On IT governance structures and their effectiveness in collaborative organizational structures

Organizations today engage in various forms of alliances to manage their existing business processes or to diversify into new processes to sustain their competitive positions. Many of today’s alliances use the IT resources as their backbone. The results of these alliances are collaborative organizational structures with little or no ownership stakes between the parties. The emergence of Web 2.0 tools is having a profound effect on the nature and form of these alliance structures. These alliances heavily depend on and make radical use of the IT resources in a collaborative environment. This situation requires a deeper understanding of the governance of these IT resources to ensure the sustainability of the collaborative organizational structures. This study first suggests the types of IT governance structures required for collaborative organizational structures. Semi-structured interviews with senior executives who operate in such alliances reveal that co-created IT governance structures are necessary. Such structures include co-created IT-steering committees, co-created operational committees, and inter-organizational performance management and communication systems. The findings paved the way for the development of a model for understanding approaches to governing IT and evaluating the effectiveness for such governance mechanisms in today’s IT dependent alliances. This study presents a sustainable IT-related capabilities approach to assessing the effectiveness of suggested IT governance structures for collaborative alliances. The findings indicate a favourable association between organizations IT governance efforts and their ability to sustain their capabilities to leverage their IT resources. These IT-related capabilities also relate to measures business value at the process and firm level. This makes it possible to infer that collaborative organizations’ IT governance efforts contribute to business value.

IT governance in collaborative organizational structures

Organizations today engage in various forms of alliances to manage their existing business processes or to diversify into new processes to sustain their competitive positions. Many of today’s alliances use the IT resources as their backbone. The results of these alliances are collaborative organizational structures with little or no ownership stakes between the parties. The emergence of Web 2.0 tools is having a profound effect on the nature and form of these alliance structures. These alliances heavily depend on and make radical use of the IT resources in a collaborative environment. This situation requires a deeper understanding of the governance of these IT resources to ensure the sustainability of the collaborative organizational structures. This study reports on the first stage of this initiative. It suggest the types of IT governance structures required for collaborative organizational structures. Semi-structured interviews with senior executives who operate in such alliances reveal that co-created IT governance structures are necessary. Such structures include co-created IT-steering committees, cocreated operational committees, and inter-organizational performance management and communication systems. The findings pave the way for the development of a model for understanding approaches to governing IT and evaluating the effectiveness for such governance mechanisms in today’s IT dependent alliances.

On information technology competencies for collaborative organizational structures

There is an uptake of organizations involvement in collaborative organizational structures (COS). As the nature and level of information technology (IT) investment in COS will be similar, the COS IT competencies will leverage the IT investments to create the collaborative rent generating potential of the COS, which would then improve the business value of the COS members. Consistent with the resource-centric views of the firm, we suggest that the COS members need to contribute their managed IT competencies to their COS, whose synergies would create COS IT competencies. We suggest three key IT competencies for COS; proactive top management decision synergy, collaborative and agile IT infrastructure, and cross-functional tactical management synergy. Using survey data, we find evidence of a positive association between these COS IT competencies and the collaborative rent generating potential of the COS. We also find a positive association between the collaborative rent generating potential of the COS and the business value of the COS members. The results suggest that developing COS IT competencies add value to a COS and its members. This study provides guidance for organizations looking to leverage their involvement in a COS.

US Federal Government entrepreneurship : new enterprise structures

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to guide the formation and to determine the structure of new governmental entrepreneurial ventures based on the nature of the public goods and the need for an entrepreneurial orientation. Design/methodology/research: This paper is conceptual and is based on reviews of appropriate organizational structure and entrepreneurship, cases studies, and the authors' experiences. Findings: Public or quasi-public entities may need to change their organizational structure in order to act more entrepreneurially and to be more effective in accomplishing their missions. Propositions are raised to guide the development of new public or private enterprises and provide the basis for future research. Research limitations/implications: This paper is conceptual and needs to be tested empirically. Though other levels of government and countries were included, a major focus is on the US federal government. Originality/value: This is the first published research on the topic of new enterprise government structures based on the nature of the goods and the requisite entrepreneurial orientation. It will help governmental and quasi-governmental organizations in developing efficient and effective organizational structures.

Supply chain sustainability: a relationship management approach

Purpose: In this research we examined, by means of case studies, the mechanisms by which relationships can be managed and by which communication and cooperation can be enhanced in sustainable supply chains. The research was predicated on the contention that the development of a sustainable supply chain depends, in part, on the transfer of knowledge and capabilities from the larger players in the supply chain. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research adopted a triangulated approach in which quantitative data were collected by questionnaire, interviews were conducted to explore and enrich the quantitative data and case studies were undertaken in order to illustrate and validate the findings. Handy‟s (1985) view of organisational culture, Allen & Meyer‟s (1990) concepts of organisational commitment and Van de Ven & Ferry‟s (1980) measures of organisational structuring have been combined into a model to test and explain how collaborative mechanisms can affect supply chain sustainability. Findings: It has been shown that the degree of match and mismatch between organisational culture and structure has an impact on staff‟s commitment level. A sustainable supply chain depends on convergence – that is the match between organisational structuring, organisation culture and organisation commitment. Research Limitations/implications: The study is a proof of concept and three case studies have been used to illustrate the nature of the model developed. Further testing and refinement of the model in practice should be the next step in this research. Practical implications: The concept of relationship management needs to filter down to all levels in the supply chain if participants are to retain commitment and buy-in to the relationship. A sustainable supply chain requires proactive relationship management and the development of an appropriate organisational culture, and trust. By legitimising individuals‟ expectations of the type of culture which is appropriate to their company and empowering employees to address mismatches that may occur a situation can be created whereby the collaborating organisations develop their competences symbiotically and so facilitate a sustainable supply chain. Originality/value: The culture/commitment/structure model developed from three separate strands of management thought has proved to be a powerful tool for analysing collaboration in supply chains and explaining how and why some supply chains are sustainable, and others are not.

