The complexity of evaluating business benefits of Information Systems (IS) Investments stems from the aggregation of business benefits at organisational level, making the correlation of business benefits and IS Investments challenging to ascertain. In an attempt to resolve these correlation challenges, Resource-based Theory was applied to distil drivers of business value of IS investments at process, rather than organisational level. The study employs a qualitative single case study method to promote a shared understanding of the challenges thus faced by practitioners. The findings demonstrate that the extent to which IS capabilities are embedded in business processes further requires disciplined effort and cost to attribute their investment value to business. Thus, the realisation of the business benefits of IS enabled processes was found to be influenced by four key factors; the governance applied to mitigate the risk that would undermine that value, the value judgements made based on accumulated knowledge from prior evaluation challenges; the intricate links between an organisation's IS investment culture and its motivational drivers for what, how and when evaluation should be conducted, and the underlying organisational structures within which those business processes occurred.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-125). / To determine, holistically, factors that contribute to organisational readiness for these emerging technologies on one part, and the factors that influence organisational preparedness on its own on the other part, raises another concern. This study developed a new conceptual readiness framework NOIIE (an acronym for National e-readiness, Organisational preparedness, Industrial relationships, Internal resistance and External influence), for assessing organisations’ readiness for emerging technologies and applications.

Bibliography: leaves 84-90.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Online social networks and micro-blogs are becoming increasingly important to organisationswithin the marketing process enabling business to conduct marketing research, marketingcommunications and customer service. There remains paucity in the body of knowledge as tohow organisations in South Africa are using specific social media technologies to conductsocial media marketing. This research report takes a specific focus on the micro-blogging andsocial networking phenomena and addresses the problem: What are the differences betweenorganisations utilizing social networking and those utilizing micro-blogging, to conductmarket research, marketing communications and deal with customer complaints in SouthAfrica?A review of the literature informed the research study that organisations use a variety of toolsand techniques in researching customers on social media platforms. Micro-blogging andsocial networking services were found to be valid channels for organisations to communicatemarketing information as well as deal with customer complaints due to product/serviceproblems. The study design allowed the collected data to be quantitatively analysedmeasuring independence between organisations using micro-blogging and social networkingservices within the marketing process.

Bibliography: leaves 101-107. / The impact of Information Technology (IT) on knowledge creation (KC) in companies is both an interesting and challenging topic. This study investigated what the use of IT does to support KC and how it works to bring about that support. Two case studies on the development of Woolworths Financial Services (WFS) products were undertaken. By combining two existing theoretical models, a research framework was developed and used to collect data and interpret the findings. The findings suggested that as knowledge is created in companies, so the level of support provided by IT increases. That is, when sharing tacit knowledge, IT provided limited support. However, during the dissemination of knowledge throughout the organization, IT was seen to provide multiple levels of support. The study attempted to provide management with a framework to assess their suite of IT applications and how they provide support to the KC process. Further discussion and debate around the framework may lead to opportunities to increase the support provided by IT in companies.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-74). / Mobile systems are increasingly growing in developing countries and have been a key interest for organisations looking to make scalable solutions for the developing world-context. For the HIV/AIDS healthcare sector, this interest has seen great investment in healthcare systems augmented by mobile technologies. One such system is the EMIT-system created by Cell-Life, a Cape Town based organisation that creates solutions for managing HIV and TB. The EMIT system is a mobile and web-based system used for health management information collection that was implemented for a number of community organisations engaged in HIV related awareness activities around the country. This research study collected the system’s users’ opinions on how appropriate they felt the EMIT system was for their task needs.

Includes bibliographical references. / While it is acknowledged that data is a valuable corporate asset, many companies fail to exploit it in order to better their performance. Organizations today need to be proactive in their operations and have to make informed business decisions in less time than ever before. This puts pressure on the organisations to better govern the use of data within an organization. Literature has shown that a holistic conceptualization of factors affecting data governance is missing. Also there is limited research on the effects of data governance on firm performance. This study therefore seeks to fill this gap by investigating the factors that affect data governance in organization X which operates in the petroleum industry and also determine the extent to which the quality of data governance influences its corporate performance. A conceptual model derived from the literature review was used to guide this study. Data was collected from 50 employees in organisation X whose job descriptions are aligned with data management via an intranet web based survey. Quantitative methods were then used to analyse the data. Results of the regression analysis confirmed four out of six research propositions made. Compliance with data policies and regulations, data stewardship and ownership were not found to be significant predictors of data governance. However, data modeling, data integration and data quality are necessary in order to achieve improved data governance. The present study also confirms that poor data governance has a negative impact on corporate performance suggesting that organisation X needs to enhance the quality of data governance in order to realise its full business value and also improved business performance.

