This thesis explores the impact of the centralization of bargaining in Ontario’s education sector on the internal democracy of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), the province’s second-largest teacher union and self-described defender of public education. Using multiple theoretical lenses of union democracy, public sector unionism, labour geography and teacher professionalism, this thesis examines OSSTF’s history and the evolution of its internal processes and structures, with a focus on the union’s response to the gradual shift to a centralized bargaining regime. Initially formed in 1919 as a conservative organization committed to raising the professional status of teachers, OSSTF expanded into a union that represents both teachers and support staff, bargaining contracts for members with local employers. Positioned within a public sector context of austerity and neoliberal governments looking to contain the costs of public education, OSSTF found itself subjected to legislation intended to upscale education funding and bargaining, beginning in the late 1990s. This thesis finds that the external context of centralization of bargaining has been the most important factor in shaping the internal democratic life of OSSTF, shifting scales of power from the local to the provincial level of the union, exacerbating tensions between provincial and local actors, increasing the overall bureaucracy of the organization, and reducing democratic participation by the rank-and-file. These findings lead to the greater question of whether these internal changes have enhanced or limited the ability of OSSTF to effectively further their members’ interests and resist the neoliberalization of the school system, with a view to considering the role of teacher unions within the future of public education in Ontario. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This case study explores the impact of the centralization of bargaining in Ontario’s education sector on the internal processes of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), a union representing 60,000 teachers and education workers in Ontario. It includes an examination of the union’s history, its responses to legislative changes in contract negotiations, an analysis of internal union documents, and semi-structured interviews with key informants. The data and analysis reveal a more bureaucratized union, with members having less ability to direct it actions. This study considers whether a more bureaucratized union can be effective in its defense of public education.

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Abstract By applying principles of conducting design science research, we have developed eight guide-lines for log management. By comparing with the literature on log management, we haveinvestigated the quality and relevance of the guidelines. We also investigated whether six of theeight guidelines are relevant in the sense that they can be supported by software. / Sammanfattning Genom att tillämpa principer för att bedriva forskning i design science, har vi tagit fram åttariktlinjer för en hantering av loggar. Genom jämförelse med litteratur om logghantering har viundersökt kvalitet och relevans hos riktlinjerna. Vi har även undersökt om sex av de åttariktlinjerna är relevanta i den meningen att mjukvara kan stödja dem.

During the past 30 years, the proliferation of electronic trading has catalysed profound structural change in the global foreign exchange (FX) spot market. Today, more than 60% of the market's volume occurs via electronic trading platforms, which provide traders with round-the-clock market access from anywhere in the world. Such platforms offer several practical benefits that have encouraged market participation from a broad new class of financial institutions and have thereby spurred market growth. The most widely used electronic trading platforms in the FX spot market incorporate several features that differentiate them from those used in other financial markets. These features raise many important questions about order flow, market state, price formation, trader behaviour, and volatility. Despite the enormous trade volumes that such platforms facilitate, these questions have received almost no attention to date. In this thesis, we study a recent, high-quality data set from a large electronic trading platform in the FX spot market in order to investigate several aspects of trading via this mechanism. We calculate a wide range of statistics regarding order flow and market state, and we highlight how our findings contrast to those reported by empirical studies of electronic trading platforms in other markets. We study the autocorrelation properties of returns, absolute returns, and order flow, and we investigate the extent to which the market's organization impacts price formation. We also introduce a model designed to reproduce the most important properties of trading via such a platform. We derive several results regarding the model's temporal evolution, and we simulate the model to investigate how the interactions between individual traders influence volatility. We conclude that electronic trading platforms in the FX spot market retain many desirable features of centralized markets while providing traders with explicit control over their personal trading partnerships.

