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Students who successfully complete the program will not be looking for new jobs when they graduate: they will be offering jobs to other young graduates looking to become part of the next-generation business success story! All rights reserved. About Ateneo Ateneo Home. Restaurant Entrepreneurship B. S Information Technology Entrepreneurship B. S Management of Applied Chemistry B. S Management B. S Management Honors Program B.
S Management Engineering B. S Communications Technology Management B. The primary purpose of this book is to present and explore current trends and changes in the nature, process and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation in the development, implementation and application of information technology. This book provides academics, entrepreneurs, managers, and practitioners with researched-based articles on the formation and implementation of effective strategies and business plans.
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With regard to IT, this factor favors competitiveness and innovation. IT is therefore an important part of technology entrepreneurship and technology entrepreneurship is an important part of CE. This paper is organized as follows. Entrepreneurship is considered to be a vital component in the process of economic growth and development. Organizational performance, growth and development may depend on entrepreneurship to a considerable extent Antoncic and Antoncic, This phenomenon can be studied from an individual perspective by analyzing the characteristics and functions of the individual entrepreneur Bygrave and Hofer, , differences between individual entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs Gartner, , or the collective process of the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities Shane and Venkataraman, Entrepreneurship is a process that consists of revitalizing existing companies, revenue growth, profitability enhancement and pioneering the development of new products, services and processes Bailetti, ; Miles and Covin, Established organizations possess significant resource advantages over new start-ups: capabilities for the production, distribution and marketing of their services and products and legitimacy in their strategic fields and among stakeholders, particularly potential customers and suppliers Miller, ; Rauch et al.
Innovation is at the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit Lumpkin and Dess, Innovation can indeed deal with the technological side of human activities, thus with product design and manufacturing processes, but it may also deal with the organizational and social side, e.
Castrogiovanni et al. Openness in communication is important as regards both promoting CE activities and creating the most appropriate work environment in which to carry out other resource management practices that stimulate entrepreneurial behaviors DeNisi, Entrepreneurial activities carried out by the enterprise to sustain or improve its competitive position have several consequences as regards processes, structures and capabilities Srivastava and Agrawal, ; Ozdemir et al.
Given the importance of CE, various scholars have focused on identifying the factors that contributing to or enhance CE see Table 1. Finally, Lumpkin and Dess define EO as an organizational decision-making proclivity that favors entrepreneurial activities.
There is an assumption that EO represents a continuous variable in which all organizations can be positioned. Covin and Wales explore how the concept has been portrayed and assessed in prior research. They claim that researchers are free to choose whichever measurement approach best serves their research purposes. In this respect, some authors have conceived of EO as a construct composed of three sub-dimensions: innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness Miller, ; Covin and Slevin, Some other authors have later expanded the number of dimensions that characterize EO by adding autonomy Dess and Lumpkin, ; Hughes and Morgan, , and they consider that this dimension is an important characteristic of EO.
The level of autonomy that managers give to employees can drive the innovations, creativity and changes usually linked to EO. Within the field of CE, we shall pay attention to the process of discovering and applying new IT systems. Scholars began to analyze the creation of technology-based firms from the s, since these firms contribute to job creation and play a crucial role in renewing the economic system.
Scholars have adopted diverse conceptualizations of IT, and have extended it beyond hardware and software to include a range of contextual factors associated with its application within organizations.
Information technology has been one of the most important drivers of economic and social value in the last 50 years, transforming organizations, markets, industries, societies, and the lives of individuals Lucas et al.
Understanding the economic impact of IT is a critical issue for researchers, and there is a rich body of literature concerning IT value e. Many papers have stressed the strategic significance of IT as regards supporting competitive strategies and improving firm performance Powell and Micallef, ; Kohli and Devaraj, ; Melville et al.
Others have stressed the IT-Productivity relationship at national economy level Dedrick et al. These works are based on several theoretical paradigms, including microeconomics, industrial organization theory, and sociological and socio-political paradigms showing the complex problem of linking IT to organizational performance Melville et al. For many firms, the most common reasons for adopting IT are to provide a means to enhance survival and growth, thus staying competitive and enhancing innovation abilities Nguyen, IT can add value to an organization via the functionality, usability and information structure, which in turn affect the quality, efficiency and innovations of IT users Gustafsson et al.
These IT systems are widely applied in business such that not only production but also administration processes can be technology-intensive. Information technology systems require quality interactive interfaces and compatible dynamic knowledge systems.
