Proactive Vision for Strategy Making

Strategy makers have expressed the need for computer support systems, which they can readily use to monitor, diagnose, analyze and synthesize the current performance of their organization and estimate its future potential, direction and performance. The computer software industry has attempted to meet this demand for many years; however, in this context, the computer-based executive support and decision support systems developed so far have provided only partial solutions. These systems have supported either specific processes or specific activities. They have not provided executives with the kind of support that would enable them to acquire a holistic understanding of the constructs, concepts, variables, specific issues, and also the relations and interrelationships that must be monitored and mastered in strategic planning and implementation. In this paper, we present a new way to analyze the current and future states of company strategy. We have used the Continuous Strategy ontology as a basic construct that incorporates many current strategic constructs, concepts, and ideas, culminating in an application that contains an ontology in which we have fixed linguistic statements. Through these statements, users can analyze the current strategic situation as well as future possible improvements to the current strategy. The system operates on the Internet and this is the first prototype application constructed for this purpose. The first test runs are only to demonstrate the ideas. In the future, this application will be tested in real strategy work in business life.© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Democratic Management Succession in Balkan Family Businesses: Appointment of Family and nonfamily Members in Leadership Roles

Given that the nomination of family and nonfamily members to top senior positions may set personal interests against corporate ones, this may lead to serious problems in the firm’s strategic direction when the two are not compatible. Consequently, potential successors should be assessed across different domains to determine who is the best fit for a leadership role. Accordingly, this paper introduces the Democratic Employee Connect Model (DECM), a step-gated framework that can provide a potential solution for family businesses when planning for management succession. It comprises six steps, which will guide family-owned enterprises during this crucial process. The six steps of the model align with the Company Democracy Model to democratically identify the most suitable candidate in the succession process, which is often driven by personal and family interests. The paper also presents research limitations that can be considered for future research

Understanding corporate innovation readiness and frequency factors with the Democratic Survival, Mirrored and Compulsive (DSMC) Framework

This paper introduces the Democratic Survival, Mirrored, and Compulsive (DSMC) Framework, a step-by-step guide to help businesses understand their innovation readiness status. The framework calculates several attributes and plots the results on a graph indicating the factors to consider in the company’s innovations strategy. The primary findings indicate factors that impact the innovation frequency, such as the available R&D facilities, financial position and stability, cumulative organizational knowledge, policy direction, and the organizations’ industry. Therefore, the paper extends the SMC framework to the Democratic SMC (DMSC) that aligns the SMC phases with the Company Democracy Model innovation evolution levels by relating and categorizing the SCM innovation factors to the CDM levels. This helps to understand the organizational innovation DNA and also the culture and philosophy that impacts the company’s human intellectual capital production frequency and the utilization frequency of this capital as well

New Tools to Help in the Recruitment Process

AbstractThe recruitment process is demanding, especially when there are many good candidates. Failure in this process can be expensive. Typically interviews and different psychological tests are used to help in the selection. The problem is that interviews and tests are costly. Here a new, partly automated approach is presented. The new approach was tested in the Tenure Track process at the Tampere University of Technology. The new approach consisted of two parts. Firstly, the candidates used the on-line Evolute Helix application [1]. They responded to 237 claims and gave their degree of agreement with each claim. This part produced data measuring commitment. Secondly, the gathered data, i.e. profiles of commitment, were analyzed to find clusters of similar candidates. These clusters were checked against the desired profile. These two parts were automated. The test data were based on the Tenure Track process at the Tampere University of Technology. Recruitment to universities nowadays largely follows the same principles as the normal recruitment process in companies and other organizations. Universities have started to play a global game in their recruitment and try to find the best possible candidates internationally for their universities. In this case example we show how an organizational commitment application that has been developed could help the recruitment process, in which 55 candidates were applying for two tenure track positions. The application used, Evolute Helix, was useful in the recruitment process and helped in the interviews as well as the selection of applicants for the shortlist. The shortlist consisted of six candidates, who were finally interviewed. The two winners were selected from among these candidates. Commitment can reveal many personal characteristics and also the future aspirations and motivations of applicants. The tested application can also be used afterwards, as the tenure track of the chosen person continues in the university. Automatic preprocessing is a great aid when sifting out desired candidates from multiple applicants

Strategic pricing possibilities of grocery retailers : an empirical study

The right pricing of products is one of the most important issues concerning the development of companies’ financial performance. Prices should be low enough to attract customers and at the same time high enough to cover all the emerged costs and expected profits. This research illustrates how self-organizing maps (SOM) can be used for pricing purposes. We show how changes in a company’s pricing policies would affect the company’s pricing position. The study illustrates clearly that companies have different possibilities to change their pricing positions. The SOM method is new and can be applied in many different ways through different pricing simulations.La tarifación correcta de los productos es una de los problemas más importantes, en relación con el desarrollo del desempeño financiero de las compañías. Los precios deberían ser lo suficientemente bajos para atraer a los clientes, y al mismo tiempo, lo suficientemente altos para cubrir todos los costes emergentes y los beneficios previstos. Esta investigación ilustra cómo los mapas auto-organizadores (SOM en inglés) pueden ser usados para fines de tarifación. Mostramos cómo los cambios en las políticas de tarifación en una empresa, pueden afectar a la posición de tarifación de la misma. El estudio muestra claramente que las empresas tienen diferentes posibilidades para cambiar dichas posiciones. El método SOM es nuevo y puede ser aplicado de muchas maneras mediante varias simulaciones de tarifación

