Information Technology Firms Research Articles

Compromising gender identities

PurposeGiven the limited research on women in information technology (IT) sectors in emerging economies and the importance of understanding their experiences working in highly gendered IT firms, the purpose of this paper is to examine the specific gendered strategies used by women engineers to stay in gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka using job embeddedness as a theoretical lens.Design/methodology/approachData collection was done through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions on a sample of 14 women engineers employed in five leading IT firms in Sri Lanka.FindingsRespondents perceived the work role expectations in the Sri Lankan IT industry as masculine. Respondents compromised their own gender identities to engage in four distinct strategies to link and fit with the prevailing work role expectations. “Using a hybrid style” and “being passive and neutral” were respondents’ link strategies, while “adopting masculine traits” and “demonstrating self-confidence” related to their fit strategies.Research limitations/implicationsMen and women who aspire to enter the IT sector need to be pre-prepared and educated about the characteristics of IT cultures and prevailing gender norms along with the subject knowledge. Managers of IT firms need to create positive work environments for their women employees that aid them to fit and link with their workplaces.Originality/valueThe study provides a deeper understanding of how women manage gender-related issues within gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka and stay in their employment.

Reasons for not changing to activity-based costing: a survey of Irish firms

Purpose This paper aims to report on a survey of medium and large Irish firms to ascertain reasons for not changing to more advanced costing techniques, namely, activity-based costing (ABC). Developments in technology and recent poor economic conditions would suggest that the technique could be adopted more by firms, as they make increased efforts to keep costs under control. Design/methodology/approach A survey instrument was used to gather data drawing from the top 1,000 Irish firms. From a useable population of 821 organisations, a response rate of 20.75 per cent was achieved. Findings Findings show a rate of adoption of ABC of 18.7 per cent, which is lower than previous studies in an Irish context. The level of information technology in firms is not a key factor for non-adoption. Instead, the main reasoning for non-adoption revolve around stable existing costing methods, which firms expressed satisfaction with. Originality/value This research suggests the adoption of ABC is not necessarily driven by external factors such as technology and economic shocks, at least in the context of Ireland. It also suggests that costing techniques may be deeply embedded within organisations and are less likely to be subject to change.

An Assessment for IT Project Maturity Levels

The statistical assessments point out that approximately half of information technology (IT) projects cannot provide basic necessities and a quarter of them fail. Therefore, the necessity of effective project management tools to enhance the project management practices increases day by day. “Project management maturity model” as one of these tools is attached more importance in IT firms. This study aims to present a framework for IT project maturity level measurement and indicate how project management maturity level differs in terms of firm characteristics. Within the scope of the research, Kerzner's Hexagon of Excellence is extended with additional questions related with firm characteristics, and a case study including 16 firms from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) ARI Techno Park is conducted. In the light of responses, (1) problems which are realized in the project management processes revealed out, (2) relation between firm characteristics and project management skills are discussed and (3) results are interpreted in order to provide managerial insights.

The Determinants of Growth in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Industry: A Firm-Level Analysis

Why do some firms grow faster than others? This question has become the focus of a large number of empirical studies in industrial organization, strategic management, and entrepreneurship since the publications of Gibrat (1931) and Penrose (1959). Using an unbalanced panel data set of 85 U.S. information and communication technology (ICT) firms that survived over the period from 1990 to 2013, we examine the effect of firm size, agency costs, RD (ii) agency costs and financial leverage exert a negative effect on firm growth; (iii) RD (iv) the Great Recession (2007-2009) produced a negative effect on firm growth; (v) a nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship exists between firm size and firm growth; and (vi) Gibrat’s law does not hold. Our findings remain robust to transformations using first differences and forward orthogonal deviations as well as principal components reductions. These results are new to the literature, since the dynamics of firm growth has not been documented at the ICT industry level. Noteworthy policy implications emerge because the growth dynamics of the ICT industry move this sector toward more concentration and less competition.

Mapping Spatial and Temporal Changes of Global Corporate Research and Development Activities by Conducting a Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract Corporate research and development (R&D) activities have long been highly concentrated in a handful of world cities. This is due to the fact that these cities (e.g., Tokyo, New York, London, and Paris) are home to the largest and most powerful transnational corporations and are globally important sites for innovative start-up firms that operate in the fastest growing industries. However, in tandem with the rapid technological changes of our age, corporate R&D activities have shifted towards newly emerging and now globally significant R&D centres, like San Jose, San Francisco, and Boston in the United States, and Beijing, Seoul, and Shenzhen in East Asia. In this paper, I will conduct a bibliometric analysis to define which cities are centres of corporate R&D activities, how different industries influence their performance, and what spatial tendencies characterise the period from 1980 to 2014. The bibliometric analysis is based upon an assumption that implies there is a close connection between the number of scientific articles published by a given firm and the volume of its R&D activity. Results show that firms headquartered in Tokyo, New York, London, and Paris published the largest combined number of scientific articles in the period from 1980 to 2014, but that the growth rate of the annual output of scientific articles was much greater in Boston, San Jose, Beijing, and Seoul, as well as some Taiwanese cities. Furthermore, it can also be seen that those cities that have the largest number of articles; i.e., that can be considered as the most significant sites of corporate R&D in which firms operate in fast-growing industries, are primarily in the pharmaceutical and information technology industries. For these reasons, some mid-sized cities that are home to globally significant pharmaceutical or information technology firms are also top corporate R&D hubs.

A contingency model of CEO characteristics and firm innovativeness

PurposeAmple evidence suggests that firm innovativeness is important for firm competitiveness. Despite the significance of the CEO for firm outcomes in general, the role of the CEO in firm innovativeness remains unclear. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the impact of two CEO characteristics – organizational identification and risk propensity – on firm innovativeness. The authors also adopt a contingency view to examine the moderating role of organizational size.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from 159 information technology firms based in India, the authors hypothesize that CEO organizational identification and risk propensity will have a positive effect on firm innovativeness. The authors further hypothesize that smaller organizations will benefit more from the positive effects of CEO organizational identification and CEO risk propensity.FindingsThe empirical findings indicate that CEO organizational identification and risk propensity positively influence firm innovativeness. Also positive effects of CEO organizational identification and CEO risk propensity are more in smaller organizations.Originality/valueThis study highlights the role of CEO characteristics in the pursuit of firm innovativeness. Significantly, the study shows that both CEO organizational identification and risk propensity can enhance firm innovativeness. However, their effectiveness is contingent on organizational size.

Scale-free network analysis of big data for patent litigation cases in the United States

This study empirically analyzes the structure and behavior of the patent litigation network in the U.S. by introducing complex network theory characterized as growth and preferential attachment rules. In this study, we draw a log-log plot of the probability distribution for both the plaintiff and the defendant sides and use a log-transform regression to verify that the patent litigation network degree distribution follows a power-law distribution. We also graph the structure of the network to explore the origin of its asymmetrical pattern. In addition, we investigate the behavior of the patent litigation network over time by calculating the Shannon entropy for each year from 2005 to September 2016. We find the power-law degree distribution, and a few hubs of the patent litigation network are like other real-world networks. We also find that the asymmetrical pattern of the patent litigation network is largely driven by non-practicing entities and the major information technology firms. We conclude that the patent litigation network is becoming more asymmetrical over time based on our finding that its Shannon entropy is decreasing.

Peculiarities of public sector clients in service innovations

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses knowledge-intensive business service firms and their innovation activities in the context of federal government procurement with empirical evidence from Swiss information technology firms. The paper contributes to the growing literature on knowledge-intensive business services by expanding the concept to also capture public sector clients. It focuses in particular on the ways in which having a public sector client influences a knowledge-intensive business service firm’s ability to innovate, opportunities for interactive learning with their clients, and ways in which having a public sector client allows a firm to diversify. The paper shows that having a federal agency as a client is quite different from a private sector client particularly with regard to multi-party systems on the client side, the importance of informal interactions, and the role of public reputation.

