Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Environmental uncertainty theory'

Described in this thesis is research that examined the influence of courtroom symbolism on jurors' ability to focus on the evidence presented in a criminal trial. This research is unique as participants were 'real' jurors who had, at the time of participation in the research, recently completed deliberations on a District Court trial. To date no other research has explored the interaction between symbolism in the courtroom and the juror experience. The broad research question examined in this research was: Do symbolic elements in the courtroom environment draw juror attention away from the evidence being presented?. Three theories drawn from environmental psychology were utilised in this research (i.e., environmental uncertainty theory, environmental arousal theory and environmental load theory). Additionally, Rapoport's (1983, 1990) theory, which was drawn from the architectural field of knowledge, was utilised. Rapoport's theory facilitated the measurement of symbolism in the form of environmental cues found in the courtroom. To address the broad research question, eight subordinate research questions were formulated those being: (1) Do trait anxiety and court related factors influence the amount of attention jurors pay to the elements of the courtroom environment?, (2) Do trait anxiety and court related factors influence the effect on jurors of the attention they paid to the elements of the courtroom environment?, (3) Do trait anxiety and court related factors influence the sense of stress or arousal in jurors?, (4) Is there an association between attention paid by jurors to the environmental cues found in the courtroom, their ability to perform their role as a juror and their sense of appreciation for the function of the law?, (5) Is there an association between attention paid by jurors to the environmental cues in the courtroom and a state of elevated stress?, (6) Does the amount of attention paid by jurors to environmental cues found in the courtroom diminish over time?, (7) Does the effect on jurors of the attention they paid to the environmental cues in the courtroom diminish over time? and, (8) Does the amount of stress jurors experience diminish over time?. The eight research questions were addressed in two studies. The first involved a survey of jurors who had completed deliberations in District Court trials in Brisbane and Cairns during the period 19th July, 2001 and 18th July, 2002 (N=192). This study examined the amount of attention jurors paid to four elements of the courtroom environment (i.e., the courtroom design, the appearance and behaviour of court officials, the appearance and behaviour of those associated with the offence and the task of being a juror). Also examined in this study was the influence on jurors of the attention they paid to the elements of the courtroom environment. Juror experience of state anxiety as measured by the State Trait Anxiety Inventory [STAI] (Spielberger, 1983) was also examined. Additionally, the influence of trait anxiety as measured by the STAI (Spielberger, 1983) and court related factors (i.e., location of trial, prior jury experience, nature of the offence and length of trial) on the juror experience was examined. Two time frames were examined (i.e., initial contact with the courtroom and midpoint of juror experience) which allowed the examination of the influence of time on the juror experience. Interviews with jurors who had completed the survey (N=19) comprised the second study. This study allowed jurors to describe their experience on a jury from a more personal perspective. The elements of the juror experience that distracted and reinforced their ability to focus on the evidence and facilitated a sense of appreciation for the function of the law were discussed. Also discussed were the elements of the juror experience that caused jurors to experience anxiety. Overall, the findings of this research indicated that although symbolism in the courtroom was linked to juror anxiety, this was positive and facilitated juror attention to the evidence and a sense of respect for the criminal justice system. That anxiety experienced by jurors facilitated their focus on the evidence is consistent with environmental arousal theory in that for optimum performance one must experience a certain level of arousal. Also confirmed by the findings of this research is environmental load theory, an element of which predicts that jurors will be task driven when experiencing environmental load. That these two theories are linked by an underlying construct is evidenced by the findings of this research. These findings open up possibilities for future theoretical research using environmental arousal theory and environmental load theory. The findings of this research also suggest that jurors found the symbolism in the courtroom environment distracting and that some elements of the juror experience were onerous and stressful. However, previous experience in the courtroom and lower trait anxiety moderated these factors. Consequently, consistent with the results of this research courts might benefit from implementing an orientation program for prospective jurors such that they are familiarised with the courtroom environment. Such a program would moderate any distress experienced by jurors. In the context of such adjustments by the courts, the influence of symbolism in the courtroom are considered beneficial to the juror experience and there is no need for the courts to alter the courtroom setting or robing practices of lawyers.

