A systemic evaluation of the implementation implications of an integrated, standard information system : the SAP implementation project as a viable system

Bibliography: leaves 107-108.Real-time, on-line, integrated software systems are a part of the latest technologies for large concerns as enablers for viability in an ever increasing competitive business environment. The SAP (R/3 and R/2) standard software is widely considered as one of the leading solutions and implementation projects have taken the world by storm. The software, which runs on client server systems since 1992, is expensive and takes time to install. Complete systems can run into the tens of millions of dollars and take from one to over three years to implement. The application of the software spans most of the processes of a business, logistics, finance, workflow and human resources as a real time, on-line and integrated information system enabler. Much of the data capture and some of the control aspects of the business are automated. With this sophistication comes a new level of complexity. An initial argument of the thesis is that the success of an investigation into the problems associated with SAP implementations will be dependent on the thorough development of the inquiry system as a framework for appreciating the implications of such projects. Question Which management research approach will provide useful knowledge of the situation, with challenges including variety of human interpretations and interests, the complexity of organisational regulation and the technical options of the software? A framework was developed by considering three levels for paradigms; philosophy, methodology and the application of the methodology. As a choice for the philosophical level, phenomenology was chosen with its regard for the importance of the mental models of an observer. Pragmatism, with its basis for attributing meaning on the consequences of holding a belief or assumption, is enabled by a bias towards systems thinking as an adequate way of determining an appropriate level of knowledge of possible consequences of a decision. The scientific method is the underlying guide for the inquiry process with its abductive, deductive and inductive stages. The base strength of the method, as presented by Peirce (Smith, 1995), was experienced as the rigorous attention to the development and testing of an hypothesis. Due to the variety and importance of human mterpretation regarding purposes and methods of information system implementations, the approach by Soft Systems Methodology was adopted as an enabler for an immersion into the problems of a project. As such it was the basis for the abductive stage of the inquiry. The result of this immersion determined the requirements for the choice of further methodologies. The application of the SSM inquiry is guided by seven stages of sets of questions, as the 'technical' aspect of the inquiry framework

Formative evaluation of Helderberg Association for persons with disabilities

Purpose The peer support programme as run by Helderberg Association for Persons with Disabilities (HAPD) uses people who have disabilities to support people with disabilities in their own community. The purpose of this formative evaluation is to explore the roles and responsibilities of peer supporters and the needs in the community. This evaluation would help HAPD explore which areas of the peer support programme could be improved. The evaluation explored the relationship between addressable and non-addressable needs, the types of disabilities and the needs identified of the people with disabilities. Exploring these relationships would allow HAPD to understand which needs they are more likely to address and which areas they could improve their support in. Problem In South Africa, community-based rehabilitation has been evaluated but there are no evaluations that focus on the roles and responsibilities of peer supporters and the relationship between the needs that are addressed. HAPD employs and assists in the training of local people with disabilities to support people within their own community, drawing from the resources already in the community. If the peer supporters’ roles and responsibilities are not well-defined to address the needs of the community, the programme would fail. The needs of the community need to be identified to understand the community and possibly addressed the needs by providing emotional support, information, and referring cases to other service providers in the community. The evaluation explores the types of disabilities identified, the needs of the people with disabilities in the community, as well as the number of needs addressed. This information would allow HAPD to have a better understanding of the variety of home visitations the peer supporter could face and would need to provide support in. Methods The evaluation used a descriptive research design, which mainly used quantitative methods to evaluate the programme. The evaluator used some qualitative methods to enhance the understanding of the programme, these methods include a focus group with peer supporters, collecting and analysing programme documents, and interviewing the chief operating officer. The evaluator explored the relationships between the types of disabilities and the needs that were identified in home visitations. The disability categories were: physical, sensory, intellectual, and psychiatric disabilities. The needs categories as grouped by HAPD were: Health & Wellness and Education & Employment and Transport & Housing and Family & Social needs. Results There were 608 usable entries for home visitations; 43% had more than one home visitation, 79% had a physical disability and 39% of the needs were related to Health & Wellness, and 73% of the needs were addressable. There was a significant relationship between having an addressable need and the type of need category identified but no relationship between disability categories. Education & Employment needs and Health & Wellness needs were more likely to be addressed than any other need. Needs related to Transport & Housing and Social & Family issues were not as likely to be addressed. Conclusion The formative evaluation of HAPD has found that the roles and responsibilities are well-defined if implemented with the WCAPD. There is a need to increase the training in counselling topics and to provide counselling to the peer supporters. The importance of creating of referral network based from an asset-based community development perspective was also recommended as it provides tangible and valuable information on the capacities, skills and services available in the community. The evaluation also highlighted some areas of improvement regarding the record keeping of training material, improvement of data collection, follow-up of home visitations, and clearer categorising of needs and disabilities. HAPD can consider evaluating the mechanism of support the peer supporters provide to the community and how the associate organisations form part of this process

Performance and reliability optimisation of a data acquisition and logging system in an integrated component-handling environment

Thesis (M. Tech.) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 201

The relationship between marketing orientation and export success among manufacturing companies in the Western Cape

Bibliography: leaves 330-342.In 1985, the writer joined the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as an export trade advisor in the Western Cape Regional Office. The function of this position is to encourage companies to export and to assist companies registered as exporters with their export endeavours. In this capacity, the writer came into contact with more than 1,000 companies covering a wide range of products, problems, attitudes and situations. It became apparent to the writer that a large number of these companies lacked a marketing orientation in their export activities. There also appeared to be a poor success rate among these exporters in that probably as many as half of the number of registered exporters never achieved any export sales and of the remaining exporters only a few obtained substantial, ongoing and profitable sales abroad. The writer believed that if these companies approached their export activities in a more marketing orientated fashion, their success rate would be significantly improved. This begged the question as to whether a relationship actually exists between export marketing orientation and export success. It is the abovementioned relationship that this study primarily addresses. It was decided to keep the scope of this study confined to manufacturing companies in the Western Cape registered as exporters with the DTI

Development: Lights, Camera, Action — The Drosophila Embryo Goes Live!

