Management of Engineering and Technology

Product development and engineering managers have increasingly used various combinations of outsourcing, offshoring, and nearshoring as a means to positively affect cost, project completion time, and design quality. Yet, these managers may not fully understand if the outsourcing or offshoring strategies used to improve these triad of project management factors have positively affected one or more of these three factors. Author: Craig Gray, Northcentral University.

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology reported a slow rate of adoption of electronic medical records. The present research sought to explore possible reasons for this situation by examining factors that distinguished between users and nonusers of electronic medical records and perceptions of physicians regarding the value of the technology in their practices. The present study was one of the first since the start of federally available financial incentives to implement this technology. Author: Jon I. Rosenthal, Northcentral University.

This dissertation focuses on understanding the relationship between the communication technologies used to support geographically distributed engineering design teams and performance variables such as design quality and team satisfaction. Relevant questions include the focus on whether telecommunications technologies adequately support these teams. Author: Massin S. Madi, Northcentral University.

There is considerable interest in characteristics of project managers that are associated with their effective performance, especially with regard to their communication competencies in team settings. However, efforts to develop a research-based framework of "effective" project managers' behaviors must consider a complex array of project sizes, duration, complexities, pace, objectives, constraints, and managerial styles. This study examined a broader set of communication behaviors associated with project managers across several industries. Author: Dron M. Mandhana, Michigan State University.

Information technology projects are progressively shifting from mere operational support to initiatives that facilitate the implementation of organizational strategy. Regrettably, although the existence of an IT PMO may have an impact on organizational performance, the disinterest by management teams to establish IT PMOs is still a prevalent tendency across multiple industries. Author: Filadelfo Bertrand Lopez, Northcentral University.

The purpose of this quantitative, descriptive non-experimental survey study was to determine whether managers of technology-driven small and medium size companies in the United States could develop practices that will improve outsourcing performance. A web-based survey targeting outsourcing professionals of technology-driven small and medium size establishments garnered 90 responses to questions pertaining to the firms’ knowledge sharing mechanisms and governance methods. Author: Issam Merhi, Northcentral University.

The theoretical scope of the reported quantitative study was framed within the overarching domain of innovation, and principally focused on the topic of open innovation (OI) in technological small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The problem of interest was the lack of knowledge about the impact of core competences on the relationships between selected OI modes applied amongst technological SMEs and the resulting innovation performance. Author: Sylvain L. Ndebi, Northcentral University.

Over the past decades, information technology has been impacting industries, economics, the way of life and even the culture throughout the world. Productivity has been attracting much attention as an important indicator of economics, and numerous researchers have investigated the relationship between information technology and productivity. Construction is one of the largest industries in the United States, but little research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between information technology and construction productivity. Author: Dong Zhai, University of Kentucky.

The problem is a lack of ability for small businesses to obtain, upgrade, and integrate software at a reasonable cost. The purpose was to gain insight and understanding on the perceptions and effects that technology has on small businesses that fail to utilize software management systems within their businesses. The study used a multiple case study format. Author: Raymond Bomgardner, Northcentral University.

Small helicopter entities are the most numerous organizations but experience the most incidents or accidents this high-risk sector of aviation, and the existence of safety management systems (SMS) in these entities is not regulated. This non-experimental study contained a systems theory framework using structural equation modeling (SEM) in a partially mediated model to determine the relationships between three variables. Author: Scott S. Burgess, Northcentral University.