Archival analysis of enterprise resource planning systems : the current state and future directions

Research on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems is becoming a well-established research theme in Information Systems (IS) research. Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, given its unique differentiations with other IS applications, have provided an interesting backdrop to test and re-test some of the key and fundamental concepts in IS. While some researchers have tested well-established concepts of technology acceptance, system usage and system success in the context of ERP Systems, others have researched how new paradigms like cloud computing and social media integrate with ERP Systems. Moreover, ERP Systems provided the context for cross disciplinary research such as knowledge management, project management and business process management research. Almost after two-decades since its inception in IS research, this paper provides a critique of 198 papers published on ERP Systems since 2006-2012. We observe patterns on ES research, provide comparisons to past studies and provide future research directions.

Engaging social customers : influencing new marketing strategies for social media information sources

A global, online quantitative study among 300 consumers of digital technology products found the most reliable information sources were friends, family or word of mouth (WOM) from someone they knew, followed by expert product reviews, and product reviews written by other consumers. The most unreliable information sources were advertising or infomercials, automated recommendations based on purchasing patterns or retailers. While a very small number of consumers evaluated products online, rating of products and online discussions were more frequent activities. The most popular social media websites for reviews were Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and e-Bay, indicating the importance of WOM in social networks and online media spaces that feature product reviews as it is the most persuasive piece of information in both online and offline social networks. These results suggest that ‘social customers’ must be considered as an integral part of a marketing strategy.

Website designers : how do they experience information literacy?

This paper presents the findings from the first phase of a larger study into the information literacy of website designers. Using a phenomenographic approach, it maps the variation in experiencing the phenomenon of information literacy from the viewpoint of website designers. The current result reveals important insights into the lived experience of this group of professionals. Analysis of data has identified five different ways in which website designers experience information literacy: problem-solving, using best practices, using a knowledge base, building a successful website, and being part of a learning community of practice. As there is presently relatively little research in the area of workplace information literacy, this study provides important additional insights into our understanding of information literacy in the workplace, especially in the specific context of website design. Such understandings are of value to library and information professionals working with web professionals either within or beyond libraries. These understandings may also enable information professionals to take a more proactive role in the industry of website design. Finally, the obtained knowledge will contribute to the education of both website-design science and library and information science (LIS) students.

An evaluation of corpus-driven measures of medical concept similarity for information retrieval

Measures of semantic similarity between medical concepts are central to a number of techniques in medical informatics, including query expansion in medical information retrieval. Previous work has mainly considered thesaurus-based path measures of semantic similarity and has not compared different corpus-driven approaches in depth. We evaluate the effectiveness of eight common corpus-driven measures in capturing semantic relatedness and compare these against human judged concept pairs assessed by medical professionals. Our results show that certain corpus-driven measures correlate strongly (approx 0.8) with human judgements. An important finding is that performance was significantly affected by the choice of corpus used in priming the measure, i.e., used as evidence from which corpus-driven similarities are drawn. This paper provides guidelines for the implementation of semantic similarity measures for medical informatics and concludes with implications for medical information retrieval.

Integrated configuration of enterprise systems for interoperability : towards process model and business document specification alignment

Enterprise Systems (ES) can be understood as the de facto standard for holistic operational and managerial support within an organization. Most commonly ES are offered as commercial off-the-shelf packages, requiring customization in the user organization. This process is a complex and resource-intensive task, which often prevents small and midsize enterprises (SME) from undertaking configuration projects. Especially in the SME market independent software vendors provide pre-configured ES for a small customer base. The problem of ES configuration is shifted from the customer to the vendor, but remains critical. We argue that the yet unexplored link between process configuration and business document configuration must be closer examined as both types of configuration are closely tied to one another.

