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Das Thema dieser Dissertation ist die Anwendung des „Matching Law” als Verhaltensannahme bei der Erklärung sozialer Phänomene. Das „Matching Law” ist ein Modell der behavioristischen Lerntheorie und sagt aus, dass die relative Häufigkeit der Wahl einer Handlung mit der relativen Häufigkeit der Belohnung dieser Handlung übereinstimmt. In der Dissertation werden verschiedene Probleme in Bezug auf die soziologische Anwendung des „Matching Law” erörtert. Aufbauend auf diesen Erkenntnissen wird das Entsprechungsgesetz in die ökonomische Entscheidungstheorie integriert und mit bestehenden Verhaltensprognosen theoretisch verglichen. Anschließend wird das Entsprechungsgesetz auf mehrere soziale Situationen angewandt. Dabei kommt ein Lernmodell zum Einsatz, welches als „Melioration Learning” bezeichnet wird und unter bestimmten Bedingungen zum Entsprechungsgesetz führt. Mit Hilfe dieses Lernmodells und agentenbasierter Simulationen werden Hypothesen zu sozialem Verhalten hergeleitet. Zunächst werden einfache Situationen mit nur zwei interagierenden Akteuren betrachtet. Dabei lassen sich durch das Entsprechungsgesetz einige Lösungskonzepte der Spieltheorie replizieren, obwohl weniger Annahmen bezüglich der kognitiven Fähigkeiten der Akteure und der verfügbaren Informationen gesetzt werden. Außerdem werden Interaktionen zwischen beliebig vielen Akteuren untersucht. Erstens lässt sich die Entstehung sozialer Konventionen über das Entsprechungsgesetz erklären. Zweitens wird dargestellt, dass die Akteure lernen, in einem Freiwilligendilemma oder einem Mehrpersonen-Gefangenendilemma zu kooperieren.

Submitted by Geyciane Santos (geyciane_thamires@hotmail.com) on 2015-05-14T14:09:41Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcello Mazzaro de Mello.pdf: 939836 bytes, checksum: cd150ba21ce304a066fd46bcc785eee9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T14:09:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcello Mazzaro de Mello.pdf: 939836 bytes, checksum: cd150ba21ce304a066fd46bcc785eee9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-29 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study aims to understand the divergent positions between the theory of social reproduction of Pierre Bourdieu and the theory of rational choices of Raymond Boudon. Theories involving the sociology of education are often placed at opposite poles in relation individual / society. On one side, the field of action subjectively motivated, rational individual choices, represented by Raymond Boudon, became known as methodological individualism. On the other hand, the inverse perspective, holistic, derived from macrosociological contexts related to the size of the collective structures represented by Bourdieu, known as structuring. In trying to understand the differences of these two theories, research is supported in methodologies related to bibliographic studies, as well as those pertaining to comparative studies of works and authors. To understand the theories of sociology of education, the approaches are preceded by a summary of the general history of western education, contextualized, where relevant, with the history of education in Brazil. Moreover, an itinerary is done in the history of sociology of education to a better understanding of its various currents. With this purpose is focused on the following: a) Identify and analyze the characteristics and contributions of each approach in the construction of modern conceptions of education; b) describe the most relevant findings of the traditions of social science research in education and c) understand the various currents of the field of sociology of education with its various aspects, in seeking to understand the "crisis" of educational paradigms. / O presente trabalho tem por objetivo compreender as posições divergentes entre a teoria da reprodução social de Pierre Bourdieu e a teoria das escolhas racionais de Raymond Boudon. As teorias que envolvem a sociologia da educação são colocadas frequentemente em polos opostos na relação indivíduo/sociedade. De um lado, o campo da ação subjetivamente motivada, das escolhas individuais racionais, representado por Raymond Boudon, tornou-se conhecido como individualismo metodológico. Por outro lado, a perspectiva inversa, holista, oriunda de contextos macrossociológicos relacionada à dimensão das estruturas coletivas, representada por Pierre Bourdieu, conhecida como estruturalismo. Na tentativa de compreender as divergências dessas duas teorias, a investigação está apoiada em metodologias relacionadas aos estudos bibliográficos, assim como àqueles concernentes aos estudos comparativos de obras e autores. Para o entendimento das teorias da sociologia da educação, as abordagens são antecedidas por uma síntese da história geral da educação ocidental, contextualizadas, quando pertinente, com a história da educação no Brasil. Ademais, é feito um itinerário pela história da sociologia da educação para uma melhor percepção de suas diversas correntes. Com esta finalidade é focalizado o seguinte: a) Identificar e analisar as características e contribuições de cada uma das abordagens na construção das concepções modernas sobre educação; b) descrever as descobertas mais relevantes das tradições de pesquisa em ciências sociais na área educacional e c) compreender as diversas correntes do campo da sociologia da educação com suas várias vertentes, na busca do entendimento das “crises” dos paradigmas educacionais.

