Reallocation Problems in Agent Societies: A Local Mechanism to Maximize Social Welfare

Resource reallocation problems are common in real life and therefore gain an increasing interest in Computer Science and Economics. Such problems consider agents living in a society and negotiating their resources with each other in order to improve the welfare of the population. In many studies however, the unrealistic context considered, where agents have a flawless knowledge and unlimited interaction abilities, impedes the application of these techniques in real life problematics. In this paper, we study how agents should behave in order to maximize the welfare of the society. We propose a multi-agent method based on autonomous agents endowed with a local knowledge and local interactions. Our approach features a more realistic environment based on social networks, inside which we provide the behavior for the agents and the negotiation settings required for them to lead the negotiation processes towards socially optimal allocations. We prove that bilateral transactions of restricted cardinality are sufficient in practice to converge towards an optimal solution for different social objectives. An experimental study supports our claims and highlights the impact of a realistic environment on the efficiency of the techniques utilized.Resource Allocation, Negotiation, Social Welfare, Agent Society, Behavior, Emergence

Overview of Infrastructure Charging, part 4, IMPROVERAIL Project Deliverable 9, “Improved Data Background to Support Current and Future Infrastructure Charging Systems”

Improverail aims are to further support the establishment of railway infrastructure management in accordance with Directive 91/440, as well as the new railway infrastructure directives, by developing the necessary tools for modelling the management of railway infrastructure; by evaluating improved methods for capacity and resources management, which allow the improvement of the Life Cycle Costs (LCC) calculating methods, including elements related to vehicle - infrastructure interaction and external costs; and by improving data background in support of charging for use of railway infrastructure. To achieve these objectives, Improverail is organised along 8 workpackages, with specific objectives, responding to the requirements of the task 2.2.1/10 of the 2nd call made in the 5th RTD Framework Programme in December 1999.This part is the task 7.1 (Review of infrastructure charging systems) to the workpackage 7 (Analysis of the relation between infrastructure cost variation and diversity of infrastructure charging systems).Before explaining the economic characteristics of railway and his basic pricing principles, authors must specify the objectives of railways infrastructure charging.principle of pricing ; rail infrastructure charging ; public service obligation ; rail charging practice ; Europe ; Improverail

The globalised village: grounded experience, media and response in Eastern Thailand

Drawing on the fieldwork in a village community in Eastern Thailand, Ban Noen PutsaPluak Ked, this thesis explores the complex relationships between processes of globaIisation, representations in the mainstream media and activist media; and villagers' responses to change. The research, summarised here has three interrelated objectives: First, to examine how globalisation and industrialisation are represented in the mainstream and activist media. Second, to investigate the role played by the activist media in promoting counter visions of possible futures. Thirdly, to investigate the practices and ideas that local people have developed to resist or accept globalisation. The research employs a multi-method approach combining ethnographic methods, a questionnaire survey; textual analysis; and focus groups. The findings point to a complex relationship between mediated representations and visions of modernity. They also demonstrate that villagers' responses are strongly stratified by age, length of residence, and relation to the pivot of the new industriaIisation- a major chemical plant and that they remain strongly influenced by the crucial nexus of traditional Thai society, the patron client system. Additionally, content analysis and critical discourse analysis suggest that Thai news television programmes reproduced both the ideology of globalism and the celebration of consumerism. Moreover, the voices of marginalized groups and local people are also absent from the activist media

The first year nurse tutor a qualitative study

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Between planned and emergent collaboration: boundary activation and identity development in the psychosocial space of a Greek educational partnership

This thesis aims to expand our understanding of inter-organisational collaborations by exploring how the process of collaboration emerges over time and how collaboration partners (re)form their identities in the developing collaboration space. For the exploration of these aims, a practice-based study of inter-organisational collaborations is followed. The study analyses the KEDDY Aitoloakarnanias collaboration in Greece. In order to examine how the KEDDY collaboration unfolds, a longitudinal ethnographic research was conducted, collecting 43 in-depth interviews, 48 documents, observations of 13 partners’ meetings and numerous field notes. The data was analysed qualitatively using thematic and narrative analysis. The results show how, as they engaged in everyday working practices, organisational members demarcated the boundaries of the collaboration by producing two types of psychosocial spaces. The ‘spaces of regulation’ provided a stable meaning framework where the partners found continuity, while the ‘learning spaces’ offered them opportunities for renewal and change. These working spaces helped partners engage with the collaborative process in a flexible way. However, they required the activation of different types of boundaries and the establishment of different types of identities through identification loops. In this way partners were able to make sense of the constant changes in the collaboration space and organise their actions accordingly. Therefore, although some of the KEDDY collaboration features were designed a priori and provided continuity through regulatory spaces, this research illustrates how the day to day collaboration unfolds as partners also explore new practices. This indicates that it is not possible to predict the outcome of the collaboration process. Notwithstanding the limitations due to the small-scale nature of this study, the results have useful implications for the understanding of the development and transformations of inter-organisational collaborations over time. This research contributes to the body of research in the area in that it strengthens the view of inter-organisational collaboration as a process and questions in which way it is currently understood in the context of contemporary inter-organisational collaboration studies

Proactive Socialisation: a Longitudinal Investigation of Newcomer Adjustment Inside Both an Institutionalised and Individualised Workplace

This thesis adopted a unique approach to the exploration of proactive socialisation and the processes by which a newcomer moves from organisational outsider to insider. Although socialisation involves actions by the individual, the work group, and the organisation, this study is one of the first to investigate how these actions work in tandem to support the adjustment of organisational newcomers. Research was conducted with a group of 526 participants, drawn from a pool of New Zealand Police (NZ Police) recruits and graduate employees. A quantitative method for data gathering was adopted, with questionnaires administered over a 15-month period for police recruits and 6-month period for graduate newcomers. Results indicated that prior work quality and quantity, job interest, proactive personality, team support, and leader-member exchange each had an important role to play in the prediction of newcomer role breadth self-efficacy. In turn, newcomers who felt confident in their ability to carry out a broader and more proactive role also enjoyed a higher level of task mastery and group fit. The successful achievement of these proximal outcomes led to other, more distal outcomes, namely performance and organisational commitment. Each of these outcomes was achieved, regardless of the socialising tactics employed by the hiring organisation. An important feature of this thesis was the design and delivery of a training intervention that was aimed at coaching newcomers in a range of proactive behaviours (i.e., information-seeking, feedback-seeking, positive framing, relationship building, networking, listening, and observation/modeling). Results found that the longitudinal pattern of proaction differed for newcomers in response to the socialising tactics adopted by the organisation. Results also indicated that the impact of training on future proaction was most potent for individuals who already had an elevated level of role breadth self-efficacy, thereby pointing to the importance of building an employee' perception of their own capability. Training was also most effective when key messages were repeated over multiple sessions, and integrated into the solving of realworld tasks. These results challenge previous studies that have assumed proactivity to be a stable construct over time. Beyond contributing to the literature on newcomer socialisation, this thesis goes some way to clarifying why proactive people actually succeed. It would seem that proactive people expect to be successful, thereby making a training intervention more useful. This thesis also challenges prior research that assumes certain adjustment outcomes are dependent on the socialising tactics adopted by the hiring organisation. Thus, rather than passively adapt to their environment, this research shows how a newcomer can actively shape their own socialising experience. A number of methodological weaknesses found in previous studies have been addressed in this thesis. It also presents a number of practical implications to support the pre-entry, initial entry, and long-term adjustment of seasoned newcomers, versus graduate Generation Y employees. Multiple options for future research are also considered