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Description
In response to the rapid rise of emerging markets, shorter product lifecycles, increasing global exchange and worldwide competition, companies are implementing `sustainable development' as a mechanism by which to maintain competitive global advantage. Sustainable product development approaches used in industry focus mainly on environmental issues, and to a certain extent on social and economic aspects. Unfortunately, companies have often ignored or are unsure of how to deal with the cultural dimensions of sustainable product development. Multi-nationals expanding their business across international boundaries are agents of cultural change and should be cognizant of the impact their products have on local markets. Companies need to develop a deeper understanding of local cultures in order to design and deliver products that are not only economically viable but also culturally appropriate. To demonstrate applicability of cultural appropriate design, this research undertakes a case study of food systems in India specifically focusing on the exchange of fresh fruits and vegetables (FFV). This study focuses on understanding the entire supply chain of FFV exchange, which includes consumer experiences, distribution practices and production processes. This study also compares different distribution channels and exchange practices and analyzes the pattern of authority between different players within the distribution network. The ethnographic methods for data collection included a photo-journal assignment, shop-along visits, semi-structured interviews, a participatory design activity and focus group studies. The study revealed that traditional retail formats like pushcart vendors, street retailers and city retail markets are generally preferred over modern retail stores. For consumers, shopping is a non-choreographed activity often resulting in exercising, socializing and accidental purchases. Informal communication, personal relationships and openness to bargaining were important aspects of the consumer-retailer relationship. This study presents cultural insights into interactions, artifacts and contexts relevant to FFV systems in India. It also presents key implications for the field of design, design research, cultural studies, consumer research and sustainability. The insights gained from this study will act as guidelines for designers, researchers and corporations interested in designing products and services that are culturally appropriate to contexts of production, distribution and consumption.
ContributorsDhadphale, Tejas (Author) / Giard, Jacques (Thesis advisor) / Boradkar, Prasad (Thesis advisor) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation examined sojourner adjustment success utilizing a unique method for collecting and analyzing the perceptions and sense making of the sojourner participants. Although previous research studies in this area have mostly relied on quantitative survey designs and researcher-generated models, this study relied on in-depth, participant-driven, qualitative interviews that were semi-structured using a software-assisted method called Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). Through this dissertation research, study abroad students (sojourners) had the opportunity to reflect on their sojourn experience, share their adjustment stories, and identify factors that were personally relevant to their success. This study broke new ground while building on the vast body of work in cross-cultural and sojourner adjustment. Sojourners were asked to provide their perspectives on the relationships among those factors reported in the literature that are commonly believed to influence successful adjustment. This allowed me to connect existing literature on the subject with the lived experience of the sojourner participants. This dissertation sought to answer two research questions. First, what factors do participants identify as being keys to the success of their sojourn? Second, what relationships do participants perceive among the factors contributing to successful sojourner adjustment? This dissertation found that language proficiency played a key role in their adjustment and openness was the factor most selected by participants in their explanation of a successful sojourn. Additionally, participant profiles and influence structure summaries provided evidence of the relationships participants saw among success factors in their lived experiences. In terms of preparing sojourners for going abroad, analysis of the composite structure revealed what could be prioritized in pre-departure training for impending sojourners. Themes emerged which provide insight into the commonalities of the sojourner experience despite differences in one's program or personality. This dissertation also explained additional success factors participants identified (e.g., ability to manage language fatigue, creation of connections with other travelers) that were not initially provided to them. Finally, suggestions for study abroad students/coordinators, researchers, and employers are provided.
ContributorsValianos, Alexis J (Author) / Broome, Benjamin (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Baldwin, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist destinations as visual phenomenon: seeking to understand how town histories were visually communicated to contemporary tourists and what role historically-grounded visual narratives played in the overall tourist experience. The study utilized a visual methodology to organize and structure qualitative data collection and analysis; it incorporated visual data from historic and contemporary photographs and textual data from observations and interviews. Through a careful exploration of each town's past and present, the research proposed a measure to assess how the strength of visual connections between past and present impacted tourist impressions of each town. The analysis suggested that, due to a general lack of historic knowledge, tourist impressions were more closely connected to contemporary experiences and prior expectations of the American Old West than to historically-grounded visual narratives.
