Purpose – The purpose of this study is to find the organizational practices in place for the performance evaluation of temporary employees and how that varies from permanent employees. Method – The study takes an inductive and interpretive approach to find out the unknown practices. The study is conducted over 7 respondents from different organizations split between recruitment agencies and client organizations and represents practices maintained by both set of industries. Findings – The study identifies low standardization in performance evaluation and discusses the variance from literature over the subject matter. Also a model is drawn based on the amalgamation of literary review and empirical results. Implications – The study presents variance in the processes for temporary employees and the prime areas where the variance occurs. For the organizations to have fair and just performance management system and for equality towards temporary employees, these issues must be addressed. Limitations – Cultural practices are not taken into consideration and literature might be based on different cultural practices than the respondents country and for a wholesome study, more respondents might be needed.

The aim of this thesis is to problematize how and under what conditions organizational performance is constituted in the practices of performance auditing and accounting. Organizational performance disclosure is a world-wide phenomenon for enabling accountability relationships in large organizations regardless of the societal sector they operate in. In constitutive accounting literature, there is a well-established notion that accounting and performance auditing enable “government at a distance” by representing organizational actions and results of those actions, i.e. by constituting performance.  Accounting and performance auditing have been regarded as “technologies of government” that make government from spatial and temporal distances possible by linking political and programmatic ambitions, i.e., the will of a superior, to everyday organizational conduct. However, whereas many previous studies of accounting and performance auditing as technologies of government focus on the discourses over the technologies of accounting and performance auditing, this thesis focuses its analysis on the operationalization of these technologies in local organizational settings. By studying the constitution of performance in the practices of accounting and performance auditing this thesis contributes by problematizing that which supposedly makes government at a distance possible. The thesis is based on two case studies of performance audit and two case studies of performance reporting. On the basis of these papers, the thesis studies the constitution of performance in performance auditing and accounting. Whereas the constitution of performance may seem stable and unproblematic at the level of discourse, this thesis suggests that constituting performance is a complex process of social construction that requires significant organizational efforts and that the ability of accounting and performance auditing to connect political and programmatic ambitions to daily organizational conduct cannot be taken for granted. The thesis suggest that once we acknowledge that performance is a socially constructed representation of organizational actions and begin to pay attention to how performance is constituted in local organizational settings, we can find new ways of addressing the ongoing challenge of constituting performance in accounting and performance auditing and increase our understanding about the ability of these practices to enable government at a distance. / <p>At the time of doctoral defence the following papers were unoublished and had a status as follows: Paper nr. 2: Manuscript; Paper nr. 3: Manuscript; Paper nr. 4: Manuscript</p>

