Outsourcing, Leadership, and Strategic Intention in Cloud Computing: Dr. Alan F. Castillo
Presentation Description: How attitudes toward business process outsourcing mediate the relationship between leadership practice and strategic intentions of leaders to use cloud computing. In this presentation Dr. Alan F. Castillo presents his quantitative correlational cross sectional research study that investigated the propensity of leader combined business.
Biography: Dr. Alan F. Castillo is an IT professional and founding principle of Castillo Technologies doing business computing technologies. His company provides IT consulting services to both public and private organizations nationwide.
Video Transcript: Uh thank you so very much uh good afternoon everybody. So I’ll be discussing the study that I conducted in 2014 relating to the relationship between strategic intention to use computing. So basically to begin talk about the main key terms within the study attitude according to stewart, attitudes involve emotional expression of value what we believe in . business process are activities that we conduct during the normal course of business operations. Business process outsourcing also known as BPO is the use of outside service providers to conduct business functions. Cloud computing where we all pretty much aware of ubiquitous on demand services via the internet. Disruptive technology or innovations is usually emerging technology or some sort of new innovation that displaces some current technology. It manager or directors usually organizational leaders responsible for making decision within their leadership organizations. Leadership practice are observed skills which an executive typically has which are displayed within an organization. Strategic intention is the ability to realize the organisation’s vision. These terms we’ll be discussing throughout the study.
Leadership practice is identified by Hughes Impossner 2003 as defining as modeling the way also having an inspired vision and challenging the business process and enabling others to act and encouraging and acknowledging excellence. Typically we see that certain functions are more inclined to be outsourced than others like business process outsourcing is leveraging the resources of an external resource provider. Some of the advantage of business process outsourcing is you can leverage operational excellence from third party providers and typically they have a series of expertise beyond what the consuming organization has but also while focusing on business process outsourcing those process that aren’t uniquely inherent to the core compency of the organization can be outsourced to gain cost savings or to allow the leadership to shift resources to focus on more core higher revenue higher generating functions within the organization. So when we look at business process outsourcing there is typically a layer on top that can be available with elastic on command and services and cloud computing. We know the five essential cloud computing characteristics they are: on-demand self service, ubiquitous network access, location transparent resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service pay per use. When we talk about strategic intentions we are looking at the idea to conduct a certain function or action in the future. So in research of this study identified and looked at prior concepts and studies and the theory of business process outsourcing evolves from WHitaker Matthias and Christanan discussed how they would move operational control of certain business functions to an external provider. Agile theory we know is the quick response to any type of new opportunity.
The technology acceptance model is if a new technology is perceived to be useful or of higher value or the ability to leverage that new technology is not significantly more difficult than typically that new technology is accepted. The cost benefit paradigm where you’re looking at higher value or higher benefit technologies verses the cost which makes them appealing. The theory of transformational leadership where looking at how the motivations behind adopting or inspiring a new structure or function. Theory of disruptive technology this is where as mentioned before a new technology displaces something existing. Theory of planned behavior where when leaders indicate higher intentions there is a higher likelihood that those intentions will become fruition. This all leads to the theory of service oriented architecture where you have an adaptable business frame where you can adapt and adopt to various types of situations. The problem statement in this study is focusing on a 2010 IBM survey cited that cloud computing is potentially the largest leadership challenge identified in eight years of research.
The specific problem of the study was to determine if attitudes towards business process outsourcing influences a leadrs intention to use cloud computing and to what extent and why? So this is a quantitative correlational cross sectional research study that examined a theoretical model of leadership practice, attitudes towards business process outsourcing, and strategic intentions of leaders to use cloud computing and relationships between test latent constructs. Existing research there were gaps while Arunkumar had attitudes and intentions with business process outsourcing from Weber ther was generally not a prior research study that looked at leadership processes and intentions to use cloud computing. So we look at here is a theoretical research model, one of the prior studies showed from Einsen shows that there is between attitude towards behavior and intention of perceived behavior or norm you can end up having to measure that resulting behavior. So for these that prior study the three latent areas were identified and focused on as being outsourcing, leadership process and intention for leaders to use cloud computing.
The research design was constructed from structural equation modeling and this identified from the individual items one through five and then the five leadership practices as well as strategic intentions went through four. Sample population is managers and directors of medium sized enterprise firms across all industries in the US. These are their demographics. So the research question one: does a theoretical model consisting of leadership practice, attitudes of business process outsourcing, and strategic intention of leadership use cloud computing fit observed data? And what was the relationship between these measurements. As a result the analysis from the statistical structural equation modeling and regression and mediate regression. Some of the limitations to the study were just restricted to IT managers and directors. The latent construct of attitudes towards business process outsourcing is limited to the attitudes of outsourcing business processes as a general business practice. And the finding for RQ1: the theoretical model consisting of leadership practice, attitudes of business process outsourcing and strategic intention of leadership to use cloud computing was found to have a borderline unacceptable fit.Findings of question two: relationship between leadership practice and intention to use cloud computing revealed a moderate and significant relationship correlation coefficient of (.294). Research question three: the relationship between leadership practice and attitudes toward business process outsourcing revealed a relationship correlation coefficient slightly above neutral between the two variables. And research question four had a strong and significant relationship, attitudes towards business process outsourcing and strategic intentions. Somewhere in the analysis indicated between the latent constructs and as a result concluding that as a piece of innovation accelerates, directly from increased integration of business process outsourcing and cloud computing technologies, presents to leadership practice both a challenge and an opportunity for competitive transformation. The study also indicates that the transformational-visionary style is the best leadership style for dealing with disruptive technology. And then when working with service oriented architectures we see that these types of configurations lend themselves to effective use of business processing whether insourced or outsourced.
And in conclusion, in summary, leadership belief that cloud computing as a cost reduction tactic with inherent cost and efficiency qualities rather than having potential for creating disruptive strategic advantage. Outsourcing is quite acceptable as a process within certain areas. There are still some concerns among leaders regarding performance security that may have potentially influenced attitudes towards cloud and strategic cloud use. And leaders are inclined to leverage wheel known outsourcing partners to gain benefit. Recommendations for future research can be expanded to specific business processes, other leadership studies may be identified that are more conducive to organisational strategic success. Optimizing technology effectiveness with cost and capability requires adaptive business processes combined with innovative technology delivery platforms. Leaders leveraging opportunities to transform their organizations into stronger postures. Here we see different types of areas that contribute more towards strategic opportunity, R&D, versus other administrative processes that may not contribute much towards strategic value of the organization. And then this section is questions, are there any questions?