Search results

In the nineteenth century, the comparative method was seen as essential, if not fundamental, to growth and production of knowledge in the human sciences. However, over time the categories that formed the basis of nineteenth century comparative research (civilized: savage for example) were discredited. And so, in time, was the comparative method itself.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of management and control in collaborations with suppliers of critical technology.

Three collaborative product development projects at a system integrator in the telecom industry were studied. The data was collected through 22 semi-structured interviews and a workshop at the studied company and its suppliers.

The paper shows that in situations of high dependence on suppliers of critical technologies, control may be pursued by complementing black-box development with appropriate checks and balances in the collaboration, i.e. using combinations of control mechanisms, disconnected development and joint problem solving, contracts and trust, and alignment efforts on project and strategic levels. Further, the paper demonstrates that this involves several trade-offs related to the advantages of increased monitoring and disadvantages of decreased levels of freedom for the supplier and consequently decreased prerequisites for supplier creativity.

The qualitative approach of the research limits generalizability. Our study is limited to three projects at one firm.

Technological roadmaps can be used as an important tool to facilitate alignment with suppliers of critical technologies. Limited influence on project level can be supported by influencing the supplier on a strategic level. By collaborating on a strategic level, firms can gain alignment for future projects and diminish the need for direct project control within the projects. Long-term collaborations facilitate control in projects with powerful suppliers of critical technologies.

While many studies suggest simplified responses to complex situations of supplier involvement in product development, this study provides insight into the complex responses to control suppliers of critical technologies.

Family firms possess dual identities, being the family and the business, which can be segmented and integrated to various degrees. This study examines whether and how management control technologies are calibrated to fit into the dual identities of family firms.

A qualitative study of 20 family firms was conducted using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with owner-managers, drawings of mental maps and publicly available information. The notion of calibration was developed and used, with its three components of graduation, purpose and reference, as an organizing device for the interpretive understanding of the management control usage and its relation to family firms’ dual identities.

The study finds that the use of calculative, family-centric and procedural management controls – in sum the pervasive use of management control technologies – are associated with a professionalization of the family firm, a foregrounding of the business identity and a reduction of the disadvantageous side of familiness. In comparison, the pragmatic and minimal use of management control technologies are found to be associated with an emphasis on family identity. It transpires as liberating, engendering trust and unfolding a familial environment.

Because results are derived from a qualitative approach, they are not generalizable at an empirical level. By showing how the use of management control technologies is calibrated with reference to family firms’ dual identities, the paper reveals the perceived potency of control technologies to affect the identity of firms.

The study reveals how family firms perceive management control technologies as strengthening their business identity while weakening their family identity. Thereby, this study provides an account of how management control technologies are expected to change the identity of firms.

This paper contributes to the management control and family business literatures because it uncovers how management control technologies are calibrated in reference to family firms’ dual identities. It shows that calculative, family-centric and procedural management controls are used to professionalize the firm and strengthen its business identity as well as to reduce the negative effects of the family identity. The paper also illustrates how the liberating force of using pragmatic and minimal control technologies can serve to give prominence to the family identity.

The purpose of this study is to build on prior work to empirically test the possible effects of control‐related consumer difference variables on the decision to use self‐service technology (SSTs) in three different contexts. Specifically, the paper seeks to examine potential effects of locus of control, autonomy, self‐efficacy, technology anxiety and time pressure on the SST usage decision in a shopping, a library and a hotel situation.

The design of the study was empirical. Data for the study came from 187 college students in classes from four different departments (business, computer science, language, and music departments) in a southern regional university.

Overall, the results suggest that regardless of individual need for control and achievements, highly techno phobic consumers and those with an enduring attitude that all events in life are predestined may be generally more disposed than others to prefer check‐out service personnel rather than self‐service check‐out machines, depending on the situation.

The major limitation of this study is that respondents were primarily students, which limits the generalizability of the study. However, the study provides useful information about customer characteristics to target for service managers who are considering adopting SST options or are planning a SST improvement program.

This study helps augment earlier studies developed to understand the importance of examining consumer traits in the context of the specific situation, especially when deploying new SSTs.

Under such circumstances, how to assign the highest priority for future products which will create the greatest value will be the key success factor for a product planning model. The purpose of this study is to construct an improved planning model for new products based on the theoretical structures of technology roadmaps and patent analysis.

This study takes the perspective of a product planning strategy, using technology roadmap developed by Institute of Manufacturing Technology of the University of Cambridge, combining with scenario planning and patent analysis. The main body of the proposed model is the technology roadmap of the product. Through patent analysis, the technology roadmap was integrated into the hierarchical execution of product planning to improve the disadvantages of the original technology roadmap and thereby clarify the content of the implemented procedure. With the planning of digital home products in a large household appliance manufacturer in China as a case study, the feasibility of the proposed model was verified.

