Teams have become increasingly popular in organizations (Devine, Clayton, Philips, Dunford, & Melner, 1999), and the issue of process loss in teams presents a persistent challenge to teamwork and team effectiveness (Karau & Williams, 1993). The present study addresses a basic issue in process loss; namely, team member motivation to contribute personal resources toward individual and team-level goals. This study identified three sources of motivation in teams: Task demands, team attributes, and member traits. Individual motivation increased with task difficulty, increased as deadlines approached, and declined overall with time on task. Team efficacy was positively associated with episodic increases in motivation over time, while cohesion was unrelated to motivation. Trait motivation was positively related, and psychological collectivism negatively related to individual motivation. This relationship persisted over the lifespan of the team. The results of this study have implications for understanding the unique and joint role of individual and contextual influences on team member motivation over time and experience.

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This thesis considers the problem of cross layer scheduling and radio resource allocation of multiple users in the downlink of time-slotted and frequency-slotted cellular data networks. For these networks, opportunistic scheduling algorithms improve system performance by exploiting time variations of the radio channel. Within the broader framework of opportunistic scheduling, this thesis solves three distinct problems and proposes efficient and scalable solutions for them. First, we present novel optimal and approximate opportunistic scheduling algorithms that combine channel fluctuation and user mobility information in their decision rules. The algorithms propose the use of dynamic fairness constraints. These fairness constraints adapt according to the user mobility. The optimal algorithm is an off-line algorithm that precomputes constraint values according to a known mobility model. The approximate algorithm is an on-line algorithm that relies on the future prediction of the user mobility locations in time. We show that the use of mobility information increases channel capacity. We also provide analytical bounds on the performance of the approximate algorithm. Second, this thesis presents a new opportunistic scheduling solution that maximizes the aggregate user performance subject to certain minimum and maximum performance constraints. By constraining the performance experienced by individual users, who share a common radio downlink, to some upper bounds, it is possible to provide the system operator with a better control of radio resource allocations and service differentiation among different classes of users. The proposed solution offers better performance than existing solution under practical channel conditions. Finally, we present a dynamic subcarrier allocation solution for fractional frequency reuse in multicell orthogonal frequency division multiple access systems. We formulate the subcarrier allocation as an equivalent set partitioning problem and then propose an efficient hierarchical solution which first partitions subcarriers into groups and next schedules subcarriers opportunistically to users. Simulation results for three solutions illustrate the usefulness of the proposed schemes.

Brazil is a high middle income country where health inequities persist across two systems of health care financing and delivery. The publicly financed system (SUS) is one of the world’s largest health organizations, which is charged with the constitutional mandate to provide comprehensive health care coverage to over 190 million citizens. National Health Conferences (CNS), the core forum for societal participation in health policy making for the SUS, occur every four years. Yet, managers and councillors struggle to decide on how to allocate resources to meet competing populational health needs and demands, and to comply with the directives of the SUS. The purpose of my research is to describe the three most recent CNS, based on a scoping literature review, to evaluate the ethical account of these decision making processes, and to provide recommendations for improving priority setting for health resource allocation for the SUS according to the ethical analysis.

Abstract This research explores the problems of resource allocation during the process of internationalization by small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. The literature largely portrays a positive view of internationalization with respect to increased firm performance or growth. However, particularly for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises(SMEs), growth through internationalization increases uncertainty and may jeopardize firm performance and even threaten survival of the firm. The literature indicates that some SMEs fail during the process of expanding to foreign markets (Brewer 1981;Ramaswamy 1992; Mudambi and Zahra 2007). Many of these failures are due, in part,to the challenges of allocating limited resources during and after internationalization(Chen and Hsu 2009). Given the challenge of internationalizing, this research examines the influence of resource allocation on firm performance with the aim of providing recommendations on how entrepreneurs can make better resource allocation decisions that in turn may lead to improved performance. To address the problem of allocation of limited resources during and after internationalization, theoretical propositions are developed based on modern portfolio-theory (Markowitz 1952; 1959; 1991) that explains the risk-return tradeoffs with regards to resource allocation to domestic, U.S., and foreign markets and possible effects on firm performance. This research applies a multiple case-study approach based on critical realism, a qualitative philosophical research paradigm. Data collection is through in-depth interviews with executives of twenty-two small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms located in Canada. Within-case and cross-case analyses findings are used to confirm or modify the propositions, resulting in a descriptive model that best explains resource allocation decisions and the effects on performance. The findings indicate that resource allocations to domestic, U.S., and foreign markets have different contributions to overall firm performance. However, the way in which resource allocation trade-offs are decided between these markets is largely dependent on the firms or owners/manager’s disposition to risks and returns. Findings from this research also show that decisions by firm managers to allocate resources to a particular market depend on their assessment or anticipation of risks and the potential mitigation strategies that are required in order to maximize returns. This, consequently, determines the firm’s performance during the process of internationalization. This research contributes to the literature in international entrepreneurship, management of technology, and decision analysis. While there is an extensive body of literature that focuses on the output of internationalization (i.e., where, when, and how firms export their products), few studies have specifically examined the inputs that make this happen (one of these being the allocation of resources). Rugman et al. (2008) examines the resource allocation decision between domestic and foreign markets for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and the impact on firm performance. No known study has specifically explored resource allocation decisions between domestic, U.S., and foreign markets for SMEs and the influence on firm performance. This research fills the identified gap by making a significant theoretical contribution to this field by adopting portfolio theory to the challenge of allocating resources between domestic and foreign markets.

