Search results

Climate change is upon us, and the soft landing window has almost certainly closed given the current pace of response. But climate change is only one of the huge issues facing humanity – indeed, the planetary boundaries model (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015) ranks biodiversity loss and biochemical flows even further along the path of irreversible planet-threatening change. In the face of powerful inertia, how can we at least shape the hard landing that seems inevitable, where civilization as we know it will likely collapse to support the rising of much better ones? The SDG Transformations Forum supports development of powerful T-systems as a purposeful transformation strategy with this goal. To do so, the Forum has developed a strategy drawing from leading knowledge about how transformation happens, and creating systems change communities that are applying and advancing the strategy in the experimental, adaptive manner focused on deep learning and radical action.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a framework for the exploration of system transformation that includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.

A five‐phased longitudinal research of one organization – Kibbutz Shefayim– during 12 years: semi‐structured interviews (60‐120 minutes each) with Kibbutz members representing a wide range of views and experiences in 1993; collecting and reviewing of Kibbutz internal “raw” documents that related to changes that occurred during the past 12 years, and; follow‐up semi structured interviews in 1998, 2001 and 2005. The interviewed members were asked to describe the nature of the changes that had taken place since the previous interview, including reasons, mechanisms, results and impacts.

The findings suggest that leading system change requires managerial orientation that is centered on balancing acts embedded in on going dialogue and the design of learning mechanisms. The paper advances a specific set of balancing acts and discusses their implications for leading system wide transformation.

This research was conducted within one organization. Further longitudinal replications in other Kibbutz‐based systems are under way.

The proposed view of leadership as a balancing act seems to capture the experience of many managers in the twenty‐first century. The findings suggest that some of the critical success factors for system‐wide transformation centers on the leaders' ability to sustain the following activities: continuous effort at bringing the outside forces into alignment with the internal forces; utilizing triggering events as levers for continuous change, and the purposeful design and management of learning mechanisms.

Adds to the literature on the exploration of system transformation and includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.

The purpose of this paper is to aim to an application of element of the theory of differential geometry for building the state space transformation, linearizing nonlinear dynamic system into a linear form.

It is assumed that the description of nonlinear electric circuits with concentrated parameters or electromechanical systems is given by nonlinear system of differential equations of first order (state equations). The goal is to find transformation which leads nonlinear state equation (written in one coordinate system) to the linear in the other – sought coordinate system.

The necessary conditions fulfilled by nonlinear system undergoing linearization process are presented. Numerical solutions of the nonlinear equations of state together with linearized system obtained from direct transformation of the state space are included (transformation input – the state of the nonlinear system).

Application of first order exact differential forms for determining the transformation linearizing the nonlinear state equation. Simple linear models obtained with the use of the linearizing transformation are very useful (mainly because of the known and well-mastered theory of linear systems) in solving of various practical technical problems.

Digital transformations represent an increasingly salient empirical phenomena for institutionalists studying the processes by which institutions evolve, erode, or otherwise change. Yet, there have been few meaningful attempts to engage with insights from the information systems (IS) literature, despite digital innovation and diffusion falling squarely within its domain. This essay makes an initial attempt at integration by offering a two-by-two framework which crosses salient theoretical categories within the IS and institutional literatures. From the former, we draw on concepts of system acceptance and resistance, and from the latter, we draw on concepts of institutional maintenance and change. Each quadrant in our framework represents user responses happening because of, in reaction to, or toward various institutional dynamics. We illustrate each quadrant with data collected as part of a study of digital transformation in the field of public healthcare in Australia. We use our illustrative case to open up research questions which researchers might use to frame their own studies of digital transformations as a form of institutional change. We conclude with a discussion of what other theoretical advances or insights might be yielded from greater collaboration between institutionalists and IS scholars. This essay contributes to the nascent study of digital transformations as a form of institutional change through examining how complementary concepts of the IS and institutional literatures might be used simultaneously to understand the intersection of digital innovation and diffusion and the institutional arrangements governing the fields which they change.

