Business Critical: Understanding a Company’s Current and Desired Stages of Corporate Responsibility Maturity

It’s been a while since the Corporate Responsibility profession took stock of its collective wisdom on where we have been, and where we are going on running businesses responsibly. Meanwhile hardly a week goes by without a helpful suggestion from the outside world on how an organisation should improve its economic value, social usefulness and environmental efficiency; and it is very easy to spot businesses that get their social, environmental and economic decisions out of balance: these organisations hit the headlines seemingly within nanoseconds. On the upside, businesses are increasingly taking an approach that builds an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) premium into the core economic valuation. This is achieved by those organisations which bring in a diverse set of views to inform risk and reputation management activities, and to build a research and development pipeline for the future. This is managing both the negative and the positive social, environmental and economic impacts

Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges.

The potential shown by Lean in different domains has aroused interest in the software industry. However, it remains unclear how Lean can be effectively applied in a domain such as software development that is fundamentally different from manufacturing. This study explores how Lean principles are implemented in software development companies and the challenges that arise when applying Lean Software Development. For that, a case study was conducted at Ericsson R&D Finland, which successfully adopted Scrum in 2009 and subsequently started a comprehensible transition to Lean in 2010. Focus groups were conducted with company representatives to help devise a questionnaire supporting the creation of a Lean mindset in the company (Team Amplifier). Afterwards, the questionnaire was used in 16 teams based in Finland, Hungary and China to evaluate the status of the transformation. By using Lean thinking, Ericsson R&D Finland has made important improvements to the quality of its products, customer satisfaction and transparency within the organization. Moreover, build times have been reduced over ten times and the number of commits per day has increased roughly five times.The study makes two main contributions to research. First, the main factors that have enabled Ericsson R&D?s achievements are analysed. Elements such as ?network of product owners?, ?continuous integration?, ?work in progress limits? and ?communities of practice? have been identified as being of fundamental importance. Second, three categories of challenges in using Lean Software Development were identified: ?achieving flow?, ?transparency? and ?creating a learning culture

Management innovation made in China: Haier’s Rendanheyi

This article shows how emerging market companies like China’s Haier Group create management innovations that are appropriate for an environment characterized by increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Dealing with VUCA effectively requires practices favoring nimble and decentralized responses; the Haier Group developed a platform of management practices under the label Rendanheyi (in Chinese: 人单合一) to transform itself from a conventional hierarchical manufacturing firm into a highly responsive online-based entrepreneurial company with “zero distance to the customer”. We demonstrate how the organizational, competitive, institutional, and technological contexts mattered for the development of Rendanheyi. Our study contributes several insights for practitioners and academics. First, we showcase how context dependent management innovations are created to allow emerging market firms like Haier to deal with a high VUCA world. Second, we draw lessons from Haier’s experimentation process for other firms. Finally, we create an extended process model of management innovation that managers, in both emerging and developed countries, can readily apply

Transitioning to a Lean Enterprise: A Guide for Leaders, Volume I, Executive Overview

This Transition-To-Lean Guide is intended to help your enterprise leadership navigate your enterprise’s challenging journey into the promising world of “lean.” You have opened this guide because, in some fashion, you have come to realize that your enterprise must undertake a fundamental transformation in how it sees the world, what it values, and the principles that will become its guiding lights if it is to prosper — or even survive — in this new era of “clock-speed” competition. However you may have been introduced to “lean,” you have undertaken to benefit from its implementation

The Creative Entrepreneur Leading Innovation

The Creative Entrepreneur Leading Innovation is a course designed for undergraduate students. Students will learn the entrepreneurial mindset through the creative process triggering innovation and leading transformation to face and adapt in the current constant and fastest changing era. This course also has a skill development component through which students will be able to experience personal transformation towards positive change

Strategic innovation management at Netflix: a case study

Netflix is a company that implemented a disruptive innovation and shocked the business market with its way to create and deliver value to their customers, breaking away with the old way to watch a movie at home. The culture of freedom and responsibility engaged by a radical transparency is committed by the whole company where every kind of employee at all teams share ideas and know everything about the company’s strategy. This research consists of a description and analysis of the strategic approaches used by Netflix that explain its business success and demonstrates the technology and the business development made by one the most important players in the streaming service. It is entirely based on secondary data obtained through an exploratory literature review over the last ten years. The model by which Netflix manages its innovation process is based on agile frameworks who actively engage the developer’s team, team leaders, and top management and have the costumer at the center of the value stream. The internal culture of the firm, based on ample freedom and responsibility, and engaged by a radical transparency, is pursued by the whole company where every kind of employee, in all teams, share ideas and know everything about the company’s strategy. The article explores and emphasizes the main aspects of the company’s strategy to innovation which is based on the development of specific technological approaches based on purpose made algorithms that works to map the streaming user’s preferences. It is coupled with the implementation and constant dissemination of the agile mindset linked with frameworks, methods, and techniques such as Scrum, Kanban, and Agile at Scale, which together enable Netflix to sustain and promote its innovative business process. Netflix approach to innovation has become a model for many other companies over the globe to create an environment focused on customer centricity, elect quality as a statement, and align employees with strategy.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia UIDB/00319/202

Women and Leadership: An Integrative Focus on Equality

This article explores the importance of equality in leadership practice; describes an inclusive approach to effective leadership; and summarizes examples of contemporary and inclusive leadership models. It identifies the barriers and challenges that women face in advancing into top-level leadership positions and outlines a balanced approach to leadership that embraces equality and honors both feminine and masculine leadership principles

Applying scrum to interior design and construction

For decades, product development has been accomplished through defined processes, such as waterfall (Royce, 1970). Defined processes are those that have known inputs, repeatable processes, and expected outputs. The assumption that innovation in product development can be achieved through repeatable processes has resulted in most projects being completed over budget, over schedule, not meeting user needs, or some combination thereof (Sherman, 2015). Accommodating change and learning in a defined process is expensive. Construction and interior design projects have followed a similar defined framework of assessing requirements, planning, estimation, execution, and post-occupancy evaluations. This has resulted in projects delivered late, projects delivered over budget, waste and rework, unreliable teams, and unsatisfied clients (Lean Construction Institute, 2022). Solving complex problems require empirical processes to meet user needs. Empirical processes incorporate change and learning throughout the project lifecycle and are based on three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. This research will focus on the application of an empirical framework, namely Scrum (Schwaber, SCRUM Development Process, 1995), to construction and interior design projects. “Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.” (Schwaber & Sutherland, The 2020 Scrum Guide, 2020, p. 3) This study utilizes a case study and survey revealing that Scrum can be utilized to deliver more value to clients, increase transparency, reduce risk, and enhance employee engagement amongst project teams. Findings highlight changes that can be made in the interior design and construction industry to achieve these results.Thesis (M.S.