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a theory that helps explain the conditions under which firms select certain project evaluation techniques. This study uses contingency theory to analyze the impact of environmental uncertainty on the choice of project evaluation techniques. In addition to a direct measure of uncertainty, several dimensions of uncertainty are included in this study. These dimensions of uncertainty include control structure, method of financing, foreign assets, method of growth, and product domination. This study also analyzes the use of project evaluation, management science and risk management techniques in US firms over time and in UK firms over time in order to compare to prior research. A comparison of firms in the two countries are also provided. The primary method of data collection was a survey instrument. Data were also collected from annual reports and various other public sources. The variables that appear significant in the choice of project evaluation technique in US firms are environmental uncertainty, control structure, method of financing, foreign assets, and product domination. The variable that appear significant in the choice of project evaluation technique in UK firms is method of financing. US firms favor discounted cash flow techniques although this study detected a slight decrease over time. UK firms continue to use non-discounted cash flow techniques, although the use of discounted cash flow techniques is widespread. There are significant differences between US and UK firms. US firms tend to use discounted cash flow techniques to a greater extent than UK firms. This research makes a significant contribution in attempting to develop a theory explaining the use of project evaluation techniques in firms in the US and UK. In addition, several other developments relating to project evaluation, management science and risk management are discussed. The results of this study can be used by managers in refining and improving their existing project evaluation processes.

Climate change and anticipated impacts of sea level rise such as increased coastal erosion, inundation, flooding due to storm surges and salt water intrusion to freshwater resources will affect all the countries but mostly small island countries of oceans and low-lying lands along coastlines. Turkey having 8333 km of coastline including physically, ecologically and socio-economically important low-lying deltas should also prepare for the impacts of sea level rise as well as other impacts of climate change while participating in adaptation and mitigation efforts. Thus, a coastal vulnerability assessment of Turkey to sea level rise is needed both as a part of coastal zone management policies for sustainable development and as a guideline for resource allocation for preparation of adaptation options for upcoming problems due to sea level rise. In this study, a fuzzy coastal vulnerability assessment model (FCVI) of a region to sea level rise using physical and human activity indicators of impacts of sea level rise which use commonly available data are developed. The results enable decision makers to compare and rank different regions according to their vulnerabilities to sea level rise, to prioritize impacts of sea level rise on the region according to the vulnerability of the region to each impact and to determine the most vulnerable parameters for planning of adaptation measures to sea level rise. The sensitivity and uncertainty analysis performed for the results of the model (FCVI) is the first time application of a fuzzy uncertainty analysis model to coastal vulnerability assessments. These analysis ensure that the decision makers could be able to interpret the results of such vulnerability assessments based primarily on expert perceptions accurately enough. This in turn, would increase the confidence levels of adaptation measures and as well as accelerate implementation of adaptation of coastal areas to climate change. The developed coastal vulnerability assessment model is applied successfully to determine the vulnerability of Gö
ksu, Gö
cek and Amasra regions of Turkey that have different geological, ecological and socio-economical properties. The results of the site studies show that Gö
ksu has high vulnerability, Gö
cek has moderate vulnerability and Amasra shows low vulnerability to sea level rise. These results are in accordance with the general literature on impacts of sea level rise at different geomorphological coastal areas thus the applicability of fuzzy vulnerability assessment model (FCVI) to coastal areas is validated.

This dissertation addresses path planning for an autonomous vehicle navigating in a two dimensional environment for which an a priori map is inaccurate and for which the environment is sensed in real-time. For this class of application, planning decisions must be made in real-time. This work is motivated by the need for fast autonomous vehicles that require planning algorithms to operate as quickly as possible. In this dissertation, we first study the case in which there are only static obstacles in the environment. We propose a hybrid receding horizon control path planning algorithm that is based on level-set methods. The hybrid method uses global or local level sets in the formulation of the receding horizon control problem. The decision to select a new level set is made based on certain matching conditions that guarantee the optimality of the path. We rigorously prove sufficient conditions that guarantee that the vehicle will converge to the goal as long as a path to the goal exists. We then extend the proposed receding horizon formulation to the case when the environment possesses moving obstacles. Since all of the results in this dissertation are based on level-set methods, we rigorously investigate how level sets change in response to new information locally sensed by a vehicle. The result is a dynamic fast marching algorithm that usually requires significantly less computation that would otherwise be the case. We demonstrate the proposed dynamic fast marching method in a successful field trial for which an autonomous surface vehicle navigated four kilometers through a riverine environment.
Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008.
Committee Chair: Bras, Bert; Committee Member: Allen, Janet; Committee Member: Chameau, Jean-Lou; Committee Member: McGinnis, Leon; Committee Member: Paredis, Chris.

This qualitative, phenomenological research study addressed the research question: What is the experience of leaders when they think strategically in a VUCA environment? The study explored what happens when leaders think strategically in a VUCA environment and how such thinking occurs. Of specific interest were the triggers of strategic thinking, the strategic questions being asked, and the methods used to develop insight. The term VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity and is used interchangeably in this study with the term "complex" to represent the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition program management environment (Army, 1998).

Ten acquisition program managers and deputy program managers for major DoD acquisition programs were selected as referred by naval aviation acquisition program executive officers. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and transcribed to capture the program managers' lived experience and the meaning they made (Seidman, 2006). Data were analyzed and themes developed using Moustakas's (1994) modification of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method as a guide.

