~In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.~

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Girls on the Run Coastal South Carolina

Thank you to everyone who donated to my campaign to benefit Girls on the Run. I raised $500.00, which will make a tremendous impact on the lives of so many girls who need this program. I am so grateful for your kind and generous support.

PS- if you didn't make a gift but want to, you still have time to make a difference.
https://www.gotrcoastalsouthcarolina.org/fundraiser/Match-to-Match-Lymari-s-Coastal-Girls-on-the-Run?fbclid=IwAR04tkIGcB84OZvmwEE33c8ADQyvjXphFREA7GuLbKTxCUegVa5QXUM10EM

Doctoral Study: “Wellness programs: Strategies for Increasing Employees’ Productivity and Reducing Health Care Costs”

During the holidays, I am pleased to announce that my Doctoral Study: “Wellness programs: Strategies for Increasing Employees’ Productivity and Reducing Health Care Cost” was published via ProQuest with all the copyrights related to the manuscript. A piece of the document:

Abstract

Business executives risk higher healthcare costs and absenteeism rates without implementing cost-effective strategies to support wellness within the organization. To offset rising healthcare costs and absenteeism, executives should implement wellness programs as a component of the benefits package provided to their employees and families. Grounded in the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore the cost-effective strategies that executives in the private and not-for-profit sectors implemented to encourage employees to adopt healthy habits for increasing productivity and decreasing organizations’ healthcare costs. Six executives from the healthcare sector within the southern region of the United States participated in semistructured interviews and shared documents for thematic analysis. The four primary themes include cost-effective strategies to motivate employees, key barriers to wellness programs, a culture of wellness, and leadership roles and engagement. The key recommendation for private and not-for-profit executives is to implement an inclusive, accessible wellness culture for all members. The implications for social change involve possible reductions of healthcare costs when community members have access to holistic wellness programs.

The whole document can be located by searching Google Scholar via the following path:

https://www.proquest.com/openview/3803c20db7d1beacbd08037c3f34c247/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

March, Women’s Month, and Coastal Girls on the Run

March, women’s month, and a celebration of our continued legacy in the world and empowering girls to be their best selves. As the program enters week number four, I want to make a pause in this journey and reflect on the impact that the program had made on the girls, family, schools, and community. As the world navigated the pandemic and adapted to new normals, the girl’s enthusiasm, willingness, positivism, inclusivism, and optimism demonstrated during the past year and the amazing volunteers and donors had made the program a success.

Beyond Girls on the Run mission: “To Inspire Girls to be Joyful, Healthy and Confident using fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running” the ultimate goal of the program is to provide girls with skills that will take and apply outside the program, within their families, and community as social change agents.

Congratulations to our Month and hope that every day is Women’s International Day!

Our vision:

“We envision a world where every girl knows and activates her limitless potential and is free to boldly pursue her dreams”

Girls on the Run Coastal South Carolina Silent Auction

To All:

The purpose is to introduce myself and the team of Coastal Girls on the Run. My name is Lymari Rentas, and I am currently a member of the Board of Directors for Coastal Girls on the Run. 

Girls on the Run is an International Non-for-profit and a place where all girls can find connection, acceptance, and belonging. In addition to cultivating meaningful and healthy relationships, participating in Girls on the Run transforms girls’ lives by helping them increase their self-confidence and teaching them critical skills to manage emotions, resolve conflict, help others, and make intentional decisions. During the program, the girls learn confidence, character, care, connections, and competence. 

As a component of our fundraising efforts, we are going to be participating in a Silent Auction to be held on March 19th from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm on Tradesman Brewery at 1647 King Str. In order to make this event a success, we are reaching out to our business community to collaborate with us and validate if they will love to donate and contribute to our efforts. The donation could be made electronically via pinwheel or via the form included in this e-mail.  As well, I am including the links for Coastal Girls on the Run for additional information about the organization. 

Please refer to the pinwheel link and Coastal Girls on the Run below: 

Our Programs | GOTR Coastal South Carolina

Girls on the Run Coastal South Carolina Silent Auction Registration | Pinwheel

If further information is needed or will love to be present at any of our events, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Respectfully, 

~Girls on the Run, Coastal South Carolina~~

Hi Community, and happy greetings! I hope you and your family are doing well. The current post will be dedicated to the organization Girls on the Run Coastal South Carolina for which I was proudly select as one of the Members of the Board. I received the news last week, from Ms. Paige Hauff, that the Board had voted in favor of me to be a member of the Board. One of the best Christmas Gifts and a blessing to be participating and engaging the community in support of our Girls and future leaders. As this is a starting of a new chapter as a professional and for non-for-profit, I want to kick off with our fundraising campaign and promote what Girls on the Run do.

~What we Do~

At Girls on the Run, we inspire ALL girls to build confidence and make intentional decisions while fostering care and compassion for themselves and others. Trained coaches use physical activity and dynamic discussions to build social, emotional, and physical skills in every girl while encouraging healthy habits for life.

~Why it Matters~

At Girls on the Run, we inspire ALL girls to build confidence and make intentional decisions while fostering care and compassion for themselves and others. Trained coaches use physical activity and dynamic discussions to build social, emotional, and physical skills in every girl while encouraging healthy habits for life.

We believe that EVERY GIRL is inherently FULL OF POWER and POTENTIAL. By knowing they are the leaders of their lives, these are the girls who WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.

~~What Girls Learn~~

a. Confidence: Lessons are designed to build girls' self-worth and help them feel greater confidence in who they are. Activities help girls recognize their personal strengths and teach them how to stand up for themselves and others.

b. Character: By gaining awareness of the power they possess to make intentional decisions, girls learn to choose positive actions which demonstrate respect and responsibility towards themselves and others.

c. Connections: Girls on the Run lessons focus on cooperative skills and team building through a positive group setting. Girls learn firsthand how to create positive connections with parents and caregivers, teachers, peers, and their communities.

d. Care: Throughout each season, girls learn to respond to others and themselves with care and compassion. Lessons and activities further develop their abilities to sympathize and empathize both within and beyond their social groups.

e. Competence: Our program provides skill-building experiences to nurture girls' physical, social and emotional competencies that they apply in other areas of their lives such as home, school, and in the neighborhood. Completing a 5K at the end of the season gives them a tangible opportunity to apply all that they have learned.

~Contribution~

When girls develop and strengthen these life skills, they can thrive. More importantly, they can then develop a final skill: CONTRIBUTION. Girls on the Run inspires girls to build lives of purpose and to make a meaningful contribution to the community and society. This comes to life through a key element of the curricula when each team creates and executes a community service project.

