| 1. |
- Lindahl, Karl-Olof
(författare)
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On the linearization of non-Archimedean holomorphic functions near an indifferent fixed point
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We consider the problem of local linearization of power series defined over complete valued fields. The complex field case has been studied since the end of the nineteenth century, and renders a delicate number theoretical problem of small divisors related to diophantine approximation. Since a work of Herman and Yoccoz in 1981, there has been an increasing interest in generalizations to other valued fields like p-adic fields and various function fields. We present some new results in this domain of research. In particular, for fields of prime characteristic, the problem leads to a combinatorial problem of seemingly great complexity, albeit of another nature than in the complex field case. In cases for which linearization is possible, we estimate the size of linearization discs and prove existence of periodic points on the boundary. We also prove that transitivity and ergodicity is preserved under the linearization. In particular, transitivity and ergodicity on a sphere inside a non-Archimedean linearization disc is possible only for fields of p-adic numbers.
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| 2. |
- Ljungquist, Urban, 1969-
(författare)
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Core competence matters : Preparing for a new agenda
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ljungquist, Urban (2007). Core Competence Matters: Preparing for a New Agenda. Acta Wexionensia No. 121/2007. ISSN: 1404-4307, ISBN: 978-91-7636-567-0. Written in English. The core competence concept describes how large companies can prosper and achieve competitive advantage. It is a well-known concept in the strategy domain, frequently practiced in organizations and cited in the literature. Despite this, recent research indicates that in-depth understanding of the concept is scarce. In this thesis, a few shortcomings of the concept are recognized: The vagueness of the original definition, divergence of the existing literature, and invalid appliance. Straightforward core competence identification and verification processes are put forward, applicable to both research and practice. The processes aim at advancing beyond mere identification. Three different core competencies were identified and verified in the empirical part of this thesis. The core competencies were possible to separate through differences in the various influences from competencies, capabilities and resources. The core competencies were also possible to arrange in a complexity continuum, from a compound and highly integrated core competence to a simple and technology-based one, with the third one, a service-based core competence, representing moderate complexity. The two most complex core competencies were, in general, influenced by competencies and capabilities to a larger extent than the simpler core competence. Resources mainly influenced the goods-producing core competencies. The empirical findings of this thesis show that by acknowledging the specifics of the characteristics of competencies, capabilities and resources and their influences, in conceptual and empirical discussions and applications, core competencies can be identified and verified. Furthermore, their influences provide the keys to managing core competencies. A new core competence agenda is proposed. The agenda includes core competence management, which is of particular value to organizations in need of change, for example those facing dynamic business environments, where vital activities and processes – including core competence – must be continually renewed. The agenda is feasible for future core competence research as well, since it alters the research domain, and advocates specificity, convergence and validity.
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| 3. |
- Almerud, Sofia, 1969-
(författare)
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Vigilance & Invisibility : Care in technologically intense environments
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the relationship between technology and caring in technologically intense environments. The overall aim was to uncover the meaning of care in those environments as experienced by patients and caregivers. Moreover, the study aimed at finding a deeper understanding for the almost total dominance of technology in care in intensive care. The thesis includes three empirical studies and one theoretical, philosophical study. The research was guided by a phenomenological and lifeworld theoretical approach. Research data consist of quantitative parameters and qualitative interviews with caregivers and patients. Data was analysed and synthesised with aim of seeking meaning through openness, sensitivity and a reflective attitude. The goal was to reach the general structure of the phenomenon and its meaning constituents. The result shows that an intensive care unit is a cognitive and emotionally complex environment where caregivers are juggling a precarious handful of cards. Despite being constantly monitored and observed, intensive care patients express that they feel invisible. The patient and the apparatus easily meld into a unit, one item to be regulated and read. From the patients’ perspective, caregivers demonstrate keen vigilance over technological devices and measured parameters, but pay scant attention to their stories and experiences. Technology, with its exciting captive lure and challenging character, seduces the caregivers and lulls them into a fictive sense of security and safety. Technical tasks take precedence or have more urgency than caring behaviour. A malaise settles on caregivers as they strive for garnering the security that technology promises. Yet simultaneously, insecurity creeps in as they read the patient’s biological data. Technical tasks take precedence over and seemingly are more urgent than showing care. Listening, inspiring trust, and promoting confidence no longer have high priority. Trying to communicate ‘through’ technology is so complex, that it is a difficult challenge to keep in perspective what or who is the focus; ‘seeing’ or caring. Technology should be like a catalyst; do its ‘thing’ and withdraw ‘unnoticed’. This thesis has contributed in gaining deeper knowledge about care in technologically intense environments and the impact of technology. The main contribution is that caregivers need to be aware that the roar of technology silences the subtle attempts of the critically ill or injured person to give voice to his or her needs. In conclusion, the challenges for caregivers are to distinguish when to heighten the importance of the objective and measurable dimensions provided by technology and when to reduce their importance. In order to magnify the patients’ lived experiences. It is a question of balancing state-of-the-art technology with integrative and comprehensive care, of harmonizing the demands of subjectivity with objective signs.
