Business Commons^™

Last-Minute Coordination: Adapting To Demand To Support Last-Mile Operations, Kedong Chen, Hung-Chung Su, Kevin Linderman, William Li

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

In the highly competitive e-commerce industry, customer-facing warehouses are crucial as the “order penetration points” for e-commerce last-mile operations. This research examines how warehouses use last-minute coordination, an unstructured mechanism, to ensure sufficient inventory at the order penetration points. Previous research has focused on structured mechanisms like contracts and inventory management systems to enhance warehouse performance. However, these mechanisms can be ineffective when faced with unforeseen local contingencies. To adjust inventory and adapt to changes in supply and/or demand, warehouses need to engage in unstructured, last-minute coordination with other warehouses. Using coordination and loose coupling theories, we find that coordinating …

Reshaping Competitive Advantages With Analytics Capabilities In Service Systems, Shahriar Akter, Angappa Gunasekaran, Samuel Fosso Wamba, Mujahid M. Babu, Umme Hani

Sydney Business School - Papers

Big data analytics capability can reshape competitive advantages for a service system. However, little is known about how to develop and operationalize a service system analytics capability (SSAC) model. Drawing on the resource based view (RBV), dynamic capability theory (DCT) and the emerging literature on big data analytics, this study develops and validates an SSAC model and frames its impact on competitive advantages using 251 survey data from service systems analytics managers in the U.S. Partial Least Squares (PLS)-Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used as a data analysis technique to develop and validate the hierarchical SSAC model. The main findings …

Dynamic Service Analytics Capabilities For Service Systems In The Global Big Data Economy - A Systematic Review And Agenda For Future Research, Shahriar Akter, Saradhi Motamarri, Mujahid M. Babu, Mario Fernando, Samuel Fosso Wamba, Kathy Ning Shen

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Extended abstract presented at the Data, Organisations and Society Conference, 21 November 2018, Coventry, United Kingdom

An Exploration Into The "Over The Wall Handling" Phenomenon Of Aid And Development Supply Chain Systems, Mark Edwards, Lee Styger

Sydney Business School - Papers

This paper provides some insight regarding the causes and implications of waste within Aid and Development programs and the impact on Aid effectiveness. In order to understand this better, a comparative case study analysis of three Aid and Development programs using a systems mapping process was used to identify major constraints within these supply chain systems. This work identified a complex matrix of nodal links within these systems that correspond to the flow of both funding and value creation. The findings point to Aid and Development supply chain systems being a closed loop system where much of the funding can …

Apologetics Without Apology: Arguments For The Existence Of God From Business & Economics, Michael E. Cafferky

Faculty Works

This paper offers the reader ways for the business practitioner to participate in Christian apologetics. Apologetics is defined. The purpose and tasks of apologetics is described. A case is made for the importance of Christian apologetics. Several tactics are introduced that offer potential for the Christian apologist. A matrix describes the potential opportunities to develop Christian apologetics for the context of business and economics. A discussion follows regarding the implications for business scholars and Christian business school curriculum at all levels.

Connecting Isolated Senior Citizens: Illustrating The Complexity Of Social Information Systems Development, Carole Alcock, Lois Burgess, Helen Hasan

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

In Australia, complex issues relating to an ageing population are confronting governments, communities and individuals (APC 2011). This is a common concern in most developed countries and one where IS can play a significant role. Some studies have suggested that social well-being could be enhanced by participation in online activities (ADHA 2011). Reports in aged care research literature indicate that loneliness and isolation are among the main problems encountered by people living well into their 80s and 90s (Coughlan 2011). Those still in their home receive basic medical and support services, sometimes via the Internet, but their lack of mobility …

What Happens When Digital Information Systems Are Brought Into Health And Social Care? Comparing Approaches To Social Policy In England And Australia, Susan Baines, Penelope Hill, Karin Garrety

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This review article offers a brief comparative overview of approaches to the application of public sector information systems in England and Australia, with particular reference to health and social care. Since the 1990s, reforms to the public sector in both countries have looked to information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the private sector as the key to modern, citizen-centred services. These efforts have been conducted in the wider context of New Public Management, with the emphasis on the marketisation of government services, reducing the size of the state, and improvements in efficiency. Both countries are typically seen as being at, …

Reframing Success And Failure Of Information Systems: A Performative Perspective, Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic, Karlheinz Kautz, Rebecca Abrahall

