The suitabilty of conceptual graphs in strategic management accountancy

The hypothesis of the research is "conceptual graphs are a suitable knowledge-base decision support tool for use by managemenat ccountants in strategic planning", explained as follows. Knowledge-based approaches can help accountants apply their skills in the direction of strategic management problems. Such problem domains cannot be modelled effectively by computer alone, hence we are only interested in those advanced knowledge-based methodologies that can be adequately reviewed by strategic management accountants in the light of their own continually changing tacit and implicit knowledge. Structured diagram techniques, such as flowcharting, are well known by accountants and are a clearly understandable yet important aid in problem review. Apart from being founded on a logically complete reasoning system, the knowledge-based methodology of conceptual graphs was formulated to be an enhancement of these other methods. Furthermore the graphical form of conceptual graphs enjoy an apparent similarity to the 'negating' brackets in the accountant's traditional bookkeeping model. After conducting a comparative study with two similar methodologies in current use showing the technical advantages of conceptual graphs, the Conceptual Analysis and Review Environment computer software was devised and implemented. CARE was used to test the - accepted graphical form of conceptual graphs through a series of user evaluation sessions. The evaluations started out with subjects from the conceptual graphs community itself, then key business school staff, and culminated in a session with senior practising accountants. In addition, CARE was enhanced iteratively in accordance with the results of each evaluation session. Despite their strong prima facie attractiveness and positive response from the conceptual graphs community session, as the user evaluations progressed it became increasingly evident that the inherent complexity of conceptual graphs fundamentally undern-tined them as a viable tool, other than for very trivial problems well below the level needed to be viable for strategic management accountancy. Therefore the original contribution of this research is that its hypothesis turns out to be false

Logic and lattices for a statistics advisor

The work partially reported here concerned the development ot a prototype Expert System for giving advice about Statistics experiments, called ASA, and an inference engine to support ASA, called ABASE.This involved discovering what knowledge was necessary for performing the task at a satis¬ factory level of competence, working out how to represent this knowledge in a computer, and how to process the representations efficiently.Two areas of Statistical knowledge are described in detail: the classification of measure¬ ments and statistical variables, and the structure of elementary statistical experiments. A knowledge representation system based on lattices is proposed, and it is shown that such representations are learnable by computer programs, and lend themselves to particularly efficient implementation.ABASE was influenced by MBASE, the inference engine of MECHO [Bundy et al 79a]. Both are theorem provers working on typed function-free Horn clauses, with controlled creation of new entities. Their type systems and proof procedures are radically different, though, and ABASE is "conversational" while MBASE is not

A distributed knowledge-based support system for strategic management.

Abstract available in pdf file

LOS MICROMUNDOS Y EL PENSAMIENTO DIVERGENTE

En los inicios del proyecto nacional de la Secretaría de Informática de la Presidenciade la República se recibió con gran entusiasmo en Colombia el lenguaje LOGO y losplanteamientos de Seymour Papert. Este entusiasmo era compartido en muchos paísesdel mundo. Se esperaba, entre los resultados importantes, que se generaran notablesdesarrollos del pensamiento creativo en los niños. Antes de terminar la primera mitad dela década del ochenta iniciaron su aparición en diversas latitudes las investigaciones ypublicaciones que tenían como tema central los efectos del uso de LOGO en las escuelas.Como resultado de estos trabajos surgió una polémica sobre las dimensiones reales deesta creación tecnológica, sobre la orientación metodológica de la investigación y sobre elpapel mismo de los maestros en la innovación pedagógica

An Empirical investigation into management and control of software prototyping.

In response to the so-called "software crisis', software prototyping has been widely used as a technique in various stage of systems development since the late 70's, and, with the growing sophistication of 4GLs tools and environments, it has becoming a popular alternative to conventional development approaches. A study of the literature revealed that, unlike tools and environments, the management and control of software prototyping practice has been widely reported as being problematic. The study also suggested that there were very few reported studies of prototyping projects in practice. In order to contribute to the understanding of the management and control of prototyping, it was therefore decided to conduct an empirical study. The empirical investigation comprises three interrelated stages: preliminary survey, field modelling and semi structured interviews. The findings of each stage provided inputs and formed a base for the following stage. From the survey to practitioners it became apparent that the concerns of the literature, regarding the management and control of prototyping projects, were justified. The next stage involved a detailed study using process modelling techniques of ten prototyping projects at eight software development organisations. This was then followed up by semi structured interviews of managers and prototypers at five organisations. In addition a number of documents, minutes and standards were also analysed, and personality tests conducted. The main lessons learnt include the 'process diversity', the inadequate methods and standards, and lack of quality control, particularly in regard to future maintainability and extensibility. Recommendations are given for each key management and control area identified, including team selection, initial requirement gathering, prototypes building, change requests and quality controls. Finally the thesis concludes that further work should be extended to areas such as developing 'lean methods' and an easy to use toolset for better management and control of the process

Managerial Problem-Solving Methods and Outline Specification for a Computer-Based Managerial Job-Management System

This thesis examines problem-solving theory and practice by managers and proposes a structure for computer-based job and problem management. Two principal models are advanced. The Problem-centred model reflects existing perceptions of the problem-solver analysing a specific issue but with further definition given of the main model components. The Role-centred model broadens the perspective to reflect the manager dealing with the totality of his current work units (tasks) amongst which problems form a sub-set. Whilst a work unit may not be 'problematic' it is linked with other issues both in terms of competition for resources and the causal relationships engendered by any resulting actions. The thesis describes a number of designed methods that have emerged in the last few decades including rational sequential approaches as well as self-contained methods which focus on a particular facet. Whilst the varied nature of most managerial problems precludes the adoption of a rigid phased approach, the individual phase components of the former and the specific foci of the latter may be relevant to some amongst the population of problems. Some of the failures in acceptance of the methods by practitioners can be attributed to an assumption that these are comprehensive rather than selectively relevant. Fieldwork provides additional insights into processes adopted in real-world problem-solving, main findings being fragmentation of a problem into sub-problems, the distinction between processes to solve problems and processes to administer the problem-solving process and the network of relationships between different problems. The desk-top PC is identified as currently the main tool for managers offering the most significant potential in terms of medium for methods design and delivery. The recently-emerging PIMs systems can provide the basis for job management but the functionality requires substantial expansion to include the problem-centred activities resulting in broad categories termed Search, Input, Output, Holding, Data and Relating. Executive Information Systems and Expert Systems provide increasingly relevant support within this overall framework, along with other tools and techniques. The main implication of the role-centred model is the requirement that problem-solving methods be embedded within a wider, holistic structure which reflects the manager addressing the totality of his current activities which are prioritised but also interrelated. Within this structure many existing methods, tools and techniques can be assimilated on a non-prescriptive basis as they can be viewed as selectively relevant to types of problem or individual activities within problem-solving processes

Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918

"Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lasting influence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building, as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict, then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe