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In formulating e‐business strategies enabled by the Internet and WWW, parallels can be drawn from the viewpoint on process enabled by desktop and centralized computing in the 1990s, and that of present day. In this paper, the cornerstone of 1990s thinking on process, Hammer and Champy's nine best practices, are analyzed to apply for e‐business process management (e‐process management). For instance, Hammer and Champy's first principle is re‐stated as “[o]rganize around business rules (some combined tasks can be performed by stakeholders using interfaces accessed via the WWW)”. One finding is that checks and controls may not need to be reduced – as Hammer and Champy espouse – if they are perceived as valuable and can be performed inexpensively using Internet technologies. This work evolves the traditional re‐engineering framework to use in current e‐business realities; it can be applied to formulate e‐business strategies that are rooted in more traditional, and vetted, management thinking.

The paper examines a financial service innovation process, which is referred to as financial product innovation: improvements to existing services. This study conducts a critical analysis of the operational process of opening a Lloyds TSB Student Account at a local branch.

The process of opening a student bank account is documented in a flowchart/flow network, which highlights operational steps and the visibility line between front‐end and backroom staff. This process mapping technique/flowchart allows for the diagnosis and identification of both potential and actual bottlenecks in the existing process, which prevented a quality service encounter for the customer. After outlining these problematic areas/non‐value added activities, the adopted qualitative triangulated methodological approach yields a redesigned flowchart illustrating these changes. Furthermore, this paper proposes a re‐engineered process (i.e. e‐process or virtual process), which removes these bottlenecks systematically.

The results show the increased efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction levels that are the key to innovation process performance. The study concludes with evidence of non‐financial performance results of this type of financial service innovation.

The study does not quantify the performance of e‐process operations, and it does not examine customer concerns related to complexity, trust security and safety issues. However, it provides useful managerial recommendations for improving the process of opening a student account. Numerous key learning points and invaluable insights gathered during this project are practical contributions both to managers involved in innovation process and researchers interested in this domain.

This paper provides a re‐engineered process which is simpler, more economical and faster than the original process. It presents principles to diagnose appropriate service operation processes for re‐engineering using action mapping programmes and review their innovation performances. Managers will learn new frameworks, diagnostic tools and analysis techniques to better understand and improve their firm's service operations. This study is designed to give service innovation managers and e‐marketers instantaneous and continuous improvement in the quality of their e‐service designs.

One of its contributions lies in increasing the ability of managers to improve their knowledge and skills for responding to the e‐service innovation process. It adds to the growing literature on the innovation process for financial services. While the study answers a number of salient questions, it also produces a stimulus for further investigation of service innovation through the provision of future research directions in this area.

The paper examines the moderating role of a purchasing function's absorptive capacity (AC) on the relationship between the use of electronic purchasing tools and category level purchasing performance. The authors argue that an e‐purchasing tool may not in itself positively influence performance unless combined with AC as a human interface to maximise its information and transactional improvement potential.

Survey data collected from 297 procurement executives of large companies in ten countries are analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and hierarchical moderated regression.

The results demonstrate few significant direct effects of e‐purchasing tools on category performance. All performance measures studied are enhanced when dimensions of AC and their interactions with the e‐purchasing tools are added. Specifically, buyer competence, manager competence and communications climate have performance‐enhancing effects. In some cases, AC on its own appears to increase performance more than e‐tools.

This paper is the first to study the moderating effects of AC on the relationship between e‐purchasing tool usage and category performance. Its findings support the view that simply implementing technology does not lead to performance improvements, but that a human interface is required to maximise the information and transactional improvement potential of e‐purchasing tools.

The present article briefly reviews the protective coatings available for magnesium alloys and gives details of the New Chrome process, together with the results of corrosion tests carried out on the coating. The advantages of the New Chrome process over the H.A.E. process are also discussed.

For decades, conflict resolution (CR) educators working cross-culturally have struggled with a fundamental dilemma – whether to offer western, evidence-based approaches through a top-down (prescriptive) training process or to use a bottom-up (elicitive) strategy that builds on local cultural knowledge of effective in situ conflict management. This study aims to explore which conditions that prompted experienced CR instructors to use more prescriptive or elicitive approaches to such training in a foreign culture and the implications for training outcomes.

There are two parts to this study. First, the authors conducted a literature review to identify basic conditions that might be conducive to conducting prescriptive or elicitive cross-cultural CR training. The authors then tested the identified conditions in a survey with experienced CR instructors to identify different conditions that afforded prescriptive or elicitive approaches. Exploratory factor analysis and regression were used to assess which conditions determined whether a prescriptive or elicitive approach produced better outcomes.

