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No description available.

This study explores the nature of conflict in virtual communication in the course of inter-organisational collaborations. Conflict appears to exist inherently when organisations cooperate together because each company operates with different goals, norms and values, which are vital considerations for successful business collaborations. Special attention, therefore, needs to be paid to gaining a grounded understanding of conflict in the context of virtual communication in the interorganisational business collaborations of today. This research draws on fieldwork carried out over five months, using a multiple-case study approach, involving four cases of inter-organisational collaborations between a large high-tech corporation in Taiwan and its four supplier companies in Korea. In addition, participant observation was employed as the main method of data collection in this study, which allowed for this researcher to gain rich data in a direct way. The collected data included daily logs based on observations, in addition to interviews and documentation. This resulted in an extensive amount of useful information being gathered, which was analysed, categorised, interpreted, and summarised in relation to theory generalisation. In this inter-organisational research setting, it was found that three patterns of interorganisational conflict, namely: business strategic conflict, cultural conflict and organisational process conflict interact to influence participants’ communication media selection and, in turn, conflict is influenced by the selected media. Moreover, it was found that conflict is expressed in email communication in a stylised way that is significantly different from spoken conversation and it could lead to conflict escalation and the subsequent termination of business collaboration. Based on the research findings, a comprehensive framework was established to describe and explain the interrelations between conflict transformation and computer-mediated communication (CMC) in inter-organisational collaborations.

Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae is a Māori community settlement located in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Its hapu (sub-tribe) community was one of 33 hapu that formed the Tainui confederation claiming compensation from the Crown for land confiscated in the nineteenth century. The claim was settled in 1995 and it was within this context that research for this study was conducted at the marae from August 1997 to December 1999. This ethnographic study examines the way that the community at Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae managed its affairs through its two management bodies, the Marae Committee and the Trustees. It is argued in this thesis that the marae's mode of management is in transition from an informal to formal mode, and from an inward to outward looking focus. Bureaucratic administration, it is argued, has been the major catalyst for the transition and has been introduced into marae operations through an accumulation of state legislation affecting Māori land and communities. Furthermore, some aspects of bureaucratic administration have been legitimated and appropriated by the iwi authority, which has passed this on to the Marae Committee. The community have been complicit in the adoption of bureaucratic administration by accommodating the requirements of both the state and the iwi authority. However, a persistent question was whether the marae could maintain its own rangatiratanga (authority, self-determination, control) and separate identity in the face of increasing pressure to conform to a bureaucratic management style. The community managed the marae communally by way of hui (gatherings) and meetings, which were observed using a combined methodological approach of Kaupapa Māori research and ethnography, as described in Chapter 2. The philosophy of kotahitanga (solidarity) underpinned the social organisation of the Tainui tribal confederation, so understanding the place of the marae in its wider socio-political environment has helped in comprehending the nature of the pressure on the community to increase its scale of operations and is explained in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 introduces the accumulation of influences that have brought about a change of managerial style from informal to formal organising. The practical effect of these influences are demonstrated in the management structure and administrative systems that the community used. These are described phenomenologically in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively. The management plan, compiled since 1995, had a strong emphasis on management structural review and participation in tribal development initiatives and is discussed in Chapter 7. The implementation of a collaborative development project between the iwi authority and Marae Committee is described in Chapter 8. The final chapter reflects on the impact of bureaucratic administration on marae management as well as the dynamism of the community and how the rangatiratanga of the marae has thus far been maintained.

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The aim of this work is to introduce modular processing mechanisms for cortical functions implemented in networks of spiking neurons. Neural maps are a feature of cortical processing found to be generic throughout sensory cortical areas, and self-organisation to the fundamental properties of input spike trains has been shown to be an important property of cortical organisation. Additionally, oscillatory behaviour, temporal coding of information, and learning through spike timing dependent plasticity are all frequently observed in the cortex. The traditional self-organising map (SOM) algorithm attempts to capture the computational properties of this cortical self-organisation in a neural network. As such, a cognitive module for a spiking SOM using oscillations, phasic coding and STDP has been implemented. This model is capable of mapping to distributions of input data in a manner consistent with the traditional SOM algorithm, and of categorising generic input data sets. Higher-level cortical processing areas appear to feature a hierarchical category structure that is founded on a feature-based object representation. The spiking SOM model is therefore extended to facilitate input patterns in the form of sets of binary feature-object relations, such as those seen in the field of formal concept analysis. It is demonstrated that this extended model is capable of learning to represent the hierarchical conceptual structure of an input data set using the existing learning scheme. Furthermore, manipulations of network parameters allow the level of hierarchy used for either learning or recall to be adjusted, and the network is capable of learning comparable representations when trained with incomplete input patterns. Together these two modules provide related approaches to the generation of both topographic mapping and hierarchical representation of input spaces that can be potentially combined and used as the basis for advanced spiking neuron models of the learning of complex representations.

