Galimybę pasinaudoti teise į žalos atlyginimą viešuosiuose pirkimuose vertėtų laikyti vienu iš kertinių elementų, galinčių padėti užtikrinti viešųjų pirkimų procedūrų viešumą, skaidrumą, atitikimą teisės aktų reikalavimams. Šio darbo tikslas – nustatyti teisės į žalos atlyginimą efektyvaus įgyvendinimo ypatumus, visapusiškai išnagrinėti kiekvieną iš būtinų sąlygų civilinei atsakomybei dėl žalos viešuosiuose pirkimuose padarymo kilti, apibendrinti Lietuvos teismų ir Europos Teisingumo Teismo praktiką. Darbe analizuojama teisė į žalos atlyginimą viešuosiuose pirkimuose (VPĮ 96 straipsnio pagrindu) ir kiti VPĮ V skyriuje įtvirtinti tiekėjų teisių gynimo būdai, aptariami jų tarpusavio ryšiai. Darbe dėmesys taip pat skiriamas sąžiningų tiekėjų pareigai ginčyti neteisėtus perkančiosios organizacijos veiksmus VPĮ V skyriuje numatyta tvarka. Siekiant išsamesnės teisės į žalos atlyginimą viešuosiuose pirkimuose instituto analizės, darbo pradžioje identifikuojamas subjektų, turinčių teisę į žalos atlyginimą viešuosiuose pirkimuose, ratas, o kitose dalyse aptariama kiekviena iš civilinei atsakomybei dėl žalos viešuosiuose pirkimuose padarymo kilti būtinų sąlygų: kaltė, neteisėti veiksmai, žala ir priežastinis ryšys tarp neteisėtų veiksmų ir žalos. / One of the principal elements in the scope of public procurement is the ability to obtain damages, which ensures the transparency, publicity of public procurement procedures and meeting the requirements of law. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the singularities of the effective claim for damages, to scrutinize every condition for the civil liability in the scope of public procurement, to overview and summarize cases of Lithuanian courts and the European Court of Justice. The right to damages in the field of public procurement (Article 96 of the Law of Public procurement of Lithuania) and other remedies for civil rights protection are analyzed in this study, identifying connection between those remedies of civil rights protection. Attention is being paid to the duty of fair supplier to file a claim about the actions or decisions of the contracting authority under the Part V of the Law of Public Procurement of Lithuania. Seeking for the exhaustive analysis of the right to damages in the beginning of the study the group of subjects having right to claim for damages is being identified, in other parts of the study - every condition for the civil liability in the field of public procurement is analyzed: existence of fault, existence of damages and existence of a causal link between the fault and the claimed damages.

Presence has various definitions, but can be understood as the sensation that a virtual environment is a real place, that the user is actually in the virtual environment rather than at the display terminal, or that the medium used to display the environment has disappeared leaving only the environment itself. We present an attempt to unite various presence approaches by reducing each to what we believe is a common basis – the psychology of behaviour selection and control – and re-conceptualizing presence in these terms by defining cognitive presence – the mental state where the VE rather than the real environment is acting as the basis for behaviour selection. The bulk of this work represents the construction of a three-layer connectionist model to explain and predict this concept of cognitive presence. This model takes input from two major sources: the perceptual modalities of the user (bottom-up processes), and the mental state of the user (top-down processes). These two basic sources of input competitively spread activation to a central layer which competitively determines which behaviour script will be applied to regulate behaviour. We demonstrate the ability of the model to cope with current notions of presence by using it to successfully predict two published findings: one (Hendrix & Barfield, 1995) showing that presence increases with an increase in the geometric field of view of the graphical display, and another (Sallnas, 1999), which demonstrates the positive relationship between presence and the stimulation of more than one sensory modality. Apart from this theoretical analysis, we also perform two experiments to test the central tenets of our model. The first experiment aimed to show that presence is affected by both perceptual inputs (bottom-up processes), conceptual inputs (top-down processes), and the interaction of these. We collected 103 observations from a 2x2 factorial design with stimulus quality (2 levels) and conceptual priming (2 levels) as independent variables, and as dependent variable we used three measures of presence (Slater, Usoh & Steed’s scale (1995), Witmer & Singer’s (1998) Presence Questionnaire and our own cognitive presence measure) for the dependent variable. We found a significant main effect for stimulus quality and a significant interaction, which created a striking effect: priming the subject with material related in theme to the content of the VE increased the mean presence score for those viewing the high quality display, but decreased the mean of those viewing the low quality display. For those not primed with material related to the VE, no mean presence difference was discernible between those using high and low quality displays. The results from this study suggest that both top-down and bottom-up activation should be taken into account when explaining the causality of presence. Our second study aimed to show that presence comes about as a result not of raw sensory information, but rather due to partly-processed perceptual information. To do this we created a simple three group comparative design, with 78 observations. Each one of the three groups viewed the same VE under three display conditions: high-quality graphical, low-quality graphical, and text-only. Using the model, we predicted that the text and low-quality graphics displays would produce the same presence levels, while the high-quality display would outperform them both. The results were mixed, with the Slater, Usoh & Steed scale showing the predicted pattern, but the Presence Questionnaire showing each condition producing a significantly different presence score (in the increasing order: text, low-quality graphics, high-quality graphics). We conclude from our studies that the model shows the correct basic structure, but that it requires some refinement with regards to its dealings with non-immersive displays. We examined the performance our presence measure, which was found to not perform satisfactorily. We conclude by proposing some points relevant to the methodology of presence research, and by suggesting some avenues for future expansion of our model.

