This thesis addresses the relationship between formal and informal institutions in the European Parliament from a new institutionalist perspective. This is done in order to fulfill the aims of the thesis, which are: (1) to broaden our understanding of informal institutions and institutional change in the EP as well as (2) develop our understanding of the new institutionalist approaches: rational choice institutionalism, sociological institutionalism and historical institutionalism. The method of analysis is qualitative and the main material consists of 14 interviews with Swedish members and former members of the 4th to the 7th EP. The empirical investigation shows that the EP should be interpreted as institutionalized, but some informal institutional changes have, however, occurred due to changes in formal institutions. The enlargements and treaty changes have changed not only how the parliamentarians work in informal network, but also the internal selection procedures of the rapporteur and the internal view on the EP versus the European Commission and the Council of Ministers. The two central claims of this thesis are: (1) that new institutionalist approaches go well together and should be used parallel in order to get a comprehensive understanding of political phenomena and, (2) that the EP is characterized both by institutionalization and informal institutional changes and that these interplay with each other.

This thesis demonstrates relations among health, social network, ADL and patterns of care in the oldest old guided by a resource theoretical model. The analyzed data are based on two studies: the Nona study, a longitudinal study of 157 individuals aged 86 to 94 years, and the H70 study, a longitudinal study of 964 individuals aged 70 at baseline. Data were collected by interviews and to some extent in the H70 study, medical exams and medical records. The results demonstrate that perceived resources seem to affect patterns of care to a higher extent than the more objective resources in the sample of the oldest old. On the other hand, sociodemographic variables such as gender, marital status and SES, in addition to the more objective resources of having children nearby and the number of symptoms of illness predicted institutionalization during a subsequent 30-year period from the age of 70. The proportion of elderly persons’ institutionalization was further significantly higher than that generally found in cross-sectional studies. ADL was one of the strongest predictors for both use of formal care and institutionalization in both samples, indicating an effective targeting of the formal care system in Sweden. The care at end of life in the oldest old is challenged by the problems with progressive declines in ADL and health, which makes it hard to fit in the dying oldest old in the palliative care system. There is a need to increase the knowledge and the possibility for care staff to support and encourage social network factors and for decision-making staff to consider factors beyond ADL.

Submitted by Edileide Reis (leyde-landy@hotmail.com) on 2013-05-06T12:58:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Nascimento, Neusa Marques.pdf: 647134 bytes, checksum: 2c20f46e6830aef8c4bae86ba00ca5ab (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora Lopes(silopes@ufba.br) on 2013-05-16T17:29:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Nascimento, Neusa Marques.pdf: 647134 bytes, checksum: 2c20f46e6830aef8c4bae86ba00ca5ab (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-16T17:29:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nascimento, Neusa Marques.pdf: 647134 bytes, checksum: 2c20f46e6830aef8c4bae86ba00ca5ab (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Esta dissertação analisa concepções históricas e práticas educativas destinadas ao contingente de adolescentes, circunstancialmente institucionalizados em abrigo, em função da perda, definitiva ou temporária, dos vínculos familiares. Este estudo busca desvelar e refletir o impacto dos múltiplos processos educativos que visam à garantia da efetiva assunção da cidadania desses adolescentes, no momento do anúncio da sua desvinculação da instituição de abrigo, em decorrência da maioridade civil. Utilizando o referencial metodológico da descrição etnográfica, este estudo analítico sobre a adolescência inserida no contexto contemporâneo do abandono infanto-juvenil, no município de Salvador, compromete-se a fornecer um relato da expressão de adolescentes no momento do anúncio, expresso explicita ou implicitamente, da desvinculação da instituição de abrigo onde se encontram. A busca da compreensão dessa prática se deu através da lente da historicidade do abandono, a partir da transformação paradigmática do menor, como objeto de compaixão/repressão, presente no Código de Menores de 1927 e, na sua reformulação, em 1979, para uma nova concepção, a de sujeitos de pleno direito, através da Lei 8.069/90, do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (ECA). Através dessa legislação, o adolescente, teoricamente, passa a ser concebido como cidadão, fazendo-se necessário redirecionar a prática educativa, instituída com crianças e adolescentes circunstancialmente institucionalizados, para uma práxis educativa, que possibilite a educação cumprir seu papel de garantir a formação cidadã necessária ao convívio social igualitário. / Salvador

