[pt] Esta tese tem como objetivo propor uma reflexão teórica sobre o discurso biográfico e sua aplicação na própria produção de uma biografia. Para isso, está dividida em duas partes. Na primeira, são expostos os referenciais teóricos que tentam mapear a complexidade da construção deste tipo de discurso, levando em conta que estamos lidando com múltiplas e flexíveis redes de interpretação e discussão. Na segunda parte,elaboramos uma biografia em fractais de Adolpho Bloch, com o propósito de abordar as múltiplas e complexas identidades do biografado. Nossa proposta busca fugir da ineficácia de explicações unilaterais e totalizadoras e defende que as interpretações tenham como referência a complexidade. / [en] This dissertation intends to propose a theorical reflection about de discourse of biographies and its aplication by producting a biography. In order to do this, the dissertation has two parts. In the first one, we expose the theorical references that try to map the complexy of this kind of discourse construction, taking the account that we are working with multiplies and flexives nets of interpretation and discussion. In the second part, we ve made a fractal biography of Adolph Bloch, with the intention of study the multiples and complex identities of him. Our porpouse wants to escape from the ineficience of the total and unilateral explanations, and bases its references in the complexity of the interpretations.

The understanding and conceptualization of cities and its constituent systems such as transportation and healthcare as open and complex is shifting the debates around the technical and communicative rationales of planning. Viewing cities in a holistic manner presents methodological challenges, where our understanding of complexity is applied in a tangible fashion to planning processes. Bridging the two rationales in the tools and methodologies of planning is necessary for the emergence of a 'non-linear rationality' of planning, one that accounts for and is premised upon complexity. Simulations representing complex systems provide evidence and support for planning, and have the potential to serve as an interface between the more abstract and political decision making and the material city systems. Moving beyond current planning methods, this thesis explores the role of simulations in planning. Recognizing the need for holistic representations, the thesis integrates multiple disparate simulations into a holistic whole achieving complex representations of systems. These representations are then applied and studied in an interactive environment to address planning problems in different contexts. The thesis contributes an approach towards the development of complex representations of systems; improvements on participatory methods to integrate computational simulations; a nuanced understanding of the relative value of simulation constructs; technologies and frameworks that facilitate the easy development of integrated simulations that can support participatory planning processes. The thesis develops contributions through experiments which involved problems and stakeholders from real world systems. The approach towards development of integrated simulations is realized in an open source framework. The framework creates computationally efficient, scalable and interactive simulations of complex systems, which used in a participatory manner delivers tangible plans and designs. / <p>QC 20170602</p>

Bakgrund: Sedan slutet av 1980 - talet har skolmarknaden genomgått stora förändringar i och med konkurrensutsättningen, kommunaliseringen av skolan, friskolereformen och det fria skolvalet. Från att tidigare endast varit en del av den offentliga logiken har den kommunala gymnasieskolan nu även blivit en del av marknadslogiken vilket har medfört ett ökat behov för skolan att marknadsföra sin verksamhet. Att kombinera två institutionella logiker kan ge upphov till institutionell komplexitet vilken är viktig för organisationer att förstå och hantera för att på så sätt kunna överleva på marknaden. Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att bidra med ökad kunskap om hur den institutionella komplexiteten tar sig uttryck i marknadsföringsarbetet i den kommunala gymnasieskolans kontext. Genomförande: Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i det fenomenologiska perspektivet och är en kvalitativ enfallsstudie med ett iterativt angreppssätt. Studiens urval består av fem strategiskt utvalda respondenter inom den valda fallorganisationen och data har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Slutsats: Den institutionella komplexiteteten tar sig uttryck i marknadsföringsarbetet genom att den skapar utmaningar som uppvisas i organisationens interna dynamiker missnöje, gemensamma värderingar, maktförhållanden och handlingsförmåga. Organisationen hanterar dessa utmaningar till en viss grad, men för att ytterligare minska den institutionella komplexiteten måste organisationen inse och acceptera de konkurrerande logikernas samexistens. En prioritering av logikerna behöver göras för att därefter forma en marknadsföringsstrategi och därmed agera proaktivt. En vidare rekommendation är att anställa ytterligare en resurs till att enbart arbeta med marknadsföring för att på så sätt även kunna minska den institutionella komplexiteten. / Background: Since the end of the 1980s, the school market has undergone major changes in the face of competition, the municipalization, the reform of the private schools and the free choice of school. Before the reforms, the public school has only been a part of the public institutional logic but is now also a part of the market institutional logic which has lead to an increased need for the public school to market their business. Combining two institutional logics may lead to institutional complexity which is important for the organization to understand and manage in order to survive. Aim: The aim of the study is to contribute to an increased knowledge of how the institutional complexity is expressed in the markering within the public school context. Completion: The study takes its starting point in a phenomenological perspective and is a qualitative single case study with an iterative approach. The study´s sample consists of five strategically selected respondents within the chosen case organization and data has been collected through semi structured interviews. Conclusion: The insitutional complexity is expressed through the marketing and challanges are perceived in the internal dynamics of the organisation which are interest dissatisfaction, value commitment, shared values and power dependencies. The challenges are handled by the orgaisation to a certain extent, but in order to further reduce the institutional complexity, the organization has to realize and accept the competing institutional logics coexistence. A priorititazion between the logics must be made so that a strategy can be fomulated which will help the organization to act in a more proactive way. Further, a recommendation to hire a person responsible for marketing is given in order to reduce the institutional complexity, institutional confusion anc enabling a proactive way of working.

