University, Diss.--St. Gallen, 2005.

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2009

This dissertation sets out to investigate the management of relationships in British-Chinese business settings. Whilst set in the frameworks of politeness theory and accommodation theory, this dissertation studies the management of relationships in British-Chinese business interactions from a more comprehensive perspective. It examines the sociocultural as well as the communicative behaviour of the interactions between British and Chinese business people, to explore how relationship issues were handled and how communicative as well as cultural/sociocultural strategies affected the management of relationships. This work is based primarily on research conducted in Britain during November-December 1996, June 1997, and November 1997, when three Chinese delegations were visiting a local engineering company in the southeast of England. For the purpose of this study, three kinds of data were collected: 1) video recordings of authentic meetings between British business people and their Chinese clients (including training sessions); 2) comments from subsequent interviews and playback sessions held with the British and Chinese participants; 3) field notes. This study has shown that a variety of aspects can be held accountable for the management of relationships in intercultural settings. On a macro level, linguistic features alone can not adequately explain the process of negotiating relationships in fonnal intercultural settings, it also involves the non-linguistic perspective. From a linguistic perspective, attending to face needs is not the sole agent for relational management. Accommodation and respect for sociality rights also play an important part in it. The thesis attempts to distinguish the self-claimed face (self-image) and the perceived face (public self-image) and explore their respective functions in the management ofrelationships. The research also claims that group face is more likely to surface in group-versus-group. individual (group identity marked)-versus-group, or individual (group identity marked)-versus-individual (group identity marked or unmarked) settings. This study also argues that communication accommodation theory should incorporate convergence, maintenance or divergence along the line of culture specific behaviour. It proposes a new conceptualisation of CAT that should involve both speech and non-speech accommodative features. This study shows that a wider range of perspectives are needed in order to investigate intercultural communication.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Bachelor's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Environmental protection is a hot issue around in the world. Many governments and industries have put a lot of resources and efforts to take their responsibility of environmental protection in their daily operation and to establish correspondence environmental management system in their field. One of the international standards - ISO 14001 is a standard to assist to monitor and standardize the environmental management system in a company. Many studies have reported that implementation of ISO 14001 can provide different advantages to the company, such as improvement of image, improvement of environmental performance, improvement of efficiency of environmental policies, etc.. However, in the point of view of environmental protection, the most important is the actions of a person. Environmental protection should be done by everyone in the world, but not just in a company or an industry. If the implementation of ISO 14001 can affect a person to become more environmental friendly, it is worth to the environment. Nevertheless, there are few studies to investigate the effects and impacts of implementation of ISO 14001 to a person, especially in the property management industry. Therefore, in this paper, the impacts of implementation of ISO 14001 to the residents in the property management industry had been studies qualitatively. Three impacts, which are behaviors, awareness and knowledge of environmental protection, to the residents are investigated. The result found out that these are positively affected when ISO 14001 has been implemented in the properties. In conclusion, further research should be carried out to get an in-depth investigation as the sample size in this paper is limited and an absolute result cannot be got. However, the result is encouraging as implementation of ISO 14001 can positively affect the person living in the property and there are benefits to the environment due to their actions. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.