Project and Quality

Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) software was considered a cure for all ailments by organizations for some time before its official demise news given by Gartner Inc, which had coined the term in the first place in the 1990s. This was due to several problems encountered by organizations during the implementation of ERP software, including inflexibility in meeting organizational specific needs. This paper proposes the Best of Breed (BoB) Strategy which involves integrating number of standard package and/or custom software as a better alternative to single vendor developed ERP system. The study is based on two case studies, one case representing ERP implementation and another one representing a BOB strategy. This was followed by an in depth analysis of the two approaches using Questionnaire and personal interview. The study concludes that though traditional single vendor ERP systems, provide several benefits by integrating the Information system silos throughout the organization, but the Best of Breed provides another approach in which greater flexibility and competitive advantage can be obtained coupled with faster implementation. The paper also highlights the differences in complexity of implementation, levels of functionality, business process alignment potential and associated maintenance, between the two strategies.

This paper addressed supply chain management from another angle of view, which is explored the importance of leadership style in the supply chain process. The first part of this paper presents an overview of supply chain management and the definitions stated by researchers for decades. Furthermore, this paper reveals the dilemmas in supply chain management and some barriers facing the organizations' leaders to overcome these obstacles. Therefore, the second part of this paper presents and develops the two theories of cultural intelligence and strategic flexibility that helps managers to overcome these dilemmas. This part will present the theories background and the importance of the application of these concepts on supply chain management in general and in the healthcare industry in specific. Finally, we provide some suggestions for future researchers to consider these two variables as the main factors in their studies due to the importance of the culture in today's businesses and du to globalization. Moreover, researchers must pay attention to the role of planning in supply chain management in the future.

This study was designed to establish the project based factors influencing the supply of safe water in Kenya with Mombasa County as a case study. The Government and private organizations have established many water projects but most of them have been characterized with low levels of sustainability. Some of them have become un-operational requiring rehabilitation. Inspite of the existing projects, the water supply is still inadequate. To address the problem, this study identified four specific objectives, namely; to establish the influence of project planning on the supply of safe water, to establish the influence of project risk management on the supply of safe water, to determine the effect of project quality control management on the supply of safe water and to determine the effect of project monitoring and evaluation on the supply of safe water. The hypotheses used were geared towards establishing the influence of water projects? planning, risk management, quality management and monitoring & evaluation, on the supply of safe water. All the variables are interrelated. Project planning includes plans in all the project knowledge areas such as quality and risk management which touch on all deliverables and processes. M&E is also done on deliverables and processes, in reference to the agreement made during project planning. The study sought to assist the national and county governments in the sustained provision of safe water. The theories of sustainability, participation and project management were analyzed in relation to the supply of safe water. The participation theory discussed the unity of the beneficiaries for the sake of water projects. Sustainability theory discussed the long term water benefits. Whereas, the project management theory put emphasis on the water projects? processes.

There has been an increasing interest in organization theory field towards network theory and methodology during the recent years. Most important journals in this field published a special issue concerning the organizational networks. Social embeddedness theory of Granovetter (1985) can be seen as a milestone for the widespread usage of social network methodology in the field of economics and management. Network research methodology has gained importance to measure the social capital of the organizations (Bordieu, 1983 and Coleman, 1988) for understanding institutional effects in an organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Galaskiewicz and Wasserman, 1989) and to map resource dependency relations between organizations (Pfefer and Salancik, 1978). Networks research methodology can also be used to determine some micro issues in organizations like coalition groups, cliques, social capital formation tendency of the actors.

This study seeks to examine the standard components of project management in four knowledge areas of integration, scope, time and quality in IT management projects and with regard to infrastructures in different countries, to specialize those components for implementation in Iranian active IT corporations. Accordingly, using the Fuzzy Delphi Technique, the opinions of experts in this area were collected and a specialized conceptual model based on the mentioned standard components in association with IT management projects was developed. It was also found that, contrary to some industry projects, IT projects can be very diverse. Identification of relatively large weaknesses in the field of quality management in IT projects was the other finding of the present study. Moreover, it was found that most of the IT projects stop before being finished. Finally, the extracted conceptual model was implemented in three reputable IT corporations (the Iran (NOSA) Hardware and Software Corporation, the Hamkaran System Corporation and the Mesbah Energy Corporation, and findings were analyzed based on the Promethee II ranking model.

