The practical execution of an entrepreneurial process for technology-driven ventures in emerging markets can be likened to a maze - a dynamically complex process with many navigational contingencies. While the overall navigational path may appear straightforward conceptually, the actual execution path inherently becomes fraught with sub-optimal turns and apparent dead-end trails as an entrepreneur dynamically confronts many challenges. The navigational path for effectively sequencing events can be confounding, especially since event outcomes are highly contingent upon timing as well as execution of the appropriate events; seemingly 'right' actions can be applied at the 'wrong' time in the process with the corresponding result being an undesired outcome. Combining practical experience with academic research, this paper addresses the entrepreneurial process maze by presenting the authors' phased-structure process model for proactively sequencing effective actions in entrepreneurial ventures. Fundamental to this process model is a 'tactician' phase wherein a seven-step prescription is introduced to help entrepreneurs navigate the maze and dynamically sequence the 'right actions' at the 'right time' for commercialising innovations. Both the phased-structure process model and its seven-step prescription for the tactician provide practical guidance for technology-driven entrepreneurial ventures.

Organizational Resilience is defined as the ability of an organization to anticipate sudden disruptions, effectively respond, and adapt in a changing environment to deliver its objectives, as well as successfully recover. In order to increase resilience at an organizational level, it is important to understand how individuals collectively contribute to resilience capability of an organization. Emergency Departments (EDs) are considered to be particularly well suited to investigating resilience capability due to their highly unpredictable and complex operating environment. Further, the resilience capability of EDs and their staff is suggested to be essential to successful delivery of safe, high-quality, and timely medical care to all patients in cases of mass disruptive events. The purpose of this research is to develop a model of staff resilience to support the improvement of organizational resilience in EDs in the United States. The study was organized into two phases: Initial Model Development based on a Thematic Analysis of existing conceptual models and Preliminary Model Validation via deductive evaluation of published Empirical Case Studies on ED response to mass casualty events. As a result of the first phase, Initial Model was proposed that consists of five dimensions of resilience: Triggers, Factors Affecting Resilience, Resilience Capability, Characteristics of ED Complexity and Outcomes. The results of the second phase determined that the Initial Model was comprehensive and only minor additions were made. Further, recommendations for improving case studies on ED responses were developed. The results of the study provide a model that demonstrates how ED staff supports the organizational resilience capability of the EDs. This research contributes to the general knowledge base of resilience as a critical organizational capability in EDs when dealing with unexpected disruptions as well as provides guidance for EDs in the United States when seeking to become more resilient.

The ability to make sense of a wide array of stimuli presupposes the human tendency to organize information in a meaningful way. Efforts to assess the degree to which students organize information meaningfully have been hampered by several factors including the idiosyncratic way in which individuals represent their knowledge either with words or visually. Concept maps have been used as tools by researchers and educators alike to assist students in understanding the conceptual interrelationships within a subject domain. One concept-map assessment in particular known as the construct-a-map task has shown great promise in facilitating reliable and valid inferences from student concept-map ratings. With all of its promise, however, the construct-a-map task is burdened with several rating difficulties. One challenge in particular is that no published rubric has been developed that accounts for the degree to which individual propositions are important to an understanding of the overall topic or theme of the map. This study represents an attempt to examine the psychometric properties of two construct-a-map tasks designed to overcome in part this rating difficulty. The reliability of the concept-map ratings was calculated using a person-by-rater-by-occasion fully crossed design. This design made it possible to use generalizability theory to identify and estimate the variance in the ratings contributed by the three factors mentioned, the interaction effects, and unexplained error. The criterion validity of the concept-map ratings was examined by computing Pearson correlations between concept-map and essay ratings and concept-map and interview transcript ratings. The generalizability coefficients for student mean ratings were moderate to very high: .73 and .94 for the first concept-mapping task and .74 and .87 for the second concept-mapping task. A relatively large percentage of the rating variability was contributed by the object of measurement. Both tasks correlated highly with essay and interview ratings: .62 to .81.

