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This thesis explores Centralised Demand Information Sharing (CDIS) in supply chains. CDIS is an information sharing approach where supply chain members forecast based on the downstream member’s demand. The Bullwhip Effect is a demand variance amplification phenomenon: as the demand moves upstream in supply chains, its variability increases. Many papers in the literature show that, if supply chain members forecast using the less variable downstream member’s demand, this amplification can be reduced leading to a reduction in inventory cost. These papers, using strict model assumptions, discuss three demand information sharing approaches: No Information Sharing (NIS), Downstream Demand Inference (DDI) and Demand Information Sharing (DIS). The mathematical analysis in this stream of research is restricted to the Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) forecasting method. A major motivation for this PhD research is to improve the above approaches, and assess those using less restrictive supply chain assumptions. In this research, apart from using the MMSE forecasting method, we also utilise two non-optimal forecasting methods, Simple Moving Averages (SMA) and Single Exponential Smoothing (SES). The reason for their inclusion is the empirical evidence of their high usage, familiarity and satisfaction in practice. We first fill some gaps in the literature by extending results on upstream demand translation for ARMA (p, q) processes to SMA and SES. Then, by using less restrictive assumptions, we show that the DDI approach is not feasible, while the NIS and DIS approaches can be improved. The two new improved approaches are No Information Sharing – Estimation (NIS-Est) and Centralised Demand Information Sharing (CDIS). It is argued in this thesis that if the supply chain strategy is not to share demand information, NIS-Est results in less inventory cost than NIS for an Order Up To policy. On the other hand, if the strategy is to share demand information, the CDIS approach may be used, resulting in lower inventory cost than DIS. These new approaches are then compared to the traditional approaches on theoretically generated data. NIS-Est improves on NIS, while CDIS improves on the DIS approach in terms of the bullwhip ratio, forecast error (as measured by Mean Squared Error), inventory holding and inventory cost. The results of simulation show that the performance of CDIS is the best among all four approaches in terms of these performance metrics. Finally, the empirical validity of the new approaches is assessed on weekly sales data of a European superstore. Empirical findings and theoretical results are consistent regarding the performance of CDIS. Thus, this research concludes that the inventory cost of an upstream member is reduced when their forecasts are based on a Centralised Demand Information Sharing (CDIS) approach.

Background: An increasing number of couples turn to treatment with oocyte or sperm donation, but there is limited knowledge regarding the consequences of these treatments in a program using identifiable donors. Aim: The overall aim was to study information-sharing among heterosexual couples following identity-release gamete donation. A further aim was to study donors’ attitudes towards future contact with donation offspring. Methods: The four studies were part of The Swedish Study on Gamete Donation; a prospective, longitudinal study of donors and recipients of donated oocytes and sperm. Study I and II had a quantitative approach with recipients of donated oocytes or sperm participating through questionnaires at start of treatment, two months after the first treatment and when their child was 1-4 years old. Study III was a qualitative interview study with 30 parents following sperm donation with school-aged children. Study IV had a quantitative approach with oocyte and sperm donors participating through questionnaires 5-8 years post-donation. Results: Study I revealed that the recipients of donated gametes in general were open about their treatment with the people around them and supported disclosure to offspring regarding his/her genetic origin. Study II reported that most of those who became parents following donor conception intended to share information about the donation with their offspring and some had already started the information-sharing process with their young child. Study III described information sharing with the offspring to be a process of several levels, revealing various amounts of information about the way of conception. The parent was seen to be the owner of the process and moving the process forward with different aspects and the reactions of the offspring serving as driving or impeding forces of the process. Study IV reported that a majority of the gamete donors seem to have a positive or neutral attitude towards a future meeting with a donation offspring. Conclusion: The present thesis suggests that there is a trend towards more openness among recipients of donated gametes in Sweden. It also points out that most recipients and donors within the Swedish gamete donation programme acknowledge the child’s right to his/her genetic origin and have the best interest of the child in mind.

