Understanding employee resourcing in construction organizations

In recent years the literature on employee resourcing has consistently advocated the importance of adopting a holistic, strategic approach to employee deployment decision making rather than adopting a reactive needs-based approach. This is particularly problematic in construction where the multi-project environment leads to constantly changing resource requirements and to changing demands over a project's life cycle. This can lead to inappropriate decisions, which fail to meet the longer-term needs of both construction organizations and their employees. A structured and comprehensive understanding of the current project team deployment practices within large construction organizations was developed. Project deployment practices were examined within seven case study contracting firms. The emergent themes that shaped the decision-making processes were grouped into five broad clusters comprising human resource planning, performance/career management, team deployment, employee involvement and training and development. The research confirms that a reactive and ad hoc approach to the function prevails within the firms investigated. This suggests a weak relationship between the deployment process and human resource planning, team deployment, performance management, employee involvement and training and development activities. It is suggested that strategic HR-business partnering could engender more transparent and productive relationships in this crucial area

CYCLONE Unified Deployment and Management of Federated, Multi-Cloud Applications

Various Cloud layers have to work in concert in order to manage and deploy complex multi-cloud applications, executing sophisticated workflows for Cloud resource deployment, activation, adjustment, interaction, and monitoring. While there are ample solutions for managing individual Cloud aspects (e.g. network controllers, deployment tools, and application security software), there are no well-integrated suites for managing an entire multi cloud environment with multiple providers and deployment models. This paper presents the CYCLONE architecture that integrates a number of existing solutions to create an open, unified, holistic Cloud management platform for multi-cloud applications, tailored to the needs of research organizations and SMEs. It discusses major challenges in providing a network and security infrastructure for the Intercloud and concludes with the demonstration how the architecture is implemented in a real life bioinformatics use case

Deployment Issues And Security Concerns With Wireless Local Area Networks: The Deployment Experience At A University

This paper presents and discusses various issues pertaining to the deployment of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs).  The popularity of WLANs has steadily increased in the last two years and has led to their deployment in a variety of organizations.  Yet, making a business case for WLANs is an important step in their deployment.  In addition to highlighting the need for a business case for WLAN deployment, the paper outlines the reasons for, benefits of, and security problems associated with, their deployment.  The latter part of this paper presents a case study about the deployment of a WLAN at the University of Akron.  Therein, it discusses the context for the deployment, the process that was used to justify the deployment, and the efforts made to protect users’ information from security deficiencies of wireless networks

Policy-driven EU Research Networks: Impact on the Greek S&T System

This paper focuses on the impact of EU-funded collaborative research networks at a national level using a combined method approach, social network analysis and in-depth case study work. First, it examines the participation intensity and role of the Greek organizations in the research network established through the Information Society Technologies priority of the European Community’s 4th, 5th and 6th Framework Programmes. Furthermore, it attempts to assess the impact of the IST research network on the diffusion and deployment of innovation in Greece. Some interesting results with significant policy implications arise: a) Greece exhibits high participation intensity in the EU-funded IST network, b) there are Greek organizations that have assumed an influential role in the network through time, in addition, they are also critical to the connectivity of the more peripheral Greek actors to the IST network, c) the value of the network, lies for the most part in indirect or ‘behavioural’ effects than in immediate project outputs measured in terms of commercialized products or services, d) however, while the knowledge obtained through the network assists organizations to gain better understanding of the market and identify future deployment opportunities this is not always possible due to the lack of sufficient infrastructure and national policies to support market introduction.

Selecting Cloud Deployment Model Using a Delphi Analytic Hierarchy Process (DAHP)

Cloud computing is a significant paradigm shift in information technology (IT) service offerings that has been receiving enormous attention in academic and IT industry. Recent years has seen exponential growth in cloud use adoption, where many organizations are moving their IT resources into cloud due to flexibility and low-cost. However, on account of rapid innovation and growth in cloud technologies and service providers, selecting the right cloud services, provider and strategy is becoming increasing a common challenge to organization during cloud adoption. In an attempt to address this challenge, we propose application of Delphi Analytic Hierarchy Process (DAHP) method in selecting cloud deployment model. There are several cloud deployment models and organizations must identify the right model that best suits their business needs. The proposed approach facilitates a collaborative decision making process, consisting a number of decision makers whom, with consensus facilitated by the DAHP process, identifies feasible approaches, decision making factors and ultimate selection of a cloud deployment model alternative that is based on organizational business needs and capabilities. The DAHP process is illustrated by a means of a case study. The DAHP result analysis, as was illustrated in the case study, helps in explaining and justifying the choice selected as the best cloud deployment model

