No description available.

Design thinking and decision-making during the design process have been found to be hierarchical, representing a general pattern in which designers consider various types of intentions while conceptualising their particular design idea (Haupt, 2018; Vermaas, 2009). Hierarchical thinking can be observed through the investigation of thought development as evidenced in designers’ external representation strategies. The current CAPS document for the subject Engineering Graphics and Design seems to neglect the preliminary design phase of the design process and the connection with hierarchical thinking and idea transformation. As such, research is required to trace novice designers’ thinking processes and the transformation of their ideas. The purpose of this study is to explore and describe how novice designers’ hierarchical thinking processes support the transformation of ideas during preliminary design. In order to study the hierarchical thinking and idea transformation of designers, I adopted Extended Design Cognition and hierarchical thinking theories as the conceptual framework in this study. A mixed methods design was employed, embedded in a Critical Realist approach. Four third-year Industrial Design student participants from a local University of Technology in Gauteng were purposefully sampled. Verbal and visual data (sketches, 3D models, physical artefacts and gestures) were generated and documented by means of an in-vivo methodology and analysed qualitatively and quantitatively by means of ATLAS.ti. This study found that novice designers’ consideration of particular abstract aspectual intentions guided the way in which they generated and transformed their ideas. This study also found that they experienced a need to find a fit between their functional intentions and physical elements, allowing them to make both lateral and vertical transformations. This study contributes to the knowledge base on novice designers’ design cognition, specifically in terms of designers’ hierarchical thinking and idea transformation. To this end, this study provides pedagogical guidelines for current and future EGD teachers. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / MEd / Unrestricted

This dissertation consists of three studies related to accounting disclosure at the interface of the organization and society. The first study investigates the overlapping perspectives of legitimacy theory, institutional theory, resource dependence theory, and stakeholder theory and integrates these theories into a more cohesive meta-theory of the organization-society interface. The second study examines whether a corporation's charitable contributions represent a corporate social performance strategy or a legitimation strategy. More specifically, study two investigates, from two competing perspectives, how corporate executives rationalize their philanthropic actions. The third study analyzes the relationship between the current tax laws and the fulfillment of corporate foundations' social functions. Taken together, these three studies build upon prior theoretical and empirical work to advance social and environmental accounting research.

This study employed an experimental design intended to be an analog to the workplace to examine a person by situation interactive effect on OCBs, which were evaluated as prosocial behaviors. This study also sought to provide initial empirical support for the two-stage social cognitive model of OCBs proposed by Hauenstein and Kalanick (2008). Participants were 194 undergraduates. The study was a 2 (Helpfulness) by 2 (Fairness) design. After completing distracter tasks 1 and 2, participants received either a helpfulness prime or a control prime (task 3). Participants then either experienced either a fair manipulation or an unfair manipulation. Results indicated a distinction between the decision to help and helping effort, which has not been thoroughly examined in literature on OCBs. Results revealed main effects for the helpfulness prime and fairness manipulation on the decision to engage in helping. The nature of these effects was that participants helped more when they were primed with helpfulness and when they experienced fairness. However, once helping commenced, there was an interactive effect between helpfulness and fairness such that the helpfulness prime had a stronger effect on participants treated unfairly. Implications for future research on OCBs are discussed. / Ph. D.

This study focused on Corporate Community Involvement Disclosures (CCID), a theme usually disclosed under Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures (CSRD) in annual reports. The primary aim of the research is to investigate the genuineness and raison d'être of CCID in annual reports. To do this the researcher adopted a holistic approach employing an extensive theoretical framework, which integrates Legitimacy, Stakeholder, Agency, Signalling and Semiotics theories and asking three main research questions. Firstly, what are the motivations for CCID in annual reports? Secondly, what is the information content of CCID in annual reports? And lastly, how real is CCID in annual reports? That is can CCID be read and construed as a real measure of corporate community development (CCD)? Using content analysis and a quality score index the study examined a panel dataset covering the period from 1999 to 2009. The data was collected from a sample of 803 annual reports of 73 UK companies taken from the FTSE 350 companies and cutting across all ten industries of the Industrial Classification Benchmark (ICB) Index. Generally the study is more of a quantitative study with hypotheses developed and tested with panel data regression models in order to provide answers to the three research questions. However, due to the sensitivity of the third research question, in addition to panel regression, the researcher performed a qualitative analysis of question three using semiotics. The study provided evidence to show that CCID as disclosed in annual reports have an undertone of reputation/impression management like other CSR disclosures (CSRD). The community activities reported do not seem to address the expectations of the local communities per se; rather the disclosures seemed to be targeted at a wider stakeholder group that is likely to offer immediate reward for such disclosures. Similarly result from semiotic analysis revealed that signification of reality is either doubtful or unreal for most companies sampled. The study is unique as it is the first to explore the reality of CCID as it appears in annual reports using a combination of a panel study approach and semiotics. In addition a major contribution of the study is that it explored the ways in which multiple theoretical underpinnings can inform research by developing a CCID Meta-theory model and thus provided a robust and enriched analysis and unique insights into the CCID phenomenon.

