Este estudo teve por objetivo investigar, à luz das teorias de internacionalização de empresas, a forma de inserção no mercado externo das indústrias de calçados da cidade de Franca, Estado de São Paulo e as características determinantes do comportamento seu exportador. Foi elaborado um cadastro atualizado do setor e enviados questionários a todas as empresas de pequeno, médio e grande porte (208 indústrias). Desse total, 146 empresas responderam à pesquisa e foram aproveitados 117 questionários. A pesquisa foi respondida, em grande parte, por diretores e pelos principais executivos das empresas, que expressaram suas percepções em relação aos diversos aspectos do processo de internacionalização de suas indústrias. A investigação procurou identificar as características da empresa, do respondente, da equipe dirigente, da produção e da comercialização dos seus produtos, tanto no mercado interno como externo. Foram investigados ainda o grau de diferenciação do produto, a imagem do pólo produtivo, as expectativas sobre as vantagens do comércio internacional e a percepção de barreiras internas à exportação. Por último se verificou a forma utilizada para a inserção no mercado externo e o estágio atual dessas empresas no processo de internacionalização de suas atividades. Pode-se afirmar que as empresas da indústria calçadista francana seguem uma estratégia gradual de inserção no mercado internacional, em consonância com a literatura sobre o processo de internacionalização. Foram identificados também alguns determinantes do compromisso exportador, as estratégias utilizadas e as ações implementadas para penetração no mercado externo e sugerido um modelo da empresa exportadora da indústria calçadista francana. O que se depreende, é que as empresas que não exportam apresentam problemas internos relacionados à percepção da falta de capacidade de produção para atender ao mercado externo, à dificuldade em lidar com as diferenças lingüísticas e culturais e o desconhecimento geral de como exportar. Tudo isso aliado a uma visão até certo ponto distorcida dos benefícios que a internacionalização pode trazer para as empresas, do ponto de vista das oportunidades de crescimento e de diversificação dos produtos fabricados que o mercado externo oferece e da rentabilidade a ser obtida nas exportações. A percepção dos dirigentes é a de que falta a estas empresas, também, uma melhor qualidade e tecnologia na fabricação de seus produtos, que se reflete em menores preços de venda do que os praticados pelas empresas exportadoras. / The purpose of this study was to investigate, concerning the theories of internationalization of enterprises, the way the footwear industries from Franca, State of São Paulo, are inserted in the foreign market and the striking features of their export behavior. An up-to-date catalogue of the enterprises was developed and questionnaires were sent to all small, medium and large enterprises (208 industries). From those, 146 enterprises responded to the survey and 117 were suitable for the purposes. The survey was responded, in great part, by directors and by the principal executives of the enterprises, whom expressed their perceptions of many aspects of the internationalization process of their enterprises. The investigation meant to identify the characteristics of the enterprise, of the person responding the questionnaire, of the managing staff, and of the production and commerce of their products, both in the domestic and foreign markets. It was also investigated at what degree the product was different from those in the market, the image of the productive pole, the expectations over the advantages of international trade and the perception of domestic export barriers. At last, the methods used for inserting the enterprises in the foreign market were verified, as well as their current status in the process of internationalization. It can be stated that the footwear enterprises from Franca follow a strategy of gradual insertion in the international market. Some determinants of the export agreement, the strategies used and the actions taken in order to reach the foreign market were also identified and a model of an exporting footwear enterprise was suggested. What can be inferred is that the enterprises which do not export present internal problems related to the perception of the lack of production power to meet the foreign market needs, to the difficulties in dealing with the language and cultural differences and to the lack of know how in exports. All allied with a view a little distorted of the benefits the internationalization can bring to the enterprise, from the point of view of growth opportunities and of the variety of manufactured products that the foreign market offers and of the profitability that can be reached through exports. The perception of the directors is that there is a lack of better quality and technology in the manufacture of their products, which is reflected in prices lower than those of the exporting enterprises.

