Service-Dominant (S-D) Logics are the basis of contemporary economic activities. Based on this concept, Information System department should transform its role from a technical supporter to a service provider. S-D Logics highlight the importance to build up a successful value-cocreated service systems. This implies that, in addition to technical capabilities and business knowledge, IS department should possess certain capabilities to collaborate with other functional departments to delivery maximum value. The purpose of this research is to explore possible collaborative capabilities that IS personnel should possess, besides the technical skills and business know-how. This research adopted exploratory case study method. Through in-depth interview with developers and users of three complex information system development(ISD) projects, a total of 14 collaborative capabilities that IS personnel need were identified. The relationships among those capabilities as well as their impacts on performance were also identified. Implications of the research results to practitioners and academia are also provided.

The Service-Dominant Logic concept has replaced the traditional Product-Dominant Logic to be the mainstream of contemporary business activities. Based on this concept, value creation is viewed as a co-produced result instead of the responsibility of producer only. Through applying Service-Dominant Logic to information systems development and maintenance process, one can conclude that users should play a more active role as a co-producers. Past user participate studies largely focused on system development stage only and only little attention has been paid the maintenance process. Given the importance of maintenance in system life cycle, the main purpose of this study is to understand the factors that drive users to engage in value co-production. I adopted case study method and analyzed antecedents of co-production behavior performed by users. According to the found results, I suggest that familiarity toward system, source of demand for services, and system complexity are three potential factors that may lead to various co-production behaviors. The findings of this study can serve as critical reference for future studies. Practitioners can also be benefited by knowing how to enhance user co-production in the maintenance stage of system life cycle. Keywords: Service-Dominant Logic, System Maintenance, User Participation, Value Co-production, Case Study

This thesis aims comparative analysis of the state of the art shot boundary detection algorithms. The major methods that have been used for shot boundary detection such as pixel intensity based, histogram-based, edge-based, and motion vectors based, are implemented and analyzed. A recent method which utilizes &ldquo / graph partition model&rdquo / together with the support vector machine classifier as a shot boundary detection algorithm is also implemented and analyzed. Moreover, a novel graph theoretic concept, &ldquo / dominant sets&rdquo / , is also successfully applied to the shot boundary detection problem as a contribution to the solution domain.

<p>This thesis intends to analyze and clarify the legal position regarding abuse of a dominant position and particularly tying practices. The practice is central within European competition law and has been highly discussed in literature recently. In Article 102 TFEU it is explicitly stated that supplementary obligations which have no connection with the subject of such contracts, shall be considered as a way of abusing a position of strength. Although the method is often reasonable and very common within many business areas, it might be pursued as a tactic of excluding competition. The General Court’s decision in <em>Microsoft </em>led to some confusion as regards to the European approach towards tying practices. Prior to that judgment, the EU Courts appeared quite negative to the practice and seemed determined that the practice was in fact anticompetitive. For an example, in <em>Hilti </em>the Court found it sufficient that the company had deprived its costumers of a choice. The effects on competition were not analyzed in great detail and in most cases the EU Courts fined the undertaking involved in such business methods. However, in <em>Microsoft </em>the General Court took a new approach and focused on the actual effects that followed from the practice. Many argues that European competition law has moved from a <em>per se </em>approach to a <em>rule of reason</em> approach. In my opinion however, it seems relatively unclear whether or not this new approach shall apply to all versions of tying or if it was applied due to the certain circumstances involved in <em>Microsoft</em>. The tying practice involved a form of technical tying, i.e. an integration of two distinctive products. Cases prior to <em>Microsoft </em>mostly concerned a form of contractual tying and were treated very differently by the EU Courts. My opinion on the matter is therefore that it is not possible to declare a clear legal position regarding the practice of tying. There is a need for new judgments and official guidelines since the current situation deprives companies of legal security as concerns the practice of tying within European competition law.</p>

<p>Auto-tuning has become an important function in distributed control systems (DCS) and is especially appreciated in large industries that can have hundreds of controllers. In the DCS 800xA manufactured by ABB, there is an auto-tuning method implemented based on a relay experiment to determine the ultimate gain and the ultimate period, with which the PID parameters are obtained using the modified Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules. The tuning procedure can then proceed with a step identification experiment to get additional parameters for kappa-tau tuning. In the previous DCS, called Advant, there was another auto-tuning approach implemented. This method was based on dominant pole design, which included an identification of the process. The purpose of this thesis is to compare these auto-tuning methods, to investigate if the dominant pole placement method should be migrated to the 800xA system.</p> / <p>Automatisk trimning har blivit en viktig funktion i distribuerade styrsystem (DCS och är speciellt av intresse för stora industrier som kan ha flera hundra regulatorer. Den automatiska trimningen som idag är implementerad i ABB:s DCS 800xA är baserad på ett reläexperiment för att bestämma den ultimata förstärkningen och den ultimata periodtiden. Modifierade Ziegler-Nichols trimningsregler används sedan för att bestämma PID parametrarna. Vidare kan trimningen fortsätta med ett stegsvars-experiment för att erhålla ytterliggare parametrar och trimma med kappa-tau metoden. Den automatiska trimningsmetoden som var implementerad i tidigare DCS, Advant, var baserad på dominant polplacering med identifiering av processen. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att jämföra dessa automatiska trimningsmetoder för att undersöka om den tidigare trimningsmetoden baserad på dominant polplacering ska implementeras i 800xA systemet.</p>

