A disassembling of the Virginia Theatre Machine (VTM), LLC and its annual restaging of an adaption of Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol. The VTM is a custom-built trailer theater that combines the performance energy of street theater with the magic and wonder of a fully designed theatrical production. I provide a historical context for this 21st century revising of mobile theater that switches the paradigm of the traditional theater experience by bringing the stage to audiences, for free. I draw from critical social and cultural theory to make sense of the audience impact in public and private outdoor spaces. I examine how each new performance environment brings its own resonance to bear on the wonder of the presentation at hand. I present the VTM as an alternative business model and form of theater outreach to inspire a new generation of theater-makers to rethink the traditional constraints of producing theatre.

<p>Fenomenen mobilitet och mobila IT-tjänster är något som är mycket aktuellt idag inom flera sektorer. Mobilitet förknippas med ett oberoende av att vara på en viss plats vid en viss tid och det kan skapa helt nya förutsättningar för kommunikation mellan medarbetare som jobbar i fält eller är på resande fot. Att kunna införa mobila IT-tjänster i sin verksamhet är för företag något som kan öka effektiviteten, spara resurser och minska fel i rapporteringen. Transportnäringen, vården, service och underhåll, försäljning, övervakning är verksamhetsområden där mobila IT-tjänster införts som hjälpmedel. Området har dock kantats av såväl missbedömningar som succéer. Mobila IT-tjänster som används inom företag kallas mobile business. </p><p>Med hjälp av insamlat material från böcker, artiklar och rapporter samt vår kvalitativa och kvantitativa undersökning kan vi konstatera att utvecklingen av mobila IT-tjänster är problematiskt. Vi kan också konstatera att det finns en god insikt om denna problematik hos dem som utvecklar dessa tjänster och att användarna överlag har en god acceptans av tjänsterna. Vi påstår att det finns två krafter som driver utvecklingen av dessa tjänster idag. Den rent tekniska drivkraften som har sin utgångspunkt i att förbättra tekniken i sig för att på den vägen skapa nya attraktiva tjänster och den rent behovsdrivna som via kundernas behov försöker använda och anpassa den teknik som redan finns.</p>

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'explorer une nouvelle technologie qui remporte un certain succès dans les organisations de service connue sous l’appellation Field Force Automation (FFA). Cette technologie appartient à un vaste domaine émergent, les applications professionnelles mobiles (M-Business). Ce terme englobe tous les types d’applications mobiles destinés aux entreprises ; son succès est principalement lié à sa capacité à relier à l’entreprise, les collaborateurs de terrain (par exemple, les techniciens, les pompiers, les chauffeurs routiers etc.) qui travaillaient préalablement sans liaison directe avec leur base. L’utilisation de ces technologies, permet à ces travailleurs d’accéder à, de collecter et de traiter des données à distance et en temps réel. Le fait de connecter les collaborateurs mobiles permet à l'entreprise d'accroître sa performance, en augmentant la productivité des techniciens tout en réduisant les coûts liés aux déplacements. Malgré tous ces avantages, l’utilisation de cette technologie pose des problèmes aux communautés de techniciens, plus particulièrement ceux qui subissent des changements fondamentaux dans leur mode de travail, car cette technologie a profondément modifié la manière dont ils coordonnent leur travail. En effet, avant l'utilisation de ces technologies, les techniciens se rendaient à la station centrale afin d'obtenir leur charge de travail. Ils doivent maintenant partir en intervention directement de leur domicile. Les organisations ont appliqué un changement technique, mais ont mal pris en compte l’impact de ce changement sur la structure sociale. Notamment le fait que les techniciens ne se rendaient pas à la station centrale uniquement pour obtenir leur charge de travail mais aussi pour y échanger leurs expériences, discuter des problèmes rencontrés et des solutions apportées accroissant ainsi l’efficacité de leur travail. Selon l’approche sociotechnique, le manque d’attention à la structure sociale dans l’application de cette nouvelle technologie condamne à l’échec ces technologies au niveau des organisations qui ne prendraient pas en compte cette dimension. Ce phénomène est à l’origine de ce projet de recherche. Cette recherche a pour but d’explorer comment et pourquoi le fait de se concentrer sur la dimension technique peut mener l’implantation de ces technologies à l'échec et impacter négativement la performance des organisations. Pour analyser cette problématique, nous avons appliqué une approche sociotechnique afin d’étudier le changement organisationnel, car cette approche se base sur deux propositions majeures: le changement technique seul impacte négativement la performance de l'organisation et le changement sociotechnique impacte positivement la performance de l'organisation. Afin d’examiner et comparer ces propositions, un design de cas multiples est nécessaire pour les confirmer. L’entreprise France Télécom correspond à ce design de recherche, sollicitée elle a accepté de m’accueillir pour effectuer cette recherche. L’observation de cas au sein de cette organisation nous permet d’identifier et de comparer plusieurs exemples concrets reflétant le changement technique et ce que nous appelons le changement sociotechnique. / The aim of this thesis is to explore a new emerging technology, now gaining success in organization, called Field Force Automation (FFA) that belongs to an ever-widening, area called the Mobile Business (M-Business), a term that encompasses all kinds of mobile applications addressed to companies. This success is mainly related to its capacity for connecting Field workers, like technicians, the Fire Brigade, truck drivers and many others to corporate organizations. These workers were previously working in disconnected mode, but can now access, collect and process data remotely and in real-time. As a result, this new way of technological connectivity allows companies to increase their performance by increasing technician productivity and reducing travel-related costs. However, despite these advantages, its use is problematic, especially for the communities of technicians because its implementation implies fundamental changes of their work context, particularly concerning coordination. Before the use of these technologies, technicians went to the central station in order to get their workload. However, with the use of this technology, they can start working directly from home. In doing so, organizations applied a positive technical change but overlooked the human dimension, more precisely the collaboration between the technicians, which increases efficiency at work by exchanging experiences, discussing problems and solutions and the usual friendly interaction which gives team cohesion. According to the socio-technical approach, missing this social structure in the implementation of this new technology condemns it to failure. It is through this observation that this research project has taken shape with the aim of exploring how and why accentuating the technical dimension at the expense of the social one leads to the failure of the Information Systems (IS) innovation and decreases the overall performance of the organization in question. To analyze this problematic we applied a socio-technical theory, applied to organizational change because it argues that technical change alone can negatively impact the work performance whereas socio-technical change can impact an organization’s performance positively. Multiple-case design is required to compare these two cases and confirm or refute the above theory. France Télécom was the company selected because those types of change could be observed separately and subsequently compared. The results of this research take the form of concrete examples from the real world of what we can call technical and socio-technical change.

