<p> As Internet technologies have grown, virtual employees have become a large part of many sectors of business. The problem is that virtual team members may have lower job satisfaction than counterparts in traditional roles and virtual workers may suffer from turnover. Transformational leadership is associated with higher employee job satisfaction and performance; however, it remains unclear how particular leadership styles may affect virtual employees. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to describe the perceptions of virtual employees concerning their perceptions of extraversion/introversion of leaders and how they perceive the attributes of leaders when using different modes of communication, and how these issues affect their job satisfaction. A generic qualitative design was used with a purposeful sample from the population of virtual employees. The data were collected using an online questionnaire and qualitative methods were used to code and develop subthemes and themes. The results contained several themes: differences in interactions with introverts and extraverts; effectiveness and motivation driving communications with leaders; participants&rsquo; perceived congruence between preferred leader and current leader and the follower&rsquo;s satisfaction level. The study&rsquo;s novelty was revealed in details of perceived leadership style and personality, and virtual communication modes. The participants indicated they perceive and interact distinctively with introverts versus extroverts, including an expectation to use different communication modes and preferences or bias toward introverts and extroverts. Context of communications tended to be functionally or relationally motivated for most participants. However, participants&rsquo; motive and communication choices were often accommodating to the perceived leader personality types and aligned with follower&rsquo;s congruence and satisfaction with their leader. Conclusions and recommendations were that virtual workers&rsquo; preconceptions about introversion and extraversion are relevant to virtual communication choices with leaders should be explored for research and for practice. Congruence between an ideal and current leader has been studied quantitatively but few contextual details were available in those studies. An unexpected finding was that some participants were congruent with their leader but were unsatisfied. Another conclusion and recommendation was that qualitative results found are consistent with other studies and based on these results can be further explored qualitatively.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to uncover the perceptions of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) project leaders and project teams regarding knowledge transfer between client and vendor partners during the opening and closing transition phases of the ITO projects. Purposeful sampling was used to identify ITO knowledge assets, including project team members as well as documents and artifacts, within the participating organizations that may provide information regarding the knowledge transfer processes during the transition phases of the ITO project. The sample criteria were ITO project team members from one US-based client organization and the US company&rsquo;s international vendor partners. The study population included project managers, analyst, developers, subject matter experts (SMEs) and other ITO knowledge workers involved in ITO project from one US-based organization. Interview and document analysis was done with the aid of NVivo Pro 11^&reg; research software. Four themes emerged from the study participants' responses including (a) KT approaches to plans and processes relative to opening and closing phases of ITO projects; (b) KT dependencies relative to IT project team members reliance on project tools, processes, and artifacts; (c) Determinants of KT success or failure relative to project team member's perceptions; and (d) The role of documentation relative to communication and distribution of KT outcomes. This qualitative exploratory case study may provide insights into additional aspects of knowledge transfer during ITO transition phases, which may be used by IT leaders and project teams to plan for successful knowledge transfer during the transition phases of ITO projects.</p><p>

<p> More than half of information technology (IT) outsourced projects fail, primarily due to a lack of effective management practices surrounding the outsourcing end-to-end process. Ineffective management of the IT outsourcing (ITO) process affects organizations in the form of higher than expected project costs, including greater vendor switching or reintegration costs, poor quality, and loss of profits. These effects indicate that some business leaders lack the strategies to effectively manage the ITO process. The purpose of this single-case study was to apply the transaction cost economics (TCE) theory to explore strategies 5 business professionals use to manage an ITO project in a financial services organization located in the Midwestern region of the United States. Participant selection was purposeful and was based on the integral role the participants play on the ITO project. Data collection occurred via face-to-face semistructured interviews with the participants and the review of company documents. Data were analyzed using inductive coding of phrases, word frequency searches, and theme interpretation. Three themes emerged: vendor governance and oversight, collaborative strategic partnership, and risk management strategies enabled effective management of ITO. Identifying and executing appropriate outsourcing strategies may contribute to social change by improving outsourcing infrastructure, which might support job creation; increasing standards of living, especially within emerging markets; and heightening awareness of different cultures, norms, and languages among people living in different regions around the world to establish commonalities and gain alignment with business practices.</p><p>

