Client Organizations Research Articles

Co-creation of value outcomes: A client perspective on service provision in projects

Client organisations, as financiers, owners, and users, face the challenge of generating and delivering value outcomes for a wide range of stakeholders. However, research has demonstrated that projects constantly fall short of providing valuable outcomes in the medium- and long-term. The value outcomes start to appear in the latter stages of a project, yet, they have a link back to the project definition phase, where value outcomes can be purposely designed for the long-term. Value outcomes per se have been historically researched from a supplier and financial perspective. However, the research around the client perspective has been scarce, particularly the exploration of the co-creation of value outcomes for the long-term. To this end, the Service-Dominant Logic is an established framework to analyse the co-creation of value outcomes in the long-term from a client perspective. Thus, this framework is being used in this research to analyse six project case studies from two public sector client organisations in the United Kingdom. The results show eight managerial value interactions, which may enhance a set of five value outcomes from a client perspective in the medium- and long-term. Additionally, tensions around the co-creation process have been identified, which require management attention to secure and to defend the value outcomes. Overall, this study may prompt project practitioners to undertake a set of co-creation practices in order to formulate projects as service provision, as well as to avoid negative financial impacts to business models.

Grounding Twenty-first-Century Public Relations Praxis in Aristotelian Ethos

ABSTRACTBy grounding public relations praxis in Aristotelian ethos, practitioners can function as liaison officers with balanced perspectives, capable of co-creating meaning with both client organizations and their publics between whom experts are hired to facilitate mutually beneficial relationships. This approach locates persuasion at the nexus of speaker ethos in the public relations process. It allows practitioners to balance their commitment to the ethics of their profession with loyalty to clients, while empowering audiences (organizations and their publics) to function as the final arbiters of any courses of action proposed to them. Moreover, because the approach enables practitioners, based on their credible ethos, to participate in organizational decision-making, it has the potential to transfer their ethical worldview to client organizations. Ultimately, the central theoretical contribution of this essay is an alternative approach to public relations praxis founded on an analysis of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, arête, and eunoia.

Embedding occupational health and safety in the procurement and management of infrastructure projects: institutional logics at play in the context of new public management

The research explored the approaches used by government agencies (as client organizations) to drive occupational health and safety (OHS) performance improvements in publicly funded infrastructure construction projects in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 representatives of clients and contractors with direct and recent experience of delivering large public infrastructure projects. Interviews explored the procurement approaches taken, and the use of incentives and performance measurement. Data was subjected to inductive analysis to identify emergent concepts and themes relating to the way that New Public Management (NPM) influences the commercial management of infrastructure construction projects, with particular reference to OHS impacts. The concept of institutional logics was utilised as a theoretical frame to understand clients’ behaviour in the commercial management of infrastructure projects. Client behaviour was consistent with elements of NPM and reflected a managerialist logic in the pursuit of efficiency, the use of targets, incentives and performance measurement. However, a strong professional service logic was also found to drive active client behaviour in relation to the management of OHS. Understanding the institutional logics driving client OHS practices is an important theoretical development that can stimulate reflexive practice which may create an impetus for change.

When to Engage the Contractor for Pre-Construction Services in New Zealand

Large and complex projects have become commonplace, increasing the need to engage contractors in pre-construction services (PCS). Clients now have a range of procurement options that can involve a contractor in any phase of the pre-construction process. This research investigated what factors are important when deciding how soon to engage the contractor. Furthermore, it investigated the issues of engaging the contractor too early or too late. This study collected results through structured explorative interviews with senior staff from client, consultant, and contractor organizations in New Zealand. The results are presented, compared, and discussed for each respective viewpoint. The results show that cost (scale) and complexity of the project, the reputation of the involved parties, and the nature of the relationships are the most crucial factors. However, the parties differ on the best timing for PCS. The contractor argued that PCS should occur in the concept design phase. The client opined that for some projects they would prefer involvement by the contractor in the project definition phase, while for others this should occur later, in the detailed design phase. Consultants recommended that the contractor should be included in the later phases before construction commences. It is interesting to note that the contractor does not always want to be involved early. Generally, the contractor does not want to be involved when the award of the project is still uncertain. Finally, it became apparent that a significant number of issues stem from the contractual arrangements of PCS, which poorly dictates who controls the design process.

