Mozambique was a Portuguese province governed in terms of Portuguese legislation and principles. After the Mozambican independence in June 1975, and during the decade thereafter, all Portuguese legislation were re-evaluated and replaced by new legislation based on socialist/communist philosophies, ultimately culminating in a centralised economy, which was governed according to Marxism/Leninism principles. In terms of this maxim, the primary objectives was to favour and protect state owned companies, resulting in the nationalisation of almost all of the private sector, thus eradicating competitiveness among the economic operators, and leaving the country to become one of the poorest in the world. The implemented political philosophy and associated economic principles furthermore impacted so adversely on the economy that critical changes were required to save the economy from collapse. New economic and political reforms and directives were introduced, moving the country from a socialist orientation to an open economy, a process that was implemented with the support of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This process was highly complex and arduous, culminating in more often than not, failed implementations in the various sectors of the economy. One such sector, the Construction Engineering Industry is faced with collapse as a result of the complexities of the transition process. Against this background, ‘corrective’ economic legislation aimed to restructure the economy, was designed and implemented, only to result in high taxes and duties being paid by private companies. The present decline in foreign direct investment in the Construction Engineering Industry due to the current social and political uncertainty is of particular concern. More specific, the high interest bank rates on loans, the high duty rates for construction materials to be imported, the current judicial system which is viewed as ineffective in solving complex problems involving the industry, unfair labour laws which protect unproductive workers, and the high levels of bureaucracy, are all factors impacting adversely on any management effort to ensure the sustainability and growth of the Construction Engineering Industry in Mozambique. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) was constituted with the aim of creating an integrated and harmonious development strategy for each of its member countries, due to the fact that each country has its own culture, political dispensation, judicial system, labour laws and economic and fiscal structures. As the Construction Engineering Industries within each SADC country, by implication are subjected to differentiated operating environments and unique complexities, the solution as proposed by the SADC has the potential to culminate in a feasible option for the industry as a whole. For the Construction Engineering Industry of Mozambique however, the proposed solution of the SADC would not serve as a viable or feasible solution. This is due to the fact that the Construction Engineering Industry in Mozambique is not stable and close to collapse as a result of the plethora of inhibiting factors adversely impacting the industry. Against this background the research problem for this thesis reads as follow: “The Construction Engineering Industry in Mozambique is operating within the context of an unstructured complex management paradigm, calling for an evolutionary solution to mitigate the complexities and ensure sustainability and growth” The primary objective of this thesis is to establish to what extent an evolutionary systems approach model could facilitate paradigmatic change in the management of construction engineering in Mozambique to ensure its sustainability and growth. This objective will be met through:  An in depth analysis of the complex phenomena pertaining to the construction engineering industry in Mozambique deploying the enquiry capabilities of the Biomatrix Systems Approach.  Benchmarking the operating environments of the Construction Engineering Industries of South Africa and Mozambique.  The formulation of an evolutionary, unique viable approach so structured to address the complexity associated with construction engineering in Mozambique. This evolutionary approach will be fundamentally based on the Systems Approach and associated Viable Systems Model, juxtaposed with this authors’ own contribution, to ultimately facilitate paradigmatic change in the Mozambican Construction Engineering Industry to mitigate the research problem set for this thesis. / Prof. Dr. L. Pretorius Prof. Dr. J.A. Watkins

This research is about technology transfer from engineering to management. According to Kerlinger’s (1979) terminology, most practical management problems are formulated as engineering problems. So, it is legitimate to adapt general engineering techniques to solve those problems. In Industrial Dynamics, Forrester (1961) says “the practice of medicine or of engineering began as an empirical art representing only the exercise of judgment based on experience. The development of the underlying sciences was motivated by the need to understand better the foundation on which the art is rested.” Engineering evolved from an art after practitioners applied relationships explained by basic laws of nature. Engineers design and predict the performance of the systems they work with. At most, managers hope for acceptable performance; management is still much an art, whose practitioners study relationships based on data and observation. Therefore, the objective of this research is twofold: to establish the groundwork for a discipline of management systems engineering, and to provide one example of its application. A management system is any organizational position, its scope of authority, and its management tools. The Management System Model (MSM) describes a management system as the interaction between the manager, the operation, and the management tools (Kurstedt, Mendes, & Lee, 1988). Management systems engineering involves the specification, design, implementation and maintenance of management systems. The specification of a management system identifies the required performance characteristics in response to given events. The design is the prediction, with the aid of mathematical models, of the actual responses (outputs) to those events (inputs). The conceptual part of this research involves the development of mathematical models as fundamental tools to specify and design engineering systems. One significant contribution is the development of the conceptual framework and the demonstration of a quantitative analog for the MSM. The applied part of this research draws upon an emergency exercise in an industrial plant (the United States Department of Energy’s Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, Ohio). An emergency is any event that threatens the integrity of people, environment, or assets. In the context of this research, emergency response is the set of actions required to neutralize or reduce the effects of the threatening event. An emergency exercise is the live simulation of the response to a dangerous situation in an industrial setting. The management system is composed of the plant management, the industrial plant where a simulated accident occurs, and the management tools used during the emergency. Specifically, the objective of the applied part is to show we can use a mathematical model to describe the dynamics of the emergency management system and make short-term predictions. The mathematical model is a control theory-based system estimator. The data to compare the model against is time series data generated from information portrayed to the plant management during the unfolding of the exercise. Therefore, this research describes a longitudinal study. The similarity between the data and the model results is apparent in graphical representations and statistically demonstrated through spectral cross-correlation analysis. So, another significant contribution is revitalizing the formal application of control theory to the study of management situations. / Ph. D.