Digital libraries (DLs) represent an important evolutionary step towards accessing structured digital information. DLs are often built from scratch or by using proprietary monolithic software that is often difficult to customise and extend to meet changing requirements. Researchers are beginning to realise that this is not an ideal solution and as a result, are creating component suites and accompanying protocols to encourage the creation of modular DLs. Despite the introduction of component models, it is not immediately apparent how they can be seamlessly assembled to produce diverse, yet fully functional, component-based digital library systems without knowledge of the underlying protocols. This dissertation presents a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DL systems from distributed components, consequently shielding DL architects from the complexity of using components models and taking advantage of the inherent benefits of the component programming paradigm. The framework introduced in this dissertation was designed to be generic enough to be adopted for the assembly of a variety of component-based systems over and beyond the digital library community. After being tested on over thirty inexperienced users and modelling a number of existing DL systems, graphically assembling distributed components has been shown to be a viable approach to simplify the creation of modular DLs from a pool of heterogeneous components.

Software engineering is a discipline concerned with manufacturing or developing software. Software plays a pivotal role in everyday life, an absence of which will be devastating to a number of governmental, recreational and financial activities, amongst many others. One of the latest branches of software engineering, component-based software engineering, is concerned with the development of software systems using already existing components which speculatively will ensure rapid and inexpensive software development processes. Parallel with the advances in software engineering, the field of digital libraries — a field dealing with Web-based access to and management of structured digital content — has adopted this development model from software engineering to shift focus from developing and using traditionally monolithic software systems to developing and using more flexible component-oriented software systems. Since componentised development approaches are relatively recent, other areas such as packaging and managing component-based software systems still remain unattended to. This dissertation presents research on techniques and methodologies for packaging customisable component-based digital libraries such that deployment is rapid and flexibility is not compromised. Although the reference point of this research was that of component-based digital library systems, it is believed that this research can be generalised across the family of Web-based component-based software systems. An outcome of this research was a prototype packaging system consisting of a pair of tools: a package builder tool and a package installer tool. This packaging system was developed to model the ideas and methodologies that were identified as important to the processes of packaging and installing component-based digital library systems. These tools consequently underwent a user evaluation study whereby they were evaluated for understandability, usability and usefulness to the processes of packaging and installing component-based digital libraries. A key contribution of this research was identifying requirements for a generic component packaging framework. For a component to be seen as ”fit-to-package”, it must posses the following at the very least: the component must be configurable automatically; the component must have a formal description of its dependency software; there must be formal descriptions that describe individual components as well as systems composed of components; and there must be a way whereby installation questions are formally encoded such that components are able to correctly receive configuration information. In totality, this research has shown that component-oriented software development approaches can benefit from an infrastructure which allows for component-based software systems to be composed, distributed and installed effortlessly.