Pseudorandom sequences have many applications in fields such as wireless communication, cryptography and built-in self test of integrated circuits. Maximal length sequences (m-sequences) are commonly employed pseudorandom sequences because they have ideal randomness properties like balance, run and autocorrelation. However, the linear complexity of m-sequences is poor. This thesis considers the use of one-dimensional Cellular Automata (CA) to generate pseudorandom sequences that have high linear complexity and good randomness. The properties of these sequences are compared with those of the corresponding m-sequences to determine their suitability. / Graduate

La performance sportive est influencée par de nombreux facteurs, lesquels s’influencent eux-mêmes réciproquement. La complexité de ces facteurs et de leurs relations ayant été négligée par les chercheurs, l’objet de la présente thèse était de rendre compte de cette complexité, à l’aide de méthodes empruntées à l’approche dynamique. Nous avons pu montrer que (a) les joueurs de football les plus experts construisent leur représentations du jeu en cours (les liens entre actions réalisées sur le terrain) avec des niveaux de complexité les plus élevés; (b) en aviron, une organisation motrice complexe, impliquant des interactions entre de nombreuses composantes, sous-tend la génération des mouvements de rame en cours; (c) le momentum psychologique en aviron se caractérise par des changements psychologiques et de performance qui s’inscrivent dans l’histoire de la performance; et (d) la performance excellente se développe à partir des interactions en cours entre les facteurs personnels et environnementaux couplés. Ces différents éclairages montrent l’intérêt d’une approche de la complexité pour comprendre les processus de performance. / The processes involved in human performance seem inherently complex and dynamic. For example, in order to “read the game”, a soccer player must integrate all the information from the ongoing movements and positions of team members, the opponents, the relative positions between them, where the ball is located, etc. Furthermore, an individual’s motor performance, which is particularly crucial in sports, depends on various simultaneous processes at different levels of the motor system: Cells, muscles, limbs, the brain, etc. In addition, individuals and teams do not perform in a void, but in achievement contexts, in which they strive for their goals, and their psychological states and performance may fluctuate as a function of many personal and environmental factors. For example, an athlete may enter a positive or negative spiral when perceiving that he or she is progressing or regressing in relation to the preferred goal or outcome (e.g., the victory). This perception of progress and regress, and the positive and negative psychological and behavioral (performance) changes accompanying this perception, are called positive and negative psychological momentum (PM; e.g., Gernigon, Briki, & Eykens, 2010). Positive and negative PM can emerge from one’s (or the opponent’s) mistakes, referee decisions, crowd behaviors, one’s psychological and physical state at a certain moment, and the interactions between these factors (Taylor & Demick, 1994). In addition, switching from performance on a relatively short time frame to a long-term process, individuals develop their abilities over multiple years, and hence over many practice or competition occasions. Ultimately, very few individuals develop world-class performance (e.g., winning Olympic medals), and their excellent abilities develop out of a combination of a variety of personal and environmental factors in interaction (e.g., motivation, coaching, family support, practice; Simonton, 1999). The current dissertation aims to capture complex dynamic performance-related processes, including the topics illustrated above. This means that we examine complexity at different levels (psychological, behavioral), time scales (from one training or competition session up to a career), as well as the interrelation between the processes across different levels and time scales.

