Introdução: A avaliação dos resultados de políticas públicas de suplementação alimentar em condições reais de sua operacionalização (efetividade) é um instrumento imprescindível para área de saúde pública. Objetivos: Avaliar a efetividade de programa governamental de suplementação alimentar no crescimento de crianças, segundo o estado nutricional ao ingressar. Métodos: Estudo de coorte com dados secundários de 25.433 crianças de baixa renda com idade entre 6 a 24 meses que ingressaram em programa de distribuição de leite fortificado \"Projeto Vivaleite\" de 2003 a 2008, em 311 municípios do Estado de São Paulo. O crescimento foi medido por meio dos valores de escore z de peso para idade (PI), calculados pelo padrão OMS/2006, obtidos, na rotina do programa, ao ingressar e a cada 4 meses durante a permanência. Os critérios de inclusão foram ter idade ao ingressar entre 6 a 24 meses, ter pelo menos duas pesagens, incluindo a obtida na entrada, e não ter relatos de problemas de saúde. As crianças foram divididas em três grupos de escore z ao entrar: sem comprometimento de peso (z> -1); risco de baixo peso (-2 &#8804;z< -1) e baixo peso (z<-2). Utilizou-se regressão linear multinível (modelo misto), permitindo a comparação, em cada idade, das médias ajustadas do escore z de ingressantes e participantes há pelo menos quatro meses, ajustadas para correlação entre medidas repetidas. Resultados: Verificou-se efeito positivo do Programa no ganho de peso das crianças, variando em função do estado nutricional ao ingressar; para as que entraram sem comprometimento de peso o ganho médio ajustado foi 0,1827 escore z, entre as que entraram com risco de baixo peso foi 0,5659 e entre as ingressantes com baixo peso foi 1,0049 escore z. Conclusões: O programa é efetivo para o crescimento infantil, medido pelo escore z PI, com efeito mais pronunciado entre as crianças que entram no programa em condições menos favoráveis de peso. / OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of a state-run food supplementation program for child growth according to childrens nutritional status at enrollment. METHODS: Cohort study including secondary data of 25,433 low-income children aged between 6 and 24 months enrolled in a fortified milk program \"Projeto Vivaleite\" in 311 cities in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, between 2003 and 2008. Children\'s growth was assessed based on weight-for-age (WA) z-scores, estimated following WHO criteria (2006). Data was routinely collected at the program enrollment and every 4 months. Inclusion criteria were: being 6 to 24 months of age at enrollment; having at least two weight measures including the first measure at enrollment; and not having any ill health conditions. At enrollment, children were categorized into three groups based on their z-scores: no compromised weight gain (z> 1); at risk of low weight (-2 &#8804;z< -1), and low weight (z< -2). Multilevel linear regression analysis (mixed model) was performed for comparison, considering age, of adjusted average z-scores between new children enrolled and those in the program for at least four months, adjusted for correlation between repeat measures. RESULTS: The program had a positive effect on children\'s weight gain. Based on their nutritional status at enrollment, adjusted average weight gain z-score was 0,1827 in children with compromised weight gain, 0,5659 in those at risk of low weight, and 1,0049 in those with low weight. CONCLUSIONS: The milk program is effective for child growth, as measured by WA z-scores. The most pronounced effect was seen among children who showed less favorable levels of weight at enrollment.

