A social capital dimensional approach to Business-IT alignment

This paper examines the role that social capital plays in organisations in order to create alignment between the IT and business communities. Business and IT communities seem often to have little in common with each other and experience difficulties sharing objectives, deliverables and even communicating with each other. The heart of the problem lies in the fact that the business and IT organisations do not perceive themselves as part of a common, unified organisation. Beginning with the premise the absence of social capital is destroyer of alignment, the paper suggests that where social capital is built across the boundaries of the business and IT organisations, this leads to collective efficacy or superior performance. This is elaborated in a dimensional framework comprising the dimensions and attributes of social capital. Collective efficacy and superior performance are seen when the IT and business organisations are aligned through social capital

Social Capital and Alignment Between Business and IS - A Deep Dive Into the Impact of Trust

This paper examines the role of trust in building social capital in organisations to create alignment between the business and IS communities. The two communities often have little in common and experience difficulties sharing objectives, deliverables and even communicating with each other and frequently do not perceive themselves as part of a common, unified organisation. Examining the findings of a broader study, this paper shines a spotlight on the impact of trust. That larger study examined social capital and its impact on alignment, taking a dimensional approach to social capital analysing it in terms of network relationships, shared norms, trust, reciprocity expectation and collective efficacy. Higher levels of social capital across the boundaries between business and IS leads to improved alignment. Offering a ‘deep dive’ into one of the dimensions of social capital, this paper focuses on the impact of trust on that relationship and the consequences for alignment

Searching for the engine of business-IT alignment in social capital.

This thesis examines alignment between the business and IS communities through the lens of social capital. Although alignment has been studied in great depth for many years, it is still a concern for IS managers and practitioners. The study developed a tiered and dimensional framework approach to social capital and applied it to four cases in the investment management sector via a series of interviews and a short questionnaire targeting managers within those firms. Taking an interpretative approach to the subject, the study examined both qualitative and quantitative data looking at the impact that network associations, shared norms, trust, reciprocity-expectation and collective efficacy have on alignment within the participant firms. The study found that although business and IS participants believed that alignment was valuable for their firms to achieve their objectives and recognised the benefits of working collaboratively, they did not tend to share a view on the importance of different types of social capital. Business managers found value in personal relationships which allowed the building of trust and expectations of the fulfilment of mutual obligations. IS managers placed greater emphasis on impersonal aspects such as formal engagement and decision-making. The research concluded that whereas the business perceived alignment to be a social experience, IS viewed it as a process

Intellectual Capital Architectures and Bilateral Learning: A Framework For Human Resource Management

Both researchers and managers are increasingly interested in how firms can pursue bilateral learning; that is, simultaneously exploring new knowledge domains while exploiting current ones (cf., March, 1991). To address this issue, this paper introduces a framework of intellectual capital architectures that combine unique configurations of human, social, and organizational capital. These architectures support bilateral learning by helping to create supplementary alignment between human and social capital as well as complementary alignment between people-embodied knowledge (human and social capital) and organization-embodied knowledge (organizational capital). In order to establish the context for bilateral learning, the framework also identifies unique sets of HR practices that may influence the combinations of human, social, and organizational capital

Beyond technology and finance: pay-as-you-go sustainable energy access and theories of social change

Two-thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, a precursor of poverty reduction and development. The international community has ambitious commitments in this regard, e.g. the UN's Sustainable Energy for All by 2030. But scholarship has not kept up with policy ambitions. This paper operationalises a sociotechnical transitions perspective to analyse for the first time the potential of new, mobileenabled, pay-as-you-go approaches to financing sustainable energy access, focussing on a case study of pay-as-you-go approaches to financing solar home systems in Kenya. The analysis calls into question the adequacy of the dominant, two-dimensional treatment of sustainable energy access in the literature as a purely financial/technology, economics/ engineering problem (which ignores sociocultural and political considerations) and demonstrates the value of a new research agenda that explicitly attends to theories of social change – even when, as in this paper, the focus is purely on finance. The paper demonstrates that sociocultural considerations cut across the literature's traditional two-dimensional analytic categories (technology and finance) and are material to the likely success of any technological or financial intervention. It also demonstrates that the alignment of new payas- you-go finance approaches with existing sociocultural practices of paying for energy can explain their early success and likely longevity relative to traditional finance approaches

National Systems of Innovation and Entrepreneurship: In Search of a Missing Link

The literature on national systems of innovation (NIS) has neglected the issue of entrepreneurship because of several incompatibilities between the two notions. The Schumpeterian legacy, the current person-centric view of entrepreneurship, and methodological problems related to treating entrepreneurship at the macro-level, have made it difficult to integrate entrepreneurship into the NIS perspective. At national level it is more appropriate to treat entrepreneurship as a 'property' (dimension) of NIS. In order to link NIS and entrepreneurship we must establish a common conceptual basis. Our argument is that the functional view of NIS and entrepreneurship presents a common basis for such an approach. We develop criteria for the entrepreneurial NIS which we define as being those that can change balance between individual and cooperative entrepreneurship; that enhance both the opportunity and skill aspects of entrepreneurship; and that can balance generation of uncertainty with support to business models and other organisations which pool uncertainty. From the NIS perspective, we explain entrepreneurship as a systemic phenomenon driven by complementarities between technological, market and institutional opportunities. This framework builds on three research traditions in the entrepreneurship/NIS literature (Schumpeterian, Kirznerian and Listian) which jointly form a multi-level, multi-dimensional framework for understanding entrepreneurship from a NIS perspective. This framework could be useful as a heuristic for empirical research on entrepreneurship. Finally, we analyse policies for entrepreneurship and find that they are highly dependent on underlying and previously discussed conceptions of entrepreneurship

Strategic Communication and the Stakeholder Concept: Merging Marketing Communication and PR

Corporate communication is a strategic endeavour of two major directions; market and non-market communication. Within this differentiation, marketing and communication/Public Relations usually operate separately with a major focus on stakeholder communication since scholars’ research provides evidence for its sustainable advantage. But with regard to different stakeholders’ requirements, the differentiation between market and non-market-related communication has diminished and a number of objectives have become both disciplines’ targets. This paper suggests an extension for the notion communication and introduces a strategic model merging both disciplines under the new function of Strategic Communication. Key Words: Corporate communication, strategic communication, stakeholder concept, unitary perception

HRM and Performance: What’s Next?

The last decade of empirical research on the added value of human resource management (HRM), also known as the HRM and Performance debate, demonstrates evidence that ‘HRM does matter’ (Huselid, 1995; Guest, Michie, Conway and Sheehan, 2003; Wright, Gardner and Moynihan, 2003). Unfortunately, the relationships are often (statistically) weak and the results ambiguous. This paper reviews and attempts to extend the theoretical and methodological issues in the HRM and performance debate. Our aim is to build an agenda for future research in this area. After a brief overview of achievements to date, we proceed with the theoretical and methodological issues related to what constitutes HRM, what is meant by the concept of performance and what is the nature of the link between these two. In the final section, we make a plea for research designs starting from a multidimensional concept of performance, including the perceptions of employees, and building on the premise of HRM systems as an enabling device for a whole range of strategic options. This implies a reversal of the Strategy-HRM linkage

ILR Research in Progress 2011-12

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.Research_in_Progress_2011_12.pdf: 46 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020