The public sector can be described with different types of public policies and by the services the organisations deliver to citizens. Public sector organisations are implementing e-government projects as mechanisms to enhance public service delivery. However, public sector e-government projects in developing countries are highlighted as challenging. Awards of achievement for implementing e-government projects have been noted in the South African public sector. Business Intelligence (BI) for improved public service delivery has been identified as a key tool to improve decision-making processes. Implementing BI in organisations has been revealed as complex. The study of organisational factors that influence the initiative for successful BI implementation is suggested. For this reason, the research sets out to explore the implementation of BI in the public sector in South Africa. The research was conducted through two case studies. Data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews and document collection with organisations that are implementing BI. A qualitative thematic analysis method was used to construct the major themes that emerged from the data. The research objectives were addressed by constructing three frameworks; to describe what organisational factors influence the BI initiative, the factors that influence the use of BI, and a framework describing the process of implementing BI in the public sector. The Design-Reality gap model was applied to identify risk in the BI projects. The study revealed that BI can be used as an enabler of change and improvement in public sector activities. Consolidating structures, systems and processes was identified as a precursor to implementing BI. However, the level of skills to use BI tools was highlighted as key factor in hindering BI use.

This dissertation describes research that has been undertaken to understand factors influencing software developers' intention to perform test driven development (TDD). Unit tests are a form of testing, where tests are written for small units of software being developed. TDD is a practice where these tests are written before the functionality is written, so as to guide the design of the code for the functionality, as well as to ensure test coverage for all functionality. There has been some research conducted to understand TDD by looking at its effects on both the outcomes and the practice of software development. It has been found to increase quality by decreasing defects, while also increasing the maintainability and the changeability of the code. On the other hand, some research has also found it to increase time spent on completing tasks. Despite this, to the best of the researcher's knowledge, there hasn't been research done to understand the behavioural components of TDD, and in particular, why developers choose to practice TDD. A conceptual model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is described and used as a lens to understand intention. TPB proposes that intention to perform a behaviour (TDD in this case) is influenced by three factors: attitude towards the behaviour, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. This dissertation seeks to build onto this model for the purpose of understanding TDD, and proposes the following determinants of the influences of intention: attitude is influenced by attitude towards time taken, differences in quality, maintainability and developer efficiency; subjective norm is influenced by the perceived perception of the environment regarding changes in quality, time taken, and maintainability of the code. Lastly, perceived behavioural control is posited to be made up of perceived difficulty of TDD, and how much experience a developer has. This model is then tested based on data collected from a n online survey distributed around the world. 779 responses were collected from developers in various countries around the world. The majority of the respondents to practice TDD, allowing us to gain greater insight into why those that practice TDD actually do so. Because the study is a psychographic study, perceptions were understood from the developers using an ordinal Likert scale. To analyse this data in order to prove the hypotheses, Chi -¬‐ square tests with contingency tables, Kruskal -¬‐ Wallis tests and ordinal logistic regression were used as statistical methods. It is found the data collected does not conform to the model, and recommendations are made for a future study to form a more comprehensive model.

Purpose: There is a general consensus that games are effective as learning tools. There is however, a lack of knowledge regarding what makes games effective as a learning tool. The purpose of this study is therefore to answer the question: what are the antecedents of an effective game-based learning environment for the Net generation? The Net generation comprises individuals who prefer to learn using games as a tool. Aim: The aim of this dissertation is to develop a conceptual framework that reflects the antecedents of an effective game-based learning environment for the Net generation. The conceptual framework combines the IS Success Model, and the Task-Technology Fit and Flow theory. Method: The study used a quantitative method. Data was collected using an online instrument. The study used 125 participants from mainly the United Kingdom, United States and South Africa. The model was validated using confirmatory factor analysis and tested using multiple regression analysis. Key Findings: The identified antecedents of effectiveness are Game-Task Fit and Flow, where Flow consists of Clear Goals, Feedback and Concentration. Additionally, the Use factor in the model is replaced by Perceived Usefulness. The Conceptual Framework can be used as an evaluation tool for effective game-based learning environments for the Net generation.