1,720,959 research outputs found
The application of quality management systems at a computer customer contact centre in Cape Town
No full textThesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2011.This research investigates the application of the quality management systems
at a computer contact centre in Cape Town. It examines the issues around
brand switching from the products supported by the computer customer
contact centre to those manufactured by competitors. Its main interest is to
interrogate the reasons customers give to call centre agents when they decide
to switch brands. It also hopes to find out whether call agents understand the
interrelation between quality management, brand loyalty and customer
satisfaction. Furthermore, the project uses employee responses to ascertain
whether the concept of quality management is synonymous with customer
satisfaction and whether employee fulfilment leads to innovation and
customer satisfaction. To address the main concerns of this project, Deming's
model of quality management is used as the main conceptual framework. The
key concepts underlying this model are visionary leadership, internal and
external cooperation, learning/training, process management, continuous
improvement, employee fulfilment and customer satisfaction. To find out the reasons that customers give to call centre agents when they
decide to switch brands and also to respond to sub research questions, a
quantitative research method was selected. A questionnaire was administered
to 100 employees out of a 300 population. Although the customers' voices
would have added value to the research project, the researcher decided to
concentrate on employees because of the following reasons: 1) the interaction
with customer begins and ends with agents, therefore agents are always
aware of the reasons why customers switch brands; 2) the customers are in
excess of 100,000,000 and selecting a representative sample for a mini thesis
was not very feasible, given that the thesis is constrained by time and volume
A structural model for sustainable growth of the south African business process outsourcing sector
Full text linkhe total size of the South African Business Process Outsourcing sector is not growing as quickly as other global BPO locations like the Philippines and India. The sector has been identified by the South African government as a key sector for economic growth and for reducing unemployment. Reviewed frameworks are not exhaustive in providing a framework that is suitable for countries with an apartheid history like South Africa, so, the main aim of this study has been, therefore, to develop a structural model for sustainable growth of the South African BPO sector. The research was two phased: Firstly, it interrogated existing theories and models on BPO growth to identify variables for BPO growth. The variables were identified as talent pool, infrastructure, accessibility, lower costs, and legislative framework. The relationships between variables were hypothesised. The reviewed literature discussed the global economy and traced the origins of outsourcing as rooted in the advent of Information Technology and computer-enabled production which enabled fragmented processes which could be in any part of the world. The literature showed that competition for markets, coupled with a glut of products on the market, forced creativity which resulted in companies seeking operations in low-cost locations. The first popular locations for BPO operations were India and the Philippines, with emerging locations, like South Africa, positioning themselves to tap into this global development. Secondly, a quantitative study was performed using a web-based questionnaire which was sent to a sample of BPO executives in the BPO value chain in South Africa to test relationships among between variables. The results of the study showed statistically significant relationships between talent pool, infrastructure, lower costs, accessibility and legislative framework with BPO growth, albeit with varying degrees of strength. Contrary to popular belief, lower costs are no longer the most important driver of BPO location choice. Accessibility and legislative framework have also been confirmed by data as variables affecting BPO growth. After the computation of the relationships, the research concluded that the model developed is a good fit for BPO growth.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment, and Technology, 202
Fostering a community of inquiry for engaging undergraduate students in research: a systematic literature review
Full text linkThis systematic literature review explores strategies and best practices for fostering a community of inquiry to engage undergraduate students in research in higher education environments. The review adheres to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria to conduct a thorough analysis of academic publications and 15 articles were analysed. The study adopted a framework developed by Healy and Jenkins in 2009 which articulated different types of research-based learning. The findings shed insight into effective treatments, difficulties encountered by lecturers, and the positive benefits of community-based research activities on students' personal and academic growth. Our discussion is centred around three key concepts arising from the theoretical underpinnings and these are: research-based, tutor-based, and research-oriented. In addition, our findings suggest that fostering a community of inquiry in undergraduate research strengthens undergraduate education by providing additional outlets for faculty to teach, research, and serve, and by fostering the creation of a community of scholars that is essential to the intellectual health of the university. This study's practical contribution is that universities should develop a subunit devoted to undergraduate research rather than embedding student research into the curriculum. Our findings would have been more insightful if we had employed case studies of universities with undergraduate research-intensive communities of inquiry. Nonetheless, the study provided illuminating conclusions from building a community of inquiry to involve undergraduate students in research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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