Current Issue : July - September Volume : 2011 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 6 Articles
The objective of Cudillero Rural Living Lab is to support the fishing industry through jointly developing innovative services and applications and offering technical support, in particular related to small vessels devoted to traditional ways of fishing. The Cudillero rural innovation environment is presented in order to contextualize the living lab activities. It is illustrated how open innovation methodologies improve the quality of life of inhabitants in this rural and coastal area. This paper presents the results from the living lab methodology application in the Cudillero fishing sector including a series of experiments targeting different scenarios, and we discuss the process of software development and applications validation resulting in collaborative environments supported by the platform proposed in C@R....
Eadie et.al (2010a, 2010b) identified 20 advantages in the adoption of e- procurement within a construction organisation. The Glover report (2008) indicated that by the end of 2010 all public sector procurement should be electronic. The use of e-procurement within the construction industry has been inadequately researched. Martin (2009) examined quantity surveying organisations perspectives on the use of eprocurement across the United Kingdom. This paper seeks to address the knowledge gap that exists in the analysis of the level of usage of e-procurement within the construction industry. It compares the findings for the\r\nconstruction industry with other industries on company size and spend. Martin (2009) does not seek to investigate the size or spend on procurement activities of those quantity surveying organisations who have adopted e-procurement.\r\nThis paper investigates the correlations between size, procurement spend and adoption of e-procurement in construction organisations comparing it with other industries. It concludes that the findings of Griloa and Jardim-Goncalves (2010) and European Commission (2007) were correct in suggesting that the AEC sector has\r\nbeen lagging behind other sectors in the adoption of e-procurement and provides a breakdown of the different types of organisations who currently use e-procurement.\r\nIt further identifies the size of organisations which have implemented e-procurement within construction. On the client and consultant side in traditional contracts, company sizes of 21-50 employees make the highest use of eprocurement. This confirms that when analysing according to the size of organisation, construction\r\norganisations perform in a similar way to other industries as reported in Batenburg (2007) and Gunasekarana and Ngai (2008). However, this study indicates that very small companies may still be put off by the costs of software (corroborates De Boer et al, 2002; Kauffman and Mohtadi, 2004).\r\nThe study proposes the types of construction organisation most likely to be utilising the benefits of eprocurement in construction by procurement spend and size. It also indicates that the deadlines in the Glover report (2008) relating to e-procurement in construction are unlikely to be met....
In emerging markets including India, the used-car markets are not much developed as compared to their developed counterparts. It is necessary for the used-car marketers to understand and explore ways to develop communication channels suitable to customer demographics and significant characteristic, including age, income, education vis-à-vis their accessibility to various information sources. The purpose of present study is to determine the association between customers’ demographic characteristics and Source of information as well as usage purpose of used-car and providing a basis for segmentation of used-car market. The study shows that age group of used-car customers plays a vital role in the primary usage of used-car, and study also revealed that there is a significant association between the access of source of information of used-car and the education background of used-car customers. Findings of this study offer significant implications for the sellers of used-car....
Information Technology (IT) outsourcing becomes an increasingly popular phenomenon among business practitioners who seek services and/or products of third party suppliers to meet their in-house IT needs. It offers a business opportunity for IT outsourcing vendors, which, from a competitive potential perspective, may be challenging when such organisations are micro-enterprises (employing not more than ten employees) and operate from Malta - a developing micro island state in the Mediterranean and a constituent part of the European Union. This paper tests the notion of competitive potential as posed by the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) of Henderson and Venkatraman (1993), within such particular context. Through the SAM, competitive potential is viewed as a strategic co-alignment of a firm’s business strategy, IT strategy and organisation infrastructure. A best fit model which positively asserts such a notion is derived from Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) that is applied to data collected from a survey amongst the Maltese IT outsourcing micro-enterprises. The model is validated and confirmed through a Case Study involving six micro-enterprises. The paper indicates the strategic alignment of competitive, organisational and strategic factors, which, albeit not often explicit, are highly active in IT outsourcing micro-enterprises. It also indicates that competitive potential in the IT outsourcing micro-enterprises is a dynamic capability that evolves out of a well conceived business strategy, IT strategy and organisation infrastructure which seek to exploit existing competitive potential and compensate for resource constraints whilst seeking to deliver IT service and/or product through outsourcing arrangements....
Investors require detailed financial and nonfinancial information to evaluate\r\ninvestments. This information is available in various forms (e.g. hard copies, published media, broker and investment consultants and corporate websites). Corporate websites have the potential to be both a one-stop-shop for investor needs and an efficient cost-effective medium for companies to communicate with investors. As previous research (Baard & Nel 2006) showed unacceptable low levels of Internet presence in selected African countries compared to other international companies, including companies in South Africa, a follow-up study was undertaken. An improvement was expected given the rapid increase in Internet users, improvements in infrastructure, the arrival of wireless access technologies and lower tariffs.\r\nThe objectives of this study were to measure the availability of corporate websites\r\nand dedicated investor relations (IR) sections; to evaluate the content of IR information communicated and to compare findings with previous research.\r\nFor ease of comparison this study has evaluated the same 40 companies in each of the countries, namely Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and Tunisia that were evaluated in the 2006 study. A number of steps were taken to find the websites after which all the working websites were screened and evaluated against a checklist of international best practices.\r\nAlthough improvements were apparent, 19% of the companies in the study still do not have websites, 20% do not supply financial information on websites and a significant number of companies do not optimally utilise websites according to international best practices.\r\nNotwithstanding improvements, a significant number of companies do not\r\noptimally utilise their corporate websites to communicate to investors. Possible reasons were discussed (e.g. necessary skills, available technology and cost), but it was concluded that companies are probably either negligent, do not regard it as important to communicate information to investors via corporate websites, or do not realise the benefits of communicating company information in this manner....
Over the last two decades competition amongst organisations including financial institutions has increased tremendously. The value of information is critical to competition in different organisations. In addition, the management of cost of delivery and cohesiveness of information flow and use in the organisations continue a challenge to information technology (IT). In an attempt to address these challenges, many organisations sought various solutions, including enterprise information architecture (EIA). The EIA is intended to address the needs of the organisation for competitive advantage.\r\nThis research article focused on the role of principles in the development and implementation of EIA. The article aimed to investigate how EIA could be best leveraged, exploited, or otherwise used to provide business value. The research brings about a fresh perspective and new methodological principles required in architecting the enterprise information....
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