<p> An account of salient conceptions shared among McTaggart's contemporaries is offered to maintain the interpretive hypothesis that McTaggart's rejection of time may be a consequence of a more general metaphysical theory.</p> <p> Yet though McTaggart's rejection of time may follow from a more general account, the more general account may be false. In what follows we consider the possibility of generating complete lists from given wholes, as opposed to the practice of generating wholes by enumeration or induction. Historical support is offered for this scheme, followed by a distillation of McTaggart's doctrines, a brief linkage with mereological treatments of time and geometry, and an exegesis of McTaggart's unique account of change. Finally a treatment of McTaggart's argument for the rejection of time is offered which seeks to show that McTaggart's infamous conclusion has largely been misunderstood because of McTaggart's unfortunate emphasis on the verbal implications of his doctrines and the consequent subversion of his positive account of infinite divisibility, inclusion and the relation between descriptions and wholes.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

No description available.

<p> System performance evaluation is an on-going task for computer system management personnel in order to fine-tune the system operations. One of the evaluation aids that is readily available for the CDC 6400 computers is the job accounting dayfile maintained by the operating system NOS. A set of three programs in FORTRAN has been developed to analyze the dayfile with a view to evaluating the system performance. Program PHASEl prepares the dayfile for analysis. Program PHASE2 creates a job summary file with information on system resources utilization by each job. Program PHASE3 analyzes the job summary file by evaluating various parameters characterizing the system workload and performance at regular time intervals. The results are displayed in tabular and graphical forms. Test results from the analysis of a limited number of dayfiles are discussed. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Title: Management of Key Account Relationships in SMEs: A Resource-Based View Authors: David Gedda &amp; Simon JohanssonLevel: Master thesis, 30 hpKeywords: Relationship Marketing, Key Account, Key Account Management,Customer Relationship Management, SME, High-performing firms Background: Management of firms most valuable customers, the key accounts,are of great importance for firms in general. This is in particulartrue for SMEs which battles with notably constrained resources.The situation of SMEs poses careful consideration in how tomanage these relationships successfully. Research Question: What characterizes high-performing SMEs in terms of how theymanage their key account relationships? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of what characterises high-performing SMEs in terms of how theymanage the relationships with their key accounts. Method: A qualitative study with an abductive approach using a multiplecasestudy design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews wereconducted to collect primary data on eight Swedish SMEs in theB2B-context. Theoretical Framework: Theories about the resource-based view and relational capabilitiesare presented followed by theories about relationship marketingand its subsets KAM and CRM. The last part of the theory consistsof theories on relationship quality. Findings: In general, high-performing SMEs tend to have a more structuredapproach towards their management of their key accountrelationships. This is mainly shown through four characteristics:Clear categorization of key accounts, Senior responsibility for keyaccounts, Deep integration with key accounts and Systematicprocess towards their key accounts.

Esta tese de doutorado estuda a implantação e gestão do modelo de Gerência de Contas Especiais, em instituições financeiras no Brasil. O aumento da competitividade de mercado, fez com que os bancos tivessem que buscar novas formas de interação com seus clientes, como forma de garantir sua posição competitiva de mercado. A aplicação do modelo se inicia como uma forma diferenciada de atendimento de vendas aos principais clientes que são segmentados, em um primeiro momento, pelo volume de faturamento. A partir da evolução da implantação do modelo se identifica a necessidade de mudar o foco de vendas para o foco de marketing de relacionamento, o que exige a aplicação de instrumentos de gestão diferentes e uma mudança no foco da organização. Os instrumentos que devem ser desenvolvidos são : -a base de dados individual dos clientes, que além de transacional passa a ser gerencial e contemplar informações quantitativas e qualitativas dos clientes -o plano de negócios por cliente. O objetivo final é conseguir mudar o foco de obter resultados pelo volume de vendas de produtos aos clientes para o objetivo de obter rentabilidade no cliente pelo desenvolvimento do relacionamento. / This thesis studies the Key Account Management model implementation in financial institutions in Brazil. The growth of market competition, direct the banks to look for new forms of interaction with their clients, as a way to garantee the competitive position in the market. The model implementation starts as a different way of sales calls to major clients, that are segmented at the first moment, per turnover value. With the evolution of the implementation of this model, it is possible to identify the need to change the focus from sales to relationship marketing, what demands the application of different management tools and the change of organization focus. The tools to be developed are : -The database of individual clients, has to be focussed not only in transactional aspects but should also contemplate the quantitative and qualitative managerial data from each client. -The client Business Plan The final objective is to manage the change in focus, from products sales volume to clients to the objective to obtain rentability on the client by the relationship development with clients.

