This research focuses on project complexity with the aim to better understand it and to highlight the factors that affect/contribute to it. In addition, this research also highlights key project management practices and project critical success factors considered important to manage project complexity/complex projects. The two main motivating factors behind this research were, the lack of understanding of complex projects and the lack of relevance of project management theory to practice, which have been highlighted by many researchers. Since projects in different sectors are increasingly being characterised as complex, this entails a better project management knowledge base focusing on the dynamic, social and complex contexts of projects, so that the interrelationships, interdependencies and uncertainties between different project interfaces can be understood and managed properly. In order to understand this 'project actuality', it was necessary to obtain the views from practitioners working in these project settings and managing project dynamics and intricacies. To establish this pragmatic view, a series of interviews and questionnaire surveys was carried out and all efforts were made to select the participants working on complex projects with complex products falling under the Complex Product Systems (CoPS) category which was the case in the 2nd phase interviews and questionnaire, whereas in the 1st phase practitioners with industrial experience and also involved and/or in the process of getting academic qualification in project management were preferred. The first phase helped in establishing the theoretical and pragmatic perspective and the 2nd phase in refining and validating the findings. The questions were inline with the research focus mentioned earlier.The main findings of the research show that the perception of project complexity and its contributing factors were very much influenced by the project context, i.e. from organization level to work discipline level. No difference in the practitioners' perception of project complexity and its contributing factors was observed among the practitioners based in a similar organization and project setting. Novelty was found to be one of the key project complexity characteristics related to three project elements-people, product and process. In terms of key project management practices and skills considered important in managing project complexity, soft skills were reported useful by majority of the participants. The key processes found useful were either the ones which focused on people or others which helped to manage changes/deviations in projects. Influence and relationship, delegation, flexibility and trust were the main project critical success factors which emerged out of this research for complex projects.

In the last 30 years has seen a cutthroat competition among many organizations across the world.The Swedish industries were not an exception in this phase of globalization. However,entrepreneurs in Sweden, especially, in the manufacturing sector, are rapidly losing competitiveadvantage in the global marketing environment, a concern some researchers have attributed tolow productivity, and poor organizational performance. Therefore, this paper will identify criticalsuccess factors in entrepreneurship, with reference to Johnson Controls ManufacturingCompany. The instruments used to collect and analyse data, discourse analysis, interview andopen coding, were tested and proved to be efficient and consistent with the research method.Furthermore, the collected data was tested and found reliable with a high coefficient of 0.8,which is considered qualified. Through the data collection instrument, the study generated eightcritical success factors for Johnson Controls. The factors include leader management andstructure, competitors, manufacturing operational excellence, stakeholder‟s engagement, andproduct. These factors were then cast onto 6 broader themes as generated from open coding,which included top management, human resource, organization culture, quality management, andregulatory practice. These themes were useful in describing and correlating the critical successfactors with the basic units of the organization. Also, based on a discourse analysis, this studywas able to establish that there is a strong relationship between primary data and secondary data.Therefore, the study concluded that the eight identified critical success factors, leadermanagement and structure, competitors, manufacturing operational excellence, stakeholder‟sengagement, and product, could be used to change the current status of entrepreneurs in Swedenand help them improve their performance standing in the global business environment.

Increasing population and urbanization motivates the capability of consuming more fashion goods than ever. This push creates more momentum on global companies to focus on clothing sectors. Recent advancements, including globalization and e-commerce, have made this sector as one of the top businesses worldwide. Top clothing brands made several strategies to satisfy the stakeholders to sustain in this hot, profitable business. This results in practicing more sustainable strategies, including corporate social responsibility in their clothing business throughout their operations, including the supply chain. However, most of the developed nations are consumers of textiles, which are produced and processed by any of the developing and under developing nations. Meanwhile, achieving sustainability in clothing business includes promoting sustainability in the whole chain of suppliers. Pressure from developed nations urges developing nations to promote sustainable practices in their operations. Several studies discussed the CSR related strategies in textile sectors but failed to explore their critical success factors based on their region. With this concern, this study attempts to study the critical success factors of CSR in textile industries situated in one of the developing nations, China. This study collected the critical success factors from literature and validated with the field experts; then the same were evaluated with the assistance of Chinese textile case industrial managers. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory tool has been used to evaluate the influential critical success factors of CSR to promote CSR through motivating those most influential success factors. These results could help the Chinese textile industrial managers to further extend strong roots on CSR implementation. Finally, this study sheds some light on future opportunities that exist within Chinese contexts with the implementation of CSR. / Revisión por pares / Revisión por pares

