This thesis presents an account of curriculum initiatives in the related fields of economics and business education between the years 1982 to 1998. These developments are placed in the context of a national curriculum for schools in England and Wales, rapid changes in the post-16 education and training environment and alterations in working practices brought about by the information and communication revolution. The work employs a pluralist methodology based on fitness for purpose. Thus, the national scene largely relies on documentary sources, whilst the case studies are examined through the use of interviews and questionnaires as well as secondary data. In one example the author is a participant observer. The central theme is the relationship between business education curricula and values: the account of curriculum developments are subject to analysis both of the values that have underpinned or guided their contents and the contribution that their configurations of business education can make to values education. It introduces the notion of 'congruence' in curriculum development, a term used to describe the interface between curriculum, values and the development of young people. The thesis is in the most part an original contribution to the study of curriculum and curriculum development. In identifying the key concept, 'values', and analysing the degree of 'congruence' achieved by curriculum developers, the thesis is able to contribute to the literature on values education and the development of young people. In particular, the final chapter shows the potential of business education to promote in young people an understanding that values underpin and help to explain the workings of the economic world. The main conclusions are two-fold. First, that value positions underpin curriculum developments but that they are not always made explicit, even in subjects dealing with business and economic systems. Second, that business education curricula need to demonstrate more overtly their role in encouraging the critique of values alongside more fact based enquiry. The research shows that development of young people is only considered as a by-product of other aims and objectives, which results in a missed opportunity. The holistic perspective examining the intellectual and emotional needs of a 'complete' student and what this means at various stages of the educational process (from 14 years-old), is rarely considered when curriculum change is contemplated.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

A static memory reference exhibits a unique property when its dynamic memory addresses are congruent with respect to some non-trivial modulus. Extraction of this congruence information at compile-time enables new classes of program optimization. In this paper, we present methods for forcing congruence among the dynamic addresses of a memory reference. We also introduce a compiler algorithm for detecting this property. Our transformations do not require interprocedural analysis and introduce almost no overhead. As a result, they can be incorporated into real compilation systems. On average, our transformations are able to achieve a five-fold increase in the number of congruent memory operations. We are then able to detect 95% of these references. This success is invaluable in providing performance gains in a variety of areas. When congruence information is incorporated into a vectorizing compiler, we can increase the performance of a G4 AltiVec processor up to a factor of two. Using the same methods, we are able to reduce energy consumption in a data cache by as much as 35%. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108).

The outsourcing of elements of supply chain processes is now an integral component of the operationalization of a firm s competitive business strategy. While the purported goal of outsourcing is usually to derive a competitive advantage in the marketplace, it is not clear whether the outsourcing decisions made by firms are always strategically aligned with their overall competitive strategy. To shed light on this important issue, this research study empirically examines the performance impact of the alignment (congruence) between a firm s competitive priorities (cost, flexibility, innovativeness, quality, and time) and the drivers of its outsourcing decisions. First, we develop and validate a survey instrument used to collect data for this study from manufacturing firms operating in the United States. Next, we use structural equation modeling to examine the impact of alignment between individual competitive priorities and related groups of outsourcing drivers. This analysis finds a significant positive relationship between outsourcing alignment and performance for a number of competitive priorities. Finally, we use cluster analysis to develop a taxonomy of manufacturing strategies which are tested to determine the relationship between the alignment of outsourcing decisions and performance. The taxonomic investigation identifies three unique clusters of firms based on their competitive priorities and then determines alignment between each cluster strategy and outsourcing to be significantly associated with better performance. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies in the literature that address the issue of strategic congruence between the outsourcing drivers and competitive priorities of a firm, and the impact of such congruence on firm performance.

