Business Commons^™

Developing And Teaching The Crisis Communication Course, Mitchell Friedman

Communication Studies

Comer (2010) noted the absence of literature offering guidance to instructors charged with developing standalone courses on crisis management. This article aims to fill this void, relating the author’s experience in developing two crisis communication classes (one offered online, one in a traditional classroom setting). Drawing on 15 years of teaching experience (including single sessions devoted to crisis communication, reputation management, and related issues in public relations and business courses) plus the investigation of scholarly contributions related to the development of such courses, syllabi, and feedback from practitioners who develop and deliver related training, the article delivers the essential components …

Information Systems To Support “Door-Step Banking”: Enabling Scalability Of Microfinance To Serve More Of The Poor At The Bottom Of The Pyramid, Lakshmi Mohan, Devendra Potnis, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Microfinance provides financial services to the extremely poor who are not served by banks. At the heart of microfinance is microcredit which provides small loans to the unbanked poor to seed small local businesses. Microfinance may help alleviate poverty because access to finance has a positive impact on economic development. The unmet need of the poor for financial services spawned over 11,000 microfinance institutions (MFIs) by 2010, but 90 percent of these MFIs are small with fewer than 10,000 clients. This article presents three case examples of MFIs in India that deployed information systems (IS) to increase the scale of …

An "Interpretary" For The Is Discipline, A Compendium Of Interpretations Of Basic Is Concepts And Methods From Different Theoretical Perspectives, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This article proposes the development of an "interpretary," a compendium of interpretations of IS concepts and methods from different theoretical perspectives. Such an interpretary would recognize the importance of different theoretical perspectives while also moving toward an organized body of knowledge for the IS discipline. An idealized interpretary can be viewed as a two-dimensional concept interpretation matrix whose cells contain interpretations of specific concepts from specific theoretical perspectives. The first column is a list of important IS concepts. The other columns represent specific theoretical perspectives. Each cell contains an interpretation of a particular concept from a particular perspective Thus, the …

From Resources And Activities To Value For Customers Within Systems Of Service Systems, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper addresses important challenges related to the 2013 SIG-SVC workshop’s theme, “Delivering and Managing Services in Systems of Service Systems.” It provides an operational view of systems of service systems (SOSS) in the form of a new metamodel that significantly extends previous metamodels related to work systems and service systems. An operational view of this type is necessary for understanding and analyzing existing service systems and for designing improvements and new service systems.

The metamodel’s perspective on service and service systems agrees only partially with service dominant logic and other current ideas in service science. The paper starts by …

Is Work System Theory A Practical Theory Of Practice?, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper describes an exploration of whether ideas related to pragmatism, practical theory, and practice theory provide potentially useful directions for extending work system theory (WST), which is an outgrowth of an attempt to develop the work system method (WSM), a flexible systems analysis method for business professionals. After summarizing WST’s basic premises and its two central frameworks, this paper uses a positioning map to explain reasons for considering relationships between WST and a number of topics related to practical issues and practice theory. Based on that positioning map, the subsequent sections discuss relation-ships between WST and UML, Goldkuhl’s workpractice …

Incorporating More System-Related Knowledge Into Systems Analysis And Design, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper introduces a new, intuitively straightforward approach for thinking about important aspects of systems that are being analyzed, designed, and constructed. Building on past research highlighting metaphors related to organizations, IS, and projects, it shows how considering common, broadly applicable types of subsystems (not standard IS categories such as MIS and DSS) might provide direction, insight, and useful methods for analysis and design practitioners and researchers. A conceptual model identifies eight types of subsystems that are relevant to most systems in organizations. For each subsystem type, this paper identifies relevant metaphors, concepts, theories, methodologies, success criteria, design tradeoffs, and …

Value Blueprint And Service Design Space For Facilitating Value Creation, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

A new operational perspective on fundamental concepts related to customers, service, and value differs from service-dominant logic in its approach to service systems, value creation, value co-creation, service interactions, value facilitation, and value constellations. This perspective leads to two new tools for supporting service system design: 1) A “value blueprint” uses a swimlane representation to identify where value creation occurs, recognizing that parts of value creation may occur long after service providers have produced their contributions to customer value. 2) A multidimensional design space for value facilitation identifies design dimensions that can be used for characterizing current or proposed approaches …

Using Work System Theory To Link Managerial And Technical Perspectives On Bpm, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Work system theory (WST) provides a bridge between managerial and technical perspectives on BPM that often seem distant from each other. In combination, the work system framework, underlying work system metamodel, and the work system life cycle model provide a number of bridges between those perspectives. In relation to managerial BPM, the work system framework treats "business process" as one of nine elements in a basic understanding of a work system. The others are participants, information, technology, products/services, customers, environment, infrastructure, and strategies. The underlying metamodel outlines a precise structure for analysis and design of work systems and for links …

Work System Theory: Overview Of Core Concepts, Extensions, And Challenges For The Future, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper presents a current, accessible, and overarching view of work system theory. WST is the core of an integrated body of theory that emerged from a long-term research project to develop a systems analysis and design method for business professionals called the work system method (WSM). After discussing WST’s basic premises and its two central frameworks, this paper summarizes the relationship between WST and WSM. It shows how experience with early versions of WSM led to three extensions of WST that addressed limitations-in-use in one of the central frameworks in WST. After comparisons with related theories, this paper closes …

Managing Large Task Public-Private Partnerships, Mark Pisano, Richard Callahan

Public and Nonprofit Administration

Memo Overview

Panel Recommendations on improving public and private relationships:

There have been numerous reports from GAO and other organizations that all levels of Governments, even assuming normal economic growth, will experience fiscal shortfalls stretching far into the future. There are also numerous reports concluding that unless we undertake major investment programs in our collective goods issues of education, infrastructure, energy and health that we will not be able to accelerate growth and alter this future. Our panel is developing strategies and recommendations, both short and long term, on putting the organizations-public, private and non-profit together differently, with new “rules …

Developing Effective Mechanisms That Promote Fiscal Sustainability, Mark Pisano, Richard Callahan

Public and Nonprofit Administration

State and local governments will likely continue to face the stress and shortfalls caused by the Great Recession for an extended period. Three years of research on fiscal sustainability in local government in Southern California identifies strategies that can be used to address this stress, including options for the executive, budget, and finance functions of these jurisdictions.