Os sistemas prediais de água não potável podem ser do tipo centralizado, quando os efluentes oriundos de diversas edificações são coletados e transportados para um único local de tratamento e redistribuídos para um conjunto de residências; ou descentralizado, quando a coleta, o tratamento e o transporte dos efluentes ocorrem próximos ao local de produção. Porém, tanto o sistema centralizado quanto o descentralizado possui particularidades que os fazem interessantes ou não em aspectos sociais, econômicos e ambientais. Desta forma, o objetivo principal desta pesquisa foi formular modelos matemáticos que permitissem comparar o sistema centralizado com o descentralizado. Para o desenvolvimento do estudo realizou-se uma revisão bibliográfica com o intuito de coletar informações sobre as principais variáveis que interferem na tomada de decisão de cada tipo de sistema. A partir dos princípios da Programação Linear Inteira foram formulados três modelos que permitiram encontrar qual tipo de sistema apresenta o menor custo total acumulado, quanto é o valor desse custo ao longo do tempo e quantos sistemas são necessários instalar para atender a uma demanda específica. Com base nos dados da literatura consultada, o sistema centralizado apresentou-se mais vantajoso do que os sistemas descentralizados quanto aos custos de implantação, de manutenção e de operação considerando uma vida útil de 20 anos. Todavia, verificou-se que a escolha do sistema mais viável não deve se concentrar apenas nos custos, mas também devem ser consideradas variáveis qualitativas. Deste modo, as formulações gerais dos modelos permitem a inserção de outras variáveis de decisão e restrições para aprimorar a tomada de decisão quanto ao tipo de sistema predial de água não potável a ser implantado. / Non-potable water systems may be of the centralized type when effluents from several buildings are collected and transported to a single treatment site and redistributed to a set of residences; or decentralized, when the collection, treatment and transportation of the effluent occurs near the place of production. However, both the centralized and decentralized systems have particularities that make them interesting or not in social, economic and environmental aspects. In this way, the main objective of this research was to formulate mathematical models that allowed to compare the centralized system with the decentralized one. For the development of the study a bibliographic review was carried out in order to collect information on the main variables that interfere in the decision making of each type of system. From the principles of Linear Programming, three models were formulated that allowed to find out which type of system has the lowest cumulative total cost, what is the value of this cost over time and how many systems are needed to meet a specific demand. Based on the data of the literature, the centralized system was more advantageous than the decentralized systems in terms of the implantation, maintenance and operation costs considering a useful life of 20 years. However, it has been found that the choice of the most viable system should not only focus on costs but should also be considered as qualitative variables. In this way, the general models formulations allow the insertion of other decision variables and constraints to improve the decision making regarding the type of non-potable water system to be implanted.

Department structure and leadership functions can influence work climate. In one healthcare system, advanced practice providers (APPs) worked in a decentralized structure with multiple leaders. This project explored the impact of the change to centralized leadership for APPs working in an academic healthcare system in which employee turnover was high and satisfaction was low. An ad hoc committee led by the chief medical officer created a centralized department with a designated leader. Surveys and interviews were used to identify the benefits of the strategies implemented and understand whether the change in organizational structure resulted in an improved work climate for APPs in the large multicampus academic healthcare system,. Data were collected from departmental reports, 12 APP interviews, and 2 online surveys with a total of 73 responses. Results showed that centralization improved leadership support and communication with APPs within the system by 11.4%. Feedback from APPs indicated the physicians maximized APPs' expertise and licensure, thus creating a supportive work climate and environment, professional growth, and job satisfaction. With the implementation of the centralized department in 2014, the turnover rate dropped from 20.47% in 2013 to 6.1% in 2016 resulting in positive social change for APPs, providers, and patients.

