Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have a good reputation for automation and strength in the integration of business processes (BPs), therefore more and more organisations are adopting ERP systems. The City of Cape Town (CCT), a metropolitan municipality, is one of the organisations that have adopted an ERP system. CCT provides a wide range of services to residents and citizens in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The ERP system at CCT manages the Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes, among others, to ensure good service delivery. ERP systems are able to provide statistical reports on stock-outs; however, the information provided is insufficient to link a specific stock-out to its causes within the SCM process at CCT. This makes it difficult to select the most appropriate solution to minimise the causes and number of stock-outs. The study aims to explore the possible reduction of the causes of stock-outs at CCT stores, therefore the study has adopted a qualitative research methodology with a case study research strategy. It uses subjectivism to understand the truth, with an inductive approach applied to five different interviewee groups, namely the ERP Support Department consultants, the Procurement Department, the Inventory and Stores Management Department, the Master Data Maintenance Department, and the reservation creators. A purposive sampling method is used because the study targets knowledge and experience on the subject from the interviewees in the investigation of the problem. The case is the SCM division at CCT, the unit of analysis is the CCT stores, and the unit of observation is the employees who work for the SCM division of CCT. All ethical procedures and policies of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) are adhered to. For the data collection, in depth semi-structured questions have been developed, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis. The leading causes of stock-outs were discovered by analysing the themes. The results revealed the themes, in descending order according to the causes of stock-outs, as follows: procedures, service delivery, suppliers, stock-outs, human resources, and systems. All the objectives were achieved, thereby answering the research questions.

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A key precept in work place motivation theory is that management knows what job attributes are valued by the employee. Management can benefit by asking employees what they want from their work experience (i.e., job attribute preferences), rather than assume they know. This is particularly important to Polish high technology companies that are in transition to a free-market economy and to Polish workers who must be appropriately motivated to compete globally. This study attempts to better understand the job attribute preferences of Polish managers and workers, the potential gaps between Polish managers' perception of their workers' preferences (system), and how these preferences are affected by the worker's personal economic situation (sub system) and by business organization type (supra system). Managers and workers from five Polish high technology enterprises were surveyed on-site regarding their job attribute preferences. The results compared to a similar survey done with six American high technology firms(Eder 1988). Consistent with Maslow's prepotentcy theory, workers who tended to be optimistic about their personal economic situation rated all five extrinsic job attributes higher and four of the five intrinsics lower than those workers who tended to be pessimistic. Polish workers at firms that operated under central planning had only a few differences in their job attribute preferences indicating a strong supra-system or organizational effect on individuals in the firm. Contrary to what was expected, the Polish managers and workers rated a number of intrinsic attributes higher than their American counterparts suggesting a pent up need for intrinsic-type motivational policies. Polish managers appeared to be closer and more in touch with their workers than their American counterparts. American managers clearly underestimated the importance of intrinsic job attributes and overestimated the importance of the extrinsics, while Polish managers accurately predicted most of the workers' job attribute preferences. The results also raised questions regarding the stability of job attributes and the concept of clusters of extrinsic and intrinsic groups of job attributes.

This study is a design science research (DSR) project in which a description of the development and evaluation process for several novel technological artifacts will be communicated. Specifically, this study will establish: 1) an ontology of recommender systems issues, 2) an ontology of financial capability goals, and 3) a framework for a Personal Financial Recommender System (PFRS) application designed to improve user financial capability, called FinPathlight. The impetus for the RecSys Issues Ontology is to address a gap in the literature by providing researchers with a comprehensive knowledge classification of the issues and limitations inherent to recommender systems research. The development of a Financial Capability Goals Ontology will contribute domain knowledge classification for technological systems within the domain of finance and serves as a recommendation item knowledgebase for our PFRS. The FinPathlight framework provides the architecture and principles of implementation for a novel, financial-technology (FinTech) PFRS. FinPathlight is designed to improve the financial capability of its users through the recommendation, tracking and assistance with achieving financial capability enhancing goals. This research is notable in that it expands the influence and furthers the relevance of information systems research by providing an explicitly applicable research solution to an area of significant socio-economic importance, financial capability, a heretofore unsolved “wicked problem” (Churchman 1967) domain. In light of current financial conditions, recommender systems research that addresses a problem such as consumer financial capability is a step towards ensuring that information systems research continues to matter and retain its influence and relevance in everyday practice.

The healthcare system in the US faces substantial challenges related to cost, access and quality. Health Information Exchange (HIE) has been widely viewed as a viable solution for dealing with those challenges. Despite the potential contributions to the healthcare system that HIE promises, adoption and use of HIE have always been difficult, and the past two decades have witnessed significant HIE implementation failures. The limited understanding of HIE is a major obstacle for HIE success. Only recently in-depth research about HIE starts to appear in top IS journals. In addition, the uniqueness of healthcare industry adds to the complexity to HIE. Our study attempts to address this research gap by systematically examining multiple factors that influence HIE adoption and use. Using social exchange theory (SET) and diffusion of innovations theory, a research model was developed to empirically test major factors that impact healthcare providers’ relative advantages and risks perceptions for adopting and using HIE. It is further proposed that relative advantages and risks in turn impact organizations’ intentions for adopting and continuously using HIE. As such, we posit that organizations’ assessments of relative advantages and risks associated with HIE mediate the impacts of organizational and technological factors on organizations’ adoption and use intentions. This study uses questionnaire surveys for data collection. Out of a total of 163 responses, 117 surveys were completed and were analyzed using Partial Least Square software SmartPLS 3. Data analysis finds that most of the relationships were in the hypothesized directions with some of the relationships being significant. Specifically, top management support, absorptive capacity, trust, and HIE innovation characteristics positively affect relative advantages and negatively affect risk. Furthermore, relative advantages positively affect adoption/continuance intentions, whereas risk negatively affects adoption/continuance intentions. This study contributes to the literature and offers important practical implications. It is one of the early empirical attempts to understand the key factors that affect HIE’s adoptions and use. The research can also serve as a starting point for more in-depth studies in the future. Moreover, practitioners can use the several newly-developed scales to empirically examine healthcare providers’ adoption and use intentions.

