Cette thèse examine l'impact de la structure du marché bancaire sur l’activité économique et les contraintes financières des petites et moyennes entreprises (PME) et l'efficacité des banques au niveau local. Il comprend trois chapitres empiriques. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse à l’impact du relationship banking sur les contraintes financières des PME et s'appuie sur deux indicateurs alternatifs pour saisir différentes dimensions de ces contraintes. Les résultats soulignent le rôle ambigu de la proximité bancaire et de la relation client face aux contraintes financières des PME. Sur la période 2005-2013, la présence accrue de banques régionales ou géographiquement concentrées contribue à atténuer les contraintes de crédit à court terme des PME françaises mais accroît leur sensibilité aux flux de trésorerie liés aux investissements. En outre, dans les deux cas, les contraintes financières des PME sont renforcées sur des marchés distants sur le plan fonctionnel. De plus, en période de crise, les avantages de la relation bancaire sur la contrainte de crédit à court terme demeurent et, dans certains cas, sont renforcés. Nous constatons également que la présence accrue des banques régionales facilite l'accès au crédit à court terme pour les entreprises plus rentables avant la crise financière mondiale et particulièrement pour celles qui ont connu une forte baisse de leur rentabilité en période de crise. Le deuxième chapitre analyse l’impact des relations de crédit via une plus grande proximité bancaire sur l’activité économique réelle, en s’appuyant à la fois sur des données individuelles de firmes et sur des données macroénomiques au niveau des départements. Il s’intéresse également à l’impact différencié de cette proximité en fonction du degré de dépendance au financement externe des PME françaises sur la période 2005-2013. Nos résultats révèlent que la relation de crédit via une plus grande proximité bancaire est bénéfique pour l'activité économique des PME en temps normal et en période de crise. De plus, parmi ces PME, les avantages de la proximité bancaire sont les plus importants pour les micro-entreprises. De plus, nos résultats montrent une forte hétérogénéité dans l’impact de la structure du marché bancaire local en fonction du degré de dépendance vis-à-vis du financement extérieur. Notre analyse macroéconomique montre également que une plus forte proximité bancaire a un impact positif sur l’emploi et stimule la croissance de l’activité économique. Le troisième chapitre analyse l’impact l'impact des caractéristiques des banques et des marchés locaux sur l'efficacité des succursales bancaires. Cette analyse s’appuie sur un ensemble données détaillé au niveau des succursales en Chine sur la période 2008-2011. Nos résultats suggèrent que les caractéristiques des marchés tant locaux que bancaires affectent l’efficacité des succursales bancaires. Les succursales de banques appartenant à l'État ont l’efficience-profit la plus forte mais l’efficience-coût la plus faible, tandis que les succursales de banques étrangères ont l’efficience-profit la plus élevée. En outre, la concurrence des banques et le développement économique sur le marché local contribuent à promouvoir l'efficacité des succursales. De plus, l’efficacité des banques et l’efficacité du marché bancaire local peuvent influer sur l’efficacité des succursales, l’impact de l’efficacité des banques étant économiquement plus important. Nos résultats suggèrent que la structure du marché bancaire local a un impact statistiquement et économiquement significatif sur l’activité économique et les contraintes financières des PME, l'activité économique réelle et l'efficacité des banques. Les superviseurs bancaires et les régulateurs doivent veiller à maintenir un environnement bancaire diversifié, garantissant la présence de banques locales et géographiquement concentrées, et à renforcer la concurrence des banques afin de stimuler la croissance économique. / This dissertation examines the impact of banking mar ket structure on SMEs financial constraints, real economic activity and bank efficiency at a local level. It comprises three empirical essays as three chapters, the first two chapters are on French banking market and the third one is on Chinese banking mar ket. The first chapter investigates the relevance of relationship lending for SMEs and continuation lending during crisisrelying on two alternative indicators to capture different dimensions of SMEs financial constraints. The findings emphasize the ambiguous role of banking proximity and of relationship banking on SMEs financial constraints. Over the 2005-2013 period, for French manufacturing SME s, higher presence of regional banks or of geographically-focused banks help to alle viate their short-term credit constraint, while lar germarket share of national banks or stronger presence of geographically-diversified banks is beneficial to reduce their investment cash-flow sensitivity. Moreover, in both cases, SMEs’ financial constraints are