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In South Africa, women in senior management positions experience social identity dilemmas, necessitating more research into this domain. While research has been conducted into coaching and mentoring of these women, limited scholarly attention has been paid to sponsorship. This paper aims to explore the social identity of women at senior management levels and sponsorship as a proposed mechanism to develop talented women.

This qualitative research included two studies using two sample groups, both of which included executive-level respondents in corporate organisations. One study focussed on sponsorship; here, the 29-strong sample included 14 male and 15 female executives, of whom 15 were White; 9 were African and 5 were Indian. The second study, consisting of only African, coloured and Indian (ACI) female executives (23 interviewees), focussed more broadly on their development path to the C-suite.

A common theme across the two studies was the inclination to give developmental support, in turn, once supported. There were prerequisites in this support-giving, however. For example, sponsors identified criteria that protégés had to meet. Despite evident gender inequality at senior management levels in South Africa, this paper reveals that in the Study 1 sample, gender and race were ostensibly irrelevant when choosing a sponsor or who to sponsor. A closer examination revealed a gender-based expectation, embedded in the South African context. Study 2 showed that ACI women above 50 years of age were more inclined to mentor others; even when they themselves were not mentored, some purposefully developed other ACI women. This paper thus suggests age as an important additional diversity dimension in relation to the career development of ACI women towards the C-suite. The findings have implications for the career development of individual ACI women and for organisations in reaching equality.

Gender differences with regard to perceptions also revealed that male respondents perceived sponsorship more as task-based actions, whereas female respondents focussed on relational elements. The paper concludes with recommendations on how individual ACI women and organisations can proactively develop talented women.

The paper offers insight into the gendered expectations of sponsors and gendered perceptions around merit in identifying protégés worthy of sponsorship. ACI women’s social identity changed when they joined the C-suite to identify more with their roles as executives and became less associated with their original ACI women group.

A prolific stream of research has demonstrated the unique potential of sports sponsorship to contribute to corporate image and to influence audiences around the world. Meanwhile, the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increasingly been identified in the literature for its potential to deliver a degree of competitive advantage. This paper builds on both these theoretical fields to develop a conceptual framework linking the effectiveness of sports sponsorship with the sponsors' CSR commitment to both employees and consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to report on nine in‐depth case histories of manufacturing firms introducing significant new service innovations. Manufacturing firms are under increasing pressure to diversify into lines of business that offer unique contributions to long term profitability and this paper increases understanding of how incumbent firms successfully accomplish this transition.

Using analytical induction the authors sample published announcements of significant new service offerings by well‐established manufacturing firms. An example of this type of service innovation would be General Motor's offering of OnStar remote driver support systems (not included in this sample). A total of nine cases (43 percent of the companies contacted) participated in this case study approach.

The paper identifies two primary strategies pursued by these firms development and launch of significant new service innovations representing important diversification moves for the firm. Both require CEO/President sponsorship, but are founded on different corporate cultures. The engineering culture path to commercialization tends to nurture concepts new to the firm, requires multi‐functional strategy making, and does well with champions from operations that have deep knowledge of the conversion process in the respective industry context. The entrepreneurial orientation path to commercialization tends to nurture concepts new to the industry or new to the world paired with sole champions from R&D or Engineering. Either strategy works well depending upon development culture and available resources.

Generalizations here are limited to incumbent manufacturing firms. Innovative service offerings by new entrants in manufacturing and services as well as incumbent service firms like banks and hospitals have yet to be explored for their corporate culture patterns and sponsorship tendencies.

For manufacturing firms considering making the transition to significant service offerings, the findings here indicate at least two viable approaches to commercialization, but both depend significantly on the chief executive sponsorship regardless of the initial conditions and context.

The identified patterns of corporate culture alternatives and innovation roles, given initial contextual conditions, is a novel contribution in the field. It comes at a time when manufacturing firms are ripe for strategic change and leveraging of core competences to transition to important new service businesses.

The complementarity factor stipulates that a sponsorship leveraging strategy can lead to suboptimal consumer responses unless advertising complements, rather than reinforces, the nature of the event-sponsor relationship. Study 1 showed that the best strategy when the sponsor is an official product provider for the event is to leverage the sponsorship through advertisements that emphasise its overall image and value as opposed to its products. However, the reverse is true when the sponsor is an official event partner, where a product-oriented sponsorship leveraging yields the best outcomes. Study 2 replicated the complementarity factor effect using a different event and different set of stimulus brands. It showed that consumer attributions, with respect to the sponsor's motivations, are the key mediating psychological mechanism.

