No description available.

Objective: For this dissertation, I investigated the characteristics of homeless, unaccompanied youth to determine which subgroups of students pursued and obtained financial stipends as an incentive for satisfactory educational outcomes- grades C and above. Method: The study was based on data obtained from a community-based, non-profit, drop-in center that serves homeless, unaccompanied youth enrolled in school. From each participant (n=965), demographic variables (including the student's age, grade, gender, race, and ethnicity) and life experience variables (including the student's reason for homelessness, current living situation, teen parenting status, and program enrollment status- either a new or returning student to the program) were obtained. These variables were used to determine the relationship between the student's characteristics and the outcome measurements: percent of the potential monthly stipends earned and the length of enrollment in the program. Results: The results demonstrated significant mean differences within the student's age, grade, and program enrollment status for both the percent of stipends earned and the length of program enrollment. A student's teenage parenting status also indicated a significant difference for the percent of stipend earned. Three student characteristics were significant predictors for the percent of stipends earned, and five characteristics were significant predictors for the length of program enrollment. Conclusions: Specific subgroups within the unaccompanied, homeless population pursue and obtain financial stipend incentives for educational outcomes at different rates. These results add to the literature needed to better align educational services and programs to the various subgroups within the homeless youth population.

Traffic congestion has been imposing a tremendous burden on society as a whole. For decades, the most widely applied solution has been building more roads to better accommodate traffic demand, which turns out to be of limited effect. Active Traffic and Demand Management (ATDM) is getting more attention recently and is considered here, as it leverages market-ready technologies and innovative operational approaches to manage traffic congestion within the existing infrastructure. The key to a successful Active Traffic and Demand Management strategy is to effectively induce travelers' behavior to change. In spite of the increased attention and application throughout the U.S. or even the world, most ATDM strategies were implemented on-site through small-scale pilot studies. A systematic framework for analysis and evaluation of such a system in order to effectively track the changes in travelers' behavior and the benefit brought about by such changes has not been established; nor has the effect of its strategies been quantitatively evaluated. In order to effectively evaluate the system benefit and to analyze the behavior changes quantitatively, a systematic framework capable of supporting both macroscopic and microscopic analysis should be established. Such system should be carefully calibrated to reflect the traffic condition in reality, as only after the calibration can the baseline model be used as the foundation for other scenarios in which alternative design or management strategies are incorporated, so that the behavior changes and system benefit can be computed accurately by comparing the alternative scenarios with the baseline scenario. Any effective traffic management strategy would be impossible if the traveler route choice behavior in the urban traffic network has not been fully understood. Theoretical research assumes all users are homogeneous in their route choice decision and will always pick the route with the shortest travel cost, which is not necessarily the case in reality. Researchers in Minnesota found that only 34% of drivers strictly traveled on the shortest path. Drivers' decision is made usually based on several dimensions, and a full understanding of the travel route choice behavior in the urban traffic network is essential. The existence of most current Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) offer the capability to provide pre-trip and/or en route real time information, allowing travelers to quickly assess and react to unfolding traffic conditions. The basic design concept is to present generic information to drivers, leaving drivers to react to the information their own way. This "passive" way of managing traffic by providing generic traffic information has difficulty in predicting outcome and may even incur adverse effect, such as overreaction (aka herding effects). Furthermore, other questions remain on how to utilize the real-time information better and guide the traffic flow more effectively towards a better solution, and most current research fails to take the traveler's external cost into consideration. Motivated by those concerns, in this research, a behaviorally induced system optimal model is presented, aimed at further improving the system-level traffic condition towards System Optimal through incremental routing, as well as establishing the analysis methodology and evaluation framework to calibrate quantitatively the behavior change and the system benefits. In this process, the traffic models involved are carefully calibrated, first using a two-stage calibration model which is capable of matching not only the traffic counts, but also the time dependent speed profiles of the calibrated links. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first with a methodology to incorporate the use of field observed data to estimate the Origin-Destination (OD) matrices departure profile. Also proposed in this dissertation is a Constrained K Shortest Paths algorithm (CKSP) that addresses route overlap and travel time deviation issues. This proposed algorithm can generate K Shortest Paths between two given nodes and provide sound route options to the drivers in order to assist their route choice decision process. Thirdly, a behaviorally induced system optimal model includes the development of a marginal cost calculation algorithm, a time-dependent shortest path search algorithm, and schedule delay as well as optimal path finding models, is present to improve the traffic flow from an initial traffic condition which could be User Equilibrium (UE) or any other non-UE or non-System-Optimal (SO) condition towards System Optimal. Case studies are conducted for each individual research and show a rather promising result. The goal of establishing this framework is to better capture and evaluate the effects of behaviorally induced system optimal traffic management strategies on the overall system performance. To realize this goal, the three research models are integrated in order to constitute a comprehensive platform that is not only capable of effectively guiding the traffic flow improvement towards System Optimal, but also capable of accurately evaluating the system benefit from the macroscopic perspective and quantitatively analyzing the behavior changes microscopically. The comprehensive case study on the traffic network in Tucson, Arizona, has been conducted using DynusT (Dynamic Urban Simulation for Transportation) Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) simulation software; the outcome of this study shows that our proposed modeling framework is promising for improving network traffic condition towards System Optimal, resulting in a vast amount of economic saving.

