Inter-organizational information systems adoption for service innovation in building sector

The building sector has experienced a significant decline in recent years in Spain and Europe as a result of the financial crisis that began in 2007. This drop accompanies a low penetration of information and communication technologies in inter-organizational oriented business processes. The market decrease is causing a slowdown in the building sector, where only flexible small and medium enterprises (SMEs) survive thanks to specialization and innovation in services, which allow them to face new market demands. Inter-organizational information systems (IOISs) support innovation in services, and are thus a strategic tool for SMEs to obtain competitive advantage. Because of the inherent complexity of IOIS adoption, this research extends Kurnia and Johnston's (2000) theoretical model of IOIS adoption with an empirical model of IOIS characterization. The resultant model identifies the factors influencing IOIS adoption in SMEs in the building sector, to promote further service innovation for competitive and collaborative advantages. An empirical longitudinal study over six consecutive years using data from Spanish SMEs in the building sector validates the model, using the partial least squares technique and analyzing temporal stability. The main findings of this research are the four ways an IOIS might contribute to service innovation in the building sector. Namely: a) improving client interfaces and the link between service providers and end users; b) defining a specific market where SMEs can develop new service concepts; c) enhancing the service delivery system in traditional customer?supplier relationships; and d) introducing information and communication technologies and tools to improve information management.

NEMAWASHI: Attaining Value Stream alignment within Complex Organizational Networks

In the process of value creation, organizations perform an intense intra-organizational dialog through which internal VS alignment is achieved towards certain strategic objectives. Within the context of complex organizational networks, were goal conflicts are preprogrammed through incentive structures, VS alignment as legitimation of action towards strategic goals has special interest. On the one hand it facilitates the access to necessary resources for goal achievement and on the other it increases the sustainability and supports commonly agreed upon decisions leading to success. This paper provides a winnerless process (WLP) differential equations model for quantifying intra-organizational value stream (VS) alignment dynamics that can help design sustainable lean management solutions. This paper presents ongoing research results that show how the model was implemented in one industrial facility.

Innovation projects performance: Analyzing the impact of organizational characteristics

This study analyzes the effect of organizational characteristics on the innovation project performance. This research applies fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a large sample of Spanish firms appearing in the Community Innovation survey (CIS). The results show that the combination of organizational innovation, firm size and cooperationwith national and, especially, international firms is a sufficient condition for the success of innovation projects within the organization. Evidence also suggests that variables such as the investment on R&D peremployee or the seniority of the company do not affect the success of innovation projects. These findings help complement some results in previous studies on innovation projects performance.

Organizational determinants of substantive sustainability reporting practices: the role of company-level fit

As sustainability reporting (SR) practices have being increasingly adopted by corporations over the last twenty years, most of the existing literature on SR has stressed the role of external determinants (such as institutional and stakeholder pressures) in explaining this uptake. However, given that recent evidence points to a broader range of motives and uses (both external and internal) of SR, we contend that its role within company-level activities deserves greater academic attention. In order to address this research gap, this paper seeks to provide a more detailed examination of the organizational characteristics acting as drivers and/or barriers of SR integration within corporate sustainability practices at the company-level. More specifically, we suggest that substantive SR implementation can be predicted by assessing the level of fit between the organization and the SR framework being adopted. Building on this hypothesis, our theoretical model defines three forms of fit (technical, cultural and political) and identifies organizational characteristics associated to each of these fits. Finally, implications for academic research, businesses and policy-makers are derived.

Performing the personal within the organizational: Communicating professional identities through Taiwanese commercial airline pilots' personal narratives

