Kompensavimas už darbą – tai vienas iš svarbiausių klausimų šiandieninėje darbo rinkoje. Šiame darbe analizuojant įvairią lietuvių ir užsienio autorių mokslinę literatūrą, yra atlikta teorinė kompensavimo už darbą analizė. Aptartos pagrindinės sąvokos. Išanalizuoti kompensavimą už darbą įtakojantys veiksniai. Taip pat pristatytos kelios, skirtingų autorių kompensavimo už darbą sistemos. Šiame darbe atliktas tyrimas, kurio objektas – tai UAB „Baltic Packaging“ kompensavimo už darbą sistema. Darbo tikslas yra išanalizuota gamybos cecho darbininkų darbo apmokėjimo principus ir jiems teikiamų naudų paketą. Taip pat ištirti įmonėje veikiančią kompensavimo už darbą sistemą, ir darbuotojų požiūris į ją, bei atlikti jų norų ir poreikių analizę. Darbe siūloma UAB „Baltic Packaging“ kompensavimo už darbą sistemos tobulinimo programa su konkrečiu jos įgyvendinimo planu. Pateikiamas tobulinimo plano kompensavimo už darbą sistemai įvertinimas, pateikiant organizacijos faktinių rodiklių palyginimą su gautais realizuojant projektinius pasiūlymus. Šis darbas parašytas remiantis atliktų tyrimų rezultatais bei naudojantis įvairia lietuvių ir užsienio autorių moksline literatūra, taip pat teisės aktais, bei įvairiomis duomenų bazėmis. / Compensation for labor is one of the most important and discussed topics in today’s employment market. The theoretical analysis of compensation for labor that is based on both Lithuanian and foreign author’s scientific literature is presented in this thesis. In this analysis is discussed the terminology, as well as major influences indexes of compensation for labor. Also is presented several different compensation systems by different authors. The object of this thesis is compensation system of join stock company “Baltic packaging”. There was research conducted based on “Baltic packaging” compensation system. The goal of this thesis is to examine mill workers compensation system as well as all the merits available to them. The goal includes examining the way employees are interpreting their compensation system, and to determine their wants and needs. After careful analysis there is presented the plan how to improve the compensation system in “Baltic packaging”. This corporation’s compensation system’s improvement plan has been evaluated based on comparison between actual organizational numbers and the numbers produced by the implementing potential compensation plans All the information presented in this thesis is based on results from actual research, as well as on scientific literature by Lithuanian and foreign authors, laws, and various databases.

Bakalauro baigiamajame darbe nagrinėjama Lietuvoje veikiančių komercinių bankų elektroninės bankininkystės paslaugos 2006 – 2010 m. laikotarpiu. Pirmoje darbo dalyje pateikiami teoriniai elektroninės bankininkystės aspektai. Antroje darbo dalyje atlikta elektroninės bankininkystės paslaugų analizė: nustatyta, jog bankų pajamų iš elektroninės bankininkystės paslaugų rodikliai buvo pasiskirstę gana netolygiai; elektroninės bankininkystės vartotojų skaičius visuose bankuose didėja. Negrynųjų pinigų atsiskaitymus palyginus su grynųjų pinigų atsiskaitymais nustatyta, jog negrynieji pinigai labiausiai yra naudojami didelės sumos operacijoms atlikti. Atlikus mokėjimo kortelių operacijų įvertinimą nustatyta, jog Lietuvos vartotojai 2006 – 2010 m. buvo linkę atsiskaitinėti grynaisiais pinigais, tačiau ši tendencija ateityje turėtų pasikeisti. Koreliacinės – regresinės analizės metu nustatyta, jog negrynųjų pinigų atsiskaitymų ryšys su grynųjų pinigų atsiskaitymais yra atvirkštinis, o negrynųjų pinigų atsiskaitymų ir šalies BVP – tiesioginis. Atlikus elektroninės bankininkystės perspektyvų vertinimą, nustatyta, jog elektroninė bankininkystė Lietuvoje ir toliau plėsis. / Bachelor final work examines e-banking services of the commercial banks operating in Lithuania, for the period of year 2006 – 2010. The first part presents the theoretical aspects of electronic banking. The second part of the work presents the carried out analysis of electronic banking services: the figures of established banking income from electronic banking services were quite unevenly distributed; the number of users of electronic banking is increasing for all banks. Non-cash payments were compared to the cash payments, which showed that most non-cash money is used for transactions of large sums of money. The evaluation of payment card operations showed that residents of Lithuania in period of year 2006 – 2010 tended to pay with cash, but this trend should change in the future. The correlation – regression analysis showed that there is inverse relation between non-cash payments and cash payments and direct relation between non-cash payments and Lithuanian’s GDP. The qualitative assessment of prospects for online banking showed that e-banking in Lithuania continues to grow.