Today’s sustainability assessment frameworks are no longer applicable when evaluating the newautomotive vehicles. Therefore, the need for suitable automotive evaluation frameworks increasesas companies and scientists are trying to predict the important sustainability characteristics oftomorrows car and how it will affect our societies. The goal is to create a conceptual sustainabilityassessment framework to solve the very complex question of what the most important criteria areand how this new transportation type might affect our society. This is done using a systemapproach, a method that is suitable for studying interrelations between the influencing factors incomplex problems like the one between the sustainability dimensions. Scenario analysis has beenused in order to create the future environment and do a segmentation of the plausible concepts offuturistic transportation options. The evaluation criteria have been developed by gatheringinformation through a literature study and from primary sources via interviews.The resulting framework is composed of 19 evaluation criteria from the different dimensions ofsustainability. The framework allows the user to insert a futuristic concept and evaluate it tocompare a numeric score to other concepts to get indicators of how sustainable the concept is. Thesegmentation of futuristic vehicles shows that the most plausible types of automated vehicles areshared taxis, non-shared taxis and privately owned vehicles, all affecting society differently.The thematic analysis of the criteria has shown that there some relationships and types of criteriathat are more important than others. The most essential discovered correlations between criteriaare: Production and affordability and also maintenance & operation and affordability, affordabilitywith accessibility, affordability & accessibility and traffic volumes and further traffic Volumesand pollution. The developed framework is believed to have the desired function of creating a trustworthyassessment of autonomous vehicles based on the literature study and previous discoveries withinthe field. The evaluation of the different segments is left for future work. / Dagens ramverk för hållbarhetsbedömningar är inte längre användbara vid utvärdering av nyasjälvkörande fordon. Därför har behovet ökat av lämpliga ramverk som fokuserar påhållbarhetsutvärderingar när företag och forskare försöker förutse de viktigahållbarhetsegenskaperna av morgondagens fordon och hur de kommer att påverka vårt samhälleutifrån ett hållbarhetsperspektiv. Målet med studien är att skapa ett konceptuellt ramverk förhållbarhetsbedömning som kan hjälpa till att lösa den mycket komplexa frågan om vilka viktigakriterier bör inkluderas vid en evaluering av denna nya typ av transport. Studien har följt ettsystematiskt tillvägagångssätt kallat ”System approach”, en metod som är lämplig för studier därrelationer mellan olika påverkande faktorer är väldigt komplexa, som den mellanhållbarhetsdimensionerna. Scenarioanalys har används för att skapa en framtida miljö och ensegmentering av de mest trovärdiga koncepten av framtida transportalternativ. Utvärderingskriterierna har utvecklats genom att samla in information från en litteraturstudie ochfrån primära källor genom intervjuer. Det resulterande ramverket är sammansatt av 19 utvärderingskriterier inom de olikadimensionerna för hållbarhet. Med det resulterade ramverket kan användaren införa ett futuristisktfordonskoncept och bedöma detta för att få ett numeriskt resultat och jämföra dessa med andrautvärderingar för att få en indikation om hur hållbara koncepten är gentemot varandra. Segmenteringen av de futuristiska fordonstyperna visar att de mest trovärdiga typerna avautomatiserade färdmedel är delade taxitjänster, privata taxitjänster och privatägda fordon, allamed olika påverkan på samhället. Den tema-baserade analys av kriterierna har visat att det finns vissa relationer och typer av kriteriersom är viktigare än andra. De viktigaste upptäckta relationerna mellan kriterier är: Produktion ochekonomisk tillgänglighet, underhåll och ekonomisk tillgänglighet, ekonomisk tillgänglighet medtillgänglighet till transport, tillgänglighet till transport och trafikvolymer, ekonomisk tillgänglighetoch trafikvolymer och slutligen så påverkar trafikvolymerna utsläppet. Det utvecklade konceptuella ramverket antas ha den önskade funktionen att skapa en pålitligbedömning av autonoma fordon baserat på litteraturstudien och tidigare upptäckter inom fältet. Utvärderingen av de olika segmenten lämnas till framtida studier.

As states continue to consider taking on more responsibility in transportation, a major issue State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) face relates to financing future transportation investments. At present, many state transportation policymakers and State DOT administrators are considering alternative financing approaches to generate future revenue sources for transportation investments. This dissertation focuses on several user fee based approaches currently being considered by state transportation policymakers and administrators in the U.S. Examples of such approaches include: increasing the current fuel tax and indexing the fuel tax to inflation; implementing an odometer based vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fee approach through vehicle inspection programs in selected states; establishing a global positioning system (GPS) based VMT fee approach for heavy vehicles where privacy and implementation costs are less of a concern; and increasing existing tolls and charging tolls on existing roads that do not have tolls, preferably with open-road tolling (ORT) and all-electronic toll (AET) payment systems. Meanwhile, major questions of interest relate to the potential impacts or consequences of such financing approaches. Central to this dissertation is the development of a conceptual framework and analytical methods to aid state transportation policymakers and administrators in the planning and formulation of alternative financing approaches suitable for consideration in their state. The application of the framework and methods is illustrated in a case study. This case study includes an evaluation of alternative toll scenarios on a section of Interstate 93 in the Boston Metropolitan area where at present tolls are not charged. A major conclusion of the case study is that placing tolls along interstate highways where tolls are not currently collected has the potential to provide a significant source of revenue for State DOTs but that other impacts including route diversion, privacy, and equity need to be considered and addressed in the decision-making process. It is expected that the results of the dissertation will be of interest to state transportation policy makers as well as State DOT administrators currently involved in the development of a comprehensive transportation finance policy.

