The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of affect on privacy concerns and privacy behaviors. A considerable amount of research in the information systems field argues that privacy concerns, usually conceptualized as an evaluation of privacy risks, influence privacy behaviors. However, recent theoretical work shows that affect, a pre-cognitive evaluation, has a significant effect on preferences and choices in risky situations. Affect is contrasted with cognitive issues in privacy decision making and the role of affective versus cognitive-consequentialist factors is reviewed in privacy context. A causal model was developed to address how affect influences privacy concerns and privacy behaviors. The model of privacy risk proposed in this model argues that affect (or “feelings”) influences privacy behaviors directly as well as thru privacy concerns. To test the model, subjects were recruited using Mechanical Turk and paid for their participation. Affect, the key construct in this research, was measured using a word association technique as well as methods developed in the implicit attitudes research. Well-known scales were used to measure privacy concerns and behavioral intentions. Data was collected from subjects using a pretested privacy scenario. Data analysis suggests that, in line with published IS research, privacy concerns affect privacy behaviors. Affect has no impact on privacy concerns nor on privacy behaviors at the traditional 5% level of significance, though it is significant at the 10% level of significance. Improving the instruments used to measure affect, use of a large sample size to detect small effect sizes and more control over the instrument administration instead of an online survey are suggested for future research.

Although ERP systems have been depicted as a solution in many organizations, there are many negative reports on ERP success, benefits, and effect on user’s performance. Previous research noted that there is a lack of knowledge and awareness of ERP systems and their overall value to ERP organizations. ERP systems have been widely studied during the past decade, yet they often fail to deliver the intended benefits originally expected. One notable reason for their failures is the lack of understanding in users’ requirements. This dissertation study was designed to understand the relative importance of system quality (SQ), IQ (IQ), service quality (SVQ), and their influence on ERP users. The dependent variable individual impact (II) was used to represent the ERP success at the individual level of analysis. The research by Petter, DeLone, and McLean (2008) established the basis for this research. In addition, this study examined the moderating effect of users’ characteristics variables (age, gender, experience, and position) on the II variable. The study further compared the results of this research with Petter et al.’s (2008) research to test whether the overall findings of this research differ from their research. A web-based survey was used to collect data for this study. A number of ERP users from private and public sectors in the Middle East participated in this survey. The survey screening process provided 218 usable responses for further analysis. Using SPSS 23, the researcher determined the validity and reliability of the items. The result of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) via principal component analysis (PCA) loaded SQ items on four components, IQ on three components, SVQ on one component, and II on one component. Following the EFA results, the researcher investigated the items’ reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Hypothetical relationships were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the partial least squares (PLS) technique. The moderating effect was examined using the multigroup analysis (MGA) method. This dissertation study contributed to the body of knowledge by highlighting the importance of SQ, IQ, and SVQ in impacting ERP users’ learnability, awareness/recall, decision effectiveness, and individual productivity in an ERP environment. The results of this research can be used by ERP vendors to deliver an integrated and customized ERP system to organizations based on region. This research bridged the gap in the literature on the need to conduct more ERP research in the Middle East. Understanding the relative importance of information systems (IS) success factors brings the attention of ERP organizations and vendors to focus their efforts on the leading issues perceived by end users. Assessing the level of IS impact from multiple users may help organizations to offer all types of training to develop better attitudes toward ERP systems. Organizations can also build a rigorous approach to assess the impacts of IS on ERP users’ performance and productivity. As a result, this could help in improving productivity, learnability, awareness, and decision effectiveness of the end users.