Employee mobility, spin‐outs, and knowledge spill‐in: How incumbent firms can learn from new ventures

Research summary:We consider conditions in which incumbent firms are particularly poised to benefit from knowledge spilling in from new ventures that employ individuals previously employed by the focal incumbent firm. We distinguish between inventors who leave their incumbent employers to found spin‐outs and those who become non‐founding employees of existing new ventures. Using a sample of new ventures and incumbent firms in theU.S. information technology (IT) sector, we find that incumbents are more likely to benefit from patented knowledge that spills in from their spin‐outs than from new ventures that employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective incumbent. Any advantage that parent firms have in reaping such knowledge quickly dissipates, however, when these parents have a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others.Managerial summary:It has long been acknowledged that new ventures can acquire valuable knowledge from their larger and more established counterparts by hiring away their talented employees. We consider the possibility of a reverse flow of knowledge where established firms learn from those new ventures that have poached employees from them. We find that established information technology (IT) firms are more likely to learn and build on the technology of their spin‐outs (i.e., new ventures founded by their former inventors) than from new ventures that simply employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respectiveITfirm. Any advantage that theseITfirms had in reaping technical know‐how from their spin‐outs quickly dissipated, however, when they had a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Risk Implications of Mergers and Acquisitions with Information Technology Firms

We address the dynamics of post-merger risks for a firm acquiring an information technology (IT) company over a long-term horizon, and examine the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) motives on its post-merger risks after controlling for its self-selection into the specific motives the acquiring firm seeks. We find that a strong run-up in risk occurs before M&A transactions are initiated, but this risk begins to decline over the post-merger period. However, post-merger risks tend to persist for firms seeking M&A transactions with a customer-side motive, whereas this does not occur with a production-side motive. While greater post-merger risks are associated with M&As with a customer-side motive, our results suggest that its association with post-merger risks is moderated by industry dynamism. Overall, our study sheds new light on the post-merger risk by addressing its dynamic nature and uncovering the potential interplay between M&A motives and industry dynamism when IT firms are acquired.

A Multilevel Association Model for IT Employees’ Life Stress and Job Satisfaction: An Information Technology (IT) Industry Case Study

The aim of this research was to investigate the association among IT employees’ life stress and job satisfaction in information technology (IT) firms. Data on 250 IT employees’ in 30 working groups was obtained from 10 Information Technology (IT) Chinese firms from Beijing, and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Results found momentous association among life stress of IT employees’ and their job satisfaction at an individual-level and group-level in IT firms. Furthermore, life stress in Beijing at group-level moderates the association among job satisfaction and IT employees’ life stress at an individual-level. Finally, limitations and implications of the present study are also discussed.

Evaluating financial performance of Indian IT firms: an application of a multi-criteria decision-making technique

This study evaluates the financial performance of nine information technology (IT) firms, listed in National Stock Exchange of India, for a period of 5 years from 2011 to 2015. A multi-criteria decision-making technique (MCDM) - Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) - is used to rank the firms according to their financial performance, by considering 10 frequently used financial ratios as multiple criteria. The results indicate that TCS firm has been the top performer for the 4 years out of a total 5-year period of the analysis, whereas the firm Wipro is found to have the lowest rank during the same period. The lower ranking firms can revise their strategies by analysing the policies of better-performing firms. These results provide useful insights to identify the consistent and stable players in terms of financial performance. These findings could be useful for the managers at different levels, various stakeholders in the firms, investors and investment analysts.

Evaluating financial performance of Indian IT firms: an application of a multi-criteria decision-making technique

This study evaluates the financial performance of nine information technology (IT) firms, listed in National Stock Exchange of India, for a period of 5 years from 2011 to 2015. A multi-criteria decision-making technique (MCDM) - Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) - is used to rank the firms according to their financial performance, by considering 10 frequently used financial ratios as multiple criteria. The results indicate that TCS firm has been the top performer for the 4 years out of a total 5-year period of the analysis, whereas the firm Wipro is found to have the lowest rank during the same period. The lower ranking firms can revise their strategies by analysing the policies of better-performing firms. These results provide useful insights to identify the consistent and stable players in terms of financial performance. These findings could be useful for the managers at different levels, various stakeholders in the firms, investors and investment analysts.