The purpose of this three-article dissertation is to explore the intersection of educational leadership, instructional technology, and culturally responsive education in pursuit of a new leadership framework called technology leadership for social justice. This dissertation employs three emerging methodologies, namely three-step latent class analysis (LCA), multilevel latent class analysis (MLCA), and meta-narrative review, to examine typologies of teachers and their perceptions of technology use and technology leadership with large-scale, quantitative data and to offer a conceptual framework of school and district technology leadership through a culturally responsive lens. The first study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) with the NCES Fast Response Survey System Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools, 2009 (FRSS 95) dataset (n=2,764) to identify four different types of technology-using teachers: Dexterous, Presenters, Assessors, and Evaders. I also found that teachers in low-income schools are more likely to be in the teacher subgroups that use technology in less impactful ways in the classroom. The second study used multilevel latent class analysis (MLCA) with the 2011-12 Texas School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Charts (n=6,935 schools in n=910 districts) to find three subgroups of teacher perceptions of technology leadership at the school level, High STaR Schools, Moderate STaR Schools, and Low STaR Schools, and four subgroups of teacher perceptions of technology leadership at the district level, Model STaR Districts, High STaR Districts, Moderate STaR Districts, and Low STaR Districts. I found that the Texas teachers in the school and district level subgroups with the lowest perceptions of technology leadership had the lowest student achievement outcomes and were more likely to serve students from historically minoritized backgrounds. The third study employed a systematic, meta-narrative review of the research literature exploring the intersection of technology, leadership, and culturally responsive education, integrating the findings from sixty studies into a conceptual framework of technology leadership for social justice. Each of the three dissertation articles explores the implications for the development of a more evidence-based, sociocultural conception of school and district technology leadership in research, policy, and practice.

Radical changes to present day power systems will lead to power systems with a significant penetration of renewable energy sources and smartness, expressed in an extensive utilization of novel sensors and cyber secure Information and Communication Technology. Although these renewable energy sources prove to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions into the environment, its high penetration affects power system dynamic performance as a result of reduced power system inertia as well as less flexibility with regards to dispatching generation to balance future demand. These pose a threat both to the security and stability of future power systems. It is therefore very important to develop new methods through which power system security and stability can be maintained. This research investigated the development of methods through which the contributions of on-load tap changing transformers/transformer clusters could be assessed with the intent of developing real time adaptive voltage controlled demand response schemes for power systems. The development of such a scheme enables more active system components to be involved in the provision of frequency control as an ancillary service and deploys a new frequency control service with low infrastructural investment, bearing in mind that OLTC transformers are already very prevalent in power systems. In this thesis, a novel online adaptive supervisory controller for ensuring optimal dispatch of voltage-controlled demand response resources is developed. This novel controller is designed using the assessment results of OLTC transformer impacts on steady-state frequency and was tested for a variety of scenarios. To achieve the effective performance of the adaptive supervisory controller, the extensive use of statistical techniques for assessing OLTC transformer contributions to voltage controlled demand response is presented. This thesis also includes the use of unsupervised machine learning techniques for power system partitioning and the further use of statistical methods for assessing the contributions of OLTC transformer aggregates.

Latent variable models (LVMS) are widely appreciated multivariate methods to explore variables that are related to the observed variables, and assessing the relationships among them. One of most widely used latent variable models is structural equation model (SEM). Based on more than a dozen standard packages for fitting SEMs, such as LISREL VIII (Jorskog and Sorbom, 1996), and EQS (Bentler, 2004), these models have been widely appreciated in behavioral, educational, medical, social, and psychological research. The statistical theories and methods in these packages are based on the normal distribution; hence, they are vulnerable to outliers and the non-normal assumption. As outliers and non-normal data set are commonly encountered in substantive research, this fundamental problem has received much attention in the field. However, almost all existing methods are developed via the covariance structure analysis approach that heavily depends on the asymptotical properties of the sample covariance matrices S. Hence, this approach cannot be applied to the more complex SEMs and/or SEMs with more complex data structure such as missing data, because under these more complicated situations S is complicated, and its asymptotical properties are not well known. The objectives of this thesis are to develop novel robust methods for analyzing complex SEMs and/or more data structures, including but not limited to nonlinear SEMs with missing data. Both maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian approaches for estimation, hypothesis testing and model comparison will be investigated. Efficient algorithm for computing the results for statistical inference will be developed through unitization and modification of the advanced tools in statistical computing, for example the Monte Carlo Expectation-Maximization algorithm, and the Markov Chains Monte Carlo methods. Asymptotical properties of some statistics are derived. Simulation studies and real examples are conducted to reveal the empirical performance of the Bayesian and ML approaches. The newly developed methodologies will be very useful for analyzing complex data in the substantive research. / Xia Yemao. / "October 2005." / Adviser: S. Y. Lee. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: B, page: 3883. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-114). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

李晓煦. / Submitted: Jan. 2010. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 170-175). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Li Xiaoxu.

