The purpose of the research was to evaluate whether the Education Management Information System (EMIS) units within Provincial Education Departments can take advantage of the information management and communication tools to enhance the flow of information within the education system. The research investigates the clients' insight on the support provided by EMIS in the education department. Clients were only limited to Senior Managers and Unit Heads within the Head Office of a specific provincial education department. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.

This study explores the reasons behind why EasyPay, a financial services Information Technology company, has not been able to balance the need to innovate its service offering with the pressure to stabilise its service and maintain revenue growth. Despite its good financial performance, service delivery issues had hampered the company for a long period of time. Poor customer service continued to restrict growth and put the company's long-term survival at risk. The researcher believes that the understanding this research has provided will put management in a position to formulate a more effective strategy to take the company from its current reality to its future vision. There was an overwhelming amount of information available in the form of events, patterns, issues and opinions. This information had to be organised and understood. The theory was built from the ground up and derived directly from the evidence collected. The research was iterative in nature and, as such, yielded questions along the way, and this guided the review of the literature. There was first a need to develop a systemic appreciation of the dynamics of the situation before deciding on what strategic management plan to suggest that would balance the pressures on the business and satisfy customer needs. This study therefore focused on developing an appreciation of the situation. Systems thinking theory was used in developing this appreciation, as it provided a language for describing and understanding the forces and interrelationships that shaped the behaviour of the system in EasyPay. When the system had been grasped the researcher went back and revisited the events and patterns, and used the derived systemic model to explain more clearly what happened in the company. The researcher discusses the mental models that he became aware of, in the course of the study, that were in part responsible for the existence of the system in EasyPay. Finally the researcher suggests some recommended actions and highlights areas that he believes require attention. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

Much has been documented about the importance of effective strategic planning as a basis for an organisation to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Inadequate strategic planning is also widely recognised to be one of the major factors that contribute to the failure of most small organisations. At the same time, developing a strategy for an information technology organisation is increasingly becoming a complex exercise, considering the rate at which the field is growing and the need for organisations in this field to respond quickly to changing market demands. For large organisations, it may be a matter of ensuring that existing, tried and tested strategies are frequently updated. For small organisations on the other hand, this may be a nightmare of an exercise. In this research, the author explores a number of strategic planning approaches with the aim of identifying elements in them that could assist the strategy development process of a small information technology company. After a detailed analysis of conventional approaches to strategic management, it suggests a framework which uses the Core Competence Approach to strategy development as a basis. It is supplemented by selected techniques of Strategic Choice as a toolset for systematic decision-making within the strategy development process of a small information technology company. Also included, is a case study on the application and evaluation of the suggested framework for an initial strategy-development process at a typical small information technology company. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

1ST Otokon, a Pretoria based company delivering energy management systems to the industrial and utility market segments, has shown steady growth since its inception 15 years ago. However, after ailing financial results, all aspects of the business were interrogated. It was doubted whether its energy management system (EMS) offering, ecWIN, was fulfilling the needs of the industry. Therefore this study was needed to identify new technology which could improve the effectiveness of ecWIN. After doing a thorough literature study on ecWIN, its competitors and the technologies currently utilised, the product was mapped to various technology management models. Deficiencies in the current software development environment were identified, including a lack of manpower and old software development tools. The empirical study entailed determining the effectiveness of the product through a user survey in the form of a questionnaire. Certain problem areas (e.g. insufficient software testing and a lack of documentation on advanced features) were identified by this survey. The numerous complaints about the slowness of certain reports and lack in user-friendliness were also highlighted. Also forming part of the literature and empirical study respectively, were the identification and evaluation of new technologies not yet utilised in the ecWIN sphere. Taking a holistic view of all this information, recommendations were made on how to improve the effectiveness of ecWIN. This was presented in terms of three dimensions: • Upgrade the current infrastructure over the next 12 months, mainly with new software development tools such as Centura Team Developer 2005, Crystal Reports, etc. • Improve the cost-effectiveness of ecWIN during 2006 and 2007, typically by utilising GPRS, MMS, WiFi and BlueTooth to retrieve information from meters. • Utilise a new business model (mainly centred on the cost-effectiveness dimension together with Linux and MySQL) which could allow the company to directly compete with other firms, even in the commercial and residential markets. A fourth dimension, consisting of technologies that should not be considered for integration with ecWIN at this stage, was also identified (e.g. IPv6, XHTML and Visual Studio .NET). In a world with rapidly changing technology, this study should not be a once-off process, but should be undertaken regularly to ascertain that the effectiveness of 1ST Otokon's EMS offering is constantly improved through the identification of new technology. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