Open data standardization has many known benefits, including the availability of tools for standard encoding formats, interoperability among systems and long term preservation of data. Mark-up languages and their use on the World Wide Web have implied further ease for data sharing. The Extensible Markup Language (XML), in particular, has succeeded due to its simplicity and ease of use. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet. Whether open and standardized or not, organizations generate data daily. Offline exchange of documents and data is undertaken using existing formats that are typically defined by the organizations that generate the data in the documents. With the Internet, the realization of data exchange has had a direct implication on the need for interoperability and comparability. As much as standardization is the accepted approach for online data exchange, little is understood about how a specific organization’s data “fits” a given data standard. This dissertation develops data metrics that represent the extent to which data standards can be applied to an organization’s data. The research identified key issues that affect data interoperability or the feasibility of a move towards interoperability. This research tested the unwritten rule that organizational setups tend to regard and design data requirements more from internal needs than interoperability needs. Essentially, by generating metrics that affect a number of data attributes, the research quantified the extent of the gap that exists between organizational data and data standards. Key data attributes, i.e. completeness, concise representation, relevance and complexity, were selected and used as the basis for metric generation. Additional to the generation of attribute-based metrics, hybrid metrics representing a measure of the “goodness of fit” of the source data to standard data were generated. Regarding the completeness attribute, it was found that most Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) head office data clusters had lower than desired metrics to match the gap highlighted above. The same applied to the concise representation attribute. Most data clusters had more concise representation for the COMESA data than the data standard. The complexity metrics generated confirmed the fact that the number of data elements is a key determinant in any move towards the adoption of data standards. This fact was also borne out by the magnitude of the hybrid metrics which to some extent depended on the complexity metrics. An additional contribution of the research was the inclusion of expert users’ weights to the data elements and recalculation of all metrics. A comparison with the unweighted metrics yielded a mixed picture. Among the completeness metrics and for the data retention rate in particular, increases were recorded for data clusters for which greater weight was allocated to mapped elements than to those that were not mapped. The same applied to the relative elements ratio. The complexity metrics showed general declines when user-weighted elements were used in the computation as opposed to the unweighted elements. This again was due to the fact that these metrics are dependent on the number of elements. Hence for the former case, the weights were evenly distributed while for the latter case, some elements were given lower weights by the expert users, hence leading to an overall decline in the metric. A number of implications emerged for COMESA. COMESA would have to determine the extent to which its source data rely on data sources for which international standards are being promoted. Secondly, an inventory of users and collectors of the data COMESA uses is necessary in order to determine who would be the beneficiary of a standards-based information system. Thirdly, and from an organizational perspective, COMESA needs to designate a team to guide the process of creation of such a standards-based information system. Lastly there is need for involvement in consortia that are responsible for these data standards. This has an implication on organizational resources. In totality, this research provided a methodology for determination of the feasibility of a move towards standardization and hence makes it possible to answer the critical first stage questions such a move begs answers to.

Mobile banking is attractive because it allows people to do banking anytime, anywhere. One of the requirements of performing a mobile banking transaction is that users are required to login before use. The current mobile banking login method is PIN authentication; however, results from other research studies have found that there are usability concerns of using PINs. To overcome some of the concerns, researchers have suggested the use graphical passwords. In this research, we argue that another alternative input technique can be utilized. We explore a novel password input approach, called gesture passwords, of using 3-dimensional discrete gesture motions as password elements. As a result, three systems (PINs, graphical passwords and gesture passwords) were compared. This dissertation describes the design of two mobile authentication techniques: combinational graphical passwords and gesture passwords. These systems were implemented as prototypes. The prototypes along with a PIN authenticator were evaluated with users. User experience and password retention were evaluated to determine the usability and users’ acceptance of each system. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the above. Results from the experiments show that users were able to use all of the testing systems; however, the results reveal that users are more proficient and preferred to use PINs for mobile banking authentication than the other two systems.

The current medley of interoperability protocols is potentially problematic. Each protocol is designed by a different group, each provides a single service, and has its own syntax and vocabulary. Popular protocols such as RSS are designed with simple and easy to understand documentation, which is a key factor for the high adoption levels. But the majority of protocols are complex, making them relatively difficult for programmers to understand and implement. This research proposes a possible new direction for high-level interoperability protocols design. The High-level Interoperability Protocol - Common Framework (HIP-CF) is designed and evaluated as a proof of concept that if interoperability is made simpler, then it can increase adoption levels, making it easier for programmers to understand and implement protocols, therefore leading to more interoperable systems. HIP-CF is not suggested as the alternative to current production protocols. Rather it is suggested that the design approach taken by HIP-CF can be applied to other protocols, and also that a suite of simpler protocols is a better solution than various simple individual protocols. Evaluation results show that current protocols can be substantially improved on. These improvements could and maybe should be the result of a deeper analysis of the goals of today’s protocols and also a collaboration amongst the different groups that design high-level interoperability protocols. This research presents a new approach and suggests future experimental research options for the field of high-level interoperability protocol design.

