Adapting selection strategies of executors of business processes based on profit and social qualities

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd This paper discusses an approach for selecting executors of business processes based on profit and social-quality criteria. The approach relies on a trusted authority to ensure the transparency and fairness of the selection. Executors are known as slaves and exhibit certain social qualities (e.g., selfishness and goodwill) in response to the requests of owners of business processes known as masters. A set of simulation tests are carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in term of what selection strategy is best, i.e., profit-based, social quality-based, or both

The Fabrication Commons: Creative Agency Through Intuitive Interfaces

With digital fabrication tools and networking technology becoming increasingly attainable and versatile, there is an opportunity for more people to become makers instead of just being passive consumers. How can we take advantage of this to foster larger local and global communities of makers? Most digital fabrication research focuses on a singular novel process or application of a tool, and not the actual relationship between the users and the entire fabrication process. To engage a broader audience with digital fabrication, I propose a user-centric ecosystem that attempts to seamlessly link all of the individual elements of the workflow. My research involves designing a series of prototypes for inexperienced makers that lower the barriers of complex workflows. By doing this, anyone can be empowered to shape their environment and cater to their needs and desires without relying on mass-produced goods. With more engaging, accessible methods of fabrication, people can benefit from the advantages of creating something themselves, and form communities that are more empowered and meaningfully connected

Graphic designer-client relationships - case study

Graphic design is one of the elements of today’s environment. It communicates meanings, identifies things, navigates people, and imparts knowledge in physical visible forms. We can see it everywhere: in the street signs, books, newspapers, packages, labels, clothes, billboards, etc. Since ideas and messages find their visual appearance in printed, published, or other visual forms, this means there are clients that order these design projects and designers that make them a reality. Since there are many examples of great and poor design, this means creative cooperation may be effective and clear or mutual understanding may be missed. In this context, relationships between the graphic designer and a client become the main topic of this research. This work aims to discover the reasons of spoiling of relations and offer practical guidelines that help graphic designers and their clients to improve their business cooperation. In order to reach the main goal, this study describes the idea of the graphic designer and a client. Graphic designer is a mediator of ideas between producer and consumer and creator of experiences that can change behavior of individuals. In this context, designer’s social responsibilities, inner culture, education, career opportunities, and professional growth stay in the focus of this research. Since design is a result of designer’s activity, designer is responsible for success or failure of the project. However, client acts as equal in rights participant of the design process. This research presents a client from the position on corporate ladder and level of familiarization with design. The existing literature on the current topic describes disrespect, lack of responsibility, unethical behavior, stereotypes, and lack of clarity as the main reasons of spoiling of relationships between the graphic designer and a client. Two practical cases prove theoretical findings and outline possible solutions to improve these relations. Results provided by the cases become a basis for further research and conclusions. This study concludes with general guidelines that help graphic designers and their clients to speak clear language and provide effective design. Practical solutions suggest respect, ethical behavior, honesty, flexibility, overcoming stereotypes, individual approach to a client, and thinking several steps forward as core elements of profitable and fruitful cooperation. Also, they suggest concept of socially responsible design, payment strategies, and techniques to keep clients coming back and adapt to existing business conditions

A framework for the implementation and practice of professional bodies

Professional bodies represent practitioners who continually seek guidance on industry related problems and challenges. Each professional body adopts values that are aligned to their own field of expertise. The operations of professional bodies are generally similar in many aspects and demands efficacy in order to maintain credibility and relevance. Research has revealed that professional bodies are lacking in efficacy and need to improve so that maximum benefit can be relished by practitioners. This research attempts to develop a framework that can be utilised as a guide by professional bodies so that they can achieve excellence. The aim of the study was to develop a framework that can be used for the formation, practice and management of professional bodies by exploring the views and opinions of a total of 1119 participants from management and members of professional bodies locally. The data was collected from interviews, a focus group discussion and two separate questionnaires, one for professional bodies and the other for practitioners. The data was analysed statistically primarily using factor analysis to determine the significant factors that contributed to the developed framework for professional bodies. The questionnaires espoused questions related to the demographics of the respondents, management, mandate of professional bodies, offerings and benefits, assurance mechanisms, role of members, needs of members and more. The research instrument used the seven point Likert scale for the respondents to rate each question. The questionnaires were posted online for the respondents to participate. The research significant factors for professional bodies and practitioners emanated separately through factor analysis. The factors were then combined resulting in a total of 14 research overall factors that were used to develop a framework for professional bodies. The beneficiaries of this study are primarily professional bodies, practitioners and also SAQA. The framework will also be useful to management in industry since it addresses partnership and collaboration efforts between industry, professional bodies and academia.Business ManagementD.B.L

Examining Emergent Systems Management Strategies in Overseas Operations

Stadler, Mayer, and Hautz (2015) believed that most global companies did not possess the right management capabilities to make overseas movement profitable. Businesses must manage a bevy of internal and external organizational and process interdependencies to achieve success globally (Dynes, 2008), and these organizational processes have become increasingly more complex and adaptive (Anderson, 1999; McKelvey, 2001; Stacey, 1992; Wheatley, 1999). Today’s business leaders still develop reductionist solutions to solve complex problems despite this type of thinking\u27s practical limitations (Menkes, 2011). Comstock (2016) foresaw emergent management as a necessity in the current era, which requires organizations to unify around information flows and empowered individuals. As globalization intensifies the demand for international operations and global partnerships, business leaders must confront an evolving leadership paradigm (Baumgartner & Korhonen, 2010; Menkes, 2011). For organizations to survive amidst the rapid connectivity and complexity that defines today’s global business environment, they need to balance their traditional, planned, structural change methods with the unpredictability and emergence of new approaches (Livne-Tarandach & Bartunek, 2009)

