Broader or deeper? Exploring the most effective intervention profile for public small business support

Most advanced economies offer publicly financed advice services to start-up firms and SMEs. In England, local or regional Business Links organisations have provided these services, and divided their support into nonintensive one-off contacts providing information or advice and more intensive support involving a diagnostic process and repeated interaction with firms. A key choice for Business Link managers is how to shape their intervention strategies, balancing resources between intensive and nonintensive support. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we develop a typology of intervention strategies for Business Links in England which reflects differences in the breadth and depth of the support provided. We then test the impacts of these alternative intervention models on client companies using both subjective assessments by firms and econometric treatment models that allow for selection bias. Our key empirical result is that Business Links’ choice of intervention strategy has a significant effect both on actual and on perceived business outcomes, with our results emphasising the value of depth over breadth. The implication is that where additional resources are available for business support these should be used to deepen the assistance provided rather than extend assistance to a wider group of firms.

Preparing Aston Business School students for placement

Aston Business School (ABS) has offered four-year sandwich degrees (including a year long placement) for over 30 years, and ABS has often been ranked top for graduate employability. This report outlines the activities ABS uses to meet its ever increasing placement targets. ABS builds relationships in students’ thinking between theory and practice, and this has implications for their study, the placement period and beyond. Developing the links has certainly been a factor in the enhanced employabilility of ABS graduates, resulting in ABS having been ranked top for graduate employability for many years. The eight employability skills used as the basis for the placement preparation objectives originate from Smith at al’s (2002) work on employability. We were encouraged to find that these employability skills overlap with the benchmark of the ‘Profile summary for Business and Management’ outlined by Hawkridge (2005). In this case study we provide a rationale and then the objectives of the placement preparation period, followed by specific details of the preparation process. The evaluation highlights key achievements and areas for development, and the discussion is future-focused. Readers should note that the ABS Undergraduate curriculum is aimed at preparing students for employment but this case study focuses on the role of the Placements Team.

The role of personal advisors at Aston Business School

Aston Business School has moved away from a traditional Personal Tutoring model to the Personal Advisor model. During 2006, a review was undertaken of the existing system and proposed the new scheme. This session will present the current model of supporting students within Aston Business School’s Undergraduate Programme. It will discuss the research undertaken at the beginning of the change process which informed the decisions and structure of the Personal Advisor Scheme. It will also present evaluation research undertaken with students into their perceptions of the new scheme. The session will conclude with the plans for the future.

Business systems purpose, analysis

This thesis deals with the problematic of the business systems systemic purpose definition. The definition of the systemic purpose, which is regarded as the utmost expression of the system's purposefulness, is to be achieved by ensuring the participation of all the stakeholders, if possible, who affect or they are affected by the business system's operations. The nature of participation, defined as a process of the stakeholders' perceptual exchanges, is deemed to be problematic in itself due to the influence exerted upon it by organisational power, coercion and false consciousness. The main focus of the thesis then is to make aware and provide the stakeholders with an explicit philosophical pedestal and a set of principles upon which a meta- epistemological framework for the enquiry of the business system's purposeful behaviour is developed. In addition, the thesis focuses on the development of a methodology that can be used by the stakeholders to achieve self-knowledge through the critical and systemic examination of their normative presuppositions, about the business system, at both sociological as well as the psychological levels concurrently and the subsequent development of an organisational intrinsically motivated information system. According to the critical systems philosophy and principles, developed in this thesis, normative presuppositions define the stakeholders' perceptions about the purposeful behaviour of the business system they perceived as having a material, an informational and/or an emacipatory stake (human interest) in. The methodology will provide Information Systems that demonstrably improve coordination of organisational activities by enabling the development and maintenance of a single/multifaceted view of purpose throughout organisations.

The Japanisation process in Malaysia

This thesis examines the empirical evidence for the transferability of Japanese soft technology (JST) or Japanese work organisation within two government-initiated, Malaysian-Japanese strategic alliances: PROTON and PERNEC. The government, through its Look East Policy (LEP) began in 1982, taking Japan (and South Korea) as models and partners in Malaysian economic and industrial development process, and expected these alliances to learn the good aspects of Japanese work organisations and management styles in order for them to become independent companies, both technologically and economically. The thesis found that the alliances have been successfully taking and utilising Japanese parts, components, tools, robots and machines; i.e. the 'ready-made hard technology'. [Whereas the important element of soft technology has been ignored]. The soft technology has been slowly and marginally transferred because neither local parties nor their Japanese counterparts within the alliances consider the acquisition or transfer of soft technology to be the main concern or a part of business plan. Although many factors influence management transfer, the thesis has focused on the eagerness and the capability of Malaysian managerial teams to acquire and, to a lesser extent, the readiness of the Japanese to transfer the technology. It was found that there is a lack of demand on technology acquisition by Malaysian managers and lack of responsibility to transfer the technology among Japanese experts. However, the political and social pressures on these alliances, the industrial climate and labour market, leaderships and management system of alliances, and Japanese MNCs regional and global corporate strategies have contributed to the high level of transfer of JST at PROTON compared to PERNEC. The research also found that Malaysian industrial and investment policies have favoured foreign investment but there is a lack of strategies for nurturing indigenous technological development.On the other hand the Japanese MNCs and public agencies have been operating in Malaysia and guided by their regional and global corporate strategies and less concerned with Malaysian technological development. In conclusion, empirically, the JST transfer is minimal. The transfer has been influenced by internal contingency factors of organisation; external industrial, political and cultural environmental factors; and last but not least the Japanese MNCs' global and regional corporate strategies. The transfer of Japanese management in this research is inclined towards core-periphery transfer model, it is also related to organisational and national technological capability.

