This dissertation has the ambition to contribute to the understanding of the economic system in Czechoslovakia during the post-war socialist transformation and the subsequent consolidation of the communist regime in the 1950s. The means of knowledge is the state economic plan, which has gradually become one of the key determinants of the Czechoslovak economy after the Second World War. The process of forming a system of state-controlled economy is monitored from the field of view of selected industry - brewing. The importance of the brewing industry consists in the deep-rooted specifics of beer consumption in Czech society. The research focuses on the penetration of post-war national, social and economic transformations through Czechoslovak production and beer consumption. It focuses on the limits of business freedom in brewing industry in the period of the Third Republic, transformation of private enterprise into collective forms of ownership, specifics and detail of the state plan and its formation in the context of crucial domestic political and international events. The results of the dissertation provide information about the mechanism of state economic planning, the development of traditional Czech industry and beer consumption in the period of state socialism, and at the same time provide...

Presented thesis discusses the relationship between the Eastern bloc and Libya, using the Czechoslovak model as an example. On the basis of analysis of archive documents this text describes the cooperative process between socialist states and the regime of Muammar Qaddafi within the period of 1969-1989. The emphasis is put on political, economical, military and, to some extent, cultural aspects of mutual relationship between said countries. The purpose of this thesis is to present Czechoslovakia as a so called "small player" in the context of international politics of the Cold war. The author is aiming to show that, contrary to the orthodox explanations of the Cold war as a conflict of two monolithic blocs, Czechoslovakia was capable of limited autonomy within the frame of her foreign policy, especially towards third world countries. Therefore, more than simply presenting the Cold war as an East-West process, this thesis works with a North-South view. The point of this perspective is that the Cold war itself was not just a clash of superpowers, but was also comprised of acts of international help from Eastern bloc states to, among others, the North African countries such as Libya. To complete this task, the author worked with archive materials of Czech provenance, as well as domestic and foreign...

Implementing and conducting sustainability management in businesses today presents an urgent but also complex challenge for large German companies. To react to the fast-changing regulations and demands on the market and to reduce the complexity of sustainability, organizations have introduced sustainability departments as well as sustainability experts and managers. However, the question remains as to what the motives of companies have to conduct sustainability management, and what roles sustainability managers and experts have in the process of sustainable development. The main research question therefore examines how large German companies can achieve sustainable organizational change. In 15 semi-structured interviews with sustainability experts and managers, the motives of companies for conducting sustainability management were analyzed, thereby further exploring the role and influence of sustainability managers and experts in the change process. The results demonstrate that companies pursue a variety of motives which combine economic, legal, ethical, social, environmental, as well as philanthropic and discretionary factors. In addition, the research outlines that sustainability managers and experts embody different roles in order to support the process of integrating sustainability into the organization. Moreover, through their personal involvement and enthusiasm they can partly influence sustainable organizational change. The key results also highlight the complexity of sustainability within large companies. Based on these key results of this study practical implications could be derived in the form of ten correlating factors for achieving sustainable organizational change.

Le rapport indique que la capacité et la compétitivité des entrepreneurs locaux est l'un des principaux défis de l'industrie éthiopienne de la construction. Cependant, il n'existe aucune étude antérieure qui appuie ces récits et qui tente de déterminer les aspects de la compétence qui font défaut à ces entrepreneurs. Consciente de cette lacune, cette étude vise à mener une recherche sur la compréhension de la compétence et de la compétitivité des entrepreneurs et de leurs mécanismes d'amélioration. La recherche applique une méthode de recherche mixte qui implique une discussion en groupe de discussion et la méthode Fuzzy DEMATEL pour atteindre ses objectifs. La recherche a montré que sur les 52 éléments lean identifiés dans la littérature, 15 sont les plus importants pour améliorer les six mesures de compétences et sur ces six mesures, la capacité financière, les ressources humaines et la capacité organisationnelle et technique sont les pratiques les plus critiques pour améliorer la compétence et la compétitivité globales des entrepreneurs autochtones. Les résultats de cette recherche apportent des contributions pratiques, académiques et méthodologiques à l'évolution des connaissances actuelles dans le domaine de la construction lean et de la gestion organisationnelle, en particulier dans le contexte des pays en cours de développement / Report indicates that indigenous contractor’s capability and competitiveness is one of the main challenges in Ethiopian construction industry. However, there is no previous study that support these narratives and tries to investigate which aspects of capability do these contractors are lacking. Realizing this gap, the research has attempted to assesses capability of indigenous contractors with respect to six capability measures and it develop a conceptual model that integrates Lean with organizational capability as well as competitiveness. The research applies a mixed method of research which involves a focus group discussion and Fuzzy DEMATEL method to achieve its objectives. Of the 52 lean elements identified from literatures, the research identifies 15 most important lean elements to improve the six capability measures. The research further investigated that financial capability, human resources and organizational capability and technical capability as a means of improvement for overall capability & competitiveness of indigenous contractors in Ethiopia. The research outcome can be used for developing appropriate policies and regulation that helps to improve capability and competitiveness

