ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / A substantial amount of the energy usage in developed countries is consumed by climate control of residential and commercial structures. Collecting information on the usage patterns of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can allow a consumer to better understand the cost and effectiveness of these systems, and allow landlords and others to monitor their use. This paper describes a system which can easily be retrofitted onto legacy HVAC systems to monitor their activity, and then transmit the information over a wireless radio network for archiving and analysis

Buildings consume 40 % of Europe’s total energy consumption and causes 33 % of the CO2 emissions. (Pol and Lippert, 2010) Existing old buildings, especially those constructed with limited energy standards before 1960, are in need of refurbishment and energy efficiency. (Economidou, 2011) The thesis is a part of the EU project GrowSmarter, where smart solutions for sustainable cities are to be implemented in the lighthouse cities Stockholm, Cologne and Barcelona. (European Commission, 2014) The purpose of this thesis is to look into the experiences, success factors and barriers from the CONCERTO initiative, BEEM-UP project and EPC model, focusing on energy efficient refurbishment. The intent is that e.g. authorities, municipalities, companies and building owners, who are planning on performing energy efficient refurbishment measures, can access identified success factors and barriers in previous projects of different scale and methods. The conclusions of this study are that the communication and cooperation between stakeholders in a project, knowledge transfer and training of installers are important factors for successful projects. Information and involvement of tenants facilitates work execution, improves results after refurbishment and increases energy knowledge and awareness. The data quantity and quality is another influencing factor on building performance and the difference between calculated and measured energy savings. Stakeholder approach, energy performance regulations, ownership structure and financial status/possibilities for the building owner can affect project results. / GrowSmarter

The aim of this thesis is to conduct a case study examining the intrusion of marketplace ideals on various aspects of everyday life. In this thesis, I provide a case study of a new business in San Francisco, ReservationHop, that transforms the previously first come, first serve restaurant reservation service into an auction style scalping (resell at a higher price) system, thereby affecting the distribution of an economic service, or good. In order to investigate this phenomenon, this thesis is organized into six main sections. First, I will provide a brief introduction to the thesis, presenting my aim and purpose in writing and why I believe that this is an important topic. I then introduce ReservationHop and describe the site and its business model, the controversy that it has evoked, and the app's creator Brian Mayer's attempts to defend the app's legitimacy. Thirdly, I will provide considerations in support of the ethical permissibility of the ReservationHop business model, using two neoclassical economic arguments: consumer choice theory and the Pareto-efficiency argument. Fourthly, I will counter these arguments, claiming that this service is not a Pareto optimal improvement because it involves deception, which is incompatible with genuine Pareto optimality. In the fifth section, I will introduce my main argument against ReservationHop in which I introduce the idea that there is something inherently wrong with the service even if its deceptive characteristics were corrected for. I argue that there should be "things that money cannot buy" because unfettered marketization erodes the nonmarket value of community, or commonality. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the intrusion of marketplace values on all aspects of society should be resisted, and that we must rethink the increased influence of marketization for it crowds out other important non-market values, e.g., our sense of community solidarity.

The life insurance industry in China has developed rapidly at nearly average 30% annual growth rate in premium, since the reform in 1980. The enterprise property, the industry organization and the market size have significantly changed in the last two decades, which can be observed through the four representative categories of companies constituted in different period, including the state-owned enterprises, the large domestic enterprises, the medium domestic enterprises and the joint ventures. How to evaluate the efficiency that the companies make use of the resource and contribute to the economy? How to make possible adjustment for each type of companies to improve the efficiency? In this paper we estimate and compare the efficiency of these four categories, according to the two main roles of the life insurance, (1) risk pooling, risk sharing and risk allocation (2) premium collecting, reinvesting for the high rate of return. We use the DEA method, a popular method for analyzing efficiency in management science, to solve the problem. The method replicates the input and output of the unit company by all the other companies in the industry to establish the ideal efficiency frontier, and ranks the real efficiency of each unit company according to the ideal efficiency frontier. In the empirical test, we attain the evaluation of efficiency for each category of companies. We can make appropriate input & output adjustment to them by the ranking of the efficiency. Based on the theoretical results, we provide some practical approaches, including the scale, expense and investment improvement, to promote efficiency of the life insurance industry in China. / text

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published_or_final_version / Management Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

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This study was undertaken to investigate the relationships and interdependencies of work-unit technology, structure, leadership style and attitudes of personnel at the middle and lower level of the organizational hierarchy and to determine if a correlation exists between proper alignment of these variables and overall organizational effectiveness. Six variables have been identified by contingency theorists which must be properly aligned if organizations are to operate at peak efficiency and maximum effectiveness. These variables are the firm's outer environment, its objectives and goals, the adaptation of technology to attain these goals, organizational structure to coordinate and confine the technology, and the leadership style and personnel who use the technology within individual work units to satisfy the demands of the outer environment and meet organizational goals and objectives. Previous emphasis in contingency theory has been upon determining what constitutes proper alignment of these variables on a firm by firm or industry by industry basis, neglecting the fact that complex organizations are composed of many interacting work units in which these variables must also be properly aligned if maximum effectiveness is to be achieved. Four U.S. copper mining companies responsible for over 60 percent of domestic production consented to participate in the study. The data suggest that not only is the proper alignment of contingency variables within the firm as a whole important to organizational effectiveness as indicated by prior research, but the proper alignment of these variables within individual work units may be just as important a consideration in determining overall organizational effectiveness. Results further suggest that those mining firms within the industry whose work unit technologies show the closest alignment of routine technologies with mechanistic structures, autocratic leadership styles and personnel willing to conform, and non-routine technologies with organic structures, democratic leadership styles and personnel less willing to conform are more effective than those firms in which these variables were not so closely aligned. Implications of this study are that industrial firms can improve their overall performance and effectiveness by aligning technology, structure, leadership style and personnel within work units. The greater the number or work units in which these contingency variables are properly aligned within a business firm, the greater the success that firm will experience in realizing its primary objectives.

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