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The principal question addressed is the extent to which American organizations source legal services they require in a manner consistent with transaction cost economics and agency theory. Transaction cost economics (TCE) is an interdisciplinary undertaking which joins economics with aspects of organizational theory and contract law. TCE views frequency, uncertainty and asset specificity (the extent to which assets have little utility or value except in the context of a particular transaction or relationship) as key variables in determining how a transaction will be str...

In an effort to extend traditional human-computer interfaces research has introduced embodied agents to utilize the modalities of everyday human-human communication, like facial expression, gestures and body postures. However, giving computer agents a human-like body introduces new challenges. Since human users are very sensitive and critical concerning bodily behavior the agents must act naturally and individually in order to be believable. This dissertation focuses on conversational gestures. It shows how to generate conversational gestures for an animated embodied ag...

The various possibilities for the origin ("progenitors") of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) manifest in differing observable properties. Through deep spectroscopic and high-resolution imaging observations of some GRB hosts, I demonstrate that well-localized long-duration GRBs are connected with otherwise normal star-forming galaxies at moderate redshifts of order unity. Using high-mass binary stellar population synthesis models, I quantify the expected spatial extent around galaxies of coalescing neutron stars, one of the leading contenders for GRB progenitors. I then test this scenario by exam...

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the organisational problems, and in particular the leadership problems, of self-help groups in Japan for parents whose children have intractable diseases. Since 1993, I have been involved with these parent groups, and have conducted three sorts of qualitative interview: thirteen informal conversational interviews, six focus group interviews, and fourteen guided interviews, involving the members of twenty-one parent groups. Part of the research was carried out as participa...

‘Nervous shock’ cases form an area of law, which illustrates well the operation of judicial policy. It is possible from such cases to trace the changing attitudes of lawyers, doctors and of society in general to psychiatric injury over the last century. These cases also highlight the changing judicial attitudes to the scope of duty of care and to the whole issue of policy decisions.The recognition of nervous shock similarly illustrates the development of medical knowledge in relation to psychiatric injury. The recognition of Post traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) has been a relatively new an...

This dissertation describes work performed at the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) during 1998-2002. Using PTI, we developed a method to measure stellar angular diameters in the 1-3 milli-arcsecond range with a precision of better than 5%. Such diameter measurements were used to measure the mass-radius relations of several lower main sequence stars and hence verify model predictions for these stars. In addition, by measuring the changes in Cepheid angular diameters during the pulsational cycle and applying a Baade-Wesselink analysis we are able to derive the distances ...

Modern architecture is a creation of the West. In a non-Western context, it normally reflects a direct intervention of Western powers through colonization. Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is an exception. Thai people have argued that they adopted and assimilated modern architecture into their unique cultural tradition without being physically colonized. The shift toward Western culture and Modernity is evident in 19th and 20th century Thai architecture, particularly in the capitol city of Bangkok. Major public buildings signify the country's domestic political circum...

Communication is frequently identified in the literature as a major factor impacting Information Technology (IT) project failure. The importance of communication is amplified in buyer - seller relationships through the long-term impact of project failures on the future business of IT vendors with their customers.The formal communication between IT project sponsors from buyer firms and project managers from IT vendor firms within business to business markets is investigated through this study. Typical communication patterns between project sponsor and manager in high and low performing projects...

The strategy team have technology ideas and frameworks that represent the best body of knowledge for creating real business value from technology, but only other teams not the strategy team can create the value, by broadly completing the strategy team s ideas. The delivery teams often ignore the ideas. Sometimes real conflict emerges. It feels like the other teams think differently in a deeply rooted way. Could differences in organisational culture be to blame? This dissertation examines the organisational culture perceived within BP's energy trading technology team known as Integrated Su...

The majority of scientific research on teen magazines has been conducted from a single-country perspective, even though the experience of sex and sexuality is known to vary by country. Moreover, no research to date has analyzed the sexual content of teen magazines and directly linked it to how young people think or feel about sex. In response to these shortcomings, this book analyzes the topics of sexual desire, sexual danger, virginity loss, pregnancy, and the hook-up culture in the most popular teen magazines of the United States and the Netherlands. Results are then linked to US and Dutch y...