Cette thèse s’inscrit au croisement de l’entrepreneuriat et du management stratégique. Elle contribue à l’émergence d’un nouveau courant qui s’inspire de l’approche écosystémique et qui vise à mieux comprendre le rôle du contexte sur les dynamiques entrepreneuriales. Son objectif est plus précisément une meilleure compréhension des stratégies des incubateurs dans l'écosystème entrepreneurial. Cette recherche s'intéresse également à la relation entre ces stratégies et la performance des incubateurs. La thèse sur travaux s’articule autour de quatre articles et s’appuie sur une méthodologie mixte séquentielle combinant des méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives. Une étude qualitative a été menée auprès de 48 acteurs de l’écosystème de l’accompagnement entrepreneurial du Sud de la France. Cette recherche a été prolongée par une enquête quantitative conduite au niveau national en récoltant 156 questionnaires auprès de directeurs d’incubateurs. La contribution conceptuelle majeure repose sur une théorisation de l’écosystème entrepreneurial à partir de l’approche multi-niveaux et de la théorie du capital social. De plus, elle offre une vision holistique des stratégies des incubateurs en privilégiant une approche en termes de co-opétition. Enfin, elle permet de tester le lien entre l’écosystème, la stratégie et la performance. Nos résultats montrent des effets positifs de la stratégie de co-opétition sur la performance. La mise en œuvre de cette stratégie apparaît comme l’une des conditions pour construire un écosystème entrepreneurial durable. Des implications et recommandations sont formulées et aboutissent notamment à l’élaboration d’un plan d’action stratégique pour les acteurs de l’écosystème entrepreneurial. / This thesis is at the intersection of entrepreneurship and strategic management. It contributes to the emergence of a new theoretical steam inspired by the ecosystem approach and which aims to better understand the role of the context on the entrepreneurial dynamics. Its objective is more precisely a better understanding of incubator strategies in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This research also addresses the relationship between these strategies and the incubators performance. The thesis by publication is structured around four articles and is based on a mixed sequential methodology combining qualitative and quantitative methods. A qualitative study was carried out among 48 actors in the entrepreneurial support ecosystem in the South of France. This research was extended by a quantitative survey conducted at the national level, collecting 156 questionnaires from incubator managers. The major conceptual contribution carries on a theorization of the entrepreneurial ecosystem based on multilevel approach and social capital theory. In addition, it provides a holistic view of incubator strategies by focusing on a co-opetition approach. Finally, it allows to test the link between the ecosystem, the strategy and the performance. Our results show positive effects of the co-opetition strategy on performance. Implementation of this strategy appears to be one of the conditions for building a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Implications and recommendations are formulated, leading in particular to the elaboration of a strategic action plan for the actors of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

<p>The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how different welfare and production regimes may have structured individuals’ work orientations into cross-national patterns by the late 1990s and early 2000s. Three different aspects of work orientations are considered in the three studies. Study 1: Welfare Regimes, Production Regimes and Employment Commitment: A Multi-level analysis of Twelve OECD countries. Since the introduction of the first social insurance schemes, questions have been raised regarding the trade-off between the adequacy and equity of benefits, and their effects on individuals’ work orientations. This study examines the role of both welfare and production regime institutions for explaining cross-national patterns in individuals’ employment commitment across twelve OECD-countries in the late 1990s. Results from multi-level analyses show firstly how employment commitment is stronger within more generous welfare regimes as well as within more extensively coordinated production regimes. Secondly, institutions are found to be more important for structuring the attitudes of persons with less stable labour market attachment. Thirdly, for men, there are clear positive cross-level interaction effects between institutional structures and individuals’ socio-economic status, whereas institutions matter more equally regardless of socio-economic status for women. In relation to the concerns with the allegedly negative unintended consequences of welfare regime institutions for creating distortions, these seem to be unwarranted with regards to employment commitment. To the contrary, there appears to be a ‘paradox of employment commitment’: clearly earnings-related benefits of more generous welfare regimes appear to generate stronger commitment to take part in paid work.</p><p>Study 2: Unemployment Insurance and Work Values in Twenty-Three Welfare States. This study addresses the question of whether extended ‘social rights’, specifically in the form of unemployment insurance, is undermining people’s willingness to perform their ‘social duties’ in the form of productive work. Multi-level analyses is used to evaluate how three aspects of institutional design may explain cross-national patterns of work values across twenty-three industrialized countries in 2000. There is a consistent tendency for a positive relationship between more traditional work values with higher generosity of benefit levels as well as more demanding eligibility conditions. To the contrary, a negative relationship is found in relation to duration periods. The strength and significance of these relationships however differ across the three value dimensions studied. Firstly, the clearest pattern is found in relation to how work is valued as a ‘duty towards society’, where all institutional effects are significant. Secondly, in relation to valuations of how ‘unemployed persons should accept job offers or lose their benefits’, the positive effects of the eligibility factor are non-significant, and the negative duration effects are only significant among working men. Thirdly, in relation to how work is not valued as a ‘free choice’, institutional effects are only significant when working women within the sixteen ‘older’ welfare states are compared. The effects of economic development are inconsistent across value dimensions and in the opposite direction expected from modernization theory; more traditional work values are found to be stronger in countries with higher levels of economic development. Study 3: Continued Work or Retirement? Preferred Exit-age in Western European countries. The combination of greying populations, decreasing fertility rates and a marked trend in falling retirement age is profoundly challenging the sharing of resources and supporting responsibilities between generations in the developed world. Previous studies on earlier exit-trends have focused mainly on supply-side incentives and generally conclude that people will exit given available retirement options. Substantial cross-national variations in exit-ages however remain unexplained. This suggests that also normative factors such as attitudes to work and retirement might be of importance. Through multi-level analyses, this study evaluates how welfare regime generosity, as well as production regime coordination explains cross-national patterns of retirement preferences across twelve Western European countries. Analysis firstly shows how both men and women on average prefer to retire at 58 years, meaning on average approximately 7 or 5.5 years before statutory retirement age in the case of men and women respectively. Contrary to what is expected from previous research on supply-side factors, preferences for relatively later retirement is found within more generous welfare regimes and also within more extensively coordinated production regimes. For women, however, institutional effects do not remain once substantial cross-national differences in women’s statutory retirement ages are taken into account.</p>

