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Proposes a continuous participative evaluation process built on the formative evaluation paradigm. The benefits of this approach are that all the primary or core stakeholders, i.e. the users, top management and the technical specialists involved in the task of delivering information systems benefits, participate in the evaluation and the subsequent decision making associated with the project. These stakeholders are consequently involved in moulding and realising an information system which is targeted to meet real business needs rather than just investment and project management criteria. This approach ensures that high quality information systems that deliver direct business benefits with which the user community can identify are implemented. It implies a new focus that encompasses concentrating on and understanding the business issues and how the information system will deliver real value to the organisation. It is the view of the authors that formative evaluation can help to maximise business value from information systems.

The process of management, and the management of information as an essential element of general managerial practice, is addressed from the perspective of the manager. Information has always been a key element in the performance of a business and the effectiveness of management, and information technology can now transform the use of this information to give managers substantial benefits in business planning and decision making. It is considered that information must be integrated into an organisation′s overall management and planning system rather than being controlled by specialist IT professionals and that the manager has to be responsible for: people, their motivation and training; business systems, culture and environment; and the organisation′s data resource. The ways in which business information processes can be analysed and modelled are reviewed and it is explained that information models can enable a better understanding of the organisation by showing it in a new and sometimes enlightening way. Some of the many complex issues associated with managing the change process and achieving successful implementation of the technologies are considered.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA) and the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) encourage experiential learning as a component of accounting and business curriculum. This chapter introduces a business partnership framework for experiential learning in accounting information systems, internal control, and auditing courses. Accounting students establish a partnership with a business client at the beginning of their accounting information systems and internal control study and continue the learning approach through the first auditing course. The framework brings real-world experience to accounting information systems, internal control, and auditing concepts. Accounting students learn to solve unstructured problems in complex realistic business settings, integrating technical and experienced-based knowledge. The project provides a structure for strengthening students’ personal competencies including developing successful team behavior and professional skills. The author has used the business-partnership model effectively for 15 years.

The chapter deals with the promotion of competitiveness of national producers as compared to the main leaders in the industry.

The system management of the process of creating and mastering the production of a new product is based on effective change management, development of organizational and technical management systems, business-to-business interaction systems, business solutions relating to product creation in the industry. Systemization of problems and identification of ways of development of theory and methodology of creation of a new product by the domestic manufacturing companies can be performed by means of implementation of continuous acquisition and life cycle support (CALS) systems.

Today, the fundamental conceptual basis for the formation of information space of an enterprise and application of miscellaneous information systems is the concept of continuous information support of products throughout the entire life cycle – CALS. According to this concept, one can single out the following major objectives which are essential for an enterprise and can be achieved through information technologies: the automation of production management which was conventionally achieved through the use of MICS systems, and today it is achieved due to the use of the so-called ERP/CRM/SCM systems; product data management and automation of design and engineering analysis of structures and processes (PDM/PLM, CAD/CAM/CAE-system); information support of operation and aftersales service, integrated logistic support of products. The information technologies at the present stage are a prerequisite for achieving a competitive advantage by an enterprise, particularly if the enterprise is specialized in the production of high-technology products. The major purpose of information technologies at the enterprise is the maximum effective support of design processes, production processes and other processes running at the enterprise, creation of the information basis which enables the management to take decisions which help the enterprise to achieve a dominant position in the industry sector. For Russian companies, the problem of implementation and effective employment of CALS-technologies as a means of cardinal improvement in quality and competitiveness of science-intensive products, discussed in the chapter, is extremely topical.

For many companies, the employment of these technologies largely determines the ability to survive in the context of an intensifying competitive struggle in the domestic market and can be considered as an indispensable condition for maintaining and expanding the sales of products on the international market.

Successful performance and execution of construction projects depend highly on a good project control system capable of tracking and reporting project status on a desired time interval. The purpose of this paper is to propose such a control system by integrating spreadsheet and Visual Basic for Application to produce a customized tracking system for Pipeline Relocation Programs under Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) contracts.

The project status reporting system (PSRS) proposed here was developed to produce a single page summary report that would include scope information, financial status, descriptive status updates and top-level task schedules. This information is retrieved from various sources and transformed further utilizing specific formulas and algorithm needed to compute the budget and schedule status of the pipe relocation project. A practical case study is used to demonstrate its unique application.

The system has successfully integrated project finance and schedule information into a central control hub. Financial and schedule performance of a project is tracked and monitored by the PSRS automatically.

