...including the relationship between undesirable outcomes and factors leading to outcomes can be understood, then they can be managed more effectively and efficiently. Consequently, organizations will be able to harvest as much benefit as it can out of IT outsourcing. Abstract—IT outsourcing is the subcontracting of previous in-house IT activities to external IT vendors who can do them better and more efficiently because they possess more resources and higher experatise. Firms are driven to acquire IT outsourcing services because they expect these specialized firms to provide efficient services which lead to cost saving and increase in profit. However, only half of IT outsourcing contracts has delivered results as promised. In this research a conceptual framework is presented and tested to reveal the relationship between IT outsourcing risk factors and negative outcomes that occur from IT outsourcing. The result concluded that four risk factors...
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...RO T E U L D GE · r & Fr a nci s G ro Risk factors in enterprise-wide/ERP projects M ARY SUM NER School of Business, Southern Illinois University, Campus Box 1106, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA The purpose of this study was to identify the risk factors in implementing traditional management information systems projects, describe the risk factors associated with enterprise-wide/ERP (enterprise resource planning) projects and identify the risk factors in ERP projects which are unique to these projects. Some of the unique challenges in managing enterprise-wide projects which were highlighted through the ndings included the challenge of re-engineering business processes to ‘ t’ the process which the ERP software supports, investment in recruiting and reskilling technology professionals, the challenge of using external consultants and integrating their application-speci c knowledge and technical expertise with existing teams, the risk of technological bottlenecks through client-server implementation and the challenge of recruiting and retaining business analysts who combine technology and business skills. Introduction In the past few years many organizations have initiated enterprise-wide/ERP (enterprise resource planning) projects using such packages as SAP, Peoplesoft and Oracle. These projects often represent the single largest investment in an information systems (IS) project in the histories of these companies and, in many cases, the largest single investment...
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...technical ineptness. Professional values are also displayed in this case with opportunities. Stepchuck, Todd’s boss, misrepresented the firm’s situation to Todd when giving her the assignment. Todd was caught off guard when the firm’s entire senior management team was present at the initial meeting when Stepchuck told Todd it would be a meeting with the President of the firm to discuss the initial issues and next steps. Todd went to this meeting blind and was bombarded with direct questions about technical details of CQI, timeframes to expect results, plans to map key processes, steps to form quality improvement teams to identify and improve processes. The senior management team wanted her suggestions as an expert in continuous quality improvement (CQI) to increase efficiency and cut costs in their core business. Todd followed up with her boss and her concerns of being misrepresented to this firm as an expert in CQI. If CQI was the hot topic in the OD industry it should be something that Stepchuck’s firm and his associates were versed in to be in keeping with the ethical guidelines of responsibility for professional developoment and achievement. The misrepresentation of Todd to the client and the client to Todd illustrated value conflict as Stepchuck did not appropriately inform Todd of the purpose of the change effort and most importantly showed no concern when Todd informed Stepchuck of her lack of expertise. Stepchuck in fact stated that he had known the client for 10...
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...technical ineptness. Professional values are also displayed in this case with opportunities. Stepchuck, Todd’s boss, misrepresented the firm’s situation to Todd when giving her the assignment. Todd was caught off guard when the firm’s entire senior management team was present at the initial meeting when Stepchuck told Todd it would be a meeting with the President of the firm to discuss the initial issues and next steps. Todd went to this meeting blind and was bombarded with direct questions about technical details of CQI, timeframes to expect results, plans to map key processes, steps to form quality improvement teams to identify and improve processes. The senior management team wanted her suggestions as an expert in continuous quality improvement (CQI) to increase efficiency and cut costs in their core business. Todd followed up with her boss and her concerns of being misrepresented to this firm as an expert in CQI. If CQI was the hot topic in the OD industry it should be something that Stepchuck’s firm and his associates were versed in to be in keeping with the ethical guidelines of responsibility for professional developoment and achievement. The misrepresentation of Todd to the client and the client to Todd illustrated value conflict as Stepchuck did not appropriately inform Todd of the purpose of the change effort and most importantly showed no concern when Todd informed Stepchuck of her lack of expertise. Stepchuck in fact stated that he had known the client for 10...
