The emergence of a highly competitive, global knowledge based economy is increasingly compelling organisations to discover ways in which to create a sustainable competitive advantage. The efficient use of resources and capital at the organisation’s disposal is critical to ensuring success. Social capital is recognised as a resource which should be leveraged to the organisations benefit. This study considered the value of social networks formed on the golf course for both individuals and organisations. In addition to this, underlying relational factors for the realisation of this value were explored. This was done based on structured depth interviews with individuals who use golf as a method of networking, and representatives from various organisations. An survey was also incorporated into the study using a snowball sampling technique, in order to create a better understanding of the social factors involved in golf social networking in the South African environment. Importantly, the results showed that organisational benefits may be derived as a result of investment in golf social networking. The golf social network was found to contain a high level of cognitive trust, and motivation was identified as a strong factor in the realisation of benefits for organisations. The network was also found to be homophilous, and fairly representative of the senior management bracket in South Africa, which currently faces equity challenges. A model for managing golf social networks was posed.<p/> Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study examines three factors identified as potentially influencing the usage of Social Networking Sites (SNS’s) amongst young, professional South Africans. The three factors identified were Age, gender and Access to Technology. The propositions on which this research is based are that the men in the sample would make more use of SNS’s than the women would, that usage of SNS’s would drop off with age and that having access to technology would not influence the usage of SNS’s. A sample of 271 people was invited to participate in the research. The research instrument was a web-based questionnaire which had to be accessed online in order to complete it. The questionnaire rendered a sample of 98 usable responses, of which 31 were women and 67 were men. The results were collated into a spreadsheet and analysed to generate the results of the survey. A significant finding of this research is that 78% of make use of SNS’s, a higher proportion than the literature studies suggested would be that case. It was found that, contrary to expectations, women make more use of SNS’s than men do, although men utilise them more than women do for work related activities, that usage decreases with age, although it does become more work related as the respondents age, and that having access to technology is a strong indicator of SNS usage, but is not a defining characteristic. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The concept of social networks has emerged as a new direction in the theory of organisational behaviour. Informal networks are widely understood to contribute to innovation, collaboration and learning in organisations. Competitive advantage, or social capital from social networks, can greatly aid an organisation in the business environment. The purpose of this research project was to establish whether and in what form social networks existed in South African organisations. Based on the literature review three research questions were developed. In this quantitative research project surveys were conducted in various companies using paper questionnaires. Eighty respondents reported on five of their own contacts providing a contact profile batch of 400 people. Equal numbers of people of different race and gender completed the questionnaire. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used to analyse the data. Importantly the results showed that almost half of the employees felt excluded from social network participation in their companies. Homophily was identified as a strong divider that caused race based networking. Gender was found to be not so strong a divisive factor as anticipated. Despite an abundance of networking biases, a diverse network-context knowledge sharing model was developed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study examines the use of Twitter by decision-makers, the media, and the public during the pre-crisis stage of the 2013 Fargo-Moorhead flood. Three research questions guide this study in order to gain understanding of the content and assumed motives that drive users to utilize Twitter prior to a crisis. Data analysis revealed that decision-makers and the media active in tweeting were consistent with what would have been expected in a crisis situation. Additionally, the public were driven by the assumed motive of sharing and seeking information during the pre-crisis stage, consistent with previous research regarding the crisis stage.

As individuals use social media to create and maintain relationships and connections, they must also decide how to manage the private information that they disclose to their connections. If private information is handled improperly online, it may evoke varying responses that affect previously held privacy boundaries. Using communication privacy management theory (Petronio, 2002) as a framework, this study seeks to understand how the severity of a privacy violation impacts the Facebook users respond to online privacy turbulence. It also investigates how personality characteristics influence these responses. Results reveal that more severe privacy violations are met with more discussion of the privacy violation and thicker privacy boundaries both between the owner and the violator and between the owner and their social media network. Findings also imply that some of the Big Five personality traits impact the relationship between severity and the outcome variables.

No description available.