The objective of this study was to uncover the critical success factors that have significant value-added impacts on corporate acquisitions in the lodging industry. Specifically, this study attempted to systematically discover evidence about the determinants of a successful pre-acquisition management process, and the determinants of successful post-acquisition integration, as well as to identify an appropriate evaluation criteria for determining the post-acquisition performance of an acquisition deal. In addition, this study tried to identify important acquisition objectives of hotel acquirers. This study employed an integrated and holistic viewpoint that includes the most critical corporate acquisition issues simultaneously and in a multi-dimensional framework. As a research methodology, a Delphi technique, which is a non-face-to-face communication method, was employed and proved its effectiveness throughout the study. The key question guiding this research is, what are the critical factors in the overall acquisition process that contribute to successful acquisitions? The findings of this study indicate that the most important acquisition objective for acquirers in the lodging industry is to accelerate the growth of their firms. Further, the most important critical success factor for hotel acquirers before the deal is completed is the identification of the trend of the target firm's cash flow from operations, and reliable and valid information about the target is the most significant dimension in the pre-acquisition management phase. The study results suggest that the most significant key success factor in the post-acquisition integration stage for the lodging industry is to plan and establish a post-acquisition strategy as early as possible, even before the deal is done, while the development of an effective post-acquisition transition strategy immediately after the deal is closed is the most crucial dimension in the post-acquisition integration phase. One of the most significant findings of this study was that hotel executives gave relatively higher importance to pre-acquisition management strategy than to the post-acquisition integration process. In terms of post-acquisition performance evaluation criteria, measures from a value-based management (VBM) approach received the highest rank in evaluating the economic gains of corporate acquisitions in the lodging industry. The study results can help to improve hospitality industry academics' and practitioners' understanding of important M&A phenomena leading to significant changes in the industry's competitive landscape. / Ph. D.

Large-scale international science projects (LISPs) are those projects where two or more countries formally agree to cooperate toward the achievement of a scientific, research and development, or engineering goal. In general, only projects exceeding $1 billion U.S. are considered LISPs, so sheer size commands attention, and because they are so costly and visible, failure can lead to significant scientific, financial and political consequences. This researched focused on how 7 different critical success factors impacted the level of technical interface knowledge shared among international partners involved in a large-scale international space science project (LISSP) – the International Space Station (ISS), which is currently under assembly and testing at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The research methodology employed documentation review, individual interviews and surveys of experienced engineers and managers from three different countries associated with the ISS. The research methodology was applied to three different cases (retrospectively) involving the processing of flight hardware from the three different international partners. The analysis showed that only 5 out of the 7-factor model played a significant role in the level of knowledge sharing between partners. The developed model provides future international partnerships with critical success factors that they can apply to their specific project / mission teams in order to improve the level of knowledge shared between them.

Many IT systems fail to realize their objectives because not enough attention has been paid to the business context in which the system functions. One reason expressed--an emphasized technical focus which tend to omit business and organizational issues germane to the organization's and the system's success. When an organization's information system is in line with, and provides support for its business strategy--strategic alignment--superior business performance is often the result. Within the Requirements Engineering (RE) community there has been several attempts to develop and utilize approaches which can illuminate business and organizational informational needs. In this dissertation, the DAGS framework is used to develop an integrated web-based requirements elicitation system which is based on Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Jackson's problem diagrams and organizational strategy analysis technique to represent and model an organization's IT requirements. This research employs the DAGS (multi-methodological approach consisting of Design Science, Action Research, Grounded Theory and System Development research methodologies) framework for Information System (IS) design to assist the Information Technology (IT) department in developing a collaborative user requirements system to assist in designing and constructing more effective information systems by incorporating the needs of various stakeholders in support of organizational goals while satisfying these varied needs. Top management's field of vision is represented in the CSFs which provide a compelling clarification of what is important to the organization. Failure to achieve a CSF directly affects the organization's ability to accomplish its mission; Research shows that alignment of IT systems with business strategy leads to superior organizational performance. Industry professionals have consistently considered alignment of IT with business strategy essential to their success thus requirements for an organization's information systems need to be aligned with the objectives of the business strategy that its stakeholders intend to support. This dissertation contributes to the literature on validating an organization's IT and Business Strategic alignment. It has also provided an example of research, grounded in theory but which is nevertheless relevant to business.

No / Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the evidence that human resource management (HRM) could contribute to the improvement of organizational and individual performance. It aims to examine the historical development of HRM and its emergence as a distinct management discipline. The evidence indicates that HRM is the product of several different traditions that range from a concern with employee welfare to the development of workplace relationships. The paper critically re‐evaluates what human performance is and assesses its contribution to organizational effectiveness. What is particularly important is the lack of empirical literature on the contribution of HRM and business performance. This paper will call for the re‐evaluation of more contemporary criteria of how people contribute to organizational performance in private, public and the emerging non‐profit making sectors. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology adopted in this research uses critical literature on the contribution of human resource management performance. Findings: The main finding of this research is the understanding of the problems of research design in measuring the contribution of HRM to develop performance in organizations. Research limitations/implications: The research presented in this paper needs to review and standardize comparative research design to confirm the performance of HRM in organizations. It compares the alternative perspectives of measuring performance in financial criteria. Originality/value: This paper reviews the research between key authors for exploring the correlation between HRM and organizational performance for future research and examines the influence of human resource professional bodies.

Implementation av ERP-system är en av de viktigaste och dyraste implementationerna som företag genomgår. Systemen syftar till att stödja verksamhetsprocesser inom produktion, ekonomi och försäljning. Trots att ERP-system introducerades redan på 90-talet är det fortfarande många projekt som misslyckas, ungefär hälften av alla ERP-implementationer. Drygt 90 % av alla implementationsprojekt uppges antingen bli försenade eller överskrider budget. Kritiska framgångsfaktorer används för att organisationer på ett systematiskt sätt ska kunna identifiera de affärsområden som kräver uppmärksamhet och kunna fokusera resurserna på de områden som ökar chansen för att projektet ska lyckas. Den huvudsakliga forskningen på vilka framgångsfaktorer som är kritiska har gjorts på stora företag med bättre förutsättningar gällande erfarenhet, resurser, kunskap och budget. Det finns ännu ingen konsensus om vilka de kritiska framgångsfaktorerna är när det gäller ERP-implementation i små och medelstora företag. För att överbrygga ett kunskapsglapp har både konsulter som arbetar med ERP-implementation intervjuats samt representanter från kunderna. Studien har undersökt vilka framgångsfaktorer som konsulter respektive kunder anser vara kritiska vid en ERP-implementation vid svenska SME:er. En kvalitativ metod användes för att samla in information genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med sex respondenter. Resultatet visar att det finns en åsiktsskillnad mellan konsulterna och kunderna om vilka faktorer som är kritiska. Av åtta faktorer som påverkar projekten är alla respondenterna helt överens om tre. Studien öppnar för vidare forskning och diskussion om vilka faktorer som är kritiska vid ERP-implementation. Resultatet kan nyttjas av alla utövare för att få en bättre förståelse över vilka faktorer som anses vara kritiska beroende på yrkesroll vilket påverkar planering och allokering av resurser. / Implementation of ERP-systems are one of the most important and expensive implementations that businesses go through. Even though ERP-systems were introduced in the 90s there’re still many projects that fail, roughly half of all the ERP-implementations. About 90 % of all implementation projects are said to either be delayed or exceed the budget. Critical success factors are used so that organisations can systematically identify the business areas that require attention and to be able to focus their resources on the areas that increase the chances of the project’s success. The main research on which success factors are critical has been on big companies with better conditions regarding experience, resources, knowledge, and budget. There is still no consensus on which critical success factors are applicable when it’s about ERP-implementation in small and medium sized companies. To bridge a knowledge gap both consultants who work with ERP-implementations were interviewed and representants from the customers. This study has examined which success factors the consultants and the customers argue to be critical for ERP-implementation in Swedish SMEs. A qualitative method was used to gather information through semi-structured interviews with six respondents. The result show that there are different opinions between the consultants and the customers on which factors are critical. From eight factors that affect the projects are all the respondents fully agreeing on three. This study opens for further research and discussion on which factors are critical for ERP-implementation. All practitioners can use the result to get a better understanding on which factors are deemed to be critical depending on the professional role which affects planning and allocation of resources.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) handlar om att koppla samman system för att tillfredsställa behov som inte kunnat tillfredsställas av systemen var och en för sig, eller upprätta nya kommunikationskanaler inom eller mellan företag. Allteftersom system och deras underliggande teknologier blivit mer avancerade har uppgiften att integrera dem blivit mer komplicerad. Genom att göra en fallstudie i samband med ett integrationsprojekt på ett företag syftar denna uppsats till att identifiera fallgropar som kan innebära risker för sådana projekt. En målsättning är att analyser kring dessa fallgropar ska kunna användas för att hjälpa utvecklare undvika dessa i sina projekt. Under fallstudien identifierades flera fallgropar genom analys av dokumentation och reflektion. Den fallgrop som hade störst påverkan under projektet var otydliga krav. Fallgroparna analyseras utifrån hur de upptäcktes och resonemang förs kring bidragande faktorer. För de fallgropar som utgjorde faktiska utmaningar under fallstudien analyseras även hur de undveks, medan potentiella lösningar diskuteras för resterande. / Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) concerns connecting systems together to meet demands that could not be met by either system individually, or to establish new channels for communication within and between enterprises. As the systems and their underlying technologies have become more advanced, the task of integrating them has become a more complicated one. By making a case study bound to an integration project at an enterprise, this study aims to identify pitfalls that could constitute risks for such projects. The main goal is for the analysis of these pitfalls to guide developers to avoid the pitfalls in their own projects. Several pitfalls were identified by analyzing documentation and reflecting on the course of the project. The pitfall that had the greatest impact during the project was unclear requirements. The pitfalls are analyzed with emphasis on circumstances under which they were discovered and contributing factors are reasoned about. For the pitfalls that were actual challenges for the case study, analysis also covers how they were avoided, while potential solutions are discussed for the remainder.

