Despite significant efforts to boost female enrollment levels and retention rates in engineering programs, females continue to make up only a small portion of the Canadian undergraduate engineering student population. However, this traditionally-male field is undergoing a culture change as a result of the recent establishment of a female minority. New initiatives that are encouraging women to enter the field are also challenging assumed gender differences previously used to legitimize women's low participation. Through a series of multiple-choice, scenario-based questionnaires, this exploratory study seeks to establish whether or not gender differences observed in the broader population are applicable to the unique engineering undergraduate population at the University of Waterloo. In particular, respondents are quizzed on their preferences for specific job attributes and aspects of life outside of work. In addition, short-answer open-ended questions are used to gauge the level of integration experienced by female students in the faculty. Attention is paid to the general academic and social engineering environment as well as the specific dynamics of mixed-gender groups. Although some gender differences, such as higher preference for earnings on the part of males and work-life balance on the part of females, are in line with previous findings, other differences are found to be either absent or reversed. A surprising side effect of our culturally-diverse sample is the emergence of cultural background as a strong factor which, besides gender, affects work and life attribute preferences, especially preferences for task challenge and earnings. Another interesting outcome of the study is the resulting asymmetry between factors that respondents acknowledge as contributing to their happiness, and factors, which when absent, are found to contribute to the respondents' unhappiness. The study also reveals that female engineering students find themselves in a balancing act between perceived privileges due to their minority, and reduced participation and decision making power due to perceptions of engineering projects as stereotypically in the male domain.

Ambulance response time is a key measure used to assess EMS system performance. However, the speed with which ambulances respond to emergencies can be highly variable. In some cases, this is due to geography. In dense urban areas for example, the distances traveled are short, but traffic and other hindrances such as traffic calming measures and high rise elevators cause delays, while rural areas involve greater distances and longer travel times. There are two major components of response time: first, pre-travel delay to prepare for ambulance dispatch, and second the actual travel time to the callers location. Response time standards are often established in order to provide fast and reliable service to the most severely ill patients. Standards typically specify the percentage of time an emergency response team can get to a call within a certain time threshold. This is referred to as “coverage”. This thesis deals with the development of a new response time model that predicts not only the mean response time, but estimates its variability. The models are developed based on historical data provided by the Region of Waterloo EMS and will permit the Region to predict EMS coverage. By analyzing the historical data, we found that response times from EMS stations to geographical locations within the Region of Waterloo are characterized by lognormal distributions. For a particular station – location pair we can thus use this information to predict coverage if we are able to specify the parameters of the distribution. We do this by characterizing the travel time and pre-travel delay times separately, and then adding the two to estimate coverage. We will use a previously proposed model that estimates the mean travel time from a station to a demand point as a function of road types traversed. We also compare the results of this model with another well known model and show that the first model is suitable to apply to the Region of Waterloo. In order to estimate the standard deviation of the response time, we propose a simple but effective model that estimates the standard deviation as a function of mean response time.

Although financial innovations and deregulations are often argued to be one of the main causes of the current global financial crises, there are only a few cross-country empirical evidences. Using several proxy variables for different types of innovations and regulations of a total of 132 countries, this thesis analyzes the effects of various types of financial innovations and regulations on several types of financial crisis such as currency crisis and banking crisis, for countries with different income levels. The thesis shows that financial innovation in the form of securitization has a negative effect on a country’s financial stability, while stronger regulations in the form of restrictions on bank activities and entry requirements are positively associated with the financial stability. However, judicious implementation of financial regulations is required to cope with the financial crisis because some types of regulations, if implemented simultaneously, have countervailing effects and may exacerbate the financial crisis.

This thesis identifies the unique capabilities that characterise product-oriented vs. service-oriented firms in the software industry. Firms in the software industry have very different business models from other industries. Some firms rely entirely on earning revenue from services provided on an hourly basis, while others build and sell software once and earn revenue from it for years to come. There are even successful firms in the industry with a variety of revenue sources and models resulting from planned or unplanned transitions across orientations. The unique characteristics of this industry offer an opportunity to study the development of organisational capabilities that support contrasting strategic orientations. There is substantial literature on strategic orientations (e.g., Roberts 1990; Lynn et al. 2000; Pelham 2000; Voss and Voss 2000). There is also substantial literature on organisational capabilities (e.g., Nelson and Winter 1982; Leonard-Barton 1992; Day 1994; Teece et al. 1997; Winter 2003; Ethiraj et al. 2005). However, few studies empirically identify organisational capabilities that are developed to support an orientation. This study identifies the capabilities that enable product orientations and service orientations in the software industry. Moreover, the research tests the hypothesis that product orientations and services orientations are distinguished by different organisational capabilities. The study tests this hypothesis by eliciting capabilities and measuring the maturity of these capabilities in different firms. The findings of this study make unique contributions to the literature pertaining to strategic orientations and capabilities through further definition of both constructs. This research also utilises a previously untested approach for identifying capabilities. The method approaches the research problem using a two-step approach. The first phase focuses on eliciting the capabilities that characterise both service and product orientations. Interviews with key informants support the elicitation of capabilities. The second phase of the research study involved the collection of data using a survey to validate the existence of and identify the maturity of the capabilities from the first phase. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between productoriented and service-oriented firms, the capabilities that distinguish them and their perspectives on transition between orientations. The key result of the research is the identification of the capabilities that distinguish between software firms of three different orientations: product orientation, service orientation and a hybrid orientation. This research study contributes to advancement in the literature pertaining to strategic orientations and capabilities (e.g., Morgan and Strong 2003; Venkatraman 1989; Duhan et al. 2005; Winter 2000; Teece 2007). The results of the study further define what it means for software firms to have product, service and hybrid orientations, resulting in advancement of these constructs. The approach used to elicit and capture capabilities is novel and contributes to advancement in the literature pertaining to capabilities by applying a previously untested methodology. The results of this research are of particular interest to software firms that aspire to build or strengthen a product, service or hybrid orientation.

