Business process model abstraction

In order to execute, study, or improve operating procedures, companies document them as business process models. Often, business process analysts capture every single exception handling or alternative task handling scenario within a model. Such a tendency results in large process specifications. The core process logic becomes hidden in numerous modeling constructs. To fulfill different tasks, companies develop several model variants of the same business process at different abstraction levels. Afterwards, maintenance of such model groups involves a lot of synchronization effort and is erroneous. We propose an abstraction technique that allows generalization of process models. Business process model abstraction assumes a detailed model of a process to be available and derives coarse-grained models from it. The task of abstraction is to tell significant model elements from insignificant ones and to reduce the latter. We propose to learn insignificant process elements from supplementary model information, e.g., task execution time or frequency of task occurrence. Finally, we discuss a mechanism for user control of the model abstraction level – an abstraction slider.

Hypergraph-based modeling of ad-hoc business processes

Process models are usually depicted as directed graphs, with nodes representing activities and directed edges control flow. While structured processes with pre-defined control flow have been studied in detail, flexible processes including ad-hoc activities need further investigation. This paper presents flexible process graph, a novel approach to model processes in the context of dynamic environment and adaptive process participants’ behavior. The approach allows defining execution constraints, which are more restrictive than traditional ad-hoc processes and less restrictive than traditional control flow, thereby balancing structured control flow with unstructured ad-hoc activities. Flexible process graph focuses on what can be done to perform a process. Process participants’ routing decisions are based on the current process state. As a formal grounding, the approach uses hypergraphs, where each edge can associate any number of nodes. Hypergraphs are used to define execution semantics of processes formally. We provide a process scenario to motivate and illustrate the approach.

For the Win : How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business

Millions flock to their computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets, and social networks each day to play World of Warcraft, Farmville, Scrabble, and countless other games, generating billions in sales each year. The careful and skillful construction of these games is built on decades of research into human motivation and psychology: A well-designed game goes right to the motivational heart of the human psyche. In For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue persuasively that gamemakers need not be the only ones benefiting from game design. Werbach and Hunter are lawyers and World of Warcraft players who created the world’s first course on gamification at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In their book, they reveal how game thinking—addressing problems like a game designer—can motivate employees and customers and create engaging experiences that can transform your business. For the Win reveals how a wide range of companies are successfully using game thinking. It also offers an explanation of when gamifying makes the most sense and a 6-step framework for using games for marketing, productivity enhancement, innovation, employee motivation, customer engagement, and more. In this informative guide, Werbach and Hunter reveal how game thinking can yield winning solutions to real-world business problems. Let the games begin!

Asia Pacific Business Process Management

First Asia Pacific Conference, AP-BPM 2013, Beijing, China, August 29-30, 2013. Selected Papers

Improving business through people and process

Recent information systems development using agile project management has yielded a 50% reduction in effort, together with significant improvements in organisational skills, productivity, quality and business satisfaction.

Entrepreneurial network development as a sign of business emergence

This study aims to explain the entrepreneurial processes as developments of entrepreneurial networks. As a theoretical framework, this study adopts the theory of experimentally organized economy and competence blocs. As suggested by this theory, entrepreneurs select profitable innovations and commercialise them. Through logistic regressions on the subjective and objective dependent variables, we find that nascent firms’ various activities to network customers, innovators, investors, and employees are positively associated with the business emergence. This study identifies the roles of entrepreneurs and the other actors in the entrepreneurial processes.

The role of the ethnic enclave in facilitating immigrant business performance and social integration

Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs, known the world over for their successful business practices (Kee, 1994), tend to start businesses within their ethnic enclave. But in a move away from multiculturalism, host countries increasingly fear that immigration and asylum pose a threat to social integration resulting in a lack of social cohesion and a plethora of government programs (Cheong, Edwards, Goulbourne & Solomos, 2007). For many immigrant entrepreneurs, the EE is an integral part of their social and cultural context and the location where ethnic resources reside (Logan, Alba & Stults, 2003). Immigrant entrepreneurs can harness the networks for labor and customers through various ties in their EE (Portes and Zhou, 1996). Yang, Ho and Chang (2010) illustrate in their paper that the Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs (IE) were able to utilize ethnic network resources as their social capital in order to reduce transaction costs and thus enhance business performance. Tilly (1990) explains that immigrants’ reliance on such networks for business or other information minimizes the socioeconomic hardships they would experience in host countries (Raijman & Tienda, 2000). Acquiring jobs in ethnic businesses and establishing businesses within an EE may facilitate migrants’ social integration into the host country (Tian & Shan, 1999). Although an EE has distinct economic advantages for immigrant entrepreneurs, Sequeira and Rasheed (2006: 367) argue that ‘Exclusive reliance on strong ties within the immigrant enclave has a negative effect on growth outside the enclave community.’ Similarly, Drori, Honig and Ginsberg (2010: 20) also propose that ‘The greater the reliance of transnational entrepreneurs on ethnic (versus societal) embedded resources and network structure, the narrower their possibilities of expanding the scope of their business.’ This research asks, ‘What is the role of the ethnic enclave in facilitating immigrant business growth and social integration? This project has the following important aims: A1 To better understand the role of IE, in particular Chinese IE in the Australian economy A2 To investigate the role of the EE in facilitating or inhibiting immigrant business performance A3 To understand how locating their firm inside or outside of the EE will affect the IE’s embeddedness in co-ethnic and nonco-ethnic networks and social integration A4 To understand how an IE’s social network affects business performance and social integration

Framework of a process laboratory for the operational control of service processes

Service processes such as financial advice, booking a business trip or conducting a consulting project have emerged as units of analysis of high interest for the business process and service management communities in practice and academia. While the transactional nature of production processes is relatively well understood and deployed, the less predictable and highly interactive nature of service processes still lacks in many areas appropriate methodological grounding. This paper proposes a framework of a process laboratory as a new IT artefact in order to facilitate the holistic analysis and simulation of such service processes. Using financial services as an example, it will be shown how such a process laboratory can be used to reduce the complexity of service process analysis and facilitate operational service process control.

Dimensions of business processes quality (QoBP)

Conceptual modeling is an important tool for understanding and revealing weaknesses of business processes. Yet, the current practice in reengineering projects often considers simply the as-is process model as a brain-storming tool. This approach heavily relies on the intuition of the participants and misses a clear description of the quality requirements. Against this background, we identify four generic quality categories of business process quality, and populate them with quality requirements from related research. We refer to the resulting framework as the Quality of Business Process (QoBP) framework. Furthermore, we present the findings from applying the QoBP framework in a case study with a major Australian bank, showing that it helps to systematically fill the white space between as-is and to-be process modeling.

Understanding and impacting the practice of business process management

This presentation will explore how BPM research can seamlessly combine the academic requirement of rigor with the aim to impact the practice of Business Process Management. After a brief introduction into the research agendas as they are perceived by different BPM communities, two research projects will be discussed that illustrate how empirically-informed quantitative and qualitative research, combined with design science, can lead to outcomes that BPM practitioners are willing to adopt. The first project studies the practice of process modeling using Information Systems theory, and demonstrates how a better understanding of this practice can inform the design of modeling notations and methods. The second project studies the adoption of process management within organizations, and leads to models of how organizations can incrementally transition to greater levels of BPM maturity. The presentation will conclude with recommendations for how the BPM research and practitioner communities can increasingly benefit from each other.

From the editors : introduction and a compass for business process design

In this editorial letter, we provide the readers of Information Systems Management with a background on process design before we discuss the content of the special issue proper. By introducing and describing a so-called process design compass we aim to clarify what developments in the field are taking place and how the papers in this special issue expand on our current knowledge in this domain.

The business case for transmedia

For transmedia to be acknowledged as worthy of investment by the business world, and even by those considering a career in development of transmedia creative products, there first needs to be established a business case for the concept. This chapter seeks to inform transmedia advocates about the concept of value and the ROI of transmedia more generally. While it is by no means a template or formula for measurement of value, it is a reminder to transmedia professionals and theorists, that intangible benefits are neither valueless nor unquantifiable. The chapter is divided into four sections: 1. Definitions of transmedia – concept and scope of transmedia, expressed in a manner that is intelligible for a business audience. 2. Value and cost – discussion of the terms from an economic perspective. 3. Audience interaction and collaborative content development – discussion of how feedback and engagement systems of transmedia have facilitated rich experiences which offer more than mere content and audience reach outputs. 4. ROI metrics for transmedia – measurable criteria for articulation of value to business investors.

Falling behind : business use of social media

Australians are turning onto social media in their droves - nearly 90 per cent of our citizenry are online and more than 50 per cent of the population has a Facebook account.

Faking it : how to kill a business through astroturfing on social media

There is no doubt about it the practice of astroturfing is lazy, misleading and potentially illegal public relations (PR). But on social media, astroturfing is not just lazy and misleading, it can be irresponsible and damaging.

Distinguishing between task and contextual performance for nurses : development of a job performance scale

Aim. This paper is a report of a development and validation of a new job performance scale based on an established job performance model. Background. Previous measures of nursing quality are atheoretical and fail to incorporate the complete range of behaviours performed. Thus, an up-to-date measure of job performance is required for assessing nursing quality. Methods. Test construction involved systematic generation of test items using focus groups, a literature review, and an expert review of test items. A pilot study was conducted to determine the multidimensional nature of the taxonomy and its psychometric properties. All data were collected in 2005. Findings. The final version of the nursing performance taxonomy included 41 behaviours across eight dimensions of job performance. Results from preliminary psychometric investigations suggest that the nursing performance scale has good internal consistency, good convergent validity and good criterion validity. Conclusion. The findings give preliminary support for a new job performance scale as a reliable and valid tool for assessing nursing quality. However, further research using a larger sample and nurses from a broader geographical region is required to cross-validate the measure. This scale may be used to guide hospital managers regarding the quality of nursing care within units and to guide future research in the area.