...obvious reasons, however, organizations continue to expect more from their employees each year. Companies simply cannot afford to add new resources whenever the workload increases. The result is that the demands on the average professional employee continue to increase, and indications are that this will be the case for the foreseeable future. In other words, the pressure on an employee to perform - and even outperform - has never been greater. To respond to these challenges, employees need access to business tools that allow them to do their jobs efficiently. Since much of their work depends on exchanging information with others, tools that enable and enhance collaboration and teamwork are absolutely vital. The typical work day can be divided into two distinct parts: the time spent attending meetings, and the time spent completing work. In recent years, a wealth of “meeting enhancement” tools has flooded an efficiency-hungry marketplace. For the most part, these tools provide significant and...
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...profit – that is, to sell products at a price greater than the costs of production. * ORGANIZING A BUSINESS: BASIC BUSINESS FUNCTIONS * The decision of what to produce is called a strategic choice because it determines your likely customers, the kind of employees you will need, the production methods and facilities needed, the marketing themes, and many other choices. * The five basic entities in a business with which it must deal are: suppliers, customers, employees, invoices/payments, and, of course, products and services. * BUSINESS PROCESSES * The actual steps and tasks that describe how work is organized in a business are called business processes. * A logically related set of activities that define how specific business tasks are performed. * Also refer to the unique ways in which work, information, and knowledge are coordinated in a specific organization. Manufacturing & Production | * Assembling the product * Checking for quality * Producing bills of materials | Sales & Marketing | * Identifying customers * Making customers aware of the product * Selling the product | Finance & Accounting | * Paying creditors * Creating financial statements * Managing cash accounts | Human Resources | * Hiring employees * Evaluating employees’ job performance * Enrolling employees in benefits plans | ...
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...591 Final Paper Communication and Collaboration In Today’s Air Force: The 561st Network Operations Squadron A Case Study 1. Introduction The 561st Network Operating Squadron, with about 200 personnel divided between military, government civilians, and contract personnel, operates one of the two primary network nodes for the Air Force data network. The dynamic of the organization is defined by the relationship between the military, nominally in charge but highly transient with constant rotations and deployments, and the Operations and Maintenance (O & M) contractors, who have the knowledge base and the continuity but are on edge due to contract issues and tenuous job security. Added to that tumultuous mix is my small contract of twelve people who are implementing a methodology of best practices for managing a complex Information Technology (IT) organization. This methodology, known as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), provides a framework of processes that give shape and order to an IT operation. These three teams, the military, the O & M contractors, and the ITIL improvement team work together to provide network services for the greater Air Force, striving to maintain network availability while keeping the data secure from intrusion or compromise. 2. Problem Statement In the last four or five years collaborative computing and social networking have rapidly increased both in the business environment and in people’s personal lives. On the...
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...enterprise environment is growing at an incredible pace. The main purpose of it is to help groups of cooperating individuals to overcome time and spatial barriers. Enterprise systems implementation has led to the problem of cooperation between companies to reach their goals and successfully operate in the current market environment. The rising demand for collaboration software has led to the groupware market expansion. Collaborative software has influenced the expansion of enterprises by improving the effectiveness of a range of tools such as the ability to communicate over long distances. This software had a significant impact on expansion of enterprises and increased efficiency of its work, for example, the communication over long distances. Along with development of technologies, the way workers operate in organisations has completely changed. Monotonous and time consuming tasks can be easily solved using the computer. Consequently, this change led to increase in the number of “knowledge workers”, workers, whose main capital is knowledge (Davenport, Thomas, 2005). Organisations more often require employees, who have the skill and experience of working within a team. Obviously, teamwork has a significantly greater efficiency, especially in solving complex and comprehensive tasks. Workers can pool their knowledge and skills, leveraging the strengths of each employee. Moreover, team members can independently assess work of each other and find errors faster. Collaboration software...
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...Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action * By Ruth Reynard * 05/21/08 ##AUTHORSPLIT##<---> There has been a lot of recent debate on the benefits of social networking tools and software in education. While there are good points on either side of the debate, there remains the essential difference in theoretical positioning. Most conventional educational environments are "Objectivist" in nature and highly structured in terms of students progress and choice. Social networking essentially requires a less controlled, user-generated environment, which challenges conventional views of the effective "management" of teaching and learning. Therefore, can social networking both as an instructional concept and user skill be integrated into the conventional approaches to teaching and learning? Do the skills developed within a social networking environment have value in the more conventional environments of learning? Certainly, social learning theory is not new, but some would argue that while the social learning theorists hold that social interaction is at the center of effective learning and that no individual learns in isolation, social networking software does not provide a helpful context within which social interaction skills are developed. In other words, the valuable social skills that support learning are not the skills developed within current Internet-based social spaces. Optimum Production As you may expect, traditional academic institutions have generally...
