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In support of ACM's and the IEEE's commitment to professionalism, the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics, a technical co-sponsor of this conference, is presenting a workshop designed to help faculty provide students with tools to better understand and to better resolve their ethical challenges as professionals. This workshop will have a special focus on issues raised by robots, Google Glass, and other increasingly sophisticated devices. The workshop will use both lecture and small group activities to introduce and enhance participants' teaching skills in computer and engineering ethics. Leaders will present materials to be used in a complete professional ethics course, and that can also be integrated as examples and exercises into specific technical courses. The materials will include case studies, suggested course syllabi, and suggestions for creating and grading assignments. The workshop will feature demonstrations of several advanced devices, and how they can be used to teach about ethics, and to attract attention to ethical issues.

The past decade has shown an unprecedented growth in the use of consumer credit facilities, specifically of store cards, in Botswana. Various factors may have attributed to this growth, e.g. the effect of globalization and the consequent introduction of materialistic values in Africa that instigated the desire to increase living standards; the introduction of sophisticated shopping centers and related retail facilities; fierce competition amongst retailers that motivated retailers to extend credit facilities to consumers across the socio economic spectrum. On the one hand retailers profit from high interest rates on credit accounts. On the other hand consumers are attracted to credit facilities through attractive benefits such as flexibility of payment and convenience of use. The quest for lavish consumption that is typical of our times, has increased the need for credit systems, especially those that are easy to obtain, such as store card accounts. Unfortunately the adoption and use of credit facilities may have harmful economic implications to consumers as well as the economy unless proper facilitation prior to the approval of credit accounts is exercised. This research investigated the factors that may encourage the adoption of store cards and describes the effect of store cards on consumer’s buyer behavior as well as their eventual satisfaction with store card facilities after prolonged use. The investigation was fundamentally constructed from primary data. The findings provide first hand insights on the use of store cards. The research was exploratory in nature and was conducted within a quantitative paradigm. Data was gathered with a questionnaire that was completed in interview format or under the supervision of the researcher. The primary data was statistically analyzed. Descriptive analysis was used to give an overview of the demographic data and responses to the main questions of the research. Inferential analysis was used to determine the relationships between store card attributes and the respondents’ satisfaction levels. Financial and convenience attributes of store cards were identified as the most important influences during a decision to adopt a store card. Additional benefits and special incentives are apparently not that important. Similarly marketing influences such as advertisements and persuasive influences of salespeople seemed of lesser importance. Respondents later indicated that they are not fully informed about the additional benefits that are associated with store cards and consequently indicated their dissatisfaction with these attributes. Dissatisfaction with these attributes (although they were apparently of lesser importance) affected the general mean satisfaction score for store cards negatively: the mean score of 18.91 out of a maximum of 30 is not impressive and presents retailers with much room for improvement. These results cannot be generalized due to the limited scope of the research. However, valuable insights can be used to structure a larger research project that involves store cardholders of various retail outlets. The findings as is can also be used by professionals in Consumer Science to educate consumers on credit management and to encourage informed, responsible buyer behaviour through proper budgeting and clear long term goals in terms of income and expenses. The findings may also contribute to existing theory on consumer credit. / Dissertation (MSc (Consumer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Consumer Science / MSc / MSc / unrestricted

This dissertation makes contributions in topics related to mechanism design and learn-ing in game theoretic environments through three essays. The rst essay deals withthe question of mechanism design in the principal-agent model. The main contribu-tion of this essay is in extending the work by Piketty (1993). It prescribes a mechanismin incomplete informational settings where the principal is able to implement rst-best contracts while extracting the entire surplus. Importantly, the mechanism issuch that the desired outcome can be uniquely obtained when agents play the actionthat survives iterative elimination of dominated strategies. Furthermore, given themechanism, the desired outcome is shown to be a truth-revealing Nash equilibriumwhich is also Pareto-ecient. It is shown that the proposed mechanism also has thefeature that none of the agents prefer any of the other possible Nash Equilibria tothe status quo. It thus gives insights into possible mechanisms in nite agent settingsthat could improve upon the traditional second-best results.In the second essay, a model of sophisticated learning is developed where itassumes that a fraction of the population is sophisticated while the rest are adaptive learners. Sophisticated learners in the model try to maximize their cumulative payoin the entire length of the repeated game and are aware of the way adaptive learnerslearn. Sophisticated learning contrasts other models of learning which typically tendto maximize the payo for the next period by extrapolating the history of play.The sophisticated learning model is estimated on data of experiments on repeatedcoordination games where it provides evidence of such learning behavior.The third essay deals with the optimal pricing policy for a rm in an oligopolythat is uncertain about the demand it faces. The demand facing the oligopoly, whichcan be learned through their pricing policy, changes over time in a Markovian fashion.It also deduces the conditions in which learning (experimentation) is not achievableand outlines the dierent learning policies that are possible in other settings. Themodel combines the monopoly learning literature with that of the literature on pric-ing behavior of rms over business cycles. The model has interesting insights onthe pricing behavior over business cycles. It predicts that prices jump as the beliefof a possible future boom rises over a certain threshold. The model also predictscompetition to be quite vigorous following a boom while rms are predicted not toexperiment with their (pricing) policies for many periods following a bust.

