本文以實地實證研究方法，探討「非財務性績效衡量指標」與「工作設計」此二項誘因工具對員工績效的影響。實地研究對象為一家商業銀行，研究期間為1993-1997；該行於1995年7月開始採用非財務性績效衡量指標，並自1996年1月選擇五家分行實施徵、授信分工。 本文首先利用個案銀行17位授信員連續60個月所構成的縱查資料（panel data），以固定影響模型（fixed-effects model）分析非財務性績效衡量指標誘因工具對員工績效的影響，發現銀行授信人員之績效考核制度中，加入授信不良率與脫落率非財務性衡量指標後，雖然授信員努力的重分配導致其授信金額與利息收入財務績效變差，但授信員的授信不良率與脫落率非財務績效變佳，整體而言，授信利潤有顯著的改善。 本文另以實施徵、授信分工前後，51名授信員的績效資料，採中斷的時間序列設計（interrupted time-series design），檢定非財務性績效衡量指標與工作設計配合採用後，員工的績效是否較佳。分析結果顯示，存在非財務績效衡量指標之獎酬制度下，配合實施徵、授信分工的授信員，其授信金額及授信不良率績效顯著較徵、授信合一之授信員為佳。 / This thesis reports the results of a longitudinal field study examining the impact of nonfinancial performance measures and job design on employee performance. A commercial bank was the research site. The bank adopted nonfinancial performance measures in July 1995 and redesigned jobs in retail banking credit underwriting at five branches in January 1996. Prior to the job redesign, sales representatives were jointly responsible for all credit underwriting functions including credit extension and credit servicing. After the change, sales representatives were only responsible for credit extension while credit servicing was handled by credit decidion-makers. Panel data for 17 sales representatives over 60 months (1993 through 1997) were obtained to assess the effects of adopting nonfinancial measures on employee performance. Using fixed-effects regression analysis, the results are consistent with the predictions of agency theory: although loan volume and interest revenue decreased following adoption of nonfinancial measures to evaluate and compensate the performance of sales representatives, loan profit increased significantly. This thesis also hypothesizes that employee performance increases with the fit between incentive systems based on nonfinancial measures and job design. The empirical tests of this prediction rely on an interrupted time-series design, using performance data of 51 sales representatives in the 1995-1997 period. After the change in job design-separation of the credit underwriting jobs-alogn with introduction of incentive systems based on nonfinancial measures, the treatment group demonstrated greater improvements in productivity and quality performance. This result supports the hypothesis developed.

A framework for understanding the social responses to virtual humans suggests that human-like characteristics (e.g., facial expressions, voice, expression of emotion) act as cues that lead a person to place the agent into the category "human" and thus, elicit social responses. Given this framework, this research was designed to answer two outstanding questions that had been raised in the research community (Moon&Nass, 2000): 1) If a virtual human has more human-like characteristics, will it elicit stronger social responses from people? 2) How do the human-like characteristics interact in terms of the strength of social responses? Two social psychological (social facilitation and politeness norm) experiments were conducted to answer these questions. The first experiment investigated whether virtual humans can evoke a social facilitation response and how strong that response is when participants are given different cognitive tasks (e.g., anagrams, mazes, modular arithmetic) that vary in difficulty. They did the tasks alone, in the company of another person, or in the company of a virtual human that varied in terms of features. The second experiment investigated whether people apply politeness norms to virtual humans. Participants were tutored and quizzed either by a virtual human tutor that varied in terms of features or a human tutor. Participants then evaluated the tutor's performance either directly by the tutor or indirectly via a paper and pencil questionnaire. Results indicate that virtual humans can produce social facilitation not only with facial appearance but also with voice recordings. In addition, performance in the presence of voice synced facial appearance seems to elicit stronger social facilitation (i.e., no statistical difference compared to performance in the human presence condition) than in the presence of voice only or face only. Similar findings were observed with the politeness norm experiment. Participants who evaluated their tutor directly reported the tutor's performance more favorably than participants who evaluated their tutor indirectly. In addition, this valence toward the voice synced facial appearance had no statistical difference compared to the valence toward the human tutor condition. The results suggest that designers of virtual humans should be mindful about the social nature of virtual humans.

