Omar Khalil

Information technology enabled meta-management for virtual organizations

Abstract Virtual organizations (VO) have recently evolved as a new paradigm of organization design in pursuit of competitive advantages, and in response to electronic commerce (EC) requirements. The management of VO, called meta-management, provides a systematic approach to the exploitation of competitive economic advantages for a VO. It consists of basic activities including analyzing and tracking requirements, allocating satisfiers to requirements, and adjusting the optimality criteria. Information technology (IT) is the essential foundation for the formation and management of VO. A framework that describes the enabling role of IT at the three responsibility levels of meta-management is presented, and future research is suggested.

Determinants of internet adoption in small and medium-sized enterprises

This study builds on the existing research on internet adoption in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A research model was postulated to contain three organisational independent variables – company size, financial condition, and technological readiness – that are believed to influence internet adoption within SMEs. Using data from 94 SMEs, technological readiness variables were found to influence the overall measure of internet adoption and four of its components: e-mail use; website sophistication; internet use for marketing support; and internet use for marketing intelligence. Company size was found to be positively related to only the overall internet-adoption measure and none of its components. Financial condition, on the other hand, was found to have no influence on the internet adoption or any of its components. The findings are discussed and implications are explained.

Knowledge Acquisitions and Transfer in Egyptian Software Firms

This investigation explored knowledge acquisition and transfer practice in the Egyptian software firms. It used a combination of a cross-sectional field survey of 38 firms and an in-depth qualitative analysis of 14 firms. Although most of the firms in the sample recognized the importance of knowledge, their idiosyncrasies appeared to affect the way knowledge is acquired and transferred. The firms were found to have a limited use of their software developers’ initiatives, R&D, and the academic and research institutions as sources for knowledge acquisition. They were also found to have limited capabilities in transferring and sharing knowledge. The Egyptian culture is rich in the social and emotional capital, which can play an important role in building relationships, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, and sharing of experience. Egyptian software firms should develop and implement KM strategies that attract expert software developers, capitalize on trust and social relationships, and build IT-based KM systems in order to enable knowledge acquisition and transfer.

Knowledge Documentation and Application in Egyptian Software Firms

Employing an in-depth qualitative analysis research method, this investigation explored knowledge documentation and application practices in 14 Egyptian software firms. Although they appear to document and apply knowledge variably, the firms generally have limited capabilities in documenting and applying their knowledge. Knowledge that is not captured and documented cannot be reused effectively. To cope with the knowledge documentation problems, the firms have adopted techniques such as having multiple developers possess the same project-related knowledge, using multiple-year appointment contracts, leveraging their emotional capital and improving loyalty. Also, the firms have no formal strategies that determine and guide knowledge application in software development, which may leave the firms with significant portions of their knowledge capital inactive. Software firms need to leverage the Egyptian culture, which is rich in social and emotional capital, and develop strategies and systems in order to tap the knowledge that is distributed, scattered and embedded within their routines and the skills of their software developers into organisational knowledge bases and active knowledge capitals.

Information systems and total quality management: establishing the link

Many Total quality Management (TQM) implementations have failed to achieve the long-term, substantial gains promised by TQM proponents. Scholars and practitioners blame these failures on different causes which can be linked either directly or indirectly to insufficient support by information systems (IS) to TQM efforts. While IS is a key part of the infrastructure for TQM, its supporting role has not received much attention in the mostly prescriptive TQM literature. IS and TQM share a considerable degree of commonality in their end objectives and in their underlying philosophies and management systems. Their success hinges on the effective planning and implementation of each. This paper introduces a proposed framework to establish a link between the two. The two approaches appear to be entirely compatible and capable of being combined into a composite model of action for an organization seeking to maximize its competitive position.

IT adoption and manufacturing performance in Kuwaiti industrial corporations

Companies expect to gain competitive advantages as well as many tangible and intangible benefits as a result of adopting IT in manufacturing and operations. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between information technology (IT) applications and performance in sixty-one Kuwaiti industrial companies. IT adoption included applications that facilitate internal and external information sharing and applications that support manufacturing. Usage of IT applications varied across applications and companies. Manufacturing performance was evaluated along the five dimensions of cost, quality, delivery, flexibility, and productivity. Perceived use of intranets, computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), quality control systems, and forecasting systems were found to have significant relationships with a number of manufacturing performance measures and their elements. The findings are discussed, and conclusions are made.

Data Quality and Database Marketing

The objective of this study is to elaborate on the role of DBM in marketing strategy, identifY data quality barriers, and to discuss ways of improving data quality. The paper is organized accordingly: (i) Marketing and DBM, (ii) Data Quality Issues, (iii) Data Quality Management, and (iv) Conclusions.

Electronic Commerce Use in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The Internet and Electronic Commerce (EC) related practices were surveyed in ninety-four small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a region of the Northeastern United States. Only 6.3 percent of the firms’ sales was found to be attributable to e-commerce business. The results suggest some relationships of a firm’s sales and profitability on one hand and the firm’s Internet use on the other hand. Firms that rated their profitability and sales levels to be higher seem to have higher use of the Internet to gather distributor and vendor information, to conduct online purchasing, and to promote their products online. The majority of the firms surveyed tend to use e-mail to a great extent for communications internally among employees and externally with customers, vendors and distributors. Higher levels of e-mail usage for internal and external communications tend to associate with higher levels of reported sales and profitability. However, the findings suggest that most of the SMEs do not employ the Internet to its full capacity. In order for SMEs to advance their EC activities they need to develop their own EC strategies and to secure the managerial, human, financial, and technological resources to effectively implement them.