Relationships have become more essential today considering that the business environment consists of many actors competing over the same customers. Relationships imply great advantages, for both the companies and the customers, and involve knowledge exchange. This implies that the companies are able to understand and tailor their offering to suit the specific needs of the customers. To understand how the customers perceive a company’s offering it might be useful to assess the dimensions regarding service quality. A company needs to be aware of what they are promising in order to achieve this. The purpose of this thesis is to identify essential aspects that affect the customer satisfaction in the relationship between a wholesale company and a specialized retailer. In order to fulfill our purpose a case study was conducted of the wholesale company Dogman. To be able to understand Dogman’s relationships with their retailers, five service quality determinants were used. Our research indicates that four aspects; information, knowledge, salespeople and responsiveness, are essential for customer satisfaction and long-lasting relationships.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), which has emerged as a global trend, has gained increased focus in the everyday media and among practitioners on the political agenda. CSR has also risen as an important research topic in the field of organization. This study investigates European multinational corporations’ tendencies to adapt CSR policies and practices, or more specifically corporate community involvement, to different national cultures. The paper explores if/how and why companies with subsidiaries in different countries differentiate CSR policies. Theories of culture are used to analyze the basis and/or validity of such adaptation. The units of analysis in this research paper are two European multinational corporations, namely, the Husqvarna Group and Nestlé S.A.

Regarding presidential responsiveness and leadership, this study addresses two questions: Does the president respond to the public? Does the president lead the public? Unlike prior research, this study tries to answer these questions by focusing on the news media intervening in the relationship between the president and the public. Rather than positing a direct relationship between them, this study points out that information flows between the president and the public through the news media, which affect the president and the public. The public receives daily political information including presidential messages from the news media. Also, presidents recognize public sentiments from news stories. Accordingly, this study examines the potentially multidirectional relationships between the three actors from 1958 to 2004 in the United States. This study estimates the reciprocal relationships between the three actors by using Vector Autoregression (VAR) and Moving Average Response (MAR) simulations. Analyzing the three actors' issue stances, this study reveals that the news media significantly influence the public and the president. However, the direct relationship between the president and the public is negligible. Furthermore, the empirical findings demonstrate that presidential responsiveness is more likely to be observed when the news media report news stories consonant with past public opinion changes.

MNCs face challenges in developing complex strategic and organizational capabilities to meet their global efficiency and local responsiveness needs. Effective competitive strategy involves different management control over its product, functional and geographic diversity, language and culture. There are many options available for MNCs to use to develop models for business operations in different countries. The planning and executing these competitive strategies have significant impact to MNCs and they must be sustainable and successful. Human resources (HR) in MNCs have been playing an increasingly important role to improve organizational capabilities. Organization structure, responsibility, the practices, functions and professionals in the Human Resource management are key factors in creating the organizational capabilities. Meeting the current challenges and laying groundwork for the future calls for the redesign of roles and new competencies among HR professionals. With the aligning of the skills of HR professionals with the changing HR visions, strategies, structures, systems, and processes, the transformation of HR functions will be of value to their organization. Emerging trends in the strategic partner development of HRM is discussed.

Advances in communication and information technologies, as well as recent developments in computer technology, material research and sensor networks instigate the studies on active and dynamic environments, which call for the participation of the human and the machine in the definition of responsiveness in architecture. The thesis aims to provide for an ontological inquiry on responsiveness and responsive environments by undertaking an overview of the extensive interest in the responsive experience in architecture. It scrutinizes the field of responsive environments with a particular focus on the machinic approaches that (re)problematize the human-machine interaction. For this purpose, the thesis relates the concept of responsiveness with the machinism debate and considers the associations between the body, the human-machine interaction and the condition of embodiment in responsive environments. The machinism debate is discussed in reference to responsiveness and assesses the issue of embodiment and human-machine interaction in responsive environments. By reflecting on the human-machine interaction, the re-conceptualization of the issue of embodiment is rendered in reference to the body, the definition of which arises from the relations between the body, the environment and the machine, continuously updated during their interaction. The thesis identifies this altered concept of the body as a significant stimulation for new modes of human-machine interaction as it enables the embodiment of relations in relation to the body and initiates the re-conceptualization of both embodiment and human-machine interaction. In this respect, the thesis presents an assessment of the nature of human-machine interaction and its re-problematization in responsive environments, where the challenged conditions of body and embodiment are discussed in reference to debates in the philosophy of mind on different interpretations of the mind-body relationship. Referring to particular examples from different periods and contexts, the consequences of embracing machinic approaches in the definition of responsive environments are considered, where the dissolution of dichotomies between human and machine, subject and object, human and non-human, and mind and body are questioned in line with these transformations.

