Cloud Computing and Information Systems Strategy in Multi-National Companies

This chapter explores how information systems (IS) strategy is developed and implemented in multi-subsidiary international groups, and how this has been influenced by the advent of cloud computing and the solutions offered by the major cloud providers. Using an inductive, qualitative research approach, the chapter assesses learnings to date from cloud adoption, reports on individual expert interviews, and discusses future challenges for those companies embarking upon cloud projects. Key issues distilled from the literature and the in-depth interviews with practitioners are identified and discussed. The chapter concludes that cloud has significantly impacted IS strategy within multi-national organizations, allowing flexibility in various scenarios like, for example, moving from monolithic enterprise resource planning applications to a micro-service based architecture. There are nevertheless a range of strategic and operational issues that must be carefully managed and planned for, including multiple aspects of compliance and security.

Developing State Coalition-Building: A Focused Comparison

This article pits two diplomatic strategies in competition for policy officials’ support. Distributive strategies promote one party’s goals at the expense of another. Integrative strategies promote goals that are in conflict with those of another state. The focus is strategy choice and strategy’s bargaining potential of less developed countries (LDC) coalitions in the GATT/WTO regime. Amrita Narlikar, whose study of LDC coalitions is relied upon here, finds that many LDC states employ distributive strategy because of asymmetric structure, which emphasizes the gap between LDC and developed state capabilities, yet she critiques that strategy as ineffective in supporting LDC objectives. This disconnect is probed in this article, which concludes that LDC distributive strategy must be improved and that the integrative strategy’s success in attaining LDC objectives can be important enough to override the structural argument for distributive strategy.

A Theory of Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of School Quality

Many centralized school admissions systems use lotteries to ration limited seats at oversubscribed schools. The resulting random assignment is used by empirical researchers to identify the effects of schools on outcomes like test scores. I first find that the two most popular empirical research designs may not successfully extract a random assignment of applicants to schools. When are the research designs able to overcome this problem? I show the following main results for a class of data-generating mechanisms containing those used in practice: The first-choice research design extracts a random assignment under a mechanism if the mechanism is strategy-proof for schools. In contrast, the other qualification instrument research design does not necessarily extract a random assignment under any mechanism. The former research design is therefore more compelling than the latter. Many applications of the two research designs need some implicit assumption, such as large-sample approximately random assignment, to justify their empirical strategy. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Strategic Planning IS/IT TO Improve Business Competitiveness in Public Hospital

Hospital competition is getting tighter, making good hospital strategic planning very important so that the Hospital can survive to develop better in a changing environment. Today's competitive advantage cannot be separated from Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT). IS / IT in hospitals is currently used as a tool to create and develop innovative products, systems, and services for hospitals. The problem that occurs today is a large number of IS / IT that is made without looking at the financial side of the Hospital, thus making a number of uses of IS / IT not optimal in Hospital operational and business activities. Based on these problems, IS / IT strategic planning that also considers financial capability is needed. In this research, IS/IT strategic planning that takes into account the financial aspects is achieved using the approach of Ward and Peppard combined with Cost-Benefit Analysis. Value Chain and Critical Success Factor (CSF) analysis methods are used to analyze the current internal condition of the Hospital. Meanwhile, PEST and Porter's Five Forces analysis used external business analysis of the Hospital. The results of this study are in the form of IS business strategy recommendations, IS/IT management strategies, IT strategies, IS application portfolios, and IS/IT investment roadmaps compiled based on costs and benefits. There are 25 IS strategy recommendations, the IT strategy recommends 14 proposals to support the IS strategy based on the cost-benefit, and the IS / IT management strategy recommendations consist of 16 suggestions to support the IS strategy and IT strategy.

Sequential Preference Revelation in Incomplete Information Settings

Strategy-proof allocation rules incentivize truthfulness in simultaneous move games, but real world mechanisms sometimes elicit preferences sequentially. Surprisingly, even when the underlying rule is strategy-proof and nonbossy, sequential elicitation can yield equilibria where agents have a strict incentive to be untruthful. This occurs only under incomplete information, when an agent anticipates that truthful reporting would signal false private information about others’ preferences. We provide conditions ruling out this phenomenon, guaranteeing all equilibrium outcomes to be welfare-equivalent to truthful ones. (JEL C73, D45, D82, D83)

The effectiveness of generating interactions between schemata and text (gist) strategy towards the students’ writing skill in Indramayu

Many students have difficulties in writing the text. Some of the problems in writing such as the difficulties in expressing their idea into the words, time consuming activities and the limited number of vocabularies. This study focused on the effectiveness of GIST (Generating Interaction between Schemata and Text) strategy in improving students’ writing skill at the second grade of SMK Negeri 1 Sindang. The GIST is strategy for taking notes while the students are reading and writing good summaries. This strategy works on many levels, this allows students to put concept into their own words. This activity helps teachers and students to identify key concept. By using quasi-experimental method non-equivalent design, the instruments of this research were pre-test and post-test. The participants of the research were class XI TOI 1 and XI TOI 2 of first semester in SMK Negeri 1 Sindang. Each class consisted of 33 students. The statistical analysis showed the value of Tobs was 2.23 while the value of Ttable was 1.669 which means Tobs was higher than Ttable 2.23>1.669 (Tobs>Ttable). It means that the GIST strategy is effective in teaching and learning writing especially in report text.Key words: GIST strategy; writing skill; report text

Fundamental Elements of the Strategy Concept

This chapter answerers and elaborates on the question of “what is strategy” which has been controversial in the discipline of strategic management over the past half a century. On the basis of proposing the “problem-oriented strategy” and “goal-oriented strategy”, the theory of three elements of the strategy concept is put forward, and is introduced in detail. The chapter suggests that the lack of any element of the three cannot constitute a complete strategy. A strategy without “development goal” is undirected and one that cannot identify “development problem” is confusing, while one without a “guideline” is unrealistic. The chapter also discusses the integrated relationship among the three elements.

Small-Scale Development of Product

Small-scale product development is not for everyone, and it needs a high level of discipline, dedication, persistence, and creativity as well as a lot of work. Before setting up a small-scale business, one needs seed money, physical location of the business venture, construction work, equipment/machinery maintenance, management skills, accounting skills, and last but not least, marketing skills. For the development of any area, the small-scale industry development is very important mainly for the income source of the community and for employment opportunities. On the basis of study, four strategies that are used for the development of small-scale industries were found, and these strategies are 1) promotion and development of institutional, business groups, and cooperatives; 2) determination brands; 3) strategy competition with low cost and product development; 4) to improve final access market orientation strategies. On the basis of analysis of these strategies, they are prioritized, and the first priority is strategy.