Learning or legitimacy? an exploration of business planning amongst Australian social enterprises

In recent years, the value of business planning for new business ventures and small firms has been the subject of debate amongst entrepreneurship researchers (Brinckmann et al 2010: 24). Drawing on institutional theory, a number of writers suggest that business planning is primarily used to confer symbolic legitimacy on businesses seeking investment and engagement from external stakeholders ( Karlsson & Honig 2009; Zimmerman & Zeitz 2002; Delmar & Shane 2004). In this sense, business planning may not have any significant effects on firm learning, but may be used as evidence of good business operations in order to attract external resources. Meta-evaluation of the available empirical literature contests this proposition, finding that both the symbolic and organisational learning effects of business planning influence small firm performance (Brinckmann et al 2010: 36) While social enterprise – which we define as organisations that exist for a public or community benefit and trade to fulfill their mission - the study of social enterprise is a nascent and pre-paradigmatic area of inquiry (Nicholls 2010). As a consequence, there has been relatively little empirical analysis of the nature or effects of business planning amongst social enterprises (for two exceptions, see exploratory studies by Hynes 2009 and Bull & Crompton 2006). In this paper, we examine business planning practices amongst Australian social enterprises. Drawing on a survey of 365 social enterprises conducted in 2010 and in-depth interviews with 11 social entrepreneurs and managers from eight social enterprises, we find that social enterprises report being more actively engaged in business planning activities than their mainstream business counterparts. Our exploratory research suggests that both legitimacy and learning drive business planning amongst social enterprises, although legitimacy is the stronger driver. Our results also suggest that, as multi-stakeholder businesses led by mission, business planning can serve unique communicative and relational functions for this business type.

Introduction to the First International Workshop on Empirical Research in Business Process Management (ER-BPM 2009)

Providing effective IT support for business processes has become crucial for enterprises to stay competitive. In response to this need numerous process support paradigms (e.g., workflow management, service flow management, case handling), process specification standards (e.g., WS-BPEL, BPML, BPMN), process tools (e.g., ARIS Toolset, Tibco Staffware, FLOWer), and supporting methods have emerged in recent years. Summarized under the term “Business Process Management” (BPM), these paradigms, standards, tools, and methods have become a success-critical instrument for improving process performance.

Managing large collections of business process models - Current techniques and challenges

Nowadays, business process management is an important approach for managing organizations from an operational perspective. As a consequence, it is common to see organizations develop collections of hundreds or even thousands of business process models. Such large collections of process models bring new challenges and provide new opportunities, as the knowledge that they encapsulate requires to be properly managed. Therefore, a variety of techniques for managing large collections of business process models is being developed. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the management techniques that currently exist, as well as the open research challenges that they pose.

The rise of co-creative consumers : user experience sharing behaviour in online communities