Few consultants can actually provide “full‐service” e‐business solutions, so prepare to assemble your own team.

Reports on the process by which the Bank of Montreal became an organization fully committed to workplace equality and workforce diversity. The idea arose during the development of the new corporate strategic plan, when it became clear that competitive advantage lay in this direction. The vision was therefore incorporated into the plan. This was followed by the setting up of four task forces, looking at the advancement of women, the employment of aboriginal people and people with disabilities, and the needs of visible minorities. Describes the findings of each of the task forces and how the recommendations of each were put into practice. Summarizes the changes that have taken and are taking place at the bank as a result of this initiative.

Managing enterprise performance is an important, yet a difficult process due to its complexity. The process involves monitoring the strategic focus of an enterprise, whose performance is measured from the analysis of data generated from a wide range of interrelated business activities performed at different levels within the enterprise. This study aims to investigate management data systems technologies in terms of how they are used and the issues that are related to their effective management within the broader context of enterprise performance management (EPM).

A range of recently published research literature on data warehousing, online analytic processing and EPM is reviewed to explore their current state, issues and challenges learned from their practice.

The findings of the study are reported in two parts. The first part discusses the current business practices of these technologies, and the second part identifies and discusses the issues and challenges the business managers dealing with these technologies face for gaining competitive advantage for their businesses.

The study findings are intended to assist the business managers to effectively understand the issues and technologies behind EPM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to help managers to successfully plan, implement, and operate enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects using a risk management framework.

This paper adopted a combined literature review and case study method. Using literature review, the paper first identified major issues of managing ERP projects and develops a risk management framework for managing those issues. The proposed risk management framework was then applied to a ERP implementation project of a UK‐based energy services group and its effectiveness for managing ERP projects implementation had been demonstrated. Additionally, the risk factors as identified from the case application are compared with the risk factors from the previous researches so as to suggest mitigating measures.

All the risk factors are categorized into planning, implementation and operations phases along with project processes, organizational transformation and information technology (IT) perspectives. Project implementation phase is the most vulnerable to failure. The case study results reveal that the effect of other projects on on‐going ERP project, management of overall IT architecture and non‐availability of resources for organizational transformation are most critical from likelihood and impact perspectives. Managing risk across various phases of project and equal emphasize to effective project management, organizational transformation and IT adoption are the key to success in ERP implementation.

The risk factors, which were identified using literature review and the case study, have great significance as mitigating measures of those risks may result successful implementation of ERP projects in the industry. Additionally, proposed risk management framework could be customized to implement ERP projects elsewhere.

ERP projects are risky as they are capital intensive, technically complex, and call for organizational transformation. There are both success and failure stories. However, both researchers and practitioners agree, that if it can be implemented and operated successfully and benefits should be achievable. Although there are many studies on ERP implementation, little has been discussed on managing risks of ERP projects. Therefore, this paper bridges the gap.

This article provides a brief review of current literature on ERP and its implementation in industries. To fully understand the ERP software key points, risks, benefits, critical success factors, implementation issues, and the fundamental on that are identified and reviewed. Some applications of ERP in public places, government offices, and industries are briefly discussed and four related cases are reviewed.

Provides a background on enterprise resource planning implementation, key elements of ERP, and review four important cases from the literature in that regard. To better introduce ERP software to new users the risks and benefits of that are discussed in item lists and each are described briefly.

Pointed to key benefits and risks of enterprise resource systems software and studies four cases from the literature related to the ERP implementation.

Due to the fact that a better management of a system is related to the full understanding of the technologies implemented and the system under consideration, sufficient background on the enterprise resource planning is provided. The lack of research papers and conceptual papers related to risk‐benefit analysis of ERP systems is a motivation for conducting this research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that can be used to enhance the effectiveness of global teams.

The objectives of this paper are to provide a practical, concise framework for organizations that are using or considering global virtual teams. Based on extensive consulting research and literature review, the paper describes how global virtual teams can use Diversity & Inclusion, structure and processes to promote desired outcomes.

With globalization and skill shortages, global virtual teams are required to meet critical organizational objectives. Often these teams fall short of their promise, due to the complexity and lack trust and formal processes. This paper presents a framework to address these challenges.

Global virtual teams can use the proposed framework presented in this paper to promote high performance in both results and relationships.

This paper presents an original framework for optimal global team functioning.