Problem statement: There seem to be perceptual incongruence between systems development managers and developers. Research shows that while managers are more positive towards systems development methodologies, developers on the other hand seem to resist and not to use systems development methodologies in their entirety but instead adapt, tailor, modify and change them depending on the project at hand (contingent use). Systems development managers can exert power through a variety of influence bases. However, these power influences may be perceived differently by developers. While some might feel constrained, others might actually feel liberated by the existence of the same influence base. Main findings: IS managers are using systems development methodologies to gain control over team members. However, there was no clear perception on whether systems development methodologies were enslaving systems developers. This was indicated by the majority of the respondents neither agreeing nor disagreeing to that effect. The research showed that most organisations are adapting the use of systems development methodologies on a project to project basis, which is referred to as the contingent use of systems development methodologies. Research method followed: The positivistic research paradigm was used as it allowed the researcher to find out patterns and regularities between power, systems development methodologies’ use and success. A survey was conducted and a questionnaire was used for data collection purposes. Questionnaire data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 21, Release 20.0.0 software package tools. Principal conclusion: Power is interpreted in terms of the type of power that can be exercised by IT professionals specifically IS developers and their respective managers at the workplace. The roles assumed and the different power types that may be exercised in organisations provide a link as to who has the final say when it comes to the use and success rate of systems development methodologies. The contingent use of systems development methodologies provides a form of “freedom” to systems developers. Based on the research findings, the research proposes an answer to the question – are systems development methodologies enslaving systems developers and empowering IS managers? / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Business process management (BPM) is a philosophical approach to organisation-wide management in which the focus is on the processes through which it operates, and in particular the streamlining and optimising of these processes, for which software solutions may be used. CTexT is an intrapreneurial software organisation that has been experiencing problems with software development due to a lack of formal processes relating to customer support, versioning, configuration, quality, risk and project management. The objective of the study is to determine whether the implementation of an electronic BPM system can effectively solve CTexT's development problems and thereby improve its overall software development capacity. More specifically, the focus is on i) the effect of the resulting standardisation on creativity and innovation, and ii) implementation matters, such as the type of processes that can be subjected to an electronic system, and how CTexT can overcome the time and cost constraints of such a system. The study investigates these questions by means of a literature investigation in combination with interviews with knowledgeable respondents from other innovative and software organisations. Interviews with six employees from CTexT determine the relevance of these findings and highlight critical areas for process improvement. Since BPM systems improve organisational efficiencies and are generally employed in larger corporate contexts marked by transactional and repetitive activities where they enforce administrative rules, the conclusion is drawn that a BPM system will not be suitable for an intrapreneurial organisation, and that it is likely to cause more disruption to the creative environment than improve its operations. It is further shown that although a BPM system is theoretically applicable to software development, it generally does not seem to be applied practically in the industry, and the suitability of this process as manageable through a BPM system is seriously questioned. Instead, the research points to improvement through the application of software development methodologies and a holistic approach towards BPM. The investigation at CTexT confirms that its development problems relate to flawed methodologies and that remedies should therefore focus on improving its methodologies and controlling certain aspects of the software development life cycle by means of suitable software tools. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

This study investigated the use of systems development methodologies in Web-based application development in South Africa. Web-based systems differ from traditional information systems by integrating different media for knowledge representation and utilizing hypertext functionality. By doing this, Web-based systems not only support creation, integration, analysis, and distribution but also storage and transfer of knowledge of business transactions within a structured information system. There are numerous methodologies available to develop Web-based systems. In this study five of these methodologies were discussed. The methodologies include Web IS Development Methodology (WISOM), Internet Commerce Development Methodology (ICOM), Web Engineering, Extreme Programming and the Relationship Management Methodology (RMM). In this study a qualitative research approach was followed. Case studies were done on three different organizations in the South African marketplace. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection at each organization. The interviews were transcribed, and the data were analysed using content analysis and cross-case analysis. One of the main goals of this research was to determine "how" system development methodologies are used in practice to develop Web-based systems, and to what extent it is used. The research pointed out that those organizations who participated in this study in South Africa mainly use in-house developed methodologies to develop Web-based systems, and that these organizations adhere strictly to their methodology. The main reasons organizations choose to use methodologies are that methodologies aid in the delivery of a better quality Web-based system, and also act as a good project management mechanism within the organization. / Thesis (M.Com. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

