Leadership,sourcing modes and IT project management

Information technology (IT) project management has always been a major concern for firms. Researchers have demonstrated that the different characteristics of a project directly affect project management practices and have suggested that different leadership profiles are better suited to different project conditions. The aim of the proposed model is to aid in the understanding of the relationship between the type of IT project (represented by its sourcing mode) and the leadership profile adopted by a project manager. Using a case approach, we studied four successful IT projects. Our results suggest that projects using a partnership or recuperation sourcing mode require a more flexible profile of management than projects characterized by internal governance or outsourcing, which require a more control‐oriented profile of management. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Influence of IT Management Sophistication and IT Support on IT Success in Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

This study examined three factors that influence information technology (IT) success in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs): internal IT support, external IT support, and IT management. Using survey data gathered from 289 small and medium‐sized Chartered Accounting firms in New Zealand, the results suggest that IT management in SMEs is best understood as a multidimensional concept consisting of practices related to: IT planning, IT organizing, IT controlling, and IT leading. This view clarifies and improves our understanding of the nature and character of IT management in SMEs. The results show that some SMEs are significantly more sophisticated than others in terms of their IT management practices. Both IT planning and IT leading were found to influence IT success.     

Analyzing and Managing the Impact of Cultural Behavior Patterns on Social Capital in Multinational IT Project Teams

This paper contributes to a better understanding and to mitigate negative consequences of cultural diversity in multinational IT project teams. Our research explores how culture-specific behaviors impact social capital among team members and how firms can manage the strains. In the existing IS culture literature, culture-specific behaviors are – if at all – traced back to single culture dimensions. In contrast, the approach proposed in this article goes one step further suggesting that it is necessary to combine several culture dimensions to better understand a certain culture-specific behavior and consequently be able to better manage resulting relationship problems in multinational settings. Conducting exploratory case studies in six multinational IT projects, two exemplary cultural behavior patterns (face maintenance in India and post-communism in the Czech Republic) are identified, and management actions to avoid project performance problems are derived. The results contribute to a better understanding and management of the negative impact of culture-specific behaviors in IT project teams and corroborate that research based on culture dimensions, such as those conceptualized by Hofstede or House et al., is valuable for understanding multi-country IS projects. The findings in particular suggest that aggregating these dimensions to cultural behavior patterns improves their explanatory power and consequently the management’s capability to mitigate the negative consequences of cultural diversity.     

Lies,damned lies,and project plans: Recurring human errors that can ruin the project planning process

Project-based work has become a critical component of global industrial activity. Among other functions, projects are used to develop new products and services, improve operations flows, implement innovative information technologies, and conduct primary R&D. At the same time, project management is a core skill requirement for numerous corporations worldwide hoping to harness a means of improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Unfortunately, the track record for project development has not been strong. Data suggest that within various industrial components, such as IT, failure rates for projects are high; even ‘successful’ examples typically run well over budget and behind schedule. This article addresses some of the reasons why projects and project management have failed to live up to lofty expectations, arguing that the seeds of failure are often sown from the outset through flawed project planning. Citing the more common errors in human judgment and drawing on numerous examples, we offer guidelines by which project planning can begin to work as it was intended: on behalf of the project rather than at cross-purposes with the project's goals.     

One Leader is Not Enough for Major New Service Development: Results of a Consumer Banking Study

This article reports the results of a study into leadership in retail bank product development. New product development is an increasingly important business activity in many services businesses. Financial services specialists involved in this activity are required to have an understanding of project working that aims to match new product concepts to potential customer needs. In the empirical study reported here all the new product projects were aimed at developing a new area of business and were of great potential importance to the sponsoring businesses in which they were pursued. It was found that success in completing a project efficiently was associated with effective co-leadership between different levels of the organisation. Lesser project success was found when leadership was confined to a single leader. Co-leadership involved a common leadership style that was enabling, participative and highly communicative. Empowering junior colleagues to act as co-leaders confronts top management with challenges to traditional concepts of authority. Our results show how enlightened top management turns these challenges to the best advantage of their business.     

Roadmapping Corporate Social Responsibility in Finnish Companies

This paper presents a roadmap of Finnish companies adopting and managing corporate social responsibility (CSR). It discusses the companies' views on CSR and highlights the practices that Finnish companies have adopted or are currently adopting. It also presents a framework that outlines the CSR processes and management prospects.Results showed that Finnish companies are progressively managing CSR. This newly revived thinking about social responsibility is viewed as an issue traced back from Finland's history of industrial development. There is no general definition of CSR; however, various concepts are connoted into it. Driven by several factors, CSR is developing gradually as indicated by the positive responses and initiatives of the companies.CSR management and practices towards employees, suppliers, community and customers are well defined locally based generally on established socially responsible behavior which could be articulated by laws and regulations, corporate values and business ethics. However, managing CSR with a global scope, problems such as; lack of information and structured management system, different views and interpretations, supply chain complexities, overlap with environmental issues, etc. often lead some companies to manage CSR haphazardly. Views and management of CSR are also influenced by some distinct Finnish cultural attributes.An initial conceptual framework for CSR is drawn reflecting the current practices and prospects for management strategies. Such framework can be used in organizing and streamlining CSR elements for effective management approaches and measuring of performance. It could be expected that in due time, the efforts of the companies will become more evident, organized and systematically managed.     

