A Comparison Between Recent and Prospective Critical Success Factors in Lithuanian Printing Industry

The paper looks into the problem of identifying critical success factors in an industry. Though by definition all business organisations aim to be successful, companies within an industry differ a lot as regards their level of success. What makes some firms highly successful, when others have rather moderate success within the same industry? Can the above problems be explained by the wrong choice of strategic alternatives or inadequate strategy implementation? An empirical research of the Lithuanian printing industry was carried out with the purpose of identifying and differentiating the dominant success factors that are critical for the creation of competitive advantages.critical success factors, sustainable competitive advantage, printing industry

Information needs of rural farmers in Kedah: A case study of Pusat Internet Desa (PID)

Access to accurate, appropriate and reliable information plays a crucial role in improving the rural community’s knowledge and skills. Previous studies have little focus on website that embeds the rural farmers’ information needs. This study aims to determine the rural farmer’s information needs, through the PID of Kedah State, Malaysia. For this purpose, Dervin’s sense making theory was utilized as a guideline. The farmer’s needed information was embedding into a suitable website in two languages, namely local (Malay) and English language, this website would serve the rural farmers in Kedah by managing their farming. A sample size of 200 rural farmers from both genders in Kedah was initially taken to determine their information needs, but the usable data was only 187 respondents were analyzed. Simple random sampling technique was used for the sample selection as well as using of the questionnaire to elicit information from the respondents. SPSS version 20 was used for data analysis, and the data was analyzed in quantitatively approach. The results revealed that the highest information needs were related to the areas of financial facilities, agriculture marketing and pest management. Age, level of education and connectivity to ICT showed significant relationships with their accessibility to information. It is recommended that enough information should be provided in the needed areas and economic empowerment programs should be given serious attention to enhance their access to the needed information. Thirty farmers from different areas of Kedah were chosen to test the usability of the (INRFK) website. General findings revealed that INRFK website satisfied their needs by providing proper information

Enabling Entrepreneurs to Build on their Means: The Effectual Decision-Making Canvas

Using the design science research approach and a framework for artifact development, this paper presents the design of an artifact in the field of entrepreneurship. More specifically, in the context of decision-making for early-stage entrepreneurs. In light of existing research indicating that the decision-making process significantly impacts an entrepreneur\u27s effectiveness and that experienced entrepreneurs use Effectuation more often than Causation when reaching decisions, this paper presents a visual tool for assisting entrepreneurs in making decisions based on the principles of Effectuation. We finally test and evaluate the resulting "Effectual Decision-Making Canvas" with aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs

IT Project Selection in an Agile Organisation

Organisations face a persistent challenge in achieving sustained competitive advantage in the rapidly changing business landscape. Organisational agility (OA), enabled by information technology (IT), offers hope. However, organisations that pursue agility encounter incompatibility with IT project selection (ITPS), where projects are selected and funded before implementation. Existing literature highlights the dual capability of ITPS to enable and disable agility, underscoring its continued importance for agile organisations. To tackle the incompatibility between ITPS and OA, this study presents a case study conducted at Infrastructure Co, an agile organisation that actively undertakes ITPS. Findings show the need for a redesign of traditional ITPS governance to facilitate agility. Infrastructure Co achieved this by delegating and decentralising ITPS processes and decisions away from the enterprise-project-management-office into projects. This study contributes by presenting revelatory empirical findings, addressing this important new research question

Improvement suggestions for DSRM model

This study addresses the process of Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). The study’s proposal is that the DSRM process can be revised by relevant elements, such as user experience, co-creativity, and trust building. The research revealed that user-centered aspects and user-computer interactions are important for the success of the design and realization of information systems, and thus are necessary to take into account in the DSRM process model. The main findings of the study are that it is imperative to integrate the users’ experience and design research, trust building, and co-creativity aspects into the DSRM process as early as possible. It is also vital to train users to use the system so that the system’s design-development-dissemination continuums can be as effective as possible. The outcome of this study addresses the DSRM process and its modularity, usefulness, and feasibility in the field of information systems design theory

Artificial Intelligence Applied to Project Success: A Literature Review

Project control and monitoring tools are based on expert judgement and parametric tools. Projects are the means by which companies implement their strategies. However project success rates are still very low. This is a worrying situation that has a great economic impact so alternative tools for project success prediction must be proposed in order to estimate project success or identify critical factors of success. Some of these tools are based on Artificial Intelligence. In this paper we will carry out a literature review of those papers that use Artificial Intelligence as a tool for project success estimation or critical success factor identification

Value Co-Creation for Cyber-Physical Systems in Mining and Construction Industry

This paper focuses on value co-creation in the context of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). We investigate how value is co-created in the mining and construction industry, where the intelligent equipment are examples of CPSs. We take an interpretive research approach and study a global corporation, which manufactures tools and equipment for the mining and construction industry. The data collection was done using the laddering technique (n=20) and for the analysis a thematic clustering approach was adopted. Our findings show how value is co-created in the use of intelligent equipment. More specifically, the findings indicate that the use and service experience related to intelligent equipment is important value driver in this context. Also the sharing and receiving information related to intelligent equipment use and operating environment are important. As a conclusion, the utilitarian values and goal-oriented perspective toward values were considered to be more relevant than the hedonic values

How Different Types of IS Assets Account for Synergy-Enabled Value in Multi-Unit Firms: Mapping of Critical Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators

Rooted in a longstanding tradition, research and practice strives to determine how to derive business value from IT investments. This applies particularly to the neglected research area of multi-unit firms, where there is still a high potential to enhance IT synergies. Our study addresses important research gaps in IT business value research. First, we investigate how different of types of IS assets, i.e., infrastructural, transactional, and strategic IS, account for cross-unit synergies to create business value. Second, we map critical success factors and key performance indicators of this value creation process in order to open the “grey box” in IT business value research. An explorative multiple-case study methodology with five case sites is applied. Our results reveal that these different types of IS assets account for a different degree of cost and value synergies, support diverse critical success factors, and require distinct measurement approaches in the form of KPIs

Developing Feature Sets for Geographically Diverse External End Users: A Call for Value-Based Preference Modeling

Here we explore the terrain of understanding the value of IT applications for diverse users across geographically diverse markets. The domain of our investigation is the development of features for applications that make use of presence and location information about the user. There is good reason to believe that such applications might create substantial value for mobile device users because the systems could use our declared availability and intentions (presence) along with our location to present us with information and choices of high circumstantial value. We explored the use of wide audience requirements engineering (WARE) to collect and analyze data from potential lead users in Helsinki, Las Vegas, and Hong Kong about their preferences for applications using presence and location information. We further analyzed the data to differentiate among the three cities. Results showed substantial differences in user preferences for presence and location enabled applications across the three cities, suggesting that applications developed for one market might not succeed in the others. We propose the design of new methods to develop distinct feature sets for IT applications intended for use by diverse users in different markets