The integration and interoperability of autonomous and heterogeneous electronic government (e-government) systems of government departments and agencies for a seamless services delivery to citizens through one-stop e-government portals remain challenging issues in egovernment development. In recent years, Semantic Web technologies have emerged as promising solutions to these problems. Semantic Web technologies base on ontology allow the description and specification of electronic services (e-services), making it easy to compose, match, map and merge e-services and facilitate their semantic integration and interoperability. However, a unified and comprehensive methodology that provides structured guidelines for the semantic-driven planning and implementation of e-government systems does not exist yet. This study presents a methodology framework for the semantic-driven development of future e-government systems. The features of maturity models, software engineering and Semantic Web domains are investigated and employed to draw and specify the methodology framework. Thereafter, the semantic content of the methodology framework is further specified using ontology building methodology and Semantic Web ontology languages and platforms. The study would be useful to e-government developers, particularly those of developing countries where there is little or no practice of semantic content development in e-government processes as well as where little progress has been made towards the development of one-stop e-government portals for seamless services delivery to citizens. Part of the study would also be of interest to novice Semantic Web developers who might use it as a starting point for further investigations. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

In the past two decades, there has been huge amount of interest in Multiresolution Analysis Algorithms (MAAs) and their applications. Processing some of their applications such as medical imaging are computationally intensive, power hungry and requires large amount of memory which cause a high demand for efficient algorithm implementation, low power architecture and acceleration. Recently, some MAAs such as Finite Ridgelet Transform (FRIT) Haar Wavelet Transform (HWT) are became very popular and they are suitable for a number of image processing applications such as detection of line singularities and contiguous edges, edge detection (useful for compression and feature detection), medical image denoising and segmentation. Efficient hardware implementation and acceleration of these algorithms particularly when addressing large problems are becoming very chal-lenging and consume lot of power which leads to a number of issues including mobility, reliability concerns. To overcome the computation problems, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are the technology of choice for accelerating computationally intensive applications due to their high performance. Addressing the power issue requires optimi- sation and awareness at all level of abstractions in the design flow. The most important achievements of the work presented in this thesis are summarised here. Two factorisation methodologies for HWT which are called HWT Factorisation Method1 and (HWTFM1) and HWT Factorasation Method2 (HWTFM2) have been explored to increase number of zeros and reduce hardware resources. In addition, two novel efficient and optimised architectures for proposed methodologies based on Distributed Arithmetic (DA) principles have been proposed. The evaluation of the architectural results have shown that the proposed architectures results have reduced the arithmetics calculation (additions/subtractions) by 33% and 25% respectively compared to direct implementa-tion of HWT and outperformed existing results in place. The proposed HWTFM2 is implemented on advanced and low power FPGA devices using Handel-C language. The FPGAs implementation results have outperformed other existing results in terms of area and maximum frequency. In addition, a novel efficient architecture for Finite Radon Trans-form (FRAT) has also been proposed. The proposed architecture is integrated with the developed HWT architecture to build an optimised architecture for FRIT. Strategies such as parallelism and pipelining have been deployed at the architectural level for efficient im-plementation on different FPGA devices. The proposed FRIT architecture performance has been evaluated and the results outperformed some other existing architecture in place. Both FRAT and FRIT architectures have been implemented on FPGAs using Handel-C language. The evaluation of both architectures have shown that the obtained results out-performed existing results in place by almost 10% in terms of frequency and area. The proposed architectures are also applied on image data (256 £ 256) and their Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is evaluated for quality purposes. Two architectures for cyclic convolution based on systolic array using parallelism and pipelining which can be used as the main building block for the proposed FRIT architec-ture have been proposed. The first proposed architecture is a linear systolic array with pipelining process and the second architecture is a systolic array with parallel process. The second architecture reduces the number of registers by 42% compare to first architec-ture and both architectures outperformed other existing results in place. The proposed pipelined architecture has been implemented on different FPGA devices with vector size (N) 4,8,16,32 and word-length (W=8). The implementation results have shown a signifi-cant improvement and outperformed other existing results in place. Ultimately, an in-depth evaluation of a high level power macromodelling technique for design space exploration and characterisation of custom IP cores for FPGAs, called func-tional level power modelling approach have been presented. The mathematical techniques that form the basis of the proposed power modeling has been validated by a range of custom IP cores. The proposed power modelling is scalable, platform independent and compares favorably with existing approaches. A hybrid, top-down design flow paradigm integrating functional level power modelling with commercially available design tools for systematic optimisation of IP cores has also been developed. The in-depth evaluation of this tool enables us to observe the behavior of different custom IP cores in terms of power consumption and accuracy using different design methodologies and arithmetic techniques on virous FPGA platforms. Based on the results achieved, the proposed model accuracy is almost 99% true for all IP core's Dynamic Power (DP) components.

