Table Of ContentOperations Management
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m Operations
A Modern Approach
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Business operations are those ongoing and recurring activities involved in the running of a s
business that deal with the production of goods and services. It involves the responsibility of
ensuring efficient and effective methods and processes.
Management
This book looks at a selection of important business management techniques from a variety of
countries and types of businesses. It discusses interorganizational information systems O
development, organizational performance management, activity-based cost systems, financial
decision-making processes, teleworking (or telecommuting), customer-focused process p
A Modern Approach
improvement, the communicative nature of innovation processes and the impact of this on
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innovation management, a model of ebusiness systems that allows for emergent factors, and
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much more.
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About the Editor Mo
Rae Simons is a successful business manager in Binghamton, New York, who is well acquainted o
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with the demands and details of management. With degrees earned in both psychology and d
education (from the State University of New York), she brings practical and wide-ranging insights es
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to the field of business management. She has written extensively for numerous publications on n
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business and other topics, including publishers such as Barbour Books, Greenwood, and Facts on
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Related Title of Interest o
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• Human Resource Management: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities
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ISBN 978-1-926692-90-6
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Apple
Apple Academic Press
Academic
www.appleacademicpress.com 9781926692906 Press
OperatiOns
ManageMent
A Modern Approach
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OperatiOns
ManageMent
A Modern Approach
Rae Simons
Small-business owner and author,
Vestal, New York, U.S.A.
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COntents
Introduction 7
1. Managing Innovation as Communicative Processes: 9
A Case of Subsea Technology R&D
Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen
2. Deferred Action: Theoretical Model of Process Architecture 29
Design for Emergent Business Processes
Nandish V. Patel
3. The Survey of the Political Costs and Firm Size: Case from Iran 57
Reza Tehrani, Mahdi Salehi, Hashem Valipour and
Mohammad Jahandar Lashky
4. An Evaluation of Inter-Organisational Information Systems 90
Development on Business Partnership Relations
Elizabeth A. Williamson
5. Rational Exuberance and Revival of the U.S. Automotive Sector 113
Balkrishna C. Rao
6. A Neuroanatomical Approach to Exploring Organizational 120
Performance
David Gillingwater and Thomas H. Gillingwater
6 Operations Management: A Modern Approach
7. Neural Networks and their Application to Finance 152
Martin P. Wallace
8. Implementing the Activity Base Costing System: A Case Study 164
on Dakota Office Supply
Betty W. Steadman
9. Profitability of the Greek Football Clubs: Implications for 169
Financial Decisions Making
Dimitropoulos E. Panagiotis
10. Teleworking in United Arab Emirates (UAE): An Empirical 183
Study of Influencing Factors, Facilitators, and Inhibitors
Mohamed G. Aboelmaged and Abdallah M. Elamin
11. The Role that Personality and Motivation Play in Consumer 213
Behaviour: A Case Study on HSBC
Jolene Montgomery
12. Mobile Technology and the Value Chain: Participants, 222
Activities and Value Creation
Constantinos Coursaris, Khaled Hassanein and Milena Head
13. Cost Effectiveness of Community-Based Therapeutic Care 249
for Children with Severe Acute Malnutrition in Zambia:
Decision Tree Model
Max O. Bachmann
14. Integrating Chronic Care and Business Strategies in the 267
Safety Net: A Practice Coaching Manual
Katie Coleman, Marjorie Pearson and Shinyi Wu
15. Customer Complaints as a Source of Customer-Focused 297
Process Improvement: A Constructive Case Study
Kari Uusitalo, Henri Hakala and Teemu Kautonen
Index 318
intrOduCtiOn
Management in business pursuits and organizations can be defined as the pro-
cess of coordinating people and processes in order to accomplish specific goals
and objectives. Business management, specifically, includes planning, organizing,
staffing, directing operations, and resourcing. Resourcing, furthermore, requires
the strategic use of human, financial, technological, and natural resources in ac-
complishing the goals of a business entity. Because businesses can be usefully
viewed as “systems,” business management can be seen as human action designed
to facilitate useful outcomes from that system. This view allows for the opportu-
nity to “manage” oneself, an important factor to consider before managing opera-
tions and employees.
Business management is generally viewed as equivalent to “business adminis-
tration”. College and university departments that teach business management are
often called “business schools,” such as the Harvard Business School. Others use
the broader term “schools of management” (such as the Yale School of Manage-
ment), which by definition include the management of entities outside of com-
merce, such as in nonprofit organizations and in the public sector.
In this book, current research in one of the most important and basic aspects
of business management, operations management, has been appropriately em-
phasized.
Business operations are those ongoing and recurring activities involved in the
running of a business for the purpose of producing value for the individual owners
8 Operations Management: A Modern Approach
of the business and their stockholders. The goal of successful business operations
is the harvesting of value from assets owned or produced by a business. Assets can
be either physical or intangible. An example of value derived from a physical asset
is the profit a business makes on goods that it manufactures. An example of value
derived from an intangible asset is profit derived from selling a service, such as the
financial services of a bank, or a royalty derived from the licensing of a patent. The
effort involved in “harvesting” this value is what constitutes business operations.
There are three fundamental goals in business operation management:
1. To secure the income and value of the business
2. To generate sustainable income over the long run
3. To increase the value of business assets
The competitive nature of twenty-first-century global commerce requires that
businesses be managed strategically by managers who are knowledgeable in the
principles of operations management.
— Rae Simons
Managing innovation as
Communicative processes:
a Case of subsea technology
r&d
Tone Merethe, Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen
abstraCt
Exploration of the communicative nature of innovation processes and the im-
pact of this on innovation management has largely been ignored in innova-
tion research. This paper suggests that the adoption of a complex responsive
processes perspective opens up for insight and implications that depart from
the prevailing view of what it means to manage joint efforts for innovation
in business organizations. A key contribution is the suggestion that a change
of perspective on organizations from conceptions of “whole” to notions of joint
human interaction implies a need to increase management attention to the
detail of local interaction between people striving to construct meaning out of
new and ongoing themes, for the company and for them. We base our claims
