Choi Wai Ming. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Analysis of Workers --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Input-Process-Output of Workers --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2 --- A Spectrum of Works --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Programmed Workers --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Knowledge Workers --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3 --- The Winning Characteristics of Knowledge Workers --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Adaptive Efficiency and Allocative Efficiency --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Management and Leadership --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- "Our Proposal: to Know, to Navigate, to Accumulate and to Process (KNAP)" --- p.17 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Literature Review on Candidate Selection Instruments --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1 --- Evaluation Criteria --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Result Usefulness --- p.22 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Expense Efficiency --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Organizational Attractiveness --- p.23 / Chapter 3.2 --- Instruments for Knowledge Workers --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Biodata --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Cognitive Ability Tests --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Personality Tests --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Job-related Tests --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.5 --- Employment Interviews --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3 --- Summary --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Problem Formulation and Proposed Approach --- p.36 / Chapter 4.1 --- A Computerized Interactive Game Approach (CIG) --- p.38 / Chapter 4.2 --- Pilot Study --- p.40 / Chapter 4.3 --- Implementation: a Revised ERP Game --- p.44 / Chapter 4.4 --- Mechanism of Candidate Selection --- p.49 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Experiment Design --- p.51 / Chapter 5.1 --- Aims --- p.51 / Chapter 5.2 --- Experiment Procedures --- p.53 / Chapter 5.3 --- Contents --- p.54 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Experiment Results and Data Analysis --- p.60 / Chapter 6.1 --- Candidate Selection in the Problem Solving Test --- p.60 / Chapter 6.2 --- Candidate Selection in the Personality Tests --- p.62 / Chapter 6.3 --- Candidate Selection in the Game --- p.64 / Chapter 6.4 --- Combined Candidate Selection --- p.70 / Chapter 6.5 --- Questionnaire --- p.71 / Chapter 6.5.1 --- General Discussion --- p.72 / Chapter 6.5.2 --- Hypothesis 1: Face Validity vs. Perceived Predictive Validity --- p.87 / Chapter 6.5.3 --- Hypothesis 2: Organizational Attractiveness --- p.89 / Chapter 6.5.4 --- Hypothesis 3: the Game with Better Perceived Job Relatedness --- p.92 / Chapter 6.5.5 --- Hypothesis 4: the Game with Better Organizational Attractiveness. --- p.93 / Chapter 6.5.6 --- Others --- p.93 / Chapter 6.5.7 --- Summary of Findings --- p.95 / Chapter Chapter 7. --- Conclusion and Further Research --- p.98 / Reference --- p.101

