Lean manufacturing is one of the most developing manufacturing philosophies through which firms can minimise waste in the production process. Implementing lean practices successfully enables firms to lower unit costs of production and maximise value to the customer, which in turn helps them to increase their competitive edge over rivals. The emerging literature considers organisational culture as a necessary intangible source for achieving a competitive advantage for companies, and to have a critical role in the success or failure of lean practices implementation. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effect of organisational culture on lean technical practices in the manufacturing firms in Jordan. More specifically, four conceptual models have been developed in the current study highlighting the effect of each type of organisational culture on lean technical practices implementation. In addition, more emphasis was on understanding the mechanism through which customers' involvement, employees’ involvement and suppliers’ involvement affect the relationship between organisational culture and lean technical practices. Thus, the four conceptual models bring to light the potential intervening role of the human lean practices in the organisational culture/ lean technical practices association. After identifying and reviewing the relevant literature, the socio-technical system theory, contingency theory and RBV are adopted to develop the conceptual models and associated hypotheses. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques have been adopted to analyse a dataset of over 200 manufacturing firms in Jordan, collected by using a self-administered survey. The findings of this study indicate that the hierarchical culture has the highest substantial positive effect on lean technical practices followed by developmental culture, group culture and rational culture respectively. In addition, it is found that each type of organisational culture (group, developmental, hierarchical and rational) affects positively lean human practices (customers' involvement, employees’ involvement and suppliers’ involvement) in different statistical levels. For example, all types of organisational culture affect suppliers’ involvement more than customers’ involvement and employees’ involvement respectively. Moreover, it is found that customers’ involvement and suppliers’ involvement have the highest positive effect on lean technical practices in the rational culture and the least positive effect in the hierarchical culture. Furthermore, it is found that the positive effect of each type of organisational culture on lean technical practices is partially mediated by customers' involvement and partially mediated by suppliers’ involvement. The highest significant mediating effect of customers' involvement and suppliers’ involvement lies in the rational culture/lean technical practices link whereas the lowest significant mediating effect of customers' involvement and suppliers’ involvement lies is in the hierarchical culture/ lean technical practices link. Finally, it is found that employees’ involvement does not mediate the relationship between organisational culture and lean technical practices. These findings provide new evidence from Jordan to support the hypotheses that the organisational culture can act as a crucial pre-condition for lean technical practices to be fully effective. Additionally, the findings reinforce the notion that emphasizing the human side of lean especially for customers' involvement and suppliers' involvement can promote the effectiveness of lean implementation. The current study contributes to the current literature at two levels. First, at the theoretical level, this study develops multiple conceptual models which crosses two streams of literature mainly, organisational culture literature and lean manufacturing literature with a focus on the human side of lean. Unlike previous studies, the models integrate the direct effect of organisational culture on lean technical practices and the intervening role of lean human practices due to which the organisational culture is assumed to have also an indirect effect on lean technical practices. Furthermore, employing a powerful statistical technique (Analysis of Moment Structure-SEM) provides more credibility to the results reported in this study. Second, at the empirical level, this study is conducted in the Jordanian context. As such, this study is one of the first, to our knowledge, that examines the effect of organisational culture on lean technical practices, as well as having examined the mechanism of how each type of organisational culture affects lean technical practices using empirical survey data from this context.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-08-20Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:09:20Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 salomao_mh_me_sjrp.pdf: 880828 bytes, checksum: 1acf7804cf3583279a73a79a2dcffae2 (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / A atuação de processos de redução e de supressão de segmentos consonantais em fenômenos redundantes, como a concordância nominal, tende a suprimir marcas de pluralidade, provocando a possibilidade de ambiguidade referencial. Um fenômeno fonológico que reflete o processo gramatical de concordância é o da supressão de /S/, que pode afetar a marcação de pluralidade em contexto nominal. Com base nisso, o objetivo deste trabalho é o de submeter a um tratamento variacionista, de base quantitativa, dados de marcação variável de plural no SN e no SA em contexto de predicativo, obtidos em córpus coletado na região de São José do Rio Preto. O trabalho procura examinar se a marcação de pluralidade nos predicativos pode ser explicada com base em motivações exclusivamente formais, ou