Exploration of the relationship between information systems (IS) activity and marketing activity in the case of 'X' Airlines in developing country

Connecting IS/IT strategy with business strategy has become a crucial issue. The level of integration between business strategies requires explanation of interrelationships, in order to achieve business goals with the available resources and markets conditions. This research is a holistic examination of the relationship between IS, business strategy and marketing in 'X' Airlines. Marketing is considered as core activity. The research design involves qualitative method. It covers the literature on IS integration, a case study approach to understand 'how' and 'why' in using IS in 'X'. The research discusses existing frameworks, both theoretical and practical, of IS strategic integration. The results show that there are relationships of traditional kind as back office support of IS for business strategy and marketing within 'X'

Penggunaan model servqual bagi mengukur perkhidmatan pendidikan tinggi di UTHM

Kajian ini adalah bertajuk "Meningkatkan Kualiti Perkhidmatan Pendidikan Teknik dan Vokasional bagi mengubah dan meningkatkan pandangan masyarakat terhadap pendidikan teknik dan vokasional". Di dalam kajian ini terdapat lima bahagian utama iaitu pengenalan kajian, kajian literrator, metodologi kajian, analisis data kajian dan juga cadangan kajian. Kajian ini dimulakan dengan pendahuluan kajian yang akan dibuat dengan mengenalpasti semua aspek-aspek utama kajian seperti latar belakang masalah, penyataan masalah, tujuan kajian, objektif kajian, persoalan kajian, kepentingan kajian, batasan kajian dan juga kerangka kajian. Pada bahagian kedua kajian ini pula ia lebih kepada kajian literatur ke atas kajian yang akan dijalankan pada awal kajian literatur, pada bahagian ini terdapat maklumat mengenai kawasan kajian yang akan dijalan iaitu di Fakulti Pendidikan Teknik dan Vokasional UTHM sebagai kawasan kajian. Selain itu, bahagian kajian literatur ini juga dinyatakan kepentingan mengenai kualiti pendidikan dan model-model kajian yang akan digunakan dalam kajian ini seperti model SERVQUAL. Pada bahagian ketiga iaitu metodologi kajian, dibahagian ini dinyatakan bagaimana kajian ini akan dilakukan seperti pemilihan sampel kajian, cara pengumpulan data dan juaga kaedah analisis yang akan dijalankan. Bahagian keempat kajian ialah bahagian analisis data, lima aspek utama SERVQUAL dianalisis pada perkhidmatan di FPTV UTHM. Di bahagian terakhir kajian bab lima iaitu penambahbaikan keatas kualiti perkhidmatan di FPTV UTHM dinyatakan dan juga cadangan yang boleh dilakukan oleh pengkaji lain dalam kajian yang akan datang

The role of organisational culture during the implementation of internal succession planning within Malaysian research universities

Succession planning is not new to academia and many institutions have supported these programs for years. Few, however, have adopted formal succession planning strategies that are both strategic and deliberate and encompass the full spectrum of succession planning activities. However, less is understood about the role of culture on succession planning within public universities in Malaysia. Nevertheless; there is an absence of a comprehensive conceptual model of the culture-succession relationship in the literature that includes the impact of moderators such as national culture. A mixed mode design was adopted by the study where qualitative data was first collected, analyzed and then used to develop a survey instrument for the quantitative phase of the study. The study surveyed 375 academic staff of the five research universities in Malaysia, and the results were analyzed using the IBM SPSS for Windows and PLS-SEM. A structural model was built to identify the relationship between the organisational culture and succession planning and the moderating effect of the national culture in public research universities. The study's findings showed that succession planning is still new to public universities in Malaysia and training and development are still unstructured. Although there was a positive and significant relationship between organisational culture and succession planning, whereas, findings suggested national culture showed a moderating effect on the relationship of organisational culture and succession planning. The model can help to analyze organisational culture in order to change the Malaysian public universities’ strategy to implement succession planning

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

A theoretical model for the application of Web 2.0 in e-Government

Government organisations in many countries have started embracing modern technologies such as second generation web (Web 2.0) in an attempt to maximize on the benefits of these technologies as well as keeping up with the current trend. Nevertheless, the advancement and the adoption of these of technologies is in its initial stages in the public sector. Therefore, the research problem is that the literature surrounding the application of Web 2.0 is still highly tentative and exploratory. In particular, there is a lack of research exploring the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the context of local e-Government. This study aims to address this research problem by presenting a comprehensive decision-making tool to aid the effective application of Web 2.0 technologies amongst local government authorities (LGAs). In doing so, resulting in the development of a theoretical model that is underpinned by information systems evaluation criteria and impact factors of Web 2.0 from an internal organizational perspective. By addressing the research problem, this study will make a significant contribution to the normative literature by providing new insights of Web 2.0 technologies within the public sector. This will be of specific relevance to scholars, policy makers, LGAs and practitioners who are interested in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in an e-Government context. This paper presents the proposed theoretical model and is largely devoted to an explanation on the development of the model

