Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Rouse / Workers are increasingly exposed to dangerous work environments that pose significant risks to their well-being. Scholars have sought to improve these environments through illuminating practices that organizations use to increase safety. Yet not all dangers can be eliminated. Since workers continue to face dangers, it is important to understand how workers sustain engagement in dangerous work over time. I explore this question through an ethnography of snowmakers – individuals who make snow at ski resorts. My findings shine a light on two important factors in sustaining engagement in dangerous work: auxiliary routines and enactments of masculinity. First, I found that snowmakers sustained engagement in dangerous work by actively altering their work experiences through two primary auxiliary routines: play and respite. These routines created positive experiences in the workplace, yet paradoxically often made the work more dangerous. Second, I found that the introduction of female snowmakers led men to take different paths to navigate enactments of masculinity in the presence of women by either protecting women through enactments of masculinity through chivalry or supporting women. By focusing on the processes that enable workers to sustain engagement in dangerous work, this dissertation illustrates how workers balance danger and positive work experiences through auxiliary routines and how workers navigate enactments of masculinity in dangerous male-dominated workplaces. In doing so, this research builds new theory in dangerous work, auxiliary routines, and masculinity literatures. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

Les périphrases verbales hésitent entre lexique et grammaire. Nous avons choisi d'analyser celles construites sur "aller", "venir" et "être en train de" sous un angle diachronique, de l'origine à nos jours. Ainsi, divers thèmes seront abordés : la question de la grammaticalisation, le choix entre auxiliaire et semi-auxiliaire, l'affaiblissement sémantique, la question de l'auxiliarisation...Les formes prépositionnelles sont étudiées, avec un souci particulier accordé au rôle des prépostitions en question. Nous interrogerons également le statut de ces formes verbales par rapport au système des temps, et nous verrons dans quelle mesure elles sont en concurrence avec certains de ces temps. Par ailleurs, nous nous demanderons si ces périphrases sont à même d'intégrer le système verbal français et, le cas échéant, si elles peuvent acquérir le statut de temps à part entière. / Verbal circumlocutions hesitate between lexicon and grammar. We analyze those construct on the verbs "aller" "venir" and "être en train de" under the angle diachronic, from its origins to the Present day. So, diverse themes will be approach : question of grammaticalization, choice between auxiliary and semi-auxiliary, semantic weakening, question of auxiliarization...The prespositional forms are study, which a particular concern granted in role of presposition in quest.

This thesis comprises a regional synthesis of the diversity of the human experience in West Central Scotland during the Mesolithic period (c.7875-c.4200BCE). The research area incorporates the modern local authorities of Ayrshire, Dunbartonshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. The regional profile has been constructed from a comparison of the lithic assemblages from mainland coastal and inland sites in a transect (c.2550km2) from Ballantrae and Girvan on the Ayrshire coast inland to Loch Doon, South Ayrshire and beyond to the Daer Valley in South Lanarkshire. Three other sites from South Lanarkshire outwith the transect have also been included in the study, namely Climpy, Powbrone and Weston. Reference has also been made to sites on the islands of the Firth of Clyde and at Loch Lomondside. The archaeological and environmental evidence from the Ayrshire coast has been considered, supporting the interpretation of probable sedentism at Girvan during the Late Mesolithic. The theoretical structure can be distilled into two main themes, namely variation and technology which are folded into a cohesive framework by reference to the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, and in particular his 1968 work Difference and Repetition. The concepts of repetition, difference and becoming have given meaning to variation as something more profound than a mere contradiction. In this thesis, these concepts have been recast to incorporate the chaîne opératoire. Firstly, variation in people and things are forged in the social dimension through repetition. Secondly, technology is understood as inseparable from the agent, where the people and things are both subject and object, and things may be understood as detached parts of people. It is by conjoining these enhanced constructs of variation and technology that people and things as technology inscribe the landscape to create a meaningful taskscape; referring to the notion proposed by Ingold in 1993. These concepts as becoming have been used to explore notions of identity, group identity, social boundaries and taskscape as inseparable qualities of Mesolithic lifeways. Detailed technological analysis of the surface collections and excavated assemblages comprised within this study has confirmed the continuity of lithic practice across the greater part of the Mesolithic period. Subtle nuances have been recorded in technological choices made, and also in the composition of the lithic assemblages. The main variation lies in the choice of raw materials. The distinctions are more profound than the dominant use of flint at the coast and chert inland. Marked variations in both the colour and original cortical surface of raw materials are identified suggesting differentiated resources across the landscape and different groups of hunter-gatherers. The presence of flint at the inland sites is interpreted as representative of pioneer incursions. The variations in the assemblages of West Central Scotland, together with the cautious use of ethnographic analogy allow consideration of the cosmological significance of raw materials and the materiality of stone. The notion that the use of specific raw materials is culturally proscribed has been instrumental in the interpretation of hunter-gatherers groups who are either predominantly practising sedentism at the coastal lagoonal habitats of Girvan, or creating new group identities and adopting more mobile lifeways inland.

