Business Commons^™

What Role Does Government Procurement Play In Manufacturing In The Uk And Internationally And How Might This Change In The Future, Barbara Morton, Gregg Paget, Carlos Mena

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report, commissioned by the Government Office for Science, has the general aim of reviewing the available evidence concerning the impact and role of public sector procurement on UK manufacturing. Specifically the report addresses the following questions:

1. What is the current framework for Government procurement in the UK?
2. How does Government procurement directly and indirectly impact on manufacturing activities?
3. How do UK procurement frameworks compare to other competitor nation procurement in terms of supporting manufacturing?
4. In what ways could co-ordinated procurement (procurement that meets multiple Government departmental goals) catalyse and support UK Manufacturing?

Previous research has shown that public procurement …

Strategic Upgrades: A Vehicle Routing Overview And Implementation For Nokia Siemens Network, Lukas Kessler, Chris Davis, Farzad Moshfegh, Jerrod Thomas

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is combinatorial optimization problem that has real-world synonyms for many organizations and problem types. In this paper we discuss various implementations of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), an extension of the traditional traveling salesman problem and explore a best-fit solution as well as a heuristically derived “good” solution. The best-fit solution utilizes a branch and bound technique but requires an exponential amount of computational resources to complete when applied to problems of marginal size. Some heuristic methodologies are elucidated to compare and contrast their benefits and drawbacks and an open source solution for capacitated vehicle …

The Water Tower, Michael Gum, Travis Meinhold, Morgan Brakken, Robert Pile, Noshad Rahimi, Frank Tea, Mitch Powell, Kali Bader

Real Estate Development Workshop Projects

Students in the PSU Real Estate Development Workshop produce a development plan for a property site in Portland known as The Water Tower. Their task was to produce an original development plan, including the development concept, the market analysis, the conceptual design, economic analysis, capital and operations budget, and management plan.

Onboarding For Success: A Midstream Evaluation Of Strategic Onboarding At Portland State University, Jerrod Thomas

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Portland State University (PSU) is Oregon’s largest university and houses a large and diverse set of faculty, staff, and administrators. With such a large population and a constantly changing landscape of budgets and institutional requirements, Portland State is continually hiring, developing, and transitioning its workforce. Studies in the last decade have shown that by focusing on the onboarding process, retention and job effectiveness can be significantly enhanced. [1] In the summer of 2012, under the direction of the Vice President of Finance and Administration, a Strategic Onboarding committee was formed to evaluate existing processes and make recommendations on implementing a …

How Disruptive Is Information Technology Really?, Judith A. Ramaley

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

How disruptive is this technology revolution, and what does this expansion of the world of knowledge portend for higher education?

About the author: Judith A. Ramaley is President Emerita and Distinguished Professor of Public Service at Portland State University, President Emerita of Winona State University, and a Senior Scholar with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). She also served as President of the University of Vermont and as Assistant Director, Education and Human Resources Directorate, at the National Science Foundation.

Oit Online Web Presence, Ali Alsahaf, Ryan Menze, Farzad Moshfegh, Jerrod Thomas

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) at Portland State University (PSU) migrated its website to a centrally provided Drupal content management system in the summer of 2012, leaving out a significant amount of content from the previous website in exchange for a quick implementation timeline based on an executive order to unify departmental branding across the division of Finance and Administration. This initial migration focused on public facing information and excluded large swaths of support articles that were broadly used by faculty, staff, students, and technology professionals. In early 2013, a new project was launched to reevaluate the design decisions …

Managing Activities At Wineries: Building And Sustaining A Place-Based Brand, Ethan Seltzer, Mark Bernard, Jp Mcneil, Lori Parks

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Willamette Valley Winery Association, Oregon Winery Association, Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, and Oregon Department of Agriculture asked the authors to develop information needed to help inform discussions regarding the replacement for the soon-to-sunset HB 3280. HB 3280, signed by the Governor in August of 2011, provided a means for defining and regulating wine-related and non-wine-related events occurring or proposed to occur at wineries and vineyards in Oregon, often in exclusive farm use zones. Our charge was to investigate the following policy issue: How have wine regions permitted and managed a range of uses and activities at …

Beyond The Technology Revolution: Putting Practice Into Context, Jesse F. Dillard, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

As accounting information systems become more and more central to the technique and practice of accounting, it becomes crucial that our understanding expand beyond the technical aspects of development and application. Drawing on Habermas' social theory, arguments are presented that facilitate a significant expansion in the issues considered and participants involved. We illustrate how the theory can be used to formulate alternative views and to provide a basis for explicit recognition of the assumptions and ideologies that underlie systems applications.

