The dichotomous unity of enterprise-strategy discourse in interviews with small-firm owner-managers

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis adds to the literature on strategy and enterprise discourses by analysing how they are used in interviews with small-firm owner-managers. The literature describes features of strategy and enterprise discourses and their shaping by historical developments. There is much work on the operation of these two discourses at societal and large-organisation levels. Much less researched is how these discourses are used by small-firm managers or how these discourses interact in use. This work characterises a particular discourse-analytical approach to the research interview as suitable for advancing the literature. Small, young publishing firms producing business magazines in late ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland are argued as an apposite context. Detailed analysis of three selected interviews illustrates the relevance of enterprise and strategy discourses in the particular ways these owner-managers talk. Drawing on the notion of ideological dilemmas, this work gives an explicit account of how strategy and enterprise discourses are used and interrelated in a manner described here as a ‘dichotomous unity’. This unity depends not only on the discourses’ commonalities but also on the dilemmatic tensions between them. These tensions allow creative and subtle uses of the unified discourse. Yet these same dilemmas also constrain the discourse within the bounds marked out by them. The persistence and creativity, noted by the literature, in the use of enterprise and strategy discourses is explained by the interpretation offered here. This work also stresses the need to research these discourses as two aspects of the same phenomenon. The interview method used reveals the wholeness of a discourse that other methods might show as fractured. Discourse analysts generally recognise that people both shape, and are shaped by discourses. By explicating how strategy and enterprise discourses operate, this work adds to human agency. Small-firm managers may become more aware of the constraints otherwise implicit in enterprise-strategy discourse. Policymakers may gain an appreciation of the discursive balance that the promotion of enterprise and strategy demands of small-business managers, along with the kind of costs such balancing might entail

Standards of Practice in Postsecondary Special Needs Programming: Student and Administrator Opinion

Standards of practice for postsecondary special needs programmes are an important element to determining programme effectiveness and programme successes. A number of groups have now suggested practice standards for postsecondary special needs programmes. We amalgamated these suggested practices and queried Ontario students and administrators regarding their opinion of these practice standards. Overall, strong support for most suggested practices was found among students and administrators. However, administrators less strongly supported practices that required enhanced funding, staffing and resources. In addition, students less strongly supported practices that could reduce individualized programming and increase time commitments. Administrators pointed out barriers to achieving practice standards. Time commitments, workload, funding, unclear working definitions (i.e., standards for transition, disabilities) and institutional policy constraints were barriers to achieving suggested practice standards.Les normes qui régissent les pratiques des programmes adaptés du niveau postsecondaire représentent un élément important dans la détermination de l'efficacité de ceux-ci et de leur succès. Un certain nombre de groupes ont suggéré des normes de pratique pour ces programmes éducatifs spéciaux. Nous avons regroupé ces pratiques suggérées et avons interrogé des étudiants en Ontario ainsi que des administrateurs afin d'obtenir leur opinion sur ces nonnes de pratique. En général, un soutien important à l'égard de la plupart des pratiques suggérées a été noté parmi les étudiants et les membres de l'administration. Toutefois, les administrateurs ont réservé un accueil moins enthousiaste aux pratiques qui nécessitent une augmentation du financement, du personnel et des ressources. De plus, les étudiants ont moins bien accueilli les pratiques qui seraient susceptibles de réduire les programmes personnalisés et qui augmenteraient leur investissement en terme de temps. Les administrateurs ont précisé les obstacles à la réalisation de ces pratiques; les barrières identifiées pour leur mise en place furent : l'investissement en terme de temps, la charge de travail, le financement, des conditions de travail mal définies (c'est-à-dire les normes de transition, d'incapacités) et les contraintes des politiques institutionnelles

Simulation studies of a phenomenological model for elongated virus capsid formation

We study a phenomenological model in which the simulated packing of hard, attractive spheres on a prolate spheroid surface with convexity constraints produces structures identical to those of prolate virus capsid structures. Our simulation approach combines the traditional Monte Carlo method with a modified method of random sampling on an ellipsoidal surface and a convex hull searching algorithm. Using this approach we identify the minimum physical requirements for non-icosahedral, elongated virus capsids, such as two aberrant flock house virus (FHV) particles and the prolate prohead of bacteriophage $\phi_{29}$, and discuss the implication of our simulation results in the context of recent experimental findings. Our predicted structures may also be experimentally realized by evaporation-driven assembly of colloidal spheres

Using RNA-seq to characterize responses to 4 hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) inhibitor herbicide resistance in waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus)