SummaryLive imaging of developmental gene expression in Drosophila embryos opens up exciting new prospects for understanding gene regulation during development

A computational implementation of design sensitivity analysis and structural optimisation

Bibliography: pages 118-121.In the field of computational mechanics, increases in computing power and enhancements in material and kinematic models have enhanced the feasibility of performing structural design optimisation for a wide range of applications. The work presented here was motivated by the current groundswell of research effort in computational optimisation. Design Sensitivity Analysis (DSA) crucially underpins much of structural optimisation and, as such, is focussed on more intently than the optimisation theory itself: various approaches to the Direct Differentiation Method (DDM) DSA procedure are investigated and computationally implemented. The procedures implemented were chosen so as to involve a range of important issues in computational sensitivity analysis, particularly * Shape and non-shape sensitivity analysis, * Total and Updated Lagrange-based DSA, * DSA of displacement and non-displacement based response functionals, * Multiparameter DSA. * DSA for large strain behaviour The primary objectives of this thesis are: I. Development of a design sensitivity formulation which, when discretised, resembles the standard displacement based kinematic element formulation, thus enabling the implementation of design sensitivity analysis in established Finite Element Analysis (FEA) codes as a 'pseudo'-element routine. II. lmplemention of several design sensitivity formulations and structural optimisation into the FEA code ABAQUS as a verification of the first objective. Numerical results provided in this work demonstrate the successful completion of the above-mentioned objectives. The discretised DSA formulations presented, as well as the 'pseudo'-element approach adopted, particularly in the case of shape DSA are entirely original. To the best of the author's knowledge, DSA and DSA-based structural optimisation had never before been attempted with ABAQUS. The research conducted here lays the foundation for potentially very fruitful future work

Food of Canis mesomelas in South Africa

The black-backed jackal is probably the most important problem animal in the sheep-farming areas of South Africa and especially in the Transvaal. To detennine the extent of damage done by Canis mesomelas in such areas, a study was initiated to analyse the stomach contents of black-backed jackals collected in South Africa. In 1965 Grafton published a preliminary report on the food of the black-backed jackal in South Africa. Since then many additional stomachs have been collected. However, as the analysis of the stomach contents is time consuming, it is profitable to detennine whether increasing the sample size beyond a certain point can add to existing knowledge. This is the primary aim of the present report

Food of the silver fox Vulpes Chama

Zoologica Africana 2(2): 205-21

The accountability and professional security of the South African higher education lecturer

The widening of access to higher education (HE) for more students has been a strategic priority of the South African (SA) Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) over the past decade.  Simultaneously, lecturers are increasingly held to account for providing quality teaching and delivering employable graduates. Yet their work environment is characterised by poor support, lack of recognition for teaching efforts, and absence of legal protection when failing to fulfil the undefined yet high accountability expectations in their teaching-related work. This article reports on an empirical study, grounded in an inductive qualitative methodology from an interpretive-phenomenological perspective, which aimed to develop understanding of how SA lecturers involved in undergraduate teaching at three SA universities perceive accountability and security within their labour environment.  From the analysis and interpretation of semi-structured and focus group interview data, seven meaningful themes were identified, associated with either lecturer accountability or security.  The findings offer not only a clear delineation of internal and external teaching-related accountability, but also a comprehensive definition of lecturer professional security

Lexicography and the Relevance Criterion

Until recently, lexicography and information science could rightly be considered two disciplines which had developed along parallel lines but with no or very little formal relation between them. Although the two disciplines developed in almost complete isolation from each other, during the last few years it has nevertheless become increasingly clear that they have a lot in common. This trend began within lexicography which started viewing lexicographical works as a special kind of tool designed to be consulted in order to obtain information. Upon this basis, it has been suggested that lexicography should be considered a part of information science and, hence, integrated into it (cf. e.g. Bergenholtz and Bothma 2012, Tarp 2009). It is evident that this integration of two hitherto independent disciplines with long traditions of their own is not something to be solved overnight and neither can it be a unilateral process. This article will explore the concept of relevance in both disciplines in more detail and show, at the hand of examples from lexicographical tools, how the theoretical frameworks of both disciplines can complement one another. This will be done within the framework of the function theory of lexicography, as discussed in the many works of Tarp and Bergenholtz (e.g. Bergenholtz and Tarp 2002) and others, and relevance theory in information science as defined by Saracevic (1975, 1996), Cosijn and Ingwersen (2000) and others. Keywords:Lexicography, Function Theory, Cognitive Situations, Communicative Situations, Operative Situations, Interpretive Situations, Pre-Lexicographical Phase, Intra-Lexicographical Phase, Post-Lexicographical Phase, Information Science, Relevance Theory, Topical Relevance, Cognitive Relevance, Situational Relevance, Socio-Cognitive Relevance, Affective Relevanc