This thesis is an original contribution to critical international relations theory. Responding to Hartmut Behr's call for the development of more universalistic trajectories of ontological inquiry for contemporary (global) politics and ethics, our original contribution is to establish a 'critical' approach to international theory on a more universalistic meta-theoretical foundation. Proceeding from a philosophical analysis of 'ontological' foundations in influential normative, meta-theoretical, and critical approaches to international theory, we argue for a shift from international theory’s reliance on a shallow ontology of 'things that exist' to a fuller ontology of being, and of human being in particular. After identifying with the left-Hegelian tradition of thought, and establishing that the most compelling and promising advocate of a 'critical' approach to international theory, that of Andrew Linklater, rests on a limited conception of human existence and a thin understanding of human freedom, we explore the implications of conceptions of human being and freedom in the work of Martin Heidegger and Georg W. F. Hegel for critical international theory. Offering an epistemological defence of our universalism through Hegel's phenomenological constructivist approach to knowledge, then demonstrating how this allows us to transcend the schism between foundationalist and anti-foundationalist approaches to normative theory, we premise our own emancipatory cosmopolitanism on a commitment to the human being conceived as 'singularity' rather than subject. Proceeding from a discussion of 'what it means to be' a free human being according to Heidegger and Hegel, we then foreground two aspects of human freedom that have hitherto been obscured in critical international theory and develop a praxeological emancipatory cosmopolitanism on this basis. Rather than rejecting Linklater's emancipatory cosmopolitanism, we call for its 'overcoming,' and demonstrate ways that our meta-theoretical argument can effect international practice by offering 'love' as a guide for ethical and emancipatory praxis and an evaluative tool for critical social theory.

Dynamic assessment, as manner of alternative process-based assessment, is currently at a cross-roads chiefly characterised by, at times, vague conceptualisation of terminology, blurred demarcation as to its model and theory status and at times ill-defined fundamental philosophy. As a movement in modern psychological assessment within the broader field of intelligence, dynamic assessment does not present with a coherent unifying theory as such and due to its lack of clarity in a number of key areas its eventual disuse might well be the final outcome of this method and its unique history and methodology. In pursuit of this study’s main goal, dynamic assessment models and theories are critically explored by means of a meta-theory largely inspired by the work K.B. Madsen, a Danish meta-theorist and pioneer in theoretical psychology. Madsen’s meta-theory is attenuated in order to suit the nature and purposes of this study; so as to better analyse dynamic assessment within intelligence research and assessment. In its primary aim, this study builds on a foundation of epistemological and ontological considerations within science in general, the social sciences and psychology in particular. In keeping with Madsen’s method of meta-theory analysis, the author’s predilections are stated at the outset in order to place the progression of analyses of the various models and theories within dynamic assessment. Dynamic assessment and intelligence are discussed and a brief digression into the history of Soviet psychology is offered as it is pertinent to the work of Lev Vygotsky and its subsequent influence within process-based assessment. Theory and model development within science and the social sciences are described from a philosophy-of-science vantage point. Psychological assessment’s prime considerations are critically explored and the discussion highlights the role played by the philosophical aspects of mathematics and statistical foundations as leveraging measurement within assessment. Particular attention is paid to the perennial controversy surrounding null hypothesis significance testing and the possible future directions that can be explored by and within dynamic assessment which lends itself to approaches less restrictive than those offered by mainstream statistics. The obvious and not so obvious aspects within the mathematical, statistical and measurement foundations are critically explored in terms of how best dynamic assessment can manoeuvre within the current mainstream psychological assessment system and how new models of item response theory suited to change-based assessment can be explored as possible manner of handling the gain score issue; itself a paradoxical state of affairs within classical and modern test theory. Dynamic assessment’s past has in large part been dictated by mainstream considerations in the areas mentioned and in order to place itself on an alternative path these considerations are critically assessed in terms of dynamic assessment’s future path. Dynamic assessment and its place within the broader intelligence assessment field is then investigated by means of the meta-theory developed. It is envisaged that the intuitive appeal of dynamic assessment will continue to garner support from practitioners across the globe, specifically those trained in countries outside the traditional stronghold of Western psychological theory. However, the position taken in this argument is that in order to ensure its survival it will need to make a decision in terms of its future progress: either to branch off from mainstream assessment altogether or to become fused within mainstream assessment. The “best of both worlds” scenario has obviously not worked out as it was originally hoped. The study concludes with the meta-theoretical exploration of dynamic assessment within intelligence by utilising a small selection of current models. The application of the attenuated Madsenian framework seeks to explore, place and ascertain the nature of each model regarding the ontological and philosophical status of the approach; the nature of the hypothetical terminology, scientific hypotheses and hypothesis system utilised and lastly the nature of the abstract data, concrete data and prime considerations as implicit concerns within the varied approaches. An HQ score is calculated for each such model and is a partial indicator of the testability (verifiability or falsifiability) of the model in question. The models are thus couched in meta, hypothetical and data strata and can be positioned on a continuum of sorts according to which tentative claims can be made regarding the veracity of the approach behind each model. The study concludes with two appendices; a meta-analysis which was conducted on South African research in the field of dynamic assessment (1961-2002) and which cumulated in a significant effect size evidencing an overall positive effect that dynamic assessment has had as an alternative intervention technique in comparison to conventional or static based assessment models. In order to encourage replication of this study, all details pertaining to the studies included for consideration in the meta-analyses are attached in section 2 of this appendix. Secondly, an informal content analysis was conducted on eleven responses to questionnaires that were originally delivered to one hundred dynamic assessment practitioners and researchers across the globe. The purpose of the questionnaire was to ascertain information on core issues within dynamic assessment, as these fundamental issues were considered as pivotal in the future of this approaches’ eventual development or stagnation. The analysis concluded that dynamic assessment is indeed perceived to be at a crossroads of sorts and thus supported the initial hypothesis stated above. It is hoped that this theoretical study will aid in aligning dynamic assessment in a manner such that its eventual place in psychological assessment will be solidly grounded, theoretically defensible and viable as alternative manner of assessment. / Thesis (PhD (Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Psychology / PhD / PhD / unrestricted