Trip chaining and mode choice are two important travel behavior decisions in activity-based travel demand modeling system. The hierarchy of these two decisions influences models predictive capability and policy sensitivity. This thesis is aimed at investigating the hierarchical relationship between these decisions and also the effects of socio-demographic characteristics on them. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique is used for this investigation. A six week travel diary data collected in Thurgau, Switzerland in 2003 is used for model estimation. Model estimation results show that for work-tour, trip chain and mode choice decisions are simultaneous and it remains consistent across the six weeks. For weekdays non-work tour, mode choice precedes trip chain whereas for weekends non-work tour trip chain precedes mode choice. The investigation of the effect of a number of socio-demographic characteristics on trip chaining and mode choice behaviors is also found useful for better understanding of these behaviors. / Transportation Engineering

This thesis presents three essays on audit quality tied up by a common thread: the implication of closeness in auditor-client relationship on audit quality and beyond. In Chapter II, I investigate the implications of close auditor-client relationships arising as time passes on clients’ operating decisions. I find long auditor tenure constrains clients’ discretion in accrual reporting, which in turn prompts firms to resort to real activity management if they are under pressure to achieve earnings targets. For a given length of auditor tenure, the presence of auditor industry expertise does not affect the association between tenure and clients’ engagement in real activity management. These findings highlight an unintended consequence of long auditor tenure and therefore contribute to the on-going debate concerning the merits and shortcomings of mandatory audit firm rotation. In Chapter III and IV, we examine the implications of close auditor-client relationships arising from economic bonding on audit quality reflected from clients’ accrual reporting and auditors’ going-concern decisions. In Chapter III, we find a significantly positive association between fee dependence and abnormal accruals prior to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter SOX), but not in the post-SOX period, suggesting that SOX has enhanced non Big-4’s ability to withstand client pressure arising from fee dependence. These results suggest strong economic bonding between auditors and clients may impair audit quality among smaller auditors, and tightening auditors’ external litigation exposures enhances small auditors’ abilities to withstand client pressure. In Chapter IV, we find that even for firms that are most targeted by SOX, auditors do not allow economic bonding to affect their going-concern decisions in either the pre- or the post-SOX period. These findings thus suggest potential litigation risks faced by auditors in the event of failures to warn the public about their clients’ severe financial distress prior to bankruptcy are high enough to deter auditors from compromising their independence in formulating going-concern decisions. In conclusion, audit quality is affected by closeness in the auditor-client relationship and regulatory intervene may be needed depending on specific setting in terms of auditor type and auditing decisions. / Accounting

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

This thesis is a study of the way in which Wales and Welshness have been depicted in Welsh general histories published in the period between 1970 and 1997. National identity has been and remains a topical and controversial issue in Wales, due to the complex and multiple nature of the identities that could be classified as 'national' identities. Correspondingly, the issue of identity, particularly national and regional identities, has been the subject of considerable study within Wales. These studies have provided considerable insight into the nature of Welsh identity but there remain significant gaps in the overall research picture. This study focuses on one: the way in which Welsh historiography has portrayed Wales and Welshness. The very nature of Welsh history means that such a study must also involve consideration of the impact of England and the relationship between Wales and England on the historiographical depictions of Wales and Welshness. England, as the dominant country in Britain and Wales' neighbour, has played a major role in shaping both the Welsh historical experience and Welsh identity, facts to which Welsh historians must respond, particularly when writing general histories of their country. This thesis, then, also examines the depiction of the Welsh-English relationship within Welsh national historiography and the way this, in turn, impacted on the way in which the historians portrayed Wales and Welshness. These concepts are very significant for both Welsh historiography and the wider study of Welsh identity. Historical studies, in providing the information for the construction of historically based national identities, are heavily involved in the larger issue of Welsh identity. This study aims to contribute to the research on Welsh identity through the analysis of this specific area of Welsh historiography. In doing so, this thesis offers a new way of approaching the complicated and very real issues of understanding Wales, Welshness and the relationship between Wales and England.

