For a little less than twenty years, researchers have worked on integrating Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA). Several contributions have been done by integrating DEA with different MCDA methods to bring this field to what it is today. After studying the course of Multi-Criteria Data Envelopment Analysis (MCDEA) integration through numerous works, the future of such an attempt can be questionable. For this aim, the PROMETHEE method in MCDA has been integrated with DEA. To the best of our knowledge, this synergy has been done for the first time in this thesis.Two synergies have been conducted: Using PROMETHEE in DEA and vice versa. The first contribution applies PROMETHEE in DEA to develop a new weight restricted DEA model. This new model has two main characteristics: more discrimination power between efficient units and engaging a priori information of decision makers in DEA. The second contribution uses both DEA and PROMETHEE to propose a new ranking technique. DEA is employed to generate a pairwise comparison matrix to be used in PROMETHEE for the purpose of ranking alternatives. The last contribution uses DEA in PROMETHEE. It presents a new algorithm to propose weights in the context of the PROMETHEE II method based on DEA. Furthermore, these two methods can be used in parallel. Comparing the results obtained from DEA and PROMETHEE in evaluating the performance of units enriches the analysis of decision-making problem by confirming the robustness of answers. The purpose of this integration is to provide some tools to help decision makers in the process of evaluating the performance of alternatives and analyzing the multicriteria decision-making problems. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Abstract Increasing information systems (IS) security breaches require investments in terms of IS security techniques/practices or personnel. Prior research on IS security investment has provided economic models based on neoclassical economics to assess how much to invest in IS security. These models assume that the goal of IS security investment is only benefit maximization, and that all of the actors involved are unbiased rational actors with complete information. It is argued in this thesis that these prior models for IS security investment are flawed for two reasons. First, benefit maximization is not an appropriate goal for IS security investment, because the benefits and costs of IS security investment cannot be reliably calculated. Second, decision makers are not unbiased rational actors, because they do not have enough information to make IS security investment decisions. To address these concerns, this thesis outlines a framework for IS security investment, which is based on behavioral economics. This framework makes new assumptions about IS security investment decision makers, and redefines the contextual nature of IS security investment. As an example of how to operationalize this framework in IS research, this thesis examines IS security investment decision-making by using a theoretical model drawn from reputational herding theory. A field study for empirical testing of the model was conducted, which involved surveying 88 information security experts in Finland. The results of the field study not only confirm the new framework, but also identify several motives that strongly predict IS security investment. In this thesis the assumptions proposed for the framework have also been also tested in a different research setting: the unauthorized uploading behavior of digital goods. This study involves 220 respondents, and the findings suggest that the proposed assumptions for the framework are also applicable in that new research setting. Overall, this doctoral thesis contributes to IS research by providing a framework to increase the overall understanding of how IS security managers make decisions with regard to IS security investment; moreover, this thesis presents empirically-grounded implications for how practitioners can improve the quality of their IS security investments. / Tiivistelmä Jatkuvasti lisääntyvät tietoturvaloukkaukset edellyttävät investointeja tietoturvatekniikoihin/käytänteisiin tai henkilöstöön. Aikaisempi tietoturvainvestointitutkimus on kehittänyt neoklassiseen taloustieteeseen perustuvia taloudellisia malleja tietoturvainvestointien määrän arvioimiseksi. Nämä mallit olettavat, että tietoturvainvestointien tavoitteena on ainoastaan hyötyjen maksimointi ja että kaikki toimijat ovat täydellisen tiedon pohjalta toimivia, puolueettomia ja rationaalisia. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitetään, että aikaisemmat tietoturvainvestointimallit ovat puutteellisia kahdesta syystä. Yhtäältä hyödyn maksimointi ei sovellu hyvin tietoturvainvestointien tavoitteeksi, koska sen hyötyjä ja kustannuksia ei voida luotettavasti laskea. Toisaalta päätöksentekijät eivät ole puolueettomia rationaalisia toimijoita, koska heillä ei ole käytettävissään tarpeeksi tietoa tietoturvainvestointipäätösten tekemiseksi. Nämä asiat huomioidaan tässä väitöskirjassa kehittämällä käyttäytymistaloustieteeseen perustuva tietoturvainvestointien viitekehys. Viitekehys esittää uusia olettamuksia tietoturvainvestointeja tekevistä päätöksentekijöistä ja tietoturvainvestointien kontekstuaalisesta luonteesta Väitöskirjassa havainnollistetaan kehitetyn viitekehyksen soveltamisesta tietojärjestelmätieteen tutkimuksessa tarkastelemalla tietoturvainvestointeihin liittyvää päätöksentekoa maineeseen perustuvan laumateorian (reputational herding theory) pohjalta laaditun teoreettisen mallin näkökulmasta. Kenttätutkimuksessa mallin testaamiseksi empiirisesti laadittiin kysely, johon vastasi 88 tietoturva-asiantuntijaa Suomessa. Kenttätutkimuksen tulokset sekä vastasivat uutta viitekehystä että toivat esiin useita tietoturvainvestointeja vahvasti ennustavia motiiveja. Väitöskirjassa kehitetyn viitekehyksen olettamuksia testattiin myös toisentyyppisessä tutkimusasetelmassa: digitaalisten hyödykkeiden luvaton lataaminen. Tähän tutkimukseen osallistui 220 vastaajaa, ja löydökset osoittavat esitettyjen olettamusten olevan hyödynnettävissä myös tässä uudessa tutkimusasetelmassa. Kaiken kaikkiaan tämän väitöskirjan kontribuutio tietojärjestelmätieteelle on sen tarjoama viitekehys, joka lisää ymmärrystä siitä, kuinka tietoturvapäälliköt tekevät tietoturvainvestointeihin liittyviä päätöksiä. Väitöskirja esittää myös empiiriseen tutkimukseen pohjautuvia käytännön implikaatioita tietoturvainvestointien laadun parantamiseksi.

