E-Leadership in small and medium-sized enterprises in the developing world

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the economies of many developing countries. A critical challenge faced by SME leaders, as digitization continues, is how to adopt digital technologies to create value and enable faster product commercialization. There is a paucity of empirical research examining how e-leadership in SMEs drives technology and new product commercialization processes in the developing world. In this study, we have broadened the notion of what constitutes e-leadership, from the perspective of how advanced information technologies affect the leadership dynamic and the appropriation of advanced information technologies. Although there have been several studies on leading technologies in developed countries, we focus on developing an e-leadership framework for SMEs in developing economies. Using this framework and five selection criteria, we conducted 11 interviews with a sample of successful SMEs selected from a pool of 2,240 firms in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. We conclude by highlighting the five key findings of this study, which explain how SMEs can develop effective e-leadership to foster commercialization and improve firm performance

Uso de las TIC en las empresas cooperativas: propiedad y gobierno

Las empresas cooperativas presentan una idiosincrasia derivada de unos principios y valores propios de este tipo de organizaciones, que impregna todos los ámbitos de actuación de estas entidades. En este trabajo se realiza un análisis de las características organizativas relacionadas con la propiedad, gobierno y control de las empresas cooperativas que pueden contribuir a explicar diferencias en su comportamiento innovador ante la adopción de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). El estudio propuesto ofrece un enfoque novedoso por los aspectos organizativos tratados, ya que se revisan elementos de carácter cualitativo estrechamente ligados a las políticas de participación en las cooperativas así como cuestiones de igualdad y género dentro de las mismas. Para el desarrollo de los análisis empíricos se utiliza una muestra de 99 empresas cooperativas españolas, pertenecientes a distintos sectores y tamaños. Son las organizaciones de mayor dimensión, con la gestión profesionalizada en manos de un gerente externo varón y en las que existen trabajadores familiares, las que se caracterizan por adoptar las TIC

EXPLORING THE INFLUENCE OF EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT DIVERSITY ON IT GOVERNANCE

As all organizations are attaching more strategic importance to information technology (IT), IT governance has gained researchers’ interest. In fact, a large body of literature focuses on firm-specific or executive management attributes such as leadership as determinants of IT governance. However, it is still relevant to identify other factors influencing IT governance. Since executive management demographics and demographic diversity have an impact on strategic decisions, we explore the influence of executive management diversity on IT governance. Results suggest that IT governance for a high educational-high tenure diversity profile differs significantly from that for a low industry-moderate tenure diversity profile and a high industry-low tenure diversity profile. Furthermore, IT governance structures differ according to executive management diversity profile more than IT governance processes and relational mechanisms

Personality, top management support, continuance intention to use electronic health record system among nurses in Jordan

Electronic health record system (EHRs) is preferred as standard documentation to track patient information and office visits. It is acclaimed as technological breakthrough capable to improve the healthcare industry’s service delivery and system quality. Accordingly, Jordanian government initiated EHRs implementation in all public hospitals. However, only eleven out of 35 public hospitals have fully implemented EHRs and their usage remains low. Moreover, empirical research associated to the particular concern of EHRs is insufficient and the effort to appraise it is low considering its extensive ongoing implementation. Besides, comprehending and explaining nurses’ continuous intention (CI) to use EHRs are crucial to gauge EHRs usage in Jordan. Considering the problem, this study highlighted on continuous intention (CI) of nurses to use EHRs model by incorporating the following theories; the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) and Five Factor Model (FFM). The model is insinuated to investigate whether UTAUT factors namely effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, FFM domains (conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, and agreeableness) and Top Management Support (TMS) predict nurses’ CI to use EHRs. Total responses are 497 nurses. Partial Least Squares technique used for analysis. Results revealed significant positive relationship between UTAUT factors and CI. However, there is no significant evidence of relationship between TMS and CI. The study also disclosed significant mediating influence of performance expectancy on two separate hypotheses concerning two predictors namely agreeableness and openness to experience on CI. Additionally, the study revealed significant moderation impact of conscientiousness on the relationship between both performance expectancy and social influence with CI. The study has illustrated important attention to substantive differences between acceptance and continuance to use behaviors

The effectiveness of crowdsourcing in knowledge-based industries: the moderating role of transformational leadership and organisational learning

