Many organisations use strategic management as an imperative to gain competitive advantages. Theorists have not been able to ascertain whether prescriptive or emergent strategic approaches will be most suitable within an organisational climate for sustaining these competitive advantages. The notion of creativity has been identified as a source of competitive advantage that organisations may make use of within their strategic frameworks. However, within the organisational climate, there may be various barriers to creativity that will impede performance outcomes, efficiency and potential competitive advantage for an organisation. The study concerns itself m d y with an investigation into the strategic and organisational climates within selected higher education institutions in South Africa, as these institutions are in need of an assessment regarding potential sources of competitive advantage, in order to survive. The imperative to remain competitive is primarily due to the turbulent and changeable environments that these institutions find themselves in. This instability has occurred as a result of various changes in higher education due to the merging of several higher education institutions and the changes in the configuration of others. The study has shown that creativity is a source of competitive advantage. This was done by determining which barriers to creativity were present within the organisational climates of the selected institutions, as well as which strategic management approaches were being employed by the said institutions. The information obtained from the data gathered was compared to two competitive advantage measures (throughput and research output rates) of those higher education institutions. Three pivotal questions were asked and answered by the study in this regard. What are the prevalent prescriptive strategy dimensions and processes being employed by selected South African public higher education institutions? What are the prevalent creativity barrier dimensions that exist with selected public higher education institutions in South Africa? What relationships can be observed between the prescriptive strategy dimensions, the creativity barrier dimensions and the organisational competitive advantage performance output dimensions of throughput rate and research output in selected public South African higher education institutions? Non probability, judgment sample was obtained from four selected higher education institutions located in the Gauteng province in South Africa during the latter half of 2004. The survey requested certain biographical information on respondents (who had to fulfill the criteria of being full-time academic employees working for the institution in question), information on the strategic climate and barriers to creativity with the organisational climate. The last section of the questionnaire contained open-ended questions. Data on the throughput and research output rates of the institutions was obtained separately from the South African Department of Education (DOE), and correlated against the data obtained from the questionnaire. The questionnaire was testing for eight pre-determined creativity factors within the organisational climate (identified from the literature review and previous studies), and a separate dimension of prescriptive strategic planning. Overall only five of the creativity barriers were found to be most predominant within the selected higher education institutions, namely: Insufficient Resources; Lack of Team Unity; Lack of Organisational Support; Organisational Hindrances and Workload pressure. The factors were compared to the measures of competitive advantage and it was determined that there was a positive correlation between a higher prevalence of barriers and a lower performance output, which indicated that creativity could be identified as a source of competitive advantage within those institutions. This lent evidence to support the initial, first hypothesis of the study. Furthermore, it was discovered that those institutions that were utilising prescriptive strategic management approaches were more inched to achieve higher performance in terms of their throughput rates. Refuted the second hypothesis of the study that was advocating that emergent strategy was more likely to result in competitive advantage. More education institutions, known for their typically bureaucratic approaches might be more able to utilise formal procedures to obtain increased competitive advantage than utilising a more informal, emergent approach, as academic employees might more freely be able to explore creative alternatives under the security of prescriptive strategic approaches. It is likely that any organisation would wish to improve their competitive performance in order to be more effective. Higher education institutions also need to be concerned about their performance in order to continue operating effectively. It is necessary, then for those higher education institutions, to take note of these potential barriers to creativity with their organisational climates, which were highlighted by the study and to proactively remove them to ensure they remain competitive into the future. In addition, these institutions should consider which strategic management approaches they are currently utilising and streamline them to cement the competitive advantage. It was advocated that South African higher education institutions should be adopting formalised strategic management approaches in this regard. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Business Management))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005.

