More than ninety per cent of projects are run by project teams and the stronger the team the more likely the project will succeed. Team building activities are performed to both increase team performance and to enhance the likelihood of project success. For the purpose of this study, information technology (IT) business projects were chosen as IT is a major driving force in business today and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of IT business projects. In analysing the causes of dissatisfaction, increasingly researchers are recognising that technology is a secondary issue behind the human side of project team management. Business projects were chosen because increasingly IT is being used in the business environment to solve problems in the post-industrial era characterised by the service industry, while the manufacturing industry, from which much of the project literature has emerged, reduces. The importance of the project team in developing IT business projects is well recognised and managers are concerned about their ability to transform an ad-hoc collection of people assigned to a particular project into a coherent, integrated project team. In most cases the activities recommended to build a successful IT business project team have been theoretically based, rather than empirically founded. The goal of this research was to investigate the team building activities used on successful projects. To achieve this goal, the research defines the key measures of project success and establishes their relative importance; determines the most important team building activities for project success with experienced project managers; enhances the understanding of implementation of team building activities on successful projects; and provides suggestions on how to increase the likelihood of project success through focusing on team building activities. The research used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to develop a hierarchical model linking project success measures with team building activities. Confirmation of the AHP results and additional understanding of team building activities implementation was achieved by interviewing experienced project managers. The research found that customer satisfaction, although seldom used, was significantly more important as a project success measure than the three measures most often used - time, budget and scope. As identified by project managers, the most important team building activities for achieving customer satisfaction are team leadership; ensuring senior management support; staffing the team properly; planning the project with the team and empowering team members; building commitment among team members; developing strong communication channels and developing appropriate organisational interfaces. The research found successful projects focused on relationships in addition to the task focus of many project methodologies. The research findings on team building activities will enable project leaders on IT business projects to develop empowered project teams with stronger affiliations and support throughout the organisation. By empowering project teams to create effective internal and external relationships there will be fewer project failures, increased customer satisfaction and improved achievement of project success.

La qualité de l’enseignement primaire en Côte d’Ivoire s’est fortement dégradée au cours de ces trois dernières décennies. Cette situation est la résultante d’une gestion approximative du système éducatif, qui se caractérise par une insuffisance de support pédagogique, une mauvaise allocation des ressources, un encombrement des salles de classe (42 élèves par enseignants au primaire) et un déficit d’enseignants qualifiés et bien formés. En outre, le conflit militaro-politique de septembre 2002 n’a guère amélioré cet état de choses, bien au contraire, il n’a fait que détériorer davantage la situation. Ainsi, la présente thèse s’est fixée comme objectifs d’analyser, d’une part l’influence des dotations en ressources sur l’efficacité des écoles primaires en Côte d’Ivoire sur la base d’une enquête sur les compétences réalisée par le Ministère de l’Education Nationale et d’autre part, d’examiner l’impact du conflit militaro-politique de septembre 2002 sur la demande d’éducation en s’appuyant sur les données des enquêtes MICS-2000 et 2006 réalisées auprès des ménages. Pour ce faire, une classification des écoles selon leur dotation en ressources s’est faite, ensuite, au moyen de la méthode de l’enveloppe des données (DEA, méthode non paramétrique), une frontière d’efficience est construite pour mettre en exergue les spécificités des écoles et enfin une estimation économétrique (modèle Tobit sur les données censurées) est mise en œuvre pour déceler les facteurs influençant la formation des scores d’efficacité. Il ressort des analyses qu’une augmentation de la quantité des ressources allouées à une école n’est pas gage de sa performance car les facteurs d’efficacités ne résident pas dans les dotations en quantité, mais plutôt dans les dotations en qualité c'est-à-dire les valeurs et caractéristiques intrinsèques aux personnes et matériaux mises à la disposition des écoles, ceci fait dans un souci d’adéquation aux besoins spécifiques des écoles et d’équité. Par ailleurs, à partir d’une méthodologie combinant à la fois l’estimation par les doubles différences, l’estimation par les triples