Despite increased access to care and interventions aimed to change health behavior, socioeconomic health disparities have remained unchanged, even for preventable illness and disease. Health behavior theories and interventions heavily rely on perceptions of control over one's fate and thus ignore populations with low perceptions of personal control. Poverty is associated with an external locus of control (LOC), while both poverty and external LOC are associated with less health protective behavior. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the role of LOC as an adaptive response to poverty and to discover the risks and benefits to physical and psychological health associated with LOC orientation. Using cross-sectional survey methodology, 136 adult participants from the United States were recruited through snowball sampling to anonymously complete measures of the Multidimensional Locus of Control (MLOC), the Health Promoting Lifestyles II (LPII), the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (KP10), and a demographic questionnaire. Hierarchical regression and bivariate analyses were used to test the hypotheses. According to the study findings, chance LOC mediated the relationship between socioeconomics and health lifestyles, while external-chance was associated with less healthy lifestyle choices than external-powerful others. Internality did not offer any psychological protections from anxiety and depression for low socioeconomic populations. Implications for social change are to further the understanding of the role of perceived control on health beliefs, behavior and psychological well-being for marginalized populations to promote the development of appropriately targeted, culturally sensitive health interventions.

This thesis addresses the factors which lead the Russian government to increase natural gas prices for Ukraine in 2006. Through the use of methodological individualism, an explanation which links system, state, and individual levels of analysis is constructed. The system level variables concerned include global energy prices and the increasing importance of Turkmen natural gas to Russia and other regional gas consumers. State level variables, include changes in Russia’s patrimonial society (changing source of rents, increased authoritarianism); and increasing state control over Russia’s natural gas industry. Changes in these conditioning factors influence individuals’ beliefs about their preferred source of rents, and the nature of their rent seeking and distributing. The resulting actions bring about variations in Russia’s natural gas price for Ukraine. This framework is tested over three time periods (1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2004-2008) selected based on the nature of the conditioning variables over those years. Evidence from these case studies suggests that the above mentioned factors played a large role in the Russian government’s decision. Further, it is concluded that methodological individualism offers a way to bring together system, state, and individual levels of analysis when explaining this event, and perhaps other events in international politics.

This thesis addresses the factors which lead the Russian government to increase natural gas prices for Ukraine in 2006. Through the use of methodological individualism, an explanation which links system, state, and individual levels of analysis is constructed. The system level variables concerned include global energy prices and the increasing importance of Turkmen natural gas to Russia and other regional gas consumers. State level variables, include changes in Russia’s patrimonial society (changing source of rents, increased authoritarianism); and increasing state control over Russia’s natural gas industry. Changes in these conditioning factors influence individuals’ beliefs about their preferred source of rents, and the nature of their rent seeking and distributing. The resulting actions bring about variations in Russia’s natural gas price for Ukraine. This framework is tested over three time periods (1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2004-2008) selected based on the nature of the conditioning variables over those years. Evidence from these case studies suggests that the above mentioned factors played a large role in the Russian government’s decision. Further, it is concluded that methodological individualism offers a way to bring together system, state, and individual levels of analysis when explaining this event, and perhaps other events in international politics.