The study investigated the beliefs and practices of Sotho antenatal women. The aim was to describe the beliefs and practices of Sotho antenatal women in order to contribute to the identification of guidelines for a teaching programme for both midwives and traditional birth attendants. A non-experimental, qualitative research approach, which was exploratory-descriptive and contextual in nature, guided the researcher to explore and describe the beliefs and practices of Sotho antenatal women. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Sotho antenatal women as well as traditional birth attendants. Six themes emerged from the study through the interviews:  the nature of pregnancy  prescriptive practices  restrictive practices  sexual activity  the practice of clinic attendants  the practice of attending traditional birth attendants / Health Studies / M.A (Department of Health Studies)

abstract: This dissertation research investigates the social implications of computing artifacts that make use of sensor driven self-quantification to implicitly or explicitly direct user behaviors. These technologies are referred to here as self-sensoring prescriptive applications (SSPA’s). This genre of technological application has a strong presence in healthcare as a means to monitor health, modify behavior, improve health outcomes, and reduce medical costs. However, the commercial sector is quickly adopting SSPA’s as a means to monitor and/or modify consumer behaviors as well (Swan, 2013). These wearable devices typically monitor factors such as movement, heartrate, and respiration; ostensibly to guide the users to better or more informed choices about their physical fitness (Lee & Drake, 2013; Swan, 2012b). However, applications that claim to use biosensor data to assist in mood maintenance and control are entering the market (Bolluyt, 2015), and applications to aid in decision making about consumer products are on the horizon as well (Swan, 2012b). Interestingly, there is little existing research that investigates the direct impact biosensor data have on decision making, nor on the risks, benefits, or regulation of such technologies. The research presented here is inspired by a number of separate but related gaps in existing literature about the social implications of SSPA’s. First, how SSPA’s impact individual and group decision making and attitude formation within non-medical-care domains (e.g. will a message about what product to buy be more persuasive if it claims to have based the recommendation on your biometric information?). Second, how the design and designers of SSPA’s shape social behaviors and third, how these factors are or are not being considered in future design and public policy decisions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2016

FSCN-rapport; R-02-33

Advances in hearing instrument technology have permitted the development of non-linear prescriptive methods to prescribe amplification characteristics for the hearing- impaired individual. The dispenser’s task in selecting the most appropriate prescriptive procedure for the young child is of utmost importance to ensure optimum hearing aid benefit for communication development. It was the aim of this study to compare and describe the effect of the two most widely used methods, DSL (i/o) and NAL-NL1, on speech recognition and loudness perception. An exploratory, descriptive research design was selected to realise this goal. Ten participants were selected using a convenient non-probability method of sampling. Articulation index calculations and a closed set speech recognition test were utilised in the evaluation of speech recognition, whereas functional gain results and loudness rating measurements provided an opportunity to describe loudness perception. The obtained results were analysed using the SAS (Statistical Analysis System). The study concluded that, although significant statistical differences existed in loudness perception, no statistical difference was observed in actual speech recognition measures. This effect may contribute to the individual amplification approaches of the two methods, which seem to reflect the uncertainties expressed by researchers as to the contribution of high frequency amplification to speech recognition in young children. / Dissertation (M (Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / Unrestricted

In this dissertation, I report on the design, implementation, and evaluation of my intervention for the revision of physics in a mainstream public secondary school in Singapore. This intervention was conducted over a one-year period, and involved students who were taking their GCE 'O' level physics examination after immersion in the intervention, which was conducted as part of their regular physics revision curriculum. Based on sociocultural theory, the intervention changed the practice of how physics revision was conducted in a particular secondary physics classroom. The intervention consisted of a computer-mediated collaborative problem-solving (CMCPS) component and a teacher-led prescriptive tutoring (PT) component. The CMCPS portion of the intervention required the students to follow basic 'ground rules' for computer-mediated problem-solving of physics questions with other students, while the PT portion saw the teacher prescriptively addressing students' misconceptions, misunderstandings, and other problem-solving difficulties as captured by the discussion logs during the CMCPS session. The intervention was evaluated in two stages. First, a small-scale (pilot) study which utilised a control group (CG)/alternate intervention group (AG)/experimental group (XG) with pre- and post-test research design was conducted in order to evaluate whether the intervention was effective in promoting improved learning outcomes of a small group of students. Given the success of the pilot study, a main study involving the entire class of students was conducted. This main study was evaluated by comparing the cohort's actual GCE 'O' level physics results with their expected grades (as given by the Singapore Ministry of Education based on the students' primary school's results). Also, the students' 'O' level physics results were compared with the average physics results obtained by previous cohorts. The quantitative data indicated that the intervention for physics revision appears to be effective in helping the entire class of students revise physics concepts, resulting in improved test scores, while the qualitative data indicated that the students' interest in physics had increased over time. The physics teacher also reflected that the intervention had provided her with much deeper insights into her students' mental models.