1ST Otokon, a Pretoria based company delivering energy management systems to the industrial and utility market segments, has shown steady growth since its inception 15 years ago. However, after ailing financial results, all aspects of the business were interrogated. It was doubted whether its energy management system (EMS) offering, ecWIN, was fulfilling the needs of the industry. Therefore this study was needed to identify new technology which could improve the effectiveness of ecWIN. After doing a thorough literature study on ecWIN, its competitors and the technologies currently utilised, the product was mapped to various technology management models. Deficiencies in the current software development environment were identified, including a lack of manpower and old software development tools. The empirical study entailed determining the effectiveness of the product through a user survey in the form of a questionnaire. Certain problem areas (e.g. insufficient software testing and a lack of documentation on advanced features) were identified by this survey. The numerous complaints about the slowness of certain reports and lack in user-friendliness were also highlighted. Also forming part of the literature and empirical study respectively, were the identification and evaluation of new technologies not yet utilised in the ecWIN sphere. Taking a holistic view of all this information, recommendations were made on how to improve the effectiveness of ecWIN. This was presented in terms of three dimensions: • Upgrade the current infrastructure over the next 12 months, mainly with new software development tools such as Centura Team Developer 2005, Crystal Reports, etc. • Improve the cost-effectiveness of ecWIN during 2006 and 2007, typically by utilising GPRS, MMS, WiFi and BlueTooth to retrieve information from meters. • Utilise a new business model (mainly centred on the cost-effectiveness dimension together with Linux and MySQL) which could allow the company to directly compete with other firms, even in the commercial and residential markets. A fourth dimension, consisting of technologies that should not be considered for integration with ecWIN at this stage, was also identified (e.g. IPv6, XHTML and Visual Studio .NET). In a world with rapidly changing technology, this study should not be a once-off process, but should be undertaken regularly to ascertain that the effectiveness of 1ST Otokon's EMS offering is constantly improved through the identification of new technology. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

Abstract available from pdf file. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2010.

No description available.

Sharing and exploitation of information resources across a diverse organisation can confer a significant competitive advantage but also can be a substantial challenge in coordinating across structural and specialisation boundaries. This challenge reflects the difficulties traditionally associated with lateral relations, which were recognised by classical organisational theorists but are more pronounced with the emergence of information as a critical resource. Notwithstanding the benefits of information sharing across the organisation, the classical concept of specialisation remains fundamental to organisational theory; thus there is potential for friction between requirements for specialisation and coordination. This research therefore examines information management arrangements to balance specialisation and coordination in a diverse organisation. The research takes advantage of organisational and systems theory literature to appreciate complex information management requirements in terms of differentiation/cohesion and integration/coupling of organisational elements. Information management???s business and technology perspectives define the conceptual framework, within which gaps in the literature are identified and become the focus of the research. The two key research areas are the opportunities enabled by technology for business integration through collaborative decision-making and the management of organisation-wide information technology infrastructure. Collaborative decision-making is an integrating mechanism that can provide balance between specialisation and coordination contingent upon the nature of decision tasks and their organisational context. Propositions associated with an adaptive approach to collaborative decision-making were tested in laboratory experiments, with positive support for the contingency model albeit constrained by individual cognitive variances. Organisations increasingly are adopting centralised approaches to the provision of IT services, with IT governance as an integrating mechanism and a need for multiple business-IT alignments to add value according to the differentiation required by organisational elements. Propositions relating to the adaptation of IT management arrangements based upon organisational characteristics were tested using a multi- iv -discipline approach, which resulted in support for the model although practical difficulties were experienced in the action research component. This research provides a framework for maintaining effective variety of information capabilities commensurate with the diverse organisation???s mission and environment, while also exploiting the synergies and economies of shared information resources for holistic benefits.

Empirical studies into IT governance have considerably advanced our understanding of the mechanisms and practices used by contemporary organisations to govern their current and future use of IT. However, despite the progress made in identifying the various elements employed by contemporary IT governance arrangements, there has been relatively little research into the formulation of a holistic model of IT governance that integrates the growing collection of parts into a coherent whole. To further advance the concept of IT governance, the Viable Governance Model (VGM) is proposed. The VGM is a theoretical model of IT governance within a corporate setting that is based on the laws and principles of cybernetics as embodied in Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). Cybernetics, the science of control and communication in biological and artificial systems, establishes a firm theoretical foundation upon which to design a system that directs and controls the IT function in a complex enterprise. The VGM is developed using an approach based on design science. Given the theoretical nature of the artefact that is being designed, the development and evaluation activities are primarily conceptual in nature. That is, the development activity involves the design of a theoretical model of IT governance using theoretical concepts and constructs drawn from several reference disciplines including cybernetics, organisation theory, and complexity theory. The conceptual evaluation of the VGM indicates that the model is sufficiently robust to incorporate many of the empirical findings arising from academic and professional research. The resultant model establishes a "blueprint", or set of design principles, that can be used by IS practitioners to design and implement a system of IT governance that is appropriate to their organisational contingencies. Novel aspects of this research include: the integration of corporate and IT governance; the reinterpretation of the role of the enterprise architecture (EA) within a complex enterprise; the exposition of the relationship between the corporate and divisional IT groups; and the resolution of the centralisation versus decentralisation dilemma that confront designers of IT governance arrangements.

While there is significant evidence to suggest that the alignment of Human Resources (HR) and Information Technology (IT) has a positive impact on firm performance, there is little discussion on how to achieve alignment. Literature in both the HR and IT disciplines provides confirmation of the need to identify and address the people management issues in order to realise the expected returns from IT investments. This research will contribute to these discussions with insights into how an organisation with alignment between IT and HR might appear, who should be responsible for the alignment, and how enabling and inhibiting factors impact the alignment process.