Leisure travel has become an important activity in Taiwan. According to the statistical data of Tourism Bureau, R.O.C., people in Taiwan spent about 280.5 billions on oversea¡¦s traveling in 2003. The number of outbound travelers has grown 40.77% compare with last February. It is obvious that the market of outbound travel is getting bigger year by year. The past research on the subject of travel behavior put emphasis on behavior aspect or satisfaction, there is little research discuss the effect of psychological aspect on purchase decisions. Some foreign research verify that the effect of self-concept congruence on product preference, brand preference, and purchase intension (Sirgy, 1982; 2000). They also extend their research to the area of traveling and discuss how the self-image congruity affects post travel satisfaction (Chon 1992), pre-travel purchase intension, or purchase possibility (Surgy and Su, 2000; Litvin and Goh, 2002; 2003). Based on the self-image congruence theory proposed by Sirgy (1982), and the integrated framework of self-image congruence with travel behavior constructed by Sirgy & Su¡]2000¡^, this research try to analyze if the level of real/ideal self-image congruence relate to the purchase intension of destination choice on four destinations with difference characteristics. The results show that outbound-travel decision makings of natives are affected by the inside congruence coordination of the psychological mechanism. Relationship between self-image congruence and tourists¡¦ purchase intention exists not only in western countries but also in Taiwan. Results also show that self-image congruence is related to purchase intention whether tourists are students or social workers. And toward the four totally different cities, New York, Bali, Rome, and Hokkaido, tourists¡¦s purchase intention is still affected by self-image congruence.

This thesis investigates the geometric and topological constraints placed on the quotient space of a Fuchsian or Kleinian group by requiring that the group admits a fundamental domain which is simultaneously a Ford domain and a Dirichlet domain. In the case of Fuchsian groups, a direct correspondence with reflection groups is proved, and this result is used to first find explicitly the 23 non-cocompact arithmetic maximal hyperbolic reflection groups in the group of isometries of the hyperbolic plane, and subsequently to test whether these groups are all congruence. In the case of Kleinian groups, similar results are shown, and some examples of reflection groups are considered. / text

There has been a recent increase in research investigating the relationship between values and value congruence in the workplace and how this leads to positive organisational outcomes. This study investigated the congruence between employees’ values and their perceptions of organisational values, and how this relates to the organisational outcomes of job satisfaction, work engagement, person organisation fit and resilience. Participants were asked to rate eight values related to the workplace, in relation to how they thought about the values individually and how they perceived their organisation rated the eight values. These ratings were then used to analyse the relationship between values and value congruence and each of the four organisational outcomes. The proposed relationships were tested using data collected from an online survey of 120 employees from nine New Zealand based organisations. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that values and values congruence is significantly related to job satisfaction, work engagement, person organisation fit and resilience. However the significant relationships were dependent on certain values for each of the four outcomes. Which implies certain values are more salient for each of the outcomes. The results were also discussed in terms of the practical implications for organisations and areas of possible future research.

Because service failures are inevitable, marketing researchers have devoted considerable attention to the negative consequences of service failure and corresponding service recovery strategies. Previous research has overwhelmingly focused on customers' cognitive, coping, and behavioral reactions to failures. However, more recently, researchers have suggested that emotions may underlie the effects of customers' cognitive responses on their coping and behavioral responses. Despite the increased attention paid to the emotional dimension of customers' responses, the literature has not differentiated between different types of negative emotions. However, the appropriateness of service recovery strategies may rely on differentiating between similarly valenced emotions, because distinct emotions may require different recovery strategies. From a perspective of self-congruence theory, this dissertation contributes to the extant literature by investigating why customers experience distinct negative emotions - basic emotions (e.g., anger) and self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame) - in the context of service failure. Since emotions may influence coping and behavioral responses, distinct sets of coping responses (problem-solving vs. vindictive complaining and support-seeking vs. vindictive negative word of mouth) and behavioral intentions are also explored. Through two experiments, this dissertation provides support for the proposition that different forms of self-congruence evoke different sets of emotional and coping responses. Furthermore, drawing on self-awareness theory, this dissertation provides evidence for the proposition that the mechanisms underlying these observed patterns are distinct. Specifically, when service failures are involved, actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence differentially trigger public self-awareness and private self-awareness and the different forms of self-awareness mediate the effect of self-congruence on customers' emotions.