The study aims to evaluate the understanding of value – based management (VBM) as a decision making tool, how it is embraced in all management levels and its impact on the performance of a petrochemical company. The application of VBM links business strategy, finance, performance management and management processes all together to create value. VBM is a powerful management framework with the aim to focus all managerial processes on shareholder value creation. It encourages employees at all levels within an organisation to focus on value creation. This study investigated VBM by means of literature study to formulate an understanding of how it can be used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. The VBM metrics were presented and some successes and failures of such metrics were considered to provide a better understanding of VBM implementation. A quantitative study was conducted through the use of a standardised questionnaire to collect primary data. The questionnaire was distributed to managers (from junior managers to senior managers) at Sasol. The completed questionnaire was tested for reliability and validity before it was analysed and specific constructs were developed from the literature review together with the respondents’ demographic profile. Even though most respondents indicated that they have not received adequate training and education on VBM, the results of the study indicate that there is a general knowledge and understanding of VBM and its principles in Sasol. After analysis the study provided practical recommendations to ensure that VBM is sustainably used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The study aims to evaluate the understanding of value – based management (VBM) as a decision making tool, how it is embraced in all management levels and its impact on the performance of a petrochemical company. The application of VBM links business strategy, finance, performance management and management processes all together to create value. VBM is a powerful management framework with the aim to focus all managerial processes on shareholder value creation. It encourages employees at all levels within an organisation to focus on value creation. This study investigated VBM by means of literature study to formulate an understanding of how it can be used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. The VBM metrics were presented and some successes and failures of such metrics were considered to provide a better understanding of VBM implementation. A quantitative study was conducted through the use of a standardised questionnaire to collect primary data. The questionnaire was distributed to managers (from junior managers to senior managers) at Sasol. The completed questionnaire was tested for reliability and validity before it was analysed and specific constructs were developed from the literature review together with the respondents’ demographic profile. Even though most respondents indicated that they have not received adequate training and education on VBM, the results of the study indicate that there is a general knowledge and understanding of VBM and its principles in Sasol. After analysis the study provided practical recommendations to ensure that VBM is sustainably used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

I en konkurrenskraftig marknad som konsultbranschen är det viktigt att konsultföretagen lever i ständig utveckling och ligger i framkant gällande ny kunskap. Detta eftersom företaget som erbjuder mest kompetens och kvalité till minst kostnad är det företag som anlitas till uppdragen som erbjuds (Kaario, et al. 2003). Ett kunskapsområde som intresserar företagen är värdebaserad försäljning, vilket som forskningsområde är ett relativt outforskat ämne att sälja en lösning istället för att sälja en produkt blir en mer komplex process för företaget (Terho, H. et al. 2012). Kunden behöver nämligen förstå hur företagets lösning kommer vara användbart och värdeskapande för deras organisation (Kaario, et al. 2003). I det här uppdraget för Semcon undersöks möjligheter och utmaningar med att utveckla deras verksamhet genom att öka försäljningen av arbetspaket i sin organisation. För att kunna skapa ett sådant erbjudande till kund krävs en grundlig förförståelse för kundens nyckelverksamhet, när lösningen behöver vara helt anpassad efter kundens företag för att vara av värde (Töytäri, P. et al. 2011). Denna rapport behandlar och redogör kring Semcons arbetspaket, en kartläggning av behoven och hindren hos kund. Innovationsbidraget ligger i att koppla ihop den tekniska världen med den akademiska med ett ganska outforskat område. Rapporten ämnar bidra till Semcons innovationsprocess mot lösnings-baserad försäljning, genom att komma med kunskap utifrån kundens perspektiv. Forskningsfrågorna denna rapport kommer att besvara är: vilka utmaningar ser Semcons befintliga koncept arbetspaket? Vad är värdeskapande hos företagen som Semcon står i kontakt med? Hur kan Semcons arbetspaket utvecklas på bästa sett utifrån denna information?