This research has the objective to ascertain the Early Childhood teachers work (EI) in texts that bring guidance on this act. This research is justified to seek knowledge to explain how the teacher makes use of these texts. The problem is that motivated the search for information to clarify how the teacher proceeds with these texts, they have instructions or not. The specific objective is to identify how the EI teachers work is represented in the documents: Pedagogical Political Project (PPP) and Teacher Plan Work (PD) and compare them in order to identify teacher job actions in these texts. The theoretical basis of the research is Discursive Social Interactionism (ISD), according to which the texts are reconfigurations of vehicles of human action. Thus, the work activity is as an interactive activity related to language activities, as well as the texts, which are the instrument - in which and through which - the human issues and transmits interpretations and evaluations related properties of the act as your professional and your own work activity. The research is organized into four chapters: the first presents the theoretical and methodological framework of the ISD, the language of activity, action, representation, analysis categories and the Clinical Activity contribution; the second: synthesis of some research on the Brazilian educational work, definition of teaching and their characteristics; third: the historical background of Brazilian EI, explanation of educational laws, list of documents at the federal level that guide the teaching practice, description of quality parameters for this level of education and definition of PPP and PD; fourth: methodological procedures, analysis and discussion of the analysis of the PPP and the PD, and at the conclusion found that the prescriptive document PPP is vague and does not present definition of teacher pedagogical action, in the PD detected that the teacher describe their own work, the teacher describes his own work he writes beyond prescribed for his work by the school unit, but has no description of the actions themselves. / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo geral averiguar o trabalho do professor de Educação Infantil (EI) em textos que trazem orientações sobre esse agir. Esta pesquisa justifica-se por procurar conhecimentos que expliquem como o professor faz uso desses textos. O problema que a motivou é a busca de informações que esclareçam como o professor procede com esses textos, eles apresentam instruções ou não. O objetivo específico é identificar como o trabalho do professor de EI está representado nos documentos: Projeto Político Pedagógico (PPP) e Plano Docente (PD) e compará-los com o intuito de identificar ações do trabalho do professor nesses textos. A base teórica da pesquisa é o Interacionismo Sociodiscursivo (ISD), segundo o qual os textos são veículos de reconfigurações do agir humano. Dessa forma, a atividade de trabalho encontra-se como uma atividade interativa relacionada às atividades de linguagem, assim como os textos, os quais são o instrumento - no qual e pelo qual - o ser humano emite e transmite interpretações e avaliações relacionadas as propriedades do seu agir como profissional e de sua própria atividade de trabalho. A pesquisa está organizada em quatro capítulos: o primeiro apresenta o quadro teórico e metodológico do ISD, a atividade de linguagem, o agir, a representação, categorias de análises e a contribuição da Clínica da Atividade; o segundo: síntese de algumas pesquisas sobre o trabalho educacional brasileiro, definição do trabalho docente e suas especificidades; terceiro: o percurso histórico da EI brasileira, explanação das leis educacionais, síntese dos documentos em nível federal que orientam a prática pedagógica, descrição dos parâmetros de qualidade para esse nível de ensino e definição do PPP e PD; quarto: procedimentos metodológicos, análise e discussão das análises do PPP e do PD, e na conclusão constatamos que o documento prescritivo PPP é vago e não apresenta definição de ação pedagógica docente, no PD detectamos que o professor se autoprescreve, e ao se autoprescrever realiza além do prescrito para seu trabalho pela Unidade Escolar, todavia não apresenta descrição das ações.

