Working hours has become, besides unemployment, the most important labour market issue in the European Union (EU) and other European countries during the 1990s. The aim of the thesis is to discuss, analyse and evaluate how the issue of working hours legislation is resolved in Finland, a Finland that differs significantly from previous decades. The main concepts in the thesis are corporatism and corporate pluralism, both underlining consensual policy making. The thesis focuses mainly on a third level of consensus, labelled policy consensus. The overall research question is what an in-depth sectoral analysis of working hours legislation can tell us about labour market policy making in Finland in the 1990s. The empirical material is based on both official and unofficial material from the decision making processes, complemented by interviews with the major participants. Although the main focus is on Finland, comparisons with Sweden and the United Kingdom are made. The result of the analysis is that the development of working hours legislation, and Finnish labour market policy making overall in the 1990s, is characterised by one-dimensionality. The one-dimensional politics brings with it some side effects, the most important being an intolerance of dissensus and opposition in the name of consensus. The consensus politics in Finland are therefore no more than a rule by the more powerful. The normative justification of the inclusion of main economic interest groups in terms of their knowledge of the issues is questionable, since knowledge has become overshadowed by power. The use of the corporatist concept if also inappropriate when it comes to Finnish labour market policy making, since it is debatable whether labour market policy making in Finland has adhered to any distinct forms of the concept.

No description available.

The prevalence of overweight and obesity is on the rise. Being overweight or obese is associated with serious medical, psychological, and social consequences. The main social consequence of being overweight or obese is stigma, which is detrimental to overweight and obese people. Three types of obesity stigma reduction interventions have been proposed and tested: changing attributions, increasing empathy, and social consensus. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of these interventions and to determine the effectiveness of an intervention that incorporates major elements of the three interventions. Three hundred eighty one University of Manitoba undergraduate students participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to one of five intervention groups: status quo group, changing attributions group, increasing empathy group, social consensus group, and multi-level intervention group. The interventions involved presenting participants with information intended to influence participants’ perceptions of overweight and obese individuals. Pre-test and post-test ratings were obtained on participants’ attributions about weight, feelings about obese people, and endorsement of positive and negative stereotypes of obese people. Analyses of these ratings revealed that the empathy and multi-level interventions are the only interventions that improved attributions, feelings, and endorsement of stereotypes, and this suggests that the multi-level and empathy interventions were the most powerful. On the other hand, the attribution intervention had the largest overall effect and affected attributions, feelings, and negative stereotypes. Therefore, there are reasons to believe that the attribution intervention was the most powerful in this study. Participants were subsequently asked to rate a target overweight person. Half of all participants were informed that the target was overweight because of medical reasons, while the other half were informed that the target was overweight because of regular overeating and a sedentary lifestyle. Surprisingly, the intervention groups did not significantly differ in target ratings on any variable. Reasons for this lack of effect are discussed. A main effect did occur in the ratings of the target for controllability information. Specifically, participants who were informed that the target was overweight for uncontrollable reasons (e.g., glandular disorder) reported more favorable ratings in liking her and not blaming her, as compared to participants who were informed that the target was overweight for controllable reasons (e.g., regular overeating and sedentary lifestyle). Ratings of the target’s characteristics and physical attractiveness did not change with this manipulation. Overall, this study provided logical and consistent results, while adding specific information to the literature. Further, this study offered a new, effective intervention for obesity stigma reduction, as well as providing some support for the empathy and attribution interventions. These three interventions proved to be the strongest in this study, and perhaps they will one day be used as part of a more global intervention to reduce stigma and discrimination toward overweight and obese people.

This thesis presents a Fuzzy Consensus Building Framework (FCBF), which enables construction project parties to align their teams on their roles and responsibilities early on in their projects. The framework introduces a model that (1) incorporates consensus of construction project teams in aggregating their opinions to decide on the party responsible for every standard task of a construction project; (2) classifies the quality of experts in the decision making process by weighting their responses during aggregation, based on their attributes; and (3) resolves residual conflicts between project teams on their perceived shared tasks, using a consensus reaching process. A template of project and construction management tasks is extracted from relevant standard guidelines and interviews with industry peers. Different extents of the roles and responsibilities of the owner and contractors are described using seven linguistic terms. A modified similarity aggregation method (SAM) aggregates experts opinions in a linguistic framework, using a consensus weight factor for each expert. A fuzzy expert system (FES) determines an importance weight factor for each expert, representing expert quality; opinions are aggregated using this factor and the consensus weight factor. Based on the aggregated opinions of experts, the tasks are classified into three responsibility lists: the owners, the contractors, and the shared responsibility list. The fuzzy preference relations consensus (FPRC) approach is applied to the tasks of shared responsibility, and a linguistic consensus measure is applied to resolve potential conflicts between team members on their perceived shared tasks. Using a case study approach, the FCBF is applied to aid a project owner organization in the field of oil and gas to determine its roles and responsibilities in a customized project delivery system, called owner managing contractor (OMC). The FCBF contributes to the construction industry by solving a fundamental problem for project owners: it helps identify and reduce potential conflicts over the extent of project teams responsibilities prior to the construction stage. It also provides an improvement over previous consensus-based approaches, which rely on a subjective assessment of experts importance weights in aggregating their opinions, and it modifies the SAM to adapt it to a linguistic environment. / Construction Engineering and Management

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1976. / Bibliography: leaves 52-54.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-94). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-183). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [86]-90).

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Saarbrücken--Universität des Saarlandes, 1989.

Thèse (Ph. D.)--Université Laval, 2004. / Bibliogr.: f. 194-201. Publié aussi en version électronique.