Na atualidade, o cenário globalizado altamente competitivo e as novas regulamentações (lei Sarbanes-Oxley e Acordo da Basiléia 2), estão exigindo das empresas a utilização de mecanismos de gestão de TI cada vez melhores. Em função disto, a discussão sobre modelos de gestão de TI para satisfazer esta necessidade tem estado permanentemente em pauta. Dentre estes modelos, destacam-se o COBIT para governança de TI e o ITIL para gerenciamento de serviços, este último, totalmente alinhado com norma ISO/IEC 20000 para gerenciamento de serviços de TI, recentemente publicada. Considerando este contexto e que, o ITIL possui foco na execução dos processos, e o COBIT possui foco no controle de processos, este trabalho, alia estes dois modelos para criar o modelo GSS-COBITIL, ferramenta valiosa para auxiliar na implantação mais consistente do gerenciamento de suporte de serviços de TI, com foco na eficiência e na eficácia. Este modelo adota como alicerce os processos de gerenciamento de suporte de serviços do ITIL e agrega os componentes do COBIT alinhados com esta abrangência. A utilização do ITIL como alicerce, faz com que, o GSS-COBITIL esteja naturalmente alinhado com a norma ISO/IEC 20000. Além disto, tendo em vista que, o papel de TI na estratégia das organizações, difere de empresa para empresa, de acordo com suas metas de negócio, o trabalho também apresenta o método de especialização do GSS-COBITIL. Este método foi desenvolvido a partir dascaracterísticas da grade de impacto estratégico de TI, mapeando-as em um subconjunto de metas de negócio do COBIT 4.0 relacionadas aos processos do GSS-COBITIL. Como produto final, o método gera um conjunto de diretrizes para a implantação do GSS-COBITIL, específicas para a empresa, de acordo com o papel de TI em sua estratégia. O método de especialização do GSS-COBITIL foi aplicado em um conjunto de empresas que se dispuseram a responder uma pesquisa para esta finalidade. / Nowadays, the highly global competition between organizations and the new regulations (Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Basel 2 Accord) are requiring that organizations use better mechanisms for IT management. The discussion about IT management models to satisfy this need is permanently going on. Between these models, stand out COBIT for IT governance, and ITIL for IT service management. This last one is totally aligned with ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT service management, recently published. Considering this context and that, ITIL is focused on process execution and COBIT is focused on process control, this work makes the alliance of these models to create the GSS-COBITIL model, a valuable tool to aid in a more consistent implementation of service support management, focused on efficiency and effectiveness. This model adopts the ITIL services support management processes as basis and adds the COBIT components aligned with this scope. The utilization of ITIL as basis implies that GSS-COBITIL is naturally aligned to ISO/IEC 20000 standard. Moreover, considering that the role of IT organizations strategies differs from one enterprise to another depending on their business goals, this work also presents the specialization method of GSS-COBITIL. This method was developed mapping the characteristics of IT strategic impact grid into a subset of business goals of COBIT 4.0 related with GSS-COBITIL processes. As final product, the method generates a set of directives forGSS-COBITIL implementation, specific to the organization, according the role of IT in his strategy. The specialization method of GSS-COBITIL was applied in a set of organizations that participated in a survey for this purpose.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology. / As IT environments grow in complexity and diversity, their strategic management becomes a critical business issue. Enterprise architectures (EA’s) provide support by ensuring that there is alignment between an enterprise’s business objectives and the IT systems that it deploys to achieve these objectives. While EA is a relatively new discipline, it has already found widespread commercial application. It is likely that EA will receive even more focus as IT environments continue to grow in complexity and heterogeneity. Despite this widespread acceptance of EA as a valuable IT discipline, there are several serious challenges that contemporary EA approaches are yet to overcome. These arise from the fact that currently, there is no unified EA modelling language that is also easy to use. A unified EA modelling language is one that is able to describe a wide range of IT domains using a single modelling notation. Without a unified, easy to use EA modelling language, it is impossible to create integrated models of the enterprise. Instead, a variety of modelling languages must be used to create an EA, leading to enterprise models that are inconsistent, incomplete and difficult to understand. The need to use multiple modelling languages also places a high cognitive load on modellers and excludes non-IT specialists from developing or using these models, even though such people may be the most important stakeholders in an EA program. The research presented in this thesis tackles these problems by developing a metaphor-based approach to the construction of unified EA modelling languages. Contemporary approaches to the understanding of metaphor are surveyed, and it is noted that one way to understand metaphor is to view it as part of a dynamic type hierarchy. This understanding of metaphor is related to the development of enterprise models and it is shown that highly abstract metaphors can be used to provide conceptually unified models of a range of enterprises and their component structures. This approach is operationalised as methodology that can be used to generate any number of unified EA modelling languages. This methodology is then applied to generate a new, unified EA modelling language called ‘LEAN’ (Lightweight Enterprise Architecture Notation). LEAN is evaluated using a mixed-methods research approach. This evaluation demonstrates that LEAN can be used to model a wide range of domains and that it is easy to learn and simple to understand. The application of the theoretical principles and methodology presented in this thesis can be expected to improve the understandability and consistency of EA’s significantly. This, in turn, can be expected to deliver significant tangible business benefits through improved strategic change management that more closely aligns the delivery of IT services with business drivers. The findings in this research also provide fertile ground for further research. This includes the development and comparative evaluation of alternative unified languages, further research into the use of the methodology presented to align architectures at various levels of abstraction, and the investigation of the applicability of this theoretical approach to other, non-IT disciplines.