This dissertation presents a study on project management and its effectiveness in a multinational pharmaceutical company (MPC). A mixed qualitative-quantitative method consisting of a case study (33 managers) and a follow-up survey (122 employees) was conducted. The cybernetics theory and its related concepts were used to formulate the social and technical components of projects as a network of task-related social interactions within an organizational context. Interaction was defined as the variety or possible states one node generates for another node, while degree of coordination was defined as the extent to which a recipient node can handle the variety of interrelated nodes. Interaction Effectiveness (IE) was calculated based on the ratio of “helpful” to “not so helpful” behaviors between interrelated nodes. MPC’s average organizational IE ratio of 1.03 was used as a baseline to determine the relative effectiveness of different interactions. The IE ratio also revealed two structural network properties. First, a departmental-level analysis indicated that most network relationships were asymmetrical (76.5%), reflecting a significant discrepancy in perceptions between interrelated nodes. Second, the variability of IE ratios (standard deviation) ranged from 0.10 to 1.28, reflecting the degree of consistency among the relationships of each single node and its interrelated nodes. The results of a multiple regression analysis indicated a significant relationship between the perceived ranking of a node’s performance and the node’s IE ratio. Multiple regression analysis also indicated a significant relationship between the perceived ranking of a node’s importance and the total of that node’s helpful and not so helpful comments. Finally, the results showed that the IE ratio was almost double for employees’ positive working relationship links compared to links with which they reported negative working relationships. The qualitative findings also provide significant evidence of the method’s sensitivity to capture project management’s most crucial element of “time.” Categorizing the impact of not so helpful comments corresponded mostly to “delays” (68.87%), whereas the impact of helpful comments corresponded mostly to “saving time” (68.14%). Furthermore, categorizing decisions to handle variety revealed the dominance of “adhocracy” mechanisms (62.18%) to handle input variety as opposed to “procedural” variety handling mechanisms (20.63%). Categorizing the comments related to the not so helpful category of “unreasonable expectations” indicated that 51.4% of all comments pertained to “role overload” followed by “role conflict” (36.5%), with only 12.1% of all comments corresponding to “role ambiguity.” The quantitative follow-up survey’s primary objective was to test the research hypotheses regarding the relationship between “variety”-related concepts and different degrees of project complexity (complex versus simple). The survey supported all hypotheses except Hypothesis 7 regarding project management software. Results, limitations, potential improvements to the current study, and future research directions are discussed.

The focus of this thesis is to explore the impact of positive affective state and mood salience on intertemporal decision making. We found that positive affect significantly influence intertemporal preference. We also found that when current mood becomes salient to the decision maker, the direction of preference changes. Specifically, we hypothesized and found that individuals with positive mood are more likely to choose the later larger (long term) rewards than the individuals with a neutral mood. We discuss three factors that could explain choice behaviour in such situations. These factors are the willingness to maintain positive mood, temporal orientation and risk perception, and increase in the level of dopamine in brain. Moreover, our results indicate that when current positive mood is salient, individuals become more concerned about their affective state, and are more likely to engage in affect regulation, and as a result, more likely to prefer the sooner smaller (immediate) rewards. These findings suggest that experiencing positive affect would increase patience and self-control. However, this is the case when the level of mood salience is not high. When individuals’ attention is directed to their emotional states, they tend to choose sooner smaller rewards that could assist them in keeping their good mood and avoiding negative feelings.

This study develops a dynamic pricing model with a quality substitutable product, taking into account strategic and myopic consumers. In each of the two periods, the firm can choose between offering a high quality product, a low quality product or both and the corresponding price for the product. Strategic consumers compare current utility with future utility in order to decide the time of purchase and the quality of the product in an attempt to maximize their utilities. Myopic consumers consider only current utility in purchasing of the products. We generate scenarios, prove whether a scenario is feasible and which scenario produces the best profit for the firm. Our result suggests that the firm obtains the best profit when it provides only high quality products in each of the two periods. In other words, the firm does not have to offer quality substitution as intertemporal substitution suffices to maximize the expected profit.

