A decision-making model to choose business intelligence platforms for organizations

In recent time, technology applications in different fields, especially Business Intelligence (BI) have been developed rapidly and considered to be one of the most significant uses of information technology with special position reserved. The application of BI systems provides organizations with a sense of superiority in the competitive environment. Despite many advantages, the companies applying such systems may also encounter problems in decision-making process because of the highly diversified interactions within the systems. Hence, the choice of a suitable BI platform is important to take the great advantage of using information technology in all organizational fields. The current research aims at addressing the problems existed in the organizational decision-making process, proposing and implementing a suitable BI platform using Iranian companies as case study. The paper attempts to present a solitary model based on studying different methods in BI platform choice and applying the chosen BI platform for different decisionmaking processes. The results from evaluating the effectiveness of subsequently implementing the model for Iranian Industrial companies are discussed.

Health consumer organizations and the pharmaceutical industry : is transparency the answer?

This book examines the important role of consumer activism within health policy in different national contexts. In an age of shifting boundaries between state and civil society, consumer groups are potentially drivers of democratization in the health domain. The expert contributors explore how their activities bring new dynamics to relations between service providers, the medical profession, government agencies, and other policy actors. This book is unique in comprehensively analysing the opportunities and dilemmas of this type of activism, including ambiguous partnerships between consumer groups and stakeholders such as the pharmaceutical industry. These themes are explored within an internationally comparative framework, with case studies from various countries. Students and researchers in the fields of health policy and sociology, public policy and social movements will find this relevant and path-breaking book enlightening. It will also prove invaluable for participants and activists in patient and health consumer organizations.

A conceptual framework of corporate and business ethics across organizations

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to introduce and describe a conceptual framework of corporate and business ethics across organizations in terms of ethical structures, ethical processes and ethical performance.

Design/methodology/approach – A framework is outlined and positioned incorporating an ethical frame of reference in the field of organizational chain management.

Findings – A number of areas and sub-areas of corporate and business ethics are framed in the context across organizations.

Research limitations/implications – The introduced framework should be seen as a seed for further development and refinement. It provides opportunities for further research of ethical concerns across organizations.

Practical implications – Organizations may benefit from the findings and insights presented and they may be used to enhance their ability to manage, monitor and evaluate ethical business practices across organizations.

Social implications – Changing societal and market patterns may enforce organizations to address ethical concerns across organizations. A myopic approach restricted to the judicial system may become insufficient and unsatisfactory from the perspective of other stakeholders of the organization.

Originality/value – The framework makes a contribution bringing in ethical concerns across organizations, providing a basis for their ethical values and culture, as well as asymmetric relationships in terms of power and dependence. The authors believe that a true learning organization needs to realise the importance of an extended view of its endeavors of corporate and business ethics in terms of ethical structures, ethical processes and ethical performance across organizations.

A model of cause-related marketing for profit-driven and non-profit organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a model of cause-related marketing (CRM) for both profit-driven (PD) and non-profit (NP) organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – The model consists of two parallel internal and external organizational processes – one representing the process of a NP organization and the other a PD organization. They are interlinked as the outcome of a CRM-partnership is dependent upon their mutual efforts.
Findings – The authors argue that it is essential to remember that a CRM-partnership is a challenge and risk for both the PD and NP organizations that may harm their reputation and position in the marketplace and/or society. CRM has benefits as well as downsides that should not be underestimated nor neglected.
Research limitations/implications – Will the involvement of the PD or NP organizations in the resultant partnership be perceived as commercialism, altruism or a combination of both, in the marketplace and society? A focus on both processes opens up opportunities for further research.
Practical implications – A contribution is that the CRM-model may be used as a guide for both PD and NP organizations in order to reveal whether a CRM-partnership is appropriate for them with a potential partner or not. It may also indicate whether the motives are based upon commercial reasons or altruistic reasons or a combination of both.
Originality/value – The model enables these organizations to think through the process prior to engaging in CRM.

A psychological contract perspective to the link between non-profit organizations' management practices and volunteer sustainability

This study applies the concept of the psychological contract to the relationship between management practices and volunteers. Formalization of the voluntary sector is impacting on volunteers’ experiences and may breach the psychological contract from the volunteers’ perspective. This mixed method study interviewed 67 volunteers and volunteer coordinators/administrators, and collected mail survey information from 152 volunteer organizations. The transactional management practices of keeping formal records and not paying volunteers out of pocket expenses are negatively associated with volunteer recruitment and retention. Alternatively, publicly recognizing volunteers through a volunteer newsletter supports volunteers’ relational expectations and is positively linked to adequate volunteer numbers. Our findings have important implications for the human resource development practices of non-profit organizations in dealing with their volunteers: they suggest that the relational expectations of volunteers are an important aspect of the psychological contract, which could be used by organizations as a framework for developing management practices that fit the volunteer ethos of trust and networks.

Supporting knowledge strategy in consulting organizations : codification, personalization or both

This paper reports on results from an ongoing study of the information infrastructure support for organizational knowledge strategy. We assess the applicability and predictions of the widely cited model of Hansen, Nohria and Tierney’s on knowledge strategy and infrastructure support. We do so by means of two case studies that we conducted in the consulting sector. Our findings indicate support for the Hansen et al.’s model as each of the organizations has predominately pursued a knowledge strategy consistent with the model’s predictions. However, we also find that in so doing, organizations can incur significant opportunity costs if either a codification or a personalization knowledge strategy is allowed to predominate to such an extent that it crowds-out the alternative knowledge strategy.

