Organisational challenges of the semantic web in digital libraries: A Norwegian case study

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Emerald Group Publishing LimitedPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine from a socio-technical point of view the impact of semantic web technology on the strategic, organisational and technological levels. The semantic web initiative holds great promise for the future for digital libraries. There is, however, a considerable gap in semantic web research between the contributions in the technological field and research in the organisational field. Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive case study of the National Library of Norway (NL) is conducted, building on two major sources of information: the documentation of the digitising project of the NL; and interviews with nine different stakeholders at three levels of NL's organisation during June to August 2007. Top managers are interviewed on strategy, middle managers and librarians are interviewed regarding organisational issues and ICT professionals are interviewed on technology issues. Findings – The findings indicate that the highest impact will be at the organisational level. This is mainly because inter-organisational and cross-organisational structures have to be established to address the problems of ontology engineering, and a development framework for ontology engineering in digital libraries must be examined. Originality/value – ICT professionals and library practitioners should be more mindful of organisational issues when planning and executing semantic web projects in digital libraries. In particular, practitioners should be aware that the ontology engineering process and the semantic meta-data production will affect the entire organisation. For public digital libraries this probably will also call for a more open policy towards user groups to properly manage the process of ontology engineering

Does management matter ? evidence from India

A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this, the authors ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms, providing free consulting on modern management practices to a randomly chosen set of treatment plants and compared their performance to the control plants. They find that adopting these management practices had three main effects. First, it raised average productivity by 11 percent through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory. Second, it increased decentralization of decision making, as better information flow enabled owners to delegate more decisions to middle managers. Third, it increased the use of computers, necessitated by the data collection and analysis involved in modern management. Since these practices were profitable this raises the question of why firms had not adopted these before. Their results suggest that informational barriers were a primary factor in explaining this lack of adoption. Modern management is a technology that diffuses slowly between firms, with many Indian firms initially unaware of its existence or impact. Since competition was limited by constraints on firm entry and growth, badly managed firms were not rapidly driven from the market.Labor Policies,E-Business,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Labor Markets

Does Management Matter? Evidence from India

A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We provided free consulting on modern management practices to a randomly chosen set of treatment plants and compared their performance to the control plants. We find that adopting these management practices had three main effects. First, it raised average productivity by 11% through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory. Second, it increased decentralization of decision making, as better information flow enabled owners to delegate more decisions to middle managers. Third, it increased the use of computers, necessitated by the data collection and analysis involved in modern management. Since these practices were profitable this raises the question of why firms had not adopted these before. Our results suggest that informational barriers were a primary factor in explaining this lack of adoption. Modern management is a technology that diffuses slowly between firms, with many Indian firms initially unaware of its existence or impact. Since competition was limited by constraints on firm entry and growth, badly managed firms were not rapidly driven from the market.management, organization, IT, productivity and India

Evaluation of effects of deployment automation system on integrated automation system office and financial: A case study in Municipality of Qazvin and affiliated organizations

Today, the era of wonderful knowledge, technology and innovation is incredible. With the rapid public access to computers and information technology and advanced media in twenty First Century, economy has no proper electronic infrastructure to handle. One of the most important factors in deciding the top and middle managers is information. Having a detailed, accurate, timely, in all subjects, and institutional department will speed up decision-making and prevent the adoption of wrong decisions. Office and financial automation is one of the most important tools to achieve effective solutions to save time, respond quickly to customers and reduce the costs of the organization through appropriate decisions. The main objective of the present study is investigation of the establishment of a comprehensive system of office and financial on the quality of managers making decision in municipality of Qazvin and affiliated organizations. The study by descriptive - survey method was conducted and 60 managers and Officers based on Morgan table and Cohen by judgmental and selective sampling were selected as samples. The instrument used in this study included interviews with a number of specialists of organizations, and provided a standard questionnaire of Office automation which examines the seven factors of accuracy, precision, speed, timely, economic performance and compares them with other similar systems. Questionnaire validity was approved by using experts and scholars ideas and its reliability by Cronbach's alpha calculation. The collected data were analyzed using a one-sample t-test and were prioritized using the Friedman test. The results of the study indicated that in general, the establishment of Office and financial comprehensive automation systems has a positive impact on the quality of management decision making

