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This dissertation examines how logics of financial securitization and heteropatriarchy have shaped the production of surplus populations in reconstruction policies from the TEPCO Fukushima nuclear disaster in post-2011 Japan. Through multi-sited fieldwork with nuclear subcontractors, labor organizers, anti-irradiation mothers, and state-recognized nuclear evacuees, it elucidates nuclear reconstruction and remediation efforts more broadly as projects that resecure financial and affective investments in nuclear imperialism and colonialism through the disciplining of communities exposed to radioactive fallout. Each chapter examines nuclear reconstruction through the partial construction of archetypes of positions within the geography of nuclear reconstruction. Through this method, an analysis emerges of how reconstruction policies and their justification through risk communication discourses of “harmful rumor” reproduce the conditions of the nuclear industry in Japan, disciplining the irradiated through a racialized domesticity imposed by American imperialism, the reproduction of an eco-eugenic heteropatriarchal organization of value, and through systems of labor brokerage inherited from Japanese colonial production. The form of the dissertation and its inclusion of autoethnographic reflections argues for a feminist transgender mode of anthropology that centers the fragmentation of anthropology, the ethnographer’s body, and classical constructions of “the field.” Through the use of poetry, translation, archives from workplace struggle, work from local historians and economists, American Studies, Anthropology, and Japanese Studies, it aims to normalize a way of doing anthropology that is characterized by the splitting of the voice, disruption, and ethnographic refusal.

Research report presented to the Graduate School of Business Leadership, University of South Africa / The main purpose of this research is to investigate the interactive effect of executive leadership national cultures, the organisational culture and Angolan culture at Toyota de Angola.

Research report presented to the Graduate School of Business Leadership, University of South Africa / The main purpose of this research is to investigate the interactive effect of executive leadership national cultures, the organisational culture and Angolan culture at Toyota de Angola.

This dissertation investigates the effect of endogenous and exogenous events on firm behavior and performance. These are fundamental questions in economics. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, it provides estimates of the impact of mergers on railroad efficiency, which has important antitrust implications. Second, it provides new estimates of the effect of negative events on the market value of Johnson & Johnson, Bridgestone, and Toyota, which is important to the understanding of how markets punish corporate errors. Third, it develops better ways to estimate these effects. Chapter 2 uses the event study approach to determine how product recalls due to exogenous and endogenous shocks affect the value of the firm. Three recalls from Johnson & Johnson, Bridgestone, and Toyota have been studied in this chapter. The traditional event study method assumes that markets are efficient, a questionable assumption in the short run. Thus, the current stock value of a firm may not reflect its true market value. To address this potential problem, frontier based methods are used, including data envelopment analysis, corrected ordinary least squares, and stochastic frontier regression analysis. Stochastic frontier methods are shown to be more appropriate when market behavior is not fully rational. The evidence shows that endogenous events due to firm errors are more detrimental to firm value than exogenous negative events that are beyond the control of the firm. That is, the market is more forgiving of negative shocks that the company cannot control. Chapter 3 studies the effects of merger activity on the efficiency and productivity growth of U.S. Class I railroads from 1983 to 2008. In this chapter, I assess the effects of merger activity on efficiency, and identify the major factors associated with productivity growth. Unlike previous research, I use data envelopment analysis with an attribute-incorporated Malmquist productivity index. This approach allows firm specific measures of efficiency and productivity to be calculated for firms with differences in technology. The approach allows a decomposition of the attribute-incorporated Malmquist productivity index into technical, efficient and attribute components, the impacts of railroads mergers, and the real source and change of productivity. I find that (1) the technology efficiency performance of the seven survivor firms has grown through time; (2) mergers overall do not lead significant technology and scale efficiency gains, but there are differences across mergers; (3) mergers in the 1980s do not have significant different effect on efficiency change compared to those in the 1990s; and (4) the productivity gains are mostly attributed to the network and operation attributes change and industry technology improvement. Overall, the mergers have no direct impact on the efficiency gains or losses during our study period. The application of these techniques to product recalls and railroad merger models demonstrates how they can provide superior estimates over traditional estimation techniques. It is hoped that these applications will motivate the use of these techniques in other settings. / Graduation date: 2012

The brand architecture of an organisation has become increasingly important to global management and marketing professionals, as it deals with structures and designs of brands which are constantly influenced by a changing environment. The market realities and changes brands face continuously impact the reputation of the brand, which is critical to sustain competitive advantage. The primary purpose of the study was to investigate the impact brand reputation has on brand architecture strategies, and an automotive company was chosen as the focus of the research. This research aims to help managers, marketers and brand owners make informative decisions regarding the brand architecture of a company. A quantitative content analysis methodology was used along with a webpage keyword counting application (WebWords). The application was used based on the principles outlined by Corporate Brand and Reputation Analysis (COBRA), which uses a four step progressive filtering process in filtering traditional and consumer generated media. The results from WebWords were then aligned to the brand architecture strategies from the brand relationship spectrum (BRS) to gain insight as to which of the strategies from the BRS were most vulnerable to reputational damage. The study found that the branded house and sub-brand strategies were most vulnerable to reputational damage based on the number reputational hits received. The connection between the master brand and the sub-brands could cause both brands to be affected should any reputational issues arise.