This research explores the nature and importance of leadership in technical projects. It contends that there is a need to develop a leadership model incorporating the unique personality and occupational characteristics of technical professionals and their project environment. Increasing attention is now being paid to the non-technical aspects, such as leadership, in the execution of technical projects; but there is a dearth of empirical research justifying their importance as critical success factors. Using Bass and Avolio�s (1990) model and its measurement instrument, this study tested the suitability of transformational leadership, considered a cornerstone of post-industrial school of leadership, in the successful execution of information systems projects. In addition, a separate technical leadership scale, derived from the meta analysis of the technical leadership literature, was also tested, compared and contrasted with Bass and Avolio�s model. The conceptual framework postulated that a combination of transformational and technical leadership styles augment transactional leadership leading to high project success with the additional support of other contingency factors, such as clarity of project mission, top management support and availability of technical resources. The population for the research was information systems projects in Australian organisations. The participating organisations were part of the top 100 computer using organisations, top 50 software companies and members of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA). Of the 111 organisations which were invited and found suitable, 36 participated in the research, yielding a response rate of 32%. Each participating organisation involved two project teams in the survey, one considered more successful and another less successful, on specified parameters. The sample consisted of the IT project managers (n = 70) and their subordinates (n = 228) who described the leadership behaviours of self/manager in terms of transformational, transactional, and technical leadership scales and their perceived effectiveness. In addition, senior IT managers (n = 18) were interviewed to obtain a three dimensional (superiors, self and subordinates) perspective of project leadership. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that managers of more successful projects exhibit transformational and technical leadership behaviours to a greater extent than managers of less successful projects. They also exhibited more of transactional contingent reward behaviour, thus, supporting the augmentation effect. Management-by-exception passive behaviour showed a strong but negative correlation with leadership outcome. As hypothesised, transformational and technical leadership scales were more strongly correlated with leadership outcome scales in more successful projects than in less successful projects. These results were in line with the previous findings on Bass and Avolio�s model. The more successful projects also exhibited stronger presence of the contingency factors considered in the study i.e., better clarity of project mission to team members, top management support and greater availability of technical resources. There was a broad agreement between the managers and their subordinates on leadership, outcome and contingency scales. The factor analysis of leadership scales resulted in one transformational scale (combination of intellectual stimulation and idealised influence), one technical scale (organisational catalyst), and three transactional scales (contingent reward, management-by-exception active and passive). The modified leadership scales were used to propose a technical leadership model, laying the foundation for a technical leadership theory. The results demonstrate the importance of leadership as a critical success factor in technical projects and provide valuable clues on a 'role model' for aspiring project managers which include the key elements of transformational and technical leadership. While there may be no one leadership style that is effective in all project situations, the study recommends an underlying yet flexible style characterised by organisational catalyst, intellectual stimulation, behavioural charisma and contingent reward behaviours for enhanced leadership effectiveness.

<p>Insikter är en viktig del utav designprocessen. I användarcentreraddesign involveras just användaren i själva processen för att få ett slutresultat som är välanpassat till målgruppen och användaren. För att detta ska bli så bra som möjligt krävs ofta en bra förståelse för användarna och kontexten kring dessa. All information som samlas in måste i sin tur organiseras och tolkas. Insikter om hur situationen, kontexten och vad som är viktigt växer så småningom fram. Hur arbetar då designers med att ta fram insikter och behålla dessa genom hela designprocessen?</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka hur personer som arbetar med tjänstedesign själva uppfattar hur de jobbar med att ta fram insikter i designprocessen. Samt hur de uppfattar att insikter behålls genom hela hela processen.</p><p>Detta undersöktes genom att fem personer som jobbar med tjänstedesign intervjuades. Detta material har sedan analyserats med utgångspunkt från syfte och frågeställningar.</p><p>Insikter uppfattas generellt av dessa personer som något större än information, insikter kommer utifrån bearbetad information, och tillskillnad från idéer anses de inte utvecklas eller förfinas genom designprocessen. De behålls främst genom designprocessen genom att de ligger som grund till idéer samt att den slutliga tjänsten avvägs och utvärderas mot dessa insikter. De faktorer som framför allt påverkar uppkomsten av insikter är information, tid, erfarenhet samt kommunikation och samarbete. Information ses som grund till insikter. Tid är ett måste både för att göra ett bra grundarbete som ger bättre insikter samt att in­sikterna behöver tid för inkubation. Erfarenhet gör att designern vågar lita på sin magkänsla och kommunikation och samarbete är dels vik­tiga för att sätta ord på den intuition och magkänsla som oftast beskrivs som den första initiala delen av en insikt, men även för att förmedla insikterna i projektet samt en förutsättning för ett bra projekt.</p>

