Firms continuously report increased competitive value gains from the use of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A), however, little is known about how insights from BI&A are transformed to added value to date. We have conducted fourteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of informants in CEO positions, IT managers, CIO, Heads of R&D, as well as Market Managers from nine medium or large-sized European firms. Applying the absorptive capacity’s theoretical lens, we have provided evidence that absorptive capacity’s capabilities are an underlying foundation in the process of transforming BI&A triggered insights into valuable knowledge. Moreover, this process is supported by technological, human, and relationship assets.
COBISS.SI-ID: 24874214
Although career proactivity has positive consequences for an individual's career success, studies mostly examine objective measures of success within single countries. This raises important questions about whether proactivity is equally beneficial for different aspects of subjective career success, and the extent to which these benefits extend across cultures. Drawing on Social Information Processing theory, we examined the relationship between proactive career behaviors and two aspects of subjective career success—financial success and work-life balance—and the moderating role of national culture. We tested our hypotheses using multilevel analyses on a large- scale sample of 11,892 employees from 22 countries covering nine of GLOBE's 10 cultural clusters. Although we found that proactive career behaviors were positively related to subjective financial success, this relationship was not significant for work- life balance. Furthermore, career proactivity was relatively more important for subjective financial success in cultures with high in-group collectivism, high power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance. For work-life balance, career proactivity was relatively more important in cultures characterized by high in-group collectivism and humane orientation. Our findings underline the need to treat subjective career success as a multidimensional construct and highlight the complex role of national culture in shaping the outcomes of career proactivity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 24648678
According to the Ageing Report 2015 (EC, 2015), the number of workers in Europe will decline for 20 million by 2060. The question thus arises how this shrinking pool of workers unequally dispersed in the European regions will influence the competitiveness and profitability of global supply chains and location of the production and distribution nodes. The corporation, whose activity cells are located in the local area which is a net importer of human resources, has to pay higher average wages than the corporation, whose facilities are located in the district from which the labour is exported. If higher wages do not cover these differences, they create incentives to commute into other functional regions. So, the intensity of the flow of items (inventories in the process) and intensity of the inflow of human resources interact in the area in which the activity cell is located and influence the profit of corporations. The aim is to present an innovative approach to the integration of the gravity model of spatially dispersed human resources with the supply systems described by extended MRP Theory. The dynamics of delineation of functional regions is assumed to respond immediately to the changes in the differences between wages and commuting costs, which is also a novelty of this compound model. In our study, these two analytical models interact and merge in the compact form for studying the profitability of activities under the volatile intensity of the production flows; this represents a new approach to the evaluation of the present value of chain. Our method enables us to evaluate an expected long-term stream of profit. This is an important tool for managers and owners, who might have different options regarding where to place and invest in an activity cell, as it enables them to forecast the influences of the localities and wages on the profit stream before deciding to open or to close and to intensify or not their activities in the particular central place of a functional region.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8180321
In Europe, the number of people aged 65 or older is about to grow from 85 million today to more than 151 million in 2060, with a decrease of 20 million in the number of workers. To keep the public finances and pension funds sustainable, the retirement age of industrial workers in national pension schemes is rising. However, workers in some specific workplaces are not able to work until they have reached the increased retirement age. Often they are producing fewer products, in some workplaces also with lower quality, and they are causing substantial delays in the multi-echelon system mostly because of response latency. On the other hand, value-added, personalised products/services often demand skilled and experienced older workers, who need better ergonomic support. To solve this problem, companies have two options: (a) to develop new supplementary occupational pension schemes which would compensate the required increase in retirement age or (b) to invest in ergonomic improvements of the working places/processes, to provide a better working environment and reduce the response latency. In this paper, the trade-off between these two options is investigated, by introducing a model based on MRP theory for evaluating the Net Present Value (NPV) of activities and investments of a multi-echelon system. The numerical example related to the production of cars in Italy shows that even varying the cost of labour and the investment in collaborative robots, the model demonstrates that investments in ergonomics in case of ageing workforce increases the total NPV of the multi-echelon system.
COBISS.SI-ID: 39869445
To survive in a dynamic and hyper-competitive business environment, firms are compelled to simultaneously introduce incremental and radical innovations. While it is recognised that business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) can support innovation and provide organisational value, the literature provides a limited understanding of its impact on balancing different innovation activities and ensuring performance gains. In this study, we examine the relationship between BI&A use, innovation ambidexterity, and firm performance by relying on the process theory of IS value creation as well as the dynamic capabilities perspective. We test our model using data collected from medium- and large-sized firms in Slovenia, applying partial least squares modelling. The results support the notion that BI&A use is positively associated with successful balancing between explorative and exploitative innovation activities, which in turn enhances firm performance. Our results also indicate that innovation ambidexterity is enhanced in two ways: indirectly through interaction with the firm’s absorptive capacity, and directly by increasing the possibilities of faster experimentation with offerings of products or services and improved predictability of the value of new products or services.
COBISS.SI-ID: 25359846