Technology-driven Organizations Research Articles

A leadership and policy development model for driving operational success in tech companies

In the fast-evolving landscape of technology companies, leadership plays a critical role in shaping operational policies that align with long-term business goals. This review introduces a leadership and policy development model designed to drive operational success in technology-driven organizations. The model emphasizes the importance of visionary, collaborative, and data-driven leadership in developing and implementing operational policies that not only enhance day-to-day efficiency but also support sustainable growth and innovation. The framework is built around key leadership pillars, including visionary leadership that sets a clear operational direction, collaborative leadership that fosters cross-functional engagement, and data-driven leadership that leverages analytics to inform policy decisions. It highlights the process of policy creation and implementation, beginning with an assessment of existing operational challenges, followed by the development of scalable policies that align with business strategies. The model also incorporates agile leadership, which promotes adaptability in response to rapid technological advancements and market shifts, ensuring that policies remain relevant and effective. Moreover, the model focuses on promoting operational innovation by embedding policies that encourage research and development, cross-department collaboration, and continuous improvement. Leaders are encouraged to integrate Lean and Agile methodologies within policies to streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies, and improve overall operational performance. Through real-world case studies and applications, this review demonstrates how technology companies can benefit from leadership that actively shapes policies to foster operational excellence. The proposed model serves as a strategic tool for tech leaders, helping them align operational policies with long-term objectives, drive innovation, and maintain competitive advantage in the global market. By adopting this leadership-driven policy approach, tech companies can enhance their ability to scale effectively and sustain operational success in an ever-changing environment.

Fuzzy logic-based DDoS attacks and network traffic anomaly detection methods: Classification, overview, and future perspectives

Nowadays, cybersecurity challenges and their ever-growing complexity are the main concerns for various information technology-driven organizations and companies. Although several intrusion detection systems have been introduced in an attempt to deal with zero-day cybersecurity attacks, computer systems are still highly vulnerable to various types of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This complicated cyber-attack caused many system failures and service disruptions, resulting in billions of dollars of financial loss and irrecoverable reputation damage in recent years. Considering the nonnegligible importance of business continuity in the Industry 4.0 era, this paper presents a comprehensive, systematic survey of DDoS attacks. It also proposes a hierarchy for this severe cyber threat, besides conducting deep comparisons from various perspectives between the studies published by reputed venues in this area. Furthermore, this paper recommends the most effective defensive strategies, with a focus on recently offered fuzzy-based detection methods, to mitigate such threats and bridge the gaps existing in the current intrusion detection systems and related works. The outcomes and key findings of this survey paper are highly advantageous for private companies, enterprises, and government agencies to be implemented in their local or global businesses to significantly improve business sustainability.

Discovering the Emergence of Technical Sociology in Human Capital Systems and Technology-Driven Organizations

In 2019 the global cost of cyber-crime was over 2 trillion dollars. Current research literature outlines that 80-90% of security breaches are due to human-enabled errors in the U.S. and the U.K. Organizations encounter a barrage of cybersecurity threats that prey on the propensity of human error, human inaction, human behavior, and human misbehavior. As a result, there is an emergence of a new area of research development around technical sociology or digital sociology as a domain to explore the human capital perspectives, group dynamics, and social aspects of cybersecurity and technology management. The paper uses a relational content analysis of the literature as the research approach aimed to determine the presence and relationships of common themes and concepts. The results were creation of a concept matrix model of interrelated co-occurring concepts. The approach used was outlined by Krippendorff (1980) who asserts that concepts are "ideational grains;" these grains can be thought of as emblems which develop connotation through their connections to other emblems.

A Real-World Exploration of Green Human Resources and Sustainability Education in Hyper-Connected and Technology-Driven Organizations

The early concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), also frequently described as corporate citizenship or sustainability, grew from the seminal 1987 Brundtland Report, commissioned by the United Nations. CSR has progressed to the standpoint that in organizations necessitates the synchronized fulfillment of the firm's economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities in ways that focus strategy, operations, and behaviors towards the promotion of sustainability from a construct where organizational strategy is concerned with the care of the planet, people, and profit. This paper explores the role of green human resources interventions focused on creating organizational cultures that support sustainability in technical and hyper-connected organizations. The paper is not intended to reconstitute theory. The paper is highly theoretical and practical with the intention of influencing the world practice from practical real-world problem approaches and theories from the literature.

