Over the past decade, there has been a turn in applied health research towards the use of performance as a tool for knowledge translation. The turn to performance in applied health sciences has emerged as researchers have struggled to find new and engaging ways to communicate complex research findings regarding the human condition. However, the turn to performance has occurred within the political landscape of the knowledge economy, and thus conforms to contemporary practices of knowledge production and evaluation. Recent studies about health-based performances exhibit two hallmarks of economized modes of knowledge production. First, these studies focus their attention on the transmission of knowledge to health care professionals through an exposure to performance. Knowledgeable, and thus more useful or efficient, health care providers are the end-product of this transaction. Second, many of these productions are created in the context of application, and thus are driven by an accountability and goals-oriented approach to knowledge acquisition. This thesis argues that economized and rationalized modes of knowledge production do great harm to performance’s pedagogical and ethical potential. By utilizing scientific evaluative methodologies to monitor performance’s ‘success’ as an evaluable, predictable and ends-oriented practice obscures performance’s libratory value, and thus misses performance’s potentially most potent and critical contributions. To mount this argument, I present a case study of Margaret Edson’s play Wit, which has been used widely in medical education. Drawing from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I critically explore the impact of the knowledge economy on arts-based pedagogical models within health research and education. Further, I seek to redress potential harms inflicted by the knowledge economy by developing the notion of ethical “response-ability.” Through this concept I argue that performance challenges normative conceptions of reason, rationality and scientific evaluation, making the use of theatre in contemporary educational settings at once troublesome and vital.

Over the past decade, there has been a turn in applied health research towards the use of performance as a tool for knowledge translation. The turn to performance in applied health sciences has emerged as researchers have struggled to find new and engaging ways to communicate complex research findings regarding the human condition. However, the turn to performance has occurred within the political landscape of the knowledge economy, and thus conforms to contemporary practices of knowledge production and evaluation. Recent studies about health-based performances exhibit two hallmarks of economized modes of knowledge production. First, these studies focus their attention on the transmission of knowledge to health care professionals through an exposure to performance. Knowledgeable, and thus more useful or efficient, health care providers are the end-product of this transaction. Second, many of these productions are created in the context of application, and thus are driven by an accountability and goals-oriented approach to knowledge acquisition. This thesis argues that economized and rationalized modes of knowledge production do great harm to performance’s pedagogical and ethical potential. By utilizing scientific evaluative methodologies to monitor performance’s ‘success’ as an evaluable, predictable and ends-oriented practice obscures performance’s libratory value, and thus misses performance’s potentially most potent and critical contributions. To mount this argument, I present a case study of Margaret Edson’s play Wit, which has been used widely in medical education. Drawing from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I critically explore the impact of the knowledge economy on arts-based pedagogical models within health research and education. Further, I seek to redress potential harms inflicted by the knowledge economy by developing the notion of ethical “response-ability.” Through this concept I argue that performance challenges normative conceptions of reason, rationality and scientific evaluation, making the use of theatre in contemporary educational settings at once troublesome and vital.

Since 1962, the World Bank has involved itself in higher education discourse and practice through the provision of loans and grants to developing nations. Initially, such involvement focused primarily on tangible infrastructure projects such as building schools and providing textbooks for students. Over time, however, the Bank has increasingly come to involve itself in less tangible projects such as policy work, technical assistance, and educational discourse – including the creation of the imaginary of the Global Knowledge Economy (GKE). Through this increased focus on higher education policy and discourse, the Bank has come to wield increasing authority over the discourse of knowledge and its means of production. In order to better elucidate the rising authority of the World Bank over higher education and discourses of knowledge production, this dissertation explores the historical development of the Bank’s work in higher education broadly, as well as in two specific countries, Morocco and Indonesia. The dissertation studies the Bank’s involvement in higher education through a critical historical method, which combines traditional historical analysis with a critical policy studies lens. Through this analysis, I argue that the authority of the World Bank over the discourse and practice of higher education and knowledge production has increased significantly through time due to the Bank’s role in the creation of a new global profession of higher education economists, and that this increased authority reveals an underlying irony in the Bank’s thinking and operations. The irony is that the Bank relies upon a fundamental belief in the power of free markets in the economic sphere, but increasingly deploys methods of centralized planning over higher education and knowledge production through these new professionals. This profession is allowed to flourish in part because the Bank and the GKE both exist within a global realm in which the global public sphere has not been clarified. This dissertation adds to the historical record of the Bank’s involvement in higher education discourse, policy and practice, while also exploring the need for more robust theories of the public sphere and for alternative views of knowledge and education at the global level.

