George Westerman - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by George Westerman
Blackwell Publishers eBooks, Sep 1, 2002
Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2023
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Dec 7, 2007
Applied Optics
A roadblock to long-term growth of the photonics industry is the availability of well-trained, ad... more A roadblock to long-term growth of the photonics industry is the availability of well-trained, adaptable middle-skilled workers. This research characterizes the middle-skilled workforce gap, including the quantity required and skills needed. We estimate that 42,000 new technical middle-skilled workers are needed by 2030, requiring another 100 technician programs nationwide. Training skills along the supply chain are critical; programs must emphasize testing, troubleshooting, and process design. Middle-skilled workers trained in critical thinking will enable an adaptable workforce capable of handling technology evolution. Finally, recommendations for the academia, industry, and middle-skilled training ecosystem are included to ensure that the latter evolves with technology development.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Towards a new future in engineering education, new scenarios that european alliances of tech universities open up
The rapid pace of change in technology, business models, and work practices is causing ever-incre... more The rapid pace of change in technology, business models, and work practices is causing ever-increasing strain on the global workforce. Companies in every industry need to train professionals with updated skill-sets in a rapid and continuous manner. However, traditional educational models — university classes and in-person degrees— are increasingly incompatible with the needs of professionals, the market, and society as a whole. New models of education require more flexible, granular and affordable alternatives. MIT is currently developing a new educational framework called Agile Continuous Education (ACE). ACE describes workforce level education offered in a flexible, cost-effective and time-efficient manner by combining individual, group, and real-life mentored learning through multiple traditional and emerging learning modalities. This paper introduces the ACE framework along with its different learning approaches and modalities (e.g. asynchronous and synchronous online courses, v...
Harvard Deusto business review, 2021
Researchers disagree over the extent to which organizations can introduce innovations such as ele... more Researchers disagree over the extent to which organizations can introduce innovations such as electronic commerce within existing organizational structures. Some argue that such innovations require completely autonomous innovating units. Yet, such autonomous units may have difficulty making use of scale, skills, and infrastructure in the established organization. This paper attempts to resolve the apparent conflict by building and testing a new theoretical model of organizing to adopt a discontinuous innovation. Using concepts from technology strategy and organization theory, it builds a hybrid model in which organizations simultaneously build new subunits and leverage existing ones to adopt the innovation. Two characteristics of each component in the innovation translate to two aspects of subunit-level organization design. The theoretical model is tested using a novel database of organizational structure and financial performance for the e-businesses launched by 36 incumbent retail...
Journal of Management Information Systems
ABSTRACT Worker persistence—the ability to focus on a task for long periods of time—is often high... more ABSTRACT Worker persistence—the ability to focus on a task for long periods of time—is often highlighted as essential to success. However, computers are extraordinarily persistent, particularly for routine, repetitive work. This potentially reduces the value of human persistence in occupations that are computerized. Using a well-defined measure of worker persistence across a nationally-representative 16-year sample of 4,239 individuals, we investigate the extent to which occupations value worker persistence in the presence of computers. We find that the labor market does indeed value persistence. Nonetheless, we find that in routine jobs, the wage premium of human persistence diminishes with the degree of workplace computerization. Yet, this substitution does not occur in non-routine jobs. These findings deepen our understanding of the effect of workplace computerization on the future of work and workers, and they also warrant imlications on government job training programs, organizational talent management, as well as the redesign of the K-12 curriculum.
Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and d... more Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams Michael Tushman*
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2010
Traditional economic and business forecasting about corporate credit has relied on statistics fro... more Traditional economic and business forecasting about corporate credit has relied on statistics from government agencies, annual reports and financial statements. These statistics are often published with significant delay, which limits their usefulness for predicting changes in creditworthiness. Yet, a delay in responding to changes in a company’s credit rating can have significant financial and risk consequences. With the widespread adoption of search engines, social media and related information technologies, it is possible to obtain data on literally trillions of economic decisions almost the instant that they are made. In this study, we investigated the power of these online activity data, combined with data on firms’ business ecosystems, to predict the likelihood of counterparty credit downgrade risk. The research offers a novel approach that contributes to the fields of information systems, finance, and social science by providing new insights on the role of these data types on...
Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governan... more Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governance and management of these projects is an important challenge. Though prior research has examined the control and coordination of IS projects, not much attention has been devoted toward understanding what factors influence the governance of IS projects, particularly in terms of the distribution of project decision-making rights. Numerous decisions are made on IS projects, such as the integration of business requirements and information technologies and the management of costs and schedules. Despite a prevailing norm encouraging co-leadership of IS projects by business and IS units, it is not clear how and why successful IS projects might actually be governed. Drawing from the governance and project management literatures, we conceptualize IS project governance on the basis of decision-making rights for three key activities: requirements analysis, technical analysis, and budget/schedule m...
Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governan... more Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governance and management of these projects is an important challenge. Though prior research has examined the control and coordination of IS projects, not much attention has been devoted toward understanding what factors influence the governance of IS projects, particularly in terms of the distribution of project decisionmaking rights. Numerous decisions are made on IS projects, such as the integration of business requirements and information technologies and the management of costs and schedules. Despite a prevailing norm encouraging co-leadership of IS projects by business and IS units, it is not clear how and why successful IS projects might actually be governed. Drawing from the governance and project management literatures, we conceptualize IS project governance on the basis of decision-making rights for three key activities: requirements analysis, technical analysis, and budget/schedule ma...
The dizzying pace of innovation presents great challenges to executives in the communications, in... more The dizzying pace of innovation presents great challenges to executives in the communications, information, media, and entertainment (CIME) industries. To help these executives make sense of the complexity they face, we conducted a throughout review of research in numerous fields and interviewed industry experts and senior executives. This paper provides seven principles for creating viable and sustainable strategies in the CIME space. The seven principles synthesize lessons from the past, identify the key roles in CIME value chains, and provide strategic guidelines for developing digital platform strategy. While the nature of CIME businesses will continually change, these seven principles provide a useful guide for strategic decision-making.
Blackwell Publishers eBooks, Sep 1, 2002
Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2023
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Dec 7, 2007
Applied Optics
A roadblock to long-term growth of the photonics industry is the availability of well-trained, ad... more A roadblock to long-term growth of the photonics industry is the availability of well-trained, adaptable middle-skilled workers. This research characterizes the middle-skilled workforce gap, including the quantity required and skills needed. We estimate that 42,000 new technical middle-skilled workers are needed by 2030, requiring another 100 technician programs nationwide. Training skills along the supply chain are critical; programs must emphasize testing, troubleshooting, and process design. Middle-skilled workers trained in critical thinking will enable an adaptable workforce capable of handling technology evolution. Finally, recommendations for the academia, industry, and middle-skilled training ecosystem are included to ensure that the latter evolves with technology development.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Towards a new future in engineering education, new scenarios that european alliances of tech universities open up
The rapid pace of change in technology, business models, and work practices is causing ever-incre... more The rapid pace of change in technology, business models, and work practices is causing ever-increasing strain on the global workforce. Companies in every industry need to train professionals with updated skill-sets in a rapid and continuous manner. However, traditional educational models — university classes and in-person degrees— are increasingly incompatible with the needs of professionals, the market, and society as a whole. New models of education require more flexible, granular and affordable alternatives. MIT is currently developing a new educational framework called Agile Continuous Education (ACE). ACE describes workforce level education offered in a flexible, cost-effective and time-efficient manner by combining individual, group, and real-life mentored learning through multiple traditional and emerging learning modalities. This paper introduces the ACE framework along with its different learning approaches and modalities (e.g. asynchronous and synchronous online courses, v...
