<p> Mergers and acquisitions are a common form of inorganic growth for many companies; however, the failure rate of those activities remains high with IS&amp;T integration noted as one of the causes of failure. The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to explore the experience of the IS&amp;T leaders during an M&amp;A IS&amp;T integration to understand how to reduce future failures. Interviews were conducted with eight IS&amp;T leaders who have been involved with M&amp;A IS&amp;T integrations at technology companies. Seven themes emerged from the data analysis of the transcribed interviews. The themes resulting from the study are: incomplete or incorrect technology integration and technology architecture, identification and adherence to technology standards, employee uncertainties and conflict caused as a result of the M&amp;A, a lack of agreement on the M&amp;A strategy across leadership, identification of the end state goals of the IS&amp;T integration, development and consistent use of an M&amp;A IS&amp;T integration process playbook, and communication process across leadership and employees. The recommendations from the findings for IS&amp;T leadership provide three areas of focus. First, the findings reflect the issues impacting M&amp;A IS&amp;T integration failures. Second, the rich experiences of the participants provide leadership with recommendations on how leaders can prepare for M&amp;A integrations to reduce the potential for failures. Third, the findings provide recommendations on performing an M&amp;A IS&amp;T integration resulting in a reduction of failures including gaining an understanding of previous failures, preparing for, planning, and executing an M&amp;A integration.</p>

<p> Business organizations are faced with an enormous challenge to improve cyber security, as breeches and lapses through firewalls are increasingly commonplace. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Information Technology (IT) staff are constantly challenged to identify and purge online and network structural weaknesses. The goal is to reduce overall business risk because unresolved risks are a constant concern to consumers who are uneasy about cyber security failures. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to examine the role and impact of Cyber Security Mentoring (CSM) from the perspectives of the workplace CISO, mentors, and prot&eacute;g&eacute;s, who were randomly polled from various workplace settings across the United States. Mentoring allows IT staff members to learn from their CISOs and from workplace mentor mistakes and successes. Workplace IT staff are also closest to the various attack methodologies used by cyber hackers, and cohort and dyadic mentoring may provide insight into and responding to cyber-attacks and improving cyber defenses. Sixty-eight sets of respondent data relating to field experience, formal education, professional industry cyber security certifications, and mentoring were compared and examined between respondents. The goal was to determine where respondents agreed and disagreed on issues pertaining to cyber security and CSM. The findings suggested that CSM with a qualified mentor could improve cyber security in the workplace; in addition, more time must be devoted to continued professional education. Implications for positive social change included the use of CSM to enhance cyber security through the sharing of incidents, mindsets, procedures and expertise, and improvement of customer-consumer security confidence.</p>

<p> Hackers external to the organization continue to wreak havoc upon the information systems infrastructure of firms through breaches of security defenses, despite constant development of and continual investment in new IS security countermeasures by security professionals and vendors. These breaches are exceedingly costly and damaging to the affected organizations. The continued success of hackers in the face of massive amounts of security investments suggests that the defenders are losing and that the hackers can innovate at a much faster pace. </p><p> Underground hacker communities have been shown to be an environment where attackers can learn new techniques and share tools pertaining to the defeat of IS security countermeasures. This research sought to understand the manner in which hackers diffuse innovations within these communities. Employing a multi-site, positivist case study approach of four separate hacking communities, the study examined how hackers develop, communicate, and eventually adopt these new techniques and tools, so as to better inform future attempts at mitigating these attacks. The research found that three classes of change agents are influential in the diffusion and adoption of an innovation: the developer/introducer of the innovation to the community, the senior member of a community, and the author of tutorials. Additionally, the research found that three innovation factors are key to successful diffusion and adoption: the compatibility of the innovation to the needs of the community, the complexity of the innovation, and the change in image conferred upon the member from adopting the innovation. The research also described the process by which innovations are adopted within the hacking communities and detailed phases in this process which are unique to these communities.</p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study which evolved into a collective case study was to gain a deeper understanding of knowledge retention and transfer practices within an information technology (IT) interorganizational community of practice. The study involved analyzing structured interview responses from six trainee, seven leaders and two government leader participants in the Bermuda-based program who had experienced knowledge retention and transfer within the social environment, as well as an analysis of relevant documentation to identify emergent themes. Eight themes identified through the data were learner, role model, relevance, learning environment, communication, opportunity, networking, and modeling. The research revealed many elements in the interorganizational IT community of practice contributed to knowledge retention and transfer, including the environment, differing perspectives of those involved, personal development of participants, the career boost perceived by participants, and the complexity of the IT industry. The findings include suggestions for expanding and strengthening the community of practice through partnerships with educational institutions, IT organizations, and alumni of the program, in addition to program enhancements and the replication of the program in other jurisdictions, which might lead to enhancing the value of participation in the IT interorganizational community of practice to the constituent groups involved.</p>

