Orientador: Jacques Wainer / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T13:39:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bezerra_FabiodeLima_D.pdf: 910682 bytes, checksum: 03039d80da140539552895720627ea23 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Atualmente há uma variedade de sistemas que apóiam processos de negócio (ex. WfMS, CRM, ERP, SCM, etc). Muitos desses sistemas possuem uma forte característica de coordenação das atividades dos processos de negócios, garantindo que essas atividades sejam executadas como especificadas no modelo de processo. Entretanto, há domínios com maior necessidade de flexibilidade na execução desses processos, por exemplo, em atendimento hospitalar, cuja conduta pode variar para cada paciente. Essa característica desses domínios demanda o desenvolvimento de sistemas orientados a processos fracamente definidos, ou com execução mais flexível. Nesses domínios, a execução de algumas atividades comuns pode ser violada, ou a execução de uma atividade "incomum" pode ser necessária, ou seja, tais processos são suscetíveis a execuções excepcionais ou mesmo fraudulentas. Assim, o provimento de flexibilidade não pode ser considerado sem melhorar as questões relacionadas a segurança, pois flexibilidade e segurança são requisitos claramente conflitantes. Portanto, é necessário desenvolver mecanismos ou métodos que permitam a conjugação desses dois requisitos em um mesmo sistema, promovendo um balanço entre flexibilidade e segurança. Esta tese tem por objetivo projetar, implementar e avaliar métodos de detecção de anomalias em logs de sistemas de apoio a processos de negócios, ou seja, o desenvolvimento de métodos utilizados para descobrir quais instâncias de processos podem ser uma excução anômala. Desta forma, através da integração de um método de detecção de anomalias com um sistema de apoio à processos de negócio, tais sistemas poderão oferecer um ambiente de execução flexível, mas capaz de identificar execuções anômalas que podem indicar desde uma execução excepcional, até uma tentativa de fraude. Assim, o estudo de métodos de detecção de eventos anômalos vem preencher um espaço pouco explorado pela comunidade de process mining, que tem demonstrado maior interesse em entender o comportamento comum em processos de negócios. Entretanto, apesar desta tese não discutir o significado das instâncias anômalas, os métodos de detecção apresentados aqui são importantes porque permitem selecionar essas instâncias / Abstract: Nowadays, many business processes are supported by information systems (e.g. WfMS, CRM, ERP, SCM, etc.). Many of these systems have a strong characteristic of coordination of activities defined in the business processes, mainly for ensuring that these activities are performed as specified in the process model. However, there are domains that demand more flexible systems, for example, hospital and health domains, whose behavior can vary for each patient. Such domains of applications require an information system in which the business processes are weakly defined, supporting more flexible and dynamic executions. For example, the execution of some common activities may be violated, or some unusual activity may be enforced for execution. Therefore, in domains of applications in which the systems support a high level of flexibility the business processes are susceptible to exceptional or even fraudulent executions. Thus, the provision of flexibility can not be considered without improving the security issues, since there is clearly a trade-off between flexibility and security requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a mechanism to allow the combination of these two requirements in a system, that is, a mechanism that promotes a balance between flexibility and security. This thesis aims to design, implement and evaluate methods for detecting anomalies in logs of process-aware information systems, that is, the development of methods to find out which process instances may be an anomalous execution. Thus, when incorporating a method for detecting anomalies in such systems, it would be possible to offer a flexible and safer execution environment, since the system is also able to identify anomalous executions, which could be a simple exception or a harmful fraud attempt. Thus, the study of methods for detecting anomalous events will fill an area largely unexplored by the community of process mining, which has been mainly interested in understanding the common behavior in business processes. Furthermore, although this thesis does not discuss the meaning of an anomalous instance, the methods and algorithms presented here are important because they allow us to identify those instances / Doutorado / Ciência da Computação / Doutor em Ciência da Computação

This project will show how a computer-based information management system can be used by elementary school teachers. Using a desktop database manager software, FileMaker Pro, this project will describe how technology can help a classroom teacher manage information through an application model.

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Online product reviews have become an important and influential source of information for consumers. Firms often manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about the product, making it a research topic of urgent need for theory development and empirical investigation. In this thesis, we examine how consumers perceive and respond to the three commonly used manipulation tactics. Firstly, an exploratory pre-study via in-depth interviews with online shoppers indicates that consumers commonly have the knowledge for online review manipulations as well as for detecting them. In the first study, a survey was used to investigate the three popular manipulation tactics in terms of ethicality and deceptiveness. They rated hiding/deleting unfavorable messages as the most deceptive and unethical, followed by anonymously adding positive messages, and then offering incentives for posting favorable messages. In study 2, in a simulated field experiment, we introduce persuasion knowledge to further examine the negative influence of review manipulations on consumers’ attitudes. The results suggest that review manipulation increases suspicion of manipulations but can hardly reduce purchase intention of focal products. We also find that consumers’ persuasion knowledge enhances suspicion of manipulation, but lessens the negative impact of suspicion on purchase intention. The third study uses secondary data of a branded e-retailer and its third party website to cross-validate the effect of manipulations on product sales. The results confirm our hypotheses that review manipulation are effective in promoting sales; however, this influence would decrease over time. This research contributes to the online marketing literature by augmenting the Information Manipulation Theory and Persuasion Knowledge Model to examine the deceptive persuasion in the online context and its impact on consumer behavior. Furthermore, we also contribute to the literature of online WOM by empirically examining the influence of review manipulations on sales. Our findings provide valuable insights to practitioners and policy makers on the pitfalls of online manipulation activities and the need to ensure the healthy development of e-commerce.