This thesis examines consumer initiated value co-creation behaviour in the context of convergent mobile online services using a Service-Dominant logic (SD logic) theoretical framework. It focuses on non-reciprocal marketing phenomena such as open innovation and user generated content whereby new viable business models are derived and consumer roles and community become essential to the success of business. Attention to customers. roles and personalised experiences in value co-creation has been recognised in the literature (e.g., Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000; Prahalad, 2004; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Similarly, in a subsequent iteration of their 2004 version of the foundations of SD logic, Vargo and Lusch (2006) replaced the concept of value co-production with value co-creation and suggested that a value co-creation mindset is essential to underpin the firm-customer value creation relationship. Much of this focus, however, has been limited to firm initiated value co-creation (e.g., B2B or B2C), while consumer initiated value creation, particularly consumer-to-consumer (C2C) has received little attention in the SD logic literature. While it is recognised that not every consumer wishes to make the effort to engage extensively in co-creation processes (MacDonald & Uncles, 2009), some consumers may not be satisfied with a standard product, instead they engage in the effort required for personalisation that potentially leads to greater value for themselves, and which may benefit not only the firm, but other consumers as well. Literature suggests that there are consumers who do, and as a result initiate such behaviour and expend effort to engage in co-creation activity (e.g., Gruen, Osmonbekov and Czaplewski, 2006; 2007 MacDonald & Uncles, 2009). In terms of consumers. engagement in value proposition (co-production) and value actualisation (co-creation), SD logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008) provides a new lens that enables marketing scholars to transcend existing marketing theory and facilitates marketing practitioners to initiate service centric and value co-creation oriented marketing practices. Although the active role of the consumer is acknowledged in the SD logic oriented literature, we know little about how and why consumers participate in a value co-creation process (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008). Literature suggests that researchers should focus on areas such as C2C interaction (Gummesson 2007; Nicholls 2010) and consumer experience sharing and co-creation (Belk 2009; Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004). In particular, this thesis seeks to better understand consumer initiated value co-creation, which is aligned with the notion that consumers can be resource integrators (Baron & Harris, 2008) and more. The reason for this focus is that consumers today are more empowered in both online and offline contexts (Füller, Mühlbacher, Matzler, & Jawecki, 2009; Sweeney, 2007). Active consumers take initiatives to engage and co-create solutions with other active actors in the market for their betterment of life (Ballantyne & Varey, 2006; Grönroos & Ravald, 2009). In terms of the organisation of the thesis, this thesis first takes a „zoom-out. (Vargo & Lusch, 2011) approach and develops the Experience Co-Creation (ECo) framework that is aligned with balanced centricity (Gummesson, 2008) and Actor-to-Actor worldview (Vargo & Lusch, 2011). This ECo framework is based on an extended „SD logic friendly lexicon. (Lusch & Vargo, 2006): value initiation and value initiator, value-in-experience, betterment centricity and betterment outcomes, and experience co-creation contexts derived from five gaps identified from the SD logic literature review. The framework is also designed to accommodate broader marketing phenomena (i.e., both reciprocal and non-reciprocal marketing phenomena). After zooming out and establishing the ECo framework, the thesis takes a zoom-in approach and places attention back on the value co-creation process. Owing to the scope of the current research, this thesis focuses specifically on non-reciprocal value co-creation phenomena initiated by consumers in online communities. Two emergent concepts: User Experience Sharing (UES) and Co-Creative Consumers are proposed grounded in the ECo framework. Together, these two theorised concepts shed light on the following two propositions: (1) User Experience Sharing derives value-in-experience as consumers make initiative efforts to participate in value co-creation, and (2) Co-Creative Consumers are value initiators who perform UES. Three research questions were identified underpinning the scope of this research: RQ1: What factors influence consumers to exhibit User Experience Sharing behaviour? RQ2: Why do Co-Creative Consumers participate in User Experience Sharing as part of value co-creation behaviour? RQ3: What are the characteristics of Co-Creative Consumers? To answer these research questions, two theoretical models were developed: the User Experience Sharing Behaviour Model (UESBM) grounded in the Theory of Planned Behaviour framework, and the Co-Creative Consumer Motivation Model (CCMM) grounded in the Motivation, Opportunity, Ability framework. The models use SD logic consistent constructs and draw upon multiple streams of literature including consumer education, consumer psychology and consumer behaviour, and organisational psychology and organisational behaviour. These constructs include User Experience Sharing with Other Consumers (UESC), User Experience Sharing with Firms (UESF), Enjoyment in Helping Others (EIHO), Consumer Empowerment (EMP), Consumer Competence (COMP), and Intention to Engage in User Experience Sharing (INT), Attitudes toward User Experience Sharing (ATT) and Subjective Norm (SN) in the UESBM, and User Experience Sharing (UES), Consumer Citizenship (CIT), Relating Needs of Self (RELS) and Relating Needs of Others (RELO), Newness (NEW), Mavenism (MAV), Use Innovativeness (UI), Personal Initiative (PIN) and Communality (COMU) in the CCMM. Many of these constructs are relatively new to marketing and require further empirical evidence for support. Two studies were conducted to underpin the corresponding research questions. Study One was conducted to calibrate and re-specify the proposed models. Study Two was a replica study to confirm the proposed models. In Study One, data were collected from a PC DIY online community. In Study Two, a majority of data were collected from Apple product online communities. The data were examined using structural equation modelling and cluster analysis. Considering the nature of the forums, the Study One data is considered to reflect some characteristics of Prosumers and the Study Two data is considered to reflect some characteristics of Innovators. The results drawn from two independent samples (N = 326 and N = 294) provide empirical support for the overall structure theorised in the research models. The results in both models show that Enjoyment in Helping Others and Consumer Competence in the UESBM, and Consumer Citizenship and Relating Needs in CCMM have significant impacts on UES. The consistent results appeared in both Study One and Study Two. The results also support the conceptualisation of Co-Creative Consumers and indicate Co-Creative Consumers are individuals who are able to relate the needs of themselves and others and feel a responsibility to share their valuable personal experiences. In general, the results shed light on "How and why consumers voluntarily participate in the value co-creation process?. The findings provide evidence to conceptualise User Experience Sharing behaviour as well as the Co-Creative Consumer using the lens of SD logic. This research is a pioneering study that incorporates and empirically tests SD logic consistent constructs to examine a particular area of the logic – that is consumer initiated value co-creation behaviour. This thesis also informs practitioners about how to facilitate and understand factors that engage with either firm or consumer initiated online communities.