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...Development Franchising as a Social Innovation: When Entrepreneurial Expertise is Lacking Isaac H. Smith David Eccles School of Business University of Utah Kristie K. Seawright Marriott School of Management Brigham Young University Contact: Isaac H. Smith; isaac.smith@business.utah.edu; (T) 801-518-2991; 1645 East Campus Center Drive, 22 KDGB, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 Promoting entrepreneurship in “developing” nations has become a popular strategy for alleviating poverty and stimulating economic development (Khandker, 2005). For example, the worldwide proliferation of microfinance institutions is based on the assumption that providing individuals with better access to financial capital will fuel entrepreneurship and microenterprises, providing opportunities for people to work their way out of poverty. The results of such efforts, however, have been mixed (Snow & Buss, 2001), in part, because not all microfinance borrowers have the entrepreneurial skills sufficient to make a microenterprise succeed (Karnani, 2007a). Cross culturally, successful entrepreneurs have been shown to possess a different set of knowledge structures, or mental schema, than non-entrepreneurs (Mitchell, Smith, Seawright, & Morse, 2000). Interestingly, franchisees—often considered to be entrepreneurs (e.g., Baucus, Baucus, & Human 1996; Grunhagen & Mettelstadedt, 2005)—have been found to have entrepreneurship-related knowledge structures more closely resembling non-entrepreneurs than entrepreneurs...
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...Alum-Titan’s, the management has to perform duties designed for the function; this tends to load more obligations to the management. As a result, there has been wastage of time that could have used to attend to other duties. Moreover, though the management has tried to somehow perform the tasks, lack of human resource function is a great barrier to the company. Therefore, I can urge the company to hire part time/temporary human resource function if it cannot afford permanent, to assist the controller on undertaking the human resource responsibilities. Otherwise, the organization can train its management personnel to attain enough expertise on human resource concepts and principles to avoid incurring much expense. To eliminate and control unethical relationships, the organization should have established human resource function to effectively enforce ethical codes and standards. In addition, the company should also establish a potential mechanism to deal with individuals who engage in such mal-practices. It is an obligation of human resource function to update such policies to clarify the organizational expectations to both the managers and employees (Mathis, & Jackson, 2010). However, according to the case study, the company’s handbook includes Sexual Harassment Policy. Therefore, the organizational management should effectively enforce this to control occurrence of such issues within its processes. Lack of sufficient enforcement of the policy has encouraged the organizational...
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...Outsourcing IT Services for Data Center Consolidation California Natural Resource Agency’s Best Option for the Consolidation Project into Department of Water Resources Tier III-Equivalent Data Center The Department of Water Resources for the state of California is responsible for managing “the water resources of California in cooperation with other agencies, to benefit the State's people, and to protect, restore, and enhance the natural and human environments.” (http://www.water.ca.gov/about/mission.cfm) In late 2009 the Department of Water Resources (DWR) launched a multi-million dollar project to build a modernized IT infrastructure that is to house several of the California Natural Resources Agency’s (CNRA) commissions and conservatories. This project would make DWR a certified tier III data center. There are only four tier III data centers currently operating in California. The project was broken into two phases; the first was the build-out of the IT infrastructure, and the second phase is the migration and consolidation of the various agencies computer rooms and data centers. The first phase was completed in early 2011 and consisted of: * Better performance. New servers boost performance of key business solutions and applications by up to four times while enabling system engineers to keep computer intensive workloads in-house. * Consolidated IT. The new infrastructure provides four times the capacity of new business solutions while reducing the server footprint by...
