Factors Affecting Readiness for Business Process Reengineering-Developing and Proposing a Conceptual Model

In this paper researcher made an effort to suggest an approach to minimize risk of implementing Business Process Reengineering (BPR) initiatives by identifying certain factors crucial towards creating readiness for BPR. Lack of readiness is main factor behind high rate of BPR failures. Extensive literature review and interviews from the panel of experts provided sufficient background information. Leadership style, Information technology (IT), Top management commitment and collaborative working figured out as critical factors towards creating readiness. Regular leadership actions consistent with organizational environment, collaborative working, Information Technology and Top management commitment could promote coherence in organizational members' readiness perceptions. Assessing BPR readiness can address strong points, weak points and risks, and hence the ranking/level of readiness in the organization. Keywords: Business process reengineering, Business process readiness, Critical success factors, Organizational change

Strategic alignment and Information Systems success: Towards an evaluation model for firm performance

There are several models about the development of a successful Information Systems Planning process, while very little research has focused on the contribution of the Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) process to firm performance. The assessment of the process is a decision problem and managers should evaluate alternatives so that it could be solved. Both executives and researchers need to be aware of how the alignment of business and IS strategies impact firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of the determinants of the SISP process and success in Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to assess the contribution of these two variables to firm performance. Understanding those phases may help IS executives concentrate their efforts on organizations’ objectives and recognize the greatest value of the planning process in their firms. This paper contributes to IS executives in Greek SMEs who do not concentrate on strategic planning during the development of IS and they focus only on the technical issues. As a result, they should understand the significance of the SISP process in order to formulate and implement IS strategy which will be aligned with business objectives and increase the success of SMEs

Evaluating IT alignment and performance in SMEs using multivariate regression analysis

New competitive challenges have forced Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to re-examine their internal environment in order to improve competitive advantage. IT investments can improve firm performance in a way that it would be in “alignment” with business strategy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contemporary impact of IT and business strategy on business performance, incorporating all these constructs into a model that is tested using Multivariate Regression Analysis. Data were collected from IS executives in 160 Greek SMEs. The results of this survey show that Strategy conception and formulation have a significant impact on business performanc

Managerial Interpersonal Competencies - Benefiting from Learning Organization Characteristics in SMEs

To succeed in today's ever-changing business environment, enterprises must rely heavily on their own abilities to learn and manage acquired knowledge. In this sense, the concept of learning organization has been proposed as an ideal type of organization for competing and surviving in the contemporary, highly demanding business environment. The presumption that employees will be more open to discussions, new ideas, to acknowledge and correct their own mistakes in a favorable and supportive work environment implies that managers potentially play significant roles in developing such environments. The behavioral approach that managers take in interpersonal dynamics with their subordinates stands out as a particularly important factor in developing favorable work environments for learning and change, i.e., encouraging employees to engage in, for them, often risky and unpleasant processes of learning and changing their initial ideas, standpoints and eventually mental models. In the relevant literature, these topics have been explored a number of times in large enterprises, while they are, with a few exceptions, mostly neglected in the case of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role that managers’ interpersonal competencies (MIC) have in the emergence and the development of learning organization characteristics (LOC) in their enterprises. In addition, this paper investigates the effects of the interrelationship between MIC and LOC on overall managerial effectiveness in order to gain a deeper insight into the potential managerial and organizational benefits of the dynamics between MIC and LOC. To provide answers to the stated research agenda, empirical research has been conducted on the sample of 87 employees and managers from Croatian SMEs. Collected data were processed via SPSS 23.0 and Microsoft Excel. Results obtained suggest that there is a significant interplay between MIC and LOC and that LOC may play a positive mediating role in the effect of MIC on managerial effectiveness

Exploring the Effects of Macro-Environment on the Predisposition to Adopt Strategic Orientation among Small Medium Size Hotel Entrepreneurs

This paper looks at the effect of macro-environment context on small and medium size hotels' predisposition to adopt strategic orientation using a qualitative approach in its research methodology. Specifically it is based on in-depth interviews of fifteen informants representing the hospitality industry. Analysis from the themes surfaced suggests SME Hotels are operating within a political and financial business environment, which is found to be relatively unfriendly. However, the social and economic conditions for small and medium size hotels were encouraging. Against this background, SME Hotels operate by adopting some degree of entrepreneurial and/or market orientation. This paper offers meaningful findings to the study research questions which other methodology may not be able to provide. Keywords: Small and medium size hotels, macroenvironment, strategic orientations JEL Classification: M10, M1

How do technology orientation, organizational learning, market conditions, and firm growth connect? A preliminary analysis on small and medium size hotels in Peninsular Malaysia

This paper presents a preliminary analysis on how organizational learning (OL) and market condition (MC) affect the relationship between technology orientation (TO) and growth of small and medium size firms.Using hotels in Peninsular Malaysia as context, the study tested its hypotheses using responses from 254 hotel managers.Regression analysis results indicated that MC has an enhancing effect on the positive and significant relationship between TO and growth/performance of small medium size hotels. Meanwhile, OL only partially mediates the relationship between TO with growth of those hotels.Implications of the findings are discussed at the end of the paper

Exploring the Effects of Macro-Environment on the Predisposition to Adopt Strategic Orientation among Small Medium Size Hotel Entrepreneurs

This paper looks at the effect of macro-environment context on small and medium size hotels’ predisposition to adopt strategic orientation using a qualitative approach in its research methodology. Specifically it is based on in-depth interviews of 15 informants representing the hospitality industry. Analysis from the themes surfaced suggests SME Hotels are operating within a political and financial business environment, which is found to be relatively unfriendly. However, the social and economic conditions for small and medium size hotels were encouraging. Against this background, SME hotels operate by adopting some degree of entrepreneurial and/or market orientation. This paper offers meaningful findings to the study research questions which other methodology may not be able to provide

Transforming entrepreneurial resources to competitive advantage: the role of social capital and marketing capability

Since small businesses are economic engines in many nations, the efforts to transform small business into competitive ones have come to a challenging issue. However, there is a gap in the entrepreneurship field, which is about limited and slow development of a cumulative body of knowledge, spring from lack of agreement on many key issues in entrepreneurship This study has intention to determine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation, social capital and entrepreneurial management of firm performance. To deal with complex relationship, the research framework involves mediating effect to refine theory. The structural equation model is tested with a survey on 390 respondents with SMEs context in Indonesia. The empirical result reveals that marketing capability has full mediating effect on relationship between firm performance and both entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial management. Hence, the study indicates complementary mediating effect of marketing capability on the relation between social capital and firm performances. The contribution of this study confirms the resource-based theory, which transformed into dynamic capability approach

The Moderating Effect of Environmental Turbulence in the Relationship between Entrepreneurial Management and Firm Performance

Contingency theory points out the adaptive management is crucial point to sustainable firm performance. This research aims to determine the relative importance of a set of variables comprising the four entrepreneurial management variables, i.e. strategic orientation, organization culture, organization structure, and reward system, and a set of environmental turbulence variables in predicting firm performance. This research uses firm-level data with observed population of this research is SMEs in Surabaya, Indonesia. Through adopting hierarchical regression approach and partial least square method, this study indicates that moderating effect of environmental turbulence changes the direction of relationship between entrepreneurial management and firm performance. During low environmental turbulence, entrepreneurial management has positive impact on firm performance, but the direction changes. Entrepreneurial management has negative impact on firm performance during high environmental turbulence