Leadership and the rise of the corporate psychopath: What can business schools do about the ‘snakes inside’?

Purpose: Leadership styles are reviewed and reassessed given recent research that links destructive leadership behaviours exhibited by unscrupulous executives with traits commonly identified as indicators of corporate psychopathy. Method/approach: A review of the literature describing the various theories dealing with the nature of leadership styles and the rise of interest in corporate psychopathy and destructive leadership. Implications: This paper offers a psychological perspective for future research which provides both impetus and additional support for further analysis and exploration of such leadership styles in the business environment. One distinct advantage of this extrapolation is the articulation of insights into aspects of decision making by leaders, providing further insight into the formulation of leadership development programs in organisations and courses in business schools training future leaders.

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.

On IT and business value in developing countries : A complementarities-based approach

Developing economies accommodate more than three quarters of the world's population. This means understanding their growth and well-being is of critical importance. Information technology (IT) is one resource that has had a profound effect in shaping the global economy. IT is also an important resource for driving growth and development in developing economies. Investments in developing economies, however, have focused on the exploitation of labor and natural resources. Unlike in developed economies, focus on IT investment to improve efficiency and effectiveness of business process in developing economies has been sparse, and mechanisms for deriving better IT-related business value is not well understood. This study develops a complementarities-based business value model for developing economies, and tests the relationship between IT investments, IT-related complementarities, and business process performance. It also considers the relationship between business processes performance and firm-level performance. The results suggest that a coordinated investment in IT and IT-related complementarities related favorably to business process performance. Improvements in process-level performance lead to improvements in firm-level performance. The results also suggest that the IT-related complementarities are not only a source of business value on their own, but also enhance the IT resources' ability to contribute to business process performance. This study demonstrates that a coordinated investment approach is required in developing economies. With this approach, their IT resources and IT-related complementaries would help them significantly in improving their business processes, and eventually their firm-level performances.

Information technology and business value in developing economies: a study of intangible benefits of information technology investments in Fiji

Understanding how IT investments contribute to business value is an important issue, and this assists in the efficient use of technology resources in businesses. While there is an agreement that IT contributes to business value, we are unsure of how IT contributes to business value in the wider context, including developing countries. With the view that understanding the interaction between IT resources and the users may provide better insights on the potential of IT investments, this study investigates the businesses’ perception of the intangible benefits of their IT investments. The results indicate that businesses in developing countries perceive that their IT investments provide intangible benefits, especially at the process level, and this contributes to business value.

External orientation and business model adaptation in young and nascent firms : preliminary analysis from the CAUSSE project

Discovering factors that help or impede business model change is an important quest, both for researchers and practitioners. In this study we present preliminary findings based on the CAUSEE survey of young and nascent firms in Australia. In particular, we seek to determine an association between business model adaptation and external orientation among young and nascent firms within the random sample and amongst an oversample of high potential firms. The concept of external orientation is made operational by asking respondents whether, and to what extent, they rely on certain sources of advice and information. We find that high potential firms are more likely to have made at least some change to their business model, that greater use of external sources of advice is generally significantly associated with business model adaptation, but also that there appear to be different patterns of behaviour between the random sample and the over sample.

Virtual worlds as a model-view approach to the communication of business processes models

The improvement and optimization of business processes is one of the top priorities in an organization. Although process analysis methods are mature today, business analysts and stakeholders are still hampered by communication issues. That is, analysts cannot effectively obtain accurate business requirements from stakeholders, and stakeholders are often confused about analytic results offered by analysts. We argue that using a virtual world to model a business process can benefit communication activities. We believe that virtual worlds can be used as an efficient model-view approach, increasing the cognition of business requirements and analytic results, as well as the possibility of business plan validation. A healthcare case study is provided as an approach instance, illustrating how intuitive such an approach can be. As an exploration paper, we believe that this promising research can encourage people to investigate more research topics in the interdisciplinary area of information system, visualization and multi-user virtual worlds.

How novices design business processes

Process modeling is an important design practice in organizational improvement projects. In this paper, we examine the design of business process diagrams in contexts where novice analysts only have basic design tools such as paper and pencils available, and little to no understanding of formalized modeling approaches. Based on a quasi-experimental study with 89 BPM students, we identify five distinct process design archetypes ranging from textual to hybrid and graphical representation forms. We examine the quality of the designs and identify which representation formats enable an analyst to articulate business rules, states, events, activities, temporal and geospatial information in a process model. We found that the quality of the process designs decreases with the increased use of graphics and that hybrid designs featuring appropriate text labels and abstract graphical forms appear well-suited to describe business processes. We further examine how process design preferences predict formalized process modeling ability. Our research has implications for practical process design work in industry as well as for academic curricula on process design.

