Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-04-12T13:09:12Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Veronica Vargas.pdf: 5204634 bytes, checksum: 3ec7586f5e6c9ba277e9039225fe71a9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-12T13:09:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Veronica Vargas.pdf: 5204634 bytes, checksum: 3ec7586f5e6c9ba277e9039225fe71a9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-24 / CAPEs / Pesquisas recentes com empresas desenvolvedoras de jogos no Brasil mostram a dificuldade que elas enfrentam no que se refere à captação de recursos para financiar seus empreendimentos. Isso mostra a deficiência dos gestores em matéria de modelos de negócios. No aspecto acadêmico, os estudos da área de jogos, em sua maioria, também estão relacionados apenas ao artefato em si, carecendo de estudos sobre a forma como eles são inseridos no mercado de forma rentável e sustentável economicamente. Tratando aqui os jogos como um produto com foco no segmento dos casuais sociais mobile voltados para o mercado de entretenimento, entende-se que o desafio dos Game Designers vai além da configuração. A partir da ferramenta de concepção de jogos "Game Design Canvas" e com auxílio de Metodologias de Design, a apresentação de um novo Canvas é o objeto de estudo deste trabalho, com o intuito de auxiliar a concepção não apenas de jogos, mas a definição de sua cadeia de valor. Para tanto, são explorados os conceitos de: modelos de negócios, Metodologias de Design, jogos e um retrospecto sobre a evolução das estratégias de comercialização de jogos. Finalmente, para demonstrar a aplicação da extensão do Design Thinking Canvas, um exemplo prático do jogo Bubble Witch Saga 2 é apresentado. Como resultado deste trabalho, foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta com aplicação prática para construção de modelos de negócios de jogos. / Recent researches with companies developers of games in Brazil show the difficulty they face in relation to fund-raising to finance their ventures. This shows the deficiency of managers on business models. In the academic field, studies of the games area, mostly, are also related only to the artifact itself, lacking studies about how they are inserted into the market of an economically profitable and sustainable way. Considering here the games as a product with focus on the segment of social casual mobile facing the entertainment market, it is understood that the challenge of Game Designers goes beyond setting. From the design tool of games "Game Design Canvas" and with the help of Design Methodologies, the presentation of a new Canvas is the object of study of this work, in order to help the conception not only of games, but the definition of its value chain. For this, the concepts explored are: business models, Methodologies of Design, games and a retrospect about the evolution of marketing strategies of games. Finally to demonstrate the application of the extension of the Design Thinking Canvas, a practical example of Bubble Witch Saga 2 game is shown. As result of this work, a tool with practical application for building of game business models was developed.

The thesis is focused on international marketing of gaming industry. It’s focus is on trends and possibilities of international marketing strategy for microtransactions. The theoretical part aims to define basic concept of gaming industry, marketing, microtransactions, customer behavior and ways to engage with him. The analytical part is creating a concept of international marketing strategy for a game, which is being developed by the author of this thesis based on quality research and theoretical background. This strategy is supposed to engage with customers not interested in microtransactions.

Belönade annonser är den mest populära annonstypen i mobilspel men har trots detta inte mycket tidigare forskning bakom sig. Denna undersöknings mål är därför att skapa en förståelse kring hur olika utvalda implementationer av belönade annonser kan påverka spelupplevelsen. Spelupplevelse i denna undersökning är uppdelad i områdena engagemang, kompetens och påträngsel. För att få denna förståelse så skapades tre versioner av en artefakt som efterliknade ett mobilspel och innehöll olika implementationer av belönade annonser. Dessa versioner av artefakten testades sedan med hjälp av deltagare som observerades och intervjuades. Resultatet kom att visa på att den viktigaste faktorn var belöningens värde och typ snarare än när möjligheten uppstod att titta på en belönad annons. Framtida forskning baserat på denna undersökning skulle kunna vidareutvecklas genom att bland annat inkludera andra spelgenrer, belöningstyper och spelartyper. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p>

