M.Com. (Business Management) / The crisis that business face regarding the constant change in the environment will not go away. Therefor business will have to go on with transformation to help the business adept to the changing environment. Business in the United States of America has develop a business transformation model to guide business during the process of transformation. In South Africa we face the same circumstances but with a few differences. We arc: nota developed country and the economic objectives of the new South Africa do not allow business to use the same business transformation model. Research in the risk management department in Spoornet during a transformation process has shown the following differences to transformation in America and Europe: • South African companies need to take the economic objectives of the new South Africa into account when transforming the business and it's processes. • Need to include an employment control and management function into the transformation model. '111e research has also found that business. management and employee's are not prepared for the transformation process as their fellow businesses in America and in Europe. Business docs not understand the value and importance of transforming the business. Most managers and employee's think it's a process to automate business and a quick fix process to help the business tobecome more productive and effective. Companies in South Africa do not have the choice between transformation or not. If they want to adapt to the changing environment in South Africa and the rest of the world, they need to transform the business. To survive the severe competition of other companies in South Africa and the rest of the world transformation is not a question to consider.

In response to competitive and economic pressures, an increasing number of manufacturing firms are adding services to their traditional product offerings. However, companies are confronted with an arduous undertaking, and find it difficult to servitize successfully and profitably. This thesis investigates the transformation that traditional manufacturers undergo to become providers of integrated products and services, a phenomenon known as servitization. Servitization is considered a strategic re-direction of the manufacturing organisation and a major challenge for senior management. The purpose of this study is to provide better understanding of the change that occurs when a manufacturer attempts servitization. The study adopts a qualitative theory building approach to investigate an under-researched phenomenon and a major managerial challenge. It follows a strategy of engaged scholarship to understand a complex organisational problem. The research utilised multiple case studies, action research, and focus groups to tackle a problem with significance to industry. The findings reveal the nature of servitization as a complex transformative change which exposes the manufacturing company to its environment in new ways, and closely interlinks the organisation with a network of stakeholders through new dependencies. The transformation of traditional manufacturers towards servitized organisations is multi-dimensional and goes through eleven dimensions of transformation across the organisation and its network. In addition, thirty nine forces of change were found to influence the outcome of servitization, and were categorised into three sets of change drivers for servitization. The results of the study led to the formation of a model for transformation towards a servitized organisation for use by industry practitioners to roadmap and facilitate their organisation‟s shift towards services. The model represents a novel approach to managing servitization. This research has addressed a literature gap and met an industrial need, and has made a significant contribution to knowledge about the change that traditional manufacturers experience to become servitized organisations.

The analysis of survival data with a possible cure fraction has attracted much interest in the last two decades. Various models and estimating methods have been proposed for such data and they have been applied in many fields, especially in cancer clinical trials. In the thesis, we consider some new general cure models, which include existing survival models as their special cases. We also consider a nonparametric estimation of cure rate. The estimator is proved consistent and asymptotically normal. We also consider the application of proportional density for cure data and the analysis of length-biased cure data. / Thesis (Ph.D, Mathematics & Statistics) -- Queen's University, 2012-01-26 09:53:08.127

Storage and analysis of high-dimensional datasets are always challenging. Dimension reduction techniques are commonly used to reduce the complexity of the data and obtain the informative aspects of datasets. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is one of the commonly used dimension reduction techniques. However, PCA does not work well when there are outliers or the data distribution is skewed. Gene expression index estimation is an important problem in bioinformatics. Some of the popular methods in this area are based on the PCA, and thus may not work well when there is non-Gaussian structure in the data. To address this issue, a likelihood based data transformation method with a computationally efficient algorithm is developed. Also, a new multivariate expression index is studied and the performance of the multivariate expression index is compared with the commonly used univariate expression index. As an extension of the gene expression index estimation problem, a general procedure that integrates data transformation with the PCA is developed. In particular, this general method can handle missing data and data with functional structure. It is well-known that the PCA can be obtained by the eigen decomposition of the sample covariance matrix. Another focus of this dissertation is to study the covariance (or correlation) structure under the non-Gaussian assumption. An important issue in modeling the covariance matrix is the positive definiteness constraint. The modified Cholesky decomposition of the inverse covariance matrix has been considered to address this issue in the literature. An alternative Cholesky decomposition of the covariance matrix is considered and used to construct an estimator of the covariance matrix under multivariate-t assumption. The advantage of this alternative Cholesky decomposition is the decoupling of the correlation and the variances.

