The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to understanding of the effect of organizational context on supply chain integration. One result is a context- based model that can provide support for practitioners regarding what level of integration to establish with suppliers and customers. Given the notion that most organizations are dependent on other organizations, it leads to a need for not only cross-functional integration but also for integration across organizational boundaries. However, in many organizations the level of integration with suppliers and customers is often inappropriate, inefficient and limited mainly to dyadic integration of order processing and operational scheduling. The existing literature provides only a limited insight concerning the essential circumstances for the integration and the slow growth of the implementation of inter-organizational integration has been attributed primarily to lack of guidelines for creating business relationships with supply chain partners. In the literature, “the more integration the better performance” solutions have often been presented without consideration of very complex internal and external organizational environments of involved companies. During recent years, questions have been raised regarding the nature of integration with suppliers and customers and the extent to which it can be accomplished. Instead of all-encompassing integration, selectivity has been suggested in terms of what level of integration should be applied to each link of the supply chain. The problem for an organization is not to find “one best way”; rather it is to search for solutions that advance integration and differentiation simultaneously. Preferable level of integration depends on many contextual factors associated with e.g. focal company, industry, competitive environment, and nature and type of products. However, in the previous research the focus has primarily been on studying single or limited sets of contextual factors and their impact on integration. These results are often fragmented, leading to multiple frameworks and models. A unifying model providing recommendations in terms of what level of integration to establish with suppliers and customers considering organization’s specific circumstances is desirable. In this study, a large number of contextual factors of integration with suppliers and customers were identified and structured. Additionally, the relationship between these factors and level of the integration was clarified. The study is based on the Grounded Theory methodology. To understand the effect of context on level of integration, two supply chains (triads) from two different industries - medical devices and fast moving consumer goods - have been selected as core samples. Findings are based on in-depth analysis of qualitative data obtained from fourteen interviews with practitioners such as CEOs, SC managers, sales managers, purchasing managers, and logisticians. Following the Grounded Theory methodology, the analysis of the collected data was conducted in three major rounds divided into six steps. The results were compared with a theoretical frame of reference. The main result of this study is a model that describes the relationship between contextual factors and integration activities with suppliers and customers. The findings suggest that the assumption of a fit between context and integration of the Structural Contingency Theory is applicable also from an inter-organizational perspective. The model can be applied to contextual factors both external and internal to an organization. It is supplemented by structured lists of identified contextual factors and integration activities. Recalling the notion of fit between value of contextual factors and level of integration with suppliers and customers, it can be stated that even low levels of integration can be appropriate as long as they are consistent with the values of certain factors representing organizational context. Furthermore, the model adds to existing models and frameworks as it can be used as a diagnostic tool. Applying this model, an organization can evaluate if current levels of integration fit with the corresponding values of contextual factors. Furthermore, the model support identification of misfits between values of contextual factors and present level of integration and it provides an opportunity to adjust or reevaluate the current levels of integration. The model, in combination with the lists of contextual factors and integration activities, can then be used to develop corrective actions in order to regain the desired fit. Intention of this study was to identify and analyze integration of triads in the studied supply chains, commonly known as Supply chain integration. However, this scope of integration has not been found, which is in line with previous research indicating that triadic integration is rare. To reflect the actual situation in more accurate way it is suggested to use the term Inter-organizational integration, implying dyadic scope of integration, rather than Supply chain integration.

CEO competence and development is a continuing concern in the NHS. As a key feature of any CEO leadership role is responsibility for organisationally critical decisions, and there is an increasing recognition of the role context plays in effective leadership behaviour. This study examines the role of contextual intelligence in relation to PCT CEO decision making behaviour. To do this, the research addresses four questions: a) what does the literature say about CEO contextual intelligence? b) what factors do PCT CEOs say they take into account in different decision making contexts? c) what contextual factors do they actually take into account? and d) what impact do the contextual factors have on their decision making behaviour. A systematic literature review resulted in a model of CEO contextual intelligence for CEO decision making. Semi-structured interviews with 24 PCT CEOs in a NHS region about factors influencing their decisions on generic strategies, national policies, regional strategies and local plans revealed a hierarchy among contextual factors applying to different decision strata. Semi-structured interviews and analysis of CEO diaries two months later of the same focal decisions show the real critical factors to be:- national policies themselves, the Strategic Health Authority and the decision making process, for regional strategies; and Top Management Team and structure for local plans. Altogether, the research reveals that the PCT CEO’s decision making context is rationally bounded; the relevant contextual factors differed significantly from the literature derived model; the actual factors in practice differed from what were espoused; choice of factors vary depending on decision trigger strata which links to degrees of CEO autonomy; and macro level factors which were indicated as significant from the systematic review were in fact ignored in practice. A PCT CEO model of contextual intelligence is developed together with a two dimensional model of underlying structures guiding PCT CEO decision making behaviour. The findings have implications for governance structures in the NHS, CEO decision making and senior leader development in ii the NHS in the context of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Areas for further research in public sector, NHS and contextual intelligence are also identified.

