The functions of intermediaries in Swedish SMEs internationalization to the Nigerian market

Over the years so many academic literatures has revealed that increased number of firms have seen internationalization as a means to gain and sustain competitive advantage and even increase economic of scale, and this has led many western companies to emerging markets. In this paper we discovered that among the pool of Swedish firms, only the MNEs have seen Nigerian market attractive to internationalize to, but just a few of the Swedish SMEs has expanded to the Nigerian market. This research was conducted by doing a qualitative study with the use of phenomenological research approach, during our investigation on the functions of intermediaries in Swedish SMEs internationalization to Nigeria market.Furthermore, we were able to understand the importance and functions of the different marketing intermediaries’ in Swedish SMEs internationalization to Nigeria market. These intermediaries equip the Swedish firms with the required objective knowledge of the Nigerian market, updating them with recent development of the opportunities and threats involved in the Nigerian marketing environment, and linking these Swedish firms to the required government departments, distributors, agent/broker, customers, middle men etc, thereby impacting them with the experiential knowledge. Moreover, it is important for firms to have objective or pre-market knowledge of a particular market before entering that market, but this knowledge is regarded as non-helpful knowledge to firms. But the experiential knowledge is acquired over time in the market, which is regarded as the helpful knowledge. It is evident that the intermediaries equip these firms with both objective and experiential knowledge.Although the opportunities in some emerging markets are very attractive, but the threats in these markets are other factors firms also put into consideration before internationalizing to these markets. This is why thorough market research has to be done so that firms can create effective marketing strategies when they want to expand their marketing activities to emerging markets. Despite the risk and uncertainties involved in doing business in foreign countries, still yet companies selling global products do not have any choice than to internationalize their marketing operations.

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIMETIC LEARNING AND MULTIMODAL COGNITION: INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE INTO PROGRAMS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

My dissertation emphasizes a cognitive account of multimodality that explicitly integrates experiential knowledge work into the rhetorical pedagogy that informs so many composition and technical communication programs. In these disciplines, multimodality is widely conceived in terms of what Gunther Kress calls “socialsemiotic” modes of communication shaped primarily by culture. In the cognitive and neurolinguistic theories of Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, however, multimodality is described as a key characteristic of our bodies’ sensory-motor systems which link perception to action and action to meaning, grounding all communicative acts in knowledge shaped through body-engaged experience. I argue that this “situated” account of cognition – which closely approximates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, a major framework for my study – has pedagogical precedence in the mimetic pedagogy that informed ancient Sophistic rhetorical training, and I reveal that training’s multimodal dimensions through a phenomenological exegesis of the concept mimesis. Plato’s denigration of the mimetic tradition and his elevation of conceptual contemplation through reason, out of which developed the classic Cartesian separation of mind from body, resulted in a general degradation of experiential knowledge in Western education. But with the recent introduction into college classrooms of digital technologies and multimedia communication tools, renewed emphasis is being placed on the “hands-on” nature of inventive and productive praxis, necessitating a revision of methods of instruction and assessment that have traditionally privileged the acquisition of conceptual over experiential knowledge. The model of multimodality I construct from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, ancient Sophistic rhetorical pedagogy, and current neuroscientific accounts of situated cognition insists on recognizing the significant role knowledges we acquire experientially play in our reading and writing, speaking and listening, discerning and designing practices.

Linking strategy and the knowledge of the firm

Discovering the ways through which firms develop and maintain competitive advantage is a central research stream in management theory. The objective of this paper is to present a contribution to the discussion of the knowledge of the firm as a source of competitive advantage. The paper states that a firm's success is a consequence of its ability in the continuous development of core competencies that will sustain its competitiveness over time. Core competencies are understood as the sets of knowledge that differentiate a company strategically. The firm must discover, develop, share and update the knowledge that sustains the present and future core competencies. Knowledge management, through processes of knowledge creation and integration, is one way of doing this.

Locus of control and contraceptive knowledge, attitude and practice among university students

OBJECTIVE: To assess the relationship between locus of control and knowledge, attitude and practice regarding pill and condom use among university students. METHODS: The inquiry was developed in Campinas, a city in Southeastern Brazil, in 2006. A total of 295 adolescent newcomers to a public university answered a structured questionnaire and Levenson's multidimensional locus of control scale. The scores of the dimensions of locus of control were calculated and Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to assess their correlation with knowledge and practice concerning pill and condom use. In order to assess the relationship between the dimensions of locus of control and sociodemographic variables and variables related to the individuals' sex life, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were used. RESULTS: Male adolescents had higher scores of powerful others externality when compared to female adolescents (p=0.01). Students living alone had lower internality (p=0.01). When locus of control was compared to condom use in the first intercourse, considering only the 102 students who informed the age of the beginning of sexual activity, greater internality was found among male adolescents who did not use condoms (p<0.05). When the locus of control scores were correlated with contraceptive knowledge and practice, it was found that the higher the powerful others externality locus, the lower the adequate use of contraceptive methods (r = -0.22, p=0.03). CONCLUSIONS: The powerful others externality locus influences the practice of contraceptive use in this group of adolescents.

