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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

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Certain properties of individuals’ social networks within their organizations are known to be associated with benefits. However, these properties are not universally beneficial for all individuals. To explain the differing utility of social connections for different actors, network research has tended to focus on factors relating to the actor’s characteristics, agency and cognition. With this dissertation, I explore a different contingency affecting actors’ abilities to leverage their networks: how observers perceive and evaluate the behavior of actors as they craft and use their networks, and how these attributions impact actors’ job performance. I develop a theoretical framework that incorporates social capital theory to develop a taxonomy of networking behaviors. I build upon network cognition research to explore how observers’ perceptions and attributions of actors’ networking behaviors rather than perceptions of network ties or structure affect actors’ outcomes. I draw upon attribution theory to suggest how observers’ attributions about actors may affect observers’ behavior towards actors, thus impacting actors’ outcomes. Results suggest that networking behaviors that are seen as serving the collective positively impact actors’ outcomes, while networking behaviors that are seen as self-serving negatively impact the actors’ outcomes by limiting access to high-status friends. However, attributions about an actor’s self-serving behavior augment the benefits the actor receives when he or she has access to high-status friends. When it comes to performance, networks matter, but it also matters how observers evaluate actors’ networking behaviors.

This study was designed to explore the possible connections between student peer relationships and individual students’ roles in a network as it pertained to outcomes such as self-reported academic achievement and personal satisfaction with the first year of college. The research question directing this inquiry is: How does a student’s role within a residential community of peers relate to success in college? Social network analysis was employed for examination of individual engagement within the context of a larger community. The vast learning community literature tells an interesting story: 1.) a history of co-curricular peer learning environments, 2) a tradition of research intended to assess the value of these programs, 3) a body of literature that provides theoretical explanations for why learning communities should work. The gap in the literature is found regarding what happens within the communities. To learn how individuals within community learn from one another, community of practice was utilized as a framework in this mixed-methods approach to examine the influence of relationships, and exchange, acquisition, & development of social capital within a living learning community While this network study indicated that popularity, relational ties to staff, and being someone sought-after for advice were not statistically significant predictors of higher GPA, the network analyses confirmed strong network density, cohesion, and proper structure for ideal capital flow. The results of this study confirm that this community is effective in establishing familiarity and even more so, providing an environment that fosters friendships among participants and staff. Furthermore, students developed the ability to construct knowledge alongside their peers. Given the density and relation-rich nature of this community, this positive environment is able to foster more complex and self-authored levels of meaning-making for the students involved. Building this scaffolding facilitated student development, which effectively created a student transformation from dependence on external authority to self-authorship. This study confirmed that the primary goals of a learning community have been met: a group of strangers developed into a network of friends who reap social and academic benefits by virtue of being together in a shared and successful living learning community environment.

This research presents a structural model of the effect of the organization of military units upon their capability. This research is oriented towards a more complete understanding of military capability and policy decisions about the structure and development of military forces. We identify the types of national and military policy decisions that claims of military capability inform, and find that there are five distinct types of capability claims relevant to military policy. We show how these types of capability claims are logically related to each other, but have different premises, predicates, and standards of proof. We find that one of these types of claims, General Organization Capability Claims, ties together the various military policy decisions. The remainder of this research shows how these capability claims can be formally structured based on military doctrine and structurally evaluated using a network-science based model. The interaction between the structural elements of a military organization (personnel, materiel, and information) and the things it is supposed to do (military tasks) can be represented and analyzed with network science methods, and represents a type of general organization capability claim. We present a method for representing policy decisions about unit structure and tactical doctrine. We then develop two versions of a structural model of capability–one that links the individual elements of an organization to the tasks it performs; another that considers the capacity of a set of organizations to meet a set of requirements. We show that network statistics of organizations represented off of authoritative, rather than observational, data are still consistent with network science findings but require interpretation. We also show how alternate methods of aggregating organizations can expand the utility of the capability measurement. This research presents five new contributions to the fields of military policy analysis and network science–(1) a taxonomy of military capability claims, (2) a meta-network model of doctrinal organization and task data, (3) a structural model of organization capability, (4) a structural model of organization capacity, and (5) a network-based method integer programming method.

