Dissertations / Theses: 'Decision importance'

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Polk, Thomas E. "Decision making strategies : the influence of task complexity, decision importance, decision maker impulsivity, and decision maker gender /." Thesis, This resource online, 1990. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03122009-040747/.

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Karlsson, Markus. "The Neuroscience of Decision Making : The Importance of Emotional Neural Circuits in Decision Making." Thesis, Högskolan i Skövde, Institutionen för biovetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:his:diva-16033.

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The neuroscience of decision making is laying the puzzle of how the brain computes decisions. It tries to sort out which factors are responsible for causing us to choose one way or the other. This thesis reviews to what extent emotional brain processes and their neural circuits impact decision making. The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) provides a solid dual-system framework for decision making. Dissociating an impulsive system, in which the amygdala is central, and a reflective system mediated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex(VMPFC). The SMH emphasizes the function of the VMPFC as necessary and crucial formaking favorable long-term decisions. Research on moral decision making also shows that similar systems as used by the SMH has a key role in how we think about moral dilemmas as well. Damage or maldevelopment of these neural circuits can cause myopia for the future and deeply immoral behavior. Abnormalities in emotional neuronal circuits can also be linked to addictive behavior and psychopathy. The findings on decision making and its neuralsubstrates dismantle the common sense notion of free will and moral responsibility. An explanation of how the feeling of free will arises is given using the Interpreter system theoryof consciousness. Moral responsibility without the need for a free will is defended by analternative approach with a framework of a brain in-control versus out-of-control.

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Jackson, John B. "Exploring the importance of information superiority to the decision maker." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Naval Postgraduate School, 2008. http://bosun.nps.edu/uhtbin/hyperion-image.exe/08Jun%5FJackson.pdf.

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Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008.
Thesis Advisor(s): Sanchez, Susan M. "June 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on August 25, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-62). Also available in print.

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Milev, Sandra. "Assessing Parameter Importance in Decision Models. Application to Health Economic Evaluations." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/23810.

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Background: Uncertainty in parameters is present in many risk assessment and decision making problems and leads to uncertainty in model predictions. Therefore an analysis of the degree of uncertainty around the model inputs is often needed. Importance analysis involves use of quantitative methods aiming at identifying the contribution of uncertain input model parameters to output uncertainty. Expected value of partial perfect information (EVPPI) measure is a current gold- standard technique for measuring parameters importance in health economics models. The current standard approach of estimating EVPPI through performing double Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) can be associated with a long run time. Objective: To investigate different importance analysis techniques with an aim to find alternative technique with shorter run time that will identify parameters with greatest contribution to uncertainty in model output. Methods: A health economics model was updated and served as a tool to implement various importance analysis techniques. Twelve alternative techniques were applied: rank correlation analysis, contribution to variance analysis, mutual information analysis, dominance analysis, regression analysis, analysis of elasticity, ANCOVA, maximum separation distances analysis, sequential bifurcation, double MCS EVPPI,EVPPI-quadrature and EVPPI- single method. Results: Among all these techniques, the dominance measure resulted with the closest correlated calibrated scores when compared with EVPPI calibrated scores. Performing a dominance analysis as a screening method to identify subgroup of parameters as candidates for being most important parameters and subsequently only performing EVPPI analysis on the selected parameters will reduce the overall run time.

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Erlandsson, Daniel. "Nationality and crowdfunding : The importance of nationality on the transaction decision." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för ekonomi, teknik och naturvetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-33020.

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Crowdfunding is a growing form of start-up funding and is estimated to turn over 5.1 billion USD in the future (Teigland & Ingram, 2013). This may not be a big part of the global economy but still very important, because this capital helps start-up ventures to emerge and help them to evolve in a way they could not if it was not for crowdfunding. The findings of this paper deduces that nationality does not have an impact on the transactions decision of Swedish crowdfunders. Support for other hypothesis are also found, which could be helpful for future research about how crowdfunders transaction decisions is influenced.

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Fernandez, de Cueto Julio E. "Relative Importance of False Positives in the Selection Process." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/569.

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This study investigated the role of contextual factors in personnel selection. Specifically, I explored if specific job factors such as the wage, training, available applicant pool and security concerns around a job, influenced personnel decisions. Additionally, I explored if the individual differences of decision makers played a role in how the previously mentioned job factors affected their decisions. A policy-capturing methodology was employed to determine the weight participants place on the job factors when selecting candidates for different jobs. Regression and correlational analyses were computed with the beta weights obtained from individual regression analyses. The results obtained from the two samples (student and general population) revealed that specific job characteristics did indeed influence personnel decisions. Participants were more concerned with making mistakes and thus less likely to accept candidates when selecting candidates for jobs having high salary and/or high training requirements.

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Sweat, Patricia A. "The importance of artificial intelligence for Naval intelligence training simulations." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2006. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/06Sep%5FSweat.pdf.

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Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES))--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2006.
Thesis Advisor(s): Christian J. Darken, Perry McDowell. "September 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p. 65). Also available in print.

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Twycross, Alison Mary. "Children's nurses' pain management practices : theoretical knowledge, perceived importance and decision-making." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2003. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/19025/.

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Children continue to experience unrelieved moderate to severe pain post-operatively. Previous studies have suggested several factors to explain this. However, the impact of these factors on practice has not been explored. Nor have children's nurses clinical decision-making strategies been examined. This case study set out to explore the influence of various factors on individual nurses' post-operative pain management practices, and to answer the following questions: • How does the perceived importance of a pain management task impact on practice? • How does theoretical knowledge and its application impact on practice? • How does what nurses say they do compare to what they actually did? • How do nurses make decisions when managing pain in children? The case study used qualitative (participant observation and the think aloud technique) and quantitative methods (questionnaires) to obtain an in-depth picture of children's nurses' post-operative pain management practices. As well as examining some aspects of pain management for the first time, such as nurses' pain-related clinical decision-making, new perspectives were explored in relation to other well researched issues, including whether theoretical knowledge about pain management is applied in practice. The perceived importance of a pain management task did not affect the likelihood of it being undertaken. A good level of theoretical knowledge appeared not to affect the quality of a nurse's pain management practices. A lack of congruence was found between what the nurses said they do and what the nurses actually did. Observational data indicated that nurses generally did not follow current recommendations fully when managing pain. In several areas, the practices of the ward sisters appeared to be of a lower standard than more junior nurses. Nurses appeared to use non-expert decisionmaking strategies regardless of their years of experience or level of academic attainment. A hypothetico-deductive (analytical) model of decision-making seemed to be used. Several strategies, which might facilitate the application of theoretical knowledge in clinical decision-making and practice are considered, including the use of teaching rounds and clinical scenarios. These need evaluating, and further research is needed to identify other factors that affect pain management practices and decision-making strategies. How children's nurses make clinical decisions also needs further exploration. A revised conceptual framework is presented which suggests that, for post-operative pain management practices to be effective, nurses need to have not only the right attitude and the right knowledge but also the ability to make the right decision. However, it is probable that other factors, both individual and collective, are also involved, including ward culture, role-modelling and lack of motivation to change. The revised conceptual framework provides a basis for future research.

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Stokmans, Maria Johanna Wilhelmina. "The relative importance of product attributes : consumer decision theories in new-product development /." Delft : Delft University Press, 1991. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=003577796&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

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Roszak, Julie, and Florine Marechal. "The Importance of Environmental Sustainability in the Decision to Participate in the Sharing Economy." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-137425.