Understanding the short-and long-term impacts of a biomonitoring and exposure project and reporting personal results back to study participants is critical for guiding future efforts, especially in the context of environmental justice. The purpose of this study was to evaluate learning outcomes from environmental communication efforts and whether environmental health literacy goals were met in an environmental justice community. We conducted 14 interviews with parents who had participated in the University of Arizona's Metals Exposure Study in Homes and analyzed their responses using NVivo, a qualitative data management and analysis program. Key findings were that participants used the data to cope with their challenging circumstances, the majority of participants described changing their families' household behaviors, and participants reported specific interventions to reduce family exposures. The strength of this study is that it provides insight into what people learn and gain from such results communication efforts, what participants want to know, and what type of additional information participants need to advance their environmental health literacy. This information can help improve future report back efforts and advance environmental health and justice.

Repeatedly, parenting quality has been shown to affect children’s level of behavior problems during early childhood (e.g., Bayer, Sanson, & Hemphill, 2006; Shaw, Gilliom, Ingoldsby, & Nagin, 2003). However, the parent-child relationship exists within a broader social context (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Therefore, social contextual stressors such as financial strain, neighborhood danger, and residential overcrowding may affect children’s adjustment through parenting. Based on The Family Stress model (Conger & Elder, 1994), the current study tests the theory that sensitive parenting mediates the relationship between these three environmental stressors (i.e., financial strain, neighborhood danger, and residential overcrowding) and children’s behavior problems from ages 2 to 4 years. Results did not support this hypothesis. Though, alternative analyses provided some support for interactive effects of sensitive parenting and neighborhood danger on children’s externalizing problems. When families experienced less neighborhood danger, sensitive parenting was associated with less externalizing problems.

ABSTRACT In this Masters Research Report, I argue that different conceptual frameworks play a central role in influencing whether and why independent funders in South Africa choose to engage in either social justice philanthropy or traditional philanthropy. Based on documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with a sample population of independent funders and experts in the philanthropic field in South Africa, this research first puts forward a different understanding of social justice philanthropy, from a South African perspective. Based on this understanding, the research then reflects that the way in which independent funders conceptualise and operationalize the reasons why they do the work they do and their roles in relation to other development role players are the central elements that influence the nature and scope of the funding approaches, priorities and strategies that they adopt.