strengthened in functionally-distant mar kets. In addition, during crisis times, the benefits of relationship banking on short-term credit constraint remains and, insome cases, are reinforced. We also find that these benefits differ according to SMEs pre-crisis financial health, in line with pre vious findings of continuation lending during crisis.The second chapter analyzes the impact of relationship lending through a stronger banking proximity on real economic activity at both firm le vel and county (department) level and the heterogeneity of this impact based on SMEs external financial dependence in France over the 2005-2013 period. Our results confirm the benefits of elationship banking for SMEs as highlighted in the pre vious chapter. A stronger banking proximity is beneficial to SMEs’ economic activity in both ormal and crisis times, even after controlling for times, county, industry and firm level characteristics, and these benefits are stronger for micro firms, the smallest and more informationally-opaque SMEs. In addition, our results show a significant heterogeneity in the impact of local banking market structure among small firms depending on the le vel of dependence on external finance. Further, our macroeconomic analysis also provide evidence that local banking market structure has statistically and economically significant impact on economic activity. The third chapter analyzes the finance-growth nexus from a different perspective by investigating what drives bank branch efficiency. Three efficiency measures are adopted to estimate the impact of bank and local market characteristics on bank branch efficiency using a detailed branch-level dataset in China over the 2008-2011 period. Our findings suggest that both bank and local market characteristics affect bank branch efficiency. Branches of state-own banks are the most profit efficient and least cost efficient, while branches of foreign banks are the most cost efficient. In addition, bank competition and economic development in local market help promote branch efficiency. In addition, both bank efficiency and local banking market efficiency can affect branch efficiency, and the impact of bank efficiency is econ omically more significant. Our findings suggest that local banking market structure has a statistically and economically significant impact on small business lending, real economic activity and bank efficiency, bank supervisors and regulators should pay at tention to maintain a diversified banking environment, guaranty the presence of local and geographically-focused banks, and enhance bank competition to stimulate growth.

Notre société étant plus dépendante que jamais au vecteur électrique, la moindre perturbation du transport ou de l’acheminement de l’électricité a un impact social et économique important. La fiabilité et la sécurité des réseaux électriques sont donc cruciales pour les gestionnaires de réseaux, en plus des aspects économiques. De plus, les réseaux de transport sont interconnectés pour réduire les coûts des opérations et pour améliorer la sécurité. Un des plus grand défis des gestionnaires des réseaux de transport est ainsi de se coordonner avec les réseaux voisins, ce qui soulève des problèmes liés à la taille du problème, à l’interopérabilité et à la confidentialité des données.Cette thèse se focalise principalement sur la sécurité des opérations sur les réseaux électriques, c’est pourquoi l’évolution des principales caractéristiques des blackouts, qui sont des échecs de la sécurité des réseaux, sont étudiés sur la période 2005-2016. L’approche de cette étude consiste à déterminer quelles sont les principales caractéristiques des incidents de ces 10 dernières années, afin d’identifier ce qui devrait être intégré pour réduire le risque que ces incidents se reproduisent. L’évolution a été étudiée et comparé avec les caractéristiques des blackouts qui se sont produit avant 2005. L’étude se focalise sur les préconditions qui ont mené à ces blackouts et sur les cascades, et particulièrement sur le rôle de la vitesse des cascades. Les caractéristiques importante sont extraites et intégrées dans la suite de notre travail.Un algorithme résolvant un problème préventif d’Optimal Power Flow avec contraintes de sécurité (SCOPF) de manière distribuée est ainsi développé. Ce problème consiste en l’ajout de contraintes qui assure qu’après la perte de n’importe quel appareil d’importance, le nouveau point d’équilibre, atteint suite au réglage primaire en fréquence, respecte les contraintes du système. L’algorithme développé utilise une décomposition fine du problème et est implémenté sous le paradigme multi-agent, basé sur deux catégories d’agents : les appareils et les bus. Les agents sont coordonnés grâce à l’ « Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)» et grâce à un problème de consensus. Cette décomposition procure l’autonomie et la confidentialité nécessaire aux différents acteurs du système, mais aussi, un bon passage à l’échelle par rapport à la taille du problème. Cet algorithme