Understanding task inter-dependence and co-ordination efforts in multi-sourcing: the suppliers' perspective

The last decade has witnessed a significant growth in the outsourcing of information technologies and business processes. Of a particular trend within the outsourcing industry is the shift from the client firm contracting a single supplier to utilizing multiple suppliers, which is also known as multi-sourcing. Multi-sourcing may potentially offer numerous advantages to client firms, however, it might present some challenges to suppliers. In particular, multi-sourcing could create coordination challenges, as there are inter-dependencies between the outsourced tasks to numerous suppliers. While the current outsourcing literature acknowledges the existence of inter-dependencies, little is known about the efforts required for coordinating the work between suppliers and how these coordination efforts are made to manage task inter-dependence. Three case studies at Pactera (case one) and TCS (cases two and three) serve as the empirical base to investigate the inter-dependence between outsourced tasks and suppliers coordination efforts. This research offers theoretical contributions to both coordination studies and the outsourcing body of knowledge

Model of regional management instruments in economy based on innovation and communication

The following paper has been inspired by the main challenges that have been created for the regional development by the process of globalisation. The paper presents an attempt at creating a new model and instruments for regional development management in which regional character of knowledge creation, territorial interdependencies, sustainable development and both democratic and individual decision making processes have been taken into consideration. The problem of emerging notion of regional management and its relation to the knowledge management in the process of regional development has been discussed. The paper presents the concept of regional knowledge creation process as the essential method of description of a region's development and competitiveness. The model of management of an autopoiesis system as an essential method of description of development and knowledge creation in a local community has been presented. The process of knowledge development in a region is assisted by ICT, including the Internet portal and corporate knowledge base. The technique of analyse field and space of choice and its role in the regional process of knowledge creation as the tool serving the process of describing and diagnosing the ability of knowledge creation as well as individual and regional strategies. The description of development changes in a region have been presented in the categories of critical points focusing on the zones of degradation and development. The results obtained with the help of the proposed model of regional development can serve to develop the international standards of risk and critical points of regional management. The fact of using the knowledge management principles for the interpretation of regional processes changes considerably the role of regional development agencies. The introduction of the Internet portal and critical points analysis provides a new way of presenting the knowledge about a region. The solution proposed in the presented paper based on the corporate knowledge data bases creates contextual character of relations and connections between different measured parameters and therefore it unceasingly creates new knowledge in compliance with the spiral upward movement. The introduced indicators analysis serves to describe state of individual components (people, organisations, natural ecosystems) of the region in question, and first of all it determines their development abilities and adaptability to their environment. The territorial structure creates a complex spatial system of interrelations in which local community relates to its environment in the intensive process of communication that determines how the external components are used in the process of regional development. Such instruments as the regional Internet portal, regional communitces of practice, regional staff of knowledge management and leaders of local development become the most important tools of assistance in local development processes. The presented paper provides a coherent model of regional management which is in compliance with "regional standards" assuring predictable character of changes in the region and leading to stable economic development of the whole region.

Coping with Extreme Events: Institutional Flocking

Recent measurements in the North Atlantic confirm that the thermohaline circulation driving the Gulf Stream has come to a stand. Oceanographic monitoring over the last 50 years already showed that the circulation was weakening. Under the influence of the large inflow of melting water in Northern Atlantic waters during last summer, it has now virtually stopped. Consequently, the KNMI and the RIVM estimate the average . In this essay we will explore how such a new risk profile affects the distribution of risks among societal groups, and the way in which governing institutions need to adapt in order to be prepared for situations of rapid but unknown change. The next section will first introduce an analytical perspective, building upon the Risk Society thesis and a proposed model of ‘institutional flocking’.temperature to decrease by 3°C in the next 15 years

Design, implementation, and evaluation of an ICT-supported collaboration methodology for distributed requirements determination

