This study is an exploration of the process of accessing dementia care for Aboriginal Older Adults living in Northern Saskatchewan. The research question for this project was, What is the process of accessing formal healthcare for dementia from the perspective of Northern Saskatchewan Aboriginal communities, and what factors specifically impede or encourage accessing formal care? <p>Grounded theory methodology informed the research process. Theoretical sampling resulted in a sample of thirty participants. Data were generated through eighteen in-person, semi-structured interviews; two in-person, semi-structured group interviews; and three focus group discussions including a directed activity led by participants. Analysis of data using the grounded theory constant comparison method led to an emergent theory that was verified by research participants.<p>The theory that emerged explains the basic social process at the heart of the research question. The grounded theory, The process of negotiating culturally incongruent healthcare systems explains the access to and use of formal healthcare from the perspective of those living in Northern Saskatchewan. Specific attention to the social context of healthcare access helped to illuminate the challenges faced by Aboriginal Older Adults when accessing healthcare services. The findings indicate a need for enhancing the cultural competence of healthcare provision to Older Adults with dementia in Northern Saskatchewan while providing formal support for those persons with dementia as well as for their informal caregivers.

The rate of development for large-scale wind energy in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is a complex issue such that the various actors of the surrounding policy community (decision-makers, influential stakeholders, and the attentive public) cannot reach consensus. Inaction on resource and environmental issues like this one is often the result of complexity, either the inherent complexity of the problem being targeted or the complexity of the communicated information surrounding the problem. Inherent complexity is managed chiefly by central decision-makers and influential stakeholders of the policy community, while information complexity must be dealt with primarily by the attentive public of the policy community. This thesis uses a case study of large-scale wind energy development in Saskatchewan to explore complexity as a root cause of environmental inaction. In manuscript style, this thesis investigates two types of environmental complexity and two segments of the wind energy policy community. Through an exploration of barriers to wind energy expansion in Saskatchewan, the first manuscript focuses on the complexity of environmental problems themselves as dealt with by decision-makers and other influential policy actors. Interviews were conducted with a range of experts and stakeholders where participants were asked to describe barriers to development in each of six categories: agreement, knowledge, technology, economic, social, and political barriers. A number of key issues are identified: disagreement regarding the balance between environment and economy, contradictory knowledge about the benefits of wind energy, conflicting faith in technology to accommodate high levels of wind energy, unquantified non-economic benefits of wind energy, lack of social interest in and support for wind energy, and lagging provincial political leadership on the issue of wind energy. Perhaps more importantly, the interviews reveal that experts disagreed on many facets of the wind energy issue, which demonstrates that the complexity of the issue makes consensus and any resulting action difficult to accomplish. Intuitive solutions for managing complexity through the more effective reconciliation of disagreement are also suggested. The second manuscript focuses on the complexity of environmental information by examining policy information regarding wind energy implementation in Saskatchewan for complications that might reduce understanding about and participation in the issue by the attentive public. Through a review of publicly available reports, articles, and documents, four complexity-related problems are uncovered: non-intuitive information, misreported information, obsolete information, and absent information. Such occurrences may well be problematic for environmental policy information in general, so intuitive solutions involving clarification and elaboration are suggested for managing each one. Together, the two manuscripts illustrate that both inherent and information complexity can be problems for environmental issues, especially when one causes or feeds back into the other. Results from this thesis provide a way of thinking about environmental complexity and understanding environmental inaction as managed by policy communities.

No description available.

Kaohsiung Harbor is the most significant container harbor of Taiwan. Embracing the excellent geographical features for container transportation, it used to be the most attractive hub port for most of container liners. However, because of Taiwan¡¦s conservative cross-strait policy and the transformation of industries, Kaohsiung Harbor became less and less attractive for its clients in recent decade. To figure out a solution for the authority of Kaohsiung Harbor, the researcher used the Grounded Theory to interview 10 container transportation experts. Then find out 97 concept of how container liners choose their hub port when they¡¦re planning their routes. After this, the researcher integrates those concepts into 16 categories and finds their organic connection in between. Finally, researcher refines 5 central categories out of the 16 categories. Base on the relations between the central categories, researcher creates the hub port selecting model of container liners. According to what researcher found, we acknowledge that within this model, the most important hub port selecting factor for container liners is Operation Cost, then goes to Efficiency, Influence of Authority, Government Policy, and Safety.