Evaluation of Fraud Examinations: The Case of Inappropriate Accounting Practices at Fuji Xerox

ABSTRACTThere is a growing business for global auditing firms and local law firms as well as independent detectives to conduct forensic investigations at client organizations when there is suspicion of white-collar misconduct and crime. Client organizations normally do not disclose investigation reports. An investigation report concerned with inappropriate accounting practices at Fuji Xerox in New Zealand is publicly available. This article presents an evaluation of the investigation. Specifically, this article focuses on the mandate, where examiners were asked to find causes of misconduct. Examiners present eight reasons for inappropriate accounting practices. However, as discussed in this evaluation, the report of investigation presents little or no evidence for most of the causes.

РАЗРАБОТКА АВТОМАТИЗИРОВАННОГО РАБОЧЕГО МЕСТА АДМИНИСТРАТОРА ПО РАБОТЕ С КЛИЕНТАМИ

The article discusses the experience of developing software for automatization of the activities of an administrator in working with clients in organizations of service sector. The project will be used as a practical part when working on final qualifying work.

Can Outsourcing of Information Technology Foster Innovations in Client Organizations? An Empirical Analysis

There is a substantial body of literature on information technology (IT) outsourcing. However, little is known about employing IT outsourcing to generate innovation. In this paper, we articulate the ex ante as well as ex post contracting challenges that could preclude firms from realizing such business value through outsourcing. We develop and test a model linking innovation in IT outsourcing (process innovation and service innovation) to two complementary solutions to the contractual problems: credible commitments and contingent control rights. Alternative empirical estimation approaches support the basic thesis that contractual solutions are complementary in their association with enhanced innovation performance. Our study suggests that portfolios of complementary contractual provisions need to simultaneously address ex ante and ex post hazards through contract design in the outsourcing of innovative tasks. Theoretical and practical implications are explicated.

Challenges in Implementing a Time-Limited Martial-Arts Curriculum in Middle-School Physical Education Classes: A Research Consultation Case

The present program consultation and evaluation examines the use of a martial-arts (MA) program in a middle-school physical education (PE) setting. Prior work and anecdotal reports suggest that MA instruction has the potential to produce both physical and psychosocial benefits for adult and adolescent participants, but rarely has a systematic program been implemented in schools. At the impetus of an MA organization, self-report measures of emotional intelligence and behavior of seventy 7th- and 8th-grade boys and girls who participated in a structured 18-session tae kwon do program as a component of their school’s PE curriculum were compared with those of 45 students who received typical PE class instruction. Participant satisfaction with the tae kwon do program and feedback received from the MA instructors and PE teachers suggest that this sport can be successfully integrated into school-based PE classes; this represents an opportunity to provide a novel programming alternative to students that promotes exercise and continued pursuit of physical activities, nonviolence, and respect of self and others. The project content, process, and challenges in working with a client MA organization to develop the curriculum, gaining entry into a public school, and explaining limitations of the research are discussed.

Towards the Guidelines for Requirements Change Management in Global Software Development: Client-Vendor Perspective

Currently, being deployed by organizations to develop high-quality software at a low cost, global software development (GSD) faces many challenges that make development activities more complex. These GSD challenges are mainly concerned with requirements to change management (RCM). RCM plays a key role in the successful execution of software projects. The objective of this paper is to identify the best practices of the RCM process by adopting a systematic literature review (SLR) and validate them using questionnaire survey with industry experts. A total of 46 best practices were identified through SLR and validated with industry experts. We have further classified the identified practices in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM best practices in the context of both types of GSD organizations (client, vendor). Moreover, we have conducted a comparison analysis between SLR and questionnaire survey data and found a moderate positive correlation in the ranks of both data sets (rs = 0.522, p=0.003). In addition, the criticality of the identified best practices was assessed using the criteria of a practice having frequency ≥50%. The findings of this paper provide a framework that could help the GSD organizations to address the problems related to RCM in GSD environment.

User support as moderator for cloud computing user satisfaction

Cloud computing (CC) promises to provide quicker, easier, and less expensive computing services supporting e-commerce. To ensure that CC is also able to maintain or enhance customer satisfaction, this study addresses the factors leading to higher user satisfaction with SaaS applications websites. The proposed model defines and empirically tests these relationships, including the moderating effect of user support. Data collected from 1,257 users/customers using the order entry systems of 176 client organisations available through four SaaS providers were analysed. Results confirm the importance of the proposed success factors for user satisfaction with the CC vendor websites. Management of CC application risks, knowledge about the service provider, and effective data management respectively explained significant percentages of the variance in user satisfaction with the CC vendor website. The positive impact of user support is also confirmed. The results provide the basis for several insights and recommendations for managers and future research.