~Program Evaluations~

Girls on the Run is the only national physical activity-based positive youth development program for girls with compelling evidence of program impact.

An independent study led by Dr. Maureen Weiss, University of Minnesota, evaluated the impact of Girls on the Run on positive youth development. The findings provide strong evidence that Girls on the Run is effective in promoting season-long and lasting change in competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, physical activity, and life skills. In addition, Girls on the Run makes a stronger impact than organized sports and physical education programs in teaching life skills such as managing emotions, resolving conflict, helping others, and making intentional decisions.

Please to learn more about our organization, refer to the link:

https://www.gotrcoastalsouthcarolina.org/fundraiser/Lymari-s-Girls-on-the-Run-Coastal-South-Carolina

Better Project: Fun Gathering, Clothing & Food Driving Day with Friends

Hi neighbors, my name is Lymari Rentas Gonzalez, and I am a Doctoral Student from Walden University, works for Intuit and Duke University Health, and minority business owner who is living in the Bolton Landing - Jasmine Row community.   

The Fun Gathering & Cloth Driving Day with Friends is an event as part of my Better Project which I need to organize and record for my Executive Certification for the National of Leadership and Success. The project will consist of a fun community engagement activity with International and well-respected non-for-profits for which I volunteer during this current year 2021. As part of this project, we will have a member of the Board of Girls on the Run Coastal SouthCarolina and volunteers from Charleston Habit for Humanity educating the public of their mission and what they do for our community. As well, our Girls on the Run, are going to have their fall cloth & food drive supporting Charleston Promise Neighborhood. For purpose of the cloth & food drive the following items are needed: (a)New, underwear for ages 3-12 (smaller sizes from 3-5 most needed), (b) School uniforms (ages 5-12) XS Youth, XL or Men’s/Women’s small – Khaki or Navy-blue pants, skirts or shorts and polo shirts solid color as blue, white & red, (c) new or gently used jackets, (d) new or used gently socks. As well for the food drive items needed: (a) cans of beans, soup, corn, or vegetables, (b) canned tuna, (c) bags of rice or beans, (d) peanut butter, and (e ) individual servings of mac & cheese or pasta. In addition to the items mentioned above, interest items will be diapers and detergent.

Looking forward to meeting our neighbors!!!

Venue:

• Bolton Landing Community

• 3112 Moonlight Drive,

• Charleston, SC, 29414

• October 23rd, 2021

• 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

Food Truck: Southern Roots!!!

Reflection- Facebook Community Page -10.27.2021

Good Morning Neighbors,

We appreciate every one of you that we're able to participate in our event this past Saturday! As a reflection, we were striving to educate at least 20 neighbors and we were able to surpass the amount to 24. As well, we collected food and cloth that will impact the lives of at least 10 families. I addition, Girls on the Run and Charleston Habitat for Humanity will love to continue coming to our community with the purpose of educating about the mission of the organization.

Related to the Better Project and the National of Leadership for Success, Executive Certification, the project was approved and certification was passed. In the coming weeks, I will be receiving my last badge for the Society as completion of the whole program and credits to my Doctoral Programs. All this was accomplished by the support of Bolton Landing Community and of course, our neighbors.

Much thanks for all the support and willingness to participate in our event!

Fun pictures!!!

https://www.facebook.com/events/992277474964021/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22surface%22%3A%22group%22%7D]%7D

Ethics Among Risk Takers Leaders in Project Management

Analysis of the Field

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to complete a specific project. As stated by, Dalcher (2014), project management is increasingly being recognized as a critical competence in many organizations in both the public and the private sectors. Trends such as downsizing, reduced management layers, greater flexibility, distributed teams, and the challenge of rapidly evolving technology have taken project management beyond its routes in construction, engineering, and aerospace. Project management is often concerned with improving the current condition. It can, therefore, be viewed in terms of a process moving from a problem or an opportunity for improvement toward a solution. In problem-solving parlance, it is assumed that we are seeking to transform from the current problem space to some desired state, which represents the ideal solution (Dalcher. 2014). Leadership in projects guides in direction and gives purpose and meaning to work on the project. Management in projects makes sure that plans are developed, implementation is controlled, and goals are accomplished.

Project management is undoubtedly one of the most important and most used branches of management over the past decades. It is a combination of the art of collecting facilities and doing work by individuals in a formal and unique organization and the science of producing and processing vast amounts of information for project planning and control. One of the first issues of project management is to ensure that the project is defined with specific constraints. The second issues are to optimize the allocation of resources and align the data needed to achieve the project's predetermined goals. Project management is the skills, tools, and management processes required to complete a project successfully.

As stated by Dalcher, 2014, both leadership and management are needed for long-term success. Leadership lights up the flame of motivation, whereas management provides the oxygen for the spark to stay alive. Leadership has been studied theoretically and empirically from multiple perspectives in many research fields. As part of those, researches authors have identified 15 leadership competencies, categorized into three dimensions, as follows:

1.      Emotional

a.       Self-awareness: The awareness of one’s feelings and the capability to recognize and manage them.

b.      Emotional resilience: The ability to perform consistently under pressure in various situations and stay focused on a course of action or need for results when faced with personal challenges or criticism.

c.       Intuitiveness: The capacity to arrive at clear decisions and drive their implementation despite incomplete or ambiguous information using rational and emotional or intuitive perception.

d.      Sensitivity: The ability to be aware of and take account of the perceptions and needs of others in arriving at decisions and proposing solutions. 

e.       Influence: The capacity to encourage others to change a viewpoint based on an understanding of their position and recognizing the need to listen to this perspective and provide a rationale for change.

f.        Motivation/Conscientiousness: The ability to display a clear commitment to a course of action when faced with a challenge and to match words and needs.

2.      Managerial

a.       Managing resources: The ability to organize and coordinate resources efficiently and effectively as well as establish clear objectives and convert long-term goals into action plans.

b.      Engaging communication: The capability to engage others and win their support through communication tailored for each audience and the ability to be approachable and accessible. 

c.       Empowering: The capacity to know one's direct report's strengths and weaknesses and encourages them to take on challenges, solve problems and develop their accountability.

d.      Developing: The capability to encourage others to take on ever more demanding tasks, roles, and accountabilities, promote others' competencies and invest time and effort in coaching them.

e.       Achieving: The ability to show an unwavering determination to achieve objectives and implement decisions.

3.      Intellectual

a.       Critical analysis and judgment: The ability to gather relevant information from a wide range of sources, sound judgments, and decision-making, and awareness of the impact of any assumptions made.

b.      Vision and imagination: The capacity to be imaginative, and innovative, and to have a clear vision of the future.

c.       Strategic perspective: The ability to be aware of wider issues and broader implications and skills to balance short-and long-term considerations and identify opportunities or threats. 

