In the global economy of the 21st century, competition is complex, challenging and fraught with competitive opportunities and threats. Strategic leadership is increasingly becoming the main focus for business and academics alike and is the key issue facing contemporary organisations. Without effective strategic leadership, the capability of a company to achieve or sustain a competitive advantage is greatly constrained. More than 30 years of Harvard Business School research have shown that aligned and integrated companies outperform their nearest competitors by every major financial measure. The organisational effectiveness emanating from alignment is a significant competitive advantage. Alignment is that optimal state in which strategy, employees, customers and key processes work in concert to propel growth and profits. Aligned organisations enjoy greater customer and employee satisfaction and produce superior results. Can leadership make a difference? Some leaders do, some do not - and many more could. Effective strategic leadership can thus help organisations enhance performance while competing in turbulent and unpredictable environments. However, there has been little empirical evidence of the effects of strategic level leadership on organisational processes that have distinctive strategic significance. A greater understanding of the criteria that influence success in organisations will enable organisations to take positive action to become more successful. iv This study examines the importance of critical leadership criteria and the degree of alignment in high-performing organisations. A quantitative research design was used in this study to assess the impact of strategic leadership on strategic alignment of business organisations in South Africa. The research instruments to test the research questions comprised two questionnaires. The first was used to establish the value top leadership place on selected critical leadership criteria, and the second to establish the level of alignment in the organisations under investigation. The population selected for this study consisted of the companies included in the 200 top-performing organisations which appeared in the 2007 Financial Mail. Six companies participated in the research. The data was electronically collated into a database and the results were then analysed using the statistical inferential techniques of correlation and linear regression analysis. The study proposes that strategic leadership will positively influence strategic alignment which, in turn, will have a beneficial effect on organisational performance. / Graduate School for Business Leadership / (D. B. L.)

Context: At the core of choosing what features and level of quality to realize, and thus offer a market or customer, rests on the ability to take decisions. Decision-making is complicated by the diverse understanding of issues such as priority, consequence of realization, and interpretations of strategy as pertaining to the short-term and long-term development of software intensive products. The complexity is further compounded by the amount of decision support material that has to be taken into account, and the sheer volume of possible alternatives that have to be triaged and prioritized; thousands or even tens of thousands of requirements can be the reality facing a company. There is a need to develop the functionality that is strategically most significant, while satisfying customers and being competitive, time efficient, cost effective, and risk minimizing. In order to achieve a balance between these factors, all the stakeholders, within an organization, need to agree on the strategic aspects and value considerations to be considered, and their corresponding relative importance. Objective: The objective of this thesis is to provide enhanced decision support for product managers faced with decision-making challenges. This involves, but is not limited to, enhancing the alignment between the product and portfolio management with respect to product strategies, and enabling the use of value as a basis for product management and development related decisions. Method: A number of empirical studies, set in industry, have been performed. The research methods used span from systematic mapping, and systematic reviews to case studies, all aligned to identify possibilities for improvement, devise solutions, and incrementally evaluate said solutions. Close collaboration with industry partners was at the core of the research presented in this thesis. Result: The MASS method presented in this thesis can be used to evaluate strategic alignment and identify possible root causes for misalignment. To strengthen strategic alignment, the Software Value Map and corresponding decision support material, proposed in the thesis, can be used by product managers for making effective and efficient strategic decisions in relation to portfolios, products and process improvement, following a systematic and aligned process. Conclusions: The area of software product management, in the context of market-driven software intensive product development, is a field with unique challenges. The specifics of the solutions are based on industry case studies performed to gauge state-of-the-art, as well as identify the main challenges. The decision support developed takes the form of maps and frameworks that support software product management on product and portfolio level decisions, strategic alignment, value-based requirements selection, and value-based process improvement.

