The research sets out to investigate the effect of the policy of Rationalization and Redeployment on the culture of teaching and learning in three primary schools in the Pinetown District in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Rationalization and Redeployment was a policy adopted by the new government of South Africa to address the inequalities in education created by apartheid. There was an excess of educators in historically advantaged schools and a shortage of teachers in historically disadvantaged schools. The average teacher: pupil ratio in historically advantaged schools in 1991 was 1: 18 while the average teacher: pupil ratio in historically disadvantaged schools in the same year was 1: 43. Due to budgetary constraints the new government was unable to employ more educators to fill vacancies in historically disadvantaged schools. Therefore redeployment of human resources became imperative. While this may have been a simple solution for the new government, it proved to be a daunting experience for educators, which resulted in a negative influence on the culture of teaching and learning in schools. Two critical questions were posed: 1. What impact did the contents, claims, objectives, assumptions and silences of the policy of rationalization and redeployment have on the culture of teaching and learning? 2. How did the implementation of the policy of rationalization and redeployment affect the culture of teaching and learning? The two research questions were addressed by analysing the Kwa-Zulu Natal Education Departmental Circulars, from 1996 to 2004 pertaining to the rationalization and redeployment policy and by analysing questionnaires administered to educators and the school management team in three schools chosen for this study. 62 questionnaires were administered of which 56 were returned. The responses were analysed and conclusions were drawn. From the research it is quite evident that the policy of rationalization and redeployment had a negative effect on the culture of teaching and learning. It became evident that this policy was politically motivated rather than an attempt to improve the education in the country. In addition several conclusions and recommendations are presented in the concluding chapter. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

A better understanding of people’s attitudes to housing is fundamental to attracting new residents and retaining those who already live in or close to the central city. As such, this study operating in a Canadian context adopts Hägerstrand’s model for the process of innovation diffusion. The study draws on the findings of an online survey and interviews with city planners in both Edmonton and Winnipeg to explore the demand and supply dimensions of city-center living and attitudes towards different types of housing and neighbourhood design. The study shows that the central area in Winnipeg and Edmonton are at different stages regarding housing. Prospective home owners who are interested in housing in the central area share a number of environmental attitudes. These attitudes were related to the care for recycling, the importance for eating organic food, the use of public transportation, volunteering in non-profit organization to help the community and the interest in attending cultural activities. Based on the results of the study, it can be expected that housing types such as apartments, townhouses and even loft housing can be more common in the future and especially in Winnipeg since apartments and townhouses are already common in Edmonton.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka stressreducerade ledarskapsbeteenden som chefer använder sig av gentemot sina medarbetare. Studien har en deduktiv ansats där två etablerade balansteorier; Karasek och Theorells (1990) krav och kontrollmodell samt Siegrits (1996) ansträngning och belöningsmodell, användes för att studera empirin. Ett målinriktat urval gjordes (n = 10) och av dessa var fem stycken kvinnor och fem stycken män. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med chefer på samma eller liknande position i en organisation. Det empiriska materialet analyserades genom en tematisk modell. Resultatet visade att cheferna använder sig av olika dimensioner av balansteorierna. Samtliga chefer använde sig av socialt stöd i olika former och majoriteten av cheferna gav medarbetarna kontroll över sin arbetssituation för att reducera stress. Ett fåtal av cheferna försökte få medarbetarna att uppleva yrkesstatus som belöning och slutligen lyfte cheferna fram vikten av att skapa en balans mellan arbetslivet och privatlivet för att främja medarbetarnas hälsa.

Past empirical analysis show that in contrast to the theory predictions; prices tend to decline in some sequential auctions, a puzzle known as the declining price anomaly. Several theoretical explanations were proposed demonstrating the possibility of a declining price pattern under certain assumptions. In this paper, we demonstrate that when bidders have private values and multi-unit demand, expected selling price can be increasing, constant, decreasing or even non-monotonic. In our model, price pattern depends on the distributions from which bidder valuations are drawn (including the size of the bidders demand reduction), and the number of bidders.