This dissertation makes contributions in topics related to mechanism design and learn-ing in game theoretic environments through three essays. The rst essay deals withthe question of mechanism design in the principal-agent model. The main contribu-tion of this essay is in extending the work by Piketty (1993). It prescribes a mechanismin incomplete informational settings where the principal is able to implement rst-best contracts while extracting the entire surplus. Importantly, the mechanism issuch that the desired outcome can be uniquely obtained when agents play the actionthat survives iterative elimination of dominated strategies. Furthermore, given themechanism, the desired outcome is shown to be a truth-revealing Nash equilibriumwhich is also Pareto-ecient. It is shown that the proposed mechanism also has thefeature that none of the agents prefer any of the other possible Nash Equilibria tothe status quo. It thus gives insights into possible mechanisms in nite agent settingsthat could improve upon the traditional second-best results.In the second essay, a model of sophisticated learning is developed where itassumes that a fraction of the population is sophisticated while the rest are adaptive learners. Sophisticated learners in the model try to maximize their cumulative payoin the entire length of the repeated game and are aware of the way adaptive learnerslearn. Sophisticated learning contrasts other models of learning which typically tendto maximize the payo for the next period by extrapolating the history of play.The sophisticated learning model is estimated on data of experiments on repeatedcoordination games where it provides evidence of such learning behavior.The third essay deals with the optimal pricing policy for a rm in an oligopolythat is uncertain about the demand it faces. The demand facing the oligopoly, whichcan be learned through their pricing policy, changes over time in a Markovian fashion.It also deduces the conditions in which learning (experimentation) is not achievableand outlines the dierent learning policies that are possible in other settings. Themodel combines the monopoly learning literature with that of the literature on pric-ing behavior of rms over business cycles. The model has interesting insights onthe pricing behavior over business cycles. It predicts that prices jump as the beliefof a possible future boom rises over a certain threshold. The model also predictscompetition to be quite vigorous following a boom while rms are predicted not toexperiment with their (pricing) policies for many periods following a bust.

