Not available / text

This study analysed perceptions on the application of cost accounting in the budgeting process, a case of the City of Tshwane (CoT) municipality. Employee perceptions were analysed to determine whether recognised costing techniques were being applied, and if so, were those costing techniques being efficiently and effectively applied. An analysis of the employee perceptions of the reliability of the currently implemented costing techniques for the preparation of budget estimates, together with the employees’ perceptions of management’s implementation and maintenance of the budget estimates, as required by legislation, was also conducted. The research instruments comprise questionnaires that were distributed to all municipal officials at CoT who are responsible for budgeting within their municipal department or division, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with selected officials. Data collected from the participants were descriptively analysed. This study identified a performance gap between the potential of the costing techniques nominally being used and the manner in which CoT budget officials actually apply them. Based on the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the data, recommendations were made. Some of these recommendations include that officials of the CoT should improve training on the proper application of currently used costing techniques and that the CoT should conduct a pilot study aimed at introducing transfer pricing (TP) and standard costing as their next-generation budget costing techniques. In addition, including decisionmaking tools, such as cost-volume and profit (CVP) analysis in the costing process can add value to the budget costing process if applied as a cost-volume and service (CVS) analysis.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

Energy retrofits can be executed by a building owner with or without the supervision of a third-party agent. We define process models to capture third-party energy retrofit inspection activities, and refine, augment, and generalize those models to then examine the impact of third-party retrofit inspections. Buildings included in the study vary considerably in type, and so do retrofit programs applied to those buildings.

No description available.

Abstract Title Cashews by SMS – an implementation in Mozambique Problem Innovation is described by Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt (2005) as the core process within organisations associated with renewal and as generic activity associated with survival and growth. Yet many organisations fail to realise the benefits of adopting an innovation. Which the theory will show this is most likely due to a problem with one certain phase in the innovation process: the implementation. Purpose The purpose with this academic paper is by a practical example illustrate the risks and problems one can come across in an implementation and the consequences of this. We also intend to give suggestion on how it is possible to restart an implementation process when the process once has failed. Research questions Why has marketAlerts failed to be implemented in Mozambique? How should IPEX resume the implementation of marketAlerts? Methodology Ethnographical approach. Conclusion Our conclusion is that the Institute for Export Promotion (IPEX) has managed to adopt marketAlerts but has failed to implement it in their daily work mainly due to the fact that they only completed the acquiring phase. The failure is due to a combination of hierarchy, lack of interest and absents of routines for sending marketAlerts. In order for IPEX to make the best use of marketAlerts we believe that they have to go back and start from the executing phase and implement the service once again.

This analysis examines the theme of divine activity as found in the literature of religion and science over the past quarter century. After a brief historical chapter, reflections on divine action from authors in the philosophy of religion are considered. In chapters 2 and 3, concepts such as intervention, deism, master act and subacts, primary and secondary causation, double agency and the causal joint are outlined. Following this, chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on the work of Whitehead. The amount of space devoted to the treatment of process thought in this investigation reflects the attention it has given to the topic of divine activity. / The focus then turns to scientific subjects and how they may inform the question of divine action. Some of the themes highlighted in the case of the large-scale world (chapter 6) include natural laws, evolution, the anthropic principle and the implicate order. Those concepts more appropriate for the small-scale world (chapter 7) involve quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and chaos theory. The positioning of process thought between the two fields of science and the philosophy of religion is strategic in the sense that process thinking claims to have built a bridge between science and religion, physics and metaphysics. / In the concluding chapter, the various positions are plotted on three graphs. This approach illumines their relation to the others as well as the facet each can be expected to bring to the overall discussion of divine activity. A resolution to the issue, if any, will likely exhibit Whiteheadian and/or Bohmian contours.

The notion of seriality describes such relations where each element has a processor. It could be also understood as a condition of sequential translation and transfonnation. This thesis investi gates “seriality” in the relationship to architecture and landscape. I begin my investigation with a criticism of the conventional relationship between architecture and landscape. This relationship is often static and inert while it should be more dynamic and interactive within the design process. Reconsidering the relationship between “research” and “design,” my attempt to connect the two using algorithmic design was instrumental in formulating a new design process. In this thesis, a new design process has been developed and examined in three different sec tions: 1) “Theoretical Approach,” 2) “Technical Approach” and 3) “Case Study.” In the theoretical section, I investigate “rhythm,” which is an underlying series of movements affecting on architecture physically and fundamentally, in both architecture and landscape. In re sponse to this theory, I propose a method known as the “Genetic Grid” to manage grid flexibly by receiving its new identities from “natural conditions.” In the technical approach, I introduce methods in algorithmic design to manage grid flexibly. The basic method is called the ‘UVN generator’ which is based on the algorithmic process com bining the scripting potentiality and flexibility of traditional 3D surface modeling. This technique contributes to a method to generate the “Genetic Grid.” In the third section, I examine this “Genetic grid” more closely throughout a proposed design process called “Condition Linkage.” By embedding “Gene of Place” into architectural elements, I hope to show an underlying harmonious relationship between architecture and landscape.

No description available.

Both Hilary Bok, in “Freedom and Practical Reason,” and Robert Kane, in “Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism,” make at least implicit use of process-based accounts of deliberation to establish their positions. But Bok is a compatibilist while Kane is a libertarian—the usefulness of the notion of process to opposing sides of the contemporary free will debate suggests that it might be this notion that is doing the work for Bok and Kane rather than elements specific to their separate doctrines. At the very least it suggests that an exploration of process will offer a better understanding of the interplay between compatibilism and libertarianism in the free will debate. In this thesis, I discuss the process-based accounts of John Dewey and A. N. Whitehead—primarily from Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct and Whitehead’s Process and Reality—in an effort to bring out features of such accounts that are relevant to the issues of free will and human action. Following focused discussions of Dewey and Whitehead I explore how their specific accounts bear upon the positions of Bok and Kane in their aforementioned articles, and conclude that Dewey and Whitehead would reject both the compatibilist and libertarian positions, taking up something of a middle ground between the two views. I then end the thesis by exploring how a more general process account of human action bears upon Bok and Kane, concluding that it is possible to reconcile their views with such a general account with only some reinterpretation and restriction of their positions. In general, I conclude that process-based accounts of human action favour neither compatibilist nor libertarian positions, but rather a mixture or middle ground between the two. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-18 12:30:30.758