Understanding the benefits of IT shared services: Insights from Higher Education Sector

In search of efficiencies and effectiveness demanded by a changing marketplace, universities are rethinking their IT services and are considering shared services options. While studies suggest that a wide range of IT services could be shared across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) offering many potential benefits, there has been little empirical evidence of the specific benefits that apply to this sector and their relationships. A deeper understanding of shared services benefits will inform decision making in practice while progressing research in this field. Through a series of case studies of shared services in the Malaysian Higher Education sector, 5 key categories of benefits are empirically explored: (i) Economic, (ii) Technical, (iii) Process Improvement, (iv) Strategic and Organizational, and (v) Political benefits. The study identified specific sub-themes for each of these broad, generic benefit categories. In addition, potential relationships between these categories are also investigated to form an early theoretical framework on the complex associations between these different benefit categories that can potentially contribute to the wider shared services research

Exploring shared services from an IS perspective: a literature review and research agenda

Shared services have gained significance as an organizational arrangement, in particular for support functions, to reduce costs, increase quality and create new capabilities. The Information Systems (IS) function is amenable to sharing arrangements and information systems can enable sharing in other functional areas. However, despite being a promising area for IS research, literature on shared services in the IS discipline is scarce and scattered. There is still little consensus on what shared services is. Moreover, a thorough understanding of why shared services are adopted, who are involved, and how things are shared is lacking. In this article, we set out to progress IS research on shared services by establishing a common ground for future research and proposing a research agenda to shape the field based on an analysis of the IS literature. We present a holistic and inclusive definition, discuss the primacy of economic-strategic objectives so far, and introduce conceptual frameworks for stakeholders and the notion of sharing. We also provide an overview of the theories and research methods applied. We propose a research agenda that addresses fundamental issues related to objectives, stakeholders, and the notion of sharing to lay the foundation for taking IS research on shared services forward

Drivers influencing shared services adoption

Organizations seeking improvements in their performance are increasingly exploring alternative models and approaches for providing support services; one such approach being Shared Services. Shared Services has the potential to provide positive and powerful impact to the organizations with the support of Information Systems (IS) as the platform for Shared Services application and implementation. Due to this situation, Shared Services is becoming one of the choices in IS area for researcher to conduct a research. Shared Services results a lot of positive outcomes especially improving on the organizations financial expenses. Although various studies have been identified in discussing about the benefits of Shared Services, drivers of Shared Services that influence its adoption have received little research attention. This paper has identified several drivers that influence organizations to adopt Shared Services. By using NVivo as a tool to analyze the content from selected journal articles, 5 drivers of Shared Services adoption were identified. This suggesting the strength and benefits in adopting shared service. By identifying the drivers, it could encourage the top management as the decision maker to implement Shared Services in their organization. Thus, this could lead to the business operation to operate more effectively

Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Shared services have gained significance as an organizational arrangement, in particular for support functions, to reduce costs, increase quality, and create new capabilities. The information systems (IS) function is amenable to sharing arrangements and information systems can enable sharing in other functional areas. However, despite being a promising area for IS research, literature on shared services in the IS discipline is scarce and scattered. There is still little consensus on what shared services is. Moreover, a thorough understanding of why shared services are adopted, who are involved, and how things are shared is lacking. In this article, we set out to progress IS research on shared services by establishing a common ground for future research and proposing a research agenda to shape the field based on an analysis of the IS literature. We present a holistic and inclusive definition, discuss the primacy of economic-strategic objectives so far, and introduce conceptual frameworks for stakeholders and the notion of sharing. We also provide an overview of the theories and research methods applied. We propose a research agenda that addresses fundamental issues related to objectives, stakeholders, and the notion of sharing to lay the foundation for taking IS research on shared services forward

Achieving Rigor in Literature Reviews: Insights from Qualitative Data Analysis and Tool-Support