The Impact of Ineffective ITG on IT Deployment: A Study of Failed IT Deployment Initiatives

Organizations continue to make significant investments in Information Technology (IT) to enable business. To ensure a return on investment in IT, there is a need for a wider accountability focus on strategic technology initiatives alongside a structured and evaluative approach to the effective governance of IT. Throughout the last decade, systems, processes, standards and best practice frameworks have been developed to facilitate effective IT governance. However, IT deployment initiatives seem to fail to deliver outcomes This paper examines the impact of effective IT governance (ITG) on IT deployment. Literature review establishes the influencers (indicators) of effective ITG. A multiple case study analysis of failed IT deployment initiatives identifies key influencers (and indicators) of deployment failure. Finally, the outcome of the case study analysis is mapped back to the indicators of effective ITG derived from the literature review to determine a possible connection between failed IT deployment and ineffective IT governance

Leadership for lean six sigma

Continuous improvement is an important business strategy for many organizations, and in the last few years Lean Six Sigma has become one of the most popular and proven business process improvement methodologies.Lean and Six Sigma developed as independent business improvement initiatives, before converging in the past decade. The success of Lean Six Sigma deployment depends on a series of process/quality improvement projects undertaken in organisations: although a vast amount of literature has explored the topic of Lean Six Sigma, most of it has centred around the technical aspects, specific case studies or problems, leaving a gap in knowledge about the impact of leadership on successful implementation.The aim of this research is to assess the impact of organizational leadership on the deployment of Lean Six Sigma in organisations and thereby develop a dependency model to facilitate its successful implementation. A mixed-methods approach, using survey and semi-structured interviews, was adopted.This research identifies leadership as a critical success factor for Lean Six Sigma deployment in organizations, details what leadership traits are needed for a successful deployment, differentiating by industry sector, and presents a leadership dependency model.Building on the existing literature, this research extends and helps refine our understanding of Lean Six Sigma and leadership, identifying the traits a leader needs to display to increase the chances of successful deployment.Continuous improvement is an important business strategy for many organizations, and in the last few years Lean Six Sigma has become one of the most popular and proven business process improvement methodologies.Lean and Six Sigma developed as independent business improvement initiatives, before converging in the past decade. The success of Lean Six Sigma deployment depends on a series of process/quality improvement projects undertaken in organisations: although a vast amount of literature has explored the topic of Lean Six Sigma, most of it has centred around the technical aspects, specific case studies or problems, leaving a gap in knowledge about the impact of leadership on successful implementation.The aim of this research is to assess the impact of organizational leadership on the deployment of Lean Six Sigma in organisations and thereby develop a dependency model to facilitate its successful implementation. A mixed-methods approach, using survey and semi-structured interviews, was adopted.This research identifies leadership as a critical success factor for Lean Six Sigma deployment in organizations, details what leadership traits are needed for a successful deployment, differentiating by industry sector, and presents a leadership dependency model.Building on the existing literature, this research extends and helps refine our understanding of Lean Six Sigma and leadership, identifying the traits a leader needs to display to increase the chances of successful deployment

Deploying AI Applications to Multiple Environments: Coping with Environmental, Data, and Predictive Variety

Deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) proves to be challenging and resource-intensive in practice. To increase the economic value of AI deployments, organizations seek to deploy and reuse AI applications in multiple environments (e.g., different firm branches). This process involves generalizing an existing AI application to a new environment, which is typically not seamlessly possible. Despite its practical relevance, research lacks a thorough understanding of how organizations approach the deployment of AI applications to multiple environments. Therefore, we conduct an explorative multiple-case study with four computer vision projects as part of an ongoing research effort. Our preliminary findings suggest that new environments introduce variety, which is mirrored in the data produced in these environments and the required predictive capabilities. Organizations are found to cope with variety during AI deployment by 1) controlling variety in the environment, 2) capturing variety via data collection, and 3) adapting to variety by adjusting AI models

Artificial intelligence in human resource management in the Global South

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in human resource management (HRM) in the Global South. Multiple case studies of AI tools used in HRM in these countries in recruiting and selecting as well as developing, retaining and productively utilizing employees have been used. With AI deployment in HRM, organizations can enhance efficiency in recruitment and selection and gain access to a larger recruitment pool. With AI deployment in HRM, subjective criteria such as nepotism and favoritism are less likely to come into play in recruitment and selection of employees. AI deployment in HRM also has a potentially positive impact on the development, retainment and productive utilization of employee