The purpose of the architecture of software systems in business organizations is to support those organizations in achieving business goals. In software development organizations the design of an architecture is a collective effort that involves various organizational stakeholders and designers, who identify, interpret, and reason about intents, and communicate, delegate, commit to, and implement intents and decisions. Current architectural design descriptions are by-and-large based on block-and-arrow notations representing "coarse-grained" solution elements of the system. They lack explicit representation for modeling and analyzing the decision-making of stakeholders and architectural designers who hold different organizational responsibilities, and pursue conflicting and/or synergistic business or system goals, while collectively pursuing organizational objectives. This thesis considers the proposition that a distributed intentionality perspective is applicable in the design of software system architectures. During architectural design, relationships between intentional actors define the context in which intentional actors pursue business and system goals and in which they negotiate architectural decision-making. The objective of this research is to investigate what an Intentional Architecture Language (IAL) could be like that utilizes intentional and organizational modeling and analysis concepts to support architectural decision-making efforts in organizational settings. Drawing from prior work on organizational modeling and analysis, this thesis first defines a core IAL, and then explores its use to model and analyze architectural decision-making both reported in the literature and empirically observed at a number of commercial projects in industry. Drawing from these explorations, this thesis proposes a number of extensions to the core IAL, discusses lessons learned, and points to the advantages and limitations in using an IAL to model and analyze architectural decision-making in an organizational setting.

There is a large body of research supporting the importance of market orientation in determining performance. A growing body of research supports the notion that strategic alliance management competencies positively influence performance. Few empirical investigations have examined the importance of market orientation in the biotechnology industry, much less the effect of alliance orientation on performance, or the combined effect of market and alliance orientation on performance. This study explores these relationships among Canadian biotechnology companies with medical/healthcare focuses. Of the 394 Canadian medical/healthcare biotechnology companies identified, 81 usable responses were received, yielding a response rate of 20.6 percent. It was found that market orientation positively and significantly influenced business performance, supporting the first hypothesis. Additionally, alliance orientation positively and significantly influenced business performance, supporting the second hypothesis. However, when market and alliance orientation were examined together, alliance orientation’s effect on business performance remained positive and significant, but market orientation’s effect on business performance became negative and non-significant. This prompted a further analysis that investigated the presence of a mediation relationship. Market orientation was fully mediated by alliance orientation in its relationship with business performance. This study contributes academically by adding to market and alliance orientation research and by the successful development of a biotechnology-specific performance instrument. This study contributes to marketing and management strategy, as it outlines performance indicators that enable high performance.

This research explores the management problem of how individuals can influence the development of a strategic orientation within a firm. A market orientation strategy builds upon three dimensions: the organisation-wide acquisition, dissemination, and co-ordination of market intelligence (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993). Such management of market-based information requires a set of distinct dynamic capabilities or routines. Empirical research about the association between market orientation and performance shows that firms that develop these capabilities improve both their organisational and financial performance (Gray, Buchanan, & Mallon, 2003). This research attempts to understand the circumstances that prompt employees in all areas of an organisation to become accountable for the implementation of a market-oriented strategy. To date, studies have inadequately measured individual contribution to the market orientation of a firm and do not understand each employee's personal responsibility and willingness to act in a market-oriented way. In response, this thesis developed a dynamic, multi-dimensional scale of individual market-oriented behaviour. First-stage research used focus groups and extant literature to construct a measure of individual market orientation. Then, a cross-section of financial services employees completed a web-based survey measuring individual market-oriented behaviour and individual and interpersonal antecedents. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the presence of a single latent construct with three dimensions. Study results identified a strong and significant relationship between the performance of market-oriented behaviours and the perception of a high-quality fulfilled psychological contract with the employer. Employees who were agile learners and frequently in contact with customers were also more likely to practice market-oriented behaviours.

The influence of turbulence on the orientation state of a dilute suspension of stiff fibers at high Reynolds number in a planar contraction is investigated. High speed imaging and LDV techniques are used to quantify fiber orientation distribution and turbulent characteristics. A nearly homogenous, isotropic grid generated turbulent flow is introduced at the contraction inlet. Flow Reynolds number and inlet turbulent characteristics are varied in order to determine their effects on orientation distribution. The orientation anisotropy is shown to be accurately modelled by a Fokker-Planck type equation. Results show that rotational diffusion is highly influenced by inlet turbulent characteristics and decays exponentially with convergence ratio. Furthermore, the effect of turbulent energy production in the contraction is shown to be negligible. Also, the results show that the flow Reynolds number has negligible effect on the development of orientation anisotropy, and the influence of turbulence on fiber rotation is negligible for $mathrm{Pe_r}>$ 10. It was concluded that inertia induced fiber motion played a negligible role in the experiments.

