A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for the Degree of Masters of Commerce / Investments in information technology have in many cases failed to deliver the anticipated benefits. It is now accepted that real value can only be leveraged by linking IT implementation to organisational change and process redesign. The management of this change is inextricably linked to the overall success of the implementation. The focus of the research was on identifying what the key elements of successful change management were. Research into generic change management was used as a basis for determining these critical success factors. The applicability of these factors in the case of an enterprise wide package software implementation was then tested through a case study method. The research showed that the factors developed were applicable in managing technology driven change. In addition to the factors developed, additional factors were identified as being relevant in the case of packaged software implementations. / Andrew Chakane 2018

Student Number : 0204111E - M Com research report - School of Economic and Business Sciences - Faculty of Commerce / As organisations continuously attempt to do more with less, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) must manage their portfolio of IT investments more effectively and efficiently. In order to achieve this, CIOs can adopt a portfolio management approach; however, there are barriers to the adoption to IT portfolio management. The purpose of this research was to explore the barriers to adoption of IT portfolio management. The barriers were identified by respondents from various sectors and across various levels in their organisations and then ranked in order to determine the most critical factors that impede adoption of IT portfolio management. Data was collected using the Delphi ranking type method, and targeted at CIOs, IT executives, and project managers. The questionnaire was designed to identify perceptions of the most significant barriers to IT portfolio management adoption and strategies for mitigating the effects of these barriers were drawn from the literature. The rank order of 11 barriers was determined from the individual ratings and rank orders of 38 respondents in the final phase with ‘the lack of executive sponsorship, support, and understanding of IT portfolio management’ being ranked as the most critical barrier.

Research in partial fulfilment of the degree: M.COM (by course work) University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg / Andrew Chakane 2018

Thesis (M.M. (Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013. / The following study seeks to find out the importance of opportunity recognition and look at three factors which affect opportunity recognition. These factors lead to opportunity recognition. The three factors are alertness, prior knowledge and active search of opportunities. The study is conducted in the South African context and will focus on entrepreneurs operating in this environment. The study overall sets to address the problem of entrepreneur orientation in South Africa (GEM Report, 2009) by looking at an increase in opportunity recognition as a means of increasing entrepreneurial activity in the economy. The review of literature of various articles on all the four variables was conducted and showed the importance and of studies of this kind. The literature also reviewed studies which were done which are like this study and the results of that study where be compared to the results of this study. The study is a purely quantitative study and made use of an online survey questionnaire to collect the data. The responses of the data where then run through various tests including regression, reliability and validity test. The study found that opportunity recognition is essential for the individual and business to lead to growth and new opportunities. The alertness, knowledge and search variables where measured and analysed against opportunity recognition. The results revealed that these variables are connected to opportunity recognition, with weak support in some tests. The descriptive statistics showed high agreement with the questions. The responses of the questions also revealed the demographic information of the entrepreneurs and their ventures on the South African environment. The dependent and independent variables are interconnected with a causal relationship which is to be expected.

Thesis advisor: Thomas Massaro / This thesis does not intend to diminish the incontestable contribution of technology in combating poverty and underdevelopment. On the contrary, this thesis is an expression of optimism when it comes to the use of technology in bringing some measure of welfare to those deprived of adequate conditions of life. At the same time, this thesis is a reflection on the meaning of those bold words: technology, welfare and condition of life. We tend to put them together very easily and cavalierly, but the link may be less than fully evident, especially if we do not have a clear idea of what conditions of life we are promoting and pursuing. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Deciding what information we attend to has implications on our ability to remain valuable and productive in our respective academic and economic domains. This study investigated if attentional switching due to information technology interruptions would deplete resources in a unique way and impair performance on a response inhibition task. Three groups were compared on the Simon task after participants either did or did not receive interruptions during a self-regulation task. Unexpectedly, a larger Simon effect was found for participants who did not receive interruptions. These results conform to previous evidence showing sustained directed attention may result in depletion and effect subsequent inhibitory control. Although not supporting predictions, these results may provide a basis for further research, particularly because younger generations are developing in a more connected world than preceding generations. By understanding these differences, younger generations may better adapt to technological advances and leverage them to their advantage. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

