Erasmus University Thesis Repository
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In search of Dissent
No full textThis thesis explores how Dutch embassies, and their diplomatic staff engaged with the civil societies of the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member states between 1985 and 1989, a period marked by political upheaval and the eventual collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe. While the revolutions of 1989 have been widely studied, the specific role of Dutch diplomacy in responding to the rise of civil society in the Eastern Bloc has remained underexplored. This study seeks to fill that gap by examining the perspective of Dutch diplomats based in embassies, looking at archival sources to understand the nature, scope, and limitations of engagement with emerging opposition movements during the final years of the Cold War.
The main research question guiding this thesis is: How did Dutch embassy personnel engage diplomatically with non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member states and their civil societies between 1985 and 1989? Using Bent Boel's conceptual model of layered diplomatic engagement, ranging from recognition without outreach to direct contact, the thesis provides an analysis across six countries: East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative hermeneutic analysis of diplomatic correspondence, internal memos, and reports drawn from the Dutch National Archives. These are examined alongside secondary literature on civil society, Cold War diplomacy, and Dutch foreign policy.
Findings reveal that Dutch diplomats were often cautious and reactive, particularly in the early stages of the period studied, despite a reputation of fighting for human rights violations in the Warsaw Pact. In most cases, engagement remained limited to indirect or symbolic forms of support, especially outside Poland. However, as civil society became a political force to be reckoned with in the late 1980s, Dutch diplomats increasingly sought out opposition movements, especially in countries where political reforms began to be implemented. Still, they largely underestimated the momentum building within civil societies and were caught off guard by the speed and scale of the revolutions of 1989
AI Literacy: A Prerequisite for Effective Use of Generative AI
No full textThe widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT is transforming professional and personal workflows. While these tools promise increased productivity and innovation, they also introduce risks related to job displacement, overreliance, and emotional discomfort. This thesis investigates a critical yet underexplored issue: the distinction between use and correct use. Specifically, it explores AI literacy by examining its constituent variables and analyzing how AI literacy relates to the correct use of generative AI tools. To investigate these dynamics, the central research question guiding this study is: To what extent does AI literacy affect intentions of use and perceptions of GenAI?
This thesis argues that technical skills alone are insufficient for meaningful engagement with GenAI. Instead, effective use depends on metacognition (awareness of one's cognitive processes) and anticipation (the ability to foresee limitations in model outputs). Emotional variables such as trust and xenophobia are examined as potential mediators of workplace acceptance and the perception that using AI "feels like cheating" is also briefly explored, as GenAI challenges traditional motivational theories.
A quasi-experimental design was employed. Participants completed self-report measures and a performance-based prompting task, using ChatGPT to plan a trip. Prompts were evaluated using a custom rubric grounded in theory and best practices from prompt engineering. Results revealed a misalignment between perceived and actual AI literacy: 25% of participants scored only 1 out of 10 on the prompt task, despite reporting high levels of AI literacy. Metacognition and anticipation were found to be naturally embedded within existing AI literacy constructs, contributing to its conceptual refinement. However, self-reported AI literacy did not significantly predict GenAI acceptance, and mediation analyses showed that trust and xenophobia did not significantly mediate this relationship. These findings highlight the need to refine how AI literacy is conceptualized and measured, and they caution against overreliance on self-reports in designing effective training programs and workplace policies
Beyond Open Source: Analyzing Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Types in Closed-Source Software Community Participation
