Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Sócio-Econômico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-20T18:19:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 200050.pdf: 1725102 bytes, checksum: ff65d542839038b6740a3bae3653764b (MD5) / Nesta pesquisa, estudou-se a implantação do Call Center como ferramenta de marketing na empresa Marisol, localizada na região norte do estado de Santa Catarina. Justifica-se que o marketing vem despontando em estudos aprofundados dessa área, por ser apontado como o grande propulsor da fidelização dos clientes para organizações em um ambiente cada vez mais competitivo. A partir destas constatações, faz-se necessária uma análise embasada em pesquisas que possam dizer de que forma o Call Center contribui e pode contribuir para que empresas mantenham-se competitivas em nível mercadológico. E este trabalho é o ponto básico de partida para um constante e evolutivo estudo que pode ser desenvolvido sobre este tema, em virtude do seu grau de importância no caminho mercadológico. O Call Center é considerado ainda hoje uma central de realização de negócios por telefone, reunindo um banco de dados centralizado e um sistema de distribuição automática de chamadas, integra a automação com a telefonia e otimiza permitindo melhores serviços aos clientes. O Call Center nasceu nos anos 70 (nos Estados Unidos); no Brasil (nos anos 80), revolucionando a forma de fazer negócios e redefinindo o termo serviço ao cliente. O tema central desta pesquisa foi analisar "de que forma o Call Center contribui para uma melhor performance competitiva em nível mercadológico", ou seja, desse problema extraiu-se o tema da dissertação cujo título é: "o Call Center como ferramenta à atividade comercial na empresa Marisol". A presente pesquisa classifica-se como qualitativa, analisando dados indutivamente, tendo caráter exploratório e descritivo, em que os dados primários foram colhidos através de entrevistas e questionários com o corpo gerencial e diretivo da implantação do Call Center. O estudo torna-se possível, uma vez que existe apoio institucional, no caso UFSC, bem como, o interesse de uma empresa do porte da Marisol, no caso, de dar ciência do estudo e disponibilidade para este pesquisador. Também do Professor Orientador, especializado na área predominante, ou seja, em marketing. As considerações precedentes possibilitam dizer que o presente estudo é suficientemente importante, original e viável.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção. / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-21T02:54:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 191674.pdf: 971338 bytes, checksum: 3b366fe93e6fcc96f2b3610606574e2f (MD5)

A LEADERSHIP PROFILE OF THE SUCCESSFUL TRANSITIONAL PASTOR: A DELPHI STUDY Michael Austin Kramer, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2018 Chair: Dr. Michael S. Wilder Over the last fifteen years denominational decline coinciding with megachurches led by iconic pastoral personalities has changed the playing field of pastoral transition. The current pastoral succession conversation has addressed the pastor’s responsibility in succession and provided snapshots of functional transitional plans. The question that now needs addressed is, “What does it take to be a transitional leader?” or “What is the leadership profile of a successful transitional pastor?” While the current literature contains hints at what the traits of a successful transitioning leader should be, these characteristics have yet to be statistically identified. Once systematically studied these traits would allow an individual to measure and improve areas of perceived growth. The purpose of this qualitative analysis of the characteristics of successfully transitioning pastors is to statistically identify the traits of a successful transitional pastor to prepare pastors to become transitional leaders. To accomplish this a qualitative study was prepared. Chapter 1 provides the need for the study—pointing to a void in the literature surrounding pastoral transition, specifically the identification of characteristics of successfully transitioning pastors. Chapter 2 reviews the current literature and distills 27 characteristics identified in pastoral, secular, and academic writings. Chapter 3 outlines the research design, which utilizes a Delphi study engaging an expert panel. Chapter 4 provides analysis of the Delphi panel results including a successful transitional pastoral profile and a transitional pastor competency model. Chapter 5 offers research applications noting the statistical prominence given to followership and confusion surrounding disciple-making, the statistical importance of the characteristics of willingness to let go of authority, concern for the church, and emotional maturity, as well as statistical implications for the use of a successful transitional profile and competency model for self-assessment, church leadership, and academic training.

abstract: Software Managed Manycore (SMM) architectures - in which each core has only a scratch pad memory (instead of caches), - are a promising solution for scaling memory hierarchy to hundreds of cores. However, in these architectures, the code and data of the tasks mapped to the cores must be explicitly managed in the software by the compiler. State-of-the-art compiler techniques for SMM architectures require inter-procedural information and analysis. A call graph of the program does not have enough information, and Global CFG, i.e., combining all the control flow graphs of the program has too much information, and becomes too big. As a result, most new techniques have informally defined and used GCCFG (Global Call Control Flow Graph) - a whole program representation which captures the control-flow as well as function call information in a succinct way - to perform inter-procedural analysis. However, how to construct it has not been shown yet. We find that for several simple call and control flow graphs, constructing GCCFG is relatively straightforward, but there are several cases in common applications where unique graph transformation is needed in order to formally and correctly construct the GCCFG. This paper fills this gap, and develops graph transformations to allow the construction of GCCFG in (almost) all cases. Our experiments show that by using succinct representation (GCCFG) rather than elaborate representation (GlobalCFG), the compilation time of state-of-the-art code management technique [4] can be improved by an average of 5X, and that of stack management [20] can be improved by an average of 4X. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2014

