One of the many problems the educational system in Malawi suffered is the lack of an efficient decision-making system that could make better use of its resources. A decentralization reform was therefore adopted as one of the means by which efficient decisions for the educational system could be assured. The decentralization reform was intended to give local or district level administrators powers for making discrete planning and management decisions for basic education within their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the implementation of the reform was seen to lack progress. Some issues that were against the decentralization probably caused the stalled progress of the implementation. The basis of this study was to explore possible factors that might have caused the stalled implementation of the decentralization so that possible solutions could be provided to strengthen it. A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to conduct the study. Interviews, documents analysis, observations, and questionnaires were the means for collecting data for the study. Using a sample of 23 participants drawn from different central, division, and district offices of the educational system and donor agencies, the study forces revealed that there were problems in the process and support system for the implementation. Process related forces include: lack of a culture of change, lack of specific decentralization goals for education, fear of loss of power, poor participation, lack of preparedness by the districts, poor coordination, resistance, lack of information, and poor commitment. Support related forces that were for the implementation included: existing policies, willingness of the districts, political will, and donor support. As a way forward, the study proposes that the implementation of the decentralization could be strengthened if the design of the implementation and its support system are reconsidered and improved. Regular revisions on the design of the implementation to ensure that it meets the decentralization requirements and strengthening the support system by making sure that the districts have an adequate information system can help to strengthen the implementation of the decentralization.

This study deals with the scope and feasibility of video-conferencing on the Internet and Intranet, for a real-time implementation of a classroom atmosphere linking different universities. I have considered the effects of various factors on video conferencing and different tests have been performed to study the data transfer during the online sessions. Readings of send rate, received rate and CPU load have been considered during these tests and the results have been plotted in the form of graphs. The study also gives conclusions at regular intervals on the tests performed and the limitations on various video confencing sessions. From the statistics collected I have concluded on the hardware requirements for optimized performance of video conferencing over the Internet. The study also states the scope of research to be undertaken in future for much better performance and understanding of different types of protocols. This thesis includes the study of various network-monitoring tools.

This thesis identifies a number of key factors of importance to business in making the transition to global activity. The findings show that these factors can be categorised in terms of enablers or inhibitors of global activity. These conclusions are drawn from a case study of a large securities company in the process of making the transition from a national to a global organisation. The research included an analysis of the subject matter expert views on issues relating to e-commerce, management, and global business. There was minimum research concerned explicitly with the combined factors e-commerce, management of information technology, the organisational structure and culture. Australian-based research had generally targeted Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs)use of e-commerce, rather than that of large organisations. The focus of this study was to investigate how the case study, being a large organisation, managed its information technology requirements within a multi-market environment. It sought first, to establish the practices and conduct commensurate with global business activity and second, to determine their influence on the organisation and the implementation of a global business solution. These findings will inform other organisations as to the how and why of implementing successful and robust organisational and global business relationships. It will provide an insight into a range of issues some of which might be conducive to their own organisational and global business requirements. This study comprised three stages. The first was an initial appraisal of the subject matter experts' views on issues covering global business solutions.The outcomes from this formed the basis of the interview guide used in the second stage, which was a series of open-ended interviews with the high-end decision makers from the participant company. The third stage was a subsequent review of the subject matter experts' views on issues that emerged from the interview data and documents provided by the participant company. Data derived from each of the investigations was categorised into themes using the recurring issues approach. A comparative analysis of this data (sourced from the literature, documents provided by the participant company and the interviews) provided a degree of triangulation by which the author could validate and justify the emergent issues. These issues form the 'Composite Enablers and Inhibitors Model'. What is revealed are the key enabling and inhibiting factors commensurate with, and impediments of, a global business solution for the securities industry. These findings make known the dynamism of the case study's organisational and global relationship. It demonstrates that the securities industry is devoid of a set of common business processes or a business culture that will allow the implementation of a comprehensive global solution. It brings to light the ramifications of the securities industry regulatory framework and its negative impact on the company's global objective. This suggests that there are notable barriers to global business, which have existed for some time. Companies moving into global markets should expect to undergo change and these changes will more than likely involve complex internal and external business relationships. Organisations should be prepared to restructure their operations in order to accommodate local and global business solutions. The diverse range of enabling and inhibiting factors that have emerged from this study suggests that the depth of global market change is very much dependent on an industry's regulatory framework and the jurisdictions of each country of operation. This raises the question about the obtainability of a truly global business solution.