It is important for researchers to efficiently conduct quality literature studies. Hence, a structured and efficient approach is essential. We overview work that has demonstrated the potential for using software tools in literature reviews. We highlight the untapped opportunities in using an end-to-end tool-supported literature review methodology. Qualitative data-analysis tools such as NVivo are immensely useful as a means to analyze, synthesize, and write up literature reviews. In this paper, we describe how to organize and prepare papers for analysis and provide detailed guidelines for actually coding and analyzing papers, including detailed illustrative strategies to effectively write up and present the results. We present a detailed case study as an illustrative example of the proposed approach put into practice. We discuss the means, value, and also pitfalls of applying tool-supported literature review approaches. We contribute to the literature by proposing a four-phased tool-supported methodology that serves as best practice in conducting literature reviews in IS. By viewing the literature review process as a qualitative study and treating the literature as the “data set”, we address the complex puzzle of how best to extract relevant literature and justify its scope, relevance, and quality. We provide systematic guidelines for novice IS researchers seeking to conduct a robust literature review

Understanding the benefits of IT shared services: Insights from the Higher Education sector

In search of efficiencies and effectiveness demanded by a changing marketplace, universities are rethinking their IT services and are considering shared services options. While studies suggest that a wide range of IT services could be shared across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) offering many potential benefits, there has been little empirical evidence of the specific benefits that apply to this sector and their relationships. A deeper understanding of shared services benefits will inform decision making in practice while progressing research in this field. Through a series of case studies of shared services in the Malaysian Higher Education sector, 5 key categories of benefits are empirically explored: (i) Economic, (ii) Technical, (iii) Process Improvement, (iv) Strategic and Organizational, and (v) Political benefits. The study identified specific sub-themes for each of these broad, generic benefit categories. In addition, potential relationships between these categories are also investigated to form an early theoretical framework on the complex associations between these different benefit categories that can potentially contribute to the wider shared services research

Prospects of collaborative consumption in the context of digital government

Rapid advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) combined with rising economic constraints are causing a change in behavior towards new forms of consumption called collaborative consumption (the sharing economy). Research on this phenomenon from the government perspective has however not received much attention. This paper therefore performed a systematic literature review to make sense of how the notion of collaborative consumption (CC) has been investigated in the digital government context, further reflecting on the implications for developing countries. The findings suggest that there is a significant research opportunity on CC in digital government settings to developing countries such as in Latin America, Africa or Australia. Specifically those developing countries are unreflectively sharing based on what developed countries consider needs to be shared. The study contributes theoretically a research agenda on CC in a digital government setting and practically on how to share public services with limited resources

Evaluating Collective Action for Effective Land Policy Reform in Developing Country Contexts: The Construction and Validation of Dimensions and Indicators

Although land reform can be motivated by different policy objectives, it always involves the participation of many actors. Insights from New Institutional Economics suggest that individual interests that are not aligned with collective interests tend to undermine the goals of reform. This study provides a viable framework and measures for social capital, trust, and cooperation performance and their interrelationships to compensate for the existing separate analysis of these three factors and their rare application in achieving goals of collective action. We also build a strong and deepening theoretical foundation for the indicator design, providing a rich representation of social capital, trust, and cooperation performance. After being presented with variables, indicators are used to further elaborate on the variables to enhance the richness and science of the indicator design. The validation results of indicators from 12 experts and 223 respondents are to yield an average reliable coefficient as a positive sign of reliability and validity of the evaluation process with Kendall’s Co-efficient of Concordance (W) through R programming. This study emphasizes the importance of collective action for sustainable land use and effective land policy reform, a topic that remains underrepresented in most land reform analyses

Continuous improvement and organizational practices in service firms: Exploring impact on cost reduction

A growing importance of services sectors for global trade invokes the question of how to combat the innate complexity and inefficiency of service operations. As a response to the growing request for enhancement of service efficiency, companies implement Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives to reduce costs of operations. However, the researchers failed to reach consensus on the effect of CI operations efficiency in non-manufacturing environment. Thus, the proposed study attempts to answer an important question of impact of CI on cost reduction in the services environment by applying Structural Equation Modeling to the 304 survey responses collected in the course of the study. Furthermore, the research investigates how organizational practices impact relationship between CI and cost reduction. The study suggests that CI itself is unable to reduce costs and requires a support of multiple organizational practices, such as Rewards and Recognition of Employees, Quality Culture, Employee Training and Goal setting, to obtain the benefits of cost reduction. Consequently, the research results allow for a conclusion with a vast practical implication that there is need to develop a comprehensive infrastructure of organizational practices to support CI in order to attain cost reduction. The research findings provide recommendations for CI implementation and investment prioritization in service organizations. © 2019, Serbian Journal of Management.Internal Grant Agency of Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/FAME/2017/008, IGA/FAME/2018/005]; Visegrad Fund [51700045