A framework and tool to manage Cloud Computing service quality

Cloud Computing has generated considerable interest in both companies specialized in Information and Communication Technology and business context in general. The Sourcing Capability Maturity Model for service (e-SCM) is a capability model for offshore outsourcing services between clients and providers that offers appropriate strategies to enhance Cloud Computing implementation. It intends to achieve the required quality of service and develop an effective working relationship between clients and providers. Moreover, quality evaluation framework is a framework to control the quality of any product and/or process. It offers a tool support that can generate software artifacts to manage any type of product and service efficiently and effectively. Thus, the aim of this paper was to make this framework and tool support available to manage Cloud Computing service quality between clients and providers by means of e-SCM.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-578

Domestic Outsourcing in the United States: A Research Agenda to Assess Trends and Effects on Job Quality

The goal of this paper is to develop a comprehensive research agenda to analyze trends in domestic outsourcing in the U.S. -- firms' use of contractors and independent contractors -- and its effects on job quality and inequality. In the process, we review definitions of outsourcing, the available scant empirical research, and limitations of existing data sources. We also summarize theories that attempt to explain why firms contract out for certain functions and assess their predictions about likely impacts on job quality. We then lay out in detail a major research initiative on domestic outsourcing, discussing the questions it should answer and providing a menu of research methodologies and potential data sources. Such a research investment will be a critical resource for policymakers and other stakeholders as they seek solutions to problems arising from the changing nature of work

Institutions and Inequality in Liberalizing Markets: Explaining Different Trajectories of Institutional Change in Social Europe

Economic and Social Research Council [grant number RES-061-25-0444]

The Global Networked Value Circle: A new model for best-in-class manufacturing

As companies face deflation, slowing production and declining prices, they will need to assess their entire value chain as they look for ways to keep costs low and improve efficiencies while continuing to innovate. To help address this challenge, this report reflects fresh research undertaken by Capgemini in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh into the ?Best-in-Class Global Manufacturing Value Chain?

Domestic Outsourcing, Rent Seeking, and Increasing Inequality

An increasing share of the economy is organized around financial capitalism, where, in contrast to the past, capital market actors actively assert and manage their claims on wealth creation and distribution. These new actors challenge prior assumptions of managerial capitalism about the goals and governance of firms. The focus on shareholder value is credited with increasing firm efficiency and shareholder returns. This lecture analyzes the changes in organizational behavior and value extraction under financial capitalism

Managing the trade-off implications of global supply

The cost versus response trade-off is a growing logistics issue due to many markets being increasingly characterized by demand uncertainty and shorter product life cycles. This is exacerbated further with supply increasingly moving to low cost global sources. However, the poor response implications of global supply are often not addressed or even acknowledged when undertaking such decisions. Consequently, various practical approaches to minimising, postponing or otherwise managing the impact of the demand uncertainty are often only adopted retrospectively. Even though such generic solutions are documented through case examples we lack effective tools and concepts to support the proactive identification and resolution of such trade-offs. This paper reports on case-based theory building research, involving three cases from the UK and USA used in developing a conceptual model with associated tools, in support of such a process

Data Envelopment Analysis (Dea) approach In efficiency transport manufacturing industry in Malaysia

The objective of this study was to measure of technical efficiency, transport manufacturing industry in Malaysia score using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) from 2005 to 2010. The efficiency score analysis used only two inputs, i.e., capital and labor and one output i.e., total of sales. The results shown that the average efficiency score of the Banker, Charnes, Cooper - Variable Returns to Scale (BCC-VRS) model is higher than the Charnes, Cooper, Rhodes - Constant Return to Scale (CCR-CRS) model. Based on the BCC-VRS model, the average efficiency score was at a moderate level and only four sub-industry that recorded an average efficiency score more than 0.50 percent during the period study. The implication of this result suggests that the transport manufacturing industry needs to increase investment, especially in human capital such as employee training, increase communication expenses such as ICT and carry out joint ventures as well as research and development activities to enhance industry efficiency

What's Behind the Increase in Inequality?

The focus of this paper is the increase in earnings inequality over the last 30-plus years. Economists have well-developed theories that explain differences in wage levels among different categories of workers. Differences in educational attainment and skills are a major source of these differences; large organizations typically employ workers with a wide range of skills and responsibilities and pay them accordingly. As a result, the level of wage inequality within organizations is quite large. This paper does not challenge these results. It argues, however, that these theories are not adequate to explain a relatively recent phenomenon: the increase in recent decades in wage inequality among workers with similar levels of education and similar demographic characteristics who are employed in similar occupations but in different firms or establishments. These differences in wages are how most people experience inequality. Yet much of the analysis by economists has focused on developments that have enabled leading firms in the U.S. to increase their ability to extract monopoly rents.This paper reviews a wide-ranging literature that examines the increased ability of leading firms to extract monopoly rents. It also reviews the more recent and still thin literature on the increase in inequality among workers with similar characteristics but different employers. The contribution of this paper is the identification of a mechanism that reconciles these two strains of economic research and explains how the increase in rent extraction is linked to the increasingly unequal pay of U.S. workers with similar characteristics. I draw on joint work with Rosemary Batt (2014) to identify new opportunities for rent seeking behavior, and on joint work with Annette Bernhardt, Rosemary Batt and Susan Houseman (2016, 2017) on domestic outsourcing, inter-firm contracting and the growing importance of production networks to establish a mechanism that connects the increase in rents with this new type of increase in wage inequality

Profiling a decade of information systems frontiers’ research

This article analyses the first ten years of research published in the Information Systems Frontiers (ISF) from 1999 to 2008. The analysis of the published material includes examining variables such as most productive authors, citation analysis, universities associated with the most publications, geographic diversity, authors’ backgrounds and research methods. The keyword analysis suggests that ISF research has evolved from establishing concepts and domain of information systems (IS), technology and management to contemporary issues such as outsourcing, web services and security. The analysis presented in this paper has identified intellectually significant studies that have contributed to the development and accumulation of intellectual wealth of ISF. The analysis has also identified authors published in other journals whose work largely shaped and guided the researchers published in ISF. This research has implications for researchers, journal editors, and research institutions

International trade agreements and international migration

Despite large potential economic gains to the countries concerned, bilateral and multilateral negotiations regarding liberalization of migration have not had the high profile of trade negotiations and agreements. Migration and trade have been traditionally the prerogative of different ministries, yet there are many interdependencies between international trade, foreign investment and migration. The relevance of these interdependencies for trade negotiations has been remarkably ignored in the literature. In this paper we therefore focus on the two-way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross-border trade or investment. Liberalization of international trade in services and the movement of people are likely to offer much more significant economic gains than liberalization of remaining barriers to goods trade. However, progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty. Mode IV of GATS is restricted to temporary movement of service employees and has yielded little progress so far. Negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalizing the movement of labour. We discuss several specific examples and conclude that trade negotiations are increasingly accommodating migration policies that favour temporary migration over permanent migration and that the migration regulatory framework is likely to be further linked to trade and investment over time