a aussi pour avantage d’être robuste à n’importe quelle perturbation, incluant la séparation du système en plusieurs régions.Puis, pour prendre en compte l’incertitude sur la production créée par les erreurs de prédiction des fermes éoliennes, une approche distribuée à deux étapes est développée pour résoudre un problème d’Optimal Power Flow avec contraintes probabilistes (CCOPF), d’une manière complétement distribuée. Les erreurs de prédiction des fermes éoliennes sont modélisées par des lois normales indépendantes et les écarts par rapport aux plannings de production sont considérés compensés par le réglage primaire en fréquence. La première étape de l’algorithme a pour but de déterminer des paramètres de sensibilités nécessaires pour formuler le problème. Les résultats de cette étape sont ensuite des paramètres d’entrée de la seconde étape qui, elle, résout le problème de CCOPF. Une extension de cette formulation permet d’ajouter de la flexibilité au problème en permettant la réduction de la production éolienne. Cet algorithme est basé sur la même décomposition fine que précédemment où les agents sont également coordonnés par l’ADMM et grâce à un problème de consensus. En conclusion, cet algorithme en deux étapes garantit la confidentialité et l’autonomie des différents acteurs, et est parallèle et adaptée aux plateformes hautes performances. / Our societies are more dependent on electricity than ever, thus any disturbance in the power transmission and delivery has major economic and social impact. The reliability and security of power systems are then crucial to keep, for power system operators, in addition to minimizing the system operating cost. Moreover, transmission systems are interconnected to decrease the cost of operation and improve the system security. One of the main challenges for transmission system operators is therefore to coordinate with interconnected power systems, which raises scalability, interoperability and privacy issues. Hence, this thesis is concerned with how TSOs can operate their networks in a decentralized way but coordinating their operation with other neighboring TSOs to find a cost-effective scheduling that is globally secure.The main focus of this thesis is the security of power systems, this is why the evolution of the main characteristics of the blackouts that are failures in power system security, of the period 2005-2016 is studied. The approach consists in determining what the major characteristics of the incidents of the past 10 years are, to identify what should be taken into account to mitigate the risk of incidents. The evolution have been studied and compared with the characteristics of the blackouts before 2005. The study focuses on the pre-conditions that led to those blackouts and on the cascades, and especially the role of the cascade speed. Some important features are extracted and later integrated in our work.An algorithm that solve the preventive Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow (SCOPF) problem in a fully distributed manner, is thus developed. The preventive SCOPF problem consists in adding constraints that ensure that, after the loss of any major device of the system, the new steady-state reached, as a result of the primary frequency control, does not violate any constraint. The developed algorithm uses a fine-grained decomposition and is implemented under the multi-agent system paradigm based on two categories of agents: devices and buses. The agents are coordinated with the Alternating Direction method of multipliers in conjunction with a consensus problem. This decomposition provides the autonomy and privacy to the different actors of the system and the fine-grained decomposition allows to take the most of the decomposition and provides a good scalability regarding the size of the problem. This algorithm also have the advantage of being robust to any disturbance of the system, including the separation of the system into regions.Then, to account for the uncertainty of production brought by wind farms forecast error, a two-step distributed approach is developed to solve the Chance-Constrained Optimal Power Flow problem, in a fully distributed manner. The wind farms forecast errors are modeled by independent Gaussian distributions and the mismatches with the initials are assumed to be compensated by the primary frequency response of generators. The first step of this algorithm aims at determining the sensitivity factors of the system, needed to formulate the problem. The results of this first step are inputs of the second step that is the CCOPF. An extension of this formulation provides more flexibility to the problem and consists in including the possibility to curtail the wind farms. This algorithm relies on the same fine-grained decomposition where the agents are again coordinated by the ADMM and a consensus problem. In conclusion, this two-step algorithm ensures the privacy and autonomy of the different system actors and it is de facto parallel and adapted to high performance platforms.