<p>The dominant design concept describes the evolution from one dominant design to a new one, or in a new industry, the evolution to a set of standards and features that becomes a dominant design for that particular product or sector. Typically the dominant design is used to describe industry trends. This thesis takes the bottom up perspective, i.e. the company's perspective, to identify if, or what parts, of the dominant design model that can be used as an explanatory tool of innovation in the two ERP companies chosen. This thesis has found that some parts of the dominant design model can be used to describe innovation in our two case companies. However, the model has to be altered to fit the particular needs of the software industry and exclude the concept of process innovation, which is a part of the original dominant design model. By considering a company’s existing situation, e.g. customers, market share, partnerships etc. and fitting these facts into our altered dominant design model it should be possible to explain actions undertaken by an ERP company.</p>

The French colonizer from 1912–1956 brought not only the French language to Morocco but also a colonial administration that reinforced divisions between various indigenous social groups. European, Jewish, Muslim, and Berber communities were segregated into separate schools providing different levels of French-language education. As a result, French linguistic dominance and economic opportunity were assured among some groups more thoroughly than others. Acquisition of the French language for European and Jewish communities through advanced educational opportunities at the European lycées and Jewish Alliance Israélite Universelle granted certain higher educational, economic, and administrative privileges within the colonial administration and workforce. Meanwhile, those attending schools created for Muslim and Berber Moroccans where curricula insisted on rudimentary French skills were unable to seek advanced educational or economic opportunity. This research describes the different types of access to the French language that were intended for the diverse European, Jewish, Berber, and Arab speech communities through the various educational institutions created by the French government during the French protectorate in Morocco. Through the application of Bourdieu’s language market theory, this dissertation examines the ways that access became linked to the job market and the attainment of symbolic, economic, and cultural capital. This research offers explanations of how language shift occurred among European and Jews in Morocco and how French continued to confer socioeconomic value long after independence, despite efforts to oust the “colonizer’s language” for all Moroccans. Furthermore, in contradiction to Bourdieu’s language market theory, this research exposes how multiple language markets in Morocco emerged for Muslim and Berber communities as a result of access to different kinds of instruction and how both French and Arabic became legitimate languages with very different social functions. / text

What explains the resilience of formerly nationally dominant parties at the subnational level? This dissertation demonstrates that factionalism is key. When intra-party factions are united, subnational dominant parties retain power even under adverse electoral conditions. By contrast, divisions and conflicts among internal groups lead these parties to lose even in favorable electoral contexts. I test these claims using a variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence from Mexico, focusing on the electoral performance of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in contemporary gubernatorial elections. Democratization potentially undermines unity in dominant parties because it provides politicians with viable exit options (i.e., joining the opposition) and because authoritarian central party committees no longer control subnational politics. Yet, I argue that factions can cooperate under democracy when they were more autonomous from the center during the authoritarian period. The negotiation skills acquired in the past help them "get along" in the absence of an external enforcer. By contrast, previously subordinated factions never acquired such skills and quickly became antagonistic to each other under democracy. As I show, collaboration had positive electoral consequences in subnational elections whereas antagonism had pernicious ones. / text

Τα δυναμικά βαρυτικών συστημάτων μπορούν να περιγραφούν ασυμπτωτικά στη γειτονιά μιας χωρικής ανωμαλίας σαν μια κίνηση μπιλιάρδου στον υπερβολικό χώρο.Η περιγραφή αυτή μπορεί να πραγματοποιηθεί με άλγεβρες Kac-Moody λαμβάνοντας σαν σύστημα ένα σ-μοντέλο. / The dynamics of some models in Gravity can be described as a billiard motion in the vicinity of a spacelike singularity in hyperbolic space. This description is equivalent in terms of a sigma model and can be described by some hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras

Auto-tuning has become an important function in distributed control systems (DCS) and is especially appreciated in large industries that can have hundreds of controllers. In the DCS 800xA manufactured by ABB, there is an auto-tuning method implemented based on a relay experiment to determine the ultimate gain and the ultimate period, with which the PID parameters are obtained using the modified Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules. The tuning procedure can then proceed with a step identification experiment to get additional parameters for kappa-tau tuning. In the previous DCS, called Advant, there was another auto-tuning approach implemented. This method was based on dominant pole design, which included an identification of the process. The purpose of this thesis is to compare these auto-tuning methods, to investigate if the dominant pole placement method should be migrated to the 800xA system. / Automatisk trimning har blivit en viktig funktion i distribuerade styrsystem (DCS och är speciellt av intresse för stora industrier som kan ha flera hundra regulatorer. Den automatiska trimningen som idag är implementerad i ABB:s DCS 800xA är baserad på ett reläexperiment för att bestämma den ultimata förstärkningen och den ultimata periodtiden. Modifierade Ziegler-Nichols trimningsregler används sedan för att bestämma PID parametrarna. Vidare kan trimningen fortsätta med ett stegsvars-experiment för att erhålla ytterliggare parametrar och trimma med kappa-tau metoden. Den automatiska trimningsmetoden som var implementerad i tidigare DCS, Advant, var baserad på dominant polplacering med identifiering av processen. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att jämföra dessa automatiska trimningsmetoder för att undersöka om den tidigare trimningsmetoden baserad på dominant polplacering ska implementeras i 800xA systemet.