Archival data of unrestricted and restricted gift card transactions was compared with national level consumer spending data from both the U.S. and Canada to investigate the similarities and differences in purchase pattern. The objective for this comparison was to investigate the motivational power of unrestricted gift card compared to cash rewards, restricted gift card and other hedonic tangible incentive. Through results interpretation, the data supported the hypotheses that people perceive and use unrestricted gift card as a cash carrying medium rather than a tangible reward. A restricted gift card that is hedonic by design constrains its recipients to hedonic purchase and removes the guilt and eliminates the justification process. The results also suggested that the elimination of justification seems to be associated to not only the hedonic dimension of goods/services but also transaction size.

Archival data of unrestricted and restricted gift card transactions was compared with national level consumer spending data from both the U.S. and Canada to investigate the similarities and differences in purchase pattern. The objective for this comparison was to investigate the motivational power of unrestricted gift card compared to cash rewards, restricted gift card and other hedonic tangible incentive. Through results interpretation, the data supported the hypotheses that people perceive and use unrestricted gift card as a cash carrying medium rather than a tangible reward. A restricted gift card that is hedonic by design constrains its recipients to hedonic purchase and removes the guilt and eliminates the justification process. The results also suggested that the elimination of justification seems to be associated to not only the hedonic dimension of goods/services but also transaction size.

Abstract Employee Stock Bonus (ESB) is a unique bonus model to link employee salary package with company performance under the current regulation in Taiwan. Comparing with Employee Stock Option (ESOP) in USA, ESB is different in accounting process, company¡¦s actual cost and the model of employee gain in spite of the principle of linking employee salary package to corporate performance is the same. Moreover, the incentive effectiveness and the impact on shareholders¡¦ value between ESB and ESOP need to be clarified. The objectives of this research are to discuss the pros and cons of ESB program as well as to analyze the implementation history and decision characterization of ESB in Taiwan. In the first part of this study, we compare the difference between ESB and ESOP in terms of their fundamentals, implementation and incentive effectiveness, as well as analyze the impact on shareholders¡¦ value by various accounting principles and valuation models approaches.¡@In the second part, we do a history study on ESB implementation history of Taiwan hi-tech industries. We point out some improper ESB decisions that hurt shareholder¡¦s value. We also propose some indexes to measure effectiveness, efficiency of ESB and degree of impact on shareholder¡¦s value. In the third part, we apply regression methodology and cross-sectional analysis to characterize the ESB decision using the samples from Taiwan listed hi-tech companies between 1998 to 2001. We conclude the following contributions in this research: 1. The fundamental of ESB is to provide employee bonus by diluting shareholder¡¦s value. During bull market or stock price appreciates after stock splits, ESB perfectly incorporates employee bonus with shareholders¡¦ value. On the other hand, ESB becomes an extra overhead for shareholders during bear market or stock price depreciates after stock splits. 2. What employees gain from ESB is paid by equity market instead of being paid by the company, no matter whichever accounting principle is adopted. Recognizing ESB as company expense will present income statement in more a proper way but will not impact book value of equity. 3. To recognize ESB as company expense will reduce ¡§intrinsic value of equity¡¨ evaluated by EBO model as EBO model is based on accounting profit. As DFC model is based on free cash flow, ¡§intrinsic value of equity¡¨ evaluated by DFC model will not change even if different accounting principles are adopted. However, ¡§intrinsic value of equity per share¡¨ will be slightly affected by the dilution of share number. 4. In the research samples, mean of ¡§the market value of ESB over average appreciation value of company¡¨ is 13%¡Astandard deviation is 53%¡Amedian is 8%, which implies the welfare effectiveness created by ESB to shareholders varies with individual company. 5. The result of empirical study supports that the main measurement index for managers to decide the share number of ESB program is ¡§total market value of ESB¡¨ instead of ¡§profit share rate¡¨ or ¡§dilution rate¡¨, regardless companies which adopted ¡§fix profit share rate for ESB¡¨ policy. 6. According to the result of empirical study, ¡§the market value of ESB ¡¨ is significantly positive- correlated to growth opportunity, merit raises rate, net profit growth rate, and significantly negative ¡V correlated to company size and financial leverage. ¡§The market value of ESB per employee¡¨ is significantly positive-correlated to company size, growth opportunity, merit raises rate, net profit growth rate, and significantly negative ¡V correlated to financial leverage. The result is consistent with hypotheses that are based on Agency Theory, Information Asymmetry Theory and Scale of Economic. The result of empirical study is not able to support the hypotheses that managers will offer employee more value of ESB according to the appreciation of company value.