Nowadays, municipal solid waste (MSW) has got great attention from world-wide decision makers in the field of waste management. When they are making a MSW management decision, there are lots of factors that may influence their final decision for picking up an optimal alternative. In order to find out the influence factors in municipal solid waste management decision-making, incineration and anaerobic fermentation techniques are selected as example for comparison. Literature study and interview are used for collecting theoretical and practical information respectively. A list of theoretical influence factors is created, which integrates environmental, social and financial aspects of incineration and anaerobic fermentation. This list can help the decision-maker to have a better choice when they are choosing an alternative from MSW management methods. Practical information is achieved by interviewing the City of Stockholm Waste Management Administration. Differences are revealed between theory and the Stockholm case. The priority of each influence factor is discussed in this paper. Base on the decision between theoretical factors and the Stockholm case, the result shows that the theoretical factors are not completely sufficient for the practical use in the city of Stockholm. The list of theoretical influence factors should be extended by integrating more factors and more MSW management alternatives to meet different requirements in practical cases. There is no clear definition on which factor has the highest degree of influence for the decision-maker. The priority of influence factors is depended on the local condition and subjective choice of decision-maker. / www.ima.kth.se

Whilst influencer marketing has become a more common practice for decision makers within the field of influencer marketing, qualitative measurements are yet intangible and hard to measure, hence, requiring standardization. Recent scholars suggest that the phenomenon of influencer marketing have drastically changed over a short period of time, and there are reasons to believe that it is still changing. Therefore, relevant scholars have suggested that further research on the subject is of highest importance to the society as well as for brand/ company perspectives. The authors of this thesis have therefore focused on the most crucial elements that needs further research within the field of influencer marketing. These elements are elaborated by previous research, however, there are inconsistencies that needs to be reviewed and clarified. Although, influencer marketing requires more research in general, the authors of this thesis have decided to focus on the Swedish market, to understand and display the common strategies used within influencer marketing today, andpotentially foresee future strategies and trends.Inconsistency among previous research exists in terms of influencer selection, influencer evaluation and disclosure strategies. Additionally, there is a further need of elaborating on preferred relationships between brands/ companies and influencers, as well as preferred traits and characteristics brands/ companies seeks within an influencer. Therefore, the research question states; How do decision makers within the field of influencer marketing select andevaluate influencers; andhow are the different disclosure strategies used?Based on theoretical books, scientific articles, and journals the authors of this thesis have chosen suggested approaches to evaluate and analyse the data gathered. The primary data itself was gathered through semi-structured interviews consisting of six respondents. The respondents operate in different industries, but all are decision makers within the field of influencer marketing. For convenience, the authors of this have categorized the respondents based on size of company and whether their main focus are products or services.The findings of the thesis are presented in a model where the most common practices are displayed. The result will provide the reader with cause of action within the quantitative and qualitative approaches one can take. It has been established that qualitative approaches are becoming more common, contributing to a need of a trustworthy evaluation of such subjective approaches. In addition, the model presents the disclosure strategies used by the respondents in this study, hence, providing an understanding of how disclosure can be used to prevent certain issues. Evidence also points at missing opportunities regarding disclosure strategies. Furthermore, influencer characteristics and relationship approaches will be discussed. This thesis provides the most common approaches used by decision makers within the field of influencer marketing, especially when selecting and evaluating influencers. However, there is a need for further research regarding selection and evaluation of qualitative approaches as well as for disclosure strategies.

