Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Political Science, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 29,2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 266-303). Also issued in print.

This paper explains what recognition the auditor has of theoretical judgment and decision making subjects surrounding the audit process. The auditors’ judgment and decision making skills seem to be more challenged when it comes to estimating their clients’ valuations. Therefore, the audit process of fair value measures (FVM) is used to charterer the recognition more clearly. Attention to this topic is warranted for several reasons. First, FVM was implemented on the Swedish market in 2005 and is relatively recent to Swedish auditors. Second, to our knowledge no similar study, regarding the Swedish audit firms, has been conducted within this area. Third, the evidence, drawn from previous research, of what recognition the auditors have of the theoretical judgment and decision making subjects seem to be more indirect than direct and we also extend the previous research. We find, through semi-structured interviews with employees of the ‘Big four’, that both judgment and decision making are acknowledged as possible issues. However, we also find that certain areas within these two categories are unrecognized to be of immediate concern.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Before a context where the process of decision-making is considered complex and studies in this area focus on this complexity, as well as analysis of the individual, their bounded rationality and issues related to information for decision-making the research aims analyze the process of decision-making in agriculture, in terms of social, institutional, cultural, organizational and personal aspects. Thus, for its development was used a descriptive and quantitative survey, that is, was carried out a survey of data from 77 properties in the city of Boa Vista das Missões - Rio Grande do Sul. The analyses of data collected were due to quantitative methods, such as the description of the sample by frequency and the other data over the relationship between variables. With base on the results of the study, it is possible to verify a relationship between social, cultural, personal, institutional and organizational aspects and decision-making. These relationships are more present in aspects of basement (decisions based on information or experience, cost/benefit or intuition/impulse), nature (routine or innovative decisions) and response time (fast decisions and thoughtful and time consuming decisions) for the decisions. Thus, it is suggest that the studies will help to specify some relevant characteristics to the process of decision-making of the farmers, which so far in the literature were little explored. / Diante de um contexto onde o processo de tomada de decisão é considerado complexo e os trabalhos desta área focalizam essa complexidade, assim como análises do indivíduo, sua racionalidade limitada e aspectos relacionados às informações para o processo decisório a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo geral analisar o processo de tomada de decisão na agricultura, sob os aspectos sociais, institucionais, culturais, organizacionais e pessoais. Assim, para o desenvolvimento da mesma foi utilizado um survey descritivo e quantitativo, ou seja, realizou-se um levantamento de dados, através de um questionário, junto a 77 propriedades do município de Boa Vista das Missões Rio Grande do Sul. As análises dos dados coletados se deram por métodos quantitativos, como a descrição da amostra através de freqüências e os demais dados através de relação entre variáveis. Com base nos dados e análises, pode-se verificar que há relação entre aspectos de interesse da investigação e o processo de tomada de decisão. Estas relações são mais presentes em aspectos de embasamento (decisões baseadas em informações ou experiência; custo/beneficio ou intuição/impulso), natureza (decisões rotineiras ou inovadoras) e tempo de resposta (decisões rápidas e ágeis ou reflexivas e demoradas) para as decisões, porém, ressalta-se que alguns deles com maior e outros com menor intensidade. Deste modo, sugere-se que o trabalho contribui para especificar algumas características relevantes ao processo de tomada de decisão dos agricultores, que até então na literatura eram pouco exploradas.

This study focuses on the Internet auction in the market of jade from Ming or Ch¡¦ing dynasty. Yahoo/Kimo auction, which is the biggest net auction site in Taiwan, has been selected as the research site in the project. Jade from Ming or Ch¡¦ing dynasty is the major goods in this research because of its distinguishable characteristics and reasonable price in the market. ¡§Case studies¡¨ have been chosen as the methodology of this research. Interviews with six jade sellers, trading records of consumers, and observation from the researcher have become methods of data collection. This study attempts to discover workable strategists for jade sellers in the Internet auction. The main research questions are: (1)Why do sellers choose Yahoo/Kimo auction as the site to sell jade of Ming or Ch¡¦ing dynasty¡H(2)How do sellers manipulate perception of consumers to influence their decision making¡H(3)How does rating and feedback work in marketing jade¡H(4)How to pricing¡HHow to satisfy different marketing segmentation¡H Three conclusions have been summarized as following: In Taiwan, Yahoo/Kimo auction site is a suitable site for jade trading because the site is user friendly, with huge size of pictures showing the characteristics of jade, with fast searching engine, low running cost, and highly security system. If a seller wants to run a stylish store, he/she is suggested to design the website by himself/herself. Generally speaking, most consumers in Internet auction are lack of understanding of jade. Therefore, enriching the description and pictures of goods and lowering the price become key points to influence consumers¡¦ decision making. Another fact found in the study is that the rating and feedback system is useful for convincing consumers at the beginning time; however, it plays less and less important role especially for consumers to make their final decisions. Selling with low-price is unable to reach the exceptional profits, but is considered as a way to clean out stocks. High-price jade is hardly to market through Internet auction because it needs a real site to sell it. ¡§Under the table¡¨ bargaining is commonly seen in Internet auction. In the future, the researcher suggests jade sellers in Internet to specialize jade items, to demonstrate in a theme or a style when marketing.