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Titel: Thinking outside the box: Goals and Salary boxes as motivational factors Authors: Anna Ceder and  Karin Barwinger Plogare Seat of Learning: Uppsala University Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate if the imposition of salary boxes in Uppsala municipality has had any influence on the organisation’s employees’ to improve their work motivation. The reason for the study was to look deeper into employees’ motivational factors, this with a focus on salary as motivational factor in structures of salary boxes where it is possible for the employee to work towards goals which affect their salary. The primary purpose of the study was to look into if employees’ ability to advance their performance had any connection to the impostion of salary boxes. Methodology: In order to collect as much data as possible for the measurements one of the largest occupational groups in Uppsala municipality was chosen, which represents the group of pre-school teachers. In total there are 758 staff members in the professional group of pre-school teachers in Uppsala municipality who were all contacted to participate in the study through a survey questionnaire. The answers from the questionnaire were then tested and analyzed in forms of linear and binary regression analyses to check the significance of the independent variables both separetely with the dependent variable and all variables together in an attempt to identify the most significant motivational factor. Results: The results showed that the significant motivational factors for pre-school teatchers was the ones which represent organizational commitment and the goal setting theory. Keywords: Motivation, salary boxes, individual payment, individual salary, work motivation

This project investigates the impacts of nutrition merchandising on consumers’ willingness to pay for local tomatoes and strawberries. The data come from survey of Kentucky and Ohio residents in June 2011. Two thousand one hundred twelve individuals from Kentucky and Ohio were surveyed, to find out the impact of selfawareness of health benefits and health benefits information on their willingness to pay. The consumers were offered one of the three survey versions. The versions varied by how much nutrition information was provided to the consumer related to both strawberries and tomatoes – otherwise identical. A had the most, B had text only, and C omitted any nutritional benefits. This nutrition preamble was offered just before doing a payment card willingness-to-pay experiment. Standard demographic data were also included. The goal of the study was to see if and in what way the provision (or nonprovision) of this information, as well as consumers’ own knowledge of nutritional benefits of local foods, their beliefs and lifestyle influenced their willingness to pay for these local products.

Background: In 2007, Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health launched the Seniors’ Drug Plan (SDP), whereby provincial beneficiaries at or above the age of 65 receive medications at a maximum self-payment of $15. The purpose of this study was to document the impact of the SDP using provincial health-administrative databases. Methods: Aggregate medication utilization and costs were described using the prescription drug database starting two years before the implementation of the SDP and continuing for two years after. Interrupted time series analysis using segmented regression models were developed to test the impact of the SDP. Also, the probability of achieving optimal medication adherence was examined among cohorts receiving medications after SDP implementation versus similar patients receiving medications before the SDP and also a group of patients <65 years who were not eligible for the SDP at all. The impact of the SDP on the outcome of optimal adherence was estimated using logistic regression models with generalized estimating equations (GEE). Results: Monthly government spending on medications increased by 47.5% following implementation of the SDP, while total medication dispensations only increased by 5.8%. The SDP was associated with more dispensations per month among prevalent users (+5.4%, 95% CI: 1.3% to 9.5%) but not incident users who did not receive the study medication in the previous 365 days (+1.3%, 95% CI: -8.0% to 10.7%). Similarly, the SDP did not appear to impact the use of blood-glucose-lowering agents, (-0.5%, 95% CI: -6.2% to 5.2%). A small but significant increase in the odds of optimal medication adherence was observed after the SDP compared with before (OR=1.08, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.11). However, the impact was only observed in prevalent users (OR=1.08, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.12), but not incident users (OR=1.05, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.13). Also, the impact of the SDP on medication adherence was not consistent for all medication classes examined. Discussion: In summary, the SDP resulted in substantially higher government investment into drug costs without a major effect on medication utilization and adherence. However, cost reduction for seniors must have provided substantial relief independent of the impact on adherence and utilization.

