DETERMINANTS OF STRATEGIC RISK MANAGEMENT IN EMERGING MARKETS SUPPLY CHAINS: THE CASE OF MEXICO

Risk mitigation in global supply chains has grown in importance in recent years, in tandem with globalization and both the commercial and security threats faced by firms both large and small. This study hypothesizes that a firm’s ability to manage risk strategy—and therefore support its competitiveness—is determined by a symbiotic triad of factors: the resources it utilizes; network systems; and performance criteria it employs. The study, comprising 24 in-depth interviews with electronics and IT firms, examines resource utilization through the Resource-Based View (RBV), assesses firms’ proclivity to engage in networks for risk mitigation and competitiveness; and highlights the importance of performance evaluation as a critically important component in supply chain management. Findings reveal that both buyers and suppliers believe that the symbiotic triad can provide them with a competitive advantage in addition to improving operational efficiency, effectiveness and quality. Future research should also extend this pilot investigation to other countries and industries, and utilize a larger sample of firms for quantitative as well as qualitative assessment.Risk management; emerging markets; Supply Chain Management; IT

Ready for Tomorrow: Demand-Side Emerging Skills for the 21st Century

As part of the Ready for the Job demand-side skill assessment, the Heldrich Center explored emerging work skills that will affect New Jersey's workforce in the next three to five years. The Heldrich Center identified five specific areas likely to generate new skill demands: biotechnology, security, e-learning, e-commerce, and food/agribusiness. This report explores the study's findings and offers recommendations for improving education and training in New Jersey

Evaluating Ethical Technology Leadership: Organizational Culture, Leader Behavior, and a Cyberspace Ethic of Business

Evaluating ethical technology leadership at a financial services firm in North Carolina requires discovering interactions amongst organizational culture, leadership approaches, and ethical decision-making practices. This study provides insight into how the participating firm’s organizational culture creates a leadership climate accommodative of an applied cyberspace business ethic. A cyberspace business ethic provides guidance to technology leaders addressing ethical challenges arising from emergent digital technologies. The identification of four key influencers that support ethical decision-making and provide protection against reputational risk exposures create an understanding of the collective nature of core values, relational, reputational, and technological influences on ethical behaviors. Self-determination theory assists in understanding the motivations for ethical leader behavior in the form of competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Coupling this theoretical knowledge with identification of the four influencers of ethical decision-making provides the basis of understanding the participating firm’s applied cyberspace business ethic. Given the rapid pace of emerging digital technology deployment, a dynamic condition of internal environmental complexity and external environmental uncertainty creates the need for leaders to develop a cyberspace business ethic appropriate for the business context. The participating firm’s cyberspace business ethic centers on core values, transparency, and communication clarity, purposefully utilized to mitigate reputational risk. Applying a Christian worldview to study findings adds a theological construct to organizational core values and underlying virtue ethics

Regulating the Cloud: A Comparative Analysis of the Current and Proposed Privacy Frameworks in Canada and the European Union

Cloud computing is a growing phenomenon and promises greater efficiency and reduced-cost computing. However, some of the basic technological and business-related features of the Cloud are at odds with personal data protection laws. Canada and the European Union share similar core values related to privacy/data protection, and both regions aim to increase their competitiveness regarding cloud computing. Having these two similarities in mind, this paper explores the current legal and stakeholder landscape in Canada and the European Union with respect to cloud computing, data protection and how adoption of the model can be advanced. The analysis shows that neither of the frameworks is entirely compatible with cloud computing in its current application. Canada’s legal landscape is slightly more hospitable, but is lacking direction from regulators, while the EU’s non-harmonized and restrictive framework presents a challenge for cloud proliferation. Relevant stakeholders have diverging views on how data protection in the Cloud should be approached and 2012 will be a year during which these views will likely be debated in detail, in particular in response to the draft proposal of the European Commission on a new data protection framework. This paper concludes with distilling four possible options in this regard

Smart Communities: From Sensors to Internet of Things and to a Marketplace of Services

Our paper was inspired by the recent Society 5.0 initiative of the Japanese Government that seeks to create a sustainable human-centric society by putting to work recent advances in technology: sensor networks, edge computing, IoT ecosystems, AI, Big Data, robotics, to name just a few. The main contribution of this work is a vision of how these technological advances can contribute, directly or indirectly, to making Society 5.0 reality. For this purpose we build on a recently-proposed concept of Marketplace of Services that, in our view, will turn out to be one of the cornerstones of Society 5.0. Instead of referring to Society 5.0 directly, throughout the paper we shall define a generic Smart Community that implements a subset of the goals of Society 5.0. We show how digital technology in conjunction with the Marketplace of services can contribute to enabling and promoting sustainable Smart Communities. Very much like Society 5.0, our Smart Community can provide a large number of di verse and evolving human-centric services offered as utilities and sold on a metered basis. The services offered by the Smart Community can be synthesized, using the latest technology (e.g. 3D printing, robotics, Big Data analytics, AI, etc.), from a hierarchy of raw resources or other services. The residents of the Smart Community can purchase as much or as little of these services as they find suitable to their needs and are billed according to a pay-as-you-go business model

American Well: A Viral Solution

The case presents an overall look at American Well, its position within the telehealth market, and a look at the market and market affecting factors. The following analysis will be conducted using the information presented in the case and will identify strengths, weakness, strategies and provide discussions of special topics

The next generation internet initiative

Digital transformation is pushing all market sectors to level up their digital capabilities to better serve customers and improve the user experience. The European Commission launched in 2016 the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative as part of the DSM strategy. NGI includes a number of different – but always interrelated – emerging technologies in the following focus areas: artificial intelligence and autonomous machines, blockchains and distributed ledgers, big data, Internet of Things, 5G, cybersecurity and privacy technologies, cloud and edge computing, and open data. As for cooperation in the field of Information and Communications Technology, Europe and the United States should seek a joint framework to expand efforts in new emerging technologies, while preserving common principles around a comprehensive EU–US digital economy dialogue. The NGI Initiative is an important opportunity to radically rethink the way the Internet works today, and more human-focused narratives are needed more than ever