Agility : customer's perspective

In competitive environments agility is emerging as an important determinant of success. Despite the widely accepted importance of agility there has been paucity in research on this construct, especially the customer’s perspective of agility. Rise of digital natives together with growth of ubiquitous information systems has changed the way firms engage with their customers. Firms are finding it difficult to establish sustained loyalty hence the long term sustained advantage over competition. Hence, firms are increasingly investing substantial resources on dynamic Customer Relationship Management systems such as mobile-CRMS to better engage with customers to sense and respond quickly (Agility of the firm) to their demands. This paper investigates firm’s customer agility from customer’s perspective, and we propose a model to understand firm’s customer agility from customer’s point of view. The proposed model is derived based on previous conceptions of agility and the expectation confirmation theory (ECT). This paper reports the initial findings of this study obtained through a pilot test. The findings of the study demonstrate that customer’s view point on firm’s customer agility is an important determinant of achieving success through sustained competitive advantage.

Digital social signal processing - theorectical underpinning and research agenda

Organizations make increasingly use of social media in order to compete for customer awareness and improve the quality of their goods and services. Multiple techniques of social media analysis are already in use. Nevertheless, theoretical underpinnings and a sound research agenda are still unavailable in this field at the present time. In order to contribute to setting up such an agenda, we introduce digital social signal processing (DSSP) as a new research stream in IS that requires multi-facetted investigations. Our DSSP concept is founded upon a set of four sequential activities: sensing digital social signals that are emitted by individuals on social media; decoding online data of social media in order to reconstruct digital social signals; matching the signals with consumers’ life events; and configuring individualized goods and service offerings tailored to the individual needs of customers. We further contribute to tying loose ends of different research areas together, in order to frame DSSP as a field for further investigation. We conclude with developing a research agenda.

Employees' adoption of enterprise web 2.0 : the role of technological attributes

Although the adoption of Enterprise Web 2.0 within organisations is beneficial, it could meet with employees’ resistance and the adoption process can be lengthy. The successful implementation of Enterprise Web 2.0 is based on employee involvement and adoption of such social technology. This paper is part of a larger research project that explored the adoption of Web 2.0 by individuals within enterprises. Using a qualitative study, the findings show that there are number of adoption influences including technological, individual and contextual issues. This paper presents Web 2.0 technological attributes that influence its adoption. The found attributes are: friendliness, reliability, mobility, technical compatibility, discoverability, transparency and Web 2.0 type.

Measuring IS-support : a conceptual model

This paper reports on a conceptual model of a larger research effort proceeding from a central interest in the importance of assessing the IS-Support provided to key-user groups. This study conceptualised a new multidimensional IS-Support construct with four dimensions: training, documentation, assistance and authorisation, which form the overarching construct – IS-Support. We argue that a holistic measure for assessing IS-Support should consist of dimensions, and measures, that together assess the variety of the support provided to IS key-user groups. The proposed IS-Support construct is defined as the support the IS key-user groups receive to increase their capabilities in utilising information systems within the organisation. With two interrelated phases, conceptualisation phase and validation phase, to rigorously hypothesise and validate a measurement model, the IS-Support model, proposed in this study, is intended to include the characteristics of analytic theory.

The design science research roadmap : in progress evaluation

Although Design Science Research (DSR) is now an accepted approach to research in the Information Systems (IS) discipline, consensus on the methodology of DSR has yet to be achieved. Lack of a comprehensive and detailed methodology for Design Science Research (DSR) in the Information System (IS) discipline is a main issue. Prior research (the parent-study) aimed to remedy this situation and resulted in the DSR-Roadmap (Alturki et al., 2011a). Continuing empirical validation and revision of the DSR-Roadmap strives towards a methodology with appropriate levels of detail, integration, and completeness for novice researchers to efficiently and effectively conduct and report DSR in IS. The sub-study reported herein contributes to this larger, ongoing effort. This paper reports results from a formative evaluation effort of the DSR-Roadmap conducted using focus group analysis. Generally, participants endorsed the utility and intuitiveness of the DSR-Roadmap, while also suggesting valuable refinements. Both parent-study and sub-study make methodological contributions. The parent-study is the first attempt of utilizing DSR to develop a research methodology showing an example of how to use DSR in research methodology construction. The sub-study demonstrates the value of the focus group method in DSR for formative product evaluation.

