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The copious information generated from transcriptomes gives us an opportunity to learn biological processes as integrated systems; however, due to numerous sources of variation, high dimensions of data structure, various levels of data quality, and different formats of the inputs, dissecting and interpreting such data presents daunting challenges to scientists. The goal of this research is to provide improved and new statistical tools for analyzing transcriptomes data to identify gene expression patterns for classifying samples, to discover regulatory gene networks using natural genetic perturbations, to develop statistical methods for model fitting and comparison of biochemical networks, and eventually to advance our capability to understand the principles of biological processes at the system level. / Ph. D.

This study examines the relationship between organisational culture and TQM implementation barriers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting TQM implementation. For TQM implementation to take root effectively, the critical role of organisational culture is widely recognised. The existence of pitfalls and obstacles (barriers) to implementing TQM is also widely recognized, as is the importance of understanding these TQM implementation barriers. Nevertheless, whilst many TQM implementation models and frameworks have been designed and proposed, no study has been located in the literature that has systematically examined the relationship between organisational culture and TQM implementation barriers. This theoretical lapse in the TQM literature necessitates an investigation of the direction and significance of the relationship which can help in devising more informed TQM implementation models. In this context, a quantitative research methodology was adopted to examine the profiles of organisational culture and of TQM implementation barriers in organisations in Bahrain and to examine the relationship between these variables. Bahrain is presently going through a rapid expansion in quality management system adoption. Accordingly, the research uses four constructs of organisational culture as independent variables and six constructs of TQM implementation barriers identified through the literature as dependent variables. A set of hypotheses was developed describing the expected relationships between these two sets of variables. The study adopted a positivist, deductive approach using an online survey questionnaire to obtain quantitative data for hypothesis testing. The research instrument was assessed for validity and reliability through structured interviews. Responses to the survey were obtained from 325 organisations located in Bahrain. Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) version 16.0 was used to test the measurement model using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and to test the structural model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Both models showed a very good fit to the data, with good construct validity and reliability. The findings of the study showed that group culture, which is believed to be an ‘ideal’ culture for TQM implementation helps decrease employee barriers, information barriers and customer related barriers as predicted. However group culture wasn’t found to help decrease top management barriers. Rational culture was found to decrease top management barriers as predicted but it wasn’t found to help decrease employee and customer barriers. The findings confirm the significant impact of hierarchical culture in the Bahrain context in decreasing planning and process management barriers. Developmental culture’s potential to lower employee and customer barriers was observed but was not found to be statistically significant. This research makes several contributions in both academic and practical terms. Theoretically, positioning organisational culture as an antecedent of TQM implementation barriers, this study is the first holistic approach that attempts to empirically investigate which type of organisational culture is related to which TQM implementation barriers. Understanding the nature, strength and direction of these relationships can help to inform and support future TQM implementation attempts. Practically, this research will benefit organisations who have not been able to fully realise TQM, or who are in the process of planning the introduction of TQM. The findings of the study can help Bahraini organisations to realise the long term quality objectives of the Bahrain Centre of Excellence’s Vision 2030 programme. Furthermore, the study has contributed a new empirically tested scale for measuring TQM implementation barriers - a valuable tool on its own, or in conjunction with the organisational culture profile assessment tool - for both practitioners wishing to examine their readiness for TQM or progress in creating a TQM ethos, and for future researchers wishing to extend our understanding of the influence of TQM barriers and/or culture on major organisational improvement interventions. It is expected that replication of this study in other countries and regions with different culture and context may help in developing an improved model of TQM implementation. Implications for managers and future research are advanced.

