<p> Concerns related to the protection of personal identification information, graphic user interface, patient privacy, and consumer acceptance, to name a few, have plagued the implementation of telemedicine. Advocates of telemedicine have gained the interests of consumers but failed to recognize the true nature of consumer attitudes towards the use of telemedicine. This research was a significant step towards understanding consumer unwillingness to use telemedicine. Understanding and acknowledging what customers feel is detrimental to improving the telemedicine implementation process. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore consumers who may have experienced cognitive dissonance between their interest and the use of wireless body area networks. The interpretative phenomenological method was employed to understand and contribute knowledge about the phenomenon. The research participants were randomly selected patients, physicians, nurses, paramedics, and healthcare professionals. The findings contribute to knowledge by exposing the relevance of understanding cognitive dissonance, and its underrated affiliations. Such alliances play a meaningful role when embracing or rejecting the use of telemedicine. Future research may consider aligning and employing use behavioral models, such as the social cognitive theory, or the social capital theory, to help increase knowledge and understanding of consumer cognitive dissonance towards the use of telemedicine Advocates planning to implement telemedicine in rural areas could use these findings to help diminish or subdue indigenous consumer anxiety towards the use of telemedicine.</p><p>

<p> Internet of Things (&lsquo;IoT&rsquo;) systems are complex, asynchronous solutions often comprised of various software and hardware components developed in isolation of each other. These components function with different degrees of reliability and performance over an inherently unreliable network, the Internet. Many IoT systems are developed within silos that do not provide the ability to communicate or be interoperable with other systems and platforms. Literature exists on how these systems should be designed, how they should interoperate, and how they could be improved, but practice does not always consult literature. </p><p> The work brings together a proposed reference architecture for the IoT and engineering practices for flow semantics found in existing literature with a commercial implementation of an IoT platform. It demonstrates that the proposed IoT reference architecture and flow-service-quality engineering practices when integrated together can produce a more robust system with increased functionality and interoperability. It shows how such practices can be implemented into a commercial solution, and explores the value provided to the system when implemented. This work contributes to the current understanding of how complex IoT systems can be developed to be more reliable and interoperable using reference architectures and flow semantics. The work highlights the value of integration of academic solutions with commercial implementations of complex systems.</p><p>

The aim of this study was to explore the nature and extent of the alignment of business and information strategies, and organisational factors which might be related to that alignment. The study was undertaken in two parts: an extensive literature analysis to identify possible factors and models of alignment, followed by empirical case study based research examining factors which might be related to the alignment of business and information strategy in some large information intensive organizations. The conceptual frameworks for the study were drawn from the literatures of strategy development, organizational design, and theories and practices of information systems and services. The literature review and analysis for this study was purposely extensive in order to encompass a wide range of conceptual and research based literatures about the management of information systems and services which inform the study. the literature review revealed burgeoning interest in the area of business and information strategy alignment from different, though often narrow, paradigms. At the same time there was plenty of rigorous, empirically based and cumulative studies of direct relevance to the research question. Areas of potential importance to the alignment of business and information strategy, drawn from the conceptual and research based literature, were examined in a hypothesis-generating empirical case study analysis of four of Australia’s five largest firms in the financial services sector.

The aim of this study was to explore the nature and extent of the alignment of business and information strategies, and organisational factors which might be related to that alignment. The study was undertaken in two parts: an extensive literature analysis to identify possible factors and models of alignment, followed by empirical case study based research examining factors which might be related to the alignment of business and information strategy in some large information intensive organizations. The conceptual frameworks for the study were drawn from the literatures of strategy development, organizational design, and theories and practices of information systems and services. The literature review and analysis for this study was purposely extensive in order to encompass a wide range of conceptual and research based literatures about the management of information systems and services which inform the study. the literature review revealed burgeoning interest in the area of business and information strategy alignment from different, though often narrow, paradigms. At the same time there was plenty of rigorous, empirically based and cumulative studies of direct relevance to the research question. Areas of potential importance to the alignment of business and information strategy, drawn from the conceptual and research based literature, were examined in a hypothesis-generating empirical case study analysis of four of Australia’s five largest firms in the financial services sector.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Business Information Systems)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2011. / Studies done in Information Technology (IT) mostly demonstrate and capture the significant and acceptance of IT in organizations. IT has become an increasingly fundamental section of every organization, extending into our personal environment. Studies have been done focusing just on IT acceptance use and how IT leverages our daily life or the business. With a sound implementation and use, IT can enable a business to prosper. This dissertation argues that a sound development and implementation of an IT strategy may be leveraged with the consideration of social factors - these factors often get left out as organizations tend to focus more on the technological aspect of IT. Against the above backdrop, this minor dissertation focused on how communication, power and culture relationships as social factors affect the development, maintenance and alignment of the IT strategy with the business.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-117).

Organisations globally are communicating their environmental sustainability impact to stakeholders by means of the widely used sustainability report. A key benefit of environmental sustainability reporting is that organisations can gain a positive reputation when these reports are presented to stakeholders. Organisations in South Africa are faced with many challenges regarding managing sustainability information and producing an environmental sustainability report. Two of the primary challenges are the many diverse standards for sustainability reporting and data quality issues. Information Technology (IT) can be used to support and improve the process of sustainability reporting but it is important to align the environmental sustainability strategies with the strategies of business and also with the IT strategy to avoid silos of information and reporting. Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be used to solve alignment problems since it supports business-IT alignment. EA is defined by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) as “The fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution”. It can be argued, therefore, that EA can be used to support environmental sustainability information management and the reporting process by means of its support of improved business-IT alignment and ultimately integrated systems. The main objective of this study is to investigate how EA can be used to support environmental information management (EIM) and reporting. A survey study of thirty one prominent South African organisations was undertaken in order to investigate the status of their EA adoption and environmental reporting and EIM processes. An EA for EIM Toolkit and a set of guidelines are proposed which can provide support for EIM through the use of EA. These guidelines were proposed based on best-practice for each of the three process levels of an organisation, namely, the strategic level, the operational level and the technological level. The toolkit and guidelines were derived from theory and the results of the industry survey were then validated by an in-depth analysis of a case study consisting of multiple cases with key employees of seven South African organisations which have proved to be successful at EA and EIM and reporting. The results of the case study show that the EA for EIM Toolkit and related guidelines can assist organisations to align their environmental sustainability strategies with their organisational and IT strategies.

Since the world has become smaller, resulting in the development of a global economy, it is no longer adequate for countries to provide education in silos by country or region. Instead, educators throughout the world need to integrate global competencies into their curricula. However, many teachers generally lack the knowledge of global context 21st century skills and do not have enough global experiences to assist them in providing this context. Although a great deal of effort has been put into providing teachers revised global Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum, very little is known concerning how many teachers are integrating global concepts into their curricula. The purpose of this research was to determine the factors that affect the integration of global tasks into Virginia Business Information and Technology (BIT) and Marketing Education (MKED) curriculum as defined by lived experiences of Virginia BIT and MKED teachers. A qualitative research method design was used to collect and analyze data for this study. A purposeful sampling method was chosen to find the best participants for this research. Interviews were used to determine the lived experiences of BIT and MKED concerning the extent to which they integrate global competencies into their curricula. In addition, factors affecting this integration were identified. The findings of this study suggest strategies for overcoming challenges for integrating global competency into the curricula and provide factors to make best practices for integrating global tasks into Virginia BIT and MKED curricula. / Doctor of Philosophy / Since the world has become smaller, resulting in the development of a global economy, it is no longer adequate for countries to provide education in silos by country or region. Instead, educators throughout the world need to integrate global competencies into their curricula. However, many teachers generally lack the knowledge of global context 21st century skills and do not have enough global experiences to assist them in providing this context. Although a great deal of effort has been put into providing teachers revised global Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum, very little is known concerning how many teachers are integrating global concepts into their curricula. The purpose of this research was to determine the factors that affect the integration of global tasks into Virginia Business Information and Technology (BIT) and Marketing Education (MKED) curriculum as defined by lived experiences of Virginia BIT and MKED teachers. A qualitative research method design was used to collect and analyze data for this study. A purposeful sampling method was chosen to find the best participants for this research. Interviews were used to determine the lived experiences of BIT and MKED concerning the extent to which they integrate global competencies into their curricula. In addition, factors affecting this integration were identified. The Findings of this study suggest strategies for overcoming challenges for integrating global competency into the curricula and to provide factors to make best practices for integrating global tasks into Virginia BIT and MKED curricula.

This research investigates the adoption of mobile commerce (MC) technologies across the supply chain in three businesses in New Zealand that already have adopted and implemented MC. The research used the technological innovation literature and the supply chain research to develop a framework that could assist this research in its attempt to understand the EC phenomenon in the three cases. This research followed the multiple case studies design. The findings from the three case studies suggested that most of the MC applications were concentrated in the B2B side of the SC relationships. Most of the MC activities were internally focused in order to streamline internal mobile operations and processes inside the studied businesses. The clients of the interviewed businesses in this research were not involved in the different MC activities. MC in businesses in New Zealand was used to drive efficiencies in operations in order to fulfil both orders and field requests (coordination and scheduling) leading ultimately to increased customer satisfaction. This research found that MC adoption in the businesses in New Zealand was motivated by its advantages, top management support, the availability of internal IT experts and expertise, the suitability of the MC in filling a mobile gap (i.e., company's field-force), competition, support from technology vendors in assisting and facilitating the adoption decision. The adoption of MC was hindered by its incompatibility with the business environment and the complexity of the MC technology. However, cost, pressure from buyers and suppliers and vertical linkages were unimportant as such to the adoption decision. The research highlight implications concerning MC research in businesses in New Zealand and suggest areas for further research in this innovative technology (MC). These initial insights are of great interest to businesses, researchers, and professionals interested in the adoption of MC in businesses in New Zealand and elsewhere. However, this research raise the importance of conducting more work to further assess the depth of the MC phenomenon in New Zealand and more time is needed before judging MC penetration and success in businesses in New Zealand.

M.Tech. Business Administration. Business School. / Business organisations who have implemented the Systems Applications Product (SAP) are increasingly looking to get more value out of their investment. With increased pressure to be competitive in all aspects of the business, organisations are increasingly sceptical about information technology benefits and its associated high costs. This research will be conducted at various business organisations in South Africa, who deployed the SAP system. Jordan (2008:395) states that software is design intensive, symbolic, abstract and constrained by intellectual complexity more than by physical laws. The analogy can thus be drawn that the level of complexity underlines the business's ability to extract real value from the investment, and relies heavily upon the insight and understanding of the people responsible for the deployment and ongoing configuration and customisation of the system, in line with organisational processes and goals.