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Research in the field of computer assisted language learning and teaching has discussed the necessity of defining a research agenda in area. Because of this, some of these studies have focused on the analysis of research reports to identify the objectives of studies, the methodologies and the themes in order to identify the state of the art. By using a methodology of a research synthesis, this work describes the research practice of the Computer Assisted Language Learning and the discourses which come out this investigation field in relation to what researchers from this area conceive about language and about English as a foreign language teaching and learning. To do that, I collected 123 research articles from specific international journals in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning and 14 reports from Brazilian journals in the same field which were published from 2005 to 2009. By analyzing the research articles, I have also analyzed the content of the selected articles, the methodology and the results. Then, after the textual analysis, I elaborated an interview through e-mail with the authors of the articles to confirm or deny the data obtained in the textual analysis. The textual and contextual analysis is theoretically based on Genre Analysis and on Critical Discourse Analysis, which helped to describe the theoretical-methodological procedures adopted in this investigation field. The results suggest a field oriented by the investigation of four main themes which are: language, participants, technologies and online pedagogy. The investigation discourses in CALL suggest the existence of an area interested in the analysis of practices such as teach, read and write, virtually speak and communicate, which are done through the Internet. However, the predominant discourse about language in the research has been conceived as a cognitive and social phenomenon. The description of the Research Agenda suggested in this dissertation describes the main themes investigated in CALL, the social and discursive practices which are realizable in the cyberspace and examples of researches oriented by different language concepts. / Pesquisas na área de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas mediados por computador têm discutido a necessidade do estabelecimento da agenda de pesquisa nessa área. Devido a isso, algumas pesquisas têm centralizado na análise de relatos de pesquisas para identificar os objetivos dos estudos, as metodologias e os temas de interesse nessa área de investigação com vistas a identificar o estado da arte. Usando a metodologia de pesquisa de síntese, este trabalho descreve a prática de pesquisa em Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) e os discursos que emergem dessa área de investigação com relação ao que os pesquisadores dessa área concebem por linguagem e pelos processos de ensino e aprendizagem de inglês como língua estrangeira. Para tanto, coletei 123 relatos de pesquisa em periódicos internacionais específicos da área e 14 relatos em periódicos brasileiros sobre a temática de ensino de inglês mediado por computador, os quais foram publicados entre os anos de 2005 a 2009. Na análise textual, analisei o conteúdo dos artigos acadêmicos selecionados, a metodologia e os resultados. Em seguida, elaborei entrevistas via correio eletrônico com os autores dos artigos, para confirmar ou refutar dados obtidos na análise textual. A análise textual e contextual está ancorada teoricamente pela Análise de Gêneros e pela Análise Crítica do Discurso, as quais ajudaram a descrever os procedimentos teórico-metodológicos adotados nessa área de investigação. Os resultados sugerem uma área orientada pela investigação de quatro eixos temáticos, os quais são: a linguagem, os participantes, as tecnologias e a pedagogia online. Os discursos de investigação em CALL sugerem a existência de uma área com interesse na análise de práticas tais como ensinar, ler e escrever, falar e se comunicar virtualmente, que são realizadas na Internet. Porém, o discurso predominante sobre linguagem nas pesquisas é como um fenômeno cognitivo e social. A descrição da Agenda de Pesquisa sugerida nesta tese descreve os temas principais investigados na área de CALL, as práticas sociais e discursivas realizáveis no ciberespaço e exemplos de pesquisas orientadas por diferentes concepções de linguagem.

M.Comm. (Business Management) / The statement at the core of the thesis is that the success of the call centre depends on a strategic benefits model. The search for the proof will be conducted within the systems theory framework. The call centre is depicted as a micro system of the bigger organisation. This micro system is influenced by external factors. Factors that are external to the organisation and factors that are external to the call centre but forms part of the rest of the organisation. Systems have internal processes that deliver specific outputs, therefore the saying that the system is perfectly engineered for the results it achieves. The call centre has internal processes to deliver certain outputs. This study tries to identify what internal processes will have an impact on a strategic benefits model for the success of the call centre. 3 Systems theory is known to have feedback loops. The call centre operation should have similar feedback loops. Call centre feedback is received from three different perspectives, that of the customer, the employees and management. The study concludes by indicating how the benefits model ensures the success of the call centre. The primary objective of the study is to determine if the success of the call centre depends on a strategic benefits model. The secondary objectives of the study are to: • Develop a model that can be used for the design, assessment and running of the call centre, • Determine which factors influence the functioning of a call centre operation, • Determine the impact of the call centre on meeting customer expectations, • Develop a measure for call centre benefits. The elements of such a strategic benefits model had to be described for the analysis.

