Ball State University LibrariesLibrary services and resources for knowledge buildingMasters ThesesThere is no abstract available for this thesis.

This dissertation research is focused on how we, as researchers, ‘influence’ others researchers. In particular, I am concerned with the notion of what constitutes the ‘influence’ of a scholar and how ‘influence’ is conferred upon scholars. This research is concerned with the construct called ‘scholarly influence’. Scholarly influence is of interest because a clear “theory of scholarly influence” does not yet exist. Rather a number of surrogate measures or concepts that are variable are used to evaluate the value of one’s academic work. ‘Scholarly influence’ is broken down into ‘ideational influence’ or the influence that one has through publication and the uptake of the ideas presented in the publication, and ‘social influence’ or the influence that one has through working with other researchers. Finally through the use of the definition of ‘scholarly influence’ this dissertation tries to commence a definition of ‘quality’ in scholarly work.

The design-build construction industry has recognized the advantages of a collaborative contracting method; however it has yet to create information systems that can truly support the industry. Many software applications have been created to assist the Design-Builder; however no software provider has created an application that can completely manage the design-build process from beginning to end. Although some software providers have attempted to integrate data between various project management activity modules (estimating, scheduling, accounting, etc), no software provider has resolved the need to integrate data between both project management activity modules and the various phases of the design-build life cycle. The advancements of the design-build industry method of contracting will never be fully achieved until an information system is designed to specifically support the industry. This paper details the conceptual development of a management control system designed to not only integrate data among various project management activities modules but also to integrate data between all phases of the design-build project life cycle.

A framework for monitoring the dependencies between users, applications, and other system components, combined with the actual access times and frequencies, was proposed. Operating system commands were used to extract event information from the end-user workstations about the dependencies between system, application and infrastructure components. Access times of system components were recorded, and data mining tools were leveraged to detect usage patterns. This information was integrated and used to predict whether or not the failure of a component would cause an operational impact during certain time periods. The framework was designed to minimize installation and management overhead, to consume minimal system resources (e.g. network bandwidth), and to be deployable on a variety of enterprise systems, including those with low-bandwidth and partial-connectivity characteristics. The framework was implemented in a test environment to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The system was tested on small-scale (6 computers in the GT CERCS Laboratory over 35 days) and large-scale (76 CPR nodes across the entire GT campus over 4 months) data sets. The average size of the impact topology was shown to be approximately 4% of the complete topology, and this size reduction was related to providing system administrators the capability to better identify those users and resources most likely to be affected by a designated set of component failures during a designated time period.

Thesis (M.Sc.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Restricted until June 2001. Bibliography: leaves [93]-98.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2009. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Health and Science, School of Computing and Mathematics, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

Thesis (M. Inf. Sc.)--University of Pretoria, 2002. / Summaries in Afrikaans and English. Includes bibliographical references.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / This mini-dissertation is about ways by which a South African bank may improve alignment of information systems and business strategies.

D. Tech. Policing / The first legislation on accident reporting in South Africa was promulgated in 1913 in an ordinance of Transvaal, one of the four provinces of South Africa at the time. Since then several amendments have been made to legislation on accident reporting, but accident reporting has continued to be time consuming and unnecessarily complicated. It seems that technology is not yet utilised to its full potential. Therefore this study investigates ways in which an online application (app) for accident reporting could be designed and implemented. The development and implementation of a simpler and modern app for online accident reporting could successfully address the problem of unavailable statistics for minor damage-only accidents. By amending the National Road Traffic Act, 1996 (Act 93 of 1996) to accommodate more cost-effective online accident reporting through eAccident, the time spent on compiling the current accident reports could be minimised and costly human resources could be utilised more effectively in core police functions such as law enforcement.

M. Tech. Business Information Studies / Organizations, at all levels of operations, need to establish systems to manage the creation, capture, flow, and delivery of knowledge and information. Furthermore, systems are being designed by many organizations to facilitate Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Systems are being implemented in an attempt to increase the quality and speed of knowledge creation and distribution in organizations. The problem is, such systems are often seen to clash with corporate culture and as a result have limited impact. This research/study aimed at determining factors likely to influence the implementation of knowledge management in an organization where knowledge transfer/sharing is critical to its operational efficiency. The study will also investigative the challenges of implementing knowledge management in an organization using Eskom as Case study.