Masters dissertation pdf

As soon as you have a subject to work on, use the thesis template to create a comprehensive outline for the proposed project.

The outline should be a cut above the many average bear document written by other students. Writing a thesis proposal is always complex, and unless you give attention to details, your document is bound to have countless errors. To get you off the erroneous hook, use the short guide below to write your research proposal.

Begin by identifying the title for your project. The title for the project has to be the preliminary subject of your discussion. You may also see Project Proposal Templates. Your proposal must have a short introduction, say one or two pages. You must have an objective, too. Divide your goals into two parts: specific objectives and general objectives.

Then, Literature reviews follow; this is where you explain what other industries have done as far as they concern your subject matter. The other sections should flow easily if you peruse the sample thesis proposal templates. The format for the thesis must always remain the same throughout your writing as taught by your lecturer. Every thesis must start with an introduction and end with a conclusion and a recommendation.

You may also see Investment Proposal Templates. One interesting aspect from this cross tabulation was that out of the firms that were not exporting to any country 2. Having seen the association from the Chi-squares test a Spearman rho correlation was also conducted to see the effect of using KMS on the number of countries a company was exporting.

When the knowledge form variable was tested as the dependent variable the Spearman rho correlation coefficient was.

The three options were taken as independent variables and the financial and non-financial EP measures as dependent variables. Furthermore using the combined KMS as the independent variable was regressed against the EP measures as identified in the conceptual framework to determine their effect on each dependent variables so as to confirm the above findings.

The statistics from the ordinal regression showed a sensitivity and positivity test of This was also clear in that organizations that were performing well confirmed to be using IT driven KMS and were also using social driven KMS although unaware of it as it emerged from the secondary data. The increase in EP as result of utilizing both systems was actually 1. However while using IT driven KMS influence was realized to be significant on all financial export measures and none of the social driven EP measures as indicated above in section 4.

On the other hand social driven KMS had a significant influence on all non-financial EP measures but none on financial performance measures as also indicated in section 4. The outcome of the results is shown in the figure below.

The finding of formulating and adopting a framework was in line with the conclusions by Pawlowski and Bick who suggests that the field of KM and KMS needs guiding frameworks for it to be implemented successfully in support of any given role.

These thematic areas will now be discussed in detail. This supports the views by Zou that small companies are less likely to engage in exporting as compared to large companies. This could be probably due to a view of being incapacitated in terms of human capital and this condition presents a good environment for the role of KMS as a lasting solution to this shortcoming.

The results also indicated that the Zimbabwean manufacturing industry was composed mostly of new companies that were less than 30 years in operation. Considering the need for experience in exporting as suggested by Marandu who concluded that the longer the experience the higher the EP. This could explain the low EP in the manufacturing sector. There is therefore need to find out how the inexperienced companies can stand the global competition from century old Multinationals.

This suggests that KMS can be treated as ordinary computer systems that cannot predict pattern and advice in taking positive less risk decision. However these views are in agreement with the current agreed definitions of KMS in literature which are normally related to IT based system Thierauf, ; Alavi and Leidner, ; Hidayanto and Efendy, ; Assegaf and Hussin, As such the fact that these powerful systems could be used for providing basic internet or relational database systems.

This was supported by the finding that there was acceptance in most of the respondents that KMS are primarily for knowledge transfer and have little or no role in knowledge creation, retention or utilization.

This suggests a low awareness of the role that KMS play in supporting export knowledge management activities and hence the lack of realisation of benefits from export promotions programs from ZimTrade. The study also showed that there was little understanding of the two categories of people centered and IT centered systems. It appears that the Industry would need more education about KMS before it can start to appreciate their role in enhancing EP.

First the test that was using IT driven system only was done. This tested showed that there is a positive relationship between IT driven systems and financial EP measures and a negative relationship between IT driven systems and non-financial EP measure.

