Approaching Strategic Misalignment from Organizational View of Business Processes

Enterprise software system (ESS) design is premised upon an embedded business process model, a system model, whichembodies the ESS designers’ a priori view of best business practices in the intended context. In contrast, an organization’sexisting business model reflects its own a priori view of best practices. This native model is the aggregate of theorganization’s business processes and operationalizes management intentions. Business processes are the primary buildingblocks of both models. Understanding process disparity between these models may improve the understanding ofmisalignment between ESS and the organization. Researches and practitioners continue to struggle to explain how ITresources contribute to business performance and how to realize business performance from strategic IT investments.Misalignment between the strategic potential afforded by IT resources and business performance can be understood by anapproach that centers on business process

Exploring the Misalignment between Business and Information Technology on the Implementation of Balanced Scorecard: Case Study of State-Owned Telecommunication Companies in Indonesia

Many organisations around the world have faced misalignment in attaining the alignment between business and IT. The positive effect of alignment on overall company success has been focused on previous research. On the other hand, the misalignment in the implementation of a balanced scorecard was primarily unexplored. This study aimed at identifying and evaluating the factors that contribute to a misalignment of businesses and IT. The case study methodology is conducted in two state-owned telecommunication companies in Indonesia. The telecommunication industry’s selection as the case study is because of their nature closely related to technology development and implementation. Five semi-structured interviews, field notes and business records are used to produce the data, which have been thematically analysed and further follow by cross-case analysis to compare the thematic analysis result from each company. This study has resulted in 12 factors of misalignment between business and IT that can inhibit achieving alignment in implementing a balanced scorecard. The main findings showed that human factors, enterprise architecture, and IT project implementation factors could be three main source themes that can potentially contribute to misalignment. The findings may allow researchers to devise frameworks for how misalignments can be minimised to align business and IT better. This finding also useful in practice for companies that are seeking to achieve business-IT alignment by focusing on human factors, enterprise architecture factors, and IT project implementation factors

HR: Innovation\u27s Accelerator

[Excerpt] Amazon and Borders. Netflix and Blockbuster. Uber and taxi drivers. Digital camera makers and Kodak. The list could go on and on. Individual stories of disruptive innovation such as these are some of the most well known - and ca utionary - business tales of our times. Yet, many firms remain blindly confident that such an outcome will never happen to their company. Recent research suggests otherwise. According to a 2016 report by the innova tion -focused firm Innosight, high M&A activity and billion -dollar startup valuations are creating significant market turbulence, with 28 companies being replaced on the S&P 500 index in 2015 alone. At current churn rates, Innosight estimates that by 2026, half of the entire S&P 500 will be replaced-a staggering and sobering figure. As such, the ability to develop deep innovation capabilities has never been more important, for both growth and survival. This year\u27s CAHRs Research Assistant (RA) project takes on this very topic, examining the intersection between HR & Innovation, and how progressive HR leaders can create value and impact through a range of human capital strategies and solutions. Consistent with past CAHRS RA projects, the research methodology for this paper was qualitative in nature, including 41 interviews with HR and business executives at 31 different partner companies, all within the Fortune 500. Unique to this year\u27s project, and in addition to the traditional focus on HR leaders, research assistants also spoke with more than 10 business and innovation leaders, to get a richer, deeper view of innovation. Interviews consisted of 11 questions, but largely focused on three key categories: Why is innovation often so hard? What factors lead to innovation success? How can HR leaders be innovation change agents within their company? Our findings and recommendations follow below

Information systems evaluation: Navigating through the problem domain

Information systems (IS) make it possible to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, which can provide competitive advantage. There is, however, a great deal of difficulty reported in the normative literature when it comes to the evaluation of investments in IS, with companies often finding themselves unable to assess the full implications of their IS infrastructure. Although many of the savings resulting from IS are considered suitable for inclusion within traditional accountancy frameworks, it is the intangible and non-financial benefits, together with indirect project costs that complicate the justification process. In exploring this phenomenon, the paper reviews the normative literature in the area of IS evaluation, and then proposes a set of conjectures. These were tested within a case study to analyze the investment justification process of a manufacturing IS investment. The idiosyncrasies of the case study and problems experienced during its attempts to evaluate, implement, and realize the holistic implications of the IS investment are presented and critically analyzed. The paper concludes by identifying lessons learnt and thus, proposes a number of empirical findings for consideration by decisionmakers during the investment evaluation process

Strategic Orientations and Technology Policy: An Empirical Test of Relationship in Developing Countries

