Browsing by Subject "Strategy"
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Agendas, Actions, and Accountability in International Development: A Case Study of the USAID Education Strategy for 2011-2015(2014-12) Willis, GarthBeginning in 2010, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented a series of institutional reforms designed to rebuild USAID as the world's premier development agency. This research examined one component of this larger reform effort, the USAID Education Strategy for 2011-2015: Opportunity Through Learning. The purpose of this research is to examine how the current agenda for basic education was determined, what actions occurred based on this agenda, and how USAID will be held accountable for results. The problem is that while new strategies are routinely developed and implemented, without accountability for results lessons learned to do not inform future policy. The education strategy is an exemplary case study to examine USAID's redesigned approach to international development as: 1) it is the first sector strategy developed under Administrator Rajiv Shah and paved the way for future strategies, 2) it resulted in significant changes to priorities and programs in education, and 3) it represents an unprecedented commitment by USAID to be held accountable for results. This case study of the 2011 Education Strategy provides insights into USAID's new operational model and the implications the model poses for international development assistance. Lessons learned can also inform other global agendas including the design of education indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals. The research uses a framework of agendas, actions, and accountability to analyze the political context and alternative agendas that are the drivers of strategy development and implementation at USAID. This research highlights how agendas are formulated and strategies developed, how ensuing actions depend on both bureaucratic and political processes to deliver results, and how accountability for results is an ambiguous process that has profound implications for the development agenda. Through a document review and interviews with policy specialists and technical experts at USAID, this research adds to existing research by examining and critiquing the policy processes of agendas, actions, and accountability in the context of international development, where decisions are shaped by a global set of actors and contexts.Item A futures study of internationalization of the Carlson School of Management: diverse perspectives of key stakeholders.(2010-08) D’Angelo, Anne MarieInternationalization is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and complex concept described most notably as a higher educational process that integrates an international perspective into its organizational leadership, vision, and curricular goals. Success is dependent upon ongoing engagement of a multitude of internal and external stakeholders with an approach towards the future (Ellingboe, 1998). Today businesspeople operate in an open, global environment wherein interactions manifest themselves differently for each individual and depend upon one's abilities to adapt to and access interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships. The intricacies of these interactions occur at multi-dimensional levels - individual, organizational, and global - and present unique challenges for managers to maintain balance between independence and interdependence. Studies suggest that corporate leaders expect business schools to prepare graduates to be more competent and adaptive to these dynamic global challenges (Webb, Mayer, Piocher, and Allen, 1999). Using StoryTech, a futuring tool to develop desirable scenarios, this qualitative, futures study draws on specific ethnographic tools and methods and employs the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management as an exemplar of analysis regarding its internationalization strategies. The researcher examines how stakeholders, both internal and external to a business school community, envision their contributions in shaping internationalization strategies and how business school leaders should engage them in ways that are more effective and future-oriented. Preliminary data suggest stakeholders define internationalization in myriad ways reflecting unique perspectives consisting of cognitive, relational, and transactional factors for business schools to be more innovative in the development of internationalization strategies. Additional data support a systems approach to internationalization as most effective with business schools serving as focal points for these interconnected stakeholder communities. Broader implications of the study recommend that business school leaders develop and adopt a global meta-strategy approach to enhance broader school-wide initiatives. Moreover, a meta-strategy serves as a means to engage stakeholders from business school communities in unique ways focused on present day realities of globalization (global actualization) while creating desirable future scenarios and engagement for the betterment of new knowledge and applications for future professionals in the workforce. A consequence is the examination of a new, expanded role for international educators, one that broadens the professional realm.Item Immigrant social capital and firm strategic heterogeneity: effects on foreign entry and firm performance.