Submitted by Tatiana Lima (tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2015-04-13T20:31:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Miranda, Renato Luis Pinto.pdf: 2324516 bytes, checksum: 9d7f3af7c9f9d69edc7ef18789828bfc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Tatiana Lima (tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2015-05-05T20:01:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Miranda, Renato Luis Pinto.pdf: 2324516 bytes, checksum: 9d7f3af7c9f9d69edc7ef18789828bfc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-05T20:01:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Miranda, Renato Luis Pinto.pdf: 2324516 bytes, checksum: 9d7f3af7c9f9d69edc7ef18789828bfc (MD5) / A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo identificar os macrofundamentos inerentes ao processo de uniformização da legislação do ICMS, o qual emerge, no atual debate sobre a reforma tributária, como uma forma de eliminação da chamada “guerra fiscal”. A percepção dos determinantes imanentes a esse processo demanda uma reflexão sobre as bases teórico-metodológicas destinadas à sua concepção, constatando-se a necessidade de uma abordagem a partir da própria materialidade histórico-concreta do objeto. As principais dificuldades de investigação a esse respeito residem no fato de as teorias hegemônicas da economia do setor público – principalmente a Public Choice Theory e a New Institutional Economics – reduzirem o estudo das barganhas federativas à dimensão “racional-mercantil-maximizadora”. Fundadas no individualismo metodológico, tais teorias – em afirmação da sua inspiração neoclássica – subordinam a investigação desse fenômeno à identificação dos seus microfundamentos, o que impede a sua apreensão enquanto fração de uma totalidade concreta que, no curso do seu movimento, expressa a própria dinâmica de funcionamento do seu todo. Dados os obstáculos encontrados no cerne das teorias que compõem o maistream, a pesquisa segue pela abordagem da constituição histórica do arranjo federativo e do sistema tributário brasileiros, identificando os traços concretos da sua materialidade institucional. Abstrai-se, a partir daí, suas categorias essenciais, percebendo-se a dita uniformização enquanto um arranjo sócio-organizativo destinado a garantir a ampliação do ciclo reprodutivo do capital, no cerne da nova espacialidade capitalista. A institucionalidade, a que se visa implementar – mediante a homogeneização dos padrões normativos concorrenciais – busca assegurar uma pretensa neutralidade das estruturas públicas, adequando os arquétipos federativo e tributário do país segundo a predominante coalizão de forças, marcada pelo atendimento aos imperativos de competitividade, em detrimento dos compromissos redistributivos, tanto no âmbito social como regional. This research aims to identify the macro-foundations inherent to the process of standardizing ICSM legislation, which emerges in the current debated on tax reform, as a way of eliminating the so called “war tax”. The perception of the determinants inherent to this process demands a reflection on the theoretical and methodological based aimed at its design, noting the need for an approach from the concrete history of the object. The main difficulties of researching about this topic lie in the fact that the hegemonic theories of the public sector economy – specially the Public Choice Theory and New Institutional Theories – reduce the study of the size of federal bargain to “rational-mercantile-maximizing”. Based on methodological individualism, such theories – in asserting its neoclassical inspiration – subordinate the research of this phenomenon to the identification of its micro-foundations, which prevents its comprehension while part of a concrete totality that in the course of its movement, expresses the whole operation dynamics. Given the obstacles encountered at the heart of the theories that make up the mainstream, the research follows the approach of historical constitution of the federal arrangement and the Brazilian tax system, identifying the specific features of its institutional materiality. Its essential categories are withdrawn noticing their uniformity while a social-organizational arrangement destined to ensure the expansion of the reproductive cycle of the capital, in the heart of the new capitalist spatiality. The institutions which is aimed to be implemented – by homogenization of competing normative standards – seeks to ensure an alleged neutrality of public structures, adapting the federal and tax archetypes of the country according to the prevailing coalition forces, characterized by the attention to the imperatives in competitiveness rather than the redistributive commitments, both in social and regional levels.