How should a company best allocate its spending between acquisition and retention? Under what condition should a company devote resources and money to analytics? The above questions are just examples of more general issues concerning many companies when managing their customer acquisition and retention programs. To answer the above questions, I will conduct a study on the allocation of financial resources between incentives that target different types of customers, and the allocation of resources between incentives and analytics spending. This research first distinguishes between customers and acquisition, between incentive and price discount, and between acquisition and retention. It then proposes a new concept, “free rider”, in a customer acquisition and retention context. Building on the free-rider concept, two mathematical models are formulated to examine the optimal allocation between acquisition incentive, retention incentive, and analytics spending. Closed-form solutions are reached for both models and the results are interpreted in the context of marketing practice. The conditions leading to different patterns of optimal solutions of analytics spending, acquisition incentives, and retention incentives are discussed. Specifically, the detailed conditions under which the optimal acquisition incentives is zero or non-zero, the optimal retention incentives is zero or non-zero, and the optimal analytics spending is zero or non-zero, are provided. Factors determining the ceiling for acceptable level of cost of analytics are also examined.

UAB „Projektų gama“ - tai greitai auganti, konsultacines paslaugas teikianti organizacija, veikianti Lietuvos rinkoje. Šiuo metu įmonė vienija 33 pastovius darbuotojus. Įmonės struktūroje yra du skyriai: Investicinių projektų skyrius ir projektavimo skyrius. Per pastaruosius metus įmonės darbuotojų skaičiui ženkliai padidėjus, nesant personalo skyriui, įmonės viduje juntamas žemas darbuotojų lojalumas, bei nepasitenkinimas esama atlyginimų sistema. Šio darbo pagrindinis tikslas yra ištirti ryšį tarp darbuotojų nuostatų į esamą atlyginimų sistemą ir jų lojalumo. Todėl, pagrindiniam tikslui pasiekti buvo iškelti tokie uždaviniai: • Išanalizuoti esamą situaciją įmonėje apimančią įmonės vidinius ir išorinius veiksnius įtakojančius atlyginimų sistemą ir darbuotojų lojalumą; • Suformuluoti teorinį modelį, kuris atspindėtų atlyginimo sistemos ir darbuotojų lojalumo ryšį bei parengti tyrimo instrumentą; • Atlikti empirinį tyrimą siekiant išsiaiškinti darbuotojų nuostatas į atlyginimų sistemą įmonėje; • Parengti pasiūlymus siekiant padidinti darbuotojų lojalumą tobulinant atlyginimų sistemą. Pirmoje dalyje yra išanalizuoti UAB „Projektų gama“ įmonės dabartiniai personalo valdymo principai. Identifikuotos įmonės stipriosios ir silpnosios pusės. Situacijos analizėje atlikta konsultacinių paslaugų rinkos Lietuvoje analizė, kurios metu buvo išsiaiškintas rinkos dydis bei augimo tempai, identifikuotos pagrindinės konkurentų grupės, taip pat įvardinti esami ir būsimi sėkmės veiksniai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / JSC „Projektu gama“ is a quickly growing consulting company operating in the Lithuanian market. Currently the company is uniting 33 employees. The company has two departments – investment projects and projection. The number of employees has increased significantly in the past couple of years, yet the personnel department has not been formed. This led to low employee commitment and low satisfaction of current compensation system. The aim of this Final Bachelor’s thesis is to research the relation between the employee commitment and the satisfaction with the compensation system. Therefore the following goals were raised: • To analyze the present situation in company, covering the inside and outside factors, influencing the compensation system and employee commitment; • To form a theoretical model, which would show the relation between the compensation system and employee commitment, as well as to prepare the tool for research; • To perform an empirical research in order to find out the employees‘ view towards the compensation system; • To prepare solutions in order to increase employee commitment by improving the compensation system. The main principles of personnel management of JSC “Projektu gama” are analyzed in the first part of the paper including the strengths and weaknesses. The situation analysis covers the Lithuanian market research of consulting services. The empirical research was performed and described in part two. The aim of the research was to determine the... [to full text]