This thesis explores the imperative of intelligent data and potential analysis in the realm of mechatronic product development. The persistent challenges of synchronization and efficiency underscore the need for advanced methodologies. Leveraging the substantial advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly in generative AI, presents unprecedented opportunities. However, significant challenges, especially regarding robustness and trustworthiness, remain unaddressed. In response to this critical need, a comprehensive methodology is introduced, examining the entire development process through the illustrative V-Model and striving to establish a robust AI landscape. The methodology explores acquiring suitable and efficient knowledge, along with methodical implementation, addressing diverse requirements for accuracy at various stages of development.  As the landscape of mechatronic product development evolves, integrating intelligent data and harnessing the power of AI not only addresses current challenges but also positions organizations for greater innovation and competitiveness in the dynamic market landscape.

Contexte: Le cancer du poumon est la deuxième cause de décès par cancer chez les femmes mondialement. Peu d'études ont examiné les facteurs de risque professionnel potentiel de ce cancer chez celles-ci. Objectif: Cette thèse vise à déterminer si certaines expositions professionnelles sont associées au risque de cancer du poumon chez les femmes. L’objectif principal est composé de trois sous-objectifs: 1) Étudier les associations entre les expositions professionnelles prévalentes telles qu'évaluées par des experts et le risque de cancer du poumon chez les femmes dans une étude cas-témoin Montréalaise. 2) Comparer la concordance des attributions d'exposition entre la matrice emploi-exposition canadienne (CANJEM) et l'évaluation d'experts pour les emplois occupés par des femmes. 3) Étudier les associations entre des expositions professionnelles prévalentes et le risque de cancer du poumon chez les femmes dans un ensemble de données internationales combinées de dix études cas-témoins de ce cancer, en utilisant CANJEM pour évaluer les expositions des femmes Méthodes : Pour le sous-objectif 1, nous avons utilisé des modèles de régression logistique multivariée pour examiner les associations entre les expositions professionnelles prévalentes et le risque de cancer du poumon chez les femmes (361 cas et 521 témoins) dans l'étude de Montréal. Pour le sous-objectif 2, nous avons comparé la concordance des expositions entre CANJEM et les experts pour 69 expositions professionnelles en utilisant les données de la même étude montréalaise. Pour le sous-objectif 3, nous avons utilisé une approche méta-analytique pour examiner les associations entre des expositions professionnelles prévalentes et le risque de cancer du poumon chez les femmes (3040 cas et 4187 témoins) à partir de dix études cas-témoins menées en Europe, au Canada et en Nouvelle-Zélande. En l'absence de la disponibilité de données sur les expositions des femmes, nous avons appliqué CANJEM pour estimer les expositions professionnelles. Résultats: Nous n'avons pas observé de risque accru de cancer du poumon chez les femmes exposées professionnellement à 22 agents prévalents évalués dans l'étude de Montréal. Nous avons constaté que la capacité de CANJEM à reproduire l'évaluation des expositions par des experts variait selon l'agent. 