Thesis advisor: Julie Mortimer / Essays on the effects of health policy payment systems in long-term care and end-of-life care institutions are studied. In the arena of long-term care, state Medicaid agencies have recently implemented pay-for-performance (P4P) programs to address poor quality of care in nursing homes. Using facility-quarter level data from 2003 to 2010, we evaluate the effects of Medicaid nursing home P4P programs on clinical quality measures, relying on variation in the timing of P4P implementation across states. Further, we exploit variation in the structure of states' programs to investigate whether programs that reward certain dimensions of quality are associated with larger improvements. We find P4P decreases the incidence of adverse clinical outcomes by as much as 8%, and the improvements are concentrated among the measures that experienced an increase in their relative returns and share strong commonalities in production. In the Hospice industry, changes to the current reimbursement system are mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The motivation stems from noticeable hospice utilization changes since the Medicare Hospice Benefit (MHB) introduced a per-diem reimbursement in 1983. This research analyzes the abilities of a multi-tiered payment system, and a simpler two-part pricing system, to accurately match Medicare payments with hospice patient costs. Both systems improve on the current payment mechanism, while two-part pricing is the only system to maintain access to care for all MHB eligible patients. In addition, consumer disutility incurred by driving to airports is estimated and used to define air travel markets. Though an accurate definition of an economic market is important for any study of industry, there is no rule governing what exactly constitutes a market. To define a market we must ask the question ``between which products do consumers substitute,'' knowing that the answer to this question will depend on how ``close'' products are to one another in product space, as well as how close they are to one another, and to consumers, in geographic space. We estimate a discrete choice model of air travel demand that uses known information about the locations of products and consumers, which allows us to study substitution patterns among air travel products at different airports. We evaluate the commonly used city-pair and airport-pair definitions of a market for air travel, and conclude that a city-pair is the appropriate definition. We also employ the Hypothetical Monopolist test for antitrust market definition, as defined by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, and conclude that the relevant geographic market for antitrust analysis is frequently more narrowly defined as an airport-pair. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Background: Value-based leadership is needed and demanded in today’s complex and changing business environment. Values facilitate upcoming obstacles and difficult situations that everyone in an organization encounters. Hence, a manager should be able to lead and influence the entire organization towards these values, which make the role of the manager essential. Research argue for the effectiveness of implementing value-based leadership in organizations. Yet, less is known about how today’s companies and managers work with it, and what the factors are related to it. Research QuestionHow are managers working with value-based leadership and how can certain factors be related to it? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe how managers both view and work with value-based leadership in terms of social transformation, organizational culture and leadership behavior. Further, to explain how certain factors are related to value-based leadership in the company. The study also aims to develop and broaden the academical field with a framework of value-based leadership in order to create a deeper understanding of value-based leadership in practice and its possible outcomes. Method: A qualitative approach was used during this study, where ten managers from four Swedish companies from the private sector were interviewed. These companies were chosen due to their awareness of value-based leadership and clarification of values. Theoretical framework: The framework consists of three theoretical blocks: value-based leadership, leadership behavior, and organizational culture. Based on this, an analyze model was created to facilitate the analysis of the empirical data. Findings: All managers and their companies are working in accordance with value-based leadership, but to different extents, which is partly due to social transformation in terms of a shift in generations and social sustainability. The factors trust and values are most emphasized and related to value-based leadership, while the factors organizational culture and self-leadership are less emphasized. Still, the authors claim that these factors are crucial in value-based leadership.

The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program (HVBP), created by Section 3001 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, enacted a major industry shift in Medicare towards "pay for performance," or paying for high marks on a variety quality metrics rather than the traditional reliance on volume of care delivered. This study examines one of these quality metrics in particular: patient satisfaction. The trajectory of this paper begins with an overview of the current focus on patient satisfaction as a modern quality metric in American healthcare, contextualizes this emphasis on satisfaction within the intellectual movement of "patient-centered care," and moves on to a review of the relevant scholarship that attempts to explain the numerous determinants of patient satisfaction scores (with special attention to the inpatient hospital setting), as well as the robust academic debate over whether satisfaction is even an appropriate quality metric at all relative to clinical outcomes in care. The second half of my discourse moves on to more practical applications - first I break down the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey and the impact of its methodology on providers, then the Medicare HVBP program itself and its various directions towards the value-based care model. I conclude with a quantitative analysis of trends in patient satisfaction over time between 1) HVBP-participating providers (as of FY2014) and 2) those providers who have not opted in (including those ineligible to do so). My comparison aims to study the strength of the HVBP incentives to improve patient satisfaction in those subject to the financial incentive relative to those who are not. Additionally, I preface this analysis whether patient satisfaction scores are associated with either clinical process of care scores or outcome scores in the HVBP program. My research questions aim to shed light on the academic debate between patient satisfaction and more traditional clinical outcomes - are they related in the context of FY2014 HVBP? Are the new incentives to improve patient satisfaction actually doing so in a meaningful way among providers newly accountable to these incentives? Finally, in a market defined by zero-sum resources, is there evidence that a financial incentives around patient satisfaction are channeling resources and by extension improvement away from clinical outcome performance? I believe this last question is the true concern of patient satisfaction skeptics, and hope to address it with applicable data. By providing a thorough qualitative grounding in the topic followed by current quantitative analysis, my goal is to create an informed perspective on the use of patient satisfaction as a quality metric in U.S. healthcare, which can be applied meaningfully from policy, provider, and consumer vantage points. With patient satisfaction becoming increasingly more internalized in the value-based care model, these analyses of the initial results in HVBP potentially serve as predictive insight into provider behavior in this area moving forward.