A METHODOLOGY FOR QUANTITATIVELY MANAGING THE CODING PHASE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Many organizations use information technology to gain competitive advantage. As a result the demand for software products increased tremendously and the information technology industry has grown rapidly. As demand increased, the competition among information technology firms also increased. The information technology companies can no longer survive by just delivering the products but has to ensure the quality of products as well as the products have to be delivered on time without cost or effort overrun. Hence it is imperative for information technology companies to quantitatively manage the software development process. In fact quantitative project management is one of the requirements for achieving higher levels of capability maturity model. Lots of research has been carried out in the past to develop models to quantitatively manage the software development process. Most of these studies focussed on methodologies to quantitatively manage only one of the performance characteristics namely quality or schedule or effort. But to deliver the good quality software on time within the budgeted cost, all the critical performance parameters of software development process namely quality, productivity, effort, cost, etc need to be managed simultaneously. Many of these characteristics are related to each other and many cases the correlation is such that improving the performance of one characteristic will adversely affect the performance of other performance characteristics. Moreover all these performance characteristics need to be managed by controlling a common set of control parameters. Hence it is required to identify the best values of the control parameters which would simultaneously optimise all the performance characteristics. In this paper, the authors suggest a methodology to simultaneously optimize the performance characteristics of coding phase of the software development process. The same methodology can be used to simultaneously manage the different performance characteristics at other phases as well as the overall software development process. In this study the authors have taken two performance characteristics namely coding productivity and quality (measured in terms of defect density). The approach is to develop separate process performance models to estimate the coding productivity and defect density using the process parameters namely programmer skill, reviewer skill, review type, preparation time, module complexity and code review rate. Then the values of these process parameters which would simultaneously optimize the coding productivity and defect density are identified using Taguchi’s loss function. The proposed approach has been implemented on seven software development projects and the results are very encouraging. Moreover the optimum obtained by the proposed method is much better than that of optimizing the coding productivity and defect density separately. The project managers also agreed that a common setting for process parameters which would optimize both performance characteristics simultaneously is much easier to implement than methods for managing different performance characteristics independently.

Predictors of Work-Family Role Conflict and Its Impact on Professional Women in Medicine, Engineering, and Information Technology in Nigeria.

This study examines work-family role conflict and the factors predicting it, with a sample of 173 professional women in engineering and information technology (IT) firms, including 2 hospitals-1 public and 1 private. Our findings show no significant difference in the level of work-family role conflict encountered by women across medicine, engineering, and IT, whereas hours of work, family responsibilities, job demand, and work role overload were significantly correlated with work-family role conflict. Multiple linear regression analysis indicates that only work role overload, family responsibilities, and hours of work significantly predicted 45.9% of work-family role conflict. This implies that working women are burdened by work demands, which invariably affects the work-family role conflict they experience and leads to deterioration of their occupational health. It is suggested that employers should create a flexible work schedule and establish family-friendly policies in the workplace to promote a healthy work-life balance for women in science careers.

New Entry Threats and Firm Performance in the IT Industry: Moderating Role of Board Independence

The Information Technology (IT) industry is characterized by rapid technological change and fast-moving dynamics, a significant part of which may be attributed to entrepreneurial ventures that pioneer new innovations. Correspondingly, the rate of new entry in the form of entrepreneurial ventures poses a critical risk factor for incumbent IT firms. While theoretical work points out a negative relationship between new entry threats (NET) and firm performance, empirical findings are scarce due to the inability to measure NET properly. Leveraging a novel NET measure based on text-mining approaches, we show that a higher level of NET indeed leads to a drop in the incumbent’s performance. We also show that facing high NET, firms with more independent directors are better able to withstand these threats, possibly due to stronger monitoring and the valuable resources and information provided by the independent directors. Effectively, we circumscribe a set of boundary conditions under which board governance mechan...

Adoption and correlates of Western concepts of high performance work system in the IT industry in India