The aims of this research investigate and discuss the possibility of how a local government can construct city image by organizing local festivals with its marketing campaign. In generally, most of festivals and events can inject economic revenues and build up the city images upon branding marketing. Basically, the local government remains the main authority to coordinate the festival promotion and marketing, but festival branding and marketing even meet many challenges and struggles. Significantly, many of phenomena in Taiwan tourism markets presented those current festivals facing many potential problems and unpredictable impacts with respect to festival management and sustainability. However, these problems and dilemma including local government please tourists, lack of culture protection, demolishing local specialty and lack of innovation as well as the purposes of this festival. Wan-Nien Festival was chosen as the case study of this research since Wan-Nien Festival has exhibited for more than ten years to be the most popular and historical event of Taiwan official festivals as a result of its amazing campaign and diverse contents. Due to its entirely empirical characteristics and comparing with other short-lifecycle festivals in Taiwan tourism market, Wan-Nien Festival has been already authorized by Taiwan Tourism Bureau to call for the 2010 main folk festival t. On the contrary, a number of festival managements might face the end situation due to the limitation of budgets even though those festivals have already experienced and accumulated high popularity and reputation such as Yilan International Children¡¦s Folklore ¡® Folkgame Festival. Similarly, Wan-Nien Festival might face the same challenge and difficulty for its sustainability without money injection. In contrast, many famous festivals and events are still in the process and development, such as Edinburgh International Festival which has been held for more than sixty years (from 1947). However, these famous festivals still attract many tourists all over the world as a result of their marvellous activities and they also turn into highly-acceptations festivals by the branding marketing. According to the argument of above description, the purpose of this research intends to discuss the possibility of Wan-Nien Festival branding-building and branding management. The methodology of this research can be divided into three perspectives. First of all, Three outstanding international festival, Edingburgh International Festival, Qingdao International Beer Festival, and Yilan International Children¡¦s Folklore and Folkgame Festival will beanalysed, induced, and compared the significant key factors and impacts to result in the success of these festivals. Secondly, referring to the branding management, research strategy adopt semi-construct interview to ask eleven relative stakeholders such as governors involved in holding festival, representative from Wan-Nien Festival local committee, village wardens, scholars specialize in festival marketing and tourism and business representatives. This research method tries to build up complete theory in the base of grounded theory and utilize the Atlas.ti 5.6.3 software to integrate and collect these interview data. The main research process is to record all correspondents interview conversations by the step to open coding, family coding, illustrating network diagram and finally constructing research theory. Due to the deep interviews with 11 relative stakeholders who might directly or indirectly participate in Wan-Nien Festival marketing and branding, this dissertation illustrated several significant discoveries and valuable information. These results demonstrate that there are numbers of key factors of a success festival such as well-using of the local resource, festival organizing and support with more assistance from a local government, and integrating local community agreement. The research results also recapitulate that local participators involvement seem main power to drive the local feature and shape the festival organization. In addition, the main attraction to identify the difference of marketing branding and marketing position is to plan the local stories.

This qualitative study explored conflict resolutions in everyday setting by applying grounded theory method to data on real-life conflict experiences. The data represent 53 graduate students (27 male and 26 female) of 20 different nationalities. After careful coding, we found seven categories. By applying a dimensional analysis model, we not only identified that ¢wpreparation for resolving conflict¡ü is the central phenomenon but also explored how conflict origins, casual condition, contextual condition, intervening condition, resolution strategies and consequences are related to the central phenomenon and the dynamics among themselves. This helped in developing a grounded formal theory that provide a detailed picture of the complex process of conflict resolution in everyday setting by covering its origins, dynamics, resolution strategies, consequences, and effects in different contexts. Detailed explanations with ample examples from the data were provided. Implications for future researchers and practical implications are discussed.

The introduction of a new appraisal system has been seen as a common practice for firms to map its strategic goals and organizational objectives. Such a practice can be seen as a kind of organizational change. Previous studies on the introduction of new appraisal system tend to adopt a cross-sectional approach to examine the effect of the new appraisal system from various dimensions. In the mean time, how the new appraisal system is forming and how the member of organizations affect the shaping of the appraisal system are basically neglected. In order to fill this gap, this research adopted a longitudinal perspective to examine how a sub-business unit (SBU) of L Company introduced a new appraisal system. We particularly concerns how this new appraisal system is shaping, why the leader of this SBU introduced a new appraisal system, how employees react to the introduction of this new system, how leaders and employees perceive the change of the appraisal system. A grounded approach was implemented to explore the introduction process of this new appraisal system. Action research was used as the main research method. Information was collected from the participation of the introduction of the new appraisal system based on interview, observation, field log, and internal data of the firm. In this study, we find that the introduction of new appraisal system was driven by the change of external environment and the motivation of the leader of the SBU. Additionally, employees would resist the change of the new appraisal system. Such a resistance was caused by the change of routine, the perception of the reasonability and the sense of equities. The new appraisal system, in essence, was the outcome of the communication between the leader and the employees of this SBU. At last, leader and employees viewed appraisal system differently. The leader saw the new appraisal system as a means to realize strategies, while employees tended to perceive the change of appraisal system as a punishment.