Social and legal aspects of the development of civil society institutions. Part I

This collective monograph offers the description and analysis of the formation and development of civil society institutions at various levels of government in the field of politics, economics, education and culture. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study. Theoretical and applied problems and the existing legal base of practical activities of civil society institutions in the context of growing interdependence of economic, cultural, demographic, political, environmental processes are investigated. The prospects for the further development of civil society and its institutions, their relations with the state, as well as the promotion of the participation of civil society organizations in socio-economic development

Developing Organizational Dynamic Capabilities in Project-Based integrated Solution: A Study of Servitization in Chinese Water treatment Industry

Manufacturing firms seeking to create and extend competitive advantage are striving to incorporate more services into their offerings. Although service is seen as service providers applying knowledge and skills for the benefits of customers, service providers are traditionally treated as pure decision takers, and their influence upon organizational dynamic capabilities is largely underestimated. There are research gaps such as how front-line service providers influence organizational dynamic capabilities and how organizational dynamic capabilities can be developed in servitization need to be systematically studied and explicitly explained. This study focuses on firms providing project-based integrated solutions. The attempt to fill identified research gaps is carried out by answering three questions: What roles the front-line service providers, project manager and team members, play in project-based integrated solution? How service providers can influence organizational dynamic capabilities in project-based integrated solution? What mechanisms service providers can adopt to develop dynamic capabilities in project-based integrated solution? The theoretical foundation of this thesis is built on dynamic capability and servitization literature, complemented by researches on project-based organizations. The empirical data are collected in semi-structured interviews. In this thesis, the strategic roles which project manager and team members play, and their respective influences upon organizational capabilities are differentiated. Meanwhile, the roles of service co-creators on customer side are studied and the influence on project performance are discussed. Overall, this study is qualitative in nature and the theory development follows a deductive in combination with inductive approach. This study creates multiple theoretical contributions. Knowledge about the roles of front-line service providers, their influence upon organizational capabilities, the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities, and the influence of service co-creators in project-based integrated solution are developed. This study also generates insights for managers to reconsider firm organizational structure, decision-making processes, human resource and knowledge assets management in solution projects. Additionally, this study indicates that, to improve project performance, managers should emphasize the importance of service co-creators and develop their capabilities

Organizing for the Future: Cases on the Transition to Organic Forms

How most organizations are organized today is not coherent with the current market conditions and business environment. Many organizations are still relying on the decade’s old traditional organizational designs (Fassoula, 2004; Rahnema & Van Durme, 2017), although the emergence of these can be traced back to specific eras in history where managers aimed to take advantage of the prevailing market conditions (Miles et al., 2009). However, since then, the world has dramatically changed as a result of technological development, increased knowledge and globalization (Hinrichs, 2009). The business environment of today can therefore be described as dynamic, complex and uncertain, and to be successful under such conditions, organizations must be flexible and innovative (Hinrichs, 2009; Rigby, Sutherland & Takeuchi, 2016). Consequently, the traditional forms of organizing are no longer responding to the market conditions they were designed to match. In uncertain environments, organic organizations with features such as few hierarchical levels and decentralized decision-making are favorable (Burns & Stalker, 1961). Being organic also allows for agility (Holbeche, 2019; Olivia et al., 2019), an organizational capability that enables efficient and effective adaption of resources for value creation that corresponds to the changing environment. Thus, agility is highly desired in today’s volatile business environment and can be connected to higher organizational performance (Tallon & Pinsonneault, 2011; Salo, 2017). New organizational designs are therefore emerging which offer a possibility to become organized in accordance with today, and not only in terms of responsiveness, but also in recognizing the individual contribution of each employee. Nevertheless, engaging in organizational change tends to be difficult. Approximately 70% of the change initiatives that organizations engage in fail (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Rahnema & Van Durme, 2017; Holbeche, 2019), and most literature on change management is not suitable for the new unstable market conditions (Burnes, 1996). Additionally, the large differences between the traditional, hierarchical forms and the new forms imposes an even greater difficulty. Consequently, while a need to change has been recognized, the available literature on how to do so is limited. The purpose of this thesis was to increase the understanding of how to successfully manage the transition from a traditional form of organizing to a newer, organic form. To fulfill this purpose, the transformation processes towards the rather novel Teal-model made by Zordan Srl SB and Credito Emiliano S.p.A were studied following a case study methodology. The 8 findings of the explorative research confirm that both external and internal factors question the appropriateness of traditional forms of organizing in the business environment of today, and by transforming, great results can be achieved connected to economic profits, employee satisfaction, organizational climate and customer satisfaction. Successful ways of how to manage the transition was found in a gradual implementation of change where the process evolves along the transformation. This allows for reflection and a high involvement of employees, which positively affects change resistance. The findings also suggest a creation of an internal guiding group to function as a facilitator during the process. However, the change is not only limited to the organizational design, but the organizational culture and mindset must be changed as well to reflect the new ways of working. Accordingly, the required efforts to succeed are affected by the existing culture and perceptions of power, and the organizational starting point in relation to the desired model. Due to the limited number of studied cases, additional research is needed