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Growing e-commerce and technology-led initiatives are the catalysts for digitization in the financial industry. Green (2020) states that there has been an increase in global funding in this sector from $111 billion in 2018 up to $135 billion in 2020. This surge in digital payments requires a payment technology company that understands the market needs of developing countries, has an agile approach and strong organizational practices. TPS is an agile company that has aligned itself to capture the untapped markets in developing countries through its best practices, perseverance, and continuous innovation by identifying and filling market gaps. The company is highly customer-centric and people-oriented. This case study explores the key practices and drivers of success for this company by outlining the main features of organizational strategy, competitive advantage, external and internal marketing practices. Looking ahead, the case asks whether agile practices, organic mindset, highly flexible customer orientation, and talent building practices influence the productivity and proficiency of the company or not.

To examine the nature and the determinants of the incidence and diffusion of a range of new technologies.

We collected new survey data in 2001 for medium sized establishments in upstate and central New York.

Our econometric findings suggest that the use of new technologies tends to be more extensive in firms in which greater use is made of flexible work practices and flexible compensation practices and when skill levels are high. We find that the use of IT, the intranet, and computer literacy training is greater when the average tenure of managers is low, which might reflect a greater comfort with new technologies by younger managers. Larger establishments tend to use the Internet more extensively, which may reflect the cost of setting up Internet billing and purchasing systems, and an intranet communication system. Managerial tenure does not affect the use of the Internet in general perhaps because these might be operations that are less central to the activities of more senior managers. Also, we find mixed evidence for our digital divide hypothesis that predicts that the use of new technologies would be greatest in metropolitan areas and least in rural locations.

We recognize it is potentially risky to draw inferences from a relatively small survey.

Some findings mesh with those contained in earlier studies (e.g., Black & Lynch, 2004) though, importantly, now finding emerge when a broader range of new technologies is being considered.

This study provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between job design and the labor-market environment in which firms operate. In particular, I focus on one aspect of job design: the extent to which employees have discretion (autonomy) to organize their work. There has been considerable emphasis in the last 20 years on the importance of “high-involvement” work practices, which seek to give employees more decision rights at work. This literature has been concerned with the introduction of work practices such as team work, job rotation, or quality circles, and with the use of performance pay contracts. Within this literature, there are also some studies that focus more particularly on the extent to which employees have job discretion or autonomy. Discretion is an important characteristic of jobs because much of the redesign effort that has been conducted in the last years has aimed at giving employees more power to make decisions at work, and performance gains are largely attributed to these changes.

A substantial literature examines the effect of high-performance workplace practices on various outcomes for firms and workers. However, little attention has been paid to the effect of broad job design on product quality or financial performance. And with rare exception, the empirical literature on outcomes from high-performance work practices treats those practices as exogenously determined. This chapter seeks to address these two shortcomings in the existing literature. Using a nationally representative cross-section of British employers in 2004, we measure the effect of multiskilling on establishment-level labor productivity, product quality, and financial performance. We find that treating multiskilling as an endogenous choice of employers in empirical models of organizational performance has significant implications for the results. In particular, the estimated (positive) effect of multiskilling on labor productivity vanishes when we treat multiskilling as an endogenous choice of employers. Treating multiskilling as an endogenous choice changes its estimated effect on product quality from zero to positive and substantially increases the estimated magnitude of its (positive) effect on financial performance.

Globally, higher education institutions have become reliant on a quality assurance (QA) system over the past four decades. QA is considered to be one of the most important drivers of continuous improvement and an essential tool for promoting excellence in teaching, learning, and research. It provides a framework for establishing and maintaining standards, and for assuring stakeholders that programs and services meet or exceed these standards. Despite the wide range of quality assurance models available to higher education institutions, there remains considerable debate over which model is the most effective, as well as what criteria should be used for evaluating the effectiveness of these models. Universities in the Middle East have tried to adopt different models of QA that can meet their needs and expectations and provide a framework for continuous improvement. A major objective of this book is to provide an overview account of the QA process as implemented in the higher education systems of a number of Middle East countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This book lays out essential theoretical and practical insights into the role of QA policies and practices in higher education in the Middle East countries and builds upon this idea to provide a blueprint for future academic leaders in these countries and other Middle Eastern countries to enhance their QA policies and practices and drive higher education in those countries forward.

A distinguishing feature of strategic human resource management research is an emphasis on human resource (HR) systems, rather than individual HR practices as a driver of individual and organizational performance. Yet, there remains a lack of agreement regarding what these systems are, which practices comprise these systems, how these systems operate, and how they should be studied. Our goal in this paper is to take a step toward identifying and addressing several conceptual and methodological issues regarding HR systems. Conceptually, we argue that HR systems should be targeted toward some strategic objective and operate by influencing (1) employee knowledge, skills, and abilities, (2) employee motivation and effort, and (3) opportunities for employees to contribute. Methodologically, we explore issues related to the relationships among policies and practices, sampling issues, identifying the appropriate referent group(s), and who should serve as key informants for HR system studies.

The first cluster of papers in this volume studies the effect of worker participation on individuals, group processes, and organizations. This topic mirrors the predominant emphasis in the literature wherein worker participation, broadly defined, has been regressed against nearly every conceivable outcome in diverse work settings. Quite reasonably, a driving question for social scientists is what happens when worker participation is introduced. What are the consequences of top-down participation schemes and are they meaningful? Do they change the distribution of rewards and opportunities, or reconfigure dynamics between workers? The study of outcomes is significant because it touches on whether worker participation programs genuinely change the nature of work, improve workers’ jobs, strengthen workers’ hand or merely perpetuate traditional power structures.