exclusivamente funcionais, ou ainda, com base na interação entre ambas, que consistiriam, assim, em motivações em competição (DU BOIS, 1985). A análise dos resultados mostra, por um lado, que um princípio funcional, como o as Condições de Distintividade de Kiparsky (1972), atua positivamente na marcação variável de pluralidade, mas não tem força suficiente para governar isoladamente o processo. Mostra, por outro, que as motivações formais, gerenciadas pelo Princípio do Paralelismo Formal, também exercem influência significativa na marcação variável de plural no predicativo, mas não como força predominante, na medida em que se submete a uma influência significativa das variáveis extralinguísticas escolaridade e idade. Esse comportamento dos dados não permite dar a esse princípio o poder explanatório que Labov (1996) lhe atribui, isto é, como a atuação mecânica de forças inerentemente internas ao sistema linguístico. Por essa razão, a explicação mais plausível para a marcação variável de pluralidade nos predicativos, na variedade estudada... / Both the reduction and the suppression of consonantal segments when those occur in contexts of nominal agreement tends to drop plural markers, thus creating referential ambiguities. Amongst those phenomena reflecting a process of grammatical agreement is the suppresion of /S/ in spoken Portuguese, which characterizes a phonological phenomenon that may affect plurality marking in the NP. Considering that, the present work employs a variationist and quantitative method to analyse data containing instances of predicative variable plural marking both in the NP and AP taken from a corpus collected in the area of São José do Rio Preto. This research aims to attest to whether plurality marking in the predicative context can be explained in terms of exclusively formal or exclusively functional motivations, or else, in terms of the interaction between these two kinds of motivations, thus consisting in competing motivations (DU BOIS, 1985). On the one hand, the analysis of the results evinces that a functional principle such as Kiparsky‟s Distinctiveness Conditions (1972) acts in a positive way in the variable plural marking; yet it alone does not suffice to govern the entire process. On the other hand, this work demonstrates that formal motivations governed by the Principle of Formal Parallelism have a significant influence on predicative plural marking, but not in a predominant fashion, inasmuch as the latter is subject to significant influence of extralinguistic variables such as „education‟ and „age‟. The situation of the data do not authorize that such a principle be bestowed the explanatory power that Labov (1996) ascribes to it, i.e., that idea of a mechanical acting of inherent forces whithin the inner linguistic system. For that reason, the most plausible explanation is that the predicative plural marking in the variety under scrutiny constitutes a process influenced... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Depuis plusieurs années, la question de la simplification du droit est au cœur du discours juridique. La multiplication des règles de droit, de leurs sources (nationales et internationales) comme de leurs supports (lois, codes, etc.), nuit à la lisibilité du droit et donc à la sécurité juridique.Ce constat peut être fait plus particulièrement en matière de responsabilité civile extracontractuelle où l’on trouve effectivement des normes de toutes origines, de toutes natures et sur de nombreux supports. Or, ces normes connaissent des champs d’application concurrents, de sorte que plusieurs d’entre elles peuvent jouer pour le même litige. Le problème qui se pose alors est de savoir à l’avance comment trancher pareil concours.Pour parvenir à articuler les normes de la responsabilité civile, il a fallu rechercher des principes permettant de désigner la norme applicable au litige. Deux principes sont alors ressortis de cette étude. Le premier, dit principe directeur, est le principe de subsidiarité, tandis que le second, dit principe correcteur, est un principe d’intérêt, qui repose lui-même sur plusieurs outils, tels que l’option, le cumul ou la hiérarchie. Le législateur, le juge et la victime sont naturellement au cœur de ce dispositif d’articulation qui, correctement appliqué, devrait permettre de résoudre tous les concours, en désignant la norme finalement applicable. / For several years now, the issue of the simplification of the law is central in the juridicaldebate. The multiplication of rules of law, of their sources (national and international), as well astheir foundations (laws, rules, codes, etc.), is harmful to the clear understanding of the law andconsequently to the juridical safety.This statement can be made particularly in the field of extra contractual civil liability where normsfrom all origins, all natures and numerous founding bases are indeed to be found. Yet thesenorms overlap and compete in their scope of application, so that several norms may apply to thesame litigation. Therefore, the issue which arises is to ascertain beforehand option, the how toarbitrate among such competing and overlapping norms.In order to structure the norms of civil liability, it has been necessary to research and findprinciples enabling to designate the norms to be applied in the litigation. Two principles stand outfrom this research. The first one, called the guiding principle, is the principle of subsidiarity, whilethe second one, called the principle of revision, is a principle of interest, which is itself based onseveral instruments, such as: option, plurality, and hierarchy. The legislator, the judge and thevictim are obviously at the core of this system of links which, if it is correctly applied, shouldenable to solve all the competitions between norms, by designating the norm which is finallyapplicable.

