10,231 research outputs found

    Serving to secure "Global Korea": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants

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    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 “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sŏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sŏbisŭ), 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 country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (Helchosŏn) 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 “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s 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 attendants’ 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 attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryŏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s 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

    A Design Science Research Approach to Smart and Collaborative Urban Supply Networks

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    Urban supply networks are facing increasing demands and challenges and thus constitute a relevant field for research and practical development. Supply chain management holds enormous potential and relevance for society and everyday life as the flow of goods and information are important economic functions. Being a heterogeneous field, the literature base of supply chain management research is difficult to manage and navigate. Disruptive digital technologies and the implementation of cross-network information analysis and sharing drive the need for new organisational and technological approaches. Practical issues are manifold and include mega trends such as digital transformation, urbanisation, and environmental awareness. A promising approach to solving these problems is the realisation of smart and collaborative supply networks. The growth of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has led to a wide range of applications in a variety of domains. However, the potential of artificial intelligence utilisation in supply chain management has not yet been fully exploited. Similarly, value creation increasingly takes place in networked value creation cycles that have become continuously more collaborative, complex, and dynamic as interactions in business processes involving information technologies have become more intense. Following a design science research approach this cumulative thesis comprises the development and discussion of four artefacts for the analysis and advancement of smart and collaborative urban supply networks. This thesis aims to highlight the potential of artificial intelligence-based supply networks, to advance data-driven inter-organisational collaboration, and to improve last mile supply network sustainability. Based on thorough machine learning and systematic literature reviews, reference and system dynamics modelling, simulation, and qualitative empirical research, the artefacts provide a valuable contribution to research and practice

    Victims' Access to Justice in Trinidad and Tobago: An exploratory study of experiences and challenges of accessing criminal justice in a post-colonial society

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    This thesis investigates victims' access to justice in Trinidad and Tobago, using their own narratives. It seeks to capture how their experiences affected their identities as victims and citizens, alongside their perceptions of legitimacy regarding the criminal justice system. While there have been some reforms in the administration of criminal justice in Trinidad and Tobago, such reforms have not focused on victims' accessibility to the justice system. Using grounded theory methodology, qualitative data was collected through 31 in-depth interviews with victims and victim advocates. The analysis found that victims experienced interpersonal, structural, and systemic barriers at varying levels throughout the criminal justice system, which manifested as institutionalized secondary victimization, silencing and inequality. This thesis argues that such experiences not only served to appropriate conflict but demonstrates that access is often given in a very narrow sense. Furthermore, it shows a failure to encompass access to justice as appropriated conflicts are left to stagnate in the system as there is often very little resolution. Adopting a postcolonial lens to analyse victims' experiences, the analysis identified othering practices that served to institutionalize the vulnerability and powerlessness associated with victim identities. Here, it is argued that these othering practices also affected the rights consciousness of victims, delegitimating their identities as citizens. Moreover, as a result of their experiences, victims had mixed perceptions of the justice system. It is argued that while the system is a legitimate authority victims' endorsement of the system is questionable, therefore victims' experiences suggest that there is a reinforcement of the system's legal hegemony. The findings suggest that within the legal system of Trinidad and Tobago, legacies of colonialism shape the postcolonial present as the psychology and inequalities of the past are present in the interactions and processes of justice. These findings are relevant for policymakers in Trinidad and Tobago and other regions. From this study it is recognized that, to improve access to justice for victims, there needs to be a move towards victim empowerment that promotes resilience and enhances social capital. Going forward it is noted that there is a need for further research

    On the Mechanism of Building Core Competencies: a Study of Chinese Multinational Port Enterprises

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    This study aims to explore how Chinese multinational port enterprises (MNPEs) build their core competencies. Core competencies are firms’special capabilities and sources to gain sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) in marketplace, and the concept led to extensive research and debates. However, few studies include inquiries about the mechanisms of building core competencies in the context of Chinese MNPEs. Accordingly, answers were sought to three research questions: 1. What are the core competencies of the Chinese MNPEs? 2. What are the mechanisms that the Chinese MNPEs use to build their core competencies? 3. What are the paths that the Chinese MNPEs pursue to build their resources bases? The study adopted a multiple-case study design, focusing on building mechanism of core competencies with RBV. It selected purposively five Chinese leading MNPEs and three industry associations as Case Companies. The study revealed three main findings. First, it identified three generic core competencies possessed by Case Companies, i.e., innovation in business models and operations, utilisation of technologies, and acquisition of strategic resources. Second, it developed the conceptual framework of the Mechanism of Building Core Competencies (MBCC), which is a process of change of collective learning in effective and efficient utilization of resources of a firm in response to critical events. Third, it proposed three paths to build core competencies, i.e., enhancing collective learning, selecting sustainable processes, and building resource base. The study contributes to the knowledge of core competencies and RBV in three ways: (1) presenting three generic core competencies of the Chinese MNPEs, (2) proposing a new conceptual framework to explain how Chinese MNPEs build their core competencies, (3) suggesting a solid anchor point (MBCC) to explain the links among resources, core competencies, and SCA. The findings set benchmarks for Chinese logistics industry and provide guidelines to build core competencies

