Finding the Missing Link between Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Competitiveness through Social Capital: A Business Ecosystem Perspective

There are existing studies that successfully show the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms’ financial performance. However, limited attention is paid to its impact on the business ecosystem. CSR could be seen as an investment for building a sustainable business ecosystem, which enhances the competitiveness of this system’s members. In that context, this study apprehends and captures the virtuous cycle of firm competitiveness. On analyzing data from interviews with seven firms, the study offers four propositions identifying the structure of the virtuous cycle linking CSR activities to firm competitiveness through the accumulation of social capital within business ecosystems. Based on those propositions, the study offers new insights into CSR research for academics and strategic planning guidelines for managers that integrate social and economic values for a sustainable business ecosystem and firm competitiveness

Importance of Project Manager’s Leadership in IT Project Scope: Empirical Study

This study is to investigate the importance of a project manager’s (PM) leadership in Information Technology (IT) projects as the complexity of such projects increases by addressing the following main research question: How do PM leadership and different complexities affect the successful completion of IT project? Specifically, this study focuses on PM leadership (transformational and transactional behaviors) in delivering intended outcomes meeting the scope of the project under different layers of inherent complexities (complexity of faith, facts, and interaction), using cross-industry data collected from 111 IT project business professionals. Preliminary findings reinforced the importance of a PM’s leadership and provided strong indications for how PM leadership and IT project complexity affect IT project scope, respectively. The next step is to further explore the role of project complexity (moderating or mediating) to refine such nomological framework

How Can an Organization Develop and Retain Competent IT Workforce: The Role of IT Leadership

This study aims to provide a systematic framework with which business organizations learn to develop and retain competent IT personnel. Derived from both IT academics and practices, the proposed model is to evaluate the role of Information Technology (IT) leaders in such dynamics. The study focuses on examining how leadership behaviors on the part of IT managers/executives influence their IT personnel to develop and enhance relevant skills and their perception of work. This will, in turn, increase IT personnel’s needs satisfaction, quality-of-work-life (QWL), to improve the chance of retaining competent IT personnel. The contribution of this study is two-folds: 1) it provides IT leadership studies with effective IT leadership model developing competent IT personnel and 2) it also provides IT practitioners with valuable insights on how to make IT personnel be satisfied with their work and retain them in the long-run

Effective IT Project Leadership

Effective project leadership, which goes beyond traditional project management, is essential for successfully deploying IT initiatives that are often overwhelmed with increasing levels of technology and business integration complexity. We identify five distinct project leadership types (Administrator, Technologist, Business Integration Lead, Principal Lead, and Consummate Lead) that can be matched to projects with different complexity levels. Together with the corresponding transformational and transactional behaviors essential for leaders, these five types provide a framework for effective project leadership