Title of Thesis¡GService Quality and Customer Satisfaction of ADSL Broadband Network¡GA Case Study of Chunghwa Telecom Total Pages¡G108 Name of Institute¡GGraduate Institute of Information Management National Sun Yat-Sen University Graduate date¡GJune,2002 Advisor¡GChin-fu Ho Name of Student¡GWen-Jong Leu Abstract The open telecom market causes the telecom business to be competitive and obvious and each telecom company invests an amount of cost to gain more customers. As a result of the increase in consumer consensus, most telecom companies are dedicated to create a variety of newer, faster and more stable telecom products and consistently lower the prices. Besides, in order to sustain loyal customers and attract new customers, providing high-quality service becomes the most important strategy. Even though Chunghwa Telecom today has taken a great part in ADSL market, it should think much of customers and make an effort to provide them with good ADSL broadband network products¡Bservice quality and satisfactory service to defend and enlarge the market. This thesis discusses ADSL broadband network, service quality, customer satisfaction and the development of Chunghwa Telecom. The structure of this study is constructed based on the concept to SERVQIAL submitted by three scholars like Parasuraman(PZB) and the research on the users of Chunghwa Telecom ADSL in Kaohsiung area with the analytic tool of SPSS software.The purpose of this study is to discuss the difference between customers expectations and recognition and examine the relevance between service quality factor and customer satisfaction. The Conclusion of This Study: 1. Customers' expectations to ADSL are not compatible with their recognitions because ADSL service is not as good as what they expect. Customers also expressed that the performance of Chunghwa Telecom didn't reach their expectations. 2. The relationships between customers perceived degree of ADSL overall service quality, ADSL service quality factor perceived degree, and overall satisfaction are positively relevant. In other words, customers have more perceived degree of ADSL overall service quality or five factors perceived degree of ADSL service quality, including "Tangibility," "Reliability," "Responsiveness," "Assurance," and "Empathy," then customers are more satisfied with the ADSL overall satisfaction. 3. Based on the variable of population statistics on customers, different ages distinctively have diverse perceived degree of ADSL overall service quality. Furthermore, this result is reflected on the relationship between the ages and ADSL service quality five factors perceived degree. Customers at the age of under 20 and from 20 till 40 have much more different perceived degree of ADSL overall service quality and five factors. 4. Based on the variable of population statistics on customers, only sex difference causes different overall satisfaction with ADSL service. Male customers are more satisfied with the service than female ones. Therefore, telecom companies like Chunghwa Telecom should improve service quality, especially to female customers. Besides, customers with different sexes have different perceived degree of one factor on ADSL service quality, "Responsiveness," but the other four factors have no obvious difference.

The firm In this research is a trading company that has been exploiting and marketing hi-tech materials and equipments since it was founded in 1968. From 1980, the firm has been working on the globalization arrangement and the requirement to expand the company's operation scope. The overseas subsidiaries were established in south-eastern Asia, Hong Kong, and China. In today's growing complexity of global networks of supply chains and hypercompetitive business environments, firms are confronted with the need to manage supply chain activities across functions and between firms. Yet the overseas subsidiaries might not certainly get enough resources and support from their headquarter to conquer the challenges, even though they usually face tough competition and greater customer scale especially in China. The profit center system is the major reason that obstructs the cooperation between the headquarter and the overseas subsidiaries. Some employees of the headquarter just care their own business region, instead of assisting overseas subsidiaries to grow up together, and developing the strategies of the whole business group for the future. The findings show that a firm¡¦s cross-functional orientation (CFO) has positive effect on supply chain management (SCM) performance with empirical evidence. The conclusions are as below¡G 1. The cross-functional orientation (CFO) has remarkably positive effect on customer satisfaction. And the stronger factors that encourage CFO to enhance customer satisfaction are operation linkage and technology integration. 2. The cross-functional orientation (CFO) affects remarkably and positively on supply chain management (SCM) responsiveness. And operation linkage, participative management, and technology integration are stronger factors that encourage CFO to enhance supply chain responsiveness. 3. The supply chain management (SCM) responsiveness has remarkably positive effect on customer satisfaction. 4. The customer satisfaction of the headquarter and overseas subsidiaries influences each other.