This paper aims to provide insights regarding the state of the art of digital transformation for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt and propose avenues for future research.

A proposed framework for the digitization process in SMEs is developed by providing three layers of working steps toward full automation. The paper also provides an extensive analysis of the main requirements for improving the existing traditional information systems' performance in these enterprises. The challenges of digital transformation and the future research direction are discussed as well.

This paper provided an overview of the importance of digital transformation in real-life applications. The role of the information systems in building a digitalized information processing environment is covered as well. Also, a framework for the shifting process from the traditional approaches to the digitalized systems is proposed. Besides, the paper overviewed the future research directions related to digital transformation in SMEs, especially in Egypt. These research directions are related to technical challenges during the digital transformation process, such as cybersecurity, big data analytics and multimodality data.

Despite the significant governmental and institutions' steps toward full automation and digital transformation, the traditional information systems, infrastructures, and unequipped employees make the digitizing process on-the-fly an open challenge. A technology shift that is not supported by a similar cultural change threatens digital business initiatives and increases the risk of their failure. This paper aims to provide insights regarding the state of the art of digital transformation for SMEs in Egypt and propose avenues for future research.

There is only scarce research about the transformation of e-HRM in general, and of the e-recruiting function in particular. Further, there is not much known of the transformational implications for the related people, process, and information technology (IT). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To analyze the transformation of e-recruiting caused by external influences outside of the organization, the authors report the results of an eight-year case with a media corporation in order to derive and describe five consecutive steps of an e-recruiting transformation model.

The paper comes up with five stages (transformation of tools, transformation of systems, transformation of workflows, transformation of tasks, and transformation of communication), each influenced by external developments and market tendencies (War for Talent, increasing number of applications, job market switch, globalization of job market, changing communication behavior).

This research contributes to literature by explaining the drivers of an e-HRM transformation and the different stages of this transformation process differentiated by the affected people, processes, and IT. However, it only observes the transformation in one company, hence the transformation of further e-HRM functions in other companies might differ.

The paper highlights both the transformation of e-recruiting and for the related people, processes, and IT, so companies could observe their current status of e-recruiting transformation.

This paper represents the first longitudinal approach observing the transformation of e-recruiting by describing different stages and external influences.

This uses a framework of systemic change to understand the contextual factors including stakeholder, social, political, cultural and economic, which contribute to the social and environmental narratives of a conservation organisation that has and continues to undergo transformation.

The social and environmental disclosure annual report narratives for a 27-year period were coded to a framework of systemic change.

The end of apartheid in 1994 meant that South African society required transformation. This transformation impacts and drives the social and environmental accounting disclosures made by SANParks. The social and environmental disclosures coded against a framework of systemic change, fluctuated over the period of the study as the format of the annual reports changed. The systems view was the most frequently disclosed category. The political ecology subcategory which details the power relationships showed the most disclosures. However, 25 years after the end of apartheid, the transformation process remains incomplete. Although the evidence in the paper does not support Joseph and Reigelut (2010) contention that the framework of systemic change is an iterative process, it nevertheless provides a useful vehicle for analysing the rich annual report narratives of an organisation that has undergone and continues to undergo transformation.

This paper makes two primary contributions. First, to the limited developing country social and environmental accounting literature. Second, the development, refinement and application of a framework of systemic change to social and environmental disclosures.

Most successful companies have adopted some type of improvement methodology to achieve optimum performance, high quality, lower costs and productivity. Some of the structured methodologies employed indiscriminately are total quality management, quality control, agile, lean and Six Sigma which yield varied results. The purpose of this paper is to explore how to harness the power of an integrated system of quality tools and techniques to create operational excellence. An integrated framework involves matching quality tools and techniques to the multi-phases (input, transformation and output) of lean manufacturing or service ecosystem.

