Questions relating to the existence and nature of firms have become major issues in economics in recent years. The agenda in this area has been largely set by transaction cost economics (Coase, Williamson), an approach which provides a basis for explaining the boundaries and structure of the firm in a variety of contexts. This book follows the agenda set by transaction cost economics, but is unique in providing improved explanations of individual phenomena as well as a more general framework for analyzing the nature and behavior of firms. He illustrates his argument with sixty figures which present the relations between firms in a graphic form.
Information Systems Development: Business Systems and Services: Modeling and Development, is the collected proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Information Systems Development held in Prague, Czech Republic, August 25 - 27, 2010. It follows in the tradition of previous conferences in the series in exploring the connections between industry, research and education. These proceedings represent ongoing reflections within the academic community on established information systems topics and emerging concepts, approaches and ideas. It is hoped that the papers herein contribute towards disseminating research and improving practice.
This edited volume presents new insights and challenges in the field of electric mobility in relation to new mobility and infrastructure concepts as well as to renewable energies. The book covers the socio-economic view on the topic as well as technical aspects and thus offers valuable knowledge for future business models. It primarily addresses practitioners and researchers in the field but may also be of use to graduate students.
Software development has been a troubling since it first started. There are seven chronic problems that have plagued it from the beginning: Incomplete and ambiguous user requirements that grow by >2% per month. Major cost and schedule overruns for large applications > 35% higher than planned. Low defect removal efficiency (DRE) Cancelled projects that are not completed: > 30% above 10,000 function points. Poor quality and low reliability after the software is delivered: > 5 bugs per FP. Breach of contract litigation against software outsource vendors. Expensive maintenance and enhancement costs after delivery. These are endemic problems for software executives, software engineers and software customers but they are not insurmountable. In Software Development Patterns and Antipatterns, software engineering and metrics pioneer Capers Jones presents technical solutions for all seven. The solutions involve moving from harmful patterns of software development to effective patterns of software development. The first section of the book examines common software development problems that have been observed in many companies and government agencies. The data on the problems comes from consulting studies, breach of contract lawsuits, and the literature on major software failures. This section considers the factors involved with cost overruns, schedule delays, canceled projects, poor quality, and expensive maintenance after deployment. The second section shows patterns that lead to software success. The data comes from actual companies. The section’s first chapter on Corporate Software Risk Reduction in a Fortune 500 company was based on a major telecom company whose CEO was troubled by repeated software failures. The other chapters in this section deal with methods of achieving excellence, as well as measures that can prove excellence to C-level executives, and with continuing excellence through the maintenance cycle as well as for software development.
Over time, overemphasis and adherence to the same proven routines that helped your organization achieve success can also lead to its decline resulting from organizational inertia, complacency, and inflexibility. Drawing lessons from one of the best models of success, the evolutionary model, Inverting the Paradox of Excellence explains why your organization must proactively seek out changes or variations on a continuous basis for ensuring excellence by testing out a continuum of opportunities and advantages. In other words, to maintain excellence, the company must be in a constant state of flux! The book introduces the patterns and anti-patterns of excellence and includes detailed case studies based on different dimensions of variations, including shared values variations, structure variations, and staff variations. It presents these case studies through the prism of the "variations" idea to help you visualize the difference of the "case history" approach presented here. The case studies illustrate the different dimensions of business variations available to help your organization in its quest towards achieving and sustaining excellence. The book extends a set of variations inspired by the pioneering McKinsey 7S model, namely shared values, strategy, structure, stuff, style, staff, skills, systems, and sequence. It includes case history segments for Toyota, Acer, eBay, ABB, Cisco, Blackberry, Tata, Samsung, Volvo, Charles Schwab, McDonald's, Scania, Starbucks, Google, Disney, and NUMMI. It also includes detailed case histories of GE, IBM, and UPS.