I Speak Up to My Tech-Savvy Leader: Technological Savviness and Voice

Ambient cues in leaders’ environments or in their behaviors not directed towards employees can influence voice. In this research, we focus on leaders’ technological savviness – a leader characteristic that is critical in today’s technology-driven organizations – and examine how it might serve as an ambient cue to employees by providing valuable information about whether it would be safe/worthwhile to speak up with ideas and, ultimately, influence voice. Drawing on signaling theory (Spence, 1973), we posit that employees perceive leaders’ technological savviness as an ambient cue that signals leaders’ openness, that in turn, increases their likelihood of speaking up. Three experiments with two different samples (i.e., general population and students) supported our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications for voice and the future of work are discussed.

Technology Focus: Petroleum Data Analytics (October 2018)

Technology Focus Expectations from data analytics in the upstream sector continue to evolve. Although the number and diversity of applications continue to increase, the adoption at the assetwide level faces well-known barriers and challenges. Massive data collected from field instrumentation remain unexploited to the full potential because of misalignment between people, processes, and technologies. To begin with, a lack of consistent data-integration infrastructure (e.g., between secure field networks and corporate data repositories) makes accessing and using data in real time difficult. It is disappointing that small, missing, or broken links can interrupt the whole data flow. For example, data from a fully instrumented field may not be leveraged in the data-analytics domain because of a lack of an integrated gateway between two networks within the same company. Furthermore, although the number of data-analytics applications continues to grow, data-assimilation algorithms are still gaining momentum in being accepted as business as usual. A disconnect exists between the available operational challenges and the applications being developed, in some cases because of data completeness and availability and in other cases because of a mismatch between the technology-driven organizations and the asset owners, operators, and decision makers. Finally, adopting such business processes requires dedicated people with the expertise to exploit the data, with business-intelligence skills and experience with data analytics or automated-work-flow building. The competency gap does not appear to be reduced despite the avalanche of data-analytics self-training programs; it remains a highly scientific mathematical approach to solve problems, accessible to few. The good news is that success stories are everywhere. Traditionally unsolved upstream challenges have the potential to be addressed by self-clustering and dimensionality-reduction techniques that uncover hidden patterns and trends in data from drilling, production, completion, seismic, and logs. As an example of success, engineers can gather data from thousands of wells and automatically (without previous knowledge or target outputs) group these wells into a small subset that is similar or related through different attributes, such as rates, reservoir quality, contact area, completion parameters, or location. These applications clearly have benefited operators and service companies to focus quickly on value-added decisions, which was not possible previously unless senior experience was considered. Assets and operators should strive to understand the value that predictive analytics can provide to their bottom line. I invite you to review the selection of key papers in this feature. In addition, I would like to invite you to try the new SPE advance search engine (https://search.spe.org), which uses advanced analytics and artificial-intelligence techniques to offer a better experience for finding and analyzing information on SPE.org, PetroWiki, and OnePetro. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. SPE 190812 Status of Data-Driven Methods and Their Application in the Oil and Gas Industry by Karthik Balaji, University of North Dakota, et al. SPE 187030 Logging Facies Classification and Permeability Evaluation: Multiresolution Graph-Based Clustering by Xinlei Shi, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, et al. OTC 28002 Multiscale Ensemble-Based Data Assimilation for Reservoir Characterization and Production Forecast: Application to a Real Field by Alexandre de Lima, CGG, et al.

Integrating the ‘Troublemakers’: A taxonomy for cooperation between banks and fintechs

The banking sector has been subject to fundamental changes as digitalization is enabling novel technology-driven banking services and is creating new customer demands. While banks face sluggish innovation processes, fintechs take advantage of the digital era, delivering customer-centric solutions. Although banks have realized that cooperation with fintechs is a key approach to foster innovation, they struggle to address the associated challenges. Yet, there has been very little research into this phenomenon, so as to establish best practices, because neither bank-fintech cooperation, nor associated and relevant characteristics have been evaluated. However, especially from an economic and financial perspective it is crucial to close this research gap to better understand how technology-driven organizations and cooperating with them reshapes the financial sector and therefore entire economies. Thus, we propose a theoretically founded and empirically proven taxonomy. Based on the literature, 136 real-world cases, and 12 expert interviews, our results suggest structuring and describing bank-fintech cooperation through 13 dimensions. Further, the empirical examination allows for the identification of prevailing cooperation patterns. Our findings contribute to theory development on fintechs, their integration into the banking sector, and the cross-organizational cooperation research area. This paper also has practical implications for both banks and fintechs, and opens promising avenues for future research.