ContributorsMcMullen, Melissa (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Rowe, Jeremy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The People's Republic of China's inexorable ascendancy has become an epochal event in international landscape, accentuated by its triple national ceremonies of global significance: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 2009 Beijing Military Parade, and 2010 Shanghai World Expo. At a momentous juncture when the PRC endeavored to project a new national identity to the outside world, these ceremonial occasions constitute a high-stake communicative opportunity for the Chinese government and a fruitful set of discursive artifacts for symbolic deconstruction and rhetorical interpretation. To unravel these ceremonial spectacles, a public memory approach, with its versatile potencies indexical of a nation's interpretive system of social meaning, its normative framework of ideological model, and its past-present-future interrelationships, is contextually, conceptually, and analytically diagnostic of a rising China's sociopolitical constellations. Thus employing public memory as a conceptual-methodological matrix, my dissertation focuses on the prominent texts in these ceremonies, excavates their historico-memorial invocation and sociocultural persuasion, and plumbs their discursive agenda, rhetorical operation, and sociopolitical implication. I argue that the Chinese government deliberately and forcefully strove for three interrelated communicative objectives at these three ceremonies--re-imaging, re-asserting, and re-anchoring its national identity as an ancient, emergent superpower. Yet in contemporary Chinese context, its discursive (con)quest to recast its leadership as a historically continuous, culturally orthodox, and ideologically legitimate regime has always been compromised by its mythologized historical representation and hegemonic rhetorical reconfiguration, countervailed by its political and ideological fragility, and contested by domestic and global publics. Besides its contributions to the current conversation on the PRC's ceremonial phenomena, discursive formations, and communicative dynamics, this dissertation further offers its diagnosis and prognostication of this projected leading country in the 21st century.
ContributorsGong, Jie (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Wu, Xu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation examines the organizational discourse of business meetings in a Kuwaiti financial organization (Innovative Kuwait Co., pseudonym) and an American non-profit trade organization (Global Phoenix, pseudonym). Specifically, I explore the discourse and social identities, agency, and power used in staff members' task-oriented business meetings (Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1997). The study is based on ethnographic business meetings data collected during eight months of fieldwork in 2010, 2011 and 2012. I used three major qualitative methodologies: observation, audio recording, and feedback focus group. In this study, I propose three research questions: 1) How does agency of staff members reflect membership in the corporate culture of an organization as a whole? 2) How is power used in relation to agency in business meetings? And 3) How are discourse and social identities of staff members enacted in business meetings? The analyses of ethnographic and fieldwork data demonstrate similar and different business linguistic behaviors in the two companies. In Innovative Kuwait Co., male managers are responsible for opening and closing the meetings. They also perform power by using language directives and suggestions directed to staff members. In contrast, female staff members in the Kuwaiti company participated insignificantly in meetings and produce more nonverbal cues. However, in one meeting, a female manager organized the discussion by controlling topics and giving directions. In Global Phoenix, female managers outnumber their male counterparts; therefore, agency, power, discourse, and social identities are performed differently. Female managers are responsible for opening and closing the meetings and for organizing the overall discussions. Additionally, female and male staff members participate equally and they interrupted their colleagues less frequently compared to staff members in Kuwait. Interestingly, American staff members laugh and joke more together than staff members in Kuwait. The findings of this dissertation will contribute to existing linguistic literature on business discourse and the examination of social meanings and structures in organizations, explaining how language shapes the actions and relationships of business staff members. This dissertation will also encourage business people to become mindful of the role of language and language training in developing and maintaining the corporate culture of their organizations.
ContributorsAlHaidari, Fatma M. (Author) / Adams, Karen L (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation explores South Asian American (SAA) emerging adult daughters' roles as their parents' reluctant confidants and mediators of conflict. Using Petronio's (2002) communication privacy management theory (CPM) as a framework, this dissertation investigates daughters' communicative strategies when engaged in familial roles. Findings from 15 respondent interviews with SAA women between the ages of 18 and 29 reveal daughters' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for role-playing within their families, such as inherent satisfaction and parental expectations, respectively. Additionally, findings highlight daughters' use of coping and thwarting strategies after they become the recipients of their parents' unsolicited private information. Namely, daughters engaged in coping strategies (e.g., giving advice) to help their parents manage private information. Likewise, they enacted thwarting strategies (e.g., erecting territorial markers) to restore boundaries after their parents (the disclosers) violated them. Consequently, serving as parental confidants and mediators contributed to parent-child boundary dissolution and adversely affected daughters' well-being as well as their progression toward adulthood. This study provides theoretical contributions by extending CPM theory regarding reluctant confidants within the contexts of emerging adult child-parent relationships and ethnic minority groups in America. Practically, this study offers emerging adult children insight into how they might renegotiate boundaries when their parents change the relationship by disclosing personal information. Information gleaned from this study provides SAA emerging adult daughters with an understanding of the ramifications of prioritizing their familial roles and being a reluctant confidant, in addition to potential avenues for remediation.