Le rôle de l’entrepreneuriat en tant que levier pour les économies a été beaucoup mis en évidence et depuis longtemps (cf. Schumpeter). Dans ce sens, selon l’OCDE (2016) « L’entrepreneuriat est une source importante de création d’emplois et d’innovation ». De plus, « l’entrepreneuriat est considéré comme un moteur essentiel de la reprise économique et de la croissance de l’emploi » (OCDE, 2012Toutefois, l’aspect « économique » de l’entrepreneuriat semble moins évident pour les cas des femmes entrepreneures. En effet, en 2013, les femmes qui travaillaient à leur compte gagnaient entre 13 % et 60 % de moins que les hommes dans la zone OCDE (OCDE, 2016). Ce constat concernant l’écart en matière de performance économique et de caractéristiques des entreprises créées et gérées par des entrepreneures femmes rejoint les résultats de recherches académiques qui ont noté que celles-ci créent des entreprises de très petites tailles et à faible croissance.Dans le cadre de cette thèse nous optons pour une recherche focalisée exclusivement sur les femmes. Nous mettons ainsi l’accent sur la notion de la performance des entreprises telle qu'elle est vue et définie par ces femmes entrepreneures.L’objectif de ce travail de recherche est de mettre en évidence une définition de la performance donnée par les femmes entrepreneures. Répondre à cette problématique permettrait de contribuer à la littérature en apportant de nouvelles connaissances sur la performance et sur les femmes entrepreneures. En effet, le phénomène dit de « sous-performance » est remis en question, et la performance des entreprises est vue sous un autre angle. En suite, sur un plan plus pratique, comprendre certains phénomènes et comportements permet de mettre en place les dispositifs nécessaires pour mieux les orienter et surtout les encourager. / The role of entrepreneurship has been highlighted as leverage for many economies (see Schumpeter). In this sense, according to the OECD (2016) "Entrepreneurship is an important source of job creation and innovation". In addition, "entrepreneurship is seen as a key driver of economic recovery and employment growth" (OECD, 2012)However, the "economic" aspect of entrepreneurship seems to be less obvious for the case of women entrepreneurs. In 2013, self-employed women earned between 13% and 60% less than men in the OECD area (OECD, 2016). This finding concerning the gap in economic performance and the characteristics of firms created and managed by women entrepreners is consistent with academic research results. Reserchers concluded that women entrepreneurs create smaller and with lower-growth rate firms.In this thesis we opt for a research focused exclusively on women. Thus we emphasize the notion of corporate performance as seen and defined by those women entrepreneurs.The purpose of this research is to highlight a definition of performance given by women entrepreneurs. We aim to contribute to the literature by bringing new knowledge on performance and on women entrepreneurs. Indeed, the phenomenon called "underperformance" is questioned, and the performance of small firms is seen from another angle. Then, on a practical level, politics need to understand certain phenomena and behaviors. That would help them to put in place the necessary devices to better guide women enrepreneurs and especially to encourage them.

In this study, a traffic generator software package namely MTGawn was developed to run packet generation and evaluation on a mobile device. The call generating software system is able to: simulate voice over Internet protocol calls as well as user datagram protocol and transmission control protocol between mobile phones over a wireless network and analyse network data similar to computer-based network monitoring tools such as Iperf and D-ITG but is self-contained on a mobile device. This entailed porting a ‘stripped down’ version of a packet generation and monitoring system with functionality as found in open source tools for a mobile platform. This mobile system is able to generate and monitor traffic over any network interface on a mobile device, and calculate the standard quality of service metrics. The tool was compared to a computer–based tool namely distributed Internet traffic generator (D-ITG) in the same environment and, in most cases, MTGawn reported comparable results to D-ITG. The important motivation for this software was to ease feasibility testing and monitoring in the field by using an affordable and rechargeable technology such as a mobile device. The system was tested in a testbed and can be used in rural areas where a mobile device is more suitable than a PC or laptop. The main challenge was to port and adapt an open source packet generator to an Android platform and to provide a suitable touchscreen interface for the tool. / >Magister Scientiae - MSc

Performance is an important aspect of computer systems since it directly affects user experience. One way to analyze and predict performance is via performance modeling. In recent years, multi-core systems have made processors more powerful while keeping power consumption relatively low. However the complicated design of these systems makes it difficult to analyze performance. This thesis presents performance modeling techniques for cache performance and synchronization cost on multi-core systems. A cache can be designed in many ways with different configuration parameters including cache size, associativity and replacement policy. Understanding cache performance under different configurations is useful to explore the design choices. We propose a general modeling framework for estimating the cache miss ratio under different cache configurations, based on the reuse distance distribution. On multi-core systems, each core usually has a private cache. Keeping shared data in private caches coherent has an extra cost. We propose three models to estimate this cost, based on information that can be gathered when running the program on a single core. Locks are widely used as a synchronization primitive in multi-threaded programs on multi-core systems. While they are often necessary for protecting shared data, they also introduce lock contention, which causes performance issues. We present a model to predict how much contention a lock has on multi-core systems, based on information obtainable from profiling a run on a single core. If lock contention is shown to be a performance bottleneck, one of the ways to mitigate it is to use another lock implementation. However, it is costly to investigate if adopting another lock implementation would reduce lock contention since it requires reimplementation and measurement. We present a model for forecasting lock contention with another lock implementation without replacing the current lock implementation.