Os Métodos Ágeis surgiram no final da década de 90, como uma alternativa aos métodos prescritivos de desenvolvimento de software. Eles propõem uma nova abordagem de desenvolvimento, eliminando gastos com documentação excessiva e burocrática, enfatizando a interação entre as pessoas e as atividades que efetivamente trazem valor ao cliente. Nos últimos anos, diversos princípios e práticas baseados na indústria de manufatura foram incorporadas pelos Métodos Ágeis de desenvolvimento de software. Um dos princípios absorvidos é o de melhorar a eficácia de uma organização através de melhorias globais. Embora este princípio seja bem difundido nos Métodos Ágeis, utilizá-lo não é uma tarefa fácil. Nem sempre é fácil ter uma visão global do processo de desenvolvimento. Além disso, para realizar melhorias globais é necessário descobrir a causa para possíveis problemas, o que também pode ser uma tarefa difícil. Esse trabalho investiga duas abordagens da indústria de manufatura que enxergam uma organização como um sistema no qual todas as partes são inter-relacionadas. Com base nelas, três abordagens de desenvolvimento de software existentes são analisadas. Finalmente, um estudo comparativo foi feito para avaliar as principais características dos métodos de desenvolvimento estudados. Esse estudo estende o trabalho feito por Abrahamssom et al., no livro Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions, avaliando o desempenho dos métodos seguindo o arcabouço proposto pelos mesmos autores. / Agile methods appeared in the late 90\'s as an alternative approach to the classic prescriptive planning approaches to software development. They propose a new style of development, eliminating excessive and bureaucratic documentation, and emphasizing the interactions between people collaborating to achieve high productivity and deliver high-quality software. In the last few years, several principles and practices based on the manufacturing industry were incorporated by Agile software development. One of the principles absorbed is to improve the effectiveness of an organization through an overall improvement. Although this principle is quite widespread in Agile Methods, using it is not an easy task. It is not easy to get the big picture of the development process. Moreover, to achieve overall improvements is necessary to discover the cause of possible problems, which can also be a difficult task. This work investigates two approaches in the manufacturing industry that shares the assumption that the whole organization is focused on overall throughput, not on micro-optimization. Based on then, three approaches to existing software development are analyzed. Finally, a comparative study was done to assess the main characteristics of the studied methods. This study extends the work done by Abrahamssom et al. In the book Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions, evaluating the performance of the methods following the framework proposed by the same authors.

大體上來說，高維列聯表通常比較不容易分析，因此我們考慮將某柴暫不列入探討之因子的次數相加，以便降低列聯表的維數。但是降低列聯表維數的過程必需相當慎重，以確保合併的過程不致影響到所欲探討之因子間的相關性。本文就 "sun-to-zero" 及 "set-to-zero" 兩種不同的對數線性模式參數之限制式，分別探討簡易合併(collapsibility)、嚴格合併(strict collapsibility)及強固合併(strong collapsibility)之充要條件，並舉例說明及印證這些條件。 / A lower-dimensional contingency is usually easier to understand than a higher-dimensional one. Collapsing a larger table into a smaller one so that the associations among a set of factors can be easier to explain, however, should be exercised with care. In this study, definitions of collapsibility, strict collapsibility, and strong collapsibility are viewed. Distinctions among the three are compared. Necessary and sufficient condittions for these three types of collapsibility under conventional "set-to-zero" and "sum-to-zero" constraints are discussed and proved.

