The influence of informal power structures on corporate strategy of a selected mining organisation in Northern Cape Province, South Africa

Corporate strategy has gained a lot of traction in academic discourse as a critical field that ensures organisational success and the role of informal structures in achieving this success has also gained a lot of focus. However, several scholars have pointed out that most of the studies on informal structures have used western and Asian socioecological narratives to contextualise informal structures. The contextual gap identified by the study and the assumptions by scholars that African, Asian and Western contexts have huge variances prompted the study to explore the contextual gap in South Africa. After defining the contextual gap, the critical question that the study sought to answer was; How are informal structures responding to corporate strategy within a South African context? To answer this question the study used an interpretive approach and a single case study to draw from the subjective experiences of 30 employees using in depth interviews. To ensure the abstraction of high-quality data the study utilised heterogeneous purposive sampling to draw insights from informed participants which in turn enabled the study to explore diversified perspectives. The study established that the socio ecological context of the organisation had both positive and negative influence on the employee's desire to accept or reject corporate strategy. The study established that the positive influence enabled smooth flow of information, flexibility, fulfilment of social needs and sharing of ideas. However, the study also established that the negative influence which manifested in resistance to corporate strategy, social fragmentation, conflict and political bickering outweighed the positive influence. The study concluded by adopting a strategic management model and extending it to contain the negative attributes of the socio-cultural environment with the hope that the model may enable the organisation to positively influence informal structures

A PREDICTION MODEL OF COMPANY HEALTH USING BAGGING CLASSIFIER

In business, have many competitions between companies occur to obtain as many profits as possible, Financial Distress is a financial decline that occurs in companies, reflecting the health of the company before bankruptcy started. Therefore, to avoid bankruptcy, it requires a method or tool with high accuracy in identifying company health. This research uses a bagging classifier, which is one type of Ensemble Learning algorithm. To predict financial difficulties, the authors use the bagging classifier algorithm with 0.13% more accurate results than previous studies using the XGBoost algorithm

Factors that Influence the Synergy between Development and IT Operations in a DevOps Environment

Software development processes have been associated with severe conflicts between the development and operations teams. The problems further worsened by the occasional performance of activities such as planning, testing, integration, and releases. Many developing software development concepts reveal attempts to address these challenges. For instance, continuous integration is a practice that has emerged to reduce disconnects between development and IT operational deployments. In a comparable thread, the current emphasis on DevOps acknowledges that the integration between software development and its operational deployment needs to be a continuous whole. Problems involving the integration of software development and operations require positive synergy within DevOps teams. Team synergy brings about team effectiveness and performance as well as creating opportunities for innovation. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence team synergy between the development and operations teams in a DevOps environment. The researcher conducted a case study at one of South Africa's leading information and communication technology services providers. Thirteen participants were interviewed to provide insight into the research questions. Interviews were conducted at the premises of the participating organization in Cape Town. The participants in the study preferred pseudonyms instead of their actual names to preserve anonymity. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. During the analysis of the transcribed data, themes and categories were identified. The themes and categories that emerged from the data sources were aligned to the theoretical framework. The findings from this study describe enabling and inhibiting factors that influence the synergy between development and operations teams in a DevOps environment. Recognizing that DevOps teams face several challenges, the factors identified in this study provide insights into how organizations can influence the build and motivate their DevOps teams to achieve team synergy. The contribution to DevOps research is the application of a theoretical framework that suggests the importance of team social capital dimensions in the formation of team synergy. Based on its findings, this study recommends that further investigation and improvement on strategies to mitigate the factors that inhibit the dimensions of team social capital and prevent team synergy in a DevOps environment. The study also recommends a more detailed and practical demonstration to validate the value of the theoretical framework and continue to improve or extend it. This study revealed that DevOps teams operate in a complex and dynamic environment with many stakeholders and complex technical infrastructure. Based on this outcome, the study also suggests that future studies can take a different approach to create a different perspective on the synergy between DevOps teams by focusing on the behavior of the actors and complex problematic situations involving social activities

PARTISIPASI MASYARAKAT DALAM PEMBENTUKAN PERATURAN DAERAH BERDASARKAN UNDANG-UNDANG NOMOR 12 TAHUN 2011 TENTANG PEMBENTUKAN PERATURAN PERUNDANG-UNDANGAN