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...Zorko University of Ljubljana Wikis are believed to be a powerful tool assisting the development of constructivist learning environments, as their very nature supports collaboration. However, not much research has been done into the types of collaborative interaction that take place in wikis when used for learning. The main purpose of this study is to explore the factors that affect the ways students collaborate in the wiki environment. To this end, a qualitative exploration of students’ perceptions of collaboration in the wiki was carried out among sociology students at university level who used this environment in blended, problem based learning as part of their English for Specific Purposes course. The research shows that the wiki promoted many collaborative behaviours among students, such as learning from each other and communicating with the teacher. However, the data indicate that the wiki was less successful in facilitating other types of collaboration, such as communicating with peers and co-constructing products, primarily because the students had the opportunity to collaborate in live meetings and preferred to use Messenger and email to communicate. Overall, the results obtained here confirm that the wiki can be used to enhance effective collaboration in a constructivist approach to language learning. Introduction With rapid advances in Internet technologies an ever increasing choice of tools can be used to support language teaching. One such application...
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...Office Automation In today’s work environment, collaboration applications are a critical part of the day to day activities. Being able to share information in an organized way is important to ensure a successful and productive work environment. Many applications are available that can help a corporation with communication and information sharing. Microsoft SharePoint is one of the leading products on the market today that help organization’s employees with successful collaboration. Describing the Environment Microsoft SharePoint is an enterprise server application that is mainly used for collaboration by employees across a corporation. This application can easily be access via a web interface and is very user friendly. Microsoft SharePoint is fully integrated with Active Directory making it easier to setup users and access control. The application can be used across the LANs (Local Area Network) as well as across the WAN (Wide Area Network) without affecting too much the network bandwidth. It comes in two different versions and depending on the business needs, corporations can either install standard or enterprise. It has many different uses including project management and collaboration. Describing How is Used SharePoint can be setup and managed by sites. Users can be granted access to one or more sites depending on their need. Each site can be customized with different colors, backgrounds and pictures. Each site is also composed of a group of applications that are...
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...Proctor & Gambles Business Strategy and the Use of Collaboration Systems Proctor and Gambles goal is to maintain the popularity of its existing brands through advertising and marketing, while also creating innovative products cost effectively to improve the lives of their consumers around the world. To increase its success in the business world, P&G spends 3.4 percent of revenue on innovation, therefor finding better ways to innovate and develop new ideas is critical and for a large company like P&G, finding methods of collaboration that are effective throughout the company can be difficult. That's why P&G has been active in implementing IT that fosters effective collaboration and innovation. Procter and Gamble utilizes a distributed development strategy, to form a basis for the distributed development strategy Procter and Gamble must make use of a collaborative environment. both as a way to develop groundbreaking innovations more quickly and to reduce research and development costs. P&G is using collaboration systems to execute its business model and business strategy by allowing researchers to use the tools to share the data they've collected on various brands; by giving marketers a more effective way to access the data they need to create more highly targeted ad campaigns; and enabling managers easier ways to find the people and data they need to make critical business decisions. To do this P&G needed to develop alternatives to business practices that were not sufficiently...
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...Group Collaboration and Web 2.0 Applications: | Knowledge sharing/retention, innovation and talent management | | | | [Type the author name] | 8/16/2009 | | Instructor Background Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) is an outsourcing company for business process outsourcing and information technology services and has more than 70,000 employees worldwide. ACS has three divisions: IT services, Government Solutions and Financial and Accounting Services (F&A). The contractual agreements between ACS and the clients are not uniform. Each contract has specific Service Level Agreements (SLA) that ACS must perform. In the event that the SLA of the contract is not meet on a monthly basis then financial penalties are assessed according to the contract. The Mission Statement describes to goals of the company. The following two excerpts from the Mission Statement are an important to the success of ACS in providing exceptional service to the clients: We will design innovative solutions to meet our clients’ business requirements and deliver only the highest quality of service. We will marshal talented, committed people and create an environment in which they can grow professionally through their achievements. In addition to the Mission Statement, the core of the ACS culture is referred to as the Hustle Principle. The Hustle represents a “can-do” attitude. In essence, the Hustle Principles require above average individual and team performance, dedication...
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... What are aspects of collaboration in business goals, deliverables, activities, design and technology? Collaboration involves the use of Information Technology and other tools to assist groups of people to achieve a shared task. Collaboration processes are infused in business processes and therefore are present in the creation of business goals, deliverables, activities, design and technology. Business Goals The creation of business goals is an important process in establishing the foundations for a business’ direction. Collaboration tools are used to facilitate team meetings and the communication of ideas between members of a group. The use of such tools fosters discussion allowing each member to provide their specialised skill set and knowledge to the group. The use of online collaboration resources, such as social networks and web applications allows each member of the group to contribute from any location or device that has Internet access. Deliverables The creation of deliverables is subjected to a collaboration process. Reports, overviews and analysis are made through a collaborative effort with several people often contributing to the creation of a deliverable item. Those items can then be further subjected to a collaborative process and used by another group of people to create another item, report or idea. Collaborative tools, such as Google Docs, allow members of a group to contribute to reports through an online environment. Activities Business...