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...cultivate ‘decision-making paralysis’ and a lack of individual decision making ability are explained. Numerous examples and reasons are outlined to communicate a manager’s fear of failure, reluctance to make decisions and inability to make effective decisions when required at all hierarchical levels. If a decision must be made, particularly for an unexpected situation or problem, there is a tendency to look up, at superior’s intents and desires, and look around, at the general consensus of peers, before making any decisions. Jackall also explains managerial short term focus, the corporate culture of self interest and the reasons for each. In particular, he explains the manager’s interest in their progression and preference for short term, self promoting, often political, decisions over rational decisions that benefit the organisation in the long term. These passages show that personal ambition prevents good, rational decisions being made. Jackall also shows how this extends to the blaming of others and changing jobs in order to avoid being accountable for the consequences of previous decisions or strategies that enabled individual corporate progression. In essence, if you ‘outrun your mistakes’ through promotion or transfer, you will succeed no matter the impact on the organisation or others. This is facilitated through a lack of accountability at all levels. Without ever explicitly expressing it, the author is criticising these methods, this culture and the acceptance of it. He highlights...
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...to non-employees, a business does not have to pay consistent wages or offer additional employee benefits. The company may pay lower taxes because independent contractors, the people who complete the outsourced projects, pay their own withholding, social security, and other taxes. This can add up to substantial savings. Some businesses choose to take their outsourcing one step further by choosing a vendor, located in another part of the world. Doing so typically saves them more money because they end up paying a much lower wage than would be necessary in their home country. The disadvantage is that these vendors may not understand English and communication is more difficult. Many times, outsourcing speeds up production time. Since the third-party vendor will only be concentrating on one specific task, instead of numerous office duties, actual production time can be greatly increased. Outsourcing gives a business the flexibility to change third-party vendors whenever necessary. This process is not as time-consuming as the normal employee hiring process, because they are not screening individuals, they are considering established companies with proven track records. An excellent example of this is customer service. When a business outsources its customer service department, it does not have to hire and oversee thirty individual operators. Instead, it can hire one call center, which will perform all needed tasks. Recent studies show that information technology-related...
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...Impacts of Chinese Government PR 1 Running Head: IMPACTS OF CHINESE GOVERNMENT PR Impacts of Chinese Government Public Relations: PR Expertise, Legitimacy and News October 31, 2007 Impacts of Chinese Government PR 2 Abstract Over the past five years, Chinese government has deployed considerable amount of resources to enhance government public relations expertise with the hope of achieving more positive media coverage by Western media. However, the effectiveness of government public relations strategies is not only contingent upon public relations expertise but also upon legitimacy of Chinese government perceived by journalists. This study finds out that Chinese government public relations efforts have been helpful in raising the number of attributions to Chinese government sources in U.S. media coverage of China, but do not improve the image of China in U.S. media coverage and the valence of China in American public opinion. Impacts of Chinese Government PR 3 Impacts of Chinese Government Public Relations: PR Expertise, Legitimacy and News China has become more involved in the international community economically and politically since the reforming and the opening policies in the late 1970s. As a result, China has gradually played an important role in international economy and politics. Simultaneously, China has seen an influx of Western tourists and businessmen. Inevitably, these changes spur demand for various kinds of information of China, and lead to a dramatic...
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...implement its corporate strategy correctly. Furthermore it fails to make the necessary adjustments in strategy formulation required to take the corrective action necessary to resolve its implementation problems. To correct this problem, my first recommendation is for the Wallace group to solidify its management team. Currently the team lacks the expertise necessary to run the three divisions as a cohesive unit. It also lacks the expertise in non-defense areas to successfully execute its growth strategy into these private sector markets. New managers from outside the organization must be hired with this experience and expertise. These people will help establish the policies, programs, budgets and procedures necessary to succeed in the new growth areas. They will also be able to firmly establish the roles and responsibilities of each person in both the corporate and group positions to ensure that the organizational structure supports corporate strategy and unity. The second recommendation I would make is to sell off the Chemical Group. This group is the weakest of the three and using valuable resources, particularly engineers, that could be put to better use in the other divisions. The proceeds of the sale could also be used to upgrade the salary structure. This move would allow the firm to retain and attract the top-notch talent they desperately need to improve morale and productivity. With only the plastics and electronics divisions, stronger leadership from management and a happier...