Popular Online Social Networks (OSNs), such as Facebook or Twitter, are logically centralized systems. The massive information aggregation of sensitive personal data at the central providers of these services is an inherent threat to the privacy of the users. Leakages of these data collections happen regularly – both intentionally, for example by selling of user data to third parties and unintentionally, for example when outsiders successfully attack a provider. Motivated by this insight, the concept of Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs) has emerged. In these proposed systems, no single, central provider keeps a data collection of all users. Instead, the data is spread out across multiple servers or is distributed completely among user devices that form a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Encryption is used to enforce access rights of shared content and communication partners ideally connect directly to each other. DOSNs solve one of the biggest privacy concerns of centralized OSNs in a quite forthright way – by getting rid of the central provider. Furthermore, these decentralized systems can be designed to be more immune to censorship than centralized services. But when decentralizing OSNs, two main challenges have to be met: to provide user privacy under a significantly different threat model, and to implement equal usability and functionality without centralized components. In this work we analyze the general privacy-problems in DOSNs, especially those arising from the more exposed metadata in these systems. Furthermore, we suggest three privacy-preserving implementations of standard OSN features, i.e. user authentication via password-login, user search via a knowledge threshold and an event invitation system with fine-grained privacy-settings. These implementations do not rely on a trusted, central provider and are therefore applicable in a DOSN scenario but can be applied in other P2P or low-trust environments as well. Finally, we analyze a concrete attack on a specific decentralized system, the Tor anonymization network, and suggest improvements for mitigating the identified threats. / Populära sociala nätverkstjänster som Facebook och Instagram bygger på en logiskt centraliserad systemarkitektur. Tjänsteleverantörerna har därför tillgång till omfattande ansamlingar av känsliga personuppgifter,vilket innebär en oundviklig risk för integritetskränkningar. Med jämna mellanrum läcks dessa informationsansamlingar till tredje part – antingen när tjänsteleverantören själv säljer eller ger dem tillexterna aktörer, eller när obehöriga får åtkomst till tjänsteleverantörens datasystem. Decentraliserade sociala nätverkstjänster (eng. Decentralized Online Social Networks, DOSNs) är en lovande utveckling för att minska denna risk och för att skydda användarnas personliga information såväl från tjänsteleverantören som från tredje part. Ett vanligt sätt att implementera ett DOSN är genom en icke-hierarkisk nätverksarkitektur (eng. peer-to-peer network) för att undvika att känsliga personuppgifter samlas på ett ställe som är under tjänsteleverantörens kontroll. Kryptering används för att skydda kommunikationen och för att realisera åtkomstkontrollen av information som ska delas med andra användare. Att inte längre ha en tjänsteleverantör som har tillgång till all data innebär att den största riskfaktorn for integritetskränkningar tas bort. Men genom att ersätta den centrala tjänsteleverantören med ett decentraliserat system tar vi även bort ett visst integritetsskydd. Integritetsskyddet var en konsekvens av att förmedlingen av all användarkommunikation skedde genom tjänsteleverantörens servrar. När ansvaret för lagring av innehållet, hantering av behörigheterna, åtkomst och andra administrativa uppgifter övergår till användarna själva, blir det en utmaning att skydda metadata för objekt och informationsflöden, även om innehållet är krypterat. I ett centraliserat system är dessa metadata faktiskt skyddade av tjänsteleverantören – avsiktligt eller som en sidoeffekt. För att implementera de olika funktioner som ska finnas i ett integritetsskyddande DOSN, är det nödvändigt både att lösa dessa generella utmaningar och att hantera frånvaron av en betrodd tjänsteleverantör som har full tillgång till all data. Användarautentiseringen borde till exempel ha samma användbarhet som i centraliserade system. Det vill säga att det är lätt att ändra lösenordet, upphäva rättigheterna för en stulen klientenhet eller återställa ett glömt lösenord med hjälp av e-post eller säkerhetsfrågor – allt utan att förlita sig på en betrodd tredje part. Ett annat exempel är funktionen att kunna söka efter andra användare. Utmaningen där är att skydda användarinformationen samtidigt som det måste vara möjligt att hitta användare baserad på just denna informationen. En implementation av en sådan funktion i ett DOSN måste klara sig utan en betrodd tjänsteleverantör som med tillgång till alla användardata kan upprätthålla ett globalt sökindex. I den här avhandlingen analyserar vi de generella risker för integritetskränkningar som finns i DOSN, särskilt de som orsakas av metadata. Därutöver föreslår vi tre integritetsskyddande implementationer av vanliga funktioner i en social nätverkstjänst: lösenordsbaserad användarautentisering, en användarsökfunktion med en kunskapströskel och en inbjudningsfunktion för evenemang med detaljerade sekretessinställningar. Alla tre implementationerna är lämpliga för DOSN-scenarier eftersom de klarar sig helt utan en betrodd, central tjänsteleverantör, och kan därför även användas i andra sammanhang såsom icke-hierarkiska nätverk eller andra system som måste klara sig utan en betrodd tredje part. Slutligen analyserar vi en attack på ett specifikt decentraliserat system, anonymitetstjänsten Tor, och diskuterar hur systemet kan skyddas mot de analyserade sårbarheterna. / <p>QC 20161115</p>

