While it is acknowledged that CI is important to SMEs, it is not being practiced optimally in SMEs. The study of CI in SMEs has not been as well documented as it has been in larger enterprises. Moreover, there is no evidence of CI awareness and practices in SMEs. The purposes of this study are to, establish the level and extent of awareness and practices of CI in SMEs, identify the challenges SMEs face in implementing CI, and equip SMEs for decision making in order to help SMEs to gain competitive advantage in a turbulent global market and to enhance their economic growth. This research indicates that SMEs are aware of CI. It also indicates that while SMEs practice CI, they do so informally. It also shows that CI provides competitive advantage to SMEs. / Business Management / M.Comm. (Business Management)

Public sector decision makers are confronted by pressures to make faster and better decisions as a result of the competitive environment they operate in. However, there is a trend in the public sector, including the Department of Transport (DoT) in South Africa, to invest in management information systems (MIS) that are highly fragmented and not aiding effective and timely decision-making. As a result, the country witnessed several service delivery protests since 2008 which also affected the public transport sector, such as the widespread burning of Metrorail trains several times by angry commuters. In most instances, poor service delivery emanates from the fact that public servants do not have information at their fingertips to make decisions. This quantitative study utilised Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies 5 (COBIT 5) as a theoretical framework to investigate the integration of MIS at the DoT with a view to enhancing business intelligence for effective decision-making. Data were collected through a questionnaire directed at middle managers and senior managers that were selected through stratification of business units at the DoT, as well as analysis of documents such as system specifications and strategic plans. The study established that the DoT has several systems such as Alfresco, BAS, GIS, Logis and Persal to name a few, which serve different purposes. However, in most instances, the systems are not integrated as the current infrastructure did not support integration needs and plans to accommodate changing requirements. This is compounded by the system policy implementation constraints, as well as ageing legacy systems that are obsolete. The only component where MIS was found to be integrated, was in the financial business units (Supply Chain Management, Finance and Budgeting). Core business units use off-the-shelf systems and, in some cases, custom-made applications that do not integrate with any other system and thus hinder decision-making. In conclusion, decisions are made based on thumb-sucking, as management does not have access to comprehensive information that is stored in fragmented unintegrated systems. The study recommends that governance structures should be set up to deal with a more holistic business, information and technology architecture for the DoT that enable integration of various systems for effective decision-making. Failure to transform this pattern would lead to service delivery protests persisting. A further study on a framework to integrate MIS in the public sector is recommended. / Information Science / M. Inf.

There are ethical concerns on how competitive intelligence (CI) is practiced. CI is mainly confused with industrial espionage or sometimes smeared with harmful unethical conduct. The assumptions have negative implications for the full recognition of CI as a profession and the reputation of the practice on, industries or firms and performance. In an attempt to address these concerns, the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) developed a CI code of ethics. However, critics of CI claim that the CI code of ethics has not been adopted by CI professionals, firms and industries. Moreover, there is very little evidence, if any, on how ethical theory influence the adoption of CI. In response to the critics, this study aimed at developing a CI Ethics Adoption Model (CIEAM) that will be the premise for analysing factors that positively or negatively influence the adoption of a CI code of ethics. This study followed interpretive structural modelling to identify core determinants of CI ethics adoption. Based on extracts from literature, a web-based questionnaire was designed, validated by CI experts and empirically/quantitatively tested by 184 South African ICT firms. The results reveal that South African ICT firms have adopted CI ethics to an absolute extent and utilises different CI ethics enforcement methods. The results also reveal that organisational and stakeholders’ factors, business ethics and ethical theories, decision-making factors, CI practice factors, raising CI ethics awareness, and CI ethics challenges are the core determinants for the adoption of CI ethics and are components of the CIEAM. In practice, the CIEAM may minimise unethical conduct by some CI professionals, and the confusion of CI with espionage, whilst improving the credibility and recognition of the CI profession. The model may also serve as a valuable tool for practitioners and scholars who need to measure the adoption of CI ethics across different business sectors. Theoretically, it may serve as input to the development of CI policies and CI ISO standards in the ICT industry and related industries. Recommendations are made towards the application of the model in other industries. / Business Management / D. Com. (Business Management)