This study is to discuss the correlation between customer orientation, customer satisfaction and sales performance, also discuss the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and moderating effects of customer¡¦s personality of salesperson in the animal health industry. ¡§Customer-oriented¡¨ selling can be viewed as the practice of the marketing concept at the level of the individual salesperson and customer. The marketing concept requires an organization to determine the needs of a target market and adapt itself to satisfying those needs better than its competitors. In the marketing concept, all parts of an organization are oriented toward solving customer problems and meeting the needs of the marketplace. ¡§Customer-oriented¡¨ selling is directed toward providing customer satisfaction and establishing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with its market. The conclusions of this study and significant to the management are presented as follows: 1.Customer satisfaction and sales performance are significantly related to the practice of customer-oriented selling. 2.Customer satisfaction is significantly related to sales performance. 3.The mediating effect of customer satisfaction is significantly related to sales performance. 4.The interaction between customer personality types (as measured by the MBTI) and customer-orientation were not found to have significant influence. 5.Salespeople might improve customer satisfaction and their performance if they attempted to solve customer problems and meet their needs. 6.Understand the different personal-approach needs of the customers can maintain loyalty and long-term customers and increase sales effectiveness.

Laotian American students attending universities across the U.S. are first-, second-, and third-generation American. This generation status, along with their families' unique immigration experiences, likely impacts their adjustment to college. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census indicates a very low representation of Laotian Americans (7.6%) in the cluster of Asian Americans who have attained at least a Bachelor?s degree (42.7%). This low representation calls for further research on the Laotian American population to discover ways to increase these numbers. This study examines the mediating effect of campus connectedness on ethnic identity and college persistence attitudes and on other-group orientation and college persistence attitudes. It also examines mean group differences on campus connectedness by cultural orientation, among 82 low-land Laotian American college students. Results reveal that campus connectedness does not mediate the relationship between ethnic identity and college persistence attitudes. A mediation effect exists for campus connectedness on: 1) ethnic identity cognitive clarity (EI-clarity) and persistence and 2) other-group orientation and persistence. Mean group differences on campus connectedness by cultural orientation appear in the results.

ABSTRACT Human Resources Management of Elevating Service Quality of Junior Service Personnel and Customers¡¦ Degree of Satisfaction ¡V Using the Junior Service Personnel of Banks in Kaohsiung City as the Scope of Case Study In 1990, the restriction on the establishment of new banks was lifted, and 16 new private-operated banks came into existence, extending the competitive market dimension of the financial service industry. This would absolutely throw a revolutionary impact upon banks. Furthermore, since Taiwan was acceded to the global WTO in 2002, large foreign-based financial institutions have entered Taiwan local financial market with tremendous capital and advanced services and products. In the foreseeable future, they will bring up unprecedented pressures of operation and survival upon the banks in the financial service industry that has an annual productivity of 1200 billion dollars. This research began with the human resources management perspective that is performance oriented and development oriented and set out to investigate the relevancy and objective of the case junior financial and service personnel who worked under the operation of this management dimension system, through the conveyance of personal service quality, to achieve the elevation of overall service quality and customers¡¦ degrees of satisfaction. After literature investigation and the compilation and review of relevant theories, a questionnaire survey was conducted, and by using PZB model as the basis, the obtained data underwent a factor analysis and the SPSS 12.0 for Windows XP software package was used to conduct statistical analysis of these data. Then Kaiser Varimax of main factor analysis was used as the rotation axis to extract the dimension factors of this research. Finally, one-way ANOVA and canonical correlation were used to analyze and investigate the differences between the variables and correlations, which would be used as the viable theoretical foundation of the hypotheses of this research. In addition, after conducting statistical analysis of the data about the case banks, this research found that in the two aspects of human resources management, the junior employees had higher degrees of approval of development orientation that those of performance orientation, which seemed to overthrow the long-standing traditional concept ¡V using ¡§performance orientation¡¨ of realistic or tangible feedback as the prime basis for selection. On the contrary, although the junior personnel work in the employment market of unfavorable and competitive financial service industry of various kinds, this research has found that as a matter of fact, junior personnel of banks still have high degrees of approval of ¡§development orientation¡¨ and vision for ¡§development orientation,¡¨ in spite of the threats posed by the WTO globalization and the waning trend of the ¡§golden bowl.¡¨ This seems to provide bank management, amid celebration, with a new thinking of establishing better and forward human resources management procedures and regulations related to loyal, committed and competent employees.