Despite these competencies mentioned above, Northouse (2016) defined leadership as a process whereby an individual influences a group to achieve a common goal. Also, it is identified six styles of leadership: (a) transactional, (b) transformational, (c) authentic, (d) servant, (e) adaptive and (f) spiritual leadership. Each leadership style contributes to and enriches the organization, providing its followers with the tools needed to reach the goals. For example, as stated by Cregard (2017), the literature on spirituality in the workplace has argued that spiritual leadership in organizations can increase workplace productivity and even financial performance at the same time that it increases the well-being and organizational commitment of members who place a high value on ethical leadership. This type of leadership is most related to not-for-profit organizations, which is a topic of interest. This interest comes for two main reasons: (a) nonprofit organizations whose leaders follow the spiritual leadership model are implicitly communicating their concern for followers' physical and mental well-being, and (b) it is often charged that nonprofit organizations, especially those in the public sector, are unable to motivate followers in the way that for-profit organizations can.

Risk Leadership

Risk aversion is an individual difference variable of some importance in economics. It is referred t as a preference for stable outcomes. In other words, it is a construct that captures an individual's level of comfort with unknown results. Kulas, Korma, and Grossman (2013) stated that there is not enough research on the leader's risk preference. As stated in the initial presentation, project management is often concerned with improving the current condition. It can, therefore, be viewed in terms of a process moving from a problem or an opportunity for improvement toward a solution. The concept of project risk management comes alive, seeking a possible explanation for the organizational project problem.  Sarfaraz (2019) stated that the goal of every project is to achieve the project objectives within the primary constraints of time, quality, and budget. Every project is unique and complex, which requires risk management. Risks can have significant impacts on the project. Risk management is used in projects to identify and analyze risks, determine how to manage a project best, and utilize resources.

In academia, risk management definition includes (a) risk identification, (b) risk analysis, (c) risk planning, and (d) risk monitoring. Debnath, Uzal, Montejano, and Riesco (2006) change mismanagement is a machine of risk situations creation. It is stated that the project leader calls risk issues instead of change management skills to lack. Successful change management requires leadership. Successful change management includes three progressive (interactive and interactive) steps: (a) unfreezing the present level of performance, (b) moving (improving) to a new level, and (c) freezing group life at the new standard. Also, it is suggested a three similar part framework: (a) defrost the status quo, (b) take actions that bring about change, and (c) anchor the changes in the corporate culture. For example, to defrost the status quo, leaders must establish a sense of urgency. A leader should examine market or competitive realities and identify an urgent need in terms of a crisis, potential crisis, or great opportunity. The second element, which takes action that brings about a model change, includes three steps. The first step is to empower others to act on the vision. The second action step is to plan for and create short-term wins, and the third step arises from the second consolidating improvements and producing still more change. For the third element, anchoring the changes in corporate culture, it is suggested a single step. As leaders create effective changes, leaders must now make the changes permanent by using the force of recidivism (Debnath, Uzal, Montejano, and Riesco, 2006).

  Maladazhi (2015) stated that there had been a dramatic increase in globalization over the past decades, the rapid pace of technological innovation, a growing knowledge workforce, and shifting social and demographic trends requiring organizational change leadership. Business leadership has been described as "the dynamic process of presenting a vision, committing followers and risk acceptance when facing opportunities that cause efficient use of available resources, along with discovering and utilizing new resources concerning leadership vision. Studies state that competent leadership should achieve higher innovativeness through risk-taking, which is recognized as one of the characteristics to measure the innovativeness of leadership organizations. Components of organizational entrepreneurial could be translated as (a) risk-taking, (b) pro-activeness, and (c) innovativeness but understanding that these three characteristics do not make one leader. However, the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others is central to being a leader. For example, entrepreneurial leadership manages to encourage and stimulate employees with risk-averse behavior. Maladzhi (2015) stated that companies must eliminate the fear of risk by providing training and setting an example for risk culture. When employees are exposed to exercise, they develop attitudes, skills, confidence, and capabilities to deal with the unknown.

Research Topic

Values and Ethics

Values are the primary motive of our activities and endeavors. They provide us with orientation and serve as a basis for responsible decisions. To make daily choices about good or bad behavior easier, societies and groups develop principles and rules that guide our conduct. These morals are codified convictions and expectations as to what is considered good behavior. Ethics are the systematic combination of values and morals to enable rational and values-based judgments and decisions about what should be done. Ethics include criteria and processes allowing to arrive at or assess personal choices or behavior in terms of good or bad and right or wrong.

  Ethical decisions making tends to be secure in the case of one option serving one value. Facing several options serving one value or conflicting choices, it is necessary to enter a decision-making process based on ethical considerations helping to sort out the moral dilemma and arrive at an ethically sound decision. Ethics deals with the right actions and good results. Project management strives to meet project requirements through project activities. Hence, every aspect of project management involves ethical considerations and may produce a moral dilemma. However, ethical hotspots in project management are areas of interest to the public and issues that touch on essential, generally known as accepted values (human rights, preservation of our environment, financial honesty, etc.).

Project management has been acknowledged as a relevant, knowledgeable field of study considering the huge socio-economic impact of projects on our lives and society. Through the project, we create our future. As stated by Bredillet (2014), the project activities situations, and contexts are managed and led by project managers, making decisions, using professional and industry standards practices, complying with all kinds of regulatory rules and regulations, managing pluralistic or conflicting interests amongst various stakeholders and committed to delivering the best possible outcome. Competent project managers are acknowledged as important actors leading to successful projects and successful organizations. Project managers face the tension between decision-making based on facts, i.e., what "is" and also on values, i.e., "what ought to be," doing "right," i.e., using "the right means" in practice, finding the "right" balance of duty towards stakeholders with pluralistic or conflicting interests, delivering the "right" outcome, i.e., the best possible "end." These tensions are all deeply rooted in ethics (Mengel, 2015).

As stated by Kiani, Hossein, and Abdi (2018), managers must ethically create an atmosphere or a healthy environment for employees to increase their productivity and not get into trouble in terms of good behavior. Many countries in the industrialized world have grown mature, disregarding ethical issues and fleeing social responsibilities and obligations, leading to their disappearance. This argument may be attributed to the fact that work ethic, in particular, is believed to reflect an individual’s attitudes towards various aspects of work, including a preference for activity and involvement, attitudes toward monetary and non-monetary rewards, and the desire for upward career mobility (Kiani, Hosseini and Abdi, 2018). This last statement could be attributed to the individual behavior trying to mirror the organization's corporate culture.

