Growing competition, globalisation and changing circumstances make innovation a prerequisite for the growth, success and survival of any private or public organisation. While innovation in technology, production, marketing and finance all remain essential, it is innovation in management that is most desperately in short supply. A literature study could not reveal the existence of any scale that measures all the factors and processes relevant to organisational innovation. A scale for managerial innovation was developed. This scale is based on the work of various researchers in the field of innovation. The major tasks in the process were connected to the structural arrangements and social patterns that facilitate the tasks are discussed. Innovation consists of a set of processes carried out at the micro-level, by individuals and groups of individuals, and these micro-processes are in turn stimulated, facilitated and enhanced - or the opposite - by a set of macro-structural conditions. A semantic differential scale was developed to measure managerial innovation. The scale consists of 88 items and was designed to reflect the major factors and processes of organisational innovation. Various statistical tests were used to evaluate the scale and data obtained through the scale. Five Factors were identified after the data was analysed using factor analysis. The five factors are Factor 1 (leadership and culture), Factor 2 (employee acquisition and development), Factor 3 (variables that facilitate problem solving and aid in innovation), Factor 4 (variables that impact negatively on innovation), and Factor 5 (variables external to the organisation that influence innovation). The Alpha Cronbach test for reliability showed a very high degree of reliability and the scale conformed to the criteria of content validity. Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) was used to perform comparative analysis on the biographical variables. The relationships between age, gender, level of education, industry, length of service, and the combined effect of age and gender, age and length of service, gender and industry, and gender and length of service and the five factors were analysed. Age seems to play a significant role in Factor 1 and Factor 2 (i.e. leadership and culture as well as employee acquisition and development). For Factor 1 and Factor 2 average achievement in terms of innovation seems to increase with age. With regard to Factor 3, 4 and 5 age does not seem to impact on achievement significantly. The results of this study indicate that there are no significant relationship between gender and innovation. The results of this study indicate that there is a positive relationship between level of education and innovation for Factors 3, 4 and 5. It was found to differ significantly between the levels for two factors, namely Factor 1: leadership and culture, and Factor 2: employee acquisition and development. They seem to decline as the level of education increases. The results of this study indicate that for all five factors there seem to be a very significant difference in average achievement when individuals from different industries are compared. The results of this study indicate that there is not a significant relationship between length of service and innovation. The ANOVA results for combined variables indicate a significant difference in average achievement Factor 1 (leadership and culture) when the research participants are grouped based on both age and gender. In general, males of any age group tested equal to or higher than their female counterparts for Factor 1. Also apparent from the results is that generally the scores for Factor 1 seemed to increase with age. For Factor 2, 3, 4, and 5 there is no significant difference in achievement when participants are grouped according to age and gender. The results of the tests for difference in achievement when the research participants are grouped according to age and length of service, do not indicate that there is any significant difference in average achievement between the groups. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

The primary goal of this work is a implementation of temporal XML database in Java. There are described databases for XML documents and temporal databases with emphasis on their query languages and problem data storing is also analyzes for temporal databases. Source codes of the resulting application are public as open-source.

This thesis focuses on a implemenation of a a temporal data support within traditional relational environment of PostgreSQL system. I pick up on Radek Jelínek's thesis and an extension developed by him. I've analyzed the extension from functional, practical and performance perspectives. Based on my results, I've designed and implemented changes to the original extension. The work also contains implementation details as well as performance comparison results between the new and the original extensions.

This thesis is focused on design and implementation of TSQL2 language interpreter for SQL. It briefly introduces temporal database and language TSQL2. Currently available implementations of temporal database systems are introduced and their practical usability for temporal data is reviewed. Main part of this thesis covers design and implementation of TSQL2 interpreter. A working TSQL2 interpreter implemented in Java as JDBC adapter is the result of this work.

