Women entrepreneurship in Middle East: Understanding barriers and use of ICT for entrepreneurship development

The main objective of the paper is to elaborate and suggest positive note on basic agenda existing in Middle East resisting the women entrepreneur growth development and use of ICT. The entrepreneurship among the women in Arabic countries has been lately given due consideration. In order for develop women entrepreneurship for economic growth their must be strong move by all stakeholders. ICT enables women entrepreneurs to extend equal participation compared to the male in the growth and development of the nation’s economy. The extended use of ICT will help the entrepreneur for creating advantage, research; participate in the global world of business for technology transfer, training, collaboration, and development initiatives at the global level. The paper tries to highlight the barrier for women for entrepreneurial growth and use of ICT with special reference to Middle East countries. The case related to women in two gulf countries will elaborate the deep insight of the issue.     

Threats to new product manufacturability and the effects of development team integration processes

The thesis of this article is that new product manufacturability (NPM) is influenced by certain challenges inherent in new product development (NPD), and by efforts to integrate manufacturing and other functional concerns into the product design process. This research tests the direct and interacting effects of these influences via a survey of 91 completed NPD projects representing a variety of manufacturing industries. While most hypotheses were supported, the analysis also provides some surprising findings. Project complexity and increased levels of design outsourcing are associated with poorer NPM. Product newness and project acceleration are associated with better NPM. All the measured aspects of development team integration are associated with better NPM, including intense manufacturing involvement, a collaborative work environment, supplier influence on the product design, and strong management support in the project. Furthermore, certain integration variables exert moderating effects on relationships between technological uncertainty, product newness, design outsourcing, project acceleration and NPM. By exposing these relationships this research extends the theory of product development influences on manufacturability beyond a focus on engineering-oriented approaches (e.g., design-for-manufacture). The results suggest that larger managerial issues must be addressed and that more contingency-oriented research is needed to explore the benefits and limitations of development team integration processes.     

Ambiguity and choice in processes of region development and company location

In recognition of its importance to an understanding of what “really goes on” in organizational decision-making, it is argued in this paper that the Garbage Can (GC) model should be applied to large empirical materials concerning different types of context, organization and process from those where it has been chiefly used. It is thereby shown that the model (1) is a good theoretical tool for interpreting processes of region development and company location—unless a dominating actor dictates the choice throughout, and (2) is also relevant to inter-organizational processes. Some new GC-theoretical concepts are derived from the confrontation of data and model: ambiguity avoidance, garbage collection, participant shift and selective garbage separation.     

中国"以电子政务拉动信息产业发展"政策的再评估

电子政务是中国信息化战略的重中之重,但其实际发展与预期间存在着明显差距。本文以中国“以电子政务拉动信息产业发展”政策为研究重点,把这一政策放在中国信息化历史中加以考察,分析中国信息化新阶段ICT市场的新变化和新挑战,针对电子政务实践与预期间的差距,对该政策提出我们的看法。     

The impact of ICT on the demand for skilled labour: A cross-country comparison

This paper provides a unique cross-country comparative perspective on the impact of information and communication technology on the demand for skilled labour. It employs panel data for the US, the UK and France, comprising several skill categories for each country for the 1980s and 1990s. The paper considers the issue of whether skill bias is transitory or permanent both by considering changes through time and by dividing the highly skilled into IT specific and other occupations. The results indicate that the impact of technology on the demand for skilled labour is slowing down, at least in the US, supporting a transitory interpretation.     

ICT助力节能减排的影响因素和途径研究

ICT在节能减排和促进低碳经济发展中的重要性得到政府的重视和认可,本文在分析ICT技术推动节能减排所受影响因素的基础上,从通信产业节能减排先行和ICT助力其他行业节能减排两个方面,提出实现ICT推动节能减排的具体途径。     

The development of a destructive sampling method designed for high quality production processes (DSM-HQ)

Customers are requiring producers to conduct destructive testing using traditional sampling techniques as monitoring tools. These techniques are not well suited for situations where the quality is high and tests are destructive since a high number of units need to be tested (and in turn destroyed) in order to guarantee good quality. Furthermore, traditional sampling methods are not specifically designed to monitor a high-quality production process where destructive tests are required and therefore make costly and inefficient monitoring tools. A sampling method is developed to monitor quality in high-quality processes where destructive testing is required. This method is based on a cost function, which balances the costs of sampling versus the costs of finding a defect on the field. It assumes a Poisson process defect pattern and uses an empirical Bayes updating scheme.     

Enablers for Organizational Project Management in the Chinese Context

This study aims at exploring the organizational enablers (OEs) for organizational project management (OPM) in the Chinese context. From the resource‐based view of firms, we conceptualize OEs as important drivers for the business value creation processes in project‐based organizations. The preliminary factor framework was constructed through literature review and expert interviews. Questionnaire surveys elicited 146 responses from Chinese project management practitioners; thereafter, factor analysis was performed to test the OE system empirically. The resulting final OE system contains 49 enablers in nine categories for three management hierarchies; this OE system, constructed by exploratory analysis and verified by confirmatory analysis, comprehensively clarifies the framework of OEs in the Chinese context; it facilitates further investigations into the interaction among OEs and their effects on organization performance. Firm managers may also find this system helpful in formulating identifiable, measurable, and manageable OE frameworks for their own firms, and enabling their organization's strategies with robust OEs.     