Disbursement involves approval, allocation, release and transmission of funds or grants to projects for implementation. Funds are always disbursed according to funding and implementation schedules agreed upon by the parties and based on the submitted budget and work plan. The developed schedule with each grant recipient is necessary to ensure proper funding accounting, reporting and timely disbursement of funds during the implementation phase to the devolved units. Implementation is the carrying out, execution, or practice of a plan, a method, or any design for doing something. The government of Kenya has made deliberate efforts to decentralize most of its development projects over the past few years, through the use of decentralized funds key among them are, Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF), Constituency Bursary Fund (CBF), Women and Youth Enterprise Fund and Constituency Development Funds (CDF). This was made possible through Constituency Development Act of Kenya, (2003) which was enacted in order to re-distribute resources to every corner of the country so that poverty levels can be alleviated. Devolved funds have been taunted as the most effective way of fighting poverty on the strength of their ability to bring governance closer to the people thereby addressing their priorities. In a perfect world every project would be "on time and within budget." But reality tells a very different story. Even if the budget and schedules are met, one must ask if the project delivered the results and quality expected. True project success must be evaluated on all the three components otherwise a project could be considered a failure. Delays in disbursement of funds lead to delay in land acquisition among other factors which eventually has a serious impact on the overall performance in the implementation of the development project. The impact of delays in acquisition resulted into cost overruns due to price variations and time overruns and had an impact also on the successful completion of the development project.

Reducing poverty has become a priority objective of any policy based on the planning of economic and social development, we will present various strategies adopted by Tunisia to fight against poverty. In analyzing the economic and social situation in Tunisia and to test the relationship between poverty and economic growth in Tunisia, that is to say, to have it was if growth benefits the poor or not.

Earned Value Management System (EVMS) is designed for controlling the costs and determining the periods of attracting financial credits (domestic or Rial and foreign currencies) in the project. Unfortunately, this controlling system is poorly carried out in most of the operational projects or merely its show-off aspects are highlighted. But, in reality, this system is able to predict the process of attracting costs at the beginning of the executive operation, and also, to control the amount of costs spent during the executive activities. Furthermore, the project status can be assessed in different time intervals using the key indices of this system and different cost analyses acquired from these indices. The aim of this project is the examination of the concepts involved in the earned value method, the methods and metrics it employs as well as the performance measurements and methods of forecasting project progress that are used. A case study regarding the construction of a Cattle Barn in Qazvin city, an actual project, is utilized to illustrate the comparison between traditional methods and the EVMS method. By utilizing information obtained when employing the earned value method with the project, findings the valuable would be early warning with regard to a problematic situation, it is possible to take steps to correct the problem before too much time has elapsed. It is possible to make more informed decisions about the project's direction with accurate forecasting. With accurate forecasting, it is possible to make better decisions with regard to issues that are outside the scope of the project but that may be affected by the project's progress. Sponsor confidence is boosted when a view of progress is available that is open and that can be verified.

In the fashion business, privately owned brick-and-mortar fashion boutiques in the United States face the challenge of competing with online retailers who usually have low overheads and inventories. The knowledge and awareness of the changing marketing landscapes responsible for the decline in the survival rate of traditional or brick-and-mortar fashion boutiques may be essential to traditional and online entrepreneurs, to increase adaptability and business sustainability. Grounded in the general systems theory, the research conducted through the invocation of a qualitative multiple case study, entailed the exploration of strategies used by successful brick-and-mortar fashion boutique owners in contending with the online retailers. Interviews constituted the means for data collection and involved 5 brick-and-mortar fashion boutique owner participants, who operated retail fashion businesses in the southeast region of the United States. The successful existence of the business for more than 5 years, while participation criteria in the study, also indicated merit in studying success in traditional fashion retailing. The primary data from interviews were analyzed and triangulated with credible secondary sources such as information and reports from the U. S. Small Business Administration, U. S. Census Bureau, and fashion industry sources. From a thematic analysis of the interview data, the three themes that emerged from the data analysis were the importance of business success of marketing strategies, cognizance of fashion trends, and the role of customer preference in economic success. The potential knowledge from the utilization of the study results may serve to increase the success rates of traditional and online fashion startups and possibly endow these businesses with the adaptabilities and strategies capabilities in the inevitable greater transformation to an online business world.

Universities have always had three key roles to play: teaching, research and community service. However in recent times, they have been expected to excel in a fourth and pivotal new role, that of developers of the economy. In order to achieve this new and important role, they have had to become entrepreneurial in nature and become what has been termed “entrepreneurial universities”. This paper had as its objective the development of a roadmap for Nigerian universities to follow if they truly wanted to excel as developers of the Nigerian economy by becoming entrepreneurial universities. The roadmap covered six critical factors namely government policy, top-management buy-in, availability of finance, availability of infrastructure, quality of staff and entrepreneurship education which are considered vital for any university with aspirations of becoming entrepreneurial in nature. A critical analysis of these six factors as to their prevalence in the Nigerian context revealed that in all six critical factors, Nigerian universities had a lot of work to do to attain the minimum standard required by each of the six critical factors. Most importantly, the analysis revealed that the biggest problem among the six factors lay in the issue of sincere leadership. The authors were of the opinion that until and unless the top management of Nigerian universities put the betterment of these universities as the most important priority rather than their personal self-enrichment, none of the other five factors would be attainable, and the dream of Nigerian universities contributing positively to the development of the economy by become more entrepreneurial in nature would remain forever unfulfilled.