This research is focus on the influence of cross-functional orientation on semiconductors¡¦ supply chain performance. In today¡¦s growing complexity of global network, more and more merge and acquisitions are happening in all kinds of industries. Semiconductors Industry is selected because of it¡¦s large investment on capacity expansion. Today the manufacturing service is getting mature, all IDM companies tend to asset-light policies to focus on their core business only. Intra-organization and inter-organizations cooperation is becoming important. This study is to find out whether the cross-functional activities can bring customer satisfaction and supply chain responsiveness through empirical research. The findings show that the supply chain¡¦s cross-functional orientation has some positive effect on supply chain performance with empirical evidence. The conclusions are: 1. The cross-functional orientation has some positive effect on customer satisfaction on its construct of ¡§Participative Management Model¡¨ and ¡§Technology Integration¡¨. 2. The cross-functional orientation has some positive effect on supply chain responsiveness on its construct of ¡§Participative Management Model¡¨, ¡§Information Exchange¡¨ and ¡§Technology Integration¡¨. 3. Customer Satisfaction and Supply Chain Responsiveness has remarkably positive effect to each other.

Auxin can induce adventitious rooting. Synthetic auxin, indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), effectively promoted the rooting in Cinnamomum kanehirae. In Cinnamomum kanehirae, there are high (H) and low (L) rooting cultivar. The peroxidase (POX) activity significantly decreased in the IBA-treated tissues as compared with the control. The inhibition on POX activity may lead to the redifferentiation processes induced by IBA. In this investigation, we cloned POX cDNA from the young roots. Degenerate primers were designed from the conservative regions of other published POXs to amplify the expectant DNA fragment. We found that the H and L line have similar genes (>99%). The Full-length cDNA of the POX genes were cloned by the method of 5'and 3' Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (RACE). The deduced amino acid were compared with the previously reported POX and showed between 40% and 70% identity with other plant POXs. Further studies on the promoter elements of POX in High-rooting cultivar and Low-rooting line show that some elements are related to auxin response, lignification, pathogen invasion and stress response. The regulatory elements of the POX gene in High-rooting line contain sugar repression responsiveness (SRS) elements that might repress the expression of POX gene, causing the lower POX activity.

The U.S Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration continue to face common challenges in the development and acquisition of their space systems. In particular, space programs repeatedly experience significant schedule slippages, and spacecraft are often delivered on-orbit several months, sometimes years, after the initially planned delivery date. The repeated pattern of these schedule slippages suggests deep-seated flaws in managing spacecraft delivery and schedule risk, and an inadequate understanding of the drivers of schedule slippages. Furthermore, due to their long development time and physical inaccessibility after launch, space systems are exposed to a particular and acute risk of obsolescence, resulting in loss of value or competitive advantage over time. The perception of this particular risk has driven some government agencies to promote design choices that may ultimately be contributing to these schedule slippages, and jeopardizing what is increasingly recognized as critical, namely space responsiveness. The overall research objective of this work is twofold: (1) to identify and develop a thorough understanding of the fundamental causes of the risk of schedule slippage and obsolescence of space systems; and in so doing, (2) to guide spacecraft design choices that would result in better control of spacecraft delivery schedule and mitigate the impact of these "temporal risks" (schedule and obsolescence risks). To lay the groundwork for this thesis, first, the levers of responsiveness, or means to influence schedule slippage and impact space responsiveness are identified and analyzed, including design, organizational, and launch levers. Second, a multidisciplinary review of obsolescence is conducted, and main drivers of system obsolescence are identified. This thesis then adapts the concept of a technology portfolio from the macro- or company level to the micro-level of a single complex engineering system, and it analyzes a space system as a portfolio of technologies and instruments, each technology with its distinct stochastic maturation path and exposure to obsolescence. The selection of the spacecraft portfolio is captured by parameters such as the number of instruments, the initial technology maturity of each technology/instrument, the resulting heterogeneity of the technology maturity of the whole system, and the spacecraft design lifetime. Building on the abstraction of a spacecraft as a portfolio of technologies, this thesis then develops a stochastic framework that provides a powerful capability to simultaneously explore the impact of design decisions on spacecraft schedule, on-orbit obsolescence, and cumulative utility delivered by the spacecraft. Specifically, this thesis shows how the choice of the portfolio size and the instruments Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) impact the Mean-Time-To-Delivery (MTTD) of the spacecraft and mitigate (or exacerbate) schedule risk. This work also demonstrates that specific combinations/choices of the spacecraft design lifetime and the TRLs can reduce the risk of on-orbit obsolescence. This thesis then advocates for a paradigm shift towards a calendar-based design mindset, in which the delivery time of the spacecraft is accounted for, as opposed to the traditional clock-based design mindset. The calendar-based paradigm is shown to lead to different design choices, which are more likely to prevent schedule slippage and/or enhance responsiveness and ultimately result in a larger cumulative utility delivered. Finally, missions scenarios are presented to illustrate how the framework and analyses here proposed can help identify system design choices that satisfy various mission objectives and constraints (temporal as well as utility-based).