The postmodern ultra-competitive global marketplace makes it difficult for companies to hold on to customers. This is especially true for industries that are driven by commodity products, and the South African fertilizer industry is not excluded from this statement. It is therefore important that companies not only operate to create loyal customers, but also increase and maintain a high level of engagement with their customers. This study measures customer engagement for a South African fertilizer company. In doing so, the study makes use, firstly, of a proposed customer engagement model, secondly, a customer engagement questionnaire and, thirdly, factor analysis as a statistical tool to identify the underlying construct embedded within the data. The results show that only five factors Trust, Involvement, Integrity, Repurchase and Loyalty are antecedents for customer engagement. These factors explain 76% of the variance. Furthermore, it is important to note that all the antecedents were regarded as important by the respondents, and all but one exceed the required 75% level of excellence. The data were tested for reliability and showed excellent reliability in excess of 0.90, as measured by Cronbach alpha. The main finding of the study is that a new model for customer engagement in the fertilizer industry is proposed. This model can be used by future researchers in the fertilizer industry, as well as other agriculture related industries. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In this thesis, we address the challenge of information overload in online participatory messaging environments using an artificial intelligence approach drawn from research in multiagent systems trust modeling. In particular, we reason about which messages to show to users based on modeling both credibility and similarity, motivated by a need to discriminate between (false) popular and truly beneficial messages. Our work focuses on environments wherein users' ratings on messages reveal their preferences and where the trustworthiness of those ratings then needs to be modeled, in order to make effective recommendations. We first present one solution, CredTrust, and demonstrate its efficacy in comparison with LOAR --- an established trust-based recommender system applicable to participatory media networks which fails to incorporate the modeling of credibility. Validation for our framework is provided through the simulation of an environment where the ground truth of the benefit of a message to a user is known. We are able to show that our approach performs well in terms of successfully recommending those messages with high predicted benefit and avoiding those messages with low predicted benefit. We continue by developing a new model for making recommendations that is grounded in Bayesian statistics and uses Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). This model is an important next step, as both CredTrust and LOAR encode particular functions of user features (viz., similarity and credibility) when making recommendations; our new model, denoted POMDPTrust, learns the appropriate evaluation functions in order to make ``correct" belief updates about the usefulness of messages. We validate our new approach in simulation, showing that it outperforms both LOAR and CredTrust in a variety of agent scenarios. Furthermore, we demonstrate how POMDPTrust performs well against real world data sets from Reddit.com and Epinions.com. In all, we offer a novel trust model which is shown, through simulation and real-world experimentation, to be an effective agent-based solution to the problem of managing the messages posted by users in participatory media networks.

Internets framfart har föranlett att den elektroniska handeln etablerat sig som en allt vanligare kanal för konsumtion. Denna utveckling har gett dagens konsumenter betydligt fler alternativ att välja bland vid konsumtion, vilket har försvårat utvecklingen av långvariga relationer mellan konsument och företag. Genom ett konsumentperspektiv undersöker därför denna explorativa studie hur trogen dagens konsument egentligen är mot sin nuvarande butik. Genom att fokusera på de relationella komponenterna knowledge, trust och commitment är studiens syfte att ge en klarare bild av huruvida relationer påverkar konsumenters val att hålla fast vid en och samma butik. Studien genomförs med hjälp av teoretiskt stöd från tidigare forskning om de olika komponenterna. Försök görs också att kategorisera konsumenter efter hur stark konsumentens relation till butiken är. Utifrån denna kategorisering är det möjligt att utläsa hur trogna dagens konsumenter faktiskt är. Studiens empiriska resultat grundar sig på en kvantitativ enkätstudie ställd till konsumenter. Studien mynnar ut i slutsatsen att relationer har betydelse för att konsumenter ska hålla fast vid en och samma butik vid elektronisk handel, vilket innebär att dagens konsumenter kan betraktas som trogna sina butiker.