Fenomenen mobilitet och mobila IT-tjänster är något som är mycket aktuellt idag inom flera sektorer. Mobilitet förknippas med ett oberoende av att vara på en viss plats vid en viss tid och det kan skapa helt nya förutsättningar för kommunikation mellan medarbetare som jobbar i fält eller är på resande fot. Att kunna införa mobila IT-tjänster i sin verksamhet är för företag något som kan öka effektiviteten, spara resurser och minska fel i rapporteringen. Transportnäringen, vården, service och underhåll, försäljning, övervakning är verksamhetsområden där mobila IT-tjänster införts som hjälpmedel. Området har dock kantats av såväl missbedömningar som succéer. Mobila IT-tjänster som används inom företag kallas mobile business. Med hjälp av insamlat material från böcker, artiklar och rapporter samt vår kvalitativa och kvantitativa undersökning kan vi konstatera att utvecklingen av mobila IT-tjänster är problematiskt. Vi kan också konstatera att det finns en god insikt om denna problematik hos dem som utvecklar dessa tjänster och att användarna överlag har en god acceptans av tjänsterna. Vi påstår att det finns två krafter som driver utvecklingen av dessa tjänster idag. Den rent tekniska drivkraften som har sin utgångspunkt i att förbättra tekniken i sig för att på den vägen skapa nya attraktiva tjänster och den rent behovsdrivna som via kundernas behov försöker använda och anpassa den teknik som redan finns.

Mobile information and communication technology (ICT) has the capability to strategically influence and completely transform SMEs. It provides heterogeneous benefits in information sharing, collaboration and corporate interactions. However, mobile resources do not improve competitive performance on their own. Instead, purposeful or tacit strategic actions are required to combine existing resources in innovative ways, to acquire additional valuable resources or to dispose of redundant resources. Companies have to accomplish this quickly and repeatedly if they are to remain competitive. This research project employs the strategic management theory of dynamic capabilities (DCs) in a qualitative case study to analyse the transformational capacity of mobile ICT in each SME from a strategic perspective. Candidates from ten SMEs were interviewed. The data was analysed to identify: a) the DCs that are essential for mobile transformation in SMEs, and b) the practices that develop and maintain the effectiveness of these capabilities. Eight distinct mobile DCs are identified, each contributing to firm performance, profitability or strategic advantage over competitors. The results were consistent with previous research in DCs by confirming a maximised effectiveness of capabilities when they are tautly coupled with business strategy. The dissertation concludes with valuable guidelines and a conceptual framework for SMEs to strategically utilise mobile ICT and achieve mobile transformation. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Informatics / unrestricted

Business Intelligence (BI) has now become a core part to many businesses due to the benefits it brings -- the ability to access data in a common format from multiple sources and making decisions that help organization to move closer to its goals. Many workers today spend most of their time away from their office and can't easily access corporate data. The use of the Internet on mobile devices has changed the way people consume information. Embracing mobile computing means having the ability to access information anywhere, anytime and as a result consumers can make decisions faster. Thesis is focused on mobile Business Intelligence and the aim is to provide o comprehensive overview of this area, examine market trends, define critical success factors for implementation projects, and introduce mobile BI platform QlikView. Furthermore it explains the differences between traditional and mobile BI, explores benefits and drawbacks of these tools and the challenges that must be addressed. The reader will learn what types of employees and tasks are suited for mobile BI programs and outlined critical success factors might be valuable information for any company planning implementation of mobile BI tools.