Efficiency of knowledge integration in enterprise systems implementation

Recent literature has emphasized the pivotal role of knowledge integration in Enterprise Systems (ES) success. This research-in-progress paper, building upon Knowledge Based Theory of the firm (KBT), examines the efficiency of knowledge integration in the context of ES implementation and identifies the factors contributing to its enhancement. The proposed model in this paper suggests that the efficiency of knowledge integration in an ES implementation process depends upon the level of common knowledge and the level of coordination in the ES adopting organization. It further suggests that the level of common knowledge can be enhanced by proper training, improving ES users’intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and business process modeling and the level of coordination can be improved by articulating a clear unified organizational goal for the ES adoption in the organization, forming a competent ES team, enhancing interdepartmental communication and the cross-functionality in the organization structure.

Information quality in social media : a conceptual model

Social Media (SM) is increasingly being integrated with business information in decision making. Unique characteristics of social media (e.g. wide accessibility, permanence, global audience, recentness, and ease of use) raise new issues with information quality (IQ); quite different from traditional considerations of IQ in information systems (IS) evaluation. This paper presents a preliminary conceptual model of information quality in social media (IQnSM) derived through directed content analysis and employing characteristics of analytic theory in the study protocol. Based in the notion of ‘fitness for use’, IQnSM is highly use and user centric and is defined as “the degree to which information is suitable for doing a specified task by a specific user, in a certain context”. IQnSM is operationalised as hierarchical, formed by the three dimensions (18 measures): intrinsic quality, contextual quality and representational quality. A research plan for empirically validating the model is proposed.

Sejong Park's Birthday Boy and Korean-Australian encounters

This chapter focuses on some of the flows of film work between Australia and South Korea and some of the roles taken by Australians in the performance (and particularly the sound) of Koreanness in different film contexts. We explore Korean-Australian collaboration on film, through case studies of Sejong Park's Oscar nominated short animated film Birthday Boy (2004) and two Korean feature films - Musa (Kim Sung-su, 2001) and Shadowless Sword (Kim Young-jun, 2005) - for which Australian firms provided sound post-production services. We show how these films instanciate and expand Korean, Australian, diasporic and transnational filmmaking.

Review : "Birthday Boy" -- Sejong Park

Synopsis and review of Sejong Park's film Birthday Boy. Includes credits. Birthday Boy has won over 40 awards at film festivals around the world including Best Animated Short at the prestigious SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival in 2004 which qualified the film for the 2005 Academy Awards even before Park and fellow students had graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). It was subsequently nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, losing to another extraordinary short, Chris Landreth’s tribute to pioneering Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, Ryan. Other awards include the Prix Jean-Luc Xiberras at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2005 (which had a special focus on Korea) and Best Short Animation at the 2005 BAFTA awards. It has screened at over 100 film festivals around the world, and is the most awarded film in the almost forty year history of the AFTRS...

Susceptibility of the critical structural components of railway bridges to the changes in train speed

Modern trains with different axle configurations, speeds and loads are used in railway networks. As a result, one of the most important questions of the mangers involved in bridge managements systems (BMS) is how these changes affect the structural behavior of the critical components of the railway bridges. Although researchers have conducted, many investigations on the dynamic effects of the moving loads on bridges, the influence of the changes in the speed of the train on the demand by capacity ratios of the different critical components of the bridge have not yet been properly studied. This study is important, because different components with different capacities and roles for carrying loads in the structure may be affected differently. To investigate the above phenomenon in this research, a structural model of a simply supported bridge is developed. It will be verified that the dynamic behavior of this bridge is similar to a group of railway bridges in Australia. Demand by capacity ratios of the critical components of the bridge, when it is subjected to a train load with different speeds will be calculated. The results show that the effect of increase or decrease of speed should not be underestimated. The outcome is very significant as it is contrary to what is currently expected, i.e. by reducing the speed of the train, the demand by capacity ratio of components may increase and make the bridge unsafe for carrying live load.

Korean ubiquitous-eco-city : a smart-sustainable urban form or a branding hoax?

