Business Process (BP) design reflects managerial needs and may directly influence business performance. A good design could substantially increase managerial performance, while a bad one would be inefficient, lack of flexibility, mess cost effective and eventually miss the business strategy. The widespread of information technology has raised the need to redesign or modify business processes in order to fit the trend of automation and computerization. As a result, business process reengineering (BPR) has gained much attention in 1990s. In recent years, a new paradigm, called Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), becomes a new management innovation. Service process design becomes a new science that can be applied to support service innovation and management. Previous research on BPR includes two major directions: one focuses on managerial aspects of business processes, including the planning, implementation, and critical factors of BPR; the other focuses on the design aspects pf business processes with a target of making processes more efficient. For research on process design, most deal with the syntactic structure of the process. They analyze the syntax structure of a process. This can help find design errors such as deadlocks, livelocks, and even infinite loops in a process. Not many studies have investigated whether a process design meets its managerial goals. This research presents a knowledge-based approach to dealing with the managerial issue of whether a process design matches specific managerial goals. This thesis contains a new business process modeling method that allows a business process to be diagnosed by knowledge-based rules. We have defined three managerial goals in process design: effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility. Each activity in a business process has its goal. Through the analysis of activities and their associated goals, we can determine whether a business process is properly designed. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, we have implemented a JAVA-based prototype expert system and used it to check two sample business processes. The contributions of the study are two-fold. Academically, it proposed a new approach for business process diagnosis, which can help determine whether a process meets its managerial goal. In practice, businesses can use the concepts developed in the thesis to make their business processes more effective by matching activities with intended managerial goals.

The impact of globalisation and advanced information technology on service and knowledgebased industries in South Africa contributes to these workplaces becoming increasingly virtual. Virtual teams can be seen as a mechanism that organisations could use to increase their orientation for change through enhancing and integrating key organisational resources such as people, space and information technology to deliver greater business value. The findings of several studies suggest that the implementation of virtual teams is associated with benefits such as cost and time saving, increased employee productivity and employee empowerment. There are however salient barriers to effective virtual teamwork that organisations need to address before engaging in the transformational process towards virtual teamwork. The literature review identified ineffective leadership practices, factors relating to virtual team development, inadequate use of information technology and a paucity of social and organisational cultural integration, as the most salient features that impede effective virtual teamwork. The objective of this research was to develop a basic theoretical framework for the implementation of virtual teams. Since virtual teams emanate from a relatively new area of research an inductive methodology, based on a literature review, was used to achieve the research objective. Several theoretical models on virtual teams and their effectiveness thereon were explored to conceptualise the dynamic nature of virtual teams and the requirements for implementing them in the workplace. The results of the study indicated that an emergent approach to change be followed and that the following factors be addressed to determine an organisation's readiness for the implementation of virtual teams, namely: the degree of interdependence between tasks, structural requirements, technological requirements, process redesign and the selection of appropriate people. A methodology for work transformation towards virtual teamwork was suggested based on an integration of these factors. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The impact of globalisation and advanced information technology on service and knowledgebased industries in South Africa contributes to these workplaces becoming increasingly virtual. Virtual teams can be seen as a mechanism that organisations could use to increase their orientation for change through enhancing and integrating key organisational resources such as people, space and information technology to deliver greater business value. The findings of several studies suggest that the implementation of virtual teams is associated with benefits such as cost and time saving, increased employee productivity and employee empowerment. There are however salient barriers to effective virtual teamwork that organisations need to address before engaging in the transformational process towards virtual teamwork. The literature review identified ineffective leadership practices, factors relating to virtual team development, inadequate use of information technology and a paucity of social and organisational cultural integration, as the most salient features that impede effective virtual teamwork. The objective of this research was to develop a basic theoretical framework for the implementation of virtual teams. Since virtual teams emanate from a relatively new area of research an inductive methodology, based on a literature review, was used to achieve the research objective. Several theoretical models on virtual teams and their effectiveness thereon were explored to conceptualise the dynamic nature of virtual teams and the requirements for implementing them in the workplace. The results of the study indicated that an emergent approach to change be followed and that the following factors be addressed to determine an organisation's readiness for the implementation of virtual teams, namely: the degree of interdependence between tasks, structural requirements, technological requirements, process redesign and the selection of appropriate people. A methodology for work transformation towards virtual teamwork was suggested based on an integration of these factors. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.