Le Web des Objets s'inscrit dans divers domaines d'application, tels que la domotique, les entreprises, l'industrie, la médecine, la ville, et l'agriculture. Il se présente comme une couche uniforme placée au-dessus de l'Internet des Objets, afin de surmonter l'hétérogénéité des protocoles présents dans ces réseaux. Une valeur ajoutée des applications Web des Objets est de pouvoir combiner l'accès à divers objets connectés et sources de données externes avec des techniques standards de raisonnement sémantique (RDF-S,OWL). Cela leur permet alors d'interpréter et de manipuler de ces données en tant qu'informations contextuelles. Ces informations contextuelles peuvent être exploitées par ces applications afin d'adapter leurs composants en fonction des changements dans leur environnement. L'adaptation contextuelle est un défi majeur pour le Web des Objets. En effet, les solutions d'adaptation existantes sont soit fortement couplées avec leur domaine d'application (étant donne qu'elles reposent sur des modèles de contexte spécifiques au domaine), soit proposées comme composant logiciels autonomes, difficiles à intégrer dans des architectures Web et orientées sémantique. Cela mène alors à des problèmes d'intégration, de performance et de maintenance. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une solution d'adaptation contextuelle multi préoccupations pour les applications Web des Objets, répondant à des besoins d'utilisabilité, de flexibilité, de pertinence et de performance. Notre travail se base sur un scenario pour l'agriculture numérique et se place dans le cadre de la plateforme orientée-avatar ASAWoO. Premièrement, nous proposons un Meta modèle générique permettant de concevoir des modèles contextuels standards, interopérables et réutilisables. Deuxièmement, nous présentons un cycle de vie du contexte et un workflow d'adaptation contextuelle, permettant la sémantisation de données brutes, ainsi que la contextualisation en parallèle durant l'exécution de l'application. Ce workflow combine des données issues de sources hétérogènes, telles que l'expertise du domaine, les documentations techniques des objets, les données de capteurs et de services Web, etc. Troisièmement, nous présentons une méthode de génération de règles d'adaptations basées sur des situations contextuelles, permettant de limiter l'effort des experts et concepteurs lors de l'élaboration d'applications adaptatives. Quatrièmement, nous proposons deux optimisations pour le raisonnement contextuel : la première adapte la localisation des taches de raisonnement en fonction du contexte, la seconde améliore le processus de maintenance incrémentale d'informations contextuelles / The Web of Things (WoT) takes place in a variety of application domains (e.g. homes, enterprises, industry, healthcare, city, agriculture...). It builds a Web-based uniform layer on top of the Internet of Things (IoT) to overcome the heterogeneity of protocols present in the IoT networks. WoT applications provide added value by combining access to connected objects and external data sources, as well as standard-based reasoning (RDF-S, OWL 2) to allow for interpretation and manipulation of gathered data as contextual information. Contextual information is then exploited to allow these applications to adapt their components to changes in their environment. Yet, contextual adaptation is a major challenge for theWoT. Existing adaptation solutions are either tightly coupled with their application domains (as they rely on domain-specific context models) or offered as standalone software components that hardly fit inWeb-based and semantic architectures. This leads to integration, performance and maintainability problems. In this thesis, we propose a multi-purpose contextual adaptation solution for WoT applications that addresses usability, flexibility, relevance, and performance issues in such applications. Our work is based on a smart agriculture scenario running inside the avatar-based platformASAWoO. First,we provide a generic context meta-model to build standard, interoperable et reusable context models. Second, we present a context lifecycle and a contextual adaptation workflow that provide parallel raw data semantization and contextualization at runtime, using heterogeneous sources (expert knowledge, device documentation, sensors,Web services, etc.). Third, we present a situation-driven adaptation rule design and generation at design time that eases experts and WoT application designers’ work. Fourth, we provide two optimizations of contextual reasoning for theWeb: the first adapts the location of reasoning tasks depending on the context, and the second improves incremental maintenance of contextual information

Abstract The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the conflicts of interests that may arise between the differing land use needs of a municipal planning agency and The Swedish Armed Forces. The study is based on three distinct cases located in the municipalities of Umeå, Luleå and the region of Gotland; each respective case presents unique contextual factors at the local level and these also serves to exemplify the issue at a national level. The work has been carried out as a case study and the methods employed were research interviews, document-based research and literature studies. The results indicate that there are significant differences in the planning practice used by the respective municipal planning agencies and that employed by The Swedish Armed Forces in terms of differing aims, methods and outcomes. The study also highlighted how the outcome of each case was dependent upon a combination of contextual factors and the impact of external factors such as national politics, changing security policy, urban development and progression of the environmental legislation. In short, The Swedish Armed Forces is a land use agency that has had significant impact on the municipal planning in each of the locations that has been studied. In a Swedish context, their land use needs are classified as being of national interest and thusly have precedence over competing land use claims. These factors have combined to create conditions in which municipal planning is, to some extent, often restricted by the land use needs of The Swedish Armed Forces.

Adaptive learning is a crucial part in intelligent tutoring systems. It provides students with appropriate tutoring interventions, based on students’ characteristics, status, and other related features, in order to optimize their learning outcomes. It is required to determine students’ knowledge level or learning progress, based on which it then uses proper techniques to choose the optimal interventions. In this dissertation work, I focus on these aspects related to the process in adaptive learning: student modeling, k-armed bandits, and contextual bandits. Student modeling. The main objective of student modeling is to develop cognitive models of students, including modeling content skills and knowledge about learning. In this work, we investigate the effect of prerequisite skill in predicting students’ knowledge in post skills, and we make use of the prerequisite performance in different student models. As a result, this makes them superior to traditional models. K-armed bandits. We apply k-armed bandit algorithms to personalize interventions for students, to optimize their learning outcomes. Due to the lack of diverse interventions and small difference of intervention effectiveness in educational experiments, we also propose a simple selection strategy, and compare it with several k-armed bandit algorithms. Contextual bandits. In contextual bandit problem, additional side information, also called context, can be used to determine which action to select. First, we construct a feature evaluation mechanism, which determines which feature to be combined with bandits. Second, we propose a new decision tree algorithm, which is capable of detecting aptitude treatment effect for students. Third, with combined bandits with the decision tree, we apply the contextual bandits to make personalization in two different types of data, simulated data and real experimental data.

