Business Commons^™

Potentially Valuable Overlaps Between Work System Theory, Demo, And Enterprise Engineering, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper explores how work system theory (WST) and related core ideas in various versions of the work system method (WSM) overlap with enterprise engineering and with the DEMO methodology. Based on the definition of work system, an enterprise can be viewed as a set of interacting work systems. A work system can be summarized at various levels of detail. The simplest level is basically a verb phrase. The next level is a “work system snapshot.” More detailed descriptions are based on a work system metamodel.

This paper’s contribution is in two areas, 1) establishing links between WST/WSM and enterprise …

Knowledge-Supported Design Thinking About Systems In Organizations: An Application Of Work System Theory, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper explains a type of knowledge-supported design thinking related to systems in organizations. It shows how work system theory (WST) provides the basis for the work system method (WSM), various versions of which have been used by many hundreds of MBA and Executive MBA students. Design thinking occurs throughout WSM and is especially prominent at the point where WST/WSM users apply their analysis and develop recommendations for improving an existing work system or creating a new work system. Knowledge support for that design thinking has been provided through the knowledge built into WSM, and can be provided in a …

Work System Perspective On Service, Service Systems, It Services, And Service Science, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This document explains how a “work system” perspective on systems in organizations illuminates many service topics in an understandable and broadly applicable way. It contributes to ISSIP (International Society of Service Innovation Professionals) by providing frameworks and concepts that can be used in describing, evaluating, analyzing, designing, and improving services, service systems, and IT systems.

Disentangling Service: Using A Work System Perspective To Reconcile Different But Overlapping Portrayals Of Service And Service Systems, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Discussion and debate about the meaning of service, service system, IT service, and related to terms has proven inconclusive and frustrating. This preliminary draft provides insights about the nature of the problem and tries to disentangle ideas and expectations related to three portrayals of service. In a nutshell, efforts to understand service as a unitary concept tend to go in circles due to overlapping references to different but overlapping portrayals and contexts. This paper identifies three separate but somewhat overlapping portrayals of service, services as acts, services as outcomes, and services as software entities. Then it introduces a work system …

Engineering Enterprises For Emergent Change, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper uses work system theory (WST) and two of its extensions to provide an integrated perspective on engineering enterprises for emergent change. This paper starts by explaining six basic assumptions and distinctions related to emergent change. It introduces four frameworks or models related to WST including the work system framework, work system life cycle model, a theory of workarounds, and a work system metamodel. It shows how each framework or model can help in identifying different aspects of engineering for emergent change and also can be the basis of guidelines for that purpose. Overall, this paper provides a unique …

Theory Of Workarounds, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Although mentioned frequently in the organization, management, public administration, and technology literatures, workarounds are understudied and undertheorized. This article provides an integrated theory of workarounds that describes how and why workarounds are created. The theory covers most types of workarounds and most situations in which workarounds occur in operational systems. This theory is based on a broad but useful definition of workaround that clarifies the preconditions for the occurrence of a workaround. The literature review is organized around a diagram that combines the five “voices” in the literature of workarounds. That diagram is modeled after the diagram summarizing Orton and …

Bankruptcy: The Divergent Cases Of The City And The County Of San Bernardino, Richard Callahan, Mark Pisano

Public and Nonprofit Administration

The cases are the two separate jurisdictions of the City of San Bernardino and the County of San Bernardino, California, U.S.A. The matched pair offers a unique opportunity for a research design that compares a bankrupt city government with a jurisdiction sharing the essential demographic, economic, and geographical features, though as a county a different level of government. The two cases offer insights into bankruptcy as not simply a function of economic forces or recent poor policy choices but as a result of a pattern of decision-making, a structure of government, and the constraints placed on leadership by structure and …

Accompanying The Student: The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm And Prior Learning, Kimberly R. Connor

Public and Nonprofit Administration

At the University of San Francisco’s School of Management (SoM), working adults enrolled in our Bachelor of Science in Management degree completion program participate in a process of experience and reflection that prepares them, as our slogan proclaims, to “change the world from here.” Before our working adult students take a management or business class, they are introduced to a process we call the Interdisciplinary Studies Assessment (ISA), a prior learning opportunity that is distinctive for how it works within an Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) that recognizes that learning is a lifelong journey that can take place in a variety …

Using Common-Pool Resource Principles To Design Local Government Fiscal Sustainability, Shui‐Yan Tang, Richard Callahan, Mark Pisano

Public and Nonprofit Administration

This article analyzes local government fiscal sustainability as a common-pool resource (CPR) problem. By comparing the experiences of Los Angeles County, San Bernardino City, and San Bernardino County, the analysis applies a framework developed from three decades of CPR research to show the importance of six micro-situational variables — communications with the full set of participants, known reputations of participants, high marginal per capita return, entry or exit capabilities, longer time horizon, and agreed-upon sanctioning capabilities — in shaping collective-action dynamics and building the trust and reciprocity among stakeholders needed for achieving fiscal sustainability. The underlying contextual conditions for these …

Corporate Social Responsibility And The Nonprofit Sector: Assessing The Thoughts And Practices Across Three Nonprofit Subsectors, Richard D. Waters, H K. Ott

