Managing Flexibility in Outsourcing

In recent years, outsourcing has gained considerable management attention. However, the benefits of outsourcing are not without concessions. One major risk is losing the flexibility to change the extent, nature, or scope of the outsourced business services, and such flexibility is strategically imperative in today\u27s dynamic business environment. This paper seeks to clarify the multi-dimensional notion of flexibility in outsourcing by examining robustness, modifiability, new capability, and ease of exit. Adapting from Evans (1991), we also develop a framework to classify existing practices in managing outsourcing flexibility. We go beyond contractual provision to surface a portfolio of pre-emptive, protective, exploitive, and corrective maneuvers. These strategic maneuvers map well to traditional notions in coordination theory, both in advanced structuring through loose coupling and dependency diversification, and in dynamic adjustment through proactive sensing and reactive adapting. We put forward a set of propositions hypothesizing the relationships between the various strategic maneuvers and the different dimensions of outsourcing flexibility, and discuss the moderating impact of such maneuvers on outsourcing success. We hope the greater conceptual clarity will not only contribute to the effectiveness of outsourcing management but also spawn a new research agenda on outsourcing flexibility

Severity Assessment of ERP-Organization Misalignment: Honing in on Ontological Structure and Context Specificity

It has been estimated that at least half of all ERP (enterprise resource planning packages) implementations fail to meet expectations or achieve estimated benefits. In many cases, the misalignments between ERP features and organizational requirements have resulted in costly workarounds. In extreme cases, such misalignments have even contributed to project abandonment and organizational failure. One question that arises is why such severe misalignments have not been surfaced and recognized by organizations. Specifically, this paper proposes a framework that seeks to assess the severity of misalignment by critically examining the seductive universal best practices embedded in ERP. The framework is grounded theoretically on key ontological and context specificity concepts. We illustrate the framework by applying it to several hundred instances of misfits that we collected from multiple ERP implementations. We use the results of the analysis to shed light on the functionality ìblack boxî of ERP misalignment

Challenges in Delivering Cross-Agency Integrated e-Services: The OBLS Project

This case study describes how the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Infocomm Development Authority, as lead agencies, jointly initiated and managed the implementation of a one-stop business licensing portal called OBLS (Online Business Licensing Service, https://licenses.business.gov.sg/) in the Singapore public sector. While the mandate from the top for this strategic cross-agency project was strong, there were many hurdles in the form of people, process and technology that had to be overcome. The case study highlights these issues and challenges, and illustrates how they were successfully overcome for delivering cross-agency integrated e-Service for new business license application

Challenges in Delivering Cross-Agency Integrated E-Services: The OBLS Project

This case study describes how the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Infocomm Development Authority, as lead agencies, jointly initiated and managed the implementation of a one-stop business licensing portal called OBLS (Online Business Licensing Service – https://licenses.business.gov.sg/ ) in the Singapore public sector. While mandate from the top for this strategic cross-agency project was strong, there were many hurdles in the form of people, process and technology that had to be overcome. The case study highlights these issues and challenges, and illustrates how they were successfully overcome for delivering cross-agency integrated e-Service for new business license application

A case study of Brillo Box by Andy Warhol as a work of art

This research as a case study is to identify the work of Andy Warhol which is Brillo Box as an everyday object. "Brillo Box" is the ordinary, common and everyday boxes that can be found in grocery and hardware stores. It was not a single Brillo Soap Pad Box mounted on a pedestal. Besides, Brillo Box as an work of art are made possible by theories of art. Therefore, there is the question of this study that why Brillo Box as an everyday object can seen as the work of art. This is a qualitative study that uses face to face interview, participant observation and case studies to identify the Brillo Box as an everyday object and analyze the theory of art that can support Brillo Box as one of the artwork. In addition, the findings of this study also revealed the theory of art based on Brillo Box ensures the transfiguration of everyday things into works of art

IT CAPABILITIES IN GLOBAL ENTERPRISES

Organizations are globalizing rapidly for growth. However, with globalization they constantly struggle with the often competing objectives of global scale and responsiveness to local conditions and global trends. Prior research suggests that IT capabilities are critical to achieving organizational goals; however there has been relatively little research that explicitly examines IT capabilities in the MNC context. This paper examines in-depth the IT capabilities in a global organization. Drawing on recent research that suggests a goal-oriented approach to IT capabilities, we identify MNC capabilities of Global Scale, Global-Local Responsiveness and Global Coordination. The paper also notes the distinction between resources and processes in the conceptualization of capabilities, and provides empirical support for the resources and associated processes that comprise each of the global IT capabilities

IT Governance in Global Enterprises: Managing in Asia

As businesses reconfigure their value chains and scale up their global expansions, they have to cope with a myriad of complex IT management challenges. This research examines how enterprises realign their global IT strategies for scale, speed, and innovation. Anchored in the IT governance literature, we seek to unravel the required governance structures and processes in balancing the inherent global-local tensions. Through field interviews with CIOs of global enterprises with established Asian presence, we derived a research framework for global IT management. Our findings suggest evolving global-regional-local structural elements in global IT organization supplemented by the institution of horizontal/linking mechanisms. Specifically, the key tension points appear to be in the flexible design of IT service delivery, the facilitation of IT innovation flow, and the nurturing of a global IT management mindset

Managing Risks in a Failing IT Project: A Social Constructionist View

Why do IT projects continue to stumble, despite the proliferation of risk management methodologies and a growing body of knowledge on project risk assessment and mitigation? In this paper, we propose an alternative theoretical perspective that views project risk as a social construction process shaped by the risk accounts of social groups and actors within an implementation context. Risk management is embedded in the social processes where risks are negotiated and contested, with some risk accounts amplified and some attenuated. Through the analysis of a large IT implementation in an Asian logistics firm and its trajectory of successive crises, we examine the process of the social construction of risk. Our findings highlight the inherent fragmentation and the challenge of building collectiveness in risk construction, and the need for risk managers to consider the influence of broader social structures and the reshaping dynamism of sudden focusing events in managing complex IT projects

The Institutional Legitimacy of Disruptive Start-ups in Sharing Economy

The sharing economy, with innovative business models (e.g. ride sharing, house sharing, and crowdsourcing), has threatened and disrupted the traditional industries. However, the process of such disruptions and negotiation of new institutional legitimacy is messy. Our study attempts to utilize institutional legitimacy literature to understand the dynamic process of new institutional legitimacy formation in a sharing economy disruption and generate a framework to explain the factors which influence the legitimacy process. We used deep- learning technique to identify the institutional legitimacy issues surrounding Uber, a leading tech start-up in sharing economy, from news articles published between 2009 and 2016. The preliminary results show that institutional legitimacy of sharing economy disruption varies by time and geographical regions