The proposed system utilizes the powerful computing capability of MS Excel and the user-friendly VBA programming tool to customize the reporting needs of a project and program environment. The proposed system, whose functionality has been validated by the intended users, tries to achieve a balance between simplicity, accuracy and effectiveness for the flow of information at a much lower cost compared to the other readily available project control software.

In a technological age where and how does the health sector fit in? Have hospitals and other health agencies that are updated technologically also advanced in other areas of service and operation?

The author writes from experience, originally as a member of the Aslib Consultancy Service and subsequently as an independent consultant. She explores the expectations of the client and the consultant, qualities desirable in consultants and job satisfactions, and goes on to analyse in detail the consulting process, the pathology of information systems and the role of library consultants as change agents.

This paper aims to explore how different motives for implementing activity based‐costing may affect the implementation process. It focuses on the factors that affect different stages of the implementation process.

The paper uses case studies of two different business units of the same company which approached ABC implementation with different motivations. It is informed by administrative theory and institutionalist framework which draws on concepts from both old institutional economics and new institutional sociologists theory.

The paper shows how administrative and institutional factors affect different stages of the ABC implementation process and that the importance of success factors for implementation may depend on the level of implementation stage, and motivation for change. For instance, the quality of information system is very important at the adaptation and infusion stage.

The paper uses case studies that focus on two types of motivation for change. Further research work is needed that would examine other types of motivation for adopting accounting innovation to support the findings.

The empirical evidence results of this study can provide guidelines for companies either planning or implementing ABC.

The theoretical framework developed suggests that administrative theory reveals the practice (action) involved in the implementation, whereas institutional theory reveals the broader (macro) factors which shape the internal (micro) processes of implementation.

In this paper we present a roadmap for the elicitation of business rules based on different stakeholders' perspectives, in order to facilitate the processes of structuring, organizing and expressing business tactic and policy in a way that it is close to the business milieu and stakeholders' viewpoints.

This paper has derived from a combined research practice. Initially, the development of a roadmap for understanding different stakeholders' perspectives and for identifying their views on business tactics and policies was based on well‐grounded work on enterprise goal modelling, combined with a theoretical study of business rule – related concepts. The outcome of this work was tested against a real business case dealing with the development of an electronic procurement system in the pre‐fabricated construction sector.

As a conclusion, the paper put forward a comprehensive methodological framework for dealing with rule‐intensive projects. The proposed roadmap can help IT practitioners in collecting and organizing business rule statements that apply within a particular organization, either towards the implementation of change on a business level, or in the context of specifying the (existing or future) functionality of supporting information systems (IS).

The rule roadmap presented here has been coupled with a modelling approach for expressing rules in a structured, consistent manner and for organizing them in a rule repository. Future work includes the extension of this approach to cover design and implementation as part of rule‐centric information systems engineering.

Therefore, the overall contribution of this work relates to the provision of guidance for identifying business policy and tactics at an intentional level (through the investigation of the rationale behind them) and for transforming relevant models to the operational level, where business rules are linked to business processes, information and systems.

Although the business rule concept has been examined from different points of view over the past years, the paper attempts to bridge the gap between approaches that see rules as extensions of business goals, other approaches that consider rules as limitations on the way business activities are performed, and finally, approaches according to which rules constrain the creation, modification and deletion of information entities.

To remain sustainable, open source software (OSS) projects must attract new members—or newcomers—who make contributions. In this paper, the authors develop a set of hypotheses based on the knowledge barriers framework that examines how OSS communities can encourage contributions from newcomers.

Employing longitudinal data from the source code repositories of 232 OSS projects over a two-year period, the authors employ a Poisson-based mixed model to test how community characteristics, such as the main drivers of knowledge-based costs, relate to newcomers' contributions.

The results indicate that community characteristics, such as programming language choice, documentation effort and code structure instability, are the main drivers of knowledge-based contribution costs. The findings also suggest that managing these costs can result in more inclusive OSS communities, as evidenced by the number of contributing newcomers; the authors highlight the importance of maintaining documentation efforts for OSS communities.

This paper assumes that motivational factors are a necessary but insufficient condition for newcomer participation in OSS projects and that the cost to participation should be considered. Using the knowledge barriers framework, this paper identifies the main knowledge-based costs that hinder newcomer participation. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study that does not limit data collection to a single hosting platform (e.g., SourceForge), which improves the generalizability of the findings.