Analysing Cultural Impacts of Compouter-Mediated Communication in Organisations

In our research in progress, we study how CMC affects culture in office life. By culture we mean here our way of life in general and thus our way of working in work places. We will investigate impacts of CMC on the way we work in offices. In the next section we will explain the meaning of culture used in this research in detail and present evaluation framing (Stamper, 1988) as a conceptual framework

Business model design for sustainable society: Therapy for the consumerist mindset

We address the problem of unsustainable business in the consumerist society with a reframing of the purpose of business, in recognition of the power of higher purpose for the company and contribution to society as the primary stakeholder. In this, the business model operated is crucial, but is generally under-invested, both conceptually unclear and usually more implicit than explicit, and thus lacking in guiding influence on the way a company performs. Despite the apparent significance of why and how a business operates, business model design is only in its infancy. A framework for business model design is outlined. We conclude with a discussion and proposed research agenda

Consuming identity : the case of Scotland

The paper examines national identity in Scotland. The research explores how consumers perceive the symbols used to represent Scotland, how these symbols relate to their perceptions of contemporary Scottish identity and their responses to the use of these symbols to promote Scotland and Scottishness. A series of in-depth interviews revealed that national identity in Scotland was seen to be multidimensional. Activities associated with art and culture, as opposed to business and industry, were identified as primary characteristics of contemporary Scotland. The traditional symbols of Scottish identity (e.g. tartan and whiskey) remain dominant signifiers, however, and the problems of this are discussed

Support: Can it be a value creation strategy for positive marketing?

In pursuit of improving people's wellbeing and engaging in positive marketing, this paper addresses the application of Vickers' Appreciation System to deepen our understanding of how people comprehend their environment and respond to improve their situation. The paper highlights how companies can collaboratively engage in people's appreciation and support them in fulfilling their needs

Definite Descriptions are Directly Referential

Amongst those who have analysed definite descriptions as referential, most have considered them to be indirectly referential. In contrast, I will argue that definite descriptions are directly referential, in the sense of Kaplan (1980). In other words, the informational contents of utterances of definite descriptions are identical to their referents. In this thesis, I will first present a semantic framework inspired primarily by Kaplan (1980) with additions from Russell (2008) and Salmon (1986). I will then present a semantic analysis of definite descriptions whereby they are directly referential expressions. This analysis will also concur with Lewis’ (1979) suggestion that the referents of definite description utterances are determined by comparative salience. I will argue that this analysis provides the most theoretically virtuous explanation of the various semantic properties of definite descriptions. I will also examine a series of problem cases for this analysis and argue that they can be resolved through independently justified means. Firstly, I will discuss Frege’s Puzzle, as presented by Salmon (1986), as it relates to the directly referential analysis of definite descriptions, as well as the related problem of de dicto indirect speech and propositional attitude reports. I will suggest that Salmon’s approach to these problems in the case of proper names will also apply in the case of directly referential definite descriptions. Secondly, I will argue that Kripke’s (1977) analysis of the phenomena discussed by Donnellan (1966) is compatible with the directly referential analysis of definite descriptions. Thirdly, I will provide an ambiguous analysis of modal operators to account for de dicto modal claims. I will conclude by discussing possible links between this analysis and analyses of other singular terms

Formal Representations of Salience in Dynamic Semantics

Lewis’ (1973; 1979) salience analysis of definite description reference suggests that an utterance of ‘the F’ refers to the most salient F, according to a contextual salience ranking. This analysis was created to account for referring improper definite descriptions. As shown by von Heusinger (2004), the salience analysis can also be used to explain anaphoric definite descriptions. Any formalization of the salience analysis will require a method for formally representing salience, such as Lewis’ order-theoretic method or von Heusinger’s choice-theoretic method. In this thesis, I will argue that the order-theoretic method explains certain features of salience that the choice-theoretic method does not, and therefore the order-theoretic method should be favored. I will also show how von Heusinger’s Dynamic Semantics with Choice Functions can be adapted to utilize the order-theoretic method, thus providing a formal modeling of the context change described by the salience explanation of anaphoric definite descriptions.Master of Art