Many critics of rational choice theory aim at unrealistic psychological assumption of this theory. To what extent is this kind of critic relevant? If we analyze the formalized scheme of choice than we will find difficult to interpret this scheme as psychological theory that develops intentional explanations. We should rather understand this theory as a theory developing causal explanations that are generated by the structure of surrounding. Intencionality in this theory is only a auxiliary tool and the explanation is made in terms of structure, not in terms of mental states. From this perspective most of the critic aim at wrong target.

The prevailing discourse of “resistance vs. acceptance” in IT implementation research mostly personalizes the issue as “users” versus IT implementers (e.g., managers, CIOs, CMIOs, etc.). This kind of discourse has created an IT-implementer-centric attitude among IS scholars and practitioners. The IT-implementer-centric attitude, while embraces “acceptance” as a desirable reaction almost unconditionally, frequently holds for minimizing or more conservatively suppressing “resistance” to IT implementation. In other words, the mainstream IT implementation research, almost completely, treats “users” as passive recipients whose choices, as they face pre-developed/pre-designed/pre-rolled-out technology being implemented, can only be defined on a spectrum from “acceptance” to “resistance.” The current research study, however, offers an alternative perspective that views the “resistance vs. acceptance” duality “from the other side,” i.e., from the perspective of the supposed “resistors” or “acceptors” themselves. Through a review of the literature, this study first identifies major drawbacks of the extant theories and models of IT implementation research. Next, drawing on an interpretive paradigm of research (more specifically, phenomenological sociology), this study investigates a real world case of healthcare IT implementation. The results of the aforementioned literature review and case investigation subsequently form the basis for the study’s proposed theoretical account, which provides an unprecedented understanding and explanation of how actors representing different stakeholder groups, among which people who are routinely called “users” are but one group, experience IT implementation as they live their everyday lives. The proposed theoretical account is lastly used as a guide for crafting both practical and research prescriptions with respect to managing IT-involved change occasions.

Cette thèse s’intéresse aux croyances, représentations et facteurs qui façonnent l’intention de croissance du dirigeant de PME. Produire de la connaissance sur ces éléments est essentiel. A un niveau social, l’intention de croissance constitue un enjeu dans une période marquée simultanément par le chômage et le manque d’attirance des dirigeants pour la croissance. A un niveau académique, la connaissance des micro-fondations de la croissance demeure méconnue et à renforcer (Wright et Stigliani, 2012). L’enquête qualitative est constituée de 32 entretiens individuels, complétée par 2 entretiens collectifs focalisés et des données recueillies lors des salons majeurs de la PME. Les résultats mettent d’abord en évidence la construction cognitive du phénomène de croissance, puis soulignent la nature distincte des croyances qui façonnent l’intention de croissance et ses deux formes de négation identifiées : l’intention de non-croissance et la non-intention de croissance. Des propositions concrètes sont avancées pour encourager l’intention de croissance du dirigeant. / This thesis focuses on the beliefs, representations and factors shaping SMEs owners’ growth intention. Produce knowledge on these elements is crucial. At a social level, growth intention is an issue in a period marked simultaneously by unemployment and lack of attraction of entrepreneurs for growth. At an academic level, knowledge of the micro-foundations of growth remains unknown and need further strengthening (Stigliani and Wright, 2012). The qualitative survey consists of 32 individual interviews, supplemented by 2 focus group interviews and data collected during major exhibitions of SMEs. First results highlight the cognitive construction of growth phenomenon and emphasize the distinct nature of the beliefs that shape growth intention and its two forms of denial identified: intention of no-growth and no-intention of growth. Concrete proposals are put forward to encourage SMEs owners’ growth intention.