52,071 research outputs found
Costs, Benefits and Value Distribution – Ingredients for Successful Cross-Organizational ES Business Cases
This paper introduces my PhD research project on developing guidelines for creating successful business cases for Enterprise System implementations in network settings. Three important aspects that were found to be important in such business cases are: the costs, benefits and the value distribution within a network. Each of the three aspects is addressed in this paper and the relationships between them are pointed out. A research model is presented showing how all three aspects contribute to the main goal of defining successful business case guidelines
Effects of innovation types on firm performance
Innovation is broadly seen as an essential component of competitiveness, embedded in the organizational structures, processes, products, and services within a firm. The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of the organizational, process, product, and marketing innovations on the different aspects of firm performance, including innovative, production, market, and financial performances, based on an empirical study covering 184 manufacturing
firms in Turkey. A theoretical framework is empirically tested identifying the relationships amid innovations and firm performance through an integrated innovation-performance analysis. The results reveal the positive effects of innovations on firm performance in manufacturing industries
Effects of innovation types on firm performance
Innovation is broadly seen as an essential component of competitiveness, embedded in the organizational structures, processes, products, and services within a firm. The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of the organizational, process, product, and marketing innovations on the different aspects of firm performance, including innovative, production, market, and financial performances, based on an empirical study covering 184 manufacturing firms in Turkey. A theoretical framework is empirically tested identifying the relationships amid innovations and firm performance through an integrated innovation-performance analysis. The results reveal the positive effects of innovations on firm performance in manufacturing industries
Overcoming Barriers in Supply Chain Analytics—Investigating Measures in LSCM Organizations
While supply chain analytics shows promise regarding value, benefits, and increase in performance for logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) organizations, those organizations are often either reluctant to invest or unable to achieve the returns they aspire to. This article systematically explores the barriers LSCM organizations experience in employing supply chain analytics that contribute to such reluctance and unachieved returns and measures to overcome these barriers. This article therefore aims to systemize the barriers and measures and allocate measures to barriers in order to provide organizations with directions on how to cope with their individual barriers. By using Grounded Theory through 12 in-depth interviews and Q-Methodology to synthesize the intended results, this article derives core categories for the barriers and measures, and their impacts and relationships are mapped based on empirical evidence from various actors along the supply chain. Resultingly, the article presents the core categories of barriers and measures, including their effect on different phases of the analytics solutions life cycle, the explanation of these effects, and accompanying examples. Finally, to address the intended aim of providing directions to organizations, the article provides recommendations for overcoming the identified barriers in organizations
Determinants of technology adoption in the retail trade industry - the case of SMEs in Spain
This paper analyzes the determinants of small and medium-sized enterprises’ technology adoption in the retail trade industry. From the theoretical perspective, two types of influential factors are differentiated in this respect: the personal characteristics of the manager/business owner and the business’s organizational characteristics. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 268 small and medium-sized enterprises in the Spanish retail trade sector. A logistic regression specification is used as an econometric method.
The results indicate that both the acquisition of new technical and electronic equipment and the obtaining of new software are affected by the two types of determinants previously pointed out. The manager/business owner’s entrepreneurial motivation and educational background have significant influences on technology adoption in this type of companies. Furthermore, being part of a business group, carrying out training activities for the employees and inter-firm cooperation also positively influence technology adoption in the retail trade industry
Considering Human Aspects on Strategies for Designing and Managing Distributed Human Computation
A human computation system can be viewed as a distributed system in which the
processors are humans, called workers. Such systems harness the cognitive power
of a group of workers connected to the Internet to execute relatively simple
tasks, whose solutions, once grouped, solve a problem that systems equipped
with only machines could not solve satisfactorily. Examples of such systems are
Amazon Mechanical Turk and the Zooniverse platform. A human computation
application comprises a group of tasks, each of them can be performed by one
worker. Tasks might have dependencies among each other. In this study, we
propose a theoretical framework to analyze such type of application from a
distributed systems point of view. Our framework is established on three
dimensions that represent different perspectives in which human computation
applications can be approached: quality-of-service requirements, design and
management strategies, and human aspects. By using this framework, we review
human computation in the perspective of programmers seeking to improve the
design of human computation applications and managers seeking to increase the
effectiveness of human computation infrastructures in running such
applications. In doing so, besides integrating and organizing what has been
done in this direction, we also put into perspective the fact that the human
aspects of the workers in such systems introduce new challenges in terms of,
for example, task assignment, dependency management, and fault prevention and
tolerance. We discuss how they are related to distributed systems and other
areas of knowledge.Comment: 3 figures, 1 tabl
Misaligned Values in Software Engineering Organizations
The values of software organizations are crucial for achieving high
performance; in particular, agile development approaches emphasize their
importance. Researchers have thus far often assumed that a specific set of
values, compatible with the development methodologies, must be adopted
homogeneously throughout the company. It is not clear, however, to what extent
such assumptions are accurate.
