3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Patient information management at University Hospital of Libreville, Gabon(2017) Divassa, LouisetteThe purpose of this research study was to investigate the factors leading to the problems being experienced in patient information management at University Hospital of Libreville. This was based on the fact that there was poor management of patient information that affected the quality of service delivery in the health sector.To reach this objective, the research study used a qualitative approach to conduct the investigation. Interview and observation were used to obtain information from healthcare professionals on the practice of patient information management in their services in order to identify the challenges. Themes were used to analyse findings in order to identify the issues related to patient information management. The identified challenges were categorized as the lack of IT system, lack of storage facilities, and the lack of skilled healthcare professionals. These challenges represent the obstacles to patient information management to the required standard at University Hospital of Libreville. The implementation of appropriate technology systems and storage should enable the hospital to improve patient information management. The key findings are that despite the fact that services at University Hospital of Libreville face numerous difficulties, it would not be impossible to adopt or create a proper system. The research provides feasible recommendations that should address the challenges faced by patient information management within the hospital so that improved services can be provided to citizens.Item Constraints and enablers of effective knowledge sharing practices of South African construction project managers(2018) Zungu, ZamagedaDue to budget and time constraints, construction projects are fast paced and rely heavily on quick but sound knowledge input and application by the different participants in a project team. This requires accurate information retrieval and management of the social interactions between different project participants through knowledge sharing. Although knowledge sharing between construction project managers working within the same organisation exists, the knowledge sharing practices of construction project managers are ineffective and that has a negative impact on the development of innovative ideas, the way project members deal with changes, cope with crisis, deal with coordination and complex tasks, define plans, and make decisions. The aim of this research report was to examine the factors constraining effective knowledge sharing practices among construction project management colleagues working within the same organization with a view to developing recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the knowledge sharing practices. A quantitative research methodology was applied in the examination of the factors constraining and enabling effective knowledge sharing of South African project management colleagues working within the same organization. The main findings indicate that, the reluctance to share knowledge, the lack of affiliation and time limitations are the knowledge sharing constraints faced by most construction project managers. Conversely, the findings also reveal that the allocation of time (in the form of organisational systems), team member relationships, and sense of self-worth would equally motivate the sharing of knowledge. Main conclusions indicate that companies need to formalise the knowledge sharing process through structured mentorship programmes and facilitate team building activities.Item The influence of interpersonal skills of IS leaders on IS employee job satisfaction(2018) Aboobaker, YusufInformation system/technology (IS/T) leaders require varied skills to drive performance and satisfaction of IS/T employees within their departments. One way posited to increase job satisfaction of employees is by changing the characteristics of the workplace about which employees form attitudes. One such set of characteristics on which attitudes are formed is the interpersonal skills of the supervisor themselves. Generally, IS/T leaders have often been criticised as being poor communicators often with stronger technical than social skills. More research into the importance of interpersonal skills among IS/T leaders is needed. But what exactly are the interpersonal skills of supervisors and can they really affect the job satisfaction of others? The purpose of this research was to answer the above question by specifically preparing an inventory of interpersonal skills and draw on past theories to develop and subsequently test a model of the relationship between employee perceptions of their immediate IS/T leader’s interpersonal skills and their job satisfaction. Specifically, the study hypothesised that the interpersonal skills of IS/T supervisors influences the job satisfaction of the IS/T employee supervised in the presence of commonly known predicators of job satisfaction. The study employed a deductive, relational design. Data was collected using a survey methodology and employed a structured questionnaire instrument. The sample consisted of 82 IS/T departmental employees from South African organisations in which a permanent IS/T leader heads up the department. Bivariate analysis was performed, and measures were tested for reliability and validity prior to testing the hypothesised model. The model was tested using regression techniques. Results show that interpersonal skill of IS/T leaders significantly influence job satisfaction of IS/T employees, albeit only the sub elements of peer leadership skills and relationship building skills of supervisor’s influence employee job satisfaction. The combined effect of interpersonal skills over commonly known predicators is not significant, however peer leadership skills is. The originality and contribution of this research to IS/T literature takes the form of contribution by espousing the descriptions of interpersonal skills and furthering the iii understanding of what role perceived interpersonal skills of supervisors can play in creating an effective IS/T department through satisfied employees. The practical implications of the study may influence educators, students and recruiters to respectively understand, teach, learn and test for interpersonal skills. IS/T supervisors may also work on elements of those skills found lacking in their behavioural repertoire.Item The role of a training intervention in reducing email overload and improving productivity(2017) Campbell, Kerry MeghanEmails have become a fundamental computer application and business tool, in organisations across the global. This is because of the accessibility and convenience of emails which have generated an array of benefits to both employees and their organisations. However, this accessibility has led to an over-reliance on emails, which often has the negative consequence of email overload. Email overload continues to be a recurring issues experienced by employees universally, which research has found to have negative implications on employees’ wellbeing and productivity. Yet there has been limited research, particularly in South Africa, that aims to reduce email overload among employees. Thus, this research report investigated how the role of providing employees with a job resource (training intervention) could increase perceived productivity and eliminate email overload and change caused by the job demands (emails) on employees .In order to examine this effect, this research utilised a pretest post-test control group design on order to compare the impact of a training intervention in reducing email overload and increasing productivity. The quantitative results revealed that the training intervention contributed to a decrease in feelings of email overload among the participants. Additionally, focus groups were administered to determine participants’ experience with emails both prior to the training and after the training, to gain a clearer understanding of the best practices used to eliminate email overload. These