If they are not compatible with these systems, then either the systems should be improved or replaced, or people should be better trained or replaced Wang, If the cost of hiring new staff is high, firms must provide the current staff with training. Training and effective communication must be provided for existing employees if there is to be a substantial change in the IT Nguyen, Information technology systems can reduce and automate repetitive works, and reduce the time needed to search for copy, collect, and format information, and they can enable team members to focus on critical and inventive activities Wang, Moreover, innovations in one area have important implications in other areas, and distribution impacts on the concepts of product and service Franklin et al.
This increases autonomy within the organization. When employees have the capacity to make decisions regarding their work, this is directly related to their attitudes toward engaging in entrepreneurial activities; b design of the superstructure, thus cutting down the number of hierarchical levels since IT simplifies communication, coordination and control functions and therefore increases the degree of decision making authority in the possession of individuals; c design of the lateral linkages, thereby improving analytical and design capabilities, increasing access to information and making it easy to access the results; and d design of the decision-making system, thus allowing organizations to simultaneously exploit the advantages of both centralization and decentralization.
In this respect, Lau et al. The paper adopts an exploratory perspective and employs a qualitative approach. A case study was used to gain deeper insights into a contemporary and complex issue within its real-life context Yin, Many studies are based on qualitative methodologies and can reveal the reality of entrepreneurship in organizations e. Bruque et al. The results indicate frank and fluid communication between departments and members of the organization, low levels of conflict and the explicit support of top management as regards the introduction and development of IT.
The single case setting limits the applicability of the research to other institutions. However, the framework and model that are developed, along with the overall approach, are valuable contributions to an important and emerging research area. Case-based research aims to generate refined theory based on an in-depth understanding of a particular context.
According to Yin , research must identify some situations in which all research strategies might be relevant. As the paper seeks to address research questions, this suggests the adoption of an exploratory approach Yin, The identification of EO enablers is essentially exploratory, in the sense that the main objective is to refine a research idea in order to facilitate further research Kervin, The qualitative approach and exploratory nature of the research question influenced the data-collection method.
Research conducted within the qualitative paradigm is characterized by its commitment to collecting data from the context in which social phenomena naturally occur and to generating an understanding that is grounded on the perspectives of research participants Marshall and Rossman, Data collection was consequently developed using desk and field research. Desk research, based on internal company documents, served to provide a detailed understanding of the innovation.
Interviewing multiple respondents in the company provided diverse sources of evidence and served as a means to validate and replicate the findings. The interviews took place during June—July Bearing in mind the principal opinions of the scholars reviewed above, we have included the following dimensions in our research: EO, organizational effects, company strategy and social effects.
The Covin and Slevin and the Hughes and Morgan scales were chosen in order to analyze the EO in our case study. The first scale considers that EO is a composite of risk taking, innovativeness, and participativeness. We have also introduced the autonomy items from the latter because, like Hughes and Morgan, we consider the fact that the employees are permitted to act and think without interference and perform jobs that allow them to make and instigate changes to be important for EO.
Furthermore, we analyze the organizational effects based on Mintzberg We have also added more questions in relation to organizational effects, company strategy and customers and social effects in order to include some important issues that affect this specific case see Appendix. First, in the following section, we describe the company, its activity and its most recent innovations.
We then explain the principal ideas extracted from the interviews. The principal activity of the firm under analysis is that of pharmaceutical distribution.
The pharmaceutical industry in Europe is defined as being composed of commercial enterprises engaged in the design, creation and development of medicines to prevent or cure disease and relieve human suffering.
Distribution can be defined as a variety of processes linked with delivering the pharmaceutical products needed to the right place at the right time such as express delivery to hospitals or daily shipments to pharmacies. One of the most important characteristics of pharmaceutical distribution in Spain is its wide public regulation. The national health programs fall into the first of these, which, through specific programs concerning, for example, vaccinations , supply medicines directly to users.
Hospitals make up the second, through the medication administered to hospitalized patients. The third is direct purchase by the general public, and it is in this process that the wholesalers like Cofarcir and the retailers the pharmacies participate.
Its organization chart is shown in Figure 1. Organization chart. The company started its activity in , and during the course of the last 84 years of its existence has been numbered amongst the six largest companies in the province and the twenty largest companies in the country. Some data related to the company is shown in Table 2.
The pharmaceutical distribution sector, and particularly the company under analysis, has always been a pioneer in relation to the adoption of continuous IT developments.