Technologies like IEEE 802.16j wireless mesh networks are drawing increasing attention of the research community. Mesh networks are economically viable and may extend services such as Internet to remote locations. This thesis takes interest into a planning problem in IEEE 802.16j networks, where we need to establish minimum cost relay and base stations to cover the bandwidth demand of wireless clients. A special feature of this planning problem is that any node in this network can send data to at most one node towards the next hop, thus traffic flow is unsplittable from source to destination. We study different integer programming formulations of the problem. We propose four types of heuristic algorithms that uses greedy, local search, variable neighborhood search and Lagrangian relaxation based approaches for the problem. We evaluate the algorithms on database of network instances of 500-5000 nodes, some of which are randomly generated network instances, while other network instances are generated over geometric distribution. Our experiments show that the proposed algorithms produce satisfactory result compared to benchmarks produced by generalized optimization problem solver software. / x, 131 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

Das Europäische Parlament ist zweifelsohne die mächtigste parlamentarische Versammlung auf supranationaler Ebene. Das provoziert die Frage, wie Entscheidungen in diesem Parlament gefällt werden und wie sie begründet werden können. Darin liegt das Hauptanliegen dieser Arbeit, die zur Beantwortung dieser Frage auf soziologische Ansätze der Erklärung sozialen Handelns zurückgreift und damit einen neuen Zugang zur Beobachtung parlamentarischen Handelns schafft. Dabei arbeitet sie heraus, wie wichtig es ist, bei der Analyse politischer Entscheidungsprozesse zu beachten, wie politische Probleme von Akteuren interpretiert und gegenüber Verhandlungspartnern dargestellt werden. An den Fallbeispielen der Entscheidungsprozesse zur Dienstleistungsrichtlinie, zur Chemikalien-Verordnung REACH und dem TDIP (CIA)-Ausschuss in der Legislaturperiode 2004–2009, wird der soziale Mechanismus dargestellt, der hinter Einigungen im Europäischen Parlament steckt. Kultur als Interpretation der Welt wird so zum Schlüssel des Verständnisses politischer Entscheidungen auf supranationaler Ebene. / The European Parliament is the most powerful parliamentary assembly on the supranational level. However, the question of how and why decisions are being taken in this parliament has been insufficiently addressed so far. This is the main aim of this book, which draws on sociological theories for explaining social action and thus opens up a new approach to the analysis of parliamentary action. It argues that it is necessary to take into account how actors interpret political problems and how they relate to their counterparts in negotiations. In three case studies on decision-making processes in the 6th European Parliament between 2004 and 2009 - Services Directive, REACH and the TDIP (CIA-)committee – the study reconstructs the social mechanism behind compromise in the EP. Culture as the way actors attach meaning to the world is the key to understanding political decisions on the supranational level.

The sharing of needles among injection drug users (IDUs) is a common route of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis C Virus transmission. Through the increased utilization of social network analysis, researchers have been able to examine how the interpersonal relationships of IDUs affect injection risk behaviour. This study involves a secondary analysis of data from a cross-sectional study of 156 IDUs from Winnipeg, Manitoba titled “Social Network Analysis of Injection Drug Users”. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to assess the individual and the social network characteristics associated with needle sharing among the IDUs. Generalized Estimating Equations analysis was used to determine the injecting dyad characteristics which influence needle sharing behaviour between the IDUs and their injection drug using network members. The results revealed five key thematic findings that were significantly associated with needle sharing: (1) types of drug use, (2) socio-demographic status, (3) injecting in semi-public locations, (4) intimacy, and (5) social influence. The findings from this study suggest that comprehensive prevention approaches that target individuals and their network relationships may be necessary for sustainable reductions in needle sharing among IDUs.

Sharing and inappropriate discarding of syringes and drug use equipment can lead to transmission of bloodborne pathogens and decreased sense of community safety. To reduce these risks, interventions such as syringe drop boxes, are implemented. However, little consideration has been made of the social and spatial networks of the injection drug use (IDU) populations in the placement of these drop boxes. A sample of IDU was obtained through respondent driven sampling in Winnipeg, Canada in 2009. Characteristics of the sample and distribution of these characteristics through the social network were assessed. A spatial network was constructed which focused on the connections between IDU and specific geographic locations. Measures of centrality were calculated using Pajek and the geographic network was mapped using ArcGIS. Analysis of the social network revealed variation among network components in demographic and drug use characteristics. Spatial analysis revealed geographic clustering, quantified through network centrality measures. There was congruence between locations of high degree and current drop box placement in Winnipeg. This research illustrates the benefit of combining IDU social network and spatial data to inform evidence-based municipal policies and programs.