Understanding business process models : the costs and benefits of structuredness

Previous research has put forward a number of properties of business process models that have an impact on their understandability. Two such properties are compactness and(block-)structuredness. What has not been sufficiently appreciated at this point is that these desirable properties may be at odds with one another. This paper presents the results of a two-pronged study aimed at exploring the trade-off between compactness and structuredness of process models. The first prong of the study is a comparative analysis of the complexity of a set of unstructured process models from industrial practice and of their corresponding structured versions. The second prong is an experiment wherein a cohort of students was exposed to semantically equivalent unstructured and structured process models. The key finding is that structuredness is not an absolute desideratum vis-a-vis for process model understandability. Instead, subtle trade-offs between structuredness and other model properties are at play.

A conceptual model to link deep customer insights to both growth opportunities and organisational strategy in SME’s as part of a design led transformation journey

Although Design Led Innovation activities aim to raise the value of design within the business, knowledge about which tools are available to support companies and how to apply them to make the connection between design for new product development and design as a strategic driver of growth is needed. This paper presents a conceptual method to supplement existing process and tools to assist companies to grow through design. The model extends the authors’ previous work to explore how through storytelling, customer observation can be captured and translated into new meaning, then creating new design propositions shaped into product needs, which can drive internal business activities, brand and the strategic vision. The paper contributes to a gap in the theoretical frameworks and literature by highlighting the need to align and scale design processes which match the needs of SME’s as they transition along a trajectory to become design led businesses.

Value co-creation in social marketing wellness services

Customer perceived value is concerned with the experiences of consumers when using a service and is often referred to in the context of service provision or on the basis of service quality (Auh, et al., 2007; Chang, 2008; Jackson, 2007; Laukkanen, 2007; Padgett & Mulvey, 2007; Shamdasani, Mukherjee & Malhotra, 2008). Understanding customer perceived value has benefits for social marketing and allows scholars and practitioners alike to identify why consumers engage in positive social behaviours through the use of services. Understanding consumers’ use of wellness services in particular is important, because the use of wellness services demonstrates the fulfilment of social marketing aims; performing pro-active, positive social behaviours that are of benefit to the individual and to society (Andreasen, 1994). As consumers typically act out of self-interest (Rothschild, 1999), this research posits that a value proposition must be made to consumers in order to encourage behavioural change. Thus, this research seeks to identify how value is created for consumers of wellness services in social marketing. This results in the overall research question of this research: How is value created in social marketing wellness services? A traditional method towards understanding value has been the adoption of an economic approach, which considers the utility gained and where value is a direct outcome of a cost-benefit analysis (Payne & Holt, 1999). However, there has since been a shift towards the adoption of an experiential approach in understanding value. This experiential approach considers the consumption experience of the consumer which extends beyond the service exchange and includes pre- and post-consumption stages (Russell-Bennett, Previte & Zainuddin, 2009). As such, this research uses an experiential approach to identify the value that exists in social marketing wellness services. Four dimensions of value have been commonly conceptualised and identified in the commercial marketing literature; functional, emotional, social, and altruistic value (Holbrook, 1994; Sheth, Newman & Gross, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). It is not known if these value dimensions also exist in social marketing. In addition, sources of value said to influence value dimensions have been conceptualised in the literature. Sources of value such as information, interaction, environment, service, customer co-creation, and social mandate have been conceptually identified both in the commercial and social marketing literature (Russell-Bennet, Previte & Zainuddin, 2009; Smith & Colgate, 2007). However, it is not clear which sources of value contribute to the creation of value for users of wellness services. Thus, this research seeks to explore these relationships. This research was conducted using a wellness service context, specifically breast cancer screening services. The primary target consumer of these services is women aged 50 to 69 years old (inclusive) who have never been diagnosed with breast cancer. It is recommended that women in this target group have a breast screen every 2 years in order to achieve the most effective medical outcomes from screening. A two-study mixed method approach was utilised. Study 1 was a qualitative exploratory study that analysed individual-depth interviews with 25 information-rich respondents. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo 8 software. The qualitative results provided evidence of the existence of the four value dimensions in social marketing. The results also allowed for the development of a typology of experiential value by synthesising current understanding of the value dimensions, with the activity aspects of experiential value identified by Holbrook (1994) and Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon (2001). The qualitative results also provided evidence for the existence of sources of value in social marketing, namely information, interaction, environment and consumer participation. In particular, a categorisation of sources of value was developed as a result of the findings from Study 1, which identify organisational, consumer, and third party sources of value. A proposed model of value co-creation and a set of hypotheses were developed based on the results of Study 1 for further testing in Study 2. Study 2 was a large-scale quantitative confirmatory study that sought to test the proposed model of value co-creation and the hypotheses developed. An online-survey was administered Australia-wide to women in the target audience. A response rate of 20.1% was achieved, resulting in a final sample of 797 useable responses after removing ineligible respondents. Reliability and validity analyses were conducted on the data, followed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) in PASW18, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in AMOS18. Following the preliminary analyses, the data was subject to Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in AMOS18 to test the path relationships hypothesised in the proposed model of value creation. The SEM output revealed that all hypotheses were supported, with the exception of one relationship which was non-significant. In addition, post hoc tests revealed seven further significant non-hypothesised relationships in the model. The quantitative results show that organisational sources of value as well as consumer participation sources of value influence both functional and emotional dimensions of value. The experience of both functional and emotional value in wellness services leads to satisfaction with the experience, followed by behavioural intentions to perform the behaviour and use the service again. One of the significant non-hypothesised relationships revealed that emotional value leads to functional value in wellness services, providing further empirical evidence that emotional value features more prominently than functional value for users of wellness services. This research offers several contributions to theory and practice. Theoretically, this research addresses a gap in the literature by using social marketing theory to provide an alternative method of understanding individual behaviour in a domain that has been predominantly investigated in public health. This research also clarifies the concept of value and offers empirical evidence to show that value is a multi-dimensional construct with separate and distinct dimensions. Empirical evidence for a typology of experiential value, as well as a categorisation of sources of value is also provided. In its practical contributions, this research identifies a framework that is the value creation process and offers health services organisations a diagnostic tool to identify aspects of the service process that facilitate the value creation process.