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The paper questions common assumptions in the dominant representational framings of information systems success and failure and proposes a performative perspective that conceives IS success and failure as relational effects performed by sociomaterial practices of IS project actor-networks of developers, managers, technologies, project documents, methodologies, and other actors. Drawing from a controversial case of a highly innovative information system in an insurance company-considered a success and failure at the same time- the paper reveals the inherent indeterminacy of IS success and failure and describes the mechanisms by which success and failure become performed and thus determined by sociomaterial practices. This …

The Perceived Impact Of The Agile Development And Project Management Method Scrum On Information Systems And Software Development Productivity, Karlheinz Kautz, Thomas Heide Johansen, Andreas Uldahl

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This research contributes to the body of knowledge in information systems development (ISD) with an empirical investigation in form of a case study that demonstrates the positive impact of the agile development and project management method Scrum on information systems and software development productivity and it provides a useful operationalization of the concept through seven identified indicators for productivity. Despite the fact that the case unit had challenges with the use of Scrum, the indicators identified the areas where the company had managed to exploit the potential of Scrum and its practices with regard to increasing productivity. The research results …

Local Government Service Systems Improvement: Exposing The Social Networks, Matthew Pepper, Andrew Sense

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Using a local government (LG) case study, this paper describes and qualitatively explores the value and use of social network analysis (SNA) in creating a rich environment for service network innovation and development. The case study analysed manages regional planning development applications and involves a complex social network. The study underpins the view that in LG service environments, mechanistic models for systems improvement are on their own inadequate. SNA constitutes an essential complementary development framework underpinning continuous innovation through human and social capital development. Findings presented are profound for local government and multiple service contexts and argue for a greater …

Reorienting The Information Systems Function To Support Increasing Levels Of Business Service, Magno J. Queiroz, Tim Coltman

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Business scholars and practitioners are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities that exist when service is added to traditional product offerings. However, the literature has not previously explored the question of how the IS function is responding to greater emphasis on service. In this paper, we employ a multi-case research design to investigate the role of the IS function in supporting increasing levels of service. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that differences in IS service orientation and collaborative capabilities affect the ability of firms to support service. The implications for IS and managerial practice are discussed by …

Creating Business Value Through Agile Project Management And Information Systems Development: The Perceived Impact Of Scrum, Karlheinz Kautz, Thomas H. Johansen, Andreas Uldahl

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Value creation through information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) is a major IS research topic. However there still exists an ambiguity and fuzziness of the 'IS business value' concept and a lack of clarity surrounding the value creation process. This also true for organizations that develop IS/IT and for development technologies like information systems development and project management methods that are applied in the production of IS/IT. The agile method Scrum is one such technology. In the research presented here we studied productivity, quality and employee satisfaction as supported by Scrum as value creating measures. Our positive assessment is …

Airline Innovation And Sustainability: A Systems Perspective, Peter Critchley, Lee Styger

Sydney Business School - Papers

Air transport has been the scene of remarkable and rapid innovation since man first controlled powered flight in Kitty Hawk in 1903. Significant developments in aviation technology, for example, the onset of the Jet Age, tend to dominate popular perception of aviation innovation. The commercial airline industry is hugely complex and inexorably tied to our economic, social and technological systems. Consequently, it is also on the leading edge of the sustainability debate. Modern air transportation has developed into a hugely complex system in a relatively short time. That rapid development and complexity, however, offers insights into how the industry can …

Sociomateriality And Information Systems Success And Failure, Karlheinz Kautz, Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic

Sydney Business School - Papers

The aim of this essay is to put forward a performative, sociomaterial perspective on Information Systems (IS) success and failure in organisations by focusing intently upon the discursive-material nature of IS development and use in practice. Through the application of Actor Network Theory (ANT) to the case of an IS that transacts insurance products we demonstrate the contribution of such a perspective to the understanding of how IS success and failure occur in practice. The manuscript puts our argument forward by first critiquing the existing perspectives on IS success and failure in the literature for their inadequate consideration of the …

Building A Systems View Of Strategic Discourse Across Organizational Meetings, Brendan O'Rourke, Martin Duffy

Books/Book Chapters

The purpose of this paper is to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise organisational strategy meetings as a ‘system’, rather than as singular strategic events or episodes.

