The Role of Interdependencies in Blockchain Adoption: The Case of Maritime Trade

Despite its many potential economic and organisational benefits, enterprise blockchain (distributed ledger) technology has still not been widely adopted. From the viewpoint of the participants, the deployment of a blockchain that links collaborating enterprises requires value creation that will exceed investment, including investment in operational and strategic change. The theory behind and practice of cross-enterprise open innovation can inform blockchain adoption. Blockchain implementation requires and creates interdependencies across collaborators, both among enterprise consortium partners and with stakeholders in the broader ecosystem. Distinguished from arm’s-length forms of collaboration, interdependencies occur when organisations intentionally collaborate to become reliant upon one another. In this paper, we develop a framework of blockchain interdependencies and explore key factors that promote or inhibit interdependence. We propose a blockchain collaboration continuum with three levels: cooperation, interdependence, and mutualism. We then explore factors that influence the level of interdependence: two types of consortium-level interdependencies – socio-technical and economic, and two types of ecosystem-level interdependencies – standards and legal/regulatory. We illustrate these interdependencies and their payoffs through the example of supply chains in maritime trade. This work can be used as a starting point for diagnosing critical factors influencing adoption and for illuminating points of leverage that may sway hesitant organisations to participate in blockchain consortia

How Blockchain and AI Enable Personal Data Privacy and Support Cybersecurity

Recent increases in security breaches and digital surveillance highlight the need for improved privacy and security, particularly over users’ personal data. Advances in cybersecurity and new legislation promise to improve data protection. Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies provide novel opportunities for protecting user data through decentralized identity and other privacy mechanisms. These systems can allow users greater sovereignty through tools that enable them to own and control their own data. Artificial intelligence provides further possibilities for enhancing system and user security, enriching data sets, and supporting improved analytical models

CSR and the Companies Act, 2013: Be Bold, Take Action

Through the Companies Act, 2013, the Indian government recently made Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities mandatory for companies that, in any of the three preceding financial years, had: (i) net profits of USD 769,000 or more; or (ii) net worth of USD 76.92 million or more; or (iii) turnover of USD 153.84 million or more. These provisions were made effective from the financial year starting 1 April 2014. Dasra's report, Be Bold, Take Action: CSR and the Companies Act, 2013, introduces and explains the regulatory provisions, and guides corporate investors through basic social investment issues to help shape new CSR strategies. It also provides a roadmap to document and expand the impact of CSR spending

Analyzing Sustainability Impacts

Financial managers need basic models that incorporate the most significant variables, are robust enough to accommodate a wide variety of decisions, and provide results that are simple to communicate. We attempt to help fill this gap by providing a simple and familiar cost-benefit approach that\u27s enhanced and improved through the addition of sustainability outcomes. We developed the cost-benefit tool presented here specifically with the needs of financial managers in mind. It allows them to simultaneously consider the financial and social outcomes of potential decisions without the need for advanced knowledge of sustainability models or methods. The tool is built on a decision-making model that highlights operational and sustainability outcomes. The underlying model is an adaptation of a corporate sustainability model presented in an article by Marc J. Epstein titled Implementing Corporate Sustainability: Measuring and Managing Social and Environmental Impacts, Strategic Finance, January 2008. We developed the tool to highlight the financial impacts of sustainability outcomes and provide a straightforward approach for incorporating them into cost-benefit decisions. The tool can be used for quick, ad hoc decisions made by individual managers, or it can be used as part of a comprehensive analysis of a strategic initiative. Here we provide an example of how the model can be applied to a common, everyday decision many organizations face: whether to alter factor inputs and production processes to reduce negative environmental impacts of the products or services offered

Redefining Education in the Developing World

Brief article in which the authors argue that governments and organizations investing in developing-world education must move away from the assumption that improvements in test scores provide evidence of success. They believe, instead, that in a time of scarcity, it is more important to seek out interventions that lead to the greatest social and economic impact for the poor