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Global warming, increasing greenhouse gases emissions, global pollution, exhaustion of natural resources... Those are all consequences of human activities on the environment. Today's world is facing major environmental challenges and sustainability has become a burning topic during the last decades. In our consumption-focused society, the concept of the sharing economy has emerged as an alternative to existing consumption patterns. Advocating the "use rather than own" principle, this concept has a true potential in terms of changing the way we consume and produce to lead to more sustainable behaviors. Current literature has investigated the motivations influencing the decision to participate in the sharing economy. Three main motivations have been highlighted: economic, social and environmental. Indeed, the sharing economy offers the possibility to save or make money, strengthen social ties and reduce one's ecological impact. Even though the environmental aspect plays a part in the decision-making process, it is unclear whether it is a determining factor or only a secondary concern. Thus, our study aims at developing an in-depth understanding of the motivations that drive people's participation in the sharing economy and the role of environmental sustainability. To fulfill that purpose, we have formulated the following research question: How important is environmental sustainability among the motivations to participate in the peer-to-peer sharing economy? To answer our research question, we conducted a qualitative study. We interviewed six French users of the collaborative carpooling platform Blablacar. Questions about the sharing economy in general and use of this specific platform were asked. These interviews allowed us to understand users' perceptions and attitudes towards the sharing economy and to make the connection with the environmental motivation. Our findings reveal that the environmental motivation exists and is part of the decision- making process. We could note a behavior change as the willingness to use collaborative platforms in the future is increasing. At the same time, a growing environmental consciousness has been expressed. However, the economic motivation still strongly prevails over the environmental and social motivations to engage in sharing activities. This observation leads us to conclude about the uncertain future of the sharing economy as a more sustainable consumption pattern.

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Chinburapa, Vijit 1959. "PRESCRIBING INTENTION AND THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF DRUG ATTRIBUTES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HMO AND FEE-FOR-SERVICE PHYSICIANS." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/276926.

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Shields, M. Dale. "An examination of the importance of purchase planning and decision management activities in industrial firms." Connect to resource, 1986. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=osu1263049285.

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Lubis, Arief Wibisono. "Exploring the importance of financial literacy within the Capability Approach framework." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277309.

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This dissertation aims to address the importance of financial literacy within the capability approach framework in the context of microfinance institutions’ clients in Indonesia, by raising four main issues. The first touches on financial capability and specifically focuses on its conceptualisation, predictors, and relationship with quality of life. A participatory method was employed to understand whether financial literacy is viewed as an important element of financial capability. An index of financial capability was built to investigate factors predicting financial capability and the relationship between financial capability and quality of life. The results suggest that socio-demographic discrepancies in financial capability exist, and financial capability is relevant for the improvement of quality of life. The remaining three issues centre on the instrumental value of financial literacy. In the second part, it is proposed that financial literacy is a relevant conversion factor. Within the capability approach literature itself, there is a lack of empirical discussion on conversion factors. It can be concluded that financial literacy is associated positively with conversion rate efficiency. The third research topic examined is the role of financial literacy in household financial decision-making authority. Previous studies have used household decision-making authority as a reflection of agency, which is an important building block of the capability approach. This thesis focuses on financial decision making, which is often perceived as “difficult”, “boring”, and “full of uncertainties”. It is suggested that the relationship between financial literacy and household financial decision-making authority is complex and contingent upon various factors. The role of financial literacy in the relationship between financial decision-making authority and subjective well-being is the last topic investigated in this dissertation. While decision-making authority has been argued as a reflection of human agency and source of power within households, it can also be perceived as a burden. These two interpretations of authority lead to an unclear relationship between household financial decision-making authority and subjective well-being. While a negative relationship between household financial decision-making authority and subjective well-being can be found among those with low levels of financial literacy, a similar correlation is absent among those who score high in financial literacy. This suggests that skills are important for people to value agency.

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Johnson, Earl E., Gustav Mueller, and Todd Ricketts. "Statistically Derived Factors of Varied Importance to Audiologists When Making a Hearing Aid Brand Preference Decision." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2009. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1695.

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To determine the amount of importance audiologists place on various items related to their selection of a preferred hearing aid brand manufacturer. Three hundred forty-three hearing aid-dispensing audiologists rated a total of 32 randomized items by survey methodology. Principle component analysis identified seven orthogonal statistical factors of importance. In rank order, these factors were Aptitude of the Brand, Image, Cost, Sales and Speed of Delivery, Exposure, Colleague Recommendations, and Contracts and Incentives. While it was hypothesized that differences among audiologists in the importance ratings of these factors would dictate their preference for a given brand, that was not our finding. Specifically, mean ratings for the six most important factors did not differ among audiologists preferring different brands. A statistically significant difference among audiologists preferring different brands was present, however, for one factor: Contracts and Incentives. Its assigned importance, though, was always lower than that for the other six factors. Although most audiologists have a preferred hearing aid brand, differences in the perceived importance of common factors attributed to brands do not largely determine preference for a particular brand.

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Twum, Amoako Benjamin. "The importance of Business Intelligence as a decision-making tool : case study electricity company of Ghana (E.C.G)." Thesis, Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen Handels- och IT-högskolan, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-17652.

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Demand and technology are driving competition to its best if not to the edge, blurring the industrial boundaries and resulting in a substantial re-arrangement of businesses. The advancement in information technology has also made it possible for organisations to hoard large volumes of data from multiple sources through their business processes. To remain competitive in the face of these changing times and fierce competition, a tool is needed which has the capability to allow a holistic view of the operating environment of the organisation, by taking advantage of the huge body of accumulated data and thereby allowing decision makers to be spontaneous with their decision-making.Business Intelligence offers these capabilities and more, for instance the possibility to perform analytics operations about event(s) that demands more clarity on their behaviour.Research in this area, though young, is gradually gaining attention in academia, although still scanty in Africa. This thesis investigates if the adaptation of Business Intelligence (BI) systems can help in an organisation's strategic decision-making in the context of the Electricity Company of Ghana (E.C.G), operating in the utility industry in Ghana.A qualitative approach, employing interviews with seven selected managers at E.C.G was adopted. The results indicate that BI, or a similar system, has never been adapted by E.C.G, though the company creates huge data through its operations. Further, the organisation's information system is not linked together to allow possible discovery of some intelligence that would be worthwhile to influence strategic decisions. The dispersed nature of the current systems is not only causing delays in quest of information from other departments, but also affecting decision-making and progress of work. E.C.G is a prime candidate for the adaptation of BI to leverage on its huge data and also/additionally reduce production waste and costs and to help provide an efficient supply of electricity to its customers. Such a tool would prove to be indispensable.
Program: Masterutbildning i Informatik

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James, Elizabeth M. "Importance of Factors Considered by Ohio Secondary Agricultural Education Teachers in Their Decision to Remain in Teaching." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1367579114.

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Dosne, Anne-Gaëlle. "Improved Methods for Pharmacometric Model-Based Decision-Making in Clinical Drug Development." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för farmaceutisk biovetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-305697.

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Pharmacometric model-based analysis using nonlinear mixed-effects models (NLMEM) has to date mainly been applied to learning activities in drug development. However, such analyses can also serve as the primary analysis in confirmatory studies, which is expected to bring higher power than traditional analysis methods, among other advantages. Because of the high expertise in designing and interpreting confirmatory studies with other types of analyses and because of a number of unresolved uncertainties regarding the magnitude of potential gains and risks, pharmacometric analyses are traditionally not used as primary analysis in confirmatory trials. The aim of this thesis was to address current hurdles hampering the use of pharmacometric model-based analysis in confirmatory settings by developing strategies to increase model compliance to distributional assumptions regarding the residual error, to improve the quantification of parameter uncertainty and to enable model prespecification. A dynamic transform-both-sides approach capable of handling skewed and/or heteroscedastic residuals and a t-distribution approach allowing for symmetric heavy tails were developed and proved relevant tools to increase model compliance to distributional assumptions regarding the residual error. A diagnostic capable of assessing the appropriateness of parameter uncertainty distributions was developed, showing that currently used uncertainty methods such as bootstrap have limitations for NLMEM. A method based on sampling importance resampling (SIR) was thus proposed, which could provide parameter uncertainty in many situations where other methods fail such as with small datasets, highly nonlinear models or meta-analysis. SIR was successfully applied to predict the uncertainty in human plasma concentrations for the antibiotic colistin and its prodrug colistin methanesulfonate based on an interspecies whole-body physiologically based pharmacokinetic model. Lastly, strategies based on model-averaging were proposed to enable full model prespecification and proved to be valid alternatives to standard methodologies for studies assessing the QT prolongation potential of a drug and for phase III trials in rheumatoid arthritis. In conclusion, improved methods for handling residual error, parameter uncertainty and model uncertainty in NLMEM were successfully developed. As confirmatory trials are among the most demanding in terms of patient-participation, cost and time in drug development, allowing (some of) these trials to be analyzed with pharmacometric model-based methods will help improve the safety and efficiency of drug development.

