Business Commons^™

The Role Of Organizational Reality In Implementing Technology, Sakthi Mahenthiran, M. D’Itri, R. Donn

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Reports on the structurational model of technology which shows how workers who had the power to make the implementation successful affected the data that was collected and the extent to which management was able to use the technology to influence their work. Systems for recording job-related data; Analyzing organizational processes; Application of the structurational theory.

Bulletin 4397 - Stone Fruit From Western Australia - At A Glance, Glynn Ward, Geraldine Pasqual, Eleanor Melvin-Carter

Bulletins 4000 -

Western Australia produces a range of horticultural commodities including fruit, vegetables, flowers, nursery products and wine as part of its fast growing $400 million horticultural industry. Natural advantages such as climate and clean environment, soils and water make Western Australia an ideal place to supply a variety of high quality produce to domestic and international markets.

The stone fruit industry in Western Australia is booming with large production increases predicted. Production from well established plum, peach and nectarine orchards in 1996/97 is estimated at $17 million and exports have doubled in the past five years to $10 million in 1998/99. …

Algorithms For Scheduling Projects With Generalized Precedence Relations, Bert De Reyck, Erik Demeulemeester, Willy Herroelen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The problem of scheduling projects under various types of resource constraints constitutes an important and challenging problem which has received increasing attention during the past several years. The bulk of the models and procedures designed for coping with these problem types aim at scheduling project activities to minimize the project duration subject to constant availability constraints on the required set of resources and precedence constraints that indicate that activities can only be started when all of their predecessors have already been finished. However, real-life project scheduling applications often involve more complicated types of precedence relations such as arbitrary minimal and …

A Classification Scheme For Project Scheduling Problems, Willy Herroelen, Erik Demeulemeester, Bert De Reyck

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The basic concern of scheduling is commonly described as the allocation of limited resources to tasks over time (Lawler et al. 1993, Pinedo 1995). The resources and tasks may take many forms. In project scheduling the tasks refer to the activities belonging to one or more projects. The execution of project activities may require the use of different types of resources (money, crews, equipment, …). The scheduling objectives may also take many forms (minimizing project duration, minimizing project costs, maximizing project revenues, optimizing due date performance,…). The result is a wide and steadily growing variety of problem types which motivates …

Creating A Registration Database Using Microsoft Access 97, Darren A. Otte

Graduate Research Papers

Every business or organization that conducts any type of training, whether on a small or large scale, must deal with logistical issues. There are several ways of keeping track of relevant and important information, including anything from paper based systems to off the shelf computer applications. Very often, these methods are cumbersome or not applicable to the needs of the organization. This research project focuses on the customization of training registration information and logistics for a specific company, for the purposes of this paper called XXXX, using a database.

Specifically, a Microsoft Access database was created to keep track of …

State-Wide Training Sessions For County Office Personnel Using The Blue Ribbon Data Management System, Rebecca L. Nibe

Graduate Research Papers

A statewide training initiative was necessitated by the upgrade of the statistical database management program required by the State 4-H Office. The upgrade was released in the fall of 1998, but was flawed and buggy, resulting in much frustration among users. Additionally, I was the newly-hired State Support Specialist, and had not established any credibility with the users I was hired to support. The Associate State Director and I decided that an ambitious early spring training program would be beneficial to all parties involved.

I believe that this project was both a personal and a professional success. I was able …

The Commercialisation Of Small Firm Technologies In Western Australia : A Case For User-Producer Interaction And The Integration Of Large Industrial Users With Small Technology Producers, Michelle Navaratnam

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study was to: * examine how grantee firms of the Western Australian Innovation Support Scheme (WAISS) have overcome their impediments to commercialisation; * examine how the process of user-producer interaction has enabled grantee firms to commercialise their technologies; * examine the process of user-producer interaction with large and/or small industrial users, and the subsequent benefits derived; * examine the entry barriers faced by grantee firms in forming interactions with large industrial users. The study examined the literature involving the role of small firms in the development and commercialisation of new technologies. The study adopted a multiple, …

New Communication Technologies, Organizational Culture, And The Creation Of Innovative Learning Environments, Denise Scott

