Idiosyncratic Values of IT-enabled Agility at the Operation and Strategic Levels

Although research recognizes the role of IT and organizational agility on firm performance, a research gap to investigate IT-enabled agility at strategic and operational levels exists. In this study, we define operation-level agility as a firm’s ability to respond to market changes or emerging opportunities by quickly modifying its business routines. In contrast, we define strategic-level agility as a firm’s ability to define long-range investment decisions and implement them to accommodate strategic moves and business initiatives. We investigate how IT can empower these two levels of agility, and, in turn, how these two levels of agility can influence firm performance. We also examine the relative roles of the two levels of IT-enabled agility in manufacturing and service settings. We use survey data to validate the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that, in general, IT leads to superior firm performance through agility at both levels. Further analyses, however, suggest that IT-enabled operation-level agility is a stronger success factor for service firms and IT-enabled strategic-level agility is more critical in manufacturing firms. Our findings provide a theoretical insight regarding the industry-specific values of IT-enabled agility at operation and strategic levels and practical implications for organizational IT deployment under specific industrial settings

Supply Chain Mega-Trends : Current Status and Future Trends

The supply chain management (SCM) concept has become embedded in the thinking of many organisations in recent years. Originally introduced by management consultants in the early 1980s, SCM has a strong focus on integration of processes across functions within firms, as well as between the organisations that comprise the wider extended enterprise. There is a significant body of research to support the notion that the consistent delivery of value to customers is predicated on higher levels of intra-firm and inter-firm integration. Putting the supply chain integration (SCI) concept into practice is critically dependent on the ability of firms to manage material, money and information flows in a holistic manner. It also depends on the way in which relationships between key supply chain actors are managed. This article explores the “mega-trends” that are evident across most sectors and which have a potentially significant impact on the ability of organisations to put SCM theory into practice. The late Don Bowersox and his colleagues from Michigan State University introduced the idea of supply chain “mega-trends” over a decade ago in their widely cited article in the Journal of Business Logistics (Bowersox et al., 2000). This article explores the current status of these “mega-trends” in an Irish context based on research being undertaken at the National Institute for Transport and Logistics (NITL). It also identifies some key factors that are likely to impact upon progress in these key areas in the medium term

Agile Adoption in Information Technology Departments at Research Universities

This dissertation analyzes Agile methods and how they are adopted by Information Technology (IT) departments in research universities. Existing literature has focused on Agile adoption in private and public sectors. This study fills a knowledge gap in the research literature on Agile adoption in university contexts. Three research questions guide this study: What are the uses of Agile methods in research universities? What are the specific factors that affect adoption of agile methods in research universities? Why do research universities adopt (or not adopt) Agile methods? By answering these questions, the present study contributes to the growing literature on the opportunities and challenges of adopting Agile methods. Methodologically, the study is based on a survey of the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of 418 research universities (response rate of 41.4%) and elite interviews. The survey included questions about Agile adoption in terms of purpose, methods, challenges, and organizational environment. The elite interviews explored the factors affecting Agile adoption and were supplemented with secondary documents about the organizational characteristics of the IT departments. The survey results show that many IT departments (nearly 60%) in these universities have adopted Agile. Agile is used to accelerate software development, manage projects, and increase productivity. The challenges of adopting Agile include pervasiveness of traditional waterfall methods, funding limitations, lack of skills, inconsistent process and practices, and organizational resistance to change. With respect to organizational factors, the level of research university is a determinant for adopting Agile. R1 Doctoral Universities (i.e., very high research activity) have more adoption of Agile methods compared to R2 Doctoral Universities (i.e., high research activity) or R3 Doctoral/ Professional Universities (i.e., D/PU). CIOs’ experience with Agile is a critical factor for adopting Agile. Elite interviews with the CIOs show the significance of the organizational context to adopt Agile. IT departments support university research and teaching; hence, these departments have a constant need to address the university departments’ needs. Leadership of these departments influences Agile adoption. Agile fosters frequent and effective communication among the team members. Overall, IT departments adopt Agile to increase their organizational efficiency in delivering their services efficiently within the universities

