1,720,971 research outputs found
Translate IS governance framework into practice: The role of IT service management and IS performance evaluation
No full textIS governance is a recent topic, regarding powers, decisions and behavior linked with the steering of IT/IS investments and information systems (IS). All over the world several large companies are working to design their own IS governance framework, with the aim to pursue a better alignment between IS and business strategy, improve IS performance and outcomes, and reduce IT risk. As a matter of fact, IS governance attempts to fulfil a dual purpose: contributing to present business operations and performance, and transforming and positioning IS to meet future business challenges. However, IS governance should not only be designed, but also executed, that is, “to put it into practice”. Therefore it is necessary to link IS governance dimensions with IT processes and activities, in order to be able to achieve the goals set by the IS governance approach. These activities should be able to make IS evolve from the “as-is” situation to the ”to-be” configuration, attempting to optimize both the value of IT/IS investments and IT service quality. Companies are facing with a lot of difficulties in implementing their own IS governance framework, because both it is a new field of IS management and it requires a complete redesign of IS organization and processes. This reorganization could be supported by international standards and best practices, such as COBIT and ITIL, but they are not ready-to-use and companies have to struggle to find the right balance between best practice proposed by these standards and their own IS governance framework. The paper proposes a new IS governance framework focused on the relations among IS governance, IT Service Management and IS Performance Management and links it with effective roadmap and activities to implement it in a specific business environment
Using Social Networks in Smart City: organizational challenges, synergies and benefits
No full textThe opportunities and challenges implied by the use of Social Networks to enable government initia-tives have been only partially investigated by e-government and e-participation studies so far. In this paper, we suggest that the potentially strategic role of Social Networks in the creation of public val-ue could be better understood by analyzing the possible synergies between these systems and Smart City strategies. The Smart City approach, in fact, considers the citizen’s quality of life as the final performance indicator, and is particularly suitable to exploit the interactive, collective, collaborative and bottom-up nature of Social Networks. We identify two key aspects of Smart City Social Net-works: performance measurement issues and organizational issues. Then, by proposing a three-steps model for Social Network adoption in Smart City programs, we suggest the conditions under which these systems can contribute to improved municipal services, enhanced civic engagement, and better reciprocal awareness between the citizens and the public or private organizations in charge of Smart City initiatives. The contribution of this paper and its novelty resides on the specific focus on the role of Social Networks in Smart City initiatives. To our knowledge there are no scientific papers till now facing this topic of using Social Networks to enhance Smart City strategies
Knowledge and intellectual capital in smart city
No full textSmart city is a recent but growingly popular topic, focusing on how technology can improve the quality of life in cities. A smart city strategy leverages several types of technologies, but especially ICT, to solve some of the most important urban problems such as pollution, traffic, energy consumption, waste, while also creating opportunities for citizens. In fact, a smart city aims to improve the communication between people and the public administration and to support political participation through e-governance and e-democracy. Therefore, a smart city plan could also be seen as an urban knowledge platform, connecting citizens, businesses and public bodies, thus resulting in enhanced intellectual capital at the urban level. This paper aims to describe how a smart city strategy can create valuable intellectual capital. A literature analysis crosses the definition of both smart city and intellectual capital, outlining their overlapping contents. The key “smart” projects and initiatives included in the Genova smart city strategy (Italy) are presented as an exemplary case
The Current Environmental Strategy Reporting Model: What Can Be Learned from Corporate Reports?
No full textThis paper explores the information on environmental strategy. Our interest is to understand whether corporate reports are useful to assess a firm’s environmental performance. We developed an empirical investigation of annual reports and social reports of large public firms. Using content analysis, our findings show major differences among companies in sensitive, manufacturing/service and financial sectors in terms of: integration of environmental issues into corporate reporting model; disclosure of environmental information. We offer some relevant insights on the overlooked relation between environmental disclosure and environmental performance and on the predominant use of environmental qualitative and/or non financial measures. The study shows that there is: a lack of consideration paid to the relationship between environmental strategies and environmental performance; high variability and limited standardization in environmental practices. Consequently the comparability of environmental performance is very low. Furthermore, integrating theoretical and empirical findings, we suggest some implications to improve environmental disclosure practices
Accounting Information System and Knowledge Management System: an integrated approach for strategic control
No full textCentralization vs. Decentralization of Purchasing in the Public Sector: The Role of e-Procurement in the Italian Case
No full textIn this work, we sought to better understand the possible role of eprocurement in the evolving strategies of centralization (and decentralization) of public purchase centres. We conducted an explorative research study in the Italian context, where both centralization and decentralization of eprocurement have been experimented. The analysis of the Italian case highlighted an aspect that has been overlooked in literature so far: the strong and sudden centralization of purchasing caused by e-procurement adoption may present problems, especially in complex contexts with a past tradition of wide-spread de-centralized purchasing powers. The Italian case suggests that a possible solution may be the adoption of a hybrid model, where a centralized structure coordinates a network made of regional semi-centralized eprocurement
centres, which, in turn, mediate with local contexts and
involve or control the smallest agencies. The main features, strengths and weaknesses of this emerging organizational model for e-procurement agencies are discussed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Looking for Synergies between Accounting and Information Technologies
No full textDuring the latest years, ICT provided new opportunities for companies through Internet, digital technologies, the convergence between several media tools (audio, video, and so on), the development of some social utilities, such as wiki, chat, forum, instant messages, tweets, and social networks. These innovations required additional research efforts, also in the field of financial, management and strategic accounting, because companies need to discover if, how and where these new technologies can be applied. Additional investigations are required to understand how companies can employ integration and convergence between several ICT tools in order to enhance their ability of managing information, of taking better decisions, of improving organizational control and coordination, of being proactive and value
adding.
The leitmotif of this book is that these innovations require the shift of the focus from integration to synergy between accounting and ICT. Companies, and their managers, need to understand these new technologies and create an environment, in which ICT cooperate with the other components of accounting information system, in order to strength companies’ ability to guide activities towards objectives
- …
