Abstract This thesis is both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of tax-compliance by taxi-operators and drivers. The exploratory case-study adopts a critical sociological perspective in assessing the limits of both the currently dominant academic literature and the industry-specific legislation on tax conformity, including the most recent strategies and explicit tax-compliance measures from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) with regard to Australian cab-drivers. The core premise of this thesis is that the social and economic activities (both legal and illicit) of cab-drivers are embedded within unique networks of social relations. The study utilises focus-group interviews to explore cabbies’ views on taxation, their perceptions of fairness and trust, and to elucidate how individual taxi-workers justify circumvention of Australian tax laws and regulatory measures in their actual work-practices. This exploration is achieved by analysing the verbal accounts and conversations among cab-drivers that involve their guilt-free justifications for non-compliance. The analysis presents further insights into their “vocabulary of motives” and “aligning actions” vis-à-vis non-compliant tax behaviour. The respondents’ views and perceptions about trust, and distributive and procedural justice, are compared and contrasted against the tax-regulator’s views and the ATO’s current enforcement measures. This study is semi-grounded and qualitative in approach, and is a first contribution to a field of inquiry that appears to be dominated by quantitatively-oriented criminological and social-psychological approaches. In contrast, the case-study presents a sociologically-inspired inquiry, by emphasising that cab-drivers are subjected to a multitude of structural arrangements and social control mechanisms, which influence their attitudes and actions with regard to non-compliance. Moreover, current regulatory initiatives towards diminishing non-compliance in the taxi-industry tend to neglect the concept of “mixed-embeddedness” and the inter-relatedness between tax rules, concomitant enforcement practices, and the nation’s broader legislative framework. The state’s regulation of tax-compliance behaviour of taxi-drivers cannot strictly be detached from other laws and regulatory measures in areas such as taxi-cab licensing, occupational health & safety (OH&S) or industrial & workplace relations, which affect every taxi-operator and contracted driver, albeit in different ways. A social-action approach that grasps more comprehensively the rich contexts and complexities involved in the informal behaviours of cabbies may be regarded as an additional and powerful information tool in the governance of modern taxation systems. The study will demonstrate how serious tensions and contradictory forces arise when tax regulators attempt to enforce a National Compliance Model which is, of itself, inherently mal-integrated and underpinned typically by a bureaucratic ‘one-size-fits-all’ enforcement approach in regard to local networks of taxi-drivers. It will be argued that legislative changes to the (legal) employment status of Australian taxi-drivers may produce a far more expedient and cost-effective way for curtailing the enduring and deeply imbued tax non-compliant modus operandi within this particular sector of Australia’s transport-services industry.

Thesis (MA (English))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In this thesis, I examine the way in which Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver can be read as a critical investigation of post-World War II American masculinity. Drawing on Susan Faludi’s arguments regarding the post-World War II American ‘masculinity crisis’, I highlight specifically how Taxi Driver addresses American masculinity in the context of ideals of heroism, of the myth of the Wild West, of the Vietnam era, and of the increasingly influential role that the popular media play in shaping conceptions of masculinity. In the process I indicate that Taxi Driver exposes, and critiques, an association in modern American society between masculinity and what analysts have termed the ‘myth of regeneration through violence’.

A Engenharia de Resiliência (ER) é um novo paradigma para gestão da segurança o qual, apesar de possuir uma fraca estrutura teórica, vem sendo aplicado em diversos setores. Neste contexto, este trabalho tem como objetivo a identificação de fontes de fragilidade e resiliência em empresas de táxi aéreo. Para essa identificação foram utilizados os seguintes princípios da ER: flexibilidade, consciência, aprendizagem e comprometimento da alta direção. O estudo de caso foi à estratégia de pesquisa adotada, tendo sido investigadas duas empresas de táxi aéreo de pequeno porte. O método de pesquisa envolveu as seguintes etapas: (a) caracterização da empresa sob a perspectiva de três subsistemas que compõem seu sistema sócio-técnico (social, técnico e organização do trabalho); (b) identificação dos constrangimentos e adaptações dos funcionários no desempenho de suas atividades; (c) identificação das fontes de fragilidade e resiliência a partir dos 4 princípios da ER, desdobradas em evidências empíricas conforme a literatura Os resultados mostram que 11 fontes estavam relacionadas à fragilidade da empresa A e 6 da empresa B. Da mesma forma, identificou-se 9 fontes de resiliência na empresa A e na empresa A. Em particular, o objetivo primário da empresa (lucro, no caso de uma das empresas; servir aos proprietários, no caso da outra empresa) revelou-se como uma fonte comum a todas as fontes de resiliência ou fragilidade e quase todas as fontes de resiliência constituíram de ações isoladas dos operadores, revelando a emergência dessas fontes na organização informal das empresas. / Resilience Engineering (RE) is a new safety management paradigm which, in spit of its weak theoretical structure, has been applied in many domains. In this context, this research has a main objective of identifying sources of brittleness and resilience on air taxi carriers. To accomplish this objective, this work used as base the following RE principles: flexibility, conscious, learning, top management commitment. Case study was the research strategy used, which investigated two small air taxi carriers. Research method involved the following steps: (a) air taxi carrier characterization from the tree subsystems that compose socio-technical system (social, technical, work system); (b) employees constraints and adaptations identification during the job; (c) brittleness and resilience source identification from 4 RE principles, unfolded in empirical evidences according to literature. The results show that 11 sources were related to brittleness at company A and 6 at company B. At the same way, 9 sources of resilience were identified at company A and company B. In particular, the main air taxi carrier objective (to profit, in of one them; to serve, to another one) appeared as a common to all sources of brittleness and resiliencies and almost all sources of resilience were constituted of isolated action from operators, revealing resilience source emergence from companies informal organization.

