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The covid-19 crisis accelerated the remote work trend and led to a new landscape in business. This sudden shift posed unique challenges for managers and middle managers in particular. Forcing them to adapt their leadership styles and lead their teams remotely. This paper explores the challenges for middle managers imposed by remote work and what is required of them to address them. This is done through a case study on a company's accounting department that has managed to transition to remote successfully. The research takes an inductive, qualitative approach using semi-structural interviews with three middle managers as a data collection method. The challenges are grouped into the themes of communication, team building, trust, technology, management of change, and social aspects. The study concludes that even though some challenges for the middle managers were present in all areas, their teams were well suited for a shift to remote. This was mainly due to low task interdependence, and high self-leadership. Social challenges required regular attention, even though the daily operations worked smoothly.

This dissertation investigated the development, implementation, and evaluation of a management methodology founded on the alignment among the strategy, performance, and customer to bring value to any organization. A case study/action research in a service organization, called Institution "Z," provided the opportunity to assess the effects of the proposed Six Sigma Scorecard (SSS) methodology in the productivity indicators (measured by cycle time, line capacity, and number of errors). The Case study/action research was conducted in three phases: Model and Concepts Design, Data Collection, and Findings. During the research, validity was pursued by using triangulation and theory to help maintain the case under research control. The observation of the SSS methodology in a real organization allowed the researcher to describe the merging process between Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma methodology and their relationships to each other. The SSS methodology allowed identification of improvement projects that contribute to organizational strategy, implementation of strategies and provide feedback to the top level of management establishing alignment at three organizational levels - corporate, business, and functional. The results of the implementation of the SSS methodology in Institution Z showed a 40% improvement of the cycle time of the auto credit process, a 500% increase in the capacity of the process, and 65% decrease in the number of non-added value activities. During the same period of time, the BSC indicators showed a positive impact, specifically one financial indicator known as Level of Intermediation or GIC grew from 30% to 42% as it was expected by the end of the SSS implementation. The demonstration of the SSS framework in a Case study justifies the need for a combined methodology that aligns strategy, performance improvement and organizational outputs in a feedback loop. More research in this area is needed, especially investigations that include assessment studies where different management approaches are used alone and combined with strategic tools, and investigations that measure the relationship between level of coherence in the three merging points of the SSS and the results reached at the performance of the organization.

Computational creativity seeks, in part, to develop autonomous agents that exhibit creativity. Language is an ideal creative domain for studying computer agents due to its rich interconnectedness and immense space of possible combinations. This dissertation explores the design, testing, and theory of creative computer systems that write microfiction and play the board game Codenames. The designs of these systems are all similarly based on building up creative artifacts from the underlying structure of the relationships between words. A critical component of the creative process is the ability to evaluate the quality of creative output. Human and automated assessment of our creative systems' outputs yields insights into the challenge of automated creative evaluation. Those insights are formalized into a novel paradigm for designing creative systems and theoretical analyses of the properties of creative domains that facilitate evaluation.

To improve their services and maintain patients’ satisfaction, healthcare organisations have adopted and applied different quality tools and models in recent times, with some even developing their own quality-based initiatives. For example, the approach of Lean Six Sigma (L6σ) has recently been gradually and slowly implemented in healthcare institutions. However, the nature and complexity of healthcare environment which directly impact on humans require leaders to carefully apply appropriate Quality Management (QM) systems suitable for this critical environment. The aim of this research project is to develop a Knowledge Based System (KBS) to assist healthcare managers and practitioners during decision-making process in the context of achieving excellent benchmark and action plans prioritisation. The system will be built based on a conceptual framework for Quality Management in Healthcare Environment (QMHE) which will be modified into a model. The KBS will be developed from this model with the integration of Gauging Absence of Pre-requisite (GAP) method for benchmarking and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method for prioritisation. The contribution of this research is the use of KBS with GAP and AHP to develop an integrated Knowledge-Based Lean Six Sigma (KB-L6σ) in QMHE. This will accomplish the necessities of investigating quality problems and recommend suitable solutions according to international best practices. It will use a systematic approach that can be applied multiple times, follow defined steps to secure consistency in the approach and integrate different healthcare management levels to maintain strategic decision-making alignment. It consists of 964 KB rules that have been produced via a knowledge acquisition process from the literature and interviewing experts in the field of QM and L6σ in healthcare environment. Feedback from conferences and system testing were used for the verification of the model, whilst validation was carried out through three case studies implementation at three tertiary hospitals in Oman. The analysis of using the KB system in these hospitals has shown clearly that the developed system is a consistent and reliable methodology for assisting decision-makers in designing, planning, and implementing L6σ for QMHE.

In the last decade, the rapid economic development in the Middle East has encouraged organisations to implement modem quality management and strategic initiatives such as Six Sigma to ensure continuous improvement and achieved excellence. Six Sigma is a comprehensive business strategic quality programme and a systematic process improvement methodology for achieving, sustaining and maximising business success. The proper implementation of Six Sigma leads to breakthrough in profitability through ensuring quantum gains in product/service quality, customer satisfaction and productivity. This research presents an empirical exploratory and comparative study that aims and attempts to bridge the gap in the existing literature of Six Sigma by investigating the current implementation status of Six Sigma in organisations of three Middle East countries (namely, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE)). The reasons/benefits that encourage Middle East organisations to implement Six Sigma projects, the challenges commonly faced during implementation, the critical success factors (CSFs) for effective implementation and the organisations’ satisfaction with the implementation are investigated. The key issues of Six Sigma implementation and their criticality relating to the experience of the implementing process of Six Sigma projects are explored through an extensive review of the relevant literature. The data were collected from a combination of quantitative (232 questionnaires) and qualitative (74 semi-structured interviews) methodologies. The research covered 44 organisations from manufacturing and services sectors and large, small, and medium enterprises (SME) sizes, which have implemented or were implementing Six Sigma projects in the selected countries at the time of study. The study findings identified 15 significant reasons/benefits which encourages Middle East organisations to implement Six Sigma projects, 13 major challenges commonly faced during implementation, 19 CSFs for effective implementation and level of the organisations’ satisfaction with the implementation. Based on the research findings, a generic model for successful and effective implementation of Six Sigma in Middle East organisations is developed and proposed. The research concludes that Six Sigma implementation in Middle East organisations still in early stage, most organisations have outstanding opportunities to implement the Six Sigma project successfully and effectively with tangible and intangible benefits. In addition, all the responding organisations, which are actively implementing Six Sigma programme, regardless of their countries, sectors and sizes are highly satisfied with the implementation results. However, the research output highlights that an improvement culture must be developed and promoted throughout the organisation to ensure long-term benefit and sustainable success. Furthermore, the research makes recommendations on development of an implementation strategy in Middle East organisations. Finally, a number of suggestions are made for future research.

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