How Can Organizations Integrate and Connect Learning with Work?

[Excerpt] Over the last few decades, workforce management has evolved to become complex and dynamic due to an increasingly competitive business landscape, the digital revolution and the mix of employees that now includes a multigenerational workforce. Work roles are expected to keep evolving requiring employees to keep up with new knowledge and upskill to remain employable; and as this happens, the ways of learning change as well. Research has also shown that companies that invest in the development of their employees are 2.4 times more likely to hit their performance targets, hence, organizations need to be proactive about adopting effective strategies that will enable them to manage the development of their employees in a way that supports the business priorities

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN KNOWLEDGE-BASED FIRM

For sustainable competitive advantages gain, modern organizations, knowledge-based, must promote a proactive and flexible management, permanently connected to change which occur in business environment. Contextually, the paper analyses impact factors of the environment which could determine a firm to initiate a programme strategic organizational change. Likewise, the paper identifies the main organizational variables involved in a changing process and emphasizes the essential role which managers and entrepreneurs have in substantiation, elaboration and implementation of organizational change models

Adaptability of Firms to Change and Corporate Performance in Nigeria Society

This research study was conducted to find out if there is a positive relationship between firms ' adaptability to change (effective change management) and corporate performance. Data were collected through questionnaire from thirteen banks in Nigeria. The Pearsons' productmoment correlation coefficient (r) was used for data analysis. The ·results show among others, that there is a positive relationship between a well managed change programme and corporate performance. Therefore, management should initiate change with the involvement of staff either from a reactive or proactive posture against environmental dynamism. This helps adapt the entire business processes to the change in order to enhance corporate performance as failure to do this could mean the death of the organizatio

IS Architecture Characteristics as a Measure of IT Agility

As markets change, business models alter and technology evolves information systems need to change. The ability and speedof change in information systems are crucial success factors for the success of the business itself. We call this IT Agility.IT Agility depends on many internal and external factors of the enterprise and can be achieved through reactive and proactiveactions. In this paper the focus is on the information systems architecture as a main proactive contributor to IT Agility.As measurement is essential for the management of IT Agility a framework is suggested that quantitatively evaluates themain influencing factors of information systems architecture on IT Agility (coupling, redundancy, complexity andparameterization). Results from a real-world application show the ability of the framework to identify fields for improvementin IT Agility in the information systems architecture of enterprises

Developing Marketing and Advertising Strategies Through Disruption Philosophy

Disruption is about finding the strategic idea, which breaks and overturns a convention in the marketplace, and then makes it possible to reach a new vision or to give new substance to an existing vision. A business strategy revolves around three basic constructs, namely, vision, core values and a business typology. When an organization must drastically change two of the three basic constructs in order to survive, it has been strategically disrupted. These basic constructs represent how the upper management of a business envision the future, how they are guided by their core values to benefit from that vision, and how they would organize the business to maintain these benefits. When the magnitude of change that causes strategic disruption is significant, it is literally a make or break experience for that business or organization. A proactive strategy can help a company to overcome significant disruption. Therefore, this paper explores how disruption philosophy affects strategic marketing and advertising decision-making process. Keywords: Marketing Strategy, Advertising, Business Strategy, Disruption Philosophy, Branding DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/54-05 Publication date:March 31st 201

A Framework for Multi-dimensional Business Process Optimization for GHG Emission Mitigation

Anthropogenic climate change is shaping up to be a major global challenge in its potential impacts to humanity. A major contributor to this is Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from various sources, including industrial or organizational sector. Some organizational managers realizing the inevitability of government legislations or taxes want to take proactive measures to manage their own GHG emissions. The current emission measuring tools and guidelines are not aimed at measuring emissions of organisational processes. Hence these guidelines and tools do not allow emissions to be handled in a pragmatic manner alongside other business objectives such as cost, turnaround time and quality of production. Therefore, we propose a framework for multi-dimensional business process optimisation that would facilitate modelling, measuring, analysing and reporting GHG emissions. This framework, derived from the GHG Protocol, enables organizational management to optimize their business processes for GHG emission mitigation, alongside other vital business objectives