The study had four findings: (1) strategic thinking utilizes an extensive range of knowledge, abilities, and conditions that enable clarity of thought; (2) strategic thinking occurs deliberately as both a high-level creative and a tactically grounded process; (3) strategic thinking is fueled by iterative individual and group analytical and dialogical activities to address the knowledge needed to create strategic-to-tactical linkages and frameworks; and (4) strategic thinking is a deeply personal experience that evokes a wide range of positive and negative emotions. The study concluded that strategic thinking is a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral phenomenon that is both high-level and tactically grounded and is fueled by individual and group analytical and dialogical activities to address needed knowledge, enable clarity of thought, and create strategic-to-tactical linkages and mental models to develop enabling strategies. Further, the characterization of the VUCA environment needs to include the structural elements that may impede the ability to adapt and respond, and the triggers for strategic thinking need to include having the explicit responsibility to think strategically. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are offered.

The decentralized Markov decision process (Dec-POMDP) is a powerful formal model for studying multiagent problems where cooperative, coordinated action is optimal, but each agent acts based on local data alone. Unfortunately, it is known that Dec-POMDPs are fundamentally intractable: they are NEXP-complete in the worst case, and have been empirically observed to be beyond feasible optimal solution.To get around these obstacles, researchers have focused on special classes of the general Dec-POMDP problem, restricting the degree to which agent actions can interact with one another. In some cases, it has been proven that these sorts of structured forms of interaction can in fact reduce worst-case complexity. Where formal proofs have been lacking, empirical observations suggest that this may also be true for other cases, although less is known precisely.This thesis unifies a range of this existing work, extending analysis to establish novel complexity results for some popular restricted-interaction models. We also establish some new results concerning cases for which reduced complexity has been proven, showing correspondences between basic structural features and the potential for dimensionality reduction when employing mathematical programming techniques.As our new complexity results establish that worst-case intractability is more widespread than previously known, we look to new ways of analyzing the potential average-case difficulty of Dec-POMDP instances. As this would be extremely difficult using the tools of traditional complexity theory, we take a more empirical approach. In so doing, we identify new analytical measures that apply to all Dec-POMDPs, whatever their structure. These measures allow us to identify problems that are potentially easier to solve on average, and validate this claim empirically. As we show, the performance of well-known optimal dynamic programming methods correlates with our new measure of difficulty. Finally, we explore the approximate case, showing that our measure works well as a predictor of difficulty there, too, and provides a means of setting algorithm parameters to achieve far more efficient performance.

To infer the hidden states from the noisy observations and make predictions based on a set of input states and output observations are two challenging problems in many research areas. Examples of applications many include position estimation from various measurable radio signals in indoor environments, self-navigation for autonomous cars, modeling and predicting of the traffic flows, and flow pattern analysis for crowds of people. In this thesis, we mainly use the Bayesian inference framework for position estimation in an indoor environment, where the radio propagation is uncertain. In Bayesian inference framework, it is usually hard to get analytical solutions. In such cases, we resort to Monte Carlo methods to solve the problem numerically. In addition, we apply Bayesian nonparametric modeling for trajectory learning in sport analytics. The main contribution of this thesis is to propose sequential Monte Carlo methods, namely particle filtering and smoothing, for a novel indoor positioning framework based on proximity reports. The experiment results have been further compared with theoretical bounds derived for this proximity based positioning system. To improve the performance, Bayesian non-parametric modeling, namely Gaussian process, has been applied to better indicate the radio propagation conditions. Then, the position estimates obtained sequentially using filtering and smoothing are further compared with a static solution, which is known as fingerprinting. Moreover, we propose a trajectory learning framework for flow estimation in sport analytics based on Gaussian processes. To mitigate the computation deficiency of Gaussian process, a grid-based on-line algorithm has been adopted for real-time applications. The resulting trajectory modeling for individual athlete can be used for many purposes, such as performance prediction and analysis, health condition monitoring, etc. Furthermore, we aim at modeling the flow of groups of athletes, which could be potentially used for flow pattern recognition, strategy planning, etc.