<p><strong>Introduction </strong>– Project-based organizations face a series of challenges when trying to implement and manage their project portfolios successfully in line with their strategic goals. Good project portfolio management (PPM) practices play a crucial role in maintaining well performing portfolios, but PPM is still a fairly new academic field. And it was found that the current PPM literature embodies a gap in providing explicit governance criteria to assure consistent portfolio decision-making.</p><p><strong>Problem </strong>– What are the criteria of portfolio governance that contribute to better aligning the project portfolio to organizational strategy? Do project-based organizations in fact not implement a governance framework to guide their decision-making rationale? If there is some sort of a governance framework, do project-based organizations implement it in a consistent manner every time they take portfolio-related decisions?</p><p><strong>Purpose </strong>– The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, we attempt to fill a gap in the current PPM literature by proposing a portfolio governance framework that could enhance project portfolio decision-making. Secondly, it is our goal to find out whether decision makers in project-based organizations consistently cover all issues related to portfolio governance at portfolio meetings.</p><p><strong>Methodology</strong> – The study employs both qualitative & quantitative methods to fulfill the two-fold nature of the study. A Portfolio Governance Framework, comprising 26 statements, was developed on the grounds of existing literature on PPM, strategy & governance. The proposed Framework was then used as a basis to carry out an online survey in which 31 respondents (executive level) from 25 project-based organizations (operating in Sweden) were asked about how consistent they are in discussing relevant portfolio governance issues.</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong> – The empirical findings of this study indicate that the majority of project-based companies do not employ a governance framework when it comes to portfolio decision-making. In the few cases that they do, it is mostly a set of policies that is not applied on a consistent basis.</p>

La planification stratégique en tant que processus rationnel a été très critiquée par beaucoup de chercheurs notamment en raison de ses effets incertains et contradictoires sur la performance des entreprises. Certains chercheurs proposent que le processus rationnel soit combiné avec un processus adaptatif afin de construire un processus intégré de planification stratégique qui serait mieux adapté à un environnement de plus en plus dynamique, complexe et incertain.L’objet de cette thèse est, d’une part, d’examiner si la combinaison des deux processus de planification stratégique est plus bénéfique aux entreprises que l’utilisation exclusive de l’un ou l’autre des deux processus et, d’autre part, d’étudier le rôle de cette combinaison dans le développement des capacités organisationnelles et l’amélioration de la performance des entreprises. Pour ce faire, nous avons construit un modèle conceptuel que nous avons testé empiriquement à l’aide d’une étude quantitative à laquelle 335 entreprises européennes ont participé.Les résultats de cette étude montrent que la planification stratégique combinant des caractéristiques de l’approche rationnelle avec des caractéristiques de l’approche adaptative est plus bénéfique aux entreprises. Nous trouvons également que la relation entre la planification stratégique combinée et la performance des entreprises est indirecte. / Strategic planning as a rational process has been strongly criticized by many researchers because of its uncertain and contradictory effects on company performance. As a result, some researchers suggest that the rational process should be combined with an adaptive process in order to build a global process of strategic planning which is better suited to the current dynamic, complex and uncertain environment.The purpose of this research is twofold: to examine whether the combination of the two processes of strategic planning is more beneficial to companies than the exclusive use of one or the other of the two and, to identify the role of this combination in the development of organizational capabilities and in improving company performance. To this end, we have built and tested empirically a conceptual model using a quantitative study in which 335 European companies have participated.The results of this study show that, in one hand, a strategic planning process combining rational with adaptive characteristics is more beneficial to companies and, on the other hand, the relationship between strategic planning and company performance is indirect.

