Model de caracterització del sistema d’informació de campus per a estudiants
3. Model de caracterització del sistema d’informació de campus per a
3.1 Concepte de sistema d’informació de campus per a estudiants (SICE)
In literature, many researchers have grouped and presented the factors under different categories. Dikmen et al, (2010) suggests that the determinants mostly associated with business failure belong to “Value Chain factors” such as, lack of management competence
(Everett and Watson, 1998), weakness of value chain analysis, and strategic planning (Perry, 2001), environmental scanning, and financial management; followed by “Resources factors”
which are important sources of competitive advantage like, organisational knowledge, technical and technological capability, relations with clients and/or government, and company image; “Decision factors” such as, unsuccessful restructuring and reorganisation,
13 saving non-value adding activities, poor investment decisions, and wrong level of diversification are among frequent decision mistakes. While general “chance factors” such
as; difficulty in collecting money from the client, unexpected change within the workforce, economic fluctuations, shrinkage in construction demand, and change in politics; have not a significant influence in the failure of construction companies. They found “that organisational and managerial factors including the inefficiency of value chain at corporate level, inappropriateness of organisational decisions, and unavailability of intangible resources are the most important determinants of failure in construction companies.”
Hall and Young (1991) classified reasons for failure under; operational management reasons, strategic reasons, technological reasons, environmental, cost of production, marketing and personal reasons. Their research sort to find owners and official receiver’s perception, in order of importance, reasons for business failure. Both owners and official receivers ranked “undercapitalisation” (shortages in working capital) as most important. They concluded that a great majority of businesses that fail for operational reasons, over half of them fail for lack of adequate capital. This confirms Russell and Jaselskis’ (1992) assertion that “an excess of 60% of construction contractor failures are due to economic factors.”
Table 2.1 shows how Arditi et al, (2000) weighted six different determinants of business failure and their respective sub-factors. To get to this, Arditi et al, (2000) expressed the determinants using an environmental response matrix with four quadrants. This matrix showed how a firm responds to internal (firm) and external events in its environment. The first quadrant contained the internal-administrative factors which consists of; budgetary issues and human and organisational capital; the second quadrant consisted of internal- strategic factors such as issues of adaptation to market conditions; the third quadrant which represents the external-administrative factors consists of business issues; and the fourth quadrant representing external-strategic factors consisted of macroeconomic issues. The research succeeded in calculating the rate of occurrence of the factors that cause business failure. Insufficient profit ranked top, followed by industry weakness and heavy operating expenses. It is important to note that the exercise was not the weighting of “What” causes failure but “Why” businesses fold-up. The “What?” question is more specific to causation
14 factors rather than effect factors. Hence Koksal and Aditi, (2004) produced an inputs and
output model from the system theorist’s point of view showing determinants of business failure as having a cause-and-effect relationship and the “what” question was answered.
Table 2.1: Calculation of weighted average values of failure factors
Source: Adopted from Arditi et al, (2000)
Other researchers looked at business failure from the angle of age and size (Everett and Watson, 1998; Kale and Arditi, 1998; Perry, 2001; Hall and Young, 1991). It is argued that as a company increases in age, its likelihood of failure decreases, in other words 'as the business ages, the chances of failure reduces’ (Bates and Nucci (1989): and Evans 1987). The argument is based on the premise that new firms have a lot to learn. First with regards their industry business environment and second, firms own management capabilities such as learning and inventing new roles like standardizing processes; developing trust, and cooperation among organisational members. In understanding its industry, securing organisational legitimacy is very important i.e. establishing stable exchange relationship with clients, creditors, suppliers and other organisations and establishing a good company image. As the organisation ages, it gain legitimacy and competence in its activities and hence the risk of failure is reduced proportionately (Kale and Ariditi, 1998; Everett and Watson 1998).
15 Some researchers have gone further to argue the inverse relationship between age of proprietor (NB: not age of company), his/her years of education and failure likelihood of the company (Cressy, 1996; Bruderl et al., 1992). It has also been argued that because many new construction companies start small, it is not easy to separate smallness from newness (Kale and Arditi, 1998). Smallness, meaning size of the construction company, was defined as a company with less than 500 employees (Perry, 2001). However, it is possible to reduce the risk of newness and smallness. According to Everett and Watson, (1998), small firms are able to reduce their likelihood of failure by diversifying. As the firm increases there will be a concomitant reduction in risk of failure”. In addition, once a business has survived the first few years its chances of failing are significantly reduced. The size of a company, has a direct relationship with company productivity and hence its chances of survival. According to Freeman et al (1983; cited in Kale and Arditi, 1998), the risk of newness and smallness has an impact on company performance but the effect of newness is stronger. Size alone cannot eliminate the risks of newness.