findings observed that the participants transferred learnt contents from training into their working lives. Thus research both further contributes to other research currently associated with email and email overload, and also provides a greater understanding of the need to provide employees with job resources much like training intervention in order to counteract those job demands like emails, that are often ignored.Item Social informatics perspective as an integrative design method for information systems technology and business intelligence and analytics: a critical realist study(2016) Dlamini, Noxolo SipheleleThis study contends that Information Systems and Technologies (ISTs) fail to adequately provide for effective delivery of Business Intelligence and Analytics (BIA), which limits the value that organisations can derive from their data assets. In spite of the influence that each has on the other and their widely acknowledged and undisputed relationship and interdependencies, design and development approaches still promote a silo approach to IST and BIA in theory and practice. The evolution of the role of data in the digital economy not only compels academics and practitioners to collaborate on how to enable creation of good quality data at source but intensifies the requirement for an integrated approach to IST and BIA design. The research problem that the study addresses is that design methods commonly employed in both Information Systems (IS) research studies and practice do not advocate for an integrated approach to design and development of IST and BIA. While IS research accounts for both IST and BIA, IST and BIA design and development studies are approached independently and/or in isolation, with limited integration. The effectiveness of Social informatics (SI) as an interdisciplinary study of design, uses and consequences of use, puts it above the rest of the commonly applied socio-technical design theories and approaches. SI’s strength is in studying designs, uses and consequences of IST use after implementation. However, the theory versus practice inconsistencies presented by the interpretivist paradigm, which is an underpinning philosophy for classical SI, limit its use as a design method. Critical Realism (CR) offers the research study a viable alternative and is crucial in addressing both contextual requirements, while embracing the positivist, deterministic aspects of the study. CR is a pluralist approach based on sound research method principles; hence the study adopted it as both the theoretical paradigm and research method. The research study objective is to reconceptualise the SI perspective as an integrative design method underpinned by CR. The study adopts CR as its research methodology. CR is a philosophy of science that allows for the pluralistic approach to operationalisation of the research strategy, a catalyst in addressing the paradigmatic challenges of the research study. The ability to address the qualitative realist requirements of the study while effectively dealing with the positivist characteristics of the research was crucial in ensuring comprehensive results. The insights which could only be effectively gained through a qualitative realist process of enquiry were invaluable in advancing the IST and BIA design knowledge and practice. CR’s strength in focusing the research practice on the complexities of the real world is a critical enabler for an open system discipline such as IS. It ensures that the research is placed within the realist context of time, space and culture. CR is effective in allowing the researcher to explain the mechanisms that influence the social actor action at different levels of social organisations. It allows for the identification of non-deterministic tendencies in a complex, multidisciplinary and open system such as IS. It not only accounts for the varying social actor requirements at empirical level but reveals possible underlying causes and relationships of the observable or non-observable events and/or activities at play. This approach to analysis of IST and BIA requirements offers a unique ability to frame problems in meaningful and social actor-centred ways, at all levels of social organisation, enabling design and development of IST that are BIA centric. The development of new knowledge advances the field of IS design, a crucial step towards offering practitioners with a practical, structured and integrative design method. The critical realist approach is the most appropriate theoretical paradigm to adopt to address the theory-practice inconsistency challenges at the heart of the IS field. Its strength as a research methodology offers the researcher a unique ability to interact with data at a level that other research methods do not: that is, to examine the impact of data at the three fundamental levels of research – empirical, actual and real – thereby enhancing the effectiveness of its application in practice. Therefore, reconceptualisation of the SI perspective theoretical paradigm from interpretivism to CR offers greater benefits not only to this research study but to the IS field. This is yet another development in the field which seeks to address the long-standing challenge of IS value contribution that is constantly diminished by ineffective design methods and poor integration of the IST and BIA disciplines, which by design should be leveraging on each other’s strengths in a quest to deliver superior results to businesses. Business requirements analysed as input into the design process using the integrative CR-based design method account for BIA requirements, thus enhancing value derived from both IST and BIA.Item Is there a relationship between TQM practices and service quality in the restaurant industry(2016) Raciti, AnndronikiThis dissertation aims to identify whether or not there is clear and tangible evidence to suggest a relationship between the presence of total quality management (TQM) practices and service quality in the restaurant industry. It attempts to investigate if restaurants that show higher levels of service quality do so because they implement quality management practices in some form or another. The study considers four restaurants in Johannesburg. A research method was devised purely for this dissertation to measure the presence of quality management practices within the restaurant and the level of service quality experienced by the customer. Three research instruments were designed for the study by using various frameworks, specifically TQM (a type of quality management practice), the SERVQUAL instrument (a tool used to measure service quality) and qualitative research interviewing. Quality management practices at the restaurants were assessed using the first research instrument: The TQM Questionnaire, which was conducted as an interview between researcher and restaurant employees. The level of service quality was assessed using the second research instrument: The Customer Survey, which was dispensed to the restaurant customers. The third instrument, an observations table was used to corroborate the results obtained by the first two instruments and was designed by the researcher. The results of the TQM Questionnaire were analysed using content analysis, and each restaurant was assigned a total TQM score, which signified the degree to which they implement TQM practices. These scores were compared to the results obtained from the customer surveys, which assigned each restaurant with a SERVQUAL score that measured the degree of customer satisfaction. The TQM results were compared to the SERVQUAL results for each restaurant in order to identify a relationship between the two aspects. The research identified that 3 of the 4 restaurants showed a clear relationship between the presence of TQM practices in their operations and the level of service quality experienced by the customer. It was identified that restaurants that achieved high TQM scores also achieved the highest SERVQUAL scores. This finding recognises that there is a relationship between TQM and service quality, however the study does not go forward to investigate the nature of this relationship.