différences et la correction par les contrôles de robustesse, elle aboutit aux résultats selon lesquels, les taux d’accès et d’achèvement aux grades un à six du primaire ont baissé du fait de la crise. En effet, les proportions d’enfants qui achèvent les grades 1 et 2 ont baissé de 25 % et celles des enfants qui achèvent les grades 3, 4 et 5 ont diminué respectivement de 22 %, 16 % et 4 %. / The quality of primary education in Côte d'Ivoire has deteriorated sharply over the past three decades. This situation is the result of an approximate management of the education system, which is characterized by a lack of educational support, a misallocation of resources, a congestion of classrooms (42 students for a teacher in primary school) and a lack of skilled and well trained teachers. In addition, the military-political conflict in September 2002 did not allow to improve this situation; on the contrary, it has further deteriorated the situation. Thus, the aim of this thesis is first to analyze the influence of resource endowments on the effectiveness of primary schools in Cote d'Ivoire on the basis of a survey on the competence conducted by the Ministry of Education. Secondly, it examines the impact of military-political conflict in September 2002 on the demand for education based on data from the MICS-2000 and 2006 household surveys. To do this, a classification of schools according to their resource endowment was made, then, using the method of data envelopment analysis (DEA nonparametric method), an efficiency frontier is constructed to highlight the specificities of schools and finally an econometric estimation (Tobit model censored data) is implemented to identify factors influencing the formation of effectiveness scores. The analysis shows that increasing the amount of resources allocated to a school does not guarantee its performance as the efficiency factors are not resident in endowment quantity, but rather in the endowment quality, that is the values and characteristics intrinsic to people and materials available to schools, this fact in order to fit the specific needs of schools and fairness. Furthermore, using a methodology combining both double differences estimation, the triple differences estimation and correction by the robustness checks, we find that the rate of access and completed grades of primary school s one to six of primary school declined because of the crisis. Indeed, the proportions of children completing levels 1 and 2 have fallen by 25% and those of children completing levels 3, 4 and 5 have decreased by 22%, 16% and 4% respectively.

The scarcity of financial resources often poses challenges for organisations in both the private and the public sector, which require productive (tangible) resources, in order to thrive. Organisations are developing innovative and cost-effective methods to secure productive resources that are needed to drive performance. Special libraries in the public sector face the same pressures that resulted in some of them being overwhelmed by poor resources. The purpose of the study is to determine the levels of resources available to the libraries in the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) and the extent to which tangible resources can predict information service provision in GPG libraries. The theory of the firm and the resource-based view (RBV) theory were used as theoretical framework to support the study. The study addresses the identified gap of resource adequacy in special libraries by measuring adequacy from the perspective of those responsible for exploiting the resources, instead of the library services (the output) and library users. This approach differs from those in similar studies, which measured adequacy from the perspective of consumers. The study adopted a positivist philosophical assumption, using a quantitative research approach, with questionnaires and interviews as the data collection tools. The population of the study involves all the library officials of the libraries in Gauteng Provincial Government departments, including management. Due to the nature and size of the target population, there was no need for sampling. A total of 30 respondents for both quantitative and qualitative data, participated in the study. In order to achieve acceptable levels of validity of collected and analysed data, the face validity method was used, whereas the representative reliability method was used to ensure reliability and consistency of the measuring instruments. Mean and standard deviation, multiple regression and Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient analyses on quantitative data was conducted by using the data analysis tool Statistical Software for Social Sciences (SPSS). Atlas Ti was used to analyse the qualitative data collected. No major limitations were identified. The study found the level of physical, financial, ICT-based resources and staff development and training in the GPG libraries to be low, similarly the level of information services provided was found to be low. The resources were found to have predictive value on one another, but not on information services. Furthermore, the study did find a positive and strong relationship between resources and services at GPG libraries. The study recommended a resourcing model that is based on the collaborative consumption/sharing economy concept and principles. / Information Science / D. Phil (Information Science)