On IT and business value in developing countries : A complementarities-based approach

Developing economies accommodate more than three quarters of the world's population. This means understanding their growth and well-being is of critical importance. Information technology (IT) is one resource that has had a profound effect in shaping the global economy. IT is also an important resource for driving growth and development in developing economies. Investments in developing economies, however, have focused on the exploitation of labor and natural resources. Unlike in developed economies, focus on IT investment to improve efficiency and effectiveness of business process in developing economies has been sparse, and mechanisms for deriving better IT-related business value is not well understood. This study develops a complementarities-based business value model for developing economies, and tests the relationship between IT investments, IT-related complementarities, and business process performance. It also considers the relationship between business processes performance and firm-level performance. The results suggest that a coordinated investment in IT and IT-related complementarities related favorably to business process performance. Improvements in process-level performance lead to improvements in firm-level performance. The results also suggest that the IT-related complementarities are not only a source of business value on their own, but also enhance the IT resources' ability to contribute to business process performance. This study demonstrates that a coordinated investment approach is required in developing economies. With this approach, their IT resources and IT-related complementaries would help them significantly in improving their business processes, and eventually their firm-level performances.

Information technology and business value in developing economies: a study of intangible benefits of information technology investments in Fiji

Understanding how IT investments contribute to business value is an important issue, and this assists in the efficient use of technology resources in businesses. While there is an agreement that IT contributes to business value, we are unsure of how IT contributes to business value in the wider context, including developing countries. With the view that understanding the interaction between IT resources and the users may provide better insights on the potential of IT investments, this study investigates the businesses’ perception of the intangible benefits of their IT investments. The results indicate that businesses in developing countries perceive that their IT investments provide intangible benefits, especially at the process level, and this contributes to business value.

Assessing the real value in residential property investment

One of the major fall outs from the Global Financial Crisis has been the decline in residential property construction, home lending and residential property prices. This has lead to some extent to a reduction in the number of small investors willing to commit funds to an investment market that is not seen to perform as well as other investment assets, particularly in relation to income return.With a decreasing supply of rental accommodation in the housing markets, less public housing being constructed by both State and Commonwealth Governments, there is the potential for the residential property market to provide more substantial returns than previous years.This paper will analyse the current residential housing market in Brisbane, Australia to determine if there are sectors in this market that are outperforming the average income and total return for residential investment property and the variation in investment performance across the various housing sub-markets. The results show that property investment in residential property provides opportunities to maximize returns based on geographic location and socio-economic economic status, with lower value areas showing the highest income returns and higher value suburbs showing greater capital returns

The molar effect on citizenship and nomad immigration: Reading, readingthe world and self

This presentation explores molarization and overcoding of social machines and relationality within an assemblage consisting of empirical data of immigrant families in Australia. Immigration is key to sustainable development of Western societies like Australia and Canada. Newly arrived immigrants enter a country and are literally taken over by the Ministry of Immigration regarding housing, health, education and accessing job possibilities. If the immigrants do not know the official language(s) of the country, they enroll in language classes for new immigrants. Language classes do more than simply teach language. Language is presented in local contexts (celebrating the national day, what to do to get a job) and in control societies, language classes foreground values of a nation state in order for immigrants to integrate. In the current project, policy documents from Australia reveal that while immigration is the domain of government, the subject/immigrant is nevertheless at the core of policy. While support is provided, it is the subject/immigrant transcendent view that prevails. The onus remains on the immigrant to “succeed”. My perspective lies within transcendental empiricism and deploys Deleuzian ontology, how one might live in order to examine how segmetary lines of power (pouvoir) reflected in policy documents and operationalized in language classes rupture into lines of flight of nomad immigrants. The theoretical framework is Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT); reading is intensive and immanent. The participants are one Korean and one Sudanese family and their children who have recently immigrated to Australia. Observations in classrooms were obtained and followed by interviews based on the observations. Families also borrowed small video cameras and they filmed places, people and things relevant to them in terms of becoming citizen and immigrating to and living in a different country. Interviews followed. Rhizoanalysis informs the process of reading data. Rhizoanalysis is a research event and performed with an assemblage (MLT, data/vignettes, researcher, etc.). It is a way to work with transgressive data. Based on the concept of the rhizome, a bloc of data has no beginning, no ending. A researcher enters in the middle and exists somewhere in the middle, an intermezzo suggesting that the challenges to molar immigration lie in experimenting and creating molecular processes of becoming citizen.

Reading students’ representations

Students’ text, symbols, and graphics give teachers a glimpse into mathematical thinking associated with investigating the Peas problem.

Are alphabetic language-derived models of L2 reading relevant to L1 logographic background readers?

