Enterprise is moving towards business-IT fusion where the business value of its IT resources is maximised while maintaining acceptable cost effectiveness. To achieve such fusion, the enterprises are forced to assess the state of its current business and IT landscape at the operational level due to the increased complexity in business requirements and the poor decisions made for the IT support in meeting those requirements. It is challenging to assess business values which arc contributed by IT in particular the social impact on the business performance. Existing approaches have lacked in offering a defined methodological approach that incorporate the social values as part of the criteria for the assessment. This motivates the research in developing a mechanism to support a holistic assessment of tile business aligned IT by articulating the values in the business and IT operational landscape from social perspectives. The main contribution of this research is a Method for the Evaluation of Business Aligned IT Services (MEBATS) as a methodological solution for a holistic assessment of the business aligned IT services at the enterprise operation. Principles from relevant theories have been adopted to form the theoretical framework for developing MEBA TS. Socio Technical Systems theory and Organisational Semiotics theory have been adopted as the basis to articulate social values from the involved stakeholders contributing to the pervasive information in business and IT. Service-Oriented and Enterprise Architecture approach have been adapted to reflect the service centric nature in enterprise. Task Technology Fit theory and Social Exchange Theory define the principles to establish and assess the relationship between business and IT. Based on the theoretical framework, a set of relevant concepts has been articulated and composed into a meta-model that guides the development of MEBA TS. Through collaboration with established practitioners in business and IT management consulting, MEBATS has been applied for its utilisation in a public service enterprise operation setting. The application has successfully presented a well-defined business and IT services profiles, the holistic value of the IT applications as aligned to the business services and proposed recommendations for the IT resources landscape towards an effective enterprise operation. The findings support MEBATS as a novel solution that enables an effective analysis for the evaluation of the business aligned IT services at the enterprise operational level.

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The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether neural networks can be used for cost estimating in project management and if so, whether they lead to improved estimates. Chapter one gives a short introduction into the field of artificial intelligence and describes the structure and learning algorithm of a selection of some typical neural networks. Chapter two reviews literature regarding cost estimating in project management and differentiates between different methods of cost estimates. Chapter three describes the statistical problem of parametric cost estimates and addresses these problems with the help of neural networks. Chapter four and Chapter five give examples of how neural networks can be used to represent mathematical equations which are currently used for cost estimating in project management. Chapter six applies neural networks on real world data and compares its performance with one of the leading parametric cost estimating software tools. Chapter seven includes the discussion and conclusions of the findings throughout the thesis. The limitation and restriction of the implementation of neural networks are examined and the potentials for further research are suggested.

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Many of today's complex systems require effective decision making within uncertain distributed environments. The central theme of the thesis considers the systematic analysis for the representation of decision making organisations. The basic concept of stochastic learning automata provides a framework for modelling decision making in complex systems. Models of interactive decision making are discussed, which result from interconnecting decision makers in both synchronous and sequential configurations. The concepts and viewpoints from learning theory and game theory are used to explain the behaviour of these structures. This work is then extended by presenting a quantitative framework based on Petri Net theory. This formalism provides a powerful means for capturing the information flow in the decision-making process and demonstrating the explicit interactions between decision makers. Additionally, it is also used for the description and analysis of systems that axe characterised as being concurrent, asynchronous, distributed, parallel and/ or stochastic activities. The thesis discusses the limitations of each modelling framework. The thesis proposes an extension to the existing methodologies by presenting a new class of Petri Nets. This extension has resulted in a novel structure which has the additional feature of an embedded stochastic learning automata. An application of this approach to a realistic decision problem demonstrates the impact that the use of an artificial intelligence technique embedded within Petri Nets can have on the performance of decision models.

The objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between Occupational Community of Practice Strength of Commitment and Perceived Usefulness of ERP systems, as mediated by the barriers to the knowledge transfer process, adaptation and perceptions of work practice compatibility. A Relativist approach was chosen, using a questionnaire as the primary data collection method, and PLS-SEM as the primary data analysis method. A survey instrument that was designed to measure the relationships between these variables was administered. The results led to the conclusions that Occupational Strength of Commitment had little effect on Work Practice Compatibility, but that Compatibility with Preferred Practices had a significant effect on Perceived Usefulness. It therefore became evident that in order to enhance ERP success, it was necessary to focus on the variables that influence perceptions of Compatibility with Preferred Practices when implementing ERP systems. These variables were identified based on the results of the data, and then synthesized into a conceptual model of ERP success in order to meet the research objective. Due to the limitations of the study, further research is recommended to test this conceptual model. The hypothesized relationships that could not be supported by the data are also identified for further research.

The focus of this thesis is on the constitutive role of discourse in the organisational adaptation of information systems, an important aspect, although not often explored and relatively neglected in the literature, of the information systems development process and, beyond that, of the role of information systems in organisations within a constructivist and dialogical perspective. The thesis explores the dual aspect of how, on one hand, professional discourses define 'worldviews' over information systems and their organisational adaptation and, on the other hand, the premises around which these discourses are constructed and deployed, both in the literature and through an inductive and qualitative case study, based upon Grounded Theory principles. It analyses how different professional discourses explored tensions in the management of the information environment articulated around three major categories of issues, which acted as interpretative repertoires and discursive resources: i) representations of the information environment, expressed through the tension between information centripetalism and information centrifugalism; ii) models of information management approaches, expressed through the tension between a focus on process and a focus on meanings; iii) and, underlying the previous elements, assumptions about the nature and complexity of the environment, strategies for dealing with uncertainty and correlated models of learning and sense-making. These different categories of issues embody different tensions between forces that, it is argued, shaped the particular context of the University environment. In negotiated interaction contexts, different actors made claims to power by exploring different discursive practices leading to the organisational adaptation of information systems. But, while making use of these discursive resources, different actors also established contacts between forces and, agentically shaped different realities, forming new organisational identities and, in doing so, acted as a vehicle for the social re-shaping and adaptation of the organisational role of information systems.

It has long been argued that organisations have struggled to achieve business benefits, and in particular sustained competitive advantage, from their information system (IS) investments. Recently, calls have been made to apply resource based theory to the field of IS research, to better understand how improved competitive positioning can be derived from information systems in general, and through the application of information systems capabilities in particular. However, such research is predicated upon finding effective ways to actually measure improved competitive positioning, an issue that has caused a significant amount of debate within the literature. This study attempts to fill these gaps by constructing an IS-enabled sustainability framework. The framework is used to explore the relationship between the application of IS capabilities, during the introduction of an IS-enhancement, and the extent to which an improvement in competitive positioning is attained and sustained, as measured at the process level. Moreover, the framework is used to investigate how the resultant levels of improved competitive positioning might be influenced by the extent to which the improved competitive positioning is directly or indirectly derived from an IS enhancement's introduction.

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As business processes become ever more complex there is a need for companies to understand the processes they already have in place. To undertake this manually would be time consuming. The practice of process mining attempts to automatically construct the correct representation of a process based on a set of process execution logs. The aim of this research is to develop a genetic programming based approach for business process mining. The focus of this research is on automated/semi automated business processes within the service industry (by semi automated it is meant that part of the process is manual and likely to be paper based). This is the first time a GP approach has been used in the practice of process mining. The graph based representation and fitness parsing used are also unique to the GP approach. A literature review and an industry survey have been undertaken as part of this research to establish the state-of-the-art in the research and practice of business process modelling and mining. It is observed that process execution logs exist in most service sector companies are not utilised for process mining. The development of a new GP approach is documented along with a set of modifications required to enable accuracy in the mining of complex process constructs, semantics and noisy process execution logs. In the context of process mining accuracy refers to the ability of the mined model to reflect the contents of the event log on which it is based; neither over describing, including features that are not recorded in the log, or under describing, just including the most common features leaving out low frequency task edges, the contents of the event log. The complexity of processes, in terms of this thesis, involves the mining of parallel constructs, processes containing complex semantic constructs (And/XOR split and join points) and processes containing 20 or more tasks. The level of noise mined by the business process mining approach includes event logs which have a small number of randomly selected tasks missing from a third of their structure. A novel graph representation for use with GP in the mining of business processes is presented along with a new way of parsing graph based individuals against process execution logs. The GP process mining approach has been validated with a range of tests drawn from literature and two case studies, provided by the industrial sponsor, utilising live process data. These tests and case studies provide a range of process constructs to fully test and stretch the GP process mining approach. An outlook is given into the future development of the GP process mining approach and process mining as a practice.