In this thesis, the main objective is to study certain aspects of modeling failure time data of repairable systems under a competing risks framework. We consider two different models and propose more efficient Bayesian methods for estimating the parameters. In the first model, we discuss inferential procedures based on an objective Bayesian approach for analyzing failures from a single repairable system under independent competing risks. We examined the scenario where a minimal repair is performed at each failure, thereby resulting in that each failure mode appropriately follows a power-law intensity. Besides, it is proposed that the power-law intensity is reparametrized in terms of orthogonal parameters. Then, we derived two objective priors known as the Jeffreys prior and reference prior. Moreover, posterior distributions based on these priors will be obtained in order to find properties which may be optimal in the sense that, for some cases, we prove that these posterior distributions are proper and are also matching priors. In addition, in some cases, unbiased Bayesian estimators of simple closed-form expressions are derived. In the second model, we analyze data from multiple repairable systems under the presence of dependent competing risks. In order to model this dependence structure, we adopted the well-known shared frailty model. This model provides a suitable theoretical basis for generating dependence between the components failure times in the dependent competing risks model. It is known that the dependence effect in this scenario influences the estimates of the model parameters. Hence, under the assumption that the cause-specific intensities follow a PLP, we propose a frailty-induced dependence approach to incorporate the dependence among the cause-specific recurrent processes. Moreover, the misspecification of the frailty distribution may lead to errors when estimating the parameters of interest. Because of this, we considered a Bayesian nonparametric approach to model the frailty density in order to offer more flexibility and to provide consistent estimates for the PLP model, as well as insights about heterogeneity among the systems. Both simulation studies and real case studies are provided to illustrate the proposed approaches and demonstrate their validity. / Nesta tese, o objetivo principal é estudar certos aspectos da modelagem de dados de tempo de falha de sistemas reparáveis sob uma estrutura de riscos competitivos. Consideramos dois modelos diferentes e propomos métodos Bayesianos mais eficientes para estimar os parâmetros. No primeiro modelo, discutimos procedimentos inferenciais baseados em uma abordagem Bayesiana objetiva para analisar falhas de um único sistema reparável sob riscos competitivos independentes. Examinamos o cenário em que um reparo mínimo é realizado em cada falha, resultando em que cada modo de falha segue adequadamente uma intensidade de lei de potência. Além disso, propõe-se que a intensidade da lei de potência seja reparametrizada em termos de parâmetros ortogonais. Então, derivamos duas prioris objetivas conhecidas como priori de Jeffreys e priori de referência. Além disso, distribuições posteriores baseadas nessas prioris serão obtidas a fim de encontrar propriedades que podem ser ótimas no sentido de que, em alguns casos, provamos que essas distribuições posteriores são próprias e que também são matching priors. Além disso, em alguns casos, estimadores Bayesianos não-viesados de forma fechada são derivados. No segundo modelo, analisamos dados de múltiplos sistemas reparáveis sob a presença de riscos competitivos dependentes. Para modelar essa estrutura de dependência, adotamos o conhecido modelo de fragilidade compartilhada. Esse modelo fornece uma base teórica adequada para gerar dependência entre os tempos de falha dos componentes no modelo de riscos competitivos dependentes. Sabe-se que o efeito de dependência neste cenário influencia as estimativas dos parâmetros do modelo. Assim, sob o pressuposto de que as intensidades específicas de causa seguem um PLP, propomos uma abordagem de dependência induzida pela fragilidade para incorporar a dependência entre os processos recorrentes específicos da causa. Além disso, a especificação incorreta da distribuição de fragilidade pode levar a erros na estimativa dos parâmetros de interesse. Por isso, consideramos uma abordagem Bayesiana não paramétrica para modelar a densidade da fragilidade, a fim de oferecer mais flexibilidade e fornecer estimativas consistentes para o modelo PLP, bem como insights sobre a heterogeneidade entre os sistemas. São fornecidos estudos de simulação e estudos de casos reais para ilustrar as abordagens propostas e demonstrar sua validade.

本研究旨在探討國民小學校長競值領導行為與教師組織承諾之關係。研究採用調查研究法，以臺灣北部區域之公立國民小學教師為對象，總共發出1043份問卷，問卷回收率為85.91%，有效問卷回收率則為81.30%。正式問卷回收之後，分別以百分等級、t考驗、單因子變異數分析、卡方考驗、皮爾森積差相關分析、迴歸分析等統計方式對回收資料進行分析。 本研究獲得以下十項結論： 一、國民小學校長競值領導行為較著重「競爭行為」層面，且以「均衡領導型」比例最高。 二、國民小學教師組織承諾以「努力意願」層面表現最佳。 三、男校長在校長競值領導行為之合作行為層面有較佳表現，年輕校長在校長競值領導行為各層面有較佳表現。 四、小型規模、偏遠地區的校長在校長競值領導行為各層面均有較佳表現。 五、年齡大的校長在均衡領導型的比例較低且在平庸領導型的比例較高。 六、小型規模、偏遠地區的校長在均衡領導型的比例較高且在平庸領導型的比例較低。 七、年齡大、資深及教師兼主任的教師組織承諾較高，小型規模及偏遠地區學校的教師組織承諾亦較高。 八、校長競值領導行為以「均衡領導型」在教師組織承諾的表現最佳，「不均衡領導型」次之，「平庸領導型」最不理想。 九、校長領導競值行為與教師組織承諾具有正向關連，校長競值領導行為表現愈好，則教師組織承諾愈高。 十、國小校長採行競值領導行為有助於教師組織承諾之提升，其中僅「合作行為」與「競爭行為」兩個領導行為層面具有顯著預測力，競值領導理論之「均衡觀點」宜適度修正。 根據研究結論提出下列建議： 一、對教育行政機關之建議 （一）校長職前與在職訓練，宜融入競值領導相關課程。 （二）適度控制學校經濟規模，以利於教師組織承諾之維持。 二、對國小校長之建議 （一）校長應加強領導行為之複雜性，以增進領導效能。 （二）校長要不斷吸取新知與積極進修，以強化專業智能與教育熱忱。 （三）校長宜多關懷年輕、資淺及未兼行政職務之教師，以協助其生涯發展。 （四）校長須展現兼容並蓄的領導作風，同時採取競爭行為與合作行為，以提升教師組織承諾。 三、對未來研究之建議 （一）研究對象可擴大至國中、高中等不同層級學校，乃至私立學校。 （二）研究變項可加入其他可能影響教師組織承諾的變項。 （三）研究方法可酌加使用質化方式之訪談，並在橫斷性研究的基礎上，兼採縱貫性研究，蒐集相關資料。 （四）競值領導理論架構需要國內更多實證研究去驗證其在本國教育環境的適用性與可行性。 / The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ competing values leadership behavior and teachers’ organizational commitment in elementary schools. The reasearch method this study adopted is survey reasearch. Data were collected from 1043 teachers of elementary schools in northern parts of Taiwan. The response rates were 85.91%; the usable rates were 81.30%. The collected data were analyzed by using the statistical methods of percentile rank, t-test, one-way ANOVA, χ2 test, Pearson product-moment correlation and regression analysis. The conclusions of this study are: 1.Among all of the dimensions of principals’ competing values leadership behavior, “Compete” is the dominant in the elementary schools. And “Balanced Style” ranks the highest. 2.Among all of the dimensions of teachers’ organizational commitment, “Effort Intention” is the dominant in the elementary schools. 3.Male principals have better performances in “Collaborate”. Young principals have better performances among all of the dimensions of principals’ competing values leadership behavior. 4.Principals in small-sized schools and in remote area schools have better performances among all of the dimensions of principals’ competing values leadership behavior. 5.Among competing values leadership behavior of elder principals, “Balanced Style” ranks lower and “Mediocre Style”ranks higher. 6.Among competing values leadership behavior of principals in small-sized schools and in remote area schools, “Balanced Style” ranks higer and “Mediocre Style”ranks lower. 7.Elder, senior teachers and directors in schools have higher organizational commitment; teachers in small-sized schools and in remote area schools also have higher organizational commitment. 8.Underneath principals’ competing values leadership behavior , Teachers have the best organizational commitment toward “Balanced Style”, the next-best organizational commitment toward “Unbalanced Style” and the worst organizational commitment toward “Mediocre Style”. 9.There is a positive relationship between principals’ competing values leadership behavior and teachers’ organizational commitment. Principals with better leadership performances tend to enhance teachers’ organizational commitment. 10.Principals ’ competing values leadership behavior promote teachers’ organizational commitment. Among all of the dimensions of principals’ competing values leadership behavior, “Collaborate” and “Compete” have significant predictabilty, “Balanced Perspective” could be modified. Based on the findings, the study offers suggestions for the education authorities, the principals of elementary schools, and the future researchers, hoping to shed light on the development of elementary school education in the future.

