Defining and Meeting the Demand for Agricultural Machinery in China: A Case Study of John Deere

China, Machinery markets, John Deere, Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, Public Economics,

Implementing Strategy Through IS Projects:A Theory Building Literature Review

In project management, a growing area of importance is “benefits realization”, including techniques to achieve on time and on budget efficiency. Broadly, it refers to aligning efforts with strategic purpose, realizing the purposes for which the project was selected, and gaining benefits from its effectiveness. There is a dearth of writing about how strategy is realized through IS projects, particularly at the program or project level. Our purpose is to create a clear, more detailed and predictive linkage between organizational strategies and IS project enactments by addressing the question, “How do organizations translate strategy through IT-enabled strategic initiatives?” In this RIP paper, we lay the foundation for our review and describe the process for our examination. By examining mechanisms for executing strategy, findings should be relevant both to academics in terms of providing insights for further testing and/or refinement, as well as practice for forming a basis for predicting outcomes and selection of execution process techniques

Virtual Transnational Teams and Their Use of Advanced Information Technology

Increasing globalization coupled with increasing use of communications and information technology has resulted in a relatively new phenomenon in organizations: the virtual transnational team. These are teams of people who work together toward a defined organizational mandate, but who are spread throughout the globe and whose work only sometimes brings them in face- to-face contact. These teams develop strategies, design and build products, service international clients, sell products and services, and so on. Their members remain connected through the use of advanced information and communications technologies such as e-mail, v-mail, video-conferencing, LotusNotes, and electronic meeting systems. Because of the fast pace of international business, it is critical that they execute their mandate effectively; however, because both the intensity of global competition and the technology are so new, we have little understanding of the most effective way of using information technologies to facilitate team interactions in successful transnational business. Our aim is to develop an understanding of the most effective team-technology configurations for transnational teams

Teaching Tools For Data Analysis

Companies rely on business intelligence and business analytics to support organizational decision making.  Application software packages enable data analysis to help companies pursue a competitive advantage.  Learning to use these tools is not trivial, however, and business schools have added assignments and classes to help their students develop rigorous analytical skills.  This paper describes hands-on, data analysis exercises to support strategic decision making used in an Applied Business Research class that is required for MBA students.  The assignment involves analyzing large volumes of data using the tools of Excel, SQL, and SPSS.  We describe the assignment, data, and exercises that the students perform.  They learn the benefit of analyzing a dataset using different tools and methods, and which tools are most appropriate for what type of analysis. &nbsp

Information Security Policy Development Through the Lens of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Organizations worldwide are increasing their information security initiatives to keep pace with the highly complex and dynamically changing operating environments. With mounting regulations, risk mitigation, and critical information protection pressures, they focus on IT governance. Using a case study methodology, this research in progress introduces an interdisciplinary common governance framework to information security policy, an important internal governance control. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is part of Nobel Prize-winning work in economics and is recognized as one of the most comprehensive tools for both design and analysis of policy interventions

EDSOA: An Event-Driven Service-Oriented Architecture Model For Enterprise Applications

Enterprise Applications are difficult to implement and maintain because they require a monolith of code to incorporate required business processes. Service-oriented architecture is one solution, but challenges of dependency and software complexity remain. We propose Event-Driven Service-Oriented Architecture, which combines the benefits of component-based software development, event-driven architecture, and SOA

Distance Matters, Except When It Doesn\u27t: Discontinuities in Virtual Work

Virtual work has become an increasingly common phenomenon in today\u27s organizations. Substantial and continuing changes in organizational processes and IT infrastructure have increased the pace and intensity of working across traditionally impermeable boundaries, enabling diverse forms of collaboration. However, our understanding of the consequences and implications of virtual work still lags and research results have been contradictory. We suggest that some of these inconsistencies have been because the boundaries that characterize virtual work-time, space, culture, organization, and so forth-are objective demarcations that are not uniformly problematic. It is only when those working in virtual settings perceive a boundary to be a discontinuity that it hinders work processes. We develop a model of virtual work that differentiates between boundaries and discontinuities, which helps account for contradictory findings. By examining the process of virtual work in more detail, we can uncover issues that are the underlying cause of problems, rather than deal with the more obvious symptoms that can mask underlying problem. Our model has implications both for research and for those working in virtual environments

MISPLACED RESOURCES? FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH COMPUTER LITERACY AMONG END-USERS

Some organizations provide a support infrastructure (e.g., information centers, on-line help) and training (e.g., vendor-supplied, one-on-one) to assist end-users and boost the computer literacy of their workforce. In this paper, we explore the efficacy of a support infrastructure, training, and various computer configurations for enhancing the computer literacy of work groups. Data come from a multi-year (1987 to 1989) study of seventy-seven computer-using work groups in the southern California area, which included two interviews with managers and two questionnaires distributed to workers. Analyses showed that none of the measures of training were associated with computer literacy. Only one kind of infrastructure support, obtaining information from a resident expert in the work group, was related to computer literacy. In contrast, many aspects of the configuration of the computer systems were associated with computer literacy. Implications of these provocative findings for the management of end-user computing are discussed

Understanding Virtuality in a Global Organization: Toward a Virtuality Index

“We are getting more virtual all the time!” was a phrase frequently uttered during recent planning sessions for remote collaboration support at Intel Corporation; some form of this statement is no doubt made in other global firms as well. But what virtual comprises is not well understood. The construct of virtuality cannot be directly measured, so how virtual and how fast the stated change is occurring is mostly an enigma. Certain high level metrics of corporate information infrastructure can give indications, but much of virtuality is not obvious. The lack of definition makes it hard to understand the impact of virtual work on performance, or to evaluate the infrastructure and collaborative toolset needed to support distributed knowledge workers. Building on the concept of discontinuities, or factors contributing to a decrease in cohesion, we propose a virtuality index to assess the degree to which virtual work occurs and the pace at which this phenomenon progresses. The index was derived from data gathered in a study with sound psychometrics of over 1,200 employees at Intel Corporation. Preliminary analyses suggest that work predictability and general sociability (on or off teams), along with a range of media for expressivity and visualization can mitigate the consequences of working in discontinuous environments, while discontinuity of practices (e.g., more cultural and work process diversity) and worker mobility negatively impact the perception of team performance. Being distributed in and of itself was found to have no impact on team performance. These findings, along with others yet to be analyzed, promise to give us a handle on how the discontinuities of working virtually can be most effectively supported with collaboration tools