This study explores whether and how skilled Chinese immigrants can contribute to New Zealand's knowledge society and economy with their knowledge and skills. As New Zealand is moving towards a knowledge society and economy, the attraction of skilled migrants is one of the critical strategies in maintaining its competitive advantages. However, the results of the socioeconomic integration of new skilled migrants always lead to debates on the real role of skilled migrants in New Zealand's society and economy. This study uses multiple research strategies combining analyses of historical and statistical materials, and a case study with fourteen interviews conducted with new Chinese immigrants, who came from Mainland China after 1990 and are living and working in Christchurch, to explore the relationships between these 'descendents of the dragon' and New Zealand's knowledge society and economy. Through these strategies, the study shows the role of knowledge in the emergence of New Zealand's knowledge society and economy, the value placed on knowledge and skills in New Zealand immigration policies and the change in the Chinese community with the growing demand for skilled migrants. It argues that tacit knowledge is not separated from but interactive with explicit knowledge through cultural values, social networks and structures, and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, in the process surrounding the entry of new skilled Chinese immigrants into New Zealand society, the knowledge economy is not exclusively economic but socially and culturally conditioned; and the knowledge society is not universal but diversified and interdependent.

Rapid technological advances and globalization have resulted in the rise of the information era and with it, the emergence of knowledge economies and the call to lifelong learning viewed as necessary for producing skilled workers. This study examines the characteristics of lifelong learners in different environments, in order to understand how education contributes to the development of the lifelong learner, as well as how active pedagogical approaches, namely problem-based learning, may be especially beneficial for developing the lifelong learner. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this exploratory study was conducted on a sample of polytechnic graduates from Singapore who were continuing their learning in bachelor degree programs at different universities. It was guided by a framework of four main attributes which were identified as possible descriptors of the lifelong learner: capacity for self-directed learning, motivation, metacognitive awareness, and learner disposition. Quantitative data were collected via responses to an instrument, the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), while quantitative data were collected through interviews, to capture in-depth information about individuals’ lifelong learner attributes as well as to probe into their experiences in Singapore’s formal education system that enabled (or hindered) their lifelong learner development. The data generated from the survey and interviews indicated that this group of young learners from Singapore who were continuing their learning journey did manifest some of the qualities of effective lifelong learners. However, there was also some suggestion that their engagement in lifelong learning was not so much from an intrinsic love for learning, but more out of compulsion because of the better job prospects that came with it. Also, despite the aim of the Singapore Ministry of Education to develop lifelong learners under the policy umbrella of Teaching Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN), learners’ experiences suggest that reforms have not reached all secondary schools to the same extent, and that many government schools were still using more didactic teaching rather than learner-centred pedagogies. Cross-case analyses found that the experience of problem-based learning seemed to equip learners with more self-direction in learning, more intrinsic motivation to learn, and a greater metacognitive awareness. At the same time, the positive outcomes of this pedagogy appear to be mediated by the learner’s own readiness for self-directed learning: learners with lower readiness for self-directed learning appeared to be less able to enjoy the learning benefits of problem-based learning. The study concluded with implications of these findings for the Singapore education system, as well as on problem-based learning as a pedagogy for developing lifelong learners.