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...functions, such as finance and accounting, human resources, manufacturing and production, and sales and marketing. Business organizations are arranged hierarchically into levels of management. A business process is a logically related set of activities that define how specific business tasks are performed. Business firms must monitor and respond to their surrounding environments. 1.1 Define a business and describe the major business functions. A business refers to a formal organization whose aim is to produce products or provide services for a profit. Every business, regardless of its size, must perform four functions to succeed. It must produce the product or service; market and sell the product or service; keep track of accounting and financial transactions; and perform basic human resources tasks, such as hiring and retaining employees. 1.2 Define business processes and describe the role they play in organizations. A business process refers to a logically related set of activities that define how specific business tasks are performed. Business processes are the ways in which a business collaborates and organizes work activities, information, and knowledge to produce their products or services. 1.3 Identify and describe the different levels in a business firm and their information needs. The different levels of management are senior management, middle management, and operational management. Senior managers need summary information that can quickly inform them about the overall...
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...Collaboration in the Workplace Author’s Note This research is being submitted on July, 26th 2013, for N234/CET2810C Section 01 Microsoft Exchange Server course. Collaboration in the Workplace Collaboration has been around for a while now. However, in the modern world it has become extremely important (Kerry, 2013). The use of the internet to connect us around the globe has become a way of life. The use of cloud computing is growing faster than anyone has anticipated and with faster internet connections it has enabled collaboration more than ever (Kelly, 2013). It’s plainly easy to see why collaboration has become so popular if you consider how much technology has changed over the years, we’ve done away with emails having to be exchanged and archived for referencing now we can discuss and work on a project in real time. With collaboration becoming such a strong and valued achievement in the way businesses conduct work; it is important that these businesses obtain better integrated collaboration tools as mobile and remote access to the corporate network increases (Gerwig, 2012). Collaboration is an essential component of teamwork, the notion of forming teams in organizations is the need for members with complementary skills and expertise to collaborate in order to achieve the goal for with the team established (Mohammad, 2010). Knowledge, sharing and management in virtual teams has been the focus of recent research studies as it represents a challenge in virtual work...
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...Merklin_Guided Writing Research What is Guided Writing? Gibson describes guided writing as a “small-group instructional framework presented to students who share similar needs at a particular point in time. Guided writing provides an important context for teachers' in-the-moment assessment and immediate instructional scaffolding of students' construction of their own individual text" Gibson (2008). In other words, Guided Writing means working with small groups of students with similar needs in writing development. Teachers can use this time to help them see where the students are and how to help students progress. How does Guided Writing Work? Several steps make up a Guided Writing lesson: a brief shared experience, discussion of targeted...
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...B COLLABORATION IN THE WORKPLACE: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX COM/526, SPRING 2010 DR. LA TRIC CAMPFIELD, FACILITATOR ABSTRACT The term collaboration and its concept has become a keyword in the infrastructure of corporate businesses, small businesses, higher education, and workplaces. "In today's process-driven workplace", as authored by Evan Rosen (2008), "collaboration is king". As the remnants of the in-the-box and old-school traditions are becoming more and more obselete, the out-of-the-box culture of collaboration is being born across the globe. Introduction and History of Collaboration in the Workplace An Overall View The term collaboration and its concept has become a keyword in the infrastructure of corporate businesses, small businesses, higher education, and workplaces. "In today's process-driven workplace", as authored by Evan Rosen (2008), "collaboration is king". While remaining in-the-box and old-school traditions are becoming more and more obselete, the out-of-the-box culture of collaboration is being born across the globe. According to Webster’s New Dictionary (2001), the definition of collaboration is the gathering of resources, data, and information, especially in literature. This combined collection of information and workplace activity constructs a general, specific plan or purpose which is to be executed or produced within the workplace while working with others as a team. The history of collaboration began...
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...Advantages and Disadvantages of Collaboration in the Workplace Teams and groups exist in all levels of industries and organizations. Groups can be small or large, local or remote, coached or self-directed. Teams are found at all levels of business, from a multi-billion dollar corporation that builds jets to a small waterpark employing lifeguards and clerks. Successful teams need some form of leadership, good communication, problem-solving skills, and a purpose. Successful groups can achieve tremendous results,. When teams work together, everyone is working toward one common goal and completing the project with successful results. Average groups do just enough to achieve a goal, and then there are groups that are extraordinary. They achieve superior results and team members come away from the group experience with a newfound respect of what he or she helped accomplish. A study revealed eight performance indicators linking extraordinary groups and group members agreed. Each team member agreed teams must: have a compelling purpose, a shared leadership role, team structure, full engagement among members, embrace member differences, learn the unexpected, build trusting relationships, and achieve outstanding results. Whether the team is for-profit or not, volunteers or employees, face-to-face or virtual, these eight indicators emerged (Bellman & Ryan, 2010). Athletics and businesses share many of the same qualities. The head coach sets goals for his team as does the business...
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