La tesi si compone di tre saggi su disoccupazione e mobilità del lavoro in Italia, presentando anche un focus sulla regione Lombardia, oltre che da una parte iniziale che inquadra tali tematiche. Il primo capitolo offre infatti una disamina degli sviluppi ed empirici connessi a disoccupazione e mobilità del lavoro. L’obiettivo di questa parte introduttiva è duplice. Da un lato si cerca di fornire un quadro pressochè esaustivo sulle evoluzioni teoriche ed empiriche connesse alle tematiche citate. D’altro lato si introducono le analisi oggetto dei successivi saggi come evoluzione degli sviluppi proposti dalla letteratura, enfatizzandone logiche sottostanti ed originalità. Il primo saggio analizza le determinanti della durata della disoccupazione ed i relativi “competing risks” per la regione Lombardia. La scelta di tale contesto non è casuale. La Lombardia, infatti, rappresenta una delle regioni economicamente più sviluppate ed i risultati ottenuti con tali metodologie di stima possono fornire spunti utili e rappresentativi sia delle regioni europee maggiormente sviluppate, sia di altre rilevanti regioni italiane (Emilia Romagna e Toscana). Il secondo saggio estende l’applicazione di modelli di durata e modelli a rischi competitivi all’intero territorio nazionale. In questo modo è possibile enfatizzare la rilevanza di tali tematiche per il contesto italiano, ed ottenere un quadro esaustivo circa l’evoluzione del fenomeno della durata della disoccupazione. Le tecniche utilizzate per tali analisi, ovviamente, differiscono ripetto a quelle impegate per la regione Lombardia, ed anche questo aspetto consente interessanti considerazioni. Il terzo saggio sposta l’attenzione alla rilevante tematica della mobilità del mercato del lavoro. Tale aspetto è ovviamente connesso al fenomeno della disoccupazione, e consente di approfondirne nonché di delinearne le possibili cause. In tale capitolo vengono proposte due metodologie di analisi. In primo luogo, ed a livello macro, sono fornite le stime aggregate dei flussi fra i principali stati o condizioni (occupazione, disoccupazione, inattività) del mercato del lavoro. Questo primo step consente appunto una prima quantificazione del fenomeno della mobilità. La seconda parte del capitolo si focalizza invece su una stima - a livello micro - delle determinanti delle transizioni fra gli stati del mercato del lavoro. Tale aspetto consente appunto di investigare ed esaminare le cause sottese alla mobilità riscontrata a livello macro. / Structured in three essays, this thesis focus on unemployment and labour mobility in Italy and Lombardy (the biggest Italian’s region). The first essay offers a picture of the main theoretical and the empirical issues related to these complex phenomena. The purpose of this section is twofold. On one hand we aim to offer an exhaustive picture of the theoretical and empirical developments of such phenomena. On the other hand, we introduce the empirical investigations of the subsequent essays as evolutions of the ones proposed by literature. We also emphases the original contribution and the logic behind. The second essay investigates the determinants of the unemployment duration and of the related competing risks (CRM hereafter) for Lombardy. The choice to concentrate the initial part of this dissertation on Lombardy is primarily driven by two factors. First, there is interest in applying relevant techniques to a regional context characterized by a certain degree of homogeneity of economic indicators. Further, Lombardy is one of the most important Italian regions (confirmed by many economics indicators), and is quite homogeneous in terms of labour market indicators (only little differences between provinces, with the north-east with the fewest unemployment problems), This allows verifying the effectiveness of these investigations of the determinants