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Today's organizations face an economic climate that is globalizing, increasing customer demands for products and services that meet their unique needs and the fast pace of technological developments. Organizations require the effective use of new communication technologies as a means of sharing information and expanding capacity for innovation. The main question for this research is: When new communication technologies are introduced into organizations, how do they work together with existing cultural assumptions to produce an innovative, learning environment within the organization? The research design involves conducting moderately structured interviews with organizational leaders in four diverse organizations: Ingram Book Company, Service …

Local Search Methods For The Discrete Time/Resource Trade-Off Problem In Project Networks, Bert De Reyck, Erik Demeulemeester, Willy Herroelen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we consider the discrete time/resource trade-off problem in project networks. Given a project network consisting of nodes (activities) and arcs (technological precedence relations), in which the duration of the activities is a discrete, nonincreasing function of the amount of a single renewable resource committed to it, the discrete time/resource trade-off problem minimizes the project makespan subject to precedence constraints and a single renewable resource constraint. For each activity, a work content is specified such that all execution modes (duration/resource requirement pairs) for performing the activity are allowed as long as the product of the duration and the …

A Branch-And-Bound Procedure For The Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem With Generalized Precedence Relations, Bert De Reyck, Willy Herroelen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present an optimal solution procedure for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) with generalized precedence relations (RCPSP-GPR) with the objective of minimizing the project makespan. The RCPSPGPR extends the RCPSP to arbitrary minimal and maximal time lags between the starting and completion times of activities. The proposed procedure is suited for solving a general class of project scheduling problems and allows for arbitrary precedence constraints, activity ready times and deadlines, multiple renewable resource constraints with time-varying resource requirements and availabilities, several types of permissible and mandatory activity overlaps and multiple projects. It can be extended to other regular and …

Computer-Based Decision Support System Use In Contracting's Source Selection Process, Matthew L. Decker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of decision support system (DSS) technology within the U.S. Air Force's contracting source selection process. DSS technology has been shown to be an effective aid to complex decision processes such as source selection decisions and the possible effects of utilizing this technology are the focus of this study. Conclusions drawn from this thesis may guide the contracting community to readdress the possibility of implementing DSS technology within the source selection process. This study evaluated statistical data from a previous experiment to determine the effect of DSS use on time, confidence, and decision quality. This study …

An Examination Of Information Technology Valuation Models For The Air Force, Todd A. Peachey

Theses and Dissertations

Information technology investment has become a significant part of the Department of Defense's budget. The Information Technology Management Reform Act requires that government quantitatively evaluate future information technology investments. Quantitative evaluation of IT investments present special problems for agencies that do not generate incoming cash flows. This thesis is designed to examine models that are currently being used in the public and private sector of the economy to evaluate Information Technology investments to learn which ones might serve the needs of the United States Air Force. The methodology is an exploratory study based on Criterion based Congruence Analysis. This technique …

Technology Acceptance: A Fusion Of Human-Computer Interaction And Management Information Systems Constructs, Patrick W. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, information technology has advanced at a pace that few would have anticipated. It has been estimated that the computing power of the modem desktop computer has been increasing at the rate of 1000% per decade. In combination with the development of personal computers, the advent of networks and the world wide web provide unprecedented access to information and computing power. However, the problem of developing useful user interfaces remains a problem. In many military and commercial settings, the increased computing power offered by current information technology remains unexploited because of user interfaces that are difficult to use. …

Information Systems And Economics, Robert J. Kauffman, Frederick J. Riggins

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Do big dollar expenditures on information systems pay off? Friction-free: is that what we really want markets to be? Is it time for consumers to say goodbye to fixed pricing? The Internet creates an environment in which the cost of buyer-seller interactions is cheaper than ever, and consumers can participate in the price-setting process—revealing their willingness to pay—making it the most efficient one-on-one selling environment anywhere, approaching the efficiency of the financial markets. In fact, such transformation is evident throughout the information economy. We see it in the approximately 1,000% annual network growth rates expected by some Internet service providers’ …

