Determining information requirements for e-business Systems - from activity space to information space

The study of information requirements for e-business systems reveals that the level of detail, granularity, format of presentation, and a broad range of information types are required for the applications. The provision of relevant information affects how e-business systems can efficiently support the business goals and processes. This paper presents an approach for determining information requirements for e-business systems (DIRES) which will allow the user to describe the core business processes, whose specification maps onto a business activity space. It further aids a configuration of information requirements into an information space. A case study of a logistics company in China demonstrates the use of DIRES techniques and assesses the validity of the research.

Artefact-oriented business process modelling: an ontological dependency approach

Business process modelling can help an organisation better understand and improve its business processes. Most business process modelling methods adopt a task- or activity-based approach to identifying business processes. Within our work, we use activity theory to categorise elements within organisations as being either human beings, activities or artefacts. Due to the direct relationship between these three elements, an artefact-oriented approach to organisation analysis emerges. Organisational semiotics highlights the ontological dependency between affordances within an organisation. We analyse the ontological dependency between organisational elements, and therefore produce the ontology chart for artefact-oriented business process modelling in order to clarify the relationship between the elements of an organisation. Furthermore, we adopt the techniques from semantic analysis and norm analysis, of organisational semiotics, to develop the artefact-oriented method for business process modelling. The proposed method provides a novel perspective for identifying and analysing business processes, as well as agents and artefacts, as the artefact-oriented perspective demonstrates the fundamental flow of an organisation. The modelling results enable an organisation to understand and model its processes from an artefact perspective, viewing an organisation as a network of artefacts. The information and practice captured and stored in artefact can also be shared and reused between organisations that produce similar artefacts.

Requirements analysis for an e-government system to support multi-organisational collaborative groups

We present a conceptual architecture for a Group Support System (GSS) to facilitate Multi-Organisational Collaborative Groups (MOCGs) initiated by local government and including external organisations of various types. Multi-Organisational Collaborative Groups (MOCGs) consist of individuals from several organisations which have agreed to work together to solve a problem. The expectation is that more can be achieved working in harmony than separately. Work is done interdependently, rather than independently in diverse directions. Local government, faced with solving complex social problems, deploy MOCGs to enable solutions across organisational, functional, professional and juridical boundaries, by involving statutory, voluntary, community, not-for-profit and private organisations. This is not a silver bullet as it introduces new pressures. Each member organisation has its own goals, operating context and particular approaches, which can be expressed as their norms and business processes. Organisations working together must find ways of eliminating differences or mitigating their impact in order to reduce the risks of collaborative inertia and conflict. A GSS is an electronic collaboration system that facilitates group working and can offer assistance to MOCGs. Since many existing GSSs have been primarily developed for single organisation collaborative groups, even though there are some common issues, there are some difficulties peculiar to MOCGs, and others that they experience to a greater extent: a diversity of primary organisational goals among members; different funding models and other pressures; more significant differences in other information systems both technologically and in their use than single organisations; greater variation in acceptable approaches to solve problems. In this paper, we analyse the requirements of MOCGs led by local government agencies, leading to a conceptual architecture for an e-government GSS that captures the relationships between 'goal', 'context', 'norm', and 'business process'. Our models capture the dynamics of the circumstances surrounding each individual representing an organisation in a MOCG along with the dynamics of the MOCG itself as a separate community.

An organisational semiotics inspired information architecture: pervasive healthcare as a case study

Information architecture (IA) is defined as high level information requirements of an organisation. It is applied in areas such as information systems development, enterprise architecture, business processes management and organisational change management. Still, the lack of methods and theories prevents information architecture becoming a distinct discipline. Healthcare organisation is always seen as information intensive organisation, moreover in a pervasive healthcare environment. Pervasive healthcare aims to provide healthcare services to anyone, anywhere and anytime by incorporating mobile devices and wireless network. Information architecture hence plays an important role in information provisioning within the context of pervasive healthcare in order to support decision making and communication between clinician and patients. Organisational semiotics is one of the social technical approaches that contemplate information through the norms or activities performed within an organisation prior to pervasive healthcare implementation. This paper proposes a conceptual design of information architecture for pervasive healthcare. It is illustrated with a scenario of mental health patient monitoring.