Transport and trade of gas are decoupled after the liberalization of the European gas markets, which are now organized as so-called entry-exit systems. At the core of this market system are bookings and nominations, two special capacity-right contracts that grant traders access to the gas network. The latter is operated by a separate entity, known as the transmission system operator (TSO), who is in charge of the transport of gas from entry to exit nodes. In the mid to long term, traders sign a booking contract with the TSO to obtain injection and withdrawal capacities at entry and exit nodes, respectively. On a day-ahead basis, they then nominate within these booked capacities a balanced load flow of the planned amounts of gas to be injected into and withdrawn from the network the next day. The key property is that by signing a booking contract, the TSO is obliged to guarantee transportability for all balanced load flows in compliance with the booked capacities. To assess the feasibility of a booking, it is therefore necessary to check the feasibility of infinitely many nominations. As a result, deciding if a booking is feasible is a challenging mathematical problem, which we investigate in this dissertation.Our results range from passive networks, consisting of pipes only, to active networks, containing controllable elements to influence gas flows. Since the study of the latter naturally leads to a bilevel framework, we first consider some more general properties of bilevel optimization. For the case of linear bilevel optimization, we consider the hardness of validating the correctness of big-Ms often used in solving these problems via a single-level reformulation. We also derive a family of valid inequalities to be used in a bilevel-tailored branch-and-cut algorithm as a big-M-free alternative.We then turn to the study of feasible bookings. First, we present our results on passive networks, for which bilevel approaches are not required. A characterization of feasible bookings on passive networks is derived in terms of a finite set of nominations. While computing these nominations is a difficult task in general, we present polynomial complexity results for the special cases of tree-shaped or single-cycle passive networks. Finally, we consider networks with linearly modeled active elements. After obtaining a bilevel optimization model that allows us to determine the feasibility of a booking in this case, we derive various single-level reformulations to solve the problem. In addition, we obtain novel characterizations of feasible bookings on active networks, which generalize our characterization in the passive case. The performance of these various approaches is compared in a case study on two networks from the literature, one of which is a simplified version of the Greek gas network. / Transport et commerce de gaz sont découplés depuis la libéralisation des marchés européens du gaz, qui sont désormais organisés en systèmes dit d'entrée-sortie. Au cœur de ce système de marché se trouvent les réservations et les nominations, deux contrats spéciaux de droit à la capacité qui permettent aux négociants d'accéder au réseau de gaz. Ce dernier est exploité par une entité distincte, appelée gestionnaire de réseau de transport~(GRT), qui est chargée du transport du gaz entre les nœuds d'entrée et de sortie. À moyen et long terme, les négociants signent un contrat de réservation avec le GRT pour obtenir des capacités d'injection et d'extraction aux nœuds d'entrée et de sortie, respectivement. Au jour le jour, ils désignent ensuite, dans les limites des capacités réservées, un flux de charge équilibrée des quantités de gaz prévues à injecter et à extraire le lendemain. La propriété essentielle est qu'en signant un contrat de réservation, le GRT est obligé de garantir la transportabilité de tous les flux de charge équilibrée respectant les capacités réservées. Pour évaluer la faisabilité d'une réservation, il est donc nécessaire de vérifier la faisabilité d'une infinité de nominations. Par conséquent, décider si une réservation est réalisable est un problème mathématique difficile, que nous étudions dans cette thèse.Nos résultats vont des réseaux passifs, constitués uniquement de pipelines, aux réseaux actifs, contenant des éléments contrôlables pour influencer les flux de gaz. Comme l'étude de ces derniers conduit naturellement à un cadre biniveau, nous considérons d'abord certaines propriétés plus générales de l'optimisation biniveau. Pour le cas de l'optimisation biniveau linéaire, nous étudions la difficulté de valider l'exactitude des constantes de type big-M souvent utilisées dans la résolution de ces problèmes via une reformulation à un seul niveau. Nous déduisons également une famille d'inégalités valides à utiliser dans un algorithme de branch-and-cut adapté au biniveau comme alternative à l'approche utilisant des big-Ms.Nous nous tournons ensuite vers l'étude des réservations réalisables. D'abord, nous présentons nos résultats sur les réseaux passifs, pour lesquels les approches biniveaux ne sont pas nécessaires. Une caractérisation des réservations réalisables sur les réseaux passifs est déduite en termes d'un ensemble fini de nominations. Bien que le calcul de ces nominations soit une tâche difficile en général, nous présentons des algorithmes polynomiaux pour les cas particuliers des réseaux passifs en forme d'arbre ou contenant un cycle unique. Enfin, nous considérons les réseaux avec des éléments actifs modélisés à l'aide de contraintes linéaires. Après avoir obtenu un modèle biniveau, permettant de déterminer la faisabilité d'une réservation dans ce cas, nous dérivons diverses reformulations à un seul niveau pour résoudre le problème. En outre, nous obtenons de nouvelles caractérisations des réservations réalisables sur les réseaux actifs, qui généralisent notre caractérisation dans le cas passif. La performance de ces différentes approches est comparée dans une étude de cas réalisée sur deux réseaux de la littérature, dont l'un est une version simplifiée du réseau de gaz grec. / Nach der Liberalisierung der europäischen Gasmärkte, welche nun als sogenannte Entry-Exit Systeme organisiert sind, sind Transport und Handel von Gas entkoppelt. Im Zentrum dieses neuen Marktsystems sind Buchungen und Nominierungen, zwei spezielle Kapazitätrechtsverträge, die Händlern Zugang zum Gasnetz gewähren. Letzteres wird von einem separaten Akteur betrieben, dem sogenannten Fernleitungsnetzbetreiber (FNB), der für den Transport des Gases von den Einspeise- zu den Ausspeiseknoten verantwortlich ist. Händler schließen mittel- bis langfristig einen Buchungsvertrag mit dem FNB ab, um Ein- und Ausspeisekapazitäten zu erhalten. Täglich nominieren sie dann innerhalb der gebuchten Kapazitäten einen bilanzierten Lastfluss der geplanten Gasmengen, die am nächsten Tag eingespeist und entnommen werden sollen. Die Haupteigenschaft ist, dass der FNB sich durch Unterzeichnung eines Buchungsvertrages für die Transportierbarkeit aller bilanzierten Lastflüsse innerhalb der gebuchten Kapazitäten verpflichtet. Um die Zulässigkeit einer Buchung zu bestimmen ist es daher notwendig, die Zulässigkeit von unendlich vielen Nominierungen zu prüfen. Die Entscheidung, ob eine Buchung zulässig ist, ist daher ein anspruchsvolles mathematisches Problem, das wir in dieser Dissertation untersuchen.Unsere Ergebnisse reichen von passiven Netzen, die nur aus Rohren bestehen, bis hin zu aktiven Netzen, die steuerbare Elemente zur Beeinflussung der Gasflüsse enthalten. Da die Untersuchung aktiver Netze uns auf natürlichem Wege zu Bilevel-Problemen führt, betrachten wir zunächst einige allgemeinere Eigenschaften der Bilevel-Optimierung. Für den Fall der linearen Bilevel-Optimierung betrachten wir die Schwierigkeit, Big-Ms zu validieren, die oft bei der Lösung dieser Probleme mittels einer einstufigen Reformulierung verwendet werden. Wir leiten außerdem eine Familie gültiger Ungleichungen ab, die in einem Bilevel-spezifischen Branch-and-Cut Algorithmus als big-M-freie Alternative verwendet werden können.Wir wenden uns dann der Untersuchung von zulässigen Buchungen zu. Zunächst stellen wir unsere Ergebnisse zu passiven Netzwerken vor, für die Bilevel-Ansätze nicht erforderlich sind. Eine Charakterisierung zulässiger Buchungen in passiven Netzwerken wird in Bezug auf eine endliche Menge an Nominierungen hergeleitet. Während die Berechnung dieser Nominierungen im Allgemeinen eine schwierige Aufgabe ist, präsentieren wir polynomielle Komplexitätsergebnisse für die Spezialfälle baumförmiger oder einzyklischer passiver Netze. Schließlich betrachten wir Netze mit linear modellierten aktiven Elementen. Nachdem wir ein Bilevel-Modell hergeleitet haben, mit dem wir die Zulässigkeit einer Buchung in diesem Fall bestimmen können, leiten wir verschiedene einstufige Reformulierungen zur Lösung des Problems ab. Darüber hinaus erhalten wir neuartige Charakterisierungen zulässiger Buchungen auf aktiven Netzen, die unsere Charakterisierung im passiven Fall verallgemeinern. Die Anwendbarkeit dieser verschiedenen Ansätze wird in einer Fallstudie an zwei Netzen aus der Literatur verglichen, wovon eines eine vereinfachte Version des griechischen Gasnetzes ist. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