Venture Capital Contracting In The Information Age, D. Gordon Smith

Faculty Scholarship

Most venture capitalists provide services to their portfolio companies beyond capital investment. Although these services form an important part of the bargain between the venture capitalists and the entrepreneur, they are rarely specified or even capable of specification in venture capital contracts. This article examines the moral hazard and adverse selection problems facing entrepreneurs who hire venture capitalists to provide value-added services and describes the role of the market for venture capitalist reputation in addressing those problems. Further, the Article speculates about whether advances in information technology - specifically, the World Wide Web - are likely to improve the efficiency …

New Computational Results On The Discrete Time/Cost Trade-Off Problem In Project Networks, Erik Demeulemeester, Bert De Reyck, Bram Foubert, Willy Herroelen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We describe a new exact procedure for the discrete time/cost trade-off problem in deterministic activity-on-the-arc networks of the CPM type, where the duration of each activity is a discrete, nonincreasing function of the amount of a single resource (money) committed to it. The objective is to construct the complete and efficient time/cost profile over the set of feasible project durations. The procedure uses a horizon-varying approach based on the iterative optimal solution of the problem of minimising the sum of the resource use over all activities subject to the activity precedence constraints and a project deadline. This optimal solution is …

The Intelligent Browser For Texpros, Chih-Ying Wang

Dissertations

Browsing is a technique, which helps users to formulate their query and retrieve information in the information retrieval system. This technique provides users with capabilities of understanding their information needs and gaining system knowledge during the course of the browsing and thus it eases the users' burden when issuing queries. The basic components of the browser provides an underlying structure which allows users to navigate and a browsing process controller which provides users with the needed assistance during each browsing session.

In this dissertation, a new infrastructure (OP-Net), transformed from the existing object network is proposed. Each object in the …

Development Of A Framework For Internet Based Education System, Srinivas Lanka

Theses

Development of a framework for Internet based education has demonstrated the use of Oracle tools for the use of delivery of education on the World Wide Web. This also has proved that for an efficient dynamic education scenario, the use of a database-based system with a proper retrieval system is required.

We have designed the system on an Oracle backend system with Designer/2000. Developer/2000 helped us with the design and development of the system. Oracle Web Server 2.1 helped us with the retrieval of the web pages.

The entire design of the system and the reasoning behind the system has …

Application Of The Internet Technology And Client/Server Paradigm For The Implementation Of Repi, Chetankumar G. Patel

Theses

There are many problems associated with Requirements Engineering such as defining the system scope, developing understanding among the communities involved in the system to be built, volatility of requirements etc. These problems may lead to poor requirements and therefore cancellation of the system development, or else the development of a system that is unsatisfactory, has high maintenance cost or is unacceptable. By improving Requirements Elicitation, the Requirements Engineering can be improved, leading to a better requirements specification and eventually a better product.

Requirements Elicitation requires effective communication among the team members, as communication is the key factor. Easing communications between …

Fisheries Management Report No. 2 - Use Of Market Mechanisms For The Allocation Of Commercial Fishing Access Entitlements In Western Australia, Economics Consulting Services Pty Ltd

Fisheries Published Reports

This publication has been prepared as a discussion paper on the potential use of market-based mechanisms for allocating commercial fishing entitlements in Western Australia. The aim has been to explore alternative mechanisms for allocating entitlements and the circumstances under which various methods might be more effective.

Fisheries Management Report No. 4 - Planning For The Further Development Of The Aquaculture And Marine Farming Industry At Jurien Bay, Dave Everall

Fisheries Published Reports

There is a well documented global requirement for some twenty million tonnes of edible sea foods from aquaculture in the next fifteen years. Most of the projected increase in production will need to be from mariculture because of limiting factors on land based aquaculture. At present, approximately 85%of all aquaculture occurs in the Asian region.

Globally, temperate water species have market advantages because of their ability to supply a growing market preference for a firm white fleshed fin fish. Although significant temperate water aquaculture occurs in various countries north of the equator, there are growing environmental concerns surrounding production of …

Guidelines Of Activities And Costs Of Establishing A Vineyard For Winegrapes, Alex Sas, Roslyn Hanna, Diana Fisher

Viticulture published reports

This document is intended as a starting point for those interested in growing wine grapes and highlights the management techniques, labour requirements, and costs involved with such an enterprise. Budgeting methods are used to determine the profitability of investing in a 10 ha vineyard in the south-west of Western Australia. The document should not be used as a recipe with which to develop a vineyard, but rather as a guide.

