Data As Infrastructure

The National Infrastructure Commission appointed Dr Peter Kawalek (Director of the Centre for Information Management at Loughborough University) and Ali Bayat (Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester) to explore the case for considering data as Infrastructure. This was one of four pieces of external research commissioned to support the Commission’s study, Data for the Public Good

Cultural foundations of corporate control: an empirical enquiry [Abstract]

Cultural foundations of corporate control: an empirical enquir

A normative model for assessing SME IT

Information technology (IT) is a key enabler of modern small businesses, yet fostering reliably effective IT systems remains a significant challenge. This paper presents a light weight IT effectiveness model for small businesses to assess their IT and formulate strategies for improvement. Employing an action research approach we investigate a mixed method analysis of 120 survey responses from small family businesses and user participation in 10 semi-structured interviews. We then conduct critical reflection to identify refinements which are validated using 72 survey responses from university students. The results present compelling evidence that employees’ normative patterns (norms) are a significant driver of IT effectiveness in a second order PLS predictive model able to explain 26% of observed variance. A norms-based approach to IT effectiveness helps fill a significant research and managerial gap for organizations unable or unwilling to adopt IT best practice frameworks used by large organizations. Our findings imply that comparing norms to IT best practices may offer a less technical approach to assessing IT operations, which may be well suited to small businesses. Although further investigation cycles are needed to systematically test this model, we encourage small business managers to: 1) anticipate IT risks and mitigate them; 2) identify measures of IT performance, and monitor them, and 3) review/synchronize business and IT goals

Integrated platforms for circular economy in the construction industry

Construction is one of the most significant industries that are responsible for the huge extraction of raw materials as well as large contribution to global greenhouse gas emission. Thanks to the digitalisation and the development of innovative technologies, the operation of construction projects has been transformed with advanced applications. However, it the adoption of platforms in the industry as well as the solution for secondary materials replacement remains as new and under-development areas. This paper generates a comparison across four case studies of recent platforms that support for circularity of reused, repurposed, and recycled materials in the construction industry. Most of the platforms are at the infancy stage of development, but it shows the potential for future expansion and more efficiency with multiple actors’ participation.</p

Digitization and urban governance: The city as a reflection of its data infrastructure

This article introduces the ‘House Model’, an integrated framework consisting of four data governance modes, based on the urban and smart city vision, context, and big data technologies. The model stems from engaged scholarship, synthesizing and extending the academic debates and evidence from existing smart city initiatives. It provides a means for comparing cities in terms of their digitization efforts, helps the planning of more effective urban data infrastructures and guides future empirical research in this area. The article contributes to the literature examining the issue of big data and its governance in local government and smart cities. Points for practitioners: Data is a vital part of smart city initiatives. Where the data comes from, who owns it and how it is used are all important questions. Data governance is therefore important and has consequences for the overall governance of the city. The House Model presented in this article provides a means for organizing data governance. It relates questions of data governance to the history and vision of smart city initiatives, and provides a typology organizing these initiatives

Sustainability and consumer behaviour: Toward a cohered emergent theory

Existing research suggests that sustainable strategies of many corporate organizations are internally focused and aim to boost companies’ brand images, improve their competitive positions and to increase wealth for their shareholders. Such sustainable initiatives lack a genuine commitment to long-term green production, ecological integrity, human welfare and green buying behaviour. Yet, not many consumers have developed the mindset to buy green products even when companies strive hard to preserve sustainable standards through externally-focused initiatives to promote fair trade, ecological protection and social justice. While consumers’ demand for products can be analyzed and predicted through economic models, their green consumption behaviour is not always predictable and goes far beyond simple rational analysis. Some consumers even take sustainability matters less seriously due to complex and sometimes divisive sustainability discussions by world leaders

Investigating the determinants of inter-organizational information sharing within criminal justice: A context-mechanism-outcome approach

Focusing on inter-organizational information sharing in criminal justice, it is found that, while poor project management leads to unsuccessful inter-organizational information sharing, a recipe for success is more demanding as it requires both compatible technologies and good project management implemented either by means of a top-down approach of strategic alignment or an emergent approach of bottom-up alignment. Though unplanned, the latter approach may lead to mistakes that are more correctable than the large mistakes stemming from top-down, deliberate planning. The study is an analysis of context-mechanism-outcome configurations of inter-organizational information sharing activities within criminal justice systems and demonstrates the causal asymmetry between positive and negative cases. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed by highlighting the causal role of different types of governance structure in a crisp-set configurational fashion

Evaluating if trust and personal information privacy concerns are barriers to using health insurance that explicitly utilizes AI

Trust and privacy have emerged as significant concerns in online transactions. Sharing information on health is especially sensitive but it is necessary for purchasing and utilizing health insurance. Evidence shows that consumers are increasingly comfortable with technology in place of humans, but the expanding use of AI potentially changes this. This research explores whether trust and privacy concern are barriers to the adoption of AI in health insurance. Two scenarios are compared: The first scenario has limited AI that is not in the interface and its presence is not explicitly revealed to the consumer. In the second scenario there is an AI interface and AI evaluation, and this is explicitly revealed to the consumer. The two scenarios were modeled and compared using SEM PLS-MGA. The findings show that trust is significantly lower in the second scenario where AI is visible. Privacy concerns are higher with AI but the difference is not statistically significant within the model

Human resource management, complementarity and organisational performance

A feature of public sector organisations is the presence of substantial variations in productivity. What drives organisational productivity and its persistence? Using a rich panelon NHS hospitals in England, we trace the variation in productivity back to differences in clusters of complementary management practices. We introduce the indeterminacy effect of management practices, provide systematic evidence on the non-linearity effect and the complementarity effect of the practices, and identify several practically significant clusters of management practices involving incentives, workplace flexibility, job training, team quality and job design. The complementary character of management practices explains why low performing organisations remain low performing over time </div

Compatibility effects in the prescriptive application of psychological heuristics: Inhibition, Integration and Selection

Recent studies have proposed the use of “fast and frugal” strategies as viable alternatives to support decision-processes in cases where time or other operational constraints preclude the application of standard decision-analytic methods. While a growing body of evidence shows that such procedures can be highly accurate, limited research has evaluated how well decision-makers can execute the prescriptive recommendations of aids based on such strategies in practice. Drawing on the behavioural, neuropsychological and decision-analytic literatures, we propose that an alignment between individual, model and task features will influence the effectiveness with which decision-makers can execute strategies that draw on prescriptive psychological heuristics – “fast and frugal” or otherwise. Our findings suggest that strategy execution is highly sensitive to task characteristics however, the effects of the number of alternatives and attributes on individuals’ ability to deploy a given strategy, differ in magnitude and direction depending on which decision-strategy is prescribed. A more compensatory decision-style positively affected overall task performance. Subjects’ ability to regulate inhibitory control was found to positively affect non-compensatory strategy execution, while having no discernible bearing on comparable compensatory tasks. Our findings reinforce that rather than an aspect of the prescriptive model, synergies between individual, model and task features are more instrumental in driving task performance in aided MCDM contexts. We discuss these findings in light of calls from OR scholars for the development of decision-aids that draw on prescriptive “fast and frugal” principles