Управління міжнародним бізнесом: Agility Journey для високотехнологічних компаній

The purpose of the article is the development of recommendations for the business maturity determination and measurement in the implementation of the agile approach for high-tech companies. Methods of analysis of documents, observation, personal and in-depth interviews, case studies have been used in the research. The findings of the research: Business Agility Journey has been suggested for defining the state of the maturity of the company and conducting express diagnostics of agility. Agile Project Management Journey has been developed for the identification of weaknesses by the companies in the path to agility, as well as for the determination of events for the transition from the traditional to the agile approach. Personal Agility Checklist has been designed for testing the soft skills of employees for the presence of the agile mindset. Research limitations include the study of the maturity of companies in the IT industry. Practical implications are based on the use of suggested Agility Journeys in defining the state of maturity and main problems on the transition path. Also, Personal Agility Checklist will help to check the agility of the future employees. The originality of the article is based on the uniqueness of the Agility Journey that has been developed for the first time. Further research on this topic should be focused on the development of an agile mindset as a prerequisite for the provision of agility in the company.Метою статті є розробка рекомендацій щодо визначення та вимірювання зрілості бізнесу при впровадженні еджайл-підходу для високотехнологічних компаній. У дослідженні використовуються методи аналізу документів, спостереження, особистого та глибинного інтерв’ю та кейс-стаді. Розроблено Business Agility Journey для визначення стану зрілості компанії та проведення експрес-діагностики еджайльності. Agile Project Management Journey було розроблено для визначення компаніями своїх слабких сторін, а також заходів для переходу від традиційного до еджайльного підходу. Personal Agility Checklist був створений для перевірки «гнучких навичок» (soft skills) співробітників на наявність гнучкого мислення (agile mindset). Обмеження досліджень включають вивчення зрілості компаній ІТ-галузі. Практична значущість ґрунтується на використанні запропонованих Agility Journeys для визначення стану зрілості та основних проблем на шляху переходу. Також Personal Agility Checklist допоможе перевірити еджайльність майбутніх працівників. Оригінальність статті базується на унікальності Agility Journey, яка була розроблена вперше. Подальші дослідження на цю тему доцільно зосередити на розвитку гнучкого мислення як передумови забезпечення еджайльності в компанії

Exploring the concept of learning agility : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Human Resource Management at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Continuous learning and employee adaptation have become increasingly important within modern organisational environments categorised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In turn, this has resulted in a growing body of literature supporting a construct known as learning agility. This study sought to determine the underlying psychological variables that support individual learning agility. In doing so, cognitive ability, personality, and emotional intelligence assessments distributed by OPRA Psychology Group were administered to a random sample of Scenic Hotel Group employees to obtain quantifiable data. Alongside this, a validated learning agility questionnaire was administered to participants and their managers to obtain a measure of each employee’s learning agility. Participants’ learning agility scores were then correlated with their personality, cognitive ability, and emotional intelligence assessment results. Results of this study indicate that learning agility is significantly positively correlated with overall cognitive ability. Furthermore, learning agility shows a significantly positive relationship with personality factors associated with openness to experience, extraversion, and the neuroticism sub-trait, tense-driven. As an outcome, this has provided for a tentative model of learning agility comprising of: 1. Cognitive ability 2. Learning mindset and behaviour 3. Contribution to the social learning environment This research adds to the current body of literature available into a construct known as a key determinant of employee performance and potential (Eichinger & Lombardo, 2000; McCauley, 2001). Furthermore, it provides the foundations for the development of a derived measure of learning agility that can be determined using existing psychometric assessments

Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Primary Causes of Disability Among Canadian Seniors: An Analysis of the 1986 and 1991 Health and Activity Limitation Surveys

An aging Canadian population highlights the need to examine the prevalence and causes of disabilities in seniors in order to be able to meet their health care needs. This report represents a step in that direction by examining disabilities among Canadian seniors using the 1986 and 1991 Health and Activity Limitation Surveys (HALS), two nation-wide surveys assessing the prevalence and impact of disabilities in the Canadian population. From these two surveys, disabilities among noninstitutionalized seniors, 65 years of age and older, were examined. Findings revealed that over 40% of seniors had at least one disability that impacted on activities of daily living and that one-quarter of disabled seniors were severely disabled. Risk factors that were associated with having a disability included marital status, language spoken, total household income, tenure of dwelling, number of people living in the household, and region of the country. Mobility and agility disabilities were the most common types of disabilities among seniors, with approximately 80% of disabled seniors having at least one mobility or agility disability. Further, mobility and agility disabilities tended to coexist, with approximately 70% of all seniors who had a mobility disability also having an agility disability. Arthritis/rheumatism was the medical condition that most often caused mobility and agility disabilities, followed by cerebrovascular disease, other forms of heart disease, and fractures/bone breaks. Women were more likely than men to have mobility and agility disabilities, with other risk factors associated with having mobility and agility disabilities similar to those for having any disability. The findings of this report indicate that many Canadian seniors suffer from disabilities, particularly disabilities that affect their mobility and agility. Therefore, to have a substantial effect on reducing the impact of disabilities on Canadian seniors, efforts should be directed toward finding effective medical interventions that reduce or control the most common conditions which result in mobility and agility disabilities. Further, finding means to reduce the negative impact that mobility and agility type impairments have on everyday living would serve to help disabled seniors.disability; seniors; HALS

Investigating the Agility Bias in DNS Graph Mining

The concept of agile domain name system (DNS) refers to dynamic and rapidly changing mappings between domain names and their Internet protocol (IP) addresses. This empirical paper evaluates the bias from this kind of agility for DNS-based graph theoretical data mining applications. By building on two conventional metrics for observing malicious DNS agility, the agility bias is observed by comparing bipartite DNS graphs to different subgraphs from which vertices and edges are removed according to two criteria. According to an empirical experiment with two longitudinal DNS datasets, irrespective of the criterion, the agility bias is observed to be severe particularly regarding the effect of outlying domains hosted and delivered via content delivery networks and cloud computing services. With these observations, the paper contributes to the research domains of cyber security and DNS mining. In a larger context of applied graph mining, the paper further elaborates the practical concerns related to the learning of large and dynamic bipartite graphs.Comment: Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT 2017), pp. 253--260, Helsinki, IEE

Effects of Whole-Body Electromyostimulation on Physical Fitness in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Whole-body electromyostiulation (WB-EMS) has experienced a boom in recent years, even though its effectiveness is controversial. A sedentary lifestyle is deeply rooted in the European population, mainly in the elderly. This experimental study analyzed the impact of WB-EMS on the physical fitness of postmenopausal women. Thirty-four healthy sedentary women between 55 and 69 years followed an experimental design pre–post-test. Both groups conducted a ten-week aerobic and strength training program. The experimental group overlaid the WB-EMS during exercise. At the end of the intervention, both groups improved upper and lower body strength, lower extremity flexibility, agility, and speed levels (pBonferroni < 0.05). Significant interactions were observed at upper andlowerbodystrength,agility,speed,andcardiovascularendurance(p < 0.05). TheWB-EMSgroup scored better agility than the control group at the end of the intervention (pBonferroni < 0.05) and was the only group that improved cardiovascular endurance. WB-EMS shows a favorable isolate effect on the development of dynamic leg strength, agility, and cardiovascular endurance but did not in dynamic arm strength, gait speed, balance, or flexibility of postmenopausal women.This study was funded by the non-profit organization: Institut de Desenvolupament Social i Territorial. UniversitatdeLleida. Thenameofthisprojectis“Activeaging,qualityofliveandintergenerationalrelationships”. Grant INDEST2016

Exploring the supply chain agility attributes in fast moving consumer goods industry: A case study in the Middle East

During the 1990s, supply chain management and agility have both received great attention. This is due to the fact that the business market place is characterized by being highly dynamic and complex. This paper aims to explore the need and the attributes of supply chain agility in FMCG business industry working in the Middle East markets. A case study of a multinational company working in the Middle East was chosen, where it faces the challenges of its business environment and its rapid changes in its markets. The findings show the case study supply chain working within such type of industry needs to be agile and that the attributes required for achieving agility within FMCGs supply chain includes: responsiveness; Customer service; flexibility; innovation; speed; quality; efficiency; and responsible people thinking

Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard?

Enterprise agility requires capabilities to transform, sense and seize new business opportunities more quickly than competitors. However, acquiring those capabilities, such as continuous delivery and scaling agility to product programmes, portfolios and business models, is challenging in many organisations. This paper introduces definitions of enterprise agility involving business management and cultural lenses for analysing large-scale agile transformation. The case organisation, in the higher education domain, leverages collaborative discovery sprints and an experimental programme to enable a bottom-up approach to transformation. Meanwhile the prevalence of bureaucracy and organisational silos are often contradictory to agile principles and values. The case study results identify transformation challenges based on observations from a five-month research period. Initial findings indicate that increased focus on organisational culture and leveraging of both bottom-up innovation and supportive top-down leadership activities, could enhance the likelihood of a successful transformation

Learning more from crossing levels: Investigating agility at three levels of the organization

Scholars have tried to explain how organizations can build agile teams by only looking at one level of analysis. We argue in this short paper that lessons can be learned from organizational science results explaining variance on three different abstraction levels of organizations. We suggest agility needs to be explained from organizational (macro), the team (meso), and individual (micro) levels to provide useful and actionable guidelines to practitioners. We are currently designing such studies and hope that they will eventually result in validated measurements that can be used to prevent companies from investing in the wrong areas when trying to move towards more agility