Establishing a vineyard involves a large initial investment with no returns until usually three years after planting. Factors such as site selection, environment, seasonal conditions and management, will all affect …

Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling: A Survey Of Recent Developments, Willy Herroelen, Bert De Reyck, Erik Demeulemeester

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We review recent advances in dealing with the resource-constrained project scheduling problem using an efficient depth-first branch-and-bound procedure, elaborating on the branching scheme, bounding calculations and dominance rules, and discuss the potential of using truncated branch-and-bound. We derive conclusions from the research on optimal solution procedures for the basic problem and subsequently illustrate extensions to a rich and realistic variety of related problems involving activity preemption, the use of ready times and deadlines, variable resource requirements and availabilities, generalized precedence relations, time/cost, time/resource and resource/resource trade-offs and non-regular objective functions.

Applications Of Internet Technology For Requirements Elicitation, Deepak Pandit

Theses

During the Requirements Elicitation part of a project various stakeholders need to be able to communicate their requirements to the developers, and the developers need to be able communicate their understanding back to the stakeholders. Communication between the various members of the project is the key factor during the Requirements Elicitation part of a project. Easing communications between stakeholders and developers makes the process of eliciting requirement easier, leading to better requirements specification and eventually a better product.

The Requirements Elicitation Process through Internet (REPI) web site has been designed and implemented to explore this idea. The prototype version of …

Green Computing: Environmental And Ergonomical Issues, Nabil Alghalith

Journal of International Information Management

Green computing has become more of a concern among computer users in recent years as the environmental awareness increases. As with most environmental movements, green computing encourages people to reduce, reuse, and recycle. The paper concludes with some suggestions to achieve green computing.

The Construction Of Theory In Mis Research, Mark T. Dishaw

Journal of International Information Management

As a relatively new academic discipline, MIS has gone through processes of initiation, expansion, and consolidation. During the past two decades, MIS researchers have examined the state of their discipline and have found it "wanting" at times in the area of theory building and development. One important criticism of early MIS research was that it lacked strong theory of its own, and that it was often weakly grounded in theory, if at all. This paper examines the process and significance of theory building with an emphasis on some of the most well known MIS research streams. This paper demonstrates that …

An Examination Of Computer-Use Ethics In Hong Kong And The United States, Anthony M. Townsend, Michael E. Whitman, Anthony R. Hendrickson, Dail Fields

Journal of International Information Management

This study examines differences in individual ethical evaluations of computer-use scenarios between subjects in Hong Kong and the United States in an effort to better understand value differences that may be associated with differences in attitudes toward computer use expectations. Analysis indicates that although Hong Kong subjects generally take a more permissive view of ethical responsibility regarding computer use, they do not necessarily condone violations of ethical behavior. Results are discussed and implications for future research are addressed.

A Contrarian's Twenty Questions, Robert D. Wilson

Journal of International Information Management

One might begin to think the art of the university is being lost also. Since the traditional university has focused on education as distinct from training, we might consider if this movement toward Web-based courses is consistent with that tradition.

Intermediation On Electronic Markets: The Case Of Java Software Elements, Peter Buxmann, Frank Rose, Wolfgang Konig, Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Journal of International Information Management

This paper provides an introduction to the Java Repository - an intermediary for Java software elements. First, basic concepts for electronic intermediaries are derived from economic theory. Furthermore, the theoretic considerations are applied to the Java Repository and current and future developments of this special intermediary are presented, especially the use and implementation ofEcash to support financial transactions on the Java market.

A Comparative Study Of The Use Of Executive Information Systems Between Korea And The United States, Hung Kook Park, Ki Jung Chun, Joa Sang Lim, Jung Ki Min

Journal of International Information Management

Since their conception, EIS have been developed and adopted in many firms. The importance of EIS is now increasing with the need of accessing data from many sources under the high-velocity environment. Although many of the Korean firms are now in the process of introducing EIS with the faster growing economy, most research has been conducted on the use of EIS in Western firms. This study aims to explore the current state of EIS usage in Korean firms and make a comparison with that of the United States. Based upon Watson et al. (1992), a questionnaire instrument was constructed. The …