Performance management research in the private and public sector has received much attention in management accounting research; however, empirical studies on performance management in the non-profit sector remain scarce. This study proposes and validates a model that explains the relationships between contingency variables, performance management practices, and organisational effectiveness in the non-profit sector. The study employed a mixed methods research approach, which entailed a field study and a cross-sectional survey in the Kenyan non-profit sector. The field study was undertaken to understand the perceptions of NPO leaders on non-profit sector characteristics, organisational effectiveness, determinants, challenges, and benefits of implementation of performance management systems in the Kenyan non-profit sector. Thereafter, a cross-sectional survey (using mailed questionnaires and an online survey) was used to collect quantitative primary data. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the quantitative data. The structural equation modelling approach was adopted to test the hypothesised relationships among the contingency factors, performance management practices and organisational effectiveness. The findings indicate that performance management in NPOs can be categorised into three groups: performance planning, performance measurement and performance context. The NPOs emphasise mission statements and core values within the formal PM system. Although a number of private sector measurement frameworks are utilised, the NPOs mostly use logical framework, with emphasis on output and financial measures and team based targets with no clear rewards. The PM systems are resource intensive and they lead to goal displacement and narrow definition and measurement of organisational effectiveness. The results further reveal that among the contingency variables, strategic orientation significantly predicted performance management practices and organisational effectiveness in non-profits. Among the performance management variables, performance planning, performance targets, and performance rewards significantly predict organisational effectiveness domains. Furthermore, performance management practices mediate the relationship between strategic orientations, technology, information technology, leadership and external environment and organisational effectiveness domains. However, organisational size was not significantly related to performance management practices or organisational effectiveness. To successfully implement and benefit from the PM system, non-profit organisations need to address the fit between contextual factors and the performance management system. By employing a pragmatic, embedded, mixed methods approach this study provides empirical evidence of performance management practices that influence organisational effectiveness beyond the rhetoric of performance management theory. At the practice level, the findings will benefit Kenya government, non-profit organisations, donor agencies and performance evaluation practitioners.

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

D.Com. (Economics) / The objective of this dissertation was to examine the economic relevance of the actuarial. practice of investment Performance measurement and the valuation of the assets and liabilities of the South African private pension funds. South Africans are great contractual savers.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Bibliography: leaf 55. / by Lana Yook Pung Choy. / M.C.P.

The master's thesis focuses on project management. The basic terms of project management, the lifecycle of a project and project stakeholders are decribed in the theoretical part of the thesis. The EVM method and survey are characterized in the methodological part of the thesis. Afterwards Komerční banka, a.s. and its project management practice are presented. The essential part of the thesis consists of the analysis of a selected project and a survey in Komerční banka, a.s. The final part of the thesis presents recommended measures resulting from the analysis.

The importance of integrating design and manufacturing becomes apparent when the increase in the degree of difficulty of change is observed as the product development proceeds from concept to production in a serial engineering process. The greatest opportunity in design for manufacture occurs at the initial design stage before any commitments to tooling and equipment have been made. This research develops a framework and an implementation system dealing with integration of design, manufacturing and economic aspects in the development of a product. The objective is to evaluate process technology for a specified product design and to identify the best work/tool material combination and production conditions to optimize the production process. A commercial CAD/CAM package (SmartCAM) playing roles as a part design tool, a processing time simulator, and a NC code generator is integrated with a manufacturing database, and a machining cost model. This integrated system runs in Microsoft Windows environment under an external program which not only coordinates the activities of various modules but also enhances the capabilities of SmartCAM. This system allows product design evaluation for economic and technical criteria and recommends best manufacturing environment. An NC program containing recommended machining parameters is generated. Furthermore, the system reports on tool wear on each tool per part manufactured. This information is useful for cost analysis as well as for producing a tool replacement schedule. / Graduation date: 1995

This research project focuses on understanding the reasons why projects executed within Denel UAVS do not meet the objectives as set out in beginning of the project and inevitably, the project fails. The aim of the study is to meet the following objectives: 1) To evaluate the effect the current project management process practiced within Denel UAVS has on project success. 2) To evaluate the effect of size and complexity of projects executed within Denel UAVS has on project success. 3) To establish the most important interpersonal skills required by project managers, within Denel UA VS for project success. 4) To evaluate the influence the current organisational structure within Denel UAVS has on project success. The research method for this research project consists of two phases: namely phase one - Literature Review and phase two - Empirical study. The Literature review was conducted to evaluate the common reasons for project failure and to gain a better understanding of defining project success. A survey questionnaire was distributed to employees of Denel UAVS to obtain quantitative data as part of the Empirical study. The research provides information on results obtained and specific analysis of data collected from employees within Denel UAVS. The research also provides information on the reasons for project failure within Denel UAVS. The researcher makes recommendations to the management of Denel UAVS based on the results obtained from this study. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2006.