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This is a study of the relationship between information technology (IT) dimensions and three organizational properties: leadership philosophies, organisational context and IT strategic choice. Six hypotheses were formulated and tested using data collected from a sample of 750 senior civil servants across the Australian Public Service (APS). Attempts are made to show that a direct relationship exists between respondents’ perception of leadership philosophies, organisational context, IT strategic choice and IT dimensions. Results suggest that organisational IT is defined by four dimensions: IT deployment, IT skills, IT training and IT impact on the organisation, and that all four dimensions are necessary for the effective adoption of IT. Leadership philosophy emerges as the most influential determinant for effective IT adoption, whilst only certain aspects of organisational context and strategic choice variables show a significant influence of effective IT adoption. It is concluded that the respondents’ precaution about the effective adoption of IT in the organisation is strongly influenced by the leadership philosophies held by senior APS managers and to some extent by organisational context and IT strategic choice / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The value of information technology investments is becoming a topical issue for corporate governance under the recent regulations enacted in the US (Sarbanes Oxley Act, US Congress, 2002). Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the absence of a definitive approach to evaluating IT investments is an impediment to the governance of corporations. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) information systems are a key IT implementation that has been promoted in both vendor and practitioner communities alike as a panacea for informed enterprise performance management. This research sets out a methodology for the evaluation of ERP’s contribution to enterprise value. This issue is important because billions of dollars of corporate funds have been invested in these systems since the early 1990s. Shareholders and management require a justification of ERP based upon its proven contribution to enterprise and shareholder value.The study develops a theory for the value relevance of ERP information by showing how ERP meets the requirement of a management and organizational innovation. Such an innovation promotes enterprise operations, improves enterprise performance, supports value creation, and increases shareholder wealth. A model is presented for testing the value of ERP adoption. Empirical testing proceeds in two phases. The first phase develops a model for forecasting normal performance. Performance is shown to be a function of autoregressive earnings moderated by macroeconomic factors impacting operations. The latter are associated with the business cycle. The estimated coefficients of the model are used for predicting the earnings performance of the firm. The residuals of actual earnings less the predicted represent abnormal performance. This represents the unique improvement in performance over the prior year after adjusting for macroeconomic effects. The second phase tests the value relevance of ERP information. A returns–earnings model developed by previous research is adapted with ERP–earnings interaction terms representing the ERP system’s effect on performance. Two classes of tests are performed on the model: tests of performance relevance of ERP systems, and tests of value relevance. The former tests ERP performance across several accounting metrics identified as indicators of firm performance level change. The latter tests the market response to these changes in a bid to determine if, in the perception of the market, the changes in the performance level attained to by the firm are associated with ERP adoption. These tests are performed for each year of a 5–year period following adoption. The results of the tests of performance relevance show that ERP–adopter firms do not achieve significant abnormal earnings in years 1 and 2 of the test period. They realize significant, negative, abnormal earnings in year 3. In years 4 and 5, they attain significant, positive, abnormal earnings. The tests of value relevance show that the market responds significantly to ERP adoption in year 2 of the test, but not in other years. The early response immediately after the year of adoption would seem to indicate a significant early expectation from these systems. However, this does appear to translate into long–term value relevance for ERP.

In today's highly competitive landscape, new product development strategies are imperatives for companies to create and sustain competitive advantages. The objective of this research is to develop an integrated approach to automate, or aid, the design problem solving process. An Integrated Design System (IDS) is proposed focusing on the parametric and detail design. In this system, generation and evaluation of new design problems occur quickly and easily by changing the inputs for the design model. The IDS provides an integrated platform to incorporate available application programs such as CAD and FEM tools into a single system. Four major frameworks, namely information handling, problem decomposition, design space characterization, and problem solving, are proposed and embedded in it to implement the product development process. The information handling includes five aspects. A naming protocol is devised to organize the historical design cases. A search algorithm is proposed to retrieve a design case. A system-generated report is used to distribute the design information. A constraint definition frame is presented to define the relationships between design parameters. Two schemas, information matrix and constraint tree, are developed to represent information in the IDS. A diagonal-centered decomposition scheme is developed utilizing a Genetic Algorithm to decompose a complex design problem. In addition to the conventional genetic operators, two novel genetic operators, unequal position crossover and insertion mutation, are proposed. To characterize the design space, two methods, Incremental Response Method (IRM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), are presented. The IRM is derived from response surface method, while the back-propagated ANN is coded to be self-evaluated. The presented problem solving algorithm constitutes the solving mechanism of the IDS. Based on the assessment of the design objectives, all design parameters are given a priority index to facilitate the parameter selection. An independent recursive method is introduced in this algorithm to handle the design constraints. The case studies are performed on two design problems: a hard disk drive actuator arm and a shaft. The results show that the system can automatically align parameter values towards the objective values in a reasonable manner, and thus verify the feasibility of the embedded frameworks.