Competence portfolio assessment of research and development center for regional development

Digitalization is rapidly increasing and enterprises must find new ways to innovate for business advantage. Engineering industry is currently living in the middle of co-evolution from being the product provider to offering smart services and even to being the provider of customer value. The right way of digitalization can lead to business differentiation by smart services. But to transform themselves, the companies must have the right digital assets, suitable organizational capability and culture, right competence structure and individuals with right mindset to succeed in co- evolution. This article concentrates on analysing the role of research and development unit HAMK Smart Services. Its mission is to support co-evolution of municipal and industrial enterprises as well as value networks and through that increasing the competitiveness of the region. For that purpose, it is important to know the overall capabilities of the HAMK Smart Services unit. In our article we categorize the competence and capability into three layers: human competence and capability, organizational capability and content management capability. This article introduces a new interrelated three layer competence portfolio model and results of survey done with Smart Services research and development unit. Case study analysis has been executed within the customer segment of Industrial digitalization and life cycle care.©2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The Scandinavian Democratic Governmental Support Model for Start-Ups and Innovations (SDeGMSI)

This paper attempts to identify the main elements of the unique Scandinavian government business policy formula for innovation start-up success, particularly in Sweden and Finland, which has been key in creating a region with an incredibly high density of “unicorns” (billion-dollar companies), second to Silicon Valley. The paper introduces the Scandinavian Democratic Governmental Support Model for Start-Ups and Innovations (SDeGMSI), a globally applicable public sector model for the support and encouragement of start-ups and business innovation. The model is based on Scandinavian governments’ practices while also accounting factors such as cultural values, the performance of local economies, and demographic characteristics. The democratic dimension is powered with the Company Democracy Model, another Scandinavian innovation management model. SDeGMSI provides critical, fair, and unbiased support of the government to all the organizations and start-ups that can demonstrate significant and valuable intellectual capital for the economy and society

Metaverstic Innovation Management: The World Innovation Stock Exchange Democratic Incubator

The recent global technological and social disruptions are changing the game of innovation management. Indeed, knowledge sharing in its ideation, collaboration, and deployment phases is becoming increasingly gamified by nature: a more diverse and ad-hoc pool of contributors emerge under the culture of individual entrepreneurship. The World Innovation Stock Exchange (W-ISE) structures metaverstic collaborative innovation management while fully potentializing the outcomes of Globalisation 5.0. This exchange facilitates physical and moral individuals’ interactions and socioeconomic discussions. Furthermore, it frames the intervention of computing systems as managing forces in project management and innovation development. Yet, this first conceptualization has limitations in addressing the facilitation of all stages of innovation management. To clarify the development of the W-ISE domain, this paper describes in detail how the World Innovation Stock Exchange Democratic Incubator (WISE-DI) operates conceptually and how it could be gamified for an improved immersive and engaging experience in R&D activities

Customer Feedback Analysis using Collocations

Today’s ERP and CRM systems provide companies with nearly unlimited possibilities for collecting data concerning theircustomers. More and more of these data are more or less unstructured textual data. A good example of this type of data iscustomer feedback, which can potentially be used to improve customer satisfaction.However, merely getting an overview of what lies in an unstructured mass of text is an extremely challenging task. This isthe topic of the field of computational linguistics. Collocation analysis, one of the tools emerging from this field, is a tooldeveloped for this task in particular. In this paper, we use the collocation analysis to study a text corpora consisting of 64,806pieces of customer feedback collected through a case company’s online customer portal. Collocation analysis is shown to bea very useful tool for exploratory analysis of highly unstructured customer feedback

Assessing the Feasibility of Self Organizing Maps for Data Mining Financial Information

Analyzing financial performance in today’s information-rich society can be a daunting task. With the evolution of the Internet, access to massive amounts of financial data, typically in the form of financial statements, is widespread. Managers and stakeholders are in need of a data-mining tool allowing them to quickly and accurately analyze this data. An emerging technique that may be suited for this application is the self-organizing map. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of self-organizing maps for analyzing financial performance of international pulp and paper companies. For the study, financial data, in the form of seven financial ratios, was collected, using the Internet as the primary source of information. A total of 77 companies, and six regional averages, were included in the study. The time frame of the study was the period 1995-00. An example analysis was performed, and the results analyzed based on information contained in the annual reports. The results of the study indicate that self-organizing maps can be feasible tools for the financial analysis of large amounts of financial data