Current research of lean quality systems provides a conceptual understanding of core tools employed by manufacturing and service organizations. Interviewing domain experts from a series of manufacturing and service organizations highlighted a common challenge. The challenge was lean tools and methodologies were selected and employed arbitrarily for the different operational phases, which resulted in selective synergies of tools between operational phases. This limitation resulted in rework and duplication of quality efforts through the diverse phases of the transformation system. This study is based on the hypothesis that all phases of an operational system must be linked by common tools and methodologies which enables harnessing quality benefits and synergies throughout the entire operational system. The study methodology trailed through cooperative inquiry using a case study approach to design an integrated framework of tools that facilitates a common platform for manufacturing or service ecosystems.

This study suggests that quality systems in a complex competitive environment must consider an integrated iterative approach. An iterative development of lean quality tools for multiple phases produces an integrated quality system. Such systems employ blending and extending of lean quality tools to multiple phases of the transformation system to synthesize agile and versatile quality system.

A limitation of this study is that the research of integrated framework is based on repertory grid technique only; it should be supplemented by other methods. Second, the proposed framework does not consider the complexity added by the internal and external stakeholders as they interface with the integrated system at different points with reference to phases of the system.

One of the advantages of this method is its generality, instead of delivering a monolithic system at the culmination of long transformation process we rely on smaller quality sprints which are implemented sequentially at each stage or phase of the transformation system. The phenomena of incremental clustering of time-series of quality sprints for different phases results in true integration from end to end for a transformation system.

This study helps investigate the personal constructs that users and managers employ to interpret and select quality tools or methodologies for the different phases of lean transformational system.

This study aims to understand the impact of blending quality and business process improvement tools and methodologies to enhance outcomes. The basis of this study is “the power of multiplicity” through which a diverse collection of improvement paths is pooled into an integrated framework of quality tools for lean and efficient operations.

Organisational transformation has been a major research theme over the last few decades. The main emphasis focuses on how successful organisations are using information systems and technology (IS/IT) to transform business operations. This paper aims to summarize and evaluate the key perspectives and concepts of change management. These perspectives and concepts are used to conduct an overview of the transformation of a major UK telecommunications company is using IS as a driver.

This paper focuses on trying to understand the whole range of systems‐related problems that may confront an organisation during the introduction of new operational systems as part of organisational change and transformation. The primary objective is to identify best practice. A case study focusing on a large organisation is the approach used to try and elicit learning.

The view emerging from the case study is that there are generic problems that need to be addressed especially related to how system changes, processes and the customer are managed. Even with an increasing caseload of examples where large firms are unsuccessfully with major organisational transformations‐companies are still willing to undergo this risky change process.

It is intended that this best practice framework will be used in other organisational environments.

The paper contributes to widening studies on systems introduction as part of organisational change.

The internationalization of business has grown the production value chains and created performance challenges for industrial production. Industry 4.0, the digital transformation of industrial processes, promises to deliver performance improvements through smart functionalities. This study investigates how digital transformation translates to performance gain by adopting a systems perspective to drive smartness.

This study uses qualitative research to collect data on the lived experiences of digital transformation practitioners for theory development. It uses semi-structured interviews with industry experts and applies the Gioia methodology for analysis.

The study determined that enterprise smartness is an organizational capability developed by digital transformation, it is a function of integration and the enabler of organizational performance gains in the Industry 4.0 context. The study determined that performance gains are experienced in productivity, sustainability, safety and customer experience, which represents performance metrics for Industry 4.0.

This study contributes a model that inserts smartness in the linkage between digital transformation and organizational outcomes to the digital transformation and production management literature.

The study indicates that digital transformation programs should focus on developing smartness rather than technology implementations, which must be considered an enabling activity.

Existing studies recognized the positive impact of technology on performance in industrial production. The study addresses a missing link in the Industry 4.0 value creation process. It adopts a systems perspective to establish the role of smartness in translating technology use to performance outcomes. Smart capabilities have been the critical missing link in the literature on harnessing digital transformation in organizations. The study advances theory development by contributing an Industry 4.0 value model that establishes a link between digital technologies, smartness and organizational performance.