Aided by the development of information technology, the balance of power in the market place is rapidly shifting from marketers towards consumers and nowhere is this more obvious than in the online environment (Denegri-Knott, Zwick, & Schroeder, 2006; Moynagh & Worsley, 2002; Newcomer, 2000; Samli, 2001). From the inception and continuous development of the Internet, consumers are becoming more empowered. They can choose what they want to click on the Internet, they can shop and transact payments, watch and download video, chat with others, be it friends or even total strangers. Especially in online communities, like-minded consumers share and exchange information, ideas and opinions. One form of online community is the online brand community, which gathers specific brand lovers. As with any social unit, people form different roles in the community and exert different effects on each other. Their interaction online can greatly influence the brand and marketers. A comprehensive understanding of the operation of this special group form is essential to advancing marketing thought and practice (Kozinets, 1999). While online communities have strongly shifted the balance of power from marketers to consumers, the current marketing literature is sparse on power theory (Merlo, Whitwell, & Lukas, 2004). Some studies have been conducted from an economic point of view (Smith, 1987), however their application to marketing has been limited. Denegri-Knott (2006) explored power based on the struggle between consumers and marketers online and identified consumer power formats such as control over the relationship, information, aggregation and participation. Her study has built a foundation for future power studies in the online environment. This research project bridges the limited marketing literature on power theory with the growing recognition of online communities among marketing academics and practitioners. Specifically, this study extends and redefines consumer power by exploring the concept of power in online brand communities, in order to better understand power structure and distribution in this context. This research investigates the applicability of the factors of consumer power identified by Denegri-Knott (2006) to the online brand community. In addition, by acknowledging the model proposed by McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig (2002), which emphasized that community study should focus on the role of consumers and identifying multiple relationships among the community, this research further explores how member role changes will affect power relationships as well as consumer likings of the brand. As a further extension to the literature, this study also considers cultural differences and their effect on community member roles and power structure. Based on the study of Hofstede (1980), Australia and China were chosen as two distinct samples to represent differences in two cultural dimensions, namely individualism verses collectivism and high power distance verses low power distance. This contribution to the research also helps answer the research gap identified by Muñiz Jr & O'Guinn (2001), who pointed out the lack of cross cultural studies within the online brand community context. This research adopts a case study methodology to investigate the issues identified above. Case study is an appropriate research strategy to answer “how” and “why” questions of a contemporary phenomenon in real-life context (Yin, 2003). The online brand communities of “Haloforum.net” in Australia and “NGA.cn” in China were selected as two cases. In-depth interviews were used as the primary data collection method. As a result of the geographical dispersion and the preference of a certain number of participants, online synchronic interviews via MSN messenger were utilized along with the face-to-face interviews. As a supplementary approach, online observation was carried over two months, covering a two week period prior to the interviews and a six week period following the interviews. Triangulation techniques were used to strengthen the credibility and validity of the research findings (Yin, 2003). The findings of this research study suggest a new definition of power in an online brand community. This research also redefines the consumer power types and broadens the brand community model developed by McAlexander et al. (2002) in an online context by extending the various relationships between brand and members. This presents a more complete picture of how the perceived power relationships are structured in the online brand community. A new member role is discovered in the Australian online brand community in addition to the four member roles identified by Kozinets (1999), in contrast however, all four roles do not exist in the Chinese online brand community. The research proposes a model which links the defined power types and identified member roles. Furthermore, given the results of the cross-cultural comparison between Australia and China showed certain discrepancies, the research suggests that power studies in the online brand community should be country-specific. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on online consumer power, by applying it to the context of an online brand community, as well as considering factors such as cross cultural difference. Importantly, it provides insights for marketing practitioners on how to best leverage consumer power to serve brand objective in online brand communities. This, in turn, should lead to more cost effective and successful communication strategies. Finally, the study proposes future research directions. The research should be extended to communities of different sizes, to different extents of marketer control over the community, to the connection between online and offline activities within the brand community, and (given the cross-cultural findings) to different countries. In addition, a greater amount of research in this area is recommended to determine the generalizability of this study.