Penelitian ini menggunakan metode pendekatan yuridis normatif yang mengacu kepada norma-norma hukum dan tidak bermaksud untuk menguji hipotesis, maka titik berat penelitian tertuju pada penelitian kepustakaan. Adapun sumber data yang dipergunakan dalam penelitian ini diperoleh dari berbagai bahan-bahan hukum yang mencakup bahan hukum primer, bahan hukum sekunder dan bahan hukum tertier. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian dapat disimpulkan bahwa bentuk partisipasi masyarakat yang dapat dilakukan dalam tahapan pembentukan peraturan perundang-undangan antara lain: rapat dengar pendapat umum, kunjungan kerja, sosialisasi, seminar, lokakarya, diskusi, konsultasi publik, musyawarah, kemitraan, penyampaian aspirasi, pengawasan, partisipasi dalam bentuk penelitian, partisipasi masyarakat dalam bentuk masukan melalui media cetak, partisipasi masyarakat dalam bentuk masukan melalui media elektronik, partisipasi masyarakat dalam bentuk unjuk rasa. Sedangkan pengaturan mengenai pelaksanaan dari partisipasi masyarakat melalui bentuk-bentuk partisipasi masyarakat dalam setiap tahapan pembentukan peraturan daerah belum diatur dalam peraturan perundang-undangan. Kata kunci: partisipasi, pembentukan, undang-undang, masyarakat, peraturan

Exploratory Data Analysis Towards Terrorist Activity in Indonesia Using Machine Learning Techniques

Terrorism Activity is the subject of the talks in various countries, especially in Indonesia. Theactivities of terrorism are carried out in various ways using suicide bombs, violent action thataimed to demoralize by creating fear to the society and national security. In Indonesia,according to Kompas news website recorded there were 10 suicide bombings occurred in thepast 6 years and took many casualties in every event. With this, it certainly gives a threat tothe people in Indonesia in terms of physical, moral and even in terms of national security. Toovercome this problem, it is necessary to increase the national security so that terrorism canbe prevented, and it will not happen again. This study is aimed to conduct an exploratory dataanalysis and predict terrorist activity in Indonesia using K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and ¬kfold cross-validation. In this research, data selection, data cleaning, data reduction wascarried out and feature selection process which aimed to find out the most influential dataattributes. Based on the result of the analysis to predict the terrorist activity, the result of theaccuracy was obtained with a value of k = 8 at 88.86%

Bioanalytical methods for studies of homocysteine and novel cardiovascular disease indicators

This dissertation explores the development of analytical methods for studies of CVD biomarkers and related biomolecular indicators. Initially, spectroscopic studies were conducted to investigate the chemical reactivity of homocysteine (Hcy), an independent CVD risk factor and serological biomarker. Consequently, we proposed an alternate theory for in vivo Hcy clearance based on spontaneous pyridoxal tetrahydrothiazine (PT) formation from Hcy and pyridoxal. The validity of PT-assisted Hcy clearance was further evaluated by use of capillary electrophoretic methods, which allowed rapid monitoring of protein oligomerization in PT-protein reaction mixtures. The results of these studies suggest that PT formation is a plausible mechanism for Hcy clearance. Moreover, PT formation was shown to protect proteins from post-translational modification by homocysteine thiolactone. This dissertation also addresses the need for rapid and direct detection methods for CVD biomarkers. Accordingly, we introduced the first plasmon resonant GNP sensing scheme for protein homocystamide. The nanosensor provides visual conformation of protein homocystamide (N-Hcy-protein) by way of a red-to-blue color change. Further sensor investigations conducted with protein nanobioconjugates revealed that the GNP sensing mechanism is dependent on several complex physiochemical and biomolecular interactions including nanoparticle self-assembly, interparticle disulfide cross-linking, and modification-induced protein conformational changes. This dissertation also continues previous atherosclerotic tissue characterization studies by demonstrating the feasibility of using hybrid organic-immunoaffinity extraction for GC-MS analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in human heart plaque samples. This body of work is significant because it proposes new bioanalytical technologies that could enhance CVD screening and treatment