In duopoly Cournot competition with sequential moves, it is well known that each player prefers Stackelberg leadership without demand uncertainty. We study the same game when the demand is uncertain, and firms possess some private information about the uncertain demand. There are two effects of private information in this game. First, when the Stackelberg leader moves first, its private information is leaked to, or inferred by the Stackelberg follower via the output quantity. Hence, the Stackelberg follower makes decision based on more accurate information than the leader. Second, the leader incurs a cost to signal its information to the follower, which hurts the leader. Both effects hurt the Stackelberg leader, then the follower may earn more ex ante profit than the leader. When the demand is continuous, Gal-or (1987) assumes that firms follow linear decision rules and reports that the follower always sets a higher output quantity than the leader and earns more profit than the leader. However, our study finds that it is true if and only if the demand is unboundedly distributed. Otherwise, the Stackelberg leader's Pareto-optimal output quantity is not linear in its private information unless it observes the highest signal, and the follower does not always earn more ex ante profit than the leader. When the demand is discretely distributed, we study how the number of demand states influences the effect of cost of signaling. With more demand states, the effect of cost of signaling on the leader becomes more significant, and the follower may earn more ex ante profit than the leader.

To learn the uncertainty of customer preference on the attribute of new product, usually a firm needs to do market research. Developing a product on an attribute which is less preferred by customer may lead to a failure. In addition, a firm used to take efforts to design the product. In recent years, we observed a new business model in which the firm does not take effort to design new product, nor does she do market research by herself. She provides rewards to attract outside designers to design new product. Some designers may take effort and design products based on their private information of customer preference. The firm receives designs with different quality and attribute, she chooses one to produce. By solving this game model, we get the equilibrium quality of the design offered by each designer based on their private cost parameter. And we obtain the following insights: When the market size is too small, the firm gives nothing to designers; when the market size is sufficiently big, the firm only gives reward to the designer whose design is produced; otherwise the firm gives both rewards to participated designers and the designer whose design is produced. We find that when the market size is big enough or the disutility is high enough, the new business model dominates the benchmark business model. When both the disutility and market size are small enough, the firm prefers the benchmark business model. And the relative attractiveness of new business model versus benchmark model keeps the same when the market size is small enough. The impact of extra reward on relative attractiveness of new business model versus benchmark model increases with extra reward. When the extra reward is high enough, the firm always prefers the new business model.

In this thesis, we conduct an experimental simulation of 131 students from a university in Hong Kong and investigate the relationship between pay changes and the perceived values (i.e., utility). Applying traditional psychophysical methods, we measure the utility of pay changes (i.e., pay raises and pay cuts) of different sizes by individual responses (i.e., happiness/unhappiness). Drawing on utility theory and expectancy theory, we examine the function that best fits this relationship by considering common function forms including linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and power functions. Using regression techniques, we find that a quadratic function best fits the data, and the utility function is concave in the pay change. When we examine the best form of utility functions for pay raises and pay cuts separately, we find that the utility of pay raises and that of pay cuts are best described by a quadratic function and a linear function, respectively. We further show that a single model involving all pay changes better describes the utility than two separate models for pay raises and pay cuts. In addition, our best-fit utility model reveals that a sufficiently small amount of pay increase may generate a negative value of utility, and we calculate the percentage of smallest meaningful pay increase that results in non-negative utility. We also discuss the theoretical contributions of our findings to the literature and their implications to practitioners.

This paper considers a two-echelon supply chain involving a manufacturer and a retailer who make their pricing, quality, and restocking fee decisions under the word-of-mouth (WOM) effect. To investigate the decision-making problem for the sales and product returns, we construct a leader-follower game model in which the manufacturer first determines his quality effort and the wholesale price and the retailer then decides on her retail price and the restocking fee. Our results show that the wholesale and retail prices under no WOM effect are smaller than those when the WOM effect exists; and, as the WOM has a higher impact on consumer purchases, the retailer should increase her retail price, and the manufacturer should also spend more quality control effort and raise his wholesale price. In addition, when the WOM effect exists, both the restocking fee and the retail price are decreasing in the mismatch probability. It is interesting to learn that a positive WOM may not help achieve more total sales and realized sales than a negative WOM, and the realized sales under the full refund policy may be lower than those under a partial refund policy. We also find that the manufacturer and the retailer may not benefit under the WOM effect, which mainly depends on how consumers are sensitive to the restocking fee and the WOM. The retailer can benefit from the full refund policy when the mismatch chance is not high, whereas the manufacturer can always benefit from the full refund policy.

Thesis: B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1976 / Includes bibliographical references. / B.S. / B.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

This master´s thesis deals with critical factors of management information systems implementation. In first part its describing the present state of the topic, defines the basic terminology, clarifies theoretical background and determines how to understand to a concept of management information systems. In next part is survey of current business intelligence solutions of three leaders of the world market and its detailed comparison, description of their basic properties their advantages and disadvantages. In Conclusion is detailed description of platform Tableau, its practical application, example of implementation, critical succes factors and benefits of its use in companies.