Background: Waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus (Moq.) J.D. Sauer) is a problem weed commonly found in the Midwestern United States that can cause crippling yield losses for both maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L. Merr). In 2011, 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate-dioxygenase (HPPD, EC 1.13.11.27) inhibitor herbicide resistance was first reported in two waterhemp populations. Since the discovery of HPPD-herbicide resistance, studies have identified the mechanism of resistance and described the inheritance of the herbicide resistance. However, no studies have examined genome-wide gene expression changes in response to herbicide treatment in herbicide resistant and susceptible waterhemp. Results: We conducted RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analyses of two waterhemp populations (HPPD-herbicide resistant and susceptible), from herbicide-treated and mock-treated leaf samples at three, six, twelve, and twenty-four hours after treatment (HAT). We performed a de novo transcriptome assembly using all sample sequences. Following assessments of our assembly, individual samples were mapped to the de novo transcriptome allowing us to identify transcripts specific to a genotype, herbicide treatment, or time point. Our results indicate that the response of HPPDherbicide resistant and susceptible waterhemp genotypes to HPPD-inhibiting herbicide is rapid, established as soon as 3 hours after herbicide treatment. Further, there was little overlap in gene expression between resistant and susceptible genotypes, highlighting dynamic differences in response to herbicide treatment. In addition, we used stringent analytical methods to identify candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that distinguish the resistant and susceptible genotypes. Conclusions: The waterhemp transcriptome, herbicide-responsive genes, and SNPs generated in this study provide valuable tools for future studies by numerous plant science communities. This collection of resources is essential to study and understand herbicide effects on gene expression in resistant and susceptible weeds. Understanding how herbicides impact gene expression could allow us to develop novel approaches for future herbicide development. Additionally, an increased understanding of the prolific traits intrinsic in weed success could lead to crop improvement

Engineering Art Galleries

The Art Gallery Problem is one of the most well-known problems in Computational Geometry, with a rich history in the study of algorithms, complexity, and variants. Recently there has been a surge in experimental work on the problem. In this survey, we describe this work, show the chronology of developments, and compare current algorithms, including two unpublished versions, in an exhaustive experiment. Furthermore, we show what core algorithmic ingredients have led to recent successes

Star Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Quasigeodesic Loops

We extend the notion of star unfolding to be based on a quasigeodesic loop Q rather than on a point. This gives a new general method to unfold the surface of any convex polyhedron P to a simple (non-overlapping), planar polygon: cut along one shortest path from each vertex of P to Q, and cut all but one segment of Q.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. v2 improves the description of cut locus, and adds references. v3 improves two figures and their captions. New version v4 offers a completely different proof of non-overlap in the quasigeodesic loop case, and contains several other substantive improvements. This version is 23 pages long, with 15 figure

Guarding art galleries by guarding witnesses

Let P be a simple polygon. We de ne a witness set W to be a set of points su h that if any (prospective) guard set G guards W, then it is guaranteed that G guards P . We show that not all polygons admit a nite witness set. If a fi nite minimal witness set exists, then it cannot contain any witness in the interior of P ; all witnesses must lie on the boundary of P , and there an be at most one witness in the interior of any edge. We give an algorithm to compute a minimal witness set for P in O(n2 log n) time, if such a set exists, or to report the non-existence within the same time bounds. We also outline an algorithm that uses a witness set for P to test whether a (prospective) guard set sees all points in P

Spectral decomposition of internal gravity wave sea surface height in global models

Two global ocean models ranging in horizontal resolution from 1/12° to 1/48° are used to study the space and time scales of sea surface height (SSH) signals associated with internal gravity waves (IGWs). Frequency‐horizontal wavenumber SSH spectral densities are computed over seven regions of the world ocean from two simulations of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and three simulations of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm). High wavenumber, high‐frequency SSH variance follows the predicted IGW linear dispersion curves. The realism of high‐frequency motions (>0.87  cpd) in the models is tested through comparison of the frequency spectral density of dynamic height variance computed from the highest‐resolution runs of each model (1/25° HYCOM and 1/48° MITgcm) with dynamic height variance frequency spectral density computed from nine in situ profiling instruments. These high‐frequency motions are of particular interest because of their contributions to the small‐scale SSH variability that will be observed on a global scale in the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite altimetry mission. The variance at supertidal frequencies can be comparable to the tidal and low‐frequency variance for high wavenumbers (length scales smaller than ∼50 km), especially in the higher‐resolution simulations. In the highest‐resolution simulations, the high‐frequency variance can be greater than the low‐frequency variance at these scales.Key PointsTwo high‐resolution ocean models compare well against data in frequency spectral density of dynamic heightSea surface height frequency‐horizontal wavenumber spectral densities show high variance along internal gravity wave dispersion curvesTwo high‐resolution ocean models give different estimates of variance in high‐frequency, high wavenumber phenomenaPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/1/jgrc22465-sup-0002-2017JC013009-fs01.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/2/jgrc22465-sup-0003-2017JC013009-fs02.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/3/jgrc22465_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/4/jgrc22465.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/5/jgrc22465-sup-0007-2017JC013009-fs06.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/6/jgrc22465-sup-0009-2017JC013009-fs08.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/7/jgrc22465-sup-0004-2017JC013009-fs03.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/8/jgrc22465-sup-0005-2017JC013009-fs04.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/9/jgrc22465-sup-0006-2017JC013009-fs05.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/10/jgrc22465-sup-0001-2017JC013009-s01.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139946/11/jgrc22465-sup-0008-2017JC013009-fs07.pd