Business-IT alignment (BITA) continues to be a top management concern. It generally refers to a preferred condition in which the relationship between business and IT is optimised to maximise the business value of IT. Early approaches in both research and practice have focused on the role of IT in supporting business strategies. Today, a more extended approach of BITA has been embraced that recognises soft factors that are related to people and culture issues at both tactical and operational levels of organisations. ‘Why alignment is important’ is not the crucial question today. In fact ‘how it can be achieved and matured’ is the real concern of business executives. There exists a number of theoretical models for conceptualising BITA, however, they have different focuses and contain different BITA components. Therefore, there is a need for a means of supporting practitioners for selecting an appropriate model. Furthermore, there is a need for a more practice-oriented research that target higher maturity of BITA by understanding the organisational context, including barriers that hinders BITA and the mutual relationships between organisational culture and BITA. Thus, the overall problem addressed in the thesis is the following: In spite of extensive literature on business-IT alignment, there is still limited maturity of business-IT alignment in practice due to the limited knowledge on barriers that hinder BITA achievement from practitioners’ perspective, on the means for supporting the selection of an appropriate model for assessing BITA, and on mutual relationships between BITA and organisational culture. Based on this research problem, five research objectives were developed. The first two objectives corresponded to barriers to achieving BITA and supporting the selection of BITA model respectively. The remaining three objectives corresponded to the two unidirectional influences between BITA and organisational culture (OC) and to the mutual relationships between them respectively. Different research methodologies and strategies were applied to achieve the research objectives, including qualitative and quantitative studies as well as design science. The results presented in the thesis, each corresponding to an objective, are the following:  A list of barriers that practitioners can use as a basis for better achievement of BITA, a better focus on strategic vs. tactical barriers, and their relationships to BITA components. An evaluation framework that supports practitioners in selecting appropriate BITA models for assessing and modelling BITA. An extended version of the strategic alignment model (SAM) of Luftman (2000), which considers organisational culture. An analysis of the impact of BITA components on organisational culture profiles. A BITA-organisational culture integrated view that supports decision-makers in facilitating decisions regarding both BITA and organisational culture. The results of the research provide both theoretical and empirical contributions to the business-IT alignment research and practice. / MIT

Esta tese de doutorado apresenta uma metodologia para planejamento de projetos de automação industrial, considerando o alinhamento do Planejamento Estratégico, Plano Diretor da Automação Industrial e Desenvolvimento Sustentável. Intitulada MAPEAS, esta metodologia visa contribuir para o aprimoramento do processo de tomada de decisões em relação ao planejamento de projetos de automação industrial de forma que, além dos ganhos de eficiência e econômicos, também sejam atingidos bons níveis de sustentabilidade. A literatura apresenta alguns trabalhos relativos a Planejamento Estratégico e Sustentabilidade, porém a relação com automação industrial ainda não é abordada de forma sistemática e científica nas publicações acadêmicas ou mesmo técnicas. Para desenvolvimento da metodologia MAPEAS, o modelo de relatório da Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) foi utilizado devido à adoção do mesmo por 80% das 250 maiores empresas, segundo relatório da empresa KPMG International (2011). A avaliação da metodologia foi realizada a partir da análise de projetos de automação industrial de uma indústria química, sua aplicação e identificação dos benefícios alcançados. / This thesis presents a methodology for industrial automation projects planning, considering the alignment of Strategic Planning, Master Plan of Industrial Automation and Sustainable Development. Entitled MAPEAS, this methodology aims to contribute to the improvement of the decision making process regarding industrial automation project planning so that, in addition to efficiency and economic gains, good levels of sustainability are also achieved. The literature presents some papers on the Strategic Planning and Sustainable Development, but the relationship with industrial automation is not yet addressed in a systematic and scientific way in academic or technical publications. In order to develop the methodology MAPEAS, the sustainability report model of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was used due to its adoption by 80% of the 250 largest companies, according to a report from KPMG International (2011). The evaluation of the methodology is performed through the analysis of industrial automation projects in a chemical industry, its application and identification of the benefits achieved.

