Following the call of recent authors for an improved process-oriented model of entrepreneurship, this exploratory research study sets out to understand the process of entrepreneurship, or “entrepreneuring”. It uses perspectives from the process-oriented view of reality, social constructionism and the complexity sciences. The aim of this study was to construct new questions, using the theoretical lens afforded by these perspectives, which would fuel further research toward developing a process-oriented model of entrepreneurship ‒ or point out the intractability of such a problem. Eleven individuals, who were considered to be early-stage entrepreneurs, were selected for qualitative interviews. A narrative analysis of these interviews was performed which showed, within the context of the process of entrepreneuring, that the emergent themes could be understood from the alternative theoretical paradigms covered in the literature. Several important questions for future research emerged, alongside the understanding that an alternative to the mechanistic/systemic perspective is to be sought, and that the process of entrepreneuring might be better understood within the broader context of power and social influence dynamics. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Alpine treeline ecotones (ATE) are the transition zones between contiguous subalpine forest and open alpine tundra. Because of their transitional natures formed by different ecosystems in high mountain areas, there are a variety of acute interactions between different species, between vegetations and environmental factors, and between ecological pattern and process. These interactions, or feedbacks, are often nonlinear in nature and make alpine treeline ecotones sensitive to environmental change, especially climate change. Feedbacks or nonlinear interactions between pattern and process create a variety of distinctive yet sometime surprising alpine treeline patterns. These nonlinear interactions between pattern and process and their resultant various patterns are defined as spatial complexity. In this study, the research framework of complexity theory was adopted. Dynamical simulations of alpine treeline ecotone is used as basic research method, and local nonlinear interactions, or more specifically, positive feedbacks are considered the key mechanism driving alpine treeline dynamics. A cellular simulation was created with tree/no-tree states that change as a function of probabilities of tree establishment and mortality which are functions of the neighborhood and an underlying gradient; the former changes in space and time endogenously; the latter can change in space and time exogenously. Three research projects were conducted for this dissertation that explore the endogenous and exogenous aspects of alpine treeline dynamics. First, the endogenous dynamics of alpine treeline ecotones was examined, which indicates that local positive feedbacks originated from interactions between trees can create fractal spatial dynamics in space and time. Second, the impacts of geomorphologic factors that impose an exogenous spatial structure on alpine treeline dynamics, was examined, which shows that there is a geomorphic limit to the endogenous fractal alpine treeline dynamics. Third, the impacts of climate change that imposes an exogenous temporal structure on alpine treeline dynamics was examined, which suggests that the self-organization nature of alpine treeline dynamics will not be significantly affected by external climate change and the use of alpine treeline ecotones as potential indicator of climate change is called into question. Results of this study suggest further research using complexity theory is needed to improve our understanding of alpine treeline dynamics and their interactions with exogenous environmental factors.

In order to identify complex systems capable of modeling artificial life, we study the notion of complexity within a class of dynamical systems called cellu- lar automata. We present a novel classification of cellular automata dynamics, which helps us identify interesting behavior in large automaton spaces. We give a detailed comparison of our results to previous methods of dynamics classification. In the second part of the thesis, we study the backward dynamics of cellular au- tomata. We present a novel representation of one-dimensional cellular automata, which can be used to charcterize all their garden of eden configurations. We demonstrate the usefulness of this method on examples. 1

With the increasing popularity of microservices for software application development, businesses are migrating from monolithic approaches towards more scalable and independently deployable applications using microservice architectures. Each microservice is designed to perform one single task. However, these microservices need to be composed together to communicate and deliver complex system functionalities. There are two major approaches to compose microservices, namely choreography and orchestration. Microservice compositions are mainly built around business functionalities, therefore businesses need to choose the right composition style that best serves their business needs. In this research, we follow a five-step process for conducting a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to define, develop and evaluate BPMN-based models for microservice compositions. We design a series of BPMN workflows as the artifacts to investigate choreography and orchestration of microservices. The objective of this research is to compare the complexity of the two leading composition techniques on small, mid-sized, and end-to-end e-commerce scenarios, using complexity metrics from the software engineering and business process literature. More specifically, we use the metrics to assess the complexity of BPMN-based models representing the abovementioned e-commerce scenarios. An important aspect of our research is the fact that we model, deploy, and run our scenarios to make sure we are assessing the modeling complexity of realistic applications. For that, we rely on Zeebe Modeler and CAMUNDA workflow engine. Finally, we use the results of our complexity assessment to uncover insights on modeling microservice choreography and orchestration and discuss the impacts of complexity on the modifiability and understandability of the proposed models.