Firm growth. This concept has interested researchers for generations. Economists have sought to predict and measure firm growth using a host of different variables, while strategic management scholars depict growth as the result of clever analyses and rational resource exploitation. Entrepreneurship scholars - ever engrossed by successful start-ups - have pondered why growth sometimes comes fast and sometimes never at all, while the field of business history has given countless examples of growing firms in a range of different settings. Yet despite research across fields, our knowledge of how growth in a firm actually comes about is limited and we still know little about the process. This book offers a new reading of economist Edith Penrose’s The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. The bold statement is that although Penrose’s work - across fields and generations - is amongst the most quoted on firm growth, the basic points of her work have yet to be realized and explored empirically. Essentially, growth is created by a dynamic interrelation between the firm’s self-conception and its image of context. Based on these two subjective categories, the firm makes decisions and its actions lead it to develop along a particular path. To Penrose this is the basic engine that drives the growth and development of firms. This book discusses how the engine of firm growth can be captured in empirical analysis using interpretative theory and narrative methods inspired by recent streams of research in business history.
Standard corporate evaluation approaches are improved by trendy innovation, especially as it concerns technological scale up and environmental issues such as digital networking or ESG compliance. Whereas traditional firm appraisal follows institutional guidelines and best practices, frontier research still must define the boundaries of these trendy issues, linking a strong theoretical background to practical advances that still need fine-tuning. This book, written by an academic who is also a senior consultant, combines theoretical rigor with practical insights, providing an innovative framework for researchers, evaluators, managers, and practitioners.
In an ever more digitized world, it necessary to embed digital technology in business strategy, leading to an overarching phenomenon called the digital business strategy. Accordingly, this thesis sets out to advance the understanding, the digital business strategy concept in general as well as its influence on a company’s performance. At the same time, incumbents are often constrained by path dependencies and inertia as executives tend to make use of prior experiences and favor strategic choices they are familiar with over unfamiliar As a consequence, companies may stick to a specific path which restrains transformational change. Accordingly, the study elucidates the ongoing digital transformation as it manifests itself in the evolution of incumbents’ digital business strategies. In addition, this thesis seeks to derive important implications for business practice, as it helps practitioners to develop a better understanding of digital business strategies, especially considering that digitalization challenges the conventional wisdom of competition. This is particularly important, as with increasing digitalization, tightly integrated digital business strategies will be among the biggest determinants of a company’s future success. In einer immer stärker digitalisierten Welt ist es wichtig digitale Technologien in die Geschäftsstrategie eines Unternehmens einzubetten, was zu einem übergreifenden Phänomen führt, das als digitale Geschäftsstrategie bezeichnet wird. Dementsprechend zielt diese Arbeit darauf ab, das Verständnis des Konzepts der digitalen Geschäftsstrategie im Allgemeinen sowie dessen Einfluss auf die Performance eines Unternehmens zu verbessern. Gleichzeitig sind etablierte Unternehmen oft durch Pfadabhängigkeiten und Trägheit eingeschränkt, da Führungskräfte dazu neigen, auf frühere Erfahrungen zurückzugreifen und strategische Entscheidungen, mit denen sie vertraut sind, gegenüber unbekannten Optionen zu bevorzugen In der Folge verharren Unternehmen auf einem bestimmten strategischen Pfad, was transformatorischen Wandel hemmt. Dementsprechend beleuchtet die Studie die laufende digitale Transformation und wie diese sich in der Entwicklung der digitalen Geschäftsstrategien etablierter Unternehmen manifestiert. Darüber hinaus versucht diese Arbeit, wichtige Implikationen für die Unternehmenspraxis abzuleiten, da sie Praktikern hilft, ein besseres Verständnis für digitale Geschäftsstrategien zu entwickeln, insbesondere in Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass die Digitalisierung die konventionelle Weisheit des Wettbewerbs herausfordert. Dies ist besonders wichtig, da mit zunehmender Digitalisierung eng integrierte digitale Geschäftsstrategien zu den größten Determinanten für den zukünftigen Erfolg eines Unternehmens gehören werden.
This book presents the current state of research in information systems and digital transformation. Due to the global trend of digitalization and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, the need for innovative, high-quality research on information systems is higher than ever. In this context, the book covers a wide range of topics, such as digital innovation, business analytics, artificial intelligence, and IT strategy, which affect companies, individuals, and societies. This volume gathers the revised and peer-reviewed papers on the topic "Management" presented at the International Conference on Information Systems, held at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2021.
