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This thesis seeks to identify the characteristics of Japanese and western management practices concerning product quality, and their transferability to the petrochemical industry in Saudi Arabia. The thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter One discusses the purpose and value of this research. Chapter Two introduces the management practices of developing countries and Saudi Arabia in particular, to assist in the understanding of this subject. The experience of western and Japanese companies in transferring their management practices abroad is discussed in Chapter Three. To carry out this study, a model has been developed in Chapter Four, adopted from the theoretical models of Neghandi and Frasada (1971) and Horn, Grubb-Ingram and Masson (1987). This model suggests that product quality can be achieved through improvements in management philosophy, management functions and production management. Chapter Five shows the results of the questionnaire analysis and Chapter Six discusses the findings of the research. Finally, Chapter Seven provide a summary of the research findings which showed both the Japanese and western management practices have contributed considerably to an improvement in product quality in the Saudi petrochemical industry. Both the Japanese and western companies have employed their management practices in their subsidiaries in Saudi Arabia to a considerable extent; however, both Japanese and western practices have been influenced by the business environment in Saudi Arabia to a certain extent.

År 1855 klassificerades slotten i vindistriktet runt Bordeaux. Denna klassificering fick stort genomslag och används än idag. Klassificeringen har emellertid kritiserats för att ej representera den faktiska kvaliteten av dess innefattande viner. Trots det används den som ett facit över vinernas storhet. Detta arbete har undersökt samband mellan klassificeringen och vinernas kvalitet idag. Resultatet av litteraturstudien fann samband mellan bordeaux, pris och marknadsföring. Vidare redogörs för att begreppet kvalitet är svårdefinierat då flertalet aktörer tolkar kvalitet på skilda sätt. Influensen av terroir är ej utan vinmakaren en relevant faktor för de sensoriska egenskaperna i vinet. Faktisk kvalitet är mindre betydelsefullt än förväntad kvalitet ur ett marknadsperspektiv. Arbetet diskuterar kvalitetens förankring och vikt i klassificeringen från 1855. Marknadsföring är en stark variabel vid prissättning av viner från Bordeaux i vilken förväntad kvalitet vägde tyngst för priset. Vinkritiker är inflytelserika i en vinproducents förväntade kvalitet. Diskussionen behandlar även olika ståndpunkter i användande av begreppet terroir. De innefattande vinernas faktiska kvalitet var av mindre vikt när klassificeringen genomfördes. Rankningen har idag lett till en generellt högre kvalitet bland vinerna. Klassificeringen har även skänkt status åt regionen och dess viner. / B-uppsatser

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The first two pieces of work in this thesis look into the strategic decision of intergenerational educational investment and its implication to income inequality, skill distribution and income mobility. The contribution of my work is to incorporate matching frictions into the marriage market and analyze returns from strategic educational investments. The mechanism in the marriage market adopted follows the spirit of the competitive search model which interprets the ‘mismatch’ phenomenon as the result of coordination frictions in the matching process. The competitiveness and frictions in the family formation process create decreasing returns to high educational investment. The more parental households who choose high educational investment, the less is the return to high educational investment compared to the lower alternative. The fact that rich parental households suffer less from costly high educational investment puts the poor households at a disadvantage and the poor are more likely to be crowded out of the group that have incentives to choose high investment. The model predicts that given a certain parameter region, children of poor parents are more likely to become skilled if the fraction of rich parental households is not too large. In a multi-generational dynamic setting, it further implies the existence of a stationary household income distribution and income mobility rates. An increase in returns to education alone generates a larger stationary fraction of rich households and a larger upward income mobility rate. An increase in the cost of the high educational investment alone generates a smaller stationary fraction of rich households and a smaller upward income mobility rate. The third piece of work looks into the strategic interaction between passenger carriers over product quality and the location choice in a duopoly scheduled flight market. The model predicts that the two carriers prefer to be specialized in different flight quality (non-stop vs. one-stop) and adopt the same schedule when a higher quality difference makes the consumers less sensitive to the flight frequency. It contributes to literatures on the application of two-dimensional product differentiation in air-travel market analysis.

Three experiments, two with pigs and one with Atlantic salmon, (<I>Salmo salar</I>) were carried out to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with α-tocopheryl acetate (ATA) on quality of pig and salmon tissues. In Experiment 1, 32 pigs were individually fed either of two dietary fat sources: 0.5:0.5 <I>w/w</I> coconut oil/lard (59 g/kg finisher diet) or rapeseed oil (100 g/kg finisher diet) (as contained in full-fat rapeseed {FFR}), with or without supplementary ATA at 200 mg/kg diet. In Experiment 2, 24 pigs were individually fed either a diet which contained mixtures of vegetable oil (59 g/kg diet) (having a high level of palm oil) or rapeseed oil diet as in Experiment 1. The rapeseed oil diets were supplemented with 0, 200 and 500 mg ATA/kg diet. In Experiment 3, a commercial diet with high lipid content (290 g/kg diet) and 250 mg ATA/kg diet was supplemented with 0, 400 and 700 mg ATA/kg diet. Diets were fed to 54 salmon. Tissue samples were stored at 4°C and/or -20°C for different periods. Spectral data on tissue samples were collected with an NIRSystems 6500 scanning monochromator. Salmon and pig tissues, and pig muscle subcellular fractions (microsomal and mitochondrial) were analysed for fatty acid composition, α-tocopherol (AT) content and oxidative stability (by thiobarbituric acid test). In both pigs and salmon, muscle drip loss was measured, and the colour score and carotenoid content of salmon fillets were determined. Data presented in this study indicate that pig tissues respond positively to increased dietary supply of unsaturated fatty acids (UFA). Pig tissue UFA and n-3 fatty acid contents were increased, and n-6/n-3 fatty acid ratio was decreased by feeding diets containing FFR. There was only a slight influence of dietary fatty acids on fatty acid composition of the subcellular membranes. AT concentration was higher in the mitochondrial fraction than the microsomal fraction. The mitochondrial fraction lipids had a higher content of UFA than those of the mcirosomal fraction. Supplemental dietary ATA increased the AT content of both pig and salmon tissues.

This study looks at spatial variation of groundwater nitrate in Texas and its fluctuations at 10 year increments using data from the Texas Water Development Board. While groundwater nitrate increased in the Ogallala and Seymour aquifers across the time period, the overall rate in Texas appears to be declining as time progresses. However, the available data is limited. Findings show that a much more targeted, knowledge based strategy for sampling would not only reduce the cost of water quality analysis but also reduce the risk of error in these analyses by providing a more realistic picture of the spatial variation of problem contaminants, thereby giving decision-makers a clearer picture on how best to handle the reduction and elimination of problem contaminants.