There is a growing awareness of the pivotal role of technology in securing and maximizing competitive positions. This study based on primary data from two banks in Nigeria examines the relationship between technology policy and strategy dimensions. Differentiation and futurity strategy dimensions were found to be marginally dominant in the managerial practices of these firms. In addition, the study found new evidence of relationship between the strategy dimensions; and the pattern of relationship between technology policy and strategic orientations indicate the use technology to foster defensive behaviours rather than securing competitive edge. Futurity orientation was also found not to be significantly related with most of the technology policy dimensions investigated. These results are expected to provide management and management theorists with valuable practical insight into the relationship between pattern of strategic orientation and technology policy

Beyond enterprise resource planning projects: innovative strategies for competitive advantage

ABSTRACT A rapidly changing business environment and legacy IT problems has resulted in many organisations implementing standard package solutions. This 'common systems' approach establishes a common IT and business process infrastructure within organisations and its increasing dominance raises several important strategic issues. These are to what extent do common systems impose common business processes and management systems on competing firms, and what is the source of competitive advantage if the majority of firms employ almost identical information systems and business processes? A theoretical framework based on research into legacy systems and earlier IT strategy literature is used to analyse three case studies in the manufacturing, chemical and IT industries. It is shown that the organisations are treating common systems as the core of their organisations' abilities to manage business transactions. To achieve competitive advantage they are clothing these common systems with information systems designed to capture information about competitors, customers and suppliers, and to provide a basis for sharing knowledge within the organisation and ultimately with economic partners. The importance of these approaches to other organisations and industries is analysed and an attempt is made at outlining the strategic options open to firms beyond the implementation of common business systems

SMEs and virtual R&D teams: a motive channel for relationship between SMEs

In today?s dynamic marketplace, manufacturing companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for long-term survival with their competitors. Nevertheless, every company cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in the competitive milieu. Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon companies to develop new products faster. In response to these pressing needs, there should be some new approach compatible in flexible circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the popular Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach. Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces conceptual product development architecture under a virtual team umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual teams, Stage-Gate system finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system to cope up with the changing needs. It also provides the guidelines for the successful implementation of virtual teams in new product development

Trust, Contracting, and Adaptation in Agri‐Food Hybrid Structures

The paper considers the relationship between trust and governance structure from a Transaction Cost Economics perspective. The role of trust in the coordinating decisions is variously conceptualized according to the theoretical view adopted by the scholars. The present study adopt the three‐level schema introduced by Williamson (1996) and suggest that determinants of trust may operate both at institutional and governance structure level. The analytical framework depicted maintains that trust may determine a reduction of ex post transaction cost in the adaptation of hybrid structure. As a consequence trust appears to be able to extend the range of existence of the hybrids. The empirical part of the study is dedicated to a case study which illustrates the emerging of conditional trust (Fritz et al., 2008) and the role of trust in the adaptation process.hybrid, conditional trust, adaptation, contractual relationship., Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Industrial Organization, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Dynamic capabilities - what do we 'actually' know? : a systematic assessment of the field and a research agenda

How organizations deal and manage strategic change is a fundamental problem in management studies. An important way increasingly chosen to implement strategies is through programmes. Programme Management is an emerging discipline that aims to research how programmes could be more effective in delivering their expected strategic benefits. In order to obtain this, it is recognised that successful programmes require a continuous development of capabilities at different levels and on a context-dependent basis. My research project aims to use the theoretical lens of dynamic capabilities to explore how different capabilities could be integrated, built, and reconfigured in a context of Programme Management. In order to establish robust bases for the PhD, this thesis presents a systematic literature review (and its formal protocol) of the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. In doing so, in this MRes thesis I test for the level of reification of the concept of dynamic capabilities and highlight some major theoretical challenges. I observe that the field is currently affected by a conversational misalignment that is hindering the potential for further research. In particular, the argument is that empirical and conceptual developments have grown from the same foundations but with low mutual influence. In addition, I utilize content and thematic analysis to explore areas where future efforts may be fruitfully directed. Overall, findings show how dynamic capabilities are an emerging field where several research gaps may be identified. However, they also highlight how it is fundamental to clarify on which theoretical foundations any research builds. Finally, I introduce some interesting findings that may be of help for an operationalization in a Programme Management context. In particular, I suggest that a high-potential and unexplored theme is how dynamic capabilities are created and sustained in the inter-organizational relationship between business service providers and their client firms