By using IT-solutions, the flexibility on the demand side in the electrical systems could be increased. This is called demand response and is part of the larger concept called smart grids. Previous work in this area has concerned the utilization of demand response by grid owners. In this thesis the focus will instead be shifted towards the electrical companies that have balance responsibility, and how they could use demand response in order to make profits. By investigating electrical appliances in hourly measured households, the business value from decreasing electrical companies’ power imbalances has been quantified. By an iterative simulation scheme an optimal value was found to be 977 SEK/year and appliance. It could however be shown that the value became larger for energy inefficient households, and that such consumers’ participation in a demand response market would be prioritized ahead of other measures like isolating walls is rather unlikely. Thermal appliance whose load depend on the outdoor temperature are less valuable for demand response during the summer months, and the annual value would increase if less seasonally dependent appliances were used. Additionally, by increasing the market price amplitudes and the imbalance price volatility, it could be shown that the potential for such demand response markets is larger in e.g. the Netherlands and Germany.

This research develops a food demand system model based on the Linear Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS). The major contribution of this research is that the opportunity cost of time on food cooking/cleaning up is modeled in the demand system. Different from the traditional one constraint demand, this two constraints LA/AIDS model better captures consumer behavior and attitude toward food choice –food at home (FAH), sugar sweetened beverage (SSB), food away from home (FAFH). Using Statistics Canada Food Expenditure Survey (FES) and General Social Survey-time use, a two sample two stage least square (2S2SLS) is an applied in the data estimation. The empirical results show most coefficient estimates and own price elasticities are significant. FAH and FAFH are found to be more price elastic compared to a one constraint model, and SSB is found to be more price inelastic. This research provides a new perspective to estimate potential food policies, such as, a tax on SSB, or a food tax on "junk food".

The goal of this research is to develop a method of objectively comparing and optimizing the performance of demand-responsive transportation systems in heterogeneous environments. Demand-responsive transportation refers to modes of transportation that do not follow fixed routes or schedules, including taxis, paratransit, deviated-route services, ride sharing as well as other modes. Heterogeneous environments are transportation environments in which streets do not follow regular patterns, passenger behavior is difficult to model, and transit schedules and layouts are non-uniform. An example of a typical heterogeneous environment is a modern suburb with non-linear streets, low pedestrian activity, and infrequent or sparse transit service. The motivation for this research is to determine if demand-responsive transportation can be used to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs in suburban and low-density urban areas where fixed-route transportation may be inefficient. This research extends existing comparison and optimization techniques that are designed to work in homogeneous environments. Homogeneous environments refer to transportation systems where the streets follow regular and repeating patterns, passengers are evenly distributed throughout the system, and the transit system is easily modeled. The performance of systems with these characteristics can be approximated with closed-form analytical expressions representing passenger travel times, vehicle distances traveled, and other performance indicators. However, in the low-density urban areas studied in this research, the street patterns and transit schedules are irregular and passenger behavior is difficult to model. In these areas, analytical solutions cannot be found. Instead, this research develops a simulation-based approach to compare and optimize performance in these heterogeneous environments. Using widely-available route-planning tools, open-source transit schedules, and detailed passenger data, it is possible to simulate the behavior of transit vehicles and passengers to such an exacting degree that analytical solutions are not needed. A major technical contribution of this research is the development of a demand-responsive transportation simulator to analyze performance of demand-responsive systems in heterogeneous environments. The simulator combines several open-source tools for route planning with a custom-built demand-responsive vehicle and passenger-itinerary optimizer to simulate individual vehicles and passengers within a large system. With knowledge of the street network, the transit schedule, passenger locations, and trip request times, the simulator will output exact passenger transit times, passenger travel distances, vehicle travel distance, and other performance indicators for a particular transportation setup in a given area. The simulator is used to develop a method of comparing various demand-responsive and fixed-route systems. By predefining a set of performance indicators, such as passenger travel time and operating cost, the simulator can be used to ascertain the performance of a wide array of transportation systems. Comparing the weighted cost of each type of system permits a transportation engineer or planner to determine what type of system will provide the best results in a given area. The simulator is extended to assist in optimization of the demand-responsive transportation system layout. A key problem that needs to be solved when implementing a demand-responsive system is to determine the size, shape, and location of the demand-responsive coverage areas, i.e., the areas in which passengers are eligible for demand-responsive transportation. Using a particle swarm optimization algorithm and the simulation-based comparison technique, the optimal size and shape for a demand-responsive coverage area can be determined. The efficacy of the comparison and optimization techniques is demonstrated within the city of Atlanta, GA. It is shown that for certain areas of the city of Atlanta, demand-responsive transportation is more efficient than the currently implemented fixed-route system. Depending on the objective of the transportation planner, passenger satisfaction as well as operating costs can be improved by implementing a demand-responsive system in certain low-density areas. The techniques introduced in this research, and the simulation tool developed to implement those techniques, provide a repeatable, accurate, and objective method with which to optimize and compare demand-responsive transportation systems in heterogeneous environments.