In general, although prescriptive methods were found to be more efficient, elicitive methods produced more effective, culturally appropriate, sustainable and culturally sensitive training. Results revealed a variety of instructor, participant and contextual factors that influenced whether a prescriptive or elicitive approach was applied and found to be more suitable.

This study used empirical survey data with practicing experts to provide insight and guidance into when to use different approaches to CC-CR training effectively.

This paper aims to focus on economic consequences of audit outcomes by investigating the concept of audit quality operationalised as seven components of audit benefits to owner-managers of small companies.

The authors analyse survey data collected in 2013 from 642 small private companies above the audit exemption threshold in Finland.

No significant association was found between engagement of a Big 4 auditor (proxy for audit quality) and any of the audit benefits tested. However, the results provide consistent evidence of a positive relationship between the owner-manager’s perception of the competence and reliability of the external accountant and the perceived benefits of audit. It was also found that companies which do not incorporate e-processes in the accounting system are more likely to value the internal control benefits provided by audit.

Small business surveys suffer from poor response rates. To some extent, the authors overcame this problem by using two focused sampling frames and reminders. Care must be taken when generalising the results, as the definition of “small” varies across jurisdictions.

By focusing on small private companies, the research contributes to the audit quality literature. Contrary to studies of listed companies, the authors conclude that use of a Big 4 auditor is not a sufficient surrogate for audit quality in small companies. The authors go beyond aggregate measures of audit quality used in previous studies and identify specific audit benefits.

This paper aims to explain how small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) create information technology (IT) business value through blended IT outsourcing (ITO). The explanatory framework it proposes enables SMEs to replicate IT capability outcomes (i.e. enhance their economic, strategic and technological competences, namely, ITO success) by endorsing an ITO strategy catalyzed by IT vendor integration.

This study uses covariance-based structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. Data are collected from 251 knowledge-intensive business SMEs located in Science and Technology Parks in Spain.

The results demonstrate empirically that SMEs can replicate IT capability benefits (i.e. enhance their non-IT competences) through blended ITO in which IT, conceptualized as a transversal supporting activity, is outsourced to an IT vendor while the value creation process remains with the buyer. The integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) of an IT-proficient vendor catalyzes ITO success. More specifically, the results show that, although process integration is not directly related to competence enhancement, fosters information sharing, which directly facilitates ITO success. The results also show that IT vendor proficiency accounts for ex ante trust.

Managers should think of transformational ITO as a strategy to enhance firm competences. For blended ITO strategies to succeed, managers must have a comprehensive understanding of the business they run, as it is important to create conditions that foster inter-firm information sharing. To achieve these conditions, managers should take special care in selecting boundary spanners, who are the pivotal links in competence enhancement.

While most research focuses on ongoing trust (i.e. trust develops as ITO evolves), this study focuses on initial (i.e. ex ante) trust and analyzes IT vendor proficiency (expert, experienced and reputed) to examine trust as an antecedent of ITO. This study also draws on previous conceptualizations of vendor integration to develop and analyze a two-step integration model to explain how IT vendor integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) catalyzes enhancement of the buyer’s non-IT competences. This study focuses on SMEs, which are often neglected in ITO studies.

Understanding the economics and dynamics of channel marketing systems is the keystone to implementing successful channel marketing strategies.

The advent of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has changed the way information is organized, managed, and acquired in business organizations. It is vital for information managers that the information needs of the organizations in which they serve be satisfactorily fulfilled. Therefore, in order to fulfill these needs, a complete understanding of how businesses seek, adapt and manage information and knowledge is of the greatest importance. The ultimate objective of this process is to ensure the competitiveness and survival of the organization. This process can be accomplished with the help of these same new information technologies but also by means of human resources, if the personnel in question are well versed in the relationship between business, information, and knowledge. This paper presents the concept of environmental scanning (ES) as reviewed from the literature and suggests the implications for research and the role of information professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on improving the monitoring and evaluation of DRM capacity development initiatives.

The paper first explores the complexities and challenges presented in the literature, before using empirical data from a research project in six countries (Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Philippines, Haiti and Mozambique) to discuss current approaches to M & E of DRM capacity strengthening interventions.

This is generally an area of technical weakness in the initiatives studied, with poor understanding of terminology, little attention to outcomes or impact and few independent evaluations. The need for greater inclusion of participants in M & E processes is identified and one programme from the fieldwork in Mozambique is presented as a case study example.

The paper ends by presenting a unique M & E framework developed for use by DRM programmes to track the outcomes of their interventions and ultimately raise standards in this area.