[pt] Os elementos de código geralmente mudam ao longo da evolução do sistema, o que implica em uma eventual degradação estrutural do código fonte. Sintomas recorrentes de tal degradação são chamados anomalias de código. Estudos sugerem que quanto mais anomalias de código afetam um sistema, mais alta se torna a propensão a bugs dos elementos de código. Para lidar com tal degradação da qualidade estrutural do código, desenvolvedores geralmente aplicam refatorações no código fonte. No entanto, aplicar refatorações pode não ser suficiente para reduzir a propensão a bugs dos elementos de código degradados. Um estudo recente sugere que refatorações induzem bugs frequentemente. No entanto, os autores não analisam se o código refatorado está, de fato, diretamente relacionado à introdução de bugs. Com isso, nesta dissertação, realizamos dois estudos longitudinais de múltiplos projetos para avaliar a propensão a bugs do código refatorado. Nossa metodologia teve como objetivo abordar várias limitações de estudos anteriores. Por exemplo, definimos duas propriedades complementares da propensão a bugs do código refatorado, sendo elas, frequência e distância. Enquanto a primeira propriedade quantifica a frequência com que um código refatorado está relacionado a bugs que emergiram no código fonte, a distância quantifica o quão próximo um bug surge depois que uma refatoração é aplicada. Nosso primeiro estudo tem como objetivo avaliar a propensão a bugs de refatorações isoladas. Primeiro, nossos resultados mostram que 80 porcento dos elementos degradados que se tornaram bugs não foram previamente refatorados. Este resultado implica que um código refatorado é menos propenso a bugs do que um código não refatorado. Em segundo lugar, em 75 porcento das vezes um bug surge depois de 7 mudanças feitas a partir da operação de refatoração, o que geralmente corresponde à 3 meses nos projetos analisados. Nosso segundo estudo tem como objetivo avaliar a propensão a bugs de refatorações em lote, ou seja, refatorações aplicadas em sequência. Nossos resultados mostram que, na maioria dos casos, o código refatorado em lotes é mais resiliente à introdução de bugs do que o código refatorado por meio de refatorações isoladas. / [en] Programs often change along the system evolution, which implies an eventual code structure degradation. Recurring symptoms of such degradation are code smells. Studies suggest that the more frequently code smells affect a system, the higher becomes the bug-proneness of the code elements. To tackle code structural quality degradation, developers often apply refactorings on smelly program elements. However, applying refactorings might not suffice to reduce the bug-proneness of such degraded program elements. Previous empirical studies do not systematically analyze the bug-proneness of refactored code. Even though a recent study suggests that refactoring induces bugs frequently, the authors do not analyze to what extent refactored code is indeed closely related to the bug occurrence. Thus, in this dissertation, we conducted two longitudinal multi-project studies to assess the bugproneness of refactored code. Our methodology aimed to address various limitations of previous studies. For instance, we have defined two complementary properties of the bug-proneness of refactored code, i.e., frequency and distance. While the former quantifies how often a refactored code is related to emerging bugs, the latter quantifies how close a bug emerges after a refactoring has been applied. The quantitative analysis of such properties was complemented by a manual analysis of refactorings closely related to the bug occurrence. Our first study aims at assessing the bug-proneness of code refactored through isolated refactorings, i.e., a single refactoring operation not performed in conjunction with other refactoring operations. This study reveals that 80 per cent of the smelly elements that became buggy were not previously refactored. This result suggests the refactored code is much less bug-prone than non-refactored code. Moreover, in 75 per cent of the times, a bug emerges in 7 changes far from the refactoring operation; this amount of changes usually corresponds to 3 months in the analyzed projects. Our second study aims at assessing the bug-proneness of code elements refactored through batch refactorings, i.e., a sequence of inter-related refactoring operations. Our results show that code refactored through batches is often more resilient to the introduction of bugs as compared to code refactored through isolated refactorings.