The design of a semantics-oriented organisational performance measurement system

Current methods and techniques used in designing organisational performance measurement systems do not consider the multiple aspects of business processes or the semantics of data generated during the lifecycle of a product. In this paper, we propose an organisational performance measurement systems design model that is based on the semantics of an organisation, business process and products lifecycle. Organisational performance measurement is examined from academic and practice disciplines. The multi-discipline approach is used as a research tool to explore the weaknesses of current models that are used to design organisational performance measurement systems. This helped in identifying the gaps in research and practice concerning the issues and challenges in designing information systems for measuring the performance of an organisation. The knowledge sources investigated include on-going and completed research project reports; scientific and management literature; and practitioners’ magazines.

A normative method to analyse workarounds in a healthcare environment: motivations, consequences, and constraints

Healthcare information systems have the potential to enhance productivity, lower costs, and reduce medication errors by automating business processes. However, various issues such as system complexity and system abilities in a relation to user requirements as well as rapid changes in business needs have an impact on the use of these systems. In many cases failure of a system to meet business process needs has pushed users to develop alternative work processes (workarounds) to fill this gap. Some research has been undertaken on why users are motivated to perform and create workarounds. However, very little research has assessed the consequences on patient safety. Moreover, the impact of performing these workarounds on the organisation and how to quantify risks and benefits is not well analysed. Generally, there is a lack of rigorous understanding and qualitative and quantitative studies on healthcare IS workarounds and their outcomes. This project applies A Normative Approach for Modelling Workarounds to develop A Model of Motivation, Constraints, and Consequences. It aims to understand the phenomenon in-depth and provide guidelines to organisations on how to deal with workarounds. Finally the method is demonstrated on a case study example and its relative merits discussed.

Assessing pragmatic interoperability of information systems from a semiotic perspective

Most of studies on interoperability of systems integration focus on technical and semantic levels, but hardly extend investigations on pragmatic level. Our past work has addressed pragmatic interoperability, which is concerned with the relationship between signs and the potential behaviour and intention of responsible agents. We also define the pragmatic interoperability as a level concerning with the aggregation and optimisation of various business processes for achieving intended purposes of different information systems. This paper, as the extension of our previous research, is to propose an assessment method for measuring pragmatic interoperability of information systems. We firstly propose interoperability analysis framework, which is based on the concept of semiosis. We then develop pragmatic interoperability assessment process from two dimensions including six aspects (informal, formal, technical, substantive, communication, and control). We finally illustrate the assessment process in an example.

Modelling capability and affordance as properties of human/machine resource systems

Understanding how and why the capability of one set of business resources, its structural arrangements and mechanisms compared to another works can provide competitive advantage in terms of new business processes and product and service development. However, most business models of capability are descriptive and lack formal modelling language to qualitatively and quantifiably compare capabilities, Gibson’s theory of affordance, the potential for action, provides a formal basis for a more robust and quantitative model, but most formal affordance models are complex and abstract and lack support for real-world applications. We aim to understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of business capability, by developing a quantitative and qualitative model that underpins earlier work on Capability-Affordance Modelling – CAM. This paper integrates an affordance based capability model and the formalism of Coloured Petri Nets to develop a simulation model. Using the model, we show how capability depends on the space time path of interacting resources, the mechanism of transition and specific critical affordance factors relating to the values of the variables for resources, people and physical objects. We show how the model can identify the capabilities of resources to enable the capability to inject a drug and anaesthetise a patient.

The roles and competencies of HR managers in Slovenian multinational companies

Purpose – The HRM literature provides various typologies of the HR managers’ roles in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the roles and required competencies of HR managers in Slovenian multinational companies change when these companies enter the international arena. Design/methodology/approach – The authors explored the total population of 25 Slovenian multinational companies (MNCs) operating in Serbia. In these companies the authors conducted interviews with 16 expatriates working in branches in Serbia, sent questionnaires to the CEOs, and conducted a survey of 50 HR managers and interviews with 15 of them. The authors used a triangulation approach and analyzed the results by multivariate methods and content analysis. Findings – The authors found that the complexity of HR managers’ roles, and expectations of their competencies, increases with an increasing level of internationalization of companies. Orientation to people and conflict resolution are seen as elementary competencies needed in all stages of internationalization. The key competence is seen to be strategic thinking that, according to CEOs and expatriates, goes hand in hand with cultural sensitivity, openness to change and a comprehensive understanding of the international environment and business processes. Practical implications – These results can potentially be used for assessing the HRM roles and competencies in different stages of company internationalization, especially MNCs operating in the ex-communist states of Europe, and will help HR managers to support expatriates, CEOs and other employees working in branches abroad more efficiently. Originality/value – This study contributes to the review and evaluation of the quite limited research on HR managers’ roles and competencies in MNCs. It focuses on MNCs and outward internationalization in the Central and Eastern European region. It contributes to studies of the HR managers’ roles and competencies and is the first study to establish a set of roles and competencies for HR managers in Slovenian MNCs.

