The association the alignment of the psychological contract has to workplace outcomes in the South African emerging market context was investigated at a total psychological contract level but also on a psychological contract construct level. The results of 106 manager and employee dyads supported that there are correlations between psychological contract alignment and the performance of employees as rated by their manager, the commitment of the employee to the organisation and the propensity of the employee to leave the organisation. Models were developed that indicated alignment on loyalty aspects explaining the performance outcome and that a combination of alignment on fulfilment and performance support explained the commitment and propensity to leave outcome. Differences in responses between same gender dyads and different gender dyads were explored, as well as between same population group and different population group dyads with no statistically significant differences observed. The results of the study are discussed in terms of its practical use for general and human resource management. Further related research areas are suggested: the association of psychological contract alignment to propensity to leave in a positive economic climate, the degree of bias in performance ratings by managers when highly committed to the employee. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to understand the types of competitive methods used by independent hotels in their bid to obtain and sustain competitive advantage. The concept of the co-alignment principle, as it relates to the choice of competitive methods and their implementation, was the focus of the research. The study investigated the co-alignment between the elements of the co-alignment principle; strategy choice, firm structure and firm performance. Five hotels in Jamaica and two propositions were used to test the model. The theoretical discussions were based upon the resource-based view literature. The empirical section of the study consisted of in-depth case studies, direct observations, guests' surveys and secondary data of independently owned and operated hotels in Jamaica. Interviews were conducted with general managers (or acting general managers) and other managers at each hotel. The study revealed the importance of co-alignment in hotels and the results indicated that performance was best when there was co-alignment. The results also indicated that the competitive methods cited by managers, as providing the greatest value to the hotels, were not always in line with what guests saw as important to them. Six conclusions were reached, which revealed the actions of managers of independent hotels. Unlike past research that focused on only one element of the co-alignment principle, this study focused on three elements; strategy choice, firm structure, and firm performance. The fourth element, environmental forces, was held constant in this study. / Ph. D.

Phylogenetic analysis is a central tool in studies of comparative genomics. When a new region of DNA is isolated and sequenced, researchers are often forced to throw away months of computation on an existing phylogeny of homologous sequences in order to incorporate this new sequence. The previously constructed trees are often discarded, and the researcher begins the search again from scratch. The jumpstarting algorithm uses trees from the prior search as a starting point for a new phylogenetic search. This technique drastically decreases search time for large data sets. This kind of analysis is necessary as researchers analyze tree of life size data sets.

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This thesis is concentrated on parallelizing a sequential algorithm for finding k best non-intersecting local sequence alignments. In this thesis, the DNA local sequence alignment and the related problems are formally defined and efficient algorithms for solving these problems are presented. The problem have important applications in molecular biology. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of the local sequence alignment problem and a multi-transputer system, the problem was partitioned into subproblems and nicely mapped onto the transputer nodes. Then, an efficient parallel program is designed and implemented. By comparing the outputs of the sequential program and the parallel program, the performance of the parallel program is estimated. An average speedup of 6.3 is achieved on a 8-node configuration and an average speed-up of 11 is achieved on a 16-node configuration. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

According to Fossati and Guzdail, many CS instructors rely on their intuition, feedback from students and anecdotal advice from other instructors to make course improvements. Guzdail noted that: "Computing educators' practice would dramatically improve if we drew on evidence, rather than intuition". This means that Computer Science instructors may benefit from processes and tools that help them make informed changes to their curriculum. An evidence-based approach to course improvement is curriculum alignment, which evaluates the degree which the learning objectives, course content, and assessment methods are in agreement with each other. This provides instructors with a detailed view of their course and areas that need improvement. Current alignment processes are impractical for a course instructor to apply, requiring a panel of experts and training on the process. In this research, I developed a computer-assisted alignment process (CAAP) that uses the concept of traceability from software engineering, to define a process that is applicable by a single course instructor limiting the need for a panel of experts. In an initial application CAAP took 75 hours to apply, consequently a prototype alignment tool (AlignET) was designed to automates the new alignment process providing instructors with results they can use to make course improvements. I evaluated the practicality of AlignET by conducting collective case studies with four participants. Observations and interviews were used to collect data. AlignET reduced the time to complete CAAP to less than 11 hours and the participants identified course improvements, gaps in their instructional methods, and learning objectives they emphasized more than others. The findings from the case study presented key improvements to AlignET. / Doctor of Philosophy / According to Fossati and Guzdail, many CS instructors rely on their intuition, feedback from students and anecdotal advice from other instructors to make course improvements. Guzdail noted that: "Computing educators' practice would dramatically improve if we drew on evidence, rather than intuition". This means that Computer Science instructors may benefit from processes and tools that help them make informed changes to their curriculum. An evidence-based approach to course improvement is curriculum alignment, which evaluates the degree which the learning objectives, course content, and assessment methods are in agreement with each other. This provides instructors with a detailed view of their course and areas that need improvement. Current alignment processes are impractical for a course instructor to apply, requiring a panel of experts and training on the process. In this research, I developed a computer-assisted alignment process (CAAP) that uses the concept of traceability from software engineering, to define a process that is applicable by a single course instructor limiting the need for a panel of experts. In an initial application CAAP took 75 hours to apply, consequently a prototype alignment tool (AlignET) was designed to automates the new alignment process providing instructors with results they can use to make course improvements. I evaluated the practicality of AlignET by conducting collective case studies with four participants. Observations and interviews were used to collect data. AlignET reduced the time to complete CAAP to less than 11 hours and the participants identified course improvements, gaps in their instructional methods, and learning objectives they emphasized more than others. The findings from the case study presented key improvements to AlignET.