This study deals with the employee perception on the effectiveness of the performance management and performance appraisal system fairness at the National Security Agency, Department of Training. Organisational factors such as (appraisal knowledge), were used as a guide for assessing effectiveness of the system and its fairness. The quantitative approach/method was used to gain and understand employee perceptions on the system based on their personal experiences of the organisation's performance management system. The research chosen was Quantitative, which is the most appropriate approach to the study. The survey used self-administered e-mailed and hand delivered questionnaires to gather data from the respondents. The questionnaires had a brief overview of the research methodology, to give a reader a clear picture of the processes and procedure that were followed. The data was analysed quantitatively by using SPSS system. The overall findings show that many employees perceive the system not effective and not fair. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2014

Published Article / This article reports the findings and results of the Masters study on the causes of poor performance of learners in English in primary schools in Leribe district. A literature study was conducted to explore and to identify the causes of poor performance of learners in English in the literature. The findings of the study were collected by means of in-depth individual interviews the manifestation of the causes of poor performance of learners in English was investigated from the participants. Based on interpretive theory employing qualitative research approach, data collected and analysed from the individual interviews were analysed as emerging and themes. The findings of the study repudiate the argument that existence of the Education policy inevitably leads to sound improvement of learners in English in primary schools and consequently quality education improved.

Performance Management is both a strategic and an integrated approach to delivering successful results in organizations by improving the performance and developing the capabilities of teams and individuals. The term performance management gained its importance and popularity in the1980’s when the competitive pressures in the market place started rising. This is when organizations felt the need of introducing a comprehensive performance management process into their systems for improving productivity and performance effectiveness. Performance management can be regarded as a continuous process of managing the performance of people to get desired results. Performance management is beneficial to major stakeholders of an organization by clearly describing what is supposed to be done for attaining certain desired goals. However focus on performance management may be fruitless without the existence of effective implementation, proper organizational design and management systems.

This thesis applies structural reliability measures for the performance based design of residential PV system structures. These measures are intended to support designers in delivering systems with quantified and consistent reliability. Existing codified practices prescribe global factors (allowable stress design) and partial factors (load and resistance factor design) intended to provide an acceptable level of reliability as defined by historical practice. When applied to residential PV systems this prescriptive approach has two flaws, (1) calibration efforts needed to ensure consistency across structural system types have not kept up with the commercially available system types and (2) the actual expected reliability is not quantified and available to support decisions. The proposed reliability measures include probability of failure conditioned to wind speed in a fragility curve and the reliability index β, both of which are commonly used in performance based design. The approach is demonstrated through the application of the reliability measures to code compliant designs. Diverse system types are utilized to demonstrate how the existing code prescribed approach may lead to non-uniform structural performance. For each of the system types on which the reliability measures are demonstrated, a code compliant design is developed for three roof slopes, wind tunnel testing is conducted to provide an experimental measure of wind pressure coefficients, system specific fragility curves are generated to quantify the probability of failure conditioned to a set of wind speeds, and then, a site specific wind model is applied to produce a probability of failure and reliability index β. Through the performance based approach proposed in this thesis, two key outputs show non-uniform and unanticipated structural performance of PV systems designed according to the prescriptive code method. The two key outputs which illustrate this finding are fragility curves which illustrate the probability of failure over a range of wind speeds and reliability index, β values which couple the structural and wind distributions for a single measure of reliability.

The purpose of my thesis is to create one-person show lasting approximately twenty minutes. The following paper contains the step-by-step process of developing this piece of work, audience reactions to the final performance, and thoughts on continuing the process in hope of sharing the play with other communities. / text