Outsourcing of business processes and information technology (IT) operations is an important trend in large and middle-sized organizations. However, outsourcing could affect the organization’s ability to align its IT with business strategy and operations. This article reports a qualitative study into the relationship between IT outsourcing (ITO) and business and IT alignment. It aims to provide recommendations for outsourcers and service providers on how outsourcing relationships should develop in order to support business and IT alignment. The research question of the study is “What is the effect of IT outsourcing on the business and IT alignment of companies that have outsourced their IT?”After a review of relevant literature and concepts, four cases are reported. The study revealed that a higher level of motivation for outsourcing paired with a higher level of the relationship between outsourcer and service provider and with a higher level of alignment maturity of the outsourcer. The study also showed that the ITO relationship is influenced by organizational turbulence on one or either side of the relationship and that the service providers tend to assess the relationship on a higher level than the outsourcers. These conclusions provide relevant directions for both outsourcers and service providers for improvement of the their relationship
For IT services companies, delivering high quality IT services is of eminent importance. IT service quality drives customer satisfaction, which in its turn drives firm performance. It is this link that is addressed in this paper: How can the performance of customer service delivery teams be improved, when looked upon from the perspective of firm performance? Based on the literature on excellent performing organizations, we apply the concepts that, according to Collins (2001), drove the development of 'good' companies to 'great' companies to a case study of an under performing service delivery team that developed into an excellent performing service delivery team. The lessons from this study were that most of the drivers behind the performance improvement of this team were in fact 'soft' factors that concerned the human side of the team more than the organizational, procedural or structural measures.
The ideology of inclusive education signifies that every child should be able to attend a regular school, unless there are insoluble barriers which make this impossible. This principle is voiced in treaties such as the Salamanca Statement and the No Child Left Behind Act. Accordingly, many countries nowadays aim at integrating students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education.A specific challenge for teachers who apply for inclusive education is teaching students who show challenging behaviour in the classroom1. A growing number of teachers report feelings of professional inadequacy in teaching students with behavioural difficulties. Feelings of professional inadequacy are said to occur when a teacher lacks pedagogic and/or didactic skills to act adequately in demanding classroom situations.Teachers of students with behavioural difficulties are found to be particularly at risk for experiencing occupational stress. Moreover, these teachers are more likely to end their career in education earlier than teachers who are teaching students with other SEN or without. Many teachers of students with behavioural difficulties tend to pay too much attention to controlling student behaviour rather than to teaching.At the same time, in this respect, students with behavioural difficulties are a population at risk as well. Regardless of the underlying cause of their behavioural problems, students with behavioural difficulties gain less academic progress than students who go through a normal development. Strikingly, this academic delay appears to increase rapidly over the years.For all the feelings of professional inadequacy, there are also teachers who are somehow able to bring out the best in all their students. These teachers are able to engage students, meet their differing needs and increase their potential. These teachers are commonly said to be equipped with a teacher’s X-factor; an enigmatic, yet unexplained talent causing a teacher’s excellence in the classroom.A widely accepted key determinant of successful schooling is teacher quality. Accordingly, the competencies of expert teachers have already been studied in detail. However, recent evidence points at personality as an underlying core factor from which these competencies may arise. In the literature, personality is defined as relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.Much literature has already been published on the relationship between personality and job performance. Virtually all studies on the subject report strong correlations between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and job performance. However, until recently, these relations were not explored in the field of education. A first study of this kind was conducted by the authors. The results of this study were presented at last year’s ECER in Istanbul.The personality dimensions of Conscientiousness (facets of competence, self-discipline, ambition) and Neuroticism (facets of depression, vulnerability, shame) were found to discriminate expert teachers from non-experts. Furthermore, significant relationships were found between teacher personality and teacher quality in teaching students with behavioural difficulties for Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Extraversion (assertiveness).With the aim of contributing to finding ways to accurately recruit expert teachers of students with behavioural difficulties, a cohort of in-service teacher-trainees was studied on their personality and performance in teaching students with behavioural difficulties. The authors wondered whether the relationships found in the previous study could be established or replicated in teacher education?
MULTIFILE
