Review of the environmental and organisational implications of cloud computing: final report.

Cloud computing – where elastic computing resources are delivered over the Internet by external service providers – is generating significant interest within HE and FE. In the cloud computing business model, organisations or individuals contract with a cloud computing service provider on a pay-per-use basis to access data centres, application software or web services from any location. This provides an elasticity of provision which the customer can scale up or down to meet demand. This form of utility computing potentially opens up a new paradigm in the provision of IT to support administrative and educational functions within HE and FE. Further, the economies of scale and increasingly energy efficient data centre technologies which underpin cloud services means that cloud solutions may also have a positive impact on carbon footprints. In response to the growing interest in cloud computing within UK HE and FE, JISC commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a Review of the Environmental and Organisational Implications of Cloud Computing in Higher and Further Education [19]

Industry 4.0: the impact of strategic leadership behaviour on organisational response to the adoption of technological innovation.

The rapid development and cross-interaction between emerging technologies is called Industry 4.0, and it is being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Organisational leaders are seeking to understand how to lead their firms to benefit from the opportunities that these technologies offer, as well as mitigating against the threats that the technologies could pose. This thesis aims to examine how Industry 4.0 and strategic leadership behaviours are intersecting and influencing each other. This study forms part of the requirement for completion of a Doctorate of Business Administration, a professional doctorate that was undertaken whilst the researcher was in full time employment in a leadership role. Partially influenced by professional practice, the research philosophy that underpins the study is pragmatic. Data collection was completed using semi-structured qualitative interviews. Data analysis included inductive and deductive thematic analysis to re-signify strategic leadership behaviour in the context of Industry 4.0. Yukl's 2012 hierarchal behavioural taxonomy was selected as the most appropriate framework to connect to existing literature on leadership behaviour. The primary finding is the display of knowledge management behaviours by strategic organisational leaders. This thesis recommends significant changes to Yukl's behavioural taxonomy by the addition of a metacategory called 'knowledge-based behaviours', and removal of 'externally focused behaviours' metacategory. This metacategory is partially populated by previously-identified behaviours: networking, external monitoring, representing, and facilitating collective learning. The objectives behind these behaviours are revised in line with the findings of this study. Additionally, a novel behaviour of critical evaluation is also included in the knowledge-based behaviour metacategory. Secondary findings include the revising the objectives of existing behaviours, as well as the identification of another novel behaviour 'mission matching'. Finally, the study provides evidence that the enablers and challenges of Industry 4.0 adoption previously theoretically identified in literature are broadly applicable; however, there is divergence on which factors have the most impact. This study also identified additional factors such as scepticism and the lack of a clear definition of Industry 4.0 impeding collective learning behaviours in organisations. This thesis proposes an updated definition of Industry 4.0, as well as a conceptual framework to assist with categorising technologies

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Implications and effectiveness of information management while restructuring an organisation

This research paper undertakes to outline factors of Information Management that organisations should consider when attempting a restructuring process. Conversely, valuable information and knowledge are often mislaid, overlooked or discarded to the eventual detriment of an organisation during the processes of downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring, reorganisation, reengineering, transformation or change. In the global economy organisations are always striving to keep ahead of competition and ultimately to improve their net profit. Information is at the very core of any organisation, its ads value, structure and power to an organisation. Information Management assists with the locating, storing and use of corporate information. A means of controlling and structuring corporate information is via the use of the Information Management elements. A case study using an organisation that is in the process of change and transformation was performed. Potential loss of knowledge and information was identified and examined. The organisation’s implementation of an information portal was highlighted as an effective way to minimise the loss of knowledge and information during the period of change.Professor A.S.A. du Toi

Are cognitive and social factors sufficient to explain the acceptance of decision aiding processes within organisations?

This research extends the limited existing research into the acceptance of decision aids by considering this in an organisational, rather than personal, context. This led to the thesis having a theory-building bias as it was not clear at the outset what a decision aid in an organisation consists of, what the main influences on acceptance would be, nor how to conduct such an enquiry. The potential influences were identified as the extent of agreement within the organisation with the way in which the decision aid represented the basic problem, and this was argued to form the cognitive and social/actors. The expectation was to find an association between the level of intra-organisational agreement and either acceptance or rejection of the decision aid if they are the sole cause. Other potential influences include the type of problem (especially whether maintenance of the status-quo is an option), the approach to decision aiding in use, and other external factors. Decision aiding in organisations was linked with approaches to organisational planning, whether or not this included significant use of IT. Such approaches involve constructing a problem representation and testing the implications of potential solutions. From this perspective, it was possible to see some of the influences on the acceptance of a decision aid as those which will affect any decision whether aided or not. The empirical work was designed to disentangle these effects by concentrating on the degree of intra-organisational agreement and using case-studies to capture any other factors which applied. The findings were that intra-organisational agreement, continuation of the status-quo and external constraints all influenced acceptance. However, there was no simple relationship between the cognitive and social factors and acceptance