2 Compte tenu de ces résultats, nous avons sélectionné 15 agents susceptibles d'être évaluables à l'aide de CANJEM qui étaient également répandus dans l'ensemble de données internationales. Il n'y avait aucune association entre la plupart des agents examinés et le cancer pulmonaire; cependant, les expositions à la poussière métallique, aux composés de fer, à l'isopropanol et aux solvants organiques étaient associées à des risques légèrement élevés. Conclusions: Cette thèse a estimé l'exposition professionnelle des femmes à un large éventail d'agents et a examiné leurs associations avec le cancer du poumon. Dans l'étude de Montréal, aucun des agents évalués par les experts n'était associé à ce cancer. CANJEM s'est avéré capable de reproduire des évaluations d'exposition similaires à celles des experts, bien que sa fiabilité dépende de l'agent. Les expositions professionnelles évaluées par CANJEM ont suggéré des risques plus élevés de cancer du poumon chez les femmes exposées à la poussière métallique, aux composés de fer, à l'isopropanol et aux solvants organiques. / Background: Worldwide, lung cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women. Few studies have examined possible occupational risk factors for lung cancer in women. Objective: This thesis aims to investigate whether selected occupational exposures are associated with lung cancer risk among women. The main objective consists of three sub-objectives: 1) To investigate associations between prevalent occupational exposures as assessed by experts and lung cancer risk among women in a Montreal lung cancer case-control study 2) To compare exposure assignment concordance between the Canadian Job-Exposure Matrix (CANJEM) and expert assessment for jobs held by women 3) To investigate associations between prevalent occupational exposures and lung cancer risk among women in a combined international dataset of ten lung cancer case-control studies, with exposure assessed by CANJEM. Methods: For sub-objective 1, we used multivariate logistic regression models to examine the associations between prevalent occupational exposures as assessed by experts and lung cancer risk among women (361 cases and 521 controls) in the Montreal study. For sub-objective 2, we compared exposure assignment concordance between CANJEM and expert assessments for 69 occupational exposures using data from the same Montreal study. For sub-objective 3, we used meta-analysis to examine the associations between prevalent occupational exposures and lung cancer risk among women (3040 cases and 4187 controls) from ten case-control studies conducted in Europe, Canada, and New Zealand. In the absence of available expert-assessed exposures, we applied CANJEM to estimate occupational exposures. Results: We did not observe a clearly increased risk of lung cancer among women occupationally exposed to 22 prevalent agents assessed by experts in the Montreal study. We found that CANJEM’s ability to replicate expert assessment of exposures varied by agent and by specific configurations of CANJEM. Considering these findings, we selected 15 agents suitable to evaluate using CANJEM — which were also prevalent in the international dataset of ten studies — and examined their risks for lung cancer. There was no association between most agents examined in this analysis and lung cancer; however, exposures to metallic dust, iron compounds, isopropanol, and organic solvents were associated with suggestive higher risks. 4 Conclusions: This thesis estimated women's occupational exposure to a wide range of agents and examined their associations with lung cancer. In the Montreal study, none of the expert-assessed prevalent agents was associated with lung cancer. CANJEM was shown to be able to reproduce exposure assessments similar to those of the experts, although its reliability was agent dependent. Occupational exposures assessed by CANJEM in the international dataset of ten studies indicated slightly higher risks of lung cancer among women exposed to metallic dust, iron compounds, isopropanol, and organic solvents.