The outsourcing business of the call center grew enormously in recent years, but there were only a few studies focused on the outsourcing employees, especially the turnover problems and related issues, which were deeply concerned by call center supervisors. This research aims to comprehend the turnover problems of the outsourcing employees; in addition, what policies the managers of the call centers adopt to solve the turnover problems. This is a one-case study. The qualitative research methodology follows the principles of the grounded theory. Eight supervisors of different call centers in the company were interviewed during April to November in 2003. The data collection and analysis is a long process of hard working. The research findings can be concluded as the following three aspects. The first is that the high turnover rates of outsourcing employees cause serious problems to various call centers. The unstable manpower quality and the lower department morale would generate inconsistent customer services. It turns out the operation costs increase as well as the outsourcing cost. Because of the strong impact to the operation in each call center, supervisors have adopted several approaches in order to solve the turnover problems in the last few years. The most significant improvement is from the following efforts, such as clarifying the basic salary and benefit for the outsourcing employees in the outsourcing contract, training the back-up personnel, and improving the management skills of the vendors. For the second aspect of the research findings, we conclude that the turnover problem is caused by the internal organizational factors and the external organizational factors. The internal factors contain the working environment associated with the climate, and the administration policy or style. The external factors include the personal concerns of outsourcing employees, and the vendor problems. Furthermore, there are two intervening conditions: employees¡¦ personality and working life quality. That would reinforce the influential factors to the turnover problem and action/interaction strategies. Finally, some of the empirical results of this research are consistent to the literatures about the call center operation. By improving recruit process, employee training and encouraging policy, it may lower the turnover rate that may result in a better quality of customer service, and then have the outsourcing cost down.

This thesis is a case study about the transformation processes for a petrochemical corporation in Taiwan during the last thirty-nine years (1965~2003). We adopted the Grounded theory as the research method to probe the relationships between growth and change for the case company. We had several interviews with senior managers. In addition, the public reports about the company are also collected, such as news and financial analyses on newspapers or journals. There have been four phases of company development that are divided by three changes. According to the findings in this research, it is concluded that most of the transformation or change decisions were based on the core competence. Therefore, the R&D capabilities that have been much emphasized by the company provide the speed and flexibility for the company to adapt the industrial dynamics. Another important factor is the vision of the executive managers. They make good decisions because they foresee the company needs for the growth associated with the environmental changes. Finally, we have found that the core technical competence plays the essential role for the corporate transformation. Enterprises should well recognize their cores and then develop proper business strategies. They should plan for changes and incorporate them into organizational process to establish a company¡¦s culture

The premise of this research is to view the decision process that the audience chooses to be the pay member of performing arts as a consuming behavior, and this research takes this consumer behavior for the studying topic. The researcher interviews the audience who is or was the pay member of performing arts, and analyzes the interviewing data by the Grounded Theory¡¦s process from Open Coding, Axial Coding, to Selective Coding for building a pay member¡¦s consumer behavior in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. Besides, according to the pay member¡¦s consumer behavior, the researcher proposes suggestions to performing arts organizations and discusses the practical feasibility of these suggestions by interviewing the performing arts organizations. In order to study the decision process that the audience chooses to be the pay member of performing arts, the researcher interviews 20 audiences who are pay members from different performing arts organizations. The research analyzes the interviewing data by Grounded Theory: firstly it gets 76 concepts in the process of Open Coding, and then integrates the concepts into 16 categories in the process of Axial Coding, finally refines the categories into 5 central categories which are respectively ¡§the cultivation of interests and motivation¡¨, ¡§the media of awareness and contact¡¨, ¡§the combination of decision factors¡¨, ¡§personality¡¨, and ¡§the feedback reaction¡¨. According to the relationship of these categories the research builds up a pay member¡¦s consumer behavior in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. In addition, the researcher also interviews three performing arts organizations which respectively are ¡§Cloud Gate¡¨, ¡§Godot Theatre¡¨, and ¡§Performance Workshop¡¨. During the interview, the researcher discusses the pay member¡¦s consumer behavior with these three organizations and they also assess the feasibility of the suggestions which this research proposed. By this method, this research hopes can develop the more practicable suggestions of the membership system. in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts. In the conclusion of this research, the researcher proposes not only the advantage and disadvantage of the performing arts¡¦ membership system, and also the suggestions of direction to improve the membership system in Taiwan¡¦s performing arts.