M.B.A / The performance of project delivery in the software development domain has a poor history of successes. This research focused on identifying some of the reasons for this poor performance for software development projects in order to propose a possible framework for measuring and evaluating a software development project's performance. The proposed framework is intended to link individual project performance into the strategic performance measurements for an organisation and hence includes the aspect of being able to evaluate an individual project's performance relative to other projects within a programme, organisation or industry. The research was conducted through in-depth interviews and literature studies. The following three Key findings resulted from this study: • Firstly that unless an organisation establishes upfront what the intended use of the measurements is, as well as how they as an organisation and project define "project success" in terms of their overall objectives, any measurements taken will be oflittle value. • Secondly that there is still strong support for the generic measurements of Time, Cost, and Quality all within good customer relations, however, these need to take into account the aspects of project complexity, project management skills, the team fit and the accuracy of the estimates. • Thirdly that the ultimate framework adopted by an organisation for measuring and evaluating project performance should be simple without being simplistic and hence should be generic and easy to implement across a broad range of projects.

D.Phil. / In spite of developments in the field of Human Resource Development (HRD field) with regard to the development of human resources, the HRD field has no universally accepted evaluation paradigm that could be utilised for evaluating the impact of HRD interventions. This unsatisfactory state of evaluation was brought about, firstly, by the prevailing dominance of the Kirkpatrick approach (1994) towards evaluation and, secondly, by the absence of empirically-tested evaluation models. Although the Kirkpatrick approach to evaluation establishes a logical frame of reference for evaluation, this approach could be considered controversial and restrictive. Furthermore, the taxonomic nature of the Kirkpatrick approach provides limited prospects for explaining the contribution and impact HRD interventions could have on enhanced organisational effectiveness. Consequently, a need exists for an innovative HRD evaluation paradigm that offers satisfactory exposition possibilities with regard to the effectiveness of interventions. Furthermore, the Human Resource Development field is characterised by a lack of terminological congruence particularly with regard to such concepts as evaluation, Human Resource Development and organisational effectiveness. In order to overcome the problem, concepts that are applicable to the study in question, were defined and a few objectives that could be achieved by means of evaluation were explained/highlighted. From further analysis of a variety of evaluation approaches propounded in literature it appears that the conceptualisation of evaluation areas such as reaction, learning and performance could be considered problematic. Furthermore, these evaluation approaches focus mainly on evaluating the impact of a few interventions without determining the contribution of most interventions for enhanced organisational effectiveness. Bearing relation to the aforementioned, important variables that occur on individual, group and organisational levels, and that influence the effectiveness of an intervention, are not considered. The aforementioned, therefore, does not indicate that the evaluation approaches followed could be considered as faulty, but instead that these approaches could be regarded as incomplete. Against the above background, an Evaluation Model has been formulated that could overcome evaluation problems. The model includes five major factors, namely individual, group and organisational factors, the learning environment and the components of the training cycle. It has been hypothesised that these factors mutually interact with each other and transform HRD inputs into specific outputs. These elements also serve as outputs of the HRD function and it has been argued that the factors could be considered as indicative of effective HRD iniatives. The elements of the transformational process serve as one of three key evaluation areas, of which the other two evaluation areas are organisational effectiveness and external factors. The proposed evaluation approach thus pays attention to the impact and interaction between the different elements, the point of departure being that effective transformation (that is, processing HRD inputs to outputs) would only be possible if full functional discharge occurs in all the elements.

Increased production and use of multimedia data has led to the development of a more advanced Database Management System (DBMS), like an Object Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS). These advanced databases are necessitated by the complexity in structure and the functionality required by multimedia data. Unfortunately, no suitable benchmarks exist with which to test the performance of databases when handling multimedia data. This thesis describes the design of a benchmark to measure the performance of basic functionality found in multimedia databases. The benchmark, called MORD (Multimedia Object Relational Databases), targets Oracle, a well known commercial Object Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS) that can handle multimedia data. Although MORD targets Oracle, it can easily be applied to other Multimedia Database Management System (MMDBMS) as a result of a design that stressed its portability, and simplicity. MORD consists of a database schema, test data, and code to simulate representative queries on multimedia databases. A number of experiments are described that validate MORD and ensure its correct design and that its objectives are met. A by-product of these experiments is an initial understanding of the performance of multimedia databases. The experiments show that with multimedia data the buffer cache should be at least large enough to hold the largest dataset, a bigger block size improves the performance, and turning off logging and caching for bulk loading improves the performance. MORD can be used to compare different ORDBMS or to assist in the configuration of a specific database.