The microtubule [MT] cytoskeleton of S. pombe is a highly dynamic network of filaments that facilitates intracellular transport, determines cell polarity and plays an essential role in chromosome separation during mitosis. In fission yeast, MTs are nucleated in a temporally and spatially regulated manner from sites called Microtubule Organising Centres [MTOCs], through the activity of both the g-tubulin complex [g-TuC] and the Mto1/2 complex. The Mto1/2 complex determines the localisation of the g-TuC at MTOCs, which change throughout the cell cycle. As cells enter mitosis the cytoplasmic array of MT bundles depolymerise. They are replaced by the intranuclear mitotic spindle and cytoplasmic spindle pole bodyderived astral MTs that in turn give way to the formation of the post-anaphase array. Although much is known about the properties of each type of MT array, the mechanism by which the timing of MT nucleation at different MTOCs is regulated over the cell cycle remains unclear. In the Mto1/2 complex, Mto1 is thought to provide the primary interaction with the g-TuC, and Mto2 functions by reinforcing this interaction. Due to the lack of structural information for the Mto1/2 complex, the molecular mechanism of Mto1/2- mediated assembly of the g-TuC at MTOCs is unknown. The aim of my study is to investigate the possibility that the Mto1/2 complex is able to promote g-TuC assembly by forming a direct template. In addition, I will attempt to determine the molecular role of Mto2 within the Mto1/2 complex and examine ways in which regulation of Mto2 may influence the function the Mto1/2 complex at specific MTOCs. As part of the investigation into the mechanism of Mto2 function, an in vitro analysis of recombinant protein demonstrated that in the absence of Mto1, purified Mto2 is able to self-interact as a tetramer. I have confirmed this interaction in vivo and have also shown that Mto2 forms a dimer as cells enter mitosis. However, in the context of an Mto1/2 complex the significance of the change in Mto2 oligomeric state remains unknown. Hydrodynamic analysis of a truncated form of the Mto1/2 complex suggests that it may form a heterotetramer, a hypothesis which is consistent with the equimolar levels of Mto2 and Mto1 protein within the cell. This information provides some structural insight as to how the Mto1/2 complex may interact with the g-TuC at MTOCs. Further analysis of the Mto1/2 complex revealed that in vivo, the Mto1-Mto2 interaction is disrupted during mitosis. This was found to correlate with the hyperphosphorylation of Mto2, which occurs as cells enter mitosis. Subsequently, an in vitro kinase assay demonstrated that phosphorylation of the Mto1/2 complex reduces the stability of the complex. Mass spectrometry techniques and sequence conservation were used to identify several phosphorylated residues within Mto2 and the ability of these mutants to bind to Mto1 was analysed in vivo and in vitro. In summary, in this study I have uncovered a mechanism which allows fission yeast cells to regulate the nucleation of cytoplasmic MT nucleation in a cell-cycle dependent manner, through a phosphorylation-dependent remodelling of the Mto1/2 complex.

This thesis presents a biologically inspired model of learning and development. This model decomposes the lifetime of a single learning system into a number of stages, analogous to the infant, juvenile, adolescent and adult stages of development in a biological system. This model is then applied to Kohonen's SOM algorithm.In order to better understand the operation of Kohonen's SOM algorithm, a theoretical analysis of self-organisation is performed. This analysis establishes the role played by lateral connections in organisation, and the significance of the Laplacian lateral connections common to many SOM architectures.This analysis of neighbourhood interactions is then used to develop three key variations on Kohonen's SOM algorithm. Firstly, a new scheme for parameter decay, known as Butterworth Step Decay, is presented. This decay scheme provides training times comparable to the best training times possible using traditional linear decay, but precludes the need for a priori knowledge of likely training times. In addition, this decay scheme allows Kohonen's SOM to learn in a continuous manner.Secondly, a method is presented for establishing core knowledge in the fundamental representation of a SOM. This technique is known as Syllabus Presentation. This technique involves using a selected training syllabus to reinforce knowledge known to be significant. A method for developing a training syllabus, known as Percept Masking, is also presented.Thirdly, a method is presented for preventing the loss of trained representations in a continuously learning SOM. This technique, known as Arbor Pruning, involves restricting the weight update process to prevent the loss of significant representations. This technique can be used if the data domain varies within a known set of dimensions. However, it cannot be used to control forgetfulness if dimensions are added to or removed from ++ / the data domain.

Companies need different information about their operations, so that they can make better decisions and be more effective in the business world. One way to obtain that information is through looking at how costs are assigned to different cost objects, such as products or services. Of special interest is the allocation of indirect costs, because if these costs make up an important part of an organisation, then grasping them will help the firm be more competitive and respond better to customers and their needs. One method of allocating indirect costs is called activity based costing, or ABC, and it looks upon what activities that are being performed by a company, how much they cost based on resource usage, what drives the costs, and most importantly, it assigns these ex-penses to products/services. The aim of this thesis has been to investigate whether the ABC method can be applied in an event organising company. In order to reach the purpose we have used the example of Elmia AB, an event and trade show organiser situated in Jönköping, Sweden. The focus of our investigation was exhibition stands used in trade shows. We have come to the conclusion that activity based costing is applicable when it comes to event organisers in the sense that it is possible to identify major activities and depict re-sources. However, problems emerge when trying to estimate costs of resources because it is hard to know in advance what customers want, and therefore one cannot clearly distin-guish or set fixed and variable costs, nor can one easily cope with problems of unused ca-pacity, that is resources that are supplied but not used. This is especially the case with cus-tomised exhibition stands. The process is somewhat easier when it comes to standardised offerings, because they are less complicated since they are already set and cannot be much altered by the customers. Furthermore, cost drivers can be applied in this setting, at least theoretically because they provide help in determining what processes the customers might find important. On the other hand, they might be rather difficult to measure. Finally, the actual assigning of costs to cost objects is hard, because for the complex solutions, one cannot easily find common activities across different stands, but this can be easier to do when exhibition stand pack-ages are standardised and demand is better traceable. We have based our results on one company as a generalisation of event organisers as a whole, and we can argue that the example that we have chosen can be a good representa-tive of this particular branch of the service industry, because it shows how important indi-rect costs are to this dynamic business and also it reveals the importance of customers and their role when applying activity based costing to the environment. However, in order to have a complete conclusion with respect to our aim, more research is needed in other event and trade show organising firms because there are company specific situations in terms of size, structure, culture, etc, of a company that makes ABC a special case that changes ac-cording to different objectives of different users.