<p> Computers have changed the way organizations do business and store information. Teams of professionals are needed to support the increased use of technology. Organizational leaders depend on information technology to obtain market information, maintain contact with customers, maintain organizational data, and stay competitive. Research supports organizational use of teams and a leader&rsquo;s relationship with followers affect the success of teams, which in turn influences an organization&rsquo;s competitiveness and outcomes. This quantitative descriptive correlational study describes how leadership and communication styles affect the success of computer support teams. The sample size in the study was relatively small. The response of leaders was eight out of 10 and follower response was 25 out of ninety. The study included a review of the impact of the increased use of teams in organizations and the relationship between leaders and followers. The results indicate a correlation of a leader&rsquo;s leadership and communication style to the success of computer support team members. The effect of relationships between leaders and followers is important in determining why some computer support teams are less successful.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Mark Keil, committee chair; Henry Moon, Arun Rai, Detmar Straub, committee members. Electronic text (190 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 22, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-168).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-110). Also available in electronic version.

<p> The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the available strategies IT leaders at ABC, a Managed IT Services company in the SME sector in Columbus, Ohio, may use to avoid data breaches in the cloud environment. The security framework established by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) provided the conceptual framework for this study. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to select 10 IT leaders to participate in the study. Data were gathered through open-ended, semi-structured individual face-to-face interviews, asynchronous discussions through e-mails, and reviews of company-provided documents. An inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze all the data collected in the study. The following six major themes emerged from the data relating to descriptions of the data security threats and vulnerabilities facing IT leaders in the cloud, and the strategies they may use to avoid a breach of their data: (1) managing the human factor, (2) managing the network environment, (3) types of data security threats, (4) people pose the most significant risk, (5) elements of an effective strategy, and (6) addressing password issues. The results indicated that IT leaders face multifaceted data security threats in the cloud and these could be addressed through a combination of strategies including user education, securing the network, limiting user access to IT resources, and addressing password issues.</p><p>

<p> Agile Software Development methods such as Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, and Large Scale Agile (LeSS) promise substantial benefits in terms of productivity, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, quality project management overhead, and time to market. As Agile methods have become widespread in the software development industry and begin to take root in the overall business community, there is an increasing need to understand the firm level impact of the implementation of these methods. To build the most effective business case for organizations in and out of the software development industry, it is imperative that a case be made to show that the implementation of Agile frameworks has constituted a competitive advantage. This study investigated the organization level performance impact of switching from traditional methods to the use of Agile frameworks. The results showed that changing from a traditional methodology to an Agile framework resulted in higher return on assets and lower operating expense ratios. The interaction between time and methodology for OER, ROA, or revenues in Table 6 did not show a significant difference, indicating that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected. Thus, we cannot say whether performance differs as a function of type of agile methodology. That said, the non-parametric sign test shows that the median improvement in Operating Expense Ratios were highest for Scrum while SAFe seemed to show a slightly higher improvement in Return on Assets. On the whole, Scrum seems to outperform SAFe in terms of operating efficiency (as measured by OER) but lags in terms of ROA.</p><p>