Modeling and Simulating Coordination in Projects

A main challenge in managing projects is identification and understanding of interactions between subtasks. These interactions give rise to dependencies between activities in the project plan. The resulting interdependence between members of the project team requires them to coordinate extensively during project execution. Project managers need a systematic methodology for describing and analyzing coordination requirements on project teams. This need is not met in traditional tools for project planning and scheduling. In this article, we describe an object-oriented framework for modeling projects and a methodology for formalizing these models such that they can be used for discrete event simulation of information processing and coordination in project execution. Our modeling framework represents projects in terms of objective (requirements), product (solution deliverables), process (activities), and organization (participants and relations). We then use matrix techniques to explicate the constraints between project requirements and deliverables (complexity), the contingencies in information flow between activities (uncertainty), and the resulting coordination requirements between project team members. The model and coordination measures can be used as input for simulation of project execution and give predictions for the probable effects of carrying out proposed changes in planning and managing projects. To illustrate how enterprise modeling and analysis can inform project planing and execution, we apply our framework and methodology to model and simulate a simplified project for development of hydraulic systems. Our simulation results demonstrate how project performance is contingent on the fit between the project policies and the objectives and preferences of the project team.     

Quality Management: A Key Process in the Service Industries

Project management is a developing area in the service industry, as more unique and customer-tailored services are being developed. This paper presents a benchmarking research study, aimed at improving project planning capabilities in the service industry. Based on data collected from 275 project managers from several industries, including 79 from the service sector, project management strengths and weaknesses within the service industry were investigated. It was found that project managers from the service sector excel in cost and procurement planning processes, compared to project managers from other industries. On the other hand, project managers from the service sector achieve the worst score in quality management processes. Moreover, in the service industry quality management was found to have the most significant impact on project success. Hence, managers in the service sector would benefit from acquiring proper knowledge and techniques relating to quality management in the planning phase of projects. It was also found that the success level of projects performed in the service sector depends most on the qualifications of the project manager. A project manager in the service sector gets very little support from the organisation itself. Support processes should focus on the main weaknesses of the service industry, mainly ‘developing project management procedures’ and ‘increasing the extent of training of their project managers’. The paper presents and analyses strengths and weaknesses of the service industry in project planning and suggests a detailed roadmap for improvement.     

Investigating the Interrelationships among Success Measures of Open Source Software Projects

Open source software (OSS) has attracted extensive attention from researchers and scholars. This increasing attention is a result of the remarkable growth in the number of OSS applications in recent years. Despite an increased number of studies on OSS project success, the interrelationships among different success indicators of OSS projects are not well understood in literature. The present study reports on the interrelationships between the success measures of OSS projects, as defined by the ability of the project to attract user and developer interest, release management, project activity, and development sustainability. To test the relationships hypothesized, we gathered data from 1409 OSS projects over time (in two snapshots over a period of eight months). The results show the following: (a) project activity until any time period positively impacts the subsequent period’s developer interest and development sustainability; (b) development sustainability positively drives user and developer interest; (c) release frequency positively influences the next period’s developer interest, as well as development sustainability; (d) developer interest positively drives user interest. These findings have implications for both the OSS research community and OSS practitioners.     

Eleven Misconceptions about Customer Relationship Management

Higher buying rates and lower service costs make long–term customers more profitable and firms increasingly focus their marketing efforts on customer relationship management (CRM). However, they are often disappointed by the performance of CRM projects. These disappointing results are caused by managerial misconceptions about CRM and customer behaviour. This article focuses on 11 of these misconceptions to help managers make well–considered CRM–related decisions and raise the success rate of CRM projects.     

Practice Makes Profit: Business Practices and Firm Success

Which business practices set successful firms apart from others? We address this question using data from an official survey of almost 3000 New Zealand firms. Questions cover: leadership, planning practices, customer and supplier focus, employee practices, quality and process monitoring, benchmarking, community and social responsibility, innovation, IT use, business structure and the competitive environment. Some of these are internal practices reflecting a firm’s resources and capabilities; some are characteristics of the external environment. We find that capital investment choices, R&;D practices, market research and a range of employee practices are positively associated with firm success; industry structure is also a key determinant of success. The association between specific business practices and firm success is mostly independent of firm size, age and industrial sector, other than for export marketing.     

Developing critical thinking through student consulting projects

The authors present survey results from faculty at 44 universities on the role of student consulting projects in developing business students' critical thinking. They conclude that students can improve critical thinking by engaging in guided primary and secondary research to inform their business assumptions that underpin business planning and financial modeling in consulting projects. Results also suggest that instructors newer to the practice of using student consulting tend to emphasize objective results (e.g., application of disciplinary skills and research methods), whereas experienced users seem to focus on the subjective consulting process (e.g., managing client relationships and evaluating information quality and fit for the project).     