In this paper, we argue that second language (L2) reading research, which has been informed by studies involving first language (L1) alphabetic English reading, may be less relevant to L2 readers with non-alphabetic reading backgrounds, such as Chinese readers with an L1 logographic (Chinese character) learning history. We provide both neuroanatomical and behavioural evidence from Chinese language reading studies to support our claims. The paper concludes with an argument outlining the need for a universal L2 reading model which can adequately account for readers with diverse L1 orthographic language learning histories.

Information technology and business value in a global economy : do information technology investments pay off in a developing economy?

Understanding the business value of IT has mostly been studied in developed countries, but because most investment in developing countries is derived from external sources, the influence of that investment on business value is likely to be different. We test this notion using a two-layer model. We examine the impact of IT investments on firm processes, and the relationship of these processes to firm performance in a developing country. Our findings suggest that investment in different areas of IT positively relates to improvements in intermediate business processes and these intermediate business processes positively relate to the overall financial performance of firms in a developing country.

Information technology resources,complementaries and capabilities : towards a deeper understanding of leveraging business value from IT

Organisations devote substantial resources to acquire information technology (IT), and explaining the important issue of how IT can affect performance has posed a significant challenge to information system (IS) researchers. Owing to the importance of expanding our understanding on how and where IT and IT-related resources impact organisational performance, this study investigates the differential effects of IT resources and IT-related capabilities, in the presence of platform-related complementarities, on business process performance. We test these relationships empirically via a field survey of 216 firms. The findings suggest that IT resources and IT-related capabilities explain variance in performance. Of interest is the finding that IT resources and IT-related capabilities ability to explain variance in business process is further enhanced by the presence of the platform-related complementarities. Our findings are largely consistent with the resource-based and complementarity arguments of sources of IT-related business value.

Information technology and business value: how complementary IT usage platform and capable resources explain IT business value variation

Understanding information technology’s (ITs) contribution to business value is an imperative issue, and while we have attempted to untangle the relationship between IT and business value with some success, our knowledge of specific factors leading to ITs contribution to business value still remains limited. In this paper we propose that complementing IT resources, by establishing a sound IT platform with capable organisational resources may aid in ITs ability to contribute to business value. We suggest that performance measurement of this contribution be undertaken at the business process level first, and then mapped through to firm level performance measurement to obtain a better understanding of the path of IT business value contribution.

Sourcing and evaluating IT business value in emerging economies : the case of the South Pacific Island Countries

Information Technology (IT) is an important resource that facilitates growth and development in both the developed and emerging economies. The increasing forces of globalization are creating a wider digital divide between the developed and emerging economies. The smaller emerging economies are the most venerable. Intense competition for IT resources means that these emerging economies would need to acquire a deeper understanding of how to source and evaluate their IT-related efforts. This effort would put these economies in a better position to source funding from various stakeholders. This research presents a complementary approach to securing better IT-related business value in organizations in the South Pacific Island countries – a case of emerging economies. Analysis of data collected from six South Pacific Island countries suggests that organizations that invest in IT and related complementaries are able to better their business processes. The data also suggest that improved business processes lead to overall business processes improvements.

ACE research vignette 007 : what is the value of entrepreneurship?

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team and other international Entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, we summarise the findings from a paper written by Mirjam van Praag and Peter Versloot that examines the research relating to the value of entrepreneurship.

ACE research vignette 014 : how does networking contribute to the bottom line? - The value of purpose-driven networking

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team and other international researchers. In this vignette, Dr Martie-Louise Verreynne from the University of Queensland Business School summaries the findings from a paper written in conjunction with Sarel Gronum and Tim Kastelle from the UQ Business School that examined if networking really contributes to small firms' bottom line. Their findings show that unless networks are used for productive means, efforts to cultivate and maintain them may be wasteful.

Leveraging value within IT-backed collaborative alliances

Organizations today make radical use of the IT resources to sustain or better their existing competitive position. One such initiative is forming alliances on a shared IT backbone with partners of their value chain. We term these alliances the collaborative organizational structures (COS). Regardless of the nature of engagement with IT resources, organizations will require unique competencies to obtain performance-differentiating value from these IT resources. In a collaborative environment, these competencies would be a result of the synergy between the alliances’ unique competences. We call these the inter-firm IT-related capabilities. The resource centric theoretical frameworks suggest a trajectory of competence development and the structure of inter-firm competencies, but does not inform on the nature of these competencies. We employ an interpretive design to suggest three inter-firm IT-related capabilities for IT-backed collaborative alliances. We discuss these capabilities in this research and suggest that their effectiveness be measured directly against the collaborative rent, and indirectly against the firm-level performance of the alliance partners. This forms a model of leveraging and evaluating value within IT-backed collaborative alliances.