Tor Guimaraes and Ketan Paranjape
This study aims to test the moderating impact of competition intensity on the relationships between the new product development (NPD) success factors and company success in NPD.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to test the moderating impact of competition intensity on the relationships between the new product development (NPD) success factors and company success in NPD.
Design/methodology/approach
A mailed questionnaire collected information from 311 manufacturing companies to test the proposed model with moderated multivariate regression analysis.
Findings
The results corroborate the impact of competition intensity on the relationships between the success factors individually and company success performing NPD.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the relatively broad scope of the proposed model, other success factors and/or moderating and mediating variables may also be important. As such, these variables should be identified and tested in future studies.
Practical implications
In practice, competition is viewed as an unavoidable factor beyond the control of managers within a company. Undeniably, competition is a great stimulant for business innovation. Thus, it is important for managers to understand the need, to focus attention managing the success factors most important to increase the likelihood of long-term success for NPD projects, particularly in markets under intense competition.
Originality/value
While the study is grounded on well-established literature, its major constructs originated from relatively isolated areas of knowledge. The major contribution is empirically testing an integrated model for variables considered important for success in NPD and the moderating effect of intense competition.
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Tor Guimaraes and Curtis Armstrong
The literature is abundant with articles extolling the importance of change as a necessity for business survival and growth. Specifically, business change means the redesigning of…
Abstract
The literature is abundant with articles extolling the importance of change as a necessity for business survival and growth. Specifically, business change means the redesigning of business processes, the improvement of the company’s products and/or services, and organizational changes to organizational structure and/or culture deemed necessary for better performance. Despite the importance of the topic, the existing literature contains little empirical evidence. Mostly superficial analyses and personal opinions have been published in this basic area. A field test of how effectively business organizations are implementing business changes, and use IS technology to do so, was undertaken to understand the important characteristics of the business change processes involved and to empirically test the relationships among these constructs. Despite the relatively small sample size, the results provide clear evidence about the importance of effectively managing business change for business success. The items used for measuring the main constructs provide further insights into how managers should go about managing necessary business changes, including IS department support for the change process to improve business performance.
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The voluminous body of literature on the management of change, including sub‐areas such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM), and product…
Abstract
The voluminous body of literature on the management of change, including sub‐areas such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM), and product improvement, implicitly or explicitly propose that company strategic intelligence is a pre‐requisite for change, and that effective information systems (IS) support is a critical requirement for implementing change. While these two hypotheses are exceedingly important, the existing literature contains no empirical evidence supporting them. A field test of how effectively small business organizations are identifying strategic problems and opportunities, how effectively they implement business changes, and use IS technology to do so, was undertaken to empirically test their relationships. Despite the relatively small sample size, the results provide clear evidence about the importance of competitive intelligence and IS support for effectively implementing change in small business organizations. The items used for measuring the main constructs provide further insights into how managers should go about acquiring competitive intelligence and managing IS technology to effectively support business improvements.
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Mariado Carmo Caccia-Bava, Valerie C.K. Guimaraes and Tor Guimaraes
Business process reengineering (BPR) is touted in the literature as the dramatic improvements necessary for competitiveness, but in practice there are many unsuccessful cases. A…
Abstract
Purpose
Business process reengineering (BPR) is touted in the literature as the dramatic improvements necessary for competitiveness, but in practice there are many unsuccessful cases. A more systematic and rigorous factor-assessment deemed important to each BPR phase and overall project success is needed. This paper aims to assess the extent to which proposed success factors in a hospital contribute to each BPR phase's success.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the relevant literature, desirable results from each project phase were defined. Overall project success was defined as the benefits hospital managers derive from BPR according to manager opinions. A total of 192 hospital administrators shared their last BPR experience, where changes were operational for at least one year.