The principal purpose of the project is to enable ReMoTe support for multi-databases. ReMoTe stands for the Recursively Estimating Multi-Threaded Observation Technology Enterprise, which is a web-based computer aided software engineering tool for monitoring software development process. Development of ReMoTe is based on the RMT (Recursive Multi-Threaded) software life cycle developed by Scott Simon, a CSUSB alum, in his master's thesis in 1997. ReMoTe enables the monitoring of projects that use different databases in various locations. Central management can view the progress information of each project using a web browser no matter where the database or project team is located. In this project, three database software were supported, namely MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft Access, and employed contemporary technologies such as JavaScript, PHP, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Source codes are included.

This dissertation discusses risk management in the context of software development. It commences by investigating why so many software development projects fail. It then focuses on approaches to software development that emerged as attempts to improve the success rate. A common shortcoming to these approaches is identified, namely that they only cater for the tasks that need to be done, ignoring possible unexpected problems. After having motivated the need for risk management, the framework for a risk management methodology is discussed, outlining the steps in the risk management process. Decision-making guidelines and best practices follow, as well as a discussion about the way they should be implemented as part of the risk management effort. Guidelines are provided for the implementation of risk management as part of software development. Finally, the risks that may cause the failure of the implementation of risk management are identified and guidelines provided to address them. / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

This report discusses the experiences gained and lessons learned during a project management internship in post-earthquake Christchurch as part of the construction industry and rebuild effort.

The Look East Policy (LEP), which was officially launched in February 1982, came about as a result of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamed's determination to encourage Malaysians to "learn from Japan". Despite the difficulties in transferring management ideas between countries, Mahathir was convinced that with the Look East Policy he could persuade management in Malaysia, and particularly in the manufacturing firms, to implement wholesale the Japanese model of management or Japanese management techniques. This is not only because he believed that Japanese management techniques were the prerequisites for Malaysia's drive for industrialisation, but also he believed that they were the solutions to the problems cojifronting the Malaysian workforce. However, the findings from this study seem to suggest that only certain elements of the Japanese management techniques have been implemented in or transferred to the manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Even then, our findings show that there are a number of problems being encountered, especially if these elements are not compatible with Malaysian cultural and religious beliefs. This could imply that certain elements of the Japanese management practices are culture-bound and therefore difficult to transfer to a different cultural environment. Our findings also seem to suggest that despite the strength of the state in Malaysia, it has not been very successful in promoting, through the Look East Policy, the Japanese style of management to manufacturing firms. Instead, it is suggested that the majority of the Malaysian workforce prefers the present management system that is pro-West, which suggests its profound influence in Malaysia. Hence, it can be argued that because of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious beliefs in Malaysia, and also because of the strong influence of the West, there is a limit to what the state can do or achieve. Based on our findings, it might be possible to suggest the following conclusions: (i) that the Look East Policy was never properly thought through in terms of the difficulty of transferring management techniques from one culture to another; (ii) a more limited objective with regard to learning from the Japanese might have been more successful. However, this would have demanded not only a long-term commitment but also greater involvement from Chinese community; and (iii) that the Look East Policy was always a political as well as an economic one. Perhaps its success should be judged not on a basis of whether it was adopted but on whether it achieved its political objectives.

M.Ing. (Engineering Management) / The steel industry is considered a very harsh working environment that has been seen to be a major contributor to the occupational health and safety incidents occurring in the manufacturing sector. Due to the nature of the steel making process, the steel industry remains dangerous to employees. Leading key performance indicators of safety are a control mechanism that can be used in contributing to the improvement of safety performance. The aim of the research conducted was to determine if leading key performance indicators of safety are being utilised in organisations in the steel industry, to determine the KPI in use was informative of the root cause of the safety incident and to identify the initial KPI development requirements in a steel manufacturing organisation in South Africa. A literature review centred on leading key performance indicators of safety was conducted to establish the meaning of KPI and their application in other similar industries. A benchmark for the research was established from the literature review. The research was influenced by the methods that were applied by Grabowski, Ayalasomayajula, Wang, Merrick, Mc Cafferty, Meador & Kinney, 2007, that were successfully used in the derivation of leading KPI in the shipping industry. The research done by Toellner, 2001 on leading indicators of safety was also influential in conducting this study. The data was obtained through random sampling in a population of production staff, engineering, personnel, specialists and managerial staff, whose experience in the industry ranged from two years to forty years. The questionnaire was randomly distributed to a population consisting of fourteen supervisors, twelve engineering staff, eighty-six production personnel, twenty-one specialists and six management staff. The respondents’ level of experience in the industry varied from two years to forty years and a combined experience level of one-hundred and thirty-five years. It was found that the key performance indicators of safety that were being utilised have not evolved significantly over the past fifteen years and they do not provide insight to the root cause of the accident. This research provides the strategic requirements needing for developing leading key performance indicators of safety in a steel manufacturing organisation.