Information Systems is a relatively new curriculum area and one that is still growing in size and importance. It involves applied studies that are concerned with the ways people build and use computer-based systems in their organisations to produce useful information. Information Systems is, of necessity, a socio-technical discipline that has to deal with issues involving both people and machines; with the multitude of human and non-human entities that comprise an information system. This thesis reports an investigation of how Information Systems curriculum is made and how the choices of individual lecturers or groups of lecturers to adopt or ignore a new concept or technology are formed. It addresses this issue by describing a study into how the programming language Visual Basic entered the Information Systems curriculum of an Australian university, and how it has retained its place there despite challenges from other programming languages. It is a study of curriculum innovation that involves an important but small change in the curriculum of a single department in a particular university. Little of the literature on innovation deals with university curriculum and most reported work is focussed on research, development and diffusion studies of the adoption, or otherwise, of centrally developed curriculum innovations in primary and secondary schools. The innovation described here is of a different order being developed initially by a single university lecturer in one of the subjects for which he had responsibility. It is important primarily because it examines something that does not appear to have been reported on before: the negotiations and alliances that allow new material, in this case the programming language Visual Basic, to enter individual subjects of a university curriculum, and to obtain a durable place there. The research investigates a single instance of innovation, and traces the associations between various human and non-human entities including Visual Basic, the university, the student laboratories, the Course Advisory Committee and the academic staff that made this happen. It follows the formation of alliances and complex networks of association, and how their interplay resulted in the curriculum change that allowed Visual Basic to enter the Information Systems curriculum, and to fend off challenges from other programming languages in order to retain its place there. I argue that in this curriculum innovation no pre-planned path was followed, and that representations of events like this as straightforward or well planned hide the complexity of what took place. The study reveals the complex set of negotiations and compromises made by both human and non-human actors in allowing Visual Basic to enter the curriculum. The study draws on the sociology of translations, more commonly known as actor-network theory (ANT) as a framework for its analysis. I show that innovation translation can be used to advantage to trace the progress of technological innovations such as this. My analysis maps the progress of Visual Basic from novelty to ‘obvious choice’ in this university’s Information Systems curriculum.

Many significant barriers must be faced in the adoption and dissemination of e-government systems regardless of how advanced or modest a country is in terms of ICT infrastructure and deployment. This research has endeavored to investigate the impediments associated with the development and diffusion of e-government with a concentration on non-technical and country-specific factors. The focus of the research was on Oman's efforts to develop an e-government system, using advanced nations' experiences in the same domain to establish benchmarks. Initially, this research undertook a general literature review to define the barriers to the uptake of e-government and to set and refine aims, scope and questions asked of the research. Subsequently, a more focused literature review was conducted on the experiences of advanced nation with e-government, to identify possible lessons for and solutions to barriers facing the take-up of e-government. In parallel, an exploratory case study of the Oman e-government project was conducted that aimed to test the extent to which the barriers and solutions drawn from the largely Western-centric literature apply in the Omani situation, and to investigate other possible cultural and country-specific barriers. Semi-structured interviews and face-to-face administered questionnaires were the primary data collection strategies used throughout the case study phase. The study found that non-technical barriers in Oman, such as users' lack of IT knowledge and the absence of marketing campaigns, have negatively affected people's decisions to use the technology and inhibited decision makers from implementing or adopting technology initiatives. In addition, several country-specific limits to e-government growth were identified. Government decision makers in Oman were found to be prone to short-term planning, which prevents them from anticipating the long-term potential of e-government. Additionally, frequent structural changes within ministries, and the fact that the e-government project is not given high priority nor urgently needed at present, have contributed in delaying development of and improvements to such a system. Ultimately, this research delivered a socio-technical framework for adoption, detailing causes and effects of the critical factors in the adoption and diffusion of e-government initiatives in Oman.