Reducing hospital readmissions is critical to the success and sustainability of both hospitals and the communities in which they reside. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore organizational strategies hospital leaders use to reduce hospital readmissions. The study was limited to hospitals in Southwest Missouri with readmission rates below the state average. Complex adaptive systems was the conceptual framework for the study because of the complex nature and numerous stakeholders of the healthcare system. Data were collected from a purposive sample of 15 hospital leaders via semistructured interviews and an analysis of organizational artifacts. Member checking was used to increase reliability and validity of the results. Data analysis was conducted using Yin's 5 step process including qualitative analysis software to identify major and core themes. The major themes identified in the study included population health, hospital operations and patient interactions, leadership and mission, and barriers to reducing readmissions. The implications for positive social change include the potential to improve services hospital team members provide to patients, which may improve the overall health of the communities they serve. By promoting improved health outcomes for local communities, society benefits through reduction of costs to the federal government and an overall improvement in the health of communities.

Bakgrund:                       I takt med att företagen mer och mer har börjat fokusera på aktieägarvärde och ägarstyrning har nya normativa ekonomistyrningsfunktioner som värdebaserad styrning vuxit fram. Därmed är det intressant att undersöka hur svenska familjeföretag av olika karaktärer upplever denna trend och huruvida det överensstämmer med ett aktieägarorienterat synsätt.  Syfte:                                  Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka och kartlägga vilken uppfattning svenska noterade och onoterade familjeföretag har på värdebaserad styrning och dess överensstämmelse med ett aktieägarorienterat synsätt. Vidare syftar uppsatsen att beskriva och förklara huruvida sådana verksamheter upplever att värdebaserad styrning kan användas som ett styrningsverktyg för att definiera och säkerställa aktieägarvärde. Metod: Jag har genomfört sex stycken intervjustudier med en abduktiv forskningsansats. Det empiriska materialet grundar sig huvudsakligen på data från både personliga intervjuer och telefonintervjuer men även sekundär data från hemsidor, årsredovisningar och bekräftade teorier. Slutsatser:                         Studiens noterade och onoterade familjeföretag upplever att deras värdeskapande processer stämmer väl överens med ett aktieägarorienterat synsätt. De påvisar alla att både finansiella och icke-finansiella målsättningar symboliserar verksamheternas aktieägarvärde vilket överensstämmer med varje familjs grundläggande värderingar och intressen för respektive verksamhet. Studiens fallföretag har vidare ingen konkret definition utav aktieägarvärde, verksamheterna är medvetna om värdet men använder inte begreppet i den dagliga verksamheten. Aktieägarvärde uppfattas vidare vara en integrerad målsättning i varje familjeföretag värdeskapande process. / Background:   As more and more companies have begun to focus on shareholder value and corporate governance, new normative financial functions as value-based management have emerged. Thus, it is interesting to investigate how Swedish family businesses of different characters experiencing this trend and whether it is consistent with a shareholder-oriented approach. Purpose:                             The purpose of this paper is to examine and identify the perception of Swedish listed and unlisted family business, on value-based management and its consistency with a shareholder-oriented approach. Furthermore, the study aims to describe and explain whether such business perceives that value-based management can be used as a management tool to define and ensure shareholder value. Method:                             I have completed six interview studies with an abductive research approach. The empirical material is mainly based on data from both personal interviews and telephone interviews but also secondary data from websites, annual reports and confirmed theories. Conclusions:                     The listed and unlisted family firms in this study perceive that their value creation processes is consistent with a shareholder-oriented approach. All the family firms demonstrate that both financial and non-financial objectives symbolize activities which are shareholder value consistent with the family’s basic values ​​and interests. Furthermore has each and every firm no concrete definition of shareholder value, businesses are aware of the value but they are not using the concept in their daily operations. Shareholder value is further perceived as an integrated goal in the firm’s value creation process.