Dalcher (2014) stated that mirroring the corporate culture, the area of ethics is assuming greater importance in project management, with most professional associations establishing professional codes. With an increased focus on the discipline's professionalization, there is an implicit expectation that project managers will behave ethically and professionally, discharging their duties morally and responsibly. As a component of such professionalism and discipline implicit in leader behavior, value-based leadership takes form and importance in project management within the organization. Value-Based Leadership's concepts, values, and skills emerged from the path-goal theory and the transformational leadership approach that requires a solid trusting and ethical partnership between the leader and team members. Northhouse (2016) stated that the path-goal theory provides a set of assumptions about various leadership styles that interact with the characteristics of followers and the work setting to affect the motivation of followers. For example, leaders who advocate for their subordinates benefit from the leader's ethical values and reflection of the organization's structure and systems.

There are six centric principles of values-based leadership, stated by Walker and Moylan (2014), described as follows;  

1.      The leader's role in stakeholder development is to transform himself, his follower, and the organization's focus on accomplishing the vision with creativity and enthusiasm.

2.      The leader's role in creating this vision epitomizes the leader's core values and helps target the follower's actions.

3.      The leader creates a culture supportive of the core values that contribute to the team achieving its personal and group goal.

4.      The leader's preparation for the personalized relationships with their followers that amalgamate the personal values, self-purpose, and methods with each other in a council-like, two-way counseling exercise.

5.      The leader's ability to be a teacher of their followers, coaching on improving personal relationships, work skills, and attitudes to enable, empower, and energize them to higher performance.

6.      The leader’s dual goal of producing high-performance and self-directed followers with an inherent loyalty to the organization and the group mission.

These six principles of G.W. Fairholm constitute the philosophical base for value-based leadership, which is much appropriate for leading transformational change initiatives, which in a particular manner requires a change in corporate culture and personal behavior of what is right or wrong, the ethics of project management.

Projects are understood in organizations as temporary, with unique features that set them apart from permanent organizational forms. For example, a project has a strong focus on achieving a goal and is time-bound, often clearly defined, and with a specific budget (Ljungblom and Lennerfors, 2018). With this in mind, the project is detached from the organization day to day business. Still, it remains affected by the organization's surroundings, including corporate culture and leaders' behavior. Acknowledging that projects are temporary, leaders must understand the importance of ethics in each project. In academia, Ljungblom and Lennerfors (2018) described five central dichotomies that differentiate the temporary from permanent forms, which highlight the potential reason why project management ethics is relevant to business ethics. These five concepts could affect ethics in the following ways:

1.      Temporariness indicates that a project is limited in time, which can affect ethics, introducing even more time pressure than in the permanent organization.       

2.      Uniqueness indicates that, to a greater extent, new situations might arise for which there are no clear rules or standards that can be followed.

3.      Heterogeneity/diversity points to the number of different stakeholders involved in the project, which can also result in value differences or even value conflicts between stakeholders, which could aggravate ethical issues.

4.      Informal coordination within the project and ambiguous hierarchies indicate that the relationships between the different stakeholders of a project are not always clearly defined, which also emphasizes the relevance of soft skills, for example, ethical judgment.

Since 1998, there has been an ethical code to help the project manager deal with ethical issues: the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The code describes what is expected of project managers and their fellow practitioners in the global project management community (Project Management Institute, 2018; Walker & Lloyd-Walker, 2014). In the introduction to the code, it is stated that:

“The purpose of this code is to instill confidence in the project management profession and help an individual become a better practitioner. We do this by establishing a profession-wide understanding of appropriate behavior" (Project Management Institute, 2018, p. 1)."

This code of conduct had the purpose of addressing any ethical issues encountered in project management such as (a) fraud, (b) data fabrication, (c) falsification, (d) plagiarism, and (e) conflict of interest. Some of the benefits of managing ethics in project environments are to lessen liability and maintain the professional integrity of executives and project managers. Mengel (2015) stated that managing ethics has proven to provide companies with financial advantages and improved public image. Beyond improving public image, this ethical reasoning and values-oriented leadership become part of a comprehensive organizational and project strategy to maintain the moral course during turbulent corporate times.

Future Directions

Ethics are the systematic combination of values and morals to enable rational and values-based judgments and decisions about what should be done. Ethics include criteria and processes allowing one to arrive at or assess personal choices or behavior in terms of good or bad and right or wrong. Ethical decisions making tends to be accessible in the case of one option serving one value. Facing several options serving one value or conflicting choices, it is necessary to enter a decision-making process based on ethical considerations helping to sort out the moral dilemma and arrive at an ethically sound decision. Ethics deals with the right actions and good results.

Ethics is the purest form, boils down to the science of duty and compulsion, which governs human conduct, valuing the nature of virtue and right action, regardless of the outcome for the individual. Araujo Galvão, Abadia, Parizzotto, de Castro Souza Pião, and de Carvalho (2017) stated that this environment provides practical and cognitive trust among professionals who will make one feel part of the whole. On the other hand, situations in which ethical conduct is not reinforced can lead to different actions and behaviors of the manager, even if it results in acting differently from the framing of ethical issues they consider. For example, corporate corruption is infrequently reported, resulting in fines, punishments, and even the unfeasibility of the organization’s activities caused by unethical conduct and violation of regulations.

In the context of projects, organizations have to work, develop, and invest in ethics. As stated by Araujo, Abadia, Parizzotto, de Castro Souza Pião, and de Carvalho (2017), the ethical principles of a company reflect how projects are managed and executed. Team members will adhere to the ethical principles throughout the life of the project to mirror the corporate culture and personal behavior of the leaders in the organization. The success of a project could benefit and impact a group of stakeholders and prejudice others, significantly when the project itself could affect different sides of society and with high impacts in environments. For example, an office of compliance could be the best resource to address any concern related to ethical issues, including violation of federal laws. In the future, offices of agreement, code of ethics, ethical commutes, and code of conduct could be tools used in organizations to address ethical issues in projects, which by academia are identified temporarily.

References

Araujo Galvão, G. D., Abadia, L. G., Parizzotto, L., de Castro Souza Pião, R., and de Carvalho, M. M. (2017). Compliance and Ethics for Project Management Governance. Proceedings of the International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning. pp. 115–123. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=126894447&site=eds-live&scope=site

Cregard, A. (n.d.). Investigating the Risks of Spiritual Leadership. NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, 27(4), 533–547. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1002/nml.21262

Collins, R. J. (2011). Project management. [electronic resource]. Hauppauge, NY : Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2011. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat06423a&AN=wal.EBC3017821&site=eds-live&scope=site

Dalcher, D. (Ed.) (2014). Advances in project management: Narrated journeys in unchartered territory. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing Company.

