This study was conducted on the premise that if quality business information is provided to business enterprises, socio-economic transformation could be achieved. The study emanated from the documented problem where business enterprises in northern Uganda were found to depend on "word of mouth" rather than any meaningful formal mechanism for accessing information efficiently. The aim of the study was, therefore, to design an information system for northern Uganda business enterprises. The study makes use of document analysis, questionnaires and interviews. The Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs), information providers and business policy-makers in northern Uganda constituted the population of the study. The data which was collected was edited and analysed to produce graphs, charts and percentages. The main findings indicate that business activities in northern Uganda are diverse - covering almost the entire sector of the economy. The SMEs need information on finance/capital/loans, local markets, business management skills, appropriate technologies, business competitors and security. They are lagging behind in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). There is a lack of familiarity with changing technology - especially the Internet. Although the SMEs are making a fundamental contribution to Uganda's economy, they face serious challenges, such as insecurity, inadequate electricity, lack of trained information professionals and appropriate technology to access electronic information. The findings further indicate that respondents want business information to be selective to address their needs. The study concludes that the SMEs need an efficient, effective mechanism to provide the required business information. Hence, it is recommended that a business information system (BIS) design be implemented to address their needs. The BIS should provide business information in terms of legal, technical and economic information as well as contact information and management skills. Information should be processed by means of radio broadcasts, the telephone, short text messages, posters, online and CD-ROM formats - as required by the SMEs managers. To facilitate access, BIS should have telephone services; Internet-based services; online small business workshops; business start up assistant; and Talk to BIS services. BIS should have a flexible interface. / INFORMATION SCIENCE / DLITT ET PHIL (INF SCIENCE)

<p> The challenges of Big Data (BD) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) have attracted disproportionately less attention than the overwhelmingly espoused benefits and game-changing promises. While many studies have examined BD challenges across multiple industry verticals, very few have focused on the challenges of implementing BDA solutions. Fewer of these studies have focused directly on the financial services industry, and none have quantifiably measured the severities of the challenges. That created gaps as BDA solution implementers in the financial services industry could neither access a roadmap to guide their steps against obstacles that lay ahead, nor compute the severities of the challenges. This study addressed those gaps through two research questions: (1) What are the challenges of implementing BDA solutions in the financial services industry; and (2) What are the rankings of these challenges, in terms of importance and relative severities, such that BDA implementations can devote more research attention to or hedge better against those challenges? To answer these questions, the study used a mixed methods approach to content-analyze 75 BDA documents and collate a comprehensive list of 22 BDA challenges. As well, 36 financial services industry BDA-subject-matter-experts (SMEs) were surveyed to validate the list, rank the challenges, and measure their impacts. The research findings showed that the challenges of implementing BDA solutions in the financial services industry are mostly strategic and people-driven, rather than process-induced or technology-driven. Specifically, miscommunications and misconception of the meanings, intents, and the value-added benefits of BDA implementation in the financial services industry were found to be the top challenge. Details of the results, its implications for the BDA communities of practice and discourse, and opportunities for future research were discussed. The results can be generalized if scaled with a bigger sample size and better measures-of-intangibles.</p>

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Project control systems often fail to support management in achieving their global project goals. This thesis proposes a Multidimensional Project Control System (MPCS) as an approach for quantifying deviations from the planning phase to the execution phase with respect to the global project control specification (GPCS). The projects' current state must be translated into yield terms, which are expressed as a gap vector that represents the multidimensional deviation from the global project control specification. The MPCS methodology allows the project manager to determine: integrated project status; where problems exist in the project; when and where to take corrective action; and how to measure improvement. However, implementing the MPCS methodology does not require extra data collation. MPCS deals with the control of a single project and defines the project performances in comparison with the plan. The progression of several projects in parallel is a common situation in organizations, therefore a comparison of the various project performances is required. It is proposed that a comparison process be performed using the data envelope analysis (DEA) approach. The reference points for examining the performances of different projects and the directions of improvement for the projects are not necessarily found on the efficiency frontier. An algorithm is developed for applying multi-project system control having a relatively large number of inputs and outputs while maintaining the validity of the DEA methodology. The DEA output allows the diagnosis of those found on the efficiency frontier and those that need improvement.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Computer Science Dept., 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 29, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: B, page: 1103. Adviser: Dennis Gannon.

Thesis (MIT(Informatics))-Universiteit van Pretoria, 2008. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references.