The United States increasingly calls upon elite teams of Special Operations Forces, like the Navy SEALs, to respond to the evolving asymmetric threats posed by terrorists and extremists. These teams must have the capacity to adapt as a collective unit in the most dynamic circumstance. This research explored the nature of collective adaptation by these exceptional action teams using a qualitative case study methodology and a lens of complexity theory. Specifically, data gathered from official documents and interviews with retired Navy SEALs expanded the understanding of dynamic instability as it relates to team adaptation in uncertain environments. A greater understanding of this phenomenon contributed to the scholarly literature by identifying and describing the critical factors used by teams to promote adaptive capacity through the appropriate usage of structure and innovative flexibility in a dynamically changing situation. The study produced the following conclusions: 1. Individuals in an action team mentally reference a combination of general simple rules and situation-specific simple rules when they adapt in an uncertain environment. • Varying application of different types of simple rules correspond with different levels of environmental uncertainty. • Simple rules provide the basis for a shared cognitive structure that enables greater collective adaptation. 2. Previous experience plays an important role in the adaptive capacity of an action team. • Experience provides an individual with context to determine how simple rules can and should be applied. • Experience strengthens the relationship (trust and familiarity) between team members which allows them to adapt more quickly and effectively as a collective. 3. Relationships between team members, grounded in previous experience and a shared culture, play an important role in the adaptive capacity of an action team. • Trust between team members gives each individual the freedom and permission to take initiative and adapt as necessary. • Familiarity between team members enables the action team to collectively adapt more quickly and effectively because they can predict how another teammate will react given a specific set of parameters without the need for extensive communication. 4. The ability of individual team members to control emotions, slow and simplify reactions, and focus communication promotes more effective adaptation by an action team in an uncertain environment. • Individual decision-making is enhanced when individuals are able to control their reactions and react calmly in the midst of an uncertain environment. • As environmental uncertainty increases, individuals who react by slowing down and simplifying their actions are capable of more effective adaptation. • In an uncertain environment, action teams that focus communication, reduce potential distractions for team members. This reduced, but effective communication is possible because of trust and familiarity between team members. 5. An action team's ability to adapt is dependent upon its dynamic instability (the interplay between morphostatic and morphogenetic factors). • Morphostatic factors that promote structure include simple rules, selection of team members, familiarity between team members, and perpetuation of a structured culture that regulates behavior. • Morphogenetic factors that promote flexibility include previous experience, distributed leadership, trust between team members, and perpetuation of a permissive culture that encourages innovation.

It is generally accepted that innovation is a source of competitiveness for companies and nations. The impact of innovation activities on business performance ranges from the effect on sales and market share to the improvement of productivity and operational efficiency. At a national level, the main effects of innovative activities are characterized by the raise of the sectorial competition, this increases the yield of the productive industry, along to the systematical permeation of know-how to the linked business networks. The first definition of the concept of innovation was established by Schumpeter (1934), indicating that innovation is what we call in a non-scientific way, economic progress. The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI, 1998) mentions that innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas. The Oslo Manual (OECD, 2006) indicates that an innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations. It is noteworthy that the concept of innovation involves elements such as economic progress, business success, successful exploitation, etc. But, how does this happens exactly? Identifying the implications of innovative activities in business performance is highly relevant, as it opens a path for assisting a key issue in innovation research: systematically determine which resources, from those intended to manage continuous change within companies are justified, moreover, categorize which of them have had a major impact on the organization’s goals and objectives. The formula to address the previous question is somehow logical and has been widely studied by several authors. It consists on collecting information of the determinants of success or failure of companies in specialized studies on innovation management, then generating a list with the most relevant and frequent characteristics and elements, finally applying a scoring system to the selected best practices (Tidd and Bessant, 2013). However, that method faces complex challenges in the innovation environment: the heterogeneous terminology, dissimilar views and definitions of the concept, among other elements obstruct a standard measurement framework. Thus a correct evaluation, quantification and comparison of the innovative competencies of the organizations is highly challenging, since there is no single or main tendency to evaluate the measure of innovation. It is conventionally accepted that innovation is a concept demarcated by uncertainty. Thus, one of the most recurring problems is to treat innovation information with traditional methodologies, "the uncertainty that the innovation process entails is manifested by the fact that only one third of the new products introduced in the market end up being successful, a proportion that seems not to have been overcome in the last decades" (Velasco et al., 2008). Despite innovation is, by its nature, governed by random processes, in the business reality innovation must be the result of a deliberate process, guided by human intuition, intelligence and foresight (Cotec, 1999). It is therefore necessary to understand and manage the innovation process, so that there is little room for chance (Tidd; Bessant and Pavitt, 2005). Motivated on shedding light to the scientific gap found in the literature, we present our proposal, which is mainly focused in the application of methodologies and techniques for the treatment of information under uncertainty towards innovation management measurement and its interlaced complex decision-making process.
Es generalmente aceptado que la innovación es una fuente de competitividad para las empresas y para las naciones. El impacto de las actividades de innovación sobre los resultados de las empresas va desde el efecto sobre las ventas y la cuota del mercado hasta la mejora de la productividad y la eficiencia operacional. Los principales beneficios a nivel de nación se distinguen por el incremento de la competencia sectorial, lo cual eleva el rendimiento total de los factores productivos, así como el derrame del nuevo saber-hacer, que permea de forma sistémica las redes empresariales. Es notorio que alrededor del concepto de innovación se encuentran elementos tales como progreso económico, éxito empresarial, solución de problemas, etc. Por lo tanto, identificar las implicaciones que las actividades innovadoras suponen al rendimiento de las empresas es relevante, ya que abre camino para asistir un aspecto clave entorno a la innovación: determinar de forma sistemática qué recursos, de aquellos destinados a gestionar el cambio continuo dentro de las empresas es justificable, y más aún, cuáles de ellos han impactado mayormente a los objetivos y metas de la organización. La fórmula para conocer éste aspecto clave resulta de cierta forma lógica y previamente estudiado por varios autores. Consiste en recopilar información del éxito o fracaso empresarial documentado en estudios especializados en factores determinantes de innovación, a continuación, generar una lista con las características y elementos más relevantes y frecuentes, finalmente aplicar un sistema de puntuación con las mejores prácticas encontradas, sin embargo, tal método se enfrenta a retos complejos como lo es la heterogénea terminología, disimiles puntos de vista alrededor de la innovación y desemejantes definiciones del concepto. Así pues, una correcta evaluación, cuantificación y comparación de las competencias innovadoras de las organizaciones es complejo ya que no existe una tendencia única o principal para evaluar la medida la innovación. Motivados por acortar la brecha científica encontrada en la literatura, presentamos nuestra propuesta, que se centra en la aplicación de técnicas para el tratamiento de la información en la incertidumbre destinadas a apoyar la toma de decisiones hacia la gestión de la innovación y el cambio continuo en la empresa.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out when Research and Development (R&D) becomes a suitable attribute for a production company to outsource. In an environment where innovations are following up quickly up and uncertainty about the type of innovation and customer is a fact, external sourcing can bring a competitive advantage. The empirical evidence shows that when R&D is outsourced the total cost does not increase at a due cause of outsourcing in this given study.