A crescente importância do mercado de serviços terceirizados de TI no Brasil e o interesse por pesquisas nesse tema no Brasil e em nível mundial, são os principais argumentos que justificam a realização deste estudo. Este trabalho teve por objetivo entender questões que envolvem os aspectos considerados em decisões de terceirização de funções de TI em empresas brasileiras, visão ainda pouco explorada na literatura. Para que o objetivo fosse atingido, foram propostas quatro questões de pesquisa respondidas utilizando-se de uma revisão bibliográfica, simulação e dois surveys. Os resultados encontrados permitiram identificar um modelo final que facilita um melhor entendimento sobre como a decisão de terceirização é tomada em empresas brasileiras. Tal modelo engloba seis aspectos de decisão usualmente considerados pelas empresas, o inter-relacionamento entre estes aspectos e mostra fatores externos que contribuem para a definição do nível de importância de cada aspecto na decisão. Como produto secundário, a discussão dos resultados encontrados frente à literatura que trata do tema terceirização em TI validou resultados já apresentados por outros autores e, gerou a necessidade de estudos futuros ao encontrar divergências. Do ponto de vista prático, o trabalho apresenta importante contribuição, pois ajudou a estruturar o processo de decisão de terceirização de funções de TI. / The growing importance of IT service market in Brazil and the interest for researches in this area in Brazil and worldwide are the main arguments that justifies the development of this study. The objective of this work was to understand the issues that involve the aspects considered on IT outsourcing decisions in Brazilian companies, theme that is not well explored in the literature. To achieve this objective, it was proposed four research questions answered by a bibliographic revision, simulation and two surveys. The founded results allowed the identification of a final model that facilitates a better understanding about how outsourcing decision making process occurs in Brazilian companies. This model considers six decisions aspects usually considered by the companies, the inter-relationship between this aspects and shows external factors that contributes to the definition of the importance level of each of these aspects in the decision making process. As secondary product, the discussion of the founded results against the literature that covers IT outsource theme, validated the results already presented by other authors and created the need of future researches by presenting some different results. From practicing stand point, this work presents an important contribution, by helping to structure the IT outsourcing decision making process.

A aplicação da Tecnologia da Informação na Mineração teve início na década de 50, de forma similar a outros segmentos de indústria. Já os aplicativos específicos para a atividade fim da indústria mineral surgiram nos anos 60 com os primeiros sistemas de planejamento de lavra. A partir daí a Tecnologia da Informação se popularizou e expandiu, passando a atender às mais diversas áreas funcionais das mineradoras, porém ainda mantendo uma clara divisão entre sistemas administrativo-financeiros e sistemas técnicos. No início dos anos 90 surgiram os sistemas integrados Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), que prometiam abranger todas as atividades de negócios das empresas, tendo desde então um crescimento impressionante. Entretanto, no auge da expansão desses sistemas, já no fim do milênio, esses projetos passaram a ser questionados quanto à sua efetiva contribuição ao aumento da eficiência, eficácia e competitividade das empresas. Diversos autores pesquisaram as consequências decorrentes desses projetos, mas como os sistemas ERP foram originalmente idealizados para substituir os antigos sistemas MRP e MRP II, a maioria deles atuando no segmento de manufatura discreta, pouca pesquisa foi desenvolvida com foco na mineração. A indústria de mineração apresenta diversas características bastante peculiares, difíceis de serem atendidas pelas funcionalidades de um sistema integrado padrão como o ERP, mas da mesma forma pouca pesquisa foi dedicada aos requisitos específicos desse segmento. O objetivo dessa tese é identificar como os sistemas ERP gerenciam as áreas funcionais da mineração e como atendem ou não aos requisitos de TI da cadeia de valor mineral. A pesquisa busca ainda identificar se a estratégia da TI está ou não alinhada à estratégia corporativa em empresas de mineração. Os resultados do estudo de caso indicaram que, ainda que tenha havido benefícios mais voltados ao aumento da eficiência nas mineradoras, ainda há considerável espaço para que a utilização de sistemas integrados possa aumentar a eficácia e competitividade das corporações. / The usage of Information Technology applications in Mining started in the 1950s, similarly with other industry segments. Core-business mining specific applications, mine planning computerized systems, started to be developed in the 60s. Since then, IT has expanded and has been in widespread use across mining organizations, addressing most functional areas, but still keeping a clear boundary between corporate and technical systems. The first generation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integrated systems appeared in the early 90s, promising to cover and link all areas throughout the organizations, and since then achieving impressive market growth rates. However, while reaching the peak at the end of the millennium, these projects started to be questioned regarding their actual contribution to the companies efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness growth. Several authors researched the consequences of these projects, but as ERP systems were originally designed to replace old MRP and MRP II systems, most of them in the discrete manufacturing industry, mining-focused studies have been very limited. Mining industry presents several peculiar characteristics that are difficult to be addressed by the functionalities of a standard ERP integrated system, but also very limited research has been dedicated to this subject. The objective of this thesis is to identify how ERP systems manage the mining industry functional areas and how they fit or not the mineral value chain requirements. This study also aims to identify if the IT strategy is aligned with the corporate strategy in mining companies. The results of this case study indicate that, despite identifying several benefits contributing predominantly to increase the efficiency in mining companies, there is still considerable space to augment corporate effectiveness and competitiveness through the usage of integrated systems in these organizations.

