Considering the importance of routine execution within firm replication, exploring the balance between organisational routine development in terms of variations and routine constraints of this variation, with the goal of allowing for improvements without deviating too far from the original routine that makes it a success. Aim: Shed light onto how routine variations are managed in the face of the two extremes; no routine development at all and too much routine development. Methodology: This qualitative case study was conducted within two IKEA stores, the iconic furniture retailer from Älmhult, Sweden. The in-store goods flow process was the platform for the study. The study involved participant observation, as well as 13 (semi-structured) interviews with IKEA co-workers on operational and managerial level to identify mechanism for balancing drift in organisational routines. Findings: This study has developed a conceptual model visualizing a hierarchy of mechanisms composed by artifacts, embededdness and identity that IKEA stores use to curb drift in organisational routines.

Thesis advisor: Ryan A. Chahrour / The dissertation studies the primary sources of business-cycle fluctuations and their interaction with uncertainty and financial frictions. In my work, I examine the degree to which changes in uncertainty and financial conditions can be independent drivers of economic fluctuations; I study the sources of boom-bust cycles and whether they are linkedto credit market sentiments; and I ask how financial frictions affect economic fluctuations in terms of prices and quantities. In "Financial and Uncertainty Shocks", I separately identify financial and uncertainty shocks using a novel SVAR procedure and discuss their distinct monetary policy implications. The procedure relies on the qualitatively different responses of corporate cash holdings: after a financial shock, firms draw down their cash reserves as they lose access to external finance, while uncertainty shocks drive up cash holdings for precautionary reasons. Although both financial and uncertainty shocks are contractionary, my results show that the former are inflationary while the latter generate deflation. I rationalize this pattern in a New-Keynesian model: after a financial shock, firms increase prices to raise current liquidity; after an uncertainty shock, firms cut prices in response to falling demand. These distinct channels have stark monetary policy implications: conditional on uncertainty shocks the divine coincidence applies, while in case of financial shocks the central bank can stabilize inflation only at the cost of more unstable output fluctuations. In "What are the Sources of Boom-Bust Cycles?", joint with Vito Cormun, we provide a synthesis of two major views on economic fluctuations. One view maintains that expansions and recessions arise from the interchange of positive and negative persistent exogenous shocks to fundamentals. This is the conventional view that gave rise to the profusion of shocks used in modern dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. In contrast, a second view, which we call the endogenous cycles view, holds that business cycle fluctuations are due to forces that are internal to the economy and that endogenously favor recurrent periods of boom followed by a bust. In this environment, cycles can occur after small perturbations of the long run equilibrium. We find empirical evidence pointing at the coexistence of both views. In particular, we find that the cyclical behaviour of economic aggregates is due in part to strong internal mechanisms that generate boom-bust phenomena in response to small changes in expectations, and in part to the interchange of positive and negative persistent fundamental shocks. Motivated by our findings, we build a theory that unifies the dominant paradigm with the endogenous cycles approach. Our theory suggests that recessions and expansions are intimately related phenomena, and that understanding the nature of an expansion, whether it is driven by fundamentals or by beliefs, is a first order issue for policy makers whose mandate is to limit the occurrance of inefficient economic fluctuations. In "COVID-19 and Credit Constraints'', joint with Pierluigi Balduzzi, Emanuele Brancati, and Fabio Schiantarelli, we investigate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role played by credit constraints in the transmission mechanism, using a novel survey of expectations and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firms revise downward their expectations for sales, orders, employment, and investment, while prices are expected to increase at a faster rate, with geographical and sectoral heterogeneity in the size of the effects. Credit constraints amplify the effects on factor demand and sales of the COVID-19 generated shocks. Credit-constrained firms also expect to charge higher prices, relative to unconstrained firms. The search for and availability of liquidity is a key determinant of firms' plans. Finally, both supply and demand shocks play a role in shaping firms' expectations and plans, with supply shocks being slightly more important in the aggregate. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This study is aimed at uncovering the capital constraints of emerging agribusinesses in South Africa. The goal of the research is to provide South African policy makers, programme administrators and development practitioners with information to make sound policy and programme decisions for the reduction of such constraints. The research also aims to make potential entrepreneurs aware of the importance of considering capital constraints to the start-up and growth of their businesses. This research was informed by the principles of qualitative research and is both exploratory and interpretative in nature. The research process comprised of two phases. The first phase constituted a sample of five experts from the finance-enabling environment (financial institutions); and the second phase was made up of twenty start-up entrepreneurs in the emerging agribusiness industry. The research found that barriers to accessing finance are largely due to lack of collateral, a poor credit record, inadequate business skills and communication problems between financiers and entrepreneurs. On the issue of what role the finance-enabling environment should play in reducing barriers to finance, findings from the research suggested more risk-taking by the financiers, relaxing the stringent credit assessment criteria, increasing the risk appetite and providing more for impairments or bad debts. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Spencer H. Harrison / Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / Through an inductive, qualitative study of individuals developing new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, this dissertation builds theory on how creative workers manage the emotions that arise from forecasting the outcomes of implementing their creations. I find that, in a context that illuminates the danger of implementing certain types of creative ideas, creative workers forecast both positive and negative outcomes arising from implementing their work, which elicits ambivalence. My work indicates that how creative workers respond to this ambivalence affects whether they impose constraints on their work as it unfolds. First, some individuals may proceed without constraints because they have resolved their ambivalence by amplifying their positive thoughts and feelings toward their work. Informants who exhibited this pattern created psychological distance (Lewin, 1951; Trope & Liberman, 2003) from the potential negative effects of their work by anchoring on the present moment and/or emphasizing potential positive outcomes. However, the majority of informants exhibited a novel “redistribution” response to ambivalence, whereby they committed to their work (Brickman et al., 1987; Pratt & Rosa, 2003; Pratt & Pradies, 2011) and shifted from a strengthening of negative thoughts and feelings toward a strengthening of positive thoughts and feelings through the use of self-imposed constraints. My work suggests that, although self-imposed constraints do not eliminate negative thoughts and feelings altogether, applying these self-determined boundaries enables individuals to reduce ambivalence and engage (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002) more fully in their work. In addition to inducing a process model that encompasses these dynamics, I present the categories and types of self-imposed constraints that I have induced. These self-imposed constraints are not mutually exclusive, and each serves one of three broader purposes: developing a sense that one’s creation will have a positive moral valence, that one will be able to control his or her creation, or that one may trust in the quality of his or her creation. This dissertation extends theory on the role of prospective thought processes in creative work and shows how constraints, though often seen as impediments to creativity, can be used proactively by creative workers to manage the darker emotions and thought processes that have largely been overlooked in prior research. This work also contributes a novel response to ambivalence, redistribution, which entails approaching potentially harmful creative work in a heedful manner. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