This research advances distributed information sharing by equipping nodes (e.g., software agents) in a distributed network with (1) partner selection algorithms in cooperative environments, and (2) strategies for providing and requesting information in competitive environments. In cooperative environments, information providers are willing to provide requested information, but information consumers must consider uncertainty in the quality of provided information when selecting appropriate information providers. In competitive environments, if a self-interested agent can be an information consumer and provider at the same time, agents need to determine the best ways to request and provide information so that the information acquisition utility can be maximized. This research defines a set of metrics for evaluating information acquisition utility, and presents a game-theoretic approach for determining the best information sharing strategies based on stochastic games. The results show how agents build collaborative relationships with appropriate agents and how the information acquisition utility is affected by those relationships. / text

<p align="justify">Aujourd'hui, la gestion des documents est l'un des problèmes les plus importants en informatique. L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer un système de gestion documentaire basé sur une approche appelée recherche structurée et collaborative. Les caractéristiques essentielles sont :</p> <ul><li><p align="justify">Dès lors que les utilisateurs ont plusieurs centres d'intérêts, ils sont décrits par des profils, un profil correspondant à un centre d'intérêt particulier. C'est la partie structurée du système.</li> </p> <li><p align="justify">Pour construire une description des profils, les utilisateurs jugent des documents en fonction de leur intérêt</li> </p> <li><p align="justify">Le système regroupe les profils similaires pour former un certain nombre de communautés virtuelles</li></p> <li><p align="justify">Une fois les communautés virtuelles définies, des documents jugés comme intéressants par certains utilisateurs d'une communauté peuvent être partagés dans toute la communauté. C'est la partie collaborative du système.</p> </li></ul> <p align="justify">Le système a été validé sur plusieurs corpora de documents en utilisant une méthodologie précise et offre des résultats prometteurs.</p>

The ability to control one’s own personally identifiable information is a worthwhile human right that is becoming increasingly vulnerable. However just as significant, if not more so, is the right to health. With increasing globalisation and threats of natural disasters and acts of terrorism, this right is also becoming increasingly vulnerable. Public health practice – which is charged with the protection, promotion and mitigation of the health of society and its individuals – has been at odds with the right to privacy. This is particularly significant when location privacy is under consideration. Spatial information is an important aspect of public health, yet the increasing availability of spatial imagery and location-sensitive applications and technologies has brought location-privacy to the forefront, threatening to negatively impact the practice of public health by inhibiting or severely limiting data-sharing. This study begins by reviewing the current relevant legislation as it pertains to public health and investigates the public health community’s perceptions on location privacy barriers to the practice. Bureaucracy and legislation are identified by survey participants as the two greatest privacy-related barriers to public health. In response to this clash, a number of solutions and workarounds are proposed in the literature to compensate for location privacy. However, as their weaknesses are outlined, a novel approach - the multidimensional point transform - that works synergistically on multiple dimensions, including location, to anonymise data is developed and demonstrated. Finally, a framework for guiding decisions on data-sharing and identifying requirements is proposed and a sample implementation is demonstrated through a fictitious scenario. For each aspect of the study, a tool prototype and/or design for implementation is proposed and explained, and the need for further development of these is highlighted. In summary, this study provides a multi-disciplinary and multidimensional solution to the clash between privacy and data-sharing in public health practice.

Tech. (Logistics, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology / The focus of this study was to examine the relationship between information sharing, information quality, strategic partnership and internal lean practices among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in South Africa. It is essential to understand practitioners’ and entrepreneurs’ current knowledge towards the topic at hand in order to determine what interventions would be most beneficial in helping to curb the problem of the lack of knowledge in this area and to understand the underlying causes behind the problem, while creating awareness and giving new insight to those who are already aware of this topic. Data was collected from a sample of 350 Small to Medium Enterprises and the measurement items in the measuring instrument were measured using a 5-point likert scale. Thereafter the collected data was coded and analysed by means of structural equation modelling using the AMOS 21 software package. The results indicate that supplier information sharing and information quality have a strong influence on strategic partnership and in turn strategic partnership has a strong influence on internal lean practices among Small to Medium Enterprises. This indicates that the level and quality of information shared between Small to Medium Enterprises and their suppliers has a positive effect on the strength of their partnerships as well as on the internal practices of each Small to Medium Enterprise. Based on these results, conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forward on how internal lean practices in Small to Medium Enterprises can be improved by means of information sharing, information quality and strategic partnerships.

Effective supply chain management gains much attention from industry and academia because it helps firms across a supply chain to reduce cost and improve customer service level efficiently. Focusing on one of the key challenges of the supply chains, namely, demand uncertainty, this dissertation extends the work of Zhao, Xie, and Leung so as to examine the effects of forecasting method selection coupled with information sharing on supply chain performance in a dynamic business environment. The results of this study showed that under various scenarios, advanced forecasting methods such as neural network and GARCH models play a more significant role when capacity tightness increases and is more important to the retailers than to the supplier under certain circumstances in terms of supply chain costs. Thus, advanced forecasting models should be promoted in supply chain management. However, this study also demonstrated that forecasting methods not capable of modeling features of certain demand patterns significantly impact a supply chain's performance. That is, a forecasting method misspecified for characteristics of the demand pattern usually results in higher supply chain costs. Thus, in practice, supply chain managers should be cognizant of the cost impact of selecting commonly used traditional forecasting methods, such as moving average and exponential smoothing, in conjunction with various operational and environmental factors, to keep supply chain cost under control. This study demonstrated that when capacity tightness is high for the supplier, information sharing plays a more important role in effective supply chain management. In addition, this study also showed that retailers benefit directly from information sharing when advanced forecasting methods are employed under certain conditions.

This case study of the use of hospital accident and emergency records to safeguard children was triggered by Lord Laming’s inquiry into the care of Victoria Climbié, his follow up report, and government legislation since 1948. Research on the use of documentation for safeguarding children is limited, although serious case reviews consistently indicate, that across agencies, record keeping, and the sharing of pertinent information to identify patterns of maltreatment is poor. The social constructed meaning people place on hospital documentation relating to children’s safety and the perceived intentions of conveying that information within and between social environments are the focus of this research. A hermeneutic framework was used to identify how staff in A&E and other agencies perceive the use of A&E child records (birth -16 years). The investigation was in three stages (a) analysis of a purposive sample of 378 A&E children’s records, (b) a focus group with twelve A&E staff on the case study site and (c) another group with twelve members of the Local Operational Child Protection group. Colaizzi’s approach and the hermeneutic circle were the methods utilised to provide a rich description of the essential structure of the phenomenon. The results reveal that although written records are good tools for communication, records are not sufficiently child focused and risks factors are not always recognised. Consequently, the ability of the professional to provide information to safeguard children is limited. The data also highlights professional communication as the central theme, because this seemed to describe and unify the participants’ practices in a way that made sense. The findings of this study indicate that the behaviour of staff plays a crucial role in recording information. They are influenced by factors that are multi-faceted with the complexities of meanings that include social, economic, emotional, cultural, political and technical elements. A new theoretical framework to understand the complex interaction of professional perspectives within the varied situations that occur in clinical practice is proposed. This is underpinned by a constructivist epistemology. This provides an efficient method for evaluating the overall behaviour of the major components that affect documentation and communication, and highlights the recurring problems that arise from these areas when safeguarding children. Hence, this study provides an original contribution to knowledge concerning information sharing in the field of child protection. As a result of the findings of this study A&E records have been redesigned locally.

This thesis focuses on investigating inter-departmental Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) through Inter-organisational Systems (IOS) in the context of Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in England and Wales. There is an increasing demand to involve LGA departments in sharing information electronically in order to reduce the cost of storing and managing data, increase the level of data accuracy and timeliness and improve the accountability of the authority. During the last decades, several LGAs in the United Kingdom have started to employ IOSs to support information sharing and networked collaboration within their departments in order to meet a diverse range of citizen needs including housing services, social care services and education services. However, reaching a great level of crossdepartmental collaboration is not easy and requires additional time and effort. Normative literature proposed various models and frameworks that examine various issues and factors influencing the effort of EIS in the private and public domain. However, the applicability and validity of those models in the context of LGAs is arguable. Therefore, this research proposes and validates a novel conceptual framework that can be used as a tool for decision-making while sharing information electronically. The framework consists of four main levels: (a) investigation and presentation of factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing in LGAs based on external environment, organisational capacity, technology environment, EIS characteristics and inter-departmental environment, (b) investigation and presentation of the phases that departments adopt while participating in the EIS effort, (c) mapping of the influential factors onto the participation phases and (d) prioritisation of the factors influencing EIS in LGAs in relation to different phases. By validating the conceptual framework through using a qualitative, interpretive, multiple case study research strategy, this thesis attempts to contribute to the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of inter-departmental EIS. Despite the results of the cases cannot be generalised, yetthey can allow others to relate their views with the onesreported in this thesis.