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Long Term Evolution (LTE) constitutes a significant milestone in the evolution of 3G systems towards fourth generation (4G) technologies. The performance targets promised by LTE makes it an ideal solution to accommodate the ever increasing demand for wireless broadband. LTE's promised performance targets were made possible due to improvements such as a simplified system access architecture and a fully IP-based platform. LTE has also great enhancements in its enabling radio technologies by introducing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and advanced antenna technologies. In addition, LTE capabilities are further improved with enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) support for multiple data services, such as voice and other multimedia applications. LTE packet scheduling plays an essential role as part of LTE's Radio Resource Management (RRM) to enhance the system's data rate and to support the diverse QoS requirements of mobile services. LTE packet scheduler should intelligently allocate radio resources to mobile User Equipments (UEs) such that the LTE network adheres to its performance requirements. In our work, we perform a performance evaluation of multiple LTE scheduling algorithms proposed for LTE uplink transmission. The evaluation takes place in single and mixed traffic scenarios to exploit the strengths and weaknesses of proposed algorithms. Simulation results illustrated the importance of a scheduler's awareness of uplink channel conditions and QoS requirements in the presence of single and multiple traffic scenarios. Accordingly, we provide recommendations for future scheduling algorithm proposals, and ways to enhance the existing schedulers. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2011-05-07 12:43:54.983

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Infrastructure wireless mesh networks (IWMNs) provide inexpensive deployment, flexible extension of wireless infrastructure, and easy access to the Internet. With multiple radios at each node, a capacity per node improves by transmitting over these radios simultaneously using orthogonal channels. However, without properly addressing the problem of channel assignment and routing for those nodes that form wireless infrastructures, the resulting network throughput and reliability are unlikely to meet the requirements of those highly demanding, media distribution applications. On a particular channel, poor resource allocation at a given access point/gateway of the underlying IWMN can amplify the problem even further. Motivated by these problems, we develop, based on the theory of network coding, a set of alternative solutions that addresses the above issues. We first introduce a sub-optimal solution to the joint problem of network coding, channel assignment and link scheduling for throughput optimization in the multi-channel multi-radio IWMN. We mathematically formulate the problem as a linear program, taking into account opportunistic overhearing, among other constraints. Based on this formulation, we develop a sub-optimal, auction-based algorithm for network throughput optimization. Simulation results reveal the effectiveness of our algorithm in exploiting multiple radios and channels while coping with fairness issues arising from auctions. The proposed solution also shows promising gains over traditional routing solutions. Our experimental results on an 802.11 testbed further confirm these results. The second part of this thesis then presents three AP/gateway-oriented solutions that address the link-level issues related to radio resource allocation at a particular AP/gateway node of the underlying IWMN, which operates on a given channel serving a set of wireless clients. Since the last-hop wireless link is normally a bottleneck of the IWMN, the key idea underlying all the proposed solutions is to use a version of network coding at the bottlenecked AP/gateway. We use Markov chains and the probability theory to derive several performance measures related to media distribution for both uplink and downlink applications. Via extensive simulations, we show the promising delay and reliability gains of the network-coding based schemes over the traditional schemes without network coding.