Motivated by the belief, 'to serve existing consumers costs less than acquiring new consumers', firms' marketing strategies then evolve around retaining consumers and building long-term consumer relationships. In the pursuit of acquiring consumer loyalty, enhancing consumer value has been the focus of many firms' relationship building efforts. Hence, this study aims to understand the affect of using the Internet as a relationship marketing tool on consumer retention as well as the determinants of online consumer satisfaction affecting loyalty and retention. Although there are many factors affecting the implementation of 'E-CRM', that is companies' CRM initiatives on the Internet channel; this study focuses on examining consumer perceptions towards the constituents of building online consumer relationships. Adopting a positivist approach, this research asks the following major questions: 1) How are online consumer satisfaction, loyalty and retention constructed?, and 2) How does the use of Internet technology in CRM influence the satisfaction, loyalty and retention of consumers? Data for this research were collected through questionnaire survey on Internet users in major cities of Malaysia and were analyzed using statistical techniques namely, descriptive, Structural Equation Modeling and Multivariate Analysis of Variance. The results from this study reveal that the use of Internet in building consumer relationships affects consumer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. The effectiveness of E-CRM program determines the level of which online features, such as customer service efficiency, ease of navigation, information quality, personalization and online community would be implemented on firms' Web sites. In addition, older and welleducated users, more experienced as well as users who are involved in higher risk activities, such as online banking tend to be less tolerant. Hence, these groups of consumers seek superior quality of services from online service providers. This research contributes to knowledge in several ways. Most importantly, it demonstrates the roles of Internet technology pertinent in enhancing consumer values leading to long-term consumer relationships. In particular, this research highlights the critical dimensions of E-CRM program, which firms should invest in their consumer retention strategies. While repeat visits do not necessarily reflect consumer loyalty and commitment to a Web site, this research advocates that when salient elements of building consumer relationships exist, service providers are more likely to improve satisfaction and gain consumer loyalty. As indicated in the E-CRM model, firms' relationship marketing strategies should focus on identifying varying consumer expectations of service quality based on demographics, consumer level of experience with Internet technology and perceived risk.

This dissertation investigates the system-centred evaluation of visual information retrieval from generic photographic collections. The development of visual information retrieval systems has long been hindered by the lack of standardised benchmarks. Researchers have proposed numerous systems and techniques, and although different systems clearly have their particular strength, there is a tendency by researchers to use different means of showing retrieval performance to highlight the own algorithm’s benefits. For the field of visual information search to advance, however, objective evaluation to identify, compare and validate the strengths and merits of different systems is therefore essential. Benchmarks to carry out such evaluation have recently been developed, and evaluation events have also been organised for several domains. Yet, no efforts have considered the evaluation of retrieval from generic photographic collections (i.e. containing everyday real-world photographs akin to those that can frequently be found in private photographic collections as well, e.g. pictures of holidays and events). We therefore first analyse a multitude of variables and factors with respect to the performance and requirements of visual information systems, and we then design and implement the framework and resources necessary to carry out such an evaluation. These resources include: a parametric image collection, representative search requests, relevance assessments and a set of performance measures. In addition, we organise the first evaluation event for retrieval from generic photographic collections and report on its realisation. Finally, we present an analysis and the evaluation of the participating retrieval systems as well as of the evaluation event itself. Filling this particular gap by making possible a systematic calibration and comparison of system performance for retrieval from generic photographic collections constitutes the main scientific contribution of this research. This dissertation thereby enables a deeper understanding of the complex conditions and constraints associated with visual information identification, the accurate capturing of user requirements, the appropriate specification and complexity of user queries, the execution of searches, and the reliability of performance indicators.