TOWARDS INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES FOR E-SCIENCE: The Scope of the Challenge

The three-fold purpose of this Report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Research Councils (UK) is to: • articulate the nature and significance of the non-technological issues that will bear on the practical effectiveness of the hardware and software infrastructures that are being created to enable collaborations in e- Science; • characterise succinctly the fundamental sources of the organisational and institutional challenges that need to be addressed in regard to defining terms, rights and responsibilities of the collaborating parties, and to illustrate these by reference to the limited experience gained to date in regard to intellectual property, liability, privacy, and security and competition policy issues affecting scientific research organisations; and • propose approaches for arriving at institutional mechanisms whose establishment would generate workable, specific arrangements facilitating collaboration in e-Science; and, that also might serve to meet similar needs in other spheres such as e- Learning, e-Government, e-Commerce, e-Healthcare. In carrying out these tasks, the report examines developments in enhanced computer-mediated telecommunication networks and digital information technologies, and recent advances in technologies of collaboration. It considers the economic and legal aspects of scientific collaboration, with attention to interactions between formal contracting and 'private ordering' arrangements that rest upon research community norms. It offers definitions of e-Science, virtual laboratories, collaboratories, and develops a taxonomy of collaborative e-Science activities which is implemented to classify British e-Science pilot projects and contrast these with US collaboratory projects funded during the 1990s. The approach to facilitating inter-organizational participation in collaborative projects rests upon the development of a modular structure of contractual clauses that permit flexibility and experience-based learning.

Multi-perspective modelling for knowledge management and knowledge engineering

ii It seems almost self-evident that “knowledge management ” and “knowledge engineering” should be related disciplines that may share techniques and methods between them. However, attempts by knowledge engineers to apply their techniques to knowledge management have been praised by some and derided by others, who claim that knowledge engineers have a fundamentally wrong concept of what “knowledge management” is. The critics also point to specific weaknesses of knowledge engineering, notably the lack of a broad context for the knowledge. Knowledge engineering has suffered some criticism from within its own ranks, too, particularly of the “rapid prototyping ” approach, in which acquired knowledge was encoded directly into an iteratively developed computer system. This approach was indeed rapid, but when used to deliver a final system, it became nearly impossible to verify and validate the system or to maintain it. A solution to this has come in the form of knowledge engineering methodology, and particularly in the CommonKAD

Effect of organisational policies on school management teams' job performance at Maluti District, Eastern Cape , South Africa

Most school management teams (SMTs) do not do their tasks either due to lack of time or inability to fulfil this obligation. Should this be true for South African schools, it would reflect negatively on the SMT job performance. This led to undertaking research in order to ascertain the fit between organisational policies of induction, mentoring, curriculum assessment training and curriculum supervision and the SMT job performance by way of establishing the effect of organisation policy on SMTs’ job performance. The research adopted a descriptive survey research design of the correlational type. Two sets of questionnaires, one for independent variables and the other for the dependent variable, were used to elicit information from the respondents. Some of the findings show that aspiring SMT members need some training so as to know what will be expected of them to do once they get selected as SMT members. It was further proven that common tests that are normally set at the provincial and district and/or school based levels are invariably not of the standard that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) prescribes nationally. The foregoing led to the conclusion that the SMT job practice is invariably not informed by the relevant organisational policies. Hence a cascade model of SMT training is recommended, as is the notion that training toward organisational policies under review should be done cohesively

Effect of organisational policies on school management teams' job performance at Maluti District, Eastern Cape , South Africa

Most school management teams (SMTs) do not do their tasks either due to lack of time or inability to fulfil this obligation. Should this be true for South African schools, it would reflect negatively on the SMT job performance. This led to undertaking research in order to ascertain the fit between organisational policies of induction, mentoring, curriculum assessment training and curriculum supervision and the SMT job performance by way of establishing the effect of organisation policy on SMTs’ job performance. The research adopted a descriptive survey research design of the correlational type. Two sets of questionnaires, one for independent variables and the other for the dependent variable, were used to elicit information from the respondents. Some of the findings show that aspiring SMT members need some training so as to know what will be expected of them to do once they get selected as SMT members. It was further proven that common tests that are normally set at the provincial and district and/or school based levels are invariably not of the standard that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) prescribes nationally. The foregoing led to the conclusion that the SMT job practice is invariably not informed by the relevant organisational policies. Hence a cascade model of SMT training is recommended, as is the notion that training toward organisational policies under review should be done cohesively