This study aimed at investigating learners&rsquo / attitudes towards English language and English speaking societies. The study also explored the historical and sociopolitical factors that might have influenced learners&rsquo / attitudes. In order to collect data, a language attitude questionnaire was designed adapting several questionnaires which were prepared with the goal of collecting information about learners&rsquo / attitudinal predispositions towards language and language learning in various countries around the world. The study sampled 219 students studying at the preparatory schools of two state and three private universities in Ankara. In addition to the quantitative data obtained from the questionnaire, qualitative data were obtained from the open ended items in the questionnaire and the interview sessions. Interview sessions were conducted at the sampled universities, and 10 students (5 male 5 female) were asked their opinions about their reasons to learn English, their opinions regarding the current status of English in Turkey and their feelings towards English and towards their native language. After the data collection procedure, inferences were made according to the data obtained from the questionnaire and interviews so as to make quantitative and qualitative analysis. While the quantitative findings of the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics via SPSS 11.0 (Statistical Package of Social Sciences), qualitative data were analyzed through the content analysis. According to the factor analysis of the responses in the pilot and the actual study, the parallel statements were categorized into a factor. Consequently, five factors which ultimately formed five &lsquo / themes&rsquo / were obtained. The research findings were interpreted with reference to these five themes-native language loyalty, instrumental orientation, cultural interest, appreciation of intercultural contact and attitudes towards British and American people respectively. According to the research findings, Turkish learners of English at sampled universities have favorable attitudes towards the English language due to their interest in the cultural products of the English speaking societies and the instrumental value of English as a global language. On the other hand, they have developed ambivalent attitudes towards the target societies due to the intercultural contact with these societies throughout Turkish history, current sociopolitical concerns regarding the British and American state policies and finally their perceptions regarding their native language and culture. Alternative solutions at individual and institutional levels have been proposed in order to change negative attitudes into favorable ones, and prevent the generalization of stereotypes and attitudes into individual levels. In order to achieve the acquisition of favorable attitudes at individual level, intercultural contact should be promoted so that learners will have personal experiences and personal contacts rather than relying on indirect sources such as press and cultural products which might generate biased assumptions.

In the service industry, human resource is the most vital and important component, because the positive appraisement of the service is usually based on the customer¡¦s orientation of the service provider. Thus, in order to instill employees with a sense of service and with enthusiasm, the organization needs to develop the internal marketing orientation. Additionally, manager should support customer service and demonstrates this ¡§service enthusiasm¡¨ in terms of organizational support. The concept of internal marketing was first reported in the area of service marketing. The initial concept came from the field of external marketing, which is based on the concept of treating employees as customers. The hope was to enhance employees' job satisfaction so as to further develop the sense of customer orientation of the members within the organization. Moreover, employee's customer orientation will influence customer service quality. In this research, author only focused on the front line employees in bank and transformed the concept of internal marketing into more management behaviors. This research uses quantitative research methods to explore the relationship between perception of internal marketing orientation and customer orientation. In empirical studies, the major findings are as follow: 1. author proposed an operational definition of the internal marketing orientation, and developed the scale. 2. author proposed a internal marketing orientation-customer orientation orientation model, which was empirical verified. 3. the relationship between the employee's customer orientation and customer service quality wasn¡¦t verified.

Customers are aware of the service quality which has a close relationship with front-line service providers. High quality of human resources, like the good attitude and behavior of front-line service providers, becomes one of the key sources of business success and competitive advantages. Therefore, more and more companies pay attention to the concept of ¡§internal marketing¡¨, and before they sell the product or service to external customers, they should sell them to internal customer. Because the service industry plays an important role in this era, this study focuses on real estate agencies. The purposes of this study are: (1) To understand internal marketing influences employee¡¦s customer orientation. (2) The relationship between behavior-based evaluation, internal marketing and employee¡¦s customer orientation. (3) The relationship between empowerment, internal marketing and employee¡¦s customer orientation. (4) The relationship between organizational customer orientation, internal marketing and employee¡¦s customer orientation. The study adopts questionnaire investigating. Besides, this study modifies the questionnaire of customer orientation, let the questionnaire can be used in Taiwan. The analysis approaches are reliability analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, cluster analysis, one-way and two-way ANOVA. This study provides support for four hypotheses that internal marketing will influence employee¡¦s customer orientation. And behavior-based evaluation, empowerment and customer orientation of organization are the moderate variables between internal marketing and employee¡¦s customer orientation. Therefore, the manager should regards internal marketing, empowerment, behavior-based evaluation and organizational customer orientation as the most vital and important components in the company.