Although a lot of theory explains outsourcing as a cost increasing factor, the internal experience and frequent relation between the technical production company Beta and its R&D vendor company Alfa can decrease costs considerably due to lower communication and governance costs. This was not explicitly expressed in related theory and is therefore a contribution to the academia as well as for managers who seek to find an answer to the question of when to outsource and when not to outsource.

La globalidad de la problemática a través de diferentes niveles jerárquicos, funciones y roles del conjunto de empleados lleva al análisis de un conjunto limitado de factores relacionados con la retribución enmarcado en el ámbito de empresas españolas cotizadas y directamente en el papel de la retribución y de las diferencias retributivas a nivel del equipo de alta dirección. Este trabajo estudia factores contextuales que mayor influencia tienen sobre la fijación del nivel retribución del equipo de alta dirección, considerando las características del trabajo de esos mismos –posición jerárquica, discrecionalidad, interdependencia de tareas, e incertidumbre– y cómo dichas características pueden influir en las diferencias salariales entre los propios miembros del equipo de alta dirección. Completado por la verificación del efecto del gobierno corporativo y el papel de los mecanismos de supervisión para controlar a los directivos (el marco de la teoría de la agencia) se enriquece este trabajo sobre el contexto de dispersión retributiva y resultados de la empresa.
The globality of the problem through different hierarchical levels, functions and roles of all employees takes to the analysis of a limited set of factors related to compensation in the context of listed Spanish companies and directly on the role of pay and the pay differences at the top management team. This paper examines the contextual factors of main influence on establishing remuneration levels of top management team, considering the nature of their working activities- hierarchical position, discretion, task interdependence, and uncertainty-and how these characteristics may influence pay differences between the members of the top management team. Completed by the exploration of effects of corporate governance and the role of supervision mechanisms to control managers in the agency theory context this paper is enriched in the topic concerning pay differences and operating results.

This dissertation, titled “Uncertainty Discourse: Climate Models, Gender, and Environmental Literature in the Anthropocene,” takes a feminist approach to sustainability through the lens of climate science and English-language environmental fiction. I diagnose the appearance of what I call a discourse of uncertainty, which describes new constitutions of thought and social organization emerging in response to the structural uncertainties that characterize climate change. I root this discourse in the scientific practice of climate modeling, by which scientists calculate the probability, or degrees of uncertainty, of future weather scenarios. Though climate models inform socio-political preparations for a climate-changed future, their utility has gone unheeded in the humanities. I fill this gap by placing scientific and literary depictions of uncertainty into conversation to explore their epistemological and ethical implications for a climate-changing future through issues such as gender and representation, politics and sustainability, and knowledge and time. I not only trace how uncertainty is manifested in contemporary environmental literature, such as Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012), but also consider the drama of South Asian women playwrights alongside the works of feminist scholars, philosophers, and activists.

