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In this study, the underlying constructs affecting the perceived performance of mobile devices at work in grocery stores is examined. Furthermore, those constructs are combined in order to create a theoretical framework that aims to explain new relationships and draw conclusions on how organizational position plays a role in how certain constructs affect the perceived performance of mobile devices in the workplace. At first, three constructs were examined as independent variables, Job relevance, being defined as person’s perception of the level of applicability of a certain system to the individual’s job (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000, p.191), in this case, the system was mobile devices. The second construct included in the framework was self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a construct that encompasses people’s judgements of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to accomplish designated types of performance (Bandura, cited in Jeong, Lee, Nagesvaran, 2016, p.41). Once again, this was linked with the use of mobile devices. The third construct was Performance expectancy, defined as the degree to which an individual believes using a technology system will help him or her to attain gains in job performance (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, G.B., & Davis, F.D. 2003).   At first, the dependent variable was a by the authors contextualized construct from the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1985) called Perceived performance of technology which is defined as the individual’s expectations of the performance of the technology when used at the workplace. This construct was later combined with the third independent variable Performance expectancy, as they after analysis and comparation were deemed to measure the same thing.   The new combined variable became the dependent variable of the study and was named combined perceived performance which aimed to explain the degree of belief of a worker that the technology used would perform in his or her work.   The relationships that were found included a negative one between self-efficacy and combined perceived performance. A paradoxical result since the theory suggests the opposite (Jeong et al. 2016). A more expected positive relationship was found between job relevance and combined perceived performance. Later on, organizational position was also included as a moderator that categorized the respondents into two groups, employees and managers. The setting this study examined was that of a grocery store, since the roles of employee and manager are distinctive and easy to categorize. According to the results from multiple regression analysis, being a manager had a positive effect on combined perceived performance, both for self-efficacy and job relevance. This relationship was however not significant, and could therefore not be used to make any conclusions whether or not organizational position acted as a moderating factor neither between self-efficacy and combined perceived performance nor between job relevance and combined perceived performance.   While the sample size was not large enough to make conclusions about the whole population of grocery store workers, two statistically significant relationships were found, one between self-efficacy and combined perceived performance and one with job relevance and combined perceived performance. Additionally, a new framework was created based on previous theoretical models which can contribute to future studies that aim to examine the role of organizational position and perceived performance of mobile devices.

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Petroleum-producing companies in Nigeria were forced to increase spending on Nigerian-sourced materials and services from $8 billion to $13 billion since 2010, due to the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act. The act was enacted in 2010 to support local firms and improve the companies' performance. However, there is sparse research on how the act affected the companies' performance. This study was an examination of the impact of the act on the companies' performance. Bandura's social cognitive theory was the theoretical framework. The research questions of this descriptive correlational study were used to examine the act's effect on employee and organizational performance. The independent variable was employees' perception of the level of implementation of the act. The dependent variables were employees' perceived task and perceived organizational business performance. Collection of interval level survey data from 372 full-time employees of the 5 major petroleum-producing companies in Nigeria was possible by anchoring only the ends of the Likert scale with words. The Pearson product-moment correlation results indicated that the independent variable correlated positively with each dependent variable. The exploratory factor analysis results indicated that the act had a positive effect on the employees' internal competence factor and the organizations' operational performance factor. The results are significant for Nigerian government officials and managers of the companies in understanding the impact of the act on performance. The outcomes have potential implications for positive social change through improved implementation strategies to achieve the objectives of the act. Researchers could focus on examining the impact of the act on employees' internal competence factor in future studies.

In recent years the service-oriented design paradigm has enabled applications to be built by incorporating third party services. With the increasing popularity of this new paradigm, many companies and organizations have started to adopt this technology, which has resulted in an increase of the number and variety of third party providers. With the vast improvement of global networking infrastructure, a large number of providers offer their services for worldwide clients. As a result, clients are often presented with a number of providers that offer services with the same or similar functionalities, but differ in terms of non-functional attributes (or Quality of Service – QoS), such as performance. In this environment, the role of provider recommendation has become more important - in assisting clients in choosing the provider that meets their QoS requirement. / In this thesis we focus on provider recommendation based on one of the most important QoS attributes – performance. Specifically, we investigate client-perceived performance, which is the application-level performance measured at the client-side every time the client invokes the service. This performance metric has the advantage of accurately representing client experience, compared to the widely used server-side metrics in the current frameworks (e.g. Service Level Agreement or SLA in Web Services context). As a result, provider recommendation based on this metric will be favourable from the client’s point of view. / In this thesis we address two key research challenges related to provider recommendation based on client-perceived performance - performance assessment and performance prediction. We begin by identifying heterogeneity factors that affect client-perceived performance among clients in a global Internet environment. We then perform extensive real-world experiments to evaluate the significance of each factor to the client-perceived performance. / From our finding on heterogeneity factors, we then develop a performance estimation technique to address performance assessment for cases where direct measurements are unavailable. This technique is based on the generalization concept, i.e. estimating performance based on the measurement gathered by similar clients. A two-stage grouping scheme based on the heterogeneity factors we identified earlier is proposed to address the problem of determining client similarity. We then develop an estimation algorithm and validate it using synthetic data, as well as real world datasets. / With regard to performance prediction, we focus on the medium-term prediction aspect to address the needs of the emerging technology requirements: distinguishing providers based on medium-term (e.g. one to seven days) performance. Such applications are found when the providers require subscription from their clients to access the service. Another situation where the medium-term prediction is important is in temporal-aware selection: the providers need to be differentiated, based on the expected performance of a particular time interval (e.g. during business hours). We investigate the applicability of classical time series prediction methods: ARIMA and exponential smoothing, as well as their seasonal counterparts – seasonal ARIMA and Holt-Winters. Our results show that these existing models lack the ability to capture the important characteristics of client-perceived performance, thus producing poor medium-term prediction. We then develop a medium-term prediction method that is specifically designed to account for the key characteristics of a client-perceived performance series, and to show that our prediction methods produce higher accuracy for medium-term prediction compared to the existing methods. / In order to demonstrate the applicability of our solution in practice, we developed a provider recommendation framework based on client-perceived performance (named PROPPER), which utilizes our findings on performance assessment and prediction. We formulated the recommendation algorithm and evaluated it through a mirror selection case study. It is shown that our framework produces better outcomes in most cases, compared to country-based or geographic distance-based selection schemes, which are the current approach of mirror selection nowadays.

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Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:41:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 29 / Nenhuma / A co-criação de valor é pouco explorada no ensino superior e na área de serviços de um modo geral. Com um segmento que está em constante crescimento, como é o caso do ensino superior privado, desenvolver estudos que contemplem essa teoria pode ser estratégico. A co-criação de valor sinaliza que, em determinados segmentos, a participação do cliente é imprescindível para a verdadeira criação de valor, mesmo que a satisfação durante o processo possa ser questionada. Nesse sentido, pode-se dizer que a participação do aluno na relação ensino e aprendizagem é fundamental para a criação de valor. Alunos que interagem no processo da sua aprendizagem podem ter um aumento na sua satisfação, um melhor desempenho e se tornarem leal à universidade em que estudam. Esses aspectos contribuem para a retenção do aluno que é um dos principais objetivos das instituições de ensino superior privado que estão inseridas em um mercado de acentuada concorrência. Com o objetivo de explorar esse contexto, este estudo avalia os efeitos d

Web browsing posses a major share among the activities on the Internet. Heavy usage of web browsing makes the Web Quality of Experience (QoE) one of the critical factor in deciding the overall success of network services. Amongst others, Web QoE can be effected by the delays in network that can result in higher application download times. In this thesis work, an effort has been made to map applications level download times to Quality of Experience. A subjective analysis on how the user takes into account the domain of web browsing has been carried out. For this purpose a testbed was developed at Blekinge Institute of Technology on which different users were tested. Specific sequences of delays were introduced on the network which resulted in desired application download times. Regression analysis was performed and a mapping between user QoE and application download times was carried out. Based on the results conclusions were made which are presented in this thesis report. / maxi_aks@hotmail.com Skype: ashfaq84 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ashfaqahmadshinwary

The objective of this thesis is to provide theoretical and empirical insights on the subject of group communication and perceived performance within work teams. The theoretical section provides a definition and outlines the importance of work teams, it references selected psychological aspects and factors. This study details aspects of communication and performance in the context of work teams. It reveals opportunities to increase performance in the subject of learning teams, especially, where communication is its foundation. In addition, this thesis describes and interconnects new knowledge regarding the possibilities of improving performance, whilst exploring the relationship between communication and performance. At the same time, it presents an overview of the approaches and methods of measuring these aspects. The empirical section details the various the relationships of various communication parameters and the perceived performance within teams. The empirical section is devoted to the study of relations of communication parameters and perceived performance in teams. It is a built-in measuring tool for measuring three team constructs: group communication, team-member exchange quality and perceived performance. It provides analysis of psychometric properties, reliability and constructive...