published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

<p>This study analyses the relationship between the manner of citizens&rsquo / engagement with the state and the level of service delivery they experience in their everyday lives, as residents of Khayelitsha. The phenomena of so-called &lsquo / service delivery&rsquo / protests across South Africa have now become a fixture of South African politics. Khayelitsha is one of the sites with frequent protests in Cape Town and is inhabited by poor people, 70 percent of whom live in informal settlements. While the lack of municipal services is undoubtedly a major problem for many poor people in South Africa, thus&nbsp / far, few studies have been dedicated to investigate empirically this alleged link between service delivery and protest activity. The study utilizes mostly quantitative analysis techniques such as&nbsp / regression analysis and path analysis to discover the form and strength of linkages between the service delivery and participation forms. While residents of informal settlements and therefore&nbsp / poorer services were more prone to engage in protests and thus reinforcing the service delivery hypothesis, this relationship was relatively weak in regression analysis. What is more important than the service delivery variables such as water services was the level of cognitive awareness exemplified by the level of political engagement and awareness on the one hand and level of community engagement in terms of attendance of community meetings and membership of different organizations. In summary the study found relatively weak evidence to support the service&nbsp / delivery hypothesis and stronger evidence for the importance of cognitive awareness and resource mobilization theories in Khayelitsha as the key determinant of protest activity.</p>

Detta är en kvalitativ studie med syfte att få en djupare förståelse av klienters delaktighet i samverkansmöten. Fyra klienter från Socialtjänsten har intervjuats i en semistrukturerad intervju. Det har sedan gjorts en innehållsanalys på empirin. Studien visar att ett samverkansmöte är uppbyggt av sociala processer som antingen kan skapa delaktighet för klienten eller försvåra för densamma. Studien påvisar även att det finns maktskillnader i samverkansmöten och att dessa måste synliggöras kontinuerligt för att kunna skapa en mer jämlik diskussion. Det har också framkommit att det finns faktorer på individ- grupp- och strukturellnivå som försvårar eller främjar klientdelaktighet. / This is a qualitative study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of a client´s participation in collaboration meetings. Four clients that get interventions from the Social services have been interviewed with a semi-structured interview. After the intake of empirical data it has been made a content analysis. The research shows that a collaboration meeting is built out of social processes that can either create participation of the client or obstruct it. The study also shows that there are power differences in collaboration meetings and that these must be made visible continuously in order to create a more equal discussion. It has also emerged that there are factors at an individual, group and structural level which hinders or promotes client participation.

Computers are used in sociable situations, for example during customer meetings. This is seldom recognized in design, which means that computers often become a hindrance in the meeting. Based on empirical studies and socio-cultural theory, this thesis provides perspectives on sociable use and identifies appropriate units of analysis that serve as critical tools for understanding and solving interaction design problems. Three sociable situations have been studied: customer meetings, design studios and domestic environments. In total, 49 informants were met with during 41 observation and interview sessions and 17 workshops; in addition, three multimedia platforms were also designed. The empirical results show that people need to perform individual actions while participating in joint action, in a spontaneous fashion and in consideration of each other. The consequence for design is that people must be able to use computers in different manners to control who has what information. Based on the empirical results, five design patterns were developed to guide interaction design for sociable use. The thesis demonstrates that field studies can be used to identify desirable use qualities that in turn can be used as design objectives and forces in design patterns. Re-considering instrumental, communicational, aesthetical, constructional and ethical aspects can furthermore enrich the understanding of identified use qualities. Witha foundation in the field studies, it is argued that the deliberation of ynamic characters and use qualities is an essential component of interaction design. Designers of interaction are required to work on three levels: the user interface, the mediating artefact and the activity of use. It is concluded that doing interaction design is to provide users with perspectives, resources and constraints on their space for actions; the complete design is not finalized until the users engage in action. This is where the fine distinctions and, what I call 'shades of use' appear.