Purpose – increasing the understanding of what distinguish a decentralized from a centralized blockchain business network and identify its value creating mechanisms. To fulfill this research purpose, three research questions have been derived, RQ1: What distinguishes a decentralized from a centralized blockchain business network?, RQ2: How are the blockchain business network values affected by a decentralized vs centralized network model? and RQ3: Which value creating mechanisms exists within decentralized blockchain networks? Method – This study was conducted as an abductive explorative study with interviews of actors that works with their own blockchain or is an expert in the subject, respondents from 9 different industries were participating. In total 25 interviews were held in two phases and they were together with a workshop analyzed through a thematic analysis. Findings – The findings from the study resulted in a framework including four separate areas, namely, Governance models, Blockchain values, Business network values and Value creating mechanisms. There were three governance modes, Lead organization, Network administrative organization and Participant owned organization. Furthermore, this study has resulted in 12 blockchain values, 11 network values and 9 value creating mechanisms. Theoretical and practical implications – This study gives an answer to the question what distinguish the decentralized and centralized nature of a blockchain business network, stating that the most value critical factor is the choice of network governance model. Furthermore, additional examples of blockchain and network values have been presented and those values have been analyzed through three different governance models. Also, the 9 value creating mechanisms have been described and analyzed from a decentralized blockchain network perspective. The practical implications give managers insight of which value creating mechanisms that exists for a decentralized blockchain business network, an understanding that could help them decide on if blockchain fits their business needs or not. Lastly, by providing an overview of which the strengths and weaknesses are of different governance models for a blockchain business network, managers could better align their network governance. Limitations and future research – Due to the explorative nature of this study these frameworks and relationships are built from our research and will need future validation from similar study to test its applicability in a larger extent. Hence, future studies with these frameworks and matrixes as reference point would be interesting.

The main objective of this thesis was to develop appropriate system protection schemes against two important causes of failure in power systems, namely, long-term voltage instability and cascade tripping of overloaded transmission lines, mainly due to overloading. To this purpose a distributed undervoltage load shedding scheme against voltage instability, and a centralized protection meant to alleviate line overload are proposed. The former, through the chosen system protection scheme characteristics, has the ability to adjust its actions to the disturbance location and severity. This behavior is achieved without resorting to a dedicated communication network. The distributed controllers do not exchange information, but are rather informed of their respective actions through voltage measurements. Neither do the controllers require a model of the system. This and the absence of communication makes the protection scheme simple and reliable. The other protection scheme, inspired of model predictive control, is aimed at bringing the currents in the overloaded lines below their limits in the time interval left by protections, while accounting for constraints on control changes. Its closed-loop nature allows to compensate for model uncertainties and measurement noise. In order to tune the proposed system protection schemes parameters and validate their performance it was preferred to detect plausible cascading event scenarios. To this purpose, an algorithm meant to identify such complex sequences has been developed. It encompasses hidden failures and the resulting system response. The tests performed on small systems as well as on a real-life one confirm not only that proposed protection schemes appropriately deal with the problems for which they were designed, but also that they cooperate satisfactorily for combined voltage and thermal problems that are beyond their individual capabilities.

This thesis is concerned with automotive active safety, and a central theme is a new safety function called Emergency Lane Assist (ELA). Automotive safety is often categorised into passive and active safety, where passive safety is concerned with reducing the effects of accidents and active safety aims at avoiding them. ELA detects lane departure manoeuvres that are likely to result in a collision and prevents them by applying a steering wheel torque. The ELA concept is based on traffic accident statistics, i.e., it is designed to give maximum safety based on information about real life traffic accidents. The ELA function puts tough requirements on the accuracy of the information from the sensors, in particular the road shape and the position of surrounding objects, and on robust threat assessment. Several signal processing methods have been developed and evaluated in order to improve the accuracy of the sensor information, and these improvements are also analysed in how they relate to the ELA requirements. Different threat assessment methods are also studied, and a common element in both the signal processing and the threat assessment is that they are based on driver behaviour models, i.e., they utilise the fact that depending on the traffic situation, drivers are more likely to behave in certain ways than others. Most of the methods are general and can be, and hopefully also will be, applied also in other safety systems, in particular when a complete picture of the vehicle surroundings is considered, including information about road and lane shape together with the position of vehicles and infrastructure. All methods in the thesis have been evaluated on authentic sensor data from actual and relevant traffic environments.