Although relationship marketing has gained acceptance as a research area in the marketing field since the 1990's, theory development in this area, particularly as it pertains to consumer markets, lags behind applications and prescriptions. Arguably, the fundamental problem of a relationship lies in the consumer's perceptions, especially for service consumers. Some consumers are very receptive to the idea of relationship because they perceive that it can reduce service risk due to the service's intangibility. / Some researchers argue that a service quality guarantee can be an effective tool to reduce consumer risk and increase consumer trust. On the other hand, others argue that a service guarantee may seem redundant with the original promise of service, as it may seem to put the burden of proof on the customer. Much of this discussion lacks actual data, so that there appear to be some gaps in knowledge and lack of much research to understand the impact of the service quality guarantee. / This paper reports results of an empirical study on the impact of a service quality guarantee on customer relationships in Singapore's mobile telecommunication market. First, qualitative research was conducted using in-depth interviews. The results demonstrated that many, though not all, customers do perceive a relationship with their mobile service providers. Further, both customer views about the role of a service quality guarantee came up- some view it as useful, and some question why it is needed if service is really already good. This qualitative work indicated that the initial proposed conceptual framework of this study is feasible. We then conducted the quantitative study to focus on the impact of the service quality activities and customer relationship elements. / Quantitative results also indicated many customers do believe that a relationship exists in this mass B2C market. Continuous improvement in service quality did increase trust, loyalty, service recovery, satisfaction, and referral, but trust and loyalty were the significant elements which contributed to the relationship strength. / The service quality guarantee was found to moderate the relationship between improvement of service quality and trust; it leads to a weaker relationship. It did not affect the other relationships between improvement in service quality and the other relationship strength antecedents (i.e. service recovery, satisfaction, referral, and loyalty). Thus, firms who plan to adopt a service quality guarantee must carefully consider its possible impacts. The view that a service quality guarantee may be redundant where consumers already see good quality seems to be supported. / Overall, while not every single element of the developed framework works exactly as hypothesized, in general, results supported the main patterns of our proposed model. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2006.

Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2003.

The working relationship between horses and riders is a unique association requiring cooperation between both to achieve the goals of humans in their selected equestrian sport. This dissertation chose the equestrian sports of eventing and dressage to investigate this working relationship between horse and rider, and its stability across training and competition settings. Consideration was given to psychological, physiological and behavioural factors for the human and horse. The research requiredthe development of a measure to indicate the harmony of the working relationship, which resulted in a rider and observer inventory, and of a physiological indicator of therelationship which became the correlation between the horse and rider heart rate and was called heart rate synchronisation. To examine reactive behavioural factors of the horse a horse Behaviour Check List was created, and to consider possible psychological factors implicated in this behaviour a Horse Temperament Inventory was developed.Anxiety was the psychological factor chosen to assess the rider, and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory – 2 and the Emotion and Mood Components of Anxiety – Questionnaire were used as its different components.It was hypothesized that there would be significant environmental differences between most factors with the competition environment showing evidence of lowerworking relationship scores, higher heart rates, higher rider anxiety, and more reactive horse behaviours. Horse temperament was considered to be a trait and therefore nodifferences were predicted. Negative relationships were hypothesized between the working relationship measures and rider anxiety components, horse temperament andcritical horse behaviours. A positive relationship was hypothesized between rider self confidence and the working relationship. Negative relationships were also predictedbetween rider anxiety, horse temperament and horse behaviour. No specific predictions were made regarding relationships between rider and horse heart rates and the other factors.In Study 1 with five eventing teams, results from Cohen’s d analyses of differences between means supported some hypotheses. A moderate to large effect size was found for rider’s somatic anxiety and heart rate being higher in the competition environment, but no significant effects were found for the rider’s cognitive anxiety and levels of self-confidence across environments. However, contrary to hypotheses, working relationship and the heart rate synchronisation factors had higher scores in thecompetition environment and showed a small and large effect size respectively. The horse’s temperament was also more positive in the competition environment, with theHorse Temperament Inventory – Rider (HTI-R) revealing a small effect size and the Horse Temperament Inventory – Observer (HTI-O) without the rider a large effect size,suggesting that it seems to be identifying a psychological state of the horse rather than the hypothesized temperament traits. The hypothesis regarding the horse and rider’s heart rate was also accepted as they also increased in the competition environment. The horse’s maximum heart rate and minimum heart rate showed a moderate effect size and a large effect size was found in the differences of the horse’s mean heart rate. Therider’s maximum heart rate and mean heart rate data also showed a large effect size and the rider’s minimum heart rate means showed a moderate effect size. Due to unforeseencircumstances and the low number of participants, the hypotheses could not be evaluated using inferential statistics. However, the patterns of the findings led to some modifications of methods and the selection of another equestrian sport for Study 2.The findings from Study 2 with thirty dressage teams indicate the working relationship between horse and rider was stable across environments during a dressagetest. The heart rate synchronisation analysis was able to identify significant relationships between most horse and rider teams during a dressage test in both the training and competition environments. At a group level the correlation between the horse and rider heart rates displayed a significant positive relationship in the training environment, but not in the competition environment. A t-test analysis found stabilityof the horse’s temperament across environments, suggesting that the Horse Temperament Inventory is measuring temperament traits. Also the rider’s somatic anxiety showed a significant increase in the competition environment, which was also reflected in the rider’s emotional experience of this anxiety. Unexpectedly the rider’s self-confidence was also significantly higher in the competition environment. However, no predicted associations were found between working relationship scores and heart rate synchronisation, or between these measures and horse and rider factors.The relationship between reactive horse misbehaviours and rider anxiety, and the team’s working relationship was analysed. A significant association was found between each of the rider’s and judge’s ratings of the working relationship and heart rate synchronisation with the horse’s misbehaviour scores in the competitionenvironment. The rider’s somatic anxiety also showed a significant association with the horse’s misbehaviour in both the training and competition environments. Significantrelationships were also found between horse misbehaviour and performance in both training and competition environments. To extend this investigation further adiscriminant function analysis was conducted to determine if the riders with levels of high and low cognitive and somatic anxiety could be categorised on the basis of horsetemperament. It revealed that riders with high and low levels of somatic anxiety could be categorised on the basis of the horse’s temperament score, whereas riders with high and low levels of cognitive anxiety could be classified on the basis of the horse’s heart rate means in the competition environment.Overall, the dissertation has significant methodological, conceptual and practical outcomes. It demonstrates possible self report, observational and physiologicalindicators to assess the horse-rider working relationship, and a reliable measure of horse temperament. It also addresses several speculations, assumptions and anecdotalreferences in the literature about the interactive association between horse and rider. Findings here point to significant associations between horse and rider psychology and physiology, and patterns of relationships that may indicate some relevance to theworking relationship, and ultimately performance.

