Integrating technology and operations in a developing country context

The importance of technology to developing countries is widely recognised as they compete internationally and develop internally. Firms acquire technology by different means and from diverse sources, and they possess varying levels of competence. Since countries are at various stages of economic and technological development, prescriptive approaches to technology and operations integration are not appropriate. The paper discusses factors in the literature that affect the integration of technology and operations in developing countries. Country similarities and differences also play a role, so the study examines three developing countries: Brazil, India and South Africa. These countries are emerging from periods of regulation and have developed certain sectors of their economies. Empirical evidence is provided from a study of managers in South Africa who were asked to assess the important factors in technology integration, and to score the extent to which they can control these. Results from the study concur with the literature regarding the importance of a country’s political stability and its policies towards new investment and infrastructure. Knowledge and understanding of technology are essential for successful integration in countries with insufficient skilled personnel, and where education levels are low.

Sustainable competitive advantage in electronic business: towards a contingency perspective of the resource-based view

Our understanding of the nature of competitive advantage has not been helped by a tendency for theorists to adopt a unitary position, suggesting, for example, that advantage is industry based or resource based. In examining the nature of competitive advantage in an electronic business (e-business) environment this paper adopts a contingency perspective. Several intriguing questions emerge. Do 'new economy' companies have different resource profiles to 'old economy' companies? Are the patterns of resource development and accumulation different? Are attained advantages less sustainable for e-businesses? These are the kinds of themes examined in this paper. The literature on competitive advantage is reviewed as are the challenges posed by the recent changes in the business environment.Two broad sets of firms are identified as emerging out of the e-business shake up and the resource profiles of these firms are discussed. Several research propositions are advanced and the implications for research and practice are discussed.

Strategizing networks of power and influence:the internet and the struggle over contested space

Whilst some authors have portrayed the Internet as a powerful tool for business and political institutions, others have highlighted the potential of this technology for those vying to constrain or counter-balance the power of organizations, through e-collectivism and on-line action. What appears to be emerging is a contested space that has the potential to simultaneously enhance the power of organizations, whilst also acting as an enabling technology for the empowerment of grass-root networks. In this struggle, organizations are fighting for the retention of “old economy” positions, as well as the development of “new economy” power-bases. In realizing these positions, organizations and institutions are strategizing and manoeuvering in order to shape on-line networks and communications. For example, the on-line activities of individuals can be contained through various technological means, such as surveillance, and the structuring of the virtual world through the use of portals and “walled gardens”. However, loose groupings of individuals are also strategizing to ensure there is a liberation of their communication paths and practices, and to maintain the potential for mobilization within and across traditional boundaries. In this article, the unique nature and potential of the Internet are evaluated, and the struggle over this contested virtual space is explored.

Entrepreneurship in the neighborhood:shifting patterns of economic activities in residential neighborhoods in five dutch cities

Cities are oftentimes seen as undergoing a process of "emergence" in the "new economy." However, this process has largely remained empirically underdetermined. This article examines the intra-city geography of emerging businesses in newly dominant sectors of the urban economy. The change in dominant sectors coincides with a shift towards small- and medium-sized businesses, creating new economic opportunities for urban residential areas. The residential neighborhood is introduced as a place where supply and demand side drivers operate to attract or limit such new economic activity. Allen Scott's perspective of the cognitive-cultural economy is used to analyze which neighborhoods are flourishing sites of the cognitive-cultural sectors. His perspective on industries that are on the rise in urban environments and their growth potential proves very valuable. Social demographic characteristics on the level of the neighborhood are used as predictors of the composition of the local economy. The analyses show that in particular wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods are more prone than others to becoming "hubs" of the cognitive-cultural economy. However, disadvantaged neighborhoods may under certain conditions serve as incubators for business start-ups as they offer low-rent office spaces. This has important consequences for their future economic growth potential as well as the distribution of successful businesses in the city. © 2013 Urban Affairs Association.

What is the Future of Strategic Management?