Talent Management Practices in IT Companies from Emerging Markets: A Comparative Analysis of Russia,India, and China

ABSTRACT

In this article, the authors review talent management practices in information technology (IT) companies from Russia, India, and China, discussing their differences and similarities. Using the emerging market context, the authors debate the factors influencing talent management, specifically in IT companies. The article examines the relevant research on the main talent management issues in Russia, India, and China, and offers one of the first intercountry comparative analyses of talent management practices in IT companies from emerging markets. The authors argue that although talent management practices are influenced by different institutional and cultural factors, there are similarities and differences that can be explained by the emerging market and industry-specific contexts.     

基于IT能力的企业信息化非技术影响因素研究

企业要想从信息技术应用中获得利润,必须投资于培育整体的信息技术能力,而并非孤立的IT系统。信息技术能力不仅依赖于技术因素,还依赖于非技术因素,单一非技术因素的忽视就能直接削弱企业信息技术能力。很多企业在信息化中对非技术因素缺乏足够的认识和管理,形成了非技术因素管理缺口,从而造成信息化项目成功率不高、效益不高。因此,针对我国企业信息化过程中的非技术因素问题,探索性地提出了构建基于IT能力的非技术因素分析框架,并对高层领导支持、组织变革与变革管理、企业的文化管理三方面的非技术因素以及之间作用机制进行重点分析。对推进我国企业信息化进程和整体信息技术能力的提升具有重要的现实意义。     

Untangling African indigenous management: Multiple influences on the success of SMEs in Kenya

This article examines the nature of indigenous management in relation to the success of SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa, taking Kenya and six SMEs under the management of Kenyan Africans, Kenyan Asians and Kenyan British as examples. It proposes that management systems, styles and practices, when appropriate to the local cultural contexts, will give rise to successful organizations. By formulating tentative hypotheses about this relation after reviewing the literature, the data from these case studies are interrogated first by using a ‘template’ derived from theories of management control to investigate the inter-continental cultural influences on local management, and then inductively to modify and develop the original hypotheses in view of possible intra-country influences. Paternalism, emerges as a common theme in the way cultural influences are combined, suggesting different types of paternalism for in-group and out-group organizational members. This is a possible success factor for local SMEs. Implications for future research in these areas and management practice are discussed.     

Creating an innovative digital project team: Levers to enable digital transformation

Digital transformation encompasses an organization's ability to adapt, respond, and position itself for success in the face of rapid technology evolution. A critical structure in achieving successful digital transformation is the digital project team, yet there is little research on how they are created and developed. Much of the focus has been on agile methodologies and processes but there is less research to inform organizations on digital team dynamics such as roles, empowerment, learning, and leadership development. This article describes our findings from a multilevel study of the IT function of 60 companies, including fieldwork at five company sites involving more than 130 semistructured interviews with senior level IT professionals. We identify four essential team-based levers that enable digital transformation: (1) diverse and targeted team composition, (2) iterative goal setting, (3) continuous learning, and (4) talent management. Using company examples and practices, we describe how digital leaders are using these levers to propel their organizations forward in the journey toward digital transformation.     

Promoting i‐Safety: Effects of Privacy Warnings and Privacy Seals on Risk Assessment and Online Privacy Behavior

Using social cognitive theory, this study experimentally examines the effects of explicit privacy warnings, a clear, conspicuous, and concise presentation of the benefits and risks associated with database information practices stated in a Web site’s privacy policy. Warnings increased perceptions of the risks associated with information practices and decreased disclosures, but not in the presence of a privacy seal. The effects were also moderated by consumer privacy self‐efficacy and involvement with privacy. The results support the development of privacy warnings as a part of consumer privacy self‐regulatory efforts and the use of a social cognitive paradigm for understanding consumer privacy behaviors.     

Managing critical success factors for IS implementation: A stakeholder engagement and control perspective

Enterprise information systems (IS) implementation is often part of an organization's strategic IT initiatives and requires a large investment of organizational resources, yet may fail due to inadequate management of critical success factors (CSF). Using a revelatory case study of a multi‐partner COTS implementation process by a large Canadian government organization, this research investigates successful management of CSF through optimal stakeholder engagement and a balancing of control configurations. This research identifies four distinct project orientations related to stakeholder engagements—strategic, responsibility, harmony, and persuasion—that can be of significant value in managing CSF and other challenges during implementation and post‐implementation phases. In addition to the identification of a need for control balancing in a multi‐partner IS implementation, three key drivers responsible for triggering control balancing are identified: (a) shared understanding, (b) negative anticipation, and (c) deviation of expectations. Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Project management in retailing: integrating the behavioral dimension

The retail environment is globalizing, requiring high levels of consistent experimentation. Project management can be used to help retailers test new ideas and implement the most successful ones. Unfortunately, project management in the retail setting often delivers unsatisfactory results. Project management has traditionally focused on conventional planning tasks. The people dimension is often overlooked as a key to project management success. However, human behavior is particularly important in the retail setting, where projects are generally focused on testing new concepts, increasing collaboration, and implementing new technologies. This research examines the role of the behavioral dimension in retail project management and supports the view that the behavioral dimension is central to retail project management success.