Channel and Recipient Characteristics: Effects on Communication Effectiveness and Performance

One significant problem that organizations face today is their ability to disseminate information within and across their organizational boundaries efficiently. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how communication media with different characteristics, and individual recipients with different characteristics, influence the performance of the message recipients on tasks that are dependent on the message. Well known communication media theories (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986) have come under scrutiny for weak empirical support and newer theories have emerged (e.g., Dennis, Fuller, & Valacich, in press) that will require empirical testing to validate. This dissertation represents an initial empirical test of several elements of Media Synchronicity Theory (MST). This dissertation is composed of three essays which describe a series of empirical studies. The studies were carried out (1) to create measurement scales to psychometrically assess individuals perceptions of media characteristics/capabilities; (2) to experimentally manipulate two media capabilities and evaluate downstream, individual performance relative to a communicated message; and (3) to assess recipient retention of communicated information after a time delay from the experimental manipulations of media capabilities. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide a rigorous, tightly controlled evaluation of several aspects of MST, and to propose and test two media appropriation factors as an extension to MST. This dissertation is organized in the following manner. The first chapter provides an introduction to the three essays. This introductory chapter will provide a brief theoretical discussion of MST, how MST has evolved over the last decade, and brief introductions to each essay. The second chapter includes the first essay, which will describe the instrument development studies. The third chapter includes the second essay, which will describe the first experimental study. The fourth chapter, containing the third essay, will describe the follow-up experimental study that incorporates a longitudinal aspect into the research model. Finally, the fifth chapter is composed of a summary section that will briefly discuss the dissertation as a whole

Japan and Japanese firms: historical and modern lessons for international business and economic development

The obsession in both the popular and academic press about Japan, Japanese firms and their management practices lasted until the 1990s, after which there has been an inexplicable absence of curiosity. I argue here that there is still much to learn, not only from their contemporary activity, but from their historical actions. Less developed countries, in particular, can benefit from a careful study of the Meiji era, during which Japan built up the structure, institutions and organizations that underlay its economic success for much of the 20th century, and was a blueprint for many Asian success stories. The Meiji period was crucial in building up of Japan’s location advantages, and the rapidity of the reforms in this period underlined much of its subsequent growth. I also argue that despite Japan’s economic stagnation since the 1990s, its firms have not been stationary. There has been considerable evolution in the management and structure of Japanese firms and its innovation system. Such developments represent a useful preview of challenges ahead for the more advanced emerging economies such as China and India, as well as newer advanced economies, such as Korea

Survey over Existing Query and Transformation Languages

A widely acknowledged obstacle for realizing the vision of the Semantic Web is the inability of many current Semantic Web approaches to cope with data available in such diverging representation formalisms as XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. A common query language is the first step to allow transparent access to data in any of these formats. To further the understanding of the requirements and approaches proposed for query languages in the conventional as well as the Semantic Web, this report surveys a large number of query languages for accessing XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. This is the first systematic survey to consider query languages from all these areas. From the detailed survey of these query languages, a common classification scheme is derived that is useful for understanding and differentiating languages within and among all three areas

A knowledge broken. Essay writing and human science in Montaigne and Bacon”

Literary theory and criticism over the last three decades have shown an increasing interest in studying the cognitive and critical relevance of the “essay” for modern history and culture . This paper aims to supply supporting evidence for this perspective, examining the function of essay writing for both Montaigne and Francis Bacon's conception of human thought and knowledge. In particular, I will focus on the epistemological implications of the essay and fragmentary prose, both considered forms of writing that express a particular way of thinking

Environmental Litigation in Historical Perspective

During the past several decades, litigation has played a major role in the attempt by citizens to realize environmental objectives. Its impact has been elaborated extensively in the vast array of writing in law journals as well as in the cases themselves. Most analyses have focused on specialized subjects of either substantive policy or legal procedure. In this brief Essay I attempt a more comprehensive overview involving two background factors- the growth of environmental values since World War II and the response of governmental institutions to the resulting demands placed upon them. Among these institutions were the courts. Their role cannot be understood simply in terms of the evolution of judicial opinion, but more in terms of the response of judges and the legal profession to changing public attitudes, legislative policies, scientific knowledge, and technical capabilities

Towards a multi-actor theory of public value co-creation

This essay suggests changes to the theory of public value and, in particular, the strategic triangle framework, in order to adapt it to an emerging world where policy makers and managers in the public, private, voluntary and informal community sectors have to somehow separately and jointly create public value. One set of possible changes concerns what might be in the centre of the strategic triangle besides the public manager. Additional suggestions are made concerning how multiple actors, levels, arenas and/or spheres of action, and logics might be accommodated. Finally, possibilities are outlined for how the strategic triangle might be adapted to complex policy fields in which there are multiple, often conflicting organizations, interests and agendas. In other words, how might politics be more explicitly accommodated. The essay concludes with a number of research suggestions

"Development as Freedom"

This chapter offers a historical and analytical introduction to the school of thought that views 'development as freedom'. Since it is impossible to do justice to the depth and complexity of this 'new' approach to development in just one short chapter, I explore a few significant dimensions of the concept beginning with Amartya Sen's pioneering contributions. I also look at clarifications by Nussbaum and others who offer a list of important functionings that can be included in the capabilities set. The subsequent part builds on this by exploring the transition from a utilitarian welfare economics to a fully social capabilities based ethics for development with justice. The present chapter proceeds in the direction of concretizing the idea of 'development as freedom' by discussing the role of a network of social, economic and political institutions in creating social capabilities. This allows us to develop the argument that freedom is to be viewed dynamically as the development of appropriate social capabilities embedded in a specific network of social, economic and political institutions. The following section then presents an example of a concrete area of application--- namely, the problem of developing women's capabilities as an important aspect of global justice--- in order to illustrate the practical relevance of the capabilities approach. The final, concluding section reflects on the future of the social capabilities approach as an evaluative framework for development theory and policy. It turns out that in addition to the usual list of capabilities, and policies driven by them in the field of development, a deep democratic constitution backed up by ongoing democratizing social and political movement is an integral part of the historical project of enhancing social capabilities.

Ask a clearer question, get a better answer.

Many undergraduate students struggle to engage with higher order skills such as evaluation and synthesis in written assignments, either because they do not understand that these are the aim of written assessment or because these critical thinking skills require more effort than writing a descriptive essay. Here, we report that students who attended a freely available workshop, in which they were coached to pose a question in the title of their assignment and then use their essay to answer that question, obtained higher marks for their essay than those who did not attend. We demonstrate that this is not a result of latent academic ability amongst students who chose to attend our workshops and suggest this increase in marks was a result of greater engagement with ‘critical thinking’ skills, which are essential for upper 2:1 and 1st class grades. The tutoring method we used holds two particular advantages: First, we allow students to pick their own topics of interest, which increases ownership of learning, which is associated with motivation and engagement in ‘difficult’ tasks. Second, this method integrates the development of ‘inquisitiveness’ and critical thinking into subject specific learning, which is thought to be more productive than trying to develop these skills in isolation