This paper aims to explain the current account imbalances between the United States of America, Japan and China. According to theory, such imbalances should offset each other so that the international balance of payments account is zero. The study also tests the Uncovered Interest Rate Parity (UIP) theory for the same sample of countries. The focus is on the empirics of the topic, therefore time-series analysis is used. The results suggest that American current account deficit can indeed be explained by the surpluses of the Japanese and Chinese current accounts. Furthermore, the conclusion regarding the UIP is that it simply does not hold in the real world. Finally, the main implication of this study is that the Asian countries will eventually buy up American assets if the trend of imbalances continues.

Bakgrund: Logiken bakom Key Account Management (KAM) bygger på att en liten andel av ett företags kunder står för den största delen av dess intäkter. Vid KAM väljer företag ut dessa strategiskt mest viktiga kunder, kallade nyckelkunder och tillägnar dessa mer resurser och uppmärksamhet jämfört med de ordinarie. Dock har litteraturen om KAM inte i någon större utsträckning berört vilket värde som skapas till följd av KAM eller hur detta värde kan mätas. Därav ligger examensarbetets huvudfokus inom detta forskningsområde inom detta område och fokus ligger framförallt på det säljande företagets perspektiv. Syfte: Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka, analysera och beskriva vilket värde samt hur detta skapas för det säljande företaget genom användningen av KAM. Genomförande: En egen definition av KAM har skapats i detta examensarbete med hjälp av existerande litteratur inom området. Denna definition har sedan tillsammans med examensarbetets syfte legat till grund för den analysmodell som har tagits fram. Analysmodellen har använts för att underlätta empiriinsamlingen och analysen som leder fram till examensarbetets slutsatser. Empiriinsamlingen har skett genom intervjuer med respondenter från de tre fallföretagen Toyota Material Handling, Ericsson AB och Scania CV AB. Slutsats: Som fördelar av KAM har bland annat förbättrade relationer, nöjdare kunder, ökad absolut försäljning och ökad marknadsandel hittats. Potentiella problem och nackdelar med KAM som uppkommit i litteraturen och under intervjuerna är till exempel organisatorisk komplexitet, ökat beroende till nyckelkunderna, att det kräver mycket personal och att interna konflikter kan uppstå. Att mäta dessa typer av fördelar och nackdelar, visar både referensramen och empirin är något som inte görs helt enkelt och intuition och känsla är vanligt vid en utvärdering av det värde som skapas av KAM. Den sammanlagda uppfattningen är att bedömningen av KAM och dess lämplighet, görs på känsla vilket enligt författarna till examensarbetet är otillräckligt. / Background: The logic behind Key Account Management (KAM) lies in the fact that a small part of the customers represents the biggest part of a company’s revenues. Through the work with KAM, companies choose its strategically most important customers; its so called key accounts and dedicate these more resources than compared to others. However, the literature in KAM, have not enough raised the question, which value that is created through this way of working nor how this value can be measured. Therefore, the main focus of this study is within this field of study and it is pursued through the eyes of the selling company. Aim: The aim of this study is to explore, analyze and describe which value and how this is created for the selling company through the work with KAM and furthermore how this can be measured. Completion: Through the use of already existing literature, within the field, an own definition has been created. This definition has together with the aim set the framework for the model for analyses that has been created. The model has been used to facilitate the data collection and leads to the conclusions of this study. The empirical work of this study contains of interviews from three companies; Toyota Material Handling Sweden, Ericsson AB and Scania CV AB. Conclusion: Among others, benefit in terms of improved relationships, more satisfied customers, increased sales and increased market share have been seen. Potential problems have been seen in the literature as well as during the interviews in terms of for example an organizational complexity, increased dependence on the key accounts and internal conflicts that may arise.  Measuring these types of benefits and disadvantages is not done easily and intuition is commonly used assessing the value that is created through the work with KAM. The total judgment is that KAM and its appropriateness is made by a feeling which is not enough according to the authors.

