Business Commons^™

December 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

What Planet Are You On? Six Steps to Simplify Remote Management Managing people and projects from different cities, states, time zones, or countries is infinitely more difficult. You might as well be on different planets. Jim Bain gives us some tips that can make sure that they are on the same planet as their remote team members

The Impact of Caregiving on Business Did you know that the average cost to employers per working caregiver is $2,110 per year. This costs U.S. employers $33 billion a year. However, programs designed to help employees deal with eldercare and other caregiving issues …

November 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire City Profile 2010 This annual city profile by John Husing, Ph.D. provides a good source of information and available data for population, taxable sales, assessed valuation, housing prices and volumes, and income for Inland Empire’s 50 cities

Who Owns Your Strategy? Having a good and great strategy is critical to organizational success. With all good resources, most organizations largely fail to successfully implement their strategy. Why? The answer can be found in who actually owns the strategy

Top Ten Pitfalls to Avoid When Going Social in the Business World If you are looking for fans, followers, and friends …

October 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Largest Tax Hike in History of America Read Joan Pryde’s article concerning the largest tax hikes in the history of America. These taxes will hit families and small businesses on Jan. 1, 2011. Big surprises await.

Nine Body Languages Dos and Don’ts to Win in the Business World If you think you’ve been saying all the right things, but you still can’t get ahead, author Sharon Sayler suggests you consider what you’ve really been saying to potential employers—not just verbally, but non-verbally

The Uncertain Economy David Shulman, senior economist, UCLA Anderson Forecast, tells us what ails the economy against a …

September 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Real-Time Performance Reviews According to Jim Whitt, performance reviews end up being “check the boxes” exercises that have little influence on performance because they take place after the fact. Employees need and want direction. How and when it is done is what makes the difference

Expand Your Ideas Using Google Find out how a good search engine, such as Google, can make developing a new product or service much more efficient and insightful. Often its use leads to results for first-time users trying to find solutions to new problems

Budget Challenges Lie Ahead for County of San Bernardino To balance …

How To Implement A Content Management System, Jonathan M. Smith

Library Faculty Publications & Presentations

Web content management systems (CMS) are increasingly becoming the preferred solution for library websites and intranets. This session will describe the entire process of implementing CMS; from requirements gathering to post-launch evaluation. We will take a look at several popular open source CMS, and discuss the technical requirements for hosting these systems. Project management principles will be applied to the process, and usability testing methods will be discussed as part of the design and evaluation phases.

August 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

The Four Gs of Smartly Growing Your Business in Good Times and Bad Professor Ed Hess counsels corporate executives and small business owners to pursue growth strategies based on the 4Gs (Growths)

Don’t Hit Send! Avoid These Common E-mail Pet Peeves If you ever wondered why people don’t take action on your e-mails or why this productivity tool seems to waste more of your time than it saves, you may be guilty of exhibiting a few e-mail pet peeves

Stopping “Slack-Off Summer” Syndrome: Six Ways to Keep Your Company Ruthlessly Focused This Summer Summer is when everything slows down—including your …

July 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Retooling the Economy: Four Key Steps to Breaking Wall Street’s Obsession With “Short-termism” and Achieving Real, Authentic Growth To achieve a true economic turnaround, we must turn our focus to a pursuit of growth and innovation. Our current capital system is structured to impede those aspirations

Reference Checks Remove One in Five Job Candidates From Consideration A new survey from OfficeTeam finds the results of a reference check can be the real deal maker—or breaker. Managers interviewed said they remove more than one in five (21 percent) candidates from consideration after speaking to their professional contacts

Are Values Back in …

June 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

The Business Doctors The Business Doctors is a strategic alliance of local experts in the areas of business law, public relations, commercial banking, advertising, marketing, medical insurance, payroll services and other services doing business in the Inland Empire. They meet twice a month and mentor one another. A topic of business valuation is discussed in this issue by Ted Collins—a member of The Business Doctors

Close-Up: Combustion Associates, Inc. Awarded “Exporter of the Year,” this company has been recognized for its achievements by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce as a full-service engineering manufacturing …

