An analysis of the perceived effects of European Economic Monetary Union upon the hotel industry in the north of Portugal.

As a catalyst for a closer economic integration through a single currency, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) held out the promise of welfare gains for the participating countries and their respective industries. Among the potential benefits of monetary union, EMU was expected to enhance business competition through a stability-oriented macroeconomic policy framework, including greater transparency, reduced exchange rate uncertainty, greater credibility to the policy regime and lower transactions costs, among others. Whether the hotel stakeholders perceived, or did not perceive, significant changes brought about by EMU for Portugal, and the hotel business environment in the north of Portugal in particular, was the central aim of this study. To meet this aim the following was done: First, based on a literature review focussing on the economics of integration, business management and competitiveness theories the underpinning framework of the primary research were identified and developed. In particular, this research focused on the perceptions of the hotel stakeholders towards the implications of EMU using and adapting three of Porter's models: the Diamond, Five Forces, and Value Chain models. By combining Porter's models together in an all-encompassing framework, it was possible to confirm that there are advantages in merging more than one business environment level into an integrated study procedure. Second, three sets of surveys were conducted based on the underlying analytical frameworks and knowledge of EMU and tourism/hotel industry. one survey for each of the three target groups. Together, these three surveys provided a multi-stakeholder perspective - the national, the industry and the businesses perspective - using people involved directly at each level of the business environment (the Portuguese national authorities, the hotel industry associations and the hotel businesses in the North of Portugal). Finally, the data analysis was structured into two parts based on the type of questionnaire used: structured and semi-structured. The semi-structured questionnaires were analysed using two types of content analysis, summation and explanation, using QSR NUD*IST 6 software programme. The structured questionnaires were analysed using basic descriptive methods, such as frequencies and cross tabulations. The quantitative data was analysed using the Statistical Packagefo r SocialS cience(sS PSS). One of the main conclusions the study reached through the conceptual framework used was that, EMU not only changed the business environment at a national level, but also changed the competitive and operational environment of the hotels. However, the effects expected in literature were greater than the effects observed by the hotel stakeholders and, in particular, by the business respondents

Diving in the dynamics of alignment processes in public organizations lessons for a reconceptualized alignment framework

In the literature about IT- and organizational change, the concept of alignment has received great attention. The basic idea behind the concept is that an organization should find a fit between its IT strategy and its business strategic orientation (Meijer & Thaens, 2010). In this paper, Business-IT alignment is viewed in terms of the strategic alignment model (SAM) of Henderson & Venkatraman (1993). This widespread framework of alignment describes Business-IT alignment along two dimensions. The dimension of strategic fit differentiates between external focus, directed towards the business environment, and internal focus, directed towards administrative structures. The other dimension of functional integration separates business and IT. (Silvius et al., 2009; Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993) (see scheme) We connect the SAM to the analysis of long term reforms in public organizations, with the focus on the Flemish cities’ service delivery architectures. All major Flemish cities have expressed the ambition to replace their existing supply-orientated service delivery architecture by a more customer-oriented service delivery architecture. These ambitions lead to changes of the business component of the organization, i.e. organization structure (for example: more integrated front desks, multichannel service delivery) and the business processes (cross-departmental) on the one hand; and IT-related changes on the other hand, i.e. the implementation of new organization wide IT-systems, supporting communications between different front- and back office units, and the different service delivery channels. Despite undoubted progress in the research field of IT alignment, the review article of Chan & Reich (2007) shows that many questions remain unanswered and research gaps still exist in the alignment literature. Chan & Reich (2007: 298) for example state that the alignment research is mechanistic and fails to capture real life, and alignment is not possible if the business strategy is unknown or in process. Another critique is that the alignment theory neglects important insights from theories on organizational change, for example: neo-institutional theory. These critiques are important, especially because we deal with public sector organizations. For these public organizations, concepts like ‘the management’, ‘the CEO’, ‘the CIO’, business strategy, etc. are more ambiguous than in private organizations because (1) of the presence of both political and administrative managers; (2) the interactions within and between the two groups, (3) the wide variety of services delivered by the Flemish cities; touching different types of strategy at the same time; and (4) the institutional environment in which those city administrations (have to) work. It leads to the question whether the alignment concept can be applied to public sector organizations and to the (reversed) question: how we should adapt the concept to grasp the complexity of those types of public organizations. In order to answer the research question, we work in two steps. Firstly, we scan the literature and summarize the theoretical roots of the business-IT alignment research and the critiques that have been formulated in relation to the alignment concept. This leads to the argument that the alignment literature is not in tune with the theoretical progress made in the field of organizational and IT change. The alignment literature lacks the incorporation of a political perspective on organizations and the influence of the institutional context surrounding organizations (see infra). Secondly, we make use of the results of a case study research in one Flemish city. The objective of the case study was to retrospectively and inductively reconstruct the development of the city’s service delivery architecture and the processes and interactions between the actors involved, determining the features of the city’s service delivery architecture. By means of the case study results, we analyze the dynamics of organizational and IT change within the Flemish city, and illustrate the discrepancies between the alignment theory and the observed IT and organizational changes

