Kathy H. Y. Hsu

Outsourcing – a strategic move: the process and the ingredients for success

Outsourcing has become an important strategic tool in today’s competitive business environment. This paper describes the steps within four stages of outsourcing process: planning, developing, implementing and evaluation. The role of outsourcing being not only a cost‐saving method but also part of the overall management strategy to focus on core competitiveness is emphasized in the discussion. Additionally, the detailed steps and considerations that are required for successful implementation of an outsourcing effort are also addressed.

E-Business Education at AACSB-Affiliated Business Schools: A Survey of Programs and Curricula

Abstract Business schools throughout the United States and abroad have responded to the explosion in electronic business (e-business) by offering programs in e-business. In this study, we examined 77 e-business programs at AACSB-affiliated business colleges and found four basic types: the master of science (MS), bachelor of science (BS), and nondegree certificate (NDC) in e-business, and the master in business administration (MBA) with a specialization or concentration in e-business. MBA programs were the most numerous. The most commonly offered e-business courses were E-Business Marketing in the MBA, MS, and NDC programs, and Introduction to E-Business in the BS programs. In this article, we provide further information on the e-business programs examined.

An assessment of classroom technology usage in business

While the intangible costs of learning and acquiring classroom technologies are still the major impediment to widespread adoption of classroom technologies, the extent to which the classroom technologies are used has become an important aspect in evaluating the educational quality of business schools. This study provides an initial assessment of the usage patterns of various classroom technologies in three business disciplines.

An investigation of the impact of financial viability model selection on audit costs: logit, multivariate discriminant analysis and artificial neural networks

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we provide evidence that relying on Type I, Type II and overall error rates to select a model for analysing the financial health of audit clients can result in greater costs than using our alternative approach. Secondly, we show that auditors who use an artificial neural network (ANN) as a tool to analyse the financial viability of audit clients need to consider the underlying ANN paradigm before developing a model in order to minimise audit costs. Our results show that a categorical learning neural network (CLN) minimises the overall cost associated with the auditor examination of audit client financial health. This ANN outperforms both statistical techniques and other ANN paradigms. Consequently, auditors who wish to minimise the total costs associated with their audits should use a CLN or similar type of ANN when assessing audit client financial health.