Library: Best sellers

The purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions – the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and pra...

Although the significance of ‘9/11’ is subject to debate, it is symbolic of a general sentiment of discontinuity whereby society is vulnerable to undefined and highly disruptive events. Recent catalysts of this sentiment are eye-catching developments such as the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and bird flu outbreaks, the Enron and Parmalat scandals, political assassinations in Sweden and the Netherlands, regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and terrorist attacks in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, and various parts of the Middle East. However, recent discontinuities should not be seen as e...

This study presents a comprehensive behavioral model for the determinants and consequences of price sensitivity in the domain of electronic entertainment. Survey data was collected in the fields of internet entertainment, video games, and mobile entertainment. The data is analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach for the whole sample and for each domain, respectively. The estimates yield a close overall model fit. However, considerable differences between the domains exist. The model is embedded in a learning theory paradigm that explains why price sensi...

Commercial companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are internationalising at an increasing pace. Yet little is known about the management of NGOs during this process. Indeed, they have been neglected by comparison to the literature on companies. This thesis draws on theories of how and why companies internationalise to determine whether the explanations they offer can be extended to cover NGOs. It considers the driving forces experienced by NGOs, the stages they pass through. This was undertaken through a postal survey using results from 52 international NGOs from Europe and the ...

Discourses of menopause are varied and complex, just as the lives of women themselves are diverse and multifaceted. Traditionally, menopause has signalled the end of the child-bearing years and the "change of life," a time when women might experience a great deal of change, in many ways. But menopause can also be understood as a natural physical change, or a time of hormonal change, or as a passage from one way of life to a different one, often accompanied by emotional flux and changes in ways women think about themselves. For this study of menopause and women’s lives, using life story meth...

Various business models have been presented each reflecting their strengths and weaknesses. The first model demonstrates consumer purchase behavior. The second model demonstrates marketing strategies. The third model demonstrates the use of various advertising vehicles and the last model demonstrates the human aspect that combines salesmanship and leadership with ethical business codes of conduct. This researcher found a multitude of articles, books, journals, and websites on each topic and recognized the need for these models to merge. Based on the readings, you will observe the pros and ...

This dissertation proposes a computational technique for automated "invention" of conceptual schemes of thermal systems. The input provided to the automated problem solver is a description of the streams entering and leaving the system. The output is a network of elementary processes: compression, expansion, heating, cooling, and chemical processes. The problem solver seeks a network that is feasible, and offers an optimal (or at least favorable) combination of energy and capital costs. The synthesis process is modeled as a heuristic search conducted in a state-space of all possible design ver...

The revision of Origen's philosophical theology by St. Maximus the Confessor resulted in an eschatology involving the replacement of the human ego by the divine presence. In this study, I will examine the theological developments that led to this loss of a sense of human freedom and creativity in the face of the divine, tracing the influence of Origen's eschatology through the Cappadocian Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus and others, up to Maximus. This will allow me to show the manner in which Origen's humanistic theology was misunderstood and misinterpreted throughout the Patristic era, culminati...

(Note: Dissertation is written in Spanish.) The principal aim of this thesis is to discover the origin, formulation and effect of what is known as a “strategic behaviour”. A very well-known type of strategic behaviour is the persuasive behaviour, the purpose of which is to produce changes in the ideas, behaviour or feelings of a person. The corpus chosen for analysis has been one made up of five parliamentary sessions which preceded and followed the 1988 Education Reform Act. This acts represents the most important governmental initiative in the education service of England and Wales si...

This thesis dissertation, written in Spanish, presents a new model for the linguistic specification and the computational management of man-machine dialogues following commands issued in spoken natural language. Our aim is to design and implement a conversational system for the automatic telephone task scenario, namely Delfos. Voice dialing represents a current trend in research, the purpose of which is to provide functional systems for products ranging from domestic appliances such as a video or a washing machine to more sophisticated environments such as a complete house, with an interface i...