The paper begins by reviewing the Meetings literature to explore the existing theoretical guidance on conceptualising meetings as a collective and integrated set of activities, rather than as singular events in isolation of each other. The Systems literature is reviewed to identify concepts which may be adopted to enable a systematised view of meetings. The central focus of the paper is to explore the theoretical ways through which organisations’ meetings …

Identifying Barriers To Internal Supply Chain Integration Using Systems Thinking, Franciscus Bakker, Tillmann Boehme, Dirk Pieter Van Donk

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This exploratory site-centred research investigates barriers to internal supply chain integration in practice, using systems thinking. A multi-method procedure termed the Quick Scan Audit Methodology is applied to four engineering to order case companies from two different country settings to identify and categorize the actual barriers to internal supply chain integration. The study establishes that the case-significant barriers to internal supply chain integration chiefly relate to behavioral / cultural factors and the organizational arrangement / structures imposed on employees. A cross-case comparison reveals two major clusters of supply chain integration barriers termed “fire-fighting” and “functional-silo mentalities”. The fundamental structures of …

Social Networks, Social Learning And Service Systems Improvement, Andrew Sense, Matthew Pepper

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This article illustrates and qualitatively explores the value of understanding the social networks present in a service operation through a case study of a local government service network that manages regional development applications. It also examines how social learning underpins service systems performance improvement and how it is instrumental in creating a richer environment for ongoing service network innovation and development. It is argued that gaining a better understanding of these social networks and the social learning potential in a system offers substantial and highly practitioner-friendly avenues to progress service systems capability development. These fi ndings clearly place an emphasis …

Informing Destination Recommender Systems Design And Evaluation Through Quantitative Research, Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, Daniel Fesenmaier

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - Destination recommender systems need to become truly human-centric in their design and functionality. This requires a profound understanding of human interactions with technology as well as human behavior related to information search and decision-making in the context of travel and tourism. This paper seeks to review relevant theories that can support the development and evaluation of destination recommender systems and to discuss how quantitative research can inform such theory building and testing. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a review of information search and decision-making literatures, a framework for the development of destination recommender systems is proposed and the implications …

New Performance Measurement And Management Control Systems, Ted Watts, Carol J. Mcnair-Connolly

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - Focusing on how performance management systems support control, this article seeks to provide two "next-generation" performance scorecards - the Performance Wheel, suitable for most organizations and the Small Business Performance Pyramid, which acknowledges the unique requirements of small business. This development considers the historical development, increasing variety and often the poorly integrated status of performance measurement systems - one of business management's most important tools.

Design/methodology/approach - The paper considers the issues of various performance measurement models - the Performance Pyramid, the Results and Determinants mode, the Balanced Scorecard - through the integration of perspectives, metrics and terminology. …

Australian Online Public Information Systems: A User-Centred Study Of An Evolving Public Health Website, Helen Hasan, Joseph Meloche, Sumayya Banna

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The strategic, transformational nature of many information systems projects is now widely understood. Large-scale implementations of systems are known to require significant management of organisational change in order to be successful. Moreover, projects are rarely executed in isolation - most organisations have a large programme of projects being implemented at any one time. However, project and value management methodologies provide ad hoc definitions of the relationship between a project and its environment. This limits the ability of an organisation to manage the larger dynamics between projects and organisations, over time, and between projects. The contribution of this paper, therefore, is …

Strategic Discourse Across Organizational Meetings:Towards A Systems Perspective., Brendan K. O'Rourke, Martin Duffy

Conference Papers

Strategic Discourse across Organizational meetings: Towards a Systems Perspective Abstract This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics(Langley and Tsoukas, 2010), meso-discourse analysis (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1969) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a ‘system of meetings’. The primary data draws from 130+ hours of recorded meeting proceedings, spanning 58 meeting events, from multiple sub-groups within a medium sized company.

Crop Updates 2011 - Farming Systems, Janette Drew, Rob Grima, Bob French, Raj Malik, Mark Seymour, Christine Zaicou-Kunesch, Glenn Mcdonald, Brendon Nicholas, Dennis Van Gool, James Fisher, Peter Tozer, Doug Abrecht, Michael Robertson, Cameron Weeks, Michael O'Conner, Peter Newman, Mike Clarke, Andrew Blake, Gordon Macaulay, Vijay Jayasena, Syed M. Nasar-Abbas, Larisa Cato, Robert Loughman, Ken Quail

Crop Updates

This session covers twelve papers from different authors:

1. Fallowing 50% of the farm each year – does it pay? Janette Drew and Rob Grima

Department of Agriculture and Food

2. How crop sequences affect the productivity and resilience of cropping systems in two Western Australian environments, Bob French, Raj Malik, Mark Seymour, Department of Agriculture and Food

3. When is continuous wheat or barley sustainable? Christine Zaicou-Kunesch and Rob Grima Department of Agriculture and Food

4. Identifying constraints to bridging the yield gap, Glenn McDonald, Department of Agriculture and Food

5. Land constraints limiting wheat yields in …

Regression Tree Construction By Bootstrap: Model Search For Drg-Systems Applied To Austrian Health-Data, Thomas Grubinger, Conrad Kobel, Karl Peter Pfeiffer

