Search results

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.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model to analyze the relationships between three aspects of technical electronic commerce (EC)‐based information system (IS) resources; the supply chain process integration; and business value.

The paper is consistent with the perspective on IS‐enabled organizational capabilities and resource based view of the firm. A questionnaire‐based survey was conducted to collect data from 214 supply chain, logistics, or procurement/purchasing managers of leading manufacturing firms.

The findings suggest that supply chain process integration, a key EC‐enabled organizational capability, can enhance business value. We found that this capability serve as a catalyst in transforming technical EC‐based IS resources (technical quality of EC applications, EC advancements, and EC alignment) into higher value for a firm.

Among other limitations, this paper does not address human IS resources as the other potential determinants of firm's supply chain capabilities. Moreover, this study relies on cross‐sectional data.

The results suggest that supply chain process integration is an important intermediate organizational capability through which value of EC‐based IS resources can be materialized. The technical aspects of EC‐based IS resources need to be developed to effectively form supply chain capabilities.

The paper is perhaps one of the first to show theoretically and empirically how firms, in particular in developing countries, can generate business value from EC‐enabled supply chain process integration; also it broadens the scope of EC alignment in relation to process integration and business value to the entire supply chain.

The purpose of the study is to develop a deeper understanding of the construct “integration within the HRM subsystem”. The study attempts to shed light on the conceptual perspective, the characteristics of this construct as well as the meaning and the mechanisms of internal integration within a HRM subsystem.

The procedure involves three main steps: first data reduction followed by data display and conclusion drawing/verification. Semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews with 21 vice‐president HRM managers and senior managers were conducted. The average time of the interviews was 60 minutes.

The findings revealed a model composed of HRM infrastructure (HRM cooperative policy, integrative core competence, and integrative technological infrastructure), internal communication process (formal and informal) and integrating process (consistency of HRM practices at the subsystem and individual levels). The first two categories are related with the dependent category‐integrating process.

HRM subsystems should develop their integrative technological infrastructure so that they can have a wide‐ranging view about their activities. Also, informal mechanisms may enhance the integrating process, as well as the formal mechanisms. Thus, managers should support and encourage the informal climate, and facilitate especially on informal communication.

The findings suggest a new approach for analyzing the integration process within an organizational HR sub‐system. On the one hand, the continuity of integration demonstrates how each category may contribute to the integration process on a high level. On the other, the low level of each category illustrates the opposite side of integration.

This study aims to investigate how compatibility between supply chain partners’ technological systems, as well as cultural and operational values, enhance supply chain process integration. Additionally, the paper examines whether supply chain capabilities mediate the relationship between supply chain process integration and organizational performance. The contradictory findings on the relationship between supply chain process integration and organizational performance in prior research point to the need for investigating the possibility of supply chain capabilities having a mediating effect on the link between the two factors.

The study used survey data from 302 managers and executives responsible for supply chain functions in food and hardware retailing businesses in Australia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses, and then Zhao et al.’s (2010) procedure was used to test for mediation effects.

The results indicate that technical, operational and cultural compatibility facilitates supply chain process integration. In support of dynamic capabilities theory, the study reveals the importance of integrating resources among supply chain partners to achieve supply chain capabilities, operational and competitive performance. Additionally, the current study found supply chain capabilities to play a mediating role on the relationships between supply chain process integration and organizational performance.

The paper contributes to supply chain management literature by identifying technical, operational and cultural compatibility as antecedents to supply chain process integration. By revealing the mediating role of supply chain capabilities, the paper highlights how supply chain process integration enhance operational and competitive performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of logistics and supply chain integration on firm competitiveness in manufacturing firms.

Utilizing the resource-based view of competitive advantage along with the transaction cost economics theory, the authors address the critical role of logistics and supply chain strategy as the driver of logistics and supply chain integration and firm competitiveness. Structural equation modeling is used to determine the effect of two sets of logistics and supply chain integration practices (logistics/supply chain information integration and logistics/supply chain process integration) along with logistics outsourcing decision practices (logistics investment decisions and private warehousing decisions) on firm competitiveness.

The results indicate that logistics/supply chain strategy is the main driver of logistics and supply chain integration and logistics decisions. Furthermore, the findings suggest that logistics/supply chain process integration is the most significant predictor of firm's competitive position.

Further examination and testing of the proposed model across multiple contexts is necessary for validity of the findings.

This is one of the first studies that provide an empirical analysis on the importance of different sources of integration (information and process) in logistics and supply chain and their impact on firm competitiveness.

The current industrial revolution is powered by data, which is also referred as Industry 4.0. The Industry 4.0 has attracted significant attention from academia and the industry professionals. The supply chain integration (SCI) has played a significant role in enhancing supply chain performance and organizational performance. This study explores the relationship between Industry 4.0 and SCI via an extensive literature review to understand the various levels of integration with the supply chain processes and to identify missing links, through a framework, and suggest further research directions.