The history of planning and creating strategies has a past of over half a century. Throughout this lifetime period we have witnessed both the evolution of theory and practice. The MBA study books in the last-third of the 20th century have with predilection exhibited this very process as a complex of monetary centered budget planning, forecast-based planning, strategic planning and strategic management. There might be a controversy existing about the naming, characteristics and timing of these different sections but there is an accordance that the changes that we have taken place in the last decade as a whole without a doubt can be derived from these very changes in the business environment or in some outstanding cases (like 9/11) they can be acknowledged as the ability of corporate foreseeing and the ability to adapt to the vision of the future. The main purposes of the research is to provide a summarized picture about the changing process of this procedure during last decades as far as the planning and creating strategies are concerned and also their milestones and periods. Try to explore and systemize the very aspects of these changes. The happenings of the first decade of the new millennium are outstandingly interesting if we consider their real effect on the theory and practice of strategic management. Let us remember the euphoria around the year 2000, the predictions of „new technologies”, „new economy”, „new organization” and „new leadership”. We have implied before on the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center which meant a new era, a new quality of international terrorism and its consequences (Afghanistan, Iraq). But the „product” of this decade is the strategic aim that companies focus on, which is the social responsibility regarding the unavoidance of the effects of climate change on the long run. During the research the big question has risen concerning how did the science of strategic management do as far as the predictions of the global monetary and economic crisis are concerned? And also its solutions this very science has to offer in order to handle and get over the crisis. Does it conclude from the answers given to the questions that a change in paradigms are necessary, a new quality is needed or may be we have come to a new crossroad of the development process that will take over strategic management? (...)

Trust - Networking - Innovation

From innovation point of view the agri-food industry is seen as matured branch of the economy, where revolutionary new products and processes are very rare. Especially the SMEs are in squeezing situation: they have to fit very sharp prerequisites and demands on one side and very much constrained resources to give them power in order to formulate appropriate answers on the other side. They are looking for partners beyond the boundaries of their organization, mainly with other firms, universities, research organisations and government agencies. Adopting an effective innovation process to successfully introduce and develop new products to the market has become one of the most important strategies for food companies. The innovation dimension of networking activity contributes to growing network complexity, which in turn also affects the nature of traditional governance structure. Trust and other relational factors are playing an increasing role in these structures. Our research interest is whether the trust as coordination form of governance structure plays significant role in the Hungarian agri-food industry. Empirical data was drawn from a survey carried out in Central Hungary and aiming at the research of cooperation and knowledge management within the SMEs of the food economy. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is applied in order to determine the relationship among the three (Trust, Networking, Innovation) latent factors. We have found that trust plays significant positive role in increasing networking activity and innovation, but the extent of it is less than expected.

Measuring the arts: The case of Dade County nonprofits arts organizations

The theoretical analysis and research of cultural activities have been limited, for the most part, to the study of the role the public sector plays in the funding and support of nonprofit Arts organizations. The tools used to evaluate this intervention follow a macroeconomic perspective and fail to account for microeconomic principles and assumptions that affect the behavior of these organizations. This dissertation describes through conceptual models the behavior of the agents involved in the artistic process and the economic sectors affected by it. The first paper deals with issues related to economic impact studies and formulates a set of guidelines that should be followed when conducting this type of study. One of the ways to assess more accurately the impact culture has in a community is by assuming that artists can re-create the public space of a blight community and get it ready for a regeneration process. The second paper of this dissertation assumes just that and explains in detail all the cultural, political, economic and sociological interactions that are taking place in the Arts-led regeneration process in Miami Beach, Florida. The paper models the behavior of these agents by indicating what their goals and decision process mechanisms are. The results give support to the claim that the public space artists create in a city actually stimulate development. The third paper discusses the estimation of a demand function for artistic activities, specifically the New World Symphony (NWS) located in Miami Beach, Florida. The behavior of the consumers and producers of NWS' concerts is modeled. The results support the notion that consumers make their decisions based, among other things, on the perceived value these concerts have. Economists engage in the analysis of the effects of cultural activities in a community since many cities rely on them for their development. The history of many communities is not told by their assembly lines and machinery anymore but by their centers of entertainment, hotels and restaurants. Many cities in Europe and North America that have seen the manufacturing sector migrate to the South are trying to face the demands of the new economy by using the Arts as catalysts for development. ^

A economia criativa como estratégia de desenvolvimento para a cidade de Natal/RN

Globalization, the enormous speed of information exchange, technology updated in a speed never before and the growth of the cultural industry places us in a new reality in which we must adapt ourselves puting issues concerning to culture and technology at the center of development discussions. The Creative Economy, therefore, is inserted in this dicussion bringing these new elements to the center of the debate. The development potential of this new economy are real in Natal / RN, from, especially their link withim tourism. Thus, the intention of the work is to answer the questions: What is the weight of the creative economy in Natal? What are the issues that accelerate or hinder their development? To answer these questions we mapping the creative sectors on Natal’s economy, stressing labor and income figures, exercise already done by national and international organizations. The issues that connect the Creative Economy to education, R & D, cultural policy and tourism is also discussed. The review of the indicators related to these topics will be used to explain how they are configured as obstacle for the development of the creative economy in Natal/RN.

