IT-enabled Sustainability Transformation—the Case of SAP

This teaching case describes how SAP, a leading global information technology (IT) solutions provider, embarked on a large-scale transformation program to implement a dual sustainability strategy of: (a) internally transforming the organization, and (b) addressing a business opportunity by developing IT solutions that enable their customers to become more sustainable. This case provides students with significant information about the development of SAP towards sustainability, including the company\u27s underlying motivation, their approach to change and related challenges, and their use of IT to enable the transformation. The teaching case provides an opportunity to critically examine the benefits and risks of using IT in an effort to improve the sustainability of an organization, and to develop appropriate models for sustainable strategies and IT implementation efforts

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

An SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation Using a Case study of Hospital Management System for Inclusion of Digital Transformation

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation necessitates substantial organizational and technological changes. These will have an impact on system stakeholders with various viewpoints and interests. It is crucial to analyze stakeholders in these situations and others like them to comprehend their attitudes and expectations toward the system. This experience report discusses problems with a medical institution's regular SAP ERP setup. This report includes insights and suggestions based on traditional system experience regarding a project to adopt SAP ERP at a healthcare facility. It ought to be a beneficial resource for all parties participating in the ERP installation process in the public healthcare sector. Many hospitals struggle to implement system analysis programs (SAP) and enterprise system programs (ERP) to assist in their business processes. The SAP ERP System is an integrated and consolidated way of easily flowing information within the organization's department. The authors identified hospitals' failure to implement a suitable SAP ERP system that works under their operations, leading to inefficiencies in their supply chain management process. This study addresses significant operational issues and productivity of the hospital management processes by administering 50 questionnaires and using Cronbach's alpha to analyze the responses. The Cronbach alpha is considered acceptable if the result is above 0.70. Our Cronbach result is 0.77. The benefits and difficulties of using SAP ERP provide a comprehensive review of the operations of Hospital and Healthcare Centre SAP ERP system digital transformations in supply chain management. Furthermore, the authors developed a framework to assist in choosing the proper tracking and transferring of information within the hospital technology that we named hospitec

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSFORMATION AMBIDEXTERITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FOUR LEADING IT ORGANIZATIONS

Successful IT organizations are ones that can constantly transform themselves to adapt to the changing environment. Unlike the punctuated change in traditional organizations’ transformation, IT organizations’ transformation is often a continuous change where the existing and the new business coexist. The ability to simultaneous exploit the existing business while exploring the new business during organizational transformation, which we term transformation ambidexterity, has proven to a key success factor. This study intends to explore how IT organizations develop transformation ambidexterity. We conduct a comparative case study of four leading IT organizations that have just gone through a successful transformation and unveil four development approaches, namely partition, hybridization, self-extension, and self-generation. These four approaches are based on two primary dimensions of ambidexterity development: 1) development mechanism and 2) development path. We conclude with theoretical contributions to IS, organizational transformation and ambidexterity literature and with guidelines for IT and general managers to redeploy appropriate mechanisms and follow appropriate path for ambidexterity

Developing Future UK Energy Performance Standards: The St Nicholas Court project, Final Report

The St Nicholas Court Project was set up to explore the implications of an enhanced energy performance standard for new housing for the design, construction and performance of timber framed dwellings. The energy performance standard, EPS08, is modelled on proposals made by the DETR in June 2000 for a possible review of Part L of the Building Regulations in the second half of the present decade. The overall goal of the project was to support the next revision of Part L through an enhanced body of qualitative and quantitative evidence on options and impacts. The seeds of the project were contained in a report – Towards Sustainable Housing - commissioned by Joseph Rowntree Foundation at the start of the last review of this part of the Building Regulations. The project itself has been based on the St Nicholas Court Development which involves the design and construction of a group of 18 low energy and affordable dwellings on a brown field site in York (see site plan below). The research project was established in two stages. Initial funding was provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the spring of 1999. This ensured the involvement of the research team from the outset of the development process. Additional funding was provided from late 2000 by the Housing Corporation and by the DETR through the Partners in Innovation programme (responsibility for which now lies with the DTI). The research project was originally divided into five phases – project definition, design, construction, occupation, and communication and dissemination. Delays in site acquisition initially allowed the design phase to be extended, but ultimately forced the abandonment of the construction and occupation phases, and the scaling down of the communication and dissemination phase. Despite the delays, the development itself will now go ahead, with construction starting in mid-2003

The Adoption of Information & Communication Technology in Managing Supply Chain Integration

Due to rising demand and supply disruptions, supply chain operations have adopted information and communication technologies more frequently in recent years. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the degree of ICT adoption and the approaches taken in the processing business. The paper adopts a mixed approach including 259 respondents involved in a survey investigating the extent of ICT adoption in the processing industries and 8 top-level staff of the focal firm tangled in an individual interview to reveal the strategies used in ICT adoption.  Taken together, the results show an improvement in the processing industry in ICT adoption. The results indicate that most of the focal firms are in the second phase of ICT adoption called the implementation phase while the most dominant strategies used in adoption include capacity development, building strategic partnerships and firm restructuring. For the focal firm to fully benefit from ICT adoption in operations and organizational performance, the focal firm must make improvements, including involving all stakeholders in their effort to digitalize supply chain operations. Meanwhile, other participants in the production of dairy products in Tanzania and elsewhere need to understand the significance of ICT adoption and SCI as well as the advantages they can all derive from this engagement. The study shed new light on the effective strategies that can be employed to enable the effective adoption of ICT to improve the performance of the entire supply chain. These results add to the rapidly expanding ICT adoption in the processing industry and other related industries

How do environmental enterprise systems contribute to sustainability value? A practitioner-oriented framework

Environmental enterprise systems (EES) are integrated software services that offer a platform to automate and manage environmental sustainability processes, data, risk and reporting. EES are widely used in organisations, but their return depends on nurturing value creating mechanisms and pathways. Since the organisational value of EES has not been well researched and documented in the information systems literature, we have undertaken an exploratory practitioner literature analysis. The findings indicate that EES investment spurs the development of EES competence and EES-enabled capability which are associated with environmental efficiency and competitive values. Based on these findings and drawing from the dynamic capability theory, we contribute an EES value framework. This paper also illustrates to business organisations how to leverage EES’s potential to improve environmental sustainability without trading off economic outcome

Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review

The digital transformation of manufacturing (a phenomenon also known as "Industry 4.0" or "Smart Manufacturing") is finding a growing interest both at practitioner and academic levels, but is still in its infancy and needs deeper investigation. Even though current and potential advantages of digital manufacturing are remarkable, in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability, customization, and flexibility, only a limited number of companies has already developed ad hoc strategies necessary to achieve a superior performance. Through a systematic review, this study aims at assessing the current state of the art of the academic literature regarding the paradigm shift occurring in the manufacturing settings, in order to provide definitions as well as point out recurring patterns and gaps to be addressed by future research. For the literature search, the most representative keywords, strict criteria, and classification schemes based on authoritative reference studies were used. The final sample of 156 primary publications was analyzed through a systematic coding process to identify theoretical and methodological approaches, together with other significant elements. This analysis allowed a mapping of the literature based on clusters of critical themes to synthesize the developments of different research streams and provide the most representative picture of its current state. Research areas, insights, and gaps resulting from this analysis contributed to create a schematic research agenda, which clearly indicates the space for future evolutions of the state of knowledge in this field