Applying Enterprise Architecture to Business Networks

Globalization, financial deregulation, economic turmoil, and technology breakthroughs are profoundly exposing organizations to business networks. Engaging these networks requires explicit planning from the strategic level down to the operational level of an organization, which significantly affects organizational artefacts such as business services, processes, and resources. Although enterprise architecture (EA) aligns business and IT aspects of organizational systems, previous applications of EA have not comprehensively addressed a methodological framework for planning. In the context of business networks, this study seeks to explore the application of EA for business network planning where it builds upon relevant and well-established prescriptive and descriptive aspects of EA. Prescriptive aspects include integrated models of services, business processes, and resources among other organizational artefacts, at both business and IT levels. Descriptive aspects include ontological classifications of business functionality, which allow EA models to be aligned semantically to organizational artefacts and, ultimately higher-level business strategy. A prominent approach for capturing descriptive aspects of EA is business capability modelling. In order to explore and develop the illustrative extensions of EA through capability modelling, a list of requirements (capability dimensions) for business network planning will be identified and validated through a revelatory case study encompassing different business network manifestations, or situations. These include virtual organization, liquid workforce, business network orchestration, and headquarters-subsidiary. The use of artefacts, conventionally, modelled through EA will be considered in these network situations. Two general considerations for EA extensions are explored for the identified requirements at the level of the network: extension of artefacts through the network and alignment of network level artefacts with individual organization artefacts. The list of requirements provides the basis for a constructivist extension of EA in the following ways. Firstly, for descriptive aspects, it offers constructivist insights to guide extensions for particular EA techniques and concepts. Secondly, for prescriptive aspects it defines a set of capability dimensions, which improve the analysis and assessment of organization capabilities for business network situations.

Evaluations of BIM : frameworks and perspectives

This paper examines the evaluation of BIM-enabled projects. It provides a critical review of the three main areas of measurement, namely technology, organization/people and process. Using two documented case studies of BIM implementation, the paper illustrates the benefits realized by project owners and contractors, and illustrates a lack of attention relative to contextual factors affecting the adoption and deployment of BIM. The paper has three main contributions. First, it identifies and discusses the lack of and difficulty surrounding standardized assessment methods for evaluating BIM-enabled projects. Second, it proposes a conceptual model that includes contextual attributes and demonstrates how the proposed framework reaches beyond simple evaluation to encompass the documentation of BIM’s benefits, lessons learned, challenges and adopted solutions. Third, it shows how the framework can account for existing business processes, organizational process assets, and enterprise level factors. The paper aims to provide a conceptual basis for evaluation and a starting point for benchmarking.

Public sector change, person-organization fit, and work attitudes : a mediation model

Organizational change is a typical phenomenon within public sector agencies in OECD countries. An increasing number of studies in the literature examine the implementation of change and its resulting impact on the work attitudes of public sector employees; however, little is known about the extent to which change management processes impact on employees’ work attitudes. This study aims to address this issue by developing a path model underpinned by change management and public service motivation literature. The path model was tested on a sample of 308 managerial and non-managerial public sector employees from the U.S. The results provide further empirical evidence on the types of change initiatives on nursing work and change management processes being implemented. Public sector agencies in the sample implemented a variety of change initiatives such as downsizing, delayering and empowerment. Employees reported two change management processes: the provision of change-related information and participation in change decision making. While the results indicate that change produces change-induced stressors, change information tends to reduce stressors and, subsequently, role stress. The results also indicate that change management processes are associated with higher levels of public service motivation, which is in turn connected to higher levels of person–organization fit. Person–organization fit was found to partially mediate the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in the context of change.

Peripheral, central and coercive routes for promoting Enterprise Social Networks

Organisations employ Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) (such as Yammer) expecting better intra-organisational communication and collaboration. However, ESNs are struggling to gain momentum and wide adoption among users. Promoting user participation is a challenge, particularly in relation to lurkers – the silent ESN members who do not contribute any content. Building on behaviour change research, we propose a three-route model consisting of the central, peripheral and coercive routes of influence that depict users’ cognitive strategies, and we examine how management interventions (e.g. sending promotional emails) impact users’ beliefs and (consequent) posting and lurking behaviours in ESNs. Furthermore, we identify users’ salient motivations to lurk or post. We employ a multi-method research design to conceptualise, operationalise and validate the research model. This study has implications for academics and practitioners regarding the nature, patterns and outcomes of management interventions in prompting ESN.

