6,290 research outputs found
An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains
This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration,
dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual
frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at
the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet
been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually.
To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative
study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would
address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the authorâs philosophical
adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered
appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and
various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of
grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two
levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in
improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and
iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards
the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply
chain performance.
The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply
chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging
conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it
allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed
insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are
connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological
contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of
terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research
methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could
adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain
desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities
Serving to secure "Global Korea": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants
This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative âservice,â âsecurity,â and âsafetyâ fashioned âGlobal Koreaâ: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, âbackwardâ country (hujinâguk) to a now welcoming, âadvanced countryâ (sĆnjinâguk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of âsuperiorâ service (sĆbisĆ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project.
More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the countryâs own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean stateâs aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current âHell Chosunâ (HelchosĆn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem âservice mobilities.â Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the âpink collarâ economy centered around âfeminineâ care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the âGlobal Southâ), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of âlabor migrant.â Moreover, within the context of South Koreaâs unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige.
Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendantsâ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendantsâ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryĆhada) service help to purify South Koreaâs less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.U of I OnlyAuthor submitted a 2-year U of I restriction extension request
The Forgetting of Fire: An Archaeology of Technics
This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucaultâs concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins as a substance for early alchemical knowledge and ends up as a quantifiable branch of functions in technics. We call the attitude of Paracelsus, an alchemist of the sixteenth century, âparticipation,â which sheds light on the intimate goal of his alchemical practice. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle inaugurates the evolution of technics with the attitude of instrumentalization. Building off this, Lavoisier participates in the development of technics through his effort to construct the countable, using measuring instruments and chemical techniques. This attitude of accounting, and neither his theory of oxygen nor his basic observations in the laboratory, determines his decisive role in the development of chemistry. Finally, we discuss the attitude of employment as we find it in Sadi Carnot and the engineers of the steam engine, watching as fire for these epistemic agents becomes nothing but an employed instant of combustion
On Making Fiction: Frankenstein and the Life of Stories
Fiction is generally understood to be a fascinating, yet somehow deficient affair, merely derivative of reality. What if we could, instead, come up with an affirmative approach that takes stories seriously in their capacity to bring forth a substance of their own? Iconic texts such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its numerous adaptations stubbornly resist our attempts to classify them as mere representations of reality. The author shows how these texts insist that we take them seriously as agents and interlocutors in our world- and culture-making activities. Drawing on this analysis, she develops a theory of narrative fiction as a generative practice
The mobility and identity of a Pehuenche community as expressed through their material culture (Alto BiobĂo, Chile)
This research focuses on the changing role of mobility within one
Pehuenche comunidad, CauñicĂș, which is part one of twenty legally recognised
Pehuenche comunidades in southern Chile, South America. Working within an
interdisciplinary perspective, I use archaeological, ethnographic, and historical
sources, adopting a diachronic view to reflect on the processes of change that
this social group has gone through: from highly mobile pastoralist in the Colonial
period, to becoming validated officially as ÂŽindigenous communitiesÂŽ or
comunidades indĂgenas by the Chilean state in the current context of
globalisation. A defining characteristic of the Pehuenche has been the seasonal
movement of some families from their annual residence in the lower valleys in
colder seasons, to the highland pastures in summer, where they take their
livestock and collect pinenuts from the Araucaria trees. However, this seasonal
movement is in decline, and pinenuts may never have been as important a
resource as the âPehuencheâ ethnonym suggests. This research includes original
ethnographic fieldwork to study how the socio-political organisation, economy,
and perception of the landscape and their own past, as well as state policies have
influenced the material culture and settlement organisation. This generates a
landscape in which present and past material culture co-exist and can be
explained from, and through, their cycle of mobility, with a strong sense of identity
embedded in these aspects of Pehuenche culture. This maintenance of practices
such as rituals, seasonal movements, and the material expressions connect the
present Pehuenches to past ways of life. This approach gives importance to the
historical processes of how mobile groups interacted with colonial societies and
responded to changes through their material culture. It also serves to reflect on
their collective identity, which is not only sustained through their current, more
limited, mobility in a context of a globalised wider society, but in certain
characteristics of their daily and ritual material assemblages
CFL Chaplaincy: How do CFL Chaplains Act in Consultation Towards Ethical Decision Making?
Abstract
Although the literature on sport ethics and religion has expanded in recent years, there is little research on the role and concept of âsports chaplaincyâ within Canada (Parry, 2007) (Watson, Parker & White, 2016) (Watson, Parker & Adogame, 2018). The Canadian Football League (CFL) chaplaincy program offers a unique form of ministry that has the potential to influence athleteâs ethical behavior. The chaplain\u27s âholisticâ counselling approach is not only concerned with the CFL professionalâs on-field job performance but offers emotional and spiritual support for every facet of a CFL professionalâs life (Roe, 2016; Cheney, 2019). In the sport ethics literature, there is, and continues to be, a vastness of incidences whereby sporting professionals breach ethical policies. These incidences include, but are not limited to; impaired driving, domestic abuse, hazing, excessive violence, the use of performance enhancing substances etc. (Mihoces, 2014) (Mitchley, 2014) (Schmidt, 2014) (Fogel, 2013). These breaches in ethical policy, and codes of conduct transgressions reflect poorly on the athletes, their professional franchises and society abroad (Dungy, 2009) (Maston, 1967). From a sport chaplaincy perspective, and referencing the current sport ethics literature, my thesis question asked how CFL chaplaincy programs influence the ethical behavior of CFL professionals? Amid analyzing this phenomenon, one aspect of my research investigated the indirect benefits and concerns for athletes who follow the ethical guidelines that the CFL chaplains promote.
Professional sports culture is an extremely competitive vocation and one where job security for players and coaches is determined by immediate and sustainable success (Gamble, 2013, pp. 250-251). Within this competitive culture, athletes and coaches often fall into customs wayward from Christian ethics, sport ethics, and common ethics (Fogel, 2013). In addition, recent sport chaplaincy literature has indicated that western society is more âhumanisticâ than Christian, and our current âpost traditional religious societyâ resembles more of a âspiritual marketplaceâ than formal religiosity (Uszynski, 2016) (Kumar, 2013) (Nesti, 2010) (Cheney, 2019). One question is: does the shift in spirituality have a positive or negative effect on athleteâs physical health, mental health, and ethical conduct within the realm of professional sports? In addition, how do CFL chaplains promote their worldview amid an increasingly secular and multicultural society? This thesis aims to provide some answers and insights to aspects of these crucial questions.
Additionally, there is evidence within the sport-ethics literature suggesting high level athletes are more likely to experience divorce, mental illness, depressive disorders, and spousal abuse than the general population (Stephenson, 2014) Reardon & Factor, 2010) (Mummery, 2005). Some of these psychiatric disorders, and breaches in ethical conduct, have been associated with the âwin at all costsâ mentality: over-training, unbalanced schedules, substance abuse, eating disorders and times of transition (i.e., post-injury or retirement) (Reardon & Factor, 2010) (Mummery, 2005) (Baum, 2000, 2003) (Watson, 2007). This thesis has investigated the CFL chaplainâs role in providing ethical counsel to CFL professionals amid the threat of these issues. Moreover, this thesis analysis how CFL chaplains provide ethical counsel within the distinctive culture of the Canadian Football League
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Citizenship Capabilities and Instant Messaging in Western Kenya: an Intersectional Approach
This doctoral research project contributes to understanding the role of WhatsAppâthe most used social media platform in Kenyaâin citizen engagement processes. Paying particular attention to inequalities, power dynamics, and the need to account for the postcolonial context of Kenya, the project develops a theoretical framework that combines the Capability Approach (CA) and critical citizenship studies to conceptualise citizen engagement as relational and multi-layered citizenship. It draws on the theory of affordances to understand WhatsApp as an artefact and uses intersectional feminism alongside the CA to study the interaction between WhatsApp and the citizenship capabilities. The projectâs methodology follows a situated knowledges approach that focuses on discourse and a digital ethnography that encompasses multiple methods across offline and online spaces. Based on research with young people in the county of Busia, this thesis first identifies a set of citizenship capabilities including mattering, belonging and respect, in addition to what may be considered more obvious citizenship capabilities such as participating in decision-making or exercising rights. Second, in addition to processes that serve as conversion factors that help to âactivateâ citizenship, the research also highlights the role of performative citizenship practices as conversion processes in themselves. Third, the study identifies a set of WhatsApp affordances which interact with these conversion processes and can help to activate or enact citizenship. These affordances emphasise WhatsAppâs social, discursive and agentic possibilities among private and relevant groups of people, helping to build and perform citizenship as an inwards and intimate process before enacting it in the public sphere. Finally, the thesis argues that the meanings attached to the capabilities as well as the conversion factors vary depending on where people are situated across axes of oppression. So do WhatsAppâs affordances. Relying on instant messagingâs affordances without taking these inequalities into account can further exclude people from valued capabilities
Post-Growth Geographies: Spatial Relations of Diverse and Alternative Economies
Post-Growth Geographies examines the spatial relations of diverse and alternative economies between growth-oriented institutions and multiple socio-ecological crises. The book brings together conceptual and empirical contributions from geography and its neighbouring disciplines and offers different perspectives on the possibilities, demands and critiques of post-growth transformation. Through case studies and interviews, the contributions combine voices from activism, civil society, planning and politics with current theoretical debates on socio-ecological transformation
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