Debnath, N.C, Uzal. R., Montejano, G., and Riesco, D. (2006). Software Projects Leadership: Elements to Redefine “risk management” Scope and Meaning. 2006 IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, Electro/Information Technology, 2006 IEEE International Conference On, 280. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/EIT.2006.252148

Fernández-Muñiz, B., Montes-Peón, J. M., & Vázquez-Ordás, C. J. (2014). Safety leadership, risk management, and safety performance in Spanish firms. Safety Science, 70, 295–307. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2014.07.010

Hossein K., Seyed H.H., and Farshid, A. (2018). A Model to Investigate the Effect of Work Ethic Culture on Dynamics of Rework in Management of Projects. Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, (1), 40. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.7906/indecs.16.1.3

Hoxha, L., and McMahan, C. (2019). The Influence of Project Manager’s Age on Project Success. Journal of Engineering, Project, and Production Management.  9(1), 12–19. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.2478/jeppm-2019-0003

Kulas, J. T., Komai, M., and Grossman, P. J. (2013). Leadership, information, and risk attitude: A game-theoretic approach. The Leadership Quarterly. 24(2), 349–362. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.01.002

Ljungblom, M., and Lennerfors, T. T. (2018). Virtues and vices in project management ethics: An empirical investigation of project managers and project management students. Project Management Journal. 49(3), pp. 5-16. DOI: 10.1177/8756972818770586

Maladzhi, W.R. (2015). Impact of risk-taking leadership on organizational performance and sustainability in SMEs. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), 2015 IEEE International Conference On, 1752. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/IEEM.2015.7385948

Müller, R., and Bredillet C. (2014). Ethics in project management: some Aristotelian insights. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, (4), 548. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1108/IJMPB-08-2013-0041

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (pp.6-18). Thousand Oaks, CA

Sarfaraz, A. R. (2019). A Combined AHP-GP Model for Project Risk Management. IEEE 6th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Applications (ICIEA), Industrial Engineering and Applications (ICIEA). pp. 608-612. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/IEA.2019.8714813

Walker, L., and Moylan, W.A. (2014). Ethics in project management research on values-based leadership in project-driven arenas. Organization, Technology, and Management in Construction. 6(3), pp. 1115-1121. DOI: 10.5592/otcmcj.2014.3.6

Big Data Analytics for Healthcare

The U.S. health care system is a complex network composed of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals that deliver health care services to the population of the United States and work with other governments and multinational organizations to protect the public's health domestically and globally. Hughes (2004) stated that the system provides services across the continuum of care: from health promotion and prevention to disease or injury diagnosis and treatment, through rehabilitation and maintenance for those suffering from lingering illness or chronic disease. Several characteristics distinguish the U.S. health care system from other segments of the domestic economy and its counterparts in other industrialized nations.

As stated by Burns, Bradley, and Shortell (2012), one of the critical challenges facing health care firms is the delivery of value, which is defined as the quotient of quality divided by cost. The providers are responsible for delivering a higher level of quality at the exact cost, the same level of quality at a lower cost, or higher quality at a lower cost. This challenge, as stated by Burns, Bradley, and Shortell (2012), has been proposed by (a) providers, in the form of accountable care organizations (A.C.O.s) and pay-for-performance, (b) suppliers, in the way of demonstrating the comparative clinical effectiveness of their products (versus alternative therapies) and (c) insurers and providers in the form of value-based purchasing.

The reality is that one of the reasons that delivering value had been a challenge is attached to the denominator of the definition: health cost. Health care costs have been rising over the years. For example, in the United States, the health cost has risen from three to four percent annually. Some of the arguments and possible explanations of this rising cost are technology and the application to new patients and patient indications. As stated by Burns, Bradley, and Shortell (2012) technology contributes to rising costs because it is a compliment rather than a substitute of labor (e.g., the requirements of technicians to use new equipment). Congressional Budget Office (C.B.O.) testimony pointed to advances in medical technologies as a primary driver of increasing healthcare costs) Advances in medical technology are essential, but there is no requirement that effectiveness is demonstrated before the technology is adopted in the U.S. healthcare market. However, as stated by Mack (2016), eagerness for innovation seems to have created a culture where medical technologies are adopted prematurely, and new medical technology is employed for additional uses beyond the original intent. In some instances, technologies that offer only marginal improvements over existing treatments - but with dramatically higher price tags - are adopted broadly and rapidly.

As part of the technology adopted by health care, the strategy to implement big data to support analytics has the potential to improve the health of the population and ultimately save lives. As stated by Sheeran and Steele (2017), the increasing richness of data in healthcare is a whole range of health-related areas where analytics can contribute, such as value-based care, health system efficiency, population health management, epidemiology, phenome-genome relationships, clinical practice knowledge discovery, personal health optimization, and personalized medicine. Big data technologies enable capturing and storing large data sets, then taking this data and analyzing it to reveal patterns and trends which would lead to the improvement of the service or product concerned. Big data technologies are concerned with quantities of data at such a scale that they cannot be easily handled by traditional means such as relational databases or data warehouses (Sheeran and Steele, 2017). In the area of health care, big data will take a large set of data, which could be typically from patients and past health information, to personalize and improve patient care through the storage, processing, and analysis of data related to the patient and the phenomic, genomic, environmental and contextual information.

Historically, the healthcare industry has generated large amounts of data, driven by record keeping, compliance, regulatory requirements, and patient care. While most data is stored in hard copy form, the current trend is toward rapid digitalization of these massive amounts of data. Driven by mandatory requirements and the potential to improve the quality of healthcare delivery meanwhile reducing the costs, these gigantic quantities of data (big data) hold the promise of supporting a wide range of medical and healthcare functions, including, among others, clinical decision support, disease surveillance and population health management (Raghupathi and Raghupathi, 2014).

Big data in healthcare refers to electronic health data sets so large and complex that they are difficult (or impossible) to manage with traditional software and hardware; nor can they be easily managed with conventional or standard data management tools and methods. Big data in healthcare is overwhelming because of its volume and the diversity of data types and the speed at which it must be managed. The totality of patient healthcare and well-being data makes up "big data" in the healthcare industry. It includes clinical data from CPOE and clinical decision support systems, such as physician's written notes and prescriptions, medical imaging, laboratory, pharmacy, insurance, and other administrative data; patient data in electronic patient records (E.P.R.s); machine-generated/sensor data, such as from monitoring vital signs; social media posts, including Twitter, feeds, blogs, status updates on Facebook and other platforms (Raghupathi and Raghupathi, 2014).