Network

Network has emerged from a contempory worldwide phenomenon, culturally manifested as a consequence of globalization and the knowledge economy. It is in this context that the internet revolution has prompted a radical re-ordering of social and institutional relations and the associated structures, processes and places which support them. Within the duality of virtual space and the augmentation of traditional notions of physical place, the organizational structures pose new challenges for the design professions. Technological developments increasingly permit communication anytime and anywhere, and provide the opportunity for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. The resultant ecology formed through the network enterprise has resulted in an often convolted and complex world wherein designers are forced to consider the relevance and meaning of this new context. The role of technology and that of space are thus interwined in the relation between the network and the individual workplace. This paper explores a way to inform the interior desgn process for contemporary workplace environments. It reports on both theoretical and practical outcomes through an Australia-wide case study of three collaborating, yet independent business entities. It further suggests the link between workplace design and successful business innovation being realized between partnering organizations in Great Britain. Evidence presented indicates that, for architects and interior designers, the scope of the problem has widened, the depth of knowledge required to provide solutions has increased, and the rules of engagement are required to change. The ontological and epistemological positions adopted in the study enabled the spatial dimensions to be examined from both within and beyond the confines of a traditional design only viewpoint. Importantly it highlights the significance of a trans-disiplinary collaboration in dealing with the multiple layers and complexity of the contemporary social and business world, from both a research and practice perspective.

Rethinking public service media and citizenship : digital strategies for news and current affairs at Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)

This article considers the concept of media citizenship in relation to the digital strategies of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). At SBS, Australia’s multicultural public broadcaster, there is a critical appraisal of its strategies to harness user-created content (UCC) and social media to promote greater audience participation through its news and current affairs Web sites. The article looks at the opportunities and challenges that user-related content presents for public service media organizations as they consolidate multiplatform service delivery. Also analyzed are the implications of radio and television broadcasters’ moves to develop online services. It is proposed that case study methodologies enable an understanding of media citizenship to be developed that maintains a focus on the interaction between delivery technologies, organizational structures and cultures, and program content that is essential for understanding the changing focus of 21st-century public service media.

Rethinking public service media and citizenship: digital strategies for news and current affairs at Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service

This article considers the concept of media citizenship in relation to the digital strategies of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). At SBS, Australia’s multicultural public broadcaster, there is a critical appraisal of its strategies to harness user-created content (UCC) and social media to promote greater audience participation through its news and current affairs Web sites. The article looks at the opportunities and challenges that user-created content presents for public service media organizations as they consolidate multiplatform service delivery. Also analyzed are the implications of radio and television broadcasters’ moves to develop online services. It is proposed that case study methodologies enable an understanding of media citizenship to be developed that maintains a focus on the interaction between delivery technologies, organizational structures and cultures, and program content that is essential for understanding the changing focus of 21st-century public service media.

Tackling ‘Wicked’ problems holistically with institutionalist policymaking

One of our most pressing needs in creating a more sustainable world is the explicit development of holistic policy. This is becoming increasingly apparent as we are faced with more and more ‘wicked problems', the most difficult class of problems that we can conceptualize. Such problems consist of ‘clusters’ of problems, and include socio-political and moral-spiritual issues. This paper articulates a methodology that can be applied to the analysis and design of underlying organizational structures and processes that will consistently and effectively address wicked problems while being consistent with the advocated 'learning by doing' approach to change management and policy making. This transdisciplinary methodology—known as the institutionalist policymaking framework—has been developed from the perspective of institutional economics synthesized with perspectives from ecological economics and system dynamics. In particular it draws on the work first presented in Hayden’s 1993 paper ‘Institutionalist Policymaking’—and further developed in his 2006 book, at the heart of which lies the SFM—and the applicability of this approach in tackling complex and wicked problems.

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.

On governing collaborative Information Technology (IT) : a relational perspective

Organizations today invest in collaborative IT to engage in collaborative alliances to sustain or improve their competitive positions. Effective use of this collaborative IT in an alliance requires a deeper understanding of their governance structures. This effort is to ensure the sustainability of these alliances. Through the relational view of the firm, we suggest relational lateral IT-steering committees, relational IT operational committees, and relational IT performance management systems as IT governance structures for collaborative alliances. We then incorporate these structures, develop a model for approaches to governing collaborative IT, and evaluate the effectiveness for such governance structures in the IT-dependent alliances. We suggest that IT governance efforts of an alliance should contribute to their collaborative rent. We also suggest that the collaborative rent of an alliance would relate to the business value of its alliance partners. Field survey data containing 192 responses indicates a positive influence of the suggested IT governance efforts of the alliance on the collaborative rent of the alliance. The results also suggest a positive impact of the collaborative rent of the alliance on the business value of the alliance partners.

