FleSSR project: Sustainable business models for community cloud infrastructure in the UK higher education sector

Cloud-based infrastructure essentially comprises two offerings, cloud-based compute and cloud-based storage. These are perhaps best typified for most people by the two main components of the Amazon Web Services (AWS)1 public cloud offer, the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)2 and the Simple Storage Service (S3)3, though, of course, there are many other related services offered by Amazon and many other providers of similar public cloud infrastructure across the Internet.

A business plan development: the case of a paint company in Douala Camroon by Bomboy & Friends

This paper presents a business plan to create a new company Bomboy & Friends regarding the Exclusive Distribution of a fully Eco Friendly Water-Soluble Anti- Corrosive Prime named Life Guard Active Rust Primer Paint abbreviated as “L.G.A.R.P Paint” in Douala Cameroon and the C.E.M.A.C Region. The lack of quality paint in Cameroon has given the opportunity for a company like Bomboy & Friends to nurture its existence and be part of a fast growing economy, providing a high quality paint competition, very economical, easy to prepare, environmentally friendly, compatible with other brands and accessible to medium and small size companies.

Investment in fish seed multiplication farms in Bangladesh: Evidences of an attractive business

This study mainly evaluated the profitability of Fish Seed Multiplication Farms (FSMFs) having hatchery, nursery and hatchery-cum-nursery located in the districts of Jessore, Jhenidah and Narail in Bangladesh. The general findings of the study were that the investment in FSMFs with hatchery, nursery and hatchery-cum-nursery was highly profitable business. The results clearly indicated that the investment on hatchery was the most profitable than those of nursery and hatchery-cum-nursery operations from the viewpoints of individual investors. The results of sensitivity analysis suggested that the investment in nursery farm was a risky business with 20 per cent increase in operation and management as well was production costs or 20 per cent reduction in benefits if other things remaining the same. It was also evident from the study that the investors of FSMFs had currently been facing some crucial problems, which among others are: problems of inbreeding, shortage of brood fish, incidence of diseases, unavailability of certain inputs and lack of credit.

A framework for analysing business performance, firm innovation and related contextual factors: Perceptions of managers and policy makers in two European regions

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel reference framework that can be used to study how different kinds of innovation can result in better business performance and how external factors can influence both the firm's capacity to innovate and innovation itself. The value of the framework is demonstrated as it is applied in an exploratory study of the perceptions of public policy makers and managers from two European regions - the Veneto Region in Italy and the East of England in the UK. Amongst other things, the data gathered suggest that managers are generally less convinced than public policy makers, that the innovativeness of a firm is affected by factors over which policy makers have some control. This finding poses the question "what, if any, role can public policy makers play in enhancing a company's competitiveness by enabling it to become more innovative?".

IS/IT resources and business value: Operationalization of an information oriented framework

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. In this paper, we review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilities could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective and show how the new framework can be operationalized with existing assessment approaches by using empirical data from four industrial case studies. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

An information oriented framework for relating IS/IT resources and business value

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. At the same time, there are numerous studies, frameworks and case studies examining the impact of information technology and systems to business value. Recently, several studies have proposed maturity models for information management capabilities in the literature, which claim that a higher maturity results in a higher organizational performance. Although these studies provide valuable information about the underlying relations, most are limited in specifying the relationship in more detail. Furthermore, most prominent approaches do not or at least not explicitly consider information as important influencing factor for organisational performance. In this paper, we aim to review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilties could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective. Moreover, the paper discusses how each part of the model can be assessed in order to validate the model in future studies.

Innovation in business groups

Using novel data on European firms, this paper investigates the relationship between business groups and innovation. Controlling for various firm characteristics, we find that group affiliates are more innovative than standalones. We examine several hypotheses to explain this finding, focusing on group internal capital markets and knowledge spillovers. We find that group affiliation is particularly important for innovation in industries that rely more on external funding and in groups with more diversified capital sources, consistent with the internal capital markets hypothesis. Our results suggest that knowledge spillovers are not the main driver of innovation in business groups because firms affiliated with the same group do not have a common research focus and are unlikely to cite each other's patents. © 2010 INFORMS.

