In the aftermath of catastrophic events, when plans for organized and timely response break down, impromptu groups often emerge to provide disaster relief. Much remains to be learned about the internal dynamics of these emergent response groups whose representatives may include members from organizations with relief missions; private sector organizations offering resources; and private citizens with the information, relationships, or physical and mental stamina to help. Organizational theories have the potential to contribute to a better understanding of emergent response groups and how they efficiently coordinate knowledge, people, resources, tasks, and technology, thereby substantially improving disaster response for future catastrophes. We apply one organization science theory toward better understanding of these groups---transactive memory systems theory---which is a theory about knowledge coordination in groups. Our application of this theory to emergent response groups requires extending the theory in three ways: the role of expertise in task assignment, how groups function when credibility in member expertise cannot be validated, and how expertise is coordinated. By demonstrating how transactive memory systems theory can be extended to the unique operating conditions of emergent response groups, we hope to inspire organization science researchers to accept the challenge of adapting their theories to study this important problem of our time.

Coordinating Expertise Among Emergent Groups Responding to Disasters

Changes in the knowledge and skill requirements of information systems (IS) positions were examined by analyzing the content of advertisements for IS professionals placed in four major newspapers over the 20-year period 1970-1990 Three types of jobs were examined: programmers, systems analysts, and IS managers The analysis of the frequency of phrases in these advertisements suggests that job ads for programmers have changed very little -- technical requirements remain high, and business and systems knowledge requirements remain relatively low (although the frequency of mention of business requirements has increased somewhat) IS management positions are also relatively stable (as relected in the makeup of job ads) from the standpoint that business knowledge requirements have remained high, with technical and systems requirements specified less frequently The greatest transition in specified job requirements over this 20-year period has occurred for systems analysts Although this is perhaps not surprising, the nature of this transition is Contrary to expectations, the relative frequency and proportion of stated technical knowledge requirements in ads have increased dramatically, while the relative frequency of business and systems knowledge requirements has actually decreased slightlyThese results raise questions concerning the implicit understanding by academics and practioners alike of the need for business knowledge on the part of systems analysts and other IS professionals Various interpretations of these findings are provided, and the implications for both education and recruitment are discussed

The evolution of IS job skills: a content analysis of IS job advertisements from 1970 to 1990

The Nature of Prejudice

Recent changes in information systems technologies, applications, and personnel require us to reconsider the skills for tomorrow's IS professionals. This study uses data from four groups-IS managers, end-user managers, IS consultants, and IS professors-to identify the key skills and knowledge that will be required of future IS professionals. These requirements were then compared with current IS academic programs. The results reveal that despite a shared vision of the future IS professional, there is an "expectation gap" between industry needs and academic preparation. Industry and universities must work together to close this gap. Universities need to place more emphasis on the integration of technologies, applications, data, and business functions and less on traditional and formal system development. Firms need to send consistent messages to universities about their expectations while recognizing that the mission of university business programs is career education, not job training.

The is expectation gap: industry expectations versus academic preparation

Purpose – Within a very short period of time, the worldwide pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus
has not only claimed numerous lives but also caused severe limitations to daily private as well as business
life. Just about every company has been affected in one way or another. This first empirical study on the
effects of the COVID-19 crisis on family firms allows initial conclusions to be drawn about family firm crisis
management.

Design/methodology/approach – Exploratory qualitative research design based on 27 semi-structured
interviews with key informants of family firms of all sizes in five Western European countries that are in
different stages of the crisis.

Findings – The COVID-19 crisis represents a new type and quality of challenge for companies. These
companies are applying measures that can be assigned to three different strategies to adapt to the crisis in the
short term and emerge from it stronger in the long run. Our findings show how companies in all industries and
of all sizes adapt their business models to changing environmental conditions within a short period of time.
Finally, the findings also show that the crisis is bringing about a significant yet unintended cultural change. On
the one hand, a stronger solidarity and cohesion within the company was observed, while on the other hand, the
crisis has led to a tentative digitalization.

Originality/value – To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first empirical study in the management
realm on the impacts of COVID-19 on (family) firms. It provides cross-national evidence of family firms’ current
reactions to the crisis.

/pdf/the-economics-of-covid-19-initial-empirical-evidence-on-how-vp5geffrr7.pdf

The economics of COVID-19: initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis

This article reports results of a qualitative study that examined communication challenges decision makers experience during the response stage of crisis management. Response is perhaps the most cr...

Crisis Response Communication Challenges: Building Theory From Qualitative Data

Knowledge, skills and abilities of information systems professionals: past, present, and future

Researchers have often commented on the high correlation between McCabe’s Cyclomatic Complexity (CC) and lines of code (LOC). Many have believed this correlation high enough to justify adjusting CC by LOC or even substituting LOC for CC. However, from an empirical standpoint the relationship of CC to LOC is still an open one. We undertake the largest statistical study of this relationship to date. Employing modern regression techniques, we find the linearity of this relationship has been severely underestimated, so much so that CC can be said to have absolutely no explanatory power of its own. This research presents evidence that LOC and CC have a stable practically perfect linear relationship that holds across programmers, languages, code paradigms (procedural versus object-oriented), and software processes. Linear models are developed relating LOC and CC. These models are verified against over 1.2 million randomly selected source files from the SourceForge code repository. These files represent software projects from three target languages (C, C++, and Java) and a variety of programmer experience levels, software architectures, and development methodologies. The models developed are found to successfully predict roughly 90% of CC’s variance by LOC alone. This suggest not only that the linear relationship between LOC and CC is stable, but the aspects of code complexity that CC measures, such as the size of the test case space, grow linearly with source code size across languages and programming paradigms.

/pdf/cyclomatic-complexity-and-lines-of-code-empirical-evidence-2zwq3520wa.pdf

Cyclomatic Complexity and Lines of Code: Empirical Evidence of a Stable Linear Relationship

The importance of effective crisis management has never been greater (Argenti, 2002; Day et al., 2004). Unfortunately, current research, replete with speculative prescriptions offered without the benefit of empirical evidence (Pearson and Clair, 1998; Sheaffer and Mano-Negrin, 2003), offers limited direction to the executive. To aid in filling this gap, this study offers an exploratory analysis of the decision-making processes evident during crisis response. The purpose is to answer Pearson and Clair's (1998) call for empirical study of the decision processes used by crisis management teams, particularly in comparison to the conditions of normal operation. An organizational crisis is "a low-probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of the organization and is characterized by ambiguity of cause, effect, and means of resolution, as well as by a belief that decisions must be made swiftly" (Pearson and Clair, 1998: 60). Fink (1986) categorizes crisis management into five interdependent stages: mitigation, planning, warning, response, and recovery. Although all stages are important, this study specifically addresses the unique decision-making environment of the response phase. The response phase begins when a crisis is triggered, at which point damage can only be minimized not avoided; it ends when the immediate danger has passed, and the organization can move on to other issues. The goal of this manuscript is to present the findings from an exploratory empirical study of the decision processes employed during crisis response. To meet this goal, the manuscript first presents related research, focusing on existing models of organizational decision making and crisis decision making. The methodology used in the current study is then detailed, including how studied crises were selected, the interview process, and the coding technique. The study's results follow, presented in the form of researchable hypotheses generated from the exploratory study. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of impacts and future research. MODELS OF ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION MAKING Crisis response decision making is subsumed by the broader field of organizational decision making. An overview of key related insights from this literature is thus a pre-requisite to any crisis decision analysis. This overview is not intended to provide a comprehensive review of this extensive body of literature. The reader is directed to other works, such as those by Halpern and Stern (1998) and Shapira (2002) for such a review. Early research posed the decision maker as a rational actor executing a series of sequential analytical processes and choosing among competing alternatives to maximize utility (Ackoff, 1981; Huff and Reger, 1987). Subsequent work (e.g., Beach and Connolly, 2004; Kurtz and Sowden, 2003; Brockman and Simmonds, 1997) has moderated this normative, rational view. Nutt concluded that "nothing remotely resembling the normative methods described in the literature was carried out. Not even hybrid variations were observed" (1984: 446). Researchers posit that environmental (Romanelli and Tushman, 1986), organizational (Bourgeois, 1984), situational (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), group dynamics (Schulz-Hardt et al., 2000), and individual (Duhaime and Schwenk, 1985) limitations combine to weaken the force of the normative, rational model (Hitt and Tyler, 1991). Phase theories of organizational decision making typically strive to explain the routines undertaken and the sequences, frequencies, and iterations with which they occur (Eisenhardt and Zbaracki, 1992; Langley, 1990). Process studies of managerial decisions have found that decision making progresses in stages or phases that include problem recognition, diagnosis, direction setting, alternative finding, alternative evaluation, and choice implementation (Mintzberg et al., 1976; Nutt, 1993, 2000). In contrast to normative models, descriptive process models of organizational decision making recognize that some phases may be skipped, others occur sequentially or in parallel, and yet others involve iteration or looping (Eisenhardt and Zbaracki, 1992; Cowan, 1986). …

Decision Processes during Crisis Response: An Exploratory Investigation

The authors examine empirical software maintenance research reported from 1978 through 1987 and categorize the research according to placement, origin, and nature of research to determine what has been done in the past. A model of software maintenance is presented and used to derive classification characteristics. To aid in the investigation, an exhaustive electronic keyword search was made of abstracts found in Computer Database Abstracts and the INSPEC Computer and Control Abstracts. The full abstracts for the articles found in the searches were scrutinized by the researchers to determine whether they were appropriate. Based on this technique, summary and trend statistics are presented to characterize the state of empirical software maintenance research. Questions concerning the nature and future direction of software maintenance research are presented that aid in the process of internalizing the current state of empirical software maintenance research. >

David P. Hale

Papers

Crisis Response Communication Challenges: Building Theory From Qualitative Data

Knowledge, skills and abilities of information systems professionals: past, present, and future

Cyclomatic Complexity and Lines of Code: Empirical Evidence of a Stable Linear Relationship

Decision Processes during Crisis Response: An Exploratory Investigation

Software maintenance: a profile of past empirical research