Universiẗat, Diss., 2002--Karlsruhe.

Zugl.: Bayreuth, Univ., Diss., 2006

This diploma paper deals with the managed care in the world and in The Czech Republic. It focuses on forms of the managed care, weaker forms of this kind of financing health care - PPOs, POS, on accomplishments and negatives and it's compared with the other kind of financing. The situation is described in all insurence companies in Czech Republic especially in Česká průmyslová pojišťovna.

This thesis is focused on Managed Futures, which is one of alternative investment instruments. Even though its popularity in developed countries rises, it is a rarity in Czech financial market. The main intent is to clarify specifications, historical roots, legal framework and other characteristic aspects. Part of the work will be devoted to the analysis of performance, risk, correlation with other investments and the possibility of inclusion in a portfolio of experienced Czech investor.

Research has consistently highlighted the short term and familial difficulties (Munn, 2000), long term difficulties (SEU 1998) and the financial costs to society (Parsons, 2011) resulting from the permanent exclusion of young people from education. Key legislative changes and government publications (DCSF 2004; 2005 & 2010) have repeatedly recommended the use of managed transfers as an alternative to permanent exclusion, yet there is very little research evidence to support this. National and local exclusions statistics suggest that the implementation of managed transfers has contributed to a reduction of the numbers of young people being permanently excluded from school, but does this statistical phenomenon equate to an increase in the inclusion of young people? This research aims to explore the experiences of young people, their families and professionals working within the managed transfer system, to address the research question What are different stakeholders’ experiences of the managed transfer process?Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was core to the design of the study and was used to analyse individual interviews from five young people and five parents, and focus group data from eight professionals working in mainstream settings, all of whom had experienced at least one managed transfer in the same local authority. Individual analysis of pupils’ experiences raised superordinate themes relating to relationships, control, identity, rejection and education. Individual analysis of parents’ experiences produced themes relating to relationships, agendas, control, pupil identity, flexibility, communication, acceptance, education and statementing. Analysis of focus group data relating to professionals’ experiences of managed transfers, produced themes around cognitive dissonance, relationships, agendas, exclusion/inclusion, motivation and feelings of failure. A deeper level of analysis, including all stakeholder experiences, produced two global superordinate themes; cognitive dissonance and relationships. The theme cognitive dissonance represented the behaviours that participants engaged in to reduce conflict, often between their own beliefs and the beliefs or actions relating to the managed transfer. Although this theme encompassed many of the earlier themes, the behaviours and mechanisms employed by different individuals to reduce dissonance differed, as did the cause of conflict causing the dissonance. Relationships were highlighted by nearly all of the participants, but different relationships were valued by different individuals and at different stages during the managed transfer process. Despite the initial similarities across the experiences, this research highlights the individuals’ sense making activities in relation to this complex social phenomenon and drew many parallels to research with young people and their families whom had experienced permanent exclusions from school. This research concludes with some overarching recommendations to improve the experiences of all stakeholders, not by applying a stringent set of rules or procedures, but through the development of a shared ethos and rationale, with greater inclusion of all stakeholders, allowing for processes to be flexibly applied and reasonable adjustments to be made in response to individual need, making inclusion central to the transfer rather than focusing on top down processes.

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This dissertation investigated the learning required for individuals to onboard into self-managing organizations (SMOs). Using a qualitative case study approach, 15 participants from various SMOs were interviewed to gain insight into their experiences. In addition, data was collected from a document review and focus group. The study found that: (a) Formal learning enabled a quick grounding in the basic mechanisms of self-management. (b) All participants faced challenges applying the principles and practices of self-management in practice. (c) All participants had to learn to shift their mindsets in order to successfully participate in self-management. (d) Transitioning into self-management was a nonlinear process that unfolded over time. For many participants, it began years before they joined an SMO and continued even after their formal onboarding period was completed. (e) Formal training supported instrumental learning, while mindset shifts were more supported by informal learning. An analysis of these findings led to four primary conclusions. First, an organizational model cannot transcend the capabilities of its members. Second, a new relationship with self, others, and the organization required new ways of thinking and being. Third, formal and informal learning experiences amidst a supportive social context enabled this holistic transformation. Fourth, self-management is a team sport and is therefore likely only able to be learned with and through a group. The study recommended building a learning environment and supporting new members' learning journeys to facilitate a successful transition into self-management.

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The practice and study of public administration has long included questions of efficiency, effectiveness, and economy. In the literature of the last decade, the New Public Management (NPM) movement argues that government should be run like a business and that entrepreneurial-based techniques should be utilized in an effort to enhance government performance. The normative perspective, however, raises counter ideas. The primary purpose of this research is to examine the impact of managed competition, a NPM technique, on four primary study areas including (1) democratic governance, (2) the politics administration dichotomy, (3) organizational effects, and (4) accountability. The study findings indicate that the economic model has had a significant impact on the four study areas to varying degrees. The theoretical propositions posed in the study center around principal-agent theory, public choice theory, and the market model and aid in reconciling the NPM perspective with normative considerations applicable to local government practice. Examining managed competition allows us to see how Charlotte has evolved in its attempt to meet demands from both perspectives. / Ph. D.

Programmers increasingly rely on managed languages (e.g. Java and C#) to develop applications faster and with fewer bugs. Managed languages encourage allocating objects in the heap and rely on automatic memory management (garbage collection) to reclaim objects the program can no longer access. With more objects in the heap, the heap encodes more program state than ever before and offers new opportunities for optimization and analysis. This dissertation shows how to efficiently leverage the managed runtime to perform dynamic heap analysis. Previous heap analysis approaches significantly slow down programs, require special hardware, and/or increase memory consumption by 75% or more. We presents two synergistic techniques—dynamic object sampling (DOS) and heap summarization (HSG)—that mine program state embedded in the heap efficiently enough to use in production and effectively enough to improve performance, find bugs, and increase program understanding. We use these techniques to address three problems: (1) Performance of managed language. Because some objects live for a long time, they incur disproportionate collection costs. We optimize these costs with dynamic pretenuring. Dynamic pretenuring uses DOS to accurately predict allocation site survival rates and uses these predictions to improve performance. (2) Finding bugs. Memory leaks in managed languages occur when a program inadvertently maintains references to objects that it no longer needs. Along with degrading performance and resulting in program crashes, memory leaks cause systematic heap growth. We introduce Cork which uses the simplest type of HSG, a class points-from summary graph (CPFG), to detect systematic heap growth. Cork quickly identifies growing data structures observed in three popular benchmarks (fop, jess, and jbb2000) while adding an average of only 2.3% to total time. Additionally, we use Cork to debug a reported memory leak in Eclipse. (3) Program understanding. For a long time, static analysis has sought to statically summarize the shape of dynamic data structures to aid in program verification and understanding. Unfortunately, it only works on small programs. We introduce ShapeUp which instead characterizes recursive data structures dynamically by discovering data structure shape and degree invariants at runtime. ShapeUp uses DOS and a class field-wise summary graph (CFSG) to track in- and out-degree invariants of data structure nodes. We show how ShapeUp automatically identifies recursive data structures and likely shape invariants. Finally, we monitor discovered shape invariants to detect when a data structure becomes malformed. In summary, this dissertation is the first to leverage the managed runtime to perform dynamic heap analysis both accurately and efficiently. Our results show that the heap contains an enormous amount of program state and that there is much potential for dynamically mining heap characteristics for optimization, debugging, and program understanding. / text