Apribojimų teorijos principus Lietuvoje pastarąjį dešimtmetį savo veikloje, padedant profesionaliems konsultantams, ėmė naudoti vos keli procentai įmonių, tačiau apribojimų teorijos principų panaudojimas paslaugų įmonėse nėra išsamiai ištirtas. Šiuo magistro baigiamuoju darbu siekiama atskleisti analizuojamos teorijos poveikį konkrečiai Lietuvoje veikiančiai paslaugų įmonei.Tyrimas patvirtino hipotezę, kad aprobojimų teorijos metodus galima sėkmingai taikyti pasaugų versle, jie padeda surasti geriausius problemų sprendimo būdus, tačiau kiekviena organizacija yra gyvas organizmas, išsprendus vienas problemas atsiranda kitos. / Despite the fact that in the last decade just small percentage of companies in Lithuania with help from professional consultants, applied the Theory of Constraints principles in their business activities, still the issue of applying the Theory of Constraints principles in services providing companies is not thoroughly explored. This Master’s thesis aims to reveal the impact of the analyzed theory on the particular services providing company.The hypothesis was confirmed by the research that the Theory of Constraints methods could be successfully applied to service business, they are used to find the best solutions to the problems, but each organization is like a live organism which confronts new problems after solving the old ones.

In 1984, Eli Goldratt published his novel “The Goal – a process of ongoing improvement”. Constraints Management has since evolved into a field of study, still widely debated and written about today. Most companies soon realized that the principles of Constraints Management could no longer be ignored to stay competitive. The South African Breweries (now SABMiller plc) is the world's leading brewer in developing markets. The company has dominated the South African liquor market for years and is currently the second largest brewing company in the world, operating in Africa, China, Europe and the USA, yet even a company with this reputation can still be ignoring the basic principles of Constraints Management. This dissertation concentrates on the application of Constraints Management in a selected brewery in South Africa. The measures used in one of SAB’s most successful breweries will be tested against Constraints Management principles, illustrating how the practice of driving performance measures without focusing on the constraint can lead one away from the goal of the company. Rosslyn Brewery is a brewery driven by traditional brewing industry performance measures. The key drivers of the brewery have always been to increase factory efficiency and reduce costs. Rosslyn set the benchmark for packaging efficiency within SAB. The problem is that the packaging operation is not the constraint in the brewery. The throughput of the brewery is determined by the operation feeding into packaging, i.e. filtration. The end result is that even though the packaging lines have the best efficiency, they still have to stop and wait for beer to become available from filtration, resulting in downtime, frustration and eventually costly overtime and weekend work. The core conflict of the brewery is the trade-off between running all the resources as efficiently as possible, and thereby decreasing product cost, and running only the constraint as efficiently as possible, resulting in an increase in throughput. The Thinking Process was used to evaluate the conflict and a solution developed. The solution consists of the following: 1. The brewery has to adopt Constraints Management using the 5 step process of ongoing improvement. The capacity constraint has to be exploited and all other operations subordinated, to ensure that products are not produced for the sake of improving efficiency. 2. The operational measures of the brewery have to be changed from increasing factory efficiency and reducing R/hl to increasing throughput, decreasing inventory and decreasing operating expense. 3. The production schedule and raw material release for the whole plant need to be determined by filtration. This requires a change in the current advanced planning solution to incorporate the principles of Drum-Buffer-Rope. If the decision is made and actions taken, the brewery will be able to survive the next decade, even if there is a further decline in the market. If not, the focus will still be on reducing product cost, whilst improving the efficiency of all operations. This will lead to further line closures and retrenchments, doing nothing more but reducing SABMiller’s potential future capacity and flexibility. / Dissertation (MEng (Management of Technology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / unrestricted

