Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:25:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Wagner Fabiano de Melo.pdf: 1611898 bytes, checksum: bbd53b7a6a8a1113db38cb52dc93abbe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este trabalho objetivou verificar a influência dos valores organizacionais de agências bancárias no desempenho destas unidades. Diversos autores mencionam que os valores organizacionais percebidos como praticados são orientadores da vida da organização,oferecem motivação para o alcance dos objetivos, afetam as decisões, criam modelos mentais semelhantes entre os empregados e são determinantes da produtividade organizacional. Estes argumentos sugerem que estes valores têm o potencial de influenciarem indireta e diretamente o desempenho organizacional. Nota-se, entretanto, uma carência de pesquisas brasileiras dedicadas ao exame desta relação, o que motivou a realização deste estudo. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em uma instituição bancária pública e se classifica como um teste de hipótese e descritiva. O questionário intitulado Inventário de Perfis de Valores Organizacionais (IPVO) foi adaptado para a mensuração dos valores organizacionais das agências. Os dados desta variável foram coletados no nível individual e, para cada agência da amostra, foi calculada a média das respostas a cada assertiva do questionário para obter os dados no nível das agências bancárias. O desempenho de cada agência foi medido pelo percentual de metas que foram integralmente realizadas no ano de 2009. A fonte destes dados é primária e o modo de mensuração é objetivo, pois foram fornecidos diretamente pela instituição financeira e se basearam em registros factuais. A amostra é do tipo não-probabilística e composta por 271 agências, cujos dados acerca dos valores organizacionais foram proporcionados por 720 respondentes. A análise dos dados fez uso de técnicas estatísticas univariadas, bivariadas e multivariadas. A análise fatorial revelou que os valores organizacionais das agências se estruturam em quatro fatores: respeito aos stakeholders, diversão para os empregados, atuação competente e prestígio. O prestígio está positivamente correlacionado com o desempenho das agências e o respeito aos stakeholders e a diversão para os empregados estão inversamente correlacionados com a variável dependente. A análise de regressão múltipla resultou em um modelo que explica 9,5% da variância no desempenho e contém dois fatores como variáveis preditoras, prestígio e atuação competente, que influenciam positivamente o desempenho.Estes fatores representam teoricamente os pólos: autopromoção e/ou abertura à mudança. Os fatores negativamente correlacionados com o desempenho, por sua vez, retratam ou aparentam retratar teoricamente o pólo de autotranscendência. Os resultados mostram que os valores organizacionais são uma das variáveis que impactam no desempenho organizacional. / This study aimed to investigate the influence of bank branches organizational values on branch performance. Many authors postulate that organizational values perceived as practiced guide organizational life, motivate to fulfill the objectives, affect the decisions, build similar employees mindsets and determine the organizational productivity. These observations suggest that these values can indirectly and directly influence the organizational performance. There are not, however, Brazilian studies focused on analyzing this relation and this motivated the accomplishment of this study. The research was undertaken at a public bank and can be considered a hypothesis testing and a descriptive study. The questionnaire called Inventário de Perfis de Valores Organizacionais (IPVO) was adapted to measure branches organizational values. The data of this variable was collected from individuals and for each of the branches of the sample, the mean of answers to each of the questions of the questionnaire was calculated to represent the branch level of analysis. Branch performance was measured using the percentage of goals accomplished during the year 2009. The source of this data is primary and its mode of assessment is objective, because it was provided directly by the bank and it was based on factual records. The sample is non-probabilistic and is formed by 271 branches and the data about branches organizational values was provided by 720 respondents. Data analysis involved univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistics.The factorial analysis revealed that branches organizational values are organized in four factors: respect for stakeholders, employee entertainment, competent performance and prestige. Prestige is positively correlated with branch performance and respect for stakeholders and employee entertainment are negatively correlated with the dependent variable. The multiple regression analysis yielded an equation that account for 9.5% of the variance in performance and contains two factors as independent variables, prestige and competent performance, which influence positively the branch performance. These factors theoretically represent the higher order value types: self-enhancement and/or openness to change. The factors negatively correlated with branch performance theoretically represent or seem to represent the higher order value type: self-transcendence. The results show that organizational values are one of the variables that impact on organizational performance.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to construct a"Program Address Generator"(PAG) to a 24-bit Harvard type, RISC DSP processor using the VHDL language. The PAG is a part of the program control unit, and should consist of the following units: </p><p>A system stack for storing jump and loop information. A program counter, a status register, a stack pointer, an operating mode register and two registers called loop address and loop counter register, to support hardware loops. </p><p>The PAG handles the fetch stage of the processor pipeline, and should handle instructions such as the jump, subroutine jump, return from subroutine/interrupt and loop instructions, among others. </p><p>The PAG was successfully designed, and its function verified through extensive tests, where common combinations of ASM instructions were tested. Files for automated testing was created, to support easy testing if only small changes are applied to the PAG.</p>