The buzzwords of zero-carbon, low-carbon, carbon-neutral, smart-eco and ubiquitous-eco have become common brands for the sustainable eco-cities of the 21st century. This paper focuses on one of these city types ‘ubiquitous-eco-city’ (u-eco-city). The principal premise of a u-eco-city is to provide a high quality of life and place to residents, workers and visitors with low-to-no negative impacts on the natural environment by using state-of-the-art technologies in the planning, development and management stages. The paper aims to put this premise into a test and address whether u-eco-city is a dazzling smart and sustainable urban form that constitutes an ideal 21st century city model or just a branding hoax. This paper explores recent developments and trends in the ubiquitous technologies, infrastructures, services and management systems, and their utilisation and implications for the development of u-eco-cities. The paper places Korean u-eco-city initiatives under microscope, and critically discusses their prospects in forming a smart and sustainable urban form and become an ideal city model.

Marital power process of Korean men married to foreign women : A qualitative study

This study explored how Korean men married to migrant women construct meaning around married life. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 10 men who had had been married to migrant women for ≥ 2 years. Data collection and analysis were performed concurrently using a grounded theory approach. The core category generated was the process of sustaining a family unit. The men came to understand the importance of a distribution of power within the family in sustaining the family unit. Constituting this process were four stages: recognizing an imbalance of power, relinquishing power, empowering, and fine-tuning the balance of power. This study provides important insight into the dynamics of marital power from men's point of view by demonstrating a link between the way people adjust to married life and the process by which married couples adjust through the distribution and redistribution of power.

Construal level and ingroup bias

The causal relationship between mental construal level and ingroup bias remains elusive. This paper uncovers a boundary condition and a mechanism underlying the relationship. We predict and find support for our hypotheses in four experiments conducted in East Asian and Western cultures. Data showed that a high- (vs. low-) level construal activated state belongingness, but had no effect on state rejection, state self-esteem, positive emotion, or negative emotion in participants from Korea (Experiment 1) and Australia (Experiment 3). Moreover, a high- (vs. low-) level construal triggered greater ingroup bias for Koreans (Experiment 2) and Australians (Experiment 3) primed with a relational self, but not for those primed with an independent self. This construal level effect on ingroup bias was eliminated when belongingness was primed at both a high- and a low-level construal; instead, relationals under a low-level construal were more ingroup-biased when they were primed with a belongingness (vs. baseline) condition (Experiment 4). These findings highlight that the relational self is a boundary condition for the construal level-ingroup bias link; belongingness explains the relationship.

Stakeholder engagement and asset management : a case study of the Gold Coast airport, Queensland

One of the fastest growing industries – aviation – faces serious and compounding challenges in maintaining healthy relationships with community stakeholders. One area in aviation creating community conflict is noise pollution. However, current understandings of the factors that affect noise annoyance of the community are poorly conceptualized. More importantly, the way community needs and expectations could be incorporated in airport governance has been inadequately framed to address the issue of aircraft noise. This paper proposes the util-ity of adopting an integrated strategic asset management (ISAM) framework [1] to explore the dynamic nature of relationships between and airport and its surrounding area. The case of the Gold Coast Airport (OOL) operator and community stakeholders is used. This paper begins with an overview of the ISAM framework in the context of airport governance and sustainable development – as a way to find a balance between economic opportunities and societal concerns through stakeholder engagement. Next, an exploratory case study is adopted as a method to explore the noise-related complaints, complainants, and possible causes. Fol-lowing this, the paper reviews three approaches to community stakeholder engagement in Australia, Japan, and UK and discusses their implications in the con-text of OOL. The paper concludes with a contention that airport governance is likely to be much more effective with the adoption of ISAM framework than without it.

Towards an integrated maturity model of asset management capabilities

Asset service organisations often recognize asset management as a core competence to deliver benefits to their business. But how do organizations know whether their asset management processes are adequate? Asset management maturity models, which combine best practices and competencies, provide a useful approach to test the capacity of organisations to manage their assets. Asset management frameworks are required to meet the dynamic challenges of managing assets in contemporary society. Although existing models are subject to wide variations in their implementation and sophistication, they also display a distinct weakness in that they tend to focus primarily on the operational and technical level and neglect the levels of strategy, policy and governance as well as the social and human resources – the people elements. Moreover, asset management maturity models have to respond to the external environmental factors, including such as climate change and sustainability, stakeholders and community demand management. Drawing on five dimensions of effective asset management – spatial, temporal, organisational, statistical, and evaluation – as identified by Amadi Echendu et al. [1], this paper carries out a comprehensive comparative analysis of six existing maturity models to identify the gaps in key process areas. Results suggest incorporating these into an integrated approach to assess the maturity of asset-intensive organizations. It is contended that the adoption of an integrated asset management maturity model will enhance effective and efficient delivery of services.