Environmental modelling of the Chief Information Officer

Since the introduction of the term in the 1980’s, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been widely researched. Various perceptions and dimensions of the role have been explored and debated. However, the explosion in data proliferation (and the inevitable resulting information fuelled change) further complicates organisational expectations of the CIOs role. If organisations are to competitively exploit the digital trend, then those charged with recruiting and developing CIOs now need to be more effective in determining (and shaping) CIO traits and attributes, within the context of their own organisational circumstances and in line with stakeholder expectations. CIOs also need to determine their own suitability and progression within their chosen organisation if they are to remain motivated and effective. Before modelling the role of the future CIO, it is necessary to synthesise our current knowledge (and the lessons learnt) about the CIO. This paper, therefore, aims to identify and summate the spectrum of key researched ‘themes’ pertaining to the role of the CIO. Summating previous research, themes are modelled around four key CIO ‘dimensions’, namely (1) Impacting factors, (2) Controlling factors (3) Responses and (4) CIO ‘attributes’. Having modelled the CIOs current environment, and recognising the evolving IT enabled information landscape, the authors call for further research to inform the recruitment and development of the future CIO in terms of personal attributes and the measurable impact such attributes will have on their respective organisation

Mainroad: information technology investment solution

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economic

Portuguese unicorns : where else to go but the U.S. : a tale of two unicorns

In the global world of today, companies are expanding internationally left and right. Portuguese start-ups, specifically unicorns who are valued at over one billion dollars, are no exception. This case study focuses on two unicorns with Portuguese DNA, OutSystems and Remote, and aims to assess their internationalization process and the challenges they faced when expanding to the U.S. As a case study, this dissertation follows a pedagogical format to present students with a real life example of the processes and challenges these companies faced when internationalizing to the U.S. It addresses pertinent frameworks and concepts on internationalization strategies, entry modes, and competitive advantages. Students are able to apply these frameworks and concepts learned in class to analyze and discuss the two companies’ expansion processes and understand why the U.S. is an attractive market for start-up technology companies. To examine the internationalization of both companies, primary and secondary data were utilized. Interviews with knowledgeable contacts at the companies and an industry expert were documented as well as secondary data from a report, books, and online sources. The findings identified for unicorns to expand to the U.S. included direct access to the U.S. consumer base, investors, tax reasons, the competitive landscape, and the perceived prestige of being a U.S. company.No mundo global de hoje, as empresas estão em expansão internacional à esquerda e à direita. As novas empresas portuguesas, especificamente unicórnios que estão avaliadas em mais de mil milhões de dólares, não são exceção. Este estudo de caso centra-se em dois unicórnios com ADN português, OutSystems e Remote, e visa avaliar o seu processo de internacionalização e os desafios que enfrentaram quando se expandiram para os EUA. Como estudo de caso, esta dissertação segue um formato pedagógico para apresentar aos estudantes um exemplo da vida real dos processos e desafios que estas empresas enfrentaram quando se internacionalizaram para os E.U.A. Aborda quadros e conceitos pertinentes sobre estratégias de internacionalização, modos de entrada e vantagens competitivas. Os estudantes são capazes de aplicar estas estruturas e conceitos aprendidos na aula para analisar e discutir os processos de expansão das duas empresas e compreender porque é que os EUA são um mercado atrativo para empresas tecnológicas em fase de arranque. Para examinar a internacionalização de ambas as empresas, foram utilizados dados primários e secundários. Foram documentadas entrevistas com contactos de conhecimento nas empresas e com um perito da indústria, bem como dados secundários de um relatório, livros, e fontes em linha. As conclusões identificadas para a expansão dos unicórnios aos EUA incluíram o acesso direto à base de consumidores dos EUA, investidores, razões fiscais, o panorama competitivo, e o prestígio percebido de ser uma empresa dos EUA

