Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. Thesis. 1972. M.S . / MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN DEWEY LIBRARY. / Bibliography: leaves 85-87. / M.S .

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 339-352). / by Thad William Allen. / M.S.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-167). / Sustainability has become an important management issue as an increasing number of corporate executives realize their companies are facing a period of disruptive change. Moving away from whether to act or not, most companies are now focusing on how to implement sustainability into their activities. This thesis explores the complexity of adapting current operations to more sustainable practices. The starting hypothesis is that corporate sustainability initiatives share similar dynamics to other innovation initiatives. A theoretical framework building upon the literature on innovation is applied to sustainability. The central focus of the thesis is a case study of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative at Nestle ("SAIN"), a unique group that promotes sustainability throughout the upstream supply chain by applying business methods to the direct sourcing of agricultural raw materials. The challenges the SAIN team faces in implementing its activities are detailed and analyzed, in part by using models from system dynamics. The challenges range from Nestle-specific strategic issues, to the mental models of some of the players in the supply chain, and the perception of sustainability by managers and others in corporate functions. Successful actions that have helped the team overcome barriers to implementation, in particular by facilitating learning within Nestlé, are then analyzed. The thesis concludes with an analysis of related initiatives in the company, and with recommendations linked to the importance of communication, collaboration and the creation of a structure that brings together business thinking with a deep understanding of social, economic and environmental global issues. / by Pascal Marmier. / M.B.A.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-60). / by Victor K. Sosah. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-56). / This thesis uses equities holdings snapshots of mutual funds to study their trading patterns. Using quarter and semi-annual holdings of mutual funds, I am able to extract a main trading component with the application of the asymptotic principle component method. This component demonstrates short term predictability of returns over three months, suggesting overall mutual fund trades contain a liquidity trading component that temporarily pushes up stock prices that reverse over the next few months. I also demonstrates that this particular type of liquidity risk is related to other measures of liquidity risk. Therefore, this trading component can be a useful building block in creating a comprehensive measure of liquidity. / by Ka Yin Kevin Chu. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-71). / by Hock W. Chiang. / S.M.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. Thesis. 1971. Ph.D. / MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN DEWEY LIBRARY. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 203-209. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2011. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-412). / This dissertation comprises a case study and formal simulation model of DTE Energy's Lean Six Sigma continuous-improvement (CI) program from its inception in 1998 through the end of 2009. The case history is based on qualitative fieldwork involving interviews, direct observation, and collection of company documents and records. DTE Energy is one of the top 20 largest electricity and natural gas utilities in the U.S. It adopted CI from its automotive industrial customers in southeast Michigan. During the 12-year period I studied, DTE Energy's CI initiative was stressed by three organizational crises. Typical of other companies' CI initiatives, DTE Energy's success with CI was variable, prompting experiments and revisions to its CI training and methods, to its tactics for garnering managers' attention and support, and to its methods for orchestrating improvement work. Several leaders of the CI initiative were graduates of MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program and were heavily influenced by research on the Toyota Production System (TPS) by Steven Spear (e.g., Spear and Bowen 1999) and Jeffrey Liker (e.g., Liker 2004). About halfway through this history, DTE Energy added Six Sigma tools and practices to its CI initiative, creating a Lean Six Sigma program. I formulated a System Dynamics (SD) simulation model based on this case study. In this dissertation, I elaborate and extend previous work in the SD literature on the implementation dynamics of CI initiatives, especially Sterman and colleagues' (1997) model of the Total Quality Management (TQM) program at Analog Devices. My model represents explicitly the corporate hierarchy, which I divided into three levels: senior executives, middle managers, and front-line employees. I also examined the interactions between front-line employees engaging in their own Lean-style CI activities and Six Sigma Black Belts doing CI projects. Based on my simulation analysis, I find that managers' and Black Belts' support and coaching required by front-line employees is usually chronically inadequate. I also find that Black Belts or industrial engineers, as full-time experts for process redesign and improvement, are crucial to the growth and long-term sustainability of a company's CI initiative. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaves 128-131. / by Walter J. Popper. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-45). / The SME financing problem in China has been widely acknowledged during the recent financial crisis. The SMEs compose 99% of all registered enterprises and employ more than 60% of labors in China. They contributed significantly to the economic vitality, as well as to ensuring stable employment and sustainable development of China. However, the SMEs have been short of external funding because they are considered to be riskier than large companies which maintained closer relationships to the governments and state-own-commercial-banks, which are the main financial source under the current banking system in China. Are the SMEs riskier than the large companies in terms of loan issuance? The thesis explores the issue by discussing the current banking structure in China and explaining the reasons from political, economic, social and technological perspectives. Comparing the financial indicators including ROE (return on equity), ROA (return on assets), NPM (net profit margin), ICR (interest coverage ratio), CR (current ratio) and revenue growth of selected SMEs and large companies before and after they received the commercial loans, I find that SMEs did not necessarily demonstrate worse performance than the large companies. Contrarily, the SMEs could more effectively utilize their loans to realize better business outcomes than the large companies did. To further improve the financing issue of SMEs, the thesis will raise recommendations from the perspectives of the government regulatory bodies and the local commercial banks. / by Michael Jiaming Tian. / S.M.