Mobile social networking(MSN) has emerged as an effective platform for social network users to pervasively disseminate the contents such as news, tips, book information, music, video and so on. In content dissemination, mobile social network users receive content or information from their friends, acquaintances or neighbors, and selectively forward the content or information to others. The content generators and receivers have different motivation and requirements to disseminate the contents according to the properties of the contents, which makes it a challenging and meaningful problem to effectively disseminate the content to the appropriate users. In this dissertation, the typical content dissemination scenarios in MSNs are investigated. According to the content properties, the corresponding user requirements are analyzed. First, a Bayesian framework is formulated to model the factors that influence users behavior on streaming video dissemination. An effective dissemination path detection algorithm is derived to detect the reliable and efficient video transmission paths. Second, the authorized content is investigated. We analyze the characteristics of the authorized content, and model the dissemination problem as a new graph problem, namely, Maximum Weighted Connected subgraph with node Quota (MWCQ), and propose two effective algorithms to solve it. Third, the authorized content dissemination problem in Opportunistic Social Networks(OSNs) is studied, based on the prediction of social connection pattern. We then analyze the influence of social connections on the content acquirement, and propose a novel approach, User Set Selection(USS) algorithm, to help social users to achieve fast and accurate content acquirement through social connections.

Background: Current literature suggests that there is an underutilisation of mental health services among Chinese people in England and that most Chinese people only come into contact with mental health services when a crisis occurs. However, there is limited evidence to enhance understanding of how they enter and navigate through the mental health systems. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the pathway experience of Chinese people living with a diagnosis of severe mental illness and the experience of their social networks who became involved in this journey. Methodology: Adopting a phenomenological approach, this study involved 55 interviews relating to 16 Chinese people with severe mental illness. Participants included Chinese people with severe mental illness, their families and Chinese speaking workers working in different service settings. Data was analysed with the aid of the QSR Nvivo software program. Findings: This was the first qualitative study to help understand the experience of Chinese people with severe mental illness in England. It confirmed that language difference, a lack of knowledge about how to access mainstream services and different conceptualisation of the experience of mental illness were significant barriers to seeking help. However, contrary to existing literature, this study found that not all Chinese people with severe mental illness experienced delays in receiving professional support. The health beliefs and attitude of their social networks towards mental illness were the main factors shaping the duration and direction of individual journey. Family played an important role throughout this journey but most families did not have adequate resources to meet the mental health needs of their relatives. Therefore, they had to seek help from mental health professionals, Chinese speaking workers and their overseas connections. Discussion: The stigma attached to mental illness was reported as the key explanation for delays in help-seeking. The impact of stigma was felt more strongly by Chinese male than female family members. The worry that mental illness would ruin the family name and the family would lose face in the community explained the reluctance of Chinese men to seek help for their close relatives with severe mental illness. Chinese speaking workers provided vital resources for Chinese people to access mainstream mental health services. However, the strong belief in self-reliance and the perception that Chinese people held a more stigmatising attitude towards people with mental illness explained why some participants were resistant to seek help from outsiders, especially people from the Chinese community. Additionally, Chinese people living in remote areas were unable to reach and access these resources because of the unavailability of such resources in rural areas. Conclusion: This study expands our conceptual understanding of how the stigma associated with mental illness impacts on the utilisation of mental health services among Chinese people in England. Chinese speaking workers play an important role in facilitating access to mental health services. Hence, it is important to explore and develop different strategies to de-stigmatise mental illness so that Chinese people living in different parts of England can utilise resources from the Chinese and wider community. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services