Animalife & Sonae : the development of a social partnership

The dissertation set forth presents a managerial perspective on how to develop a Social Partnership, with the purpose of increasing its social and economic value. It is exemplified by the study of the collaboration between Animalife and Sonae. Animalife fights animal abandonment by directly providing support to disadvantaged pet owners and Sonae is a Portuguese multinational company with large stakes on the food retailing business. For that purpose, I resort to the collaborative value creation framework, which enables managers to analyse a partnership between a non-profit and a for-profit company. To devise a strategy to simultaneously increase the partnership’s social and economic value creation, my research focuses on the resources currently being deployed by both partners and the ones which could potentially increase the value of the partnership, if deployed. In this case study, the solutions proposed are meant to enhance the sources of value by fundamentally changing the resources’ complementarity, nature, directionality and use. Such suggestions enable the partnership to evolve beyond the Philanthropic stage of collaboration.A tese apresentada introduz uma perspetiva ao nível da gestão para o desenvolvimento de Parcerias Sociais, com o intuito de aumentar o seu valor social e económico. É exemplificada através do estudo da colaboração entre a Animalife e a Sonae. A Animalife combate o abandono animal ao fornecer apoio direto a donos de animais carenciados e a Sonae é uma multinacional portuguesa com uma elevada participação no setor de retalho alimentar. Para esse propósito, recorro à metodologia de criação colaborativa de valor, que possibilita aos gestores a análise de parcerias entre entidades com e sem fins lucrativos. Para delinear uma estratégia que simultaneamente aumente a criação de valor social e económico da parceria, a minha pesquisa foca-se nos recursos atualmente mobilizados por ambos os parceiros e os que potencialmente poderiam aumentar o valor da parceria, se mobilizados. Neste estudo de caso, as soluções propostas destinam-se a reforçar as fontes de valor ao mudar fundamentalmente a complementaridade, natureza, direccionalidade e uso dos recursos. Tais sugestões permitem que a parceria evolua para além da fase de colaboração Filantrópica

Book of abstracts of the ICIEOM-CIO-IIIE International Conference 2015

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS OF THE ICIEOM-CIO-IIIE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2015: ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS: The way ahead for industrial engineering and operations managemen

Investigation on the TAVAAS methodology as a country attractiveness framework. The weighting of the Sub-factors.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to further analyse one of the most complete country attractiveness methodologies available and by the name of TAVAAS. This methodology is composed by already six investigated and validated factors but the problem lies on the sub-factor weighting as all sub-factors were equally weighted. As a result, based on primary and secondary research a hypothesis was formulated to address this problem and therefore validated with a study already done by a private national outsourcing agency (APDC). The results from this study were revealing of some aspects that led foreign companies to select a given country, which in this case was Portugal, and therefore some adjustments to the original model were performed as a way to translate the motivations behind the outsourcing moves of different companies. To conclude, a final model was elaborated, in which now sub-factors bear different weights, being this decision a combination of corporate country attractiveness assessment and secondary research on the relevance of the different matters in the sub-factors

Influence of incentive policy in the alignment of business and information technology