Demand for hospital emergency departments : a conceptual understanding

BACKGROUND: Emergency departments (EDs) are critical to the management of acute illness and injury, and the provision of health system access. However, EDs have become increasingly congested due to increased demand, increased complexity of care and blocked access to ongoing care (access block). Congestion has clinical and organisational implications. This paper aims to describe the factors that appear to infl uence demand for ED services, and their interrelationships as the basis for further research into the role of private hospital EDs. DATA SOURCES: Multiple databases (PubMed, ProQuest, Academic Search Elite and Science Direct) and relevant journals were searched using terms related to EDs and emergency health needs. Literature pertaining to emergency department utilisation worldwide was identified, and articles selected for further examination on the basis of their relevance and significance to ED demand. RESULTS: Factors influencing ED demand can be categorized into those describing the health needs of the patients, those predisposing a patient to seeking help, and those relating to policy factors such as provision of services and insurance status. This paper describes the factors influencing ED presentations, and proposes a novel conceptual map of their interrelationship. CONCLUSION: This review has explored the factors contributing to the growing demand for ED care, the influence these factors have on ED demand, and their interrelationships depicted in the conceptual model.

Understanding evaluation of learning support in mathematics and statistics

With rapid and continuing growth of learning support initiatives in mathematics and statistics found in many parts of the world, and with the likelihood that this trend will continue, there is a need to ensure that robust and coherent measures are in place to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives. The nature of learning support brings challenges for measurement and analysis of its effects. After briefly reviewing the purpose, rationale for, and extent of current provision, this article provides a framework for those working in learning support to think about how their efforts can be evaluated. It provides references and specific examples of how workers in this field are collecting, analysing and reporting their findings. The framework is used to structure evaluation in terms of usage of facilities, resources and services provided, and also in terms of improvements in performance of the students and staff who engage with them. Very recent developments have started to address the effects of learning support on the development of deeper approaches to learning, the affective domain and the development of communities of practice of both learners and teachers. This article intends to be a stimulus to those who work in mathematics and statistics support to gather even richer, more valuable, forms of data. It provides a 'toolkit' for those interested in evaluation of learning support and closes by referring to an on-line resource being developed to archive the growing body of evidence. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Understanding user experience of mobile video : framework, measurement, and optimization