A Teaching Case on Information Systems Development Outsourcing: Lessons from a Failure

Students and academics rarely receive an opportunity to investigate and learn from failed projects even though many organizations restrict access to information about failed projects in order to minimize reputational damage (Chua & Lam, 2005). However, failure cases can provide unique insights that one often ignores or cannot explore in successful projects (Lyytinen & Robey, 1999). To facilitate this learning, we present a teaching case based on an outsourced information systems development project that commenced in 2010 and was terminated in 2013. We observe the project’s failure from the viewpoint of the vendor to illustrate how misspecified requirements and insufficient understanding of the client organization’s specific requirements can lead to project failures. We derived the case description and analyses by conducting seven interviews with project team members and by analyzing 14 business requirement specification documents.

Survey on Regenerating Code Based Revocable and Searchable ABE Scheme for Mobile Cloud Storage

From the time in memorial, Information Security has remained a primary concern and today when most of the sensitive data is stored on Cloud with client organization having lesser control over the stored data, the fundamental way to fix this issue is to encrypt such data. So, a secure user imposed data access control system must be given, before the users outsource any data to the cloud for storage. Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) system is one such asymmetric key based cryptosystem that has received much attention that provides fine-grained access control to data stored on the cloud. In this paper, we propose a more proficient and richer type of Attribute Based Encryption technique (RSABE) that not only considers the Outsourced ABE construction but also address the issue of revocation in case of change of attributes of the group user or organization; once a user is removed from the group, the keys are updated and these new keys are distributed among the existing users also our system supports the Keyword search over encrypted data in the mobile cloud storage. In multi keyword search; data owners and users can generate the keywords index and search trapdoor, respectively, without relying on always online trusted authority. Experimental results prove that the performance of the proposed system is greater than existing system in terms of security, time consumption and memory utilization & data availability.

An interview with Tracey Williamson, chair, British Dam Society

The following is an interview with the current chair of the British Dam Society (BDS), Tracey Williamson, BEng, CEng, FICE. Tracey is an associate director at Arup and a supervising engineer, and has had a diverse career including 5 years as dam safety manager at Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW), experience in the United Kingdom and overseas, and with both consultancy and client organisations within the dams industry. In this interview, Tracey describes her aspirations for the BDS, both during her time as chair and beyond, and she discusses some of the challenges and opportunities that the industry currently faces.

Building Resilience in Client Organisations: The Consultant’s Challenge

Abstract We review the concept of organisational resilience from the perspective of a consultant-client relationship. Specifically, we argue that the issue of a client’s resilience in the face of performance-diminishing disruptions needs to be a central theme of any consultant-client relationship. Management consultants have a responsibility to clients to support their resilience capabilities regardless of whether a given assignment explicitly uses the language of resilience. However, our literature review suggests this is a formidable challenge, particularly with larger and more complex client organisations. Understanding the client’s resilience landscape involves learning about the effectiveness of prior responses to disruptions at individual, organizational, and network levels. Advising the client on how to improve their resilience capabilities requires the consultant to think very carefully about the overall type of resilience needed, the reasons behind this stance, the level of implementation and the scope of implementation.

Sandra L. Shullman, Ph.D., named as 2020 president of the American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association (APA) has named Sandra L. Shullman, Ph.D., a consulting psychologist internationally known in leadership assessment and development, as 2020 president of the APA, officials announced Nov. 8. Shullman, who is a partner in the Columbus, Ohio, office of the Executive Development Group, manages large, long‐term global organizational client engagements, focusing on executive education and coaching, strategic leadership development and organizational diversity initiatives. She is a senior lecturer for the HEC School of Business in Paris, Shanghai, Beijing and Qatar, and part of the Duke University Global Learning Network faculty. Shullman has served two terms on the APA board of directors and seven years on the board of the American Psychological Foundation. She is past president of the Ohio Psychological Association.

How to Support Clients and Vendors in IT Outsourcing Engagements: The Different Roles of Third-party Advisory Services

The outsourcing of information technology to external providers has been a phenomenon for organizations around the world since decades. The main reasons for this trend are, for example, cost reductions through scaling, the temporary inclusion of specific skills in the own organization as well as the joint development of innovative solutions with an external partner. The client organization “RetBa,” a major private insurance company, was facing serious quality and performance issues in the delivery of the workplace services. Hence, in 2005 they decided for an outsourcing solution aiming at moving the responsibility for managing IT workplace services for over 50,000 seats worldwide to the external service provider “EuTu.” Over the years, the outsourcing project faced several problems due to the lack of performance and delayed delivery of services by the service provider EuTu. To solve these quality issues and avoid further failures, in 2011 RetBa appointed Scaleit Consulting, a third-party advisor. Scaleit Consulting had the responsibility to identify the causes for these issues, revise the workplace strategy, and support RetBa in the communication with the service provider.