The objective of this research was to generate grounded theory about the extent to which the Semantic Web and related technologies can assist with the creation, capture, integration, and utilization of accurate, consistent, timely, and up-to-date Web based tourism information. Tourism is vital to the economies of most countries worldwide (developed and lessdeveloped). Advanced Destination Marketing Systems (DMS) are essential if a country’s tourism infrastructure, facilities and attractions are to receive maximum exposure. A necessary prerequisite here is that relevant data must be captured, ‘cleansed’, organized, integrated and made available to key industry parties (e.g. travel agents and inbound tour operators). While more and more tourists are using the Internet for travel planning, the usability of the Internet as a travel information source remains a problem, with travellers often having trouble finding the information they seek as the amount of online travel related information increases. The problem is largely caused by the current Web’s lack of structure, which makes the integration of heterogeneous data a difficult time consuming task. Traditional approaches to overcoming heterogeneity have to a large extent been unsuccessful. In the past organizations attempted to rectify the problem by investing heavily in top-down strategic information systems planning projects (SISP), with the ultimate aim of establishing a new generation of systems built around a single common set of enterprise databases. An example of this approach to integration is that undertaken by the Bell companies (Nolan, Puryear & Elron 1989), whose massive investment in computer systems turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. The Semantic Web offers a new approach to integration. Broadly speaking, the Semantic Web (Berners-Lee, Hendler & Lassila 2001) refers to a range of standards, languages, development frameworks and tool development initiatives aimed at annotating Web pages with welldefined metadata so that intelligent agents can reason more effectively about services offered at particular sites. The technology is being developed by a number of scientists and industry organizations in a collaborative effort led by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) with the goal of providing machine readable Web intelligence that would come from hyperlinked vocabularies, enabling Web authors to explicitly define their words and concepts. It is based on new markup languages such as such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) (Manola & Miller 2004), Ontology Web Language (OWL) (McGuinness & Harmelen 2004), and ontologies which provide a shared and formal description of key concepts in a given domain. The ontology driven approach to integration advocated here might be considered ‘bottom-up’, since individual enterprises (and parts of the one enterprise) can apply the technology (largely) independently – thereby mirroring the processes by which the Web itself evolved. The idea is that organizations could be provided with a common model (the Semantic Web ontology), and associated (easy-to-use) software could then be employed to guide them in the development of their Websites. As such, because Website production is driven by the common ontology, consistency and convenient integration is almost an automatic by-product (for all companies that take advantage of the technology and approach). In many cases, organizations would not have to change their present data structures or naming conventions, which could potentially overcome many of the change management issues that have led to the failure of previous integration initiatives. Many researchers (e.g. (El Sawy 2001)) have stressed the necessity to take a holistic view of technology, people, structure and processes in IT projects and, more specifically, Sharma et al. (2000, p. 151) have noted that as significant as DMS technological problems are, they may well pale into insignificance when compared with the managerial issues that need to be resolved. With this in mind, a systems development research approach supported by a survey of tourism operators and secondary interviews was used to generate grounded theory. The systems development and evaluation were designed to uncover technical benefits of using the Semantic Web for the integration and utilization of online tourism information. The survey of tourism operators and secondary data interviews were aimed at providing an understanding of attitudes towards adoption of a radical new online technology among industry stakeholders. A distinguishing feature of this research was its applied and pragmatic focus: in particular, one aim was to determine just what of practical use can be accomplished today, with current (albeit, extended) technology, in a real industry setting.

