Care for old people is a particular concern in ageing societies. In Taiwan, traditional collective cultures encourage collective practice, including informal family care of elderly people. However, social change is modifying traditional values and behaviours, leading some commentators identify a western style of individualism on this change. This thesis explores how Taiwanese young adult grandchildren and their grandparents interpret ’collectivism’ and ‘individualism’ and think about or draw on these value systems in familial interactions. This was achieved through in-depth individual interviews with 20 pairs of college-aged grandchildren and their grandparents living in different locations and family households. The research questions mainly focus on three areas. Firstly, how perceptions of the role, and the attached expectations of being a grandchild construct contemporary grandchildren’s understandings of their orientations to their families. Secondly, how grandchildren interpret traditional and what they understand imported individualistic value systems and how these operate on personal and family lives. Lastly, how the two generations, grandparents and grandchildren, perceive transformation of Taiwanese society and family, particularly their views of the effects of domestic-demographics and wider structural changes on the grandparent-grandchild relationship over time. How grandchildren viewed collectivism and individualism and reported their behaviours towards the grandparent generation was both as expected in terms of the results of previous research and contained some unexpected outcomes. According to the interviewees, being more individualistic is responsible for causing distance between family members, whereas possessing more collective perspectives encourages more communal considerations for common benefit. However, grandchild informants acknowledged benefits of individualistic concepts and use them to rationalise intergenerational flows that do not follow tradition, arguing that personal considerations themselves are able to contribute more collective practices. Interestingly, the expressed views of the grandchild generation reverse commonly perceived negative impacts of individualistic concepts on collective interests. Critically, the youth in Taiwan still regards themselves as being primarily guided by collective-based doctrines, by indicating how traditional Chinese values are still prioritised. Meanwhile, the concepts of individualism are placed as complementary principles by the grandchildren, although they and their grandparents had identified some negative effects of individualistic-led tendencies in their society and families.

Past research highlights the important role of the teacher-child relationship in children's school adjustment and success. The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the role of child gender in teacher-child relationship quality across elementary school grades. Specifically, this study explored: 1) stability of teacher-child relationship quality over time for girls and boys, 2) gender differences in relationship quality at first, third, and fifth grade, 3) possible relational mechanisms that could mediate the association between child gender and teacher-child relationship quality, 4) child gender as a moderator between relationship quality and child outcomes both concurrently and over time and 5) the influence of teacher gender and teacher-child gender match on relationship quality. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development (SECCYD), these questions were explored in a sample of 682 children at first, third, and fifth grade. Analyses revealed relative stability in teacher-child relationship quality across grade level with no significant gender differences in stability. However, girls were consistently rated higher in closeness and boys higher in conflict across the grade levels. The child's affiliative orientation toward the teacher was found to partially mediate the link between child gender and relationship quality, such that girls' greater affiliation predicted greater closeness and lower conflict with the teacher. Child gender was found to moderate associations within grade level, such that closeness was associated with greater social competence for girls than boys. Conflict was also associated with more externalizing behaviors for girls than boys. Teacher-child gender match was also found to play a significant role in predicting teacher-child closeness. This study highlights important and significant contributions gender makes to teacher-child relationship quality.

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The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the factors affecting consumer foreign online purchase process when taking country of origin, the company’s website and the company itself into account. Four narrative stories were used to describe consumers’ buying process before the purchase, during the purchase and after the purchase. The results show that the website level and country of origin level played a significant role only during the pre-purchase and purchase phase when the factors included in the company level were not known to the consumer. However, when the consumer was familiarized with factors related to the company level, the website level and country level factors lost significance. The factors concerning the company seemed to be the most important during the majority of the foreign online purchase processes.

Background: The importance of supportive business networks has been widely acknowledged in the field of entrepreneurship. Due to the success of informal business networks, the same networking concept is frequently encouraged and applied by regional political authorities. However, when duplicating a certain networking approach in different settings, it is important to address motives and expectations of network actors and be aware of potentially arising threats. Purpose of the study: The purpose of the Master Thesis is to explore and broaden the understanding of the relationship between the two actors: entrepreneurs and policy-driven networks. The Master Thesis aims to provide a theoretical contribution to the field of entrepreneurship in identifying and describing main motives and expectations of both actors, when engaging in a mutual relationship. However, the Thesis will focus on a single actor’s perspective and the main emphasis of the research will be placed on a set of entrepreneurs and their behavior within the analyzed policy-driven network. Ultimately, main emerging challenges between the two actors will be identified and analyzed, as well as appropriate guidance to address it will be provided. Methodological framework: The qualitative research approach was chosen for the conducted study. A multiple case study was completed in the form eight semi- structured interviews with the anagerial levels of the analyzed policy-driven network and local entrepreneurs. Completion and findings: The conducted study reveals that it is a great challenge to implement a certain networking approach in a diverse context. The provided frameworks of entrepreneurship, networking and social embeddedness indicate that, when establishing a policy-driven network a considerable amount of attention should be devoted to main network actors – regional entrepreneurs.

This article focuses on the development of guidelines to empower parents with adolescent children to have a better relationship with their adolescent children. A qualitative research method within the context of intervention research was followed to develop the guidelines. Three major themes and some sub-themes were identified from two focus groups with the parents and two focus groups with the adolescents. The main themes are parent-adolescent relationships, conflict and communication. Sub-themes include characteristics of a good relationship, time spend together, times of crisis, reasons for conflict, resolving conflict, effectiveness of conflict, aspects of good communication, coping with sensitive issues and dealing with unacceptable friendships. Empowerment involves the process of increasing personal, interpersonal, or political power so that individuals, families and communities can take action to improve their situations. The Strengths perspective subscribes to the notion that people have a reserve of abilities that can be expressed. When this reserve of inner power is enhanced, individuals, families or communities develop their potential, mastery and self-actualization. To empower the parents with adolescent children it is necessary for a practitioner helping the family to understand how to focus on the present and to incorporate a vision of the future in the guideline developed for parents with adolescent children. The integration of empowerment mandates parents with adolescent children, to move towards emphasizing strengths and to create solutions that incorporate elements of social action to improve their situations. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

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