Harvard Deusto business review, 2021
Researchers disagree over the extent to which organizations can introduce innovations such as ele... more Researchers disagree over the extent to which organizations can introduce innovations such as electronic commerce within existing organizational structures. Some argue that such innovations require completely autonomous innovating units. Yet, such autonomous units may have difficulty making use of scale, skills, and infrastructure in the established organization. This paper attempts to resolve the apparent conflict by building and testing a new theoretical model of organizing to adopt a discontinuous innovation. Using concepts from technology strategy and organization theory, it builds a hybrid model in which organizations simultaneously build new subunits and leverage existing ones to adopt the innovation. Two characteristics of each component in the innovation translate to two aspects of subunit-level organization design. The theoretical model is tested using a novel database of organizational structure and financial performance for the e-businesses launched by 36 incumbent retail...
Journal of Management Information Systems
ABSTRACT Worker persistence—the ability to focus on a task for long periods of time—is often high... more ABSTRACT Worker persistence—the ability to focus on a task for long periods of time—is often highlighted as essential to success. However, computers are extraordinarily persistent, particularly for routine, repetitive work. This potentially reduces the value of human persistence in occupations that are computerized. Using a well-defined measure of worker persistence across a nationally-representative 16-year sample of 4,239 individuals, we investigate the extent to which occupations value worker persistence in the presence of computers. We find that the labor market does indeed value persistence. Nonetheless, we find that in routine jobs, the wage premium of human persistence diminishes with the degree of workplace computerization. Yet, this substitution does not occur in non-routine jobs. These findings deepen our understanding of the effect of workplace computerization on the future of work and workers, and they also warrant imlications on government job training programs, organizational talent management, as well as the redesign of the K-12 curriculum.
Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and d... more Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams Michael Tushman*
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2010
Traditional economic and business forecasting about corporate credit has relied on statistics fro... more Traditional economic and business forecasting about corporate credit has relied on statistics from government agencies, annual reports and financial statements. These statistics are often published with significant delay, which limits their usefulness for predicting changes in creditworthiness. Yet, a delay in responding to changes in a company’s credit rating can have significant financial and risk consequences. With the widespread adoption of search engines, social media and related information technologies, it is possible to obtain data on literally trillions of economic decisions almost the instant that they are made. In this study, we investigated the power of these online activity data, combined with data on firms’ business ecosystems, to predict the likelihood of counterparty credit downgrade risk. The research offers a novel approach that contributes to the fields of information systems, finance, and social science by providing new insights on the role of these data types on...
Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governan... more Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governance and management of these projects is an important challenge. Though prior research has examined the control and coordination of IS projects, not much attention has been devoted toward understanding what factors influence the governance of IS projects, particularly in terms of the distribution of project decision-making rights. Numerous decisions are made on IS projects, such as the integration of business requirements and information technologies and the management of costs and schedules. Despite a prevailing norm encouraging co-leadership of IS projects by business and IS units, it is not clear how and why successful IS projects might actually be governed. Drawing from the governance and project management literatures, we conceptualize IS project governance on the basis of decision-making rights for three key activities: requirements analysis, technical analysis, and budget/schedule m...
Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governan... more Increasingly, as firms undertake large, mission-critical, and strategic IT projects, the governance and management of these projects is an important challenge. Though prior research has examined the control and coordination of IS projects, not much attention has been devoted toward understanding what factors influence the governance of IS projects, particularly in terms of the distribution of project decisionmaking rights. Numerous decisions are made on IS projects, such as the integration of business requirements and information technologies and the management of costs and schedules. Despite a prevailing norm encouraging co-leadership of IS projects by business and IS units, it is not clear how and why successful IS projects might actually be governed. Drawing from the governance and project management literatures, we conceptualize IS project governance on the basis of decision-making rights for three key activities: requirements analysis, technical analysis, and budget/schedule ma...
The dizzying pace of innovation presents great challenges to executives in the communications, in... more The dizzying pace of innovation presents great challenges to executives in the communications, information, media, and entertainment (CIME) industries. To help these executives make sense of the complexity they face, we conducted a throughout review of research in numerous fields and interviewed industry experts and senior executives. This paper provides seven principles for creating viable and sustainable strategies in the CIME space. The seven principles synthesize lessons from the past, identify the key roles in CIME value chains, and provide strategic guidelines for developing digital platform strategy. While the nature of CIME businesses will continually change, these seven principles provide a useful guide for strategic decision-making.