Configuring processes and business documents : an integrated approach to enterprise systems collaboration

Enterprise Systems (ES) provide standardized, off-theshelf support for operations and management within organizations. With the advent of ES based on a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) and an increasing demand of IT-supported interorganizational collaboration, implementation projects face paradigmatically new challenges. The configuration of ES is costly and error-prone. Dependencies between business processes and business documents are hardly explicit and foster component proliferation instead of reuse. Configurative modeling can support the problem in two ways: First, conceptual modeling abstracts from technical details and provides more intuitive access and overview. Second, configuration allows the projection of variants from master models providing manageable variants with controlled flexibility. We aim at tackling the problem by proposing an integrated model-based framework for configuring both, processes and business documents, on an equal basis; as together, they constitute the core business components of an ES.

The phenomenon of information literacy

Information literacy is increasingly recognised as an important educational outcomes for university students. How it is experienced, however, has only recently become the subject of scrutiny. THe study reported here examines varying conception of information literacy amongst a group of lecturers, librarians, staff developers and learning counsellors. A phenomenographic approach was used to discover their conceptions. Data were gathered from participants, both male and female, through interviews, e-mail discussions and workshops. As an outcomes of the analysis, seven categories, or 'faces' of information literacy were discovered. These categories depict information literacy as it is conceived or experienced. They provide target conceptions for the educational process which differ from the more conventional competencies or skill-based objectives.

A tensor encoding model of word meaning : theory and application to information retrieval

This project was a step forward in developing and evaluating a novel, mathematical model that can deduce the meaning of words based on their use in language. This model can be applied to a wide range of natural language applications, including the information seeking process most of us undertake on a daily basis.

Learning to use information : informed learning in the undergraduate classroom

“Informed learning” is a pedagogy that focuses on learning subject content through engaging with academic or professional information practices. Adopting the position that more powerful learning is achieved where students are taught how to use information and subject content simultaneously, the research reported here investigated an informed learning lesson. Using phenomenographic methods, student’s experiences of the lesson were compared to what the teacher enacted in the classroom. Based on an analysis of student interviews using variation theory, three ways of experiencing the informed learning lesson emerged. Some students understood the lesson to be about learning to use information, i.e., researching and writing an academic paper, while others understood it as focusing on understanding both subject content and information use simultaneously. Although the results of this study are highly contextualized, the findings suggest criteria to consider when designing informed learning lessons.

Barriers to the adoption of health information technology

Information Technology (IT) is successfully applied in a diverse range of fields. Though, the field of Medical Informatics is more than three decades old, it shows a very slow progress compared to many other fields in which the application of IT is growing rapidly. The spending on IT in health care is shooting up but the road to successful use of IT in health care has not been easy. This paper discusses about the barriers to the successful adoption of information technology in clinical environments and outlines the different approaches used by various countries and organisations to tackle the issues successfully. Investing financial and other resources to overcome the barriers for successful adoption of HIT is highly important to realise the dream of a future healthcare system with each customer having secure, private Electronic Health Record (EHR) that is available whenever and wherever needed, enabling the highest degree of coordinated medical care based on the latest medical knowledge and evidence. Arguably, the paper reviews barriers to HIT from organisations’ alignment in respect to the leadership; with their stated values when accepting or willingness to consider the HIT as a determinant factor on their decision-making processes. However, the review concludes that there are many aspects of the organisational accountability and readiness to agree to the technology implementation.

Identification and evaluation of service bundles for governmental one-stop portals

