자연주의적 탐구조사(Naturalistic Inquiry)

According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Knowledge Management

The theory of precautionary saving is shown in this paper to be isomorphic to the Arrow-Pratt theory of risk aversion, making possible the application of a large body of knowledge about risk aversion to precautionary saving, and more generally, to the theory of optimal choice under risk In particular, a measure of the strength of precautionary saving motive analogous to the Arrow-Pratt measure of risk aversion is used to establish a number of new propositions about precautionary saving, and to give a new interpretation of the Oreze-Modigliani substitution effect

Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically examine how social augmented parameters impact on the effective adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) by small‐scale agribusinesses operating in Southeast Nigeria. The relevance of incorporating social imperatives in scholarship focused on technology adoption is due to its role in sustaining the process of adoption and diffusion.Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from a focus group made up of 27 agribusiness proprietors affiliated with a state cooperative based in the south‐eastern Nigerian state of Ebonyi.Findings – This paper puts forward an argument that to ensure successful diffusion of innovation, a balance must be maintained between the amount of effort expended in the design of ICT and social factors such as language and traditional life. The paper finds that a willingness of indigenous ICT users is particularly influenced by the recognition and incorporation of visible social imperatives during the adoption pro...

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ICT adoption in developing countries : perspectives from small-scale agribusinesses

Projects are important to industry. Project manager (PM) competences are important in project success. Yet, current competence studies largely rely on small-sample, homogenous PM surveys which could suffer from uncontrollable biases and may not be generalizable. Often, the studies disregard industry specificity. We attempt to address these issues by exploring the key competences employers require from PMs across multiple industry sectors. We code the contents of 2306 online project management job advertisements in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, China, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore for frequently occurring keywords. Using three-way multidimensional scaling (MDS), we extract six dimensions of competence present in the coded keywords: 1) industry-specific and generic skills over project management knowledge/expertise; 2) project management knowledge/expertise over industry-specific and generic skills; 3) (senior) managerial skills; 4) (positive) personal traits; 5) project management methodology experience and professional qualifications; and 6) risk management over a project life cycle. We find that typically industry puts more weight on generic skills than project management knowledge/expertise, replicating previous PM survey-based results. We believe, however, that the main contribution is our finding that different industry sectors place significantly different levels of salience on the six dimensions. We discuss the practical implications of the results.

A Multidimensional Analysis of Project Manager Competences

Learning and teaching challenges in project management

Purpose – Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems if successfully implemented bring about competitive advantages. On the other hand, project failure could, in an extreme case, cause an organisation to go out of business. Mapped against existing literature on ERP critical success factors, this paper examines environmental factors that impacted on the adoption of ERP by The Oman Telecommunication Company (Omantel).Design/methodology/approach – A case study methodology is used to study perceptions of the ERP system implementation project in Omantel.Findings – This paper highlights the particular problems of large organisations that operate disparate legacy systems.Research limitations/implications – A single case study is conducted. This provides opportunities for further research in a number of varied settings.Originality/value – It is very important that experiences of ERP projects are shared across countries and sectors. This is because many ERP implementations are rolled out by multi‐national corporat...

Udechukwu Ojiako

Papers

ICT adoption in developing countries : perspectives from small-scale agribusinesses

A Multidimensional Analysis of Project Manager Competences

Learning and teaching challenges in project management

ERP implementation in Omantel: a case study

Email overload: Exploring the moderating role of the perception of email as a 'business critical' tool