Driven by vigorous competition and continuously escalating demands of clients in construction, innovation is increasingly important for enhancing performance of contractors and designers in design, planning and management of construction projects. Instead of intraorganization innovation, innovation in construction often diffuses across inter-organization boundaries. Influenced by various organi...

With a focus on improving the quality of patient care, the President George W. Bush called for electronic health records (EHRs) for all Americans by the year 2014; however, recent estimates for EHR adoption in the ambulatory care environment are just over 10 percent. The objective of this study was to determine the individual characteristics and the social and technical factors that may contrib...

i ABSTRACT JENNIFER C. JARRELL Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Policy in the United States (Under the direction of RUSS TOAL, FACULTY MEMBER) HPV vaccine school entry mandates and vaccine funding by state was examined using the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory. The DOI was applied to HPV immunization policy to evaluate the rate of vaccine adoption and to determine whether associations existed...

The primary purpose of this chapter is to present descriptive real-life case studies of different offshore-outsourced custom software development projects (that the author has actually worked for). The first case study discusses the practical issues in two fixed-term/fixed-price custom software development projects that were offshoreoutsourced. The second case study discusses the practical issu...

Although technological products are unavoidable in contemporary life, studies focusing on them in the consumer behavior field have been few and narrow. In this article, we investigate consumers’ perspectives, meanings, and experiences in relation to a range of technological products, emphasizing lengthy and repeated interviews with 29 households, including a set of first-time owners. We draw on...

This paper proposes a generic software architecture for the concurrent execution of social simulation models. Concurrent execution of simulation models has considerable advantages regarding other ways of comparing models, such as run-time comparison, performance evaluation, and the possibility of interaction between complementary models. A tool has been implemented and experiments have been car...

Asocial learning is a mechanism by which innovations develop, and social learning is a mechanism by which innovations spread. Penetration of an innovative behavior through a population is measured by the proportion of the population that possesses the innovation. Via agent-based modeling, we examine innovation diffusion with agents learning and interacting in space. Simulations show that innova...

Starting out from a classical perspective on income distribution and growth, the paper reconsiders this issue in the framework of a basic (deterministic) Schumpeterian model with ongoing technical change. On a long-run equilibrium path of this economy, the forces of technological innovation and diffusion balance such that always various techniques of different efficiencies coexist. A consequenc...

This paper explores how the increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. We model the incentives of soldiers to exert effort in war and show that as army size increases paying mercenaries is no longer optimal. In order for the population to accept fi...

Muscle mechanical output such as force and power are governed by highly nonlinear intrinsic muscle properties associated with different muscle fiber types and are influenced by training and age. Many of the interactions between these properties pose trade-offs such that an individual's anthropometrics and muscle morphology may allow an athlete to excel in one sport but not in others. Advanced m...