Dynamic capabilities and performance : strategy, structure and environment

Dynamic capabilities are widely considered to incorporate those processes that enable organizations to sustain superior performance over time. In this paper, we argue theoretically and demonstrate empirically that these effects are contingent on organizational structure and the competitive intensity in the market. Results from partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analyses indicate that organic organizational structures facilitate the impact of dynamic capabilities on organizational performance. Furthermore, we find that the performance effects of dynamic capabilities are contingent on the competitive intensity faced by firms. Our findings demonstrate the performance effects of internal alignment between organizational structure and dynamic capabilities, as well as the external fit of dynamic capabilities with competitive intensity. We outline the advantages of PLS-SEM for modeling latent constructs, such as dynamic capabilities, and conclude with managerial implications.

Quality Information System: Investigating the conception, role, models and suggesting conceptual and hierarchal models

In the current business world which companies’ competition is very compact in the business arena, quality in manufacturing and providing products and services can be considered as a means of seeking excellence and success of companies in this competition arena. Entering the era of e-commerce and emergence of new production systems and new organizational structures, traditional management and quality assurance systems have been challenged. Consequently, quality information system has been gained a special seat as one of the new tools of quality management. In this paper, quality information system has been studied with a review of the literature of the quality information system, and the role and position of quality Information System (QIS) among other information systems of a organization is investigated. The quality Information system models are analyzed and by analyzing and assessing presented models in quality information system a conceptual and hierarchical model of quality information system is suggested and studied. As a case study the hierarchical model of quality information system is developed by evaluating hierarchical models presented in the field of quality information system based on the Shetabkar Co.

Introduction to "Business innovation and disruption in the music industry"

Similar to most other creative industries, the evolution of the music industry is heavily shaped by media technologies. This was equally true in 1999, when the global recorded music industry had experienced two decades of continuous growth largely driven by the rapid transition from vinyl records to Compact Discs. The transition encouraged avid music listeners to purchase much of their music collections all over again in order to listen to their favourite music with ‘digital sound’. As a consequence of this successful product innovation, recorded music sales (unit measure) more than doubled between the early 1980s and the end of the 1990s. It was with this backdrop that the first peer-to-peer file sharing service was developed and released to the mainstream music market in 1999 by the college student Shawn Fanning. The service was named Napster and it marks the beginning of an era that is now a classic example of how an innovation is able to disrupt an entire industry and make large swathes of existing industry competences obsolete. File sharing services such as Napster, followed by a range of similar services in its path, reduced physical unit sales in the music industry to levels that had not been seen since the 1970s. The severe impact of the internet on physical sales shocked many music industry executives who spent much of the 2000s vigorously trying to reverse the decline and make the disruptive technologies go away. At the end, they learned that their efforts were to no avail and the impact on the music industry proved to be transformative, irreversible and, to many music industry professionals, also devastating. Thousands of people lost their livelihood, large and small music companies have folded or been forced into mergers or acquisitions. But as always during periods of disruption, the past 15 years have also been very innovative, spurring a plethora of new music business models. These new business models have mainly emerged outside the music industry and the innovators have been often been required to be both persuasive and persistent in order to get acceptance from the risk-averse and cash-poor music industry establishment. Apple was one such change agent that in 2003 was the first company to open up a functioning and legal market for online music. iTunes Music Store was the first online retail outlet that was able to offer the music catalogues from all the major music companies; it used an entirely novel pricing model, and it allowed consumers to de-bundle the music album and only buy the songs that they actually liked. Songs had previously been bundled by physical necessity as discs or cassettes, but with iTunes Music Store, the institutionalized album bundle slowly started to fall apart. The consequences had an immediate impact on music retailing and within just a few years, many brick and mortar record stores were forced out of business in markets across the world. The transformation also had disruptive consequences beyond music retailing and redefined music companies’ organizational structures, work processes and routines, as well as professional roles. iTunes Music Store in one sense was a disruptive innovation, but it was at the same time relatively incremental, since the major labels’ positions and power structures remained largely unscathed. The rights holders still controlled their intellectual properties and the structures that guided the royalties paid per song that was sold were predictable, transparent and in line with established music industry practices.

'Information in context' : co-designing workplace structures and systems for organizational learning

With the aim of advancing professional practice through better understanding how to create workplace contexts that cultivate individual and collective learning through situated 'information in context' experiences, this paper presents insights gained from three North American collaborative design (co-design) implementations. In the current project at the Auraria Library in Denver, Colorado, USA, participants use collaborative information practices to redesign face-to-face and technology-enabled communication, decision making, and planning systems. Design processes are described and results-to-date described, within an appreciative framework which values information sharing and enables knowledge creation through shared leadership.