Contexts of relevance in explanatory case studies in information systems : ubiquitous information technology implementation in organizations

Case studies of the organizational implementation of traditional business computing have often emphasized the importance of context in research design and data analysis. The emergence of computing phenomena that pervade different contexts within and even beyond the organizational boundary suggests the need to disaggregate the notion of context to allow for finer levels of contextual analysis. Indeed we demonstrate that a failure to consider interdependent levels of context in organizational case studies of computing technologies that even approach ubiquity runs the risk of partial and even incorrect conclusions being drawn. We illustrate this argument by means of two explanatory case studies of intranet and mobile technology implementation in organizations. Based on the extant literature on context in case study design and examples drawn from the cases, we propose a range of interconnected and interrelated contexts to consider in the research design of explanatory cases of ubiquitous technology implementation in organizations.

Intranet development processes in large organizations : characteristics and management implications

This paper highlights characteristics pertaining to intranet development processes in large, complex organizations. Some key differences between traditional development processes and intranet developments are identified. An empirical case of corporate intranet development is used to illustrate these differences. In the light of this, a number of managerial considerations in terms of intranet design, implementation, costing and control are outlined.

The implementation of mobile technology in organizations : expanding individual use contexts

Mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, smart mobile phones, and other handheld computing devices hold much promise in terms of their organizational application. Many existing models of the individual acceptance and implementation of information technology in organizational contexts have been developed in the era of “at the office” computing such as MIS, office automation, groupware, and so forth. We conducted two in-depth case studies of the implementation of mobile technology in healthcare organizations. The studies highlight interrelated individual use contexts due to the mobility of the technology: the individual as employee, as professional, as private user, and as member of society. The cases show that influences emanating from these use contexts impacted on the individual adoption of the technology within the organization. While broad extra-organizational influences are incorporated in some existing individual technology adoption models, we show that it becomes relevant to accommodate these influences more specifically in research models of mobile computing in organizations. Based on the extant literature and the case study data we pave the way toward more comprehensive models of the adoption and implementation of mobile technologies in organizations.

Contextual influences on user satisfaction with mobile computing : findings from two healthcare organizations

Mobile information technologies (IT) are transforming individual work practices and organizations. These devices are extending not only the boundaries of the ‘office’ in space and time, but also the social context within which use occurs. In this paper, we investigate how extra-organizational influences can impact user satisfaction with mobile systems. The findings from our longitudinal study highlight the interrelatedness of different use contexts and their importance in perceptions of user satisfaction. The data indicate that varying social contexts of individual use (individual as employee, as professional, as private user, and as member of society) result in different social influences that affect the individual’s perceptions of user satisfaction with the mobile technology. While existing theories explain user satisfaction with IT within the organizational context, our findings suggest that future studies of mobile IT in organizations should accommodate such extra-organizational contextual influences.

A conceptual framework for the implementation of enterprise information portals in large organizations

Addressing the diversity in information requirements across the enterprise is a central challenge in enterprise content management. Enterprise information portals (EIPs) hold promise in this regard, offering each user a gateway to customized and personalized content. However, in large organizations EIP implementers face the complexity of tailoring portals for potentially thousands of users. A conceptual framework based on marketing fundamentals is developed to inform EIP implementation in this respect. It is argued that EIP implementers should view their user community as a number of distinct segments in order to address divergent needs more specifically (as opposed to a ‘one size fits all’ approach). For each identified segment, a ‘mix’ of content (product), distribution (place), promotion and price (cost) should be considered. The framework is applied to two cases of EIP implementation in large organizations. It is proposed that segmentation enables better planning of the overall EIP implementation effort. Considerations such as the number of user segments, customization, and personalization of content, and the funding of EIP development in large organizations are also discussed. The concepts elaborated here also hold theoretical relevance for other IS implementation contexts that involve very large usercommunities with diverse information

Power, influence and intranet implementation : a safari of South African organizations

Intranets hold great promise as ``organizational Internets'' to allow information sharing and collaboration across departments, functions and different information systems within an organization. Yet not much is known about how to implement intranets. We adapt a taxonomy based on institutional theory and distinguish six broad diffusion drivers that might be considered to sustain the implementation process. An exploratory field study of four intranet implementations was conducted to analyze which drivers were used and the results that were yielded. We draw several conclusions. First, all six drivers were deployed in the analyzed cases. Second, the choice of drivers varied with the level of the intranet (corporate or unit), the implementation stage, and existing organizational practices and contingencies. Third, it seems that the critical drivers are knowledge building, subsidy and mobilization in the early stages of implementation. In the later stages knowledge deployment, subsidy and innovation directives were most commonly used.

Reigniting the fire : a contemporary research agenda for social, political and nonprofit marketing

The paper reports on the core challenges faced by the nonprofit, political and social marketing disciplinary areas and suggests a series of research agendas to develop theory and practice to meet these challenges.

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Social marketing's research agenda involves the continued adaptation of the new developments in commercial marketing, whilst building a base of social marketing theory and best practice benchmarks that can be used to identify, clarify and classify the boundaries of social marketing against social change techniques.
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Nonprofit marketing is pursuing the dual research agenda of developing the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship whilst seeking deeper consumer-based research to understand motivations for charitable behaviour and gift giving.
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Political Marketing's research agenda looks for an increase in the level of background research, core data and market research to use as a basis for developing more advanced theoretical and practical models. In addition, as political marketing is being transferred internationally between a range of political and electoral systems, there is a need for comparative research into both the relevance and effectiveness of these techniques to isolate nation independent and nation dependent political marketing strategies and campaigns.