Cette étude est consacrée à la dynamique des relations intergouvernementales en Afrique du Sud et aux interactions des acteurs participant de manière directe ou indirecte à la définition et à la mise en oeuvre de la politique de sécurité alimentaire. Par l'analyse de l'approche de politiques publiques, nous exemplifions ces dynamiques sur la base d'une étude comparative des politiques de sécurité alimentaire entre les provinces du Limpopo et du KwaZulu-Natal, en Afrique du Sud. Nous rendons compte des allers-retours qui se produisent entre les différents niveaux du gouvernement sud-africain mais aussi entre les divers acteurs et les instances internationales et nationales en ce qui concerne la conception et la mise en oeuvre des politiques. À l'aide de la métaphore de l'« effet prismatique », notre analyse identifie les divergences qui se dégagent de ces allers-retours entre acteurs et souligne que leurs perceptions de l'enjeu alimentaire sont influencées et façonnées par un ensemble de circonstances sociales, économiques et politiques qui vont « envoyer » une ou plusieurs interprétations de ce problème. Ceci conduit à un effet de dispersion de l'idée de départ de « sécurité alimentaire » par rapport aux représentations et aux référentiels que chaque acteur se fait à ce sujet, complexifiant ainsi la définition et la mise en oeuvre des politiques publiques. Cette étude, loin deformuler des conclusions catégoriques, soulève des questionnements nouveaux. Elle révèle notamment trois difficultés que l'approche des politiques publiques et la dynamique multi-level governance posent aussi bien au niveau théorique qu'au niveau de la praxis : (1) l'opposition des propositions empiriques ; (2) l'opposition entre les instances du gouvernement local et celles du gouvernement national dans l'identification de problèmes publiques ; et (3) le questionnement sur le rôle de l'approche multi-level governance dans la définition et la mise en oeuvre de politiques publiques. Ceci nous invite à explorer de nouveaux chemins pour aborder les faits sociaux et tracer les contours d'un ordre social et politique encore incertain.

<p>This thesis presents the design of a broadband and high speed dc-coupled AGC amplifier for multi-level (4-PAM) signaling with a symbol rate of 1-GS/s ( 2-Gb/s ) . It is a high frequency analog design with several design challenges such as high -3 dB bandwidth ( greater than 500 MHz ) and highly linear gain while accommodating a large input swing range ( 120 mVp-p to 1800 mVp-p diff.) and delivering constant</p><p>differential output swing of 1700 mVp-p to 50-ohm off-chip loads at high speed. Moreover, the gain control circuit has been designed in analog domain. The amplifier incorporates both active and passive feedback in shunt-shunt topology in order to achieve wide bandwidth. This standalone chip has been implemented in AMS 0.35 micron CMOS process. The post layout eye-diagrams seem to be quite satisfactory.</p>

<p>In spite of Sweden´s lack of formal regions, the country is evolving towards regional administrations. The regional level are to a growing extent viewed as important bases for economic growth and development. The concept of the triple helix implies that interaction between the public sector, the industry and universities is a source to economic and social development. Research has though implied that the interaction between the triple helix actors could be problematic from a multi-level governance perspective. It has been shown that since the institutional setting is horizontal and vertical fragmented, cooperation between different institutions and actors becomes difficult. In year 2005-2006 the Värmland region was one of fourteen regions in twelve countries that was included in a OECD project, that was a response to the multiplicity of initiatives across the OECD countries concerning regional development. In the report that evolved from the project actors in Värmland was recommended to improve the cooperation concerning regional development in the county. This thesis investigates the cooperation between the triple helix actors for regional growth and development in the Värmland region 1998-2008. My research questions are: Is there evidence of a lack of cooperation between the university, the public sector and the industrial actors in Värmland? And if this is the case, could these problems be related to the fragmentation of the institutional setting? The thesis is a qualitative case study, conducted through elite-interviews and document analysis. My findings implies that the cooperation between the triple helix actors in Värmland has developed dramatically the last decade. From a strive for coordination that was pervaded by institutional fragmentation to an increased closeness and mutual involvement that has come to over-bridge the institutional fragmentation on the regional level. Although, it seems like the vertical fragmentation between the regional and national level, which could impede growth and development in the region, to a great degree remains.</p>

