Joseph KK Ho's work diary

For the coming Research in IT lecture topic: Organizations as systems , I will refer to the following article: Ackoff and Gharajedaghi (1996) "Research Paper: Reflection on Systems and their models" Systems Research Vol. 13(1), pp. 13-23. Try to also study the following references: Morgan, G. (1986) Images of Organization , Sage. Jackson, M, C. (1991) "Chapter 3: Organizations as Systems" Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences , New York, Plenum Press. Related lecture handwritten notes: Note 1 Note 2: Note 3: Note 4: Note 5: In the lecture, I have mentioned Greiner's growth model: re: http://www.ils.unc.edu/daniel/131/cco4/Greiner.pdf You should also study the related course manual and course notes Some useful readings on organizational images and information systems management are: Walsham, G. (1993) Interpreting information systems in organization , Wiley. Kamm, R. (1995) "Informat...

The tutorial 3 and 4 tasks for Research in IT are as follows:   Students should also refer to course powerpoints for additional references.   Also comment on the following presentation styles:   Michael Porter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5I_cnpP99U Charles Handy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrR-OUSCWjE&feature=related Steve Jobs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs

I need to read around the following research themes and write some articles this year: a. e-coaching b. diagramming techniques in Research Methods c. Systems approach in Housing Policies. My new article on e-learning is to be published in Systems Research and Behavioral Science this year; I hope my next submitted article on managerial intellectual learning will also be accepted. They are complementary. It is a busy season for writing.

Some students treated the dissertation abstract as the report introduction ; Abstract is not the same as the Introduction Section of a report; pls read Research methods textbooks carefully. Some Independent Studies (IS) reports read like lecture notes; at most, the reports are literature review exercises; this is not good enough. You need to apply Research Methods skills, e.g. data gathering skills as well as qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills. Some students did not provide referencing in their IS reports; some reports have incorrect harvard referencing format . Another example: Research design problem: Internet is BIG: Student A IS report: My survey is done via the Internet... Now consider this: Person A: Where do you live? Person B: I live in the planet called the Earth Many reports have grammatical errors; some have grammatical errors starting right from their IS report essay titles . All these quality problems in IS reports can be a...

So as to have more understanding of social media, I now start to use twitter. Address is : https://twitter.com/JosephKKHo I am still in the learning phase right now.

A student wrote a chapter on Literature Review in his dissertation report with the following subsections: Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.1 An introduction to Literature Review 2.2 Literature Review in details 2.3 Concluding remarks in Literature Review This is a real case..

For the Business Systems Analysis class, students please refer to the following notes: https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10150196289562090.347036.713727089&type=3 You need to study the subject manual. Major topics are as follows: Systems Development Life Cycle Project management for systems development CASE tools Dynamic Systems Development Method Soft Systems Methodology for systems development Considerations on purchase of software applications for enterprises Quality Assurance for software development UML notations with special reference to Use Cases and Activity Diagrams Some briefing on Data Flow Diagrams, and a few minispecifications, e.g. Structured English, Decision Table, Decision Tree Software Testing Exam is 1 hour 30 mins., closed book. Class exercise on  rich picture building : A manufacturer on toys located in PRC Products sold to South Eas Asia 3 suppliers nearby the factory Main theme: problem with the inv...

Lectures 4 and 5 for the Research in IT class are on Literature Review . Students should study the following references: Saunders et al. (2003) "Chapter 3: Critically reviewing the literature" Research Methods for Business Students , Prentice Hall. Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2003) "Chapter 4: Searching the literature" Business Research , Palgrave. You should be able to find relevant videos in Youtube on how to do literature review . Reference Facebook forum on Business Research: https://www.facebook.com/josephho33#!/groups/194088197319308/

Having just conducted a meeting with students who plagiarised in their course assignments, I note the following reasons why students plagiarised in their study: Too busy to do assignment and so plagiarised in assignment works to meet assignment submission deadline Do not know what is plagiarism and the education has not briefed me; plus, this is my first assignment so I do not know the "rule of the game" in doing assignments properly. The centre did not use turnitin (anti-plagiarism software) to check assignments in previous courseworks, thus believing that plagiarism is not a serious problem. Cannot remember that I have plagiarised..

The following tasks are for Research in IT (NCC) seminars 3 and 4: Seminar 3 tasks: Key notions covered: The feedback control model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory The value chain model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain Work system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_systems Soft Systems Methodology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_systems_methodology References Facebook forum on Systems thinking : https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/272833847547/ Schoderbek, P.P., Schderbek, C.G. and Kefalas, A.G. (1985) Conceptual Considerations, Business Publications , Inc. Zexian, Y. and Xuhui, Y. (2010) "Research Paper: A Revolution in the Field of Systems Thinking - A Review of Checkland's System Thinking" Systems Research and Behavioral Science Vol 27, pp. 140-155. Seminar 4 tasks: Key notions covered in Seminar 4 tasks: Office automation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_automation Wo...

Some of my students in Independent Study (IS) do not know how to make use of Excel to generate multiple regression analysis reports; so I offer to generate the Excep reports to them if they will just send me their excel files. A few days ago, some students sent me emails asking me to interpret the multiple regression reports (from Excel) for them as they do not know how to do so. At this point, I told them that I cannot do that - it is solely their responsibility to do their own data analysis. If they do not know how to analyze multiple regression data, they need to study (or do some revision on) statistics. Subsequently, I repeat the same point in my facebook.  Then, one of my students commented that it was IS students' sole responsibilty to do own data analysis in IS because this was made clear in the name of the subject Independent Study , which means " Eat myself" . [I feel a bit taken aback that this viewpoint comes from a lady as my understanding of "eat mys...

For students studying Research in IT , your joint research paper should employ Socio-technical Systems thinking to address a specific concern arising from Internet impacts for a specific organization (business or non-business). For examples, a. how the Internet commerce affects office support for a specific Audit firm b. how the Internet applications affects the customer service practice of a specific bank c. how the Internet application affects the staffing practices for a specific professional translation service company in Hong Kong Try to focus on a real-life company for your assignment work. Try to examine one specific organization in your Joint Research Paper work. You also need to read the assignment requirements and relevant literature yourself. For the coming workshop session, I will make use of the following article for illustration on how to analyze office automation (with Internet as the IT enabler) using socio-technical systems approach: Davenport, T.H. an...