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:30:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Capa.pdf: 123089 bytes, checksum: 2ae875641ee7e18854f9b9d586f074a3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-05-02 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This work is an exploratory study on entertainment messages processing. The objective of this work was to test a model of message processing dedicated to understand digital games. In order to accomplish the objective an extensive research on the observational techniques was conducted in order to analyze the final user s reaction upon software and different kinds of media, thus learning the qualities and limitations of each technique. Another research was conducted on the message processing models on new and traditional media. The result made possible to propose a new model for analysis of entertainment message processing. The development methodology required empirical tests. With this in mind a data collection tool was structured. Later, the tool was tested with digital gamers of different ages on their personal PCs and on an interactive digital television, thus finding how the different elements correlate. The following step of this research was to collect data from gamers used to play games on cell phones. The objective with this was to collect data on the users experience in a media that has several limitations such as size of the screen and size of the keyboard, to name a few. The research result was that games played at media such as a PCs attract their users for its aesthetics aspects, while games played on a cellular phone depend highly on its ability to be interactive - much more so than a game played on a PC. With the results it is possible to say that entertainment message processing rely upon the designer s ability to understand the limitation of each media and adequately construct the elements that compose the game s setting, thus guaranteeing the approval of its target.(AU) / O trabalho é um estudo exploratório sobre o processamento de mensagens de entretenimento. O objetivo do trabalho foi propor e testar um modelo de processamento de mensagens dedicado à compreensão de jogos digitais. Para realizar tal tarefa realizou-se um extenso levantamento de técnicas de observação de usuários diante de softwares e mídias, para conhecer as qualidades e limitações de cada uma dessas técnicas, bem como de sua abordagem do problema. Também foi realizado um levantamento dos modelos de processamento de mensagens nas mídias tradicionais e nas novas mídias. Com isso foi possível propor um novo modelo de análise de processamento de mensagens de entretenimento. Uma vez criado o modelo teórico, fez-se preciso testar se os elementos propostos como participantes desse processo estavam corretos e se seriam capazes de capturar adequadamente as semelhanças e diferenças entre a interação entre jogadores e as diferentes mídias. Por essa razão, estruturou-se uma ferramenta de coleta de dados, que foi validada junto a designers de jogos digitais, uma vez que esses profissionais conhecem o processo de criação de um jogo, seus elementos e objetivos. Posteriormente, foi feito um primeiro teste, junto a praticantes de jogos digitais de diversas idades em computadores pessoais e TV digital interativa, a fim e verificar como os elementos do modelo relacionavam-se entre si. O teste seguinte fez a coleta de dados de praticantes de jogos digitais em aparelhos celulares, tendo como objetivo capturar como se dá a formação de uma experiência através do processamento da mensagem de entretenimento num meio cujas limitações são inúmeras: tamanho de tela e teclas, para citar algumas delas. Como resultado, verificou-se, por meio de testes estatísticos, que jogos praticados em meios como computadores pessoais atraem mais por seus aspectos estéticos, enquanto a apreciação de um jogo em aparelhos celulares depende muito mais de sua habilidade de manter a interação que um jogo praticado em PC. Com isso conclui-se que o processamento das mensagens de entretenimento depende da capacidade dos seus criadores em entender os limites de cada meio e usar adequadamente os elementos que compõe o ambiente de um jogo, para conseguir levar à apreciação do mesmo.(AU)

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Submitted by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-08-25T18:13:09Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Luis J. E. R. Cabrejos.pdf: 5126285 bytes, checksum: b667aa9fb7c3b14f995507bb4a821f1e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-08-25T18:13:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Luis J. E. R. Cabrejos.pdf: 5126285 bytes, checksum: b667aa9fb7c3b14f995507bb4a821f1e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-08-25T18:13:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Luis J. E. R. Cabrejos.pdf: 5126285 bytes, checksum: b667aa9fb7c3b14f995507bb4a821f1e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-25T18:13:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Luis J. E. R. Cabrejos.pdf: 5126285 bytes, checksum: b667aa9fb7c3b14f995507bb4a821f1e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-08 / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / User eXperience (UX) refers to a holistic perspective and an enrichment of traditional quality models with non-utilitarian concepts, such as fun, joy, pleasure, hedonic value or ludic value. In order to evaluate UX in software applications, several technologies (tools, methods, techniques) have been proposed that range from using questionnaires to employing biometrics to gather quantitative and qualitative data on users’ experience. However, there is a need for research in the development of specific UX evaluation technologies that are easy and comfortable to use from the point of view of users, while supporting software engineers in the correction of the aspects that cause poor experiences. Additionally, new UX approaches should be proposed for evaluating mobile applications, as there is still a shortage of methods for this type of applications, which is rising in demand. This doctoral dissertation proposes an alternative approach for evaluating mobile applications called Redesigning for EXperience (REX), which intends to be less intrusive for users when extracting UX data, while generating reports containing design suggestions for improving the UX. We assessed the acceptance of the initial versions of the REX approach from the point of view of users and software engineers in two studies. When compared to 3E, a qualitative UX evaluation method, the results showed that REX was perceived as more fun, useful and more interactive. Additionally, software engineers considered REX useful and easy to understand, while suggesting improving its report to facilitate its understanding and increase its use. After working on the improvements opportunities from the empirical studies, we developed a tool support for the REX approach called the REX report generator. Also, we carried out an observational study to verify to which extent the REX approach could be applied in a real software development project. Thus, REX was employed by users to evaluate a mobile educational application and a discussion meeting was held with the software development team to discuss the improvement suggestions provided by REX to support the redesign process. The findings from the observational study indicated the satisfaction of users to report their experience with the REX approach, while the members of the development team agreed with the usefulness of the REX report and its improvement suggestions. By providing design suggestions, we aim to support software engineers in improving the UX of the developed mobile applications, thus increasing their quality and acceptance in the market. / .

Global Software Development (GSD) is an emerging trend in today's software world in which teams are geographically dispersed, either in close proximity or globally. GSD provides certain advantages to development companies like low development cost, access to cheap and skilled labour etc. This type of development is noted as a more risky and challenging as compared to projects developed with teams under same roof. Inherently the nature of GSD projects are cooperative in which many software developers work on a common project, share information and coordinate activities. Coordination is a fundamental part of software development. GSD comprises different types of development systems i.e. insourcing, outsourcing, nearshoring, or farshoring, whatever the types of development systems selected by a company there exist the challenges to coordination. Therefore the knowledge of potential challenges, associated threats to coordination and practices to mitigate them plays a vital role for running a successful global project.