Magister Artium - MA / The aim of the study is to prove that a correlation exist between job satisfaction and the levels of absenteeism, turnover, performance and customer satisfaction. Data were collected using the Job Satisfaction Survey which is a self-administered questionaire to measure job satisfaction of call centre representatives. Additional data were collected using the company's existing measures for measuring absenteeism, turnover, performance and customer satisfaction. The study found a relationship between job satisfaction and performance, between job satisfaction and turnover and between job satisfaction and customer service. However, no relationship was found between job satisfaction and absenteeism, which is consistent with previous studies. / South Africa

Magister Artium - MA / South Africa is recognised as having world-class status in the call centre arena and this industry has grown exponentially in the last two decades, as has the number of women entering the workforce, including married and single mothers. Call centres provide a 24/7 service to the public, and therefore employees are expected to work shifts in this environment. It is also evident that even though mothers are making a significant contribution to the workforce, the role of the working mother is still that of primary caregiver and nurturer in the home. The main purpose of this study was to examine and compare the psychological well-being of single and married mothers, who do and do not work shifts in a call centre environment. The study findings were based on quantitative research in a call centre in the Western Cape, South Africa, with a sample of 192 single and married working mothers, of whom 135 mothers worked shifts and 57 mothers did not. Psychological well-being was indicated by the use of two instruments: Rosenberg‟s(1965) Self-esteem Scale and Diener‟s (1982) Satisfaction with Life Scale. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package in the Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). The analysis of the data included the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings of the study show that marital status has a significant effect on the psychological well-being of working mothers in this call centre environment. However, it was found that shift work did not make a significant difference to the psychological well-being of the working mothers in this call centre. The Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to analyse the interaction of the four groups (single, married, shift working and non-shift working mothers) and the results of this analysis showed that there was no significant difference in the interaction between the groups.Recommendations are provided in the study.

The simplest and most widely used queueing model in call centres is the M/M/k system, sometimes referred to as Erlang-C. For many applications the model is an over-simplification. Erlang-C model ignores among other things busy signals, customer impatience and services that span multiple visits. Although the Erlang-C formula is easily implemented, it is not easy to obtain insight from its answers (for example, to find an approximate answer to questions such as "how many additional agents do I need if the arrival rate doubles?"). An approximation of the Erlang-C formula that gives structural insight into this type of question would be of use to better understand economies of scale in call centre operations. Erlang-C based predictions can also turn out highly inaccurate because of violations of underlying assumptions and these violations are not straightforward to model. For example, non-exponential service times lead one to the M/G/k queue which, in stark contrast to the M/M/k system, is difficult to analyse. This thesis deals mainly with the general M/GI/k model with abandonment. The arrival process conforms to a Poisson process, service durations are independent and identically distributed with a general distribution, there are k servers, and independent and identically distributed customer abandoning times with a general distribution. This thesis will endeavour to analyse call centres using M/GI/k model with abandonment and the data to be used will be simulated using EZSIM-software. The paper by Brown et al. [3] entitled "Statistical Analysis of a Telephone Call Centre: A Queueing-Science Perspective," will be the basis upon which this thesis is built.

Contact centres are the first point of contact between a company and a customer after the purchase of a product or service. These centres make use of contact centre agents to service customer queries. In the past contact centres hired as many agents as they could in order to service customers, which have led to an increase in personnel costs causing contact centres to become costly to run. Automation techniques were introduced to decrease personnel costs and one such technique is the Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The usability of IVR systems is, however, dismal. Customers would rather speak to a contact centre agent than navigate through the menu structure found in these systems. The menu structure has come under scrutiny because it is difficult to use and navigate, is often not aligned to caller usage patterns, and the menu options are long and vague. This research investigated whether a Natural Language Interface (NLI) could alleviate the problems inherent to IVR. NLIs, however, come with their own disadvantages of which the main ones are ambiguity and the loss of context of a conversation. Two prototypes were implemented, one of which resembled an IVR and the other an NLI (using ALICE concepts). An evaluation of two prototypes confirmed the advantages and disadvantages of these concepts in accordance to theory. A Hybrid prototype was proposed with the aid of two models. The model which proposed an NLI using a rule base was chosen for implementation. The Hybrid prototype was then evaluated against the NLI and IVR prototypes to deduce which prototype was the most effective, efficient and satisfying. The evaluation through the aid of descriptive and inferential statistics showed that the Hybrid prototype was the most usable prototype. The evaluation of the Hybrid prototype confirmed that a Hybrid approach could limit the shortcomings of IVR through the elimination of the menu structure found in these systems, thereby allowing users to state their queries in natural language. The incorporated rule base provided the Hybrid system with long term memory, eliminating one of the main disadvantages of NLIs.