Since users have become the focus of product/service design in last decade, the term User eXperience (UX) has been frequently used in the field of Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Research on UX facilitates a better understanding of the various aspects of the user’s interaction with the product or service. Mobile video, as a new and promising service and research field, has attracted great attention. Due to the significance of UX in the success of mobile video (Jordan, 2002), many researchers have centered on this area, examining users’ expectations, motivations, requirements, and usage context. As a result, many influencing factors have been explored (Buchinger, Kriglstein, Brandt & Hlavacs, 2011; Buchinger, Kriglstein & Hlavacs, 2009). However, a general framework for specific mobile video service is lacking for structuring such a great number of factors. To measure user experience of multimedia services such as mobile video, quality of experience (QoE) has recently become a prominent concept. In contrast to the traditionally used concept quality of service (QoS), QoE not only involves objectively measuring the delivered service but also takes into account user’s needs and desires when using the service, emphasizing the user’s overall acceptability on the service. Many QoE metrics are able to estimate the user perceived quality or acceptability of mobile video, but may be not enough accurate for the overall UX prediction due to the complexity of UX. Only a few frameworks of QoE have addressed more aspects of UX for mobile multimedia applications but need be transformed into practical measures. The challenge of optimizing UX remains adaptations to the resource constrains (e.g., network conditions, mobile device capabilities, and heterogeneous usage contexts) as well as meeting complicated user requirements (e.g., usage purposes and personal preferences). In this chapter, we investigate the existing important UX frameworks, compare their similarities and discuss some important features that fit in the mobile video service. Based on the previous research, we propose a simple UX framework for mobile video application by mapping a variety of influencing factors of UX upon a typical mobile video delivery system. Each component and its factors are explored with comprehensive literature reviews. The proposed framework may benefit in user-centred design of mobile video through taking a complete consideration of UX influences and in improvement of mobile videoservice quality by adjusting the values of certain factors to produce a positive user experience. It may also facilitate relative research in the way of locating important issues to study, clarifying research scopes, and setting up proper study procedures. We then review a great deal of research on UX measurement, including QoE metrics and QoE frameworks of mobile multimedia. Finally, we discuss how to achieve an optimal quality of user experience by focusing on the issues of various aspects of UX of mobile video. In the conclusion, we suggest some open issues for future study.

Understanding IT business value creation and evaluation in least developed economies

Information Technology (IT) is an important resource that can facilitate growth and development in both the developed and developing economies. The forces of globalisation increase the digital divide between the developed and developing economies is increasing. The least developed economies (LDEs) are the most vulnerable within this environment. Intense competition for IT resources means that LDEs need a deeper understanding of how to source and evaluate their IT-related efforts. This effort puts LDEs in a better position to source funding from various stakeholders and promote localized investment in IT. This study presents a complementary approach to securing better IT-related business value in organizations in the LDEs. It further evaluates how IT and the complementaries need to managed within the LDEs. Analysis of data collected from five LDEs show that organizations that invest in IT and related complementaries are able to better their business processes. The data also suggest that improved business processes lead to overall business processes improvements. The above is only possible if organizations adopt IT and make related changes in the complementary resources within the established culture and localizing the required changes.

Understanding successful use of technology in organisations in developing countries : a structurational perspective

Information Technology and its relationship to organisational performance has been a subject of continued interest to researchers and other stakeholders in developing countries. While there is concurrence that IT does contribute to performance, and we are efficiently expanding our knowledge on what factors cause better leveraging of IT resources in organisations, we have done little to understand how these factors interact with technology that results in improved performance. This paper suggests looking that the interaction between organisational resources and technology within the structurational lens, which recognises the recursive interaction between technology and people in the presence of social practices, and the norms that inform their ongoing practices. An ethnographic approach to understanding this interaction between technology and resources, as suggested by the structuration perspective, is suggested, aiming to provide richer insights on the nature of the environment that promotes better use of IT resources in developing countries. Such insights could provide the IT users in developing countries with at least an initial conception of the “IT usage platform” that they could promote in their organisations to leverage the most from their IT resources.