In hierdie proefskrif is die belangrike rol wat inligting tans en toenemend in die samelewing speel ondersoek, om te beklemtoon hoe noodsaaklik dit tans is om `n misdryf wat die wederregtelike en opsetlike verkryging van inligting strafbaar sal reël, te verorden. Die rol wat industriële spioenasie in die verband speel word uitgelig. As gevolg van die bepaalde onliggaamlike aard van inligting kan inligting nie soos liggaamlike eiendom `n persoon ontneem word nie. Inligting word gewoonlik bloot gekopieer en die oorspronklike houer van die inligting behou die inligting hoewel die dader ook die inligting verkry. Die gemeenregtelike misdaad van diefstal maak dus nie voorsiening vir die diefstal van inligting waar die inligting bloot gekopieer of gedupliseer is nie. Om te bepaal hoe hierdie bepaalde probleem in ander lande se regstelsels aangespreek word en om kennis op te doen oor hoe dit in die Suid-Afrikaanse reg aangespreek behoort te word, is die strafregtelike bepalings en selfs nie-strafregtelike bepalings in lande soos Engeland, Amerika, Kanada en Nederland ondersoek. Ten einde vas te stel welke inligting deur die strafreg beskerm behoort te word, is selfs sekere nie-strafregtelike bepalings van vermelde lande en van die Suid-Afrikaanse reg nagegaan. Insigte is verkry oor welke elemente sodanige inligting aan moet voldoen en `n definisie van beskermwaardige inligting word aanbeveel. Vir hierdie doel is `n nuwe begrip van beskermwaardige inligting geskep. Die redes waarom diefstal van inligting nie in Suid-Afrikaanse en die ander lande se regstelsels nie erken word nie, is bespreek. Die wyse waarop die gemeenregtelike misdaad van diefstal na die diefstal van onliggaamlike geld uitgebrei is, is ondersoek waarna `n aanbeveling gemaak word oor hoe die definisie van diefstal uitgebrei kan word om ook ander onliggaamlike objekte in te sluit. As gevolg van die bepaalde aard van inligting kan die gemeenregtelike definisie van diefstal nie uitgebrei word om inligting as `n objek in te sluit nie en word `n statutêre misdryf van diefstal van inligting voorgestel. / Jurisprudence / LL. D.

While it is acknowledged that CI is important to SMEs, it is not being practiced optimally in SMEs. The study of CI in SMEs has not been as well documented as it has been in larger enterprises. Moreover, there is no evidence of CI awareness and practices in SMEs. The purposes of this study are to, establish the level and extent of awareness and practices of CI in SMEs, identify the challenges SMEs face in implementing CI, and equip SMEs for decision making in order to help SMEs to gain competitive advantage in a turbulent global market and to enhance their economic growth. This research indicates that SMEs are aware of CI. It also indicates that while SMEs practice CI, they do so informally. It also shows that CI provides competitive advantage to SMEs. / Business Management / M.Com. (Business Management)

PhD (Business Management) / Department of Business Management / This thesis demonstrates the researcher’s efforts to put into practice the theoretical foundations of information systems research, in order to come up with a context-aware business intelligence framework (CABIF), for the South African higher education institutions. Using critical realism as the philosophical underpinning and mixed methods research design, a business intelligence (BI) survey was deployed within the South African public higher education institutions to measure the respondents’ satisfaction and importance of business intelligence characteristics. The 258 respondents’ satisfaction and importance of the 34 observed business intelligence variables, were subjected to principal components analysis and design science research to come up with the CABIF. The observable BI variables were drawn from four latent variables namely technology and business alignment; organizational and behavioural strategies; business intelligence domain; and technology strategies. The study yielded good values for all the observed satisfaction and importance business intelligence variables as indicated by the Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy and the Bartlett Test of Sphericity. The data set collected from the survey deployed at the South African public higher education institutions, was reliable and valid based on the Cronbach α values which were all above 0.9. The researcher then used the descriptive and prescriptive knowledge of design science research, and the meta-inferences of the results from the principal components analysis to produce five contexts of CABIF. The BI contexts developed were, the Basic Context; the Business Processes Context which was divided into Macro and Micro business process contexts; the Business Intelligence Context; and the Governance Context. These contexts were extrapolated within the University of Venda’s business processes and this researcher concluded that the CABIF developed, could be inferred within the South African higher education institutions. At the University of Venda, this researcher managed to draw up CABIF based business intelligence tools that spanned from leveraging the existing ICT infrastructure, student cohort analysis, viability of academic entities, strategic enrolment planning and forecasting government block grants. The correlations and regression measures of the technology acceptance variables of the business intelligence tools modelled using CABIF at University of Venda, revealed high acceptance ratio. Overall, this research provides a myriad of conceptual and practical insights into how contextualised aspects of BI directly or indirectly impact on the quality of managerial decision making within various core business contexts of South African higher education institutions.