of unemployment duration and the related CRM without dealing with the typical dualism between north and south which is a structural feature of the Italian labour market. This is a way to investigate in depth the characteristics of the relevant phenomenon of unemployment for a significant partition of Italy, which is representative of both richest regions in Europe and Italian regions as well (such as Tuscany or Emilia Romagna). The third essay enlarges the attention to Italy by employing techniques of unemployment duration and competing risks to analyse the overall Italian unemployment and its main exit routes. Those are tools to get an exhaustive picture and relevant insights on the evolution of the Italian unemployment duration. The techniques employed for the overall country obviously differ from the ones used for the region of Lombardy, and these differences also offer the scope for interesting considerations. The fourth essay deals with the relevant issue of labour market mobility. This is a theme quite linked to unemployment, since it allows understanding and exploring its causes. We focus on two different kind of analysis. At macro level, we estimate the gross flows between the relevant labour market states of employment, unemployment, and inactivity (three-state representation of the labour market) to quantify the overall labour market mobility. The second part of this section, instead, offers micro econometrics estimates of the determinants of such labour market transitions, to investigate the causes of such mobility.

Strategic behaviors in electricity markets are analyzed. Three related topics are investigated. The first topic is a research about the NE search algorithm for complex non-cooperative games in electricity markets with transmission constraints. Hybrid co-evolutionary programming is suggested and simulated for complex examples. The second topic is an analysis about the competing pricing mechanisms of uniform and pay-as-bid pricing in an electricity market. We prove that for a two-player static game the Nash Equilibrium under pay-as-bid pricing will yield less total revenue in expectation than under uniform pricing when demand is inelastic. The third topic is to address a market power mitigation issue of the current Texas electricity market by limiting Transmission Congestion Right (TCR) ownership. The strategic coordination of inter zonal scheduling and balancing market manipulation is analyzed. A market power measurement algorithm useful to determine the proper level of TCR ownership limitation is suggested. / text

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本研究旨在編製「知識創新學習環境量表」，以瞭解學習環境中知識創新氛圍的程度。透過三個獨立樣本A、B及C，分別進行探索性因素分析、驗證性因素分析及複核效化分析。樣本A（332人）以探索性因素分析獲得因素成份，結果顯示此份量表有三個因素，分別命名為「想法因素」、「自主學習者因素」及「社群因素」。其次，透過建立本量表的一系列競爭模式，以樣本B（536人）進行驗證性因素分析之評鑑，結果顯示二階單因素模式為最簡效模式，並且量表具有良好之信、效度。而樣本C（536人）則作為複核效化之分析，結果顯示二階單因素模式具有穩定性與預測力。希冀本量表能提供相關單位做為教學及研究之應用。 / The purpose of this study was to develop the Knowledge Building Environment Scale (KBES). Three independent samples was used to validte the reliability and validity of the scale. Firstly, sample A (n=332) was used to generate the factors through exploratory factor analysis. It resulted in a scale of three factors which contains ‘idea’ factor, ‘agent’ factor and ‘community’ factor. Secondly, a series of competing models was established and evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis through sample B (n=536). Comparing with several competing models, hierarchical model was found to be the most efficient model with good reliability and validity. Finally, the cross-validation was tested by sample C (n=536) for hierarchical model to confirm the stability and predictive power of this model. The KBES can provide relevant institutions as a tool for evaluating learning environments.