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Purpose: The objective of this master's thesis is to investigate the factors that trigger the accountants to assume the diverse roles in Swedish SMEs within various business contexts.  Theoretical perspective: To satisfy the aim of this thesis we relied on role theory, organizational demography and socioemotional wealth.   Methodology: This thesis employs a deductive approach along with a quantitative methodology. A survey was conducted to gather data, resulting in a sample of 82 respondents who met the predefined criteria for this research.  The collected data was subjected to several statistical tests, such as the Spearman correlation matrix, multiple linear regression analysis, and principal component analysis. Findings: This thesis’s findings challenge the assumptions that firm age, family/ non-family CEO and accountant, experience, level of family engagement and ownership are the primary triggers for the beancounter, advisory, decision-maker and protector roles of the accountants. Instead, the thesis reveals a more nuanced perspective, indicating that these roles may be clustered and encompassed within a larger mixed role, which is referred to as co-leading-power role. This new understanding suggests a need to reevaluate and expand the understanding of the accountant's responsibilities within the organizational context. By acknowledging the existence of the co-leading-power role, we can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of accountants' contributions and their impact on organizational outcomes.

The focus of this dissertation is on improving decision-maker trade-offs and the development of a new constrained methodology for multiple response surface optimization. There are three key components of the research: development of the necessary conditions and assumptions associated with constrained multiple response surface optimization methodologies; development of a new constrained multiple response surface methodology; and demonstration of the new method. The necessary conditions for and assumptions associated with constrained multiple response surface optimization methods were identified and found to be less restrictive than requirements previously described in the literature. The conditions and assumptions required for a constrained method to find the most preferred non-dominated solution are to generate non-dominated solutions and to generate solutions consistent with decision-maker preferences among the response objectives. Additionally, if a Lagrangian constrained method is used, the preservation of convexity is required in order to be able to generate all non-dominated solutions. The conditions required for constrained methods are significantly fewer than those required for combined methods. Most of the existing constrained methodologies do not incorporate any provision for a decision-maker to explicitly determine the relative importance of the multiple objectives. Research into the larger area of multi-criteria decision-making identified the interactive surrogate worth trade-off algorithm as a potential methodology that would provide that capability in multiple response surface optimization problems. The ISWT algorithm uses an ε-constraint formulation to guarantee a non-dominated solution, and then interacts with the decision-maker after each iteration to determine the preference of the decision-maker in trading-off the value of the primary response for an increase in value of a secondary response. The current research modified the ISWT algorithm to develop a new constrained multiple response surface methodology that explicitly accounts for decision-maker preferences. The new Modified ISWT (MISWT) method maintains the essence of the original method while taking advantage of the specific properties of multiple response surface problems to simplify the application of the method. The MISWT is an accessible computer-based implementation of the ISWT. Five test problems from the multiple response surface optimization literature were used to demonstrate the new methodology. It was shown that this methodology can handle a variety of types and numbers of responses and independent variables. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the methodology can be successful using a priori information from the decision-maker about bounds or targets or can use the extreme values obtained from the region of operability. In all cases, the methodology explicitly considered decision-maker preferences and provided non-dominated solutions. The contribution of this method is the removal of implicit assumptions and includes the decision-maker in explicit trade-offs among multiple objectives or responses.

O presente trabalho apresenta uma proposta metodológica para se determinar a pegada hídrica ecotoxicológica (PHE) de produtos em uma perspectiva de ACV, dentro de uma abordagem crítica sobre o método. Cenários são construídos na forma de um estudo piloto de aplicação da metodologia para o etanol hidratado produzido por uma determinada Usina no Brasil e utilizado como combustível em carros a álcool ou carros flex. O trabalho também sugere que a PHE ou WEF (water ecotoxicity footprint ), na forma de um indicador, sirva de parâmetro tanto para o setor produtivo quanto para o mercado consumidor dentro do processo de tomada de decisão . O setor produtivo poderá utilizar o citado indicador dentro de um programa de metas de redução do nível de ecotoxicidade aquática de seu produto enquanto que, para o consumidor final, o conhecimento da PHE na forma de selo informativo servirá de alavanca rumo à evolução sustentável de nossa civilização que usará o seu poder de escolha na hora de adquirir determinado produto. Dentro da perspectiva de ACV, foram estudadas e inseridas formas de avaliação de impacto, no ponto médio, a nível local e regional com o uso de ferramentas de georeferenciamento. Na intenção de facilitar o uso da ACV no Brasil, o estudo estabelece parâmetros que tornam viável a obtenção de um indicador passível de comparação. Políticas Públicas poderão ser formadas com a possibilidade de incentivar a identificação e mitigação da ecotoxicidade aquática ao longo da cadeia de suprimentos do setor produtivo.. / This work presents a methodology to determine water ecotoxicity footprint of products in a perspective of LCA within a critical approach to the method. Scenarios are constructed in the form of a pilot study of application of the methodology for hydrous ethanol produced by a given plant in Brazil and used as fuel in flex cars. The work also suggests that the water ecotoxicity footprint, as an indicator, can be used as a parameter for both: the productive sector as well as for theend consumer within the decision-making process. The productive sector can use the cited indicator in a program targeting for reduction in aquatic ecotoxicity of your product while for the end consumer, knowledge of water ecotoxicity footprint in the form of a informative stamp will leverage towards sustainable development of our civilization that uses the power of choice when purchasing a product. From the perspective of LCA, were studied and included forms of impact assessment, at the midpoint, in local and regional level with the use of geo-referencing tools. With the intention of facilitating the use of LCA in Brazil, this study establishes criteria that make possible the comparison . Public policies can be formed with the possibility of encouraging the identification and mitigation of aquatic ecotoxicity along the supply chain of the productive sector..