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have become recognised as brands in the academic and popular domain, but little is known about the relationship between these senior manager ¿brands¿ and the corporate brand of the organisation they represent. Since stakeholders associate the CEO¿s reputation with that of the company, they may negatively or positively affect each other, and there is little research into this dynamic. Indeed there is only a limited understanding about the field of people branding in general and much less into CEO brands in particular. Consequently this doctoral thesis investigates the people and CEO brands phenomena, the relationships between CEO, corporate brand and stakeholder¿s self-image and how these can be effectively managed in order to enhance brand equity for the company. Based on a critical realist perspective, this research examines traditional product brand elements from the literature and develops a new conceptual framework for people brands, which is subsequently applied to CEOs. Furthermore a survey is performed with business school students. The findings are analysed by using content analysis, descriptive statistics and by developing and testing a Structural Equation Model. The contribution to knowledge is threefold. Firstly a conceptual framework of people brands is constructed. Second this model is applied to CEO brands. Third five propositions about stakeholder perceptions of CEO brand differentiation and equity are empirically tested. The main findings are that visual presentation is not the main factor to differentiate CEO brands from each other, nor is their association with the company. Positive perceptions of corporate brands can influence the reputation of the CEO brand and lead to an enhancement of their brand equity. Importantly this indicates that stakeholders do not distinguish between CEO and company. Brand equity is also created if there is a relationship between stakeholder self-image and company brand, which in turn can improve the reputation of the CEO brand. Finally brand equity is enhanced through stakeholder perceptions of an ideal self-image. Overall this research has important implications for academia and managerial practice as it extends the knowledge about people and CEO brands and provides an insight into ways in which the relationships between CEO, company and stakeholders can be managed to enhance brand equity for the company

Hosting major sport events is a large and complex endeavour entangled with various stakeholders, investments, outcomes, resources, and exchanges. Hosting major sport events has often relied on residents’ public funding, with the promise that hosting will create a positive social return on investment (SROI) for residents. However, not only has no empirical research to date determined residents’ SROI from hosting a major sport event, SROI sport research often fails to apply necessary monetary valuation methods and follow an appropriate framework underpinned by relevant economic and social concepts. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to understand residents’ SROI from hosting a publicly-funded major sport event. To address this purpose, four research questions were presented, each answered through one of four articles: (1) what theoretical concepts have been used to underscore residents’ socio-economic exchanges when hosting a publicly-funded major sport event?; (2) which monetary valuation method(s) is(are) best to examine residents’ SROI from hosting a publicly-funded major sport event?; (3) what factors predict residents’ SROI from hosting a publicly-funded major sport event?; and (4) why did residents evaluate their SROI the way they did? To answer these questions, this dissertation first conducted a systematic review of relevant sport management literature and then followed a three-phase sequential mixed methods design which included pre-questionnaire semi-structured interviews with Metro Vancouver Regional District residents (n = 14), a self-administered online questionnaire with Canadian residents (n = 1901), and post-questionnaire semi-structured interviews with Canadian residents (n = 21). In the first article, the systematic review revealed the importance of transparency, economic indicators, and affinity with sport factors when understanding residents’ SROI, but also revealed the lack of research focused on understanding residents’ SROI or the factors concepts associated with it. In the second article, semi-structured interviews were used to understand Vancouver residents’ experiences and desires with hosting the Games. Then 13 monetary valuation methods were evaluated with two monetary valuation methods (i.e., reverse contingent valuation method and opportunity cost approach) considered to be most appropriate to determine SROI based on specific selection criteria and used to examine Vancouver residents’ SROI. Quantitative analyses from the questionnaire findings indicated the reverse contingent valuation method to be best for studying this phenomenon. Through a regression analysis, the third article stressed the importance of financial investments and event outcomes to determine SROI, and predicted SROI based on social experience outcomes, affinity with sport factors, and economic factors. Finally, the fourth article investigated Canadian residents’ post-exchange SROI evaluation through semi-structured interviews and elicited how residents’ perspectives were formulated. Interviewees highlighted the importance of social norms, residents’ identity, and time, and the benefits of having a reflective opportunity to evaluate the exchange itself. Consequently, this dissertation offers four concepts (i.e., structure, norms, time, experience) which collectively creates a comprehensive understanding of residents’ SROI from hosting a major sport event. This collection of concepts is presented in a conceptual framework with insight into its development, presentation, and potential construct relationships. The conceptual framework presents how and why residents who publicly fund major sport events evaluate their SROI. Specifically, this framework outlines the importance of the temporal effects of social outcomes while considering the power and control of government representatives, the alignment of pre-event desires and post-event outcomes, residents’ societal and hosting identities, their positive and negative experiences from hosting, and their affinity with sport and income. These findings highlight that hosting publicly-funded major sport events can produce positive SROI from residents. To do so, scholars, practitioners, and residents need to work harmoniously and transparently. Concurrently, the findings offer a path for scholars to explain this SROI phenomenon and produce better desired positive exchanges for residents and practitioners in the context of publicly-funded sport events.