CSR, handlar om företags sociala ansvarstagande i samhället de verkar. I ett led att ta ansvar så upprättar företag en code of conduct, en uppförandekod, vars syfte är att förmedla hur företaget tar ansvar och agerar i olika situationer. En bransch som kraf-tigt har ökat sitt arbete med CSR är bankbranschen. En förklaring till det skulle kunna vara att de utpekades som starkt bidragande till den senaste finanskrisen år 2008.Banker måste följa stadgar och regler från Finansinspektionen och därigenom upp-rätta en uppförandekod. Även om bankernas uppförandekod kanske styrs av direktiv från Finansinspektionen så vill studien belysa att det finns andra motiv bakom ban-kens uppförandekod. Syftet med studien är att studera vilka olika motiv en bank har att upprätta en uppförandekod. Studien försöker även bidra med en ökad förståelse för uppförandekoder och visa på vilka effekter en uppförandekod kan ha för banker. För att studien ska kunna hitta de olika motiven så har de fyra storbankerna i Sverige valts ut som studieobjekt, där deras respektive uppförandekoder har legat till grund för undersökningen.Studien är en kvalitativ undersökning med ett abduktivt förhållningssätt. Studien har en undersökande förhållning och ett förklarande syfte. Den empiriska grunden utgörs av en dokumentstudie på de fyra storbankernas skriftliga uppförandekod. Utöver detta så har studien kompletterats med intervjuer och tidigare forskning som genom-förts inom ämnet.I undersökningen analyseras och sammanfattas olika motiv i en förklarande bild där de olika motiven har olika karaktär. Studien kommer fram till att det finns flera mo-tiv bakom en uppförandekod. Dels tvingande motiv, och dels motiv som ger banken positiva effekter. Tvingande motiv kan exempelvis vara lagar och regler. De positiva effekterna av en uppförandekod kan ses både ur ett externt och ur ett internt perspek-tiv för en bank. Ett motiv med att förmedla uppförandekoden externt kan exempelvis vara att det stärker det egna varumärket eller ökat förtroendet från sina intressenter. Genom att upprätta en uppförandekod kan en bank även påverkas internt då uppfö-randekoden medför en stärkande identitet för banken, men den kan även fungera som en styrning för medarbetare då riktlinjer presenteras. / CSR is about corporate social responsibility in the community they serve. As a step to take responsibility, a company establishes a Code of Conduct that aims to convey how it takes responsibility and actions in different situations. One industry that has significantly increased its CSR work is the banking industry.Banks must follow the laws and rules from the authority, therefore, they establish a Code of Conduct. The purpose of this study is to see the effects of what a code of conduct can provide to a bank in addition to following the directive given by the au-thority e.g. One of the motives of a bank is to establish a code of conduct. This study will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the Codes of Conduct. To see their motives, we selected the four major banks in Sweden as subjects of the study as well as looking through their respective Codes of Conduct as basis for this investigation.The study concludes that there are several motives behind having a Code of Conduct. Foremost, companies are required by the authority to have a Code of Conduct. Also, companies gain several advantages in having a Code of Conduct. The study provides external and internal advantages for a company in drawing a Code of Conduct

ABSTRACT Organizations are working to establish and maintain relationships with their target publics using a wide variety of communication tools. How they work at developing this organization-public relationship (OPR) is open to the organization, but previous research suggests there are measurement scales that can indicate what factors an organization may be doing right and those they may need to improve on. This study examines relationship building efforts of the Tampa Bay Rays organization and the representation it has demonstrated through online content. Utilizing a content analysis, sample articles were collected and coded to examine if relationship components could be found through the organization's affiliated website and the target public's local newspaper. The structure and development of this study was created based on the relationship indicators that were established by Hon and Grunig (1999) and Huang (2001). Based on the analysis of the results, it was discovered that OPR indicators were being used by the Tampa Bay Rays. Examples of commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality were the most frequent indicators throughout the online content. Trust and face and favor were the two remaining indicators that showed the lowest frequency of representation through the online content. From the study, the results revealed: (1) that differences in framing exist; (2) a representation of frequent OPR material and topics does occur; (3) there are thematic patterns on the part of the source; and finally, (4) the organization perspective of what may show up from online content may differ from the outside perspective.

The paper will describe one of David Miller’s arguments for limiting immigration by concluding that immigration is a threat to a successful democratic welfare state. There is a threat to a democratic welfare state when there is lack of trust in a heterogeneous society. Immigration contributes to heterogeneity. The paper will present flaws in Miller’s argument, which include the unacknowledged concepts of ignorance and fear that can lead to mistrust in cultural heterogeneous communities. I will then consider Miller’s response to the critiques. Lastly, I will mention some proposals for increasing trust and addressing the real issues in a multicultural society.

