1,720,954 research outputs found
The effectiveness of contractor development programme in KwaZuluNatal.
No full textMaster of Science in Construction Management. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2017.The construction industry in South Africa is a major contributor towards the economic growth. According to the IDC (2016), the construction industry has contributed 9% towards the gross domestic products in 2008, with this figure increasing to 12% towards the gross in 2016. This latest contribution comes from 12 500 construction projects, with majority being government led projects. The government is implementing and awarding tenders in its construction led project through the Contractor Development Programme. The Contractor Development programme was designed specifically to develop previously disadvantaged and marginalised contractors. Despite the increase in the number of government led construction projects, a survey conducted in 2011 indicates that contractors remain dissatisfied with the programme operations. Moreover, during the parliamentary briefing in 2015, it was indicated that more has to be done to support contractors to grow within the programme.
In KwaZulu Natal alone, the programme is having 6900 contractors between grades 1 to 3, with majority of these on grade one. It was therefore assumed that while contractor development programmes are important to assist participating contractors to achieve overall improved performance, growth and development, the open access to such programmes by all interested parties is counter-productive resulting in these goals not being achieved. This research therefore aimed at examining if the backlog due to openness of registration on the contractor development programme is in actual fact hindering the development of contractors. The aim was to establish if registration on the contractor development is too open and whether participants are satisfied with growth and developmental aspects of the programme.
The study sampled 364 participants who participated in the study .The detailed narrative data was also gathered from six participants who participated in the focus group interviews. The overall research design employed in the investigation of the research problem was triangulated or mixed methods. Based on the inferential, descriptive and thematic analysis conducted, it could be revealed that registration on the contractor development programme is easy and too open to allow access to any contractor, including those without the necessary experience and interest. Contractors indicated overall high satisfaction with system registration. This is indicative of system openness and easiness. The openness increased competition and resulted into the behaviour of opportunistic contractors.
The openness resulted in competing for resources such as tenders and training, and it ultimately led to low level of satisfaction with growth and development amongst the contractors. Participants in both data gathering methods indicated limited training, growth and development in the contractor development programme.
It was found that being part of the programme does not necessarily translate into increased development. Moreover, poor communication in the programme was indicated to be a major concern for contractors
Effectiveness of contractor development programme in KwaZulu-Natal
Get PDFThe article investigates the level of satisfaction with the South African Department of Public Work’s Contractor Development Programme (CDP) in terms of its effectiveness. A mixed method research approach (combination of quantitative and qualitative approach) is employed for the collection of both statistical and in-depth information on the perceptions of participants on the CDP. Survey data collected from 364 participants and interview data from six focus-group participants in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa forms the data sets for the article. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. Descriptive statistics is used to report the reliability of the various constructs, mean scores, standard deviations, and correlations. The findings show that participants not only deemed the programme unsatisfactory, but also reported an overall negative experience with the programme. Specific findings show that the CDP offers no training opportunities to registered members, lacks effective communication mediums, and benefited only those with political connections. The correlation results show that there is a strong relation between population and registering on the CDP, thus confirming that the open and easy access when registering on the CDP allows any interested person to automatically become a contractor creating the possibility of abuse of the programme. The study was limited to KZN contractors only and may, therefore, not be generalised to the entire national population of contractors. This article is relevant, as it gives insight into how satisfied contractors are with the CDP. It may help potential contractors to consider whether the CDP will be beneficial to them, before they decide to join the programme
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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