The main drawback of Alternate Reality Gaming, compared to other genres, is that it lacks reusability; typically it cannot be played freely by anyone, anytime, anywhere. However, with the help of modern technology, especially in the mobile devices section, this can be overcome, at least to a certain extent. Therefore, we propose a conceptual framework built upon these challenges raised by other ARGs, a framework meant for game designers and developers that wish to create reusable ARGs, to add reusability to their own ARGs or even turn their digital games into a mixed experience. We designed it by reviewing relevant literature of past ARGs that had a reusable or a digital component, from which we have drawn conclusions and mixed them with our own ideas. Then we tested it iteratively by developing two prototypes and evaluating them through user feedback.

The world moves toward the era of a smart society that is human-centered, sustainable, and inclusive. Countries employed new information and communication technologies to deliver services and engage citizens in the decision-making process. These services are evolving and in the near future, we can expect a plethora of new services related to Smart Society 5.0 and Industry 4.0, in addition to more traditional services. The possibility of these new technologies to foster sustainable development can only be obtained when all target users have fair access to the offered services. In the e-government context, ensuring service quality is crucial for success. While many factors contribute to service quality, user experience is becoming increasingly important. Governments need to put citizens at the center of the design process of their services and ensure that all target users have an enhanced experience with the offered e-services. Moreover, e-government constantly changes over time and continues to drive opportunities and open new possibilities for potential developments. Therefore, it is highly recommended that government agencies regularly evaluate citizens' experience with the offered services and investigate the factors that significantly influence their adoption behavior. However, numerous research efforts investigated the user experience of e-government from the lens of specific government services in an individual or specific range of countries. There has been a lack of a global e-government adoption framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Despite successful efforts to formalize certain aspects of user experience, there remains a need for a comprehensive and systematic framework for user experience evaluation. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to conduct a comprehensive study of the state of the art in user experience evaluation and develop a unified framework that integrates existing knowledge on the topic. It provides a systematic approach for enhancing user experience by providing guidelines on how to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services efficiently as a reference for future investigations. The research approach was conducted through two main phases. The first phase aims to design the proposed conceptual framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Hence, we have conducted a systematic literature review on user experience towards e-government services and cover all different aspects to better understand target users and enhance their overall experience. This systematic review informed the design of a holistic conceptual framework by investigating factors that significantly affect users' adoption of e-government services globally. The proposed framework provides a standard overarching process for future research in the e-government domain by providing an established methodology for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. This framework is global, it is used to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government in any country to ensure that citizens have a good experience with e-government services in that country. The framework includes the most common significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government that represent the necessary steps to enhance citizen experience and boost their adoption behavior. The second phase implies the utilization of the proposed framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government by developing a reference implementation of e-government adoption based on the proposed framework. The quantitative research methodology was employed using a web-based questionnaire to evaluate the e-government adoption behavior. The questionnaire contains a set of measurement items pertaining to each factor that existed in the proposed framework to investigate their potential relationships. The questionnaire underwent an iterative process of testing and validation to ensure the reliability and credibility of the measurement items. Then, the multivariate statistics, including the structural equation modeling, have been adopted to analyze and examine the framework relationships. Preliminary results of this thesis include two user studies investigating user experience towards specific e-government services to support the development of the conceptual framework. Then, the proposed framework alongside the reference implementation were applied to evaluate the Saudi e-government adoption by evaluating the adoption behavior and developing an explanatory model for the adoption behaviors of Saudi citizens. The contributions of this thesis can be summarized by conducting a systematic literature review on user experience towards e-government services to inform the design of the proposed framework. Then, developing a global conceptual framework for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government. Overall, this thesis provides valuable insights into enhancing citizen experience and increasing their adoption of e-government services, which supports government agencies, practitioners, and policymakers. / Doctor of Philosophy / Governments employed new technologies that