In order to succeed, it is imperative that all e-commerce systems include an effective and reliable trust and reputation modeling system. This is particularly true of decentralized e-commerce systems in which autonomous software engage in commercial transactions. Many researchers have sought to overcome the complexities of modeling a subjective, human concept like trust, resulting in several trust and reputation models. While these models each present a unique offering and solution to the problem, several issues persist. Most of the models require direct experience in the e-commerce system in order to make effective trust decisions. This leaves new agents and agents who only casually use the e-commerce system vulnerable. Additionally, the reputation ratings of agents who are relatively new to the system are often indistinguishable from scores for poorly performing agents. Finally, more tactics to defend against agents who exploit the characteristics of the open, distributed system for their own malicious needs are required. To address these issues, a new metric is devised and presented: seniority. Based on agent age and activity level within the e-commerce system, seniority provides a means of judging the credibility of other agents with little or no prior experience in the system. As the results of experimental analysis reveals, employing a reputation model that uses seniority provides considerable value to agents who are new agents, casual buyer agents and all other purchasing agents in the e-commerce system. This new metric therefore offers a significant contribution toward the development of enhanced and new trust and reputation models for deployment in real-world distributed e-commerce environments.

This study reviews the burgeoning literature on followership and tests propositions from a recently developed theoretical framework to explore the relationship between follower behaviours, leaders’ perceptions of follower trustworthiness (trusting beliefs), and leaders’ subsequent willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of their followers (trusting intentions). Leaders’ implicit followership theories (IFTs) were examined as a potential moderator of both relationships. Results revealed that passive followership influenced leaders’ trusting beliefs negatively, whereas collaborative followership had a positive influence on leaders’ trusting beliefs as well as leaders’ trusting intentions. The most extreme form of proactive followership, challenging followership, had nonsignificant relationships with leaders’ trusting beliefs and intentions. In addition, leaders’ IFTs did not interact with followership behaviour to produce any change in leaders’ trusting beliefs. However, IFTs were found to moderate the relationship between leaders’ trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of the results.

This dissertation examines reputation as a regulating force in online and offline relationships and transactions, arguing that reputation requires protection through the promulgation of new laws. Using John Locke’s “under-labourer” approach as its central method, this dissertation ultimately sets out a series of conclusions, which form a preliminary framework upon which appropriate reputation regulation might be built. Part I of this dissertation studies offers an interdisciplinary study of reputation. Chapter 1 examines the ways that reputation is created and maintained, the purposes for which it is used, and its role in risk management and trust. These understandings are then applied to reputation in process. Chapter 2 explores formal reputation systems and the ways in which user investments and desires become written into reputation such that multiple levels of “dominant” norms may be simultaneously operant. Chapter 3 shows this normative force also operating on social network sites, shaping identity performances. Finally, having established these intersections and the regulating power of norms upon reputation, the effect of such performances is examined in chapter 4, which identifies reputation’s gatekeeper role in offline and online spaces and the risks this can create when information is accessed or employed without an understanding of the norms which have shaped that information. Thus reputation is shown as a socially negotiated and co-created process which exerts an unseen hegemonic force, with dominant political, economic and ideological interests embedded in seemingly social norms. These norms are enforced via reputation, which takes on a gatekeeper role, regulating access to a variety of spaces, information, and economic opportunities. Part II begins with an examination of the current forms of legal and quasi-legal regulation of reputation that exist, ultimately finding that none of them is fully applicable to the complexity of reputation. Having established this complexity and shown that current approaches are inadequate, chapter 6 moves on to examine and then reject the neoliberal approach currently applied to these issues, finding its focus on individual responsibility to be inadequate and inappropriate, calling instead for a mode of regulation that understands reputation within its social context.

Denna uppsats berör tillit till offentlig sektor i Sverige och dess specifika institutioner. Dessutom undersöks ifall det föreligger skillnader i tillitsnivån, beroende av människors klasstillhörighet. Tillvägagångssättet för att kunna studera detta har varit logistiska regressionsanalyser samt en linjär regressionsanalys. Detta på ett material utfört av SIFO, nämligen välfärdstatsundersökningen från år 2010. Resultaten i denna studie visar att det återfinns klasskillnader i individers sannolikhet för att hysa en hög tillit till offentlig sektor. Detta har varit främst gällande för offentlig sektors kapacitet att tillhandahålla en hygglig levnadsstandard för arbetslösa, sjuka och ålderspensionärer. I analysen visas att klasskillnaderna kan grunda sig i de olika resurser som individerna besitter, vilket i sin tur inverkar på deras förutsättningar för att hysa tillit till offentlig sektor.