Human Systems Management

This study seeks to establish the general trend in telecommuting in Singapore. Results indicated that the highly rated reasons cited for telecommuting are often practical ones such as that it is a better form of working and enables higher work productivity, while social reasons such as taking care of one's dependants figure on a lower level. In addition, while telecommuters enjoy certain benefits, they do not do so without having to bear certain costs. This study also found that accountants/auditors in general reported to their supervisors more frequently than insurance agents and information consultants. The higher levels of reporting indicate that the former is more regulated and controlled than the latter.

Modern time managers have access to many more data sources than managers of earlier times, and better instruments and resources to deal with large amounts of data. In principle, this means that they have a better command of facts and should be able to work out better assessments of their business environment. In reality, however, information overflow and problems with the quality and reliability of information complicate the picture.

We have a support system with intelligent agents to help managers conduct constantly active scanning and interpretation activities with hundreds of data sources. The system was built on a Java platform and has been enhanced and developed in several versions. The first implementation was at the Alko Group (the producers of the Finlandia vodka). The system is expected to provide mangers with a broad and comprehensive first approximation of environmental trends and events as needed, and will help them extract useful information from large volumes of data. (Originally presented at the ISDSS’99 Conference, Melbourne, July 19–22, 1999.)

Developing Information Systems is a process fraught with danger and often resulting in failure. Failure rates now run at 80% and there is no sign of decline [16,17,18,20,21,30,31,35,36,40]. If Information Systems (IS) projects are high risk even in industrialised societies, then projects in developing countries and newly emerging economies are even more prone to failure. Putting IS projects together with the developing economies would appear to be a recipe for disaster but this paper describes an IS project developed between the UK and China which has got to beta testing stage and shows early signs of success.

The paper describes the process whereby the project was developed, the methodology applied and the problems and difficulties encountered.

Taking as its point of reference the autumn 1999 review mission, the paper describes the situation for the Feasibility and Appraisal Information System (FAIS) at that time and draws out some policy and methodology learning issues relevant to others planning IS in similar contexts.

In today's volatile environment of business, competitive advantages of firms are temporary. Top managements do not, and cannot, have all the answers to increasingly complex and rapidly changing problem situations facing their firms. In such a context, people of an organization constitute its core resource for continuing competitiveness. This resource comprises people's individual and collective learning and knowledge, skills and expertise, creativity and innovation, competencies and capabilities i.e., people's continuous capacity for providing customer-valued outcomes. In terms of their continual enhancement of such a capacity, the people of an enterprise constitute an appreciating resource i.e., its human capital. This paper explicates an inclusive concept of human capital, and specifies its necessary and sufficient conditions. It further highlights the embededness of human capital within a dynamic multi-loop nexus of social capital, learning, and management of knowledge. Intellectual capital of a firm is an emergent from this nexus. The framework developed here also helps outline a set of propositions regarding the nature and process of human capital development.

Every day, a new problem attributable to the World Wide Web's lack of formal structure and/or organization is made public. What arguably could be presented as one of its main strengths, is rapidly turning out to be one of its most flagrant weaknesses.

The intent of this article is to show that the World Wide Web's insistence in remaining free from outside regulation and interference may be counter-productive.

The World Wide Web (also known as the Internet and/or Cyberspace) is growing by leaps and bounds. It is entering uncharted territory.

While doing so, it must recognize that trampling at will on existing legal and ethical societal standards will impair its credibility and usefulness. It should be willing to accept the benefits of mild regulation and outside control, against the risks of unfettered freedom.

It is to balance these benefits and risks that a more formal organization which could take the form of a metacontrol system – to be explained – coupled with self-regulation, is proposed.

The so-called metasystem system would be responsible for preventing some of cyberspace's illegal and unethical emerging situations from ever taking place. Evidently, these unanticipated situations are occurring due to the web's lack of maturity. They will grow in number and severity unless they are kept in check.

Activities, such as the denial-of-service (DoS) attacks may well be illicit. Others, like the question of establishing a world-wide democratic board to administer the Internet's address system is so new, that there are no technical, legal or political precedents to ensure that its design will succeed.

What is needed is a formal, over-arching control system, i.e., a ‘metasystem’, that will arbitrate over controversies, decide on the legality of new policies and, in general, act as a metalevel controller over the activities of the virtual community called Cyberspace.

The problem can be defined in terms of control theory.

Cyberspace lacks a metacontroller that can be used to resolve the many problems that arise when a new organizational configuration such as the Internet is created, and when questions surface about the extent that new activities interfere with individual, or corporate freedom(s).

Ten teams of 2–3 full time undergraduate business students, at Abo Akademi University in Finland were to collaborate with a corresponding team of 3–4 part time MBA students at California State University, Long Beach in the USA. A 10-hour time difference, as well as different cultural backgrounds separated the teams. Students were challenged to push the limits of Internet by collaborating on a joint task on electronic commerce with people they never met face-to-face. The teams co-operated with ten Finnish companies, and the study was taken all the way to an implementable plan for companies doing business on the Internet. This paper confirms several observations of previous researchers and identifies several new issues related to distributed groupwork.