As stated by Raghupathi and Raghupathi (2014), by digitizing, combining, and effectively using big data, healthcare organizations ranging from single-physician offices and multi-provider groups to large hospital networks and accountable care organizations stand to realize significant benefits. Potential benefits include detecting disease at earlier stages when they can be treated more efficiently and effectively, managing specific individual and population health, and detecting health care fraud more quickly and efficiently. The health data volume is increased in the last few years, and also the healthcare reimbursement has been changing by creating a more meaningful use and pay for performance as new critical factors. Even though profit is not and should not be a priority or the primary motivator, it is essential for healthcare organizations to acquire the available tools, infrastructure, and techniques to leverage big data effectively or will risk losing millions of dollars in revenue and profits potentially.

As stated by Sheera and Steele (2017):

“In 1854, before a large amount of data was collected on hospitals and patients, an early example of health analytics was used to analyze and control an outbreak of cholera in London. Dr. John Snow, an English physician, collected data on the patients and analyzed their similarities in lifestyle. Realizing there was a connection to London’s Broad Street, he drew a map and further analyzed what may have been causing the outbreak. He noticed that those using the water from a pump on Broad Street were contracting the sickness - but those with a private well or not drinking water were not getting sick. This led to the water pump being inspected and changed and the improvement of the health of residents. Although he did not discover what was causing cholera at the time, he showed the usefulness of using and analyzing data to discover causes and prevent future outbreaks of diseases. While this is a very early example, the challenge in modern-day health is managing the vast and exploding quantities of health-related data available and carrying out useful analytics tasks to provide valuable and actionable information.”

Big data are enabled to capture and store many data sets, analyze for patterns and trends, and provide insightful information to embrace better services and products.

  However, while it is ubiquitous today, 'big data' as a concept is nascent and has uncertain origins. Diebold (2012) argues that the term "big data … probably originated in lunch-table conversations at Silicon Graphics Inc. (S.G.I.) in the mid-1990s, in which John Mashey figured prominently". Despite the references to the mid-nineties, This current hype can be attributed to the promotional initiatives by I.B.M. and other leading technology companies. They invested in building the niche analytics market (Gandomi and Haider, 2015).

Size is the first characteristic that comes to mind considering the question "what is big data?" However, other features of big data have emerged recently. For instance, Laney (2001) suggested that Volume, Variety, and Velocity (or the Three V's) are the three dimensions of challenges in data management. The Three V's have emerged as a common framework to describe big data (Chen et al., 2012; Kwon et al., 2014). For example, Gartner, Inc. defines big data in similar terms: “Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.” (“Gartner IT Glossary, n.d.”) Similarly, TechAmerica Foundation defines big data as follows: “Big data is a term that describes large volumes of high velocity, complex and variable data that require advanced techniques and technologies to enable the capture, storage, distribution, management, and analysis of the information.” (TechAmerica Foundation's Federal Big Data Commission, 2012).

As stated by Gandomi and Haider (2015), 3 V’s are described as follow:

1.      Volume refers to the magnitude of data. Big data sizes are reported in multiple terabytes and petabytes. A survey conducted by I.B.M. in mid-2012 revealed that just over half of the 1144 respondents considered datasets over one terabyte to be big data (Schroeck, Shockley, Smart, Romero-Morales, & Tufano, 2012). One terabyte stores as much data as would fit on 1500 CDs or 220 DVDs, enough to store around 16 million Facebook photographs. Beaver, Kumar, Li, Sobel, and Vajgel (2010) report that Facebook processes up to one million pictures per second. One petabyte equals 1024 terabytes. Earlier estimates suggest that Facebook stored 260 billion photos using storage space of over 20 petabytes.

2.      Variety refers to the structural heterogeneity in a dataset. Technological advances allow firms to use various types of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Structured data, which constitutes only 5% of all existing data (Cukier, 2010), refers to the tabular data found in spreadsheets or relational databases. Text, images, audio, and video are examples of unstructured data that sometimes lack the structural organization machines require for analysis. Spanning a continuum between fully structured and unstructured data, semi-structured data format does not conform to strict standards. Extensible Markup Language (XML), a textual language for exchanging data on the Web, is a typical example of semi-structured data. XML documents contain user-defined data tags, which make them machine-readable.

3.      Velocity refers to the rate at which data are generated and the speed it should be analyzed and acted upon. The proliferation of digital devices such as smartphones and sensors has led to an unprecedented rate of data creation. It is driving a growing need for real-time analytics and evidence-based planning. Even conventional retailers are generating high-frequency data. Wal-Mart, for instance, processes more than one million transactions per hour (Cukier, 2010). The data emanating from mobile devices and flowing through mobile apps produce torrents of information that can be used to generate real-time, personalized offers for everyday customers. This data provides useful information about customers, such as geospatial location, demographics, and past buying patterns, which can be analyzed in real-time to create real customer value.

In addition to the 3 V’s mentioned above, there are three additional dimensions defined by Gandomi and Haider (2015) as follow:

1.      Veracity. I.B.M. coined Veracity as the fourth V, which represents the unreliability inherent in some sources of data. For example, customer sentiments in social media are uncertain since they entail human judgment. They contain valuable information. Thus the need to deal with imprecise and uncertain data is another facet of big data, which is addressed using tools and analytics developed for managing and mining uncertain data.

2.      Variability (and complexity). S.A.S. introduced Variability and Complexity as two additional dimensions of big data. Variability refers to the variation in the data flow rates. Often, big data velocity is not consistent and has periodic peaks and troughs. Complexity refers to the fact that big data are generated through a myriad of sources. This imposes a critical challenge: the need to connect, match, cleanse and transform data received from different sources.

3.      Value. Oracle introduced value as a defining attribute of big data. Based on Oracle's definition, big data are often characterized by relatively "low-value density.” The data received in the original form usually has a low value relative to its volume. However, a high value can be obtained by analyzing large amounts of such data.

4.       The extraction of useful information on group structures from these data can improve the quality and effectiveness of care for a sustainable health system. It is not only the sheer size of the data that imposes difficulty in the direct application of conventional clustering methods; big data in healthcare often exhibit a multilevel structure with complex correlation among observation and a mix of variable types. Massive data collection in the scientific field includes bioinformatics health, biomedicine, and biometrics/biostatistics. Huge data collection in these fields is the fact of 21s Century science, meaning that we live in the era of "Big Data." For example, big data in healthcare research is now commonplace (due to increasingly information-rich governments and sophisticated data management and data linking technologies), and the extraction of useful information on group structures from these data can contribute to improving the quality, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of care for the sustainable health system.

The healthcare field introduces a range of unique characteristics, challenges, and potential transformative benefits. For example, Singh, Bhatia, and Bhatia (2017) stated that big data technologies provide instant solutions and huge applications to biomedical problems. The instant service via prediction analysis proves better than the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) and the Centre for Disease Control (C.D.C.). Application of Big Data Analysis using the patient care dataset, which includes notes of physician, Lab reports, X-Ray reports, case history, diet regime, doctors and nurses in a particular hospital, data from national health register, expiry date identification of medicine and surgical instruments based on RFID data can be helpful in better insight into care coordination, health management, and patient engagement.

There are various strategies that management could implement to be more efficient in gathering, collecting, storing, and analyzing data in healthcare. For example, the Internet of Things (IoT) can be perceived as enabling user-specific interoperable communication services by integrating sensing and actuation technologies with other leading technologies, such as telecommunications, networking, security and cloud computing, etc. Advancements in IoT technologies, bioengineering, and cloud computing opened new frontiers in critical healthcare systems. Mobile health (m-Health) systems are gaining wide popularity as they enable patient-centric personalized healthcare services. M-Health systems provide an omnipresent Internet interface through which the medical personnel or any authenticated and authorized end-user can remotely monitor the health parameters. Despite all security enhancements in data collection and communication technologies, m-Health systems have been highly vulnerable to malicious hacker attacks. A Healthcare system based on IoT can store the data in the cloud, and the system can notify the end-user if any critical situation occurs.

A second possible strategy or model that can be implemented to collect globally healthcare data is the Common Data Model (C.D.M.), which stores data in a fixed generic format instead of a specific format. As stated by Khan, Kothari, Kuchekar, and Koshy (2018), the C.D.M. should be independent of the structure of its source data files because the analysis tools are highly dependant on the data they are operating. The problem of integrating multiple data sources in one warehouse is a long-existing one. There have been several advancements in research on building standard models to store data about a particular department or institution (Khan, Kothari, Kuchekar, and Koshy, 2018). For example, the Integrated Aircraft Health Management (IAHM) program successfully developed a standard data model specifically for Aircraft Vehicle Health Management. The proposed system collected and integrated flight data, maintenance log information, and test stand run into their designed C.D.M. to support the development of a wide variety of aircraft health management analysis tools.

A third possible strategy is a basic model for assessing primary health care E.M.R. data quality, comprising a set of data quality measures within four domains. The model is offered as a starting point from which data users can refine their approach based on their needs. The nature of the data that a primary health care practitioner requires for the care of a patient cab differs from what is needed for other purposes, for example, research. The overall assessment of the quality of these data can vary depending on their intended use, which is characteristic of data quality that is aligned with the concept "fitness for purpose." As stated by Terry, Stewart, Cejic, Marshall, de Lusignan, Chesworth, and Thind (2019), the four basic tasks that the basic model of primary health care E.M.R. data quality should complete are: (a) conceptualizing data quality domains, (b) developing data quality measures, (c) operationalizing the data quality measures and (d) testing the data quality measures. The challenge with this model is that not all measures could be utilized in all datasets and illustrated the variability in the data quality as a step forward in creating a standard set of measures of data quality.

Conclusion

Big data in healthcare often involve data collections from multiple sources or platforms. These sources may include clinical decision support systems (medical imaging, laboratory, pharmacy, immunological and genomic-markers expressions, and other health administrative data), hospital emergency department records, Medicare, health insurance records, and social media posts. Big data with complex correlation structures and possibly a mix of variable types make them difficult to be analyzed by classical cluster analytic approaches. A lot of inferences and information can be obtained from this data via analysis in a field of data analytics that is rapidly blooming. The challenge is that even though data is available, it is scattered and segregated by domain. For example, patient data, which can be found in the electronic medical record (E.M.R.), which, as stated by Sheeran and Steele (2017), could be helpful for analysis on the possible diagnosis of one patient and in the future will increasingly include other sensor-captured data.

References

Burns, L. R., Bradley, E. H., Weiner, B. J., & Shortell, S. M. (2012). Shortell and Kaluzny’s health care management: Organization, design, and behavior. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar/Cengage Learning.

Burton, D.A. (2013). Population health management: Implementing a strategy for success. Retrieved from: https://healthcatalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/WhitePaper PopulationHealthManagement.pdf

Dall, T.M., Gallo, P.D., Chakrabarti, R., West, T., Semilla, A.P. and Storm, M.V. (2013). An aging population and a growing disease burden will require a large and specialized healthcare workforce by 2025. Health Affairs, 32(11), 2013-2020. Retrieved from: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/11/2013

Gandomi, A. and Haider, M. (2015). Beyond the hype: Big data concepts, methods, and analytics. International journal of information management. 35, 137-144. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.10.007

Gartner, IT Glossary (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://www.gartner.com/it-glosarry/big-data

Hibbard, J.H. and Greene, J. (2013). What evidence shows about patient activation: Better health outcomes and care experiences; fewer data on costs. Health Affairs, 32(2), 201-214. Retrieved from: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/2/207

Hughes, J. (2004). U.s. Health care system. In M. J. Stahl (Ed.), Encyclopedia of health care management (pp. 574-576). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412950602.n828

Kaufman, D. (2004). Health care services. In M. J. Stahl (Ed.), Encyclopedia of health care management (pp. 253-253). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412950602.n364

Khan, M. S., Guan, B. Y., Audimulam, J., Liceras, F. C., Coker, R. J., Joanne, Y., & ... Yoong, J. (2016). Economic interventions to improve population health: a scoping study of systematic reviews. B.M.C. Public Health, 16(528), 1–9. doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3119-5

Mack, M. (2016). What drives rising healthcare costs? Government Finance Review, (4), 26. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgea&AN=edsgcl.462236742&site=eds-live&scope=site

Moreno-Serra, R., & Smith, P. C. (2012). Does progress towards universal health coverage improve population health? The Lancet, 380(9845), 917–923. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61039-3

Raghupathi, W., and Raghupathi, V. (2014). Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential. Health Information Science and Systems, 2(1), 1-10. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/2047-2501-2-3.