This dissertation project explored professionalism and the performance of identities by examining Taiwanese commercial airline pilots' discursive practices in everyday life. The intentions for this project were to not only expand current knowledge of organizational communication from a critical rhetorical perspective, but to further explore the under-appreciated concept of professionalism of organizational members. Theoretically, I traced theoretical analysis in the sociology of professions and further investigated scholarship from identity research in organizational communication studies. This research agenda helped to advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professional identity as a complement to the sociological conception. I further merged a performance paradigm and critical rhetorical perspective to examine the discursive practices of organizational members and to challenge the bias of traditional textual approaches. Methodologically, I conducted ethnographic interviews with Taiwanese commercial airline pilots in order to understand how they construct their personal, social, and professional identities. Five narrative themes were identified and demonstrated in this project: (1) It takes a lot to become a commercial airline pilot, (2) Being a professional commercial airline pilot is to build up sufficient knowledge, beyond average skill, and correct attitude, (3) Pilots' resistance and dissent toward company management, (4) Popular (re)presentation influences professionalism, (5) Power and fear affect professionalism. Pilots' personal narratives were presented in performative writing and in poetic transcription to make word alive with sounds featuring their meanings. Their personal storytelling created a dialogic space to not only let pilots' voice to be heard but also revealed how identities are created within and against a larger organizational identity. Overall, this project demonstrated the interdisciplinary examination of the meanings, functions, and consequence of discursive practices in everyday professional life. It also critiqued relationships between power, domination, and resistance while reintroducing the roles of the body and materiality in the domain of professionalism, and provides ethical readings of larger and complex organizational cultures. Applying communication-oriented analysis to study professionalism indeed challenged the long time neglected phenomena regarding the power of the symbolic in sociological approaches and raised the awareness of structural, material, and bodily condition of work.

The Healthy Workplace of the 21st Century: The Benefit of Organizational Wellness Programs on Employee Health and Absenteeism

Every year, obesity rates continue to rise and have reached epidemic proportions throughout the United States. The costs associated with obesity are staggering and many researchers feel that the workplace should be the new front line in the battle for a healthier workforce. Employers must take action to address this worsening health crisis and help reduce spiraling medical costs and absenteeism rates. This capstone reviews the current literature on wellness programs and discusses different companies' approaches to wellness programs that have special emphasis on nutrition and physical activity. It also provides strategies and recommendations for companies eager to initiate a comprehensive, dynamic and directed wellness program to improve the current and future health of their workforce.

Structures, Systems and Organizational Communication Processes in Franchises in times of crisis: the Spanish case

Current economic crisis together with the Internet revolution has had direct impacts on the franchise sector of Spain: in particular on its unique communication network. The aim of this research is to analyse how Spanish franchise companies have adapted to these changes through its corporate communications management. We want to determine whether the management of communications is ideal to the growth and consolidation of companies in the market. Corporate communications plans and organizational structures were analyzed to verify whether or not information technology (i.e. the use of the Internet) is maximized: the communications aspect being a critical area of company growth. We found that most franchise companies surveyed had adapted well to the changes in information technology, despite economic challenges. The Internet as a communications tool has been limited to its utility as a “bulletin board” for information. The marketing advantage of Internet communication, or its use as an avenue for customer exchange and exchange of goods and services has yet to be maximized. Future research may look into the details of how companies are able to maximize the communications-marketing advantage that Online/Internet can contribute to the franchise sector.

Quality Management, Environmental Management and Organizational Design in the Hotel Industry: A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the paper analyzes the relationship between quality management and environmental management and their effects on hotel performance. Second, the article examines the relationship between these two management systems and organizational design. The paper uses an exploratory, qualitative approach based on interviews with managers and experts in the hotel industry. Based on a content analysis of interviews, the results lead to several propositions. Specifically, quality and environmental management influence hotel performance through mediating variables. Moreover, the implementation of quality management facilitates the implementation of environmental management. Furthermore, the implementation of these two management systems is associated with an increase of formalization and decentralization. The paper contributes to the analysis of quality management, environmental management, organizational design and performance in a joint manner, which has not been attempted before in the hotel industry. In addition, it helps extend the findings about these links in manufacturing and service organizations to the hotel industry.

Organizational design, quality management and competitive advantage in hotels

Purpose – The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between practices of quality management (QM) and the characteristics of organizational design, and QM and competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a partial least squares approach to test these relationships in 350 hotels in Spain. Findings – The findings show that QM influences specialization, formalization and interdepartmental interactions, and that QM practices influence both cost and differentiation competitive advantage. The results also indicate the importance of QM strategic and operational systems as practices that have a key impact on the characteristics of organizational design. Similarly, the QM operational system is key in the relationship between QM and cost competitive advantage. Finally, the QM operational, information and strategic systems positively influence differentiation competitive advantage. Practical implications – When hotels adopt QM practices, there will be significant changes in a number of organizational variables, including specialization, formalization and interdepartmental interactions. This paper provides empirical evidence that QM practices improve both cost and differentiation competitive advantage in the hotel industry. Originality/value – There has been little research on the effects of QM on organizational design in the hotel industry. The contribution of this paper is that analyze the effects of QM on organizational design and competitive advantage, extending knowledge about these issues in a specific sector.