Lam, Kwok Hap. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Two-level NSEM with outcomes from Exponential Family --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Basic Model Description --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2 --- Generalization from Normal Distribution to Exponential Family Distributions --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- Bayesian Analysis of the Model --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Posterior Analysis and Gibbs Sampler --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Prior Distributions --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Bayesian Estimation --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3.4 --- Bayesian Model Selection --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4 --- A Simulation Study --- p.15 / Chapter 3 --- Two-level NSEM with mixed continuous and ordered categorical data --- p.28 / Chapter 3.1 --- Model Description --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2 --- Bayesian Analysis of the Model --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Posterior Analysis and Gibbs Sampler --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Bayesian Estimation --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3 --- A Simulation Study --- p.31 / Chapter 4 --- "Two-level NSEM with mixed continuous, count and binomial data" --- p.36 / Chapter 4.1 --- Model Description --- p.37 / Chapter 4.2 --- Bayesian Estimation --- p.38 / Chapter 4.3 --- A Simulation Study --- p.39 / Chapter 5 --- Two-level NSEM with mixed continuous and unordered categorical data --- p.43 / Chapter 5.1 --- Basic Model Description --- p.44 / Chapter 5.2 --- Bayesian Analysis of the Model --- p.47 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Posterior Analysis and Gibbs Sampler --- p.47 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Prior Distributions --- p.48 / Chapter 5.3 --- A Simulation Study --- p.49 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion and Discussion --- p.53 / Chapter A --- Technical Details for Chapter 2 --- p.56 / Chapter A.1 --- Full conditional distributions --- p.56 / Chapter A.2 --- Implementation of the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) Algorithm --- p.59 / Chapter A.3 --- Gelman-Rubin statistic --- p.61 / Chapter B --- Technical Details for Chapter 3 --- p.63 / Chapter B.1 --- Full conditional distributions --- p.63 / Chapter B.2 --- Implementation of the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) Algorithm --- p.64 / Chapter C --- Technical Details for Chapter 5 --- p.66 / Chapter C.l --- Full conditional distributions --- p.66 / Bibliography --- p.68

Wang, Chang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-145). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.3 / CHINESE ABSTRACT --- p.5 / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --- p.6 / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.7 / LIST OF TABLES --- p.9 / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.10 / INTRODUCTION --- p.11 / Chapter 1.1 --- ISSUE OF MODEL FIT IN SEM --- p.11 / Chapter 1.2 --- CLASSIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF FIT INDICES --- p.13 / Chapter 1.3 --- ORGANIZATION OF THIS THESIS --- p.18 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- ISSUES OF FIT INDICES IN ASSESSING MODEL FIT --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1 --- SENSITIVITY OF FIS TO MODL PARAMETER --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Sample size --- p.20 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Model complexity --- p.21 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Misspecification --- p.23 / Chapter 2.2 --- MEASUREMENT ERROR --- p.26 / Chapter 2.3 --- PERFECT FIT VS. APPROXIMATE FIT --- p.26 / Chapter 2.4 --- Minimum Fit Function chi-square vs. Normal-theory Weighted Least chi-square --- p.29 / Chapter 2.5 --- RULE OF THUMB --- p.30 / Chapter 2.6 --- FIVE RESEARCH QUESTIONS --- p.37 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- SIMULATION --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1 --- FIT INDICES --- p.39 / Chapter 3.2 --- DESIGN OF MONTE CARLO SIMULATIONS --- p.38 / Chapter 3.3 --- MODEL COMPLEXITY AND MODEL SPECIFICATION --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4 --- SIMULATION PROCEDURE --- p.41 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- RESULTS --- p.45 / Chapter 4.1 --- MEASUREMENT ERROR AND CRONBACH´ةS ALPHA --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2 --- ANSWER TO Q1 --- p.45 / Chapter 4.3 --- ANSWER TO Q2 --- p.53 / Chapter 4.4 --- ANSWER TO Q3 --- p.56 / Chapter 4.5 --- ANSWER TO Q4 --- p.60 / Chapter 4.6 --- ANSWER TO Q5 --- p.62 / Chapter CHAPTER 5 --- DUSCUSSION --- p.77 / Chapter 5.1 --- DUSCUSSION TO Q1 --- p.77 / Chapter 5.2 --- DUSCUSSION TO Q2 --- p.83 / Chapter 5.3 --- DUSCUSSION TO Q3 --- p.85 / Chapter 5.4 --- DUSCUSSION TO Q4 --- p.88 / Chapter 5.5 --- DUSCUSSION TO Q5 --- p.89 / Chapter CHAPTER 6 --- LIMITATION --- p.99 / Chapter CHAPTER 7 --- CONCLUSION --- p.101 / PREFERENCE --- p.139