Plant efficiency and profitability are becoming increasingly important and operating at the most optimal point is a necessity. The definition of proper operational bounds on output variables such as product quality, production rates etc., is critical for plant optimisation. The use of operational bounds that do not lie within the region of the output operational space of the plant can result in the control system attempting to operate the plant in a non attainable region. The use of operational bounds that lie within the bounds of the output operational space of the plant and if the output operational space is non convex can also result in the control system attempting to operate the plant in a non attainable region. This results in non feasible optimisation. A numerical intersection algorithm has been developed that identifies the feasible region of operation known as the desired operational space. This is accomplished by finding the intersection of the required operational space and the achievable output operational space. The algorithm was simulated and evaluated on a case study under various scenarios. These scenarios included specifying operational bounds that lie partially within the bounds of the achievable operational space and also specifying operational bounds that lie within the bounds of the operational space which was non convex. The results yielded a desired operational space with bounds that were guaranteed to lie within an attainable region on the output operational space. The desired operational space bounds were also simplified into a rectangle with high and low limits that can be readily used in control systems. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Chemical Engineering / unrestricted

Predation is known to have a significant effect on life history, eliciting predictable responses. Physical constraints of body shape and size may also limit life history divergence. There may be a trade-off between adapting to predation, and limits placed by constraints that decrease life history divergence. We test this idea in the Costa Rican livebearing fish Alfaro cultratus. This species has a keeled ventral surface and does not develop a distended abdomen when pregnant like other livebearers. We describe the life history of A. cultratus in 20 different populations across predator and non-predator environments. We found significantly lower reproductive allotment in predator environments relative to non-predator environments, but no significant difference in female or male size at maturity, number of offspring, or size of offspring. We found that A. cultratus exhibit isometric patterns of allocation for clutch dry mass in relation to female dry mass in predator and non-predator environments. We suggest that body shape constraints in this species limit the life history divergence we typically see in predator and non-predator environments in other species.