In this paper, we have used systematic literature review approach to identify the building blocks of the conceptual framework, which is the main contribution of the present study. We have used Scopus database to search literature using keywords.

The study offers some interesting insights that may help scholars to advance theoretical debates. Moreover, the study also provides interesting direction to the practitioners engaged in supply chain management in data-driven environment. In this study, we have proposed a conceptual framework for the adoption of Industry 4.0 and SCI.

In this study we have proposed a conceptual framework. However, the framework is yet to be empirically tested. Hence, we caution readers to evaluate the findings of the present study in context to its limitations. This is an attempt to develop a conceptual framework which may be tested using longitudinal data.

The present work helps in integrating two independent subjects', i.e. Industry 4.0 and SCI. The theoretical framework presented here integrates Industry 4.0 and SCI which can be useful to the practitioners and policymakers engaged in implementing Industry 4.0.

The complexity of business environments often causes organizations to produce several inconsistent views of the same business process (BP), leading to fragmentation. BP view integration attempts to produce an integrated view from different views of the same model, facilitating the management of BP models.

To study the trends of BP view integration, the authors conduct an extensive and systematic literature review to summarize findings since the 1970s. With a starting corpus of 918 documents, this survey draws up a systematic inventory of solutions used in academia and industry. By narrowing it down to 71 articles, the authors discuss in-depth 17 BP integration techniques papers, classifying each solution according to 9 criteria.

The authors' study shows that most view-integration methods (11) utilize annotation-based matching, based on formal merging rules. While most solutions are formalized, only approximately half are validated with a real-world use case scenario. View integration can be applied to areas other than database schema integration and BP view integration.

By summarizing existing knowledge up to June 2021, the authors explore possible future research directions. The authors highlight the application of view integration to the blockchain research area, where stakeholders can have different views on the same blockchain. The authors expect that this study contributes to interdisciplinary research across view integration, namely to the context of blockchain.

This survey serves to pave the way for future trends, where the authors highlight the application of view integration to blockchain research.

Many business process improvement efforts emphasize better integration, yet process integration can mean many things. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of information flows to modern business processes, and draw upon recent organizational and information systems literature to characterize process integration and to derive four principles of process integration: accessibility, timeliness, transparency, and granularity of information flows.

Using a field study, the four principles of process integration are applied to analyze ten different business processes across five organizations.

In total, 18 generalized activities are identified that describe non‐integrated behavior, and “keying in known data” was found to be the most common. Among other findings, analysis highlights the importance of documentation to modern business processes, especially for coordination roles, and the paper describes three different purposes for documentation found in the data: content, process validation, and posterity.

The articulation of “business process integration” offers a foundation for future research in this area. Findings are limited in generalizability to various levels of processes, as well as possible instrument‐related biases.

The principles of process integration provide a lens through which practitioners can analyze processes. Empirical findings stress the role of documentation, forms of documentation, and types of non‐integrated work.

The paper characterizes process integration in relation to other commonly‐used constructs such as organizational integration, data integration, and application integration. Principles are derived from the literature that can guide future inquiry and practice associated with business process improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether business process integration is feasible.

This paper employs a single case study strategy to research the aforementioned research question. The case study is exploratory.

Based on the findings and within the context of the case organisation, it appears that enterprise application integration (EAI) technology can integrate business processes. However, since it is not possible to generalize from a single case study, further research is suggested to investigate this area. From the case study, it appears that EAI can easily integrate the business processes when it is combined with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

This is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.

The empirical date suggest that organisations may combine ERP with EAI to integrate their business processes in a more flexible way.

The contribution of the paper is threefold: it describes the business process automation layer of EAI technology, it defines and presents a stage model for the business process integration and it examines the research question.

The use of capability maturity model integration (CMMI) on its own can be problematic for the organisation because it does not provide a roadmap to implementation or identification of key process improvement areas, but instead only provides the goals for each level of implementation. Addition of another framework such as control objectives for information and related technology (CoBIT) can add the required operational data, but poses some unique challenges for implementation. However, the integration of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), CoBIT, and ISO/IEC 22007 provides a roadmap to the integration of CMMI and CoBIT. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this co‐implementation and integration of the two frameworks, as well as the underlying framework of a new proposed integration model.

A literature review approach is used to address issues that have evolved from the empirical literature regarding the integration of CMMI and ITIL with other standards and determining whether this approach can be applied to the integration of CMMI and CoBIT as well. This literature review also provides insight into roadblocks to the implementation and structural improvements for CMMI.

The literature review demonstrated that the integration of CMMI and CoBIT could potentially be performed using the same techniques used in integrating ITIL and CoBIT, which provides a valuable guideline for further research into this area. However, further work will be required in order to determine the specifics of integration.

The paper adds to the existing literature by discussing the integration of CMMI and CoBIT and examining how these two frameworks can work together in order to create the basis for a new integration model.