Findings
Recommendations are made for hospital managers to focus attention and resources on factors important to BPR success. Hospital managers are not emphasizing the most important activities and tasks recommended in the BPR literature, such as changes to customer/market related business processes, every business activity's value-added element and applying the right innovative technology. Based on the whole findings, top managers should not engage BPR before ensuring that important success factors are present.
Originality/value
While many researchers identified and/or tested factors important to BPR success, this is the first study to explore BPR success factors' importance to each project phase, from inception to overall project success assessment phase.
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The literature prescribing important determinants of innovation success is grouped into four main areas encompassing strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of…
Abstract
Purpose
The literature prescribing important determinants of innovation success is grouped into four main areas encompassing strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the company's innovation process. Further, industry clockspeed has been considered to be a possible moderator for these determinants of innovation success. While these major areas of study may indeed be important to enhance company innovation and competitiveness, the existing literature on each area is not being shared by researchers in the other areas. That has led until now to the study of models relatively narrow in scope and primarily focused on the particular research area. This study aims to test these constructs as a set of determinants of innovation success and the possible moderating effect of industry clockspeed.
Design/methodology/approach
A field test using a mailed questionnaire to collect a relatively large sample has been used to test the proposed model. To eliminate possible multicollinearity among the independent variables, a multivariate regression analysis was used.
Findings
The results provide clear evidence about the importance of industry clockspeed as a moderator of the relationships between strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the company's innovation process with company success in business innovation. Also, the company's change process as defined here is equally important to low and high clockspeed industries for successfully implementing business innovations.
Research limitation/implications
Despite the relatively broad scope of the proposed model, other factors may also be important and should be included in future studies.
Practical implications
The items used for measuring the main constructs provide further and more specific insights into how managers should go about developing these areas within their organizations.
Originality/value
While the study is grounded in the literature of what until now have been four separate areas of knowledge, it proposed an integrated model for these areas important to business innovation, and empirically tested the model.
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Maria do Carmo Caccia‐Bava, Valerie C.K. Guimaraes and Tor Guimaraes
Hospitals have adopted new policies, methods and technologies to change their processes, improve services, and support other organizational changes necessary for better…
Abstract
Purpose
Hospitals have adopted new policies, methods and technologies to change their processes, improve services, and support other organizational changes necessary for better performance. The literature regarding the four major areas of strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the organization's change process propose their importance in successfully implementing organization innovation. While these factors may indeed be important to enhance hospital performance, the existing literature contains limited empirical evidence supporting their relationship to successfully implementing innovation in hospitals. This study aims to empirically test these relationships proposed in the literature by researchers in separate knowledge areas.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of 223 hospitals has been used to test an integrated model of these relationships. The response rate and the representativeness of the sample in terms of hospital size and geographical location were found satisfactory. The quality assurance/compliance managers for each hospital were the target respondents to questions, which require a corporate perspective while reducing the chance of bias for questions regarding top management leadership abilities.
Findings
The results provide clear evidence about the importance of strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the hospital's change process to the hospitals success in implementing innovation.
Practical implications
Given the importance of hospitals to change their processes, improve services, and support other organizational changes necessary for better performance, a great benefit is that the main factors for successful innovation have been brought together from scattered literature and tested among hospitals. Further, the items used for measuring the main constructs provide further insights into how hospital administrators should go about developing these areas within their organizations.
Originality/value
This study is a first attempt at empirically testing the importance of strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the hospital's change process for the success of innovation efforts.
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Maria do Carmo Caccia-Bava, Valerie C.K. Guimaraes and Tor Guimaraes
Without use the expected benefits from healthcare management systems (HMS) cannot be derived. Thus, while use alone may not guarantee success, one can safely assume that the more…
Abstract
Purpose
Without use the expected benefits from healthcare management systems (HMS) cannot be derived. Thus, while use alone may not guarantee success, one can safely assume that the more use the better. HMS has been instrumental in facilitating care providers’ work. However, many hospitals have encountered usage problems and some user-related factors have been recognized in the literature as potentially important to make HMS more successful. The purpose of this paper is to test the importance of the factors proposed in the literature as important determinants of HMS usage measured by the number of hours used and the frequency of use.