Shifting from production to purpose : facilitating design-led change in a small family-owned enterprise

This research was embedded as a Design-led Innovation catalyst within a family-owned small business, to explore the application of a design program to achieve organizational change. Based on the findings two new models for increasing design integration within an organisation were proposed, establishing a range of pre-requisites needed for a firm to progress. Struggling firms may leverage their use of design and strategy by embedding a catalyst in a new cross-disciplinary role providing the necessary internal assistance. The study demonstrated that even non-design or strategy-inclined family-owned SMEs could benefit from embarking on a design-led journey to boost their competitive preparedness.

Do good things and talk about them : a theory of academics usage of enterprise social networks for impression management tactics

Enterprise social networks provide benefits especially for knowledge-intensive work as they enable communication, collaboration and knowledge exchange. These platforms should therefore lead to increased adoption and use by knowledge-intensive workers such as consultants or indeed researchers. Our interest is in ascertaining whether scientific researchers use enterprise social networks as part of their work practices. This focus is motivated by an apparent schism between a need for researchers to exchange knowledge and profile themselves, and the aversion to sharing breakthrough ideas and joining in an ever-increasing publishing and marketing game. We draw on research on academic work practices and impression management to develop a model of academics’ ESN usage for impression management tactics. We describe important constructs of our model, offer strategies for their operationalization and give an outlook to our ongoing empirical study of the use of an ESN platform by 20 schools across six faculties at an Australian university.

Superstars as drivers of organizational identification : empirical findings from professional soccer

This paper examines the effect of superstars on external stakeholders’ organizational identification through the lens of sport. Drawing on social identity theory and the concept of organizational identification, as well as on role model theories and superstar economics, several hypotheses are developed regarding the influence of soccer stars on their fans’ degree of team identification. Using a proprietary data set that combines archival data on professional German soccer players and clubs with survey data on more than 1,400 soccer fans, this study finds evidence for a positive effect of superstar characteristics and role model perception. Moreover, it is found that players who qualify for the definition of a superstar are more important to fans of established teams than to fans of unsuccessful teams. The player's club tenure, however, seems to have no influence on fans’ team identification. It is further argued that the effect of soccer stars on their fans is comparable to that of executives on external stakeholders, and hence, the results are applied to the business domain. The results of this study contribute to existing research by extending the list of personnel-related determinants of organizational identification.

A critical realist perspective of Enterprise Architecture evolution : conditioning and outcomes

This paper investigates how Enterprise Architecture (EA) evolves due to emerging trends. It specifically explores how EA integrates the Service-oriented Architecture (SOA). Archer’s Morphogenetic theory is used as an analytical approach to distinguish the architectural conditions under which SOA is introduced, to study the relationships between these conditions and SOA introduction, and to reflect on EA evolution (elaborations) that then take place. The paper focuses on reasons for why EA evolution could take place, or not and what architectural changes could happen due to SOA integration. The research builds on sound theoretical foundations to discuss EA evolution in a field that often lacks a solid theoretical groundwork. Specifically, it proposes that critical realism, using the morphogenetic theory, can provide a useful theoretical foundation to study enterprise architecture (EA) evolution. The initial results of a literature review (a-priori model) were extended using explorative interviews. The findings of this study are threefold. First, there are five different levels of EA-SOA integration outcomes. Second, a mature EA, flexible and well-defined EA framework and comprehensive objectives of EA improve the integration outcomes. Third, the analytical separation using Archer’s theory is helpful in order to understand how these different integration outcomes are generated.

LeaD-In : a cultural change model for peer review of teaching in higher education

Peer review of teaching is recognized increasingly as one strategy for academic development even though historically peer review of teaching is often unsupported by policy, action and culture in many Australian universities. Higher education leaders report that academics generally do not engage with peer review of teaching in a systematic or constructive manner, and this paper advances and analyses a conceptual model to highlight conditions and strategies necessary for the implementation of sustainable peer review in higher education institutions. The model highlights leadership, development and implementation, which are critical to the success and formation of a culture of peer review of teaching. The work arises from collaborative research funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching to foster and advance a culture of peer review of teaching across several universities in Australia.