The Implications of COVID-19 for Nonmarket Strategy Research

The COVID-19 virus ignited social and economic turmoil around the world. Not since the Spanish Flu of 1918 had we seen a pandemic of such scale and severity. The resultant global transformation of industries, supply chains, work, communication, and institutional frameworks suggests we are entering a period of non-ergodic change, in which the future cannot be extrapolated from the past (North, 1999). This means that we do not know the probability distribution or the outcomes from the virus. So, we must find a way to coexist and build our resilience. Moreover, although pandemics cause short-term fear and disruption, they can also initiate long-term change for economies and societies. Thus, we suggest that although COVID-19 challenges the foundations of modern business and management, it reinforces the core assumptions of nonmarket strategy research. In particular – and especially during times of crisis and uncertainty – competitive advantage is predicated on proactive political and social awareness and engagement, aligned with strategic business objectives

Factors influencing business continuity readiness of the Western Cape government

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020The research was focused on business continuity management as a key discipline towards building a resilient Western Cape Government. It provided an opportunity to identify existing business continuity processes to determine the level of preparedness of the Western Cape Government to ensure continued business due to a disruption. The inability of the public sector to manage and facilitate sound business continuity processes in anticipation of disruptive events have placed it in a position where it would be unable to deliver services to citizens and stakeholders. As the current business environment was continuously evolving, Government as an organization was therefore not immune to change and disruption, whether generated internally or externally. For government to be resilient it required the holistic management of risk but also the ability to adapt and respond to change with a limited impact on the delivery of services. Business Continuity was the core to building and improving organizational resilience. It had been a proven methodology that organizations should embrace as part of a holistic approach to the management of risks and threats. Legislation and/or policies have been drafted for the public sector to guide with the management of risks. As an organ of state and part of the public sector the Western Cape Government was therefore obliged to manage risks in a way that ensured that government was able to continue to render a service both internally and externally with as little impact as possible. Business continuity management identified the priorities of an organization as well as prepared solutions to address disruptive threats. The aim of the study was the exploration of the state of business continuity within the Western Cape Government. The objectives of the study were to: Identify current business continuity processes; Evaluate current business continuity processes; Critically analyse existing business continuity documentation; and Identify the links between business continuity and resilience. The research questions were focused on getting departments to express how business continuity was facilitated; clarity in respect of processes; input source of business continuity documentation; as well as determining whether departments acknowledged the benefits of having business continuity management towards building a resilient Western Cape Government. Previous work reinforced the importance of having sound business continuity processes in place. From the literature it would appear that business continuity in the public sector was fairly new and developmental in nature. Previous work also recognized that each and every organization was unique and as such the process should be aligned with the core functions and/or mandates afforded by legislation and/or policies. The research approach deemed most appropriate for this particular study was the Interpretivist approach. Not only was this approach value laden but it allowed for the exploration of the theory and obtaining of rich in-depth data from the participants. It also allowed for the contextualization of the problem as it related to the business continuity processes within the Western Cape Government. The research method was qualitative using interviews and document analysis as the most suited research instruments to elicit qualitative data required to render the research process as valid. It was concluded that having sound business continuity processes in place would greatly support organizations with the management of disruptions. Business continuity should be a proactive plan to avoid and mitigate risk associated with disruption of operations and needed to be managed in a way that objectives were met. Further to this it should be noted that the resilience maturity of the Western Cape Government remained reactive and concerted efforts towards becoming proactive should be considered

Entrepreneur Digital Business Strategy and Efficiency: Intervening Role of Firm’s IT Capabilities

137-147Organizations change their business strategies by incorporating digital technology where their skills make an important contribution to the contemporary and continually changing world. This analysis is intended to examine the relationship between Digital Business Strategy (DBS) and the efficiency of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria through the intervening role of Information Technology (IT) capability. The survey is therefore quantitative, and the findings show that DBS has a significant positive effect on the business spanning (p = 0.001), and the coefficient is positive as well. The direct effect of the IT proactive stance is also calculated as a significant positive impact on the efficiency of SMEs (p < 0.055). However, all other direct effects are not statistically significant. A complete intervention of IT capability is assessed favourably by business spanning, IT infrastructure and proactive posture. The intervention effect was evaluated using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) method. The research has a variety of management inferences, notably for the proactive posture in which managers will facilitate the transition to improve performance