O presente trabalho apresenta uma proposta metodológica para se determinar a pegada hídrica ecotoxicológica (PHE) de produtos em uma perspectiva de ACV, dentro de uma abordagem crítica sobre o método. Cenários são construídos na forma de um estudo piloto de aplicação da metodologia para o etanol hidratado produzido por uma determinada Usina no Brasil e utilizado como combustível em carros a álcool ou carros flex. O trabalho também sugere que a PHE ou WEF (water ecotoxicity footprint ), na forma de um indicador, sirva de parâmetro tanto para o setor produtivo quanto para o mercado consumidor dentro do processo de tomada de decisão . O setor produtivo poderá utilizar o citado indicador dentro de um programa de metas de redução do nível de ecotoxicidade aquática de seu produto enquanto que, para o consumidor final, o conhecimento da PHE na forma de selo informativo servirá de alavanca rumo à evolução sustentável de nossa civilização que usará o seu poder de escolha na hora de adquirir determinado produto. Dentro da perspectiva de ACV, foram estudadas e inseridas formas de avaliação de impacto, no ponto médio, a nível local e regional com o uso de ferramentas de georeferenciamento. Na intenção de facilitar o uso da ACV no Brasil, o estudo estabelece parâmetros que tornam viável a obtenção de um indicador passível de comparação. Políticas Públicas poderão ser formadas com a possibilidade de incentivar a identificação e mitigação da ecotoxicidade aquática ao longo da cadeia de suprimentos do setor produtivo.. / This work presents a methodology to determine water ecotoxicity footprint of products in a perspective of LCA within a critical approach to the method. Scenarios are constructed in the form of a pilot study of application of the methodology for hydrous ethanol produced by a given plant in Brazil and used as fuel in flex cars. The work also suggests that the water ecotoxicity footprint, as an indicator, can be used as a parameter for both: the productive sector as well as for theend consumer within the decision-making process. The productive sector can use the cited indicator in a program targeting for reduction in aquatic ecotoxicity of your product while for the end consumer, knowledge of water ecotoxicity footprint in the form of a informative stamp will leverage towards sustainable development of our civilization that uses the power of choice when purchasing a product. From the perspective of LCA, were studied and included forms of impact assessment, at the midpoint, in local and regional level with the use of geo-referencing tools. With the intention of facilitating the use of LCA in Brazil, this study establishes criteria that make possible the comparison . Public policies can be formed with the possibility of encouraging the identification and mitigation of aquatic ecotoxicity along the supply chain of the productive sector..

<p>Floods are common natural disaster occurring in most parts of the world. This results in damage to human life and deterioration of environment. There have been immense uses of technology to mitigate measures of flood disaster i.e. structurally and non-structurally. Undoubtedly, structural measures are very expensive and time consuming which involves physical work like construction of dams, reservoirs, bridges, channel improvement, river diversion and other embankments to keep floods away from people. Whereas non-structural measures is concerned with planning like flood forecasting and warning, flood plain zoning, relief and rehabilitation for reducing the risk of flood damage to keep people away from floods. Thus, non-structural measures involve analysis, planning providing spatial information on maps with high accuracy in less time. Non-structural measures can help decision maker to plan an effective emergency response towards flood disaster. A one of the good way to plan non-structural measures is to analyze impact of flood in the flood prone areas. The thesis tries to analyze impact of flood on environment along the demarcated flood prone areas of Lake Roxen and Lake Glan in Östergötland County, Sweden. The thesis also proposes how to use current flood information during flood emergency utilizing geographical information system. This provides spatial information for area in the flood zone for assessment regarding flood vulnerability.</p><p>Using map overlay analysis in GIS software (ArcGIS); flood prone areas and topographic data along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan were digitized from PDF maps. Thus, the thesis work is an effort to analyze impact of flood when areas along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan are flooded. ESRI® GIS software Arc Map 9 and Arc View 3.3 is used for data preparation, integrating, analyzing, and spatial data with attribute table information. Finally, to show GIS can be an effective tool for development of flood emergency system as a part of disaster preparedness by the decision makers.</p>