This study focused on the possible determinants of operational efficiency at the University of Venda, which was premised on the extent to which stakeholders are involved in the strategic planning of the institution. The aim of the study was to establish the stakeholders’ involvement in the strategic planning of the University of Venda. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data during August and October 2011. The study was conducted at the University of Venda, Vhembe District in the Limpopo Province. A non-probability sampling procedure was used to select respondents. The results revealed that whilst the stakeholders seem to be involved in the process of the strategic planning, the extent of stakeholders’ involvement has largely remained contentious. The results further indicate that not all stakeholders are involved in the strategic planning process at the University of Venda. Although stakeholders are invited to participate, the process of strategic planning is absolutely dominated by the management cadre, reducing the rest participants into the doldrums. Those who are directly affected by the strategic plan are least involved in the process of the planning. Because of the lack of involvement and communication regarding the strategic planning process, the findings reveal that the majority of stakeholders were de-motivated in that regard, culminating in their lack-lustre approach towards the implementation of the orchestrated plan. The resultant lack of buy-in by the affected stakeholders, essentially the internal stakeholders (staff members and the student community), eventually hamper the actualisation of the targeted goals of the strategic plans. These results suggest that the strategic plan review should be an on-going process in order to update and involve the university community of the strategic planning processes. Proper feedback and communication on strategic planning processes should be implemented. More importantly, the stakeholders’ involvement and consultation on the strategic planning should be galvanized, since most of the staff members and students seem to be unaware of the strategic planning process at the University of Venda, let alone its contents and aspirations. / Business Management / M. Tech.(Business Administration)

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Arlo Biere / This thesis is the plan used to outline a business plan for a prospective business, TASTE ST LOUIS. While working toward my MAB Degree, I realized there were many things I could implement from the program into the business that would help this new business venture to succeed. I was able to research the food service industry to gain a better understanding of how to market and plan for the success of this venture. After I started the research on this business venture, I soon found that we needed a business plan that would answer many questions we had regarding the success of our business. The first part of the thesis is a brief summary of the food service businesses in St. Louis and the geographic analysis that became the deciding factor in locations. The second part of the thesis is an explanation of TASTE ST LOUIS. This section gives the history of the business and explains the development and start-up. The third portion, of the thesis is the small- business plan and pro forma financial statements.

[pt] Com o crescimento dos sistemas de informação baseados na internet, empresas que mantém seus negócios eletrônicos através de sistemas web necessitam monitorar o andamento das atividades dos seus negócios. Várias técnicas para monitoramento e análise da execução de processos de negócio podem ser empregadas, dentre elas: (i) mineração de arquivos de log de servidores web, tais como o Apache; e (ii) inserção explícita de código de monitoramento diretamente no código da aplicação. Tais técnicas possuem várias limitações, entre elas, a dificuldade e falta de flexibilidade para corelacionar informação ocorrendo em diferentes requisições web, e/ou necessidade de várias modificações invasivas transversais diretamente no código de componentes/classes do sistema. Esse trabalho apresenta o projeto e implementação de um framework orientado a aspectos para monitoramento e análise de processos de negócio que ocorrem em sistemas web. Aspectos foram usados para implementar as variabilidades orientadas a aspectos de monitoramento de processos de negócio ocorrendo em sistemas web. O framework foi implementado usando as linguagens Java e AspectJ e foi validado por meio da sua instanciação para duas diferentes aplicações web. / [en] Over the last years, many mechanisms and techniques to monitor web applications have been proposed, such as, mining of log files from web servers and insertion of monitoring code directly in web applications. The adoption of these techniques presents several limitations such as: obstacles to correlate information from different web requests and/or requires several intrusive changes in the code of existing web applications. This dissertation presents an aspect-oriented framework to monitoring and analysing business processes. Aspect-oriented technologies are used to implement crosscutting variabilities of monitoring of web business processes. The framework has been developed using Java and AspectJ programming languages. It was instantiated and validated through the development of two different web applications.