Queensland Business Women Stories

These projects build on the research of Klaebe and Burgess into digital story-telling, specifically variable workshop scenarios, co-creative media, participatory public history, and the development of co-creative production processes for cultural institutions. The projects represented a partnership between QUT and the State Library of Queensland. The Five Senses project focused on the distributed digital storytelling workshop model and the development of audiences for digital storytelling. The team worked with regional artists whose work had been selected for inclusion in the Five Senses exhibition at the State Library of Queensland to produce stories about their work; these works were then integrated into the physical exhibition space. The Queensland Businesswomen project produced four digital stories profiling the lives of leading Queensland businesswomen. The digital story telling workshop model was disbanded and research teams worked individually with participants to create the digital stories. Academic research and oral history interviews were conducted initially to foreground these productions. This pilot led to a larger project, Business Leaders Hall of Fame, which now has a dedicated viewing room in the SLQ sponsored by an annual silver service dinner event. With the Responses to the Apology project, which stimulated similar projects in Mt Isa and Cairns, the research team worked with Indigenous facilitators, and the participants created their digital stories with assistance from these facilitators and the QUT research team using a mix of workshop and individual meetings. The research component of the work relates to the further development of co-creative production processes for cultural institutions, involving a wide range of institutional and individual partners, while authentically representing the intensely personal perspectives of each of the primary participants. The Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame was a research project that included interviews with eminent Queenslanders that produced oral history interviews and digital stories about the achievements of both Queensland personalities and businesses. This model was able to test and evaluate the use of oral history and digital storytelling for learning and community heritage purposes. Interviewees include; Sir John and Valmai Pidgeon, Joseph Saragossi, Robert Bryan, Clem Jones, Jim Kennedy, Sr Angela Mary, Castelmaine Perkins, Burns and Philp, Qantas, Don Argus & Steve Irwin All digital stories, oral history interviews and transcripts were accessioned into the library collection – an international first for digital stories. Two publications in refereed journals have resulted, and the digital stories are stored in the SLQ permanent collection for the benefit of national and international scholars and the general public.

Service delivery framework : an architectural strategy for next-generation service delivery in business network

The next-generation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) needs to scale for flexible service consumption, beyond organizational and application boundaries, into communities, ecosystems and business networks. In wider and, ultimately, global settings, new capabilities are needed so that business partners can efficiently and reliably enable, adapt and expose services. Those services can then be discovered, ordered, consumed, metered and paid for, through new applications and opportunities, driven by third-parties in the global “village”. This trend is already underway, in different ways, through different early adopter market segments. This paper proposes an architectural strategy for the provisioning and delivery of services in communities, ecosystems and business networks – a Service Delivery Framework (SDF). The SDF is intended to support multiple industries and deployments where a SOA platform is needed for collaborating partners and diverse consumers. Specifically, it is envisaged that the SDF allows providers to publish their services into network directories so that they can be repurposed, traded and consumed, and leveraging network utilities like B2B gateways and cloud hosting. To support these different facets of service delivery, the SDF extends the conventional service provider, service broker and service consumer of the Web Services Architecture to include service gateway, service hoster, service aggregator and service channel maker.

Diversified service provisioning in global business networks

Companies and their services are being increasingly exposed to global business networks and Internet-based ondemand services. Much of the focus is on flexible orchestration and consumption of services, beyond ownership and operational boundaries of services. However, ways in which third-parties in the “global village” can seamlessly self-create new offers out of existing services remains open. This paper proposes a framework for service provisioning in global business networks that allows an open-ended set of techniques for extending services through a rich, multi-tooling environment. The Service Provisioning Management Framework, as such, supports different modeling techniques, through supportive tools, allowing different parts of services to be integrated into new contexts. Integration of service user interfaces, business processes, operational interfaces and business object are supported. The integration specifications that arise from service extensions are uniformly reflected through a kernel technique, the Service Integration Technique. Thus, the framework preserves coherence of service provisioning tasks without constraining the modeling techniques needed for extending different aspects of services.

A graphical notation for modelling events in business processes

Using complex event rules for capturing dependencies between business processes is an emerging trend in enterprise information systems. In previous work we have identified a set of requirements for event extensions for business process modeling languages. This paper introduces a graphical language for modeling composite events in business processes, namely BEMN, that fulfills all these requirements. These include event conjunction, disjunction and inhibition as well as cardinality of events whose graphical expression can be factored into flow-oriented process modeling and event rule modeling. Formal semantics for the language are provided.