Role assigning and taking in cloud computing

The widespread use of cloud computing (CC) has brought to the forefront information technology (IT) governance issues, rendering the lack of expertise in handling CC-based IT controls a major challenge for business enterprises and other societal organizations. In the cloud-computing context, this study identifies and ranks the determinants of role assigning and taking by IT people. The study’s integrative research links CC and IT governance to humane arrangements, as it validates and ranks role assigning and taking components through in-depth interviews with twelve IT decision-makers and forty-four Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) members, engaged as panelists in a Delphi technique implementation. The empirical results recognize skills and competencies as prioritized determinants of IT controls, while IT security, risk and compliance emerge as capabilities crucial to evaluate and manage CC service providers. Despite the study’s generalizability limitations, its findings highlight future research paths and provide practical guidelines toward the high technology of open-market IT self-governance. The latter entails the humane flows of collegial control and responsibility, as opposed to the inhumane flows of authority and power, under the sequestered technique of the bureaucratically-hierarchized IT hetero-governanc

Rebuilding Corporate Leadership: How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals

This report examines how efforts to build public trust and long-term value have coalesced to encourage many large, global corporations to pay greater attention to their longer-term interests by striking a balance between short-term commercial pursuits and such societal concerns as the environment, labor standards, and human rights. Many companies have also found ways to turn such concerns as the effects of climate change and other environmental damage into profitable commercial opportunities. This report also explores how all corporate boards could take a more active part in considering such issues and improving the reporting of financial and non-financial measures of corporate performance broadly conceived. In our view, directors could do more with their current authority to motivate managements to greater innovation, and to support managements in finding long-term value solutions to the numerous economic and societal pressures they face

Socio-technical transitions towards environmental sustainability through green ICT

We adopt the broad conceptualisation of Green Information Communication Technology (ICT) used by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), incorporating perspectives on Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) which has currency with both business practitioners and policy makers. The objective of our research is to develop a theory of the institutional mechanisms that underpin socio-technical transitions to environmental sustainability through the direct, indirect and systematic effects of Green ICT in and across organisational fields. We construct our theory by drawing on published research in several disciplines focusing on the organisational field of the ICT industry. We present a mechanism-based theoretical model that explains how institutional change in organisational fields can evoke appropriate socio-technical transitions and organisational responses to Green ICT. Systems researchers agree that Green ICT can help lower GHG emissions directly, through energy efficiencies and indirectly by enabling environmentally sustainable business processes. If this research is to be of theoretical or practical relevance it must recognize that government organizations and business enterprises may not adopt policies and strategies on Green ICT because it is rational or moral to do so rather, a web of social, and institutional mechanisms interact to produce the outcomes observed in practice

Corporate Governance Practices to Restore Trust, Focus on Long-Term Performance, and Rebuilding Leadership

Summary of the three CED corporate governance reports: Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate Governance After Sarbanes-Oxley (2006); Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance (2007); and Rebuilding Corporate Leadership: How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals (2009)

Responsible Autonomy

As intelligent systems are increasingly making decisions that directly affect society, perhaps the most important upcoming research direction in AI is to rethink the ethical implications of their actions. Means are needed to integrate moral, societal and legal values with technological developments in AI, both during the design process as well as part of the deliberation algorithms employed by these systems. In this paper, we describe leading ethics theories and propose alternative ways to ensure ethical behavior by artificial systems. Given that ethics are dependent on the socio-cultural context and are often only implicit in deliberation processes, methodologies are needed to elicit the values held by designers and stakeholders, and to make these explicit leading to better understanding and trust on artificial autonomous systems.Comment: IJCAI2017 (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Advancing Strategy: How to Lead Change in Corporate Societal Engagement

Implementing a strategy may be even harder than developing it. This learning brief is intended for corporate foundation and CSR leaders who have completed an initial strategy refresh process and who seek effecitve practices and tools to advance this strategy. In our experience advising more than 100 multinational companie, effective leaders facilitate structured, data-informed decisions and enable important organizational improvements to achieve their strategic objectives. Specifically, advancing strategy in corporate societal engagement typically requires leading change in two major areas of the overall portfolio: designing a signative initiative and transforming local giving

Power, Responsibility & Wisdom: Exploring the Issues at the Core of Ethical Decision-Making and Leadership

Decision-making ostensibly requires the exercise of Power. But that use of Power must be counterbalanced with Responsibility in order to make good decisions. Infusing Wisdom into the decision-making process necessarily incorporates an ethical component and involves both the identification and evaluation of relationships. Wise decision-making, therefore, requires the application of Wisdom which transcends simple, short-lived factual proficiency. It is this careful weighing of Wisdom, Power, Knowledge, and Responsibility which must guide our business leaders and be taught to our business students

Education for Sustainable Development

The U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development has collected resources to help educators and the general public understand sustainable development (creating healthy ecosystems, communities and economies). Resources are categorized into youth, K-12, higher education, business, faith and funding. Educational levels: Primary elementary, Intermediate elementary, Middle school, High school, Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division, Graduate or professional, General public