This thesis is an empirical investigation examining the impact of state development and institutional flexibility on economic growth, across fifteen developed countries from 1880 to 2008. The development of the state, particularly since the late nineteenth century, has resulted in the exponential growth of institutional complexity and living standards. While there is evidence to suggest institutional flexibility may have increased for a time during this period, evidence also indicates a subsequently decline over the course of the twentieth century, resulting in ‘rise and decline’ explanations for economic growth. This ‘rise and decline’ hypothesis is tested in this thesis in an attempt to rehabilitate the works of Mancur Olson. This thesis presents a new framework for establishing years of peak institutional flexibility and creates new data for measuring state development and institutional flexibility. It finds both improvements in state development and institutional flexibility explain changes in cross-country growth over the long run. This should come as encouragement to those interested in institutional justifications for economic growth and all interested in revitalising Olsonion explanations for the economic performance of countries over the long run.

The aim of the paper is to contrast and test the NAIRU theory and the Keynesian theory of unemployment econometrically. For the former, wage push variables are key in explaining the rise of European unemployment, for the latter accumulation is. The theories are tested using time series data for Germany, France, Italy, the UK and the USA, using the seemingly unrelated regression method (SUR). Unemployment benefits, union density and the tax wedge were used as wage push variables, and the growth of business capital stock as the accumulation variable. The NAIRU specification performed poorly, with only the tax wedge having a positive effect on unemployment as predicted. The Keynesian approach was more successful, with accumulation being statistically significant in all countries. Moreover, the tax wedge and accumulation are fairly robust to changes in the specification and can be pooled across countries. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Denna studie tar sin utgångspunkt i en tidigare medarbetareundersökning som utfördes i ett kunskapsföretag hösten 2013. Den undersökningen visade att en av arbetsgrupperna (verksamhetsutvecklarna) upplevde att arbetet påverkade deras fritid.   Därför genomfördes en kvalitativstudie med fokus på intervjuer i syfte att få kunskap om fenomenet och dess orsaker till varför individen har svårt att koppla bort arbetet på sin fritid. De frågeställningar som ligger till grund för denna studie är; vad är det som gör att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid påverkas negativt av arbetet? Vad är orsakerna i organisationen som gör att individen tar med sig arbetet hem? Vad kan organisationen göra för att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid inte ska påverkas negativt av arbetet? Resultatet visade att alla respondenter har oreglerat arbete, gällande fyra dimensioner; tid, genomförande, plats och samarbete. De känner sig ensamma i sitt arbete och upplever låg grad av socialt stöd men även otydliga krav. De upplever också att organisationen har en otydlig struktur samt upplever oklara förväntningar från arbetsgivaren. En annan slutsats är också att respondenterna är relativt nöjda med sin flexibla arbetstillvaro. Studien visade också att organisationen borde satsa mer på utbildning, teambuildning samt att arbeta för tydligare krav och förväntningar för att motverka att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid ska påverkas negativt av arbetet. / This study takes its premise in an earlier survey amongst persons working in a knowledge based company during the fall of 2013. That survey showed that one of the workgroups (the activity developers) perceived that the work interfered with their free time. That is the reason a study was done with the purpose of acquiring knowledge by interviewing activity developers about the phenomena, in which the individuals experience difficulties with disconnecting themselves from work in their free time.  This study aimed to acquire knowledge about the underlying factors relating to this phenomena. The questions that form the basis of this study are; what are the causes that negatively impact the participant’s free time? Could it be related to organizational problems? How could an organization limit this impact?  The result indicated that all participants have what we refer to as unregulated work, based in four dimensions; time, execution, workplace, and collaboration. According to the study it is clear that the participants feel that there is a lack of support in their work; experience a low degree of social support in the workplace, and it that clear goals are lacking. Management of expectations, is also seen as a contributing factor. The study concludes that the organization should invest more in education, teambuilding and work towards defining goals and tasks in order to reduce the impact on the participants and their free time.

Based on previous research readiness for strategic change has found to impact employee commitment and flexibility positively, by increasing the willingness to embrace and adapt changes faster. However, the relationship has mainly been investigated within the health care industry or from a national perspective, but lacks empirical research taking organizational culture into account. This study aims to investigate the relationship between readiness for strategic change, employee commitment and flexibility, with organizational culture as a moderating factor. The survey was conducted at an organization belonging to a multinational company including participants in four different countries. The results only showed partial support for the investigated relationship, and significant differentials between areas was also found to be present. A main finding was the major impact by organizational culture for employee commitment and flexibility at the presence of strategic changes.