In this dissertation, we investigate jackknife empirical likelihood methods motivated by recent statistics research and other related fields. Computational intensity of empirical likelihood can be significantly reduced by using jackknife empirical likelihood methods without losing computational accuracy and stability. We demonstrate that proposed jackknife empirical likelihood methods are able to handle several challenging and open problems in terms of elegant asymptotic properties and accurate simulation result in finite samples. These interesting problems include ROC curves with missing data, the difference of two ROC curves in two dimensional correlated data, a novel inference for the partial AUC and the difference of two quantiles with one or two samples. In addition, empirical likelihood methodology can be successfully applied to the linear transformation model using adjusted estimation equations. The comprehensive simulation studies on coverage probabilities and average lengths for those topics demonstrate the proposed jackknife empirical likelihood methods have a good performance in finite samples under various settings. Moreover, some related and attractive real problems are studied to support our conclusions. In the end, we provide an extensive discussion about some interesting and feasible ideas based on our jackknife EL procedures for future studies.

Approaches were developed for building extraction and updating from high resolution satellite imagery. The developed approaches include two main stages: (i) detecting the building patches and (ii) delineating the building boundaries. The building patches are detected from high resolution satellite imagery using the Support Vector Machines (SVM) classification, which is performed for both the building extraction and updating approaches. In the building extraction part of the study, the previously detected building patches are delineated using the Hough transform and boundary tracing based techniques. In the Hough transform based technique, the boundary delineation is carried out using the processing operations of edge detection, Hough transformation, and perceptual grouping. In the boundary tracing based technique, the detected edges are vectorized using the boundary tracing algorithm. The results are then refined through line simplification and vector filters. In the building updating part of the study, the destroyed buildings are determined through analyzing the existing building boundaries and the previously detected building patches. The new buildings are delineated using the developed model based approach, in which the building models are selected from an existing building database by utilizing the shape parameters. The developed approaches were tested in the Batikent district of Ankara, Turkey, using the IKONOS panchromatic and pan-sharpened stereo images (2002) and existing vector database (1999). The results indicate that the proposed approaches are quite satisfactory with the accuracies computed in the range from 68.60% to 98.26% for building extraction, and from 82.44% to 88.95% for building updating.

This thesis deals with the business process based transformation of two businesses - Lázně Aurora s.r.o. and Bertiny lázně s.r.o. The outline of a system development analysis is based on a theoretical framework of the business process reengineering and the production management in a contemporary dynamic and turbulent corporate environment. A conversion into a holding arrangment with parent corporation Slatinné lázně Třeboň a.s. and two subsidiaries Lázně Aurora s.r.o. and Bertiny lázně s.r.o. is proposed in relation with restructuring and redesigning all business processes. The outline of new Slatinné lázně Třeboň group based on business process management precedes a detailed analysis of current state and future lookout of spa industry from the point of view of the new business entity. This analysis implies that current management techniques facing the challenging environment cannot guarantee a substantial economic growth of the businesses. Within a whole host of named reasons there are changes related to the transformation of the national health sector, strengthened by demographic changes. Current management practices and enterprise enablers of process management are evaluated through Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM). Last part of this thesis presents the outline of the new business system development analysis. The goal is to overcome the dynamic environment issues by engagement of business process management and to prepare a production system for serving different segments of clients that are characterized by considerably different needs and requirements. New model of core business processes is proposed in order to meet this goal. It comprises a description of process relations and positioning within the new enterprise structure, including the main reasons of such an alignment.

Esta tesis de investigación tiene como finalidad la implementación de un modelo de gestión sostenible basado en la economía circular que permita el tratamiento y aprovechamiento del plástico PET en los colegios del Perú. El modelo parte debido a la necesidad de que exista un modelo de gestión que pueda ser aplicado a un escenario ya establecido como el distrito de Pachacamac ubicado en Lima-Perú. Debido a que este distrito tiene ciertas características de alta demanda en desechos plástico, se decidió la creación de un modelo ya que actualmente modelos en este tipo de distritos acá en Perú no existen. El modelo se basa en el uso de 3 Fases de gestión de residuos y viene apoyado de la metodología Lean y la economía circular, lo que le permite ser un modelo adaptable y cambiante de acuerdo con el escenario propuesto. Dentro de sus principales dimensiones se encuentran la cultura ambiental, la dimensión social y la dimensión económica lo que le permite ser un modelo integral. / This research thesis aims to implement a sustainable management model based on a circular economy that allows the treatment and use of PET plastic in schools in Peru. The research starts from the need of a management model to exist, this model can be applied to an already established scenario such as the district of Pachacamac located in Lima-Peru. Due to the fact that this district has a high demand in plastic waste, it was decided to create a new model since models of this kind do not exist currently in Peru, especially in districts like Pachacamac. The model proposed is based on the use of 3 phases of waste management and is supported by the Lean Methodology and Circular Economy, which allows it to be an adaptable and changing model according to the proposed scenario. This model starts from the use of 3 different dimensions that complement each other perfectly, this include the environmental culture, the social dimension and the economic dimension, which allows it to be an integral model. The model was applied in the district of Pachacamac in 3 different possible scenarios. In this way it was possible to conclude that the correct management of the 3 approaches of the model generates a high economic and environmental impact. Likewise, it was possible to help the population and its resources. / Tesis