A successful Customer Relationships Management (CRM) implementation helps organisations to obtain competitive advantages over others by improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, increasing revenue and reducing operating costs. Effective CRM implementation has become more and more important owing to the huge percentage of failures that occur. This year, organisations are expected to spend about $13billion on implementing CRM. While a significant amount of research has been conducted into CRM implementations, particularly with respect to Critical Success Factors (CSFs), only a minority of the implementations have been successful. Culture plays a major role in CRM implementation. It is ranked one of the top three factors involved in CRM's CSFs. Culture, therefore, become significant issues when planning to implement CRM within the developing countries, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) due to its existing cultural differences. Very limited research into CSFs for CRM implementation in the KSA exists. This research, therefore, focuses on identifying the CSFs and their interrelationships for CRM implementation in the KSA with the ultimate aim of developing an integrated model that includes these factors and their interrelationships to support effective implementation of CRM solutions within the private sector of the KSA from both organisations' and customers' perspectives. It adopts an integrated mix of case study and Grounded Theory as a research strategy. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and documentation, which was then analysed using Grounded Theory data analysis. The findings showed that adoption of CRM in the KSA revealed some additional CSFs to those found within other studies, such as customer culture and the country's policies and procedures. The interrelationships between the CSFs of CRM were identified and shown to be vital for successful CRM implementation. The results identified the relationships between CRM's CSFs and their key development stages. The findings were interpreted by using Institutional Theory. It was found that implementing a CRM solution as a response to institutional isomorphism pressures could lead to a conflict and mismatch of institutional logics among customers and CRM solutions. Organisations subjected to these pressures implemented CRM without the advantage of a cost-benefit analysis. This increased the failure of CRM adoption. This research makes six major contributions. Firstly, a theoretical contribution was made by applying Institutional Theory to enrich the understanding and interpretation of the research's findings. This provided useful insight into the main factors that affect the adoption of CRM and extended the line of research on the use of this theory to study Information Systems (IS) in organisations. Secondly, the development of the research model presented the CSFs that affected the adoption of CRM solutions and their interrelationships from both the organisations and customers' perspectives within KSA. Thirdly, the research identified thirty-one cause-and-effect relationships between CSFs that need to occur in a dependency mode for the success of CRM implementation. Fourthly, it identified that each CSF needs to be executed in certain stages during the CRM's development life cycle. Fifthly, this research provides organisations within the private sector in the KSA (those that intend to implement CRM solutions) with an extensive way of thinking about its CRM implementation. Finally, this research is one part of the very limited research focusing on the implementation of CRM solutions within the private sector in the KSA.