Total data quality management: a study of bridging rigor and relevance

Ensuring data quality is of crucial importance to organizations. The Total Data Quality Management (TDQM) theory provides a methodology to ensure data quality. Although well researched, the TDQM methodology is not easy to apply. In the case of Honeywell Emmen, we found that the application of the methodology requires considerable contextual redesign, flexibility in use, and the provision of practical tools. We identified team composition, toolsets, development of obvious actions, the design of phases, steps, and actions, and sessions as vital elements of making an academically rooted methodology applicable. Such an applicable methodology, we name “well articulated”, because it incorporates the existing academic theory and it is made operational. This enables the methodology to be systematically beta tested and made useful for different organizational conditions

The Impact of I.T. on the Degree of Outsourcing, the Number of Suppliers, and the Duration of Contracts

It has long been accepted within theinformation technology (IT) researchcommunity that IT should have a profoundimpact on industrial organization. However,there has been as yet on the changes to be expected in the design of firms or industries; rather, there is an apparently inconsistent collection of conjectures and analyses. We are now able to offer an integrative framework for describing the impacts of IT on an industrial organization. Our analyses generally support the "move to the middle" hypothesis that states that the impact of IT on the organization of economic activity is to lead to a greater degree of outsourcing where this increased outsourcing is done from fewer suppliers with whom the buyer has long-term relationships.

Information Technology and Information Goods as Predictors of Organizational Expansion Activity

This research presents a model that separates the effects of the use of information technology (IT) in the production and distribution of goods from the degree of information in the product on changes in vertical and horizontal firm boundaries. The research tests and confirms the hypothesis that firms that produce higher levels of information goods tend to have different vertical and horizontal organizational boundaries when compared to non-information goods firms. Information goods producing firms may be subject to unusual economies of scale, scope, network externalities, and increasing returns effects. These effects are drivers for horizontal firm boundary expansion. Further, the research partially tests the electronic markets hypothesis, which argues that information technology influences the dismantling of extensive vertical firm boundaries by lowering firm transactions costs, finding some supportive results. The research also tests for the hypothesized effect of information technology use in enabling expanding horizontal firm boundaries. Chi square and MANOV A analyses, using two years of merger, acquisition and alliance event data on a sample of 317 very large firms were conducted, while controlling for firm revenues. The results suggest that information goods producing firms have structures that are driven by the unique economics of manufacturing and marketing information products, as well as the transactional and agency effects of information technology used in production

The Determinants of Network Default and Consolidation

Many industries whose products and services are based on information technology are being swept by asset buyouts, mergers and consolidations, a trend that promises to bring increased competition and cooperation, and lower prices for consumers. We have seen this happen in the world of packaged software products, including database management products, CASE tools, LAN software and software suites. The recent news of the merger of IBM and Lotus, and Microsoft\u27s attempted purchase of Intuit are cases in point. In a similar vein, the cellular communications industryalready has experienced a number of consolidations, with the result that the big players have gotten dramatically bigger. The market for services delivered by retail electronic payment networks also has experienced a deal of change in the last decade. Electronic banking networks have been merging with and acquiring one another in their fight for market share. The result is that the average network has increased in size, and although automated teller machine (ATM) usage has expanded even more dramatically,today fewer and fewer electronic banking networks exist (O\u27Keefe, 1994). Each of these industry scenarios shares an important feature: installed base appears to give rise to network externalities that create value for users who adopt common solutions and buy into shared technological standards. This, in turn, creates value for the acquirers or for the owners of the merged network. Why do some network technologies consolidate with competing technologies or networks to remain competitive, while others evolve to become dominant? How can these outcomes be explained? Although much has been written on the adoption of technologies and networks in the presence of beneficial externalities by economists (e.g., Farrell and Saloner, 1985; Katz and Shapiro, 1985; Oren and Smith, 1981) and IS researchers (e.g., Bakos, 1991; Chismar and Meier, 1992; Clemons and Kleindorfer, 1992; Gurbaxani and Whang, 1991; Seidmann and Wang, 1994), little is known about why network mergers occur under these circumstances. This research examines the determinants ofnetwork default(when a network goes out of business by its own choice) and network consolidationin electronic banking networks, and suggests a general evaluative framework that applies more broadly, to a spectrum of informationtechnologies and competitive interorganization information systems that offer network externalities

Prisoner\u27s Dilemma and the Tower of Babel

The modern business paradigm, like the Tower of Babel, is being transformed by information technology-enabled communication capability, from one of competition to one of cooperation. This is illustrated by Miller, Roth and Kim\u27s (1992) report, in which they compare and contrast the Boston University Manufacturing Futures Survey\u27s results from its inception in 1981 with those throughout the1980\u27s and the most recent in 1990. The survey was administered to approximately 200 American manufacturing executives, who in it ranked the importance of strategic manufacturing capabilities and the initiatives their firms are undertaking. The authors\u27 results thus give a cross-sectional view of manufacturing priorities and initiatives, their evolution through the 1980\u27s, and the respondents\u27 projections of such into the 1990\u27s. The authors report a shift in manufacturing response patterns from restructuring (i.e., downsizing, plant closure, plant relocation, workforce reductions, product standardization) and process improvement and product improvement in the 1980\u27s, to the response pattern characterized by the authors as integrative . This integrative pattern includes initiatives such as : 1) constructing measures that are congruent with business strategy, 2) using interfunctional teams to span functional barriers, 3) sharing goals through the entire hierarchy, 4) training supervisors and workers, and 5) enhancing organizational learning through knowledge transfer. I contend that this paradigm shift is partly due to the ubiquitous integration of information technology (IT) into all facets of the business environment. The Tower of Babel is an apt metaphor for the modern IT-enabled business paradigm shift, in that communication capability enabled cooperation in the Tower\u27s construction. The Tower\u27s destruction was due to lack of communication. Likewise, business effectiveness and efficiency are enabled through cooperation, which depends on communication capabil

The Causal Relationship between ICT and FDI

foreign direct investment, information and communication technology, stationarity, cointegration, causality, LSDV, 2SLS

Learning Capacity as an Industry Capability

Industrial learning (i.e., interorganizational creation, diffusion and management of information assets) is portrayed as an industry capability which is differentially accessed by firms depending on their absorption capacity and relative bargaining power, both of which are determined by their complementary resources. IT enhances industrial learning by improving communication capabilities and optimizing incentive systems. IT also enables individual firms\u27 appropriation and exploitation of industrial learning to the extent that it leverages complementary firm resource