With over forty institutes of higher education in Lebanon, each offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in Computer Science and IT-related majors, it is surprising and disappointing not to have any academic publications in IT managerial issues. This complete silence may be partly due to the fact that the focus of such programs is more technical than managerial, and partly because the majority of Lebanese universities are “teaching-oriented”, rather than “research-oriented” institutions. One of the major contributions of this thesis is to pioneer IT managerial research in Lebanon and pave the way for future research in this vital area. The main scope of this thesis is to determine how to derive business value from enterprise IS investments, and what conditions maximize that value. While each of the extant theoretical models provides insight on one key aspect of the IT value proposition, what seems missing is a model that combines the salient points from each of various models, and one that incorporates both a process and variance orientation, providing a more comprehensive explanation of the IT value proposition. Therefore, the main contribution of this thesis is development of a comprehensive new IT value model, providing a framework of the processes and factors needed to derive optimal business value from such investments. The new model incorporates salient features of extant IT value models, and is grounded in the data gathered in this thesis. The strength of the new model lies in combining three individual IT value research threads. The first is the RBV research stream, which posit that to derive business value from IS investments, organizations must invest in organizational resources, and must develop individual and organizational IS competencies. The second is the IS process research stream, which evaluates the path that IT investments take from value conception to value creation, and proposes a sequence of phases and activities that must be followed during that investment journey. The third research stream stresses the importance of considering additional contextual factors when engaging IS investments. A review of the extant literature is conducted to develop an initial conceptual framework combining salient features of existing IT value models. Next, using multi-grounded theory and multiple investigative methods, primary data is gathered from thirty-six large Lebanese organizations representing several business sectors. In order to ensure validity and reliability, data is gathered in iterative phases, starting with one-on-one structured interviews with CIOs, followed by a survey and CIO group discussions using the “communities of practice” method, and culminates in one-on-one structured interviews with all other stakeholders involved in the IS value proposition at four of the thirty-six participating organizations using the “deep case study” method. The data is analyzed to determine the key challenges inhibiting the success of IS investments, the key competencies and factors needed to derive business value from such investments, to validate and refine the initial conceptual IT value model, and to ground the attributes of the new model to reflect the Lebanese experience. The thesis concludes by suggesting guidelines for how organizations may develop and nurture the proposed organizational competencies. It also paves the way and suggests possible future research opportunities in Lebanon and beyond.

Academia and business could benefit significantly from a framework allocating scarce resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes while considering the stakeholders’ importance. Methodologies that are capable of integrating CSR into business models in an operational way could be of great use. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge by the development of a decision support methodology to allocate resources to CSR programmes. The research introduces the concepts of CSR and decision analysis, while identifying a hybrid integrated framework combining several decision analysis techniques allowing elimination of the deficiencies of mono-methodologies and facilitating resources allocation to CSR projects. Despite the high levels of awareness, the process of implementing CSR at the project level is difficult, as implementation of CSR at the design stage requires effective allocation of scarce resources in addition to considering diverging objectives of stakeholders, multiple criteria and uncertainty throughout the decision-making process. A three phase research programme involving a pilot study, framework building, framework testing and validation is conducted to understand the principles of CSR practices and related implementation issues. The research explores and identifies methodologies of decision analysis that can be applied in an integrated manner to address problems in CSR. The result is a sequential and iterative methodology that fills the gap identified through a literature review and practitioner survey. The documented framework, derived from the structured development and test programme, has shown to be feasible. It makes a significant contribution to knowledge, attained through the provisions of procedural fairness. The key stakeholders are fully engaged in the process of framework building as well as throughout the entire decision-making process. The research provides a framework to allocate resources to CSR programmes in an efficient manner by considering the stakeholders’ diverging objectives, companies’ competitive advantage, interdependent criteria, and limited resources.

The research focused on dissatisfaction with explanations of Information Technology (IT) value. IT’s business potential and the high levels of IT investment have put IT under the management spotlight. Management typically asks: “What is the contribution of our IT investments to improving our corporate strategy and business leverage?” or “How can we monitor the progress and performance of investments, in order to identify improvement actions?” Managers are, however, dissatisfied with explanations of IT value, because attempts to demonstrate the link between IT investments and business performance have produced mixed results. The research objective required the development of a framework as a step towards understanding dissatisfaction with IT value. Three case studies were used that resulted in a concluding theory consisting of a framework, a set of hypotheses describing the relationships between the elements of the framework and a pattern of conditions under which there is dissatisfaction with explanations of IT value. The theory clarifies dissatisfaction with explanations of IT value: IT is on management’s agenda due to its track record; high spending on IT; the need to exploit IT and dissatisfaction with available explanations of IT value. An outcome of this is a concern about IT’s value. Management’s concern is conditioned by factors such as their levels of comfort with IT; the business/IT relationship and management’s mindset about IT as a business resource. The concern becomes a need to control IT which requires an effective IT evaluation process in turn. Steps to ensure an effective IT evaluation process need to address the availability of alternative IT evaluation methods; the mindset about IT evaluation; flaws in IT evaluation methods; problems with defining IT value as well as IT benefits and costs complications. As a result, explanations of IT value may not be satisfactory. IT will then remain on the management agenda and management will continue to be concerned about IT value. The theory indicates two broad strategies to overcome or avoid dissatisfaction with explanations of IT value. The first strategy is to fully understand the reasons for management’s concern about IT value as well as to recognize those conditions that could influence concerns about the value of IT. The second strategy is to ensure an effective IT evaluation process by specifically addressing those factors or conditions that could impact on the effectiveness of the IT evaluation process. / Thesis (DCom (Informatics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Informatics / unrestricted

The purpose of this study is to understand the technical and social considerations of implementing business to business processes integration. In order to do so, a study was undertaken of two processes used by a local vehicle manufacturer to integrate their operations with those of their suppliers. Structuration theory was used to situate the findings. It was found that technology is a powerful enabler, but can also constrain human agency in terms of process execution. Competitive advantage, identified as the main driver for business to business process integration, is enabled by technological and process structures, but can only be maintained by enabling human agency. / Dissertation (MPhil(Informatics))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Informatics / MPhil / unrestricted