In the 80s, Cofarcir gave its pharmacies dataphones for the electronic transmission of medical orders, thus preceding the Internet and the official definition of e-business by several years. The automation of the other warehouse took place in and permitted the application of the most innovative technology in the sector worldwide. The pharmaceutical sector in general, and the distribution of drugs in particular, is immersed in a continuous process of change in Spain.
The worldwide crisis we have been confronting since , which is more serious in this country, has resulted in constant decreases in the prices of medication, in subsidies for patients as regards acquiring them and in many other measures such as the promotion of generic products or the setting up of public pharmacy services inside hospitals.
Government sanitary agencies meanwhile continue to push the ideal goal of total traceability of the whole medication chain, from the laboratory that produces it to the final patient who consumes the drug. This is an extremely difficult objective to achieve, and the most recent theoretical technologies are intended for this purpose. Thirdly, the great pressure that the huge wholesalers, which control the pharmaceutical distribution in other European countries, are exerting on Spain with the aim of changing the successful Mediterranean model.
Finally, some large cooperatives in this sector have opted for expansion outside their natural territories. Cofarcir has decided to confront these major challenges in two ways: firstly, it continues to rely on the current regional cooperative model, convinced that this is the optimal means to maintain the high standards of the Mediterranean model.
To accomplish this goal Cofarcir has strengthened its ties with several other Spanish cooperatives that are united in this vision in order to create the group Unnefar, the fourth biggest of its kind in Spain. The company has therefore made the decision to renew the technology at its main warehouse in Ciudad Real. The automation level of this storehouse, although a pioneer when installed back in , was becoming outdated and was virtually unable to keep pace with the new regulations commented on above.
The company selected for this change in technology has again been Knapp, an Austrian company and a worldwide leader in this sector. The core of the project is to install a chaotic storage system of 16 m-high towers — called OSR35b — in which the system automatically chooses the place where the goods are stored, allowing the separation of a good by its batch number and its expiration date.
The user does not know where the products are kept inside the robot. They only ask the system for an amount of good and the system retrieves it to them, following certain premises FIFO, for instance while keeping track of which batch is sent to which pharmacy.
The best appear to rely on the information the laboratories send with the products when delivered to Cofarcir. However, this information is not always sent in the way-bill and worse, when it is, it is very difficult to introduce into the computer system as it is printed on paper.
For the time being, Cofarcir will continue to use the AECOC standard which uses the GS1 bar-code system to describe much important information about the products delivered. This information is registered in Cofarcir with bar-code readers and special software developed internally, and is linked with the product income via radio-frequency devices when available. The increase in productivity will principally occur in two ways.
A new technology is now being used and improves the speed of manual dispatching by up to four times, while decreasing the error rate. There is also a new positioning system, which has been developed by Cofarcir employees and which aims to use the Internet to inform clients where their order is and how long it will take them to receive it.
The total investment will be up to 6 million Euros. This amount includes not only the cost of the technology explained above but also the building of a new warehouse next the current one to contain it.
We shall now present the main ideas extracted from the interviews Appendix Figures A1 and A2. Following the Covin and Slevin and the Hughes and Morgan scales we can consider that the company has an EO, i. However, upon considering the autonomy items proposed by Hughes and Morgan , although employees are given freedom to communicate without interference and have access to all vital information, they are not given freedom to decide for themselves how to go about doing their work or to make and instigate changes as regards the way in which they perform their work tasks.
In relation to job design, the IT in Cofarcir allows its workers to know how they are performing their jobs, thus allowing them to improve their skills in order to make their tasks more efficient.
This may lead to increased motivation since the workers can evaluate their performance. It also makes the workers more multifunctional because they have to cope with the instructions, guides, checking, warnings, etc.
In any case, IT helps workers to auto-organize their work whilst simultaneously providing management with powerful means of control, from the overall performance of the production system to the most detailed performance of an individual worker. This leads to a direct and efficient control of the company, eliminating intermediaries in the process.
In terms of jobs, owing to the considerable changes in the way that the work will be done, the company considers that there is no need to decrease the amount of warehouse workers. The automation of the firm has not therefore created or eliminated departments but has simply redistributed the employees to control, administration, maintenance and IT jobs since fewer workers are now directly needed in the production process.
With regard to lateral linkages, tools like Business Intelligence Software provide the management with a better understanding of the process and allow them to determine the main variables that affect it, in addition to keeping track of the critical points involved. This leads to an improvement in the planning phase. Improved control is one of the main reasons for investing in IT. In the design of the decision-making system, IT eventually supports both centralization and decentralization.
On one hand, as stated previously, managers need IT to be able to make decisions based on a better understanding of the development of the process.
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