Tese de Doutoramento (Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação)Os executivos de topo de muitas das maiores empresas mundiais estão hoje conscientes de que as novas tecnologias estão a redefinir as cadeias de valor e que as suas empresas precisam de permanecer atentas para continuarem relevantes no mercado. Os negócios modernos precisam de articular as necessidades do negócio com tecnologias de informação (TI) inovadoras. De facto, a necessidade de um melhor alinhamento entre o negócio e as TI tem sido continuamente considerado como uma das maiores preocupações que executivos de topo de TI enfrentam. Esta preocupação é talvez apoiada na convicção, suportada em um número significativo de estudos, de que um melhor alinhamento pode influenciar positivamente o desempenho do negócio. Na verdade, este alinhamento é considerado uma das áreas mais importantes da governação das TI e a sua importância é reconhecida e abordada por alguns dos mais importantes normativos das TI, como o COBIT, o ITIL ou o TOGAF. Embora o alinhamento tenha sido abordado por muitos estudos no passado, a preocupação constante com ele na última década sugere que não tem havido progresso suficiente sobre esta questão. Por outro lado, o alinhamento é feito por pessoas. E, quanto mais as pessoas estiverem motivadas nas organizações, mais e melhor elas trabalham. A influência que os incentivos de alguns gestores têm no seu comportamento e, assim, na sua atividade e produtividade profissional tem sido bastante abordada na literatura. Na verdade, é habitual as empresas darem pacotes de incentivos aos seus gestores, desejavelmente concebidos para serem alinhados com os objetivos organizacionais. Este trabalho investigou a influência de políticas de incentivo na promoção de um melhor alinhamento. Além da revisão da literatura mais importante sobre estas duas áreas, foi proposto um novo modelo que relaciona o incentivo com o alinhamento do negócio e das TI. É proposto e aplicado um novo instrumento para medir o nível de incentivo de uma organização e também adaptado e aplicado um instrumento existente para medir o nível de alinhamento. Após algumas fases prévias, como pré-teste e teste piloto, os instrumentos foram aplicados na amostra completa, através duma plataforma de inquéritos online. A amostra, provida pela Informa Dun & Bradstreet, foi expandida com base na rede social LinkedIn, suportada no método "bola de neve”, que ajuda o estudo de populações difíceis de alcançar. Foram recolhidas respostas de mais de quatro centenas de gestores de negócio e TI, de mais de duas centenas de médias e grandes empresas portuguesas, representando, ao que se sabe, o inquérito mais vasto já feito em Portugal sobre alinhamento. O modelo, de componentes hierárquicas, foi estimado usando um modelo de equações estruturais (SEM) com a técnica dos mínimos quadrados parciais (PLS). A confiabilidade e validade do modelo de medida (reflexivo) foram garantidas depois de descartados alguns indicadores. A avaliação dos componentes de ordem superior do modelo (formativo) foi assegurada por uma sólida validação de conteúdo dos constructos “incentivo” e “alinhamento”. Os resultados principais são apresentados, discutidos e interpretados através de vários ângulos, respetivamente, a área funcional dos respondentes, o seu género, a sua geração, a atividade económica das empresas, por cada variável manifesta do incentivo e alinhamento e dimensão das empresas. Por fim, os resultados do modelo proposto são discutidos e interpretados. Ao propor uma explicação do alinhamento com uma única variável, o incentivo, este é talvez um dos modelos mais parcimoniosos do alinhamento apresentados até agora. Este estudo também permite suportar aquele que é, talvez, o seu maior contributo, que é facto do incentivo explicar a maior parte do alinhamento. Algumas recomendações para a prática e para investigação futura são ainda propostas.The chief executive officers from many of world’s largest companies are aware that new technologies are redefining value chains and that companies need to remain aware to remain relevant in the market. The modern businesses need to articulate business needs with innovative information technologies. In fact, business and IT alignment (BIA) has been continually considered as one of most important concerns that top IT executives face. This concern is probably supported on the conviction, sustained on a significant number of studies, that achieving a better alignment can positively influence business performance. Actually, this alignment is considered one of most important areas of IT governance and its importance is recognized and addressed by some of most important IT frameworks, as COBIT, ITIL or TOGAF. Although alignment has been focused by numerous researches in the past, the ongoing concern with it in the last decade suggests that there was not been sufficient progress in addressing this issue. Still, the allignment is made by people. And, the more people are motivated in organizations, the more and better they work. The influence that incentives have on managers behaviour and, thus, on their professional activity and productivity has been widely addressed in the literature. Indeed, it is a common practice among companies giving packages of incentives to their executives, desirably designed in order to be aligned with organization objectives. This work investigated the influence of incentive policies to promote a better alignment. Besides reviewing most important literature about these two areas, this study proposes a new model that relates the incentive with the alignment of business and IT. It proposed and applied a new instrument to measure the incentive maturity of an organization and it also adapted and applied an existing instrument to measure the alignment maturity. After some preceding phases, as pretesting and pilot testing, the instruments were administered on a full scale sample, through an online survey platform. The sample, provided by Informa Dun & Bradstreet, was expanded with the help of the social network LinkedIn, supported in the snowball method, which helps on the study of hard-to-reach populations. Responses were collected from more than four hundred business and IT managers, from more than two hundred medium-size and large Portuguese companies, representing, as far as is known, the wider survey ever done in Portugal about the alignment between business and IT. The model, a hierarchical component model, was estimated using a structural equation model (SEM) with partial least squares technique (PLS). The reliability and validity of the measurement model (reflective) were guaranteed, after some indicators have been discarded. The model assessment concerning the higher-order components (formative) was assured through robust content validity procedures of incentive and alignment constructs. The major findings are presented, discussed and interpreted by different angles, respectively, by the functional area of respondents, by respondents' gender, by respondents’ generation, by companies’ economic activity, by each one of the manifest variables of incentive and alignment and by companies’ size. Finally, the results of the proposed model are discussed and interpreted. By proposing an explanation of alignment with just one latent variable, the incentive, this is probably one of the most parsimonious models of alignment presented until now. The study also allows supporting the one that is perhaps its greatest contribution, which is the fact that the majority of the explanation of alignment is made by incentive. Some recommendations for practice and future research are also proposed