<p> Autonomous Vehicle are coming. But mass adoption is at least ten years away according to consensus compiled from interviews conducted with industry thought lenders. Questions remain as to what technology those vehicles will contain as there is no universal platform for autonomous vehicle technology, since manufacturers, hardware and software companies are developing their own proprietary products. A/V technology is expected to improve productivity, and provide a plethora of societal benefits, but while we await the closure of the time gap the US will lose almost 40,000 citizens each year with traffic fatalities. </p><p> Connected vehicle technology, which is currently completing pilot studies, has been shown to reduce automobile accidents. This technology is not as complex as autonomous vehicle technology and is available now. Semi-autonomous vehicles which is Level 1 through Level 3 on the Society of Automobile Executives (SAE) scale is available on American automobiles today and has proven to be very popular amongst consumers. Technology convergence of semi-autonomous vehicle and connected vehicles can bridge the time gap until mass adoption of autonomous vehicle and contribute to reducing annual traffic fatalities. Combining these technologies will give drivers additional safety features thus providing them with the opportunity of making better decisions.</p><p>

This thesis aims to make a significant contribution to the development of the emerging literature on small business strategy. First, it conducts a critical review of the existing literature on strategy in general, and its relation to small firms in particular. Second, it investigates whether or not small firms do make strategic decisions, and discovers how these are incorporated into their long-term plans. Third, it establishes a link between the strategies employed by new small firms and their subsequent performance. And finally, it advises on the strategies and actions a small business should follow if it wishes to achieve high performance. As such, the work should be useful, not only to academics with an interest in new small firms, but also to practitioners and small business advisors. The thesis explains how two fieldwork instruments were designed, for use in face-to-face interviews with the owner-managers of 150 young micro-firms throughout Scotland, over a two-year time period. This work led to the design and development of a new database, and the creation of 17 case studies on small business strategy. Cluster analysis was used to group the firms into high, medium and low performance categories. Then strategies followed by each performance category were analysed to discover why some were more effective than others. The case study evidence was used to support this analysis, further augmented by statistics from the administered questionnaire. Seven propositions were developed, and empirically tested. O f these, the most notable were that: first, higher performers appear to have a better appraisal of their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as being more aware of opportunities and threats, compared to the lower performing firms; second, the implementation and continued use of information-technology has a statistically significant and positive effect upon performance; and third, the gathering of trade intelligence (e.g. marketing, quality) on rivals appears to enhance performance. Further propositions, on awareness, funding and ownership, round off the detailed picture provided of performance in the new small firm.

The Institute of Medicine has stated that legal structures and the authority vested in health agencies and other partners within the public health system are essential to improving the public's health. Variation between the laws of different jurisdictions within the United States allows for natural experimentation and research into their relative effectiveness. Yet the current knowledge management environment of public health law lacks standardization and formalization of public health legal concepts. This study describes an ontology developed for two specific domains of public health law: emergency preparedness and community water fluoridation. An ontology of public health law concepts is an effective way to efficiently formalize, standardize, and manage this information for the benefit of public health practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers. Law corpora in the two domains collected in previous studies were obtained. The context of public health law work in research and practice including workflows, resources, and barriers to use was determined through key-informant interviews. Concepts and relationships were extracted from the law corpora and from supporting documentation using natural language processing. Concepts and relationships were refined and mapped together using a modified Delphi survey conducted with a panel of public health law experts. The resulting concept map was used to create the public health law ontology in Protégé. The final prototype ontology contains 9 semantic types, 8 kinds of semantic relations, 1,484 concepts, 3,793 law instances, and 3,022 semantic relationships. The ontology was evaluated in two ways: first by using information retrieval scenarios with experts and second by comparing the breadth and depth quantitatively to existing ontologies. Using the ontology, the time required for information retrieval decreased and precision improved compared to current methods. Although this ontology has low breadth and depth compared to existing ontologies, it has larger breadth and depth when used to annotate public health laws in comparison to news articles and laws in general. Knowledge management is critical in information rich environments and allows us to improve the development, discovery, communication, translation, conversion, maintenance, and application of this knowledge. This ontology is significant because few formal knowledge management tools exist for public health and law and none exist at the intersection of those fields. It is a first step toward developing a shared understanding of the conceptual content and relationships of public health law and is formative work that will support the science of public health. It is also a common framework that will allow for enhanced information retrieval, data annotation and integration, semantic interoperability, and reasoning across public health jurisdictions, a critical step for improving public health research and practice.

No description available.