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...Consulting for George Lancia: 1. Problem: George lacks expertise, and incompetence to run his Businesses’. Source: Does not have an education and does not know how to handle his finances from an early stage. Backing: George brought all business down financially by reaching overdraft limits and lines of credit. Constraints: George will need to confront all conflicts while maintaining past relationships. Solution: George needs to hire Cam as a consultant to help him with the skills he is missing. Cam’s expertise will bring everything under control. Problem Statement: George lack of expertise and incompetence is no longer adequate to run his businesses’ as evidenced by financial inefficiencies and George’s difficulty in confronting people, needs to hire a consultant with the expertise and skills he is missing; so, he can handle his financial burdens and continue operating his businesses’ while confronting his conflicts and past relationships. 2. George’s definitely had some technical skills; he had specialized competencies such as owing a couple of businesses’ such as a movie theater, drive in theater, restaurant and sold real estate. George had the capability to invest in several fast food restaurants, retirement home and rental properties. George was lacking human skills he couldn’t not confront many people in his businesses' or give them direction on how to run the business. In one of his restaurants George was worried about being forced...
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...Malaysia. This subsidiary of PCK holding since 2005 was managed by Encik Selamat, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). It became one of top 5 chicken suppliers within mid-tier producers in the country due to increasing demand in year 2000 from superstores and fast-food chains, high chicken consumption by Malaysian, and expansion of chicken industry. However, in 2008, cost of poultry production increased. EPM operating cash was low and severe, that it “had puzzled Encik Selamat” (p.4). Other problems were also identified. Decision Maker: Credit Controller Ms Choy is the decision maker as she has the responsibility to make the right decision regarding unethical conduct of Encik Selamat, she can convince Board of Directors about En. Selamat. If she failed to convince BOD to take action, she can then reveal the issue to the auditor, besides mentioning to the auditor the lack of segregation of duty in the business operation. She can execute and monitor implementation and performance of employees under her responsibility and convince her friend, Puan Azura to do the same. What should Ms. Choy do? Analysis: 1) SWOT analysis S – STRENGTHS * One of top 5 chicken suppliers * Continuing profitability and growth * Good promotional strategy * Qualified accountant (Encik Kasim) * Reliable Credit Controller (Ms Choy) * Encik Selamat’s reputation in community W – WEAKNESSES * En. Selamat’s lack of expertise in poultry and meat industry * 2008’s operational crisis * Lack of focus of...
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...Date: Oct. 13, 2015 Treatment of Loss Dear Renee: The purpose of this letter is to discuss the treatment of the $25,406 loss. This loss is classified as a hobby loss under IRC code section (183)(a). Given the circumstances, you have not displayed enough profit-motive to classify your activities as business activities. The facts relevant to this case are that you: had an art degree; bought five terriers for breeding purposes; had particular interest in breeding for profit; spent lots of time with friends while attending dog-show social events; converted part of the home office into a ten-kennel pen; purchased an advertisement in Dog World for services of a breeder; signed onto the breeder network; retained detailed records of the Terriers which includes: stud fees, care costs, and receipts of the sold puppies. The assumptions used are that you: already had friends that were dog breeders; have no expertise in breeding or had not hired outside council with expertise in dog breeding; have not made any profits from breeding; have no past experience with dog breeding; did not have separate business checking accounts; did not have a business plan; did not purchase or obtain insurance, certifications, or liscenses. The implications of having a hobby loss is that you can not offset other income. Unlike business losses, hobby losses do not carryforward or backward. The deductions for hobby activities are claimed as itemized deductions on Schedule A, Form 1040. The decision to claim...
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...provide an automatic payroll for employees to control and check the undeserved overtime payments to city workers, which are not possible before. * Business benefits using NYCAPS and CityTime projects: 1. They are able to reduce the labor costs by automating the system to handle employee benefits. 2. It saved the revenue of the New York City by control the overtime payments to the city employees. 3. Improves the business process and efficiency of the system 2. Evaluate the key risk factors in both projects. The key risk factors in both NYCAPS and CityTime projects are as below: NYCAPS * Lack of strong leadership: This factor tends to increase in project’s over all cost and delays in project deliverables. * Lack of Authorities and Expertise: The NYCAPS project was controlled by government officials who did not have authority or expertise to make important project decisions,...
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