Then the test using social driven KMS was done. It was found out that social driven KMS have a positive relationship with non-financial EP measures and a negative relationship with financial EP measures. Organisations that were using these systems independent of each other had challenges in their exporting. The last test was that of combined system which had a positive relationship on both systems as they perfectly complimented each other. These findings are in agreement with those of Assegaf and Hussin, who noted that the best approach to strategic implementation of KMS is the socio- technical approach which combines the two systems together to effectively cater for the two taxonomies of knowledge.

This is further supported by Moghaddam et al. This shows that before any decision to adopt KMS can be made an internal or localised research is necessary as relying on finding from researches done elsewhere may prove difficult to operationalize leading to disappointments. It further suggests that these are currently not being practiced. They also suggest a missing link between the export promotion activities by the national export promotion institution ZimTrade and the industry.

Since the data from the secondary sources indicated that ZimTrade were engaged in a number of export promotion activities but the condition on the beneficiaries was not confirming the situation. The reason for the missing link could be that the systems being used to manage knowledge by the industry and ZimTrade are different. It seems the strategic adoption of KMS will go a long way in combing the industry and the export promotion institution thereby improving the national EP levels.

The most preferred being the connect everyone strategy and the formulation and adoption of a KMS framework. This lack of appreciation of socio-technical and multi systems strategy poses a problem since the adoption of the other strategies has proved to support one side of measures while killing the other.

It may be necessary and important that more awareness programs be conducted to enable industry to adopt the multi systems approach. The next chapter gives conclusions and recommendations. This chapter summarizes the salient points discussed in the research study from the findings.

It looks at the conclusions drawn from the findings made in the previous chapter. It also looks at the recommendations suggested to various stakeholders. Based on the limitations identified in the research the study recommends areas of further study to other future researchers. The research study used collected data to establish the level of KMS awareness by players in the Zimbabwean manufacturing sector; to ascertain the KMS Critical Success Factors for improving EP in the Zimbabwean manufacturing sector; to determine the effect of KMS on EP in the Zimbabwean manufacturing sector and to recommend the framework and strategies that can be used by firms intending to utilise KMS to improve their EP.

All the respondents viewed KMS as being IT centered which showed a low understanding of these systems. The value addition strategy may have been influenced by the current drive by government to promote value addition and import substitution.

The respondents that were using KMS had better form of knowledge explicit knowledge which could be used for enhancing EP as compared to tacit which is complex to implement for supporting firm performance. Second firms that were using KMS were more strategic in their export activities as they were exporting internationally, continentally and regionally. Most of the companies that were registered with ZimTrade and had exporting in their strategic plans and did not have KMS were not exporting indicating the importance of KMS in EP enhancement 5.

While a combined approach of using both systems proved to be very significant thus suggesting that a strategic approach to KMS is the best way to improve EP. Both IT centered KMS and people centered KMS when used separately proved to be positively correlated with both non-financial and financial export performance measure. However the chi-square and ordinal regression analysis revealed that this was a weak and insignificant relationship leading to its disapproval in the study.

Since there is a missing link it is recommended that the Government through ZimTrade embarks on knowledge based export promotion programs that will increase the level of KMS awareness. A combined use of IT and people centered KMS be adopted The study has also revealed that the independent use of KMS result in unbalanced improvement which leads to export loses.

Based on these findings it is recommended that the industry adopts the use of both people centered and IT centered KMS in its exporting activities so as to increase the export performance levels in the country. It is thus imperative that a good ICT policy and infrastructure be put in place to support the transfer and utilization of knowledge from ZimTrade by the Industry players as the research indicated that most of the companies did not have IT systems.

The study framework proved a positive relationship with EP though this need to be validated. It is recommended that those firms intending to utilize KMS for enhancing their EP adopt the framework for testing validity of variables before committing their resources. It is thus recommended that further studies be conducted using a much larger sample to test the variations from an industry or national level. Second, the proposed framework although it has proved that there is a positive relationship between strategic adoption of KMS and improved EP it has not been effectively tested for validity.

It is recommended that the model be fully tested with a wider sample using Partial Least Squares to validate its application in the industry without errors.

Lastly since the research used only one country which did not take into consideration different environment it is also recommended that further studied involving a cross country sample be carried out.

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