Importance of knowledge management processes in a project-based organization : a case study of research enterprise

Knowledge Management (KM) is vital factor to successfully undertake projects. The temporary nature of projects necessitates employing useful KM practices for tackling issues such as knowledge leakiness and rework. The Project Management Office (PMO) is a unit within organizations to facilitate and oversee organizational projects. Project Management Maturity Models (PMMM) shows the development of PMOs from immature to mature levels. The existing PMMMs have focused on discussing Project Management (PM) practices, however, the management of project knowledge is yet to be addressed, at various levels of maturity. This research project was undertaken to investigate the mentioned gap for addressing KM practices at the existing PMMMs. Due to the exploratory and inductive nature of this research, qualitative methods were chosen as the research methodology. In total, three cases selected from different industries: research; mining and government organizations, to provide broad categories for research and research questions were examined using the developed framework. This paper presents the partial findings of undertaken investigation of the research organisation with the lowest level of maturity. The result shows that knowledge creation and capturing are the most important processes, while knowledge transferring and reusing are not as important as the other two processes. In addition, it was revealed that provision of “knowledge about client” and “project management knowledge” are the most important types of knowledge that are required at this level of maturity. In conclusion, the outcomes of this paper shall provide powerful guidance to PMOs at lowest level of maturity from KM point of view.

Evidence-based business process management: Using digital opportunities to drive organizational innovation

Process improvement and innovation are risky endeavors, like swimming in unknown waters. In this chapter, I will discuss how process innovation through BPM can benefit from Research-as-a-Service, that is, from the application of research concepts in the processes of BPM projects. A further subject will be how innovations can be converted from confidence-based to evidence-based models due to affordances of digital infrastructures such as large-scale enterprise soft-ware or social media. I will introduce the relevant concepts, provide illustrations for digital capabilities that allow for innovation, and share a number of key takeaway lessons for how organizations can innovate on the basis of digital opportunities and principles of evidence-based BPM: the foundation of all process decisions in facts rather than fiction.

Liquid Business Process Model Collections

Many organizations realize that increasing amounts of data (“Big Data”) need to be dealt with intelligently in order to compete with other organizations in terms of efficiency, speed and services. The goal is not to collect as much data as possible, but to turn event data into valuable insights that can be used to improve business processes. However, data-oriented analysis approaches fail to relate event data to process models. At the same time, large organizations are generating piles of process models that are disconnected from the real processes and information systems. In this chapter we propose to manage large collections of process models and event data in an integrated manner. Observed and modeled behavior need to be continuously compared and aligned. This results in a “liquid” business process model collection, i.e. a collection of process models that is in sync with the actual organizational behavior. The collection should self-adapt to evolving organizational behavior and incorporate relevant execution data (e.g. process performance and resource utilization) extracted from the logs, thereby allowing insightful reports to be produced from factual organizational data.

Technology transfer offices as boundary spanners in the pre-spin-off process: The case of a hybrid model

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become ambidextrous organizations reconciling scientific and commercial missions. In order to manage this ambidexterity, technology transfer offices (TTOs) were established in most universities. This paper studies a specific, often implemented, but rather understudied type of TTO, namely a hybrid TTO model uniting centralized and decentralized levels. Employing a qualitative research design, we examine how and why the two TTO levels engage in diverse boundary spanning activities to help nascent spin-off companies move through the pre-spin-off process. Our research identifies differences in the types of boundary spanning activities that centralized and decentralized TTOs perform and in the parties they engage with. We find geographical, technological and organizational proximity to be important antecedents of the TTOs’ engagement in external and internal boundary spanning activities. These results have important implications for both academics and practitioners interested in university technology transfer through spin-off creation.

Middle managers' uncertainty management during organizational change

Purpose This study aims to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit middle managers' experience of uncertainty management during organizational change. Design/methodology/approach The approach is qualitative and involved interviews with 40 middle managers from a range of organizations. Findings Analysis revealed that at the pre‐implementation stage, uncertainty focused on the strategic concept of the change, whereas at implementation, uncertainty related to the appropriate procedures to implement. Middle managers’ uncertainty management was found to be important in assisting their employees in the change transition. The factors identified as being either facilitators or barriers to uncertainty management focused on themes related to the design of change, communication with both senior management and their own staff, support from senior management, role conflict, and peer interaction. A model was created to link facilitators and barriers with uncertainty to guide future research. Research limitations/implications Implications for organizational change research along with practical implications are discussed. Originality/value This study provides insight into the positive contributions middle managers can make during change, along with suggesting what factors are facilitators or barriers to this positive role.

A longitudinal investigation of coping processes during a merger: Implications for job satisfaction and organizational identification

This study tested the utility of a stress and coping model of employee adjustment to a merger. Two hundred and twenty employees completed both questionnaires (Time 1: 3 months after merger implementation; Time 2: 2 years later). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that positive event characteristics predicted greater appraisals of self-efficacy and less stress at Time 1. Self-efficacy, in turn, predicted greater use of problem-focused coping at Time 2, whereas stress predicted a greater use of problem-focused and avoidance coping. Finally, problem-focused coping predicted higher levels of job satisfaction and identification with the merged organization (Time 2), whereas avoidance coping predicted lower identification.