<p>Istraživanje je provedeno na reprezentativnom uzorku od 490 ispitanika na teritoriji Vojvodine koji posredno ili neposredno imaju iskustva sa poplavama, sa ciljem otkrivanja relevantnih prediktora egzaktne odgovornosti za prevenciju i sprečavanje poplavnih rizika iz ugla relevantno najugroženije populacije. Dobijeni rezultati nam nedvosmisleno govore u prilog tezi da nestrukturirano ublažavanje može dovesti do odličnih rezultata u ublažavanju. Takođe nam sugerišu da pored edukacije ugroženih poplavama, formiranja jasne državne strategije po pitanju zaštite i prevencije od poplava, sinergije države, stanovništva i OD, nadasve je potrebno da OD uvedu potpuno nov proizvod: osiguranje od poplava.</p> / <p>The study was conducted on a representative sample of 490 respondents on the territory of Vojvodina, who directly or indirectly have experience with floods, in order to identify relevant predictors of the exact responsibilities for the prevention and the avoidance of flood risks from the perspective of the relevantly vulnerable populations. The results clearly support the thesis that unstructured mitigation can lead to excellent results in alleviation.The obtained results also suggest that, in addition to education of the endangered by floods, the formation of a clear national strategy with regarding the protection and prevention of floods, the synergy of the state, population and IO&rsquo;s (insurance companies), above all, it is necessary that IO&rsquo;s introduce an entirely new product: flood insurance.</p>

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration in Project Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / Though strides have been taken to ensure the availability and application of technology, there still exists some disparity between the envisaged use compared to the actual one (Ross, Romich & Pena, 2016:48). The application of technology, such as project management software (PMS), could be the answer to unlocking success in projects especially where a large scope and high degree of complexity can sometimes prove to be very challenging. The research explored how the application of PMS influences project success. A case of NPOs in the Western Cape Province, South Africa was used. The research objectives were to (1) establish if PMS is applied in the NPO’s work, (2) determine employees’ interactions with PMS relative to project success, and (3) identify the limitations of current PMS being used. A non-experimental and quantitative approach was taken to conduct the research. Out of a potential 200 units of analysis, a sample group consisting of 132 project-implementing NPOs in the Western Cape was used. Ninety-four responses were received setting the response rate at 71%. The research instruments used were questionnaires, which were administered physically and online. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. There is high project success rate among NPO projects in the Western Cape at 77%. The research revealed that PMS is utilised in a significant number of organisations with the most popular ones used being Microsoft Project, Project Manager and Jira. Most project offices utilise PMS on a weekly or monthly basis especially during the project planning and execution stages. The limitations of the software include that it can over-complicate issues, be time-consuming, and costly. In light of the above, respondents revealed that they believe PMS does have a positive influence on project success. Furthermore, based on the findings and conclusions derived from this study, the researcher made a few recommendations. For example, persons in academia need to widen the scope of the study to different geographical locations and use a different research approach. Another is that software engineers/developers must consider localised support for PMS as well as improve on scalability issues. To NPOs, recommendations were made on potential training sessions to capacitate the sector to be more adept to information and communication technology (ICT) and eventually make more use of PMS.

The world in which we live is hyper-dynamic with multiple inputs, outputs and expectations. As it relates to the fast pace of corporate America, customers want products and services within a tighter market window, with no defects and for lower costs. Stakeholders insist that managers do more with less human and financial resources yet more aggressive technological and sales goals. These realities translate into a more complex work environment in that the emotional toll of pending economic outcomes act to motivate or paralyze the very engine designed to produce the desired outcomes the employees. The body of work presented in this dissertation directly addresses the empirical relationship between the perceptions of the work context factors of leadership, task autonomy and social support networks with respect to the positive and negative emotions of the employees of the engineering firm that participated in this study. The empirical results from this research indicate that a positive and significant interrelationship does exist among the factors examined in this study. The employees studied included 249 middle to upper level managers of whom 78.7% were men and 21.3% were women. The range of years of experience for the participants varied from new hire to more than 20 years. Homogeneity of Variance tests confirms the validity of comparative analysis for the segmented data population. Multivariate statistics were used to address the four research questions. The strongest correlations occurred for the subgroups of women and non-managers with respect to the relationship of social support networks and positive emotions. Until now, there has been no empirical research linking the social support networks factor directly to emotions.