Does Management Matter? Evidence From India

A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We provided free consulting on modern management practices to a randomly chosen set of treatment plants and compared their performance to the control plants. We find that adopting these management practices had three main effects. First, it raised average productivity by 11% through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory. Second, it increased decentralization of decision making, as better information flow enabled owners to delegate more decisions to middle managers. Third, it increased the use of computers, necessitated by the data collection and analysis involved in modern management. Since these practices were profitable this raises the question of why firms had not adopted these before. Our results suggest that informational barriers were a primary factor in explaining this lack of adoption. Modern management is a technology that diffuses slowly between firms, with many Indian firms initially unaware of its existence or impact. Since competition was limited by constraints on firm entry and growth, badly managed firms were not rapidly driven from the market.management, organization, IT, productivity and India

Evaluation of effects of deployment automation system on integrated automation system office and financial: A case study in Municipality of Qazvin and affiliated organizations

Today, the era of wonderful knowledge, technology and innovation is incredible. With the rapid public access to computers and information technology and advanced media in twenty First Century, economy has no proper electronic infrastructure to handle. One of the most important factors in deciding the top and middle managers is information. Having a detailed, accurate, timely, in all subjects, and institutional department will speed up decision-making and prevent the adoption of wrong decisions. Office and financial automation is one of the most important tools to achieve effective solutions to save time, respond quickly to customers and reduce the costs of the organization through appropriate decisions. The main objective of the present study is investigation of the establishment of a comprehensive system of office and financial on the quality of managers making decision in municipality of Qazvin and affiliated organizations. The study by descriptive - survey method was conducted and 60 managers and Officers based on Morgan table and Cohen by judgmental and selective sampling were selected as samples. The instrument used in this study included interviews with a number of specialists of organizations, and provided a standard questionnaire of Office automation which examines the seven factors of accuracy, precision, speed, timely, economic performance and compares them with other similar systems. Questionnaire validity was approved by using experts and scholars ideas and its reliability by Cronbach's alpha calculation. The collected data were analyzed using a one-sample t-test and were prioritized using the Friedman test. The results of the study indicated that in general, the establishment of Office and financial comprehensive automation systems has a positive impact on the quality of management decision making

The Relationship Between Perceived Leadership Behaviors and Job Satisfaction of Middle Managers : A Case Study at Motorola Technology (M) Sdn.Bhd

The problem investigated in this case study is whether perceived leadership behaviors of the superiors namely, consideration and initiating structure, will have an impact on the job satisfaction on the middle managers of Motorola Technology Sdn. Bhd., Penang. A total of 151 middle managers selected as the population of the study. Out if the 151 questionnaires distributed 123 were returned and were used. This study employed a quantitative methodology to examine the relationship between the independent variables (leadership behavior and personal information)and dependent variable (job satisfaction). The questionnaire of the study consisted of 68 items include 8 items on personal information, 40 items on leadership behavior and 20 items on job satisfaction. The finding showed that there was a significant difference between mean of general job satisfaction. The lover mean is 72.7841 while the upper is 74.8582. Meanwhile, significant relationship between leadership behavior and job satisfaction;; and between selected personal information (gender, age, marital status, highest educational level and salary grade) except for tenure with job satisfaction. The limitations of this study thus the findings may not apply in its entirety to other corporations even though the lessons learnt from Motorola might have some relevance to other organizations. The study was limited by the extent to which relevant data could be obtained by the researcher who was recognized as an outsider by the respondents. Perhaps for the future study, is a comparison of the relationship between job satisfaction and perceived leadership behavior of two or more categories of employees of the same company, a comparison of the relation between job satisfaction and perceived leadership behaviors of employees of two or more companies, and compare public and private sector organizations

Stress management in IT companies in India

For the past few decades there were literatures based on the stress management in IT companies. However, these studies examined about the stress of Information technology professionals working in IT companies and about the stress management programs followed in those IT organizations, very less number of research have been taken place in India when compared to the developed countries like United States and United Kingdom. The main focus of this research is to explore the stress levels of IT professionals in India and its impact on their work and health. For this, the main focus was given to three different designations of Indian IT professionals - senior managers, middle level managers and developers. And this study also mentions the category facing high amount of stress and about the effective ways the organizations uses to handle their employees’ stress. For this study a qualitative research was conducted. Telephonic and email interviews were done for the same. A total of fourteen members were considered for the research, where three from senior managers, six from middle level and five from the developers. The research clearly explains that, the managers face high stress when compared to developers, especially in case of middle level and also it gives information related to various stress management programs followed by IT organizations in India

Why is it difficult to implement e-health initiatives? A qualitative study

<b>Background</b> The use of information and communication technologies in healthcare is seen as essential for high quality and cost-effective healthcare. However, implementation of e-health initiatives has often been problematic, with many failing to demonstrate predicted benefits. This study aimed to explore and understand the experiences of implementers - the senior managers and other staff charged with implementing e-health initiatives and their assessment of factors which promote or inhibit the successful implementation, embedding, and integration of e-health initiatives.<p></p> <b>Methods</b> We used a case study methodology, using semi-structured interviews with implementers for data collection. Case studies were selected to provide a range of healthcare contexts (primary, secondary, community care), e-health initiatives, and degrees of normalization. The initiatives studied were Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) in secondary care, a Community Nurse Information System (CNIS) in community care, and Choose and Book (C&B) across the primary-secondary care interface. Implementers were selected to provide a range of seniority, including chief executive officers, middle managers, and staff with 'on the ground' experience. Interview data were analyzed using a framework derived from Normalization Process Theory (NPT).<p></p> <b>Results</b> Twenty-three interviews were completed across the three case studies. There were wide differences in experiences of implementation and embedding across these case studies; these differences were well explained by collective action components of NPT. New technology was most likely to 'normalize' where implementers perceived that it had a positive impact on interactions between professionals and patients and between different professional groups, and fit well with the organisational goals and skill sets of existing staff. However, where implementers perceived problems in one or more of these areas, they also perceived a lower level of normalization.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> Implementers had rich understandings of barriers and facilitators to successful implementation of e-health initiatives, and their views should continue to be sought in future research. NPT can be used to explain observed variations in implementation processes, and may be useful in drawing planners' attention to potential problems with a view to addressing them during implementation planning

Impact of human resource management information systems on the quality of appraisal performance process

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.These days the recent development of information systems and their impact on human resource activities is one of the main hot debates in many large organizations. Many managers argue that adopting technology to incorporate the HR activities could help to improve the quality of management’s decision making process. Alternatively, there are big companies which are not adopting any specific type of technology in their HR activities. The purpose of this paper is to identify the impacts of HRIS on the quality of HR activities, particularly from the appraisal performance point of view. The concept of the impact of HRIS on HR activities was applied to the case of company X which is one of the leader chemical companies in UK. In that process, interviews were conducted and they were the main methods for collecting personnel feedback, opinions and experiences about their new HRIS. It could be seen that, although the result of the research showed improvement in the quality of the activities in HR department, the quality growth was not as much as expected. It was assumed that the reason behind this limited impact on some activities could be because the new system needs some more time to implement potential efficiency gains. It is too early to measure the impact of new system on part of HR activities such as employees’ satisfaction. Keywords: Human Resource Information Systems, Management Information Systems, Executive Information Systems, Strategic Information Systems, Information Systems, Human Resources