The INTERNORM Project: Bridging Two Worlds of Expert- and Lay-Knowledge in Standardization

This paper presents a pilot project to reinforce participatory practices in standardization. The INTERNORM project creates an interactive knowledge center based on the sharing of academic skills and experiences accumulated by the civil society, especially consumer associations, environmental associations and trade unions to strengthen the participatory process of standardization. The first objective of the project is action-oriented: INTERNORM provides a common knowledge pool supporting the participation of civil society actors to international standard-setting activities by bringing them together with academic experts in working groups and providing logistic and financial support to their participation in meetings of national and international technical committees. The second objective is analytical: the standardization action provides a research field for a better understanding of the participatory dynamics underpinning international standardization. This paper presents three incentives that explain civil society (non-)involvement in standardization that overcome conventional resource-based hypotheses: an operational incentive related to the use of standards in the selective goods provided by associations to their membership; a thematic incentive provided by the setting of priorities by strategic committees created in some standardization organization; and a rhetorical incentive related to the discursive resource that civil society concerns offers to the different stakeholders.

Pharmacology and biochemistry undergraduate students'concern for a healthy diet and nutrition knowledge

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Effective Practice and Experiential Education

The central challenge to educators in the liberal arts as in all areas of study is transfer of learning i.e. how can we design learning environments and instruction to that students will be able to use what they learn in appropriate new contexts? Alfred North Whitehead described this as the problem of ‘inert knowledge’ nearly a century ago and Dewey noted that instruction which helps students reproduce what is studied on exams might not produce the depth of understanding that allows for recognizing the relevance of what is known to a particular situation and the ability to apply it. Knowledge that is not conditionalized (i.e. in which the learner does not know when where and why it is to be used) is inert.

Influences of psychological and experiential processes in paintings of Sheila Sobol

"For a number of artists, the activity of making. art is an inquiry into: the nature of art, the true nature of reality, and the execution of artistic ideas. This inquiry ·is benefited by recognizing psychological processes and theories, subjectl.ve and external experiences, and technical and aesthetic knowledge. The "creative process" contains this inquiry and can be likened to a hinge which connects the art produced and the artist"

Social capital and tacit knowledge sharing in organisational projects in Malaysian ICT companies

An increasing number of organisational researchers have turned to social capital theory in an attempt to better understand the impetus for knowledge sharing at the individual and organisational level. This thesis extends that research by investigating the impact of social capital on knowledge sharing at the group-level in the organisational project context. The objective of the thesis is to investigate the importance of social capital in fostering tacit knowledge sharing among the team members of a project. The analytical focus is on the Nahapiet and Ghoshal framework of social capital but also includes elements of other scholars' work. In brief, social capital is defined as an asset that is embedded in the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit. It is argued that the main dimensions of social capital that are of relevance to knowledge sharing are structural, cognitive, and relational because these, among other things, foster the exchange and combination of knowledge and resources among the team members. Empirically, the study is based on the grounded theory method. Data were collected from five projects in large, medium, and small ICT companies in Malaysia. Underpinned by the constant comparative method, data were derived from 55 interviews, and observations. The data were analysed using open, axial, and selective coding. The analysis also involved counting frequency occurrence from the coding generated by grounded theory to find the important items and categories under social capital dimensions and knowledge sharing, and for further explaining sub-groups within the data. The analysis shows that the most important dimension for tacit knowledge sharing is structural capital. Most importantly, the findings also suggest that structural capital is a prerequisite of cognitive capital and relational capital at the group-level in an organisational project. It also found that in a project context, relational capital is hard to realise because it requires time and frequent interactions among the team members. The findings from quantitative analysis show that frequent meetings and interactions, relationship, positions, shared visions, shared objectives, and collaboration are among the factors that foster the sharing of tacit knowledge among the team members. In conclusion, the present study adds to the existing literature on social capital in two main ways. Firstly, it distinguishes the dimensions of social capital and identifies that structural capital is the most important dimension in social capital and it is a prerequisite of cognitive and relational capital in a project context. Secondly, it identifies the causal sequence in the dimension of social capital suggesting avenues for further theoretical and empirical work in this emerging area of inquiry.

Methodology for Creating of Objective and Balanced Linear Tests Based on the Item Response Theory

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2014

Formal performance appraisal interviews: Can they really be objective, and are they useful anyway?

This paper reports on a qualitative field study conducted in Australia which examined what is occurring in formal performance appraisal interviews in relation to their objectivity and resultant outcomes. Supervisors and subordinates who had recently been involved in performance appraisals were interviewed about their experiences of the process. Perceptions of the utility of, and satisfaction with the interview process were examined. Further, the effect of the relationship between the participants on objectivity was investigated. Results indicated that formal appraisal interviews were not perceived to be of great utility, and that the relationship of the participants influenced the interview.

Unagi-sentences in Japanese and mutual knowledge

This paper examines the so-called ’Unagi-sentence‘ in Japanese. So far, it has been taken for granted that the Unagi-sentence is incomplete syntactically and/or semantically. Because its structure apparently neither provides a fully-fledged semantic meaning, nor furnishes a plausible syntactic pattern (such as ‘subject-predicate‘), a number of previous works have considered the Unagi-sentence to be elliptic, and consequently reconstructed it as a complete sentence or established intermediate structures to account for its grammatical form. Other researchers have not used elliptic solutions, but sought to discover logical connections between the parts of the Unagi-sentence themselves. As a result, fixing their entire attention on the internal structure of the Unagi-sentence, these researchers inevitably needed to establish hypothetical constructs in order to explain the structure of the Unagi-sentence. The present author believes that the Unagi-sentence is neither incomplete nor a result of some hypothetical processes. The Unagi-sentence stands on its own as a complete utterance. It is basically an NP utterance which can be expanded to the form NP1 wa + NP2 da and its variations. The occurrence of the Unagi-sentence depends heavily on a presupposed context and its pragmatic features, without which the Unagi-sentence cannot exist. It is these features that the present article seeks to elucidate.