Value Creation

In the debate between marginal decision-making and full absorbance that has been going on since the nineteenth century, activity-based costing/management (ABC/M) appeared as a promising decision support tool which answers the criticism leveled against traditional cost accounting. This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of ABC/M from a global value creation perspective, in an effort to explain why it failed to live up to its promise and why not too many companies retained it beyond a short pilot period. The paper suggests the global decision-making methodology (GDM), as an effective alternative to costing methods, which improves the quality of decisions and enhances organization value. The paper illustrates its implementation by presenting a case study of a large international financial services organization that abandoned the ABC/M system it had been using for seven years in favor of GDM. The ABC/M system was transformed to a throughput focused "light ABC" system that supports GDM. The article describes the circumstances that led the organization to adopt GDM, and provides general guidelines for its implementation.

Norway is a nation with an abundant supply of energy, both from fossil and renewable resources. Due to limited domestic demand, Norway is today exporting large amounts of petroleum products. For the future, various options for export of CO 2 -lean energy exist, both from Northern and Southern Norway, and both from fossil sources (including carbon capture and storage), and renewable energies (particularly wind power). Transport vectors are hydrogen pipelines, liquid hydrogen ships and HVDC cables, and a plausible customer is central Europe due to its proximity, high population density and lack of domestic energy resources.

Introduzione In questo scri o presentiamo uno studio esplorativo sul sistema delle scuole di musica della provincia di Trento. Il nostro lavoro parte da una prospe iva socioeconomica e considera le cara eristiche delle scuole e del sistema isti-tuzionale di cui esse fanno parte in relazione agli esiti che nel complesso riescono a produrre, non soltanto in termini di istruzione, ma anche di inclusione, partecipazione comu-nitaria, creatività ed espressività artistica. Ci interessa, in-somma, capire meglio quale sia il potenziale di produzione di esternalità immateriali del sistema di istruzione musica-le, motivate da una prospe iva in particolare, e cioè che-dove inclusione, relazionalità e espressione creativa trovano maggiore realizzazione-individui, gruppi, organizzazioni o comunità possono essere più vitali e dunque con possibilità di maggiore benessere (Sacche i, 2019). Quest' articolo, nello specifico, affronta il tema della collaborazione tra scuole di musica nonprofit e amministrazione pubblica, evidenziando gli elementi a supporto e a detrimento della produzione di valore per la comunità. Il Trentino rappresenta un contesto unico rispe o al resto del Paese per un motivo in particolare: ha sviluppato un sistema in cui l'istituzione provinciale e le organizzazio-ni private di Terzo se ore coordinano le proprie risorse in maniera sistemica con l' obie ivo di massimizzare l' accesso alla formazione musicale nella comunità, su un territorio costituito da zone urbane e rurali, a tra i piu osto isolate per via della morfologia territoriale. L'idea è di proporre in primo luogo un approccio conce uale generale a raverso il quale sia possibile poi interpretare il modo in cui l'istruzio-ne musicale si è andata evolvendo in provincia di Trento e, successivamente, presentare i risultati di alcune interviste esplorative, volte a fare emergere ulteriori categorie di ana-lisi e temi da approfondire con ricerche successive, anche in chiave comparata. In Trentino le organizzazioni nonprofit e for profit che offro-no servizi di formazione musicale sono numerose e diversifi-cate. Nel 1987 la Provincia Autonoma di Trento ha istituito il Registro delle scuole musicali trentine, al quale possono ade-rire le organizzazioni che presentino determinati requisiti e che acce ino di rispe are alcune dire ive poste dall' a ore pubblico, fra cui l' applicazione degli Orientamenti dida i-ci provinciali. Se queste condizioni vengono soddisfa e, la Provincia si impegna a finanziare i costi sostenuti, in gran parte per la remunerazione del personale, nell' ambito dell' e-rogazione delle ore di formazione musicale che seguono gli orientamenti dida ici. Gli Orientamenti dida ici provinciali sono stati originaria-mente stabiliti di comune accordo con le scuole e sono stati poi modificati nel tempo per essere adeguati ad alcune istan-ze avanzate comunemente dagli istituti. In generale, essi hanno l' obie ivo di uniformare la formazione su standard comuni. Le scuole sono dotate di una propria rappresentanza, la qua-le tu avia non raccoglie l' adesione di tu e e tredici le scuole comprese nel registro provinciale 1 .

Purpose -In today's complex and highly competitive marketplace, universities and colleges, realizing a need to develop sustainable strategies, have turned to branding as a solution. However, because of their unique service characteristics, universities' branding attempts may not always result in success. The aim of this paper is to present a brand ecosystem framework in order to develop branding strategies for colleges and universities. Design/methodology/approach -The key elements of the framework include: student experiences as the driving force of the university branding strategies, academic services as the core value creation activities in delivering student learning experiences that are co-created with students and faculty, and supporting activities that are important in creating the core value. Findings -The framework suggests that both core and supporting value-creating activities are dynamically inter-related and work jointly in creating student learning experiences, and ultimately, a strong university brand. Originality/value -The paper presents the crucial elements and the relationships among them for building successful brands in higher education.

Value creation and key account management both attract increasing attention among marketing researchers and practitioners. At the intersection of both research streams, however, little is known about the role that key account managers play for the creation of customer-perceived value. Do key account managers contribute to customer value and if so, what are the basic drivers? Based on a qualitative study among key account managers and a quantitative study among purchasing managers, this paper develops and tests a framework for value creation in key account settings.

Organisations operate in an increasingly dynamic environment. Consequently, the business models span several organisations, dealing with multiple stakeholders and their competing interests. As a result, the enterprise information systems supporting this new market setting are highly distributed, and their components are owned and managed by different stakeholders. For successful businesses to exist it is crucial that their enterprise architectures are derived from and aligned with viable business models. Business model ontologies (BMOs) are effective tools for designing and evaluating business models. However, the viability perspective has been largely neglected. In this paper, current BMOs have been assessed on their capabilities to support the design and evaluation of viable business models. As such, a list of criteria is derived from literature to evaluate BMOs from a viability perspective. These criteria are subsequently applied to six well-established BMOs, to identify a BMO best suited for design and evaluation of viable business models. The analysis reveals that, although none of the BMOs satisfy all the criteria, e3-value is the most appropriate BMO for designing and evaluating business models from a viability perspective. Furthermore, the identified deficits provide clear areas for enhancing the assessed BMOs from a viability perspective."

Long-standing wisdom holds that criticism is antithetical to effective brainstorming because it incites intragroup conflict.  However, a number of recent studies have challenged this assumption, suggesting that criticism might actually enhance creativity in brainstorming by fostering divergent thinking.  Our paper reconciles these perspectives with new theory and a multimethod investigation to explain when and why criticism promotes creativity in brainstorming.  We propose that a cooperative social context allows criticism to be construed positively, spurring creativity without inciting intragroup conflict, whereas a competitive social context makes criticism more divisive, leading to intragroup conflict and a corresponding reduction in creativity.  We found support for this theory from a field experiment involving 100 group brainstorming sessions with actual stakeholders in a controversial urban planning project.  In a cooperative context, instructions encouraging criticism yielded more ideas and more creative ideas, whereas in a competitive context, encouraging criticism yielded fewer ideas and less creative ideas.  We replicated this finding in a lab study involving brainstorming in the context of a union-management negotiation scenario, which allowed us to hold constant the nature of the criticism.  Taken together, our findings suggest that the optimal context for creativity in brainstorming is a cooperative one in which criticism occurs, but is interpreted constructively because the brainstorming parties perceive their goals as aligned.