There are different factors that contribute to the development of work ethics. One such factor is the individual in relation to the work, the organisation and the environment. Work ethics are believed to be related to performance, productivity and the disciplining of extreme misconduct. Work ethics are also associated with economic success. It is recommended that the organisation should find out more about work ethics and how work ethics could be to the advantage of the organisation. The general aim of this research was to determine the work ethic of the employees in the Platinum mine industry. Work ethics were defined in detail from the literature and the most important factors that influence it were analysed. A qualitative research design based on the phenomenological approach was used. The purpose of this was to understand the individual in his or her totality and to make a qualitative analysis of a person's conscious world. A questionnaire and interviews were used to determine employees' experience of work ethics. Content analysis was done to define, examine, analyse, quantify and interpret the research findings. The results of the empirical study were discussed according to the themes of religion, culture, individualism, group dynamics and organisational factors. It was found that factors influencing work ethics have different effects on different people. Etiology, determinants and work-related beliefs in different settings must also be taken into account. It was evident that people who espouse work ethics are more productive, successful and satisfied. Recommendations for future research were indicated. / Thesis (MA (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The study deals with the concept of competing in the market with a dual branding strategy against mono-brands. The research, more specifically, examines the market awareness of the brand regarding the company versus the product. Monsanto SA, as a company, deals in the market as DEKALB. The study is based on the principles of the Burrows model of corporate identity. A tailor-made questionnaire was used as the measuring instrument. A total of 281 respondents completed the questionnaires. Data analysis was done by means of descriptive statistics and a Varimax rotated factor analysis. The reliability of the data was verified by determining the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. In this investigation, for the brand DEKALB, only one factor contributes to the brand image identified as dynamism. For Monsanto SA, two factors contribute to the organisation image. These factors are identified as dynamism and visual identity. The research concludes that although brand identities are similar to a large extent, the market views Monsanto SA more defined. A second factor is identified in addition to the common factor in both identities. The final and most important conclusion is that dual branding in the marketing strategy influences corporate identity and image, and vice versa. Monsanto SA should, therefore, take care not to confuse the market. Currently, agreement exists between the two identities, but it could easily result in confusion. Marketing strategies of Monsanto SA and DEKALB should purposefully dovetail to ensure that market confusion does not set in. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

To deliver the type of marketing graduate that meets industry demand necessitates that marketing curricula content be continuously updated to keep pace with the dynamic marketing environment. One of the major trends influencing the twenty-first century marketing environment is the advent of the Internet and substantial growth in Internet usage and Internet-based commerce. Not only is the Internet driving major marketing environmental change, it is also emerging as a new marketing tool of significant potential. The widespread implications of the Internet to marketing is making it increasingly necessary for general marketing practitioners, even those not actively engaged in Internet-based commerce, to be equipped with an understanding of Internet marketing principles. For marketing education to remain relevant in the twenty-first century, it is essential that Internet marketing content elements be included in undergraduate generic marketing curricula. The first step in this process, and the one addressed by this study, is to identify and reach consensus on which Internet marketing content elements are relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students. The primary purpose of -this study w a s t a develop an empirically derived inventory o f Internet marketing content elements relevant for inclusion in generic undergraduate marketing programs, based upon both marketing academic and marketing practitioner perspectives. Five focal questions were asked and answered by the study. Which Internet-driven marketing environmental changes do marketing academics consider relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students? Which principles guiding the use of Internet as a marketing tool do marketing academics consider relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students? What do marketing academics consider to be the most suitable approach to implementing Internet marketing principles within higher education undergraduate business programs? What do marketing academics consider to be the relevant Internet marketing learning outcomes for generic marketing students at undergraduate level? Do marketing practitioners hold the same opinion as marketing academics regarding research questions one, two, three and four? For the purpose of this study, research was undertaken amongst two groups of respondents. Firstly, a census of the marketing faculties/departments of each of South Africa's public higher education institutions was taken at the end of 2004. Secondly, a non-probability, judgment sample of marketing practitioners, employed in those companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), that engage in marketing activities and which are operational in the South African market was taken at the start of 2005. The questionnaire requested respondents in both samples to indicate the relevance of five identified Internet-driven marketing environmental changes and twenty-four identified principles guiding the use of the Internet as a marketing tool to generic undergraduate marketing students. Further, both samples were requested to select the approach they judged to be the most suitable in implementing Internet marketing principles within undergraduate business programmes. Respondents in both samples were also requested to indicate which Internet marketing learning outcomes they believed. To be relevant generic undergraduate marketing student addition to both samples were asked to provide certain demographical data. The findings indicate that both the Internet-driven marketing environmental change's construct and the principles guiding the use of the Internet as a marketing tool construct to be relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students. The findings further suggest that Internet marketing content elements should be integrated into existing marketing subject offerings. Regarding the learning outcomes, the findings indicate descriptive Internet marketing principles to be the overriding learning outcome. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Business Management))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005.