Abstract Since economic recession happened globally in 2000, Taiwan has not been able to keep itself out of the financial tsunami. The unemployment rate was increasing gradually, and the economic problem was getting worse. In view of this, the central government led by Democratic Progressive Party at that time proposed ¡§Doubling Tourist Arrivals Plan¡¨ in order to improve the economic situation. The plan had the following merits: (1) Tourist industry itself had high added value. (2) The resource consumption was relatively of low pollution (e.g. less water use, and less garbage, so it was similar to the smokeless industry proposed by scholars in 1970). (3) Tourist industry had great correlation with other industries, and thus could bring about the development of related industries (such as food processing industry, transportation industry, retail business, insurance and financial industry ¡K etc.). It was hoped that the traditional industries which were going to have survival problems could be replaced by tourist industry. The proposed policy embraced the goals and objectives of the best economic and industrial development strategies, which were expected to create high economic growth, solve unemployment problem, and alleviate environmental destruction. At the very beginning the intention for establishment of this plan was quite good. However, the actual effects of the plan were not as sound as expected. The study mainly hopes to understand whether the implementation of the strategies had any obstruction or problems that made the plan unable to be thoroughly implemented and made the problems unsolved: (1) Were the planned objectives and the actual implementation sufficiently and perfectly connected, and were the results of the plan affected? (2) Was the allocation of budget and resources appropriately involved in the plan, and how was the effectiveness of the use of funds? (3) Did the influence caused and the effectiveness derived from the implementation of the plan conform to the expected outcomes, and what was the value or contribution caused to the development of tourist businesses of Taiwan? Therefore, the study mainly hopes to accomplish the purposes and positioning of the above three research items, and find out the critical problems and methods so as to give suggestions and endeavoring direction for the improvement and demand of tourist industry in the next step. Furthermore, the study gives concrete suggestions for the promotion of the employment ability, and for how to meet the need of training of the talents in tourist industry.

Globally, the tourism industry is recognised as one of the fastest growing industries, generating high revenues and creating a vast number of job opportunities. In South Africa, this is no different and, in recent years, the tourism industry has outshone the country's gold exports therefore claiming its position as the fourth highest earner of foreign exchange to date. Yet the industry is still to receive the attention it deserves from conventional economics. This research aimed to fill this gap in South Africa by providing an understanding on the determinants of international tourism demand for South Africa. The first objective of the study was to provide a broad overview of the tourism industry of South Africa. The discussion focused on the supply and demand sides of tourism which, in turn, are divided into the domestic and international tourism markets. There has been a high growth, especially in the international market since 1994 and, while domestic and international markets continue to grow, seasonality remains an issue. Tourism has a significant impact on economic activity, employment, and the balance of payments and therefore the industry has great potential. The second objective was to create a theoretical understanding on the different factors that could determine the international demand for the tourism product. From this discussion it was found that there are various economic and non-economic factors that are believed to have an influence on tourism demand. Income, prices, transport cost, and the exchange rate are amongst the favourite economic variables with travel time, population, marketing expenditure, climate, and capacity being the more popular noneconomic factors. Among these, certain threats were also identified that could have harmful impacts on tourism growth. The third objective and main aim of the study was to determine which of the factors identified earlier determine the demand for international tourism to South Africa. This was done through an empirical investigation. Data from all the continents were used to attain an international perspective on tourist arrivals (tourism demand). The results indicated that capacity and climate factors determine tourism demand in the short term with income and transport cost influencing South Africa as a tourism destination in the long term. The last objective was to determine whether certain events or disasters that take place globally have a negative influence on tourism demand to South Africa. The event that was looked as was the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001. It was found that although the overall tourism activity of the world became stagnant during this period, the effect was not that considerable in South Africa's tourism arrivals. Tourism in countries such as the United Sates, on the other hand, has still not recovered fully after this event. / Thesis (M.Com. (International Commerce))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Reverse Auction Bidding (RAB) is a recently developed procurement method that can be used by the construction industry. The technique is different from a traditional auction system, since RAB system uses a bidding activity method that is completed anonymously by pre-qualified bidders during a fixed auction time. The basic premise for the auction is that the current best auction price is available for viewing during the whole auction process by both bidders and owner. The apparent incentive is for noncompetitive bidders to lower the price. There are however controlling factor beyond the reach of owners, such as market demand, lending restrictions, stakeholder expectations and risk tolerance levels, that impact on price levels. However, owners continue to attempt to drive down prices using this technique. A study into the mechanics of RAB was launched at Texas A&M University in 2004. This ongoing study of RAB continues to this time with eighteen case studies. This nineteenth study looks at the time series bid data from some of the prior work. Nine case studies were selected from the previous case studies. These nine studies provided untainted data with 6674 RAB bid arrivals by prior investigator actions. This study concerns the statistical process of bid arrivals with time. The hypothesis to be tested is that the RAB bid arrivals timing can be modeled with a statistical process. The analysis reviewed the fit for several types of distribution, including Gaussian and Poissionian. The best fit was modeled by non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The first conclusion from the analysis is that RAB bid arrivals follows a Poisson process, termed non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The second conclusion is that the controlling Poissionian process has a square root factor. The NHPP model for RAB provides a tool for future studies of RAB in real time. Future work is suggested on the inter-time periods for the bidding.

