Thesis (MPA.) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / The study investigated the impacts of performance management system on service delivery in Mokopane Regional hospital. The study moved from the premise that Performance Management System in Mokopane Regional Hospitals is not well managed. The investigation however revealed that efforts are being made to implement performance management system although some essential improvements are inevitable required. It also probed the implementation of the performance management system within the ambit of the determined policies and procedure manual for the hospital. The challenges experienced are due to the failure of the line managers and supervisors in understanding the essence of the system. The implementation of the system often results in biasness and other performance unrelated factors. In many instances, other factors (such as subjectivity at the expense of objectivity) are unrelated to high performance rates. The study makes a recommendation on how alignment can be made to ensure that the system become more effective.

Orientador(a): Suely Master / Banca: Fabio Miguel / Banca: Nadia Vilela / Resumo: Quando o ator está em cena é necessário que no mínimo sua voz seja bem projeta e audível a plateia em sua Performance. O espectro médio de longo termo (Long Term Average Spectrum - LTAS) é um método que possibilita estudar os fatores mais estáveis da voz, como a sua qualidade. O termo "formante do ator" foi empregado para o pico de aproximadamente 3.5 kHz em projeção vocal desse espectro. Muitos estudos que identificaram esse formante em atores, não o fizeram com o ator atuando de fato em uma real performance, e sim com o ator estático, muitas vezes apenas lendo o texto. Pouco se tem relatado, na analise acústica, sobre a qualidade da voz quando o ator trabalha o corpo e voz juntos como no caso da maioria das performances teatrais. Sendo assim, esse estudo teve como objetivo analisar a voz acusticamente na performance teatral e entender se a mesma foi considerada uma variável significante para voz. Foi utilizado o LTAS como instrumento de quantificação para a análise acústica e a análise perceptivo-auditiva foi feita como forma de complementar os resultados. Os atores apresentaram o "formante do ator" em ambas as performances, sendo ele um pouco mais forte na performance em movimento / Abstract: Actors supposed to have a voice that, at least, can be well projected and audible when they are performing. The Long Term Average Spectrum (LTAS) has been used as a method to study the stabiles voices factors, as its quality. The term "actor's formant" was used to an approximately 3.5 kHz peak in voice projection for this spectrum. Researchers that had found this formant didn't use actors on action as in real theater Performance, but in a static position just reading the text. Nothing has been reported about the voice quality of actors when they are using movement body and voice at the same time, as they usually do in a real performance. Therefore, this study had as the mean objective the acoustic analyze of actor's voice in theater performance and proves if it could be a considerable variability to the voice. LTAS was used as a quantification instrument. The perceptive-auditive analyses was used to support the results as well. The "actor's formant" had showed increased in actors on action performance / Mestre

De nos jours, les utilisateurs de services interactifs comme le e-commerce, ou les moteurs de recherche, ont de grandes attentes sur la performance et la réactivité de ces services. En effet, les études ont montré que des lenteurs (même pendant une courte durée) impacte directement le chiffre d'affaire. Avoir des performances prédictives est donc devenu une priorité pour ces fournisseurs de services depuis une dizaine d'années.Mais empêcher la variabilité dans les systèmes de stockage distribué est un challenge car les requêtes des utilisateurs finaux transitent par des centaines de servers et les problèmes de performances engendrés par chacun de ces serveurs peuvent influencer sur la latence observée. Même dans les environnements correctement dimensionnés, des problèmes comme de la contention sur les ressources partagés ou un déséquilibre de charge entre les serveurs influent sur les latences des requêtes et en particulier sur la queue de leur distribution (95ème et 99ème centile).L’objectif de cette thèse est de développer des mécanises permettant de réduire les latences et d’obtenir des performances prédictives dans les environnements de stockage de données dans les nuages. Une contre-mesure efficace pour réduire la latence de queue dans les environnements de stockage de données dans les nuages est de fournir des algorithmes efficaces pour la sélection de réplique. Dans la sélection de réplique, une requête tentant d’accéder à une information donnée (aussi appelé valeur) identifiée par une clé unique est dirigée vers la meilleure réplique présumée. Cependant, sous des charges de travail hétérogènes, ces algorithmes entraînent des latences accrues pour les requêtes ayant un court temps d'exécution et qui sont planifiées à la suite de requêtes ayant des long temps d’exécution. Nous proposons Héron, un algorithme de sélection de répliques qui gère des charges de travail avec des requêtes ayant un temps d’exécution hétérogène. Nous évaluons Héron dans un cluster de machines en utilisant un jeu de données synthétique inspiré du jeu de données de Facebook ainsi que deux jeux de données réels provenant de Flickr et WikiMedia. Nos résultats montrent que Héron surpasse les algorithmes de l’état de l’art en réduisant jusqu’à 41% la latence médiane et la latence de queue.Dans la deuxième contribution de cette thèse, nous nous sommes concentrés sur les charges de travail multi-GET afin de réduire la latence dans les environnements de stockage de données dans les nuages Le défi consiste à estimer les opérations limitantes et à les planifier sur des serveurs non-coordonnés avec un minimum de surcoût. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous présentons TailX, un algorithme d’ordonnancement de tâches multi-GET qui réduit les temps de latence de queue sous des charges de travail hétérogènes. Nous implémentons TailX dans Cassandra, une base de données clé-valeur largement utilisée. Il en résulte une amélioration des performances globales des environnements de stockage de données dans les nuages pour une grande variété de charges de travail hétérogènes. / Today, users of interactive services such as e-commerce, web search have increasingly high expectations on the performance and responsiveness of these services. Indeed, studies have shown that a slow service (even for short periods of time) directly impacts the revenue. Enforcing predictable performance has thus been a priority of major service providers in the last decade. But avoiding latency variability in distributed storage systems is challenging since end user requests go through hundreds of servers and performance hiccups at any of these servers may inflate the observed latency. Even in well-provisioned systems, factors such as the contention on shared resources or the unbalanced load between servers affect the latencies of requests and in particular the tail (95th and 99th percentile) of their distribution.The goal of this thesis to develop mechanisms for reducing latencies and achieve performance predictability in cloud data stores. One effective countermeasure for reducing tail latency in cloud data stores is to provide efficient replica selection algorithms. In replica selection, a request attempting to access a given piece of data (also called value) identified by a unique key is directed to the presumably best replica. However, under heterogeneous workloads, these algorithms lead to increased latencies for requests with a short execution time that get scheduled behind requests with large execution times. We propose Héron, a replica selection algorithm that supports workloads of heterogeneous request execution times. We evaluate Héron in a cluster of machines using a synthetic dataset inspired from the Facebook dataset as well as two real datasets from Flickr and WikiMedia. Our results show that Héron outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms by reducing both median and tail latency by up to 41%.In the second contribution of the thesis, we focus on multiget workloads to reduce the latency in cloud data stores. The challenge is to estimate the bottleneck operations and schedule them on uncoordinated backend servers with minimal overhead. To reach this objective, we present TailX, a task aware multiget scheduling algorithm that reduces tail latencies under heterogeneous workloads. We implement TailX in Cassandra, a widely used key-value store. The result is an improved overall performance of the cloud data stores for a wide variety of heterogeneous workloads.

