Archive for September 17th, 2008

Evaluating leadership, IT quality, and net benefits in an e-government environment (Prybutok et al., 2008)

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

Evaluating leadership, IT quality, and net benefits in an e-government environment (Prybutok et al., 2008)

Prybutok, Victor, R.; Zhang, Xiaoni; Ryana, Sherry D.: Evaluating leadership, IT quality, and net benefits in an e-government environment; in: Information & Management; Vol. 45 (2008), No. 3, pp. 143-152.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2007.12.004

The authors did something quit unusual in eGovernment research, they went quantitative. Their survey consisted of 178 useful respondents among the public workers of Denton, TX. It generally tried to establish the cause-effect relationships between

  • Leadership Triad
    • Leadership
    • Strategic Planning
    • Customer/Market Focus
  • IT Quality Triad
    • Information Quality
    • System Quality
    • Service Quality
  • Net Benefits

The results support the hypothesis that the MBNQA leadership triad has a positive impact on the IT quality triad. The authors also found that both leadership and IT quality increased the benefits.

Posted in Leadership, Public Sector | No Comments »

Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company (Tillmann & Goddard, 2008)

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

 Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company

Tillmann, Katja; Goddard, Andrew: Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company; in: Management Accounting Research, Vol. 19 (2008), No. 1, pp. 80-102.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2007.11.002

Tillmann & Goddard analyse in a large German multi-national corporation how strategic management accounting is used and perceived. This is interesting as insofar they explore how managers work and get decisions made. The authors follow an open systems paradigm, which conceptualises the organisation as a set of ambiguous processes, structures, and environments. In such the manager is operating. Furthermore Tillmann & Goddard identify 4 major typically managerial activities (1) Scanning, (2) Sense-Making, (3) Sense-Giving, and (4) Decision-Making.

Sense-Making is of key interest to the authors. Sense-Making can be understood as constructing and re-constructing meaning, or simply as understanding the situation and getting the picture. Understanding is inherently linked to interpretations of real world events. In order to make-sense of events, simplification strategies are employed, such as translating, modelling, synthesis, and conceptualising/frameworking.

Moreover the authors propose a 3 step process model of sense-making.

  • Input – internal context, multiplicity of aspects, and external context which are individually internalised as information sets and ‚a feel for the game‘
  • Sense-Making – structuring & harmonising, compromising & balancing, and bridging & contextualising
  • Output – sense communication and decision-making

Posted in Decision Making, Research, Sensemaking | 1 Comment »

Post-project reviews as a key project management competence (Anbari et al., 2008)

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

 Post-project reviews as a key project management competence

Anbari, Frank T.; Carayannis, Elias G.; Voetsch, Robert J.: Post-project reviews as a key project management competence; in: Technovation, Vol. 28 (2008), No. 10, pp. 633-643.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2007.12.001

George Santayana was the wise guy who said: „Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“ At university I learned that 2 strategies exist to make an organisation remember it’s past – Internalisation and Codification. While internalisation usually happens anyway and an organisation only needs to keep track on who did which projects in the past, so that he can be interviewed, the codification bit is tricky.

Anbari et al. describe which interest are held by which stakeholder group and how that is going to impact any knowledge management or lack thereof. The authors also outline useful techniques and critical aspects, plus when project reviews are most usefully held during the project lifecycle.

Furthermore, the paper discusses where post-project reviews fit into the project life cycle and project management processes. It assesses how such reviews can assist an organization in improving the manner in which its projects are conceived, planned, implemented, reported, and evaluated.

Finally Anbari et al. outline a 3-fold growth model for organisations
(1) Vicious circle = no real reviews
(2) Functional circle = reviews which no one knows about
(3) Virtuous circle = reviews everybody knows.

Posted in Actuality Research, Critical Success Factors, Knowledge Management, Organisational capabilities, Stakeholder Management | 1 Comment »

Investing Smarter in Public Sector ICT (VAGO (Ed.), 2008)

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

 Investing Smarter in Public Sector ICT

Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO): Investing Smarter in Public Sector ICT, Melbourne 2008.
Download available here: http://download.audit.vic.gov.au/files/ICT_BPG_Intro.pdf

The VAGO has recently published (if I remember correctly it was end of July) a 6 step best practices guide on how to invest into ICT. The best part – it’s written in a clear, non-techy language. Readers don’t have to be the master genius of IT to put this into practice. They break down the ICT project flow into 6 distinct steps, which are
(1) Understand & Explore
(2) Identify & Refine options
(3) Decide to invest
(4) Procure a solution
(5) Manage delivery
(6) Review & Learn

The nice thing in this guide is that it lists a lot of best practices, things to avoid, and gives meaningful examples. Although most of the recommendations sound fairly basic (It’s basic not trivial!) the hard part is actually doing them. I would never ever have expected that benefits and costs are not calculated cross agencies, or that someone is not considering a non-tech solution.

Posted in IT Project, Public Sector | No Comments »

Facelift

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

I admit neglecting this little blog in the last couple of weeks. In the spirit of a true marketer I gave it a facelift and will start posting some new articles soon – since the new issue of the Internation Journal of Project Management just landed on my desk.

P.S. It’s official Google’s Chrome needs an update – it doesn’t work with wordpress’s WYSIWYG-Editor, it’s more WYSIWYGWLB (what-you-see-is-what-you-get-without-line-breaks).

Posted in Admin | No Comments »