Metrology is a concept that is not known by many, it is the science of measurement. For such an unknown concept it has significant importance to both the manufacturing companies and the customers as they both need to be sure that the final products are correct and of high quality. Therefore many companies have a quality system within their company to measure and calibrate their instruments. To ensure that the measuring instruments used are correct they need to be calibrated towards national and international standards. If you cannot do that at the company the service needs to be purchased externally. SKF, Svenska Kullagerfabriken AB, has a metrology service that they use for their own manufacturing that they have sold externally before and want to start selling again. The purpose of this study was to investigate what the main value drivers are in the metrology market and based on those values create a service offer. To investigate the purpose a case study of SKF’s metrology service was made and interviews were performed on nine manufacturing companies within the western region of Sweden, with focus on Gothenburg. The theoretical framework is based on the market positioning strategy by Lovelock & Wirtz (2011). The market positioning strategy includes a market section, an internal section and a competitor section. These parts can be seen all through the thesis as it guided the authors through the process. The empirical findings show the interview answers, the value drivers and the competitor response profile.   In the empirical chapter it was discovered that accreditation and accuracy are the two value drivers that the customers find most important in metrology. Those value drivers does both Mätcentrum and most of the competitors have. The empirical also show that the suppliers have a strong position in the market and can offer similar or more value than Mätcentrum. The conclusion is that it would be difficult for Mätcentrum to start selling their service externally again. This is due to the competition, mainly from existing competitors and suppliers in combination with the lack of differentiating elements in their offer. However there is still an opportunity for profitability if the communication of the values is adjusted after each customer’s need and received successfully.

Performance of modern pipelined processor depends on steady flow of useful instructions for processing. Branch instruction disrupts sequential flow of instructions by presenting multiple paths through which a program can proceed. By predicting branch outcome early, branch predictors allow processor to continue fetching instructions from the predicted path. History-based dynamic branch predictors have shown to reach high prediction accuracy, yet certain branch types continue to mispredict. These are multitarget indirect branches and data-dependent direct and indirect branches. These are hard-to-predict branches since their outcome do not always exhibit repeatable patterns. This thesis describes branch prediction schemes for improving prediction accuracy of hard-to-predict branches using data value correlation. In these schemes, instead of relying on branch history information, compiler identifies program instructions whose output value strongly correlates with branch outcome. These correlated instructions are tracked at run-time, and their output is used for making branch predictions. Specifically, this thesis proposes following two branch prediction schemes: (i) Value-based BTB indexing (VBBI) is a low cost, compiler-guided scheme for predicting multi-target indirect branches. For every indirect branch, compiler identifies an instruction whose output strongly correlates with targets taken by the indirect branch. At run-time, multiple branch targets are stored and subsequently accessed from BTB using index formed by hashing indirect branch PC with output of the correlated instruction. (ii) Store-Load-Branch (SLB) predictor is a compiler-assisted branch prediction scheme for data-dependent branches. Typically, data-dependent branches are associated with program data structures such as arrays, linked list etc., and follow store-load-branch execution sequence. A set of memory locations is written at an earlier point in a program. Later, these locations are read, and used for evaluating branch condition. Branch outcome depends on values stored in data structure, which, normally do not have repeatable patterns. In SLB scheme, compiler identifies all program points where data structure associated with a data-dependent branch is modified. These marked store instructions are tracked at run-time, and stored values are used for computing branch flags ahead of time. Later, when branch instruction is fetched, pre-computed flags are read, and used for making predictions. This thesis introduces new branch prediction schemes, describes hardware structures and compiler analysis for implementing these schemes, evaluates their performance impact, and estimates their area, power and timing overhead. / text