[EN] Crowdsourcing provides an opportunity for SMEs to exploit collective knowledge that is located outside the organisation. Crowdsourcing allows organisations to keep pace with a fast-changing environment by solving business problems, supporting R&D activities, and fostering innovation cheaply, flexibly, and dynamically. Nevertheless, managing crowdsourcing is difficult, and positive outcomes are not guaranteed. Drawing on the Resource-based View, we study transformational leadership and organisational learning capability as complementary assets to help SMEs deploy crowdsourcing. An empirical study of Spanish telecommunications and biotechnology companies confirmed the moderating effect of organisational learning on the relationship between crowdsourcing and organisational performance.Devece Carañana, CA.; Palacios Marqués, D.; Ribeiro-Navarrete, B. (2019). 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Creativity and Information Systems: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of Creativity in IS

Be productive. Since the industrial revolution, managers have had an almost singular focus on equipping employees with productivity tools in productivity-supportive environments. Information technologies—systems designed to increase productivity—entered the marketplace in the 1980\u27s and were initially credited with the subsequent boom. Eventually, innovation was shown to be the primary spark, and the managerial focus shifted. Increasingly, the imperative is: be creative. This dissertation investigates how a technology environment designed to be fast and mechanistic influences the slow and organic act of creativity. Creativity—the production of novel and useful solutions—can be an elusive subject and has a varied history within Information Systems (IS) research so the first essay is devoted to conducting an historical analysis of creativity research across several domains and developing a holistic, technologically-aware framework for researching creativity in modern organizations. IS literature published in the Senior Scholar\u27s journals is then mapped to the proposed framework as a means of identifying unexplored regions of the creativity phenomenon. This essay concludes with a discussion of future directions for creativity research within IS. The second essay integrates task-technology fit and conservation of resources theory and employs an experimental design to explore the task of being creative with an IS. Borrowing from fine arts research, the concept of IS Mastery is introduced as a resource which, when deployed efficiently, acts to conserve resources and enhance performance on cognitively demanding creative tasks. The third essay investigates an expectedly strong but unexpectedly negative relationship between technology fit and creative performance. This finding launches an exploration into alternate study designs, theoretical models and performance measures as we search for the true nature of the relationship between creativity and technology fit. The essay concludes with an updated map of the technology-to-performance chain. These essays contribute to IS research by creating a technology-aware creativity framework for motivating and positioning future research, by showing that the IS is neither a neutral nor frictionless collaborator in creative tasks and by exposing the inhibiting effects of a well-fitting technology for creative performance

Modeling and Analysis of Complex Technology Adoption Decisions: An Investigation in the Domain of Mobile ICT

Mobile information and communication technologies (ICT) promise to significantly transform enterprises, their business processes and services, improve employee productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency, and create new competitive advantages and business agility. Despite the plethora of potential benefits, however, widespread enterprise adoption of mobile ICT has not been as extensive as initially anticipated. Drawing on the extant information systems, technology management, and organizational innovation literature, this dissertation investigates the salient drivers and inhibitors of emerging ICT adoption, in general, and mobile ICT in particular, and develops an integrative ICT adoption decision framework. From this synthesis we identify four broad elements that influence an enterprise s decision to adopt mobile ICT: (1) business value, (2) costs and economics, (3) strategic alignment, and (4) enterprise readiness. The latter decision element has received only little theoretical and practical attention. In order to fill this gap, this dissertation explored the concept of enterprise readiness in further detail and identified eight key dimensions and their associated assessment indicators. Using a two-stage expert study and experimental design approach, we empirically validated these dimensions and determined their relative importance. Results indicated that leadership readiness followed by technology, data and information, and resource readiness, contributed the most to enterprise readiness for mobile ICT. The results are implemented into a web-based readiness diagnostic tool (RDT) that enables decision makers to assess an enterprise s readiness for mobile ICT. The benefits of the RDT are multifold: first, it navigates the decision maker through the complex readiness assessment space; second, it identifies potential organizational deficiencies and provides a means to assess potential sources of risks associated with the adoption and implementation of mobile ICT; and third, it enables decision makers to benchmark their level of readiness against other organizations. The dissertation concludes by highlighting both theoretical and practical implications for emerging and mobile ICT adoption management and suggesting directions for future research.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Rouse, William; Committee Member: Cross, Steve; Committee Member: Cummins, Michael; Committee Member: DeMillo, Richard; Committee Member: Vengazhiyil, Rosha

Business intelligence for sustainable competitive advantage: the case of telecommunications companies in Malaysia

The concept of Business Intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool has been widely emphasized in the strategic management literature. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well explained. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage.Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.This research uses combination of theoretical foundation of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study then is carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modeling.The findings revealed that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management will have better chance in realizing their dreams of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. It thus implied that the executives’ positive perceptions towards BI initiatives are deemed necessary. Moreover, the most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social and environmental issues.The BI model well explained how BI was deployed in Malaysian telecommunications companies. This study thus contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts