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The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for evaluating the quality of an organization’s performance management system.

The paper presents a theoretical development based in extant literature, using a field study to illustrate the application of the methodology in assessing the quality of the performance management system of the case company.

The study presents performance management systems as a network of interconnected elements instead of elements that follow a lineal sequence. The more consistently aligned the elements of this network, the more likely it is to be able to influence behaviours and decisions in desirable ways.

The development requires its use by practitioners and researchers assessing the performance management systems of organizations to assess further implications. It stresses the need to differentiate the purpose of performance management systems from the objectives of the organization.

The tentative application of the methodology suggests that it provides a helpful tool for practitioners and researchers to assess the functionality of systems in place and to identify opportunities for improvement.

The methodology overcomes the two limitations of previous studies. First, it uses a holistic approach and does not focus on specific tools; second, it assesses the quality of the system, not from future company results that might be influenced by other variables, but from the consistency and alignment of the elements of the system.

As sport gradually becomes a full‐scale business, a debate about the applicability and appropriateness of measures of performance has emerged. The purpose of this research is to analyse how the special features of sport businesses influence the performance management system of a sports merchandiser.

The research work examines a case study of a sports retailer that manages the merchandising and image rights of a major European football club. It was conducted using Otley's performance management framework.

It was found that organization objectives were clearly known by all managers at all levels, despite not articulated in explicit statements, but conveyed in less formal ways. The main finding is to explain how a performance management system can be structured to effectively respond to the sports setting in which the company operates: constant meetings, shared values, information exchange and fast response to events substituted planning and forecasting.

The nature of the case study research method limits the generalizability of findings. Research in performance measures must have a holistic approach.

Managers can use this comprehensive framework to analyse the consistency of their performance measurement systems and to identify opportunities for improvement. Also, understanding how this organization was successful in communicating objectives and values can be of help.

The paper analyses a performance management system within the special features of sport‐related businesses.

THE American magazine Business Week recently dealt with the problem of work study in white collar areas and in the course of the article made the following comment: ‘The real impact of computer technology on work measurement and performance standards will come when it can take over more of the functions of the industrial engineer.’

THIS country is suffering from a serious shortage of skilled workers. This fact was brought into sharp focus when John Brown, the famous shipbuilders, announced two weeks ago that it had been necessary for them to decline a £5 million order because of a lack of labour in the steel and allied trades. The firm and the size of the potential order ensured national attention, but it cannot be accepted as an isolated instance. When the Ministry of Labour tells us that although 3,124 mostly skilled men entered shipbuilding and marine engineering during the last five weeks for which figures are available, but that there remained 2,860 unfilled jobs, or that 3,264 taken into metal manufacturing left 4,637 vacancies, there is need for concern and investigation.

This chapter introduces the important connections between media, democracy, and development in Brazil. Brazilian thought has relied heavily on conceptual oppositions in attempts to understand the country, as if there were something mysteriously contradictory in our culture and history, forever set on a rift between modernity and tradition. However convincingly described, the origin of such oppositions has never been fully explained. Introducing media history and theory into this discussion, we present a material dichotomy that illuminates the more abstract and cultural explanations of our particular history. We look at the region of Minas Geraes, where a sophisticated and diverse culture developed after the gold rush in the eighteenth century, in the Americas, and contrast such cultural achievements with the insurmountable difficulties in establishing a compatible written culture, primarily due to the prohibition of printing in the colony. We take note of the particular experience of the Conversos in Brazil, Jews who adopted Christianity in the shadow of the Portuguese Inquisition, as key to understand our ambivalent relationship to the written word and to knowledge. We describe commercial and cultural networks and contrast them with the paucity of media networks, including those of books and mail, domestic and international. This material disconnect, constitutive of colonial times in general, was particularly important during the formative years of a national market and identity and continues to resonate in the present.

Information Systems – IT Strategy Design and Implementation.

The case can be discussed in Marketing Management courses and IT Strategy classes in MBA, executives from NGOs who are participating in Management Development Programs, etc. It can also be used in entrepreneurship classes. The case serves as an illustration to entrepreneurship projects, and so this case can be discussed in training program for budding entrepreneurs intending to implement cloud in its IT infrastructure.

E-commerce is big nowadays in India. In e-commerce, particularly e-tail in India is witnessing a boom with players reporting achieving revenue targets earlier than anticipated. Though e-tail sites are now ubiquitous and dime a dozen with multiple offerings or specialized offerings, the e-grocery model is yet to take off on a large scale across India. E-grocery model has its unique challenges on both supply as well as distribution side unlike other e-tail business. As it deals with perishable items, it faces challenges in supply chain, procurement, inventory management, cold storage management, quality and logistics. To solve such problems, high degree of localization is needed for players in this business. It requires them to open up multiple warehouses at strategic locations in a city if they decide to have control over the goods they sell. Start-ups in this space face the problems in monitoring inventory levels across warehouses where they use disparate Point of Sales (POS) systems. There is a lack of synchronization among the POS applications across the warehouses for which they are able to take the benefit of economies of scale during procurement and distribution. Also, they face stock out and excess inventory across stock keeping units (SKUs). To solve this problem, a strategy is needed so that they can maintain data for all its warehouses through a single database and also by which they can scale up easily and at a lower investment without disturbing continuity in business.

Following are the learning outcomes: to learn about the business model and market ecosystem of an e-tailing business dealing in grocery items in a tier-II city in its introduction phase of organizational life cycle, to learn about various processes involved in online ordering of an item from an e-commerce website, to understand the various challenges faced by an organization dealing in e-tailing business in its introduction phase and to find out whether IT Strategy can be of help to overcome these challenges, to have an understanding of the Balance Score Card and Departmental Score Card, to understand how cloud can be of help to overcome the challenges and what are the possible cloud architectures to address such problems, to get an idea about how return on investment can be measured for finding feasibility of investment in cloud and to have the understanding of risk associated with implementing cloud and the cost of mitigating those risks.

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CSS:11 Strategy.

To cope with online competitors and new consumer behaviors, retailers need to hybrid digital and physical offerings to implement an omni-channel business model. This constitutes a digital transformation of the traditional business model. However, business cases on how traditional retailers are shifting from multi-channel to omni-channel retailing are lacking. This paper aims to explore the different issues and organizational paths during the transformation of a business model.

This study is based on a qualitative multiple case study of five retailers with a global reach currently implementing an omni-channel business model.

This research sheds light on three main issues encountered by retailers and the different underlying decisions when moving toward an omni-channel business model. The first relates to revenue attribution across channels, which involves rethinking traditional key performance indicators to give incentives to stores when promoting digital offers. The second issue concerns the supply chain decisions associated with cross-channel operations. The third issue relates to the delicate balance between global reach (digital channel) and local reach (specific store) for communication on social media and marketing decisions on pricing. This study provides empirical evidence about the variety of choices that retailers make to cope with the issues during the implementation of an omni-channel business model.

This work explores the issues faced by established firms when moving toward a new business model that is the hybridization of two existing business model managed separately. It provides comprehensive and clear illustration of how to manage such a business model transformation process that can be used by both business strategy practice and academic research.

Studying the role of advertising music (ad music) in a retail context can be an emergence of new marketing practices. The purpose of this paper is to identify the potential usage and utility of ad music as an atmospheric stimulus in contrast to music (retail music) as an atmospheric stimulus. This paper also aims to provide a model, which depicts how ad music could be an alternative to retail music in retail settings with regard to consumers’ attitudinal influence and its optimistic correlation with related marketing outcomes.

The paper reviewed the literature related to the role of retail music as an atmospheric stimulus and studies related to the role of music in the ad.

Advertising music as an atmospheric stimulus is more likely to influence consumers’ attitude towards advertising music, towards advertising and towards the advertised brand. Contrary to retail music, advertising music as an atmospheric stimulus may help a consumer for ad recall, ad message/brand information recall, brand recall, brand identification and brand recognition. Consequently, advertising music may always have an advantage over retail music with regard to purchase intent, brand choice and financial return.

This work may encourage the advertisers for the proper usage of ad music as an atmospheric stimulus that may holistically magnify the saliency of advertising theoretically and practically.

This study is a novel attempt to conceptualise the potential scope of utilisation of ad music in the retail context.

The case concerns strategy.

This study is applicable to information system, development sector and application of technology in development sector.

Krutika Terracotta Unit is a small unit located in Bhubaneswar, Odisha (India), owned by Mr Tarun Tapan Sahoo. The organization product portfolio varies from decorative statues, pots and vessel to customized products demanded by customers. Organization is also involved in training and renting the products for traditional fairs, marriages and religious ceremony in Bhubaneswar along with order sales. The case attempts to get a close picture of the industry. The exercise of developing the vision, mission, and goals for the organization was carried out and an attempt was made to align the information system with the business objectives even though the organization does not have a very structured organogram. Using BIS will surely reduce manual work and will give qualitative output. There will be lesser hassles in management. The defined and integrated approach will also help in taking strategic decisions well. The objective is to develop and apply well-structured BIS which can be integrated with the existing system so as to develop the terracotta organization in terms of reachability and profit-making with better decision-making capacity.

To learn about the business model of a handicraft marketing organization; to learn about the processes involved in traditional art form of Terracotta; to go through the exercise of creating vision, mission, goals of the organization through mutual discussion and expectation of owner; to determine how BIS helps in achieving higher productivity in Krutika Terracotta Unit; and to get an idea about how NPV calculation and social ROI should be measured for finding feasibility of technology investment.

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