Along with the non-profit organizations¡]NPOs¡^play an important role day by day in Taiwan , people¡¦s regarding of NPOs operation still pause in traditional impression¡Gthe volunteer and the board without pay raise funds. People just don¡¦t know that general middle or large-scale NPOs have set fund-raising department and recruited professional fund-raisers. Thus, it can be seen that fund-raisers are so important to NPOs. But there is a phenomenon of keeping talented persons uneasily. Therefore, investigator tries to cut in the topic of motivation to discuss a problem of changing job incentives of fund-raisers. The research interview managers and fund-raisers of eight middle and large-scale NPOs in Taiwan to comprehend NPOs operation and find relation between job incentives of fund-raisers and organization motivations. Finally, investigator discusses mystifications of fund-raising in NPOs. Now we have the following conclusions¡G 1.The general operation model of NPOs is that starting from organization mission to develop service plans, and then provide to fund-raisers to pack with marketing and public relation strategies to raise funds to support service. And achieve organization missions finally. 2.General job incentives of fund-raisers to enter NPOs are ¡§ideals of helping people¡¨and ¡§seek for a job¡¨.But fund-raisers prefer to choose realizing ideals rather than high-pay. 3.Fund-raisers¡¦ incentives of staying are internal motivations, such as ¡§see service fruition and realize ideals of helping people¡¨,¡§job achievement¡¨, ¡§autonomy¡¨and¡§moved¡¨. 4.During the process of working, the key point of organization motivation is job design¡]job enrichment, job rotation, job enlargement and team work¡^, which make fund-raisers gain mission and recognition. Sometimes leaders use mission leadership strategy to inspire fund-raisers. Most of NPOs apply MBO and performance evaluation to motivate the staff at the same time, but there¡¦s usually no effect. 5.Due to NPOs must compete with non-profit trade generally, there are three mystifications¡G(1) dazzle mission and supremacy of raising funds, (2) over-depend on subvention to aggrandize firm, (3) add service to reflect social needs.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-93).

Thesis (M.S.) in Resource Economics and Policy--University of Maine, 2009. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68).

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are being adopted with unprecedented speed. The growth in demand and system complexity increasingly requires collaboration of multiple parties in order to achieve better functionality, efficiency, performance, etc. This poses unique challenges such as information sharing among different parties, utility sharing among different parties, and dishonest and collusive behaviors. Different mobile services may require different types of collaboration and involve different entities in the system. In this work we take a bottom-up approach by first looking at collaboration at the end user level, then the cross level collaboration and finally at the service provider level. Specifically, we first consider a completely distributed service: friend discovery in mobile social networks, where users of a mobile social network work together with each other to discover potential new friends nearby by computing their social proximity. We develop mathematically sound yet highly efficient approaches that simultaneously achieve privacy and verifiability. We then focus on cellular offloading where a cellular service provider seeks third party resource to offload cellular demand, as an example of cross level collaboration. We propose a reverse auction framework: iDEAL, which efficiently allocates cellular resource and third party resource in a joint optimization, effectively incentivize third party resource owners and mitigates dishonest and collusive behaviors. We validate our findings and approaches with real trace driven analysis and simulation, as well as real implementation. Finally we focus on collaboration at the service provider level and propose a double auction framework - DA². DA² allows cellular service providers to reallocate spectrum resource in a dynamic fashsion. It preserves all the desired economic properties. Compared with existing spectrum double auctions, DA² achieves higher efficiency, revenue, and spectrum resource utilization, due to its ability to more accurately capture the competition among buyers, which is characterized by a complex conflict graph. We evaluate DA² and demonstrate its superior performance via simulations on conflict graphs generated with real cell tower locations. / text

This research focuses on the relationships between principal instructional leadership and the change process of teachers while a district is undergoing the implementation of a performance pay program. The researcher utilized a mixed methods approach. The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (Porter, Murphy, Goldring, & Elliott, 2007) developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University and Penn State was one of the quantitative measures. This instrument is designed to measure instructional leadership from the perspective of teachers and the principal. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) (George, Hall, & Stiegelbauer, 2006), based on the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (Hord, Rutherford, Huling-Austin, & Hall, 1987), is the quantitative instrument used to determine the stage of change of the participants or potential participants of the new performance pay program.Interviews of school district administrators and a review of relevant documents regarding the performance pay implementation serves as the data for the qualitative component of the study. A grounded theory approach was utilized in gathering and analyzing information. This approach allows for discoveries of themes and concepts that are not preconceived by the researcher.Results of the research indicate increased teacher collaboration and fidelity of implementation of the targeted instructional strategies and practices after a performance pay program funded by a United States Department of Education Teacher Incentive Fund Grant was implemented. The monetary incentive and the incentive of professional development may have had equal value to participants. Principals positively impacted the implementation when they were skilled communicators who advocated for teachers and held them to high standards for student performance and supported their efforts in implementation of new instructional strategies to produce higher levels of student achievement. The performance pay implementation was supported by layers of leadership which established and continues to sustain the project.