Existem muitas ferramentas capazes de apoiar o processo de gestão do conhecimento nas organizações. A eficiência dessas ferramentas depende da capacidade de lidar com grandes massas de dados. Portanto, a recuperação é fundamental e é hoje uma área de pesquisa em ascensão, para a qual várias técnicas vêm sendo desenvolvidas, tais como sistemas sofisticados de classificação, mecanismos de busca e agentes inteligentes. Grande parte dessas tecnologias se baseia no princípio de que o usuário sabe da existência da informação e está a sua procura. Este trabalho propõe um conceito para a construção de sistemas que, ao invés de apenas disponibilizar mecanismos para a busca, procura filtrar as informações e apresentá-las em meio aos sistemas corporativos empregados pelo usuário nas suas tarefas rotineiras. Isto significa uma informação contextualizada, isto é, apresentada conforme a situação enfrentada pelo usuário e dentro da qual faz sentido e adiciona valor às decisões. O conceito proposto emprega conhecimentos sobre gestão de projetos e modelagem de empresa, de forma a proporcionar que as informações relevantes sejam oferecidas no ambiente onde o usuário interage com outros membros da equipe de projeto. Foram desenvolvidos, além do conceito, uma especificação detalhada e um protótipo da ferramenta. Os resultados demonstram que o conceito é viável e pode ser utilizado em sistemas de apoio à gestão do conhecimento. Encerra-se o trabalho apresentando as propostas de melhoria para o conceito e solução desenvolvidos. / There exist many tools able to support the knowledge management process in organizations. Due to a large quantity of information registered in these tools, they need to be efficient in the recovery of information. In this sense there exist several techniques, such as sophisticated search engines, classification and intelligent agents. These ways are by far important to the information recovery but, the user knows that exist an information and need to search. The present dissertation proposes a concept of a system which, instead of providing a form of the user to search the information, tries to find a form to present it together the functionalities the user employs when he/she performs his/her job. It means contextual information, which is presented according to the situation the user faces and which such information makes sense and adds value to the decisions. For the development of this system, concepts on project management and enterprise modeling are used. The results show that the concept is viable and can be utilized supporting systems to knowledge management. Finally the dissertation present the proposals of improvement for the concept and the solution developed.

<div>This dissertation includes two studies. The first study investigated longitudinal associations between the home and classroom environments at age 3 and academic and social outcomes at age 9 as well as the mediating role of attention regulation and language in these associations. Study 2 examined the continuity and change in the level of the quality of the home environment across ages 3 to 5 and its association with school readiness outcomes at age 5. Data for both studies came from four waves (baseline, age 3, 5 and 9) from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, which includes 4898 children (52.4% male) and primary caregivers. Twenty one percent of the mothers for the total sample were White, 47% were Black, 27% were Hispanic, and 4% identified as other. Sixty five percent of mothers had an education level of high school or less, 24% completed some college, 11% had a college degree or higher. Results for study 1 indicated that better quality home and classroom environments at age 3 were related to stronger language skills at age 5, and the quality of the classroom environment was significantly related to better attention regulation at age 5. Further, mediation analyses indicated that children’s language skills at age 5 mediated the associations between both early contexts and later academic skills, and attention regulation at age 5 mediated associations between the classroom environment and later academic skills. Results for study 2 indicated that there was not stability in the quality of the home environment between the ages of 3 to 5. In addition, higher quality home environments at age 3 and change in the quality of the home environment predicted greater gains in children’s attention regulation, language, and social emotional competence. Taken together, findings from these studies inform our understanding of the importance of early environments for children’s school readiness and later skills and have potential implications for future research, policy, and interventions designed to promote healthy development in early and middle childhood. <br></div>