This study, utilizing Preston and Karahanna’s framework for shared vision development and Agency Theory, explores the impact of vision development factors and factors associated with incentive plans on shared vision and alignment. Results of the study confirm the strong relationship between shared vision and alignment, and indicate that having an effective management team is important with respect to developing and maintaining shared vision and alignment within the organization. Several vision development factors such as using the language of the business, participation on the top management team (TMT), and having knowledge of the business impact shared vision through their influence on teamwork. Also, results of this study suggest that participation on the TMT by the CIO/IT leader is more important than the individual’s position in the organizational hierarchy. In addition, attributes associated with incentive plans such as achievable and clear measures, measures linked to organizational goals, measures that align the interests of the individual with those of the organization, regular plan reviews, and using a balanced scorecard approach with respect to incentive plan design positively impact teamwork and shared vision. For practitioners, this highlights the importance of incentive plans as powerful tools that can be used to reinforce shared vision, effective teamwork, and alignment within the organization. Also, the CIO/IT leader needs to be knowledgeable of the business and must fill the role of both a technologist as well as an enterprise leader. This person must be an evangelist communicating the value and benefits of IT to the rest of the organization.

The genome sequence alignment problems are very important ones from the computational biology perspective. These problems deal with large amount of data which is memory intensive as well as computation intensive. In the literature, two separate algorithms have been studied and improved – one is a Pairwise sequence alignment algorithm which aligns pairs of genome sequences with memory reduction and parallelism for the computation and the other one is the multiple sequence alignment algorithm that aligns multiple genome sequences and this algorithm is also parallelized efficiently so that the workload of the alignment program is well distributed. The parallel applications can be launched on different environments where shared memory is very well suited for these kinds of applications. But shared memory environment has the limitation of memory usage as well as scalability also these machines are very costly. A better approach is to use the cluster of computers and the cluster environment can be further enhanced to a grid environment so that the scalability can be improved introducing multiple clusters. Here the grid environment is studied as well as the shared memory and cluster environment for the two applications. It can be stated that for carefully designed algorithms the grid environment is comparable for its performance to other distributed environments and it sometimes outperforms the others in terms of the limitations of resources the other distributed environments have.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19106号 / 情博第552号 / 新制||情||98 / 32057 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 河原 達也, 教授 田中 利幸, 講師 吉井 和佳 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

Stratgic alignment has been one of the top concerns for IT executives for decades. One of the great debates in literature regarding strategic alignment is what act ‘alignment’ means, why it is needed and how do enterprises stay aligned. Alignment has many definitions, but in this context, it is concerned with the integration of business and IT strategies. Research has proven that there are positive relations to enterprise performance when it is aligned.   This qualitative research investigates the causes of misalignment through the views and thoughts of IT professionals at a Scandinavian IT consultancy company. By using a model created by, Schlosser, Wagner, and Coltman, this thesis could establish the most common factors to achieve alignment in the given enterprise. The model allowed the field of business-IT alignment to be explored in IT projects, and allowed for a better understanding of what causes misalignment.   This thesis conducted six interviews to answers two research questions; (1) what factors cause misalignment in IT projects and (2) how do these factors differ in different methodologies. The results from the analysis found that the main factors of misalignment were ‘procedures / workflow alignment’, ‘managerial skills of business and IT employees’, ‘technical skills and knowledge of IT employees’, ‘mutual trust and respect between business and IT executives / employees’, ‘IT skills and knowledge of business executives/employees’ and ‘alignment of business and IT strategy/goals/plans’. The second research question could  concluded that more research is needed to understand how factors change using different methodologies, as the results were to similar to reach a definit conclusion. For future research the thesis recommends using a multiple case study using the same model to verify the data gathered in this thesis and to strengthen the use of the model.