Knowledge process outsourcing in financial services: The vendor perspective

This research reports the findings from a study on nine knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) vendors working in the financial services industry. It delineates financial business processes along a low to high-end continuum. Findings suggest that KPO vendors are gradually moving along the value pathway offering more complex intellectual value activity based products and services to clients. However, they face many challenges including gaining the confidence of potential clients about outsourcing knowledge-intensive work, and finding effective solutions to mitigate outsourcing risk. Our paper concludes by developing a taxonomy of KPO scenarios to provide a backdrop for further academic research and to illustrate current practice.

KPIs and their properties defined with the EXTREME method

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the main instruments of Business Performance Management. KPIs are the measures that are translated to both the strategy and the business process. These measures are often designed for an industry sector with the assumptions about business processes in organizations. However, the assumptions can be too incomplete to guarantee the required properties of KPIs. This raises the need to validate the properties of KPIs prior to their application to performance measurement. This paper applies the method called EXecutable Requirements Engineering Management and Evolution (EXTREME) for validation of the KPI definitions. EXTREME semantically relates the goal modeling, conceptual modeling and protocol modeling techniques into one methodology. The synchronous composition built into protocol modeling enables raceability of goals in protocol models and constructive definitions of a KPI. The application of the method clarifies the meaning of KPI properties and procedures of their assessment and validation.

The role of the sponsor in business change

Successful business change programmes require a holistic approach covering processes, people, information and technology. Yet many current IT-related initiatives rely heavily on a systems development lifecycle and too early use of structured project management methodologies. This is exacerbated by limited or unclear definitions of what constitutes success. The IT-enabled business change lifecycle has been developed as an antidote to this narrow view. It stresses the importance of alignment in fuzzy situations with a continued focus on benefits management throughout the lifecycle. This paper reports on business change in large enterprises describing the results of an exemplar case study using the IT-enabled change lifecycle. There are different challenges at each stage of the lifecycle with implications for the skills needed. The paper considers these stages from the perspective of the sponsor, a role which is often misunderstood, and assesses what is required for successful stewardship and leadership of change. It concludes with practical recommendations for sharing learning on success and failure throughout the enterprise.

Mathematical modelling of decision making processes in construction projects

Many different individuals, who have their own expertise and criteria for decision making, are involved in making decisions on construction projects. Decision-making processes are thus significantly affected by communication, in which a dynamic performance of human intentions leads to unpredictable outcomes. In order to theorise the decision making processes including communication, it is argued here that the decision making processes resemble evolutionary dynamics in terms of both selection and mutation, which can be expressed by the replicator-mutator equation. To support this argument, a mathematical model of decision making has been made from an analogy with evolutionary dynamics, in which there are three variables: initial support rate, business hierarchy, and power of persuasion. On the other hand, a survey of patterns in decision making in construction projects has also been performed through self-administered mail questionnaire to construction practitioners. Consequently, comparison between the numerical analysis of mathematical model and the statistical analysis of empirical data has shown a significant potential of the replicator-mutator equation as a tool to study dynamic properties of intentions in communication.

A design for business intelligence service in demand driven supply chain management

This paper discusses the problems inherent within traditional supply chain management's forecast and inventory management processes arising when tackling demand driven supply chain. A demand driven supply chain management architecture developed by Orchestr8 Ltd., U.K. is described to demonstrate its advantages over traditional supply chain management. Within this architecture, a metrics reporting system is designed by adopting business intelligence technology that supports users for decision making and planning supply activities over supply chain health.