Strategi Pengembangan Bisnis Melalui Analisis SWOT Pada UKM Brownies Cinta Karanganyar

Brownies Cinta is a culinary business with products in the form of steamed brownies which have a variety of flavors. As a highly developed business category Brownies Cinta is expected to always innovate to develop its business in order to be able to compete with producers of brownies and other types of bread. Therefore it is necessary to have business development with a good and healthy strategy planning for the present and future, therefore SWOT analysis is needed to avoid a decline in product value. This study aims to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by Brownies Cinta SMEs and find out the right business development strategies to be used by Brownies Cinta in running its business. This qualitative research uses descriptive analytical ethnographic design. Performed at the Brownies Cinta Karanganyar outlet. The resource persons of the study are the owners of Brownies Cinta SMEs, two employees of Brownies Cinta, and two consumers of Brownies Cinta. Data collection is done through interviews, observations, and documentation. Data validity uses triangulation of sources and confirmations, comparing information obtained through other information from other informants. Data analysis techniques using interactive analysis. The results of this study indicate that through SWOT analysis the strengths of Brownies Cinta are quality products, halal-certified, a variety of flavors, strategic outlet locations, and basic religious companies, the weaknesses are lack of leadership, less use of technology, less attractive packaging, and promotion channels to agencies not yet maximized. The opportunities they have are increasing market demand, opening up jobs, and lots of media for promotion. Threats faced are rising raw material prices, declining sales, and many competitors. Brownies Cinta also has several alternative strategies resulting from SWOT matrices such as SO, WO, ST, and WT strategies. Business development strategies undertaken or carried out by Brownies Cinta include Integration strategy, Intensive strategy, diversification strategy, and divensive strategy. Keywords: strategy, business development, SWOT analysis

Web Services Support for Dynamic Business Process Outsourcing

Outsourcing of business processes is crucial for organizations to be effective, efficient and flexible. To meet fast-changing market conditions, dynamic outsourcing is required, in which business relationships are established and enacted on-the-fly in an adaptive, fine-grained way unrestricted by geographic distance. This requires automated means for both the establishment of outsourcing relationships and for the enactment of services performed in these relationships over electronic channels. Due to wide industry support and the underlying model of loose coupling of services, Web services increasingly become the mechanism of choice to connect organizations across organizational boundaries. This paper analyzes to which extent Web services support the dynamic process outsourcing paradigm. We discuss contract -based dynamic business process outsourcing to define requirements and then introduce the Web services framework. Based on this, we investigate the match between the two. We observe that the Web services framework requires further support for cross - organizational business processes and mechanisms for contracting, QoS management and process-based transaction support and suggest ways to fill those gaps

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Business Level Service-Oriented Enterprise Application Integration

In this paper we propose a new approach for service-oriented enterprise application integration (EAI). Unlike current EAI solutions, which mainly focus on technological aspects, our approach allows business domain experts to get more involved in the integration process. First, we provide a technique for modeling application services at a sufficiently high level of abstraction for business experts to work with. Next, these business experts can model the orchestration as well as the information mappings that are required to achieve their integration goals. Our mediation framework then takes over and realizes the integration solution by transforming these models to existing service orchestration technology

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Service architecture design for E-Businesses: A pattern-based approach

E-business involves the implementation of business processes over the Web. At a technical level, this imposes an application integration problem. In a wider sense, the integration of software and business levels across organisations becomes a significant challenge. Service architectures are an increasingly adopted architectural approach for solving Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI). The adoption of this new architectural paradigm requires adaptation or creation of novel methodologies and techniques to solve the integration problem. In this paper we present the pattern-based techniques supporting a methodological framework to design service architectures for EAI. The techniques are used for services identification, for transformation from business models to service architectures and for architecture modifications