Gendered Responses to Global Crisis: Circular Migration and Return among Ecuadorian Families in Spain and Ecuador

This paper analyzes the impact of Spain’s economic crisis on social reproduction strategies of Ecuadorian migrant families in Madrid and Quito. The paper analyzes circular migration experiences and more permanent returns to Ecuador. I argue that these strategies and migrants' greater or lesser capabilities to move between different migration destinations show significant gender differences. On the one hand, men and women make a differential use of their migratory status to deploy transnational strategies and expand their mobility. On the other hand, migrants’ degree of mobility and flexibility with regard to the labor market and transnational social reproduction are derivative of a specific gendered order and sexual division of labor.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Perspectives on gender, migration and transnational work: joint work of social reproduction and care in Southern Europe

This paper presents the "state of the art" and some of the main issues discussed in relation to the topic of transnational migration and reproductive work in southern Europe. We start doing a genealogy of the complex theoretical development leading to the consolidation of the research program, linking consideration of gender with transnational migration and transformation of work and ways of survival, thus making the production aspects as reproductive, in a context of globalization. The analysis of the process of multiscale reconfiguration of social reproduction and care, with particular attention to its present global dimension is presented, pointing to the turning point of this line of research that would have taken place with the beginning of this century, with the rise notions such as "global care chains" (Hochschild, 2001), or "care drain" (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2013). Also, the role of this new agency, now composed in many cases women who migrate to other countries or continents, precisely to address these reproductive activities, is recognized. Finally, reference is made to some of the new conceptual and theoretical developments in this area.

Gestão da informação: um estudo de caso em um instituto de pesquisa tecnológica

Each two years the amount of available information in the world double. This is the Information Age, where the success depends on what one knows, not on what one has. A new economy appears with the capacity to generate, to store, to process and to apply effectively the knowledge, based on information, determining the companies productivity and competitiveness.The objective of this work is to understand the information management model of a technological research institute - CTGÁS (Gas Technology Center). The research has been done focused on the 5 main processes and the 15 support processes of the organization value chain , aiming to understand the information management in the organization based on Davenport´s Information Management model (1998). Therefore, it was necessary to identify how the necessary information for the organizational processes accomplishment are determined, obtained, distributed and used by the organization. The research can be classified as descriptive, regarding to its aims, and as a case study, related to the research ways. Interviews with the managers of the organization value chain processes have been carried through, with the objective to identify how they perceive the Information Management process that circulates in the organizational processes. Complementarily, a documentary research has been carried through, associated to the direct observation and procedures and actions follow up, involving the Information Management. The data treatment and analysis have been done from the authors theoretical support and from the managers interviews analysis, documents and processes observed by the researcher in the organization. It was noticed that the organization has raised its level of information needs that are not difficult to be determined and are satisfactorily obtained and distributed, although the majority of them are not structuralized, automatized or even classified regarding to its confidence. These peaces of information have good quality and are important, however they reflect a medium dependence on external and informal information, besides being used only in its great majority for people to know what and how to do something

Gestão da informação: um estudo de caso em um instituto de pesquisa tecnológica

Each two years the amount of available information in the world double. This is the Information Age, where the success depends on what one knows, not on what one has. A new economy appears with the capacity to generate, to store, to process and to apply effectively the knowledge, based on information, determining the companies productivity and competitiveness.The objective of this work is to understand the information management model of a technological research institute - CTGÁS (Gas Technology Center). The research has been done focused on the 5 main processes and the 15 support processes of the organization value chain , aiming to understand the information management in the organization based on Davenport´s Information Management model (1998). Therefore, it was necessary to identify how the necessary information for the organizational processes accomplishment are determined, obtained, distributed and used by the organization. The research can be classified as descriptive, regarding to its aims, and as a case study, related to the research ways. Interviews with the managers of the organization value chain processes have been carried through, with the objective to identify how they perceive the Information Management process that circulates in the organizational processes. Complementarily, a documentary research has been carried through, associated to the direct observation and procedures and actions follow up, involving the Information Management. The data treatment and analysis have been done from the authors theoretical support and from the managers interviews analysis, documents and processes observed by the researcher in the organization. It was noticed that the organization has raised its level of information needs that are not difficult to be determined and are satisfactorily obtained and distributed, although the majority of them are not structuralized, automatized or even classified regarding to its confidence. These peaces of information have good quality and are important, however they reflect a medium dependence on external and informal information, besides being used only in its great majority for people to know what and how to do something