpose within the Wellington landscape.

This study has adopted the metaphor of �mind-forged manacles� to explore adolescent transformation within an educational context. It does this by examining the experiences of two groups of people who participated in an intensive, one-off personal development program for adolescents, known as Discovery. The first study involves secondary school students for whom the program was part of the school curriculum. The second study consists of an older group of people who did the program during their adolescence and outside the formal education system. The third study is a contemplation of transformation derived from my experience as researcher during the course of completing this thesis. In an attempt to reflect the perspectival worldview from within which the study is created I have drawn on a range of theorists. To integrate their ideas I created three different �lenses� or ways of viewing the data. The first lens is developed from consciousness theory, the second from process philosophy and complex self-organising systems theory, and the third from individual humanistic psychology. The educational pedagogy is holistic and embraces developmental models of thinking and learning. The study uses participant reflection to argue that a program of intentionally focussed challenges, combined with the support that enables these challenges to be successfully met, can be transformational for many young people. It suggests that the complex postmodern world requires teachers to be aware of their own and their students� consciousness, and demands learning experiences that are deliberately focussed on helping the process of consciousness transformation rather than only on achieving predetermined outcomes. Transformation is understood as a shift to a different order of consciousness in which it is how one sees rather than what one sees that changes. With each shift towards a new order of consciousness the mind-forged manacles are loosed and individuals accept increasing responsibility for their lives and how they live them. Educational programs can be developed to assist this process.

<p><strong><p>Abstract</p><p>Attitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian’s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden. We used three theories to explain our aim. These are Jürgen Habermas theory of social communication, theory about professions and Christian Grönroos theory of Service Management.</p><p>We found that our informants both see the physical meeting with the library and the social exchanges with the librarians as important parts of the user’s experience of the library.</p><p>The three libraries that we visited work in different ways to improve their customer service. One library has developed a policy for concrete ways to improve the social exchange with the library user. Another library is working with a policy and the third library handle attitude questions more implicit in the daily work and in a specialised group. We could see that the informants who worked at the library which had a policy and an under-standing of the importance of customer service as a central part of the organisation regarded those questions as being very important. Some informants could not see how customer service could get improved in another way than just discussing these issues in groups, meetings or in connection to seminars.</p><p>The changing of attitudes of members of the staff can be complicated however because it, at some level, is about individual changes. We believe that a person has to be motivated to make these changes. To improve this motivation the organisation has to create opportunities for the staff to critically reflect upon their working situa-tion. In that way we believe that the staff can experience security and motivation to do a good job which then has a positive impact on the customer service provided. The acknowledgement of the importance of customer service within an organization has to engage everybody and the whole organisation at all its levels.</p><p>We think that customer service in the library setting will become more important in the future as a response to the technical evolution and all the automated elements in our society. The importance of actual meetings in-crease as our society increasingly communicates via digital means.</p></strong></p>

Purpose: To investigate how attitudes of hockey supporters change towards a sponsoring company depending on fan type and team commitment. Background: Sponsorship has become a widely accepted and used as a communication tool. In Sweden, sponsoring is a large part of all advertising conducted in the country. Previous studies within the subject of sponsorship show that generally sponsorship is a good affair for companies that engage in it. When it comes to sports sponsorship, hockey is the most developed sport in Sweden. Sports sponsorship is also an area where negative effects could occur due to sponsoring and the fact that many people are very passionate when it comes to sports and their favorite teams. Considering the massive amounts that companies invest in sponsoring it is of great interest to further investigate the effects of such activities. There is quite little research conducted within sports sponsoring in Sweden and therefore it is of interest both from businesses as well as the academic world to investigate the effects of sponsorship in a Swedish context. The main focus of this study is to investigate possible positive and negative attitudes towards sponsoring companies that sponsor different teams as well as effects on brand recall based on fan commitment. Method: In order to answer the purpose of this thesis a deductive approach was applied by collecting quantitative data from an experiment, control group and a follow-up study. Theories and previous research in the subject area was used in order to establish hypothesis that later has been tested.  The data retrieved through the research was processed and analyzed using SPSS. Conclusion: The results show that attitudes towards the sponsor are positive when associated with the supported team and negative when associated with the rival team. Fans viewer frequency did not have a significant impact on positive attitudes towards the supported team while fan commitment had a strong impact on negative attitudes towards the sponsor of the rival team. Brand recall was higher with highly committed fans and is correlated with fan commitment. It is concluded that negative attitudes are easily invoked by fan commitment while it is not as easy to build positive attitude with repeated viewings.