Data analytics and optimization theory are well-developed techniques to describe, predict and optimize real-world systems, and they have been widely used in engineering and science. This dissertation focuses on applications in biomedical systems, ranging from the scale of microbial communities to problems relating to human disease and health care. Starting from the microbial level, the first problem considered is to design metabolic division of labor in microbial communities. Given a number of microbial species living in a community, the starting point of the analysis is a list of all metabolic reactions present in the community, expressed in terms of the metabolite proportions involved in each reaction. Leveraging tools from Flux Balance Analysis (FBA), the problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) and new methods are developed to solve large scale instances. The strategies found reveal a large space of nuanced and non-intuitive metabolic division of labor opportunities, including, for example, splitting the Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle (TCA) cycle into two separate halves. More broadly, the landscape of possible 1-, 2-, and 3-strain solutions is systematically mapped at increasingly tight constraints on the number of allowed reactions. The second problem addressed involves the prediction and prevention of short-term (30-day) hospital re-admissions. To develop predictive models, a variety of classification algorithms are adapted and coupled with robust (regularized) learning and heuristic feature selection approaches. Using real, large datasets, these methods are shown to reliably predict re-admissions of patients undergoing general surgery, within 30-days of discharge. Beyond predictions, a novel prescriptive method is developed that computes specific control actions with the effect of altering the outcome. This method, termed Prescriptive Support Vector Machines (PSVM), is based on an underlying SVM classifier. Applied to the hospital re-admission data, it is shown to reduce 30-day re-admissions after surgery through better control of the patient’s pre-operative condition. Specifically, using the new method the patient’s pre-operative hematocrit is regulated through limited blood transfusion. In the last problem in this dissertation, a framework for parameter estimation in Regularized Mixed Linear Regression (MLR) problems is developed. In the specific MLR setting considered, training data are generated from a mixture of distinct linear models (or clusters) and the task is to identify the corresponding coefficient vectors. The problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) subject to regularization constraints on the coefficient vectors. A number of results on the convergence of parameter estimates for MLR are established. In addition, experimental prediction results are presented comparing the prediction algorithm with mean absolute error regression and random forest regression, in terms of both accuracy and interpretability.

Bakgrund: I Sverige får distriktsköterskor, barnmorskor och sjuksköterskor med särskild utbildning skriva ut ett begränsat antal läkemedel. Forskning visar att förskrivning från sjuksköterska inom somatisk vård har fungerat väl. I flera länder omfattas även psykiatriska läkemedel i sjuksköterskans förskrivningsrätt. Psykiatriska tillstånd har ökat i Sverige under 2000-talet och behandlas i många fall med läkemedel. Svenska psykiatrisjuksköterskor har dock inte förskrivningsrätt. Författarna vill med denna uppsats belysa erfarenheter från de länder där sjuksköterskor inom psykiatrisk vård har förskrivningsrätt.  Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva erfarenheter av psykiatrisjuksköterskors förskrivningsrätt av läkemedel.  Metod: Litteraturöversikt med systematisk. Litteratursökningen genomfördes i PubMed, CINAHL och PsycINFO och sammanlagt 12 vetenskapliga kvalitativa originaltitlar inkluderades i resultatet. Resultat: Förskrivningsrätt för sjuksköterskor inom psykiatri bidrog till att vården och yrkesrollen förändrades vilket ledde till en ökad helhetssyn och personcentrerad vård samt förbättrade tillgängligheten och följsamheten. Relationer inom vården förändrades mellan patient, sjuksköterska och läkare. Patienter upplevde att de var välinformerade när sjuksköterska förskrev och övriga behandlingsalternativ övervägdes i större utsträckning. Handledning från erfarna förskrivare lyftes fram som en framgångsfaktor. Slutsats: Erfarenheter av psykiatrisjuksköterskors förskrivningsrätt visade att vården förändrades ifrån flera perspektiv. Även yrkesrollen förändrades till att bli mer självständig vilket inkräktade på sjuksköterskans vårdande roll och påverkade hierarkier inom vården. / Background: In Sweden district nurses, midwives, and nurses with special training may prescribe a limited number of pharmaceuticals. Research has shown that prescriptive authority for nurses in somatic care has been successful. In several countries, psychiatric drugs are also covered by nurses’ prescriptive authority. Psychiatric conditions have increased in Sweden during the 21st century and are in many cases treated with medication. However, Swedish specialist nurses in psychiatric care do not have prescriptive authority. The authors of this essay want to highlight experiences from countries where psychiatric nurses have prescribing rights. Aim: The aim was to describe experiences of psychiatric nurses' prescription authority. Method: Literature review with a systematic approach. The literature search was conducted in PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO, and a total of 12 scientific qualitative original titles were included in the results. Results: Prescriptive authority for nurses in psychiatric care contributed to changes in healthcare and the nursing profession, which led to an increased holistic approach and person-centered care, as well as improved accessibility and compliance. Relationships within healthcare changed between patients, nurses, and doctors. Patients felt well-informed when nurses prescribed, and other treatment options were considered to a greater extent. Guidance from experienced prescribers was highlighted as a success factor. Conclusion: Experiences of psychiatric nurses' prescription authority demonstrated that healthcare underwent changes from multiple perspectives. The nurses’ professional role also transformed to becoming more independent, which encroached upon the nurse’s caring role and impacted hierarchies within healthcare.