are dynamic and smart to deliver services to citizens and ensure they are engaged while using these services. Nowadays, the phenomenon of 'smart society' refers to systems that are human-centered, sustainable, and accessed by all target users. Universal access to government services is the pillar to achieving sustainable development goals as expressions of a smart society. In the electronic government context, ensuring service quality is crucial for success. While many factors contribute to service quality, user experience is becoming increasingly important. Governments need to put citizens at the center of the design process of their services and ensure that all target users have an enhanced experience with the offered e-services. Moreover, e-government constantly changes over time and continues to drive opportunities and open new possibilities for potential developments. Therefore, it is highly recommended that government agencies regularly evaluate citizens' experience and investigate the factors that influence their adoption behavior. In the literature, there has been a lack of a comprehensive review of user experience towards e-government services globally. In addition, many research efforts focused on developing e-government adoption frameworks based on government services in a specific country or a limited range of countries. There has been a lack of a global e-government adoption framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Despite successful efforts to formalize certain aspects of user experience, there remains a need for a comprehensive and systematic framework for user experience evaluation. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to conduct a comprehensive study of the state of the art in user experience evaluation and develop a unified framework that integrates existing knowledge on the topic. It provides a systematic approach to enhance the user experience by providing guidelines on how to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services efficiently as a reference for future investigations. This comprehensive review informed the design of a holistic conceptual framework by investigating significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government services globally. Hence, the proposed framework includes the most common significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government imported from the comprehensive review's results. This framework provides a standard overarching process for future research in the e-government domain by providing an established methodology for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. It is used to evaluate the e-government adoption behaviors in any country to ensure the efficiency of e-government services and enhance the citizen experience in that country. The quantitative research methodology was employed using a web-based questionnaire to evaluate the e-government adoption behavior based on the proposed framework. The questionnaire was tested and validated to ensure the reliability and credibility of the questionnaire items. After that, specific statistical techniques, including structural equation modeling, were used to examine and refine the framework relationships. Preliminary results of this thesis include two user studies investigating users' experience towards specific e-government services to support the development of the conceptual framework. Hence, the proposed framework alongside the developed questionnaire and implemented analysis techniques were applied to evaluate the Saudi e-government adoption by evaluating the adoption behavior and developing an explanatory model for the adoption behaviors of Saudi citizens. This thesis supports the e-government by providing valuable insights to government practitioners and policymakers on enhancing citizen experience and increasing their adoption of e-government services.

Software-based system architecture has been recognized as a foundation laying out the underpinnings that are critically important for successful engineering of large-scale complex systems. In recent years, architecting has played a more crucial role in engineering network-centric system of systems. The software paradigm has been shifting from treating software as a product (SaaP) to treating software as a service (SaaS). SaaS is also referred to as the Cloud Computing, where the term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for "network". As the complexity of the architecture of network-centric software-based system of systems has increased, the description of such architecture has posed significant technical challenges. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has developed the DoD Architecture Framework [DoDAF 2009a, DoDAF 2009b] for describing system architectures. IEEE proposes a Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems [IEEE 2000]. SEI provides high-level guidelines for Documenting Software Architectures [Clements et al 2003]. However, all of the diagrams proposed by DoD, IEEE, and SEI are two-dimensional static graphical and textual representations that do not reveal the dynamic characteristics of a system architecture. This thesis presents a conceptual framework (CF) for specifying the architecture of a network-centric software-based system of systems. The developed CF provides the beginning part of a larger research effort. The main goal of the overall research is to employ the automation-based software paradigm and to automatically generate a visual simulation model of a system architecture, with which experiments can be conducted to assess the dynamic characteristics of that architecture. The CF, developed in the research described herein, enables the automatic generation of a visual simulation model representing a system architecture. The proposed CF is evaluated in half a dozen case studies to demonstrate that it provides the necessary elements for automatic generation of a simulation model as the description of a complex system of systems architecture. / Master of Science