Understanding learning and teaching : elementary teacher trainers in Papua New Guinea engaged in cultural authorship in the context of national educational reform

Over the last decade, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has pursued educational reform in elementary teacher education. Because elementary teachers and teacher education are central to the reform agenda, there is a need to gain empirical evidence about how PNG teacher trainers’ understandings about learning and teaching impact on their practice. The study uses cultural-authorship as a theoretical framework to investigate the nature of changes in understanding about learning and teaching for 18 teacher trainers as they progressed through a two-year Bachelor of Early Childhood upgrade course. It addresses the research question: What do elementary teacher trainers in PNG understanding about learning and teaching and how has this changed during their course? The focus on such understandings provides valuable insights into their professional identities at a critical time in PNG’s education reform agenda. Analysis of journal entries at the beginning and end of the course showed that, over time, teacher trainers described increasingly more complex ways of understanding learning and teaching. These views shifted from a focus on learning and teaching as transmission of ideas to one in which the critical role played by communities and families in educational processes and the teacher as a change agent became focal. This watershed finding demonstrates notable shifts in teacher trainers’ professional identities from trainers to community leaders in elementary education.

An application of the Health Belief Model to understanding use of child restraint practices

Aims Multi-method study including two parts: Study One: three sets of observations in two regional areas of Queensland Study Two: two sets of parent intercept interviews conducted in Toowoomba, Queensland. The aim of Study Two is to determine parents’ views, opinions and knowledge of child restraint practices and the Queensland legislative amendment.

Understanding graphicacy : students’ making sense of graphics in mathematics assessment tasks

The ability to decode graphics is an increasingly important component of mathematics assessment and curricula. This study examined 50, 9- to 10-year-old students (23 male, 27 female), as they solved items from six distinct graphical languages (e.g., maps) that are commonly used to convey mathematical information. The results of the study revealed: 1) factors which contribute to success or hinder performance on tasks with various graphical representations; and 2) how the literacy and graphical demands of tasks influence the mathematical sense making of students. The outcomes of this study highlight the changing nature of assessment in school mathematics and identify the function and influence of graphics in the design of assessment tasks.

Sound thinking : tips and tools for understanding popular music

Sound Thinking provides techniques and approaches to critically listen, think, talk and write about music you hear or make. It provides tips on making music and it encourages regular and deep thinking about music activities, which helps build a musical dialog that leads to deeper understanding.

Understanding innovation adoption : effects of orientation, pressure and control on adoption

We develop and test a theoretically-based integrative framework of key proximal factors (orientation, pressure, and control) that helps to explain the effects of more general factors (the organisation's strategy, structure, and environment) on intentions to adopt an innovation one year later. Senior managers from 134 organizations were surveyed and confirmatory factor analyses showed that these hypothesized core factors provided a good fit to the data, indicating that our framework can provide a theoretical base to the previous, largely a theoretical, literature. Moreover, in a subgroup of 63 organizations, control mediated the effects of organizational strategy and centralisation on organizational innovation adoption intentions one year later. We suggest this model of core factors enables researchers to understand why certain variables are important to organisational innovation adoption and promotes identification of fertile research areas around orientation, pressure and control, and it enables managers to focus on the most proximal triggers for increasing innovation adoption.

Integration of opinion into customer analysis model

Nowadays, Opinion Mining is getting more important than before especially in doing analysis and forecasting about customers’ behavior for businesses purpose. The right decision in producing new products or services based on data about customers’ characteristics means profit for organization/company. This paper proposes a new architecture for Opinion Mining, which uses a multidimensional model to integrate customers’ characteristics and their comments about products (or services). The key step to achieve this objective is to transfer comments (opinions) to a fact table that includes several dimensions, such as, customers, products, time and locations. This research presents a comprehensive way to calculate customers’ orientation for all possible products’ attributes. A use case study is also presented in this paper to show the advantages of using OLAP and data cubes to analyze costumers’ opinions.