This work presents a novel slack management technique, the Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique, for dynamic real-time distributed embedded systems targeting the reduction and management of energy consumption. Energy minimization is critical for devices such as laptop computers, PCS telephones, PDAs and other mobile and embedded computing systems simply because it leads to extended battery lifetime. Such systems being power hungry rely greatly upon the system design and algorithms for processing, slack and power management. This work presents an effcient dynamic slack management scheme for an energy aware design of such systems. The proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique has been considered with two static(FCFS, WRR) and two dynamic(EDF, RBS) scheduling schemes used most commonly in distributed systems. A fault tolerance mechanism has also been incorporated into the proposed technique inorder to use the available dynamic slack to maintain checkpoints and provide for rollbacks on faults. Results show that in comparion to contemporary techniques, the proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique provides for about 29% more perfor-mance/overhead savings when validated with real world and random benchmarks.

Författarna utreder i denna uppsats medelst empirisk analys huruvida ålder, anställningstid och personalansvar inverkar på graden av deltagande i budgetprocessen samt i vilken utsträckning dessa individuella karaktärsegenskaper påverkar uppfattningen av budgetmålens svårighetsgrad. För att definiera, mäta och samla in data har författarna distribuerat 103 stycken enkäter med direktriktade frågor till kostnadsansvariga chefer vid en av Sveriges ledande verkstadskoncerner. Resultatet har därefter sammanställts och analyserats utefter koncernens organisatoriska struktur.  Sammanfattningsvis gav uppsatsens empiriska resultat – i strid med tidigare empirisk forskning – tillräckligt med statistiskt belägg för att författarna skulle kunna konstatera att individuella karaktärsegenskaper som ålder och personalansvar särskilt bör beaktas vi en effektivisering av deltagandegraden i budgetprocessen.

The relationship between budgetary participation, budgetary slack and performance has received a great deal of attention in the literatures of management accounting. However, there is a little consistent conclusion in the relationship between budgetary participation, budgetary slack and performance. Behavior accounting researchers using the Contingent Theory in order to conciliate these inconsistent conclusions also confound contrary results (such as Merchant (1985) and Dunk (1993)). This study suggested that the perceived cause of budgetary participation and the cognitive functions of budgetary participation are important determinants of propensity to create budgetary slack and performance. In addition, this study considered the influence of procedural justice about budgetary decision on budgetary slack and performance. We proposed that there are three actions of participator in the process of participation. The first, subordinate would review the surroundings around themselves like environment uncertainty, task uncertainty, budgetary emphasis, role ambiguity and information asymmetry. The second, subordinates will think the need of functions of participation. The surrounding variables will influence the cognitive functions of participation. Finally, they will decide the subsequent action (in this study we discuss the propensity of budgetary slack and performance). We gathered data from 174 subordinate managers working in the publicly owned companies in Taiwan and used LISREL to test our hypotheses. The results of this study revealed that 1.The cause of budgetary of participation is imperative factor influencing the need of the functions of budgetary participation. The environment uncertainty, task uncertainty, role ambiguity and information asymmetry has positively direct influence on the need of informational effect of budgetary participation respectively. Budgetary emphasis has positively direct influence on the need of affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation. 2.The informational effect of budgetary participation was directive associated with budgetary slack. However, the affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation was indirectly related to budgetary slack through procedural justice. 3. The affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation was directive associated with performance. However, the informational effect of budgetary participation was indirectly related to performance through procedural justice and affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation. We anticipated that the result of this study could offer insight into the relationship between budgetary participation, slack and performance. In addition, we expect to give some suggestions to firms that implement participatory budgeting system to avoid dysfunctional behavior of employees and to encourage performance.

This work presents a novel slack management technique, the Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique, for dynamic real-time distributed embedded systems targeting the reduction and management of energy consumption. Energy minimization is critical for devices such as laptop computers, PCS telephones, PDAs and other mobile and embedded computing systems simply because it leads to extended battery lifetime. Such systems being power hungry rely greatly upon the system design and algorithms for processing, slack and power management. This work presents an effcient dynamic slack management scheme for an energy aware design of such systems. The proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique has been considered with two static(FCFS, WRR) and two dynamic(EDF, RBS) scheduling schemes used most commonly in distributed systems. A fault tolerance mechanism has also been incorporated into the proposed technique inorder to use the available dynamic slack to maintain checkpoints and provide for rollbacks on faults. Results show that in comparion to contemporary techniques, the proposed Service Rate Based Slack Distribution Technique provides for about 29% more perfor-mance/overhead savings when validated with real world and random benchmarks.

This thesis represents a study of textile-impressed ceramics from Slack Farm, a Late Mississippian Caborn-Welborn phase site in Union County, Kentucky. The goal of this study was to use the textile impressions to provide additional insight into Caborn-Welborn social organization. The Caborn-Welborn phase represents the reconfiguration of communities in the Lower Ohio River Valley after the collapse of the Angel chiefdom and other nearby Mississippian polities. Results indicate that there was an increase in textile structural variation in the fabric used for the impressions at Slack Farm and other Caborn-Welborn sites from earlier Mississippian assemblages. Increased textile structural variation may be associated with the reconfiguring of the Caborn-Welborn social organization during this phase. Textile types associated with Oneota tribal groups were also identified at Slack Farm and suggest Oneota women were in residence at the site. Textile patterns assumed to be associated with an elite status were not identified in this study. Overall, the textile-impressed assemblage reflects the response of weavers to changes in the Caborn-Welborn social organization.

St. Gallen, Univ., Diss., 2008.