Submitted by Elba Lopes (elba.lopes@fecap.br) on 2018-05-23T19:00:57Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Clainton Jos?? Jockims de Avelar.pdf: 383778 bytes, checksum: 7dfa60270f5a8a5b6902775d2bec8118 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-23T19:00:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Clainton Jos?? Jockims de Avelar.pdf: 383778 bytes, checksum: 7dfa60270f5a8a5b6902775d2bec8118 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-14 / The preponderant theory of Stakeholder Management proposes the existence of positive associations between fairness (fairness approach) with stakeholders and business performance. Nevertheless, there is recent literature that proposes that not all stakeholders would care about mutually fair relationships and that such audiences would have heterogeneous motivations. In this context, there would be reciprocators and self-referents. According to this theory, companies would be more successful if they adapted their approaches to the specific behavior of the different stakeholders. Using the indicator of the percentage variation of a company's revenue with its client stakeholders over a period of two years, the objective of this article was to test if the form of treatment employed between company and client stakeholders has an influence on financial performance. The data collection took place in a large retail company and occurred through questionnaires where the type of treatment was classified in the relationship between the company and the client stakeholder. The valid sample total for the study was 421 stakeholders. After identifying the form of treatment employed in the relationship between company and stakeholder, the respective financial performance of the revenue between the years 2015 and 2016 was determined. From the survey and respective analysis of the statistical models of the sample of 421 stakeholders, it was not possible to establish a conclusive position on the theory of heterogeneity of treatments in Stakeholder Management. This research, however, generates a meaningful empirical contribution by examining the recently published theoretical proposition and also generates benefits to the business practice, since it brings operational results that suggest alternatives on how a company can manage its relations with client stakeholders. / A teoria preponderante sobre Gest??o de Stakeholders prop??e a exist??ncia de associa????es positivas entre os relacionamentos justos (fairness approach) com stakeholders e o desempenho empresarial. N??o obstante, h?? literatura recente que prop??e que nem todos os stakeholders se importariam com rela????es mutuamente justas e que tais p??blicos teriam motiva????es heterog??neas. Neste contexto, existiriam os stakeholders rec??procos (reciprocators) e os autocentrados (self-regarding). De acordo com essa teoria, as empresas seriam mais bem-sucedidas se adequassem suas abordagens ao comportamento espec??fico dos diferentes stakeholders. Utilizando o indicador da varia????o percentual da receita de uma empresa com os seus stakeholders clientes, num per??odo de dois anos, o objetivo do presente artigo foi testar se a forma de tratamento empregado entre empresa e os stakeholders clientes tem influ??ncia no desempenho financeiro. A coleta de dados se deu em uma empresa varejista de grande porte e ocorreu por meio de question??rios onde se classificou a tipologia de tratamento na rela????o entre a empresa e o stakeholder cliente. O total da amostra v??lida para o estudo foi de 421 stakeholders clientes. Ap??s a identifica????o da forma de tratamento empregado na rela????o entre empresa e stakeholder cliente foi apurado o respectivo desempenho financeiro da receita entre os anos de 2015 e 2016. A partir da realiza????o da survey e respectiva an??lise dos modelos estat??sticos da amostra de 421 stakeholders clientes n??o foi poss??vel estabelecer uma posi????o conclusiva acerca da teoria da heterogeneidade de tratamentos na Gest??o de Stakeholders. Esta pesquisa, contudo, gera contribui????o emp??rica significativa, ao examinar proposi????o te??rica recentemente publicada e, tamb??m, gera benef??cios ?? pr??tica empresarial, uma vez que traz resultados operacionais que sugerem alternativas sobre como uma empresa pode gerenciar suas rela????es com stakeholders clientes.

This study analyzes the long-term evolution of the North American pulp and paper industry, and offers a new synthesis of the dynamic forces that spearheaded the expansion and transformation of this large manufacturing industry. The evolution of the North American pulp and paper industry between 1860 and 1960 was driven by successive waves of technological learning that spawned structural change. Such waves transformed and expanded the sulphite and sulphate pulp, envelope, paper container, paper bag, magazine and printing paper, coated paper, board, and many other pulp and paper industries between 1860 and 1960. These waves repeated a pattern of co-evolution of technology and industrial organization that enveloped dynamic forces of change, such as innovation, corporate strategies, industrial relocation, and policy. As distinct branches of the pulp and paper industry passed from the early nascent phase to full maturity, the sources of innovation, nature of technological change, strategy and structure of leading firms, and industrial organization underwent throughout transformation. As these waves of industrial change passed from a nascent phase to maturity, the reciprocal dynamics between organization, corporate strategy, policy, and technological learning co-evolved, and established the evolutionary path of the North American pulp and paper industry.

Finding ways to deal with complex situations has been a long issue of interest by researchers and scholars alike. Researchers and scholars have provided the strategy community with an insightful understanding of the phenomenon of complexity. The traditional understanding of complexity in strategic management, mainly coming from the design school of strategy, has given way to modern complexity perspectives. These perspectives are from Chaos Theory, Dissipative Structures and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Complexity sciences seek to look at the challenges associated with knowing and understanding the unknowable by focusing on the interactions in complex systems. The properties of complex systems in turn provide lessons that can be transferred to the field of strategic management in a form of approaches to deal with complexity. The CAS metaphor will be used as a model to contrast the approaches in current use by the organisation of study in strategic management. Insights from studies on complex systems points to a need for constant exploratory studies in organisations to determine how well organisations are responding to complexity. The aim of this study is to explore approaches that inform thinking and management practices in strategic management by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education (department) in view of complexity - increasing difficulties to understand the world. Firstly, results of the study are intended to contribute to understanding how insights arising from the study of complex systems, in the world, are being used to rethink and design government departments – public sector organisations - systems and strategic approaches, so that they are more flexible, adaptable and able to respond efficiently and effectively to changes in larger environment. Secondly, where the study finds that the current complexity approaches of the department are not informed by the latest thinking on complexity, recommendations are made on ways the department can improve its approaches. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

Thesis (D.P.H.)--University of Michigan.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-224). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992.

Dissertation (D.P.H.)--University of Michigan.