Public and Nonprofit Administration

Scholars have increasingly been studying the impact of corporate social responsibility as a business strategy in for-profit institutions, and results frequently indicate benefits to the organizations such as increased reputation, sales, and reduced reputation damage during crises. Little is known about the impact of corporate social responsibility on organizations from the nonprofit sector, however. Using in-depth interviews with nonprofits sponsoring festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013-2014, this study examines how nonprofits representing agriculture, arts and culture, and sexual health view corporate social responsibility as it affects their communication efforts. Results indicate that nonprofit communicators downplay the corporate …

Corporate Social Responsibility: Perspectives Of Hotel Frontline Employees, Sun-Young Park, Stuart E. Levy

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Strategy

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine hotel frontline employees' perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities at the hotel they currently work, and how their perceptions influence their level of organizational identification, an indicator of their relationship quality with the hotel.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses 575 responses of hotel frontline employees in the US, collected through a national online survey.

Findings – Results show that hotel employees' perceptions of CSR activities encompass the host community, colleagues, and customers, beyond green practices. Moreover, their perceptions of CSR activities positively and significantly influence the level of organizational …

The Impact Of New, Renewal And Termination Sponsorship Announcements On Share Price Returns, T. S. Kruger, Michael M. Goldman, M. Ward

Sport Management

What impact do sport sponsorship announcements have on the share price returns of the sponsoring firms? The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of new, renewal and termination sponsorship announcements on share price returns. The research employed the widely acceptable event study methodology to analyse 118 announcements made by 19 firms over a period of more than 11 years. The mixed findings across all three announcement types point to the lack of consideration given to the sponsorship investment by investors. The findings suggest that, although some firms may position their sponsorships as a contributor towards competitive advantage, …

Sports On Television: The How And Why Behind What You See, Michael M. Goldman

Sport Management

No abstract provided.

A Bayesian Approach To Ranking Private Companies Based On Predictive Indicators, Matthew Dixon, Jike Chong

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Private equity investors seek to rank potential investment opportunities in growth stage private companies within an industry sector. The sparsity of historical investment transaction data for many growth stage private companies' may present a major obstacle to using statistical methods to discern industry specific features associated with successful and failed companies.This paper describes a Bayesian ranking approach based on i extracting and selecting features; ii training support vector machine classifiers from feature pairs of labeled companies in an industry; iii non-parametric estimation of posterior probabilities of success and failure; and iv ranking unlabeled companies within a cohort based on scores …

Gpusvcalibration: A R Package For Fast Stochastic Volatility Model Calibration Using Gpus, Matthew Dixon, Sabbir Ahmed Khan, Mohammad Zubair

Business Analytics and Information Systems

In this paper we describe the gpusvcalibration R package for accelerating stochastic volatility model calibration on GPUs. The package is designed for use with existing CRAN packages for optimization such as DEOptim and nloptr. Stochastic volatility models are used extensively across the capital markets for pricing and risk management of exchange traded financial options. However, there are many challenges to calibration, including comparative assessment of the robustness of different models and optimization routines. For example, we observe that when fitted to sub-minute level midmarket quotes, models require frequent calibration every few minutes and the quality of the fit is routine …

Male Grooming: An Ethnographic Research On Perception And Choice Of Male Cosmetics, Sweta Thota, Stacy N. Hermosillo, Neilgoon N. Keyhani, Jennifer A. Walker

Marketing (Formerly Marketing and Law)

The purpose of this study is to explore male perceptions toward cosmetics and their product choice. Applying an ethnographic framework to this study, three males between the ages of 24-30 were interviewed through a series of 141 questions pertaining to their demographics, lifestyle, attitudes toward masculinity, skin care, grooming and cleaning behaviors. The results showed five overarching themes: (1) all of the participants had early experiences with personal care products, (2) the term masculinity was defined with terms such as "calm" and "practical", (3) all participants looked up to their fathers as their key role models, (4) all participants valued …

Get Your Head In The Game: Using Gamification In Business Education To Connect With Generation Y, Sonja Martin Poole, Elyria Kemp, Lauri Patterson, Kimberly Williams

Marketing (Formerly Marketing and Law)

Generation Y learners think and learn differently. They seek learning environments that are relaxed, flexible, interactive, and engaging. Gamification incorporates game mechanics to non-game contexts and has been found to motivate or incentivize students using rewards such as points, badges, and certificates. The purpose of this research is to investigate how utilizing gamification mechanics and customer engagement principles in college business courses can engage and foster learning among Generation Y students. Findings from this research suggest that using gamification techniques in the classroom can be an effective tool for enhancing student engagement and learning. Implications and future research are presented.

Truth And Consequences In The Global Village, Val Larsen, Sweta Thota

Marketing (Formerly Marketing and Law)

Almost everyone agrees that businesses have a moral obligation to be honest. Less emphasized is the fact that customers, the co-creators of value, are likewise obliged to be honest. Customer dishonesty like business dishonesty creates deadweight economic losses. Marketers can improve the moral infrastructure of society and eliminate these deadweight losses if they bring the moral accountability of the gemeinshaftlich village to the gesellschaftlich global economy. Customers can be made accountable through an expansion of credence markets that measure integrity and that compel the dishonest to bear the costs of their own misbehavior. The feasibility of expanding credence markets is …