Learning and practising supply chain management strategies from a business simulation game: a comprehensive supply chain simulation

An Internet based supply chain simulation game (ISCS) is introduced and demonstrated in this paper. Different from other games and extended from the Beer Game, a comprehensive set of supply chain (SC) management strategies can be tested in the game, and these strategies can be evaluated and appraised based on the built-in Management Information System (MIS). The key functionalities of ISCS are designed to increase players SC awareness, facilitate understanding on various SC strategies and challenges, foster collaboration between partners, and improve problem solving skills. It is concluded that an ISCS can be used as an efficient and effective teaching tool as well as a research tool in operations research and management science. Problems and obstacles have been observed while engaging in the SC business scenario game. The actions proposed and implemented to solve these problems have resulted in improved SC performance.

The determinants of business performance of estate agency in England and Wales

Purpose: This paper seeks to investigate the factors influencing the business performance of estate agency in England and Wales. Design/methodology/approach: The paper investigates the effect of housing market, company size and pricing policy on business performance in the estate agency sector in England and Wales. The analysis uses the survey data of Woolwich Cost of Moving Survey (a survey of transactions costs sponsored by the Woolwich/Barclays Bank) from 2003 to 2005 to test the hypothesis that the business performance of estate agency is affected by industry characteristics and firm factors. Findings: The empirical analysis indicates that the business performance of estate agency is subject to market environment volatility such as market uncertainty, housing market liquidity and house price changes. The firm factors such as firm size and the level of agency fee have no explanatory power in explaining business performance. The level of agency fee is positively associated with firm size, market environment and liquidity. Research limitations/implications: The research is limited to the data received and is based on a research project on transaction costs designed prior to this analysis. Originality/value: There is little other research that investigates the factors determining the business performance of estate agency, using consecutive data of three years across England and Wales. The findings are useful for practitioners and/or managers to allocate resources and adjust their business strategy to enhance business performance in the estate agency sector.

Continuous assessment activities - correlation with final exam grades and effect on final grades. A business studies experience

In this paper we analyze the partial grades – of continuous assessment activities including the final exam – and the final grades – computed as a weighted average of partial grades – for nine subjects taught in the third year of Business Administration Degree. On one hand, results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the grades of continuous assessment activities (excluded the final exam) and final exam in seven subjects. On the other hand, overall we find that students’ grades in continuous assessment activities (excluded the final exam) help in the improvement of their final grades (i.e., students’ final grades exceed the grades that they would obtain by only taking into account their final exam grades). The results are consistent when the analysis is carried out over each subject area as well as over the grades of the students who registered for the nine subjects.

What Happened to the ‘Development’ in Sustainable Development? Business Guidelines Two Decades After Brundtland

Over twenty years ago ‘Our Common Future’ presented a conceptualization and explanation of the concept of sustainable development. Since then numerous alternative definitions of the concept have been offered, of which at least some are exclusive to each other. At the same time, the role of business in the transition to sustainable development has increasingly received attention. Bringing these two trends in sustainable development together, this paper returns to the Brundtland version of the concept to examine to what extent the original principles of sustainable development are still embedded within key business guidelines, namely the UN Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the ICC Business Charter for Sustainable Development, the CAUX Principles, the Global Sullivan Principles and the CERES Principles. The findings suggest that these business guidelines tend to emphasize environmental rather than social aspects of sustainable development, in particular to the detriment of the original Brundtland prioritization of the needs of the poorest. Furthermore, the attention to environmental aspects stresses win-win situations and has a clear managerialist focus; whereas more conceptual environmental issues concerning systems interdependencies, critical thresholds or systemic limits to growth find little attention. The normative codes and principles targeted at the private sector thus not only add another voice to the multiple discourses on sustainable development but also contribute to a reinterpretation of the original agenda set by Brundtland towards conceptualizations of sustainable development around the needs of industrialised rather than developing countries. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment