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This thesis builds upon several theoretical ideas. The first of which is the anthropologists’ transition into the corporate context and the particular type of skills and value that someone with anthropological training can bring to operations management. As anthropology is relatively new and unfamiliar to corporations, anthropologists are often hired without explicit knowledge of how they will address organizational problems. Frequently, this incremental relationship building between the anthropologist and the organization leads to shifting project goals which come only after the anthropologist is able to reveal initial findings to someone who has the power to grant the anthropologist further access to employees and company information. This refocusing comes from a building of trust that is crucially important for the anthropologist’s ability to identify social issues, which is the anthropologist’s expertise. In order to develop the context of this project the following paragraphs will explain in more detail and expand into particular cases in which anthropologists have helped organizations to identify and manage social, organizational problems. As a relationship needs to be built between the anthropologist and the organization, here I argue that there needs to be continual relationship building between anthropological, design, and management theories to optimally solve organizational problems.

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No description available.

Decision making activity is at the heart of organisations and, as an essential managerial function, it has been the subject of an immense body of literature. As the majority of research has been undertaken within the disciplines of economics and psychology, studies have tended to emphasise economic rationality as the basis for cognitive reasoning, decision processes and judgement and as the analytic paradigm. However, in the face of new problems, and in times of profound change, conventional forms of thought may be problematic in themselves. This project suggests and assesses a Foucaultian framework as an alternative approach to the study of managerial decision making. Within a multiple case-study strategy, evidence has been collected from three manufacturing companies in Devon and Cornwall, using a range of qualitative methods; derived from ethnography, historiography, and grounded theory. A major decisional theme emerged in each case study: employee participation, linked to the nonrecognition of trade unions; Japanese managerial techniques (Kaizen); and product quality. A Foucaultian approach to discourse analysis was used to assess the trajectories of systems of management thought; nature and influence of changes in management discourse, and the resulting vacillation in power/knowledge relations within these three organisations. Genealogical assessment of alterations in organisational culture reveals shifts in the power relations which produce and maintain those decision outcomes; which, in their turn, establish and affirm the power relations. Among them are stereotypes that are problematised by non-unionism; the historical possibilities giving rise to the discourse and practices of Kaizen; discursive motifs on quality, and the formation of new discourses. Comparative archaeology of the various concepts of quality, as apprehended within the study, has identified two major currents of discourse. Neither discourse is inherently advantageous or harmful to an organisation but, where discourses are both present, and in competition, the resulting dichotomy is disorientating for organisational actors and potentially lethal to business performance.

D.Econ. / The idea of this dissertation has its origin in the experience of an engineer who often found himself deeply Involved In the making of Investment decisions. The main objective of this Investigation is to develop an Investment decision making model that would fulfil the demands of contemporary business better than the existing models. Such model should, firstly, be based on a sound theory. It should, however, also be easy to handle, and thirdly, be transparent to all bodies and functionaries involved in making the ultimate decision. These demands culminated In the central theme of this dissertation, namely the development of a Multlfact model that would lend itself readily to everyday use.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

by Choi Ka Wai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-55). / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- The Matching Process --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Centralization --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- One-off Approach --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Our Approach --- p.4 / Chapter 1.5 --- Organization --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- Decision Theory --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Ordinal Preference --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Strict Preference and Indifference --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Weak Preference --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Utility Theory --- p.8 / Chapter 2.3 --- Group Decision Making --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Social Choice Theory --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Bargaining --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- The Matching Rule --- p.14 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Marriage Model --- p.15 / Chapter 3.2 --- Stability --- p.16

by Wong Ho Kam. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 61-64.

North American social psychology has evolved within a culture that values an individualistic ideology. Therefore, when investigating social phenomena, the social psychologist rarely looks past the individual(s) involoved to social processes. As a result, actual social processes have seldom been studied. For example, in the classic studies performed by Sherif (1935) and Asch (1958) social influence was investigated exclusively through the behavioural products of the individual. In this thesis social influence was studied as an intrinsic social process. Twenty-two dyads completed a stimulus task wherein they made a joint decision about 12 simple stimuli. In order to have empirical access to the social processes involved, the participants were allowed to talk freely with each other. As a result, the discourse that was generated provided the data for the investigation. In other words, the interactions were the objects of investigation. Examination of the dialogues in terms of the function of the talk revealed a process that resembled scientific fact construction (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Latour, 1987). That is, the discourse moved through a continuum of "facticity" identifiable by the following functions: Statements of Hypothesis (wherein the interlocutors tentatively introduced a stimulus to be discussed), Statements of Individual Fact (where the participants offered their own assessments), and Statements of Social Fact (in which the participants agreed or disagreed about their individual assessments). Quantitative analyses of the dialogues showed that certain patterns emerged with respect to these functions. There were differences in how the talk progressed when participants agreed with each other and when they disagreed. These differences provided a basis of comparison for subsequent analyses. For example, the frequency and order of the three functions differed for agreements and disagreements. There was also a combination of certain utterances that functioned as grounding or summarizing places for the participants during the task. These differed in structure from both agreements and disagreements, and tended to occur later in the dialogues. / Graduate