Regulation of the immune response studied in vitro

In an attempt to study the regulation of the immune response in vitro, different agents have been used. Some appear to affect proliferation and/or differentiation of B cells and some specifically affect certain T cell subsets. Infection with pseudomonas aeruginosa is lethal m mice and the extracellular slime glycoprotein (GLP) has been identified as the pathogenic component. The effect of GLP on murine lymphocytes has been studied. GLP was shown to act like a B cell mitogen, in fact this could be described more specifically as a TI-2 polysaccharide antigen and GLP also caused non-specific terminal differentiation of B cells into immunoglobulin secretion. Repeated injections of 2'-deoxyguanosine (dGuO) can mimic purine nucleoside phosphorylase deficiency, which manifests itself as a selective T cell dysfunction. Using systems where the simultaneous development of T suppressor and cytotoxic cells occur, dGuO partially abrogates suppression but leaves the cytotoxic component unaltered. No effect on different populations of cytotoxic cells could be demonstrated and antigen presentation to T cells also appeared unaffected. The effect of cyclosporin A (CsA) on antigen presentation to T cell lines and clones was investigated. Pre-pulsing the antigen presenting cells with CsA inhibited proliferation to the specific antigen and also prevented cytokine release by these T cell lines. The effect of CsA on T cell triggering via anti-CD3 or idiotypic antibody were also studied. Conflicting results were obtained with T cell lines or clones and T cell hybridomas. Using T cell lines developed in this laboratory, the release of cytokines spontaneously, or following antigenic stimulation, were studied. Following on from this, the effect of various purified cytokines on the T-independent autologous plaque forming (PFC) assay were investigated. The majority of these factors did not affect this response with the exception of IL-5 and BCDF (SJL(4)F) which were consistently shown to have an enhancing effect in this assay. One T cell line, SJL(4), was extensively studied in order to identify the factor(s) which could enhance the autologous PFC assay. A factor produced by SJL(4) cells, SJL(4)F, appears to be distinct from IL-1, IL-2, IL-3, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6 and IFN-γ and therefore may well be a BCDF as yet undescribed in the current literature

Public Discourse as Information System: the Use of SSM to Facilitate ‘Healthier’ Stakeholder Discourse

This paper explores dialogue between the diverse stakeholders affected by the introduction of the BioFuels Sales Obligation policy in New Zealand. The research will use ‘rich pictures’ within the framework of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to evaluate the extent to which such abstract visualization might facilitate the communication of different viewpoints. It will examine whether the act of representation might encourage individuals, organizations and interest groups to reflect upon their beliefs and assumptions thereby contributing to a healthy discourse around the subject of New Zealand biofuels

Corpus Analysis in Philosophical Semantics

The topic of this dissertation is corpus analysis: the use of computational techniques to search through large collections of real-world texts (called corpora) to discover facts about language use which hold throughout the collection. I examine how corpus analysis can be used as an empirical methodology within philosophy of language to confirm semantic analyses of philosophically important expressions. I begin by discussing the philosophical importance of analyzing the ordinary meaning of people's language use, as through that we can come to understand how they categorize the world around them. Specifically, I am concerned with philosophical semantics: the study of the meaning of expressions for which different theories of their meaning will have different philosophical upshots. After discussing the kind of meaning relevant to this subject area (namely operative concepts: the concepts that actually determine how we apply expressions to cases), I rationally reconstruct and analyze existing methods of confirmation in philosophical semantics, including intuitive methods and questionnaire methods from experimental philosophy. I then critique these methods in terms of the strength of evidence they can offer.Next, I introduce corpus analysis, and explain how it can be used as a method of confirmation in philosophical semantics. I pay special attention to the question of how corpus analysis can be used to discover the 'deep', semantic, representational features of text relevant for confirming semantic analyses, and offer several techniques to perform this task.I argue that corpus analysis has many benefits over existing methods of confirmation in philosophical semantics, given that it studies (i) actual, rather than imagined, instances of language use, and (ii) the language use of the actual communities whose meanings we are interested in, rather than just that of philosophers.The dissertation concludes with a case study of the use of corpus analysis to confirm a theory of the reference conditions of definite descriptions over a rival theory with different philosophical upshots. This is the first corpus study in philosophical semantics to make use of an annotated corpus, which is a technique with lot of promise within this field.Doctor of Philosoph