Rapid technological advances and globalization have resulted in the rise of the information era and with it, the emergence of knowledge economies and the call to lifelong learning viewed as necessary for producing skilled workers. This study examines the characteristics of lifelong learners in different environments, in order to understand how education contributes to the development of the lifelong learner, as well as how active pedagogical approaches, namely problem-based learning, may be especially beneficial for developing the lifelong learner. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this exploratory study was conducted on a sample of polytechnic graduates from Singapore who were continuing their learning in bachelor degree programs at different universities. It was guided by a framework of four main attributes which were identified as possible descriptors of the lifelong learner: capacity for self-directed learning, motivation, metacognitive awareness, and learner disposition. Quantitative data were collected via responses to an instrument, the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), while quantitative data were collected through interviews, to capture in-depth information about individuals’ lifelong learner attributes as well as to probe into their experiences in Singapore’s formal education system that enabled (or hindered) their lifelong learner development. The data generated from the survey and interviews indicated that this group of young learners from Singapore who were continuing their learning journey did manifest some of the qualities of effective lifelong learners. However, there was also some suggestion that their engagement in lifelong learning was not so much from an intrinsic love for learning, but more out of compulsion because of the better job prospects that came with it. Also, despite the aim of the Singapore Ministry of Education to develop lifelong learners under the policy umbrella of Teaching Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN), learners’ experiences suggest that reforms have not reached all secondary schools to the same extent, and that many government schools were still using more didactic teaching rather than learner-centred pedagogies. Cross-case analyses found that the experience of problem-based learning seemed to equip learners with more self-direction in learning, more intrinsic motivation to learn, and a greater metacognitive awareness. At the same time, the positive outcomes of this pedagogy appear to be mediated by the learner’s own readiness for self-directed learning: learners with lower readiness for self-directed learning appeared to be less able to enjoy the learning benefits of problem-based learning. The study concluded with implications of these findings for the Singapore education system, as well as on problem-based learning as a pedagogy for developing lifelong learners.

Information technology, media, financial flows and consumer culture have long been acknowledged as transnational connective forces that spread ideas and values around the globe. This work proposes an alternative mechanism for such spread: development-focused civil society organizations. This thesis argues that such organizations constitute a backbone of connections that link a diversity of development actors and local communities into a network with global scope. While individual nodes in these civil society networks may not possess global reach, the network as a whole facilitates the far flung transfer of knowledge and ideas. This work focuses on the ways that knowledge is generated, transferred and renegotiated on both the global, national and local scale through such networks of development institutions. How are global discourses formed, adapted and spread via civil society into local communities? How do local communities interact with, change, implement or ignore the values, knowledge and rhetoric of global movements? How are communities shaped by these discourses and what role do they have in informing the discourses themselves? The project constructs two case studies of such 'knowledge networks' - two international foundations, their partner NGOs in the developing world (Kyrgyzstan and Kenya), and the local communities where the NGOs support ecologically-focused initiatives. The case studies demonstrate the complex and uneven ways in which knowledge and values are shared - and contested - within the networks. Ideas are transformed, adapted or ignored between different nodes, and yet the network retains enough common discourse and shared knowledge to function as a whole. Despite power imbalances, local actors remain agents, not subjects, in these networks and produce knowledge that is prized by other organizations and individuals in the networks. Civil society knowledge networks thus sculpt the content and application of knowledge across global movements, development-focused civil society organizations and local communities in the developing world.

The main aim of this thesis is to specify issues of a corporate culture, while focusing on its cultural dimensions and a possible motivation factor in the direction of the knowledge economy. This thesis compares the current situation and the motivational potential of corporate culture in two selected companies. The theoretical part describes basic concepts, procedures and opinions of individual authors on corporate culture, motivation and knowledge economy issues. For research of corporate culture in chosen companies two surveys are used: The Value Survey Module 94 & 2013 (VSM) and Color test of semantic differential (TBSD). The research has identified which dominant cultural dimensions are motivating in selected organizations. Proposed measures that can change current state are based on the own analysis and they are given in conclusion.

It is a widely held belief that those who are attractive generally experience an easier life; that the door to success is opened by perfect bone structure and a sparkling white smile. However, this might not be the case. Attractiveness might play a far lesser role in individual’s achieving their objectives than has previously been thought. Is it possible that an individual’s qualifications may have a greater influence regarding the perceptions of managers who question the suitability of a candidate to fill the position of a Knowledge Worker? The main purpose of this research was not only to identify the existence of the so-called Beauty Premium in the Knowledge Economy but, to determine that if it does indeed exist, how to explore the influence of this aspect regarding the hiring decisions for which managers are responsible. A two-phased experimental design was followed that investigated the existence and strength of the Beauty Premium amongst a group of managers who were provided with fictitious resumes coupled with photographs of the applicants. These managers were requested to make a hiring decision based on the information in front of them. The results revealed the existence of a Beauty Premium but that is was relatively weak and that the qualification of an individual had a far greater influence on a manager’s perception of the suitability of a candidate to fill a position of a Knowledge Worker. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / Unrestricted

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