Developing an enterprise simulator to support electronic supply chain for B2B electronic process

The application of any e-Solution promises significant returns. In particular, using internet technologies both within enterprises and across the supply (value) chain provides real opportunity, not only for operational improvement but also for innovative strategic positioning. However, significant questions obscure potential investment; how any value will actually be created and, importantly, how this value will be shared across the value chain is not clear. This paper will describe a programme of research that is developing an enterprise simulator that will provide a more fundamental understanding of the impact of e-Solutions across operational supply chains, in terms of both standard operational and financial measures of performance. An efficient supply chain reduces total costs of operations by sharing accurate real-time information and coordinating inter-organizational business processes. This form of electronic link between organizations is known as business-to-business (B2B) e-Business. The financial measures go beyond simple cost calculations to real bottom-line performance by modelling the financial transactions that business processes generate. The paper will show how this enterprise simulator allows for a complete supply chain to be modelled in this way across four key applications: control system design, virtual enterprises, pan-supply-chain performance metrics and supporting e-Supply-chain design methodology.

University to business technology transfer — UK and USA comparisons

University to business technology transfer offers specific challenges, beyond those encountered in industry more widely. This paper examines the issues in university to business technology transfer in the UK and USA and presents the results of a survey of UK and US university technology transfer officers. Findings indicate significant differences in the motivations of universities in each country to transfer technology, the consistency of university technology transfer policies and the accessibility of university technologies to business. The study also looks at perceived barriers to university to business technology transfer and offers suggestions for possible improvements to the process. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Benchmarking project management practices of Caribbean organizations using analytic hierarchy process

Effective management of projects is becoming increasingly important for any type of organization to remain competitive in today’s dynamic business environment due to pressure of globalization. The use of benchmarking is widening as a technique for supporting project management. Benchmarking can be described as the search for the best practices, leading to the superior performance of an organization. However, effectiveness of benchmarking depends on the use of tools for collecting and analyzing information and deriving subsequent improvement projects. This study demonstrates how analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multiple attribute decision-making technique, can be used for benchmarking project management practices. The entire methodology has been applied to benchmark project management practice of Caribbean public sector organizations with organizations in the Indian petroleum sector, organizations in the infrastructure sector of Thailand and the UK. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a proposed benchmarking model using AHP, determines problems and issues of Caribbean project management in the public sector and suggests improvement measures for effective project management.

e-Business technological innovations

Modern distribution is being shifted from paper-based, people-intensive marketing systems toward electronic-based procedures that rely on Internet communications and web-enhanced software tools. This article develops a typology of e-business technological innovations that have come to characterize cutting-edge distribution management. e-Business tools relevant to marketing channels are organized by the channel process flows that yield communication and transaction enhancements to distribution systems. Further, a model of the impact of e-business on channel performance is developed. The mediating role of channel structure on technology's impact on channel outcomes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness is also analyzed. Finally, implications of the e-business revolution for managers and researchers are discussed.

Examining a key aspect of agency-to-business relationships:the effects of regulatory control on the satisfaction of regulated firms

This paper studies an overlooked, but highly important relationship, the relationship that exists between regulatory agencies (e.g., the EPA, OSHA, and the FDA) and the for-profit businesses they attempt to govern. Drawing on business-to-business control and satisfaction research, a framework is developed to understand how regulatory control influences the satisfaction levels of customer firms. Regulatory control is disaggregated into four distinct facets: the controlling agency, the rules and regulations of control, the processes used by the agency to apply the regulations, and sanctions. Each facet is hypothesized to have an effect on satisfaction. A regulator's administration of state food safety regulations provides the empirical context for testing the hypotheses. Results from a survey of 173 restaurants provide empirical support for the conceptual model. Most importantly, the study finds that the informal control process increases customer satisfaction, while the formal control process decreases customer satisfaction. We discuss how these and other findings may contribute to more effective agency-to-business relationships and ongoing research.

Design and development of agent-based procurement system to enhance business intelligence

The purpose of this research is to propose a procurement system across other disciplines and retrieved information with relevant parties so as to have a better co-ordination between supply and demand sides. This paper demonstrates how to analyze the data with an agent-based procurement system (APS) to re-engineer and improve the existing procurement process. The intelligence agents take the responsibility of searching the potential suppliers, negotiation with the short-listed suppliers and evaluating the performance of suppliers based on the selection criteria with mathematical model. Manufacturing firms and trading companies spend more than half of their sales dollar in the purchase of raw material and components. Efficient data collection with high accuracy is one of the key success factors to generate quality procurement which is to purchasing right material at right quality from right suppliers. In general, the enterprises spend a significant amount of resources on data collection and storage, but too little on facilitating data analysis and sharing. To validate the feasibility of the approach, a case study on a manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) has been conducted. APS supports the data and information analyzing technique to facilitate the decision making such that the agent can enhance the negotiation and suppler evaluation efficiency by saving time and cost.

The practice and process of delivering integration through strategic planning

This paper explains how strategic planning is able to deliver strategic integration within organizations. While communication and participation within planning processes are perceived to have an integrative effect, we argue that these effects are unlikely to arise simply from bringing people together. Rather, we suggest that, given the varying interests of actors in different business units, integration will only arise from active negotiations and compromises between these actors. The paper is based upon a case of strategic planning in a multinational that was attempting to develop greater strategic integration across Europe. Drawing upon an activity theory framework, we examine how a common strategy emerges over time through modifications to the planning process and to different actors’ roles within it. The findings are used to develop a process model that shows how different business unit characteristics of planning experience and relative power shape different experiences of communication and participation activities and different processes for achieving integration. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this process model contributes to the literature on strategic planning, political processes of strategy-making, and strategy-as-practice.