The study is based on the answers of 106 international students of Spanish as a foreign language from three different private schools in Madrid. The purpose of this paper is to study, firstly, whether or how the intrinsic motivation of adult Spanish learners, their choice of strategies and the time they spend on vocabulary learning outside of the school, are influenced by the their age, gender or mother tongue. Secondly, the aim of this study is to identify whether learners with a higher degree of intrinsic motivation use more of their free time on vocabulary learning and whether they use a greater variety of vocabulary learning strategies than learners with a lesser degree of intrinsic motivation. Apart from the learning intensity and strategic variety, there is the aim of finding particular strategies preferred by the two different motivation groups. The hypothesis regarding the first part of the study is that, while gender and mother tongue probably won't influence the students' intrinsic motivation or the time they spend on vocabulary learning outside of the classroom, age, and in that sense, responsibility, will. Also, learners from different parts of the world are likely to apply different strategies in order to learn and remember the vocabulary so the mother tongue is important regarding their choice of strategies. The hypothesis regarding the second part of this study is that learners with a high degree of intrinsic motivation will use more of their time on vocabulary learning, they will apply a greater variety of vocabulary learning strategies and are more likely to use mnemotechnics and look for conversation possibilities than learners with a lesser degree of intrinsic motivation. The evidence from this empirical study partly supports the hypothesis. Gender had influence on the participants' intrinsic motivation. The evidence suggests that female learners have a higher degree of intrinsic motivation than the male learners. Correlations were found between the metacognitive and cognitive learning strategies of the Romanic and Germanic language group suggesting that learners with a Romanic mother tongue tend to use more metacognitive strategies than any other language group of the research. As for the Germanic mother tongue, the evidence suggest that learners belonging to this group tend to use more cognitive strategies than learners with a Romanic mother tongue. Also, the research results suggest that learners with a higher degree of intrinsic motivation use more time on vocabulary learning. Furthermore, the results indicate that learners with a higher degree of the intrinsic motivation tend to use more memory strategies than those learners with a lower degree of intrinsic motivation.

Defect prevention (DP) in early stages of software development life cycle (SDLC) is very cost effective than in later stages. The requirements elicitation and analysis & negotiation (E and A&N) phases in requirements engineering (RE) process are very critical and are major source of requirements defects. A poor E and A&N process may lead to a software requirements specifications (SRS) full of defects like missing, ambiguous, inconsistent, misunderstood, and incomplete requirements. If these defects are identified and fixed in later stages of SDLC then they could cause major rework by spending extra cost and effort. Organizations are spending about half of their total project budget on avoidable rework and majority of defects originate from RE activities. This study is an attempt to prevent requirements level defects from penetrates into later stages of SDLC. For this purpose empirical and literature studies are presented in this thesis. The empirical study is carried out with the help of six companies from Pakistan & Sweden by conducting interviews and literature study is done by using literature reviews. This study explores the most common requirements defect types, their reasons, severity level of defects (i.e. major or minor), DP techniques (DPTs) & methods, defect identification techniques that have been using in software development industry and problems in these DPTs. This study also describes possible major differences between Swedish and Pakistani software companies in terms of defect types and rate of defects originating from E and A&N phases. On the bases of study results, some solutions have been proposed to prevent requirements defects during the RE process. In this way we can minimize defects originating from E and A&N phases of RE in the bespoke requirements engineering (BESRE).

Context. Large-scale software development projects are those consisting of a large number of teams, maybe even spread across multiple locations, and working on large and complex software tasks. That means that neither a team member individually nor an entire team holds all the knowledge about the software being developed and teams have to communicate and coordinate their knowledge. Therefore, teams and team members in large-scale software development projects must acquire and manage expertise as one of the critical resources for high-quality work. Objectives. We aim at understanding whether software teams in different contexts develop transactive memory systems (TMS) and whether well-developed TMS leads to performance benefits as suggested by research conducted in other knowledge-intensive disciplines. Because multiple factors may influence the development of TMS, based on related TMS literature we also suggest to focus on task allocation strategies, task characteristics and management decisions regarding the project structure, team structure and team composition. Methods. We use the data from two large-scale distributed development companies and 9 teams, including quantitative data collected through a survey and qualitative data from interviews to measure transactive memory systems and their role in determining team performance. We measure teams’ TMS with a latent variable model. Finally, we use focus group interviews to analyze different organizational practices with respect to team management, as a set of decisions based on two aspects: team structure and composition, and task allocation. Results. Data from two companies and 9 teams are analyzed and the positive influence of well-developed TMS on team performance is found. We found that in large-scale software development, teams need not only well-developed team’s internal TMS, but also have well- developed and effective team’s external TMS. Furthermore, we identified practices that help of hinder development of TMS in large-scale projects. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that teams working in large-scale software development can achieve performance benefits if transactive memory practices within the team are supported with networking practices in the organization.