Recent advances in the area of ‘Transformational Government’ position the citizen at the centre of focus. This paradigm shift from a department-centric to a citizen-centric focus requires governments to re-think their approach to service delivery, thereby decreasing costs and increasing citizen satisfaction. The introduction of franchises as a virtual business layer between the departments and their citizens is intended to provide a solution. Franchises are structured to address the needs of citizens independent of internal departmental structures. For delivering services online, governments pursue the development of a One-Stop Portal, which structures information and services through those franchises. Thus, each franchise can be mapped to a specific service bundle, which groups together services that are deemed to be of relevance to a specific citizen need. This study focuses on the development and evaluation of these service bundles. In particular, two research questions guide the line of investigation of this study: Research Question 1): What methods can be used by governments to identify service bundles as part of governmental One-Stop Portals? Research Question 2): How can the quality of service bundles in governmental One-Stop Portals be evaluated? The first research question asks about the identification of suitable service bundle identification methods. A literature review was conducted, to, initially, conceptualise the service bundling task, in general. As a consequence, a 4-layer model of service bundling and a morphological box were created, detailing characteristics that are of relevance when identifying service bundles. Furthermore, a literature review of Decision-Support Systems was conducted to identify approaches of relevance in different bundling scenarios. These initial findings were complemented by targeted studies of multiple leading governments in the e-government domain, as well as with a local expert in the field. Here, the aim was to identify the current status of online service delivery and service bundling in practice. These findings led to the conceptualising of two service bundle identification methods, applicable in the context of Queensland Government: On the one hand, a provider-driven approach, based on service description languages, attributes, and relationships between services was conceptualised. As well, a citizen-driven approach, based on analysing the outcomes from content identification and grouping workshops with citizens, was also conceptualised. Both methods were then applied and evaluated in practice. The conceptualisation of the provider-driven method for service bundling required the initial specification of relevant attributes that could be used to identify similarities between services called relationships; these relationships then formed the basis for the identification of service bundles. This study conceptualised and defined seven relationships, namely ‘Co-location’, ‘Resource’, ‘Co-occurrence’, ‘Event’, ‘Consumer’, ‘Provider’, and ‘Type’. The relationships, and the bundling method itself, were applied and refined as part of six Action Research cycles in collaboration with the Queensland Government. The findings show that attributes and relationships can be used effectively as a means for bundle identification, if distinct decision rules are in place to prescribe how services are to be identified. For the conceptualisation of the citizen-driven method, insights from the case studies led to the decision to involve citizens, through card sorting activities. Based on an initial list of services, relevant for a certain franchise, participating citizens grouped services according to their liking. The card sorting activity, as well as the required analysis and aggregation of the individual card sorting results, was analysed in depth as part of this study. A framework was developed that can be used as a decision-support tool to assist with the decision of what card sorting analysis method should be utilised in a given scenario. The characteristic features associated with card sorting in a government context led to the decision to utilise statistical analysis approaches, such as cluster analysis and factor analysis, to aggregate card sorting results. The second research question asks how the quality of service bundles can be assessed. An extensive literature review was conducted focussing on bundle, portal, and e-service quality. It was found that different studies use different constructs, terminology, and units of analysis, which makes comparing these models a difficult task. As a direct result, a framework was conceptualised, that can be used to position past and future studies in this research domain. Complementing the literature review, interviews conducted as part of the case studies with leaders in e-government, indicated that, typically, satisfaction is evaluated for the overall portal once the portal is online, but quality tests are not conducted during the development phase. Consequently, a research model which appropriately defines perceived service bundle quality would need to be developed from scratch. Based on existing theory, such as Theory of Reasoned Action, Expectation Confirmation Theory, and Theory of Affordances, perceived service bundle quality was defined as an inferential belief. Perceived service bundle quality was positioned within the nomological net of services. Based on the literature analysis on quality, and on the subsequent work of a focus group, the hypothesised antecedents (descriptive beliefs) of the construct and the associated question items were defined and the research model conceptualised. The model was then tested, refined, and finally validated during six Action Research cycles. Results show no significant difference in higher quality or higher satisfaction among users for either the provider-driven method or for the citizen-driven method. The decision on which method to choose, it was found, should be based on contextual factors, such as objectives, resources, and the need for visibility. The constructs of the bundle quality model were examined. While the quality of bundles identified through the citizen-centric approach could be explained through the constructs ‘Navigation’, ‘Ease of Understanding’, and ‘Organisation’, bundles identified through the provider-driven approach could be explained solely through the constructs ‘Navigation’ and ‘Ease of Understanding’. An active labelling style for bundles, as part of the provider-driven Information Architecture, had a larger impact on ‘Quality’ than the topical labelling style used in the citizen-centric Information Architecture. However, ‘Organisation’, reflecting the internal, logical structure of the Information Architecture, was a significant factor impacting on ‘Quality’ only in the citizen-driven Information Architecture. Hence, it was concluded that active labelling can compensate for a lack of logical structure. Further studies are needed to further test this conjecture. Such studies may involve building alternative models and conducting additional empirical research (e.g. use of an active labelling style for the citizen-driven Information Architecture). This thesis contributes to the body of knowledge in several ways. Firstly, it presents an empirically validated model of the factors explaining and predicting a citizen’s perception of service bundle quality. Secondly, it provides two alternative methods that can be used by governments to identify service bundles in structuring the content of a One-Stop Portal. Thirdly, this thesis provides a detailed narrative to suggest how the recent paradigm shift in the public domain, towards a citizen-centric focus, can be pursued by governments; the research methodology followed by this study can serve as an exemplar for governments seeking to achieve a citizen-centric approach to service delivery.