Ethics-In-Action: An Application Of Structuration Theory In Professional Service Firms, Jesse F. Dillard, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

A theoretical base for studying ethics in action is developed. In previous work, we propose a responsibility ethic, normative stakeholder theory, and discourse ethics as components of ethical decision making within organizational contexts. Here, we argue that structuration theory provides theoretical depth and conceptual integration to the ideas presented in our earlier work. The previous work is briefly discussed and structuration theory is reviewed. Ethically informed action is formulated within the context of structuration theory as a consideration and instantiation of structural features. Ethical action is predicated on the agent’s accountability within the context of an ongoing community. Accountability requires …

Globalization And Environmental Sustainability: An Analysis Of The Impact Of Globalization Using The Natural Step Framework, Joyce S. Osland, K. Kathy Dhanda, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Globalization is becoming an increasingly controversial topic as shown by recent protests around the world. To date, however, U.S. business scholars have seldom questioned the basic assumptions of globalization, opting instead to describe the phenomena and focus on best practices. The purpose of this literature review is to broaden the boundaries of the debate on globalization and increase our understanding of its impact beyond the economic sphere into the realm of environmental sustainability. The Natural Step framework is used to organize an analysis of the existing empirical research. It describes four basic system conditions required for sustainability: 1) substances from …

Replication School: Scaling Social Innovation Through Dissemination Training, Jacen Greene, Cindy Cooper, Carolyn Mcknight, Impact Entrepreneurs, School Of Business Administration, Institute For Sustainable Solutions

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes a training methodology to scale social innovation through dissemination undertaken in 2012 by Portland State University’s (PSU) Impact Entrepreneurs for the award-winning social enterprise Digital Divide Data (DDD). It begins with descriptions of some commonly used terms in the field — social innovation, social entrepreneurship, replication, and impact sourcing — and illustrates how each of these concepts was integrated into the development and delivery of a training program for replication of Digital Divide Data’s impact sourcing model. Program outcomes are reviewed, including findings that dissemination training is a viable, cost-effective method for replicating successful social innovations.

Director Ownership, Governance, And Performance, Sanjai Bhagat, Brian Bolton

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

We study the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. We consider 5 measures of corporate governance during the period 1998–2007. We find a significant negative relationship between board independence and operating performance during the pre-2002 period, but a positive and significant relationship during the post-2002 period. Our most important contribution is a proposal of a governance measure, namely, dollar ownership of the board members, that is simple, intuitive, less prone to measurement error, and not subject to the problem of weighting a multitude of governance provisions in constructing a governance index.

Madécasse: Competing With A 4x Fairtrade Business Model, Scott Marshall, Darrell Brown, Bex Sakarias, Min Cai

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Brett Beach and Tim McCollum, co-founders of Madécasse, spent two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar. During that time, they fell in love with the country and its people. Recognizing the need of the Malagasy for stable jobs and fair wages and the connection between poverty and environmental destruction, Brett and Tim discussed possibilities for a social enterprise in the country.

Madagascar presents a beautiful yet challenging place to operate a business. It has a wide range of flora and fauna, approximately 70% of which are found nowhere else on Earth and it produces coffee, vanilla, sugar, cotton, pepper, …

Digital Media Battleground, Fahad Alhajri, James Bowen, Brian Brewer, Meles Hagos, Farzad Moshfegh, Srujana Penmetsa, Jerrod Thomas

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Current digital media distribution platforms continue their march towards streaming service-based infrastructures, delivering content to users when and where they want it: laptops, set top boxes, home entertainment systems, and the new ubiquity: mobile devices. This model was first demonstrated by utilizing the multicast backbone technology in the early 1990s and took the better part of a decade to make inroads in changing the way individuals consume broadcast, mainstream, and syndicated video media. It took the advent of streaming technology, high-speed internet adoption, and a willingness from content owners to license their treasured content with upstart streaming media platform companies. …