    Investigating and mitigating the role of neutralisation techniques on information security policies violation in healthcare organisations

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    Healthcare organisations today rely heavily on Electronic Medical Records systems (EMRs), which have become highly crucial IT assets that require significant security efforts to safeguard patients’ information. Individuals who have legitimate access to an organisation’s assets to perform their day-to-day duties but intentionally or unintentionally violate information security policies can jeopardise their organisation’s information security efforts and cause significant legal and financial losses. In the information security (InfoSec) literature, several studies emphasised the necessity to understand why employees behave in ways that contradict information security requirements but have offered widely different solutions. In an effort to respond to this situation, this thesis addressed the gap in the information security academic research by providing a deep understanding of the problem of medical practitioners’ behavioural justifications to violate information security policies and then determining proper solutions to reduce this undesirable behaviour. Neutralisation theory was used as the theoretical basis for the research. This thesis adopted a mixed-method research approach that comprises four consecutive phases, and each phase represents a research study that was conducted in light of the results from the preceding phase. The first phase of the thesis started by investigating the relationship between medical practitioners’ neutralisation techniques and their intention to violate information security policies that protect a patient’s privacy. A quantitative study was conducted to extend the work of Siponen and Vance [1] through a study of the Saudi Arabia healthcare industry. The data was collected via an online questionnaire from 66 Medical Interns (MIs) working in four academic hospitals. The study found that six neutralisation techniques—(1) appeal to higher loyalties, (2) defence of necessity, (3) the metaphor of ledger, (4) denial of responsibility, (5) denial of injury, and (6) condemnation of condemners—significantly contribute to the justifications of the MIs in hypothetically violating information security policies. The second phase of this research used a series of semi-structured interviews with IT security professionals in one of the largest academic hospitals in Saudi Arabia to explore the environmental factors that motivated the medical practitioners to evoke various neutralisation techniques. The results revealed that social, organisational, and emotional factors all stimulated the behavioural justifications to breach information security policies. During these interviews, it became clear that the IT department needed to ensure that security policies fit the daily tasks of the medical practitioners by providing alternative solutions to ensure the effectiveness of those policies. Based on these interviews, the objective of the following two phases was to improve the effectiveness of InfoSec policies against the use of behavioural justification by engaging the end users in the modification of existing policies via a collaborative writing process. Those two phases were conducted in the UK and Saudi Arabia to determine whether the collaborative writing process could produce a more effective security policy that balanced the security requirements with daily business needs, thus leading to a reduction in the use of neutralisation techniques to violate security policies. The overall result confirmed that the involvement of the end users via a collaborative writing process positively improved the effectiveness of the security policy to mitigate the individual behavioural justifications, showing that the process is a promising one to enhance security compliance

    Walking with the Earth: Intercultural Perspectives on Ethics of Ecological Caring

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    It is commonly believed that considering nature different from us, human beings (qua rational, cultural, religious and social actors), is detrimental to our engagement for the preservation of nature. An obvious example is animal rights, a deep concern for all living beings, including non-human living creatures, which is understandable only if we approach nature, without fearing it, as something which should remain outside of our true home. “Walking with the earth” aims at questioning any similar preconceptions in the wide sense, including allegoric-poetic contributions. We invited 14 authors from 4 continents to express all sorts of ways of saying why caring is so important, why togetherness, being-with each others, as a spiritual but also embodied ethics is important in a divided world

    How to Be a God

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    When it comes to questions concerning the nature of Reality, Philosophers and Theologians have the answers. Philosophers have the answers that can’t be proven right. Theologians have the answers that can’t be proven wrong. Today’s designers of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games create realities for a living. They can’t spend centuries mulling over the issues: they have to face them head-on. Their practical experiences can indicate which theoretical proposals actually work in practice. That’s today’s designers. Tomorrow’s will have a whole new set of questions to answer. The designers of virtual worlds are the literal gods of those realities. Suppose Artificial Intelligence comes through and allows us to create non-player characters as smart as us. What are our responsibilities as gods? How should we, as gods, conduct ourselves? How should we be gods
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