<p>The aim of this thesis is to describe and understand the introduction of entrepreneurship and enterprise projects in primary and secondary schools in the North of Sweden and to identify and analyse the driving forces and actors behind this process. In particular the influence and significance of education policy at supranational, national and subnational level for the introduction of entrepreneurship and enterprise in education are analysed. The main questions of the study have been:</p><p>• How and why have entrepreneurship and enterprise education come to the schools in the northern region of Sweden, in particular within the framework of the PRIO1 project?</p><p>• How were important stakeholders involved at the subnational level and how did they reason and act in relation to the introduction of entrepreneurship and enterprise in the schools?</p><p>• How are the concepts of entrepreneurship and enterprise education presented in policy documents at different policy levels?</p><p>The study wants to report on changes in education policy during recent years. Especially the emergence of international policy convergence and new forms of governance are among the factors that are considered. Drawing on a conceptual framework of structure and agency, the analyses in the empirical studies are informed by a combination of theoretical fields. Important contributions are rendered from the education policy literature. The first method consists of a policy study of documents produced by organisations at different levels (supranational, national and subnational). The purpose of this analysis is to capture the ideas and arguments that have been used but also to understand the context and driving forces for the introduction of entrepreneurship and enterprise in education. Starting from the supranational level, the analysis focuses mainly on two organisations, OECD and EU. These organisations were chosen because they are widely regarded as leading organisations in setting the supranational policy agenda for education. The document study consists of a selection of OECD documents that have been released during the period 1970 - 2006, as well as a selection of EU documents. The EU documents cover the last 15 years. Attention is paid to several documents at the national and subnational level as well. The second method is an interview study. The interview study aims to focus on some of the key stakeholders (agents/actors) that have been participating in the formation (initiation, financing and realisation) of a county wide project “PRIO1”, Priority Enterprise in Västerbotten, in the North of Sweden. In order to understand why and how these actors at the subnational level have become involved in the process, there exists a need to hear their arguments. The document study shows that there is interplay between the different levels, but intertextual aspects have also become visible. The policy drive and policy scope show the concatenation but also the complexity of the policy development. Education is increasingly related to economic policies, in particular through labour market policies. Although the concepts of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise have developed within the economic sector, they are penetrating the education and training systems of many countries. From the results presented in this study, it seems that lifelong learning has become the guiding principle for the amalgamation of education and the world of work, while learning is no longer equated with just schooling. The opening of the school towards the surrounding world is a characteristic development in all this, but it is also a process that certainly is stipulated by agencies and actors at different levels, as is shown in this study. The interviews with some stakeholders at the subnational level show that the promotion of entrepreneurship and enterprise in education is related to arguments for economic and societal development. The interviews also reveal some of the “bottom-up” aspects of the policy process. One of the important results of this study is that the education policy studies have to include the level beyond the national borders. The interplay between the different policy-levels (supranational, national and subnational) needs more attention in order to understand the transformation of the education system.</p>