A Engenharia de Resiliência (ER) é um novo paradigma para gestão da segurança o qual, apesar de possuir uma fraca estrutura teórica, vem sendo aplicado em diversos setores. Neste contexto, este trabalho tem como objetivo a identificação de fontes de fragilidade e resiliência em empresas de táxi aéreo. Para essa identificação foram utilizados os seguintes princípios da ER: flexibilidade, consciência, aprendizagem e comprometimento da alta direção. O estudo de caso foi à estratégia de pesquisa adotada, tendo sido investigadas duas empresas de táxi aéreo de pequeno porte. O método de pesquisa envolveu as seguintes etapas: (a) caracterização da empresa sob a perspectiva de três subsistemas que compõem seu sistema sócio-técnico (social, técnico e organização do trabalho); (b) identificação dos constrangimentos e adaptações dos funcionários no desempenho de suas atividades; (c) identificação das fontes de fragilidade e resiliência a partir dos 4 princípios da ER, desdobradas em evidências empíricas conforme a literatura Os resultados mostram que 11 fontes estavam relacionadas à fragilidade da empresa A e 6 da empresa B. Da mesma forma, identificou-se 9 fontes de resiliência na empresa A e na empresa A. Em particular, o objetivo primário da empresa (lucro, no caso de uma das empresas; servir aos proprietários, no caso da outra empresa) revelou-se como uma fonte comum a todas as fontes de resiliência ou fragilidade e quase todas as fontes de resiliência constituíram de ações isoladas dos operadores, revelando a emergência dessas fontes na organização informal das empresas. / Resilience Engineering (RE) is a new safety management paradigm which, in spit of its weak theoretical structure, has been applied in many domains. In this context, this research has a main objective of identifying sources of brittleness and resilience on air taxi carriers. To accomplish this objective, this work used as base the following RE principles: flexibility, conscious, learning, top management commitment. Case study was the research strategy used, which investigated two small air taxi carriers. Research method involved the following steps: (a) air taxi carrier characterization from the tree subsystems that compose socio-technical system (social, technical, work system); (b) employees constraints and adaptations identification during the job; (c) brittleness and resilience source identification from 4 RE principles, unfolded in empirical evidences according to literature. The results show that 11 sources were related to brittleness at company A and 6 at company B. At the same way, 9 sources of resilience were identified at company A and company B. In particular, the main air taxi carrier objective (to profit, in of one them; to serve, to another one) appeared as a common to all sources of brittleness and resiliencies and almost all sources of resilience were constituted of isolated action from operators, revealing resilience source emergence from companies informal organization.

A Engenharia de Resiliência (ER) é um novo paradigma para gestão da segurança o qual, apesar de possuir uma fraca estrutura teórica, vem sendo aplicado em diversos setores. Neste contexto, este trabalho tem como objetivo a identificação de fontes de fragilidade e resiliência em empresas de táxi aéreo. Para essa identificação foram utilizados os seguintes princípios da ER: flexibilidade, consciência, aprendizagem e comprometimento da alta direção. O estudo de caso foi à estratégia de pesquisa adotada, tendo sido investigadas duas empresas de táxi aéreo de pequeno porte. O método de pesquisa envolveu as seguintes etapas: (a) caracterização da empresa sob a perspectiva de três subsistemas que compõem seu sistema sócio-técnico (social, técnico e organização do trabalho); (b) identificação dos constrangimentos e adaptações dos funcionários no desempenho de suas atividades; (c) identificação das fontes de fragilidade e resiliência a partir dos 4 princípios da ER, desdobradas em evidências empíricas conforme a literatura Os resultados mostram que 11 fontes estavam relacionadas à fragilidade da empresa A e 6 da empresa B. Da mesma forma, identificou-se 9 fontes de resiliência na empresa A e na empresa A. Em particular, o objetivo primário da empresa (lucro, no caso de uma das empresas; servir aos proprietários, no caso da outra empresa) revelou-se como uma fonte comum a todas as fontes de resiliência ou fragilidade e quase todas as fontes de resiliência constituíram de ações isoladas dos operadores, revelando a emergência dessas fontes na organização informal das empresas. / Resilience Engineering (RE) is a new safety management paradigm which, in spit of its weak theoretical structure, has been applied in many domains. In this context, this research has a main objective of identifying sources of brittleness and resilience on air taxi carriers. To accomplish this objective, this work used as base the following RE principles: flexibility, conscious, learning, top management commitment. Case study was the research strategy used, which investigated two small air taxi carriers. Research method involved the following steps: (a) air taxi carrier characterization from the tree subsystems that compose socio-technical system (social, technical, work system); (b) employees constraints and adaptations identification during the job; (c) brittleness and resilience source identification from 4 RE principles, unfolded in empirical evidences according to literature. The results show that 11 sources were related to brittleness at company A and 6 at company B. At the same way, 9 sources of resilience were identified at company A and company B. In particular, the main air taxi carrier objective (to profit, in of one them; to serve, to another one) appeared as a common to all sources of brittleness and resiliencies and almost all sources of resilience were constituted of isolated action from operators, revealing resilience source emergence from companies informal organization.

This master thesis report presents the development of a geographical visualization system using taxi data. The system uses a large data base from a taxi company that have previously never used the data for visualization purposes. The taxi company requested a system that processes the data on a server on demand and visualizes it on a web client using heat map visualization as a primary visualization technique. The web client was supposed to be easy to use, provide deeper knowledge about the business of a taxi company and at the same time kept interactive with low latency for data requests. A big part of the thesis focuses on techniques for decimating an original data set to a smaller representational data set to be used for heat map visualization and sent to a web client from a server. The project continues by optimizing the system to keep latency to a minimum and finally developing a web client to explore the data. The result is a system with promising latency that is easy to use for exploring data and gaining a deeper knowledge about a taxi business.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and propose new features in order to enhance the competitiveness of the company. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on theoretical framework such as innovation, innovation process and process management. The second part is based on the analysis of the companie s competitors and SWOT analysis. Based on the results of these analysis, the thesis further investigates the companys opportunities. Data for this research were gathered from analysis, surveys, phone and personal interviews Specific innovative steps are suggested by using the results of this research. These steps are measured through balance scorecard and then the implementation steps are described together with process models based on BPMN. The results reveal recommendation for future growth of the company.

No description available.

In this thesis a model capable of predicting taxidemand with high accuracy across five different real world single company datasets is presented. The model uses historical drop off and arrival information to make accurate shortterm predictions about future taxi demand. The model is compared to and outperforms both LSTM and statistical baselines. This thesis uniquely uses a different tessellation strategy which makes the results directly applicable to smaller taxi companies. This paper shows that accurate short term predictions of taxi demand can be made using real world data available to taxi companies. MSE is also shown to be a more robust to uneven demand distributions across cities than MAE. Adding drop offs to the input had provided only marginal improvements in the performance of the model.

Vattenburen kollektivtrafik tenderar att ha längre bytessträckor än buss och spårtrafik. Då långa byten kräver mer av resenären är uppsatsens syfte att undersöka hur bytet till och från pendelbåtar kan se ut vid en för trafiken större bytespunkt. Därigenom kanske vi kan lära oss mer om resenärens informationsbehov vid byten över längre avstånd. Därtill har målet varit att presentera rekommendationer som kan stärka förutsättningarna för vattenburen kollektivtrafik, med särskilt fokus på bryggan (angöringspunkten) vid Klara Mälarstrand och den närliggande järnvägsstationen Stockholm Central. Arbetet har utförts i form av en fallstudie som undersökte platsen utifrån upplevd närhet och -tydlighet, med empiri bestående av egentagna bilder, kartor, avståndsmätningar samt dokument. Datainsamlingen pågick under lång tid, parallellt med Trafiknämndens egna utredningar av trafik till och från bryggan. Analysen visade att bryggan vid Klara Mälarstrand är bristfälligt integrerad med omgivande kollektivtrafik och att en tydlig vägledning saknas. I diskussionen förs ett resonemang om vikten av att entréer till kollektivtrafiken, exemplifierat av pendeltågens nya station Stockholm City, synliggör sin funktion även på långt håll. Resenärer bör även ges möjlighet att relatera längre bytessträckor till en tidsåtgång, liknande den ’uppskattad gåtid till gate’ som används på storflygplatser som Köpenhamns flygplats Kastrup. / Public transport on water tend to have longer transfer paths than bus and rail transport. As long transfers paths demands more from the passenger this thesis aims to investigate what a transfer to and from water buses may look like at a transfer point with public transport on water of major importance for a planned service in Stockholm, Sweden. Through that more knowledge about the information needs of passengers at transfers over longer distances might be gained. In addition the thesis aims to present recommendations which can strengthen the conditions for public transport on water, with a focus on the stop (quay) near the Stockholm Central station. The thesis has been carried out as a case study which examined the study area on the basis of perceived proximity and -legibility,with empirics consisting of images taken by the author, maps, distance measurements and documents. Data collection time has been long, in parallel with the Stockholm County Administrations (SLL) own investigations of the traffic. The analysis showed that the quay at Klara Mälarstrand has a lacking integration with surrounding public transport and that a clear wayfinding is missing. In the discussion an argument for the importance of legible entrances to public transport also at a distance is made, exemplified by the new Stockholm City commuter train station building. Also passengers at longer transfer paths needs to be able to relate the distance with the time to get there, similar to the ‘approximate walking time to gate’ used at major airports such as Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup in Denmark.