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Background. DRG-systems are used to allocate resources fairly to hospitals based on their performance. Statistically, this allocation is based on simple rules that can be modeled with regression trees. However, the resulting models often have to be adjusted manually to be medically reasonable and ethical. Methods. Despite the possibility of manual, performance degenerating adaptations of the original model, alternative trees are systematically searched. The bootstrap-based method bumping is used to build diverse and accurate regression tree models for DRG-systems. A two-step model selection approach is proposed. First, a reasonable model complexity is chosen, based on statistical, medical and economical considerations. …

Dynamic Pricing Support Systems For Diy Retailers - A Case Study From Austria, Martin Natter, Thomas K. Reutterer, Andreas Mild

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Merchandise managers have long dreamt of automated dynamic systems to help them make well-informed pricing decisions. However, such systems have proved as elusive as the Holy Grail - until now, that is. The story of an Austrian DIY retailer shows often undetected opportunities to use valuable information, hidden in retailers' data warehouses, on consumer reactions to previous price changes in order to make automatic pricing and promotion decisions.

Usability Testing Of Public Health Web-Based Information Systems, Sumayya Banna, Kholoud Alkayid, Helen M. Hasan, Joseph A. Meloche

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

While the Internet provides many opportunities for increased levels of care and access to information services in the area of public health, many web designers are not yet taking full advantage of its potential. This study looks at Intensive Care and Palliative Care, as important instances where health informatics could improve public web-based services, in meeting the particular information needs of family members of critically and chronically ill patients. This study is significant in adopting an approach to the usability testing of websites based on concepts from Activity Theory. This takes a realistic and practical approach, which identifies the purpose …

Management Control Systems: A Model For R&D Units, Parulian Silaen, Robert B. Williams

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a proposal for a new conceptual framework for management control systems (MCS) in R&D units. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is a descriptive study that reviews the control literature and proposes an MCS framework in the light of four key elements: desired ends, actors, control implementation, and control tools. Findings - The study found two sub-elements of desired ends (directional and yardstick) to be complementary in a low level of uncertainty, while directional should be emphasized more in a high level of uncertainty. Five sub-elements of actors are used differently along …

The Role Of Information And Communication Technology In Small Italian Logistics Enterprises, Pietro Evangelista, Edward Sweeney

Articles

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is widely regarded as a key integration enabler in contemporary supply chain configurations. Furthermore, recent years have seen the vertical disintegration of supply chains as increasing numbers of manufacturers and retailers outsource significant parts of their supply chain functionality. In this environment, Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers - the majority of which are small companies - play a pivotal role. This raises important questions about the usage of ICT in this sector. However, there is a paucity of research in the field of small 3PLs with little empirical investigation into the usage of ICT by …

Telling Stories Of Libraries And Leadership, Audrey Defrank

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A presentation outlining the four frames of leadership and storytelling as they relate to libraries. Leadership Orientation Questionnaire; Overview; Inspiration; Leadership; Reframing Leadership; Structural Frame; Human Resources Frame; Political Frame; Symbolic Frame; Where do you fit in the frame?; Native American Storytelling; Organizations as Cultures; Story Narrative; Telling the Story.

Circular And Cumulative Causation And The Social Fabric Matrix, F. Gregory Hayden

College of Business: Faculty Publications

This study combines the problem orientation of instrumentalism and the systems analysis of circular and cumulative causation (CCC) through the utilization of a social fabric matrix (SFM) and network digraph. The SFM is utilized to articulate part of the Nebraska State system used to distribute state funds among local K-12 public schools. The empirical content is used to derive conceptual conclusions about CCC and to make comments about a controversy regarding agents, institutions, and new rule development. This study provides a refinement of CCC, and it confirms that rules are not the result of self-action by agents.

The Influence Of Perceived Credibility On Preferences For Recommender Systems As Sources Of Advice, Kyung Hyan Yoo, Ulrike Gretzel

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Recommender systems promise to support travelers in complex decision-making processes; however, whether a recommendation is seen as credible advice and actually taken into account not only depends on travelers' perceptions of the recommendation but also of the system as the advice giver. A scale to measure recommender system credibility was developed and tested. The results confirm that credibility has two dimensions: expertise and trustworthiness. Further, significant gender differences in credibility perceptions were found. The findings also indicate that respondents prefer humans as recommendation sources and that this preference is influenced by perceptions of lack of credibility of recommender systems as …