Today’s global markets demand global processes. Increasingly, these processes are not only distributed, but also contain mobile aspects. We discuss two challenges brought about by these mobile business processes: Firstly, the need to specify the distribution of processes across several sites, and secondly, the need to specify the dialog flows of the applications implementing those processes on mobile devices. To remedy the first challenge, we give an overview of the Process Landscaping method with its support for refining processes across multiple abstraction layers and associating their activities and objects with distinguished locations. Next, we present a Dialog Flow Notation and Dialog Control Framework for the specification and management of complex hypertext-based dialog flows. These tools allow developers to build user interfaces for mobile client devices with different input/output capabilities, which all access the same application logic on a central server.

This article describes the method of Mobile Process Landscaping by example of a project in which the service processes of a company from the housing industry were analyzed regarding their mobile potential. This analysis was conducted with the aim to organize these processes more efficiently in order to realize cost savings. Therefore, the method of Mobile Process Landscaping, which is introduced in this article, was used. The method refers to the stage of requirements engineering in the software process. It is shown how the initial situation of the company was analyzed, which alternative process models on the basis of mobility supporting technology were developed and how these alternatives were economically evaluated. Furthermore, it is shown how first restrictions for the software and system design were made on the basis of one process model. Finally, it is shown how the Mobile Process Landscaping method can be used to verify whether the adoption of mobility supporting technology is suitable to obtain a defined goal and which requirements such a solution needs to fulfill.

Magistriniame darbe buvo įvertinti elektroninio verslo ir bevielio ryšio technologijų taikymo aspektai, atliktas elektroninio verslo paslaugų plėtros galimybių panaudojant bevieles technologijas tyrimas. Darbe pateikiama susisteminta bevielio ryšio technologijų ir paslaugų kaip mokslo problemos analizė, įvertinamos Lietuvoje veikiančios technologijos, paslaugos ir sprendimų sistemos, kurioms įgyvendinti panaudojamos bevielės technologijos. Pirmoje magistrinio darbo dalyje buvo išanalizuotos bevielės technologijos, taikomos elektroninio verslo ir mobilaus verslo organizavimui. Antroje magistrinio darbo dalyje buvo išanalizuotos bevielio ryšio technologijų taikymo galimybės elektroninio verslo ir elektroninio verslo paslaugų srityse. Trečioje magistrinio darbo dalyje buvo išplėstos elektroninio verslo paslaugų teikimo modelio komponentės, taikant bevielio ryšio technologijas. Ketvirtoje dalyje buvo atliktas eksperimentinis tyrimas, kuris leido įvertinti elektroninio verslo plėtros galimybes panaudojant bevieles technologijas Lietuvoje. / In this master work the aspects of application of electronic business and wireless communication technologies were evaluated, the research of electronic business services’ development, while using wireless technologies, was completed. In the work systemized analysis of wireless connection technologies and services is provided as analysis of scientific problem; technologies, existing in Lithuania, services and solution systems, the implementation of which uses wireless technologies, are also evaluated. . In the first part of this work wireless technologies applied in organization of electronic business and mobile business were analyzed. The second part of master work analyzes the possibilities of wireless communication technologies’ application in the field of electronic business and services of electronic business. In the third part of master work the components of model of e. business’ service provision were enlarged by applying wireless communication technologies. The fourth part presents experimental research, which allowed evaluating the possibilities of electronic business development by using wireless technologies in Lithuania.

This thesis presents/offers a comprehensive view of the issue of mobile Internet aimed at very small businesses and traders. In my thesis I focus on the practical applicability of mobile Internet by means of mobile technologies in the forenamed undertakings. First part of the thesis deals with the methodology of the area of very small businesses and traders and analyses present possibilities of application of mobile technologies and their suitability and usability for very small businesses and traders. Second part of the thesis identifies types of undertaking that can take advantage of mobile Internet and shows that this technology entails time and funds saving. Third part demonstrates concrete applications of mobile Internet in the activities of undertakings and presents the possibilities of gaining a support from the European Union structural funds for the implementation of mobile Internet.