Viešasis sektorius ir jam priklausančios įvairaus lygmens savivaldos institucijos atlieka didelį vaidmenį užtikrinant valstybės ir konkrečios vietos bendruomenės gerovę. Tačiau vis dažniau pastebimas viešojo sektoriaus organizacijų veiklos nerezultatyvumas, kuris priešpastatomas privačiajam sektoriui ir jo veiklos principams. Nerezultatyvi veikla kuria nepasitikėjimą valstybe ir konkrečiomis įvairaus lygmens savivaldos institucijomis. Todėl labai svarbu atkreipti dėmesį į tai kaip dirba valstybės tarnautojai, kaip jie yra motyvuojami darbui, nes darbo motyvacijos lygis ir darbuotojų pasitenkinimas savo darbu įtakoja vienas kitą. Darbo motyvacijai vis didesnė reikšmė skiriama ir tarptautiniuose dokumentuose, ir Lietuvos vadybinėje literatūroje. Kintantis požiūris į darbuotoją kaip į vieną svarbiausių darbo išteklių, besikeičiančios pačių darbuotojų vertybės, privataus sektoriaus teikiamų galimybių patrauklumas reikalauja iš naujo įvertinti ir tobulinti egzistuojančias darbo motyvacijos priemones bei kurti naujus motyvacijos modelius. / Public sector and various level self-government institutions belonging to it do a big role securing the wealth of state and concreat place society. However, more and more often it is possible to notice unusefulness of public sector organizations work and that it stands in front of the private sector and its activity principles. Unuseful performance creates distrust in the state and of the concreat various level self-government institutions. That‘s why it is very important to put the attention to how the state officers work, how they are motivated with their jobs, because the level of the job motivation and the workers satisfaction with their job effect each other. Nowadays the attention to the job motivation is increasing in the international documents and in Lithuania‘s management literature. The changing attitude to the worker as one of the most impotant work reservoir, changing virtues of the workers, the attractfullness of private sector alloted possibilities demand to revalue and improve already existance job motivation means and create new motivation models. The main scientists‘ motivation theoretical models and their importance, effect to job motivation are discussed. The peciularities of job motivation in public sector were analysed. The main motivation components were distinguished, on which the practical research is based, according to which the Vilnius municipality staff motivation to their job was valued. During the research period the main factors, influencing... [to full text]

In this thesis, a novel framework for planning and investment studies pertaining to the implementation of system-wide conservation voltage reduction (CVR) is presented. In the CVR paradigm, optimal voltage profiles at the load buses are determined so as to yield load reductions and hence energy conservation. The system modifications required for CVR is known to be capital intensive; therefore, the proposed model determines the system savings and the appropriate price incentives to offer industries such that a minimum acceptable rate-of-return (MARR) is accrued. In this model, the industrial facilities are represented by a combination of constant impedance, constant current, and constant power loads. A detailed case study for Ontario, Canada, is carried out considering that industrial loads are investing in CVR implementation to reduce their energy costs. The optimal incentives that need be offered by the system planner, over a long-term horizon and across various zones of Ontario, are determined using the presented mathematical model. Furthermore, a comprehensive risk analysis, comprising sensitivity studies and Monte Carlo simulations, is carried out considering the variations in the most uncertain model parameters. In this work, it is shown that savings from CVR are enough so that incentives are not required in Ontario. Sensitivity analysis shows that electricity price and project cost have the highest impact on the incentives, and that electricity price and industrial demand have the most effect on system savings. Monte Carlo simulations show that the expected energy cost savings result in expected incentive rates to be relatively low compared to the average electricity price in Ontario. CVR is shown in this thesis to be a low cost Demand Side Management program to implement from the perspective of the power system planner, and a worthwhile investment for the industrial load.

No description available.