As information systems development becomes more distributed, information and communication technology (ICT) has become crucial to overcome distance and to enable collaboration between system users and analysts. This study presents the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a new technology-supported collaborative methodology for requirements determination. The new ICT-supported methodology enables the elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation of requirements in a distributed environment. Its design follows the theoretical principles of Te’eni’s (2001) cognitiveaffective model of organizational communication for IT design and combines established methods as well as techniques for requirements identification, formulation, dependency determination, prioritization, and selection in a coherent and innovative way. The resulting prototype is professionally implemented and evaluated in an experiment. The experiment is the first to compare the performance of traditional ways of communication via interviews and document exchange with that of communication via an Internet-based collaboration platform for requirements determination. The results show that, both, the efficiency of the overall requirements determination process as well as the overall quality of the resulting requirements, are higher when using the new collaborative methodology. In terms of quality, efficiency, the user and analyst perspectives need to be distinguished. While the effort for requirements elicitation increases for the analysts, this up-front investment pays off in terms of significantly lower effort for the later specification and validation of requirements. In contrast, the users benefit in particular from lower effort during requirements elicitation and analysis

Control, Process Facilitation, and Requirements Change in Offshore Requirements Analysis: The Provider Perspective

Process, technology, and project factors have been increasingly driving organizations to offshore early software development phases, such as requirements analysis. This emerging trend necessitates greater control and process facilitation between client and vendor sites. The effectiveness of control and facilitation has, however, not been examined within the context of requirements analysis and change. In this study, we examine the role of control and facilitation in managing changing requirements and on success of requirements gathering in the Indian offshore software development environment. Firms found that control by client-site coordinators had a positive impact on requirements analysis success while vender site-coordinators did not have similar influence. Process facilitation by client site-coordinators affected requirements phase success indirectly through control. The study concludes with recommendations for research and practice

Interorganizational relationships in higher education: A case study

American higher education is moving into a new phase in which environmental challenges are likely to intensify, threatening the survival of some institutions. Small private colleges, especially those that are reliant on enrollments and the tuition revenue that enrollments generate, are especially vulnerable to environmental challenges. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage with stronger private institutions and state-supported institutions. The formation of interorganizational relationships (IORs) is one coping strategy that may be an important factor for survival.;The purpose of this study is to examine interorganizational relationships in higher education using a comprehensive, theory-based model. The model examines both the partner characteristics and relationship characteristics of IORs. Partner characteristics describe the motivations institutions have for engaging in IOR behavior. It is the resource-based aspect of the model. Relationship characteristics describe the social aspects that help enable and maintain the IOR over time. The performance outcome is essentially the result of the IOR. It is a function of the level of perceived satisfaction among members in the IOR, and the measure of success by which members judge the relationship. Both partner characteristics and relationship characteristics contribute to success.;This was an instrumental case study examining a consortium of six small, private liberal arts colleges. Findings show that partner and relationship characteristics both contribute to the success of the IOR in this case; however, the desire for institutional autonomy is also an important factor in the perceived success of the IOR

Managing resource dependencies in electric vehicle supply chains:a multi-tier case study

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate dependencies that arise between companies during the ramp-up of production volume in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: An inter-company case study method has been used. Data were collected via tours of manufacturing plants, workshops and interviews from multiple tiers in a supply chain, namely, a niche EV manufacturer, as well as two of its tier-one suppliers and five of its tier-two suppliers. Findings: As production volumes increased, a more relational approach was found to be necessary in inter-company relationships. The authors’ research showed that key suppliers, in addition to providing the parts, pursued a supply chain orchestrator’s role by offering direct support and guidance to the niche EV manufacturer in designing and executing its development plans. Research limitations/implications: The resource dependence theory (RDT) is used to analyse and explain the changing dependencies throughout the planning and execution of production ramp-up. Practical implications: This study will help supply chain managers to better manage resource dependencies during production ramp-up. Originality/value: This study explores dependencies during the early stages of the production ramp-up process in the EV sector, which is in itself in the early stages of evolution. RDT is used for the first time in this context. This study has moved beyond a simple dyadic context, by providing empirical insights into the actions taken by an EV manufacturer and its suppliers, towards a multi-tier supply chain context, to better manage resource dependencies