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This research examined the impact of ED process complexity on hospital quality outcomes. Nine emergency department nurse managers from hospitals in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were interviewed regarding processes of registration, laboratory testing, medication administration, radiology, and discharge. Interview data was coded according to variables in proposed equations for patientocused, providerocused, and overall process complexity. Hospital quality was measured using existing process of care, outcome of care, and patient satisfaction standards. Results showed a strong negative correlation between process complexity and overall quality, suggesting that hospitals with lower process complexity experience higher quality outcomes. Regression analysis showed that the average number of patient steps in a process and the overall complexity the registration process were significant predictors of overall quality. Methods of reducing patient steps and registration process complexity are discussed.

This research introduces the concept of transferability into the usability construct and creates the Usability Paradigm for Multiple Device System (UPMDS) to conceptualize and quantify the usability in multiple device scenarios. This study fills the literature gap that no effective method exists in measuring transferability and in quantifying usability in a multiple device context. This study also answers the research questions regarding the impact of task complexity, user experience, and device order on the total usability of the system. Study one follows a systematic approach to develop, validate, and apply a new questionnaire tailored specifically to measure the transferability within a multiple device system. The System Transferability Questionnaire (STQ) is obtained after validation with 15 question items. In a software usability study, the STQ demonstrated excellent internal reliability and validity. Results show that the STQ is effective in capturing four factors regarding transferability, which are transfer experience (TE), overall experience (OE), consistency perception (CP) and functionality perception (FP). Validation results show good convergent, discriminant, criterion and nomonlogical validity. Study two adopts a systematic tool to consolidate usability constructs into a total usability score. The study utilizes principal component analysis (PCA) to determine the weight of the four usability components (satisfaction, transferability, effectiveness, and efficiency), which is used when obtaining the total usability score. Results show slightly different weights for the four components. This quantitative tool can be applied in different usability context in which multiple devices are involved. Usability specialists are encouraged to adjust the tool based on different usability scenarios. Study three investigates the impact of task complexity, user experience, and device order on the total system usability. Results show that the total usability score is not affected by task complexity, user experience or device order. However, lower physical task complexity leads to longer performance time and lower errors from the users. High experienced users have significantly lower errors made in tasks. The machine order also has divergent results. When the mini-lathe machine was used first, users had better transferability results but poorer performance outcomes as compared to when the drill press was used first.

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Interaction design is changing as a response to new social, technological, and environmental contexts, which bring new scopes of complexity into the frame interaction designers are con-cerned with. These changes demand that established ways of designing are in need of revision, because failing to do so will inevitably lead us to reinforce established ways of designing. This thesis is a proposal of how to shift our attention from ‘what we design’ to ‘how we design’ through critical inquiry into designing itself. By using experiments as a means and facilitator of communication, I have been able to open up tensions between what designing is and what designing is becoming which inform our ways of doing. I have utilised probes to prompt fellow interaction designers to submit their vision to critical inquiry and experimented with physical experiences to facilitate awareness of embedded behaviours and thought patterns. Through my experiments, I have been able to design the constellations in which the underlying became visi-ble and tangible in ways that mere conversation cannot.Through a programmatic design research approach, this thesis work has been a journey of shed-ding light on the design program that embeds the relation to established and emergent design ideals, and experimenting with ways to make the tensions between the established and emerg-ing visible and conversational. In the process of carrying out this thesis, I have identified that the tensions between established and unfolding design ideals are often taken for granted within current design practices. Through my work, it became visible that established structures and relations within design obstruct designers from thinking beyond solutions and seamlessness. It became visible that the tensions that fiction, uncertainty and problem-framing approaches cre-ate within our current ways of doing are rarely conversational, and therefore revision of promi-nent ways of doing is lacking.  In this thesis, I am proposing an alternative design program that pushes designers to subject their practices to critical dissemination and expose collective relations to what designing is and is becoming. In my final manifestation I am proposing an activity that facilitates the type of col-lective conversation that I argue is needed to start to open up to reflecting on our current design program. By facilitating collective discussion around ‘what designing is’ and ‘what designing is becoming’, have prompted more awareness of collective relations to ‘what designing is’.In this thesis, I argue that failing to alter our design program and continuing to take ‘what de-signing is’ for granted will prevent interaction design from evolving from what it is, to what it can be, as taking what designing is for granted will lead design practices to merely solidify es-tablished ways of doing. I believe we should be doing the opposite of taking things for granted. I believe we should be actively designing interaction design(ing).

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