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

Business-IT alignment from operational level: empirical evidence from the Bank of Qingdao, China

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) has long been a significant topic for scholars as well as enterprise managers especially in the Internet era. Although numerous studies have identified the factors influencing the aligning process and relationships between them and organization successes from strategic perspective, few consider the impact of these elements on employees’s performances from an operational level. To fill this gap, this thesis first discusses the state-of-art and the challenges of BITA in China’s city commercial banks (CCBs) and further develops a theoretical framework to empirically evaluate the BITA in China banking industry. Finally, some recommendations for improving the level of BITA in China’s CCBs are provided. Taking the Bank of Qingdao (BQD) as a sample, this thesis empirically examines BITA maturity model with the results that five factors including communication, IT competency/value measurement, IT governance, partnership, and IT skills are positively related to the BITA while IT scope and architecture are not significant. In addition, the moderating effect of service quality between BITA and employee’s working performance is also supported by the survey. This study also develops a new theoretical model namely, business-IT punctuated equilibrium alignment model (BIPEAM), based on life cycle theory and punctuated equilibrium theory to describe the alternately leading roles between business and IT strategies. This model may contribute towards the better understanding of the mechanism of business-IT strategic alignment process from a longitudinal perspective within an enterprise.O alinhamento entre o negócio e as Tecnologias de Informação (TI) ou alinhamento business-IT (BITA) tem sido desde há muito um tópico significativo para académicos bem como para gestores de empresas, especialmente na era da Internet. Embora numerosas investigações tenham identificado os fatores que influenciam o processo de alinhamento e as relações entre eles e os sucessos da organização do ponto de vista estratégico, poucas consideram o impacto destes elementos no desempenho dos empregados a partir de um nível operacional. Para preencher esta lacuna, esta tese começa por discutir o estado da arte e os desafios do BITA nos bancos comerciais das cidades da China (CCBs) e desenvolve um quadro teórico para avaliar empiricamente o BITA na indústria bancária Chinesa. Por último, são fornecidas algumas recomendações para melhorar o nível de BITA nos CCBs da China. Tomando o Banco de Qingdao (BQD) como amostra, esta tese examina empiricamente o modelo de maturidade do BITA com os resultados de que cinco fatores, incluindo comunicação, competência/avaliação de TI, governação de TI, parceria, e competências de TI estão positivamente relacionados com o BITA enquanto que o âmbito e a arquitetura de TI não são significativos. Além disso, o efeito moderador da qualidade do serviço entre a BITA e o desempenho de trabalho do empregado é também apoiado pelo inquérito realizado. Este estudo também desenvolve um novo modelo teórico, nomeadamente o modelo de alinhamento de equilíbrio pontuado de business-IT (BIPEAM) baseado na teoria do ciclo de vida e na teoria do equilíbrio pontuado para descrever os papéis alternadamente de liderança entre as estratégias empresariais e de TI. Este modelo pode contribuir para uma melhor compreensão do mecanismo do processo de alinhamento estratégico entre empresas e as TI, a partir de uma perspetiva longitudinal dentro de uma empresa

Value-driven partner search for <i>Energy from Waste</i> projects

Energy from Waste (EfW) projects require complex value chains to operate effectively. To identify business partners, plant operators need to network with organisations whose strategic objectives are aligned with their own. Supplier organisations need to work out where they fit in the value chain. Our aim is to support people in identifying potential business partners, based on their organisation’s interpretation of value. Value for an organisation should reflect its strategy and may be interpreted using key priorities and KPIs (key performance indicators). KPIs may comprise any or all of knowledge, operational, economic, social and convenience indicators. This paper presents an ontology for modelling and prioritising connections within the business environment, and in the process provides means for defining value and mapping these to corresponding KPIs. The ontology is used to guide the design of a visual representation of the environment to aid partner search

Application of Web 2.0 technologies in e-government: A United Kingdom case study

Electronic government (e-Government) has endured significant transformation over the last decade and currently, it is making further leaps by incorporating modern technologies such as second generation web (Web 2.0) technologies. However, since the development and use of this kind of technology is still at its early stages in the public sector, research about the use of Web 2.0 in this domain is still highly tentative and lacks theoretical underpinning. This paper reports the preliminary findings of an in-depth case study in the United Kingdom (UK) public sector, which explore the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the local government authority (LGA). The findings elicited from the case study offer an insight into information systems (IS) evaluation criterions and impact factors of Web 2.0 from both a practical setting and an internal organisational perspective. This paper concludes that a combined analysis of the evaluation and impact factors rather than a singular approach would better assist the decision making process that leads to effective application of Web 2.0 technologies. It also highlights the significant impact and perceived effect of adoption of such technologies