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Distributed programming is usually considered both difficult and inherently different from concurrent centralized programming. It is thought that the distributed programming systems that we ultimately deploy, in the future, when we've worked out all the details, will require a very different programming model and will even need to be evaluated by new criteria. The Mozart Programming System, described in this thesis, demonstrates that this need not be the case. It is shown that, with a good system design, distributed programming can be seen as an extended form of concurrent programming. This is from the programmer's point-of-view; under the hood the design and implementation will necessarily be more complex. We relate the Mozart system with the classical transparencies of distributed systems. We show that some of these are inherently on the application level, while as Mozart demonstrates, others can and should be dealt with on the language/system level. The extensions to the programming model, given the right concurrent programming base, are mainly concerned with non-functional properties of programs. The models and tuning facilities for failure and performance need to take latency, bandwidth, and partial failure into account. Other than that there need not be any difference between concurrent programming and distributed programming. The Mozart Programming System is based on the concurrent programming language Oz, which integrates, in a coherent way, all three known concurrency or thread-interaction models. These are message-passing (like Erlang), shared objects (like Java with threads) and shared data-flow variables. The Mozart design philosophy is thus applicable over the entire range of concurrent programming languages/systems. We have extracted from the experience with Mozart a number of principles and properties that are applicable to the design and implementation of all (general-purpose) distributed programming systems. The full range of the design and implementation issues behind Mozart are presented. This includes a description of the consistency protocols that make transparency possible for the full language, including distributed objects and distributed data-flow variables. Mozart is extensively compared with other approaches to distributed programming, in general, and to other language-based distributed programming systems, in particular / QC 20100928

This work offers a new paradigm for building intelligent software systems that facilitate on-line learning. The research investigated effects of adopting intelligent agent techniques to an on-line learning environment. KnowBots (or Knowledge Robots) are intelligent agents created specifically for this research. These KnowBots employed intelligent agent techniques to provide assistance to learners and facilitators who participated in a series of on-line workshops. The KnowBot architecture created was based on a study of repetitive tasks of human workshop facilitators. KnowBots automated and reduced the number of these routine tasks. The study specifically captured experimental results of using KnowBots in two sessions of the ALN on-line workshop, Getting Started Creating On-line Courses. Using two experimental groups, the effect of the use of KnowBots on workshop completion was examined as well as the effects of KnowBots on other factors such as facilitation time and learner satisfaction. The findings showed that intelligent agent technology holds promise for application to on-line learning and indicated that the use of KnowBots was positively associated with higher learner completion rates in the workshops. In addition, KnowBots implemented a learning-support tool that reminded learners about deadlines. The support KnowBots were found to be effective autonomous motivators. In sum, the results of this research suggest that the application of agent technology to on-line learning holds great promise.

The value of an IT system can be considered from a number of different perspectives. Specifically, the same IT system can be valued differently across different stakeholders, time periods, usage environments, and other contextual factors. When measuring the value of an IT system, it is important to consider what value perspectives are relevant and how those perspectives affect the development of value metrics. An IT value assessment framework is proposed to aid in identifying such contextual factors and exploring how those factors affect the value that is realized from an IT system.

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.