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This doctoral dissertation proposes a fuller, more inclusive account of practice than that which dominates current discourse on organizations, which typically turns upon occupations, professions and jobs as manifestations of publicly recognized roles or functions within organized activity, established as a function of prescribed divisions of labour and the application of skills and techniques, and assumes that people interact in the ways that their assigned roles and functions are planned to work as interrelated parts of a shared task. The approach here is a reflexive process akin to what Lévi-Strauss characterizes as ‘bricolage’, using ready-to-hand materials linking narrative, literature and argument, adding pieces iteratively in an open-ended building process over the course of the dissertation. The reflexive process entails (a) the act of writing narratives (derived from the author’s own management experiences in the private, public and voluntary sectors) so as to produce insights and themes of interest in relation to the broader theme of practice; and (b) readings of certain key works of the literature on organizations and organized activity (including Sarbin and Allen, Denzin, Wiley, Collins, Elias, Mead, Habermas, Stacey and Mintzberg) so as to expose practice-related themes relevant to the construction of an alternative account which proposes the following: (1) Practice in organizations is communicative in nature and entails the enactment of roles. Conventionally, enactment is taken to mean that the role-incumbent meets expectations set by decision-makers and premised on conformity to preset structures within a metaphorical organizational space. In an alternative account of practice, however, enactment can be more accurately framed as a dialectical process of co-emergence of role and organization by virtue of the local social interaction of the persons involved. (2) In active life the mutually-exclusive emergent process and the spatial organizational metaphor necessarily co-exist. Reframing role enactment opens a path to new understanding, such that role enactment and practice thus become problematized in that practitioners can be seen as holding a paradoxical position of some considerable relevance to practice. Today’s predominantly objectivist management thinking primarily stresses accountability for the communicative interaction of others within the organizational space. The reflexive processual approach contests the adequacy and exclusivity of this position, because managing as an emergent practice is more comprehensively communicative and open-ended. (3) The co-presence of both the objectivist and emergent accounts thus requires the manager paradoxically to hold both these views of role and organization at the same time in his or her experiences of managing. As paradox cannot be resolved, it is instead taken up by the manager-practitioner by virtue of the reflexivity central to all processes of communicative interaction. (4) It follows that acknowledging processes of enactment and the centrality of reflexivity in the practice of managing and bringing that to the attention of managers and management educators will enhance how managing sophisticated cooperation is understood and carried out.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silvia Cristina Zanata.pdf: 581654 bytes, checksum: bd335be2ca6e8bee731a89595a6db90f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-30 / This study, part of Project Direct - Towards the language of business communication (LAEL/PUC-SP), aims to present the results of a needs analysis carried out in the professional context of 40 waiters and two managers of two sophisticated restaurants in the city of São Paulo. To collect the data, three questionnaires were used two were answered by the waiters, and the third, by the restaurant managers. In order to conduct the needs analysis of these professionals, we looked for support in Hutchinson s & Waters (1987) languages for specific purposes approach (1987). These authors argue that the needs analysis is extremely important, as it enables not only the implementation of a course but also its continuous evaluation. The linguistic analysis of the work is based on the Functional Grammar proposed by Halliday (1994, 2004) and his collaborators - among others, Eggins (1994) and Martin & White (2005). Functional Grammar is a language theory that focuses on the effective use of language, that is, the manner in which the user uses language in different contexts. Functional Grammar was employed to analyze the appraisal items that occur in the waiters answers to the questionnaires, based on the Appraisal System of Martin & White (2005) and on the analysis model proposed by Eggins & Slade (1997). The results of the needs analysis and of the Appraisal System analysis revealed that the most important items to be included in a professional qualification course, according to the waiters, are: assistance to restaurant clients, self-evaluation, and performance. The present work intends to have contributed to the suggestion of a course proposal for the professional development of waiters that takes into account the needs considered by the waiters who participated in this study as relevant for professionals who intend to work in the area / Este estudo, parte do Projeto Direct - Em direção à linguagem dos negócios (LAEL/PUC-SP), tem como objetivo a apresentação dos resultados obtidos com a análise de necessidades no contexto profissional de 40 garçons e dois gerentes de dois restaurantes sofisticados da cidade de São Paulo. Para consecução de tais objetivos, foram utilizados 3 questionários, sendo que dois foram aplicados aos garçons e o terceiro foi aplicado