Kommunikation på byggarbetsplatsen har en stor förbättringspotential enligtSvensk Byggtjänsts undersökning. Rapporten visar att stora besparingar kangöras i byggbranschen och särskilt hos entreprenadföretagen. Dettaexamensarbete beskriver hur kommunikationen sker på två av Skanskasbyggarbetsplatser i Uppsala. Det visade sig att majoriteten av de problem somuppstår i byggskedet kan härledas till en brist på tydlighet i kommunikationenpå byggarbetsplatsen. En litteraturstudie har utförts som grund till arbetet. Dåkommunikation är ett brett ämne har studien avgränsats till ämnenaLedarskap, Projektorganisation, Möten och Språk. Utifrån dessa rubriker harkvalitativa intervjuer utförts med syftet att ta reda på hur kommunikationenfungerar, upplevs och arbetas med.Studien visar att besparingar kan göras genom att öka medvetenheten avkommunikation som ett redskap och att aktivt arbeta med kommunikation. / A survey made by Svensk Byggtjänst (Swedish Building Information Service)concludes that communication plays an important role in the constructionindustry and that it has a great potential of improvement. This diploma workshows that significant savings can be made in the construction industry andespecially in the field of production. This thesis describes how communicationtakes place at two different construction sites belonging to the Swedish buildingconstruction company Skanska. According to the interviews carried out at theconstruction sites, we realized that the majority of problems were sprung out ofa lack of clarity in communication. A literature study has been performed andsince communication is a wide topic, this study has been confined to thefollowing subtopics: Leadership, Project, Meetings and Language. With theseheadlines in mind, interviews were conducted. The aim was to find out howcommunication works at work sites in the construction industry and how theworkers experienced the communication within the field of production.The study shows that savings can be achieved through increased awareness ofcommunication as a tool and to actively improve interpersonal communication.

SAMMANFATTNING Introduktion: Statistiska centrabyrån (SBC) prognostiserar en växande andel utlandsfödda bland Sveriges befolkning. Detta medför en ökad kulturell mångfald i det svenska samhället och därmed fler tvärkulturella möten inom vården. Denna studie sökte att utforska primärvårdssjuksköterskors upplevelser av möten med patienter från utomskandinaviska kulturer, vilka svårigheter de kan stöta på samt vilka aspekter de upplever som viktiga vid vårdandet av dessa patienter. Metod: En kvalitativ intervjustudie med deskriptiv design. Åtta primärvårdssjuksköterskor som arbetar på olika vårdcentraler i Stockholmsområdet och som har erfarenhet av kontakt med patienter från andra kulturer än den skandinaviska intervjuades med en semi-strukturerad intervjuguide. Innehållsanalys enligt Graneheim &amp; Lundman användes för att analysera data. Resultat: Primärvårdssjuksköterskor upplever dessa möten som spännande, utmanande och lärorika. Kulturell samt etisk kompetens är nödvändigt för arbetet inom detta område och behov av formell utbildning identifierades.  Slutsats: Den växande kulturella mångfalden i Sverige medför fler tvärkulturella möten inom vården. Primärvårssjuksköterskors upplevda svårigheter, deras negativa och positiva upplevelser vid dessa möten samt deras synsätt på utbildning inom området stärker betydelsen av att besitta tillräcklig kulturell kompetens för vårdandet av dessa patienter. Detta innefattar bland annat sjuksköterskans lärande om de olika kulturerna som finns representerade i samhället där sjuksköterskan tjänstgör och en anpassning av omvårdnaden utifrån patientens behov. Således är det angeläget för sjuksköterskor att genom formell utbildning införskaffa sig denna kompetens. / ABSTRACT Introduction: The statistics centers Agency (SBC) forecasts a growing proportion of people born in foreign countries among the Swedish population. This results in increased cultural diversity in Swedish society and thus more cross-cultural encounters in health care. This study sought to explore primary care nurses’ experiences of encounters with patients from non-Scandinavian cultures, the difficulties they may encounter and what aspects they consider to be important in the care of these patients. Method: A qualitative interview study with descriptive design. Eight primary care nurses who work in various primary health care centers in the Stockholm area and have experience of contact with patients from other cultures than the Scandinavian were interviewed with a semi-structured interview guide. Content Analysis according Graneheim &amp; Lundman was used for data analysis. Results: Primary care nurses perceive these meetings as exciting, challenging and educational. Cultural competence is necessary for work in this area and a need for formal education was identified. Conclusion: The growing cultural diversity in Sweden entails more cross-cultural encounters in health care. Primary care nurses’ perceived difficulties, their negative and positive experiences from these meetings and their approaches to education in the field strengthen the importance of possessing sufficient cultural competence for the care of these patients. This includes the nurse’s learning about the different cultures that are present in the community in which he or she serves and an adaptation of the nursing care based on the patient’s needs. Thus, it is of significance that nurses seek to acquire this competence through formal education.

This thesis examines the Kurdish political mobilization in the 1960s through focusing on the case of the Eastern Meetings. These meetings were organized by the Easterners group of the Turkish Workers Party in the various provinces in the autumn 1967 in the East and Southeast Anatolia with the aim of voicing the demands, claims and the grievances of these regions and the Kurdish population. Using the theoretical framework and the analytical tools presented by the social movements and collective action theory, this thesis examines the identity formation and mobilization processes of the Eastern Meetings and situates them within the socio-political context of the 1960s. Through this analysis, the thesis aims to draw a dynamic and relational picture of a particular moment in the history of Kurdish political activism.

A tremendous amount of information is produced in the world around us, both as a product of our daily lives and as artifacts of our everyday work. An emerging area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focuses on helping individuals manage this flood of information. Prior research shows that multiple displays can improve an individual user's ability to deal with large amounts of information, but it is unclear whether these advantages extend for teams of people. This is particularly relevant as more employees are spending large portions of their workdays in meetings My contribution to HCI research is empirical fieldwork and laboratory studies investigating how multiple shared displays improve aspects of teamwork. In particular, I present an insight-based evaluation method for analyzing how teams collaborate on a data-intensive sensemaking task. Using this method, I show how the presence and location of multiple shared displays impacted the meeting process with respect to performance, collaboration, and satisfaction. I also illustrate how multiple shared displays engaged team members who might not have otherwise contributed to the collaboration process. Finally, I present Mimosa, a software tool developed to visualize large volumes of time series data. Mimosa combines aspects of information visualization with data analysis, facilitating a deep and iterative exploration of relationships within large datasets.

Due to various corporate scandals and failures, there has been a renewed interest on the role of boards in the performance of firms. This thesis examines the relationship between the key board characteristics and firm performance. Unlike most studies on boards which predominantly use only financial variables affecting governance, I take a different approach by combining them with non-financial variables. This combined set of variables is used for theoretical and empirical modelling. Based on the extant literature, I develop a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses to examine the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance. Board characteristics considered in this research include board size, director ownership, CEO duality, gender diversity, educational qualification of board members and number of board meetings. Additionally, I use board size as a moderating variable to examine how the effect of other board characteristics is contingent on board size. Firm performance is measured by return on assets. I test my hypotheses on a longitudinal sample of 156 firms over a four year period from 2004 to 2007. My sample includes all firms listed on New Zealand stock exchange as on November 2007. Empirical analysis is undertaken using Generalised Least Squares analyses. The findings of the study show that board characteristics such as board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were positively related with firm performance, where as director ownership, board meetings and the number of board members with PhD level education was found to be negatively related. Board size was found to be moderating some of these relationships, indicating the critical role being played by board size in the design and role of corporate boards. The findings also provide partial evidence to different governance theories, further indicating the need for theoretical pluralism to gain insights into boards’ functioning. The study contributes to the understanding of board-performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality, and number of board meetings as well as other organisational attributes such as gender diversity and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The theoretical framework and the findings of my thesis are expected to stimulate scholars for further research to identify the contingency conditions upon which the board characteristics and firm performance may be dependent.

As a lucrative tourism sector, the meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions (MICE) sector has been significantly affected by crises in recent years, from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to the SARS and bird flu epidemics, to the tsunami of late 2004. One of the key effects of such crises has been growing safety concerns when it comes to crisis-struck MICE destinations. In turn, this has impacted on both MICE customers’ perceived risk in terms of purchasing MICE products, and their decision to follow through on planned MICE events. In addition, the MICE sector reveals noticeably differing levels of crisis vulnerability when compared to other tourism sectors; in particular, one of the clear differences lies in the decision making process itself, given that MICE sector buyers sponsor the endusers of MICE products, and are thus heavily liable for the safety of attendees. Not surprisingly, any life-threatening situation in MICE destinations discourages buyers from taking the decision to purchase. In contrast to other tourism sectors where the buyer and end-user are generally one and the same, in MICE tourism customers and consumers remain distinct. Taken together, both the impacts of crisis and crisis vulnerability suggest that crises can affect business continuity in the MICE sector significantly. In turn, MICE suppliers need to understand the impacts of crisis on tourism demand in the MICE sector, and come to terms with the key factors contributing to crisis vulnerability in order to better cope with, and sustain, their MICE businesses through crisis situations. To this end, the core aim of this research is to identify the critical success factors responsible for effective crisis management in the MICE sector. To achieve this, this research has developed three research questions, and investigated these questions through qualitative data collection and analysis of thirty-seven in-depth interviews with MICE suppliers in Thailand. The findings of these interviews provide both rich and substantively meaningful understandings of pertinent crisis management issues. More specifically, through detailed analysis of this data, this research examines the impact of crises on tourism demand in the MICE sector; the factors contributing to crisis vulnerability in the sector; and finally, the critical success factors of crisis management as they apply to the sector. In sum, this research achieves its research aims by providing ten critical success factors (CSFs) which organizations need to implement to successfully manage crisis situations. In summary, the findings of this research provide a contribution to knowledge by highlighting that the characteristics of the MICE product market not only contribute to fragmentation within the MICE sector, but also to both crisis vulnerability and crisis management approaches in a context of MICE tourism. Both the contributions and implications of this research have the potential to contribute to better crisis management in the MICE sector and tourism industry as a whole.