(2011-06) Hernandez, ExequielI explore the effects of firms' ties to co-national immigrants on foreign entry and performance. I argue that location choice and subsidiary survival are influenced by immigrant social capital--which arises from common country bonds and becomes activated when firms co-locate with immigrants of the same nationality in a host location. Moreover, firms respond to and benefit differentially from the resources available through immigrant social capital based on heterogeneity in capabilities, resource needs, and the types of buyers they target. I test these ideas on a sample of foreign investments made by 197 firms from 27 countries into the U.S. between 1998 and 2003. Using a unique set of instruments to account for selection bias, I find strong support for my propositions. This dissertation makes theoretical contributions by showing that immigrant social capital provides firms with unique location-based advantages, and that strategic heterogeneity explains which firms seek out and benefit from social capital. It also has practical implications for managers and policy makers.Item Practical strategies of wind energy utilization for uninhabited aerial vehicles in loiter flights.(2008-12) Singhania, Hong YangUninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is becoming increasingly attractive in missions where human presence is undesirable or impossible. Agile maneuvers and long endurance are among the most desired advantages of UAVs over aircraft that have human pilots onboard. Past studies suggest that the performance of UAVs may be considerably improved by utilizing natural resources, especially wind energy, during flights. The key challenge of exploiting wind energy in practical UAV operations lies in the availability of reliable and timely wind field information in the operational region. This thesis presents a practical onboard strategy that attempts to overcome this challenge, to enable UAVs in utilizing wind energy effectively during flights, and therefore to enhance performance. We propose and explore a strategy that combines wind measurement and optimal trajectory planning onboard UAVs. During a cycle of a loiter flight, a UAV can take measurements of wind velocity components over the flight region, use these measurements to estimate the local wind field through a model-based approach, and then compute a flight trajectory for the next flight cycle with the objective of optimizing fuel. As the UAV follows the planned trajectory, it continues to measure the wind components and repeats the process of updating the wind model with new estimations and planning optimal trajectories for the next flight cycle. Besides presenting an onboard trajectory planning strategy of wind energy exploration, estimation, and utilization, this research also develops a semi-analytical linearized solution to the formulated nonlinear optimal control problem. Simulations and numerical results indicate that the fuel savings of trajectories generated using the proposed scheme depend on wind speed, wind estimation errors, rates of change in wind speed, and the wind model structures. For a given wind field, the magnitude of potential fuel savings is also contingent upon UAVs' performance capabilities.Item Representation and reasoning for complex spatio-temporal problems: from humans to software agents(2014-03) Wetzel, Christopher BaylorSuccess in the real world depends on the ability to reason about space and time. Consider the simple, everyday task of deciding whether to cross a road. If a car is coming, your decision will be based on how wide the road is, how fast you walk, how far away the car is and how fast it is moving. You might also consider structural features of the road; if the car has to turn a corner or go over a speed bump, the car will move slower for a short period of time. Determining whether it is safe to cross requires reasoning about the interaction of these variables.The field of artificial intelligence has developed representations for describing space (e.g., RCC) and time (e.g., interval calculus) but not for describing the interaction between the two. Unsurprisingly, billions of years of evolution have resulted in humans being quite good at it. How they do so is not completely understood. Detailed studies have focused on overly simple problems while studies of complex problems have lacked sufficient detail to build computer models. This thesis describes our investigation into solving problems with significant spatio-temporal components. We focused on the domain of tower defense puzzles, a class of complex spatio-temporal problems that requires the problem solver to use spatial actions (placing guard towers on a map) to maximize a temporal variable (tower active time). We had two objectives. First, using methods from experimental psychology and computational behavioral modeling, we wished to understand how, precisely, humans solved these problems. Humans, unlike computers, are known to be good at solving this type of problem. Our second goal was to construct a computer agent capable of solving this task as well as or better than the best humans.To investigate the relationship of space, time and problem solving, we performed two experiments. The goal of Experiment 1 was to determine how humans solved tower defense puzzles. Experienced tower defense solvers (n=38) were asked to solve a series of novel tower defense puzzles. Interviews and automated data capture tools provided data that were used to answer a set of questions on how humans solved these puzzles. The results showed a tight integration between problem, representation and reasoning. Subjects needed to manipulate space to maximize a temporal value. Rather than represent the space, they represented the goal-relevant opportunities for actions present in the space, known as affordances. Problems were decomposed into sets of goals, each goal was addressed by one or more simple, focused, goal-specific strategies and each strategy was activated by an