The effective implementation of infrastructure asset management systems within organizations that own, operate, and manage infrastructure assets is critical to address the main challenges facing the infrastructure industry (e.g., infrastructure ageing and deterioration, maintenance backlogs, strict regulatory operating conditions, limited financial resources, and losing valuable experience through retirements). Infrastructure asset management systems contain connectivity between major operational components and such connectivity can lead to systemic risks (i.e., dependence-induced failures). This thesis analyzes the asset management system as a network of connected components (i.e., nodes and links) to identify critical components exposed to systemic risks induced by information asymmetry and information overload. This thesis applies descriptive and prescriptive analytics strategies to address information asymmetry and information overload and predictive analytics is employed to enhance the resilience. Specifically, descriptive analytics was employed to visualize the key performance indicators of infrastructure assets ensuring that all asset management stakeholders make decisions using consistent information sources and that they are not overwhelmed by having access to the entire database. Predictive analytics is employed to classify the resilience key performance indicator pertaining to the forced outage rapidity of power infrastructure components enabling power infrastructure owners to estimate the rapidity of an outage soon after its occurrence, and thus allocating the appropriate resources to return the infrastructure to operation. Using predictive analytics allows decision-makers to use consistent and clear information to inform their decision to respond to forced outage occurrences. Finally, prescriptive analytics is applied to optimize the asset management system network by increasing the connectivity of the network and in turn decreasing the exposure of the asset management system to systemic risk from information asymmetry and information overload. By analyzing an asset management system as a network and applying descriptive-, predictive-, and prescriptive analytics strategies, this dissertation illustrates how systemic risk exposure, due to information asymmetry and information overload could be mitigated and how power infrastructure resilience could be enhanced in response to forced outage occurrences. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD) / Effective infrastructure asset management systems are critical for organizations that own, manage, and operate infrastructure assets. Infrastructure asset management systems contain main components (e.g., engineering, project management, resourcing strategy) that are dependent on information and data. Inherent within this system is the potential for failures to cascade throughout the entire system instigated by such dependence. Within asset management, such cascading failures, known as systemic risks, are typically caused by stakeholders not using the same information for decision making or being overwhelmed by too much information. This thesis employs analytics strategies including: i) descriptive analytics to present only relevant and meaningful information necessary for respective stakeholders, ii) predictive analytics to forecast the resilience key performance indicator, rapidity, enabling all stakeholders to make future decisions using consistent projections, and iii) prescriptive analytics to optimize the asset management system by introducing additional information connections between main components. Such analytics strategies are shown to mitigate the systemic risks within the asset management system and enhance the resilience of infrastructure in response to an unplanned disruption.