In 2011, a number of research projects appropriate for Bachelors or Masters Honours students are available:

How do managers use iPads?

Supervisors: David Arnott and Caddie Gao

Many commentators think that Apple’s iPad represents a new paradigm in digital media. Released in April 2010, Apple sold 3 million iPads in the following 80 days. Many managers are iPad users.

This project will investigate how managers use iPads for their work activities. It will be exploratory in nature and will investigate whether managers use iPads for different decision support tasks than those that are supported by enterprise and PC-based business intelligence. The main foundation theory for the project will be task-technology fit theory.

The project can be undertaken by multiple students with each student using a different method, for example, one student could use a survey method, another a lab-based approach, and another a case study. The project is suitable for bachelor honours and masters honours students.

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Governance

Supervisors: David Arnott and Rob Meredith

IT governance is an area of considerable academic and industry.  Business intelligence (BI) systems have been rated by the Gartner Global CIO Survey as a top technology priority for organizations for the last five years. There has been very little research conducted on the governance of BI systems and the data warehouses (DW). This project builds on preliminary Monash research on BI and DW governance.

This project will investigate how BI and DW are governed, whether they use different governance strategies to enterprise systems, and whether they themselves need different strategies. The foundation theories for the project will be the matrix and contingency theories of governance. The project can be undertaken by multiple students, with each student using a different method, for example, one student could use a survey method and another a case study approach.

The project is suitable for bachelor honours and masters honours students who have an information systems orientation. Studies in business and management would be helpful but are not required.

User Interface Elements for iOS-based OLAP Tools

Supervisor: Rob Meredith

The adoption of iPhone and iPad devices by executives has send a number of Business Intelligence vendors release iOS versions of their OLAP tools.  There has been little research investigating the use of iOS interface gestures for typical OLAP functions that allow navigation of multi-dimensional data structures.

This project will implement simple OLAP tools on an iOS device to conduct experiments to test the efficacy of various OLAP navigation techniques.

The project will be suitable for a bachelor or masters honours student with a background in programming and an interest in data visualization, decision support, data analytics or business intelligence.  Students should have access to either an iPhone or iPad as well as an Apple computer for development work.  Students will not need to pay for a developer license, as this will be covered by Monash.

Social Media use by Managers

Supervisor: Rob Meredith

The use of social media, or Web 2.0, technologies in Business Intelligence tools is growing in popularity.  However, many organizations restrict or discourage the use of social media sites by employees, and it is unclear how popular the take-up of internal social media services is.

This project will survey managers in a variety of organizations to ascertain their use of social media sites for personal use, the level of adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies in their organization, and their perceptions of the potential usefulness of social media in supporting their work.

This project will suit a bachelor honours or masters honours student with an information systems orientation.  Students should have some appreciation for managerial work and Web 2.0 technologies.