A crucial component of child language acquisition is successful generalization. First, a speaker must acquire abstract knowledge of how a particular linguistic-structure conveys meaning, and use this knowledge to generalize the structure to new lexical-items. For example, a speaker can use abstract knowledge of a SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT structure to produce a sentence such as The man rolled the ball, even if the verb roll has never been encountered in this structure before. Second, a learner must appropriately restrict ‘overgeneralizations’ whereby a structure is used with an unsuitable verb (e.g. *The man fell the boy). The most prominent theories regarding restriction of overgeneralizations are based on frequency of use and (semantic, phonological or pragmatic) compatibility between the item and construction. Since developmental evidence for these accounts is mostly limited to the judgment paradigm, which is unsuitable for testing children aged 5 and under, the aim of this thesis was to examine whether these restriction mechanisms are used by children as young as 3 or 4 – whose generalization mechanisms are at an earlier stage of development - and to develop new paradigms for doing so. Study 1 used a production priming paradigm to examine children’s (aged 3-4; 5-6) restrictions of verbal un- prefixation (e.g., *unbend). Children’s production probability of verbs in un- form (e.g., *unbend) was negatively predicted by the frequency of the target verb in bare form (i.e., bend/s/ed/ing) and by the frequency of synonyms to a verb’s un- form (e.g., straighten for *unbend). Additionally, grammaticality judgments from older children (aged 5-6) revealed that preferences for un- forms were positively related to the extent to which the verb’s semantics overlapped with a covert, probabilistic semantic “cryptotype” of meanings thought to be shared by verbs that are grammatical in un- form (e.g., tie, pack, twist, screw, cover). Study 2 investigated whether overgeneralization errors in the domain of English past-tense (i.e., when ‘regular’ inflections are applied to verbs that require ‘irregular’ inflection; e.g., *sleeped, *throwed) are best attributed to analogy across exemplars, or to a default, “add –ed” rule applied regardless of a verb’s memorized associations. Past-tense forms of novel verbs were elicited by showing children (aged 3-4; 5-6; 6-7; 9-10) animations of an animal performing a novel action described with a novel verb (e.g., gezz; chake) and asking what the animal ‘did yesterday’. A verb’s likelihood of receiving regular inflection (e.g., gezzed, chaked) was positively associated with its phonological similarity to existing regular verbs, consistent with the analogy-based approach. Study 3 investigated the suitability of an online measure of sentence processing, namely Event Related Potentials (ERP), to investigate the role of verb-frequency in restricting transitive overgeneralizations. In line with previous studies, ‘P600’ and ‘LAN’ components were evoked in response to overgeneralization errors. However, the magnitudes of these components were not sensitive to a manipulation of verb-frequency (e.g., *The clown laughed the boy vs. *The clown giggled the boy), raising doubt toward the suitability of ERP for examining the relative acceptability of overgeneralization errors. Overall, the research indicates that even young children’s generalizations are sensitive to the linguistic input (i.e., statistical regularities and generalized semantic or phonological patterns of use) and are not well explained by a system of abstract rules that act on discrete categories, whether this applies to syntactic categories (e.g., add -ed to any instance of the category “VERB”) or discrete verb classes (e.g., a narrow-range rule that acts invariably on any verb that is part of an ‘alternating’ verb-class).

Esta tese de doutorado estuda a implantação e gestão do modelo de Gerência de Contas Especiais, em instituições financeiras no Brasil. O aumento da competitividade de mercado, fez com que os bancos tivessem que buscar novas formas de interação com seus clientes, como forma de garantir sua posição competitiva de mercado. A aplicação do modelo se inicia como uma forma diferenciada de atendimento de vendas aos principais clientes que são segmentados, em um primeiro momento, pelo volume de faturamento. A partir da evolução da implantação do modelo se identifica a necessidade de mudar o foco de vendas para o foco de marketing de relacionamento, o que exige a aplicação de instrumentos de gestão diferentes e uma mudança no foco da organização. Os instrumentos que devem ser desenvolvidos são : -a base de dados individual dos clientes, que além de transacional passa a ser gerencial e contemplar informações quantitativas e qualitativas dos clientes -o plano de negócios por cliente. O objetivo final é conseguir mudar o foco de obter resultados pelo volume de vendas de produtos aos clientes para o objetivo de obter rentabilidade no cliente pelo desenvolvimento do relacionamento. / This thesis studies the Key Account Management model implementation in financial institutions in Brazil. The growth of market competition, direct the banks to look for new forms of interaction with their clients, as a way to garantee the competitive position in the market. The model implementation starts as a different way of sales calls to major clients, that are segmented at the first moment, per turnover value. With the evolution of the implementation of this model, it is possible to identify the need to change the focus from sales to relationship marketing, what demands the application of different management tools and the change of organization focus. The tools to be developed are : -The database of individual clients, has to be focussed not only in transactional aspects but should also contemplate the quantitative and qualitative managerial data from each client. -The client Business Plan The final objective is to manage the change in focus, from products sales volume to clients to the objective to obtain rentability on the client by the relationship development with clients.

Bank account Abstract This diploma thesis deals with the valid legal regulation of the bank account according to the legislation of the Czech Republic. However, the legislation of the Czech Republic is greatly influenced by the legal acts of the European Union, which are binding for the Czech Republic because this obligation is given by the country's membership in this organization. Therefore, for a more comprehensive understanding of the issue of legal regulation of the bank account, certain sections of this thesis mention several relevant provisions of legal regulations issued by the European Union. The main aim of this diploma thesis is to analyse the legal regulation of the bank account contained predominantly in the Civil Code as well as in the Payment System Act. The introductory section of this thesis focuses on the bank account as such - its characteristics and nature, and gives a brief history of its development. Furthermore, this chapter defines the term deposit and analyses the issue of the ownership of funds in the account in connection with the Czech case law. The second segment deals with the legal sources of the bank account both in the context of the Czech legislation and the legislation of the European Union. The introduction of the second segment is followed by an analysis of the previous...