Many organisations view leadership as a feature of competitive advantage and competent leaders as instrumental in achieving organisational performance and productivity. In the hotel industry, there is a strong relationship between leadership culture and leader behaviour with employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity that has a subsequent impact on service quality, profitability and growth. Consequently, many hospitality organisations invest significantly in the development of their leaders using a variety of internal and external Human Resource Development HRD interventions and practitioners. A key challenge for HRD practitioners in this setting is to design and deliver effective leadership development interventions that provide relevant learning that is transferred to the workplace for individuals and management teams. However, the learning approach is not the only concern and transfer is a crucial element of effectiveness, particularly where the practice setting of the workshop, where skills and knowledge are gained, is very different from the business setting where they are to be applied and so the concept of far-transfer must be factored in to the design and delivery. This case study reviews the evolution, design, delivery, evaluation and training transfer of a large scale Leadership Development programme for managers in a single organisation in the hotel industry, carried out by an independent HRD consultant practitioner and submitted as a thesis for a Practitioner Doctorate in Personnel and Development. The participants were all members of management teams operating within the UK and Continental Europe. This action research account treats the stages of the programme as four separate yet connected cycles, each with discrete practitioner-researcher concerns. Researcher and practitioner questions arising out of an initial diagnostic and alignment activity led to programme design and delivery considerations. These were followed by evaluation and subsequent transfer enquiries. Through these cycles, core questions at the heart of HRD consultant practice in a real world situation were explored. These relate to creating and providing effective interventions that facilitate the required sustainable behaviour changes within the client system, recognising that the criteria for how effectiveness is defined, identified and evaluated are multi-variant and highly likely to be unique in each case. A key outcome is the development of the concept of Inspirational Leadership as a potentially relevant model for developing leader effectiveness in this setting underpinned by Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientation (FIRO) Theory as the central behavioural model. A structured Training Intervention Framework (TIF) is also proposed as a holistic methodology for the diagnosis, design and delivery of similar interventions in order to create a robust strategy and tactics for training interventions to occur. This is presented as a theoretical contribution to professional practice for HRD practitioners for future interventions in similar settings.

This socio-palaeographic thesis maintains that behind the uniform appearance of Roman army writing was a particular, dedicated training. Focussing on the third century Dura-Europos, it uncovers evidence for the thorough schooling given to the clerks of the resident Cohors XX Palmyrenorum enabling them to fulfil their administrative duties. These include maintaining efficient documentation systems and preparing a range of accurate, legible texts, and the clerks were trained to produce a repertoire of standard military scripts. Additionally other soldiers and the more general public were taught to read and to understand, to varying degrees, but the clerks, distinct, were specialist writers who found dignity in the work that they did. This dissertation, a preliminary study, draws throughout from the camp’s rich epigraphic and papyrological evidence. It sets out the context in which clerical soldiers worked and the evidence for army literate education and then introduces Roman writing, its form and development generally, before analysing in detail the letter-forms used in one particular standard hand over the decades the cohort’s documents span. In this hand, the well-known development out of Old Roman Cursive is presented and discussed. A brief additional chapter presents the possibility that military clerks also produced camp signage.

The connecting premise of this study is that the explanation of human action, much of which involves conflict in various forms, is distinctive. It must address the singularity of actions (their attachment to specific moments) and its contingency (that different actions could plausibly have been taken instead). Both stem from the involvement of time in human action, such that its explanation must adopt the form of historiography. Part One argues that the authority of explanation in the physical sciences does not extend to human action as it derives from successful physical demonstration in experiment or industrial replication, not from special epistemological warrant, processes inapplicable to human action; that the distinguishing involvement of human consciousness and the will to act introduces a particular awareness of the passage of time that confers timeliness to actions, while precluding full knowledge of the consequences of actions; that the social nature of human action involves the emergence of diverse groups that generate complex divisions between ‘we’ and ‘they’ that form the basis for conflict over the consequences of action; that resolving the conflict of warfare produces collective agreements to avoid future conflict; that this conflict can reach considerable levels of brutality and lethality even outside warfare; and that moral codes that might constrain such conflict have limited effectiveness. Part Two illustrates the relevance of perspectives in reducing the complexities of reality to facilitate action, referring to categories appropriate to the emergence of Scottish Jacobitism in the late seventeenth and early eighteen centuries: dynastic, religious, economic and military. It also suggests how contingency could be addressed through conjectures about the actions that might have been taken but were not. Part Three suggests a basis in the role of expectations for the tendency of human perspectives on their context of action to change radically, and for actions to change accordingly as situations are seen ‘in a different light’. At various points in the study use is made of an analogy drawn between the adversarial advocacies presented at a trial by jury and the general explanation of human action. This illuminates both the fact that different perspectives on the same evidence can yield contrary explanations and that all explanation of human action necessarily confronts a problem of reflexivity: the perspectives of agents have to be represented through the perspectives of those seeking to explain their actions.

