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Higgins, Allen
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Higgins, Allen
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Higgins, Allen
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Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
- PublicationCountry Selection and Impact IT Sourcing: Relationships Between Business Factors and Social Inequality(2016-12-07)
; How, if at all, does offshore outsourcing impact social development in supplier countries? We explored the relationship between international offshore outsourcing rankings produced by consulting firms against country level social data obtained from international non-governmental agencies. A multivariate analysis was carried out between commercial outsourcing attractiveness data and country level socio-economic data. Two components from the main country attractiveness index are shown to be correlated with data from three international data sets: child mortality rate, life expectancy and unemployment. This suggests that higher commercial attractiveness scores are associated with lower national performance in socio-economic data, the corollary being that poverty and its consequences make some destinations more financially attractive for investment. Conversely, the top-ranked most successful sourcing destinations tend to have exemplary socio-economic data suggesting that sourcing activity does contribute to humanitarian values.378 - PublicationThe First (Beer) Living Lab: Learning to Sustain Network Collaboration for Digital Innovation(Springer, 2018-07-20)
; ; ; ; ; The Beer Living Lab was the first of a series of living labs established to analyse and improve complex cross-border trade and logistics challenges using innovative information technology. Unlike stable inter-firm networks where roles are formal and explicit, role taking and role assigning in the Beer Living Lab was highly dynamic. Although project deliverables were formally assigned, in practice responsibilities emerged as a result of actors’ own initiative or as a result of negotiation and sense-making. Even leadership behaviour shifted throughout the various stages of the initiative. The practice of knowledge broking and cultivating a close working relationship with the operational manager emerged as crucial for creating and sustaining the social network which in turn stabilised the hybrid network organisation. We discover (yet again) the key practices of knowledge brokers and the necessity for social involvement in overcoming discontinuities within organisation networks.278