Supply of cyber insurance in banking sector operating in Portugal

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Risk Analysis and ManagementThe development of technology and the way of doing business exchange sensitive information all over the world through IT resources. In consequence of such reality, cyber events are more likely to occur, being the banking sector one of the major targets. However, in parallel with these new perils from technological growth, awareness of cyber risk is also increasing among institutions, as well as the search for protection and measures to fight them. Cyber insurance is one of the possible protection options. The main goal of this work is to assess the supply of cyber insurance among the banking sector operating in Portugal. As empirical investigations of cyber insurance applied in the country are rarely reported in the literature, the results are novel. In order to get the main goal, the research is based on a literature review where will be presented the “state of the art” of cyber insurance market in the world and in the country. In addition, an empirical study will be made through the application of questionnaires to ascertain the specificities of cyber insurance suppliers or potential suppliers in the Portuguese market, their perception of market evolution and knowledge about cyber risk. There is also a specific questionnaire for the supervisor entity in order to know its point of view about the topic in discussion. The main conclusions of this study relate to the fact that there is still a long way to go in the Portuguese insurance sector for cyber risk. The sector in the country started to be developed by international companies and only after that the national ones started to have more awareness on the subject, as mentioned by the Autoridade de Supervisão de Seguros e Fundos de Pensões (ASF). However, awareness of the issue is not the only point that leads to the underdevelopment of this specific insurance. The difficulties in the product underwriting process, which on the part of those who sell as well as those who buy, the high and variable prices, the lack of historical data and the information asymmetries are examples of obstacles that still have to be overcome. Although the cyber risk insurance sector is taking its first steps, it is believed to have a large margin of expansion, as has already been the case in several other countries. The creation of information sharing platforms on cyber incidents and the design of insurance and reinsurance products for cyber incidents are considered by the participant insurers as the main measures to be taken to assist this market development. It therefore becomes an inevitable topic to be addressed by the insurance sector in Portugal

Using the dynamic capabilities perspective to analyse CRM adoption: a multiple case study in portuguese organisations

Doutoramento em GestãoCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) adoption is both a relevant research topic in academia and a challenge for practitioners. We understand CRM as a complex concept that includes technology, strategy and philosophy. In this research, we propose an analysis of CRM organisational competences and capabilities. The main goals are: to observe organisational competences and capabilities in order to find ways in which companies obtain success with their CRM initiatives; and to apply a dynamic capabilities perspective as the main theoretical point to analyse how companies can improve their competences related to customer relationship management. In order to achieve the purpose of this study a qualitative, interpretative, case-based research strategy was implemented. We first conducted an exploratory case study in a Brazilian Telecommunications company in order to define the focus of the research and research questions. Afterwards, we conducted a main case study in a Portuguese Telecommunications company for one year, and finally, we conducted four more case studies in Portuguese organisations to develop the research findings. These multiple case studies were based on semi-structured interviews and document analysis. We used qualitative techniques to analyse the collected data and ground our interpretation in two theoretical approaches: value focus thinking and dynamic capabilities. We propose a theoretical framework related to CRM dynamic capability that is corroborated with empirical evidence. We believe that because organisations which adopt a CRM strategy are in a competitive environment, a dynamic model needs to be used to analyse and explain how they can improve their CRM strategy in order to achieve success. As a second contribution we identify a set of competences that need to be developed in order to manage customer relationships effectively.A adopção de Customer Relationship Management (CRM) é um tema considerado relevante para as investigações académicas e um desafio para os praticantes. CRM neste trabalho é entendido como um conceito complexo que envolve tecnologia, estratégia e filosofia. Esta investigação propõe uma análise sobre as competências e as capacidades organizacionais relacionadas ao CRM. As principais motivações deste estudo referem-se às problemáticas observadas nas adopções de CRM, sendo que as lentes da teoria das Capacidades Dinâmicas mostram-se relevante na análise das capacidades e competências organizacionais necessárias ao sucesso da iniciativa de CRM. A fim de alcançar o propósito deste estudo, foi realizada uma investigação qualitativa, interpretativa e baseada em estudos de caso. Primeiramente foi conduzido um estudo de caso exploratório numa empresa Brasileira de telecomunicações com o intuito de melhor definir o foco da investigação e das questões de investigação. Após foi conduzido o estudo de caso principal em uma empresa de telecomunicações Portuguesa ao longo de um ano. Finalmente foram conduzidos outros quatro estudos de caso em organizações Portuguesas com o intuito de aprofundar a discussão dos resultados da investigação. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas e análise de dados secundários. Para a análise dos dados foram utilizadas técnicas qualitativas e duas teorias ajudaram a suportar as interpretações realizadas: value focus thinking e dynamic capabilities. Como contribuições desta investigação tem-se a proposição de um framework teórico sobre a capacidade dinâmica CRM que foi corroborado com evidências empíricas. As organizações que adoptam CRM estão inseridas em ambientes de grande competitividade e um modelo dinâmico precisa ser utilizado para analisar e explicar como elas aprimoram suas estratégias de CRM para ter sucesso. Como segunda contribuição foi identificado um conjunto de competências organizacionais que são necessárias para a gestão do relacionamento com o cliente

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history