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Purpose – The aim of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of activity-based costing (ABC) implementation systems in the context of a developing country such as Jordan. The main objectives of the study were to determine the extent of ABC implementation within the Jordanian industrial sector and identify the factors that facilitate and motivate the decision to implement ABC. Additional objectives include determining the problems associated with ABC implementation and assessing the degree of success of ABC implementation.

Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey was conducted during 2008 among 88 Jordanian industrial companies that are listed on the Amman stock exchange. Eighty-eight questionnaires were distributed and 61 were returned giving a rate of response of 69.3%.

Findings – The survey findings indicate that ABC implementation among the Jordanian industrial companies is quite satisfactory. The rate of ABC implementation is about 55.7%. The most cited factors that facilitate the decision to implement ABC were that adequate training was provided for designing ABC and operating data in the information system are updated in real time: followed by the fact that adequate training was provided for using ABC. The most influential factors that motivate the process of ABC implementation are among others the increasing proportion of overhead costs, growing costs, including product costs and administrative costs, and currently the increasing number of product variants. Further factors are identified in the paper.

Originality/value – Most previous studies focused only on the implementation of ABC in western developed countries. The results of this study make a contribution to existing knowledge in the area of the implementation of ABC, especially in eastern developing countries such as Jordan. In addition, the current study used a multi-attribute to measure success of ABC implementation within the Jordanian industrial sector. This multi-attribute was composed of satisfaction with ABC implementation, the degree of using ABC in decision making and the success of ABC implementation.

Many attempts to integrate technology in Swedish schools have been initiated over the past 30 years with varying success. Although the use of digital tools has increased along with a general technology development, schools have mainly been using IT in administrative support activities. In recent years, school system reforms and developments in the educational technology sector have both required and enabled schools to digitalize. In this chapter, we follow the implementation of two technologies in a benchmark school in order to understand how technology integration is achieved. We suggest four types of embeddedness resulting from different types of activities that are subject to technology integration, as well as the social and material conditions that guide convergence during the postimplementation phase.

Youth and young adults with emotional and/or behavioral difficulties (EBD) face particularly difficult challenges in their efforts to fit into adult roles and functions. The purpose of this chapter is to assist providers, educators, and administrators from the mental health, education, child welfare, justice/corrections, and adult service system sectors understand (a) a practice for improving the progress and outcomes for young people in transition, and (b) how this practice model is implemented in communities to impact the lives of youth in transition to adulthood. This is accomplished in two major parts in this chapter. The first part provides an overview of the Transition to Independence Process (TIP) model, a description of its status as an evidence-supported practice, and tools and strategies that support its implementation in communities and regions across North America. The TIP model is further illustrated through a description of how it is applied with a young person. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of implementation science, a description of how its strategies and tools can guide the implementation of an intervention or model; and an illustration of a large-scale TIP implementation initiative with collaboratives of agencies and schools. This chapter concludes with implications regarding the importance of having effective transition-to-adulthood models; and ensuring the implementation and sustainability of these to improve the progress and outcomes of youth and young adults with EBD.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) face unique barriers to implementation of environmental management systems (EMSs) compared to the private sector, where formal EMS approaches such as ISO 14001 are widely used. HEIs across the world have tended to adopt structured EMSs through less formal methods or apply bespoke approaches based on institutional drivers for implementation. This chapter explores organizational factors specific to HEIs that impact on their ability to implement and sustain formal EMS approaches. An in-depth review was undertaken examining key organization barriers to EMS adoption, and organizational factors specific to HEIs that can affect the successful implementation and sustainability of EMS approaches. The study finds that considerations of the key actors, existing organizational structures, governance and leadership, and resistance to change are important areas to consider in the implementation of an EMS within an HEI. UK HEIs are used as a case study to examine the relationship between EMS uptake and performance, and identify trends toward the adoption of various types of systems. We find that a trend toward the adoption of more formalized EMS approaches among UK HEIs contradicts the suggestion from the literature that less-formal approaches may be more suitable. The study challenges the assumption that formal approaches to environmental management such as ISO 14001 and Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) provide the gold standard EMS, suggesting that alternative standards may be more suitable in the context of the unique organizational structures and key barriers to EMS implementation faced by HEIs.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Despite the many proposed benefits of activity-based costing (ABC), many managers oppose implementing it. One important reason for this resistance that has generally not been addressed in the literature is the effect of cost reallocations on managers’ evaluations and compensation. This study examines how the impact of installing an ABC system on managers’ bonuses affects their support for ABC implementation. Because ABC systems usually allocate costs in different proportions than traditional systems, some products may appear to be more profitable while others may appear less so. This, in turn, causes the business units responsible for the products to appear to be more or less profitable.

Based on prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky (1979). Econometrica, 47, 263–291; Tversky & Kahneman (1992). Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297–323), we predict that the negative effect on managers’ support for ABC in business units reporting less profit is greater than the positive effect on managers’ support in the more profitable units. The results of an experiment support this prediction. Since management support is critical to successful system implementation, this asymmetric effect has implications for cost management system changes.

During the past decade, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementations have exponentially grown within first large and then small- and medium-sized enterprises. Contemporary implementations, often through application service providers (ASPs), increase already existing pressures to adopt the embedded “best practices” that have been incorporated into the ERP software. The result is the rapid spread of generic business processes enabled through one of only a handful of leading ERP packages. This chapter focuses on the extant research on biodiversity and its focus on the negative effects of monoculture strategies – that is, the focus on a single crop (system) versus a diversity of crops (systems). The biodiversity research establishes a clear pattern of deleterious effects resulting from the vulnerabilities of monoculture strategies. These patterns are mirrored in the ERP environment as vulnerabilities loom from the diminution of diverse business processes, limited adaptability to business environment changes given technology-driven/enabled processes, and increased susceptibility to widespread parasite damage through cyber-attacks. The implications of the study raise questions as to the sustainability of accounting systems, the business environment, and society as a whole from the rapid implementation of sterilized business processes and uniformly vulnerable enterprise software.