Globally, the tourism industry is recognised as one of the fastest growing industries, generating high revenues and creating a vast number of job opportunities. In South Africa, this is no different and, in recent years, the tourism industry has outshone the country's gold exports therefore claiming its position as the fourth highest earner of foreign exchange to date. Yet the industry is still to receive the attention it deserves from conventional economics. This research aimed to fill this gap in South Africa by providing an understanding on the determinants of international tourism demand for South Africa. The first objective of the study was to provide a broad overview of the tourism industry of South Africa. The discussion focused on the supply and demand sides of tourism which, in turn, are divided into the domestic and international tourism markets. There has been a high growth, especially in the international market since 1994 and, while domestic and international markets continue to grow, seasonality remains an issue. Tourism has a significant impact on economic activity, employment, and the balance of payments and therefore the industry has great potential. The second objective was to create a theoretical understanding on the different factors that could determine the international demand for the tourism product. From this discussion it was found that there are various economic and non-economic factors that are believed to have an influence on tourism demand. Income, prices, transport cost, and the exchange rate are amongst the favourite economic variables with travel time, population, marketing expenditure, climate, and capacity being the more popular noneconomic factors. Among these, certain threats were also identified that could have harmful impacts on tourism growth. The third objective and main aim of the study was to determine which of the factors identified earlier determine the demand for international tourism to South Africa. This was done through an empirical investigation. Data from all the continents were used to attain an international perspective on tourist arrivals (tourism demand). The results indicated that capacity and climate factors determine tourism demand in the short term with income and transport cost influencing South Africa as a tourism destination in the long term. The last objective was to determine whether certain events or disasters that take place globally have a negative influence on tourism demand to South Africa. The event that was looked as was the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001. It was found that although the overall tourism activity of the world became stagnant during this period, the effect was not that considerable in South Africa's tourism arrivals. Tourism in countries such as the United Sates, on the other hand, has still not recovered fully after this event. / Thesis (M.Com. (International Commerce))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

This research investigates a batch arrival queueing system with a Bernoulli scheduled vacation and random system breakdowns. It is assumed that the repair process does not start immediately after the breakdown. Consequently there maybe a delay in starting repairs. After every service completion the server may go on an optional vacation. When the original vacation is completed the server has the option to go on an extended vacation. It is assumed that the system is equipped with a stand-by server to serve the customers during the vacation period of the main server as well as during the repair process. The service times, vacation times, repair times, delay times and extended vacation times are assumed to follow different general distributions while the breakdown times and the service times of the stand-by server follow an exponential distribution. By introducing a supplementary variable we are able to obtain steady state results in an explicit closed form in terms of the probability generating functions. Some important performance measures including; the average length of the queue, the average number of customers in the system, the mean response time, and the value of the traffic intensity are presented. The professional MathCad 2001 software has been used to illustrate the numerical results in this study.

Due to the steady increased in public transportation demand, there is a need to provide more desirable and user-friendly transit systems. Typically, the public transportation timetables are modeled as an assignment problem, which often has objectives such as reducing the cost of operation, minimizing waiting time between transfer points or improving the quality of performance. This research considers the problem of developing synchronized timetables for bus transit systems with fixed routes when a waiting time limit exist at each transfer stops, for the passengers making connections. The objective of this research is to have maximum number of simultaneous arrivals. Different to previous studies, a simultaneous arrival' has been defined as an arrival of buses of different routes at a transfer point such that the time between these arrivals do not exceed the passenger waiting time range associated with the transfer stop. In other words, at each node, an upper bound and a lower bound are set for the arrivals of two buses and these buses are run within this allowable window. The heuristic developed has been modeled as a mixed integer linear programming problem and applied to some real life problems to evaluate the outcomes. The total number of synchronizations obtained by the model was compared to the maximum possible simultaneous arrivals at each node. Results show that a larger number of simultaneous arrivals are obtained when the waiting time ranges are relaxed. Finally some important applications of the proposed model compared to the existing models are presented.

<p>Kommunerna i Stockholms läns nordöstra del har börjat med ett projekt för att fler flyktingar snabbare skall nå en högre självförsörjningsgrad och delaktighet i samhället. Syftet var att undersöka hur nordostkommunerna analyserar och bedömer nyanlända flyktingars kompetens samt söka finna ut hur de kan förbättra sina verktyg för analys och bedömning. Kvalitativ metod har använts och sju intervjuer har genomförts. Av resultatet framkom att nordostkommunerna arbetar med kompetenskartläggning informellt och med yrkesbedömning genom tre månader praktik på arbetsplats. Men de saknar instrument och verktyg som kan vara ett stöd att nå projektets ändamål. Utifrån den lästa litteraturen och en kompletterande intervju med en annan kommun inom Stockholms län, redovisas flera modeller och verktyg som kan användas för kompetensanalys. Min förhoppning är att undersökningens faktaunderlag kan bli ett underlag för utvecklingsarbete i kommunerna.</p> / <p>The municipalities in Stockholm County's northeast has begun with a project to make more refugees faster to reach a greater independence and participation in society. The aim was to investigate how the Northeast municipalities analyze and assess newly arrived refugees skills and try to find out how they can improve their tools for analysis and assessment. Qualitative methodology was used, and seven interviews have taken place. Results show that the North East local authorities are working with skills mapping with professional and informal assessment in three months of training in the workplace. But they lack the tools and instruments that can be an aid to achieve the project purpose. Based on the literature read and an additional interview with another municipality in Stockholm County, presented several models and tools that can be used for skills analysis. My hope is that the survey's facts could be a basis for development work in the municipalities.</p>

<p>This study aims to identify the municipalities of Hallands’ methods, guidelines and policies in integration concerning new arrivals of children and teenagers. Some of the new arrivals are under the power of Swedish Migration Board and some of them are by a contract handed over to the municipalities. The evaluation is based on Michael Lipskys street-level bureaucracy which puts its focus on the lower level of bureaucrats meeting with clients. The frame is Skolverkets guideline for education of new arrivals which is more or less a way towards a common policy. The other document used to put up evaluation criteria’s is the Integration office united goals towards the receiving of new arrivals. The material for this evaluation is empirical in the sense of interviews made in the municipalities and document handed from each responsible bureaucrat. The result shows implications of the wide interpretation that the municipalities have. Some of them follow the directions and stop there, while others form routines and policies which go beyond the expectations. The conclusion of this study is that some municipalities have a lack of structure in the area for new arrivals of children and teenagers. This is in most of the cases because there also is a lack of liability areas. Most of the jobs are handed over to the principals who in the same way hand theirs over to the teachers. Bureaucrats need to know what is expected and there need to be documents or a reliable structure to work under.</p>

Kommunerna i Stockholms läns nordöstra del har börjat med ett projekt för att fler flyktingar snabbare skall nå en högre självförsörjningsgrad och delaktighet i samhället. Syftet var att undersöka hur nordostkommunerna analyserar och bedömer nyanlända flyktingars kompetens samt söka finna ut hur de kan förbättra sina verktyg för analys och bedömning. Kvalitativ metod har använts och sju intervjuer har genomförts. Av resultatet framkom att nordostkommunerna arbetar med kompetenskartläggning informellt och med yrkesbedömning genom tre månader praktik på arbetsplats. Men de saknar instrument och verktyg som kan vara ett stöd att nå projektets ändamål. Utifrån den lästa litteraturen och en kompletterande intervju med en annan kommun inom Stockholms län, redovisas flera modeller och verktyg som kan användas för kompetensanalys. Min förhoppning är att undersökningens faktaunderlag kan bli ett underlag för utvecklingsarbete i kommunerna. / The municipalities in Stockholm County's northeast has begun with a project to make more refugees faster to reach a greater independence and participation in society. The aim was to investigate how the Northeast municipalities analyze and assess newly arrived refugees skills and try to find out how they can improve their tools for analysis and assessment. Qualitative methodology was used, and seven interviews have taken place. Results show that the North East local authorities are working with skills mapping with professional and informal assessment in three months of training in the workplace. But they lack the tools and instruments that can be an aid to achieve the project purpose. Based on the literature read and an additional interview with another municipality in Stockholm County, presented several models and tools that can be used for skills analysis. My hope is that the survey's facts could be a basis for development work in the municipalities.

In spite of increasingly sophisticated workforce management tools, a significant gap remains between the goal of effective staffing and the present difficulty predicting the stochastic demand of inbound calls. We have investigated the hypothesized nonhomogeneous Poisson process model of modem pool callers of the University community. In our case, we tested if the arrivals could be approximated by a piecewise constant rate over short intervals. For each of 1 and 10-minute intervals, based on the close relationship between the Poisson process and the exponential distribution, the test results did not show any sign of homogeneous Poisson process. We have examined the hypothesis of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process by a transformed statistic. Quantitative and graphical goodness-of-fit tests have confirmed nonhomogeneous Poisson process. <p>Further analysis on the intensity function revealed that linear rate intensity was woefully inadequate in predicting time varying arrivals. For sinusoidal rate model, difficulty arose in setting the period parameter. Spline models, as an alternative to parametric modelling, had more control of balance between data fitting and smoothness, which was appealing to our analysis on call arrival process.