Business Decision-making Process Research Articles

The Potential of The Big Data Implementation, in Serbia, in the context of Marketing Research

Research question: Big Data represents a true business revolution in many areas, and, as such, in marketing research, as well. The subject of this study is the analysis of the existing stage, as well as of the achieved results in the implementation of the Big Data Technology in Serbia. Motivation: The success in managing the company depends on the ability to provide quality and comprehensive information by establishing personalized (1:1) communication with consumers on the global market in real or near real-time. This form of communication has become an imperative of the modern business decision-making process. Advanced Internet technologies, Cloud Computing (Cloud Technology), Big Data and Artificial Intelligence open a significant business potential for companies in Serbia to emerge on global markets. Idea: of this study is to perceive current business environment in Serbia through the prism of research development based on the Big Data technologies. Relevant hypotheses and conducted research have been set up with the aim of pointing to the potential of applying modern information-communication technologies, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and the Big Data concept. Data: The survey was conducted on 154 business entities from the Serbian Business Register Agency’s database. The applied sampling method was a random analysis (selection was made randomly from the total number of selected companies, with the same probability of choice). Tools: An online survey was used, and respondents were contacted via e-mail. Findings: Research results, opinions and attitudes of managers, experts in the fields of marketing research and information technology, indicate a significant degree of justifiability of investments in new technologies in the Republic of Serbia and result in several proposals of certain measures and recommendations of incentives that should be conducted by the State. Contribution: The solutions in this paper are based upon the implementation of standardized procedures and advanced tools that could be used to overcome a "bottleneck" in the existing IT infrastructure, in order to enable a rapid collection and implementation of enabled data.

Teaching Case. The Case of Assabi: Expanding the Learning on Sustainability Through an Experiential Qualitative Multi-Criteria Decision Making Activity

ABSTRACTThis teaching case study provides a learning context to explore the integration of sustainability concepts into business decision-making processes from multiple stakeholder perspectives. The case study consists of the simulation of a multi-criteria decision process in a fictitious story about stakeholders interested in the export of frozen fruit pulp from the Amazon forest in Brazil to a large supermarket chain in the UK. Within this case, we present: the key stakeholders and their interests; the alternatives for negotiation and; indicators related to financial performance and the economic, social and environmental impacts predicted by the implementation of each alternative. The learning activities are structured using an integration of Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and learning in teams with a qualitative engagement with a Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA). Student groups experience the role of stakeholders by representing their values, knowledge, and preferences in an interactive process where they are progressively exposed to different levels of information about the decision and its consequences. The activity has the potential to offer a practical and complementary contribution in different learning environments to accounting and business decision-making for sustainability.

“Rapid” but not “raid”

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain how rapid ethnography (RE) is used to understand the business decision-making process of micro-entrepreneurs. The objective of this paper is to highlight the applicability of RE in entrepreneurship research and outline practical strategies that can be used by future RE researchers.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is written as a reflection using the author’s experience in using RE.FindingsThis paper highlights that RE can be used as a research technique in entrepreneurship research. The study shows how to incorporate technological advances into RE without violating the underlying ethnographic principles. The paper also explains how preparation, planning, technology-assisted techniques, non-traditional socialisation processes, and multiple and parallel data collection strategies enhance the effectiveness of RE. The paper outlines practical strategies for researchers such as collaborations, using field guides, clear schedules and time gaps in the data collection.Originality/valueAlthough RE is widely used in research related to human-computer interactions, medicine, education and marketing, RE in entrepreneurship research seems to be limited. Thus, this paper explores this gap and contributes to the scholarly field of entrepreneurship research by highlighting the methodological potential of RE. In addition, the paper contributes empirically to the qualitative research domain by explaining practical steps in using RE.

THE APPLICATION OF THE MS EXCEL PROGRAM AND THE INFORMALIZED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ANALYTICS PLATFORMS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ENTERPRISES

Rapid progress is being made in the field of IT applications in the analysis of the economic and financial situation of enterprises and in the processes supporting management of organizations. In terms of the fastest growing areas of information and communication technology, which are the prerequisites for the progress of online electronic banking, it is necessary to disseminate the standards of financial operations have been carried out. The cloud as well as the use of large data sets in the so-called. Big Data platforms. The current Big Data technology solutions are not just large databases, data warehouses allow for multifaceted analysis of huge volumes of quantitative data for periodic managerial reporting. Business decision-making processes should be based on the analysis of reliable and up-to-date market and business data. The information necessary for the decision-making processes has been collected, stored, ordered and pre-summed up in the form of Business Intelligence analytics reports in corporations. Business Intelligence analyzes give managers the ability to analyze the large data sets in real time, which significantly contributes to improving business management efficiency. At present, business analytics use either the advanced analytical formulas of Ms Excel or computerized platforms that include ready-made Business Intelligence reporting formulas.

Clustering retail products based on customer behaviour

The categorization of retail products is essential for the business decision-making process. It is a common practice to classify products based on their quantitative and qualitative characteristics. In this paper, we use a purely data-driven approach. Our clustering of products is based exclusively on the customer behaviour. We propose a method for clustering retail products using market basket data. Our model is formulated as an optimization problem which is solved by a genetic algorithm. It is demonstrated on simulated data how our method behaves in different settings. The application using real data from a Czech drugstore company shows that our method leads to similar results in comparison with the classification by experts. The number of clusters is a parameter of our algorithm. We demonstrate that if more clusters are allowed than the original number of categories is, the method yields additional information about the structure of the product categorization.

Uncovering Urban Temporal Patterns from Geo-Tagged Photography.

We live in a world where digital trails of different forms of human activities compose big urban data, allowing us to detect many aspects of how people experience the city in which they live or come to visit. In this study we propose to enhance urban planning by taking into a consideration individual preferences using information from an unconventional big data source: dataset of geo-tagged photographs that people take in cities which we then use as a measure of urban attractiveness. We discover and compare a temporal behavior of residents and visitors in ten most photographed cities in the world. Looking at the periodicity in urban attractiveness, the results show that the strongest periodic patterns for visitors are usually weekly or monthly. Moreover, by dividing cities into two groups based on which continent they belong to (i.e., North America or Europe), it can be concluded that unlike European cities, behavior of visitors in the US cities in general is similar to the behavior of their residents. Finally, we apply two indices, called “dilatation attractiveness index” and “dilatation index”, to our dataset which tell us the spatial and temporal attractiveness pulsations in the city. The proposed methodology is not only important for urban planning, but also does support various business and public stakeholder decision processes, concentrated for example around the question how to attract more visitors to the city or estimate the impact of special events organized there.

Title: Ethical consequences in business decision process

In this paper, the author tries to present the ethical dilemma in business decision process in Greece’s frustrating economic environment. The author used the SSD decision approach in order to establish the theoretical background provided in terms of decision making and consequences.

Hadoop based Weblog Analysis: A Review

The growth of websites and the Internet has opened up new research, social, entertainment, education and business opportunities. With the fast growth of the Internet, the digital data generated by the websites is becoming so massive that the traditional text software and relational database technology faces a bottleneck while processing such massive data and the results generated by these technologies are not satisfactory. Cloud computing offers a good solution for this problem. Cloud computing is not only capable of storing such massive data but also capable of processing and analyzing such voluminous data faster, by making use of distributed storage and distributed computing technology. A weblog is a group of connected web pages that consists of a log or daily record of information, particular fields or views which is altered, every now and then, by owner of site, other websites or by website users. An enterprise weblog analysis system based on Hadoop architecture with Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Hadoop MapReduce Software Framework and Pig Latin Language aids the business decision-making process of the system administrators and helps them to collect and identify the potential value which is hidden within such huge data generated by the websites. Such a weblog analysis includes the analysis of an Internet site’s entry log as well as provides information about the amount of visitors, days of week and rush hours, views, hits, very often accessed pages, application server traffic trends, performance reports at varying intervals and statistical reports which indicate the performance of program.

Integrated risk management in the Indian banking sector and impact of credit risk management on the banks’ profitability

The emphasis, on risk management at banks, is growing globally and there is an urgent need for scheduled commercial banks in India, to integrate risk management processes with business and operating models. In addition, banks will also have to significantly enhance its stress testing capabilities and increase their knowledge on risk-management related, data requirements and analytics. The risk management processes at banks, need to be better integrated with their business and operating models. For this, risk management needs to be viewed as a key part of strategy and operations and go well beyond merely being a compliance exercise. Besides, there is a need to incorporate risk-based capital performance measures and stress testing more centrally into business decision-making processes. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether a relationship exists between credit risk management and profitability of scheduled commercial banks in India. In order to test our hypothesis, we used multivariate regression. Findings indicate that there is a positive relationship between credit risk management and profitability of scheduled commercial banks.