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| 4. |
- Ask, Sofia, 1969-
(författare)
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Vägar till ett akademiskt skriftspråk
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Abstract Ask, S., 2007: Vägar till ett akademiskt skriftspråk (Roads to academic written language). Acta Wexionensia nr 115/2007. ISBN: 978-91-7636-557-1 The overall aim of the dissertation is to analyse the general features of academic writing skills that students’ texts show at the beginning and at the end of their undergraduate education, and to investigate the paths chosen by students from different study backgrounds when they acquire competence in academic writing. The dissertation studies changes of level within the educational system from a student perspective. The empirical material consists of qualitative research interviews with student teachers at different stages of their training, and of the analyses of texts written by the same students. The study shows that both new and experienced students find it difficult to see a link between the tuition in Swedish in high school and their university studies, especially when it comes to academic writing. The new students therefore feel frustration and confusion in the transition phase. The experienced students say that they have mainly developed competence in academic writing during their studies through supervision in essay writing, which is felt to be crucial for linguistic development. The new students’ interim texts are characterized by the clear personal presence of an author, a varying degree of copying from source texts, and uncertain handling of references. Expressions of critical-analytical thinking are not common, and the texts usually have an everyday tone. The experienced students do not copy texts, yet they show great insecurity in their use of the content of the source texts. They write “academically” by using frequent reference markers and adopting a bombastic style. The linguistic tools of academic writing are used by the experienced students as decoration, to strengthen the impression of familiarity with the academic discourse.
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| 5. |
- Eng, Thérèse, 1967-
(författare)
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Traduire l´oral en une ou deux lignes : Étude traductologique du sous-titrage français de films suédois contemporains
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is a comparative investigation of the work of two subtitlers of Swedish films translated into French in the last decade of 20th century. It is a look at how they try to render the illusion of spoken language in the written line that is a subtitle. This effect has to be created despite the constraints of time, synchronisation, readability, and the limited number of characters available to work with.We have shown that the subtitles examined in this work include many of the characteristics typical of spoken French. These characteristics can be classified as belonging to the Phonetic, the Lexical or the Syntactic level. At the lexical level we can see that the translators use expressions with a lower style-level than the originals but manage to avoid being too shocking, innovative or destabilizing for the audience. We have also shown diastratic language differences in translation: our subtitlers strengthen characters of social differences by using a different language style depending on the status that the person in question has.Because of the polysemiotic nature of film it is not the primary purpose of a subtitler to translate everything. Typically verbal speech characteristics such as repetition, hesitation, incomplete phrases and non-informational expressions that are often seen as less acceptable in the written word are normally sacrificed in subtitles.On the other hand, we could not show that the original language (Swedish) had a sizable impact on the style and construction of the subtitles.We also looked at possible stylistic differences between the two subtitlers translations and tried to find out if the “voice” of the subtitler shone through. If so, we were interested in attempting to see if a difference could be caused by the fact that one of the subtitlers has French as her native language while the other translates from his second language. We were not able to relate the cause of the difference of style we observed to anything other than the original dialogue’s changing style-levels.In which direction the verbal content in subtitles will develop is an interesting and relevant question. In this work we have identified a development of style that has taken place during recent years in French subtitles to Swedish films. This development goes from a previous situation where the style of the spoken word was practically unused compared to today’s more frequent and systematic use.
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| 6. |
- Engren, Jimmy, 1971-
(författare)
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Railroading and Labor Migration : Class and Ethnicity in Expanding Capitalism in Northern Minnesote, the 1880s to the mid 1920s
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the 1880s, capitalism as a social and economic system integrated new geographic areas of the American continent. The construction of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad (D&IR), financed by a group of Philadelphia investors led by Charlemagne Tower and later owned by the US Steel was part of this emerging political economy based on the exploitation of human and material resources. Migrant labor was in demand as it came cheap and, generally, floated between various construction-sites on the “frontier” of capitalism. The Swedish immigrants were one part of this group of “floaters” during the late 1800s and made up a significant part of the force that constructed and worked on the D&IR between the 1880s and the 1920s. This book deals with power relations between groups based on class and ethnic differences by analyzing the relationship between the Anglo-American bourgeois establishment and the Swedish and other immigrant workers and their children on the D&IR and in the railroad town of Two Harbors, Minnesota. The Anglo-American bourgeois hegemony in Minnesota, to a large extent, dictated the conditions under which Swedish immigrants and others toiled and were allowed access to American society. I have therefore analyzed the structural subordination and gradual integration of workers and, in particular, immigrant workers, in an emerging class society. The book also deals with the political and the cultural opposition to Anglo-American bourgeois hegemony that emerged in Two Harbors and that constructed a radical public sphere during the 1910s. In this process, new group identities based on class and ethnicity emerged in the working class neighborhoods in the wake of the capitalist expansion and exploitation, and as a result of worker agency. Building on traditions of political insurgency an alliance of immigrant workers, particularly Swedes, Anglo skilled workers and parts of the local petty bourgeoisie rose to a position of political and cultural power in the local community. This coalition was held together by the language of class that became the basis of a local multi-ethnic working class identity laying claim to its own version of Americanism. The period of preparedness leading up to the Great War, the war itself, and its aftermath, produced a reaction from the Anglo American bourgeoisie which resulted in a profound change in the public sphere as a coalition between “meliorist middle class reformers”, represented primarily by the YMCA and local church leaders and the D&IR and its program of welfare capitalism launched a broad program to counter socialism locally, and to forge new social bonds that would cut across class lines and ethnic boundaries. By this process, the ethnic working class in Two Harbors was offered entry into American society by acquiring citizenship and by their inclusion in a broader civic community undifferentiated by class. But this could only be realized by the workers’ adoption of an Anglo-American national identity based on identification with corporate interests, a new local solidarity that cut across class lines and a white racial identity that diminished the significance of ethnic boundaries. By these means the Swedish immigrants, or at least a portion of them, became Americans on terms established by the D&IR and its class allies.