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how different welfare and production regimes may have structured individuals’ work orientations into cross-national patterns by the late 1990s and early 2000s. Three different aspects of work orientations are considered in the three studies. Study 1: Welfare Regimes, Production Regimes and Employment Commitment: A Multi-level analysis of Twelve OECD countries. Since the introduction of the first social insurance schemes, questions have been raised regarding the trade-off between the adequacy and equity of benefits, and their effects on individuals’ work orientations. This study examines the role of both welfare and production regime institutions for explaining cross-national patterns in individuals’ employment commitment across twelve OECD-countries in the late 1990s. Results from multi-level analyses show firstly how employment commitment is stronger within more generous welfare regimes as well as within more extensively coordinated production regimes. Secondly, institutions are found to be more important for structuring the attitudes of persons with less stable labour market attachment. Thirdly, for men, there are clear positive cross-level interaction effects between institutional structures and individuals’ socio-economic status, whereas institutions matter more equally regardless of socio-economic status for women. In relation to the concerns with the allegedly negative unintended consequences of welfare regime institutions for creating distortions, these seem to be unwarranted with regards to employment commitment. To the contrary, there appears to be a ‘paradox of employment commitment’: clearly earnings-related benefits of more generous welfare regimes appear to generate stronger commitment to take part in paid work. Study 2: Unemployment Insurance and Work Values in Twenty-Three Welfare States. This study addresses the question of whether extended ‘social rights’, specifically in the form of unemployment insurance, is undermining people’s willingness to perform their ‘social duties’ in the form of productive work. Multi-level analyses is used to evaluate how three aspects of institutional design may explain cross-national patterns of work values across twenty-three industrialized countries in 2000. There is a consistent tendency for a positive relationship between more traditional work values with higher generosity of benefit levels as well as more demanding eligibility conditions. To the contrary, a negative relationship is found in relation to duration periods. The strength and significance of these relationships however differ across the three value dimensions studied. Firstly, the clearest pattern is found in relation to how work is valued as a ‘duty towards society’, where all institutional effects are significant. Secondly, in relation to valuations of how ‘unemployed persons should accept job offers or lose their benefits’, the positive effects of the eligibility factor are non-significant, and the negative duration effects are only significant among working men. Thirdly, in relation to how work is not valued as a ‘free choice’, institutional effects are only significant when working women within the sixteen ‘older’ welfare states are compared. The effects of economic development are inconsistent across value dimensions and in the opposite direction expected from modernization theory; more traditional work values are found to be stronger in countries with higher levels of economic development. Study 3: Continued Work or Retirement? Preferred Exit-age in Western European countries. The combination of greying populations, decreasing fertility rates and a marked trend in falling retirement age is profoundly challenging the sharing of resources and supporting responsibilities between generations in the developed world. Previous studies on earlier exit-trends have focused mainly on supply-side incentives and generally conclude that people will exit given available retirement options. Substantial cross-national variations in exit-ages however remain unexplained. This suggests that also normative factors such as attitudes to work and retirement might be of importance. Through multi-level analyses, this study evaluates how welfare regime generosity, as well as production regime coordination explains cross-national patterns of retirement preferences across twelve Western European countries. Analysis firstly shows how both men and women on average prefer to retire at 58 years, meaning on average approximately 7 or 5.5 years before statutory retirement age in the case of men and women respectively. Contrary to what is expected from previous research on supply-side factors, preferences for relatively later retirement is found within more generous welfare regimes and also within more extensively coordinated production regimes. For women, however, institutional effects do not remain once substantial cross-national differences in women’s statutory retirement ages are taken into account.

In this thesis, capacity-constrained aspects of multi-level, multi-stage productionplanning are investigated. The aim has been to extend Material Requirements Planning Theory (MRP Theory) to cover more general problems dealing with capacity constraints, in particular when non-zero lead times are present and the processes take place in continuous time. MRP Theory deals with multi-level production systems with multiple items taking place either within a discrete or continuous time framework. External demand is considered either deterministic or stochastic. Lead times are assumed to be given constants, and the Net Present Value Principle has been applied as the objective function. The Bill-of-Materials, capturing component as well as capacity requirements, in volume as well as in advanced timing due to lead times, has been described using a generalised input matrix involving Laplace transforms or z transforms. In order to be able to apply Dynamic Programming as a solution method, the system state has been defined and designed in terms of a matrix, in which historical values of cumulative production and cumulative demand are given state variables. A high power computer has been used to calculate solutions to numerical examples. Moreover, this thesis examines the fundamental equations of MRP Theory in order to analyse the possibility to obtain closed-form expressions for the time development of the system, when standard ordering rules of MRP are applied. In addition, capacity-constrained production planning problems and procedures in a paper mill have been surveyed and are presented in the form of a case study.

In this dissertation, we introduce a novel text representation method mainly used for text classification purpose. The presented representation method is initially based on a variety of closeness relationships between pairs of words in text passages within the entire corpus. This representation is then used as the basis for our multi-level lightweight ontological representation method (TOR-FUSE), in which documents are represented based on their contexts and the goal of the learning task. The method is unlike the traditional representation methods, in which all the documents are represented solely based on the constituent words of the documents, and are totally isolated from the goal that they are represented for. We believe choosing the correct granularity of representation features is an important aspect of text classification. Interpreting data in a more general dimensional space, with fewer dimensions, can convey more discriminative knowledge and decrease the level of learning perplexity. The multi-level model allows data interpretation in a more conceptual space, rather than only containing scattered words occurring in texts. It aims to perform the extraction of the knowledge tailored for the classification task by automatic creation of a lightweight ontological hierarchy of representations. In the last step, we will train a tailored ensemble learner over a stack of representations at different conceptual granularities. The final result is a mapping and a weighting of the targeted concept of the original learning task, over a stack of representations and granular conceptual elements of its different levels (hierarchical mapping instead of linear mapping over a vector). Finally the entire algorithm is applied to a variety of general text classification tasks, and the performance is evaluated in comparison with well-known algorithms.