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Publication National Innovation Systems and Entrepreneurship(2008-09-26T09:15:47Z) Higgins, Eoin; Golden, William; Lee, Soo HeePorter (1990) argues that the future battles for competitiveness will not be fought just between organisations but also between nations. Looking at the nation as the unit of analysis, one way to become more competitive is to be innovative. Nelson (1993) directly addresses the innovativeness of nations using the concept of National Systems of Innovation (NSI). These are defined as "a set of institutions whose interactions determine the innovative performance....of national firms" (Nelson, 1993). The main premise of this concept is that innovation is central to competitiveness, and the key driver of innovation is knowledge, "the most fundamental resource in the modern economy" (Lundvall, 1992). NSI serve to stimulate the creation of knowledge. In the process they also stimulate economies, essentially taking on the role of a modern national production system. In tandem with NSI is the concept of entrepreneurship, which "involves identifying and exploiting opportunities in the external environment" (Hitt et al. 2000), such as the opportunity to commercialise innovation. Given that National Systems of Innovation seek to foster innovation, and entrepreneurship has innovation as a central component, this paper proposes that the existence of a NSI should promote entrepreneurship within an economy. To date, academic research to support this conclusion has been lacking. As a result, this paper offers a preliminary investigation into the relationship between the strength of the national system of innovation within an economy and the level of entrepreneurship occurring within that economy.Publication Rethinking the Role of the IS Function(2008-09-26T09:09:19Z) Finnegan, Pat; Golden, WilliamThis paper proposes that IS managers need to review what they regard as their core competencies if they are to be a valuable asset to organisations in the 1990s. The authors start by questioning whether the IS function has strayed away from information management in support of organisational functioning and become too occupied by strategic management, organisational design and competitive positioning. They compare the concerns of IS managers in western countries with those of their counterparts in developing countries and conclude that, even though they both face generally similar organisational conditions within the global economy, that they are focusing on different IS support mechanisms. IS managers in western countries are striving for strategic information systems and the redesign of business processes, while their developing counterparts are focusing on more infrastructure based issues that were important to western IS managers in the past. The authors examine a number of these western concerns and conclude that while they provide western IS functions with good organisational visibility they may not be of most benefit to the main organisation. The authors propose that IS managers need to be aware that changes in organisational environments require that organisations be more flexible, fleet of foot entities. They also note that strategy makers are now more concerned with emergent strategies than with traditional mechanistic strategy formulation. They believe that what such entities require is a more invisible IS function that proves to be strategic, not because it proactively chases competitive advantage, but because it provides an effective underlying flexible technical and information infrastructure that mirrors an organisation's dynamism. They propose that the Japanese Kaizen model is a good example of what such invisible efforts can achieve. Essentially, IS managers will have to tackle issues that they would have considered solved in the past because operating conditions have dramatically changed since. This will probably prove an unwelcome suggestion to some IS managers who have been working for a high organisational profile over the last decade, but should prove beneficial to the organisation.Publication The Implementation Of Citizen-Centred E-government: a Stakeholder Viewpoint(2008-09-26T08:36:15Z) Hughes, Martin; Scott, Murray; Golden, WilliamE-Government provides unprecedented opportunities to improve citize services and achieve cost efficiencies through process change. As a resul implementation models have been developed to support the successfu attainment of citizen-centred e-government. This paper reports from comprehensive study of e-government implementation in Ireland, conducte over the last two years, the outcome of which is assessed from the view-poin of multiple stakeholders. This paper argues that the potential of the Internet t transform service delivery has influenced the focus of implementation model for e-government, precipitating governments to concentrate on achieving web enabled service delivery and ignoring wider issues of stakeholder managemen and involvement. A central problem in Information Systems (IS) is th mismatch in expectation of what IS can and cannot deliver; in the context of e government in Ireland, IS has not delivered the hoped for panacea. This pape argues that the role of stakeholder involvement should be an essentia component of implementation strategy in order to develop realistic an achievable expectations of the capability and function of e-government.