Due to health problems and the negative externalities associated with cigarette consumption, many governments try to discourage cigarette consumption by increasing its price through taxation. However, cigarette, like the other addictive goods, is viewed as that it is not sensitive to demand rules and the market forces. This study analyses the effect of price increase on cigarette consumption. We used Swedish time series data from 1970 to 2010. Our results reveal that though cigarette is addictive substance its demand is sensitive to changes in the price. Estimates from this study indicate short-run price-elasticity of -0.29 and the long run price elasticity of -0.47.

In times of demand shocks, when quantitative forecasting based on historical time series becomes obsolete, the only information about future demand is "advance demand information", i.e. interpreting early customer bookings as an indicator of not yet known demand. This paper deals with a forecasting method which selects the optimal forecasting model type and the level of integration of advance demand information, depending on the patterns of the particular time series. This constitutes the applicability of the procedure within an industrial application where a large number of time series is automatically forecasted in a flexible and data-driven way. The architecture of such a planning system is explained and using real-world data from a make-to-order industry it is shown that the system is flexible enough to cover different demand patterns and is well-suited to forecast demand shocks. (authors' abstract)

Denna studie tar sin utgångspunkt i en tidigare medarbetareundersökning som utfördes i ett kunskapsföretag hösten 2013. Den undersökningen visade att en av arbetsgrupperna (verksamhetsutvecklarna) upplevde att arbetet påverkade deras fritid.   Därför genomfördes en kvalitativstudie med fokus på intervjuer i syfte att få kunskap om fenomenet och dess orsaker till varför individen har svårt att koppla bort arbetet på sin fritid. De frågeställningar som ligger till grund för denna studie är; vad är det som gör att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid påverkas negativt av arbetet? Vad är orsakerna i organisationen som gör att individen tar med sig arbetet hem? Vad kan organisationen göra för att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid inte ska påverkas negativt av arbetet? Resultatet visade att alla respondenter har oreglerat arbete, gällande fyra dimensioner; tid, genomförande, plats och samarbete. De känner sig ensamma i sitt arbete och upplever låg grad av socialt stöd men även otydliga krav. De upplever också att organisationen har en otydlig struktur samt upplever oklara förväntningar från arbetsgivaren. En annan slutsats är också att respondenterna är relativt nöjda med sin flexibla arbetstillvaro. Studien visade också att organisationen borde satsa mer på utbildning, teambuildning samt att arbeta för tydligare krav och förväntningar för att motverka att verksamhetsutvecklarnas fritid ska påverkas negativt av arbetet. / This study takes its premise in an earlier survey amongst persons working in a knowledge based company during the fall of 2013. That survey showed that one of the workgroups (the activity developers) perceived that the work interfered with their free time. That is the reason a study was done with the purpose of acquiring knowledge by interviewing activity developers about the phenomena, in which the individuals experience difficulties with disconnecting themselves from work in their free time.  This study aimed to acquire knowledge about the underlying factors relating to this phenomena. The questions that form the basis of this study are; what are the causes that negatively impact the participant’s free time? Could it be related to organizational problems? How could an organization limit this impact?  The result indicated that all participants have what we refer to as unregulated work, based in four dimensions; time, execution, workplace, and collaboration. According to the study it is clear that the participants feel that there is a lack of support in their work; experience a low degree of social support in the workplace, and it that clear goals are lacking. Management of expectations, is also seen as a contributing factor. The study concludes that the organization should invest more in education, teambuilding and work towards defining goals and tasks in order to reduce the impact on the participants and their free time.