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) augments classical query answering in databases by including domain knowledge provided by an ontology. An ontology captures the terminology of an application domain and describes domain knowledge in a machine-processable way. Formal ontology languages additionally provide semantics to these specifications. Systems for OBDA thus may apply logical reasoning to answer queries; they use the ontological knowledge to infer new information, which is only implicitly given in the data. Moreover, they usually employ the open-world assumption, which means that knowledge not stated explicitly in the data or inferred is neither assumed to be true nor false. Classical OBDA regards the knowledge however only w.r.t. a single moment, which means that information about time is not used for reasoning and hence lost; in particular, the queries generally cannot express temporal aspects. We investigate temporal query languages that allow to access temporal data through classical ontologies. In particular, we study the computational complexity of temporal query answering regarding ontologies written in lightweight description logics, which are known to allow for efficient reasoning in the atemporal setting and are successfully applied in practice. Furthermore, we present a so-called rewritability result for ontology-based temporal query answering, which suggests ways for implementation. Our results may thus guide the choice of a query language for temporal OBDA in data-intensive applications that require fast processing, such as context recognition.

Principales places d’importations et de transformation des énergies d’origine fossile, les espaces portuaires concentrent des défis de mutations industrielles, de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et de diversification du bouquet énergétique. En mobilisant les cadres théoriques de l’écologie industrielle et de la complexité, ce travail de de thèse vise à à mieux comprendre et caractériser les processus d’adaptation actuels développés au sein de ces territoires. Appréhendé dans une acception large de son périmètre, le territoire portuaire se révèle être un formidable terrain d’expérimentations de nouvelles pratiques basées sur une plus grande coopération entre acteurs, à la croisée des chemins entre une économie circulaire globale et une écologie industrielle locale. Partant d’un retour d’expériences mené à l’échelle internationale de démarches d’écologie industrielle, ayant permis la mise en évidence de différents modèles territoriaux d’organisation, ce travail de recherche a ensuite comparé l’évolution socio-écologique de trois territoires portuaires européen et asiatiques. Si la dynamique de métropolisation semble apparaître comme une constante dans la plupart de ces grands espaces côtiers, celle-ci contribue aussi à la complexification de la matrice territoriale portuaire. De nouvelles approches d’ordre organisationnel viennent ainsi compléter les évolutions technologiques. Dans une troisième partie, l’étude de l’espace portuaire de Marseille-Fos a ainsi permis de mettre en lumière un phénomène d’interactions fonctionnelles opéré au sein du territoire, au profit de sa transition progressive vers une société à bas-carbone. / One of the major issues facing our industrialized societies is the energy transition, which induces major industrial and social transformations. Port and harbor areas, which are strategic places concerning import and transformation of fossil fuels, concentrate these industrial challenges, dealing with mitigation of emissions of greenhouse gases and diversification of energy mix. By mobilizing the theoretical frameworks of industrial ecology and complexity, this PhD work aims to better understand and characterize current adaptation process developed within these territories. In this work, we consider the industrial, urban and agricultural subsystems present in a port area. When doing this, the port area is proving to be a formidable field of experimentation of new practices based on greater cooperation between players at the crossroads between a global circular economy and a local industrial ecology. Starting from an international feedback which enabled the identification of different territorial organization models, this research then compared the socio-ecological evolution of three European and Asian port areas. If the dynamics of metropolisation seem to appear as a constant in most of these large coastal areas, it also contributes to the whole complexity of the port territorial matrix. Indeed, new organizational approaches now complement technological developments. In the third part, the study of the port area of Marseille-Fos has enabled to highlight a phenomenon of functional interactions operated within the territory for the benefit of its gradual transition to a low-carbon society.