The formulation of competitive actions in practice

This is a study of what managers do in relation to the formulation of competitive actions. The study started with Project 1 (P1), a literature review that looked at managers’ cognitions in respect of competitive positioning and competitive strategy. A gap was found in how individual competitive actions are formulated and executed. A gap was also found concerning what managers do in response to interpretations of their competitive environments. Following the literature review, a series of semi-structured interviews were undertaken with managers and 26 individual competitive actions were recorded and analysed in Project 2 (P2). A structure to the formulation of competitive actions was discerned and developed into a processual model that is triggered by a stimulus, followed by the manager envisaging desired outcome and setting objectives, then deciding which levers to use, developing the action and refining it. Its application to practice was developed in Project 3 (P3) through an aide memoir tool to assist managers. The study makes a contribution to theory by providing a framework that captures the way in which managers construe and formulate competitive actions. In P2 it was found that managers tend to follow a largely homogenous process and that the tools and techniques offered in the extant literature are seldom used. The managers interviewed in mature industries were far more aware of who their competitors were in more when compared to nascent industries. This had a bearing on the formulation of competitive actions insofar as companies operating in mature industries formulated competitive actions to fend off or compete with their competitors more effectively while companies operating in nascent industries tended to formulate competitive actions with the aim of exploiting gaps in the market. It was found in P2 that managers’ backgrounds, including their functional and educational, as well as their nationalistic and cultural backgrounds, had a bearing on how they construed their competitors and the competitive actions they formulated. It was also found that competitive actions were formulated and executed on an iterative process, whereby managers would refine their actions applying the learnings from previous actions. Managers, particularly those with more experience, relied heavily on intuition and tacit knowledge, as well as input from colleagues and customers, when formulating competitive actions. Contrary to the assertions many in much of the extant literature about companies not deviating from industry norms when formulating competitive actions, the study found that managers would often do so in search of abnormal profits. The study makes a contribution to practice by providing a guide to assist in formulating competitive actions. The guide is based on the processual model developed in P2 and was summarised in five key steps, comprising Stimulus, Objectives, Levers, Actions and Refinement, and abbreviated ‘SOLAR’

DEFINING AND EVALUATING AGILE CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT FOR REDUCING TIME DELAYS IN CONSTRUCTION

Both competitive market forces and growing societal needs have triggered the demand for rapid delivery of construction projects, or at a minimum, for projects completed on schedule. However, schedule delays are common and recurring in construction, inevitably resulting in rework, cost overruns and legal claims. As projects become increasingly complicated, delays arise in a more unpredictable manner. The initial motivation for this research is to explore a systematic flexibility to deal with delays caused by complex changes in construction and meanwhile enhance the overall project performance. Accordingly, agile construction management is proposed in terms of a conceptual framework. Derived from agile theories in other engineering disciplines, agile management is an integrated method that allows projects thrive in a fluid environment by applying agile enablers (approaches) throughout the project lifecycle. Since agility and relevant theories are emerging in construction, the proposed agile ideas and enablers are verified by qualitative interviews with construction professionals. With ultimate goal of reducing delays, a case study is conducted investigating how much delays could be reduced if the agile enablers were used

THE DETERMINANTS AND ROLE OF AGILITY IN DIGITAL ORGANIZATIONS

The changes in the business environment due to digital technologies and an increasing pace of innovation, have to be reflected in the organizational design of firms. In particular, agility has been put forward as an approach to cope with upcoming changes and to ensure organizational effectiveness in times of digitalization. We conceptualize agility as two types – detecting and re-acting agility. In this paper, we analyze the organizational design and identify determinants for these two types of agility within the design. In our empirical study, we identified agility as a determinant of organizational effectiveness and discuss the relevance of agility in new forms of organizing in today’s business environment. Our research is based on a quantitative study in the professional services industry where we conducted a survey with 217 respondents. The findings of our study carry theoretical contributions regarding the determinants of agility in the organizational design and the further delineation of detecting and reacting agility. Both of them carry essential importance for the design of digital organizations. Building on that, we derive managerial implications that yield the need to update the organizational design. In addition, we determine new forms of organizing and anchor agility as a management objective for digital organizations

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse