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The impact of a limited budget on the corrective action taking process
No full textThe main goal of project control is to identify the deviations between the baseline schedule and the actual progress of the project by measuring the project performance in progress and using the project control methodologies to generate warning signals that act as triggers for corrective actions to bring the project back on track. To that purpose, tolerance limits are set on the required project performance, such that if the warning signals exceed these limits, they should result in appropriate corrective actions. In this paper, the Earned Value Management (EVM) control method and its extensions are used to test their abilities in taking corrective actions under a budget constraint. More precisely, four different approaches are proposed for allocating the limited budget along the different project phases, and whether a proper allocation of the budget results in an increase of the expected project outcome is measured. A large computational experiment is conducted on a set of artificial projects to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the budget allocation models. Results show that simply allocating budget according to the time accrue of projects performs better than methods that take cost, time/cost or risk information into account. Moreover, results indicate that allocating a budget that increases in later stages of the project is beneficial for the outcome
IT strategy for growth at Fagron
No full textThe case takes us back to March 2010, when Fagron - a multinational pharmaceutical company focusing on speciality pharma - underwent a strategic transformation to turn the company into a worldwide, scalable organisation. In the case, we follow the newly-appointed Chief Information Officer, Rene Clavaux, who had been asked to lead the Information Management department. As a non-traditional, innovation-driven IT professional, Rene was put in charge of a department that had always been viewed as subordinate to the rest of the organisation. At the Executive Committee meeting of March 2010, he was expected to outline a clear IT strategy to support Fagron's growth, starting with a clear mission statement for the IM department
Essays on the future of employee mobility
No full textIn this dissertation, we empirically examine a new model of employee mobility in large, hierarchical organizations. Our focus is on three guiding questions: (1) What processes are replacing conventional mobilization and development approaches? And what technologies are expected to play a key role therein?; (2) What technology design are organizations applying to revise their approaches to employee mobility and development?; (3) How do employees experience individual work and development in these new marketplaces of work? We find that traditional mobility models are being replaced by more nimble and market-like forms of mobility that provide employees unprecedented opportunities to self-direct their careers within their broader organization. We emphasize both the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and identify several areas of future inquiry
Academy of Management Proceedings
No full textCrowdfunding research has grown exponentially since the first academic papers on the topic in 2013 and received relatively more attention by academics than its importance in the economy would warrant. As no research exists that may guide our research question on how academics chose their research topic, this paper qualitatively explores through thirty interviews with crowdfunding scholars how the craze for crowdfunding research can be explained. Three categories of reasons emerged: scientific reasons, career reasons and socio-psychological reasons. Within each overarching category, we identify two or three second order themes, which are further split up in first order concepts. We hereby contribute not only to increase our understanding of how academics chose their research topics, but also to the adjacent theories of management fashions and schooling.
Academy of Management Proceedings
No full textWhile high-growth firms are important providers of innovation, employment, and wealth, it is not clear how a young firm’s top management team navigates the process of scaling their business into such a firm. One particular challenge young firms must learn to overcome if they want to grow is the ‘people’ challenge. This paper studies the boundary conditions of the adoption of high-performance work practices as a means to help overcome the growing pains of these firms. Building on the attention-based view, we show that the adoption of these practices uncovers a paradox which is subject to the influence of financial performance and the team’s previous entrepreneurial experience.
Kaffee kostuum: A dilemma in retail financials
No full textJohn Dong, the founder and CEO of Kaffee Kostuum, was puzzled. He had executed his business plan down to the smallest detail. His company had realized tremendous growth in only five years, topping his target of €1 million1 in revenue by the end of this fiscal year. But somehow, his business was more cash-intensive than expected. The return on sales was less than 6%. Dong examined, once more, the options provided by a team of summer intern MBA students and wondered how to proceed
North meets South: A call for inclusive global research
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic is emphasising the extent of inequalities, both between and within societies. In the dynamics between nations, these inequalities revolve around the reliance on international funding bodies for humanitarian aid — and what happens when these big funders withdraw their support
Project schedule performance under general mode implementation disruptions
No full textThis paper presents a simulation study for a resource-constrained project scheduling problem with multiple alternatives. We decide on a set of baseline schedules at the project planning phase, resulting in options to switch between execution modes of activities during project execution. We assess the performance of the set of baseline schedules under general mode implementation disruptions. A simple, yet effective algorithm is presented to construct the set of baseline schedules. Moreover, a general disruption system is proposed to model different disruption types, disruption dependencies and disruption sizes.The first author acknowledges the support provided by the Ph.D. fellowship of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO)
Imitation of Management Practices in Supply Networks: Relational and Environmental Effects
No full textThis study investigates the imitative use of management practices across a multitier supply network. Although imitation may take the form of any management practice, operationally, we focus on whether the buyer’s control practices used with first‐tier suppliers results in similar control practices being used by these first‐tier suppliers with the second‐tier suppliers. Drawing on institutional theory, we identify relational context (i.e., affective commitment) and environmental context (i.e., environmental uncertainty) as two important factors influencing the extent to which such imitation takes place. Using unique survey data of vertically linked supply chain triads, we generally find support for the occurrence of imitation and more so in cases of high affective commitment. The results regarding environmental uncertainty further reveal selectivity in imitative behavior, calling attention to the level of deliberateness in imitation decisions in supply networks. Besides contributing to theory on imitative behaviors in the supply chain, this study also generates practical implications on the spread of management practices across multiple tiers
Big data and firm performance: The roles of market-directed capabilities and business strategy
No full textDespite being the object of much interest, deep insights regarding why and when investments in big data resources enhance firm performance are lacking in the literature. Building on the resource-based view (RBV) and data provided by 301 senior marketing managers, this study reveals that big data resources primarily improve firm performance by enhancing the market-directed capabilities of the firm. In addition, the data indicate that firms pursuing a differentiation rather than cost-leadership strategy gain most from big data resource investments and that such resources account for 13 % of the variance in the performance of firms pursuing a differentiation strategy