Ações e políticas públicas têm sido desenvolvidas com o objetivo de incentivar os agricultores brasileiros a diversificar sua produção. Entretanto, tais ações têm sido incapazes de incentivar a diversificação produtiva e econômica. Justifica-se a importância da diversificação da produção agrícola na medida em que esta contribui para o desenvolvimento rural, diversificação das fontes de renda e consequente ampliação da renda familiar, auxilia no aumento da produção agrícola e possibilita maior segurança em relação aos efeitos das oscilações dos mercados. O objetivo geral deste estudo consiste em verificar quais são os fatores que afetam a intenção dos agricultores familiares produtores de leite na decisão de diversificar a produção agrícola na região Noroeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Para tanto foi realizado um survey com 101 produtores rurais. A Teoria do Comportamento Planejado (TCP) foi utilizada como abordagem teórico-metodológica para analisar e explicar os constructos psicológicos subjacentes que influenciam a decisão de diversificação dos agricultores. Os resultados revelaram que a intenção foi principalmente determinada pela avaliação dos agricultores em diversificar a produção agrícola (atitude), seguida pela sua percepção sobre a pressão social em desenvolver tal estratégia produtiva (norma subjetiva). A percepção dos agricultores sobre sua própria capacidade de diversificar (controle comportamental percebido) mostrou-se insignificante neste estudo. A análise de cluster permitiu identificar dois grupos com distintos níveis de intenção, um composto por agricultores com forte intenção de diversificar e outro com fraca intenção. Os grupos apresentaram diferenças quanto aos constructos psicológicos, algumas características socioeconômicas e a orientação de seus objetivos. Entretanto, os grupos não diferiram quanto aos estilos de decisão. Assim, os resultados desta tese sugerem que, para aumentar a diversificação da produção das propriedades rurais, é necessário desenvolver ações que forneçam informações aos agricultores referentes às vantagens e possibilidades da diversificação nas pequenas propriedades rurais, bem como aumentar a pressão social para que os produtores rurais diversifiquem suas atividades. / Public actions and policies have been developed to stimulate Brazilian farmers to diversify their production. However, those actions have been unable to stimulate the economic and productive diversification. We justify the importance of the diversification of agricultural production because it contributes to the rural development, diversification of income sources and consequent increase of familiar income, it helps the growth of agricultural production and enables more security in relation to the effects of the market changes. This research intends to verify the factors that affect the intention of familiar farmers that work with milk production on the decision to diversify the agricultural production in the north of Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. To this end it conducted a survey of 101 farmers. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as a theoretical and methodological approach to analyze and explain the subjacent psychological constructs that influence the farmers’ diversification decision. The results revealed that the intention was mainly determined by the farmers’ evaluation to diversify the agricultural production (attitude), followed by their perception about the social pressure to develop this productive strategy (subjective norm). The farmers’ perception about their own capacity to diversify (perceived behavioral control) was insignificant in this research. The cluster analysis permitted to identify two groups with different intention levels, one composed by farmers with a strong intention to diversify and another one with a weak intention. The groups showed differences in relation to the psychological constructs, some socioeconomic characteristics and the orientation about their aims. However, both of them didn’t disagree in relation to the decision styles. So, the results of this thesis suggest that, to increase the productive diversification in rural properties, it’s necessary to develop actions to provide information relative to the advantages and possibilities of the diversification in small rural properties, as well as increasing the social pressure in order that farmers diversify their activities.

