<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>

M.Com. (Computer Auditing) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

No description available.

This thesis reports on the research undertaken to develop a method for organisations to assess human communication between their business and IT personnel as part of business–IT alignment. The research described in this thesis involves (i) a literature review in business–IT alignment and related fields, such as management studies and communication science; (ii) a Delphi study conducted among industry members, practitioners, and academics operating in the IT advisory, auditing and communication disciplines; and (iii) a case study of a public sector organisation in South Africa. By adopting a system-theoretic perspective on communication, this thesis proposes that communication in business–IT alignment can be seen as coordinating behaviour and a series of learning and reflection events, consequently culminating in increased mutual understanding. Various conceptualisations of communication are explored and, together with several industry elicited factors that influence communication in business–IT alignment, are incorporated into a conceptual model informing the assessment method. This research developed, applied, and tested a method whereby organisations can assess the quality of the human communication between their business and IT personnel as part of the business–IT alignment endeavour. The aim of this method is to trigger reflection on communication by considering communication philosophy and practices in business–IT alignment. The method, termed the ‘Business-IT Communication Alignment Maturity Improvement Communication Alignment Maturity Improvement (CAMI) method’, is based on a maturity grid-based approach, which stems originally from process improvement in software development and quality management. This thesis is most closely aligned with the research performed by Maier, Eckert, and Clarkson (2004, 2006), who successfully applied the maturity grid-based approach to investigate, audit and assess communication within the engineering design process. The question addressed in this thesis is whether this approach can be successfully extrapolated to the business–IT alignment context and whether it would yield similar benefits. Furthermore, the issue of whether it would offer a practical method for use in organisations is also addressed. Having applied the CAMI method at a public sector organisation, this thesis proposes that the maturity grid-based approach can indeed be extrapolated to iv the business–IT alignment context, consequently offering a viable and practical method for assessing communication in organisations. In particular, the CAMI method allows organisations to capture both their current and their desired communication situations and to expose discrepancies between the perceptions held by their business and IT personnel. These results form a basis for action planning, strategizing, and, ultimately, interventions for improvement. In conclusion, the thesis discusses further application and extension possibilities for the assessment method.