ContributorsNemmers, Geeta Khurana (Author) / Alberts, Janet K (Thesis advisor) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Christopher, F. Scott (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Geology and its tangential studies, collectively known and referred to in this thesis as geosciences, have been paramount to the transformation and advancement of society, fundamentally changing the way we view, interact and live with the surrounding natural and built environment. It is important to recognize the value and importance of this interdisciplinary scientific field while reconciling its ties to imperial and colonizing extractive systems which have led to harmful and invasive endeavors. This intersection among geosciences, (environmental) justice studies, and decolonization is intended to promote inclusive pedagogical models through just and equitable methodologies and frameworks as to prevent further injustices and promote recognition and healing of old wounds. By utilizing decolonial frameworks and highlighting the voices of peoples from colonized and exploited landscapes, this annotated syllabus tackles the issues previously described while proposing solutions involving place-based education and the recentering of land within geoscience pedagogical models. (abstract)
ContributorsReed, Cameron E (Author) / Richter, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Semken, Steven (Committee member) / School of Earth and Space Exploration (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
The ASU COVID-19 testing lab process was developed to operate as the primary testing site for all ASU staff, students, and specified external individuals. Tests are collected at various collection sites, including a walk-in site at the SDFC and various drive-up sites on campus; analysis is conducted on ASU campus and results are distributed virtually to all patients via the Health Services patient portal. The following is a literature review on past implementations of various process improvement techniques and how they can be applied to the ABCTL testing process to achieve laboratory goals. (abstract)
ContributorsKrell, Abby Elizabeth (Co-author) / Bruner, Ashley (Co-author) / Ramesh, Frankincense (Co-author) / Lewis, Gabriel (Co-author) / Barwey, Ishna (Co-author) / Myers, Jack (Co-author) / Hymer, William (Co-author) / Reagan, Sage (Co-author) / Compton, Carolyn (Thesis director) / McCarville, Daniel R. (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems & Operations Engineering Prgm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
For as long as humans have been working, they have been looking for ways to get that work done better, faster, and more efficient. Over the course of human history, mankind has created innumerable spectacular inventions, all with the goal of making the economy and daily life more efficient. Today, innovations and technological advancements are happening at a pace like never seen before, and technology like automation and artificial intelligence are poised to once again fundamentally alter the way people live and work in society. Whether society is prepared or not, robots are coming to replace human labor, and they are coming fast. In many areas artificial intelligence has disrupted entire industries of the economy. As people continue to make advancements in artificial intelligence, more industries will be disturbed, more jobs will be lost, and entirely new industries and professions will be created in their wake. The future of the economy and society will be determined by how humans adapt to the rapid innovations that are taking place every single day. In this paper I will examine the extent to which automation will take the place of human labor in the future, project the potential effect of automation to future unemployment, and what individuals and society will need to do to adapt to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology. I will also look at the history of automation in the economy. For centuries humans have been advancing technology to make their everyday work more productive and efficient, and for centuries this has forced humans to adapt to the modern technology through things like training and education. The thesis will additionally examine the ways in which the U.S. education system will have to adapt to meet the demands of the advancing economy, and how job retraining programs must be modernized to prepare workers for the changing economy.
ContributorsCunningham, Reed P. (Author) / DeSerpa, Allan (Thesis director) / Haglin, Brett (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Businesses stand to face many uncertainties from the moment they start up to every moment in between. A business can try to recognize them and plan ahead, react to them as they occur, or be rocked by a black swan they never saw coming. How a business deals with unforeseen events can increase its potential for success or failure. With this in mind, there is no better bridge between the here and now and the future than planning for change in order to move a company toward preparing for change, adapting to change and achieving optimal results. Interested in taking a step toward the digital age, Alpha Homes Management, Inc. (Alpha Homes) sought our help to explore ideas and options to take their company to a new level. This Barrett Creative Project was centered on designing a system for Alpha Homes that will replace their outdated paper-based system with a more digital one. This aligns with the project also featured as a capstone project as required by the information technology degree expectations. In supplement to the capstone, and for the Barrett Creative Project, the final product was presented to the owners of Alpha Homes Management, Inc. to be utilized by the business. The end goal is to provide a platform which provides a paperless environment for documentation and bring the company a step closer to having a robust internet presence. Now that the web-based application product has been created and presented, the testing phase can now begin to evaluate its efficacy.
ContributorsBrice-Nash, Tristan (Co-author) / Alfawzan, Mohammad (Co-author) / Doheny, Damien (Thesis director) / Rodriguez, Carlos (Committee member) / Information Technology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05