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| 7. |
- Frithiof, Elisabet, 1949-
(författare)
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Mening, makt och utbildning : Delaktighetens villkor för personer med utvecklingsstörning
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis discusses issues concerning participation for children and young people, educated in special schools for pupils with learning disability, LD. The overall purpose of this doctoral thesis is to elucidate the preconditions of participation for persons with LD, in past and present times. A further purpose is to look into how ideas belonging to persons with LD relate to the social categorisation of LD, especially in the sphere of education. How has this category been established up to our time? Nowadays, which ontological and epistemological conceptualisation and which stance on society do persons with LD express in a first-person perspective? What can persons with LD expect of other persons, knowledge and society?Two young people with LD, called Elin and Blomman, told their life-stories with focus on those years they spent in special school. To this effect, thirteen tape-recorded interviews were conducted, constituting the empirical data. A Foucaultian model was applied in the analysis of their life-stories, which were then interpreted in a hermeneutic way of understanding. The first-person perspective of what it means to live with LD appears to be complicated and full of contradictions. Time spent in school included, after all, meaningful education in terms of challenges, traditional knowledge of subject matter, socialising and moments of happiness. However, Blomman also demands existential knowledge. He wants to arrive at an understanding of his difficult life."Good-enough-for-disabled-persons”-thinking by others is obvious. The results also demonstrate that participation in social networks gives support and serves as a sounding board. Elin and Blomman relate with a blend of both closeness and distance to others in special school, which is attended by both ”the disabled” and ”those who sit in a wheelchair”. Blomman agrees with the fact, that ”fully grown-ups” decide upon certain things. He has not yet taken upon himself the role of being grown up. Yet, he has a good grasp of his own shortcomings. Elin looks upon herself as a competent and successful relationship-builder. Persons with LD try to understand what it means to be disabled. They seek to understand themselves and they themselves in social relations to others, exactly as everybody else. According to Blomman, there is nothing wrong with his personality. By uttering these words he offers teachers and providers of education and many others, an exciting train of thought.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Jansson, Andreas, 1978-
(författare)
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Collective Action Among Shareholder Activists
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study addresses the problem of explaining the emergence and viability of coalitions among shareholder activists. The formation of coalitions for purposes of shareholder activism is generally unexpected from a theoretical perspective. Potential shareholder activists typically rely on the exit mechanism rather than becoming actively involved in the governance of corporations, and they tend to be in a prisoner’s dilemma type of situation, which has a non-co-operative outcome. Moreover, unless co-operation can be expected from others, no individual shareholder will make costly contributions to a coalition. Still, minority shareholder coalitions exist. The purpose of this study is to develop a model that accounts for the emergence and viability of minority shareholder coalitions. Two ideal-typical minority shareholder coalitions are developed: the offensive minority shareholder coalition, and the defensive minority shareholder coalition. These are based primarily on contractual theory (transaction cost economics, agency theory and property rights theory) and take form under the assumption that economic ends alone motivate actors. The offensive minority shareholder coalition emerges to seize an opportunity to increase share price by means of voice; it is led by a coalitional entrepreneur who carries all costs, thereby inducing co-operation from passive shareholders. The defensive minority shareholder coalition emerges to safeguard the members’ investments from risks of expropriation, which arise from increasing costs of using the exit mechanism; it is characterised by widespread active participation, since free riding further increases the risk of being expropriated. The model integrates the ideal types with results from three case studies of minority shareholder coalitions. These case studies show that under certain conditions, coalition members act as if they consider the effects of their actions on their reputation within networks of shareholders; this has implications for a coalition’s emergence and viability. The case studies further show that controlling shareholders, under certain circumstances, will tend to act as if they consider the effects of their actions on their public image as perceived by relevant (present or future) stakeholders; this places a shareholder coalition in a different bargaining position.
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