La crise financière récente a réveillé l’intérêt du monde académique pour les préceptes qui sous-tendent le comportement économique “rationnel”. En réponse au besoin d’une meilleure compréhension des fondamentaux du capitalisme, cette thèse prend une perspective historique sur XV quelques considérations managériales essentielles, parmi lesquelles la coordination principal-agent, la redistribution des bénéfices et la maximisation de la fiabilité et de l’efficience. Elle le fait par le biais de multiples analyses longitudinales de la Compagnie Néerlandaise des Indes Orientales (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, la VOC), qui opéra pendant la première vague de mondialisation et fut une pionnière des principes managériaux modernes. Se basant sur une combinaison de données quantitatives et qualitatives, et instruite par la théorie de l’agence et par l’institutionnalisme, cette thèse fait deux contributions théoriques larges. En premier lieu, en soulignant la réactivité de la Compagnie à l’évolution des exigences d’un monde en mutation, elle enrichit l’état des connaissances sur la VOC, qui était jusqu’à présent fortement orienté vers la contextualisation historique et minimisait l’importance de l’action managériale. En deuxième lieu, elle démontre que la gestion de la VOC, bien que guidée par des objectifs organisationnels modernes par essence, tels que le contrôle, la maximisation des revenus, ou l’optimisation opérationnelle, était formatée par des situations politiques et culturelles prémodernes. Ceci confirme de nouveau la thèse selon laquelle les racines de l’action économique “rationnelle” se trouvent d’avantage dans le pragmatisme et la construction sociale que dans une logique économique autonome. Sous cet angle, la lutte de la VOC pour réconcilier les objectifs de long terme et les exigences de court terme éclaire les problématiques stratégiques d’industries dynamiques ou émergeantes, et alimente le débat sur les facteurs, culturels ou politiques, qui ont contribué à l’état actuel du capitalisme occidental. / The recent financial crisis has reinvigorated an academic interest in the precepts upon which “rational” economic behavior is based. Answering to the need for a better understanding of capitalism’s fundaments, this dissertation takes a historical perspective on a number of core managerial issues, including raising capital, controlling agents and improving reliability / efficiency. It does so by means of multiple longitudinal analyses of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie – VOC), which operated during the first wave of globalization and pioneered modern management principles. Together, the chapters cover all of the Company’s three important domains of activity: the Asian branch, the metropolitan upper echelons and the shipping between Europe and Asia. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and drawing on agency theory and institutionalism, the dissertation depicts the VOC as an actively governed organization that consciously addressed trade-offs and dilemmas. Elaborating how social and organizational processes contributed to the modernization of international business, the dissertation suggests that the roots of capitalism and “rational” economic coordination, which are often assumed to obey an autonomous economic logic, can be found in pragmatism and social construction. As such, the VOC’s struggle to reconcile long-term goals with short-term exigencies speaks to current strategic issues in dynamic or emerging industries and feeds into the debate on the factors (culture or political) that have contributed to the current state of western capitalism.

Organizational subunits such as marketing, sales, human resources, and customer service invest in software as a service (SaaS) as a means to reduce information technology costs, speed time to market, gain access to new technologies, and improve application support and maintenance. For these reasons, SaaS has been characterized as a form of outsourcing, and one in which the internal IT function is losing relevancy because contracts are being executed between external application service providers and the affected subunits directly without IT oversight. Here we argue that SaaS is not outsourcing as it has been traditionally envisioned and enacted, and that through the generation of four types of functional slack it has demonstrated the ability to result in higher levels of IT innovation in support of a digital business strategy. A redistribution of IT resources from efficiency to innovation as a result of SaaS adoption was found that prescribed movement toward an equilibrium of ambidexterity between exploitative and exploratory activities. This research has established a number of firsts: 1) explored the production and combination of multidimensional slack, concentrated at a functional level; 2) demonstrated a previously disconfirmed positive relationship between IT outsourcing and innovation; 3) confirmed the feasibility of a theorized positive relationship between outsourcing and ambidexterity, and 4) discovered a new pathway within the realm of digital business strategy between a key external trend and an internal organizational shift of roles, responsibilities, and knowledge patterns. Further, our findings suggest that IT ambidexterity may be a better construct for investigating the impact of IT on firm performance than traditional measures of IT performance.

Resources are a key to innovative actions -not only, but also- in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). With the societal obligation of NPOs to create innovative and effective approaches in responding to a variety of concerns such as poverty, human rights, social services, environmental protection etc. this study examines the resource foundations that make NPOs innovative. NPOs are known to show a considerable degree of pioneer work and innovativeness in responding to societal concerns (Salamon et al., 2004). To have NPOs maintain their innovative behavior it is of the utmost interest to identify those requirements and needs that support their specific functions. Organizational slack is suggested to be a very influential factor in determining the innovative behavior of NPOs. Organizational slack are these resources in or available to the organization that are in excess of the minimum necessary to produce a given level of organizational output (Geiger & Cashen, 2002). Innovation is the outcome of a creative process involving different actors which results in a qualitatively new means-end combination that is new to the market or the firm (Gemünden & Salomo, 2004). The question whether or not organizational slack fosters innovation, has not been answered unambiguously so far, since researchers deliver convincing arguments for both standpoints. Against this backdrop, the study seeks to explain the relationship between organizational slack and innovation in nonprofit organizations. More precisely it is of interest to find out how these two concepts are related, positively, negatively, or inversely U-shaped. A sample of 250 randomly selected Austrian NPOs is the data basis for the investigation and was generated in cooperation with Statistik Austria. Through questionnaires the data for the study was collected. To test the proposed hypotheses the data is analyzed through inferential statistics.

No description available.