Masters Research - Master of Philosophy (Architecture) / The widening gap between architects and clients and the associated problems in the management of their relationship have long been recognised by practitioners and researchers alike. Researchers tend to develop prescriptive models to provide some overall systematic strategy to those seeking guidance. Such models assume that the architect-client relationship can be systematically structured which is a highly optimistic, if not unrealistic view of the situation. An emerging trend has been to develop descriptive models to describe behavioural characteristics of successful and unsuccessful relationships based on observations of ‘real world’ practice. Such descriptive models indicate the significance of understanding the complexities of the social environment in which the architect-client relationship is within. This research built upon the work of past descriptive models by exploring the architect-client relationship on house projects with a focus on the client’s voice. It is positioned within an interdisciplinary approach drawing from sociological and psychological perspectives to further our understanding of this built environment industry problem. Sixty-nine percent of architects in Australia spend some of their work time on house projects and therefore improvements in this area can have significant impact on a considerably large portion of the profession. Habitus theory borrowed from sociology highlighted that the nature of architecture as a specialised activity places architects within an architectural habitus, distinguishing architects from clients who are not trained in the architectural field. An underlying premise of this study was that a mismatch between the architect and client’s habituses occurs as they enter into a relationship on the house project. This phenomenon was termed habitus shock, referring to the client’s experience of disorientation as they are confronted with an unfamiliar architectural habitus on the project. Culture shock theory was examined for its contribution to explain the process to which the client adjusts to the unfamiliar environment during habitus shock. The habitus shock model proposed that the client may achieve learning during habitus shock and it is this client learning that leads to successful relationships. Using the qualitative approach underpinned by the constructivist perspective for data collection and analysis, eight in-depth interviews were conducted across five case studies of successful architect-client relationships. The narrative inquiry approach was used to establish the extent to which habitus shock occurred and to describe the stages involved in the client’s adjustment process during habitus shock. The findings indicate that habitus shock occurred on all five case studies, which resulted in client learning, enabling clients to function with competency in the unfamiliar environment. Client learning achieved during habitus shock was directly linked to the amount of difficulty experienced. This study has refined our understanding of the architect-client relationship on house projects by exploring more deeply client behaviour and the ways in which clients successfully deal with difficulties on house projects rather than simply identifying the uncertainties and conflicts that occur on projects. The findings demonstrate that client learning during habitus shock is a characteristic of successful relationships. One of the most significant outcomes of this study is that it demonstrated the potential to facilitate client learning during habitus shock to contribute to the development of successful architect-client relationships. It also indicates the potential for further development of the model and methodology by suggesting potential areas for future research.