Algorithmic mechanism design deals with efficiently-computable algorithmic constructions in the presence of strategic players who hold the inputs to the problem and may misreport their input if doing so benefits them. Algorithmic mechanism design finds applications in a variety of internet settings such as resource allocation, facility location and e-commerce, such as sponsored search auctions. There is an extensive amount of work in algorithmic mechanism design on packing problems such as single-item auctions, multi-unit auctions and combinatorial auctions. But, surprisingly, covering problems, also called procurement auctions, have almost been completely unexplored, especially in the multidimensional setting. In this thesis, we systematically investigate multidimensional covering mechanism- design problems, wherein there are m items that need to be covered and n players who provide covering objects, with each player i having a private cost for the covering objects he provides. A feasible solution to the covering problem is a collection of covering objects (obtained from the various players) that together cover all items. Two widely considered objectives in mechanism design are: (i) cost-minimization (CM) which aims to minimize the total cost incurred by the players and the mechanism designer; and (ii) payment minimization (PayM), which aims to minimize the payment to players. Covering mechanism design problems turn out to behave quite differently from packing mechanism design problems. In particular, various techniques utilized successfully for packing problems do not perform well for covering mechanism design problems, and this necessitates new approaches and solution concepts. In this thesis we devise various techniques for handling covering mechanism design problems, which yield a variety of results for both the CM and PayM objectives. In our investigation of the CM objective, we focus on two representative covering problems: uncapacitated facility location (UFL) and vertex cover. For multi-dimensional UFL, we give a black-box method to transform any Lagrangian-multiplier-preserving ??-approximation algorithm for UFL into a truthful-in-expectation, ??-approximation mechanism. This yields the first result for multi-dimensional UFL, namely a truthful-in-expectation 2-approximation mechanism. For multi-dimensional VCP (Multi-VCP), we develop a decomposition method that reduces the mechanism-design problem into the simpler task of constructing threshold mechanisms, which are a restricted class of truthful mechanisms, for simpler (in terms of graph structure or problem dimension) instances of Multi-VCP. By suitably designing the decomposition and the threshold mechanisms it uses as building blocks, we obtain truthful mechanisms with approximation ratios (n is the number of nodes): (1) O(r2 log n) for r-dimensional VCP; and (2) O(r log n) for r-dimensional VCP on any proper minor-closed family of graphs (which improves to O(log n) if no two neighbors of a node belong to the same player). These are the first truthful mechanisms for Multi-VCP with non-trivial approximation guarantees. For the PayM objective, we work in the oft-used Bayesian setting, where players??? types are drawn from an underlying distribution and may be correlated, and the goal is to minimize the expected total payment made by the mechanism. We consider the problem of designing incentive compatible, ex-post individually rational (IR) mechanisms for covering problems in the above model. The standard notion of incentive compatibility (IC) in such settings is Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC), but this notion is over-reliant on having precise knowledge of the underlying distribution, which makes it a rather non- robust notion. We formulate a notion of IC that we call robust Bayesian IC (robust BIC) that is substantially more robust than BIC, and develop black-box reductions from robust BIC-mechanism design to algorithm design. This black-box reduction applies to single- dimensional settings even when we only have an LP-relative approximation algorithm for the algorithmic problem. We obtain near-optimal mechanisms for various covering settings including single- and multi-item procurement auctions, various single-dimensional covering problems, and multidimensional facility location problems. Finally, we study the notion of frugality, which considers the PayM objective but in a worst-case setting, where one does not have prior information about the players??? types. We show that some of our mechanisms developed for the CM objective are also good with respect to certain oft-used frugality benchmarks proposed in the literature. We also introduce an alternate benchmark for frugality, which more directly reflects the goal that the mechanism???s payment be close to the best possible payment, and obtain some preliminary results with respect to this benchmark.

This paper proposes a new model for studying the new product development process in an artificial environment. We show how connectionist models can be used to simulate the adaptive nature of agents' learning exhibiting similar behavior as practically experienced learning curves. We study the impact of incentive schemes (local, hybrid and global) on the new product development process for different types of organizations. Sequential organizational structures are compared to two different types of team-based organizations, incorporating methods of Quality Function Deployment such as the House of Quality. A key finding of this analysis is that the firms' organizational structure and agents' incentive system significantly interact. We show that the House of Quality is less affected by the incentive scheme than firms using a Trial & Error approach. This becomes an important factor for new product success when the agents' performance measures are conflicting. (author's abstract) / Series: Report Series SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"