This study looks at the relationship between ownership structure, monitoring and firm performance. The research employed the agency theory hypothesised by Jensen and Meckling (1976) from the view of contractual relationships among various parties involved within a company. It presents a longitudinal study of the 161 non- financial publicly listed companies in the Jakarta Stock Exchange between 1994- 2000. This design enables a researcher not only to examine the effects of various governance variables on corporate performance, but also to examine the extent to which such relationships vary with changes in the general economic environment. This study reveals that only a small proportion of private-domestic Indonesian firms have a widely dispersed ownership structure. Viewed from the standpoint of traditional agency theory, the separation of ownership and control seems to work differently in Indonesia. In this country the agency problem is not between the owners and the managers, as in Anglo-Saxon countries, but may be between “strong” controlling shareholders and “weak” minority owners. The findings suggest a strong association between degrees of ownership concentration, owner involvement in supervisory/management board and the existence of family business groups. These factors are interdependent, and each of them relates cohesively to the others within the organisation. In this regard, the collectivism and higher power distance value dimensions that are dominant in Indonesian society also heighten such relationships. Inappropriate institutional, law and legal enforcement provide the means for the controlling shareholders to continue these practices, which insulate them from external interference, monitoring and supervision. / Taken together, these findings support the view that national cultural features have a profound effect on the structure of national economies. The evidence corroborates the uniqueness of corporate governance practices in Indonesia, and the findings support the supremacy of controlling shareholders Further to the growing debate on the costs and benefits of controlling shareholders, the empirical findings of this study reveal that these shareholders are the source of the corporate governance problem rather than solution. In short, the most basic factor which inhibits the effectiveness of corporate governance implementation in Indonesia is the existence of powerful large shareholdings in the hands of a family. Governance reform, therefore, should address the corporate system by seeking to reduce the supremacy of these shareholders, and at the same time empower the other stakeholders. The findings also support the view of both the co-evolutionary and path-dependency theories in regard to factors that determine the pattern of ownership structure. The development of firms in Indonesia follows the path-dependence structure and, during this process, the firms’ environments will interact with and operate endogenous responses for environmental change. Such exogenous and endogenous forces shape the environment and trigger organisations to adapt in different ways so that they are able to survive. / Thus, one would expect there to be different corporate governance systems within each country and any effort towards reforming such systems should consider factors specific to that country. This implies that governance reforms should be fully compatible with a country’s national culture, institutional, legal and business systems. Other variables, such as informal norms (social norms and cultural beliefs) and the political environment in a country should also be considered in the design of these reforms.