<p> The Frightful Five&mdash;Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google&mdash;shape the way data are generated and distributed across digital space (Manjoo, 2017). Through their technologies and increase in scope and scale, these titans provide new ways for people to create, find, and share information online. And, with such control, they have continued as well as expanded their reign over information commerce, changing the way that people and technology interact. In this way, tech giants act as gatekeepers over data, as well as serve as all-mighty-creators over technologies that arguably <i>act on</i> humans. </p><p> To explain, debates over whether or not technologies are employing &ldquo;computational agency&rdquo; (Tufecki, 2015, p. 207) have developed. One of these disputes is commonly referred to as the Great Artificial Intelligence (AI) Debate, and is currently being publicly argued between two of the most prominent tech titans: Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (Narkar, 2017). On one side of the AI argument, sits tech mogul Musk, who is crying for regulatory restrictions over AI and painting doomsday pictures of robots killing humans. Conversely, on the other side of the dispute, sits tech giant Zuckerberg, who claims AI will enhance society as it makes the world a better place. </p><p> This great AI debate underscores what Illich (1973) described as organizations that practice in convivial versus non-convivial ways. In other words, as tech titans are continuing to advance technology, it can be argued that they are operating in convivial ways as they enhance society through their participatory tools that work <i>with</i> humans to complete a task. Alternatively, it can be debated that technology organizations may be functioning in non-convivial ways as they manipulate society for the sake of their technologies. And, while these technologies may be <i>participating with</i> humans (convivial) to complete a task, they may actually be <i>working for</i> and/or acting on humans (non-convivial) to do an activity. </p><p> The purpose of this dissertation was to establish a unique approach to studying the conviviality of technology titans and how they organize digital space, a concept the researcher coined as digital conviviality. <i>Digital conviviality</i> is when a technology company operates in digital convivial ways such that it: (a) builds tools for digital communication; (b) has a value proposition that, while aimed at generating a profit, is also focused on using its technology to enhance society, instead of manipulating society for the sake of its technologies; and (c) designs technological tools that <i> work with</i> humans, instead of tools that <i>work for</i> humans or tools that <i>act on</i> humans, to accomplish a task. To further understand this conception of digital conviviality, an investigation was piloted into a tech titan that arguably claims to promote digital conviviality at its core: Google. </p><p> Using Illich&rsquo;s (1973) notion of conviviality as a guide, an exploration into Google&rsquo;s approach to convivial technologies was conducted. This study sought to understand Google&rsquo;s ability to shape information in the arts and culture space. Through its Google Cultural Institute (GCI) and Google Arts &amp; Culture (GAC) initiatives, Google focused on &ldquo;democratizing access to the world&rsquo;s culture&rdquo; (Google CI Chromecast, 2014, 00:44). In this way, the study aimed to answer the overarching question: in what ways is the GCI considered a digital convivial company, and conversely, in what ways is it not? Based on this, an explication of the concept of digital conviviality and a framework for studying such things were developed. </p><p> Drawing from several disciplines, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks (e.g., science and technology, posthumanism, actor-network theory, design science in information systems, business models, digital methods, and convivial studies), a body of theory was gathered together, synthesized, and enhanced. Next, the collected information was used to assemble and create a new methodological strategy called digital convivial tracking with a design science (DS) approach and actor-network theory (ANT) mindset. Digital convivial tracking employs traditional qualitative methods, as well as innovative digital methods, to trace important objects throughout a digital ecosystem. Because the GCI digitizes the world&rsquo;s arts and culture, the iconic <i>The Starry Night</i> painting by Vincent van Gogh (1889d) was selected as the object to track across the institute&rsquo;s ecosystem. This process helped identify the GCI&rsquo;s complex and entangled business model, as well as its technological innovations. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p><p>