We develop a detailed, large-scale, airspace planning and collaborative decision-making model (APCDM), that is part of an $11.5B, 10-year, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-sponsored effort to increase U.S. National Airspace (NAS) capacity by 30 percent. Given a set of flights that must be scheduled during some planning horizon, we use a mixed-integer programming formulation to select a set of flight plans from among alternatives subject to flight safety, air traffic control workload, and airline equity constraints. Novel contributions of this research include three-dimensional probabilistic conflict analyses, the derivation of valid inequalities to tighten the conflict safety representation constraints, the development of workload metrics based on average (and its variance from) peak load measures, and the consideration of equity among airline carriers in absorbing the costs related to re-routing, delays, and cancellations. We also propose an improved set of flight plan cost factors for representing system costs and investigating fairness issues by addressing flight dependencies occurring in hubbed operations, as well as market factors such as schedule convenience, reliability, and the timeliness of connections. The APCDM model has potential use for both tactical and strategic applications, such as air traffic control in response to severe weather phenomenon or spacecraft launches, FAA policy evaluation, Homeland Defense contingency planning, and military air campaign planning. The model is tested to consider various airspace restriction scenarios imposed by dynamic severe weather systems and space launch Special Use Airspace (SUA) impositions. The results from this model can also serve to augment the FAA's National Playbook of standardized flight profiles in different disruption-prone regions of the National Airspace. / Ph. D.