Pan, Junhao. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-135). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

O ambiente competitivo e globalização vem provocando mudanças nas estratégias das empresas, fomentando, muitas vezes, para um processo de internacionalização. As empresas procuram internacionalizar-se de acordo com seus objetivos estratégicos, traçando uma estratégia de internacionalização. Sair do seu ambiente para um país desconhecido significa que a empresa estará sujeita a correr certos riscos e, portanto, requer uma estratégia que avalie os riscos envolvidos para se estabelecer em um determinado país. O conhecimento desses riscos vai proporcionar a empresa mitigar ou mesmo eliminar os riscos envolvidos. Independente do processo de entrada em outro país, sempre haverá a questão do risco. Geralmente, quando uma empresa decide se internacionalizar, ela opta primeiro pelo processo de exportação, em que terá de lidar com vários tipos de risco em suas decisões gerenciais para alcançar seus objetivos estratégicos. Portanto, essa pesquisa foi feita com oitenta e quatro empresas exportadoras brasileiras, do estado de São Paulo, com faturamento de até 10 milhões de dólares listadas na Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI). O objetivo desse estudo foi entender como e quais riscos envolvidos na internacionalização de empresas exportadoras brasileiras exercem influência sobre a estratégia e objetivos estratégicos na internacionalização de empresas exportadoras. Para a análise da pesquisa, foi utilizada a técnica de modelagem de equações estruturais baseada em variância, na qual foi utilizada uma survey para coleta de dados. Foram geradas quatro hipóteses, três relacionadas ao risco e estratégia e uma relacionada à estratégia e ao risco. Como resultado, duas hipóteses foram confirmadas e, portanto, duas rejeitadas. Essa pesquisa contribui com o conhecimento científico, pois, além de verificar os riscos que influenciam na estratégia e objetivos estratégicos, ela traz a concepção de envolver riscos não somente financeiros, mas também do ambiente, do setor e da empresa na estratégia para a internacionalização. / The competitive environment and globalization has been provoking changes in the strategies of companies, often leading to an internationalization process. The companies seek to internationalize themselves according to their strategic objectives, to which a strategy of internationalization will be traced. Leaving your environment to an unknown country means that the company is subject to certain risks and therefore requires a strategy that assesses the risks involved in establishing itself in a particular country. Knowing these risks will enable the company to mitigate or even eliminate the risks involved. Regardless of the process of entry into another country, there will always be the issue of risk. Usually, when a company decides to internationalize, it opts for the first time through the export process, where it will have to deal with various types of risk in its managerial decisions to reach its strategic objectives. Therefore, this research was conducted with eighty-four Brazilian companies in the state of São Paulo, with sales of up to 10 million dollars listed in Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI). The objective of the study was to understand how and what risks involved in the internationalization of Brazilian exporting companies influence the strategy and the strategic objectives in the internationalization of exporting companies. But even this process depending on the intensity of export the company will be subject to risk because it is unknown to the host country. Therefore, this research was carried out with Brazilian export companies, whose objective was to investigate the influence of the risks involved in the internationalization of Brazilian exporting companies on the strategy of internationalization and strategic objectives. For the analysis of the research was used the technique of modeling of structural equations based on variance, where a survey was used to collect data. Four hypotheses were generated, three related to risk and strategy and one related to strategy and risk. As a result, two hypotheses were confirmed and therefore two rejected. This research contributes with scientific knowledge, because in addition to verifying the risks that influence the strategy and strategic objectives, it brings the concept of involving not only financial risks but also the risk of the environment, sector and the company in the strategy for internationalization.

Structural Equations Models (SEMs) are now widely used almost in every discipline of research. Most of the existing materials for the Namibian macroeconomic models are studies of the well documented time series approach. In this study, we provided a statistical approach on modelling the Namibian macroeconomics for the real and fiscal economic sectors using SEMs. The approach is based on testing the theoretical specification laid down by the Namibian Macroeconometrics Model (NAMEX) of 2004. The economic structure and relationships among the variables is evaluated by means of exploratory and confirmatory analysis and the results are congruent to the existing theory in terms of loading patterns. Between Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Generalized Least Square (GLS) estimation methods, we compared the discrepancy of parameter estimates under the commonly encountered problems of sample size, violation of underlying assumptions in the data as well as model misspecifications. GLS estimation methods seem to provide better goodness of fit indices under those conditions. We have also shown that the fiscal sector is not well represented by our SEM. We recommend further studies to employ sufficiently larger samples so that models are correctly specified.