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Doubleday, Kevin. "Generation of Individualized Treatment Decision Tree Algorithm with Application to Randomized Control Trials and Electronic Medical Record Data." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/613559.

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With new treatments and novel technology available, personalized medicine has become a key topic in the new era of healthcare. Traditional statistical methods for personalized medicine and subgroup identification primarily focus on single treatment or two arm randomized control trials (RCTs). With restricted inclusion and exclusion criteria, data from RCTs may not reflect real world treatment effectiveness. However, electronic medical records (EMR) offers an alternative venue. In this paper, we propose a general framework to identify individualized treatment rule (ITR), which connects the subgroup identification methods and ITR. It is applicable to both RCT and EMR data. Given the large scale of EMR datasets, we develop a recursive partitioning algorithm to solve the problem (ITR-Tree). A variable importance measure is also developed for personalized medicine using random forest. We demonstrate our method through simulations, and apply ITR-Tree to datasets from diabetes studies using both RCT and EMR data. Software package is available at https://github.com/jinjinzhou/ITR.Tree.

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Leugering, Marvin. "Importance of social media in the information sourcing phase during the decision-making process of the South African traveller." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8541.

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Includes bibliographical references.
The Internet and the emergence of social media have a significant effect on the tourism industry world-wide. Tourists can search for advice online from strangers and friends who have visited the destination in the past. Research indicates that this information source is perceived as more credible than traditional marketing material such as Web sites, brochures or other forms of advertisements. More specifically, information sources on social media assist the tourist in evaluating alternatives in order to make an informed purchasing- decision. Destination marketing organisations and tourism enterprises need to understand the role that social media plays in the decision-making process in order to create effective marketing strategies online. This research paper places the focus on the South African traveller and which online sources s/he uses to search for travel information before going on holiday. Social media sources in particularly will be under investigation. There has been a dearth of research conducted in this area on emerging markets such as South Africa and this paper will fill an important gap in the academic literature. The database for this research was acquired from Travelstart; a leading digital travel agency in South Africa.

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Saunders, Gary University of Ballarat. "Pharmacovigilance Decision Support: The value of Disproportionality Analysis Signal Detection Methods, the development and testing of Covariability Techniques, and the importance of Ontology." University of Ballarat, 2006. http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/12755.

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The cost of adverse drug reactions to society in the form of deaths, chronic illness, foetal malformation, and many other effects is quite significant. For example, in the United States of America, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs is around the fourth leading cause of death. The reporting of adverse drug reactions is spontaneous and voluntary in Australia. Many methods that have been used for the analysis of adverse drug reaction data, mostly using a statistical approach as a basis for clinical analysis in drug safety surveillance decision support. This thesis examines new approaches that may be used in the analysis of drug safety data. These methods differ significantly from the statistical methods in that they utilize co variability methods of association to define drug-reaction relationships. Co variability algorithms were developed in collaboration with Musa Mammadov to discover drugs associated with adverse reactions and possible drug-drug interactions. This method uses the system organ class (SOC) classification in the Australian Adverse Drug Reaction Advisory Committee (ADRAC) data to stratify reactions. The text categorization algorithm BoosTexter was found to work with the same drug safety data and its performance and modus operandi was compared to our algorithms. These alternative methods were compared to a standard disproportionality analysis methods for signal detection in drug safety data including the Bayesean mulit-item gamma Poisson shrinker (MGPS), which was found to have a problem with similar reaction terms in a report and innocent by-stander drugs. A classification of drug terms was made using the anatomical-therapeutic-chemical classification (ATC) codes. This reduced the number of drug variables from 5081 drug terms to 14 main drug classes. The ATC classification is structured into a hierarchy of five levels. Exploitation of the ATC hierarchy allows the drug safety data to be stratified in such a way as to make them accessible to powerful existing tools. A data mining method that uses association rules, which groups them on the basis of content, was used as a basis for applying the ATC and SOC ontologies to ADRAC data. This allows different views of these associations (even very rare ones). A signal detection method was developed using these association rules, which also incorporates critical reaction terms.
Doctor of Philosophy

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Saunders, Gary. "Pharmacovigilance Decision Support: The value of Disproportionality Analysis Signal Detection Methods, the development and testing of Covariability Techniques, and the importance of Ontology." University of Ballarat, 2006. http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/15382.

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The cost of adverse drug reactions to society in the form of deaths, chronic illness, foetal malformation, and many other effects is quite significant. For example, in the United States of America, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs is around the fourth leading cause of death. The reporting of adverse drug reactions is spontaneous and voluntary in Australia. Many methods that have been used for the analysis of adverse drug reaction data, mostly using a statistical approach as a basis for clinical analysis in drug safety surveillance decision support. This thesis examines new approaches that may be used in the analysis of drug safety data. These methods differ significantly from the statistical methods in that they utilize co variability methods of association to define drug-reaction relationships. Co variability algorithms were developed in collaboration with Musa Mammadov to discover drugs associated with adverse reactions and possible drug-drug interactions. This method uses the system organ class (SOC) classification in the Australian Adverse Drug Reaction Advisory Committee (ADRAC) data to stratify reactions. The text categorization algorithm BoosTexter was found to work with the same drug safety data and its performance and modus operandi was compared to our algorithms. These alternative methods were compared to a standard disproportionality analysis methods for signal detection in drug safety data including the Bayesean mulit-item gamma Poisson shrinker (MGPS), which was found to have a problem with similar reaction terms in a report and innocent by-stander drugs. A classification of drug terms was made using the anatomical-therapeutic-chemical classification (ATC) codes. This reduced the number of drug variables from 5081 drug terms to 14 main drug classes. The ATC classification is structured into a hierarchy of five levels. Exploitation of the ATC hierarchy allows the drug safety data to be stratified in such a way as to make them accessible to powerful existing tools. A data mining method that uses association rules, which groups them on the basis of content, was used as a basis for applying the ATC and SOC ontologies to ADRAC data. This allows different views of these associations (even very rare ones). A signal detection method was developed using these association rules, which also incorporates critical reaction terms.
Doctor of Philosophy

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Xu, Lu. "The Importance of Construct Definition and Specification in Operations Management Structured Model Research: The Case for Quality and Sustainability Constructs in a Decision-Making Model." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248479/.

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In the operations management research, the inconsistent use of the same term for different concepts and the use of the similar concepts for different constructs potentially causes theoretical and statistical problems. This research addresses the importance of construct definitions and specification methodologically within the context of quality and sustainability management. It involves three essays using multiple quantitative methods such as partial least squares structural equation modeling and multiple regression in different consumer decision-making models in the automobile industry. In the first two essays, a comprehensive literature review results in definition and contextualization of the quality and sustainability constructs as applied to operations management and marketing research. The relationships of these constructs with consumer behavior are empirically tested. Building upon the first two essays, the third essay addresses the methodological issues on formative and reflective measurements by summarizing a procedure of validating formative measurements. The quality construct was used to illustrate the methodology. This research contributes to the literature, theory, and practices in the area of quality and sustainability management.

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Bell, Alan. "Critical junctures in decision making : the importance of strategic choice for international entrepreneurship and small business development in a globalised world; a UK Thailand case study." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.246604.

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Tan, Ee Lyn. "Drug and Therapeutics Committees: Studies in Australian hospitals." University of Sydney. Pharmacy Practice, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/711.

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Australia�s policy on Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) aims to achieve appropriate use of medicines and improved health outcomes. Drug and Therapeutics Committees (DTCs) are educators, policy makers as well as financial gatekeepers in matters relating to medicine use. Increasingly, DTCs are also involved in risk management and clinical governance. As such, DTCs could be considered to be QUM advocates in the institutions in which they function. In a health care arena where there are escalating demands on high standards of clinical practice, quality assessment and improvement is essential in ensuring safe and effective patient care. Given the role DTCs play in safeguarding the interests of the stakeholders of the health care system, research into ways in which DTC performance could be enhanced is required. Although indicators specific to DTCs exist, the literature does not seem to provide straightforward answers to the question of what is currently being done in terms of quality assessment and quality improvement of DTCs. In the absence of such data, an opportunity for research is clearly identified. The first aim of this research project was to gain insight into the current activities undertaken by, and challenges facing Australian DTCs. Following this, the second aim was to explore ways in which DTC performance could be augmented. In addressing the first aim of this project, a national survey of Australian DTCs was conducted. These findings reinforce the evidence in the literature about the roles, structure and stakeholder expectations of DTCs. Our research also documents DTCs� quality improvement initiatives and barriers to DTC activities. It appears that there is little support available to Australian DTCs. Further, a case study was undertaken in order to gain an understanding of the depth and detail of DTC operations. An audit of a DTC in an Australian hospital was conducted. This study revealed that DTC decisions are being implemented in an ad hoc manner. In fact, there were no strategies (or action) planned to implement the majority of their decisions. This could have an impact on DTC performance. In view of this finding, qualitative methods were used to explore stakeholder opinions regarding the implementation of DTC decisions and policies. Stakeholders believed that strategies used to implement DTC policies should be targeted (to the audience as well as the type of decision/policy being implemented), timely, and delivered at the point of care. Face-to-face strategies were perceived to be more effective than printed materials, particularly when an influence on clinical practice was desired. Stakeholders also felt that the lack of resources was a significant barrier to DTC performance augmentation. This probably contributed to a lack of follow-up (or review) of implemented policies. According to stakeholders, other barriers to policy implementation include a lack of ownership of policies, low DTC profile, and an over-reliance on pharmacy to implement DTC decisions. Stakeholders felt one of the ways in which DTC performance could be improved was to prioritise DTC decisions for implementation. In pursuit of a method to prioritise DTC decisions, a survey was conducted. Stakeholders identified patient safety, cost, and the practice of evidence-based medicine as domains of important DTC decisions. The results also suggest that stakeholders recognise the need for the prioritisation of DTC decisions for implementation. Stakeholders implied that higher priority would be assigned to DTC decisions considered to be important. In a follow-up survey, stakeholders (including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and DTC members) seemed to have agreement of the primary domains of DTC decisions. Higher levels of importance and higher priority were assigned to decisions involving the primary domains of patient safety and cost. However, level of importance and priority assignment were not consistently correlated. The work presented in this thesis suggests that there are ways to improve DTC performance. Although conducted primarily on hospital-based DTCs, it is anticipated that the lessons learnt could be applied to state-based, or even, Area Health-based DTCs. In conclusion, this research found that there was a range of views regarding �importance� and prioritisation for implementation. Social, organisational, as well as environmental factors may contribute to this. Future research should examine other possible factors contributing to the importance and priority of DTC decisions, so that DTC policy could be appropriately implemented into practice.

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Kelley, Christopher Patrick. "The power of identity in important leadership decisions." Diss., University of Iowa, 2014. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1656.

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Why might someone avoid information that could be useful for making an important decision? Useful information can indicate that some options are better than others for achieving an important goal or averting disaster. A theory is developed here which proposes that decisions feel more important because the consequences of the decisions are more threatening the self-concept. Useful information threatens to reduce a decision maker's decision options, thus constraining their opportunities to act quickly, reduce uncertainty and make the decision in a way that is self-verifying. This occurs while a decision maker is strongly motivated to reduce the uncertainty and the threat to the self-concept generated by the decision making situation. As a result, people become less likely to access useful information when making more important decisions. This is more likely to occur when the decisions includes a substantial threat to more salient identities and core aspects of the decision maker's self-concept. First a study is conducted to develop a measure of the relative strength of a respondent's leadership identity. Then, hypotheses derived from the theory are tested in two experiments. The hypotheses predict that participants making more important decisions will (1) experience stronger feelings, (2) value self-verifying options more and feel more certain after making a decision, (3) prefer fewer options in a subsequent decision task after making more, as opposed to less important decisions, (4) make more important decision more quickly, (5) access less useful information when making more important decisions , (6) feel more certain after avoiding useful information that could indicate an identity validating solution is inferior and less certain if accessing that information, (7) report that decisions associated with stronger feelings are more important, and (8) prefer fewer choices to pick from in a subsequent decision when having made a prior decision with less useful information. The hypotheses are tested in two incrementally differing experimental in which participants make organizational leadership decisions after completing the instrument developed to test the strength of their leadership identity. Contrasting pairs of conditions vary theoretically important elements to make the decisions feel more or less important. Both pairs vary the importance of the decision situation by changing the definition of the situation to increase or decrease the consequences for the participant's leadership identity. The second study similarly varies the decision's importance and adds the opportunity to access various types of useful information prior to making each decision. Findings indicate that decisions feel more important when the outcome includes a credible threat to the maintenance of a highly salient identity. Participant making more important decisions in experiment A felt more certain they were right after making their decisions. They preferred fewer options in a subsequent decision situation which indicates they felt more powerful. In Experiment B Participants were less likely to access useful information when making more important decisions. Participants who did access useful information prior to making a more important decision preferred more options in a subsequent task. This indicates they felt less powerful after making more important decisions with more information. These findings have implications for research on decision making, identity theory, leadership in organizations, and research on emotions, and the role of perceptual control in the resiliency of social structure.

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Elam, Michelle. "The Importance of Grit in Employee Selection Decisions." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10009329.

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Retention is increasingly important in today?s workforce as millennials and future generations are entering the workplace (Kantrowitz, 2014; Lyons, Schweitzer, & Ng, 2015). A recently identified personality characteristic, grit, may be a good predictor of retention (Robertson-Kraft and Duckworth, 2014). The current study explored the importance of grit on the hiring decisions, predicted task and contextual performance for a hypothetical candidate for a sales position. The level of participant grit was also explored to examine potential similar-to-me effects. Participants viewed a job description, resume, and assessment results (grit and cognitive ability scores) of a hypothetical job applicant and were asked to complete hiring decision, predicted task and contextual performance and grit measures. The results of the current study indicated that a candidate?s cognitive ability and grit level were viewed as significant factors in the hiring decision. Participant grit level also had a significant positive effect on predicted task and contextual performance. Candidates with a higher grit score were given a higher hiring decision score and were rated higher for predicted task and contextual performance. Candidates with a higher cognitive ability were given a higher hiring decision score when compared to those with a lower cognitive ability score. Implications from the current study apply to selection decision makers, job applicants and researchers.

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Pettersson, Johanna, and Anna Säbben. "Det etiska beslutsfattandet : En studie på svenska fastighetsmäklarbranschens attityd rörande etiska dilemman." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för ekonomi, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-21661.