Cellular decision-making help cells to infer functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues and noise present in the system and the environment, with or without genetic change. In Cellular Biology, there exists a list of open questions such as, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the population level (an organization of indistinguishable cells) and at the tissue level (a group of nearly identical cells and their corresponding extracellular matrix which simultaneously accomplish a set of biological operations)? As collective cell migration originates from local cellular orientation decisions, can one generate a mathematical model for collective cell migration phenomena without elusive undiscovered biophysical/biochemical mechanisms and further predict the pattern formations which originates inside the collective cell migration? how optimal microenvironmental sensing is related to differentiated tissue at the spatial scale ? How cell sensing radius and total entropy production (which precisely helps us to understand the operating regimes where cells can take decisions about their future fate) is correlated, and how can one understand the limits of sensing radius at robust tissue development ? To partially tackle these sets of questions, the LEUP (Least microEnvironmental Uncertainty Principle) hypothesis has been applied to different biological scenaros. At first, the LEUP has been enforced to understand the spatio-temporal behavior of a tissue exhibiting phenotypic plasticity (it is a prototype of cell decision-making). Here, two cases have been rigorously studied i.e., migration/resting and migration/proliferation plasticity which underlie the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the Go-or-Grow dichotomy. On the one hand, for the Go-or-Rest plasticity, a bistable switching mechanism between a diffusive (fluid) and an epithelial (solid) tissue phase has been observed from an analogous mean-field approximation which further depends on the sensitivity of the phenotypes to the microenvironment. However, on the other hand, for the Go-or-Grow plasticity, the possibility of Turing pattern formation is inspected for the “solid” tissue phase and its relation to the parameters of the LEUP-driven cell decisions. Later, LEUP hypothesis has been suggested in the area of collective cell migration such that it can provide a tool for a generative mathematical model of collective migration without precise knowledge about the mechanistic details, where the famous Vicsek model is a special case. In this generative model of collective cell migration, the origin of pattern formation inside collective cell migration has been investigated. Moreover, this hypothesis helps to construct a mathematical model for the collective behavior of spherical \textit{Serratia marcescens} bacteria, where the basic understanding of migration mechanisms remain unknown. Furthermore, LEUP has been applied to understand tissue robustness, which in turn shows the way how progenitor cell fate decisions are associated with environmental sensing. The regulation of environmental sensing drives the robustness of the spatial and temporal order in which cells are generated towards a fully differentiating tissue, which are verified later with the experimental data. LEUP driven stochastic thermodynamic formalism also shows that the thermodynamic robustness of differentiated tissues depends on cell metabolism, cell sensing properties and the limits of the cell sensing radius, which further ensures the robustness of differentiated tissue spatial order. Finally, all important results of the thesis have been encapsulated and the extension of the LEUP has been discussed.:Contents Statement of authorship vii Abstract ix I. Introduction to cell decision-making 1 1. What is cell decision-making ? 3 1.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Examplesofcelldecision-making. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2.1. PhenotypicPlasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2.2. Cellularmigration:orientationdecisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2.3. Celldifferentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3. Challengesandopenquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.4. Solutionstrategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.5. Structureofthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 II. Least microEnvironmental Uncertainty Principle (LEUP) 11 2. Least microEnvironmental Uncertainty Principle (LEUP) 13 2.1. HypothesisbehindLEUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.2. Mathematicalformulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.2.1. CellasBayesiandecisionmaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.2.2. VariationalprincipleforLEUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 III. LEUP in biological problems 17 3. Phenotypic plasticity : dynamics at the level of tissue from individual cell decisions 19 3.1. Mathematicalframework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.2. Individualbasedmodel(IBM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.3. Mean-fieldapproximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.3.1. Phenotypicswitchingdynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 3.3.2. Cellmigrationdynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.3.3. Superpositionofphenotypicswitchingdynamicsandcellmi- gration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.4. Spatio-temporaldynamicsofcellmigration/proliferationplasticity . . 28 3.4.1. CaseI:Largeinteractionradius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.4.2. CaseII:Finiteinteractionradius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.4.3. Phenotypicswitchingdynamicsintheabsenceofmicroenvi- ronmentalsensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 3.5. Summaryandoutlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 4. Cellular orientation decisions: origin of pattern formations in collective cell migrations 39 4.1. Mathematicalframework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4.1.1. Self-propelledparticlemodelwithleupbaseddecision-making 41 4.1.2. Orderparametersandobservables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 4.1.3. Statisticaltest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.2. ComparisonwithVicsekmodel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.2.1. Patternsindifferentparameterregimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4.3. Application:thesphericalbacteriacase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 4.4. Summaryandoutlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 5. Cell differentiation and sensing: tissue robustness from optimal environ- mental sensing 53 5.1. LEUPbasedmathematicalmodelforcelldifferentiation . . . . . . . . 56 5.1.1. StatisticalresultsfromLEUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 5.2. RelationbetweenLEUPandcellsensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 5.3. LEUPdrivenfluctuationtheorem: confirmsthethermodynamicro- bustnessofdifferentiatedtissues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.3.1. Application: differentiated photoreceptor mosaics are ther- modynamicallyrobust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 5.4. Thelimitforcellsensingradius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.4.1. Application:Theaveragesensingradiusoftheavianconecell 69 5.5. Summaryandoutlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 6. Discussions 75 7. Supplementary Material 91 8. Erklärung 115

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