Actively-managed funds have recently come under fire as it has been determined that they consistently underperform passive funds. Benchmarking, and the constraints placed on actively-managed funds, are standard practices within the industry, but research suggests that these constraints negatively affect fund performance. This research paper explores the effectiveness of actively-managed funds in relation to their benchmark indices, in terms of tracking errors and weighting constraints. This is done by qualifying the effect of these constraints on the performance of hypothetically constructed portfolios in relation to the FTSE / JSE Top 40 Index. The results are presented graphically and show that tracking error limits did, as expected, limit the possible upside returns of these funds. It was found however, that the tracking error constraints had a much greater effect on limiting downside risk than they had on limiting upside effects. Weighting limitations did not have a single universal effect on the simulated portfolios’ performance but affect performance in conjunction with tracking error limits. It was concluded that for the hypothetically constructed portfolios for the period studied, constraints did not affect the possible upside return to such a magnitude that the constraints themselves could account for the underperformance of actively managed funds and they had an overall positive effect on performance. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

The design field of landscape architecture has yet to witness the broad adoption of online education, despite multiple studies that have demonstrated the efficacy of online education in design fields, or distributed design education (DDE), in teaching design. While previous research has focused on the structural, institutional, social, and pedagogical aspects of DDE, little work has focused specifically on barriers to the adoption of DDE from a faculty perspective. This dissertation reports the results of a meta-synthesis of the current literature on DDE and a national Delphi study. A list of the identified constraints of DDE was created through the use of the meta-synthesis. This list of constraints was subsequently used in the creation of the Delphi study to identify the critical barriers to the adoption of online education in landscape architecture. There were 24 barriers assessed during the Delphi study, 7 of which were identified as critical barriers. Findings indicate that faculty remain skeptical of the precedents reported in the literature, do not receive adequate compensation for online course development, and have significant concerns about the ability of online education to replicate the social environment of the design studio. A comparison of the ranked barriers and the most commonly researched constraints suggests that the current research on DDE does not adequately address the concerns of faculty.

Complete coverage relies on a path planning algorithm that will move one or more robots, including the actuator, sensor, or body of the robot, over the entire environment. Complete coverage of an unknown environment is used in applications like automated vacuum cleaning, carpet cleaning, lawn mowing, chemical or radioactive spill detection and cleanup, and humanitarian de-mining. The environment is typically decomposed into smaller areas and then assigned to individual robots to cover. The robots typically use the Boustrophedon motion to cover the cells. The location and size of obstacles in the environment are unknown beforehand. An online algorithm using sensor-based coverage with unlimited communication is typically used to plan the path for the robots. For certain applications, like robotic lawn mowing, a pattern might be desirable over a random irregular pattern for the coverage operation. Assigning directional constraints to the cells can help achieve the desired pattern if the path planning part of the algorithm takes the directional constraints into account. The goal of this dissertation is to adapt the distributed coverage algorithm with unrestricted communication developed by Rekleitis et al. (2008) so that it can be used to solve the complete coverage problem with directional constraints in unknown environments while minimizing repeat coverage. It is a sensor-based approach that constructs a cellular decomposition while covering the unknown environment. The new algorithm takes directional constraints into account during the path planning phase. An implementation of the algorithm was evaluated in simulation software and the results from these experiments were compared against experiments conducted by Rekleitis et al. (2008) and with an implementation of their distributed coverage algorithm. The results of this study confirm that directional constraints can be added to the complete coverage algorithm using multiple robots without any significant impact on performance. The high-level goals of complete coverage were still achieved. The work was evenly distributed between the robots to reduce the time required to cover the cells.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20653号 / 経博第553号 / 新制||経||282(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 矢野 剛, 教授 劉 徳強, 教授 三重野 文晴, 准教授 高野 久紀 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM