The development of absorptive capacity-based innovation in a construction SME

Traditionally, construction has been a transaction-oriented industry. However, it is changing from the design-bid-build process into a business based on innovation capability and performance management, in which contracts are awarded on the basis of factors such as knowledge, intellectual capital and skills. This change presents a challenge to construction-sector SMEs with scarce resources, which must find ways to innovate based on those attributes to ensure their future competitiveness. This paper explores how dynamic capability, using an absorptive capacity framework in response to these challenges, has been developed in a construction-based SME. The paper also contributes to the literature on absorptive capacity and innovation by showing how the construct can be operationalized within an organization. The company studied formed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership using action research over a two-year period with a local university. The aim was to increase its absorptive capacity and hence its ability to meet the changing market challenges. The findings show that absorptive capacity can be operationalized into a change management approach for improving capability-based competitiveness. Moreover, it is important for absorptive capacity constructs and language to be contextualized within a given organizational setting (as in the case of the construction-based SME in the present study)

Human resources performance management system applied to a SME

Mestrado em Gestão/MBAO Sistema de Gestão de Desempenho de Recursos Humanos é reconhecido, nos dias de hoje, como um fator determinante para a criação contínua de valor na empresa e alcance de todo o seu potencial. O seu principal propósito é combinar e alinhar os objetivos da organização com o desempenho e o desenvolvimento do funcionário por meio de um processo de feedback integrado, permitindo uma gestão mais eficiente dos recursos humanos. As pequenas empresas, devido à sua natureza, não entendem a necessidade de medir e gerir de uma forma estruturada o desempenho dos seus recursos humanos ou são incapazes de encontrar um sistema adequado e aplicável ao seu contexto. Essa realidade tem um impacto negativo no desempenho e na motivação de seus funcionários e nos resultados da organização. A falta de um sistema estruturado de gestão de desempenho de recursos humanos deve ser considerada um risco, que, em situações extremas, poderá comprometer a existência da organização. Devido à importância económica e social deste tipo de empresa e à sua operação num mercado altamente competitivo, qualquer medida no sentido de melhorar desempenho e resultados deve ser suportada e tida como uma oportunidade de diferenciação e alavancagem. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar vantagens, requisitos e importância da implementação de um sistema de gestão de desempenho de recursos humanos em pequenas e médias empresas e fornecer uma sugestão aplicável para implementação prática na Empresa X, uma pequena empresa de EPC contribuindo assim para um eventual aumento e melhoria do seu desempenho e resultados.The human resource performance management system is recognized as one of today’s significant factors towards the enterprise’s continuous creation of value and achievement of its full potential. Its main goal is to combine the organization’s objectives with the employee’s individual performance and development through an integrated feedback process and to allow a more efficient human resources’ management. Small enterprises, due to their nature and restrictions, either do not understand the need to structurally measure and manage their human resource performance or are unable to find a suitable management system applicable to their context. This reality has a negative impact on their employee’s performance and motivation, and ultimately in the organization’s results. Therefore, the lack of a structured human resource performance management system should be considered a business risk, which, in more extreme situations, is capable to jeopardize de organization’s existence. Due to the economic and social importance of these organizations and the highly competitive market in which they operate, any measure to raise performance and results must be nurtured and seized as an opportunity for positive differentiation and business leverage, therefore, the aim of this work is to present the advantages, requisites and importance of a human resource performance management system implementation in small enterprises and provide an applicable suggestion for a practical implementation through a case study approach in Company X, a small EPC company and, hopefully with that contribute, increase its performance and results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Challenge of Energy Management – Status-Quo and Perspectives for Reference Models

Energy management is one of the great challenges of the industry in the next years. Energy becomes more and more to a critical resource. Until now, enterprises need to implement energy management system with nearly no guidance. In the following paper we present the foundation of a reference model-based method that serves for setting up energy management systems in various industrial sectors. The goal is to support reduction emission and cost reduction as well as certification needs. In contrast to previous approaches, this approach enables a model-based certification and allows an automation of activities of the process of supervision of the consumption of energy and the appropriate reengineering of business processes

A Learning and Skills Strategy

"The Learning and Skills Strategy sets out a vision for a learning region and offers a framework for achieving that vision. It is entirely encompassed within the Regional Strategy (as the Investing in People section). The strategy is based on a formal Labour Market assessment and the extensive consultation exercise undertaken by the NWDA; it has been further informed by a standing group (the Skills and Learning Forum) representing key players in education and training and a group of employers and their representatives. Throughout the strategy the phrase ‘learning and skills’ embraces all elements of education and learning appropriate to social and economic fulfillment.

Towards Successful Software Process Improvement Initiatives: Experiences from the Battlefield

Over the past years Brazil has done significant investments in software process improvement. Among them, the long term MPS.BR program focuses on improving the software process quality of Brazilian companies. This paper describes the successful software process improvement (SPI) initiative that is being developed in Brazil, called the MPS.BR program, including its software process improvement reference model (MR-MPS-SW) and the most important results accomplished to date. Our results include the analysis of the iMPS family of surveys, and lessons learned that are valuable to the SPI community. The results and benefits presented can be useful to researchers, practitioners and decision makers in Government, University, and Industry interested in SPI and software industry competitiveness. Moreover, the benefits presented can motivate organizations to engage on MPS model SPI initiatives as a mean to improve the quality of their software

Sustained growth in small enterprises: a process management approach

This thesis illustrates that given the necessary resource and a structured Business Growth Framework, Small and Medium Enterprises can lay the foundation for sustained growth. The author investigated the essence of Small and Medium Enterprises, conducted a literature review in SME growth, and asserted the importance of the application of structure to business processes in achieving sustainable business growth. The author introduced the SME business process structure deficit, assessed its implications on business growth, and elaborated that the business process structure deficit can be addressed through the methodical application of six internationally accepted UK initiatives already available in the SME domain. The thesis establishes the characteristics of Business Growth for SMEs, leading to the development of a Business Growth Framework, based upon a defined set of business processes. This framework supports business growth. The framework provides diagnostic assessment of business process performance, process specific improvements embracing better practice through the innovative application of, for example DTI publications, and internal Benchmarking linking, if desired, to the UK Benchmarking Index. The resulting Business Growth Framework, along with the Business Growth Framework Implementation Methodology have evolved during this research and are the key tools for sustained business growth developed by the author and discussed in this thesis. The benefits of close integration of financial and manufacturing systems, like ERP, with Business Processes is discussed. The author demonstrated that Business Growth could successfully occur amongst Small and Medium Enterprises if approached through a structured methodology. Intentionally no new and complex business models have been proposed. The research showed that there is sufficient literature available in this area already

AHAA- Agile, Hybrid Assessment Method for Automotive, Safety Critical SMEs

The need for software is increasingly growing in the automotive industry. Software development projects are, however, often troubled by time and budget overruns, resulting in systems that do not fulfill customer requirements. Both research and industry lack strategies to combine reducing the long software development lifecycles (as required by time-to-market demands) with increasing the quality of the software developed. Software process improvement (SPI) provides the first step in the move towards software quality, and assessments are a vital part of this process. Unfortunately, software process assessments are often expensive and time consuming. Additionally, they often provide companies with a long list of issues without providing realistic suggestions. The goal of this paper is to describe a new low-overhead assessment method that has been designed specifically for small-to-medium-sized (SMEs) organisations wishing to be automotive software suppliers. This assessment method integrates the structured-ness of the plan-driven SPI models of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Automotive SPICETM with the flexibleness of agile practices

Applying the positioning phase of the digital transformation model in practice for SMEs: toward systematic development of digitalization

Digital transformation (DT) refers to the changes in ways of working and business offering caused by adoption of digital technologies in an organization. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are struggling with this transformation because of their limited resources and know-how. Thus, SMEs need practical grassroots-level help for DT that allows the companies to analyze where they stand in digitalization, and how they should proceed. This article discusses how SMEs can be supported in their DT by utilizing the DT model consisting of four consecutive phases for supporting companies’ systematic development of digitalization. The article focuses on the first phase of the DT model, positioning, where company’s digitalization status is analyzed in detail, and development ideas are identified. The positioning phase was conducted for 19 SMEs in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. The results indicate that the used process and tools were suitable to support SMEs for analyzing their digitalization status and identifying areas for improvement. The DT model and piloted tools have been published as a free-of-charge ApuaDigiin.fi online service to facilitate their widespread use in the future. In this way, public regional business development authors or research organizations can utilize the online service while supporting the digitalization of SMEs

Managing corporate sustainability and responsibility efficiently: A review of existing literature on business groups and networks

Given the global relevance of business groups (BG) and networks as efficient organizational forms for corporate sustainability and responsibility systems (CSR), and seeing that management control systems (MCS) play a pivotal role in transmitting authority to CSR and formalizing a sustainability organizational culture, this paper aims to review the available literature in order to investigate efficient adoptions of CSR by BGs or networks. Both organizational forms have positive effects on CSR development, on three levels: (a) setting industry standards (macro-external environment); (b) stimulating sustainability-oriented innovations (mezzo-member firms); (c) reputational gains, CSR expenses mitigation, and optimization of organizational capabilities (micro-individual SMEs). The studies on SMEs were useful in identifying current sustainability practices: both partial (social, environmental) and complete sustainability systems were susceptible to being integrated with management accounting, making them an almost implicit tool for proper CSR. Finally, by gathering the empirical literature on sustainability transitions of networks and groups, it was possible to trace a comprehensive introductory plan that operators could resort to for initial guidance. The six steps of this process are (1) project initiation, (2) preliminary actions, (3) change management decision, (4) firm-level activities, (5) auditing, (6) transition to territorial social responsibility (optional)