The aim in this thesis is to develop efficient enumeration algorithms to solve certain strongly NP-hard scheduling problems. These algorithms were developed using a combination of ideas from Integer Programming, Constraint Programming and Scheduling Theory. In order to combine different techniques in one algorithm, decomposition methods are applied. The main idea on which the first part of our results is based is to separate the optimality and feasibility components of the problem and let different methods tackle these components. Then IP is ``responsible' for optimization, whereas specific combinatorial algorithms tackle the feasibility aspect. Branch-and-cut and branch-and-price algorithms based on this idea are proposed to solve the single-machine and multi-machine variants of the scheduling problem to minimize the sum of the weights of late jobs. Experimental research shows that the algorithms proposed outperform other algorithms available in the literature. Also, it is shown that these algorithms can be used, after some modification, to solve the problem of minimizing the maximum tardiness on unrelated machines. The second part of the thesis deals with the one-machine scheduling problem to minimize the weighted total tardiness. To tackle this problem, the idea of a partition of the time horizon into intervals is used. A particularity of this approach is that we exploit the structure of the problem to partition the time horizon. This particularity allowed us to propose two new Mixed Integer Programming formulations for the problem. The first one is a compact formulation and can be used to solve the problem using a standard MIP solver. The second formulation can be used to derive lower bounds on the value of the optimal solution of the problem. These lower bounds are of a good quality, and they can be obtained relatively fast.

In this paper, we minimize the holding cost of the safety stock in the supply chain subject to linear constraints on the service times between the nodes of the network. In the problem, the objective function is concave as we assume the demand to be bounded by a concave function. The optimal solutions of the problem belong to the set of extreme points of the polyhedron, specified by the constraints of the problem. We first characterize the extreme points for the two-layer networks and then provide bounds to use in a branch and bound algorithm. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The purpose of this research is to develop a model and solution methodology for selecting and scheduling timely and cost-effective maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction activities (M & R) for each pavement section in a highway network and allocating the funding levels through a finite multi-period horizon within the constraints imposed by budget availability in each period, frequency availability of activities, and specified minimum pavement quality requirements. M & R is defined as a chronological sequence of reconstruction, rehabilitation, and major/minor maintenance, including a "do nothing" activity. A procedure is developed for selecting an M & R activity for each pavement section in each period of a specified extended planning horizon. Each activity in the sequence consumes a known amount of capital and generates a known amount of effectiveness measured in pavement quality. The effectiveness of an activity is the expected value of the overall gains in pavement quality rating due to the activity performed on a highway network over an analysis period. It is assumed that the unused portion of the budget for one period can be carried over to subsequent periods. Dynamic Programming (DP) and Branch-and-Bound (B-and-B) approaches are combined to produce a hybrid algorithm for solving the problem under consideratioin. The algorithm is essentially a DP approach in the sense that the problem is divided into smaller subproblems corresponding to each single period problem. However, the idea of fathoming partial solutions that could not lead to an optimal solution is incorporated within the algorithm to reduce storage and computational requirements in the DP frame using the B-and-B approach. The imbedded-state approach is used to reduce a multi-dimensional DP to a one-dimensional DP. For bounding at each stage, the problem is relaxed in a Lagrangean fashion so that it separates into longest-path network model subproblems. The values of the Lagrangean multipliers are found by a subgradient optimization method, while the Ford-Bellman network algorithm is employed at each iteration of the subgradient optimization procedure to solve the longest-path network problem as well as to obtain an improved lower and upper bound. If the gap between lower and upper bound is sufficiently small, then we may choose to accept the best known solutions as being sufficiently close to optimal and terminate the algorithm rather than continue to the final stage.