碩士
南台科技大學
企業管理系
99
The main purpose of this study dynamic capabilities by organizational point of view, to explore the past 10 years, corporate research, and then discuss the value of its theory and practice. Previous studies by the development of dynamic capabilities in the organization of this study the theoretical foundation, and environmental uncertainty, organizational advantages of resources, social networks, inter-related nature of social capital. Finally, the study also raises a dynamic capabilities on organizational and managerial implications for future research. In the sample, this study in Taiwan listed company as a sample, a total of 1,000 questionnaires were issued, the valid sample of a total of 116, the effective rate was 11.6%. According to the empirical results show that: overall business environment more uncertain, companies must be more advantageous resources, to meet the adequate social capital and dense social networks and strong dynamic capabilities to respond to the current multi-changing business environment. In the past studies have not found that environmental uncertainty, organizational advantages of resources, social networks, social capital and organizational capacity to each of the dynamic.This article uses regression revealed: superior resources for environmental uncertainty has no significant effect of social capital for environmental uncertainty has a positive significant effect of environmental uncertainty for social network has a significant positive impact on social capital has the advantage of resources significant positive impact, superior resources for the organization has a positive significant effect on dynamic capabilities, superior resources for social network has a significant positive impact of social capital for social network has a positive significant effect,social networks, the organization has a positive significant effect on dynamic capabilities social capital for the organization has a positive significant effect of dynamic capabilities, the environment is more uncertainty, the amount of business has the resources,social networks and social capital will significantly affect the organization the strength of dynamic capabilities.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
This research is dedicated to examine that the use of influence strategies would be affected by interdependence and moderated by environmental uncertainty in the supplier-buyer relationship in Hong Kong electronics industry. This research provides both theoretical and managerial insights into the applicability of influence strategies and managers need to understand the effective use of influence strategies under different interdependent relationships and uncertain environment to make appropriate decisions.

碩士
國立中山大學
高階公共政策碩士班
99
Abstract In recent years, the Ministry of Education''s policy on higher education is no longer the way to indulge control operation, the opposite order to improve the quality of higher education. The Ministry of Education used the double-dealing, first of all, the university evaluation system begin and regulate the so-called "university exit mechanism." In addition the education and implementation of large grants of accreditation providing subsidies to the better universities, and thus evaluation of poor schools can’t get grants, so the formation of most of the subsidies to the school an excellent university, and therefore caused the situation to strong become more stronger, the weak become more weaker. Therefore, if colleges and universities can’t achieve the minimum number of students remain in operation, and it will eventually be forced out of the education market, and then it will be accompanied by referred students, teachers, severance and other social issues. This study used the purposive sampling with snowball sampling, and questionnaires the domestic 14 private university teachers, a total of 224 valid questionnaires recovered, and then to use the SPSS 18.0 in statistical analysis and examination the collected date. The results showed: 1. Teachers with high degree of Internal Marketing consciousness will increase their organizational commitment in the university. 2. Teachers with high degree of environmental uncertainty Perceptions will reduce their organizational commitment in the university and it will affect the teaching quality. 3. Teachers with high degree of organizational commitment and the internal marketing consciousness will increase the teaching quality. 4. Teachers with organization commitment have positive mediation effect between the internal marketing consciousness and teaching quality 5. In the situation of internal marketing consciousness, the environmental uncertainty perception does not have any effect the organizational commitment and the teaching quality.

The Multi-Agency Radiological Site Survey Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) is a regulatory guidance document regarding compliance evaluation of radiologically contaminated soils and buildings (USNRC, 2000). Compliance is determined by comparing radiological measurements to established limits using a combination of hypothesis testing and scanning measurements. Scanning allows investigators to identify localized pockets of contamination missed during sampling and allows investigators to assess radiological exposure at different spatial scales. Scale is important in radiological dose assessment as regulatory limits can vary with the size of the contaminated area and sites are often evaluated at more than one scale (USNRC, 2000). Unfortunately, scanning is not possible in the subsurface and direct application of MARSSIM breaks down. This dissertation develops a subsurface decision framework called the Geospatial Extension to MARSSIM (GEM) to provide multi-scale subsurface decision support in the absence of scanning technologies. Based on geostatistical simulations of radiological activity, the GEM recasts the decision rule as a multi-scale, geospatial decision rule called the regulatory limit rule (RLR). The RLR requires simultaneous compliance with all scales and depths of interest at every location throughout the site. The RLR is accompanied by a compliance test called the stochastic conceptual site model (SCSM). For those sites that fail compliance, a remedial design strategy is developed called the Multi-scale Remedial Design Model (MrDM) that spatially indicates volumes requiring remedial action. The MrDM is accompanied by a sample design strategy known as the Multi-scale Remedial Sample Design Model (MrsDM) that refines this remedial action volume through careful placement of new sample locations. Finally, a new sample design called “check and cover” is presented that can support early sampling efforts by directly using prior knowledge about where contamination may exist. This dissertation demonstrates how these tools are used within an environmental investigation and situates the GEM within existing regulatory methods with an emphasis on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Triad method which recognizes and encourages the use of advanced decision methods. The GEM is implemented within the Spatial Analysis and Decision Assistance (SADA) software and applied to a hypothetical radiologically contaminated site.