Algorithmic mechanism design deals with efficiently-computable algorithmic constructions in the presence of strategic players who hold the inputs to the problem and may misreport their input if doing so benefits them. Algorithmic mechanism design finds applications in a variety of internet settings such as resource allocation, facility location and e-commerce, such as sponsored search auctions. There is an extensive amount of work in algorithmic mechanism design on packing problems such as single-item auctions, multi-unit auctions and combinatorial auctions. But, surprisingly, covering problems, also called procurement auctions, have almost been completely unexplored, especially in the multidimensional setting. In this thesis, we systematically investigate multidimensional covering mechanism- design problems, wherein there are m items that need to be covered and n players who provide covering objects, with each player i having a private cost for the covering objects he provides. A feasible solution to the covering problem is a collection of covering objects (obtained from the various players) that together cover all items. Two widely considered objectives in mechanism design are: (i) cost-minimization (CM) which aims to minimize the total cost incurred by the players and the mechanism designer; and (ii) payment minimization (PayM), which aims to minimize the payment to players. Covering mechanism design problems turn out to behave quite differently from packing mechanism design problems. In particular, various techniques utilized successfully for packing problems do not perform well for covering mechanism design problems, and this necessitates new approaches and solution concepts. In this thesis we devise various techniques for handling covering mechanism design problems, which yield a variety of results for both the CM and PayM objectives. In our investigation of the CM objective, we focus on two representative covering problems: uncapacitated facility location (UFL) and vertex cover. For multi-dimensional UFL, we give a black-box method to transform any Lagrangian-multiplier-preserving ??-approximation algorithm for UFL into a truthful-in-expectation, ??-approximation mechanism. This yields the first result for multi-dimensional UFL, namely a truthful-in-expectation 2-approximation mechanism. For multi-dimensional VCP (Multi-VCP), we develop a decomposition method that reduces the mechanism-design problem into the simpler task of constructing threshold mechanisms, which are a restricted class of truthful mechanisms, for simpler (in terms of graph structure or problem dimension) instances of Multi-VCP. By suitably designing the decomposition and the threshold mechanisms it uses as building blocks, we obtain truthful mechanisms with approximation ratios (n is the number of nodes): (1) O(r2 log n) for r-dimensional VCP; and (2) O(r log n) for r-dimensional VCP on any proper minor-closed family of graphs (which improves to O(log n) if no two neighbors of a node belong to the same player). These are the first truthful mechanisms for Multi-VCP with non-trivial approximation guarantees. For the PayM objective, we work in the oft-used Bayesian setting, where players??? types are drawn from an underlying distribution and may be correlated, and the goal is to minimize the expected total payment made by the mechanism. We consider the problem of designing incentive compatible, ex-post individually rational (IR) mechanisms for covering problems in the above model. The standard notion of incentive compatibility (IC) in such settings is Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC), but this notion is over-reliant on having precise knowledge of the underlying distribution, which makes it a rather non- robust notion. We formulate a notion of IC that we call robust Bayesian IC (robust BIC) that is substantially more robust than BIC, and develop black-box reductions from robust BIC-mechanism design to algorithm design. This black-box reduction applies to single- dimensional settings even when we only have an LP-relative approximation algorithm for the algorithmic problem. We obtain near-optimal mechanisms for various covering settings including single- and multi-item procurement auctions, various single-dimensional covering problems, and multidimensional facility location problems. Finally, we study the notion of frugality, which considers the PayM objective but in a worst-case setting, where one does not have prior information about the players??? types. We show that some of our mechanisms developed for the CM objective are also good with respect to certain oft-used frugality benchmarks proposed in the literature. We also introduce an alternate benchmark for frugality, which more directly reflects the goal that the mechanism???s payment be close to the best possible payment, and obtain some preliminary results with respect to this benchmark.