May 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Opinion: True impact on working people of AB 32 is no mere numbers game A report by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education found that green jobs represent less than one percent of the jobs in California. Green jobs would expand under AB 32 and could potentially impact three million blue-collar or 20% of California’s workforce

Making a Comeback: 6 Strategies to Overcome Your Professional Setback and Define Success on Your Own Terms Andrea Redmond and Patricia Crisafulli gives advice on how you can lead not only to a comeback, but potentially an even better outcome than …

April 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Kelly Space & Technology, Inc. vision and mission for Technical Employment Training, Inc. After Fontana High School closed its machinist training program, Kelly Space & Technology immediately volunteered to store the equipment and tooling in its facilities. It also took this opportunity of fulfilling a business, education and workforce development approach to training students in need of employment skills

TV Battle of the Sexes, Part 2—Men are from Muntz, Women are from Zenith 3D is coming to your living room. Just as you have invested in a new and larger flat screen TV, Hollywood has gone full throttle in …

March 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

A “Fixed” Fight: A Peek Inside One Construction Expert’s Campaign to Make Fixed-Price Contracts and Cost Containment the Industry’s New Normal Construction cost overruns have run rampant for decades. It is an industry that has seen per-worker productivity fall by nearly 25 percent over the past 40 years

Leadership & Little White Lies: How Those Seemingly Harmless Fibs and Half-Truths Can Hurt Your Business Author Dave Anderson says that white lies can do serious damage to your reputation and can lead to much bigger issues down the road. Read to see why cleaning up your act can help save your …

February 2010, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

Commentary: Securing Future Leaders for Economic Growth “The future business leaders for our community should be a product of the community. In order to build a foundation for success in the business realm, steps begin at the high school and university level,” states Jennifer Torrez.

SBA Lending Increases Sharply From October Thru December 2009 SBA loan activity in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties continues to make a strong comeback, with both the number of loans and their dollar amounts showing substantial increases in the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 versus the same period in 2009. Some good news …

Impacts Of It Resources On Business Performance Within The Context Of Mergers And Acquisitions, Viet T. Dao

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

An Integrative Conceptual Model Of Vietnam As An Emerging Destination For Offshore Outsourcing Of Software Development For Finnish Companies, Nazmun Nahar, Linh Kuivanen

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Companies are constantly under pressure to develop software within tight budgets and more efficiently. Offshore outsourcing has been seen as one solution to the dilemma, and lucrative outsourcing businesses have evolved in many countries. Vietnam is now emerging within this global outsourcing sector. This study conducts an in-depth literature review and analyzes a number of important issues related to developing countries in general and Vietnam in particular, as an offshore outsourcing destination for Finnish companies for developing their software. From the analysis, an integrative conceptual model of software development through offshore outsourcing was developed. The study found challenges as well …

Enterprise Systems Network: Securid Solutions, The Authentication To Global Security Systems, Emmanuel U. Opara, Vance Etnyre

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Enterprise systems need reliable, flexible and secure means for making public and confidential information available to users in a secured and trusted manner. Although enterprise systems have variety of choice to authenticate these users, organizations face significant issues when granting access and providing a manageable structure for valuable access control. Logon functionalities such as user name and password algorithm have been used to grant authentication and authorization into enterprise systems network resources. Since most systems clients prefer the ease of using passwords, and since passwords are easily compromised, the urgency for a stronger authentication process becomes paramount. This study performed …

Key Success Factors In Knowledge Transfer During M&A In Traditional Industries: An Empirical Study, Jun Huang, Juan Ling, Jiaqin Yang, Quanwu Zhao

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper describes a study on identifying key successful factors in knowledge transfer resulting from business mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in those (so-called) traditional industries (e.g., textile and steel & iron) with the data collected in the steel and iron industry in Southwestern China. Specifically, this research investigates the relationship between prior-gained knowledge of merging companies, preparation and implementation processes, and actual performance after knowledge transfer. The result reveals that such prior-gained knowledge of merging companies will have a significant positive impact on the motivation for proposed M&A, while it, in contrast, may only have a limited impact on other …

It As A Resource For Competitive Agility: An Analysis Of Firm Performance During Industry Turbulence, Shoshana Altschuller, David S. Gelb, Theresa F. Henry