This thesis presents novel approaches that use interior point concepts in solving mixed integer programs. Particularly, we use the analytic center cutting plane method to improve three of the main components of the branch-and-bound algorithm: cutting planes, heuristics, and branching. First, we present an interior point branch-and-cut algorithm for structured integer programs based on Benders decomposition. We explore using Benders decomposition in a branch-and-cut framework where the Benders cuts are generated using the analytic center cutting plane method. The algorithm is tested on two classes of problems: the capacitated facility location problem and the multicommodity capacitated fixed charge network design problem. For the capacitated facility location problem, the proposed approach was on average 2.5 times faster than Benders-branch-and-cut and 11 times faster than classical Benders decomposition. For the multicommodity capacitated fixed charge network design problem, the proposed approach was 4 times faster than Benders-branch-and-cut while classical Benders decomposition failed to solve the majority of the tested instances. Second, we present a heuristic algorithm for mixed integer programs based on interior points. As integer solutions are typically in the interior, we use the analytic center cutting plane method to search for integer feasible points within the interior of the feasible set. The algorithm searches along two line segments that connect the weighted analytic center and two extreme points of the linear programming relaxation. Candidate points are rounded and tested for feasibility. Cuts aimed to improve the objective function and restore feasibility are then added to displace the weighted analytic center until a feasible integer solution is found. The algorithm is composed of three phases. In the first, points along the two line segments are rounded gradually to find integer feasible solutions. Then in an attempt to improve the quality of the solutions, the cut related to the bound constraint is updated and a new weighted analytic center is found. Upon failing to find a feasible integer solution, a second phase is started where cuts related to the violated feasibility constraints are added. As a last resort, the algorithm solves a minimum distance problem in a third phase. For all the tested instances, the algorithm finds good quality feasible solutions in the first two phases and the third phase is never called. Finally, we present a new approach to generate good general branching constraints based on the shape of the polyhedron. Our approach is based on approximating the polyhedron using an inscribed ellipsoid. We use Dikin's ellipsoid which we calculate using the analytic center. We propose to use the disjunction that has a minimum width on the ellipsoid. We use the fact that the width of the ellipsoid in a given direction has a closed form solution in order to formulate a quadratic problem whose optimal solution is a thin direction of the ellipsoid. While solving a quadratic problem at each node of the branch-and-bound tree is impractical, we use a local search heuristic for its solution. Computational testing conducted on hard integer problems from MIPLIB and CORAL showed that the proposed approach outperforms classical branching.

Logistics Transportation is an indispensable step that connects production, storage, and the final customers. Plenty of previous research has been done to achieve the goals such as low cost, high accuracy in timing, good customer service, and low damage rate, within the transportation system. However, most of those improvements are on the operational level. There are few supply chain collaborations that try to optimize logistics transportation from a strategic level. This thesis proposes a new collaboration policy, Carrier Managed Transportation (CMT). It is a coordinated relationship between the carrier and the clients in a supply chain. As opposed to the traditional approach, where the client decides when to request shipments of the products, in CMT, the carrier will make these decisions on their behalf through information sharing. Due to the complexity in relationships and responsibilities of chain members, we divide the business scenarios into four cases and discuss the impact of CMT on each case. Comparisons and numerical examples across cases are also provided, along with some conclusions regarding the implementation of CMT.

Firms in highly dynamic environments focusing on innovation in their products and services, often encounter elevated amounts of uncertainty regarding the future direction of technological change. Finding reliable and imbedded information enhances a firm’s ability to tackle new markets and take advantage of possible hidden opportunities. To reduce uncertainty, obtain hidden knowledge, and gain competitive advantage, environmental scanning, which is one of the main components of foresight, is recommended by scholars of strategic management. The process of detecting weak signals for shedding light what one authority calls “blurry future zones” (Day & Schoemaker, 2005, p.1) has currently been receiving attention in environmental scanning studies. Some studies emphasize the importance of the subject; yet they offer few practical methodologies for actual cases. To help address this gap, this research introduces a new approach for detecting weak signals during Internet-based environmental scanning by applying the Cluto toolkit (see Section 4.7) plus using human judgment. This novel methodology is applied to the application of Micro Tiles, a recent innovative product of a digital display company located in Ontario, Canada, Christie Digital Company. In the conduct of this exploratory research, about 40,000 HTML pages were retrieved from the Internet in a search during 2009. To extract weak signals information from the retrieved unstructured texts, documents were grouped into a number of clusters by the CLUTO software. Two subject matter experts compared and evaluated the cluster results for the purpose of finding potentially relevant information in regard to the company’s strategic intent. Analyzing the clusters, the experts reduced the number of clustered documents from the original corpus into smaller sets with the goal of finding more relevant and unexpected documents (weak signals). The relevancy and expectedness of information in documents were two measurements as related to weak signals. The trends of the study indicate that as anticipated both experts found more unexpected documents in the smaller sets rather than the larger ones. Moreover, regarding one expert’s analysis, the smaller sets contain documents that are more relevant to the domain of interest. Overall, according to one expert, documents existing in the smaller sets display more weak signals. This emerging methodology offers a practical procedure to apply web-based information in the development of a company’s environmental scanning procedures. Using this methodology, managers can employ both computer tools and human sense-making methods to detect potential weak signals and reduce certain biases in the detection process.