Purpose An interesting conundrum exists in India with its rise as an economic powerhouse. On one front, there is tremendous pride in asserting its Indian identity. On another front, it seeks to embrace Western practices to announce its entry into the world economy. This paper aims to examine the extent to which Indian information technology (IT) firms adopt Western concepts of a high performance work system (HPWS) and the correlates of such a system (pro-social organizational behavior and employee attitude). Data from 211 IT employees in India show widespread adoption of a HPWS, and more importantly several approaches to assessment indicate that a HPWS positively correlates to pro-social organizational behavior and employee attitude. Design/methodology/approach The sample consisted of IT professionals in India having a minimum of three years of work experience. The study has used a snowball strategy to generate the sample. Eight HPWS practices were included in the survey questionnaire to assess three dimensions of HPWS. Analysis was conducted to examine differences between the highest (i.e. top 10 per cent) and the lowest (i.e. bottom 10 per cent) and bivariate correlations of the surveyed employees regarding pro-social organizational behaviors related to altruism, job involvement and work involvement, and regarding employees attitudes related to job satisfaction, intention to stay in organization, level of morale and optimism. Findings HPWS is positively associated with employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behavior. It reflects the reality that HPWSs, at least as conceived by researchers from the West, have penetrated organizations in India. Moreover, they seem to complement each other and together they seem to have a positive association with employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behavior. As organizations in India continue with the march toward servicing the world in the IT sector, the present study suggests that they have a potent tool in a HPWS to keep employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behaviors high. Research limitations/implications The criticism of survey methodology approach adopted in the present study is that it has common method bias. That is, in the survey, respondents tend to score along a path with a common response. As a validation, the study has performed a treatment-by-subjects analysis of variance with matched participant scores on the three pro-social behaviors to determine whether the means of altruism, job involvement and work involvement were significantly different. As to convergence, much more causal data would be needed to make a definitive conclusion on the findings of the present study. Originality/value This is the first study of its kind to examine the adoption of Western concepts of a HPWS in Indian IT Industry.

Compensation and the Corporate Employee Benefits: Exploring The Dimensions of Employer Brand Practices in The Information Technology Firms in India

Employee compensation is the heart of the employment relationship, being of importance to both employees and employers. In India attracting, engaging and talent retention are not only involving questions of compensations packages. Employment experience in India also consists of economic, social, psychological, motivational and religious aspects. Current employees are the first brand ambassadors. Attracting and retaining high performing employees is a huge challenge for international companies. The compensation system of the Organization shows effect on employer branding and its try to retain talent employees for the long term success of the organization and value proposition of the organization.

New frontiers for studies of the effects of early life exposures and later health effects (DOHaD) in humans

Background: The widespread use of information technologies and the development of exposure (including those based on ‘omics) biomarkers constitute opportunities for studies related to DOHaD (the Developmental origins of health and disease) hypothesis. Aim: We present some possible futures for human studies aiming at characterizing the mid and long-term effects of early life environmental exposures Discussion: We argue that historical gene-environment interaction studies, which considered possible synergy between exposures and genetic polymorphisms, will be replaced by gene expression-environment (mediation) studies considering possible synergy and mediation of environmental effects by epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolic or microbiome markers. In order to tackle this question efficiently and to address the need to consider an increasing number of exposures (the Exposome vision), one way will be to conduct huge cohorts analyzed in an agnostic way. Currently, large information technology firms seem better prepared to conduct such studies with continuous follow-up of health, behavior, location, than academic epidemiologists. Therefore, such cohorts might soon originate from the Silicon Valley (“Google Epidemiology”) and risk having less consideration of key issues such as exposure misclassification and correction for multiple testing. A complementary approach would be for epidemiologists to team up with toxicologists and system biologists who would, from animal or in-vitro or in-silico studies, generate hypotheses to be tested in (possibly smaller) human cohorts. This appears as an appealing way to circumvent the risk of being drowned in data that ‘omics epidemiology might otherwise imply. Conclusion: Epidemiologists should team up with relevant disciplines to maintain a major role in the huge cohorts required to understand the interplay between the Exposome, (epi)genetics, effect/pathway biomarkers and health in childhood and later.

The Influence of International Scope on the Relationship Between Patented Environmental Innovations and Firm Performance

The literature on the natural-resource-based view of firms has mostly focused on the positive relationship between financial performance and environmental innovation. The present study extends this research by addressing recent calls to identify the specific managerial approaches that affect a firm’s ability to financially benefit from an innovative environmental strategy. In particular, the focus is on how the selected international scope of patented environmental innovations affects a firms’ financial performance. The sample used included a 5-year data panel of 3,087 environmental patent applications by the 79 Information and Communication Technology firms in the Financial Times Global 500 firms list. The findings indicate that the geographical scope of the exploitation of environmental patents increases the positive relationship between patented environmental innovation and financial performance whereas the geographical scope of knowledge sourcing of environmental patents does reduce this performance.