In Canada’s western Arctic, perennial discharge from permafrost watersheds is the surface manifestation of active groundwater flow systems, yet understanding the mechanisms of groundwater recharge and flow in periglacial environments remains enigmatic. This thesis addresses questions on how and where groundwater recharge occurs. Watersheds were selected in Yukon (Fishing Branch River at Bear Cave Mountain) and the Northwest Territories at latitudes spanning from continuous to discontinuous permafrost (five tributary rivers to the Mackenzie River from Wrigley to Aklavik). All are characterized by perennial flow with open water in the winter, and discharge from sedimentary formations of karstic carbonates and evaporate rocks. Determinations of groundwater contributions to discharge, mixing, recharge conditions and circulation times were made on the basis of a suite of analytical approaches involving measurements of major dissolved ions, δ18O, δD, δ13CDIC, 3H, noble gases and flow gauging was conducted at some sites. The application of these tracers show that hydrogeological conditions and flow paths in permafrost terrains are surprisingly similar to those of temperate regions. Groundwater recharge was determined to be a mix of annual precipitation with contributions from snowmelt and precipitation. All systems investigated show that groundwaters have recharged through organic soils with elevated PCO2, which suggests that recharge occurs largely during summer when biological activity is high. Noble gas concentrations show that the recharge temperature was between 0 and 6 °C, which, when considered in the context of discharge temperatures, suggests that there is no significant imbalance of energy flux into the subsurface. Groundwater ages were found using the 3H-3He method and were dependent on flow path. By characterizing groundwater and surface water chemistry, the proportion of groundwater was found in numerous water courses. The possible impact of ground ice formation and melting on noble gas concentrations in groundwater was considered. To assess this link, a new method to measure the noble gas composition of ground ice bodies was developed. The method can be used to determine the origin of ice, based on changes in noble gas ratios between ice originating from compaction of snow (e.g. glacier ice) vs. ice originating from freezing of water. No significant fractionation of noble gases during groundwater freezing and ground ice formation was identified. Applied to determination of the origin of ground ice bodies, the method was shown to be both diagnostic of ice origin and un-encumbered by reactivity in the subsurface, which compromises the use of the dominant atmospheric gases (O2 and N2).   Résumé Dans l’Ouest de l'Arctique canadien, la décharge pérenne dans certaines rivières en région de pergélisol est la manifestation en surface d’une circulation d’eau souterraine; cependant la compréhension des mécanismes d’écoulement et de recharge des eaux souterraines en région de pergélisol demeure énigmatique. Cette thèse s’intéresse à la question de savoir comment et où la recharge des eaux souterraines se produit. Des bassins versants ont été choisis au Yukon (Rivière Fishing Branch à Bear Cave Mountain) et dans les Territoire du Nord-Ouest à des latitudes s’étendant du pergélisol discontinu au pergélisol continu (cinq tributaires du Mackenzie entre Wrigley et Aklavik). Toutes ces rivières ont un écoulement d’eau pérenne avec des zones non gelées et une décharge dans des formations sédimentaires de roches carbonatées et d‘évaporites. L’identification des contributions des eaux à la décharge, les mélanges, les conditions de recharge, et les temps de circulation ont été faits à partir d’analyses qui ont inclus les concentrations en éléments majeurs, leur valeur isotopique (δ18O, δD, δ13C, 3H), ainsi que leur teneur en gaz rares. A certain des sites analysés des mesures d’écoulement ont été prises. L’application de ces traceurs montre que les conditions hydrauliques et le chemin des écoulements en région de pergélisol sont similaires à ceux des régions tempérées. La recharge en eau souterraine a été identifiée comme étant un mélange de précipitations annuelles, avec des contributions de neige et de pluies. Tous les systèmes étudiés montrent que les eaux souterraines se sont rechargées en traversant des sols organiques avec une PCO2 élevée, ce qui suggère que la recharge se produire largement durant l’été quand l’activité biologique est élevée. Cependant, les concentrations en gaz nobles montre que la température de recharge des eaux souterraines était entre 0 et 6 °C ce qui indique qu’il n’y a pas de déséquilibre de flux d’énergie à l’intérieur de la zone proche de la surface. L’âge des eaux a été déterminé par la méthode 3H-3He et cet âge est dépendant du chemin d'écoulement. En caractérisant les paramètres chimiques des eaux de surface et des eaux souterraines, il a été possible de trouver la contribution des eaux souterraines aux eaux surface. Le possible impact de la formation et de la fonte de la glace souterraine sur les concentrations des gaz nobles a été considéré. Pour déterminer s’il y a un lien entre ceux-ci, une nouvelle méthode pour mesurer la concentration en gaz nobles dans les glaces souterraines a été développée. La méthode peut être utilisée pour déterminer l’origine de la glace; elle est basée sur les changements dans les rapports des gaz nobles entre la glace issue de la compaction de la neige (c’est-à-dire la glace de glacier) par opposition à la glace issue du gel de l’eau. Aucun fractionnement significatif des gaz nobles durant l’engel des eaux souterraines et la formation de glaces souterraines n’a été identifié. Appliquée à l’identification de l’origine des masses de glace enfouies, on a montré que la méthode pouvait permettre d’identifier l’origine des glaces souterraines sans qu’elle soit affectée par des réactions biologiques de sub-surface, lesquelles rendent inutilisables les gaz atmosphériques (O2, and N2).