O autismo é caracterizado por um prejuízo na tríade de desenvolvimento nas áreas de socialização, cognição e linguagem, o que nos remete à necessidade de se avaliar todos estes aspectos e a inter-relação entre eles. Outro aspecto importante é a questão de várias pesquisas abordarem mudanças nesses aspectos ao longo do tempo, sendo necessários estudos com adolescentes e adultos autistas para melhor caracterização de seus sintomas e da evolução observada no desenvolvimento. O objetivo geral dessa pesquisa foi traçar o perfil comunicativo de um grupo de autistas adolescentes institucionalizados, considerando os aspectos sócio-comunicativos, sócio-cognitivos e comportamentos. Foram sujeitos dessa pesquisa oito adolescentes autistas institucionalizados que foram avaliados durante seis meses a respeito do perfil funcional de comunicação, do desempenho sócio cognitivo, da escala de adaptação sócio-comunicativa e da escala Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC). Os resultados obtidos foram submetidos à análise estatística não paramétrica. Foi observada evolução quanto ao número de atos comunicativos e à proporção de funções comunicativas interpessoais entre o primeiro e o segundo momento de coleta de dados (três meses) e quanto ao desempenho sócio-cognitivo em situação espontânea entre o primeiro e o terceiro momentos (seis meses). Outro resultado importante foi que níveis de maior ou menor adaptação sócio-comunicativa não determinam melhor desempenho e/ou evolução nos resultados do perfil funcional de comunicação e que há relação entre maior pontuação no ABC com menores escores no desempenho sóciocognitivo assim como nos atos comunicativos produzidos. Conclui-se que é possível observar evolução na linguagem na faixa etária da adolescência em sujeitos autistas. Os aspectos sócio-cognitivos, linguagem e socialização estão relacionados também à maior gravidade do quadro / Autism is characterized by impairments in the three areas of development: social, cognitive and linguistic. It makes it essential to assess all these aspects and the relations between them. Other important issue is that several studies report changes in these aspects along the time, which implies the need to assess adolescents and adults with autism to better characterize their symptoms and the evolution observed throughout development. The aim of this research was to determine the communicative profile of a group of institutionalized adolescents with autism, considering its relation with socialcognitive, social communicative and behavioral aspects. Subjects were eight institutionalized adolescents with autism. They were assessed during a sixmonth period in what refer to the functional communicative profile, the socialcognitive performance, the social-communicative adaptation scale and the Autistic Behavior Checklist (ABC). The results were analyzed with nonparametric statistics. It was observed that there was improvement in the number of communicative acts per minute and in the proportion of interpersonal communicative acts from the first to the second moment of data gathering (three-month period). The social cognitive performance in spontaneous situation presented improvement from the first to the second moment of data gathering (six-month period). Higher or lower levels of social-communicative adaptation do not determine better performance and/or improvement in the results of the functional communicative profile. There was a correlation between higher scores in the ABC and lower scores in social-cognitive performance and the number of communicative acts per minute. The social-cognitive, linguistic and social adaptation aspects were also related to the severity of the manifestations

