Business Commons^™

Where Enrollment Meets Structure: Understanding Pda Evolution Through Sociotechnological Theory, Jonathan P. Allen

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Strategy

Sociotechnological theory seeks to understand technology as both material and social artifacts. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) offers an approach to sociotechnological theory that emphasizes a micro-level analysis of political strategies, but has been criticized for not considering larger social and cultural processes. This paper presents an approach to sociotechnological theory that links the enrollment process of ANT with broader social practices, and social group memberships. Two case studies of Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) evolution (Psion, led by David Potter, and Palm, led by Jeff Hawkins) are used to illustrate this approach.

An Exploration Of Values And Ethical Choices Of Accounting Students, John Koeplin

Accounting

An individual’s ethical and economic values impact his decision processes when faced with resolving certain dilemmas. The primary issue of this research is to examine the relationship between accounting students’ ethical and economic values and their responses to business dilemmas. Additionally, this study attempted to see if senior accounting students responded with more ethical responses to the dilemmas than did lower-division accounting students.

A measure of ethicality proposed by McCarthy (1997) was compared with subjects’ ethical responses to the business dilemmas. No correlation between the students’ measure of ethicality and the number of ethical responses to business dilemmas was found. …

Choosing The Optimal Area Of Economic Impact, Nola Agha

Sport Management

Economic impact studies tout the benefits of events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl as well as of facilities and teams. Regardless of the methodology used by researchers, all economic impact studies have one thing in common – they all measure impact on a specific area or “local economy.” One struggle for those commissioning and conducting studies is to define the best area of impact. The area of impact should be representative of the region directly effected by the event. Often, there is no a clear answer. A city, a county, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), a region, or …

Spreadsheet Engineering: A Research Framework, Thomas A. Grossman Jr.

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Spreadsheet engineering adapts the lessons of software engineering to spreadsheets, providing eight principles as a framework for organizing spreadsheet programming recommendations. Spreadsheets raise issues inadequately addressed by software engineering. Spreadsheets are a powerful modeling language, allowing strategic rapid model change, and enabling exploratory modeling. Spreadsheets users learn slowly with experience because they focus on the problem domain not programming. The heterogeneity of spreadsheet users requires a taxonomy to guide recommendations. Deployment of best practices is difficult and merits research.

The Work System Method For Understanding Information Systems And Information System Research, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

The work system method is a broadly applicable set of ideas that use the concept of “work system” as the focal point for understanding, analyzing, and improving systems in organizations, whether or not IT is involved. The premises underlying this method may be controversial in the IS community because they imply that the traditional jargon and concerns of IS practitioners and researchers address only part of the issues that should be covered and may discourage focusing on other core issues related to successful projects and systems.

The work system method includes both a static view of a current (or proposed) …

Tdg Engineering: Do We Need Another Upgrade?, Steven Cox, Renee Dulfer, David Han, Ubaldo Ruiz, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This case covers an important decision of a type that confronts many managers. Several years ago TDG Engineering upgraded its IT network infrastructure, and now experienced and trusted employees are recommending yet another upgrade. The question at hand is whether this upgrade is justified, and how long the new capabilities will last before another request for yet another upgrade. In addition to addressing issues about the importance of infrastructure and the justification of IT investments, this case provides an example that illustrates concepts related to system life cycles, the alignment between business strategy and IT strategy, and the uncertainties related …