This study employed Monte Carlo simulation to investigate the ability of the growth mixture model (GMM) to correctly identify models based on a "true" two-class pseudo-population from alternative models consisting of "false" one- and three-latent trajectory classes. This ability was assessed in terms of statistical power, defined as the proportion of replications that correctly identified the two-class model as having optimal fit to the data compared to the one-class model, and accuracy, which was defined as the proportion of replications that correctly identified the two-class model over both one- and three-class models. Estimates of power and accuracy were adjusted by empirically derived critical values to reflect nominal Type I error rates of a = .05. Six experimental conditions were examined: (a) standardized between-class differences in growth parameters, (b) percentage of total variance explained by growth parameters, (c) correlation between intercepts and slopes, (d) sample size, (e) number of repeated measures, and (f) planned missingness. Estimates of statistical power and accuracy were related to a measure of the degree of separation and distinction between latent trajectory classes (λ2 ), which approximated a chi-square based noncentrality parameter. Model selection relied on four criteria: (a) the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), (b) the sample-size adjusted BIC (ABIC), (c) the Akaike information criterion (AIC), and (d) the likelihood ratio test (LRT). Results showed that power and accuracy of the GMM to correctly enumerate latent trajectory classes were positively related to greater between-class separation, greater proportion of total variance explained by growth parameters, larger sample sizes, greater numbers of repeated measures, and larger negative correlations between intercepts and slopes; and inversely related to greater proportions of missing data. Results of the Monte Carlo simulations were field tested using specific design and population characteristics from an evaluation of a longitudinal demonstration project. This test compared estimates of power and accuracy generated via Monte Carlo simulation to estimates predicted from a regression of derived λ2 values. Results of this motivating example indicated that knowledge of λ2 can be useful in the two-class case for predicting power and accuracy without extensive Monte Carlo simulations.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the structural relationships among self-reported mathematics achievement, attitudes toward statistics, and statistics outcomes by testing a structural model. The current study utilized a survey design. The participants of study consisted of 247 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in statistics courses in a university in Turkey. The participants were from different disciplines such as engineering, education, and economics. The Turkish version of the Survey of Attitudes toward Statistics-36&copy / (SATS-36&copy / ) was used to collect data. The SATS-36&copy / assessed six components of statistics attitudes: cognitive competence, value, difficulty, effort, interest, and affect. Higher scores of the six components referred to the more positive attitudes. In addition, the SATS-36&copy / involved additional items to measure students&rsquo / self-reports of mathematics achievement and statistics outcomes. Results of the descriptive statistics analyses revealed that participants of the study had positive attitudes toward statistics except that they had neutral perceptions about the difficulty of statistics and neutral interest in statistics. Statistics outcomes variable was significantly correlated with mathematics achievement, affect, value, interest, and effort variables. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized structural regression model. Results indicated that affect, value, cognitive competence, and interest variables had large total standardized effects on statistics outcomes variable. Mathematics achievement and the effort variables had small total effects on explaining statistics outcomes. Difficulty had no statistically significant total effect on explaining statistics outcomes. Overall, the hypothesized structural regression model explained 66% of the total variance in statistics outcomes, which was statistically significant.

Abstract Following the vigorous development of the information and internet technology, the National Tax Administrations are now facing the challenges from the changes of the inner and outer environment. Due to the update of the information operating platform as well as the drive of e-government from the Executive Yuan, the government officials need to have abilities to learn new information technology; otherwise, they will fail to be qualified on their jobs. However, there are not too many studies about the degree of acceptance of officials on learning new technology. It is necessary to provide an approach to figure out acceptance degree of officials for information technology. We provide an integrated model called the Technology Acceptance Model on government officials. The model incorporates a wide variety of important factors into a theoretical framework provided by "Technology Acceptance Model, TAM" (Davis, 1989) and "Theory of Planned Behavior, TPB" (Ajzen, 1985). We collect data from a sample of staffs of the five local tax administrations and we analyze the data using the Structural Equation Modeling. The results of this research indicate that essential factors and show what factors affect the behavior of the government officials on accepting new technology and e-government. In addition, the model provides a good fit because of fit indices and explanatory powers for behavior. That is, we can use the model to predict the officials¡¦ behavior on using tax information system.

Advances in collaborative work tools and communication technologies have made computer-mediated teams a part of virtually every organization. One of the challenges for members of virtual teams is the development of trust. This study examined the reciprocal relationship between trust and effectiveness in virtual teams, employing an input-process-output-input approach. Data were collected from 183 individuals comprising 61 teams. Teams participated in a computer-simulated search and rescue mission. Three alternative latent change score structural equation models were fit to the data to examine the bidirectional relationships between trust and effectiveness. Results revealed that the two factors of trust, cognition-based trust and affect-based trust, are always present, therefore examination of the trust-effectiveness relationship for each trust factor is warranted. The analyses revealed that generally, effectiveness has an impact on changes in trust, but trust does not influence the changes in effectiveness. Implications for organizations are discussed. Future research should examine the relationships between in trust and effectiveness on the team level. Additionally, research should explore the reciprocal relationship between each trust factors and effectiveness subtypes - attitudinal, behavioral, and performance effectiveness.