In Paper [I] we use data on Swedish public procurement auctions for internal regularcleaning service contracts to provide novel empirical evidence regarding green publicprocurement (GPP) and its effect on the potential suppliers’ decision to submit a bid andtheir probability of being qualified for supplier selection. We find only a weak effect onsupplier behavior which suggests that GPP does not live up to its political expectations.However, several environmental criteria appear to be associated with increased complexity,as indicated by the reduced probability of a bid being qualified in the postqualificationprocess. As such, GPP appears to have limited or no potential to function as an environmentalpolicy instrument. In Paper [II] the observation is made that empirical evaluations of the effect of policiestransmitted through public procurements on bid sizes are made using linear regressionsor by more involved non-linear structural models. The aspiration is typically to determinea marginal effect. Here, I compare marginal effects generated under both types ofspecifications. I study how a political initiative to make firms less environmentally damagingimplemented through public procurement influences Swedish firms’ behavior. Thecollected evidence brings about a statistically as well as economically significant effect onfirms’ bids and costs. Paper [III] embarks by noting that auction theory suggests that as the number of bidders(competition) increases, the sizes of the participants’ bids decrease. An issue in theempirical literature on auctions is which measurement(s) of competition to use. Utilizinga dataset on public procurements containing measurements on both the actual and potentialnumber of bidders I find that a workhorse model of public procurements is bestfitted to data using only actual bidders as measurement for competition. Acknowledgingthat all measurements of competition may be erroneous, I propose an instrumental variableestimator that (given my data) brings about a competition effect bounded by thosegenerated by specifications using the actual and potential number of bidders, respectively.Also, some asymptotic results are provided for non-linear least squares estimatorsobtained from a dependent variable transformation model. Paper [VI] introduces a novel method to measure bidders’ costs (valuations) in descending(ascending) auctions. Based on two bounded rationality constraints bidders’costs (valuations) are given an imperfect measurements interpretation robust to behavioraldeviations from traditional rationality assumptions. Theory provides no guidanceas to the shape of the cost (valuation) distributions while empirical evidence suggeststhem to be positively skew. Consequently, a flexible distribution is employed in an imperfectmeasurements framework. An illustration of the proposed method on Swedishpublic procurement data is provided along with a comparison to a traditional BayesianNash Equilibrium approach.

Nous proposons une contribution empirique aux tentatives récentes d'unification des sciences cognitives et des sciences sociales.La Théorie de l'Attraction Culturelle (CAT) propose de s'atteler à des questions interdisciplinaires en utilisant une ontologie commune faite de représentations.D'après la CAT, malgré des transformations au niveau micro, la distribution globale des représentations peut rester stable grâce à des attracteurs culturels.Cette hypothèse est difficile à tester, mais les technologies du web permettent de combiner les avantages des techniques existantes pour étendre le champ des études possibles.Nous présentons deux études de cas sur de courts énoncés écrits.La première examine les changements que des citations subissent lorsqu'elles sont copiées en ligne.En combinant psycholinguistique et fouille de données, nous montrons que les substitutions de mots sont cohérentes avec l'hypothèse des attracteurs culturels, et avec les effets connus de variables lexicales.La deuxième étude étend ces résultats, et utilise une expérience web permettant de récolter des chaînes de transmission de qualité et en grande quantité.En étendant un algorithme bioinformatique, nous décomposons les transformations en des opérations plus simples, et proposons un premier modèle descriptif du processus qui relie les connaissances psycholinguistiques sur la transformation de phrases aux tendances de haut niveau identifiées dans la littérature sur l'évolution culturelle.Enfin, nous montrons que la compréhension de l'évolution de telles représentations nécessite une théorie du sens des énoncés, une tâche pour laquelle nous explorons les approches empiriques possibles. / We propose an empirical contribution to recent attempts to unify cognitive science and social science.We focus on Cultural Attraction Theory (CAT), a framework that proposes a common ontology made of representations for cognitive and social science to address interdisciplinary questions.CAT hypothesizes that in spite of important transformations at the micro-level, the overall distribution of representations remains stable due to dynamical attractors.Testing this hypothesis is challenging and existing approaches have several shortcomings.Yet, by taking advantage of web technologies one can combine the advantages of existing techniques to expand the range of possible empirical studies.We develop two case studies to show this with short written utterances.The first examines transformations that quotations undergo as they are propagated online.By connecting data mining tools with psycholinguistics, we show that word substitutions in quotations are consistent with the hypothesis of cultural attractors and with known effects of lexical features.The second case study expands these results, and makes use of a purposefully developed web experiment to gather quality transmission chain data sets.By extending a bioinformatics alignment algorithm, we decompose transformations into simpler operations, and propose a first descriptive model which relates psycholinguistic knowledge of sentence transformation to evolutionary trends elicited in the cultural evolution literature.Finally, we show that further understanding the evolution of such representations requires an account of meaning in context, a task for which we flesh out possible empirical approaches.