Avhandlingen undersöker ett centralt steg inom vetenskapliga praktiker: hur laboratorieprov översätts till data som anses giltiga och användbara av forskargemenskapen. Baserat på ett multilokalt fältarbete bestående av observationer och intervjuer i laboratorier för genetisk forskning, visas i avhandlingen hur laboratoriepersonalens yrkesskicklighet, samt normer och ideal om vetenskaplig forskning, formade deras praktiker av att producera giltiga data. Eftersom maskiner var väsentliga i forskningen undersöker avhandlingen också de former av agens som människor och maskiner ansågs bidra med till produktionen av giltiga data; giltighet tolkades som reproducerbarhet av forskarna. Med hjälp av representationsbegreppet och Latours begrepp om inskriptioner och immutable mobiles analyserar avhandlingen arbetet med att förvandla laboratorieprov till giltiga data som en tvåstegsprocess. Proven omvandlades först till rådata som sedan tolkades till data. Personalens huvudsakliga ansträngningar fokuserade i det första steget på att uppnå säkra resultat genom att bekämpa osäkerhet i material och metoder. I det andra steget var det viktigaste att eliminera subjektivitet och att göra objektiva tolkningar av rådatan. Laboratoriepersonalens yrkesskicklighet och användning av maskiner var viktiga verktyg för att eliminiera osäkerhet och subjektivitet. Säkra och objektiva resultat, dvs giltiga data, förväntades uppnås med hjälp av maskiner. Med användning av bl a Barad’s begrepp agential realism analyserar avhandlingen de olika förståelser av människor och maskiner som formade forskarnas praktiker och möjliggjorde skapandet av giltiga data. / This dissertation explores a central step in scientific practices: how samples are turned into data that is considered valid and useful by the research community. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, with observations and interviews at laboratories involved in genetic research, the study focuses on how the laboratory staff’s professional skill, norms, and ideals of scientific research formed their practices of making valid data. As machines were essential for this research, the study also investigates the forms of agency that humans and machines were seen as contributing to the making of valid data; validity being interpreted as reproducibility by the scientists involved. Drawing upon notions of representations as well as Latour’s concepts of inscriptions and immutable mobiles, the study analyzes the practices of transforming samples into valid data as a two-step process. The samples were first turned into raw data, which was subsequently interpreted as data. During the first step, the staff’s central concern was to battle uncertainty in materials and procedures and establish certainty of results, whereas in the second step it was of vital importance to eliminate subjectivity and make objective interpretations of the raw data. Central tools for eliminating uncertainty and subjectivity were the laboratory staff’s professional skill and the use of machines. Certainty and objectivity of results, i.e. valid data, were expected to occur with the help of machines. Drawing upon e.g. Barad’s framework of agential realism, the study analyzes the various understandings of notions of humanness and machineness which shaped scientists’ practices and made the creation of valid data possible.

The presented thesis deals with political parties and especially with their legal regulation. However, the thesis does not only use the legal statutes and theirs provisions, but it also aspire to set the existence and the action of political parties into a wider context, which is provided the political science. The subject of the thesis is restricted to the Czech Republic (respectively to its contemporary national territory and to political parties, which existed or are existing within this territory). That's why the statutory regulation of political parties' position is set into the context of czech constitutional law order as well. Concurrently, only selected aspects of existence and action of political parties are carefully analysed. In spite of that, the thesis provides a basic overview of general legal regulation of political parties in the Czech Republic. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter pursues historical development of political parties' phenomenon in territory of contemporary Czech Republic It does so by characterizing of political parties themselves (including the enumeration of the most important ones of them), and further by regarding to their legal regulation in specific historical periods, which preceded the enactment of contemporary valid legal regulation of...