Singh, M., Bhatia, V., and Bhatia, M. (2017). Big data analytics: Solution to healthcare. 2017 International Conference on Intelligent Communication and Computational Techniques (ICCT), Intelligent Communication and Computational Techniques (ICCT), 2017 International Conference On, 239. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/INTELCCT.2017.8324052

Sheran, M. and Steele, R. (2017). A framework for big data technology in health and healthcare. IEEE 8th Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON), 2017 IEEE 8th Annual, 401. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/UEMCON.2017.8249095

Foundations for Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is the conditions that allow an organization or even a country to produce goods and services at a lower price. As Bacanu (2016) stated, competitive advantage is a concept mentioned and highlighted in current books related to strategic management. The idea was introduced by Michael E. Porter in 1979, in his literature "How Competitive Force Strategies,” published in Harvard Business Review. In 1985, Porter's exploded the competitive advantage concept as part of his strategic management theory in his book "Competitive Advantage" (Bacanu, 2016).

Porter (1985) stated that competitive advantage is at the heart of the firm's performance in competitive markets. It grows fundamentally out of the firm's value can create for its buyers that exceed its cost of building it. For an organization to cope with competition, they have to establish a strategy. In business, strategy is the plan, choices, and decisions used to guide a company to greater profitability and success (Kourdi, 2015). The plan, choices, and decisions should be in accordance with the organization's vision and goals, understating competitive forces or forces that determine the profitability of an industry (Porter’s 1979). Five points shape the competition, and each of them has a subdivision. These forces and subcategories are the following:

1.      Threats of entry are characterized by new entrants to an industry that brings new capacity and a desire to gain market share that puts pressure on prices but also the threat of entry puts a cap on the profit potential. When the threat is high, incumbents must lower their costs or boost investment to deter new competitors (Porter, 2008). There are seven barriers to entry, which are: (a) supply-side economics of scale, (b) demand-side economies of scale, (c) customer switching costs, (d) capital requirements, (e) incumbency advantage independent of seizing, (f) unequal access to distribution channels and (g) restrictive government policy (Porter, 2008).

2.      The power of suppliers is characterized by capturing more value for themselves by charging higher prices, limiting quality or services, or shifting costs to industry participants (Porter, 2008).

3.      The power of buyers is the flip side of the power of supplies capturing more value by forcing down prices, demanding better quality or more service, and generally playing industry participants off against one another, all at the expense of industry profitability (Porter, 2008).

4.      The threat of substitutes is identified by performing the same or similar function as an industry’s product by different means (Porter, 2008). 

5.      Rivalry among existing competitors impacts the industry profits depending on two factors: (a) the intensity for which the companies compete and (b) the basis on which they compete (Porter, 2008).

Knowing and understanding the five forces that shape the industry will provide the baseline for identifying straightness and weakness. Identifying these concepts will provide leaders of the organization with valuable data and information to create strategies that will landscape the path toward the goals and objectives of the organization.

Technology as part of the strategies contributes to the efficiency of providing services and products to the customers. Ricken and Malcotsis (2011) stated that technology innovation changed how people experience private and public life. For example, physical innovation, such as mobile communication, allows to connect with people around the world, the internet facilitates the search and finding of information, credit cards and online payments facilities the buyer and payment power for goods and services and medical innovations provide better treatments of diseases or even their prevention (Ricken and Malcotsis, 2011). In logistics, technology innovation had contributed to the reduction of delivery time and flow of products and information. Also, soft technology had contributed to improving how goods are provided, marketed, and sold. Also, concepts as just-in-time production had provoked a reduction in capital stock for goods, such as mobile, computers, and automobile, reducing the prices and providing a more accessible and affordable product for customers (Ricken and Malcotsi, 2011). 

Innovation technology could be associated and create a risk to the organization that is implementing the technology. The perception of risk varies depending on the leadership, stakeholder, and corporate behavior toward risks.  The more complex technologies are, the more significant the gap between perceived and actual risks (2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference – IPCC). For example, organizations may encounter information technology adoption problems due to bureaucratic structure and organizational behavior.

In a small business, the executive decision must be aligned with the vision and strategy of the organization. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) states that a business executive’s decision or behavioral intention (BI) is to pursue a course of action. For example, creating a presence on the web is a function of attitude (A), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC), which will ultimately result in action (Riemenschneider, Harrison & Mykytyn, 2003). In 1980, Ajzen and Fishbein introduced the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which modified the theory of reasoned action (TRA). The TPB posits that beliefs about attitude, control, and norms influence behavior and are mediated by intentions. Ajzen (2011) defines intention as "a person's readiness to perform a given behavior." The intention has three cognitive antecedents (Ajzen, 1991): attitude refers to the individual's evaluation (favorable or unfavorable) of the target behavior; subjective norms capture the opinions of social reference groups (such as family and friends) regarding whether the individual should engage in the conduct; and perceived behavioral control (PBC) denotes the perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behavior (Kautonen, Gelderen, & Fink, 2015). As a component of the design and implementation of strategies may be helpful to consider the target audience's behavior in different scenarios and validate the profitability and cost-effectiveness before any possible decision.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211.

Ajzen, I. (2011). Theory of planned behavior. Retrieved from: http://people.umass.edu

Fink, M., Gelderen, M., & Kautonen, T. (2015). Robustness of the theory of planned behavior in predicting entrepreneurial intentions and actions. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, (3), 655. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1111/etap.12056

Harrison, D. A., Mykytyn, J. . P. P., & Riemenschneider, C. K. (2003). Understanding its adoption decisions in small business: integrating current theories. Information & Management, 40, 269–285. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/S0378-7206(02)00010-1

Kourdi, J. (2015). Business strategy: a guide to effective decision-making. New York: Public Affairs, 2015. http://ezp.waldenulibrary.org

Malcotsis, G., & Ricken, B. (2011). The Competitive Advantage of Regions and Nations : Technology Transfer Through Foreign Direct Investment. Farnham, Surrey, England: Routledge. https://ezp.waldenulibrary.org

Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, (1), 78. https://ezp.waldenulibrary.org

Risk perception of complex technology innovations: Perspectives of experts and laymen. (2016). 2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), 2016 IEEE International, 1. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1109/IPCC.2016.7740510

Genesis

Genesis, the beginning of something, could be a process, birth, a root, an origin, or anything that initiates the process for an intentional outcome. For me, genesis is a concept created by an action provoked by a living cell. For example, writing this blog, the genesis of a long relationship with my readers and my thinking thoughts.

Hopefully, as I embark on this new phase, I will be able to articulate in the form of writing valuable words to delight and inform with facts in a diverse area of the profession, such as taxes, finance, information technology, and business in general. For some topics, we will be taking a deep approach to the impact in our community and global communities and possible solutions. To provide support and validation to our writing will be sharing articles and likely studies from credible sources. For the moment, I will be limiting our blogs to topics that are not conflicting with my Research Study to preserve and adhere to the ethics, integrity, and compliance of Walden University

As always, thank you for the opportunities and support to my colleagues and family of our business communities.