<p> The effect of culture on leadership strategies, goals, and behavior of business organizations have been a major focus of leadership researchers. The current study is a significant addition to the broader field of leadership studies involving ethnic and socio-cultural aspects of a prominent but understudied population in leadership literature. Asian Indian immigrants play a vital role in the US Information Technology Industry. However, no extensive research has been published on Asian Indian techno-immigrants. Study of the available literature indicated a general problem of underrepresentation of Asian Indian immigrants in IT organizations at high-level leadership positions in the United States. Despite the perceived glass ceiling, several Asian Indian immigrants have achieved notable success and attained high-level leadership positions in the U.S. IT industry. The current hermeneutic phenomenological study focuses understudied areas within scholarly literature. The study explored the lived experience of Asian Indian immigrants in high-level leadership positions in the U.S. Information Technology industry and the impact of their racial and sociocultural identity on being high-level leaders in the U.S. IT sector. The current phenomenological inquiry uncovered six essential themes from the data analysis that includes: (1) socio-cultural experience, (2) advanced technology skills, (3) leadership competency, (4) ethnic identity and assimilation, (5) personal and family sacrifices and (6) sustainment of motivation. And, the study provides an in-depth insight of the lived experiences, perspectives, and thoughts of IT leaders of Asian Indian origin about winning themes and address "glass ceiling" issues that limit the growth of aspiring leaders. </p><p>

<p> Organizational change initiatives are more likely to fail than to succeed, especially when the change challenges corporate culture and norms. Researchers have explored factors that contribute to change failure, to include the relationship between leadership behaviors and change success. Peer reviewed studies have yet to examine these variables in the context of Agile and DevOps implementations as the catalyst for change. The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to determine the extent to which a relationship exists between transformational leadership behaviors of front-line managers, employee readiness for change, and employee organizational citizenship behavior during Agile and DevOps initiatives. The population included all IT professionals in the U.S. working full-time at companies with more than 500 employees whose work processes had been altered by Agile or DevOps implementations. A sample of 400 qualified panel participants provided data through an online SurveyGizmo survey. Quotas ensured that the survey sample represented the gender and ethnicity distribution among U.S. IT professionals according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data collected were analyzed for missing data, reliability, and normality. Pearson&rsquo;s r calculations and linear regression analysis revealed that a moderate yet statistically significant correlation exists between the transformational leadership behaviors of respondents&rsquo; front-line managers and their own readiness for change and organizational citizenship behavior. The results could have been skewed by the higher than expected proportion of managers and executives who responded to the survey. Future researchers could extend the work started in this present study by adding quotas to ensure the survey responses align to average employee-manager ratios. This study could also be replicated with participants in a single company so that findings could be supported through qualitative methods such as interviews and panel discussions.</p>

<p>Abstract Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems present a management problem for various industries including institutions of higher education (IHEs) because they are costly to acquire, challenging to implement, and often fail to meet anticipated expectations. ERP systems are highly complex due to the nature of the operations they support. This dissertation was conducted via a systematic review of the literature from 1998-2017 to synthesize available knowledge in various industries including IHEs in the United States. Through the lenses of Change Management Theory and The Diffusion of Innovations Theory, this systematic review highlighted critical success factors (CSFs) affecting the implementation of ERP systems in various industries and, also, sought to discover CSFs unique to institutions of higher education. Despite the challenges ERP presents to businesses, implementation of ERP systems continues to grow. This dissertation found that for various industries, the most often cited CSFs were: top management support, change management skills, effective communications, and ERP systems user training. For IHEs, institutional governance, staff engagement, lack of internal expertise, and conflicts with other priorities were the critical factors that played a significant role in ERP implementation. These findings suggested that industries must not only pay careful attention to the CSFs in various industries but that they can utilize the specific CSFs in IHEs, even though they may not appear to be as crucial for other industries. Future research may consider the extent to which organizations have mastered the skills necessary to effectively implement ERP systems. Keywords: enterprise resource planning systems, critical success factors, CSFs, implementation, higher education, innovation management

<p> Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) lag behind their for-profit and public-sector peers in leveraging IT to satisfy a growing and diverse set of stakeholder expectations. NPO technical debt is attributed to a lack of in-house expertise and financial resources. Despite increasing isomorphic pressures, NPOs have not integrated IT into their organizational strategic planning processes. However, how NPO IT leaders advocate for mission-enhancing IT projects remains under-represented in the literature. This phenomenological study explores the life experiences of those NPO IT leaders as they propose and execute projects within a larger portfolio of competing demands. NPO IT leaders were interviewed from 21 international development and relief service organizations. A total of 56 project experiences were extracted to identify dominant stakeholder relationships, isomorphic requirements, and resource demands. Alternating rounds of interview transcript coding and epoch&eacute; memos resulted in five representative project vignettes and two leading practice stories. There were four major findings. NPO IT leadership roles are rarely filled by dedicated IT professionals; NPO IT leaders are usually dual-hatted executives. As a result, IT is not integrated into organizational strategic planning processes; NPO IT leaders are often placed in passive and reactionary positions as opposed to ones of strong advocacy. They remain dependent on financial and expertise resources, which confirms that resource dependency theory influences IT strategy. The prominence of end-user requirements in the project experiences marks a shift from previous literature; normative expectations were twice as prevalent as coercive control of funding or legitimacy when driving strategic investments. Further research in NPO IT leadership characteristics (e.g., style, dual-hatted responsibilities, and sex) and the elusiveness of measuring mission-enhancing impact of IT projects should be conducted.</p><p>