Projects that work in complex, uncertain, and dynamic environments, such as research and development (R&D) projects, require a different approach to project management. New approaches have been developed in the last decades as a response to traditional project management to address the uniqueness of the project characteristics. In the mid-1990s, Agile Project Management (APM) was introduced which aimed to address projects that face high levels of complexity and uncertainty. APM aims to develop innovative and complex products that face a constant changing environment.   APM enables a project manager to cope with the challenges presented by R&D projects by delivering customer value through innovative products and a leadership-collaboration management style, which would require certain competences. Traditional PM has focused on the importance of technical competences for successful PM. However, in the last decades two more set of competences have gained importance, contextual and behavioral competences. Several studies have demonstrated the importance of behavioral competences for project managers dealing with highly complex and uncertain projects. Competences such as leadership, communication, flexibility, and creativity have been identified as essential behavioral competences for project managers in turbulent project environments.   This study aims to show what behavioral competences are needed for an agile project manager engaged in R&D projects in the Swedish biotechnology sector. In this way, the research will extend the existing evidence of APM and behavioral competences to a new industry, due to the limited focus of the current research on software development agile projects. The methodology of the study follows a qualitative strategy and a case study design that focuses on the biotechnology sector in the Umeå region. The study achieves an intensive examination of the behavioral competences through a semi-structured interviews method with respondents from five organizations, which represent different segments of the sector.   The findings of the research study show that organizations in the biotechnology sector in Sweden use APM to deliver R&D projects. These organizations follow the APM characteristics to address complexity, uncertainty, and dynamism in R&D projects. In addition, the findings present evidence that behavioral competences are highly important for agile project managers in the biotechnology sector, and considered as the most important competences. Furthermore, the biotechnology sector acknowledges the importance of four competences: creativity, communication, flexibility, and leadership. The four identified behavioral competences allow an agile project manager to enable APM characteristics such as iterative and adaptive life cycles, change management, flexible planning, people orientation, collaborative leadership style, small and self-organized teams, tacit knowledge, and informal communication. The findings suggest that by enabling these characteristics, an agile project manager is able to deliver customer value through innovation and leadership-collaboration management style, hence, successfully addressing the characteristics of a biotechnology R&D project in Sweden.

Abstract The enzyme phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT) catalyses the biosynthesis of adrenaline. Although adrenaline is a significant central nervous system (CNS) neurotransmitter, and has been associated with various physiological processes such as the control of blood pressure and the neurodegeneration observed in Alzheimer’s disease, its exact role in the CNS is unclear. As part of an international collaborative effort, this project aimed to develop PNMT inhibitors suitable for probing the role of CNS adrenaline, and to generate novel drug leads. Towards the goal of developing potent and selective PNMT inhibitors, this thesis utilised three general approaches. The first approach involved classical structure-guided drug discovery using X-ray crystallography, and is described in Chapter 2. Characterisation of the PNMT pharmacophore provided results that led to a new understanding of how PNMT recognises inhibitors. Structures described in this thesis revealed a cryptic binding pocket that is only revealed on binding of inhibitors that were predicted to be too large to interact with PNMT. The findings therefore demonstrated an extraordinary degree of flexibility inherent to the PNMT binding pocket, and emphasise the need to include greater protein flexibility in inhibitor design strategies. Secondly, this thesis investigated the catalytic mechanism of PNMT, described in Chapters 3 and 4. This research characterised the binding of substrates to wild type and variant PNMT, including the physiological substrate noradrenaline, and model substrates as well as substrate-analogue inhibitors of the enzyme. PNMT catalyses the methylation of a range of substrates. However, differential substitutions to these substrates can dictate the ligand binding position and thereby determine whether methyl transfer will occur. Additionally, the results provided new lessons for the routine use of point mutations in the study of enzymes, because changes are not always simply an indication of the difference in the residue functionality. I found, for example, that single site mutations can induce large movements in enzyme. Therefore structural characterisation of enzyme variants is an important addition to kinetic studies to enable a comprehensive examination of catalytic function. Finally, I have implemented a fragment based screening (FBS) approach to the discovery of novel lead compounds that inhibit PNMT, described in Chapters 5 and 6. The FBS approach has many advantages over existing drug discovery methods including higher hit rates, higher efficiency hits, and the ability to sample a larger range of chemical space. This thesis describes the application of FBS by X-ray crystallography to PNMT. The approach was used to screen a library of 384 compounds yielding 12 novel PNMT fragment leads. Furthermore, chemical elaboration and kinetic evaluation of these hits was performed in Chapter 7. In summary, this thesis has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the chemistry, kinetics and structure of PNMT. This understanding will be important in ongoing efforts to develop potent, selective, and CNS-active inhibitors of the enzyme.

Spending time at work, with family/whanau, and communities takes up a large proportion of Maori women's lives. Finding a balance can often be complex and challenging, due to surrounding environmental influences that are continually changing. This thesis explores those challenges, and considers whether 'being Maori' affects the way they manage their lives around the dimensions of work family/whanau and community.The study interviewed Maori women over 20 years of age, in paid work, and who were active members in two urban Maori communities of Auckland, namely Te Whanau o Waipareira Trust and Manukau Urban Maori Authority.It was anticipated that information gleaned could be used to consider positive strategies to facilitate the better management of their time given the constraints imposed on them by modern existence without compromising their cultural obligations as Maori actively involved in their communities.Overall, it was found that being Maori does have an affect on how the women manage their lives around work, family/whanau, and community. A number of factors are identified that help balance work and everyday life including whanau and community support as well as individual strategies and personal assistance. For example, flexible employers that valued Maori beliefs and culture helped reinforce and facilitate the achievement of this balance. Similarly, quality childcare was invaluable. Further research is suggested as to how Maori women balance competing priorities from community and whanau demands.