Knowledge and perceptions in participatory policy processes: lessons from the delta-region in the Netherlands

Water resources management issues tend to affect a variety of uses and users. Therefore, they often exhibit complex and unstructured problems. The complex, unstructured nature of these problems originates from uncertain knowledge and from the existence of divergent perceptions among various actors. Consequently, dealing with these problems is not just a knowledge problem; it is a problem of ambiguity too. This paper focuses on a complex, unstructured water resources management issue, the sustainable development—for ecology, economy and society—of the Delta-region of the Netherlands. In several areas in this region the ecological quality decreased due to hydraulic constructions for storm water safety, the Delta Works. To improve the ecological quality, the Dutch government regards the re-establishment of estuarine dynamics in the area as the most important solution. However, re-establishment of estuarine dynamics will affect other uses and other users. Among the affected users are farmers in the surrounding areas, who use freshwater from a lake for agricultural purposes. This problem has been addressed in a participatory decision-making process, which is used as a case study in this paper. We investigate how the dynamics in actors’ perceptions and the knowledge base contribute to the development of agreed upon and valid knowledge about the problem–solution combination, using our conceptual framework for problem structuring. We found that different knowledge sources—expert and practical knowledge—should be integrated to create a context-specific knowledge base, which is scientifically valid and socially robust. Furthermore, we conclude that for the convergence of actors’ perceptions, it is essential that actors learn about the content of the process (cognitive learning) and about the network in which they are involved (strategic learning). Our findings form a plea for practitioners in water resources management to adopt a problem structuring approach in order to deal explicitly with uncertainty and ambiguity

Modelling and Managing Variability in Business Process Models

Business Process (BP) models capture the coordination of a set of activities whose execution realizes specific business goals within a company. However, the construction of such models entails a big challenge for modellers and strongly depends on the nature of the domain being modelled. Moreover, when this nature involves handling many process alternatives, the use of variability modelling mechanisms becomes essential to succeed in the BP modelling task. Even though BP modelling variability has already been addressed by researches from the BPM community, it still remains as a challenge that is requested as hot topic in the most relevant conferences related to the BP area (i.e. the international conference on Business Process Modeling (BPM), CoopIS or BPDSM). This demand appears since the solutions provided in the literature do not deal with variability in a broad sense (considering all types of variability that we can find in a BP model), and in a scalable manner. In this context, this work provides a modelling approach that brings variability concepts as first order aspects of the modelling process. Concretely, the approach isolates the variability factors that affect a BP and allows managing independently their impact over the whole model. For such purpose, we rely on the techniques proposed in the field of the Software Product Lines to deal with variability issues. These techniques allows enhancing variability expressiveness as well as promoting model maintenance, legibility, understanding and reuse regarding variability. Finally, a running example is described and developed to illustrate the proposal and its applicability.Ayora Esteras, C. (2011). Modelling and Managing Variability in Business Process Models. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/15495Archivo delegad

Interactive situation modelling in knowledge intensive domains

Interactive Situation Modelling (ISM) method, a semi-methodological approach, is proposed to tackle issues associated with modelling complex knowledge intensive domains, which cannot be easily modelled using traditional approaches. This paper presents the background and implementation of ISM within a complex domain, where synthesizing knowledge from various sources is critical, and is based on the principles of ethnography within a constructivist framework. Although the motivation for the reported work comes from the application presented in the paper, the actual scope of the paper covers a wide range of issues related to modelling complex systems. The author firstly reviews approaches used for modelling knowledge intensive domains, preceded by a brief discussion about two main issues: symmetry of ignorance and system behaviour, which are often confronted when applying modelling approaches to business domains. The ISM process is then characterized and critiqued with lessons from an exemplar presented to illustrate its effectiveness