Image is Indeed Everything: An Analysis of How Americans View Leading Companies Today on the Seven Dimensions of Corporate Reputation

In today’s economy, a substantial part of the value of a consumer-facing company is tied-up in the value of its corporate image and its brand. As such, major companies today have both a great opportunity and a significant challenge at hand in managing their corporate reputations. In recent years, we have seen numerous instances of how the public perception of companies - and their brands - can be either positively or negatively impacted almost overnight by a wide range of events, social media, and more. As such, “reputational risk” is - and will continue to be - a significant managerial concern. In this study, we explore recent survey data on how the American public regards leading companies today in regard to their reputations. Using data from a major national consumer survey, we examine the seven dimensions of corporate reputation and assess how the public views the “best” and “worst” companies today on each reputational aspect. The article concludes with a look at the managerial implications of the present research and a look ahead to how further research could both deepen our understanding of consumer perceptions of corporate reputation and connect the reputation construct to actual corporate performance.

Challenges for Public Sector Organisations in Cloud Adoption: A Case Study of South Australian Public Sector Agency

This research explores critical aspects of procurement of ICT cloud services for South Australian public sector organisations with the case of South Australia Police (SAPOL) for evaluation. SAPOL as one of the state government agencies at the time is initiating this transition to the cloud environment. This exploratory research takes place when this public sector agency is doing its due diligence to ensure a successful implementation. In this study the researcher started off with surfacing the challenges in this journey for a public sector organisation before the actual journey commenced. SAPOL being a public sector organisation operates differently from private enterprises and has certain constraints and limitations that pose additional challenges for the organisation to transition towards the cloud. Interview with the CIO of the organisation responsible for the cloud migration initiative was organised. After detailed literature review, an interview questionnaire was prepared in accordance with the subject of interest. The information gathered in the interviews was recorded for detailed analysis. This paper contains a detailed report on the information analysed highlighting fourteen important challenges faced by the organisation in this cloud migration journey.

A Data Governance Maturity Assessment: A Case Study of Saudi Arabia

Nowadays, data has become important and influences the decision-making process on government and business sectors. Data governance strategy should not be underestimated because it increases the value of data and minimize data-related cost and risk. The data governance concept promotes the accomplishment of organizational objectives by developing and implementing an appropriate strategy for processing data in perfect and secure manner. This study aims to assess the maturity of data governance for Saudi sectors by design a framework and using it to measure whether the data governance have been applied or not. To do so, we have designed a questionnaire based on five criteria for assessing the current state of data governance implementation which are: policies and standards of data management, data quality, risk of poor data quality, cost of data correction, and data security. The questionnaire was then distributed to the employees in the IT department or who are related to data management or data security in Saudi sectors either government or private. The results show that approximately 48% of the respondents stated that they have a data governance committee in the sectors in which they work. Also, 55% of the respondents indicated that there are legislation and regulations for data governance in the sectors, as well as for making data available. Moreover, 42% from the respondents stated that their organizations have policies and procedures to enforce data management

The Effect of Internal Factors within the Government Entities on the Implementation of E-gov Projects by External IT Service Providers: An Empirical Study on GCC Area

The building of e-government has become a priority issue as well as a challenge for many local, state, and federal government agencies worldwide. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is now widely employed to help the governments transformation toward smart governments. Many critical success factors (CSF) are there to determine the chance a transformation project can go-live. It has been noticed that the implementation journey for IT solutions in the public sector has lots of barriers and challenges which lead to low success rate of projects. This study examines the effect of the Ease of Delivery of the implementation journey on the Success of Delivery. The result shows that the Ease of Delivery is positively related to the Success of Delivery. The result of this study has the potential to increase the success rate of IT projects in government sector by shedding the light on the most important factors affecting the delivery journey for egovernment projects.

Enablers and Inhibitors of E-tax System Use:The Perspective of Dual-Factor Concepts

The aim of this study is to investigate the acceptance and rejection behavior of electronic tax system at the same time. This study applied a conceptual framework focused on the dual-factor concepts of "enablers" and "inhibitors" to illustrate users' desire to exercise the e-tax system. In the dual model the Theory of Consumption Value (TCV) and Status Quo Bias (SQB) have been used to describe the reason behind consumers' accepting or rejecting the e-tax system through perceived enablers and deliberate inhibitors. A survey has been conducted in Bangladesh to collect data from 422 taxpayers, and the structural equation model was used to validate the proposed model. We find that functional value, social value, and emotional value are seen to have positive and direct impacts on the user's preference to use the e-tax system, while user’s resistance to use adversely impacts the use of the e-tax system. The results also signify that the user's resistance to using the e-tax is due to switching costs, inertia, and perceived risk. Several suggestions are provided for the practitioners to implement the e-tax system successfully by eliminating resistance factors.

Public University Modes of Communications: A Study of Student Preferences

While there has been a plethora of research in higher education concerning how instructors communicate directly with students in their classes, there has been a paucity of work regarding the subject of the present study, which is how do - and how should - universities most effectively communicate with current students bout non-instructional information and news. The present study took place at a publicly-funded, regional state university in the Southeast United States and incorporated an extensive email sampling of students. The findings showed that today’s largely Gen Z students have important communication preferences that need to be taken into consideration by university leaders as they consider how to best communicate non-instructional messages to them. The study has important implications for university leaders to consider as to how to most effectively make use of text and email, as well as social media platforms, in their communications strategy for non-instructional matters and university news.