Cette recherche a pour objectif clé de créer un modèle conceptuel et numérique, basé sur le machine learning, permettant aux académiques et praticiens de repenser le management stratégique mais aussi de prédire l’évolution de la performance organisationnelle (e.g., la profitabilité) en fonction de la variation des facteurs organisationnels étudiés (alignement stratégique, capacités stratégiques).Cette thèse compare et intègre deux approches conceptuelles (approche par les ressources et la théorie de la contingence) et deux approches analytiques (linéaire et non linéaire).Le modèle développé appelé MSM (Modèle de Management Stratégique) est basé sur les données recueillies auprès de 239 hauts dirigeants, les résultats montrent que le MSM capture la non-linéarité (complexité) de l’organisation et offre une bonne capacité de prédiction des performances de l’entreprise basée sur les variables du MSM. De plus, les résultats suggèrent que les approches basées sur les ressources et la contingence devraient être considérées comme complémentaires plutôt que comme des approches concurrentes. / A key goal for this dissertation has been to create a conceptual and numerical model based on machine learning that allows leaders and scholars to reimagine strategic management, and predict the evolution of organizational performance (e.g., profitability) based on the variation of the considered organizational factors (strategic alignment, strategic capabilities).This dissertation compares and integrates two conceptual (resource-based and contingency-based), and two analytical (linear and nonlinear) approaches.The model developed called MSM (Model of Strategic Management) was validated using the data gathered from 239 senior executives, the results showed that MSM captures the organization nonlinearity (complexity) and offers a good prediction capability of firm performance based on the MSM variables. Also, the results suggest that resource-based and contingency-based should be viewed as complementary instead of competing approaches.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:38:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 10 / Nenhuma / As interações entre as universidades e o setor empresarial constituem um tema de interesse crescente. O processo de mudanças contínuas, a que as empresas estão submetidas requer dos atores empresariais novas formas de atuação para garantir sua competitividade, e as universidades se constituem, principalmente no Brasil, onde não há uma tradição das empresas investirem em áreas de pesquisa e desenvolvimento próprias, um importante parceiro. Tendo isso em vista o objetivo central deste trabalho foi de analisar de que forma as UGDT (Unidades de Gestão e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico) propostas pelas universidades tem promovido a interação com o setor empresarial. A metodologia adotada foi de natureza qualitativa e exploratória, sendo conduzido um estudo de casos múltiplos em duas universidades gaúchas, a UFRGS (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) e a PUCRS (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul). Foram realizadas entrevistas em profundidade e coletas de dados secundários com representantes da / The interactions between universities and businesses constitute a theme of increasing interest. The process of continuous changes to what the companies undergo require, from the players, new ways to act in order to guarantee their competitive status, and universities have become important partners, mostly in Brazil where there is no tradition for companies to invest in their own research and development areas. Taking into account that the aim of this work was to analyze how the UGDT (Technological Development and Management Units), proposed by universities, have promoted the interaction with businesses. The methodology used was qualitative and exploratory. A study of multiple cases in two universities of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS – Rio Grande do Sul Federal University – and PUCRS – Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul – was conducted. Thorough interviews and secondary data collection with representatives of these two universities, of the UGDTs, as well as with partner companies appointed by th