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

In an increasingly fast-paced business context, agility is crucial to firm performance. Competitive agility, the ability of a firm to rapidly sense and respond to changes in its environment, is especially important during industry turbulence. This research examines whether investment in Information Technology (IT) enhances firms’ competitive agility using analysis of firm performance during industry growth and contraction. The research approach addresses the causality question faced by previous IT productivity studies by focusing on ex-ante IT investment and subsequent firm performance during periods of unanticipated industry shocks. Findings indicate that IT investment enhances competitive agility but only in industries with …

Evaluating The Perceived Impact Of Collaborative Exchange And Formalization On Information Security, Randall Young

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Organizations integrate information security measures through information security planning and policy development. This study aims to examine how the extent of collaborative exchange within the organization and extent of formalization of the information security function impact the effective utilization of well-established information security objectives. The security objectives of interest, described in general deterrence theory, are deterrence, detection and recovery. This study finds that organizations that exhibit higher levels of collaborative exchange and develop and implement more information security policies are more effectively utilizing the information security strategies of detection, deterrence and recovery. This study highlights the importance of the complementary …

Financial Crisis, Bank Acquisitions, And Value Creation: The Case Of Bank Mergers For The Past Five Years, Sarina Ar-Loc Ng

Theses Digitization Project

This paper will focus on the bank acquisitions of the United States and Europe. It will specify the most highly regarded cause of the financial crisis and consider what all the components might explain about perception of consumers in the United States and in Europe. This paper also uses a commonly used event study methodology to understand the market reaction in these bank acquisition announcements.

A Framework For Identifying And Understanding Risks In Information Technology Projects, Jack T. Marchewka

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Managing the costs, complexity, and risks of IT projects continues to be a challenge for many organizations. Project risk management is becoming an important sub-discipline of software engineering, and focuses on identifying, analyzing, and developing strategies for responding to project risk efficiently and effectively. This paper presents an IT project risk identification framework to facilitate identifying and understanding various project risks as part of an overall project risk management process. The proposed framework should be of interest to IT practitioners during the creation of the project plan and over the course of a project so that appropriate and corrective actions …

Validity Of Delone And Mclean’S E-Commerce Model In B2c Student Loan Industry, Hyonsong Chong, Dewaynna Cates, Rupak Rauniar

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper empirically investigates the popular theoretical model of DeLone & McLean (2004) to measure the perceived benefits of B2C e-commerce for individuals who acquire and manage their student loans online. This study is one of the earliest validation tests on DeLone & McLean’s e-commerce success framework in the context of B2C information system. The result indicated fairly good fit of the model to data, though several relationships in the model were insignificant. It also suggested that System Quality was the least influential among three exogenous constructs and User Satisfaction much more directly influenced Net Benefit than System Use.

Statistical Analysis Of Vodsl Technology For The Efficiency Of Listening Quality Of 640k/640k, Sarhan M. Musa, Mostafa A. El-Aasser

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Next-generation Internet technology will offer high performance and high capacity traffic aggregation and scalability. Voice over Digital Subscriber Line (VoDSL) technology allows service providers to offer multiple telephone lines over a single subscriber line in addition to high speed data transmission services. This article provides a baseline test for the Listening Quality (LQ) using VoDSL access technology by using Voice/Listening Quality (V/LQ) transmission with voice compression while countinously downloading files. The result will be to enable the efficiency of the LQ and its statistical analysis based on a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service at level 640K/640K for each American National …

Identifying Entity Types For E-R Diagramming In Developing Data- Intensive Web Applications, Seung C. Lee

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Although the Web has become a major enabler for data-intensive business applications such as e-tailing, customer relationship management, and supply chain management, we find that most Web applications are built up in ad hoc fashion, raising the data-related issues of data definition and data integration. This paper proposes a new approach for identifying entity types for E-R diagramming in developing data-rich Web applications. The methodology is founded on elements of Web applications including pages, links, Web application architecture, and business logic modules.