No full textIn recent years, user participation has become central to product innovation as companies are increasingly relying on online communities for feedback and idea generation. In open-source software contexts, this collaboration is often driven by intrinsically motivated users who contribute out of enjoyment, problem-solving interest, and a desire to support shared goals. However, the role of motivational framing in encouraging user participation during product ideation tasks remains understudied in closed-source software communities. Therefore, this study aimed to examine how intrinsic and extrinsic motivational framings, along with professional experience, influence the quantity and quality of user-generated ideas during new product development. To do so, a between-subjects experimental design was implemented via an online survey targeting contributors in the Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) community on two platforms - Slack and Reddit. Participants (n = 109) were randomly assigned to one of three motivational framing conditions: intrinsic, extrinsic, or neutral (control), and were asked to generate feature suggestions for the SFCC platform (n = 237). Idea quantity and quality were measured, with quality assessed across four dimensions: novelty, usefulness, clarity, and feasibility with the help of an AI model and a SFCC-proficient software engineer. The experimental survey also measured post-task intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and creative self-efficacy. Then, to test the direct and moderated effects of motivational framing and professional experience on participation outcomes, regression analyses were carried out. The results revealed that the hypotheses regarding the effect of motivational framing on overall idea quality and quantity were not supported. However, exploratory analyses suggested that creative self-efficacy was a strong predictor of ideation outcomes, possibly outweighing the impact of motivational framing. Furthermore, a disaggregated analysis of idea quality dimensions showed that intrinsic framing negatively affected clarity among experienced users, while extrinsic framing positively interacted with experience to predict higher feasibility scores. These dimension-specific effects suggest that the influence of motivation may be contingent on both user traits and the idea quality composites. The findings of the present study indicate that in the context of closed-source software communities, brief motivational framings alone may not be sufficient to drive participation. Instead, individual traits, particularly creative self-efficacy and domain experience, may play a more central role
La soledad era completa [The solitude was complete]: Avant-garde diasporic communities and the case for a history of Surrealism in Central America
No full textThis thesis interrogates the paradoxical invisibility and creative agency of Central America within the history of Surrealism and global modernisms scholarship. Taking as its threshold the Surrealist Map of the World (1929), where the isthmus vanishes beneath the continental masses of Mexico and South America, the research foregrounds how Central America has been persistently marginalised-cartographically, discursively, and institutionally-by both Eurocentric Surrealist imaginaries and dominant Latin American accounts. Thus, the study advances a history of Surrealism in Central America not as a derivative appendix, but as a liminal, generative site of negotiation between erasure, provincialism and cosmopolitanism.
Chapter 1 explores the region's split identities and the origin of the persistent question of whether a distinct Central American art exists or if its artists are forever consigned to extraterritorial circuits. Through figures such as Asturias or Mérida, the chapter traces the oscillation between local specificity and diasporic engagement (Hall), revealing how exile, dependency, and marginality have shaped the Central American avant-garde's forms of community and postcolonial innovation (Quijano, Wallerstein, Mbembe, Césaire). Chapter 2 examines the transnational character of the Central American avant-garde generation, focusing on how figures like Cardoza y Aragón and Asturias navigated the French and Mexican Surrealist circuits, appropriating and transforming their tenets to inscribe local imaginaries and cosmologies (Friedman, Giunta, Glissant). The analysis foregrounds the region's unique position as a corridor and cul-de-sac-simultaneously permeable and isolated, where the marvellous is both a product of historical contingency and aesthetic intention. Chapter 3 turns to the internal dynamics of what I defined as isthmic compression, addressing the region artists' own formulation of what Surrealism can be, their anxieties about identity and dependence, and the challenges of regional representation.
Throughout, the thesis resists reductive taxonomies, emphasising instead the fragmentary, polycentric, ephemeral, and contested nature of Surrealism in the isthmus. It highlights the gendered exclusions of the early avant-garde diaspora and calls for further research on adjacent figures to the movement, such as Salarrué, González Feo, Benjamín Cañas, Ricardo Aguilar, and Carlos Cañas. Ultimately, the study advocates for a critically self-aware, internally generated art and cultural history-one that embraces contradiction, complexity, and the plurality of regional voices
Beyond Beauty: How a multinational cosmetics company engages employees in corporate sustainability
No full textPredictive Analytics in Sustainable Investing: Optimizing Portfolios with Future ESG Ratings
No full textThe Role of Emotions in Crisis Decision-Making: Exploring How Emotions Influence Managerial Decision Processes in High-Pressure Situations
No full textEmotion as a Learning Catalyst: Understanding How SME Leaders Adapt and Learn From Financial Decision-Making
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