Self Service Business Intelligence (SSBI) har förmågan att i grunden förändra beslutfattningsprocessen i organisationer där självgående användare har en kunskapsmakt att använda data för att fatta insiktsfulla beslut. För att förverkliga SSBI i en organisation är utbildning av slutanvändare en essentiell byggsten för ett lyckat införande, samtidigt är detta en konstaterad utmaning i SSBI-sammanhang. Därför är syftet med denna studie att identifiera vilka utmaningar som finns avseende utbildningar av slutanvändare inom SSBI. För att besvara frågeställningen har en intervjustudie genomförts med personer som har yrkesmässiga kopplingar till utbildningar av slutanvändare inom SSBI. Resultatet av studien är elva identifierade utmaningar som kan fördelas över sju olika dimensioner inom utbildningskontexten, och presenteras i en sammanfattande modell. En generell slutsats av studien är att de flesta av de identifierade utmaningarna kan undvikas om organisationen gjort ett gediget förarbete i termer om formulering av en övergripande SSBI-strategi och en kartläggning av slutanvändarnas tekniska kompetens och analysbehov i en SSBI-miljö. Resultatet i denna studie kan användas av organisationer som står inför en lansering av SSBI och vill ha ut mer av sin utbildningsinsats mot slutanvändare, för att öka sannolikheten för ett lyckat SSBI-införande.

A new hybrid Video Game Difficulty Balancing method which stands in between the two traditional methods (Static and Dynamic) has been suggested in this project aiming to discreetly estimate the player’s difficulty preference and make the respective in-game adjustment. This method has been based on the hypothesis that the user’s difficulty preferences can be to some extent predicted by some of their in-game actions. A casual mobile game containing a User Testing part has been developed for this purpose and played by 56 participants. The extracted results offer some insights on various gamers’ demographic groups behaviors and some indications that the intended prediction is feasible.

Financial data in banks are unstructured and complicated. It is challenging to analyze these texts manually due to the small amount of labeled training data in financial text. Moreover, the financial text consists of language in the economic domain where a general-purpose model is not efficient. In this thesis, data had collected from MFN (Modular Finance) financial news, this data is scraped and persisted in the database and price indices are collected from Bloomberg terminal. Comprehensive study and tests are conducted to find the state-of-art results for classifying the sentiments using traditional classifiers like Naive Bayes and transfer learning models like BERT and FinBERT. FinBERT outperform the Naive Bayes and BERT classifier. The time-series indices for sentiments are built, and their correlations with price indices calculated using Pearson correlation. Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) is used to check if both the time series data are stationary. Finally, the statistical hypothesis Granger causality test determines if the sentiment time series helps predict price. This result shows that there is a significant correlation and causal relation between sentiments and price.

Videogames have been historically known for causing negative mood states in players, but there is still more research to be done about the potential for videogames to alleviate these induced negative mood states. Using an online repeated measures survey design, participants were asked to play a game with an impossible difficulty curve unbeknownst to them. They were then instructed to play one of three casual videogames (CVGs). It was hypothesized that increased levels of competency and autonomy would lead to a decrease in participants’ negative mood state as per Self-Determination Theory. In addition, the act of playing CVGs was also predicted to decrease participants’ negative mood state as per Mood Management Theory. To test for this, participants were asked questions regarding their feelings of competency, autonomy, and overall mood state throughout the experiment. Support was not found for competency and autonomy helping alleviate negative mood states, but support was found for CVGs and their healing potential towards negative mood states. The implications of these results as well as the potential for future research is discussed.