Preliminary findings have highlighted the misalignment of values between
groups as a source of problems when engineers discuss their challenges.
Therefore, in this study, we examine how discrepancies in values between groups
affect software companies' performance.
To meet our objectives, we chose a mixed method research design. First, we
collected qualitative data by interviewing fourteen (\textit{N} = 14) employees
working in four different organizations and processed it using thematic
analysis. We then surveyed seven organizations (\textit{N} = 184). Our analysis
indicated that value misalignment between groups is related to organizational
performance. The aligned companies were more effective, more satisfied, had
higher trust, and fewer conflicts.
Our efforts provide encouraging findings in a critical software engineering
research area. They can help to explain why some companies are more efficient
than others and, thus, point the way to interventions to address organizational
challenges.Comment: accepted for publication in Journal of Software: Evolution and
Proces
Specification of vertical semantic consistency rules of UML class diagram refinement using logical approach
Unified Modelling Language (UML) is the most popular modelling language use for
software design in software development industries with a class diagram being the
most frequently use diagram. Despite the popularity of UML, it is being affected by
inconsistency problems of its diagrams at the same or different abstraction levels.
Inconsistency in UML is mostly caused by existence of various views on the same
system and sometimes leads to potentially conflicting system specifications. In
general, syntactic consistency can be automatically checked and therefore is
supported by current UML Computer-aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools.
Semantic consistency problems, unlike syntactic consistency problems, there exists
no specific method for specifying semantic consistency rules and constraints.
Therefore, this research has specified twenty-four abstraction rules of class‟s relation
semantic among any three related classes of a refined class diagram to semantically
equivalent relations of two of the classes using a logical approach. This research has
also formalized three vertical semantic consistency rules of a class diagram
refinement identified by previous researchers using a logical approach and a set of
formalized abstraction rules. The results were successfully evaluated using hotel
management system and passenger list system case studies and were found to be
reliable and efficient
Knowledge Management and Sustainable Agriculture:the Italian Case
The contemporary knowledge-based economy requires global usage of information in all aspects of modern society. Pertinent information is an important asset for successful business, therefore an application of knowledge management in organisational practice has become a crucial factor for the viability and sustainable development of enterprises. This is particularly relevant for the agricultural context, which needs modern practices for enhancement and development. However, information and knowledge, due to their intangible character, seem difficult to manage and organize. Therefore the paper targeted at developing sustainable organizational model of knowledge management for small and medium enterprises. Italian agriculture is considered as a context for this study, and knowledge management was offered as a tool for facilitating agricultural performance and increasing competitiveness of agricultural sector. A wide concept of knowledge management and specified agricultural context require a theory-based approach to research and a survey. Thus, the research methodology includes the next four parts. The first one contains literature review and examines definitions, strategies, approaches and models of sustainable knowledge management. The second part includes content analysis of 105 scientific publications. The third part of methodology is based on the results of the two previous parts and includes creating the model of knowledge management. Verification of this model is the last part of the research. Verification was executed through on-line questionnaire distributed to Italian agricultural enterprises throughout the country on their intentions and awareness towards knowledge management and developed model of knowledge management. The results of the survey have demonstrated farmer’s incentives to implement the developed knowledge management model with flexible approach in its organisation
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