This study focuses on the development of press freedom and professional journalism in Cameroon since the country's transition to democracy in the 1990s. More precisely, it examines how press freedom and professionalism have become formalized through processes of legislation and institutionalization. To realize this, this study uses a broad literature review and documentary analysis to gain an overview of the evolution of press freedom and the professionalization of journalism in Cameroon. It also incorporates survey, in-depth interviews and newsroom observation to gain additional insights into how Cameroonian journalists go about their daily routines and the extent to which they feel free and autonomous to do so, as well as to better understand both the relationship between the roles of individual journalists and the organizational and societal contexts in which they operate. I contend that it is only through blending the survey, interview and newsroom observation that we can have a broader picture of the gap between role perception and performance in journalism.The study draws from the political economy approach to inform its discussions. It argues that journalism is a socially constructed activity within a specific political, economic, legal and regulatory context. It also draws from the sociology of the professions to analyse the professionalization of journalism in Cameroon, the role perception theory to underpin the journalistic role perceptions of Cameroonian journalists and the role perception and performance gap theory to explain and understand the gap between the various roles Cameroonian journalists believe the media should fulfil and the extent to which they perform these roles in daily practice.The hierarchical news environment includes not only reporters but also editors and directors of news publications, whose job involves ensuring that information reaching the public is ethically sound. From within the Cameroonian newsrooms, the role of editors and directors of news publications as gatekeepers, commercial and economic pressures, the interests of owners may undermine the efforts of journalists in performing their roles in actual practice. From outside the news organization, state interference in the media, the use of repressive press laws, sources, advertisers, political elites and the prevalence of gombo may limit the freedom and autonomy of journalists to live up to their ideals. When combined, these factors are likely to create a gap between journalists' ideals and practice. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this thesis, I explore the dynamics of German Swiss folk music today in relation to the emerging musicians who have been involved in a folk music post-secondary program in recent years. Approaching the field as a community of musical practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), I attend to processes of learning and transmission and to the spaces of experience in which it takes place. In participant responses, three key themes emerged. The first was the significance of the recently-established folk music postsecondary program as a site of learning and participation for emerging German Swiss musicians. The second was the importance of creativity among this demographic, and the way in which learning environments and spaces of experience (Gosselain 2016), such as universities or festivals, shape this creative potential. The third was the centrality of Swiss folk music festivals to the continuance of this music and community, and the way in which they offer spaces of experience in which to connect, learn, share, and participate. In this thesis, I draw on the theoretical concepts of legitimate peripheral participation, boundary objects, spaces of experience, and genealogy, and explore issues pertaining to informal and formal learning, intergenerationality, access and power, and peripherality. / Graduate / 2018-08-31

This dissertation reported an investigation of e-commerce institutionalization process in women-led SMEs in Mozambique. The goal was to understand how e-commerce is conceptualized by these SMEs while exploring the contextual factors that contribute or inhibit the process of institutionalization from the unique perspective of a least developed country (LDC) such as Mozambique. The study combined the perspectives offered by the contextualist theory (Pettigrew, 1985) and the Perceived E-readiness Model (PERM) (Molla & Licker, 2005a) to employ an integrated framework for investigating the process of e-commerce institutionalization. An interpretative and qualitative multiple case study approach was employed as a methodological basis, using six SMEs which have been able to institutionalize e-commerce. The data collection was conducted through multiple data sources including semi-structured interviews, analysis of company website, and social media platforms. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis approach across the cases. The findings indicate that there are different patterns of e-commerce institutionalization. SMEs do not always follow the traditional steady stages of e-commerce growth described in the literature. Furthermore, the results showed a socially constructed feature of e-commerce characterized by the extensive use of social media networks. A great levels of institutionalization and satisfaction was attained when enabling factors within and outside the organization interacted positively. Within the internal context of the organizations, the SMEs manager’s capability to use social media networks, e-mail and mobile phones to build innovative business models, create direct relationships with customers, and marketing direct to their niche markets. Factors from the external context emerged as the main challengers to the process of institutionalization, specifically the challenges faced by the government, market forces, supporting industries, and those of sociocultural nature. A number of important recommendations were made, for example, the government should not only provide the regulatory framework but also work actively in its promotion and implementation. This should encompass the establishment of networks and training opportunities to improve SMEs knowledge regarding e-commerce, and continuous partnership between the various stakeholders involved in the e-commerce ecosystem in addressing the various environmental challenges. By conducting an investigation on the selected women-led SMEs in Mozambique, this study has extended knowledge of e-commerce research in the country. Additionally, it is an important contribution for the debate about e-commerce in developing countries, specifically a better understanding of SMEs that go beyond the initial adoption phase.

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