The previous chapters described in detail the literature, theory and research on Co-alignment, RBV and SHRM that was the basis for the development of a construct for the conceptualization of HPWP in the casual theme restaurant sector of the US hospitality industry for management. Firms able to implement such HPWP systems possessing universality, i.e. complementary internal fit, have been shown to increase the intangible value of their human capital (employees) and create greater economic value (Delery, 1998). This study used the co-alignment principle in conjunction with concepts in SHRM and RBV to develop a theory for a HPWP system for casual theme restaurants in the US, which is named a High Performance People System (HPPS). The co-alignment model for hospitality organizations which is the foundation of the theoretical model for this research (Olsen, West, and Tse;1998) describes the relationship between four key constructs, i.e. the environment, strategy choice, firm structure, and firm performance. Briefly, the four constructs in the model must be in alignment with each other in order for the firm to produce the greatest value for its stakeholders. Co-alignment theory purports that, "if the firm is able to identify the opportunities that exist in the forces driving change, invest in competitive methods that take advantage of these opportunities, and allocate resources to those that create the greatest value, the financial results desired by owners and investors have a much better chance of being achieved" (Olsen et al. 1998, p.2). SHRM researchers have been advocates of the theory that supports the causal relationship between HRM practices, sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) and firm performance. Several strategic human resource management researchers such as, Cappelli & Singh (1992),Wright & McMahan (1992), Pfeffer (1994), Lado & Wison (1995), Huselid (1995), Jackson & Schuler (1995),Becker & Gerhart (1996), Delany & Huselid (1996), Boxall (1998), Pfeffer (1998), Schuler & Jackson (2000), Ulrich & Beatty (2001), Lepak & Snell (2002), Hartog (2004) and others have directly or indirectly made attempts to theorize the effects of single or multiple human resource management variables on firm performance. These efforts have led to the incremental development of the strategic human resource management literature that stresses the relationships between the HRM practices, SCA and firm performance. There is an emergent body of evidence demonstrating that "the methods used by an organization to manage its human resources can have a substantial impact on many organizationally relevant outcomes" (Delery, 1998, p. 1). Convoluting the research on HPWP is incongruity among researchers on the micro HRM practices which are included in the SHRM system; there is little concurrence among scholars with respect to specifically which human resource practices should be incorporated (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Rogers & Wright, 1998; Chadwick & Cappelli, 1999). RBV is one of the ten schools of thought in the field of management theory (Mintzberg, 2000) and is predicated on the concept that in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage and produce value for the firm, individual policies or practices produce the greatest results when they operate in a complex system that is not easily imitated (Barney, 1995). Resources are the "physical things a firm buys, leases or produces for its own use or the people hired on terms that make them effectively part of the firm" (Penrose, 1959: 67). Wernerfelt (1984) defines a firm's resources as "tangible or intangible assets which are tied semi-permanently to the firm" (p. 172). Barney (1991) further suggested that resources which can be used to create a SCA must have value, rareness, inimitability and substitutability The research focused on the discovery of the components of a HPWP system construct in the US casual theme restaurant segment for operating managers and the performance metrics used to judge their effectiveness. An exploratory study, in part using the Delphi method, serves as the overall research approach. A cross section of restaurant industry experts including company executives, consultants, academics and investors/owners contributed to the study. The outcome is a list of HRM work practices that are common to the casual theme restaurant industry and performance metrics. Based on prior empirical work the study started with 14 HRM work practice dimensions (See Table 3.1) and 3 performance measurements of productivity, turnover and financial performance (Huselid, 1995; Huselid & Becker, 1995; Delery & Doty, 1996; Becker & Huselid, 1996; Huselid & Becker, 1997; Hartog, 2004). These dimensions and performance metrics were presented to the panel of expert's making up the pilot study group as a starting point in the development of the HPWP system construct for the casual themed restaurant industry. After compiling the results of the pilot study and pretesting the survey instrument, the first Delphi survey (see Appendix 3) and a subsequent reminder were sent out electronically to the preselected Delphi participants for the study. A consensus on the research questions was not reached from the first-round survey according to the protocol Therefore, the second round was administered which provide opportunity for participants to change their position to help the group reach a consensus. Since consensus was reached according to the protocol (see tables 4.9, 4.12 & 4.13), the Delphi was concluded at this point. In summary, figure 1.1 put forth a conceptual model to clarify the relationships between the above mentioned schools of thought and firm performance. Figure 1.2 presented a working theoretical model which expounds on the relationships between the key concepts in the conceptual model and firm performance. Finally, figure 5.1 displays the results and the relationships of the study which methodically confirms the components of a HPPS for unit level managers, and identifies appropriate evaluation criteria for determining the performance of HPPS in the US casual restaurant market. / Ph. D.

The Boston accent is one of the most famous accents in the United States and is known for its non-rhoticity, which essentially means that Bostonians do not normally pronounce their r’s after vowels. While most Boston locals would tell you to ‘pahk the cah ova hea’ when you arrive in the city, not every Bostonian has the same level of non-rhoticity; this variation is due to a number of different factors, but arguably one of the most interesting factors, which this paper focuses on, is gender. This study looks into how Boston non-rhoticity differs between males and females, as well the theories that explain these potential differences. This is done by collecting and analyzing the speech of Boston locals, following two previous studies on the same topic. In addition to gender, types of speech and other social factors are also analyzed. The biggest finding of this study is that there is a statistically significant difference in non-rhoticity between males and females, with females pronouncing more r’s, which supports one previous study and opposes another, and also supports the linguistic theory that women tend to exhibit more standardized speech than men.

This thesis investigates how various driver signals, signals that a truck driver can interact with, influences fuel consumption and what are the optimal values of these signals in various traffic conditions. More specifically, the objective is to estimate good driver behavior in various traffic conditions and compare bad driver behavior in similar situations to see how performing a specific driver action, changing a driver signal from the bad driver value to the corresponding good driver value impacts the fuel consumption. The result is an AI-based algorithm that utilizes the transformer model architecture to estimate good driver behavior, based on environmental describing signals, as well as fuel consumption. Utilizing these, causal inference is used to estimate how much fuel can be saved by switching a driver signal from a bad driver value to a good driver value.