aos gerentes dos restaurantes. Para a realização do levantamento de necessidades desses profissionais, apoiamo-nos na abordagem instrumental de Hutchinson & Waters (1987), que afirmam que a análise de necessidades é de extrema importância, pois é ela que, além de possibilitar a implementação de um curso, também possibilita a sua avaliação contínua. A análise lingüística do trabalho está fundamentada na Gramática Sistêmico- Funcional proposta por Halliday (1994, 2004) e seus colaboradores, como Eggins (1994), Martin & White (2005), dentre outros e foi utilizada para a análise dos itens avaliativos que ocorrem nas respostas dos garçons aos questionários, tendo como base o Sistema de Avaliatividade (Appraisal System) de Martin & White (2005) e o modelo de análise proposto por Eggins & Slade (1997). Os resultados da análise de necessidades juntamente com o resultado da análise do Sistema de Avaliatividade possibilitaram-nos identificar que os itens considerados prioritários em um curso de aperfeiçoamento profissional pelos garçons são: o atendimento, a auto-avaliação e o desempenho. O presente trabalho pretende ter contribuído para a sugestão de uma proposta de curso para desenvolvimento profissional de garçons, que considere as necessidades apontadas pelos garçons participantes desta pesquisa como relevantes para os profissionais que pretendem atuar na área

The internet has become an essential part of most people's daily lives in recent years, and as more devices connect to the internet, the risk of cyber threats increases dramatically. As malware becomes more sophisticated, traditional security prevention measures are becoming less effective at defending from cyber attacks. As a result, Signature Based Detection and Anomaly Detection are two of many advanced techniques that have become crucial to defend against cyber threats such as malware, but even these are sometimes not enough to stop modern cyberattacks. In this literature review the goal is to discuss how trustworthy each of the mentioned malware detection techniques are at detecting malware in wireless networks. The study will measure trustworthiness by looking further into scalability, adaptability and robustness and resource consumption. This study concludes that both anomaly and signature-based malware detection methods exhibit strengths and weaknesses in scalability, robustness, adaptability, and resource consumption. Furthermore, more research is needed and as malware becomes more sophisticated and an increased threat to the world it is an area that is highly relevant.

Studien avser att förklara hur kapitalstrukturen, bestående av eget kapital, kortfristiga skulder och långfristiga skulder påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik inom stora svenska bolag vid strategiska investeringar. Genom Trade Off teorin och Principal Agent teorin formulerades studiens hypoteser. Empirin samlades in via enkäter som skickades ut till 325 bolag listade på Nasdaq OMX Small, Mid och Large Cap, där svarsfrekvensen blev ca 19 %. För att kartlägga kapitalstrukturen inhämtades årsredovisningar för att sedan beräkna nyckeltal som mäter de olika delarna i kapitalstrukturen. Resultatet har analyserats med hjälp av statistiska analyser, vilket visar att kapitalstrukturen påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik inom stora bolag. En hög andel kortfristiga skulder har en positiv association med osofistikerade tekniker medan en hög andel långfristiga skulder inte har någon association med varken osofistikerade eller sofistikerade tekniker. Vidare påvisas det inte att högt eget kapital har en positiv association med sofistikerade tekniker, däremot finns en negativ association med osofistikerade tekniker. Tidigare studier har inte delat upp skuldstrukturen och menar att en hög andel skulder ökar användandet av osofistikerade tekniker. Studier som är baserade på stora företag har inte tidigare påvisat ett samband mellan hög skuldsättning och osofistikerade tekniker, vilket gör skäl för uppdelningen. Denna studien har bidragit med att dela upp skuldstrukturen i kortfristiga skulder respektive långfristiga skulder. / The study intends to explain how the capital structure, consisting of equity, short-term liabilities and long- term liabilities, affects the choice of capital budgeting techniques in large Swedish companies in strategic investments. Through the Trade Off theory and Principal Agent theory, the study's hypotheses were formulated. Empirical was collected true surveys sent to 325 companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Small, Mid and Large Cap, where the response rate was about 19 %. To chart the capital structure, annual reports were obtained to calculate key ratios that measure the various components of the capital structure. The result has been analyzed using statistical analyzes, which shows that the capital structure affects the choice of capital budgeting techniques in larger companies. A high proportion of short-term liabilities has a positive association with unsophisticated techniques, while a high proportion of long-term liabilities has no association with neither unsophisticated or sophisticated techniques. Furthermore, it is not shown that high equity has a positive association with sophisticated techniques, but there is a negative association with unsophisticated techniques. Previous studies have not broken up the debt structure and mean that a high proportion of debt increases the use of unsophisticated techniques. Studies based on larger companies have not previously demonstrated a link between high leverage and unsophisticated techniques, which makes the division possible. This study has helped to break down the debt structure in short-term liabilities and long-term liabilities.