Fueled by ubiquitous access to mobile phones, and a massive population of nearly 3 billion unbanked people around the globe, mobile commerce is evolving as a disruptive technology. Simultaneously, mobile payments are surfacing as a killer application within the mobile commerce context (Hu et al. 2008). Undeniably, the proliferation of wireless mobile technology provides much-needed access to vital information, and financial services for disenfranchised, unbanked populations. In addition, technological innovations offer first-time opportunities for suppliers of goods and services in a market context to gain competitive advantages while enhancing their economic viability. According to Portio Research, the volume of mobile payments rose significantly from $68.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2009, with predictions of $633.4 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2014 (mobithinking.com 2012). Despite exponential growth in the number of mobile subscribers globally, and widespread adoption of mobile commerce, acceptance rates for mobile payment applications have lagged (Dahlberg et al. 2007, Ondrus et al 2009, Ondrus and Lyytinen 2011). Yet examinations of factors inhibiting the widespread acceptance of mobile payments are relatively sparse. Using Social Network theory, this research examines factors affecting engagement in mobile payments. The researcher posits that four primary elements influence mobile payment engagement: 1) the relationships between and amongst inter-organizational alliance members; 2) the prevailing regulatory environment; 3) the state of existing banking and technology infrastructures, and 4) an assessment of economic opportunity. The research outcomes from this exploratory examination led to the development of a comprehensive model for mobile payment engagement, and strongly suggest that ties between and amongst firms in inter-organizational alliances help ensure the success of mobile payment engagement. Support was found for the following suppositions: 1) similarities and relations (continuous ties) help establish a framework and understanding amongst alliance members as to each party’s goals and objectives; and 2) interactions and flows (discrete ties) between and amongst inter-organizational alliance members strengthen the overall ties between alliance members while solidifying a viable working relationship amongst the alliance members. This study employs a qualitative approach to obtain real world insight into the dynamism of the mobile payment arena. A model is then proposed to practically examine mobile payment engagement opportunities. From a theoretical perspective, the research contributes to the extant scholarly knowledgebase pertaining to engagement in mobile payments.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka Bitcoins egenskaper och funktioner samt diskutera dess eventuella påverkan på dagens ekonomiska system. Den forskning som publicerats på ämnet undersöker främst tekniska och säkerhetsmässiga detaljer, det är därför intressant att analysera ur en ekonomisk synvinkel. Genom att använda makroekonomisk teori ska jag försöka klargöra om Bitcoin kan konkurrera med dagens valutor. Bitcoins volatilitet i värde gör det tvivelaktigt, en volatilitet som inte kan kontrolleras. Bitcoin uppfyller delar av de funktioner och egenskaper som definierar en valuta enligt makroekonomisk teori, men inte lika många som fiatpengar och Bitcoin bör därför inte kunna konkurrera med dagens valutor. Fiatpengar är att föredra även i andra områden som acceptans och säkerhet. Bitcoin är bättre ur ett kostnadsperspektiv, dock under specifika omständigheter som sällan uppfylls. Bitcoin kommer därför tills vidare fungera som ett alternativ betalningssystem och valuta för personer och företag som är villiga att ta de risker som medföljer. / The aim of this thesis is to investigate Bitcoins attributes and functions and discuss its effect on today’s economic system. The academic work that been published on the subject investigate technical and safety aspects, it is therefore interesting to analyse from a macroeconomic point of view. By using macroeconomic theory I will try to clarify if Bitcoin can compete with today’s currencies. Bitcoins volatility in value makes it doubtful. Bitcoins volatility in value makes it questionable, a volatility that cannot be controlled. Bitcoin meet part of the functions and characteristics that define a currency as macroeconomic theory, but not as many as fiatmoney and should therefore not be able to compete with today's currencies. Fiatmoney is preferable also in other areas such as acceptance and security. Bitcoin is better from a cost perspective, but under specific circumstances that are rarely met. Bitcoin will therefore until further serve as an alternative payment system and currency individuals and companies that are willing to take the risks included.

Den här studien undersöker om det finns ett samband mellan betalningsmedel och utfall vid företagsförvärv. För att försöka mäta denna kvantitativa studie utfördes ett antal intervjuer för att få fram parametrar, specifikt tidsaspekten och hur ett lyckat förvärv definieras, detta eftersom det finns en avsaknad av standarder inom förvärvsutvärderingar. Slutligen användes fem år som utvärderingsperiod och tillväxten i rörelseresultat beräknat från den senaste årsredovisningen innan förvärvet och den femte årsredovisningen efter förvärvet. Informationen som analyserades var hämtad från databasen Zephyr där förvärven genomförda av svenska företag mellan åren 2002 och 2007 togs med, vilket blev 134 stycken. Resultatet visade att det inte finns ett samband mellan betalningsmedlet och utfallet för förvärvet. Resultatet visade även att en stor del av förvärven med aktier var utförda om förvärvsobjektet hade ett negativt rörelseresultat. Detta indikerar att aktier är använda när det finns en uppfattad risk från förvärvaren, då representerar aktier alltså en riskdiversifiering. Under studien insåg vi att det inte är tillräckligt att endast studera siffror för att göra en rättvis bedömning av utfallet, utan istället bör en djupare analys på företagen och detaljerna runt förvärvet göras för en korrekt utvärdering. / This study researches the possibility of therebeing a link between the means of payment and the outcome of an M&amp;A. To tryand measure this quantitative study we performed a series of interviews to tryand get the parameters to measure, specifically the time aspect and definingwhat a successful takeover is. This since there is a lack of standardsregarding M&amp;A evaluations. We ended up using the parameters of a five yearevaluation-period and the growth in operating income calculated from the latestannual report pre-takeover and the fifth report post-takeover. The informationwe proceeded to analyze was attained from the company database Zephyr where wetook all the completed acquisitions performed by Swedish companies between theyears 2002 and 2007, which amounted to 134 observations. The results showedthat there is no connection between the means of payment and the outcome of theM&amp;A. Also we observed that a great portion of the acquisitions with shareswas performed if the target company held a negative operating income.Suggesting that shares are used when there is a perceived risk from theacquirer, and shares represent a risk diversification. Also realized duringthis study is that in order to evaluate a single performed acquisition, justlooking at numbers isn’t enough to give a fair assessment of the outcome.Instead a deeper look at the companies and the specifics surrounding the dealswould give a better foundation to evaluate the takeover.