Design/methodology/approach
Several user-related variables such as user participation, user expertise, and user training previously studied separately by different authors are brought together into an integrated model to be tested empirically. Data from 213 nurses using their hospital HMS have been used to test proposed relationships between the independent variables and HMS usage results.
Findings
The results confirm the importance of these factors and provide the basis for managerial recommendations. Hospital managers can use the resources validated by this study to improve their own operations and improve the likelihood of success implementing HMS. Future research projects may identify other possible factors important for HMS implementation success to improve the model proposed here.
Originality/value
HMS is a very widely used and an important system for hospitals, but has been neglected in research. This is one of the first rigorous studies of HMS, and the results provide new practical insights for hospital administrators.
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Maria do Carmo Caccia‐Bava, Valerie C.K. Guimaraes and Tor Guimaraes
Business process reengineering has been touted in the literature as a dramatic improvement necessary for organization competitiveness, but in practice there are many unsuccessful…
Abstract
Purpose
Business process reengineering has been touted in the literature as a dramatic improvement necessary for organization competitiveness, but in practice there are many unsuccessful cases. Thus, there is need for a more systematic and rigorous assessment of the factors deemed important to project success. The main objective of this study is to examine this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
For this research, success has been defined as the benefits the hospital has derived from the BPR project, according to top managers' opinions. A sample of 192 hospital administrators shared their organizations' experience with their last BPR project implementation, where the changes have been operational for at least one year.
Findings
Based on the results, recommendations are made for hospital managers to focus attention and resources on factors important to BPR project success. In general, hospitals are not emphasizing some of the most important activities and tasks recommended in the BPR literature, such as changes to customer/market‐related business processes, the value‐added element of every business activity, and applying the right innovative technology.
Originality/value
Based on the findings as a whole, it behoves top managers not to engage in BPR before ensuring the presence of the success factors found to be important.
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Tor Guimaraes, Nils Martensson, Johan Stahre and Magid Igbaria
As the increase in manufacturing competitiveness forces organizations to use more sophisticated and complex software, system performance depends on clever systems design…
Abstract
As the increase in manufacturing competitiveness forces organizations to use more sophisticated and complex software, system performance depends on clever systems design, efficient planning and scheduling of the related processes. For these advanced manufacturing systems the dependence on human competence is greater. However, previous studies indicate that the human aspects for successfully implementing such systems have been neglected. The objective here is to test the hypotheses that system complexity is inversely related to performance, and that training of system operators, and the quality of the man/machine interface reduces the negative impact of system complexity. A sample of discreet manufacturing systems from 128 organizations was used to test these hypotheses empirically. Moderated multivariate regression indicates that man/machine interfaces are significant contributors to reducing the negative effect of systems complexity. With a lower level of significance, operator training has a similar impact. For complex manufacturing systems software, it behoves managers to insure that the man/machine interface provides the desirable features outlined in this study.
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Business process re‐engineering(BPR) has been touted by many as dramatic improvements become necessary for organizations to improve competitiveness and remain strong participants…
Abstract
Business process re‐engineering(BPR) has been touted by many as dramatic improvements become necessary for organizations to improve competitiveness and remain strong participants in economic development. While as a concept BPR is like “motherhood and apple pie”, in practice there are many unsuccessful cases. Aims to identify and rate the importance of factors proposed as important for successfully implementing BPR projects in organizations, the extent to which various problems and benefits are being encountered, the extent to which proposed BPR objectives are being included in project plans and are actually being derived, and the impact of BPR projects on specific business processes and on the organization as a whole. Tests several basic hypotheses regarding the BPR implementation process, and makes recommendations for managers to focus attention and resources on factors important to success, and to proceed in a fashion which minimizes the risk of failure.