Allen Higgins

University College Dublin | UCD · Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School

The Beer Living Lab was the first of a series of living labs established to analyse and improve complex cross-border trade and logistics challenges using innovative information technology. Unlike stable inter-firm networks where roles are formal and explicit, role taking and role assigning in the Beer Living Lab was highly dynamic. Although project...

How, if at all, does offshore outsourcing impact social development in supplier countries? We explored the relationship between international offshore outsourcing rankings produced by consulting firms against country level social data obtained from international non-governmental agencies. A multivariate analysis was carried out between commercial o...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for (re)designing complex logistics networks, which interact with various governmental bodies (e.g. in FDA and USDA) for regulatory clearance and control purpose. The method (the e³‐control methodology) is demonstrated to be a useful approach to analyzing and redesigning international log...

Innovation in the eCustoms domain happens in complex constellations of heterogeneous stakeholders. Understanding and shaping the dynamics of these stakeholder constellations is critical for the success in terms of achieving collective action and precarious in terms of power struggles among stakeholders. This chapter aims at sensitizing the reader t...

The concept of living labs is presented as a framework for studying and acting in living settings such as organizations, work places, public spaces and the wider environment. Living labs have been suggested and indeed promoted as promising infrastructures for innovation. Yet, at the same time, the notion of a living lab has been criticized as being...

Supply chain security and control are key issues for the life sci ences or pharmaceutical industry. Counterfeit drugs have been recognised as a serious public health risk1. The Drug Living Lab has been designed as a pilot project to study the feasibility of innovative technologies for securing supply chains of medication from the manufacturer to th...

This chapter considers the living lab concept and reflects on its use in ITAIDE. The idea of living labs is presented as a framework for studying and acting in living settings such as organisations, work places, public spaces and the wider environment. Living labs are also suggested as promising infrastructures for developing innovation. KeywordsL...

The ITAIDE project shows that a complex set of external drivers influences the modernization strategies of Customs agencies. Rapid advances in technology available to Customs agencies push investments to replace antiquated systems with more sophisticated tools and processes, and to introduce radical procedure redesigns supported by advanced technol...

New developments in electronic cold chain management pose challenges to organisations in how they engage in inter-organisational interactions. While electronic cold chain innovations offer the promise of safer, more secure, transparent and economical life sciences supply chains, their very transparency has implications for process knowledge, cost,...

In this paper, we analyze and redesign the export procedure for shipping a high-value pharmaceutical product in a strict temperature-controlled logistics environment (cold chain) from Ireland to the US using the e3-control methodology. The e3-control methodology has been used in this case to support the introduction of a novel cold-chain innovation...

What are the infrastructural possibilities for introducing novel ICT based services in the international multi-modal logistics environment? The specific case of nascent real-time reporting potentials for cold chain transport and handling in a hybrid data carrier environment is explored and an infrastructural analysis indicates the technical suitabi...

This paper draws on Ciborra’s insightful concept of xenia (i.e., hospitality) to analyze how successful infrastructural service innovation was managed at the local operations of an international financial services firm. The xenia concept problematizes the information system development (ISD) orthodoxy and points to issues and aspects that are often...

The problematic nature of popular structured methodologies and methodological frames that ‘straightjacket’ the complex social and organizational processes encompassing system development have been widely reported but few theoretically informed analyses or remedies have been proposed. We draw upon Ciborra’s insightful concept of Xenia (i.e. hospital...

The performance of writing software is an under-studied phenomenon in Information Systems (IS) studies. Key aspects of the process of software development — the practice of writing code, coding texts collectively, maintaining and extending source code — are too often glossed or treated unproblematically as technical `givens' rather than social acco...

This paper entertains the notion that software maintenance and innovation are more closely related than is commonly accepted. We consider perspectives where innovation projects are understood as attempts to engineer both the social and the technological, where processes of innovation imply the configuring of users, communities, and artifacts throug...

Although services are the main growth engine in modern economies, there is evidence that new service development practices are ineffective. In this exploratory study, we look at the organizational roles that participate in the different stages of service innovation. We expect to find multiple roles in the creation, development and deployment of inn...

The paper analyses the initiation and management of inter-organisational networks, spanning both the public and private domain. Specifically, bracketing the institutional level and combining literature on communities-of-practice and network management, we turn our attention to managerial activities which are no longer de-contextualized but understo...

A major challenge for European governments is solving the dilemma of increasing security and control of international trade, while at the same time reducing the administrative overhead carried by commercial and public administration organisations. Electronic Customs, the transformation of paper-based trade documents to electronic ones, and the corr...

This paper examines some of the problems experienced by IONA Technology Orbix Generation 3 maintenance and enhancement team and how the adoption of Extreme Programming has further improved the team's ability to deliver quality support and enhancements to the products they work on. The issues identified and discussed are common issues for companies...

This paper presents an investigation of the application of autonomous telemetry sensors for real-time cold-chain mapping and shipment management of temperature sensitive product. New developments in electronic cold chain management pose challenges to organisations and how they engage in inter-organisational interactions. Advanced sensors and wirele...

Purpose – While Living Labs are increasingly gaining attention as real-life experimentation settings for developing and testing of innovative solutions, research on the social structure and processes that take place within Living Labs is still scarce. Our study aims at extending the empirical basis of Living Lab research and at the same time furthe...

A major concern of the European Union is to solve t he dilemma to increase on the one hand security and on the other reduce the admin istrative load concerning international trade. In this paper we argue that IT has the potential to bring innovation to eCustoms and we outline four major ca tegories of challenges for the design and adoption of eCust...

This paper entertains the notion that software maintenance and innovation are more closely related than is commonly accepted. We consider perspectives where innovation projects are understood as attempts to engineer both the social and the technological, where processes of innovation imply the configuring of users, communities, and artifacts throug...