Os Métodos Ágeis surgiram no final da década de 90, como uma alternativa aos métodos prescritivos de desenvolvimento de software. Eles propõem uma nova abordagem de desenvolvimento, eliminando gastos com documentação excessiva e burocrática, enfatizando a interação entre as pessoas e as atividades que efetivamente trazem valor ao cliente. Nos últimos anos, diversos princípios e práticas baseados na indústria de manufatura foram incorporadas pelos Métodos Ágeis de desenvolvimento de software. Um dos princípios absorvidos é o de melhorar a eficácia de uma organização através de melhorias globais. Embora este princípio seja bem difundido nos Métodos Ágeis, utilizá-lo não é uma tarefa fácil. Nem sempre é fácil ter uma visão global do processo de desenvolvimento. Além disso, para realizar melhorias globais é necessário descobrir a causa para possíveis problemas, o que também pode ser uma tarefa difícil. Esse trabalho investiga duas abordagens da indústria de manufatura que enxergam uma organização como um sistema no qual todas as partes são inter-relacionadas. Com base nelas, três abordagens de desenvolvimento de software existentes são analisadas. Finalmente, um estudo comparativo foi feito para avaliar as principais características dos métodos de desenvolvimento estudados. Esse estudo estende o trabalho feito por Abrahamssom et al., no livro Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions, avaliando o desempenho dos métodos seguindo o arcabouço proposto pelos mesmos autores. / Agile methods appeared in the late 90\'s as an alternative approach to the classic prescriptive planning approaches to software development. They propose a new style of development, eliminating excessive and bureaucratic documentation, and emphasizing the interactions between people collaborating to achieve high productivity and deliver high-quality software. In the last few years, several principles and practices based on the manufacturing industry were incorporated by Agile software development. One of the principles absorbed is to improve the effectiveness of an organization through an overall improvement. Although this principle is quite widespread in Agile Methods, using it is not an easy task. It is not easy to get the big picture of the development process. Moreover, to achieve overall improvements is necessary to discover the cause of possible problems, which can also be a difficult task. This work investigates two approaches in the manufacturing industry that shares the assumption that the whole organization is focused on overall throughput, not on micro-optimization. Based on then, three approaches to existing software development are analyzed. Finally, a comparative study was done to assess the main characteristics of the studied methods. This study extends the work done by Abrahamssom et al. In the book Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions, evaluating the performance of the methods following the framework proposed by the same authors.

No description available.

Over the last three decades, the impact of dramatic change in the social, religious, political and economic environment has led to a rapid expansion in the number of women entering the paid labour force in Sri Lanka as elsewhere. However, their identities and workload continue to be defined around caring work, especially for children. Not surprisingly, employed mothers endeavour to balance these two central spheres of their life, family and work. This research focuses on the contradictions of mothers¿ work-life balance. It does so through an analysis of how successfully (or unsuccessfully) professional and managerial mothers in Sri Lanka combine motherhood with paid work, and how they understand this in terms of gendered identities and social norms. This example also allows an evaluation of western derived theories about mothers¿ decision making in the context of a developing, Asian country. Grounded theory was used to examine mothers¿ narratives about life in the family and at work, drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews, along with data from some representative secondary sources, in order to explore these questions. This thesis demonstrates that working women¿s mothering leads to the formation of a gendered identity which varies according to different socio-cultural and religious opportunities and constraints. Using the Bourdieu approach the research suggests how everyday life operates in terms of habitus, field and capital. However, these working mothers have low capacity to achieve a work-life balance and this may lead to complex social problems.

Yes / This paper investigates the links between institutional systems and the entry mode of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in developing and transition countries (DTCs). An assessment is made of the reasons for the continuing use of international joint ventures (IJVs) in countries that have undergone reforms intended to lead to the development of wholly owned subsidiaries. The paper argues that formal and informal institutional constraints in DTCs lead to high transaction and uncertainty costs for MNCs, and that the use of IJVs is a rational response to attempt to lower these high costs. The paper follows the literature suggesting that IJVs are normally a `second best¿ entry mode in terms of the potential for foreign direct investment (FDI) to contribute to the development of DTCs. The reform process in Jordan is used to illustrate how institutional systems, especially informal institutional constraints, lead to high transaction and uncertainty costs. In the case of Jordan, this occurred despite a series of four reform packages seeking to reduce the institutional barriers to effective business activities. Interviews of 28 foreign companies provide the basis for an empirical assessment of the importance of both formal and informal institutional constraints and infrastructure problems. The paper includes an outline of a future research agenda that seeks to generalise and develop the results from Jordan to other DTCs.