The Organizational Tasks of High-Performance Gymnastic Coaches

The purpose of this study was to report the knowledge used by expert high performance gymnastic coaches in the organization of training and competition. In-depth interviews were conducted with 9 coaches who worked with male gymnasts and 8 coaches who worked with female gymnasts. Qualitative analyses showed that coaches of males and coaches of females planned training similarly, except that coaches of females appeared to emphasize esthetic and nutritional issues to a greater extent. Coaches of males revealed more concerns about the organization of gymnasts' physical conditioning. Analysis indicated that expert gymnastic coaches of males and females are constantly involved in dynamic social interactions with gymnasts, parents, and assistant coaches. Many areas of coaches' organizational work, such as dealing with the athletes' personal concerns and working with parents, are not part of the structure of coaches' training programs and emerged as crucial tasks of expert gymnastic coaches for developing elite gymnasts.

Capitalism without Capitalists? A Bottom-Up View of Industrial Transformation in East Germany. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.1, 1999

Research on the industrial transition in East Germany and its outcomes has long focused on the strategy of the Treuhand­ anstalt (IHA). According to institutionalists, David Stark and Lazlo Brust!: (1998), the powerful position of the German privatization agency was not only a result of German unification but also a function of a pathway rooted in the institutional peculiarities of the East German economy before 1989. This paper shows that neither a simple top-down perspective nor the pathway approach, as Stark and Brust!: suggested, are adequate for explaining the internal dynamic of enterprise transformation as well as the outcomes of this process. First of all, the dissolution of the former organizational structures and hierarchies was less coordinated by the 1HA than is often assumed. Often Kombinates fell apart more quickly from below than they could be dismantled from above since enterprises or their units chose the exit­ option and had good reasons to do so. Secondly, although the privatization by the 1HA resulted in the clear dominance of Western investors, the new ownership structure of East German industry as a whole could be characterized as a "capitalism without (East German) capitalists." In fact, what exists in East Germany is rather a kind of "small business capitalism" (KleinbetriebsknpitalifmllS) in which small-and medium-sized producers dominate the landscape. Finally, there was no single starting point in 1989. Two different industrial orders shaped the industrial history of the East German regions which were not destroyed between 1945-89, but rather transformed into the state socialist production system. It can be shown that these older historical patterns are relevant for transition and their outcomes as well.

Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns

This paper proposes a diachronic typology for the various patterns that have been referred to as Hierarchical Alignment or Inverse Alignment. Previous typological studies have tried to explain such patterns as grammatical reflections of a universal Referential Hierarchy, in which first person outranks second person outranks third person and humans outrank other animates outrank inanimates. However, our study shows that most of the formal properties of hierarchy-sensitive constructions are essentially predictable from their historical sources. We have identified three sources for hierarchical person marking, three for direction marking, two for obviative case marking, and one for hierarchical constituent ordering. These sources suggest that there is more than one explanation for hierarchical alignment: one is consistent with Givón’s claim that hierarchical patterns are a grammaticalization of generic topicality; another is consistent with DeLancey’s claim that hierarchies reflect the deictic distinction between present (1/2) and distant (3) participants; another is simply a new manifestation of a common asymmetrical pattern, the use of zero marking for third persons. More importantly, the evolution of hierarchical grammatical patterns does not reflect a consistent universal ranking of participants – at least in those cases where we can see (or infer) historical stages in the evolution of these properties, different historical stages appear to reflect different hierarchical rankings of participants, especially first and second person. This leads us to conclude that the diversity of hierarchical patterns is an artifact of grammatical change, and that in general, the presence of hierarchical patterns in synchronic grammars is not somehow conditioned by some more general universal hierarchy.

Decomposing hierarchical alignment: Co-arguments as conditions on alignment and the limits of referential hierarchies as explanations in verb agreement

Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical marking, hierarchical marking can be analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity. Once hierarchical effects on marking are analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity, it becomes possible to examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in exactly the same way as one can examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in cases of differential argument marking and indeed any other condition on alignment (such as tense or clause type). As a result, instances of hierarchical marking of any kind turn out not to present a special case in the typology of alignment, and there is no need for positing an additional non-basic alignment type such as “hierarchical alignment”. While hierarchies are not needed for descriptive and comparative purposes, we also cast doubt on their relevance in diachrony: examining two families for which hierarchical agreement has been postulated, Algonquian and Kiranti, we find only weak and very limited statistical evidence for agreement paradigms to have been shaped by a principled ranking of person categories.