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Syfte Syftet med denna studie är att analysera skillnader i betydelse mellan komponenterna: etisk bedömning, etisk avsikt och etisk plikt i förhållande till uppfattad betydelse av ett etiskt problem i den etiska beslutsprocessen. Metod En analys av tidigare forskning genomfördes för att skapa en teoretisk referensram samt få en god översikt över forskningsområdet. En kvantitativ metod användes därefter för att samla in empiriskt material. Detta gjordes med hjälp av en enkät som bestod av scenarion som respondenterna fick ta ställning till. Den empiriska informationen analyserades i SPSS, där utfördes deskriptiv statistik, korrelationsanalys, faktoranalys samt regressionsanalys. Resultaten presenterades, diskuterades och utmynnade i en slutsats samt förslag till fortsatt forskning. Slutsats De slutsatser som kan dras utifrån studien är att den etiska bedömningen har störst påverkan på den uppfattade betydelsen. Det kan även konstateras att den etiska avsikten samt den etiska plikten inte har någon signifikant påverkan på den upplevda betydelsen när ett etiskt dilemma ses som mindre allvarligt. Uppsatsens bidrag Studien bidrar till en ökad förståelse för fastighetsmäklares attityder gentemot etiska dilemman, samt att den etiska beslutsprocessen är mer komplex än vad som tidigare presenterats. Vi belyser även hur säljchefer kan påverka sina anställda till ett mer etiskt agerande genom att uppföra etiska koder samt arbeta för ett gott etiskt klimat.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyse the differences in importance between the components: ethical judgement, moral intent and moral obligation relative to the perceived importance of an ethical issue in the ethical decision making process. Method An analysis of previous studies was made in order to create a theoretical framework and to obtain an overview of the field of research. A quantitative method was used to collect the empirical data. This was made by using a survey where the respondents had to take a stand to ethical dilemmas presented with vignettes. The empirical data was analysed in SPSS, where descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis were created. The results were presented, discussed and lead to a conclusion and suggestions for future research. Conclusion The conclusions that can be drawn from the study are that ethical judgement has the biggest impact on the perceived importance of an ethical issue. It is also possible to establish that the moral intent and moral obligation does not have a significant influence on the perceived importance when an ethical dilemma is perceived as less important. Contribution The study contributes to a deeper understanding of real estate agents’ attitudes towards ethical dilemmas. It also shows that the ethical decision making process is more complex than earlier presented. We also highlight how sales managers can influence their employees to a more ethical approach by setting ethical codes and work for a good ethical climate.

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Barbeite, Francisco. "Importance of learning and development opportunity to job choice decisions." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/28567.

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Walker, Judith Ellen. "Length of Residency and the Importance of Environmental Amenities to Residential Location Decisions." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2006. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/WalkerJE2006.pdf.

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Ulu, Fatma. "VENTURE CAPITAL - Important factors for venture capital investment decisions." Thesis, Halmstad University, School of Business and Engineering (SET), 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-1890.

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The decision process of venture capitalists has received much attention from researchers and it is a complex and unclear process. There are plenty of factors that affect venture capitalists´ investment decisions. The purpose of this study is to find out the important factors in the due diligence process for the venture capital firms and venture capitalists during their investments. The authors find it interesting to find out factors that influence venture capitalists during their investment decisions according to due diligence process. Qualitative method was seen suitable for this study. Three phone interviews were conducted with three venture capital firms in Turkey named Is Private Equity, Ilab Ventures and Bosphorous Group. The authors find out management, market, location, product, industry and financial factors are important factors for venture capitalists to decide whether to invest or not.

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Friesen, Paul A. "The second most important decision tools to help prepare couples for marriage /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2006. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p068-0598.

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Abdulkarim, Mustafa Elkasih. "The importance of intellectual capital disclosure for financial decisions : an exploration of some key elements." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2012. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=196281.

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There has been little research on intellectual capital (IC) reporting practices of UK firms or on the incentives/disincentives that motivate them to disclose information about their value drivers. Therefore, this study explores annual report disclosures and seeks to explain why managers choose to disclose. The sample consists of 100 London Stock Exchange firms from nine knowledge-based sectors. Whilst adopting a primarily positive accounting theory explanation of disclosure, a new combination of theories (capital market transactions theory, proprietary costs theory and corporate governance theory) is used to generate explanatory variables. The results show that there is a skewing toward relational capital. However, there were large differences in the amount of information disclosed, both across sectors and, in many cases, inside sectors, suggesting that different sectors, or even different companies, may have quite different value drivers. Initial analysis of possible motives was conducted using an OLS regression including all possible explanatory independent variables. However, neither corporate governance nor proprietary costs are well-theorised, and several different variables were used to proxy each of these. Therefore, reduced regression models were also employed. Principal component analysis was used to generate one composite measure of corporate governance and proprietary costs. The results showed that reporting IC is negatively associated with the extent of external financing, while firms with high market-to-book values also disclose less IC information. However, contrary to expectations, the acquisition variable was insignificant although as expected, the relation between human capital disclosure and foreign operations was found to be positive and significant. For proprietary costs variables, there was a significantly positive relation between entry barriers and IC disclosure, and a negative relationship between IC and the intensity of industry competition. Finally, there was a significant, positive relationship between corporate governance and the disclosure of all types of IC.

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Dhingra, Neeraj. "Importance of Contract Attributes on Conservation Reserve Program Enrollment Decisions in the Prairie Pothole Region." Thesis, North Dakota State University, 2015. https://hdl.handle.net/10365/27909.

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U.S. farmers? interest in CRP has waned. Enrollment for 2015 was targeted at 26 million acres but as of the end of February, actual enrollment had declined to 24.6 million acres (USDA, 2015). Available studies point to recent fluctuations in commodity prices as a predominant factor in this enrollment gap. Other potentially influencing factors remain understudied, including farmer preferences for contract design. A choice experiment survey was conducted in the Prairie Pothole region to assess these preferences. An exploded logit model was used to evaluate the preference heterogeneity among program attributes. Results indicate that an increase in the maximum payment, length of contract, and the government?s share of establishment cost increase the utility of farmers, whereas, fixing terms at the beginning of the contract and imposing more land use restrictions on enrolled land have a negative impact on farmers? utilities.

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Nolan, Marilyn Jeanette. "Extralegal Factors Important to Judges' Decisions in Child Abuse Custody Cases." ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1203.

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Extralegal Factors Important to Judges' Decisions in Child Abuse Custody Cases by Marilyn J. Nolan MS, Pittsburg (Kansas) State University, 1986 BS, Missouri Southern State University, 1982 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Human Services Walden University May 2015 Research has shown juvenile court judges are skeptical of mental health testimony; however there is a lack of research regarding what types of testimony by what kinds of experts are valued by judges. Using the theory of legal pragmatism, the purpose of this study was to assess how 83 Oklahoma District Court judges rated extralegal factors influencing their perceptions of the credibility of mental health expert testimony. Quantitative survey research methods were used to collect the data. Friedman ANOVAs by ranks with multiple comparisons were used to test differences across multiple characteristics, and Spearman rho coefficients assessed relationships of age and gender of judges with their importance ratings of extralegal factors. The results showed that judges preferred PhD psychologists over other mental health professionals, witnesses who drew firm conclusions, testimony in layman's terms, and citing theories accepted by the scientific community. A child's testimony and educational credentials of experts were important to younger female judges when deciding custody as was maintaining the integrity of the family when deciding termination issues. Other findings included: all judges agreed sexual abuse was the most important criteria for terminating parental rights, all forms of child abuse were important case factors that influenced judges' decisions, and disparaging parents and substance abuse by a parent were important to older male judges in their decisions. Results from this study will assist in the development of core curricula for courtroom skills training for mental health experts, paving the way for positive social change. With improved training and quality of expert testimony, judges will be more likely to use testimony from knowledgeable unbiased experts when making decisions which will benefit children, families, and communities.

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Valenzuela, Bustos Carlos Eduardo. "Importancia de factores no financieros en las decisiones de inversión." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2003. http://www.repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/108175.

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Johnson, Earl E. "Dispensing a Hearing Aid Brand: What's Important to Audiologists and Their Individual Decision Choice?" Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2008. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1710.

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Adams, Anda. "Primary school enrollment and completion in Guatemala the relative importance of school availability on household education decisions /." CONNECT TO ELECTRONIC THESIS, 2007. http://dspace.wrlc.org/handle/1961/4143.