While decision-making under uncertainty is a major universal problem, its implications in the field of transportation systems are especially enormous; where the benefits of right decisions are tremendous, the consequences of wrong ones are potentially disastrous. In the realm of highway systems, decisions related to the highway configuration (number of lanes, right of way, etc.) need to incorporate both the traffic demand and land price uncertainties. In the literature, these uncertainties have generally been modeled using the Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) process, which has been used extensively in modeling many other real life phenomena. But few scholars, including those who used the GBM in highway configuration decisions, have offered any rigorous justification for the use of this model. This thesis attempts to offer a detailed analysis of various aspects of transportation systems in relation to decision-making. It reveals some general insights as well as a new concept that extends the notion of opportunity cost to situations where wrong decisions could be made. Claiming deficiency of the GBM model, it also introduces a new formulation that utilizes a large and flexible parametric family of jump models (i.e., Lévy processes). To validate this claim, data related to traffic demand and land prices were collected and analyzed to reveal that their distributions, heavy-tailed and asymmetric, do not match well with the GBM model. As a remedy, this research used the Merton, Kou, and negative inverse Gaussian Lévy processes as possible alternatives. Though the results show indifference in relation to final decisions among the models, mathematically, they improve the precision of uncertainty models and the decision-making process. This furthers the quest for optimality in highway projects and beyond.

This dissertation explores how experience and environment impact behavior. In the first chapter, I provide behavioral foundations for a model of taste uncertainty with endogenous learning through consumption. In this setting, uncertainty is over an unobservable, subjective state space. Preference over lottery-menu pairs is sufficient to identify the state space and the learning process. In this model, the agent is viewed as if he learns the utility of an object upon its consumption. This information is used to improve choice from the follow-on menu. This implies a trade-off between consumption value and information leading to experimentation. I provide a behavioral definition of experimentation. While the literature focuses on identifying subjective states through a demand for flexibility, I show that experimentation also (partially) identifies taste uncertainty. The second chapter explores the potential for social networks to affect decisions of political leaders. To this end we construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of network important individuals. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European monarchs with kinship ties increased threefold. Together, these findings help explain the well-documented decrease in European war frequency. The final chapter builds on the robust finding from the psychology literature that the co-presentation of products causes consumers to associate them. Associated products are evaluated more similarly. Supposing that agents behave according to this evidence, I axiomatically derive a tractable utility model of this association effect. In an application, I study a two-product monopolist that can strategically choose whether or not to offer his products under the same brand. I demonstrate that psychological association can provide strict incentives for either brand extension or brand differentiation depending on the distribution of product valuations in the market. Appropriate branding strategies allow firms to extract more surplus from consumers when psychological association is present.