The improved planning model for new products comprised five planning phases: market scenario planning, product feature analysis, technological development analysis, patent combination analysis, and resource allocation. A matrix corresponding to product planning was established. The case study is to find out the developing trends in next‐generation product features in six different scenarios of digital home for M, a home appliance manufacturer. There are five steps of the product planning model. The product planning model provides enterprises with integrated information from market demand, technology as well as patents. At the same time, it is easy to maintain and reproduce. The authors expect the model to make a contribution to practical product planning.

This model should become an essential prediction tool for enterprises developing new products and can assist in decision‐making and strategic implementation.

Technology increasingly features in intimate relationships and is used by domestic violence perpetrators to enact harm. In this chapter, we propose a theoretical and practical framework for technology-facilitated harms in heterosexual relationships which we characterize as digital coercive control. Here, we include behaviors which can be classified as abuse and stalking and also individualized tactics which are less easy to categorize, but evoke fear and restrict the freedoms of a particular woman. Drawing on their knowledge of a victim/survivor's experiences and, in the context of patterns and dynamics of abuse, digital coercive control strategies are personalized by perpetrators and extend and exacerbate “real-world” violence.

Digital coercive control is unique because of its spacelessness and the ease, speed, and identity-shielding which technology affords. Victim/survivors describe how perpetrator use of technology creates a sense of omnipresence and omnipotence which can deter women from exiting violent relationships and weakens the (already tenuous) notion that abuse can be “escaped.” We contend that the ways that digital coercive control shifts temporal and geographic boundaries warrant attention. However, spatiality more broadly cannot be overlooked. The place and shape in which victim/survivors and perpetrators reside will shape both experiences of and response to violence. In this chapter, we explore these ideas, reporting on findings from a study on digital coercive control in regional, rural, and remote Australia. We adopt a feminist research methodology in regard to our ethos, research processes, analysis, and the outputs and outcomes of our project. Women's voices are foreground in this approach and the emphasis is on how research can be used to inform, guide, and develop responses to domestic violence.

The “4th Industrial Revolution” is characterized by a rapidly developing integration of digital technology and “cyber-physical” capability. Diffusion of open source technology has been cited by security and policing theorists, who note an emerging array of technology-enabled challenges to status quo security regimes. What characteristics define post-industrial crime, and how do post-industrial criminal methods challenge industrial-era security and policing regimes? This chapter opens with an overview of the “4th Industrial Revolution” and its theoretic challenges to conventional security and crime controls. Several pathways of impact are defined in terms of their challenges to industrial-era security, policing, and social controls, and in the complications posed by expanding state countermeasures to combat them. The chapter describes a series of practical, legal, ethical, and technical challenges to be considered for policing and security policy as the 4th Industrial Revolution proceeds.

This chapter analyzes the construction of secrecy under the current U.S. export control regime for dual-use technologies and discusses its application for two technologies: research on a class of semiconductors used in military and civilian applications and biotechnology research on select agents. We argue that the assignment of technologies and countries to categories controlled under the export regime is an exercise in creating secret knowledge, in which the broad category of “the other” is subdivided between those who are forbidden to know and those who are not (and thus implicitly are qualified to become a party to the secret). We draw attention to the social cost of errors made in applying these categories, and point to some remaining issues.

This paper aims to empirically explore and theorise the application of technology control over customers during call-centre interactions. The author seeks to ascertain distinct types of technology-mediated control, with potentially distinct ingredients and consequences for repatronage and service relations.

During three stages of empirical research across Western and non-Western, developed and developing country settings and across call-centre types, customers who have experienced control during call-centre exchanges, as well as providers (operatives, supervisors and managers) are interviewed as part of ethnographic research also reliant upon observation and company documentation.

Findings suggest that, first, the rapid adoption of technology has facilitated the application of control during provider-customer interactions, second, such control may be more widespread than suggested in the literature and, third, there are various types, processes and ingredients of technology-mediated control. The discussion contrasts deliberate from accidental control.

Studies on call-centre interactions often assume that relationships between providers and customers follow customer-centric expectations in service marketing theory. Only a minority of theorists in service marketing contest these assumptions, arguing instead that service providers may be using techniques to control customers by dominating and regulating processes and outcomes of interactions with customers. This study advances extant literature by theorising control types, their ingredients and impact on service provision.

Businesses may benefit from knowing when, how and how much customers are willing to revoke control. Customers are shown to accept being controlled, with customers’ tolerance for control being larger than anticipated.

This is a rare attempt to analyse control over customers seen through the eyes of providers across levels of decision-making within organisational hierarchies. Whereas research tends to study control in generic terms, the author demonstrates the multifarious and complex nature of control. The author challenges conventional thinking in the discipline by providing empirical evidence of, and theorising, how and why customers permit themselves to be controlled in service relations.