Despite the wealth of scholarship concerning the origins of religious beliefs, practices, and cultures, there has been little consideration of the impact of ecological landscapes on the development of ancient religions. Although the influence of the natural environment is considered among the variables in explaining the development of various economic, political, and other social systems throughout history, there is a specific gap concerning its impact on the origins of religious systems. The argument which is taken up in this writing is the correlation between agriculturally marginal landscape and the development of monotheism. Specifically that the religions of the ancient Iranians and Israelites were shaped, in part, by the ecological landscapes in which they developed. Using comparative case studies (primarily: Judaism, Zoroastrianism; and including the religions: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Kikuyu, Maasai, and Lakota) and a dataset of temple sites of the greater Near East through the Iron Age, which are in established archaeological record, digitally mapped in ArcGIS, this argument takes up an examination of the apparent interconnection between mobile societies, monotheism, and a respective lack of temple building culture. Although the primary subjects of the argument are very ancient religious societies, this research is eminently relevant to modern humans because we continue to be affected by natural and built environments. Our modern minds and bodies are shaped, partly, in pragmatic response to spaces in which we develop individually and collectively. This writing is one call for more work to be done to understand the effects of our environments on our minds and ways of thinking. This call for scholarship – for understanding – comes, not accidentally, at a time when the implications of human psychological responses to the environment are particularly unsettling. As the tide of human-caused climate change begins to flood our societies and world, how too might the currents of an unraveling biosphere affect our minds? If the development of a mobile deity and mobile society was the pragmatic response of a people to agriculturally marginal landscapes, what economic, social, and religious constructs might be borne of ecological devastation?

BACKGROUND: Research has established the positive link between physical activity and its impact on health among adults. Generally, as people get older, they are less likely to be active. Black women comprise 13% of the women in the US but constitute 52% of women who are inactive. Existing articles on exercise motivation among Black women have generally assessed sedentary individuals. Little research has examined the motivations to exercise among physically active Black women. METHODS: Guided by the regulators of the Self Determination Theory, the 56 item Motivations of Marathoners Scales for Triathletes (MOMS-T) was used to assess the motives of (N =121) midlife to older Black women (36+) and then transformed into a semi structured guide to interview (n =12) women to further understand their motives for participating in triathlons. RESULTS: Univariate and two way analysis reveals age as a predictor for the four regulators (external, introjection, integration and intrinsic) but BMI and distance are not. Integration demonstrated the highest mean. Qualitative results indicated that construct of self competition and receiving medals are important aspects of participation but are not measured in the survey. A new scale, triathlete lifestyle, should be considered within the MOMS-T. CONCLUSION: Findings were representative of the study population and comparable to previous studies. The survey transformation of the MOMS-T into an interview guide provided additional qualitative explanations of the survey answers demonstrating a secondary method of gathering data as important to provide further understanding about constructs not measured in the survey form of the MOMS-T.

The reproductive justice movement gives a voice and representation to women of color whose experience of reproductive control is impacted by intersecting layers of oppression. This thesis uses an intersectional approach to develop the concept of racial reproductive control logics, which describes the relationship between racial logics and racial patterns of reproductive control. The study uses qualitative interviews and content analysis of organizational material to explore how the reproductive justice movement is influenced by racial reproductive control logics.