While information communications technology provides new opportunties for supporting mentoring, there is a need to explore how effectively these potential benefits are being realised. The evaluation of the effectiveness of structured e-mentoring in the small business context is problematic because it is contingent upon a multitude of contextual factors and characterised by a range of research difficulties. A review of 31 effectiveness studies across the mentoring, ementoring and small business fields undertaken as part of this study provided a basis for systematically determining the nature of these research challenges. They included the heterogeneity and divergent pedagogical needs of individuals, the complexity of the mentoring phenomenon, measurement difficulties, the paradigm location of evaluation models, inherent problems with evaluation methodologies and data quality, and the almost contradictory imperatives to evaluate individualised outcomes while exploring commonalities and patterns in effectiveness. To extend understanding and knowledge in the field of e-mentoring for small business, it will be necessary to develop empirically-based theories of effective e-mentoring systems. As a means of contributing to the generation and refinement of theory, this study proposed a framework as a potential solution to some of the research challenges and contextual contingencies identified. The framework integrates the DeLone and McLean model of Information Systems Success (1992) which is based on the principle that Information Systems success is best evaluated by considering the dimensions of effectiveness - System quality, Information quality, Use, User satisfaction and Impact - together as a system rather than in isolation. The Rickard model extends this principle to structured e-mentoring, and adapts and redefines DeLone and McLean’s Information Systems dimensions for the mentoring context. The study investigated the framework as a means of consolidating and classifying the metrics used in the informing disciplinary areas, as a reference tool for designing qualitative and quantitative effectiveness measurement instruments, for selecting situationally-responsive research strategies, and most critically, for describing, classifying and interpreting variability in effectiveness outcomes. The framework was applied to evaluate the effectiveness of an Australian e-mentoring program targeted at self-employed professional contractors called Mentors Online. This examination of actual practice provided a basis for proposing a set of determinants of e-mentoring effectiveness. This work in turn provided a basis for understanding how the potential benefits of structured e-mentoring are being realised. Creating a nexus between structured e-mentoring effectiveness evaluation and DeLone and McLean’s Information Systems success model was shown to provide a justified, sufficient and useful basis for evaluating structured e-mentoring effectiveness, and therefore a means of contributing to the body of international literature on e-mentoring effectiveness.

Information Technology has been a significant research area for some time, but its nature has changed considerably since the Internet became prominent just over a decade ago. Many researchers have studied and proposed theories and models of technology acceptance in order to predict and explain user behaviour with technology to account for rapid change in both technologies and their environments. Each theory or model has been proposed with different sets of determinants and moderators and most of them have been developed in the U.S. It is therefore questioned whether the theories and models of technology acceptance that have been developed, modified, and extended in the U.S. can be used in other countries, especially in Thailand. It is also questioned whether there might be other determinants and moderators that also play important roles in this specific environment. This thesis (1) reviewed literature in respect of nine prominent theories and models, (2) reviewed previous literature about IT acceptance and usage within four contexts of study, (3) investigated the extent to which academics use and intend to use the Internet in their work, (4) investigated how to motivate academics to make full use of the Internet in their work, (5) investigated to what extent using the Internet helps in improving academics’ professional practice, professional development and quality of working life, (6) formulated a research model of technology acceptance regarding Internet usage by Thai academics, and (7) generated and validated the research model that best describes Thai academics’ Internet usage behaviour and behaviour intention. These last two objectives represent the main focus of the thesis. Questionnaire survey method was used to collect primary data from 927 academics within Business Schools in 20 Public Universities in Thailand. The survey yielded 455 usable questionnaires, with a response rate of 49%. Statistical analysis methods and Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS version 6.0 were used to analyse data. The research model was formulated with five core determinants of usage and up to nine moderators of key relationships. It was then tested and modified, the final modified model evidenced by goodness of fit of the model to the data, explained 31.6% (Square Multiple Correlation) of the variance in usage behaviour in teaching , 42.6% in usage behaviour in other tasks, 55.7% in behaviour intention in teaching and 59.8% in behaviour intention in other tasks. From the findings, three core determinants: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and self-efficacy significantly determined usage behaviour in teaching. Two core determinants: perceived usefulness and self-efficacy significantly determined usage behaviour in other tasks. Finally, usage behaviour significantly influenced behaviour intention. In addition three moderators: age, e-university plan and level of reading and writing, impacted the influence of key determinants toward usage behaviour. Only two moderators: age and research university plan, impacted the influence of usage behaviour toward behaviour intention. The rest including gender, education level, academic position, experience and Thai language usage did not impact the influence of the key determinants toward usage behaviour and did not impact the influence of usage behaviour toward behaviour intention. Consequently, the final modified research model which is called the “Internet Acceptance Model” or “IAM” has the power to explain and predict user behaviour in a Thai Business Schools environment. A thorough understanding of the model may help practitioners to analyse the reasons for resistance toward the technology and also help them to take efficient measures to improve user acceptance and usage of the technology.