데이터 품질관리가 데이터 활용도 및 고객 지향성에 미치는 영향

낮은 품질의 데이터가 기업의 효율적인 운영과 신속한 의사결정을 저해한다는 이슈가 제기되고 있다. 이에, 본 연구는 경영층의 지원과 경쟁력이 심화되고 있는 경영환경이 데이터 활용 품질관리 활동의 영향요인이 될 수 있는지, 해당 활동이 업무처리 또는 의사결정을 위한 데이터 활용을 촉진시킴으로써 고객 지향성에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는지 살펴보았다. 연구결과 데이터 활용 품질관리는 데이터를 업무처리에 직접적 또는 의사결정에 활용하는데 긍정적인 영향요인이 될 수 있으며, 데이터 활용이 고객지향성에 간접적인 효과를 줄 수 있음을 확인하였다. 본 연구는 직접적인 매출 향상의 성과를 기대할 수 있을 것 같지 않다는 인식으로 데이터 품질관리의 중요성을 간과하는 기업의 경영자들에게 데이터 품질관리활동의 가치 및 경영층의 지원에 대한 실무적 함의를 제시하였다. It is a problem that the poor quality of data hinder the efficient operation and rapid decision-making in enterprises. Thus, we examined if the management class support and business environment could influence the data utilization management in this research. We also verified that relevant activity promotes data utilization for the handling of work or decision-making, thereby affecting customer orientation. The study showed that data utilization quality control is a positive factor for utilizing data for better business decision-making process. It was also confirmed that utilizing the data has indirect effect on customer orientation. Finally we suggested the practical implications to the corporate executives. Future research will be needed to find relationships between data quality management and other factors including management performance.

Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility in the Economy of Kosovo

Corporate governance is now a mainstream issue of concern in the business world. According to Igalens and Point (2009), which define corporate social responsbility (CSR) reporting appears as to be one of the most important new worldwide governance practices, as CSR reporting can be regarded as reflecting the evolution of companies governance systems from a shareholder perspective to reflect broader stakeholders concerns. The best corporate governance constitutes an essential factor for the survival of large corporations and enterprises or businesses in any country, but more important for countries in transition. The objective of this paper is to explore the development of corporate governance practices, their legal framework and specifically in Kosovo. An important place in this paper is the role and corporate social responsibility in society, governance based on the best models possible. Elaborating important aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR), this concept define increasingly focused on corporate governance as a vehicle for incorporating social and environmental concerns and they're considered as arguments into the business decision-making process, benefiting not only financial investors but also employees, consumers, communities and other stakeholder. Currently, corporate governance is being linked more and more with business practices and public policies that are stakeholder-friendly. At the end of this paper will also explain the current situation analysis of how corporate governance and their social responsibilities in a transition economy such as Kosovo.

Impact of ICT Innovative Momentum on Real-Time Accounting

Abstract Background: Enterprises are entering into the era of the real-time economy, also called the “now economy”, which can be characterized by a substantive acceleration of business measurement, assessment and decision processes. The real-time reporting, as a phenomenon of the now economy, presents a new challenge to the Accounting Information Systems. The current long wave of prosperity is characterized by an innovative momentum of ICT, with several disruptive innovations, far from being completely utilized. Objectives: Possible future potentialities and consequences of this innovative momentum of ICT on the real-time reporting are analysed within a network scenario approach. Methods/Approach: The used approach is the Futures Wheel, a structured brainstorming method that structures ideas about future events, issues, trends, and strategy, organised under several layers of rings of consequences. Results: The innovative momentum has certain visible direct consequences such as smart mobile devices, higher business intelligence, improved enterprise architecture and enterprise application integration, cloud services offer or increased business process maturity in organizations, and a significant number of indirect consequences on the real-time accounting. Conclusions: The actual innovative momentum of ICT has a vast set of indirect opportunities for the real-time reporting which, after a proper plan, can address its implementation.

Accounting Information in a Business Decision-Making Process – Evidence from Croatia

Abstract The objective of the conducted research includes examining importance of financial statements and financial statements analysis in business decision-making process. Conducted empirical research is focused on analysis of determining and evaluating the frequency of using accounting data and annual financial statements within the business decision-making process. According to obtained results, it can be concluded that more than 60% of examines frequently use accounting information and information available from annual financial statements within business decision-making process, and that they are familiar with methods of using technics of financial statements analysis for purposes of evaluating financial position and business efficiency.

English

The present paper sought to apply the theoretical framework of Wright-Pickton on Competitive Intelligence (CI) to the business practice reality within the telecommunications industry in Brazilian firms. The aim of the study was to examine the current Brazilian scenario, which is to contribute to the improvement of that model. With this in mind, we devised a set of managerial advice in view of enhancing the Competitive Intelligence function, thus acknowledging such feature as being vital to the strategic decision-making process. Herein, the telecommunications industry has been thoroughly investigated in its value chain. To this end, the data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews with the executives in charge of the areas or functions that were comparable to the concept of Competitive Intelligence in their respective companies. Finally, the conclusions show that both aspects "data collection" and "use of CI outputs" are distant from what the Framework recognizes as ideal. Consequently, those points still need effective betterments to approximate the practice as much as possible of the company's strategy. Ultimately, this paper brings to light some pivotal discussions towards what CI is and its applications in business decision-making processes to add new insights to the theoretical framework of practice.   Key words: Competitive intelligence, Brazilian scenario, market analysis, Wright-Pickton, telecommunications.

The history of Western futures studies: An exploration of the intellectual traditions and three-phase periodization

The main purpose of this paper is to present a three-phase periodization of modern Western futures studies to construct historical classification. In order to reach this goal, the following intellectual traditions are introduced to review the philosophical and historical contexts that affect the very foundations of futures studies: (a) religions, (b) utopias, (c) historicism, (d) science fiction, and (e) systems thinking. The first phase (beginning in 1945 to the 1960s) was the era of scientific inquiry and rationalization of the futures characterized by the prevalence of technological forecasting, the rise of alternative futures in systematic ways, and the growth of professionalization of futures studies. In the first phase, futures had become objects of rationalization removed from the traditional approaches such as utopia, grandiose evolutionary ideas, naive prophecies, science fiction, religious attitudes, and mystical orientation. The second phase (the 1970s and the 1980s) saw the creation the global institution and industrialization of the futures. This era was marked by the rise of worldwide discourse on global futures, the development of normative futures, and the deep involvement of the business community in futures thinking. In the second phase, futures studies-industry ties were growing and the future-oriented thoughts extensively permeated the business decision-making process. The third phase (the 1990s – the present) reflects the current era of the neoliberal view and fragmentation of the futures. This phase is taking place in the time of neoliberal globalization and risk society discourses and is characterized by the dominance of foresight, the advance of critical futures studies, and the intensification of fragmentation. In the third phase, futures practice tends to be confined to the support of strategic planning, and hence is experiencing an identity crisis and loss of its earlier status of humanity-oriented futures.

Teaching Predictive Model Management in MIS Classrooms: A Tutorial

Analytics has become a key element of the business decision process over the last decade. In today’s competitive business world, organizations have found out that their data and how they use it can make them much more competitive. According to many research institutions (e.g., Gartner and McKinsey), the worldwide market for business analytics solutions in practice, research, and education is growing exponentially. As the use of analytics become widespread, business school graduates need to gain the necessary knowledge and skill sets to use these assets effectively. In the spirit of analytical thinking, we developed a practice-oriented business case that uses a sample scenario, managerial dashboards, betting templates, model repository and model performance management metrics that teaches predictive analytics concepts and decision making with incomplete information intended for MIS courses. Through exercises and interactions, students gain the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to be become effective decision makers through applying analytical thinking. Digital copies of workshop lesson plans with dashboard and data entry templates can be downloaded free of charge from the Teradata University Network.

Critical Reflections on the Entrepreneurship Programme Designed to Develop Effectual Entrepreneurs

This article reports on a study that was largely a qualitative, critical examination of the Tsohang Entrepreneurship Programme which was designed to develop effectual entrepreneurs. The programme was primarily examined in terms of its theory of change, which evaluates effectuation, as well as evaluating its effect on the trainees' mind-set, as assessed through business decision processes and improved business practices. Effectuation advances a business decision process that attempts to guide business actions and activities toward choosing particular effects on the grounds of the available means, using the principles of affordable loss, the surprise factor and network building to fabricate and reshape markets. The critical reflection theory was predominantly used for scrutiny and critique of the programme's theory of change as well as certain other aspects of the programme. This was achieved through firstly, broadly identifying and examining the deep-seated assumptions embedded in the programme's conception and applications. Secondly, the study concentrated on tracing the origins of these assumptions. Thirdly, it focussed on evaluating their relevance in our context and within the Small to Medium businesses framework and finally, on suggesting improvements to the programme. The critical reflection theory was additionally utilised to discover the extent to which programme's trainees developed alternative decision processes as a result of their exposure to the programme and how that, in turn, improved their business practices. Through collection of data and analysis of interviews as well as observation, the data were organised in the form of vignettes or critical incidents permitting these researchers to understand some of the effects of the programme on beneficiaries' decision processes and learn of improvements on their business practices. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n25p53

Location as a competitive advantage for entrepreneurship an empirical application in the Region of Aragon (Spain)

For entrepreneurs, decision making is present right from the start. The decision-making process in business has received extensive academic attention in recent decades. One of the first-order strategic decisions for an entrepreneur is where to locate the new business. The emergence of the multi-criteria decision analysis paradigm allowed several criteria to be considered when making a decision, which surpassed the previous single criterion decision paradigm. The Electre methodology pioneered this new paradigm and, among the evolutions of the Electre method, version IV is perhaps the least used. This paper aims to show a methodology to aid decision making for entrepreneurs, in particular the location decision. Thus, this study shows an example, an empirical application of Electre IV for locating a business, with the ultimate goal of providing companies with a ranking of alternatives to consider, such that it provides a competitive advantage if the choice agrees with the first positions of the final ranking.

The non-GM crop regime in the EU: How do Industries deal with this wicked problem?

In the European Union (EU), genetically modified (GM) crops are regarded as a socially-sensitive technology. At present, GM crops are rarely cultivated in the EU and non-genetically modified ingredients dominate the EU market. However, most consumers are unaware of the fact that many genetically modified ingredients (GMI) are present in EU supermarkets in spite of this virtual ban on GM. For example, eggs, meat or milk derived from GM-fed animals are marketed without a GM label. Moreover, the EU political landscape has failed to create a stable and predictable environment in which to either implement or reject GM crops and their applications. As such, the present non-GM crop regime in the EU presents a tricky and challenging environment for agribusiness companies to determine their GM business policy.Few academic studies have analysed this industry perspective on the current EU non-GM crop regime. In this paper, we therefore analyse which discourses influence the GM business policy of agribusiness companies that are active on the EU market and how these discourses influence the decision-making process of several agricultural industry sectors on whether to include or exclude GMIs in products for the EU market.The paper outlines three discourses that shape the discursive space of GM crop applications in the EU from an industry perspective, (i) GMIs as an agricultural payoff; (ii) GMIs as a marketing threat; and (iii) non-GM crops as a preset end goal. The paper also discusses how these discourses influence the GM business decision-making process for several agricultural industry sectors, these being the agricultural biotech industry, the compound feed industry, the food manufacturing and marketing industries, the potato industry and the organic farming sector. Accordingly, our research classifies the present non-GM crop regime in the EU as a “wicked problem”, due to the high level of conflict, discord and complexity involved.Wicked problems cannot be solved, but only managed. Therefore, this paper proposes a different type of solution to break the impasse, either in favour of or against GM crop applications, by demanding multi-level stakeholder engagement instead of the current supply-chain-focused mode-of-action in industry. Nevertheless, it is necessary to adapt our knowledge about governing the particular dynamics of wicked problems, and this presents a highly complex - albeit interesting - challenge for future research.

Predicting corporate distress in the Nigerian stock market: Neural network versus multiple discriminant analysis

The objective of the paper is to assess the quality of neural networks in predicting distress as against discriminant analysis and its applications in enhancing managers’ decision. Forty four firms listed on the Nigerian Stock Market between 1987 and 2006 are used for the study. The performance of neural network is then compared with the more familiar discriminant analysis statistical technique, and the performance of both is further with a performance obtainable by mere guesswork. The results show that, while both the neural network and the discriminant analysis techniques performed better than guess work, the neural network out performs the discriminant analysis technique. The outstanding performance of neural network underscores its importance as an invaluable tool in the business decision-making process. The study suggests that neural networks could aid managers in decision making to reverse the present down trend of the Nigerian Stock Market. Key words: Stock market, neural networks, firm’s distress, business decision, pay-out policy, discriminant analysis.