Supply Chain Management (SCM) deals with the planning and coordination of resource procuring, product marketing, production scheduling, and end product delivering across multiple organizations. This thesis considers the problems posed by e-Marketplace development and the design of intelligent trading agents for supply chain management in e-Marketplaces. The primary contribution of this thesis is its detailed analysis of the characteristics and properties of a typical e-Marketplace environment, its exploration of optimal trading agent strategies and its discussions of possible enhancements for the state-of-the-art e-Marketplace development and trading agent design. This research is stimulated by the recently introduced Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM) game scenario, which is a representation of typical e-Marketplaces. TAC SCM is the only competition-based e-Marketplace simulation system that captures the real challenges present in an integrated procurement, production and customer-bidding environment. The game was designed jointly by a team made up of researchers from the e-Supply Chain Management Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, and the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), with tremendous inputs from the research community. This thesis starts with a detailed analysis of TAC SCM e-Marketplaces. We present an abstract model of the game, which consists of the market demand and market supply models. A series of experimental results that indicate the correctness and effectiveness of the strategies will then be presented, followed by the presentation of a new negotiation mechanism for the TAC SCM component market and the presentation of a new supplier model to demonstrate how negotiation strategies can be applied in automated negotiation. We explore the areas where the current TAC SCM scenario can be improved, followed by an outline of proposed enhancements to the TAC SCM e-Marketplace mechanism. Finally the thesis concludes with a discussion of future research directions. / Master of Science (Hons.)

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-112).

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

M. Tech. Business Administration / It has been noted that in developing countries, including South Africa, many projects on e-Government implementation have failed, while others have added very little value to the everyday lives of the citizenry. Broad reasons for the partial success or failure are related, inter alia, to people, policy, process or infrastructure. According to the management report of 2010 SITA (PTY) Ltd, there are many factors affecting the implementation of e-Government services. In terms of governance, there is a lack of both vision and consultation. In addition, there no is centralised budget for e-Government projects. The other challenge faced by SITA is that of skills inefficiency, as well as lack of technological upgrading that affects e-Government. In terms of process, employees are working in silos; there is no collaboration, and e-Government is a non-integrated service delivery process. The research purpose can be stated into the following objective: To identify governance, technology and financial factors that affect effective implementation of e-Government services at SITA (PTY) Ltd.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Literature shows some gaps that the impact of culture on the adoption of e-government in African countries for citizens is still undeveloped in terms of utilisation, growth as well as managing e-government services. In this 21st century, where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is one of the major drivers of the world economy, it remains a challenge for most governments in developing countries to adapt Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and effectively utilise it in their systems. The purpose of the study is to examine the key drivers of culture that impacts adoption of e-government in African countries: a case study of South Africa.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Organisations have entered into an information age where lack of knowledge on decision-making can have a negative impact on the business. Government entities deal with a huge amount of data which is a valuable asset. Decision-makers have problems in making informed decisions due to fragmented data and having to rely on IT to provide reports for them. An integrated repository can support organisations to have accurate and quality data readily available to enable them to perform reliable analyses. Currently, government departments are experiencing challenges with the adoption of data warehouse technology. Therefore, in this research, an interpretive case study was employed to explore factors influencing the adoption of data warehouse technology in a government department.

In this thesis, I investigate the potential of E-Government in enhancing ethnic economies. I focus on the Chinese ethnic economy because it is a crucial component of the Canadian economy. I conducted a survey among 50 Chinese businesses in Montreal, interviewed officers in the local government and a Chinese business association to explore their opinions of E-Government for Chinese ethnic economic development. Based on the results, I developed a suite of web-based information, Geographic Information Systems and E-Commerce tools that were integrated into an E-Government application. Lastly, the prototype was compared with other E-Government sites to determine its unique features. I found that E-Government was a possible tool for advancing economic development in the Montreal Chinese community by providing categorized information, translated and customized government services and geographic information for their business decisions. It is hoped that this application can be used to promote economic development in other communities and ethnic economies.