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Jamison, Jamie L. "The Importance of Front-Line Supervisor Coaching Ability and Performance to Employment Decisions and Coaching Culture Success." Thesis, Capella University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10829429.

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This qualitative exploratory single case study was completed to analyze the role of how middle managers evaluate coaching ability of front-line supervisors, address unsuccessful coaching, and learn how those determinants factor into the manager’s employment decision respective to retaining or hiring a front-line supervisor. The investigation occurred at a regional company in the Midwest of the United States that had previously attempted to enact a coaching culture program. Focus was placed on senior leaders and hiring/middle manager viewpoints and interviews were conducted with nine middle managers and three senior leaders. Additional data points included document analysis, direct observation, and expert testimony from a consultant who had worked with over 100 companies to implement a coaching culture. Data were analyzed through an eclectic two-phase coding system with emphasis upon hypothesis coding, word frequency, and thematic coding reassembly. Identified themes were then investigated through a lens of assertion development, and decision modeling. Five critical conclusions emerged and those findings aligned to how companies evaluate coaching ability and use those assessments in hiring decisions. Each of the five findings have a direct effect on the success of implementing a coaching culture. (1) Leaders should fully align on organizational coaching expectations, behaviors, and definitions. (2) Organizations need a robust coaching supervision program to evaluate current front-line supervisors. (3) Companies need to develop a comprehensive interviewing process to ascertain the coaching ability of potential candidates for the front-line supervisor role. (4) Leaders should also mitigate factors that inhibit coaching activity particularly emphasizing the importance of the coaching dyad. (5) Companies need to ensure the quality and consistency of coaching throughout the organization.

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Roychowdhury, Barun. "Do Internal Funds play an important role in Financing Decisions for Constrained Firms?" Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1090.

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In this paper, I discuss the importance of internal funds for corporate investment among financially constrained firms. I use the paper ‘Financing Constraints and Corporate Investments’ by Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen.as a base for my framework. I focus on a specific paper refuting their findings and their response in order to fully understand the benefits and costs of the framework. I then apply the original framework to a recent sample that covers the Great Recession to see the results of the initial paper are still valid today and if the recent recession and elongated recovery had an even more adverse effect on financially constrained firms than was previously noted.

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Ruby, Tomislav Z. "WAGING MORAL WAR: THE IMPORTANCE OF PRINCIPAL-AGENT MOTIVATION ALIGNMENT AND CONSTRAINING DOCTRINE ON MORAL U.S. TARGETING DECISIONS." Lexington, Ky. : [University of Kentucky Libraries], 2004. http://lib.uky.edu/ETD/ukyposc2004d00151/TomRuby.pdf.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kentucky, 2004.
Title from document title page (viewed Oct. 12, 2004). Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-274). Also available via the Internet.

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Mothapo, Moshibudi Nancy. "Importance of clothing brands on the purchasing decisions of Generation Y in the Vaal Triangle area / Mothapo, M.N." Thesis, North-West University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/10623.

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This study focuses on the importance of clothing brands on the purchasing decisions of Generation Y individuals. The research concentrates specifically on university students aged between 17 to 26 years, located in the Vaal Triangle Area. This study aims to determine if this group of Generation Y members are brand conscious in their choices of clothing brands and what influences or motivates them to buy clothing brands. The findings suggest that Generation Y students are brand conscious, in that the right choice of clothing helps them create an image and identity for themselves. Peer and family influences play a crucial role in their choice of brands as it aids in their socialisation process. In addition, advertising is an important variable in communicating brand values and establishing an image for the brand. Celebrities also have an impact on branded clothing as they promote certain attributes such as image, quality and status. However, the results of this study are limited given that the study was only conducted amongst students in the Vaal Triangle area. Furthermore, the research does not follow the individuals over time to see how their brand choices might have changed. In order to maintain Generation Y students’ loyalty, it is recommended that brand managers focus on building an emotional attachment to make their brands special and bring a lasting competitive advantage. In addition, advertising should be used not only to create awareness but also to influence brand image and preference. Generation Y individuals establish their brand preferences at an early age especially during their years of study and, therefore, targeting this consumer group may be rewarding because with careful promotions, marketers can create a group of brand loyal customers for the future.
MCom (Business Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

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Tarnanidis, Theodoros K. "Apparel clothing reference points for important shopping occasions and decision-making styles of Greek college students." Thesis, London Metropolitan University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.549561.

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The current study conceptualized the categories of consumer referents, concerning how they form their consumption preferences by elaborating reference points, in order to be better informed on items for a measurement scale. In addition the current study conceptualized the categories of shopping orientations (or decision-making styles) of Greek college students, as they better represent how consumers behave, act and make decisions. In the initial purification stage (i.e. pilot test, n=330), principal component analysis, with a varimax and oblique rotation was developed. In the fmal purification stage with a new data set (i.e. primary survey, n=556), confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the factors that define the two measurement models. Furthermore the methodology of Pearson's correlation helped in checking the potential relationships between those two scales. The results of the conceptualization of consumer referents produced a model made up of seven dimensions. These are: Explicit referents (Brand, Price and Store), and Implicit referents (PersonaL Financial, Social and Cultural). Furthermore the conceptualization of the decision-making styles inventory helped in analysing the utilization of consumers' referents. The results contributed to the identification of Greek college students' decision-making styles. The final model of the CSI produced six highly correlated dimensions: 1. Perfectionist, high quality conscious, 2. Recreational conscious, 3. Brand conscious, 4. Novelty conscious, 5. Impulsive conscious, and 6. Confused by over-choice. The technique of Pearson's correlation helped in analysing the effects of the six decision-making traits on the selected categorization of reference points (i.e. the seven categories of referents). The main findings suggest that consumers use reference points based on their distinct shopping orientations. As a whole the findings from this research offer new insights to marketing managers and research practitioners in analysing consumers' apparel consumption decision-making patterns. A summary, discussion of the results and recommendations for further research are proposed.

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Koort, Hannes. "Room for More of Us? : Important Design Features for Informed Decision-Making in BIM-enabled Facility Management." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Människa-datorinteraktion, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-447217.

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Building Information Modeling (BIM) is becoming imperative across building disciplines to improve communication and workflow from the first blueprint. Maintenance and facility management is however lagging behind in adoption and research of BIM. Utilizing research-through-design, this study explores BIM-enabled facility management and the critical practice of decision-making at the Celsius building in Uppsala. Contextual design and inquiry were applied to identify and suggest important design features that support decisions related to the task of establishing maximum room occupation. Results show that facility managers can make use of fuzzy multicriteria decision-making and expert heuristics to independently reach conclusions. Important design features were found to heavily rely on the existing building models, where context-view filtered to room capacity data in the existing BIM-system effectively supported the users’ assessment of data. The filtered, aggregated information presented in a simplified mobile format was insufficient for decision-making, suggesting that the building model was more important than initially perceived.

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Rivera, Deanne. "Analyzing factors that AVID students perceive important in making financial decisions about paying for college." Scholarly Commons, 2011. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/100.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze factors AVID students perceive as important in making financial decisions about paying for college. This study analyzed the factors college-bound students perceive as important in making decisions about paying for college. Trends in higher education include the rising cost of attendance, longer degree completion time, and the lagging purchasing power of federal grant funding. Existing data has delivered student perceptions regarding college access, affordability, and retention. The researcher framed the study using the human investment capital model. This model is grounded in the basic theory that education is an investment that will provide greater social and financial mobility in the future. The human capital theory coupled with benefits of a college education help guide the research and collects data that capture factors students perceive as important about making financial decisions regarding paying for college. From the data, it was evident that AVID students were seeking to maximize their higher education opportunities. Many students applied to as many as seven colleges while examining tradeoffs of college costs, the impact of financial aid offers, and ways to reduce the total costs. The factors students perceived as important in making financial decisions about paying for college could be put into three categories; tradeoffs, offered financial aid, and reducing the total cost. Students reported that the total cost of education was more important than peer and family approval of their school, academic reputation, and time to degree. However, the location of the school and the social and networking opportunities were more important than the total costs of the school. Conclusions from the study are students would rather attend a school that has less prestige and take longer to earn their degree if the total cost was aligned accordingly. Yet, the location and the networking and social experiences were not worth sacrificing for the students. Students were not willing to attend an institution with a less desirable location or fewer social opportunities even if the costs were minimal. The data say that an important factor for AVID students is the amount of financial aid they will receive.