affordance. An interesting finding was that many subjects treated temporal problems as if they were spatial ones, which we refer to as spatial proxying.The goal of Experiment 2 was to determine how well the discovered strategies worked. Novice (n=10) and experienced (n=10) tower defense solvers were asked to solve a series of novel tower defense puzzles. Results showed that 70% of novice and 40% of experienced subjects used spatial proxying strategies and that these strategies worked surprisingly well. 10% of novice and 60% of experienced subjects used strategies that directly manipulated time. These strategies performed better but frequently created solutions that were counter-intuitive. Our second objective was to investigate computational representations and algorithms capable of creating an agent that performs at or above human levels for this task. Human studies showed that the majority of the "intelligence" of their problem solving process lay in the recognition and representation of spatial affordances. This led to the creation of the Spatial Affordance Query System (SAQS). In this system, spatio-temporal reasoning agents are created declaratively, with the author specifying the strategies the agent knows. The agent and problem map are passed to a solver, which compares the agent's strategy set to the affordances reported by SAQS, which instantiates the applicable strategies. The majority of agents were 5-12 lines of code and the best agent performed at the same level as the best human subjects.Item Strategic Sustainability: Leading Corporate Change for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Reductions through Reputation, Dynamic Capabilities and Interorganizational Relationships.(2021-08) Heyn, MichelleA primary concern of business scholars is to understand and discuss how companies manage risk in this new paradigm of sustainability where the risk of not addressing climate change outweighs the risk of addressing climate change. Climate change presents many challenges for companies. Companies will have to work with others to understand expectations. Scientists maintain that greenhouse gas (GHG) must be addressed by industry and industry must report their emissions, and reduce GHG emissions below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In order for companies to address GHG reduction throughout their global operations, the risk of climate change needed to be understood financially. Substantive and material understanding of the impacts that climate change strategies have on all business operations is a long term change that involves innovation, culture, supply chain operations, human resources, capital investment and more. My dissertation tells this story of how multinational corporations (MNCs) have learned strategic sustainability. Chapter one focuses on the comparison between company statements about sustainability and their environmental performance. Most large companies have a climate change strategy. Having a climate change strategy could be a signal meant to increase a company’s reputation but one that does not necessarily translate into reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Exploring symbolic versus substantive communication, I use longitudinal data for 163 companies from 13 industries over the years 2008-2013, from the list of Fortune 1000 companies. The results show that decreases in greenhouse gas emissions are correlated with return on invested capital (ROIC) and two of the ten subcategories tested of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, the CSR subcategories environmental policy and reporting, and diversity and labor rights, along with the variable climate change strategy correlate with increased levels of GHG emissions. Furthermore, reporting ISO 14001 has a positive correlation with GHG emissions which implies that even ISO 14001 claims are symbolic and not substantive. The focus of chapter two is to understand the relationship between sustainability reporting and company reported environmental performance (measured as greenhouse gas (GHG) per unit of revenue) through the lens of building dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities are developed through absorbing the capacity to learn what is material. Materiality is defined as “likely to affect the financial condition or operating performance of companies” (SASB, 2020). As material environmental reporting is learned, companies absorb this capacity and use it for strategic advantage. The four stages of building environmental reporting capacity are acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation stages which have parallel stages in the evolutionary theory which are variation, selection, retention, and struggle. Together, these stages help to explain the dynamic change within companies that allows them to build a capacity for environmental reporting. The first two stages are defined as intended which means the company has newly discovered the capability and has not yet purposefully applied the material capability. The second two stages are defined as realized meaning the company has developed the material capability consciously and used this learning purposefully in advance of sustainability reporting. Based on this theoretical foundation I examine 163 companies, from 13 industries, listed in the 2014 Fortune 1000 list using data for the years 2008-2013. In the first two stages I find that R&D is related in a statistically significant manner to higher GHG emissions per unit of revenue; and that Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is related in a statistically significant manner to lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue. In the second two stages I find that greenhouse gas (GHG) Assurance (verification by a third party) and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) are related in a statistically significant manner to lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue, and that Climate Change Strategy is related in a statistically significant manner to higher GHG emissions per unit of revenue. My contribution in this chapter is to map out the stages needed to build capacity for environmental performance through learning about what is material for sustainability reporting. Lastly, chapter three discusses how companies are organized to address climate change challenges understood through the Paris Agreement. In the Paris Climate Agreements, governments around the world agreed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to avoid dangerous levels of anthropogenic climate change by keeping the increase in global mean temperature to remain below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. To meet this goal, companies will need to play a major role. Companies need to understand how to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To do this, companies may need to work with others to gain the needed knowledge to lower emissions while maintaining profitability. Companies can partner with NGOs and other companies to form a type of strategic alliance called an interorganizational relationship (IOR) that can assist in learning about ways to lower GHG per unit of revenue (also referred to as environmental performance), apply sustainability frameworks, and report environmental performance metrics. In this paper, I empirically test whether engagement in sustainability focused IORs is related to lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue, and whether this relationship is influenced by corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance metrics, and company financials. I find some evidence that companies who participate in sustainability IORs have lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue. With no governance interactions, membership in five out of the six IORs show lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue. Participation in the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) are correlated with lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue but not statistically significant. Participation with the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) is correlated with lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue and is statistically significant. However, participation in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is correlated with higher GHG emissions per unit of revenue and is statistically significant. Only two of the fifteen IOR interactions with governance variables are correlated with lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue and statistically significant, and one interaction is statistically significant and is correlated with higher emissions. Additionally, ROIC, and time, are statistically significant and correlated with lower GHG emissions per unit of revenue. Results may indicate that there is a difference between socially constructing sustainability expectations and making sense of the information gained internal to the company. Together, my three chapters explore the real-life phenomenon that I saw as I worked in a sustainability program at the University of Minnesota. My work was centered on building a sustainability program for and with stakeholders that included MNCs, non-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals. Reflecting on my experience, I wondered if what I saw and learned could be tested empirically and supported. Each chapter, therefore, is representative of a specific and important activity, that when taken together, become an approach to building sustainable corporate strategy considering the natural environment.Item Which way do I go? Strategic representations in rat prefrontal cortex on spatial decision tasks(2014-10) Powell, NathanielThe role of the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in animal behavior is both complex and subtle. This dissertation concerns the role of rat PFC on spatial decision- making tasks, particularly how it represents strategies or rules necessary to solve these tasks. First I review the current state of knowledge about the role of the rat PFC in regard to behavior and decision-making (Chapter 1). Then I describe the spatial decision-making tasks and electrophysiological recording techniques I used to explore the role of PFC in rats (Chapter 2). Using one of these tasks, I found overlapping populations of PFC neurons that simultaneously encoded mul- tiple relevant task parameters, including some cases in which mulitple parameters were encoded by single neurons (Chapter 3). I also describe the spatial firing properties of PFC neurons on these tasks and conclude that although these cells do not seem to directly represent space per se, there are important differences in both single-cell and population representations that corresponded to the ani- mal's location on spatial tasks (Chapter 4). Finally, using a population decoding approach that takes advantage of the spatially coded information in the cells, I identify transitions between different strategic representations in the PFC of an- imals performing these tasks. In general the transition between states occurred after animals received information that caused them to change their strategy but before the actual change in their behavior. Additionally, these transitions cannot be accounted for solely on the basis of changes to either sensory information or mo- tor output, which proves that these transitions between strategic representational states are cognitive processes (Chapter 5).