A Bpm-Systems Architecture That Supports Dynamic And Collaborative Processes, Pascal Ravesteijin, Martijn Zoet

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) are increasingly implemented in and across organizations. However, the current combination of functionality, concepts and characteristics in BPMSs is very much based on an industrial-based view of the economy while western economies are rapidly moving towards an information and service economy in which the ratio of knowledge workers is rising dramatically. Compared to the ‘old’ type of worker the knowledge worker is typically highly educated, used to collaborating with other knowledge workers and less likely to be sensitive to a controlling style of management in the execution of his or her work. While many organizations …

Technological-Personal-Environmental (Tpe) Framework: A Conceptual Model For Technology Acceptance At The Individual Level, Yijun Jiang, Dongyu Chen, Fujun Lai

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper describes the development of the Technological-Personal-Environmental (TPE) framework, which explains individuals’ behaviors of technology acceptance. We argue that existing individual-level technology acceptance theories provide a valuable, but incomplete, understanding of individuals’ technology acceptance. By synthesizing extant technology acceptance models and theories, the proposed TPE delineates the individual-level technology acceptance from technological, personal, and environmental aspects. The proposed framework provides a wider angle to investigate individual-level technology acceptance.

Leadership Characteristics And Team Outcomes In The Development Of A Marketing Web Page, Garry L. White, Karen H. Smith

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Team structures are changing under the pressures of e-commerce and globalization. Today teams have to manage the challenges of working across functional boundaries, such as marketing and web development. In such an environment, research in the disciplines of management and psychology have found that shared leadership among team members may be superior to traditional leadership by a single team member, but this notion has not been tested in the contexts of marketing and web development. This paper presents the results of an empirical study showing that teams with shared leadership exhibited better performance and greater member satisfaction than teams with …

An Excel Planning And Teaching Decision Aid For Bonner's Conceptual Framework, Freddie Choo, Kim Tan

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Bonner (1999, 2008) prescribes a conceptual framework entitled “Choosing teaching methods based on learning objectives: An integrative framework” to plan and teach accounting. Bonner’s conceptual framework involves a holistic-mapping-process in which an instructor holistically maps a set of accounting learning objectives (ALO), general learning objectives (GLO), necessary conditions (NC), and teaching methods (TM). The scope of this paper is aimed at developing an Excel planning and teaching decision aid (EDA) for Bonner’s holistic-mapping- process. This EDA neither replaces nor supplants the conventional judgment-based planning and teaching process. By presenting and making the EDA available, perhaps accounting information systems researchers will …

Use Of A Fast Information Extraction Method As A Decision Support Tool, Mahmudul Sheikh, Sumali Conlon

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Ad-hoc extraction of information from documents can ensure the transparency of decisions made by an organization. Different Information Extraction methods have been applied to extract information from various domains. Most widely known methods use manually annotated training documents that require high development time. The automated training methods are not scalable to large application domains. We have developed a semi-automated knowledge-engineering method for building the knowledge-base with minimal efforts. Because our method reduces manual processing of the training data, the development process is very fast. We have developed a prototype application to extract information from the project-reports of the American Recovery …

A Framework For Analyzing Business Model Innovation In Mobile Commerce, Chung-Shing Lee, Jonathan C. Ho

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The paper develops and tests a framework for evaluating mobile commerce business models and strategies. To study business model innovation in mobile commerce, we analyze the cost, revenue, and growth components of the business model. In addition, we also investigate whether the implementation of the new business model successfully capitalized on the key disruptive attributes of mobile commerce. An analytical framework is developed to guide the empirical study of the two leading mobile commerce companies in Taiwan. The empirical research indicates that the mobile commerce industry in Taiwan has been able to capitalize on many but not all of the …

Gender Differences In The Determinants Of Sharing Information Via Mobile Phones, Chung-Chu Liu

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The notion of sharing information has become a critical element in competitive advantage for mobile phone companies. The purpose of this particular research is to collate, compare and prioritize gender differences in the determinants of sharing information via mobile phones. The content analysis and the analytic hierarchy process methods were made use of to collect and examine relevant data. According to the findings of this research, the determinants of information sharing via mobile phones may be arranged into four fundamental categories. The categories, in order of significant, are: situational factors (including time pressures, convenience, and price discounts), the unique characteristics …