调整教学情境 实现师生互动

近年来,随着体育教学指导思想朝多元化方向发展及对体育教学整体改革的尝试,出现了一些有特色的体育教学模式．即利用形象元素创设具体生动的课堂氛围,激发学生参与的积极性,引导其对知识技能的整体理解和掌握,启发学生思维创造性,培养他们的情感意志,达到师生信息交流畅通的目的。     

调整教学情境实现师生互动

近年来,随着体育教学指导思想朝多元化方向发展及对体育教学整体改革的尝试,出现了一些有特色的体育教学模式,即利用形象元素创设具体生动的课堂氛围,激发学生参与的积极性,引导其对知识技能的整体理解和掌握,启发学生思维创造性,培养他们的情感意志,达到师生信息交流畅通的目的.     

A framework for the identification of reusable processes

A significant challenge that faces IT management is that of aligning the IT infrastructure of an enterprise with its business goals and practices, also called business-IT alignment. A particular business-IT alignment approach, the foundation for execution approach, was well-accepted by practitioners due to a novel construct, called the operating model (OM). The OM supports business-IT alignment by directing the coherent and consistent design of business and IT components. Even though the OM is a popular construct, our previous research detected the need to enhance the OM, since the OM does not specify methods to identify opportunities for data sharing and process reuse in an enterprise. In this article, we address one of the identified deficiencies in the OM. We present a process reuse identification framework (PRIF) that could be used to enhance the OM in identifying process reuse opportunities in an enterprise. We applied design research to develop PRIF as an artefact, where the development process of PRIF was facilitated by means of the business-IT alignment model (BIAM). We demonstrate the use of the PRIF as well as report on the results of evaluating PRIF in terms of its usefulness and ease-of-use, using experimentation and a questionnaire.     

全民阅读背景下面向大学生的阅读推广

在政府倡导全民阅读建设书香社会背景下,通过第十六次全国国民阅读调查数据分析,同时分析了高校大学生阅读现状,探讨了高校图书馆面向大学生开展阅读推广的途径和方式,以培养大学生正确的阅读观,建设书香校园。     

国际营销下的国际物流发展策略

国际物流是企业顺利完成国际市场营销活动的重要保障。在阐述国际物流意义的基础上,提出国际物流的发展策略,认为应该加强物流基础设施建设、加快国际物流人才的培养、强化技术在国际物流中运用和积极发展第三方物流,以促进我国国际物流的快速发展。     

社交网络背景下企业与消费者对话策略分析

社交网络成为人们在互联网以及真实世界共同的生存环境,对企业的经营管理产生了至关重要的影响。企业需要掌握社交网络的脉络,找到对自身品牌具有影响力的社交网络平台,制定行之有效的对话策略,借助社交网络与消费者进行持续的对话,才能充分利用社交媒体所带来的机会,建立自身独特的竞争优势。     

Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

Rethinking determinants of ICT acceptance: Towards an integrated and comprehensive overview

In the contemporary ICT environment, we are confronted with a growing number of failing innovations. New technological innovations often fail because too much attention is still given to (technical) product-related features without taking into account the most important parameters of user acceptance. In addition, suppliers of ICT products often lack accurate insight into the distinguished profiles of their (potential) target audience. In this article theoretical considerations and empirical results on this matter are highlighted. First of all, an approach is proposed in which more traditional and often scattered vision(s) on adoption determinants are broadened into an integrated framework. The approach provides a stronger base for better targeting of (new) users of technologies. Secondly, the authors elaborate on this by rethinking these determinants with regard to later adopters. Later adopters (or even non-adopters/users) are often ignored in technology acceptance research. However, especially for policy purposes, the understanding of why people do not adopt or do not use ICT is strongly relevant in the light of the development of an inclusive information society. Both approaches are illustrated by case studies starting from a common list of nineteen ICT appropriation determinants. This framework enables to better profile both earlier and later adopters as well as it allows to formulate recommendations how to bring innovations in the market. Summarizing, this contribution offers an integrated approach on technology acceptance research by bridging the gap between a market and a policy-oriented point of view.     

The SCOR model for the alignment of business processes and information systems

The alignment of business processes and information systems is a critical factor for both business process management (BPM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system efficiency. Analysing existing approaches of alignment shows the need for an independent reference model to support the mapping between organisational and informational views. The SCOR model represents a strong management tool to evaluate, control, measure and improve existing supply chain process structures, based on a business process view of supply chain highlighting the functional requirements of best practices identified. We have critically analysed the contribution of the current SCOR model to the alignment of business processes and information systems. As the alignment is currently only based on the functional realisation of best practices, we show that this alignment risks neglecting important process dependencies. An extended reference model is then proposed, including the structuring of information exchanged between processes. That results in a more complete process map highlighting all physical and informational dependencies, in a multi-view of ‘business process mapping’ including the informational dimension, and thus a more precise alignment of ERP systems with processes.