The wide range of applications for single input single output controllers have encouraged interest in monitoring their performance. Over the past two decades researchers in the area have found many performance enhancement opportunities by applying these techniques. These are most evident in large operational plants with hundreds of controllers being monitored at the same time. Early performance measures were based on minimum variance control as a benchmark for controller performance. Many other procedures have since emerged that have improved the level of accuracy in these performance measures. In addition, these improvements made it easier to implement control loop performance monitoring in large industrial settings. This thesis looks at the performance measures in use for single input single output controllers. The work here looks at incorporating these different measures for a specific manufacturing plant. Ways of identifying the goals and objectives of controllers in a system are presented. Furthermore, measures are proposed that most accurately indicate if these goals and objectives are being met. The concept is demonstrated on a distillation system in a gas plant. It is shown how using these objective driven techniques can provide the user with sound results. These results do not require much user analysis to identify sources of problems and areas of improvement.

Thesis (M.Com. (Management Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The purpose of this study was to test a hypothesized model of aurally perceived performer-controlled musical factors that influence assessments of performance quality. Previous research studies on musical performance constructs, musical achievement, musical expression, and scale construction were examined to identify the factors that influence assessments of performance quality. A total of eight factors were identified: tone, intonation, rhythmic accuracy, articulation, tempo, dynamics, timbre, and interpretation. These factors were categorized as either technique or musical expression factors. Items representing these eight variables were chosen from previous research on scale development. Additional items, along with researcher created items, were also chosen to represent the variables of technique, musical expression and overall perceptions of performance quality. The 44 selected items were placed on the Aural Musical Performance Quality (AMPQ) measure and paired with a four-point Likert scale. The reliability for the AMPQ measure was reported at .977. A total of 58 volunteer adjudicators were recruited to evaluate four recordings that represented one of each instrumental category of interest: brass, woodwind, voice, and string. The resulting performance evaluations (N = 232) were analyzed using statistical regression and path analysis techniques. The results of the analysis provide empirical support for the existence of the model of aurally perceived performer-controlled musical factors. Technique demonstrated significant direct effects on overall perceptions of performance quality and musical expression. Musical expression also demonstrated a significant direct effect on overall perceptions of performance quality. The results of this study are consistent with hypothesized model of performer-controlled musical factors.

Performance projections of High Performance Computing (HPC) applications onto various hardware platforms are important for hardware vendors and HPC users. The projections aid hardware vendors in the design of future systems and help HPC users with system procurement and application refinements. In this dissertation, we present an efficient method to project the performance of HPC applications onto Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) based systems using widely available standard benchmark data. The main advantage of this method is the use of published data about the target machine; the target machine need not be available. With the current trend in HPC platforms shifting towards cluster systems with chip multiprocessors (CMPs), efficient and accurate performance projection becomes a challenging task. Typically, CMP-based systems are configured hierarchically, which significantly impacts the performance of HPC applications. The goal of this research is to develop an efficient method to project the performance of HPC applications onto systems that utilize CMPs. To provide for efficiency, our projection methodology is automated (projections are done using a tool) and fast (with small overhead). Our method, called the surrogate-based workload application projection method, utilizes surrogate benchmarks to project an HPC application performance on target systems where computation component of an HPC application is projected separately from the communication component. Our methodology was validated on a variety of systems utilizing different processor and interconnect architectures with high accuracy and efficiency. The average projection error on three target systems was 11.22 percent with standard deviation of 1.18 percent for twelve HPC workloads.

Software designers make decisions between alternate approaches early in the development of a software application and these decisions can be difficult to change later. Designers make these decisions based on estimates of how alternatives affect software qualities. One software quality that can be difficult to predict is performance, that is, the efficient use of resources in the system. It is particularly challenging to estimate the performance of large, interconnected software systems composed of components. With the proliferation of class libraries, middle-ware systems, web services, and third party components, many software projects rely on third party services to meet their requirements. Often choosing between services involves considering both the functionality and performance of the services. To help software developers compare their designs and third-party services, I propose using performance prototypes of alternatives and test suites to estimate performance trade-offs early in the development cycle, a process called Design-Time Performance Testing (DTPT).<p> Providing software designers with performance evidence based on prototypes will allow designers to make informed decisions regarding performance trade-offs. To show how DTPT can help inform real design decisions. In particular: a process for DTPT, a framework implementation written in Java, and experiments to verify and validate the process and implementation. The implemented framework assists when designing, running, and documenting performance test suites, allowing designers to make accurate comparisons between alternate approaches. Performance metrics are captured by instrumenting and running prototypes.<p> This thesis describes the process and framework for gathering software performance estimates at design-time using prototypes and test suites.

As infrastructure networks grow more complex, regulatory requirements become greater, populations grow, budgets become more limited, and the expectations of customers increase, municipalities are progressively being required to provide more for less. This is presenting some particular challenges to the long-term sustainability of buried water and wastewater infrastructure in Ontario. In response, municipalities are increasingly seeking to improve their business processes and asset management capabilities as a path to optimize the lifecycle of their infrastructure assets and ensure public safety, community development, and financial sustainability. This thesis presents an organizational performance measurement framework for municipal infrastructure asset management which was validated through interviews and surveys with international discipline experts. The resultant framework provides a high-level outline and suggestions for implementation of key objectives, 11 core critical success factors, and 135 quantitative performance indicators for municipal water and wastewater asset management organizations.