Impact of Unified Communications on Communication, Relationship Building and Performance

Unified Communications (UC) integrates multiple communication and multimedia services such as voice, email, fax, voice messaging, video conferencing and chat into a unified user experience. In this research, we study the use of UC in global virtual teams in a multinational corporation. Specifically, we conduct a case study to examine how the use of UC enhances individuals’ ability to communicate, helps them create and build relationship, and then how such relationship building in turn improves their performance. This research will contribute to the theoretical understanding of the use of UC in organizational settings. This research also has practical significance as it can help organizations to make better decisions in regards to their investments in and usage of communication technologies in a global environment

Dispersants and Risk Communication

Risk communications is a research area of the social sciences which is closely associated with human dimensions and external communications. External communications, traditionally in the purview of public affairs, may have multiple purposes including influencing public beliefs, opinions, and judgments about the incident. There are many approaches toward risk communications. Some of them focus on improving the way external communications about risks are conducted, e.g., developing better messages, and some focus on the content of risk communications, that is, sharing technical information to support the assessment of the potential for risks

Evaluation of the Community Leadership Project 2.0

Social Policy Research Associates (SPR), the contracted evaluator for CLP, began work partway through the first phase of CLP and has continued its role for CLP 2.0. SPR's overall goals for the evaluation are to: (1) inform improvements in CLP 2.0 implementation; (2) share lessons with the philanthropic field on effective capacity-building strategies for small organizations working in low-income communities and communities of color; and (3) assess the impact of CLP 2.0 on community grantees. This report focuses specifically on the launching of CLP 2.0 and on community grantees' characteristics and capacity levels at baseline

Cultivating Systems Leadership in Cross-Sector Partnerships: Lessons from the Linked Learning Regional Hubs of Excellence

Investments in the social sector have become increasingly complex, with many foundations shifting from supports for single organizations toward more systemic strategies focused on improving outcomes for entire communities. As a result, the field has become awash in regional, or place-based, investments that rely on cross-sector partnerships and networks to drive change. These efforts require coordination among stakeholders across all levels of the practice and policy continuum – from direct service providers, to nonprofit intermediaries, funders, advocacy organizations, and policymakers.It is in this context, and in the spirit of continuous learning, that The James Irvine Foundation's Linked Learning Regional Hubs of Excellence investment serves as a systems change experiment, offering insights and critical lessons that can inform others undertaking similar work. The aim of this Issue Brief – authored by Equal Measure and Harder+Company – is to contribute to field dialogue and learning about the role of leadership in complex systems change strategies, particularly those focused on producing equitable impacts in college and career readiness.Equal Measure and Harder+Company serve as the evaluators of The James Irvine Foundation's Linked Learning Regional Hubs of Excellence. They work in partnership with Jobs for the Future, the intermediary and technical assistance provider for this initiative

Defining the gap between research and practice in public relations programme evaluation - towards a new research agenda

The current situation in public relations programme evaluation is neatly summarized by McCoy who commented that 'probably the most common buzzwords in public relations in the last ten years have been evaluation and accountability' (McCoy 2005, 3). This paper examines the academic and practitioner-based literature and research on programme evaluation and it detects different priorities and approaches that may partly explain why the debate on acceptable and agreed evaluation methods continues. It analyses those differences and proposes a research agenda to bridge the gap and move the debate forward

DART-MPI: An MPI-based Implementation of a PGAS Runtime System

A Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) approach treats a distributed system as if the memory were shared on a global level. Given such a global view on memory, the user may program applications very much like shared memory systems. This greatly simplifies the tasks of developing parallel applications, because no explicit communication has to be specified in the program for data exchange between different computing nodes. In this paper we present DART, a runtime environment, which implements the PGAS paradigm on large-scale high-performance computing clusters. A specific feature of our implementation is the use of one-sided communication of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) version 3 (i.e. MPI-3) as the underlying communication substrate. We evaluated the performance of the implementation with several low-level kernels in order to determine overheads and limitations in comparison to the underlying MPI-3.Comment: 11 pages, International Conference on Partitioned Global Address Space Programming Models (PGAS14

Implementation and unification of the ERP system in a global company as a strategic decision for sustainable entrepreneurship

This article considered factors connected with the implementation and unification of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, and their influence on the sustainable development of global companies. It showed a cognitive model on such impact and gave an example in the form of a case study of a global company listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. The basic strategic objectives of each organization include long-term growth and sustainability. In a growing competitive environment, it is essential to manage the company effectively. This can be achieved provided that the company's organizational structure and operations are properly set from the point of view of the ERP system. The research results were aimed at creating the generalized process of the ERP system's gradual implementation, to make the development of an organization progressive. The paper was focused on describing the implementation and unification of the Enterprise Resource Planning System, in a global company listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. The aim of the paper was to monitor and evaluate, the links between Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management. This process is time consuming and costly. To achieve the aim, the case study was carried out in the form of an expert survey aimed at assessing the impact of the unification and implementation of the ERP system in a global company. The study included methods of systemic analysis, methods of sociological expert survey, a method of qualitative peer review, and a method for a cognitive model. It leads not only to effective management of global companies but enables the monitoring and comparison of Key Performance Indicators and the Net Promoter Score in each country, using the same parameters. The implementation of a unified Enterprise Resource Planning system leads to a significant cost reduction and has a positive impact on the financial indicators reported on the stock exchange. This study highlighted the importance of the implementation of an effective ERP system, to make the development of organizations sustainable.Web of Science108art. no. 291