More than ever, organisations are recognising that they need to build and sustain healthy relationships with stakeholders in order to survive, grow and be successful. When an organisation is threatened by environmental changes – such as a crisis or competition as a result of information technology developments, increased customer demands, new legislations, even the threat of AIDS – the need for better communication increases. Successful organisations use the potential of communication management, not only to ease the transformation process, but also to improve their relationships with key stakeholders and the environment, and uphold their reputation. In this sense, communication practitioners are playing managerial, ethical and strategic roles during times of instability because change complexities involve having to deal with stakeholders’ trust and commitment. This thesis attempts to clarify the growing importance of communication management, particularly the role of relationship management. Proposed here is a different way of thinking about change communication strategies and building healthy relationships when organisations and their stakeholders have to make or adjust to change. Existing literature shows that most organisations tend to take a planned approach to change which is structured, consists of specific goals and objectives, and tightly controlled by management. Management sees its role within this paradigm as reducing conflict, creating order, controlling chaos and simplifying all the complexities created by the environment. Possible outcomes are predicted and alternatives for action are planned. Structures determine the information needed, and perceptions are managed by feeding the ‘right’ information or withholding information that might give rise to disorder and chaos. An alternative paradigm is the postmodern perspective, drawing specifically from chaos and complexity theories. These ‘emergent’ approaches to management consider organisations as living and holistic systems, more organic and ecological, seeking less control and more freedom. Organisations that operate like living systems are open, flexible, creative, caring and willing to adjust their strategies to adapt to the environment. While strategic planning is still considered important within the positivistic paradigms of management, it is nevertheless moving from the basic premise of control and prediction to scenario planning and processes of open communication, facilitation and networking. The emphasis is on relationship building via the full participation of the stakeholders involved. This two-way, symmetrical approach is also considered the more ethical. When an organisation is confronted by a problem, and if the constraints on communication are low, the organisation’s publics (employees/stakeholders) tend to feel connected to the problem and want to do something about it. Their need to actively seek information about the problem opens up many communication potentialities, including a willingness to change their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. The result is a culture of shared responsibility, participation in decision-making, open and honest communication, which leads to a positive working climate and higher productivity. So an important assumption that can be made here is that an empowered public will strive for a positive relationship with the organisation. It can further be derived that a positive relationship between an organisation and its publics, particularly its internal stakeholders (employees), will lead to greater communication and a greater willingness to change. These assumptions were tested in this study. The research questions were: (1) What is the connection between the communication management strategy followed during change in organisations and the relationship and behavioural effects on internal stakeholders (employees)? (2) What are the effects of the communication management strategy followed during high change on relationships and behaviours with internal stakeholders (employees)? The methodology was an experimental approach which allows for the manipulation of independent variables and measurement of influences thereof on dependent variables. The independent variables were the communication and change strategies followed in organisations; the dependent variables were the relationship characteristics (trust, control mutuality, commitment, and satisfaction). The use of scenarios was most effective in this experimental context because different scenarios can project different outcomes. The researcher, therefore, had the opportunity to analyse the effects of the change strategies, as well as the changes that would take place. Data collection from 9 different organisations resulted in, more or less, 10–40 employees from different levels of management and non-management of each organisation. Each respondent evaluated 2 different scenarios, which resulted in 372 evaluations in total (186 for each scenario). The scenarios addressed changes in general and were about various issues. Basic descriptive statistics, as well as hypotheses testing using MANOVA (to test for meaningful differences between groups), were conducted. Other data analyses included testing for validity and reliability, analysis of variance and the Scheffe’s Test for significance of correlations. The findings showed significant proof of the internal validity of the experimental design used, indicating that: (a) the experimental manipulation (the two different change management strategies) had a definite effect on the relationship that internal stakeholders would have with organisations, and that except for the size of the organisation and the educational level of the employees, no other variables had an influence; (b) strong correlations exist between the strategy followed during change and the resulting projected relationships with internal stakeholders of the organisation; (c) high participation during high change led to significantly more positive overall relationships between an organisation and its internal stakeholders, as compared to low participation with a planned approach. In brief, the findings support a strong participative, two-way public relations strategy to be followed when organisations go through major change processes. The significance of these findings calls for a new paradigm in strategic communication and relationship management. Change cannot be solely based on plans and projections, but rather on understanding the complexities of situations and weighing different options available. Well-developed organisational change, therefore, is a strategically managed process that takes into consideration all the possibilities of change in the environment. Traditional studies and models of change management have either ignored the importance of strategic communication as a contribution to successful change, or saw communication as only a tool in the first stages of ransformation. However, to facilitate successful strategic change management is to recognise communication management as contributing significantly to guiding the complete transformation process in building important relationships internally and externally. Alternative emergent approaches to change recognise that change and, more specifically, transformation should be viewed as a continuous process linking to the complexities of the changing market, nature of work environments, new management approaches, organisational boundaries and relationships. Chaos and complexity theories, in particular, stress the importance of interconnectivity between subsystems of societies and organisations. Central to these theories is the observation that relationships built on open communication have the potential of producing something greater for an organisation. The complex and dynamic nature of the environment, structural alteration, and the need for employee flexibility are all recognised. Another important insight is the view that organisations can create visions and perform strategic planning around scenarios that guide actions. Another way of adapting to change is to influence back on change, that is, steer change through relationship building and participative decision-making. To become a true learning organisation requires the building of knowledge architecture with a strong supporting technical infrastructure. The main function of the communication manager, therefore, is to establish networks and structures for the collection and dissemination of information, and ultimately, the translation to knowledge. Communication leaders can connect teams and workgroups by driving communication and building trust. Involving staff in change management decision-making stimulates debate and criticisms, thus creates opportunities for innovation and revolutionary change. These are some of the main preconditions for sustainable change, and all can be achieved through sound communication management and the building of relationships with stakeholders. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Communication Management / PhD / Unrestricted