Reorganizing a technical services division using collaborative evidence based information practice at Auraria Library

The article focuses on the evidence-based information practice (EBIP) applied at the Auraria Library in Denver, Colorado during the reorganization of its technical services division. Collaboration processes were established for the technical services division through the reorganization and redefinition of workflows. There are several factors that form part of the redefinition of roles including personal interests, department needs, and library needs. A collaborative EBIP environment was created in the division by addressing issues of workplace hierarchies, by the distribution of problem solving, and by the encouragement of reflective dialogue.

Future Information Communication Technology and Applications : ICFICE 2013

Focuses on the various aspects of advances in future information communication technology and its applications Presents the latest issues and progress in the area of future information communication technology Applicable to both researchers and professionals These proceedings are based on the 2013 International Conference on Future Information & Communication Engineering (ICFICE 2013), which will be held at Shenyang in China from June 24-26, 2013. The conference is open to all over the world, and participation from Asia-Pacific region is particularly encouraged. The focus of this conference is on all technical aspects of electronics, information, and communications ICFICE-13 will provide an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss the latest issues and progress in the area of FICE. In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories and practical applications in FICE. Furthermore, we expect that the conference and its publications will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in this important subject. "This work was supported by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency) of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning)."

Designing the information architecture of governmental one-stop portals : on the application and analysis of card sorting

The latest paradigm shift in government, termed Transformational Government, puts the citizen in the centre of attention. Including citizens in the design of online one-stop portals can help governmental organisations to become more customer focussed. This study describes the initial efforts of an Australian state government to develop an information architecture to structure the content of their future one-stop portal. Hereby, card sorting exercises have been conducted and analysed, utilising contemporary approaches found in academic and non-scientific literature. This paper describes the findings of the card sorting exercises in this particular case and discusses the suitability of the applied approaches in general. These are distinguished into non-statistical, statistical, and hybrid approaches. Thus, on the one hand, this paper contributes to academia by describing the application of different card sorting approaches and discussing their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, this paper contributes to practice by explaining the approach that has been taken by the authors’ research partner in order to develop a customer-focussed governmental one-stop portal. Thus, they provide decision support for practitioners with regard to different analysis methods that can be used to complement recent approaches in Transformational Government.

Workplace information literacy : cultivation strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st century libraries

This paper presents a hybrid framework of Swedish cultural practices and Australian grounded theory for organizational development and suggests practical strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st Century libraries. Toward that end, reflective evidence-based practices are offered to incrementally build organizational capacity for asking good questions, selecting authoritative sources, evaluating multiple perspectives, organizing emerging insights, and communicating them to inform, educate, and influence. In addition, to ensure the robust information exchange necessary to collective workplace learning, leadership traits are proposed for ensuring inclusive communication, decision making, and planning processes. These findings emerge from action research projects conducted from 2003 to 2008 in two North American libraries.