[pt] O problema de roteamento de navios com gestão de estoques (conhecido pelo termo em inglês Maritime inventory routing ou MIR) representa um problema prático de logística onde o transportador da carga também é responsável pela manutenção dos estoques do produto transportado nos portos de carga e descarga. Esta tese estuda um caso real do problema MIR. Um conjunto de testes é apresentado de modo a comparar diferentes formulações matemáticas da literatura, a fim de encontrar aquela mais aderente ao problema real. Em função da complexidade computacional do problema, é apresentada uma abordagem heurística que consegue encontrar soluções similares e reduz consideravelmente o tempo computacional quando comparadas com as formulações baseadas em PLIM. No entanto, problemas reais são muito influenciados por aspectos incertos. Sendo assim, é apresentada uma abordagem robusta para a otimização do problema MIR, que considera incerteza no tempo de estadia do navio nos portos. A abordagem apresentada produz soluções para diferentes níveis de robustez. Em outras palavras, considera o risco de variação no tempo de estadia do navio em um porto durante uma operação de carga ou descarga. Assim, é capaz de determinar a probabilidade de inviabilidade da solução encontrada para cada nível de robustez oferecido, além do impacto no custo de transporte à medida que soluções mais robustas são apresentadas. Esta abordagem oferece ao tomador de decisão a medida do trade-off entre robustez e custo de transporte. Desta forma, o mesmo pode determinar qual o nível de conservadorismo irá adotar em sua programação de navios e quanto isto irá impactar o custo de transporte. Os experimentos apresentados identificaram que, aumentos sutís no nível de robustez (com pequeno impacto no custo de transporte) podem reduzir consideravelmente a probabilidade de inviabilidade de uma solução. / [en] Maritime inventory routing (MIR) problem is an academic name for a practical logistic problem that represents the routing or scheduling of vessels to carry product(s) between ports. Meanwhile, the product(s) inventory levels in these ports must remain between operational bounds during the entire planning horizon. This thesis focus on how to support decision on a real-life MIR problem faced by a Brazilian petroleum company. To do so, we structure a set of tests to compare different formulation from literature and identify which is more adherent to real problem. Due to computational complexity of the problem, we present an heuristic approach that provides reasonably good solutions when compared to deterministic mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulations and reduces considerably the computational time of solving real-life instances. However, uncertainty events have great impact in the ship scheduling planning. Therefore, we propose a robust optimization approach that considers uncertainty in the time spent at ports in each ship visit. Our approach is able to determine the probability of infeasibility and the impact in the objective function for each level of robustness, helping to measure the uncertain aversion of the decision maker. Our experiments identified that, for a certain instance, varying the level of robustness one may reduce the probability of infeasibility from 87 per cent (of deterministic solution) to 2 per cent and it represents an increase in the transportation costs of about 13 per cent.

In this dissertation, we introduce new families of valid inequalities for general linear mixed integer programs (MIPs) and second-order conic MIPs (SOCMIPs) and establish several theoretical properties and computational effectiveness of these inequalities. First we introduce the mixed n-step mixed integer rounding (MIR) inequalities for a generalization of the mixing set which we refer to as the n-mixing set. The n-mixing set is a multi-constraint mixed integer set in which each constraint has n integer variables and a single continuous variable. We then show that mixed n-step MIR can generate multi-row valid inequalities for general MIPs and special structure MIPs, namely, multi- module capacitated lot-sizing and facility location problems. We also present the results of our computational experiments with the mixed n-step MIR inequalities on small MIPLIB instances and randomly generated multi-module lot-sizing instances which show that these inequalities are quite effective. Next, we introduce the n-step conic MIR inequalities for the so-called polyhedral second-order conic (PSOC) mixed integer sets. PSOC sets arise in the polyhedral reformulation of SOCMIPs. We first introduce the n-step conic MIR inequality for a PSOC set with n integer variables and prove that all the 1-step to n-step conic MIR inequalities are facet-defining for the convex hull of this set. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the PSOC form of this inequality to be valid. Then, we use the aforementioned n-step conic MIR facet to derive the n-step conic MIR inequality for a general PSOC set and provide conditions for it to be facet-defining. We further show that the n-step conic MIR inequality for a general PSOC set strictly dominates the n-step MIR inequalities written for the two linear constraints that define the PSOC set. We also prove that the n-step MIR inequality for a linear mixed integer constraint is a special case of the n-step conic MIR inequality. Finally, we conduct a polyhedral study of the triplet formulation for the single row facility layout problem (SRFLP). For any number of departments n, we prove that the dimension of the triplet polytope (convex hull of solutions to the triplet formulation) is n(n - 1)(n - 2)/3. We then prove that several valid inequalities presented in Amaral (2009) for this polytope are facet-defining. These results provide theoretical support for the fact that the linear program solved over these valid inequalities gives the optimal solution for all instances studied by Amaral (2009).