<p>People who cannot manage their daily life have the right to be granted assistance, according</p><p>to SoL §4. The purpose of this study was to investigate how older people, who have been</p><p>granted assistance with an open framework, feel that they are involved and able to</p><p>influence the decisions that are being made. The advantages with a framework decision are</p><p>that older people receive a greater influence and involvement, which provides greater</p><p>security and a more flexible way of working. To fulfil the purpose, a qualitative interview</p><p>with six care holders was conducted. The theoretical framework refers to Habermas’s</p><p>Communications theory and Antonovsky’s theory of KASAM. The results o</p><p>suggest that older people have difficulties in accepting their needs and try to fend for</p><p>themselves for as long as possible. Furthermore, the study shows that good communication</p><p>between the care holders and the organisation is vital, as the elderly do not know who to</p><p>turn to when wanting to appeal or apply for more help. Moreover, our informants feel that</p><p>they are involved in their care as they are able to interact with their home care staff and able</p><p>to make decisions regarding what to wear for example. The informants also inform us that</p><p>they do not change their relief efforts very often and that it is their relatives who are</p><p>responsible for bringing forward complaints, when needed. However, it is mostly the care</p><p>holders themselves that decide when or if their needs are changed, but for some of our</p><p>informants this responsibility lies on their relatives.</p><p>f our study</p>

The capability of organizations to respond to unexpected events has been investigated from different theoretical angles: organizational learning, improvisation, ambidexterity, resilience, to name but a few. These concepts, however, hardly ever refer to structural characteristics. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, based on systems and organizational learning theory, it will theoretically link the characteristics of organizational structure with organizational responses to unexpected external jolts, thus contributing to better understand the reactions of organizations to the unexpected. Second, it will empirically illustrate the relation of organizational structure with organizational responses by investigating how Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Austria reacted to the unexpected inflow of refugees from Central Europe. In 2015, CSOs accepted a wide range of responsibilities and worked together with government entities to provide shelter, catering, and transport for almost one million refugees. Based on participant observations during opera- tion, in-depth interviews (2015 and 2016) and focus groups with decision-makers (2017), we will sketch three longi- tudinal case studies of organizations with very different structures, concentrating on the processes and operations they developed during the crisis. Our findings show that their responses are closely related to their structure, specifically to the flexibility and the stability of structural elements. Remarkable changes took place in all organizations investigated. Initial responses and first structural changes occurred mainly where the structure already allowed for flexibility. Yet in the long run, the adaptations also impacted the stable structural elements.

Tradicionalmente, para que um layout possa ser avaliado, devem-se enfocar fatores de proximidade e de adjacência, já que os mesmos aumentam a eficiência da movimentação de materiais, o que reduz custos operacionais. Adicionalmente, se sugere acrescentar robustez, flexibilidade, suficiência e utilização do espaço a esses fatores. Nesta tese se apresenta uma sistemática de avaliação e melhoria da flexibilidade de layout em ambientes dinâmicos. Mais explicitamente, propõe-se mensurar os habilitadores de flexibilidade de um layout, ou seja, que o torna capaz de reagir às incertezas externas e internas que surgem à medida que mudam as necessidades futuras da produção. A sistemática proposta é desenvolvida em dez etapas, as quais partem de matrizes semelhantes as do Quality Function Deployment (QFD) para verificar o impacto de fatores de proximidade de departamentos, de utilização de área e de associação com outros tipos de flexibilidade de manufatura na flexibilidade de layout. A tese também traz uma proposta de análise reversa do QFD para comparar o que está realmente sendo valorado pela instalação ao ponderar os indicadores medidos. As proposições apresentadas são ilustradas em um caso prático de uma empresa do setor metal mecânico, representado pela sistemática, pelos índices de flexibilidade de layout e pelos direcionamentos de melhoria. / In the traditional evaluation of layouts emphasis is placed on factors such as proximity and adjacency, as they increase materials handling efficiency, reducing operational costs. It is usually recommended to consider additional factors in the analysis, such as robustness, flexibility, sufficiency and use of space. In this dissertation we propose a method to evaluate and improve layout flexibility in dynamic environments. More explicitly, we propose measuring the enablers of a layout that are capable of reacting to external and internal uncertainties that arise as production needs change. The proposed method is implemented in ten stages. We start using matrices similar to those in the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to measure the impact of proximity between departments, use of production space, and association with other types of manufacturing flexibility on layout flexibility. The thesis also presents a proposition where the traditional QFD analysis is performed in reverse. The propositions presented are illustrated in a case study from the metal component processing sector.