<p> This study examined the use of virtual emergency management systems within operational and tactical environments and explored the experiences of officials using these virtual systems regarding communication of information, coordination of resources, and strategic thinking throughout a critical incident at 4-year public institutions of higher education. Emergency management organizations are increasingly using virtual emergency management systems within their operations, but their effects on communication and incident management in operational and tactical environments during a critical incident is unclear. A gap in the literature has emerged in the understanding of how organizations comprehend, train, and utilize virtual emergency management systems and the possible integration of these systems with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) standards. There was a need for this study to explore virtual emergency management systems within the operational and tactical environments prior to, during, and after a critical incident; and to answer the research question, &ldquo;What are the experiences of university officials, who have utilized virtual emergency management systems, in terms of communication capability, resource coordination, and strategic thinking prior to, during, and after a critical incident involving 4-year public institutions of higher education?&rdquo; This study used a transcendental phenomenological design to elicit the lived experiences of university officials who have utilized virtual emergency management systems throughout a critical incident at a 4-year public institution of higher education. The population of 10 university officials included a sample of six university emergency managers and four senior university officials who were familiar with the use of virtual systems prior to, during, and after a critical incident. The resulting data were then analyzed using open coding to identify themes and a codebook was developed to define terms associated with the themes and ascribe meaning to the data. The software NVivo11 was utilized to assist with the organization of the resulting themes. Numerous reviews of participant interview transcripts were conducted to ensure that the essences of participants&rsquo; experiences were appropriately displayed. Member checking was also conducted to ensure accuracy of the data. The findings indicated that the use of virtual emergency management systems did aid in the communication of information, the coordination and allocation of resources, and strategic thinking prior to, during, and after a critical incident at 4-year public institutions of higher education. The study also found that these systems aid in the development of trust, leadership, and team building at these institutions. The study also indicated that these systems were not being fully utilized at many of these institutions, thereby limiting the effectiveness of these systems.</p><p>

<p> The role of the academic library has shifted from developing book collections to serving the information and technology needs of students and faculty. The needs of library users change more quickly and unpredictably than the needs of books, and library directors have pushed beyond the traditional incremental approach to library development to respond to changing needs. As many universities struggle to balance budgets, library directors must demonstrate the value and demand for library spaces and services to justify investments in construction and renovation projects. This study investigates the reasons that the new library space projects were undertaken and the forces driving decisions about investments in the library facilities. The cases in this dissertation present studies of three private, non-profit liberal arts institutions in the Eastern United States that have recently invested in major renovation or construction projects for new library spaces. At each site, interviews and focus group sessions were conducted with librarians, students, faculty, and library administrators. Archival material was researched to supplement the data collected from the subjects of the interviews. A multi-lens framework of strategic change is used to examine the forces and factors that influenced the decisions to pursue new library spaces in each case study. The institutions in the study successfully developed new learning commons and library spaces through renovation or construction projects. Each of the libraries in the study faced similar factors leading to a new space, including overcrowding, interest from students in collaborative learning, increased demand for access to technology, and the decline in the use of the printed book. The strong leadership of the library director, with support from the institution&rsquo;s president, contributed to the success of each project in the study. The importance of this study derives from its examination of the changing factors and forces that drive the uses of new library spaces, highlighting the need to build flexibility into new construction projects.</p><p>

<p> Research demonstrates that there is a gap in focusing understanding factors of information communication technology (ICT) acceptance and use in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). ICT is gaining popularity because it is a force in the economic growth equation. SMEs adopt ICT to promote their business strategy, performance, and growth. This study focused on the factors influencing ICT acceptance and use in SMEs. The research questions were 1) what factors influence SME owners/managers to accept ICT in Kenya? 2) What is the relationship between ICT acceptance and SMEs retail business growth in Kenya? and 3) What is the relationship between ICT usage and SMEs retail business growth in Kenya? The researcher used quantitative research methodology to survey SME owners/managers in Kenya. The researcher hand delivered the survey to 121 potential participants, of which 118 responded. This study evaluated factors of ICT acceptance in SMEs, the relationship between ICT acceptance and SME growth, and the relationship between ICT usage and SME growth. Research findings showed that customer services, cost reduction and business relationships were the most influential factors of ICT acceptance. Computer applications and mobile phones were the most commonly used ICT tools. The study found a strong positive relationship between ICT acceptance and SME growth, and a moderate positive relationship between ICT usage and SME growth. The research results are valuable to stakeholders including potential entrepreneurs, sponsors, government official and financial institutions who make informed decision and formulate policies about ICT investment and effective business strategies for SMEs growth.</p>