L'interface entre la gouvernance mondiale des brevets et de la santé publique est très complexe et sujette aux tensions. Doté de flexibilités, le régime mondial des brevets devait être en mesure d'évoluer pour répondre aux préoccupations de santé publique. Malgré une réactivité initiale au début du millénaire, le régime s'est néanmoins depuis figé. Un quart de siècle après sa mise en œuvre, la pandémie de COVID-19 dirige le feu des projecteurs sur une gouvernance mondiale hésitante reposant sur un régime en apparence immuable. Si le droit international explique en partie la complexité de la régulation de cette interface, l'économie politique, quant à elle, offre des pistes d'explication à sa remarquable immuabilité. Empruntant une conception élargie des communautés épistémiques, cette recherche indique que l'interface entre la gouvernance des brevets et de la santé publique est plongée dans une compétition épistémique entre deux réseaux d'experts : l'un plus conservateur et prônant le statu quo de la gouvernance des brevets, et l'autre plus réformiste prônant plus de flexibilité face aux préoccupations de santé publique. Cette compétition persistante a accentué la polarisation entre les défenseurs de chaque perspective et, conséquemment, contribué à la stagnation des initiatives de réforme multilatérales. Le présent travail s'appuie sur des analyses de réseaux sociaux retraçant d'abord l'activité de chacune des communautés épistémiques et l'interactivité entre elles. Des entrevues semi-dirigées permettent ensuite d'interroger la manière et le degré selon lesquels la compétition épistémique est vécue par les membres de ces communautés et affecte les débats multilatéraux internationaux. L'assemblage théorique et méthodologique de cette recherche permet de jeter un regard novateur sur les communautés épistémiques et sur leur influence dans une interface de gouvernance. Plus encore, cette recherche contribue aux discussions nouvellement ravivées sur l'avenir de l'interface de gouvernance entre les brevets et la santé publique. / The governance interface between patents and public health is highly complex and is prone to tensions. Equipped with flexibilities, the global patent regime was meant to be able to evolve in response to public health concerns. Despite its initial reactiveness, the regime has since then frozen. A quarter of a century later, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrusted into the spotlight a hesitant global governance relying on an apparently immutable regime. If international law partly explains the regulatory complexity of this interface, international political economy offers explanation for its remarkable continuity. Adopting a broader conceptualization of epistemic communities, this research shows that the interface between the governance of patents and of public health has been plunged into an epistemic competition between two experts' networks: one more conservative and arguing in favor of the status quo in patent governance and another more reformist arguing for greater regulation flexibility for public health concerns. This ongoing competition has increased polarization between defendants of each perspective and, consequently, contributed to the stagnation of multilateral initiatives. This research builds on social network analyses to observe the activity of each epistemic community and the interactions between them. Semi-structured interviews then investigate how the epistemic competition is felt by the members of each epistemic community and to what extent it has affected the international multilateral debates. The theoretical and methodological framework of this research takes an innovative approach of epistemic communities and of their influence in a governance interface. Moreover, this research informs the newly revived discussions on the future of the governance interface between patents and public health.

Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une méthode pour construire un outil d'aide à la décision pour le diagnostic de maladie rare. Nous cherchons à minimiser le nombre de tests médicaux nécessaires pour atteindre un état où l'incertitude concernant la maladie du patient est inférieure à un seuil prédéterminé. Ce faisant, nous tenons compte de la nécessité dans de nombreuses applications médicales, d'éviter autant que possible, tout diagnostic erroné. Pour résoudre cette tâche d'optimisation, nous étudions plusieurs algorithmes d'apprentissage par renforcement et les rendons opérationnels pour notre problème de très grande dimension. Pour cela nous décomposons le problème initial sous la forme de plusieurs sous-problèmes et montrons qu'il est possible de tirer partie des intersections entre ces sous-tâches pour accélérer l'apprentissage. Les stratégies apprises se révèlent bien plus performantes que des stratégies gloutonnes classiques. Nous présentons également une façon de combiner les connaissances d'experts, exprimées sous forme de probabilités conditionnelles, avec des données cliniques. Il s'agit d'un aspect crucial car la rareté des données pour les maladies rares empêche toute approche basée uniquement sur des données cliniques. Nous montrons, tant théoriquement qu'empiriquement, que l'estimateur que nous proposons est toujours plus performant que le meilleur des deux modèles (expert ou données) à une constante près. Enfin nous montrons qu'il est possible d'intégrer efficacement des raisonnements tenant compte du niveau de granularité des symptômes renseignés tout en restant dans le cadre probabiliste développé tout au long de ce travail. / In this thesis, we propose a method to build a decision support tool for the diagnosis of rare diseases. We aim to minimize the number of medical tests necessary to achieve a state where the uncertainty regarding the patient's disease is less than a predetermined threshold. In doing so, we take into account the need in many medical applications, to avoid as much as possible, any misdiagnosis. To solve this optimization task, we investigate several reinforcement learning algorithm and make them operable in our high-dimensional. To do this, we break down the initial problem into several sub-problems and show that it is possible to take advantage of the intersections between these sub-tasks to accelerate the learning phase. The strategies learned are much more effective than classic greedy strategies. We also present a way to combine expert knowledge, expressed as conditional probabilities, with clinical data. This is crucial because the scarcity of data in the field of rare diseases prevents any approach based solely on clinical data. We show, both empirically and theoretically, that our proposed estimator is always more efficient than the best of the two models (expert or data) within a constant. Finally, we show that it is possible to effectively integrate reasoning taking into account the level of granularity of the symptoms reported while remaining within the probabilistic framework developed throughout this work.

