Supply chain management practices in the petroleum industry of Zimbabwe.

Doctoral degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Supply chain management is one of the contemporary management philosophies recommended to companies that seek to improve competitiveness. Supply chain management focuses on cost efficiency, customer satisfaction and systems thinking. This study analyses supply chain management practices in the Zimbabwe petroleum industry. Supply chain management is a nascent concept in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean petroleum companies are uncompetitive because they have not embraced the supply chain management philosophy or the philosophy is not properly implemented among other reasons. The study analyses the Zimbabwe petroleum industry players based on how they manage supply chain managent activities such as procurement, inventory, logistics, information technology and customer service. It also analyses the industry‟s environment, supply chain strategies, industry structure and challenges. The study uses the robust convergent parallel mixed methods research design to simultaneously and independently collect data aimed to achieve a wider and detailed indepth understanding of factors leading to the Zimbabwe petroleum industry‟s uncompetitiveness. In-depth interviews were hel with six executives from Ministry of Energy and Power Development, Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority and National Oil Iinfrastructure Company of Zimbabwe. Quantitative data was collected through objective questionnaires from fifty seven managers with supply chain management responsibilities in petroleum companies. A regression analysis on supply chain performance establishes that developing effective supply chain management strategies and staff motivation, training and development are the two determinants of supply chain management performance.The results further reveal existence of supply chain management challenges owing to an unfavourable business environment, lack of clear supply chain strategy, lack of foreign currency, weak industry structure, high cost of product, the country‟s poor policy framework, and lack of communication and cooperation among supply chain members. The study recommends that authorities craft and market a supply chain strategy that takes advantage of the country‟s potential to become a regional hub for fuel distribution to countries like Botswana, Zambia and DRC. Government must fix environmental factors that keep investors at bay and threaten de-industrialisation. Industry captains must de-bottle their planning processes; encourage teamwork and strategic alliances among supply chain members. However, the small sample size, data based on one petroleum company and its distributorship and difficulty in generalising results of the study, are some of the study‟s limitations

Translating Predictive Models for Alzheimer’s Disease to Clinical Practice: User Research, Adoption Opportunities, and Conceptual Design of a Decision Support Tool

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a common form of Dementia with terrible impact on patients, families, and the healthcare sector. Recent computational advances, such as predictive models, have improved AD data collection and analysis, disclosing the progression pattern of the disease. Whilst clinicians currently rely on a qualitative, experience-led approach to make decisions on patients’ care, the Event-Based Model (EBM) has shown promising results for familial and sporadic AD, making it well positioned to inform clinical decision-making. What proves to be challenging is the translation of computational implementations to clinical applications, due to lack of human factors considerations. The aim of this Ph.D. thesis is to (1) explore barriers and opportunities to the adoption of predictive models for AD in clinical practice; and (2) develop and test the design concept of a tool to enable EBM exploitation by AD clinicians. Following a user-centred design approach, I explored current clinical needs and practices, by means of field observations, interviews, and surveys. I framed the technical-clinical gap, identifying the technical features that were better suited for clinical use, and research-oriented clinicians as the best placed to initially adopt the technology. I designed and tested with clinicians a prototype, icompass, and reviewed it with the technical teams through a series of workshops. This approach fostered a thorough understanding of clinical users’ context and perceptions of the tool’s potential. Furthermore, it provided recommendations to computer scientists pushing forward the models and tool’s development, to enhance user relevance in the future. This thesis is one of the few works addressing a lack of consensus on successful adoption and integration of such innovations to the healthcare environment, from a human factors’ perspective. Future developments should improve prototype fidelity, with interleaved clinical testing, refining design, algorithm, and strategies to facilitate the tool’s integration within clinical practice

Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric

Despite tremendous growth in attention to and scholarship about Asian Americans and their cultural work, little research has emerged that focuses directly on Asian American rhetoric. Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric addresses this need by examining the systematic, effective use of symbolic resources by Asians and Asian Americans in social, cultural, and political contexts. Such rhetoric challenges, disrupts, and transforms the dominant European American rhetoric and it commands a sense of unity or collective identity. However, such rhetoric also embodies internal differences and even contradictions, as each specific communicative situation is informed and inflected by particularizing contexts, by different relations of asymmetry, and, most simply put, by heterogeneous voices. The essays in Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric examine broadly the histories, theories, and practices of Asian American rhetoric, situating rhetorical work across the disciplines where critical study of Asian Americans occurs: Asian American studies, rhetoric and composition, communication studies, and English studies. These essays address the development and adaptation of classical rhetorical concepts such as ethos and memory, modern concepts such as identification, and the politics of representation through a variety of media and cultural texts. As these essays collectively argue, Asian American rhetoric not only reflects and responds to existing social and cultural conditions and practices, but also interacts with and impacts such conditions and practices. To the extent it does, it becomes a rhetoric of becomingý-a rhetoric that is always in the process of negotiating with, adjusting to, and yielding an imagined identity and agency that is Asian American.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1163/thumbnail.jp