Taking on a wider view: public value interests of construction clients in a changing construction industry

For financial and strategic reasons, public and semi-public construction clients increasingly depend on private parties to carry out public service delivery. They subcontract operational responsibilities to private parties while remaining socio-politically responsible for ensuring public values. Public administration literature mainly addresses the importance of procedural and performance values in safeguarding public values. However, safeguarding the quality of the built environment also requires a focus on product values. In this study, we aim to increase the understanding of the meaning and significance of public values in the daily practice of public construction clients and identify the challenges they face in commissioning these seemingly opposing values. A set of semi-structured interviews with the public administrators of a variety of public and semi-public construction client organizations in the Netherlands shows that both internal and external factors influence the collaborative practices between clients and contractors. This causes a value shift from an emphasis on procedural values to managing performance and product values, indicating that clients need to take on a wider view on public values. Six main public value dilemmas were found that complicate the task of developing an open, transparent and sustainable long-term client–contractor relationship. The current contractual system, however, lacks the flexibility to facilitate this product-based value view in construction.

Determinants and heterogeneity of switching costs in IT outsourcing: estimates from firm-level data

ABSTRACTWe study how firms decide whether to continue an existing relationship or switch the vendor of outsourced services. Because of incomplete contracts and relationship-specific investments, client organisations may face switching costs, which in some cases may be large enough to render vendor switching an unattractive option. Based on an extensive review of the literature, we develop hypotheses about relationship-, firm-, and market-specific determinants of switching costs. We then develop an econometric model to identify those determinants and their relative importance and estimate the magnitude of switching costs. In the empirical study, we observe accounting data of 1318 US credit unions (CUs) and follow their IT outsourcing choices over 11 years. We find that the largest portion of switching costs is due to relationship- and firm-specific factors, while market-specific variables are much less important. Our estimates suggest that average switching costs account for one-third of the average annual expenditure for professional services. We further highlight that the average hides substantial heterogeneity. Switching costs of CUs that decide to switch vendors are about 50% lower than those of CUs that stay. Looking more closely at stayers, our most conservative estimate of the lock-in effect, i.e., the difference in switching costs of deliberate and non-deliberate stayers, is equivalent to about 70% of the average annual expenditure for professional services.

The establishment of collaboration in managing information security through multisourcing

PurposeAs information security requirements evolve due to ever-changing business and regulatory requirements, and threat landscape, organisations have turned to multisourcing as a method of delivering information security services. This development has created opportunities for service providers which specialise in information security service provision to collaborate and deliver security services through multisourcing contracts. Therefore the research develops a collaboration framework for managing information security through multisourcing. MethodologyThis paper explores collaboration in multisourcing information security contracts through a qualitative case study that investigated the phenomenon from the views and experiences of a client organisation and its six service providers. FindingsThe research found that multisourcing contracts can effectively manage information security services through collaborative efforts from multiple service providers and technology vendors. Practical implicationsTheoretical insights into the use of collaboration and partnerships in the multisourcing of information security are non-existent. Therefore, the research contributes to practice by introducing a tripartite collaboration framework for multisourcing information security. This tripartite collaboration consists of client, service provider and technology vendors. Originality valueThe research demonstrates through the perspective of client organisation and service providers that collaboration in multisourcing information security contracts goes beyond the client and its service providers to include even technology vendors.

A Survey of Digital Technologies Used in the Procurement of Building Projects: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

Background and Objective: In spite of the important roles digital technologies play in the procurement of construction projects, there is a limited understanding of the extent of their adoption in Nigeria. The aim of this study was to investigate the different categories of digital technologies used by stakeholders in the design, tendering and construction stages of building projects and factors that influenced the decision to adopt them in the Nigerian building industry. Materials and Methods: The data were sourced via a questionnaire survey of 213 professional consultants, client organisations and contractors in the Nigerian building industry. Descriptive statistics and relative importance index (RII) were used to analyse the data. Results: The findings show that 61.5% of the participants were architects and quantity surveyors and most of them used software packages at project design stage and communication technologies at the tendering and construction stages. However, besides email, only very few used web/cloud-based systems, applications and services at the tendering and construction stages of building projects delivery. The top four most influential factors in the decision to adopt digital technologies in the procurement of building projects were the benefits of these technologies in eliminating geographic barriers (RII = 0.861), enhancing efficiency (RII = 0.855), promoting good inventory management and record keeping (RII = 0.813) and effective communication amongst project team members (RII = 0.812). Conclusion: Stakeholders in the Nigerian building industry use more of project data creation and communication technologies than intelligent systems; and thus, significant barriers exist in the adoption of intelligent systems in the procurement of building projects in the study area