Rethinking Public Organizations as Knowledge-Oriented and Technology-Driven Organizations

Public organizations should rediscover the role of knowledge as a source for designing and implementing internal processes and adopt a knowledge management approach by using and managing technology as means and enabler for building a citizen-centered public management, sustaining democratic and civic values by promoting openness and fostering participation in order to encourage collaboration with citizens for co-producing public services and co-creating public value. Information and communication technologies are driving public organizations as responsive institutions in front of the citizens to proceed towards sustainability as a principle of governance for promoting the public interest and sustaining active citizenship, enhancing both collaboration and interaction between citizens and public administration. Introducing and actively implementing technology in government helps rethink public organizations as knowledge oriented and information based organizations seeking sustainability by involving citizens, businesses and other stakeholders for public value creation, enabling access to information, sustaining openness, transparency and accountability in order to engage citizens and encourage them to be included and actively participate in democratic public life, involving citizens to assume the responsibility for co-production of public services and fostering citizen participation in public policy choices. Technology opens up new opportunities for public organizations seeking sustainability by rediscovering knowledge as source and strategic asset following a knowledge management approach for designing and implementing democratic and administrative processes, redesigning the relationship with citizens, building public trust, encouraging citizen participation and sustaining co-production of public services.

The Leadership Lab for Women: Advancing and Retaining Women in STEM through Professional Development.

Innovative professional development approaches are needed to address the ongoing lack of women leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. Developed from the research on women who persist in engineering and computing professions and essential elements of women’s leadership development, the Leadership Lab for Women in STEM Program was launched in 2014. The Leadership Lab was created as a research-based leadership development program, offering 360-degree feedback, coaching, and practical strategies aimed at increasing the advancement and retention of women in the STEM professions. The goal is to provide women with knowledge, tools and a supportive learning environment to help them navigate, achieve, flourish, and catalyze organizational change in male-dominated and technology-driven organizations. This article describes the importance of creating unique development experiences for women in STEM fields, the genesis of the Leadership Lab, the design and content of the program, and the outcomes for the participants.

Ethical Leadership in the Digital Age: Assessing the Role of Leaders in Nurturing Ethical Behavior in Technology-Driven Organizations

This research paper investigates the role that leaders play in the development of ethical behaviour within technology-driven organisations in the modern day via the lens of a research question. Because of the fast advances in technology, organisations are now faced with one-of-a-kind ethical dilemmas that can only be navigated successfully with strong leadership. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the significance of ethical leadership in establishing an ethical culture and encouraging the responsible use of technology. This paper investigates the role that leaders play in establishing ethical norms, serving as an example of ethical behaviour, and fostering an atmosphere that encourages ethical decision-making. In addition to this, the article underlines the ethical implications of new technology and analyses several techniques for establishing ethical leadership in today's digital age. This study intends to give insights into the relevance of ethical leadership in technology-driven organisations and to advise future leadership practises in the digital age by evaluating the effect that ethical leadership has on the results of organisational activities.

Risk-taking behavior of technology firms: The role of performance feedback in the video game industry

This study focuses on what drives technology-driven companies to engage in risk-taking behavior by serving new markets. Building on the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory, this study suggests that technology-driven organizations tend to respond to past performance rather than future possibilities. Using a sample of 5312 video games from 362 game developers, the results reveal that market performance trend and market performance variability have opposing effects on risk-taking behavior: while a positive market performance trend negatively influences a company's tendency to venture into new markets, a high-degree of market performance variability tends to positively influence new market entry. The study also finds opposite results for expert performance trend and expert performance variability: companies with consistently positive expert evaluations are more likely to enter into new markets, while variability in expert evaluations has a negative effect on new market entry. Furthermore, the effects of expert performance trend and variability are conditional on market performance trends. Finally, the results suggest that companies that venture into new markets tend to choose relatively similar markets if these companies are suffering from a negative market performance trend or a negative expert review trend.

A DEA benchmarking methodology for project planning and management of new product development under decentralized profit-center business model

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, technology-driven organizations widely adopt decentralized profit-center business model. In order to complete a series of new product development (NPD) activities on time and within budgetary constraints, the NPD managers need an objective benchmarking approach to gain accurate perception on the relations of resource allocations, profits, costs and times for each NPD activity. Thus, this study employs the data envelopment analysis (DEA) concept to put forward a benchmarking planning and management methodology to optimize the NPD activities within a profit center for achieving the goal of maximal profit and satisfying the resource constraints. By applying the real case of the electric motor scooter NPD project, this research demonstrates the method’s real case application with superior results, comparing to other existing approaches.

Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to Win in the Information Age (Putt, A.; 2006)

This concise 181-page book introduces guidelines for those interested in improving their status in the hierarchy of modern, technology-driven organizations. The book is divided into five parts. Part One is an introduction to the guidelines needed to succeed in technological hierarchies. Part Two consists of 11 chapters that present the tale of I. M. Sharp, who went from being an average high school student to being a successful technocrat. Part Three consists of seven chapters that introduce a methodology that technologists can use in the management of high-technology projects. Part Four consists of six chapters that explain how to select projects, evaluate ideas, and thrive in a technological organization. Part Five consists of three chapters that summarize all the laws, corollaries, rules, and precepts presented in the book, serving as an excellent reference. The ideas in the book are presented in brief, practical, and reader-friendly format and the examples facilitate the understanding of the key points covered. The book will certainly interest readers who are looking for a career in a technology-driven organization.

Who Are the Spellbinders? Identifying Personal Attributes of Charismatic Leaders

While much is known about what charismatic leaders do, where they emerge, and what their followers' reactions are, relatively little systematic empirical research has been conducted to assess who charismatic leaders are, and how we differentiate charismatic from noncharismatic leaders. To address this gap in the literature, multi-source field data were collected in five technology-driven organizations to examine the relationship between five personal attributes of leaders (i.e., self-monitoring, self actualization, motive to attain social power, self-enhancement, and openness to change), ratings of charismatic leadership, and follower (i.e., extra effort, self-actualization, collectivistic work motivation, organizational citizenship behavior) and managerial performance outcomes. Two hundred and eighteen managers provided self-reports of their personal attributes and 945 subordinates provided ratings of follower outcomes and their manager's charismatic leadership. Superiors of the managers provided ratings of the manager's charismatic leadership and managerial performance two months after collecting the managers' and subordinates' ratings. Results indicated that managers rated by subordinates as high on charismatic leadership reported higher levels of self-monitoring, self-actualization, motive to attain social power and self-enhancement values than managers rated low on charismatic leadership. Managers rated by superiors as high on charismatic leadership were associated with followers who reported higher levels of extra effort and OCB than managers rated low on charismatic leadership.

Conceptual estimating tool for technology-driven projects: exploring parametric estimating technique

This paper examines a parametric estimating technique applied to technology-driven projects. Parametric cost estimating is a widely used approach for bidding on a contract, input into a cost benefit analysis, or as the pre-planning tool for project implementation. Extensive literature reviews suggest that effective parametric estimating methodology is becoming an essential tool for technology-driven organizations. The use of parametric estimating in budgeting, scheduling, and control of projects will enhance the ability of project management organizations to effectively and efficiently utilize valuable resources. The benefit of parametric estimating is its use as an estimating model for better determining potential resource requirements during the project pre-planning and conceptual phase.

Higher order technological learning as determinant of market success in the multimedia arena; a success story, a failure, and a question mark: AGFA/BAYER AG, Enable Software, and Sun Microsystems

The case studies of three players in the multimedia arena focused on instances and patterns of technological learning — technical and administrative learning as it occurs within and across technology-driven organizations — are compared and contrasted. Success and failure to learn from customer, competitor, and supplier feedback and to integrate lessons learned in shaping entrepreneurial decision making and marketing strategy are highlighted. These case studies were all composed through triangulation of multiple field interviews with several company principals, of publicly available information, and of company documents made available to the author by the companies studied. The first story is about AGFA Electronic Preprint Systems, a subsidiary of BAYER AG, based in Wilmington, Mass., and a leader in the high end desk top publishing and reproduction business. The company successfully reinvented itself driving its transformation by a vigorous focus at lower, middle, and top management levels on employee, customer, competitor, and supplier feedback and by integrating lessons learned into a very entrepreneurial manufacturing and marketing strategy. The second story is about Enable Software, an upstate New York software venture that was among the pioneers of software integration but failed to capitalize on the niche it carved for itself, lost its strategic focus, and recently transferred its customer base to Microsoft through a strategic alliance with the software giant. The third story is about Sun Microsystems, a Silicon Valley producer of engineering workstations currently faced with major challenges to redefine its worldviews and reinvent itself, as its market niche comes under increasing pressure from higher and lower end original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).