La présente thèse étudie comment certaines organisations parviennent à accorder des logiques institutionnelles différentes dans le contexte de partenariats intersectoriels. L’étude utilise des données longitudinales sur trois partenariats entre entreprise à but lucratif et entreprise à but non lucratif. Les partenariats étudiés s’attaquent à trois causes différentes : maladie infantile, éducation, et conditions de travail. Les données proviennent de sources multiples, notamment des entretiens approfondis, des sources telles que les archives organisationnelles, les rapports annuels, des rapports officiels sur des projets, et des contenus de médias sociaux. Le premier article décrit comment les logiques contradictoires d’un partenariat entre entreprise et ONG (organisation non gouvernementale) peuvent être réconciliées. Le deuxième article de cette thèse étudie le résultat de la confrontation des logiques institutionnelles des organisations engagées dans ces partenariats, et identifie deux scénarios : l’hybridation et la coexistence. L’article explore en outre la transformation des ONG d’organisations informelles en organisations plus formelles du fait de leur interaction avec les entreprises. Le troisième article analyse du point de vue théorique la combinaison des logiques institutionnelles au niveau de l’échange entre les partenaires. En prenant en compte 1) la tension entre les logiques institutionnelles, et 2) l’interdépendance résultant des échanges entre les organisations considérées, on aboutit à une typologie et des propositions qui prédisent les résultats de la confrontation. Globalement, cette thèse montre que la dynamique de réconciliation dans les situations de complexité institutionnelle peut être mieux comprise en observant comment les partenaires négocient la portée de leurs échanges dans le partenariat, et comment l’obtention des premiers résultats dans le cadre du partenariat influence les phases ultérieures de la collaboration. Les résultats de la recherche enrichissent la littérature sur les collaborations inter-organisationnelles ainsi que celle sur les logiques institutionnelles parce qu’ils soulignent l’importance de la dépendance des ressources dans l’interprétation de la complexité institutionnelle. / This dissertation investigates how organizations reconcile different institutional logics in the development of cross sector partnerships. It is based on longitudinal data from three cases of partnership between firms and NPOs. These partnerships addressed three distinct sets of social challenges: childhood disease, education and labor force conditions. The data is collected from multiple sources, including in-depth interviews and archival material such as organizational records, annual reports, formal project reports, and social media content. The first essay explains how reconciliation between competing logics of partners can be achieved in a firm-NPO partnership. It focuses on the mechanisms that enable partnership to exist despite different institutional logics of partners. The second essay of this dissertation explores the outcome of competition between the institutional logics of the organizations involved in these partnerships and it identifies different scenarios, namely hybridization and co-existence, as the result of confrontation between different institutional logics of partners. It further explores the transformation of NPOs from informal entities into a more formally organized entity as a result of their interaction with firms. The third essay of this research theorizes the impact of institutional logics at the level of exchange between partners. Taking into account 1) the tension between institutional logics and 2) the interdependence of organizations resulting from their exchanges, it develops a typology and propositions predicting the outcomes of the confrontation. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that the dynamics of reconciliation in situations of institutional complexity can be better understood by examining how partners negotiate the scope of activities in their partnership, and by exploring how the development of valuable outcomes for both parties during the initial stages of the partnership impacts subsequent stages of the collaboration. The research findings contribute to the literatures on inter-organizational collaboration and institution logics by highlighting the role of resource dependence in understanding institutional complexity.

This study investigates influences on the sustainability of a computers-in-schools project during the implementation phase thereof. The CALIS Project (1992-1996) is the unit of analysis. A qualitative case study research design is used to elicit data, in the form of participant narratives, from people who were involved in the regional management of the Project, as well as teachers who implemented the Project in their classrooms. These narratives are then analysed from a post-modern perspective (Kvale, 1996). The analysis reveals personal, programmatic, physical and systemic influences on the Project. These influences can be identified on all structural levels of the education system (Mooij and Smeets, 2001). Furthermore, metaphoric patterning across narratives is analysed in terms of implicatures, postulated by Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995). Analysis of the data provides evidence in support of Fullan’s (2005) definition of sustainability as a quality of dynamic, complex systems. Personal, programmatic, physical and systemic influences on the Project are found to be interrelated on, and across, structural levels of the system. In addition, influences are dynamically related to the changing Project in particular host environments (Cavallo, 2004). The resulting ecological or viral growth is characteristic of complex systems, where further development is indeterminate. / Thesis (PhD (Curriculum Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted