Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1986.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1954. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [328]-341).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1986. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-117).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-235).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:52:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo3204_1.pdf: 2932974 bytes, checksum: ed70cb5e6dddd387ea04292de409a2f3 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / A fim de melhorar a sua competitividade no mercado global, as organizações de software têm se preocupado cada vez mais com a questão de produtividade na execução de projetos. No entanto, para melhorar a produtividade, as organizações de software devem definir uma forma de medí-la. O problema é que a medição da produtividade apesar de parecer ser simples, sua aplicação concreta se mostra muito complexa. Muitos são os trabalhos de pesquisa sobre o tema, no entanto não há convergência sobre a métrica mais adequada de produtividade para as organizações de software. Baseado nos conceitos fundamentais relacionados à processos de produção, áreas de conhecimento social, evidências coletadas em organizações de software reais e análise do estado da arte em medição de produtividade em software, concluimos que a métrica mais adequada para medir a produtividade é específica para cada contexto organizacional, pois envolve estratégia, cultura organizacional, modus operandi, além de interesse e conhecimento daqueles diretamente envolvidos na medição e avaliação da produtividade. Isto explica porque não existe e nem há a possibilidade de existência de uma métrica de produtividade para projetos de software universalmente aceita. Baseado nestas descobertas, sugerimos a adoção de uma abordagem de medir produtividade baseada em valor. A hipótese central que orienta nossa trabalho de pesquisa é que uma abordagem baseada em valor pra medir a produtividade para medir a produtividade de projetos de software é mais adequada que as medições tradicionais. Uma das consequências da validade desta hipótese é que cada organização deve definir seu próprio modelo para a medição da produtividade. Com o objetivo de ajudar as organizações a definir e implementar um modelo próprio de medição de produtividade, um processo sistemático, com uma seqüência bem definida de etapas, entradas, saídas e diretrizes foi proposto. Ele envolve as atividades relacionadas com a definição, implementação e aperfeiçoamento do modelo de medição de produtividade. Além disso, foi baseado em uma extensa revisão dos principais desenvolvimentos relacionados com a medição da produtividade, além de ser influenciado por modelos de referência em engenharia de software, como IDEAL, CMMI, PSM e ISO/IEC 15939. O resultado da aplicação deste processo em uma organização de software produz um modelo de avaliação da produtividade, que considera a idéia de valor com base na visão dos principais stakeholders da organização. Finalmente, o conceito de medição de produtividade baseado em valor é adotado e avaliado em um estudo de caso, envolvendo em uma organização real de desenvolvimento de projetos de software. Em particular, o processo proposto para definição de modelos de medição de produtividade foi adotado e os benefícios, problemas e desafios foram avaliados com o objetivo de avaliar a eficácia do processo em atendar a o seu propósito. As análises do estudo de caso confirmaram que este tipo de abordagem foi de fato mais adequada para a organização estudada e que potencialmente pode ser aplicado a outras organizações de software

Profiter des avantages d’un monde de plus en plus mondialisé et plus accessible n’est pas un résultat évident pour tous les acteurs économiques. Les disparités entre les régions, les entreprises et les professions se sont creusées, entraînant des inégalités croissantes entre les personnes. Cette thèse examine comment les entreprises, qui sont l'un des canaux de la mondialisation qui transmettent leurs impacts entre pays, réagissent, s'adaptent et divergent en termes de performances. L’investigation empirique présentée dans cette thèse a pour objectif de comprendre les futures propositions de politique publique en expliquant comment les entreprises réagissent à la mondialisation et à la concurrence, comment elles choisissent leur main-d’œuvre et comment les politiques et les chocs influent sur leur performance sur le marché étranger. L’objectif est de comprendre, dans quatre chapitres, comment les entreprises réagissent à la présence multinationale ou à la présence d’entreprises très productives et « frontalières 2», et comment les entreprises choisissent leurs employés, en particulier la main-d’œuvre immigrée face à une demande étrangère accrue, et enfin, fournir une évaluation de l’évolution du coût du travail sur les résultats à l’exportation des entreprises.Bien que les résultats agrégés importent, il n’est pas suffisant d’examiner le comportement d’une entreprise moyenne. La répartition des entreprises selon leurs caractéristiques est très asymétrique et le respect de l'hétérogénéité des entreprises peut également permettre une meilleure compréhension de la compétitivité. Les petites entreprises manufacturières ont tendance à souffrir de plus de concurrence et leur productivité est associée à un déclin lorsque les industries manufacturières étrangères s'installent dans la même région. Les grandes et moyennes entreprises ont généralement tendance à accroître leur productivité grâce aux effets de contagion intersectoriels de la présence étrangère, ce qui montre bien que les entreprises plus productives et bien établies sont plus susceptibles de tirer parti des relations possibles avec leurs fournisseurs ou d'un marché plus vaste. Les entreprises plus proches de la frontière technologique sont plus productives. Toutefois, subissant le choc de l’entrée d’une nouvelle entreprise productive, la productivité d’une entreprise moyenne chute, ce qui est conforme à la littérature théorique qui prédit que les entreprises les moins productives quittent le marché et que les ressources sont ensuite réaffectées à des entreprises plus productives. Les entreprises ont également tendance à faire des choix en ce qui concerne leurs effectifs, ce qui leur permettra finalement de mieux performer. En particulier, les entreprises choisissent d'embaucher un employé immigré lorsqu'elles ont la possibilité d'accroître leurs exportations. Cela est dû principalement au fait que les immigrants peuvent fournir des connaissances sur les marchés étrangers qui sont autrement difficiles à obtenir. Enfin, l’augmentation des coûts de main-d’œuvre se traduit par une valeur à l’exportation inférieure aux entreprises, comme le montre l’expérience naturelle d’une politique d’avantages fiscaux sur les heures supplémentaires des entreprises.Dans l’ensemble, les petites entreprises et les enterprises moins productives sont promptes à subir les chocs négatifs des pratiques d’entreprises mondialisées ou sont les moins susceptibles de tirer un bénéfice positif de l’exposition aux réseaux mondiaux. Cependant, les entreprises sont des entités dynamiques et ont la capacité de progresser et de modifier ou d’améliorer leurs pratiques, y compris la composition de leurs effectifs. Le gouvernement contribue à la dynamique des entreprises et les politiques axées sur la compétitivité des entreprises peuvent avoir un impact, en particulier si l'entreprise est de petite taille. / Reaping benefits from increasingly globalized and more accessible world is not an evident outcome for all economic actors. Heterogeneous consequences of globalization have become apparent within countries over past two decades. Disparities have expanded between regions, firms, and occupations, implying growing inequalities among people. This thesis investigates how firms, being one of the channels of globalization transmitting its impacts across countries, react, adjust, and diverge in terms of performance. The empirical investigation of micro-level data on a firm and a worker level aims to provide understanding for future public policy suggestions by giving insights into how firms respond to globalized and competitive environment, how they choose their labor force, and how the policies and shocks influence their performance on the foreign market. The objective is to give some understanding, in four chapters, on how firms react to multinational presence or presence of very productive, “frontier” firms in their vicinity, and how firms choose their employees, especially immigrant workforce when facing higher foreign demand, and lastly, to provide an evaluation of change in labor cost on export performance of the firms. While aggregated outcomes matter, looking at the behavior of an average firm is insufficient. The distribution of the firms by their characteristics is highly skewed, and respecting heterogeneity of firms can also lead to better understanding of competitiveness. Productivity and employment of small firms in services is associated with small, but statistically significant increases when more foreign firms locate in the firm’s vicinity, implying positive knowledge and technological spillovers from foreign presence. However, small manufacturing firms tend to suffer from more competition, and their productivity is associated with a decline when foreign manufacturing locates in the same region. Mainly medium-sized and large firms tend to increase productivity from cross-sector spillovers of foreign presence, which points out to the fact that more productive and established firms are more likely to benefit from possible supplier relationships or larger market. The firms closer to the technological frontier are more productive. However, experiencing a shock of entry of a new productive firm, the productivity drops for an average firm, which is in line with theoretical literature that predicts that the least productive firms leave the market and resources are then reallocated towards more productive firms. Firms also tend to make choices with respect to their workforce that will ultimately make them perform better. In particular, firms choose to hire an immigrant employee when facing a possibility to increase their exports. Both skilled and unskilled immigrants are hired, while firms do not deviate from their standard trends of hiring low-skilled native employees, and only slightly increase their population of skilled native employees. This happens mainly because immigrants can supply knowledge about foreign markets that is otherwise difficult to obtain. Lastly, increasing labor costs translates into lower export value of firms as shown using a natural policy experiment of fiscal advantages on overtime hours of firms. Yet, an opposite shock of lowering the labor cost has no significant impact on exports of large firms, while small firms are sensitive to the shock and export more.All in all, small and less productive firms are prompt to experience negative shocks from practices of globalized firms or are the least likely to benefit positively from exposure to global networks. However, firms are dynamic entities and have capacity to progress and change or improve their practices, including workforce composition. The government plays role in helping the dynamics of firms, and the policies focused on competitiveness of firms can have impact especially if the firm is of small size.

An average slope index and a number of agricultural productivity indices were determined for a sample of 100 districts in Costa Rica. To establish the relationship between these variables, correlation coefficients were calculated between the average slope index, on the one hand and, on the other, total gross agricultural income, total net agricultural income and also income and yields for individual crops. These relationships were calculated for the meseta central (the central, highly-populated area) and for areas outside of the meseta central and for the total sample taken from all of Costa Rica. Cases in which gross agricultural incomes were much lower than predicted by the study were investigated further to identify other factors which may have influenced the results. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Yes / Labour productivity is a key concept for understanding the way modern economies use resources and features prominently in ecological economics. Ecological economists have questioned the desirability of labour productivity growth on both environmental and social grounds. In this paper we aim to contribute to ongoing debates by focusing on the link between labour productivity and worker wellbeing. First, we review the evidence for the happy-productive worker thesis, which suggests labour productivity could be improved by increasing worker wellbeing. Second, we review the evidence on ways that productivity growth may undermine worker wellbeing. We find there is experimental evidence demonstrating a causal effect of worker wellbeing on productivity, but that the relationship can also sometimes involve resource-intensive mediators. Taken together with the evidence of a negative impact on worker wellbeing from productivity growth, we conclude that a relentless pursuit of productivity growth is potentially counterproductive, not only in terms of worker wellbeing, but even in terms of long-term productivity. / UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in particular through grant no: ES/M010163/1 which supports the Centre for the Under-standing of Sustainable Prosperity and ES/S015124/1 which supported the project “Powering Productivity”.