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Kangasmäki, Heini, and Maja Koskelainen. "How Important Is an Image? : Dutch Travel Agencies' Perception of Sweden as a Travel Destination." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Business and Economics, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-59.

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Nowadays, when the world feels smaller as a result of the increasing flow of information, the competition of tourism between countries is getting bigger. This has caused that the marketing of the country has become vital. It is important for the country to send out the right signals so that the tourists have the right image of a destination. Once the image has been created, it might be hard to change it.

Scandinavian Travel Agent AB is a company arranging different trips around Scandinavia. They work as incoming agent for foreign tour operators, which they help with different types of travel arrangements in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Now they want to expand their business to other countries, and at the same time they want to identify how Sweden is seen as a tourist destination. We helped them with this by investigating travel agencies and tour operators in the Netherlands.

Our purpose with this thesis was to find out what kind of picture the Dutch travel agencies and tour operators have about Sweden. Furthermore, we wanted to know how the Dutch market looks like considering the trips to Sweden. To be able to analyze the phenomena of image we have taken closer look at the decision- making process, which was originally created by Mathieson and Wall (1984). It contains four areas (tourist profile, travel awareness, destination resources & characteristics and trip features) that have effect on the decision making process. Since we thought that image also has a big influence on the tourists’ decision, we chose to investigate that subject as well.

With the help of our theories we created two different questionnaires, one to Dutch travel agencies/ tour operators having Sweden as a travel destination, and one to Dutch travel agencies/tour operators not currently offering trips to Sweden. After receiving the answers we interpreted them together with our theories and we found out that the respondents have a correct image of the reality. Sweden’s nature with the forests, water and snow were some of the most common parts of their image. Stockholm was also a prominent feature together with beautiful and clean nature. Sweden was also seen as a modern and safe country with high quality. Some respondent also mentioned space, but it was not as common answer as we expected.

Regarding the image, we found out that an image handles both a person’s affective and cognitive images, which arises from many different sources and influences. After doing this research our believes, about the image as a part of the decision making process, were strengthened. Therefore we saw the need to change the already existing model.

Our suggestions to the Scandinavian Travel Agent AB, is to first contact the travel agencies/tour operators who are currently offering Sweden, since they seem to be most interested in expanding to Sweden. Among the other travel agencies/tour operators an interest has to be aroused. This can depend on the fact that companies with Sweden can see the demand and the opportunities better than the companies who do not have Sweden.

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Sylvander, Johanna. "To measure what is ethically important in the decisionmakingprocess for auditors as managers : the development of a multidimensional instrument." Thesis, Högskolan Kristianstad, Sektionen för hälsa och samhälle, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hkr:diva-12539.

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The article develops a multidimensional scale that measures to what extent different moral philosophical dimensions influence auditors’ decision-making in their managerial role. An additional aim was to explore if auditors perceive differences in the ethical decision-making process as managers and as auditors. The scale was developed based on eight ethical dimensions from a priori theory. The scale was converted into a webbased questionnaire and sent to Swedish authorised auditors. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to test the scale, since it is a suitable method for scale development and early stages of research. The EFA indicates a five-dimensional scale; however, the eight-dimensional scale is to some extent supported, since two of the five dimensions, both connected to duties, are multidimensional in themselves. Hence, the study implies that the concept of duty is a wider concept in the auditing context than in moral philosophical theory, which could be explained by the nature of the profession and that auditors do not perceive a difference between the managerial and auditing role. However, since the study is limited to the Swedish auditing context, the scale needs to be tested in other geographical and cultural contexts. Other implications and suggestions for further research are also presented.

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Espinosa, Guerrero Karen. "LA IMPORTANCIA DE LA DEPRECIACIÓN PARA LA TOMA DE DECISIONES ECONÓMICAS Y SU FINANCIAMIENTO EN DECISIONES DE REEMPLAZO Y CONSERVACIÓN DE MAQUINARIA." Tesis de Licenciatura, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11799/104395.

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La depreciación es la reducción en el valor de un activo por lo que en el análisis de reemplazo, debe incluir el valor monetario al cual se vende el activo que se desea remplazar; este valor puede ser igual o mayor al valor en libros, que es en realidad el control contable de la depreciación, que tiene el activo al momento del reemplazo, lo cual tiene repercusiones directas en el ahorro o pago de impuestos, esto impacta directamente la decisión que se toma utilizando técnicas de ingeniería. El método de depreciación en línea recta es un método de libro mediante el cual se recupera la inversión de capital en propiedad tangible, cuya cuantía anual es deducible de impuestos, lo cual puede generar cambios reales de flujo de efectivo

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Thermoyianni-Artikis, Helen. "Identification of location considerations, assessment of their relative importance, and analysis of the role of development laws in plant location decisions in Greece." Thesis, University of Bradford, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.297219.

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Taffese, Mahlet, and Mohamed Ismail. "Important Perception of Market Entry Barriers and Factors in Africa : Case Study on Ethiopia and Egypt." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Ekonomihögskolan, ELNU, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-20615.

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Globalization, rising affluence in developing and transitional economies, improved infrastructure, and advancements in communication and information technologies have increased the opportunities for marketing services beyond borders. For the last decade African economies has been growing which has created enormous opportunity for international companies. However, foreign companies have been slow to enter into African markets. The purpose of this research is to identify important perception of barriers and factors that affect market entry decision in Africa specifically in Ethiopia and Egypt.This research is based on a qualitative case study and data is collected from primary and secondary data. The primary data are collected from four Swedish micro and small companies. The secondary data collection is based on website, and published material from accredited government, such as UN, Ethiopian investment agency and Swedish government.The major market entry barriers and factors are determined through analysis of these data. The major barriers are cost advantages incumbents, product differentiation, capital requirement, switching cost, access of distribution channel, government policy. The factors are market attractiveness, cultural distance, uncertainty, legal environment, and competition. Market entry decision is dependent on high influential perception of market entry barriers. From this research the important influential perception of barriers and factors that affect market entry decision in Ethiopia and Egypt are government policy, cultural difference, uncertainty, and legal environment. Cost advantage and switching cost are the low influential perception of barriers.

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Nilsson, Lannerstedt Katarina. "Location decisions regarding forest plantations in Brazil : Which aspects are important to actors in the Brazilian tree industry?" Thesis, KTH, Hållbar utveckling, miljövetenskap och teknik, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-266973.