Innovationen führen zu volkswirtschaftlichem Wachstum. In dieser Diplomarbeit geht es um einen neuen, innovativen Holzwerkstoff: Faserverstärkte Holzrohrprofile. Diese wurden von Professor Peer Haller an der technischen Universität entwickelt. Die Arbeit untersucht das Marktpotential des neuen Baustoffes in 5 Branchen: Bauingenieurwesen und Architektur, Leichtbau, Windkraft, Masten und Rohrleitungen. Die Forschung findet anhand einer Literatursynthese und Experteninterviews statt. Die Marktanalyse wird mit dem 5 Kräfte Modell von Porter und den 5 Rahmenbedingungen von Baum, Coenenberg und Günther durchgeführt. Dabei handelt es sich bei den 5 Kräften um Lieferanten, Abnehmer, Substitute, Konkurrenz und Wettbewerber. Die untersuchten Rahmenbedingungen sind ökonomische, ökologische, gesellschaftliche, technologische und rechtliche. Sie ermitteln die Chancen und Risiken des neuen Produktes auf den verschiedenen Märkten. Zudem werden die aktuellen Marktsituationen dargestellt. Durch die Hinweise der Experten und die Ergebnisse der Literatur werden Vorschläge für die weitere Forschung in ökonomischer und technologischer Richtung abgeleitet. Empfehlungen für das weitere Vorgehen bei der Markteinführung in die 5 Brachen sind die Ergebnisse der Arbeit. / Innovations lead to economic growth. This diploma thesis deals with a new, innovative wood product: Fibre-reinforced Tiber Profiles. These where invented by Professor Peer Haller at the Technical University Dresden. The paper investigates the market potential of this new product in 5 industries: building and architecture, lightweight construction, wind power, towers and pipes. This is achieved trough literature synthesis and expert interviews. The market analysis is determined with the 5 Forces Model of Porter and the 5 framework conditions by Baum, Coenenberg and Günther. Thereby the forces suppliers, buyers, substitutes, new entrants and competition the markets with influence on the product are identified. As well as the economic, ecological, social, technological and legal frameworks which make out the opportunities and threats for the product on the different markets. Additionally the current situations of the different markets are presented. Further economic and technical research needs appear through the suggestions of the experts and the findings in the literature. Recommendations for further approach and handling of the product in the markets are the outcomes of this writing.

The aim of the present theoretical-empirical thesis is to present the topic of court interpreting for non-native speakers, focusing on criminal proceedings in the Czech Republic. At first, the study looks into the context of Czech court interpreting, taking into account interpreters' tasks in individual stages of criminal proceedings and concentrating on communication situations in which non-native speakers take part. The topic of the second chapter is interpreting for non- native speakers in general. This chapter consists of findings and conclusions of studies published by Michaela Albl-Mikasa as well as other authors who address the topic of conference interpreting through lingua franca. The third chapter looks into interpreting for non- native speakers in the area of court interpreting. It is based on an analysis of findings obtained by lingua franca research in the field of conference interpreting against the background of general court interpreting theories. The empirical part provides a description of research based on hypotheses of a survey carried out by Michaela Albl-Mikasa transferred into the context of Czech court interpreting in criminal proceedings. The aim is to find whether interpreters, judges, state prosecutors, police officers and lawyers use different strategies when...