Evolution in the world of work has led to the adoption of outsourcing. These evolutions have not being without challenges hence indicating the need for greater attention to be paid to the complexities surrounding the potential impact of outsourcing on employees. This study focused on the effects of outsourcing on the employees' perception of the psychological contract. The study explored whether applying a relational content analysis model will give better insight into the complexity of the psychological contract and provide in-depth understanding of what influences the psychological contract. Key relational content analysis concepts and tools such as; reactions and coping strategies, diagrammatic representations and tabular mapping were used. Thirty (30) interviews from five departments (Property management, IT and Administration, Brokerage, Marketing and Valuation) of two estate management organisations were conducted. Data gathered from these interviews were analysed to draw out the reactions and their resulting responses between employees and the organisation. The findings showed that the outsourcing experience was perceived as a violation of the psychological contract by a majority of employees and an in-depth analysis model indeed provides in-depth understanding of the effects of outsourcing on the employees' perception of the psychological contract and experience of violation. Through the implementation of research approaches the study fully addressed the research questions meeting the requirements for the research objectives.

This thesis examined the factors of L1, input frequency and emergent productivity in child L2 acquisition. This thesis is the first study to look at the interplay of L1 and usage factors in children learning a L2. The focus of the thesis was an investigation of these factors in the acquisition of article and auxiliary systems of English, which have been proven to be problematic areas for both L1 and L2 learners. While accounts of L1 transfer in L2 are better developed in generative theory, the roles of input frequency and emergent productivity are better developed in constructivist theory. The thesis assessed these two approaches against the data from L2 children from various L1 backgrounds. The children’s accuracy and error patterns with articles and auxiliaries were investigated. The main findings were as follows. L1 typology facilitated the acquisition of the structure of the NP and VP, but it only extended as far as the awareness of the presence of the functional morpheme (article or auxiliary). L1 transfer effects were observed only in the first 1.5 years of acquisition, which could be due to the unstable L1 knowledge in child L2 learners. The use of articles and auxiliaries was also influenced by their input frequencies and distribution, as more frequent forms were supplied more accurately and were substituted for less frequent forms. Different forms of articles and auxiliaries emerged separately and followed different paths of development. It was argued that they were acquired piecemeal and that productivity with these forms emerged gradually. It was concluded that constructionist theories were better supported by the data, since the findings on input frequency and productivity were not compatible with the generative approach, and L1 transfer was incorporated into the constructionist approach to account for the findings. It was argued that by the onset of acquisition, child L2 learners had established constructions in their L1 that were abstract enough to be transferred to L2 and did not rely on lexically specific information. As all children learned specific morphological forms of L2 piecemeal, in doing so they demonstrated input effects that held across all L1 backgrounds.

Until today the offshore wind power has grown in a steady pace and many new wind farms are being constructed around the globe. An important factor that is investigated today in the industry are the security of power supply to the equipment needed for controlling the offshore system during emergency situations. When a offshore wind farm is disconnected from the external grid and an emergency case occur the wind turbine generators lose their ability to transfer power and they are forced to be taken out of operation. As there are a number of loads in the wind turbines (navigation lights, sensor- and communication-apparatus, ventilation- and heating equipment etc.) they have a load demand which must be supplied in emergency mode. The German Transmission System operator (TSO) TenneT GmbH has set a requirement that the wind turbines is to be supplied by an auxiliary power supply (APS) in 12 hours and therefore there is need for a long-term auxiliary power supply system. This master thesis was assigned to investigate the most feasible APS-system. From the study of a number of different APS's one concept was chosen. This was the diesel gen-set solution placed on an offshore substation at sea. The system was modeled in the software DIgSILENT PowerFactory where a load flow analysis validated the calculated data and a study of the impact of  transients in the system was performed.

A new class of oxazolidinone chiral auxiliary has been synthesized from various α-amino acids, incorporating a perfluoroalkyl functional chain as a soluble support. This feature allows the chiral auxiliaries to be employed under standard solution-phase reaction conditions, and rapidly purified from crude mixtures using fluorous solid phase extraction (FSPE). Our investigation of these new materials has been divided into two main sections. To obtain the chiral auxiliaries in multi-gram quantities a synthetic protocol was designed, where efficiency and reproducibility were the primary objectives. Meeting these goals required an extensive study of the reactivity of perfluoroalkyl nucleophiles. This study identified a versatile and scalable protocol for the perfluoroalkylation of the required amino acid starting materials. These results have allowed us to design a general, five-step synthetic pathway to create the fluorous chiral auxiliaries quickly and effectively. The new auxiliaries were then applied in several model reactions, specifically chosen to examine the reactivity and behavior of these compounds. In particular, the auxiliaries were tested for their stereoselectivity, recyclability, and ease of purification, in a series of Aldol reactions, 1,3 dipolar cycloadditions, and radical conjugate additions. This set of model reactions, combined with the facile and efficient synthesis clearly demonstrates that these new chiral auxiliaries are useful alternatives to the non-fluorous oxazolidinone chiral auxiliaries currently employed in stoichiometric asymmetric syntheses. / February 2006