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Brazilian productive forest plantations and sustainability is a continuous subject of debate, since such forest plantations constitute an increasing proportion of the Brazilian forest cover, and because of documented instances where some establishments have resulted in negative impacts on local ecosystems and communities. Meanwhile, balancing economic, environmental and social sustainability is becoming an important concern in industrial decision-making given the increasing importance of the global sustainability goals. The aim of this study is to investigate the contemporary decision context in which companies in the Brazilian tree industry select locations for forest plantations in Brazil. Special focus is devoted to how sustainability aspects are included in such decisions, as well as the roles assigned to possible mechanisms for sustainable development, such as Brazilian policy, legislation and independent forest certification. A qualitative research strategy is employed, which encompasses a literature review and semi-structured interviews with industry practitioners in two segments of the industry, whose perceptions are triangulated with perspectives of relevant non-industry actors. Grounded theory is used to analyse the qualitative data. The findings from the literature and the qualitative data are synthesised, and several hypotheses are consequently developed regarding forest plantation location decisions and sustainability in Brazil. The hypotheses evolve around the finding that strategic, economic, environmental and social perspectives are perceived as present in contemporary decision-making, in certified pulp and paper companies. Moreover, a hypothesis of general character is developed based on the synthesised findings, which is that forest plantations can be the subject of integrated location and sustainability analyses, where the problem can be formulated as finding an optimal location for a forest plantation from a three-dimensional sustainability perspective. Finally, some prospects for further integrated research about forest plantation location and sustainability are presented.
Denna studie handlar om brasilianska skogsplanteringar och expansionen av planteringar som ägs av företag i landets, så kallade ”trädindustri”. Studien fokuserar på produktiva skogsplanteringar av introducerade arter, för vilka intresset har vuxit parallellt med att de har expanderat till yta under de senaste decennierna. Intresset har även vuxit eftersom federala beslutsfattare har lyft fram skogsplanteringar som ett verktyg för att minska landets koldioxidutsläpp och stimulera ekonomisk utveckling. Produktiva brasilianska skogsplanteringar och hållbarhet är ett kontinuerligt föremål för debatt. Den befintliga litteraturen om expansionen av sådana planteringar indikerar att företag i landets trädindustri inte alltid har balanserat de ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala hållbarhetsdimensionerna i sina beslut gällande var planteringar ska anläggas. I vissa fall har besluten resulterat i negativa följder för lokala ekosystem och samhällen. Vidare finns det, såvitt författaren vet, inga studier som behandlar lokaliseringsbeslut gällande sådana brasilianska skogsplanteringar och alla de tre hållbarhetsdimensionerna. Därför syftar denna studie till att förbättra förståelsen för det samtida beslutssammanhang i vilket företag i den brasilianska trädindustrin väljer platser för sina skogsplanteringar, samt hur hållbarhetsaspekter omfattas i sådana beslut. Som ett led i denna strävan undersöks möjliga platsfaktorer, rumsliga begränsningar och andra beslutsaspekter, liksom vilken roll företag tilldelar specifika mekanismer för hållbar utveckling, såsom brasiliansk policy, lagstiftning och oberoende skogscertifiering. En kvalitativ forskningsstrategi antas för att genomföra undersökningen. En litteraturöversikt kombineras med semistrukturerade intervjuer med branschutövare i två segment av den brasilianska trädindustrin. Deras uppfattningar trianguleras med perspektiv från relevanta aktörer utanför branschen. Urvalet av deltagarna för studien genomfördes på plats i Brasilien 2015 till 2016 och resulterade i 13 brasilianska intervjudeltagare. Intervjuerna genomfördes sedan på olika platser i Brasilien under 2016. Grundad teori används som forskningsmetod för att analysera insamlad kvalitativ data. Två huvudteman, flera sekundära teman och ett koncept härleds från de kvalitativa data som samlades in, vilka främst grundar sig i uppfattningar gällande brasilianska massa- och pappersföretag. Flera beslutsfaktorer och begränsningar som kan påverka placeringen av brasilianska skogsplanteringar identifieras också. Det kan konstateras att aktörerna i urvalet i studien uppfattar det som att strategiska, ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala perspektiv är närvarande i dagens lokaliseringsbeslut, utförda av certifierade, brasilianska massa- och pappersföretag. En viktig begränsning i studien är att dess utforskande karaktär hindrar författaren från att presentera några ”sanningar” om ämnet som undersöks, eller att dra slutsatser om företagens verkliga handlingar. Därför presenteras istället ett antal hypoteser som gäller Brasilien, men även en hypotes av generell karaktär. Den generella hypotesen är att skogsplanteringar kan vara föremål för integrerad lokaliserings- och hållbarhetsanalys, där problemet kan formuleras som att hitta optimala platser för skogsplanteringar ur ett tredimensionellt hållbarhetsperspektiv. Med tanke på begränsningarna i studien, samt associerade osäkerheter som hypoteserna gällande det brasilianska fallet är befästa med, är rekommendationen att fortsatta studier först koncentrerar sig på att testa den allmänna hypotesen. Om fortsatta studier på nationell nivå visar sig vara fördelaktiga efter sådana tester, uppmuntras forskare att återvända till sammanfattningen av branschperspektiv, återstående frågor och hypoteser som tillgängliggörs för fortsatt forskning om Brasilien genom denna studie.
Este estudo trata das florestas plantadas brasileiras, e da expansão de plantios pertencentes a empresas da indústria brasileira de árvores plantadas. O estudo tem foco nas florestas plantadas produtivas de espécies introduzidas, pelas quais se teve um aumento no interesse paralelamente à sua expansão geográfica nas últimas décadas. O interesse também aumentou ao destaque dado aos plantios florestais pelo governo federal como uma ferramenta para reduzir as emissões de dióxido de carbono do país, e estimular o desenvolvimento econômico. As florestas plantadas produtivas brasileiras e a sustentabilidade são constantemente temas de debate. A literatura existente sobre essa expansão indica que as empresas da indústria brasileira de árvores plantadas nem sempre equilibram as três dimensões de sustentabilidade ao decidir onde plantar suas florestas. Em alguns casos as decisões resultam em impactos negativos nos ecossistemas e comunidades locais. Além disso, com base no conhecimento da autora, não existem estudos que tratem das decisões de localização das florestas plantadas brasileiras e de todas essas três dimensões da sustentabilidade. Por tanto, este estudo tem como objetivo melhorar a compreensão do contexto atual de tomada de decisões em que as empresas na indústria brasileira de árvores plantadas escolhem os locais para suas florestas plantadas, e como os aspectos de sustentabilidade são incluídos em tais decisões. Como parte desse empenho, são examinadas possíveis limitações e outros aspectos de tomada de decisão, bem como o papel que as empresas atribuem à certos mecanismos para o desenvolvimento sustentável, como a política brasileira, a legislação e a certificação florestal. Uma estratégia de pesquisa qualitativa é adotada para conduzir a pesquisa. Uma revisão de literatura é combinada com entrevistas semiestruturadas com profissionais em dois segmentos da indústria brasileira de árvores plantadas. Suas percepções são trianguladas com perspectivas de atores relevantes de fora da indústria. A amostra de participantes do estudo foi realizada no Brasil entre 2015 e 2016 e resultou em 13 participantes. As entrevistas foram então realizadas em diversos locais no Brasil em 2016. É utilizada a teoria fundamentada nos dados como método de pesquisa para analisar os dados qualitativos coletados. São extraídos dois temas principais, diversos temas secundários e um conceito a partir dos dados qualitativos coletados, baseados principalmente nas percepções das empresas brasileiras de papel e celulose. Vários fatores de decisão que podem influenciar a localização das plantações florestais também são identificados. Observa-se que os participantes da amostra do estudo percebem que perspectivas estratégicas, econômicas, ambientais e sociais estão presentes nas decisões atuais de localização, realizadas por empresas certificadas de celulose e papel. Uma importante limitação do estudo é que sua característica exploratória impede que a pesquisadora apresente “verdades” sobre o assunto investigado, ou tire conclusões sobre os atos das empresas. Portanto, são apresentadas várias hipóteses aplicáveis ao Brasil, mas também uma hipótese de caráter geral. A hipótese geral é que as plantações florestais podem estar sujeitas a análises integradas de localização e sustentabilidade, onde o problema pode ser formulado como encontrar um local ideal para uma plantação florestal a partir de uma perspectiva tridimensional de sustentabilidade. Dadas as limitações do estudo, bem como as incertezas associadas às quais as hipóteses do Brasil estão relacionadas, a recomendação é que novos estudos se concentrem primeiro em testar a hipótese geral. Caso novos estudos em nível nacional forem benéficos após esses testes, os pesquisadores são incentivados a retornar ao resumo das perspectivas da indústria, das questões remanescentes e das hipóteses disponibilizadas para futuras pesquisas sobre o Brasil por meio deste estudo.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Decision importance'

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