There has been a significant interest amongst immigrants in obtaining Canadian citizenship, dating all the way back to the end of World War Two in 1945. This thesis is particularly interested in what knowledge and skills these immigrants obtain as a result of their experiences in the citizenship education programs provided by the federal government prior to them becoming official citizens of Canada.<p>This thesis has a number of objectives. First, it intends to track the evolution of citizenship policy in Canada from 1945 to the present time, with a particular focus on the changes made to the citizenship education system. Secondly, an assessment of the adequacy of the changes made to the citizenship education system will be conducted, focusing primarily on whether or not those changes have provided newcomers to Canada with the knowledge and skills necessary to be active and informed citizens. Finally, suggestions will be offered as to how citizenship education programs can best provide new Canadians with a more well-rounded quality of citizenship. <p>The evolution of citizenship policy and the assessment of the changes made to citizenship education from 1945 to the present time reveal a number of findings, with many of them pointing to citizenship education policy and programming in Canada as being inadequate. The findings identify a lack of political leadership and financial resources provided for citizenship training initiatives, as well as a painfully basic citizenship education curriculum provided for newcomers to Canada. <p>The central contention of this thesis is that the federal government regards citizenship education as little more than a short-term goal. In other words, the priority is to speed up the processing of newcomers rather than to develop good citizens. Immigrants are provided with basic knowledge and language skills, but are largely left to fend for themselves once official citizenship has been attained. This short-term focus has resulted in a diminution of the quality and importance of Canadian citizenship and has impaired the ability of new citizens to feel comfortable participating in Canadian society. <p>The significance of these findings is that policy makers need to develop a long-term citizenship education strategy that focuses on providing long-term benefits to new citizens to Canada. Such a strategy will help to maximize the potential contributions of the growing immigrant population to Canadian society and will provide much needed clarity of roles and responsibilities to citizenship education service providers and instructors.

We define an order cutoff for a retailer as a time in the day such that orders sent to the depot before this point will be delivered by tomorrow, and orders submitted after will be delivered by the day after tomorrow. The later a retailer’s cutoff, the sooner it receives its orders which helps it to maintain ideal inventory levels. Generally, not all retailers in a supply chain can have the latest cutoff since transportation takes a significant amount of time. This thesis tries to assign optimal order cutoffs to retailers. We call this an order cutoff assignment problem and we solve it using three different mathematical programming approaches. The approaches are exhaustive route generation and selection, a series of mixed integer programs, and branch-and-price. 60 sample problems were solved and results showed that branch-and-price is often the most effective method.

We define an order cutoff for a retailer as a time in the day such that orders sent to the depot before this point will be delivered by tomorrow, and orders submitted after will be delivered by the day after tomorrow. The later a retailer’s cutoff, the sooner it receives its orders which helps it to maintain ideal inventory levels. Generally, not all retailers in a supply chain can have the latest cutoff since transportation takes a significant amount of time. This thesis tries to assign optimal order cutoffs to retailers. We call this an order cutoff assignment problem and we solve it using three different mathematical programming approaches. The approaches are exhaustive route generation and selection, a series of mixed integer programs, and branch-and-price. 60 sample problems were solved and results showed that branch-and-price is often the most effective method.

Majority of the studies in the scheduling literature is devoted to time based performance measures. In this thesis, we develop a model that considers monetary issues in single machine scheduling environments. We assume all the jobs should be completed by a common due date. An early revenue is earned if the completion time is before or on the due date, and a tardy revenue is gained if the job is completed after the due date. We consider restricted and unrestricted due date versions of the problem. Our objective is the maximization of the net present value of all revenues. We first investigate some special cases of the problem, and present polynomial time algorithms to solve them. Then, we develop branch and bound algorithms with lower and upper bounding mechanisms. Computational experiments have shown that the branch and bound algorithms can solve large-sized problems in reasonable times.