Redefining Quality in Developing World Education

In the outskirts of Medellin, Colombia, impoverished rural schoolchildren have cause for hope. The Colombian Coffee Growers’ Association wants to hire them. Why? Because these children have developed the independent thinking, communication, and work skills that will make them an asset to the industry. They developed these skills in their multigrade primary schools, where children do most of their learning in competence-based groups, while the teacher functions as guide and coach. In Kenya, a teenage boy is also celebrating. A primary school dropout who once survived outside the law, he now runs his own small business, lives on his own, and even helps support his family financially. He learned the skills he needed in a 12-week entrepreneurship program offered to youth living on the streets in the heart of one of Africa’s largest slums. The life-changing economic opportunities now available to these children are the direct result of the unique quality of their schooling, which has had a direct and positive impact on their immediate circumstances. In other words, these children’s schooling was made relevant to their current life experiences and those they will later encounter

Role Playing and Cooperative Learning in the AIS Course

The accounting information systems course is often viewed as difficult to teach because it contains topics that are less quantifiable and structured in comparison to courses in financial or managerial!cost accounting. Yet, many AIS instructors have developed successful teaching techniques that are suited to the AIS course. A creative teaching approach for the AIS course is that of role-playing organizations and their operations, especially for transaction cycles. In addition, cooperative learning can be nicely coupled with role playing because of their common emphases on social interdependence and shared learning. The benefits and guidelines for cooperative learning and role playing are presented and then illustrated with an example for a transaction cycle of an organization

Strategic Value Creation through Enterprise Blockchain

Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies have enormous potential for creating business value but have not yet been widely adopted. Enterprise blockchain systems are recognised as solutions to existing operational problems or ‘pain points’ but their potential for delivering value through strategic opportunities is not well understood. Drawing from literature on strategic alliances and the resource-based view of the firm, we identify avenues through which blockchain systems can contribute to a firm’s strategic capabilities and, as a result, to its sustained competitive advantage. We provide a framework for understanding how participation in blockchain solutions can enable companies to build upon existing strategic capabilities, strengthen collaborative capabilities and develop blockchain-specific capabilities. The framework can be useful to firms and service providers for incorporating strategic outcomes into the evaluation of blockchain investment opportunities

ERPs and Strategy: First, Do No Harm

ERP and other systems projects are now commonly preceded or accompanied by reengineering efforts. Traditional reengineering projects use a \u27clean sheet\u27 approach, in which companies attempt to design ideal processes without being bound to existing processes and constraints. When reengineering is associated with information technology (IT) implementation, the more common approach is known as \u27tool-driven\u27 or \u27system-enhanced\u27 reengineering. Under this approach, the new processes are designed with explicit attention to the opportunities and constraints presented by the capabilities of the new information system. Although IT-related reengineering approaches have matured through time, they have not kept pace with current perspectives on corporate strategy and competitive advantage. The perspective on strategy to which they implicitly subscribe is an industrial organization or industry structure model that is not sufficient to guide reengineering efforts when strategic advantage is at stake. Drawing on current, resource-based theories of strategy, this paper describes factors the organizations should consider when they wish to take a more strategic approach to process reengineering--one explicitly oriented to the creation and maintenance of sustainable competitive advantage

Ethics-In-Action: An Application Of Structuration Theory In Professional Service Firms

A theoretical base for studying ethics in action is developed. In previous work, we propose a responsibility ethic, normative stakeholder theory, and discourse ethics as components of ethical decision making within organizational contexts. Here, we argue that structuration theory provides theoretical depth and conceptual integration to the ideas presented in our earlier work. The previous work is briefly discussed and structuration theory is reviewed. Ethically informed action is formulated within the context of structuration theory as a consideration and instantiation of structural features. Ethical action is predicated on the agent’s accountability within the context of an ongoing community. Accountability requires the explication of reasons for one’s actions and the justification, or legitimation (normative grounds) for the reasons given. The question of expert systems applications within a professional service organization is used as the vehicle for illustrating how the theoretical ideas might be implemented in identifying and addressing ethical dilemmas