Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com

Couchsurfing (CS) was founded in 2003 as a non-profit for those interested in creating a common resource for world-wide hospitality exchange and low cost tourism. Built around a non-market communal sharing model, it became a for-profit in August 2011. Applying a discourse relational model approach, this study characterizes how competing discursive articulations over the conversion led to a discursive strategy of moral justification as management sought to retain its non-profit, alternative, democratic imaginary. The study finds that the justifications gained initial appeal, but ultimately lost credibility due to a mismanaged conversion. By articulating the competing discourses through the sacred value protection model (SVPM), this study provides insights into the way in which a management strategy can be interpreted at a micro-analysis level. It recommends that management decisions need to start from the activities of the organizations members, groups and networks so as to account for their emotions, motivations and actions

He passed away watching people die on TV : A corpus study about euphemisms for to die, dying or dead in American English

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use and frequency of euphemisms for die, dying or dead in the American English-language using the Corpus of Contemporary American English. To fulfill the purpose, three research questions were answered. I wanted to know in which genres, of Spoken, Fiction, Magazines, Newspapers, Academic texts, TV/Movies, Blogs and web-gnl, the euphemisms occurred the most. I also wanted to investigate which euphemism, in terms of frequency, of pass away, demise, decease and last breath was the most common one, and how frequent they are compared to the “standard” die, dying or dead. How the frequency of the euphemisms developed over the time span 1990-2019, was also something the study wanted to answer. To answer these questions, studies which defined and discussed taboo, euphemisms, and metonymy were used. The conclusion was that even the least occurring genre in the standard has got a higher frequency than all the euphemisms together. However, demise was the most frequent euphemism and Fiction, TV/Movies and Academic were the genres in which the euphemisms occur the most in. Moreover, although demise was the most frequent euphemism, it was also the one that decreased the most over the period of 30 years. pass away, however, increased the most over time

Koalitionens maktstrukturer : En studie om hur Socialdemokraterna och Miljöpartiet fungerar tillsammans i regeringsställning utifrån miljöfrågan.

The purpose of this study was to examine how a mainstream party and a niche party in a coalition act in a position of power by investigating their view on the issue of the environment between 2014-2018. To fulfil the purpose, I used three research questions. I wanted to know how Socialdemokraterna and Miljöpartiet reasoned about the word “climate” and “environment” in their party programs. The second question was which similarities and differences which could be found when comparing both parties' party programs with their election manifestos from 2014 when “climate” and “environment” are mentioned and to what extent the election manifesto resulted in actual parliamentary work. The theoretical framework was compiled by studies from Meguid, Müller & Ström and Naurin, Oscarsson and Håkansson. This framework was used throughout the study to identify aspects of mainstream and niche parties and how they applied to Miljöpartiet and Socialdemokraterna. The conclusion, which was determined after conducting a case study with a content analytical method, was that Miljöpartiet has affected Socialdemokraterna to the extent that they have gained some power to do as they please in the issue of the environment

A comparison of global optimization algorithms with standard benchmark functions and real-world applications using Energy Plus

There is an increasing interest in the use of computer algorithms to identify combinations of parameters which optimise the energy performance of buildings. For such problems, the objective function can be multi-modal and needs to be approximated numerically using building energy simulation programs. As these programs contain iterative solution algorithms, they introduce discontinuities in the numerical approximation to the objective function. Metaheuristics often work well for such problems, but their convergence to a global optimum cannot be established formally. Moreover, different algorithms tend to be suited to particular classes of optimization problems. To shed light on this issue we compared the performance of two metaheuristics, the hybrid CMA-ES/HDE and the hybrid PSO/HJ, in minimizing standard benchmark functions and real-world building energy optimization problems of varying complexity. From this we find that the CMA-ES/HDE performs well on more complex objective functions, but that the PSO/HJ more consistently identifies the global minimum for simpler objective functions. Both identified similar values in the objective functions arising from energy simulations, but with different combinations of model parameters. This may suggest that the objective function is multi-modal. The algorithms also correctly identified some non-intuitive parameter combinations that were caused by a simplified control sequence of the building energy system that does not represent actual practice, further reinforcing their utility

Examining Commodity, Agency, and Value: Prehistoric French Replicas, Casts, and "Frauds" within the National Museum of Natural History's Collection

From approximately 1850 to the beginning of World War II, archaeological collaboration between the United States and France was at its peak in terms of the study of human prehistory. This span of time will be referred to as a “golden age” of exchange, which resulted in thousands of objects being sent from France to be housed in museums and institutions of higher education in the United States. Within these collections, the presence of replicas, casts, and even objects questionably catalogued by the museum as “frauds” highlight the underlying value of the broader collecting ideologies. Through a statistical analysis of the French prehistoric collections at the National Museum of Natural History that includes replicas, casts, and “frauds” as well as case studies into specific objects, I hope to explore the patterns of motivations and range of perspectives of the various actors within the process of creating, collecting, and distributing these objects. More in-depth, biographical case studies will also allow for a glimpse into the complex and often ambiguous social lives of certain objects within these collections (Kopytoff 1986). Overall, the presence of replicas, casts, and “frauds” becomes a lens into which commodity, agency, and value of the prehistoric French collections can be examined and analyzed

Framgångsfaktorer för en likvärdig undervisning för elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter

Syftet med föreliggande kunskapsöversikt är att utifrån forskning sammanställa faktorer och möjligheter för att skapa en likvärdig undervisning med fokus på elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter. För att nå detta syfte utgår översikten från frågeställningen: vilka fram-gångsfaktorer möjliggör en likvärdig undervisning för elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter i årskurs F-3? En systematisk sökprocess för att hitta adekvata artiklar till valt ämnesom-råde påbörjades. Artiklarna som valdes ut granskades utifrån den formulerade frågeställ-ningen. Från forskningsresultaten framställdes framgångsfaktorer och möjligheter för att skapa en likvärdig undervisning med fokus på elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Materi-alets resultat visar att klassrumsklimat, lärarens kompetens och undervisningens struktur är olika komponenter som påverkar en likvärdig undervisning för elever med svårigheter inom läsning och skrivning. Därefter diskuteras tematiseringarna kopplat till vår framtida profession. Kunskapsöversikten avslutas med förslag om vidare forskning