Cette thèse est constituée de trois articles. Le premier étudie le problème de pollution globale dans un contexte environnemental incertain. Le deuxième article traite des accords internationaux sur l'environnement. Le troisième article montre comment la libéralisation du commerce peut affecter le bien-être et les taxes sur la pollution dans un monde où les pays sont hétérogènes et la pollution transfrontalière. Dans le premier article, je considère un monde dans lequel les pays souffrent uniformément de la pollution globale. Ils font face à une menace continuelle de voir les dommages causés par cette pollution globale s'accroître subitement de façon irréversible. Je caractérise le niveau des émissions, le stock de pollution, et le niveau de bien-être actualisé en équilibres coopératif et non-coopératif. L'objectif visé est d'analyser l'impact de ce type d'incertitude sur les équilibres issus des comportements stratégiques des pays. Je trouve que cette incertitude peut avoir un effet significatif sur ces équilibres. Les pays réduisent leurs émissions pour atténuer leur exposition à cette menace. Plus la menace est grande, plus les pays ajustent leurs émissions afin de réduire le stock de pollution globale. Cependant, en dépit du fait que cette incertitude diminue le bien-être net initial, elle peut à long terme avoir un effet net positif sur le bien-être. Le deuxième article étend la classe des modèles dynamiques standards traitant des accords internationaux sur l'environnement au cas où la durée de la période d'engagement à de tels accords est un paramètre que l'on peut varier de façon exogène. Nous y étudions les évolutions dans le temps de la taille des coalitions stables, du stock de pollution et du taux d'émissions en fonction de la durée d'engagement. Nous montrons que la longueur de la période d'engagement a un effet très significatif sur l'équilibre. Trois intervalles de durée d'engagement sont identifiés pour lesquels l'équilibre et sa dynamique diffèrent considérablement. Alors que pour des durées de la période d'engagement très longues on observe des coalitions stables constituées d'un petit nombre de pays, si ces durées sont suffisamment courtes on peut observer un niveau de coopération élevé. Les durées d'engagement entre ces deux extrêmes sont caractérisées par une relation inverse entre la durée de la période d'engagement et la taille des coalitions stables. Ces faits portent à croire qu'il faudrait accorder une attention toute particulière au choix de la durée d'engagement lors de l'élaboration de tels accords internationaux. Le troisième article s'inscrit dans un contexte où les activités de production des pays potentiellement hétérogènes génèrent de la pollution qui peut traverser les frontières et nuire au bien-être des pays impliqués. Dans chacun de ces pays, l'état impose des taxes sur la pollution aux firmes polluantes et des tarifs à l'importation afin de corriger cette distorsion. Ce papier a pour but d'évaluer les effets que pourrait avoir une diminution des tarifs douaniers sur la production, les taxes sur la pollution et le bien-être de ces pays. La littérature existante a étudié ce problème, mais seulement dans le cadre d'un commerce bilatéral entre pays identiques. Cet article fournit un cadre d'analyse plus réaliste dans lequel les pays ne seront pas nécessairement identiques et où le commerce pourra être multilatéral. Il devient alors possible de mettre en évidence le biais introduit en négligeant ces deux facteurs. Dans ce nouveau contexte, je montre qu'une réduction des tarifs d'importation n'augmente pas nécessairement la production; elle peut aussi nuire au bien-être, même si la pollution est purement locale.
This thesis is composed of three papers. The first paper studies the problem of global pollution in the context of environmental uncertainty. The second paper has to do with international environmental agreements. The third paper shows how trade liberalization can affect welfare and pollution taxes in a world of heterogeneous countries and transboundary pollution. In the first paper, I consider a world where countries suffer uniformly from global pollution while facing a continuous threat that the damages from this global pollution will suddenly jump to an irreversible high-damage state. I characterize the equilibrium level of emissions, the equilibrium stock of global pollution and the discounted net social welfare for both the cooperative and non-cooperative equilibria. The purpose is to analyze the impact of this type of uncertainty on the equilibrium behavior of the countries. I find that this uncertainty can have a significant effect on those equilibria. Countries reduce their emissions to mitigate their exposure to that threat. As the level of threat rises, countries adjust their emissions to lower the stock of pollutant. However, although initially this type of uncertainty has the effect of lowering the discounted net welfare, it can in the long run have a net positive effect on welfare. The second paper extends the standard model of self-enforcing dynamic international environmental agreements by allowing the length of the period of commitment of such agreements to vary as a parameter. It analyzes the pattern of behavior of the size of stable coalitions, the stock of pollutant and the emission rate as a function of the length of the period of commitment. It is shown that the length of the period of commitment can have very significant effects on the equilibrium. Three distinct intervals for the length of the period of commitment are identified, across which the equilibrium and its dynamic behavior differ considerably. Whereas for sufficiently high values of the period of commitment only self-enforcing agreements by a small number of countries are possible, for sufficiently low such values cooperation on the part of a very high number of countries can be occur. Lengths of periods of commitment between those two thresholds are characterized by an inverse relationship between the length of commitment and the membership size of the agreement. This suggests that considerable attention should be given to the determination of the length of such international agreements. The third paper considers a trade situation where the production activities of potentially heterogeneous countries generate pollution which can cross borders and harm the well-being of all the countries involved. In each of those countries the policy maker levies pollution taxes on the polluting firms and a tariff on imports in order to correct that distortion. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effect of a reduction in the tariff on equilibrium pollution taxes and welfare. The existing literature has investigated this problem for trade between two identical countries. This paper analyzes the problem in the more realistic context where countries are not necessarily identical and trade can be multilateral. It becomes possible to show what bias is introduced when those two realities are neglected. I find that a tariff reduction can actually lower output; it can also lower welfare even if pollution is purely local.

As agents are built for ever more complex environments, methods that consider the uncertainty in the system have strong advantages. This uncertainty is common in domains such as robot navigation, medical diagnosis and treatment, inventory management, sensor networks and e-commerce. When a single decision maker is present, the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model is a popular and powerful choice. When choices are made in a decentralized manner by a set of decision makers, the problem can be modeled as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (DEC-POMDP). While POMDPs and DEC-POMDPs offer rich frameworks for sequential decision making under uncertainty, the computational complexity of each model presents an important research challenge. As a way to address this high complexity, this thesis develops several solution methods based on utilizing domain structure, memory-bounded representations and sampling. These approaches address some of the major bottlenecks for decision-making in real-world uncertain systems. The methods include a more efficient optimal algorithm for DEC-POMDPs as well as scalable approximate algorithms for POMDPs and DEC-POMDPs. Key contributions include optimizing compact representations as well as automatic structure extraction and exploitation. These approaches increase the scalability of algorithms, while also increasing their solution quality.