Sustainable Solutions For Human Security And Anti-Corruption: Integrating Theories And Practices, Marco Tavanti, A Stachowicz-Stanusch

Public and Nonprofit Administration

Corruption is a real issue affecting the understanding and practices promoting human security. This article introduces the frameworks of sustainable human security in relation to anticorruption. Human security is explored in its historical evolution and the more recent expansion of its frameworks, including the sustainability and systemic elements. The notion of sustainable human security is examined in relation to corruption and anti-corruption, as expressed in the current challenges and opportunities on sustainable development and human international development.

Evidence-Based Management And Leadership, R B. Briner, Neil D. Walshe

Organization, Leadership, and Communication

Organizations can be led and managed in many different ways and there is no shortage of perspectives, models, and frameworks for thinking about how such tasks can be accomplished. This chapter focuses on one such perspective: evidence-based management (EBMgt). At its core is the idea that when managers and organizations make decisions, evidence of various types should be collected, critically appraised, and taken into account. Put this way, EBMgt does not appear to be either new or radical. However, as we shall go on to discuss, recent attempts to elaborate and flesh out this idea show that while some of …

Refining Thoughts On Culture: Insights Derived From Australia And New Zealand, Kevin D. Lo, Amanda Budde-Sung

Organization, Leadership, and Communication

Culture and cross-cultural differences are increasingly important in international business and management. However, the existing models of national culture may not accurately reflect intra-cultural and intra-regional variation. We examine Australia and New Zealand as examples of the national model of culture falling short with respect to both cultural clustering and intracultural variation. Given that both of these countries are attaining greater prominence in international business, we highlight the need to consider their uniqueness and what we can learn for both management research and practice. As we call attention to the important distinctions that

The Economic Impact Of Stadia And Teams: The Case Of Minor League Baseball, Nola Agha

Sport Management

This paper uses an extensive unique dataset to investigate the justification of government subsidies for minor league baseball teams and stadiums by measuring pecuniary gains in a local economy. Specifically, a dynamic panel data model incorporating 238 Metropolitan Statistical Areas that hosted affiliated or independent minor league teams between 1985 and 2006 shows that AAA teams, A+ teams, AA stadiums, and rookie stadiums are all associated with significant positive effects on the change in local per capita income. The presence of positive effects is strikingly different from decades of non-positive results at the major league level.

Nfl Time Management: The Role Of Timeouts In End-Game Scenarios, Bryan Beasley, Ryan Greenwald, Nola Agha

Sport Management

Time management is an important part of game strategy in the National Football League (NFL), especially in the second half of a game that could be decided by a field goal. This paper determines the in-game factors that contribute to an NFL offensive team’s total time taken to reach field goal range during the final six minutes of regulation in games that are within three points or less. Using data constructed from 2009-2011 NFL regular season games, we find that neither quarterback rating nor the number of All-Pro players affect the speed at a which a team reaches field goal …

Detecting Mobility Patterns In Mobile Phone Data From The Ivory Coast, Matthew Dixon, Spencer P. Aiello, Funmi Fapohunda, William Goldstein

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper investigates the Data for Development (D4D) challenge [3], an open challenge set by the French mobile phone company, Orange, who have provided anonymized records of their customers in the Ivory Coast. This data spans a 5 month (150 day) horizon spread across 4 different sets containing antenna-to-antenna traffic, trace data for 50,000 customers at varying spatial resolution, and social graphs for 5,000 customers. By leveraging cloud-based and open-source analytics infrastructure to (1) merge the D4D datasets with Geographic Information System (GIS) data and (2) apply data mining algorithms, this paper presents a number of techniques for detecting mobility …

Portfolio Optimization With Correlation Matrices: How, Why, And Why Not, Manuel Tarrazo

Finance

Correlation is used frequently both in the classroom and in professional environments to illustrate and summarize investment know-how, especially with regard to diversification. Pedagogically, the initial build-up on correlation, which reaches its climax while describing a hypothetical two-variable optimization case, abruptly disappears when the discussion reaches optimizations of several securities, thereby stopping short of running a full-fledged, correlation-based optimization. Why is that so? We offer some explanations. First, correlations initially seem to provide clarification of the workings of the optimization, specifically with respect to how security risk-relations affect optimal weights. However, the variable transformation required changes coordinates, thus making correlation-based …

Uses And Misuses Of The Black-Litterman Model In Portfolio Construction, Ludwig B. Chincarini, Daehwan Kim

Finance

The Black-Litterman model has gained popularity in applications in the area of quantitative equity portfolio management. Unfortunately, many recent applications of the Black-Litterman to novel aspects of quantitative portfolio management have neglected the rigor of the original Black-Litterman modelling. In this article, we critically examine some of these applications from a Bayesian perspective. We identify three reasons why these applications may create losses to investors. These three reasons are: (1) Using a prior without "anchoring" the prior to an equilibrium model, (2) Using a prior and an equilibrium model that conflict with one another, and (3) Ignoring the implications of …

A Case Study On Risk Management: Lessons From The Collapse Of Amaranth Advisors Llc, Ludwig B. Chincarini

Finance

No abstract provided.