Pattern-based analysis of EAI languages : the case of the business modelling language

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a challenging area that is attracting growing attention from the software industry and the research community. A landscape of languages and techniques for EAI has emerged and is continuously being enriched with new proposals from different software vendors and coalitions. However, little or no effort has been dedicated to systematically evaluate and compare these languages and techniques. The work reported in this paper is a first step in this direction. It presents an in-depth analysis of a language, namely the Business Modeling Language, specifically developed for EAI. The framework used for this analysis is based on a number of workflow and communication patterns. This framework provides a basis for evaluating the advantages and drawbacks of EAI languages with respect to recurrent problems and situations.

Regulating roles of the use of the balanced scorecard in shaping corporate identities

The literature on corporate identity management suggests that managing corporate identity is a strategically complex task embracing the shaping of a range of dimensions of organisational life. The performance measurement literature and its applications likewise now also emphasise organisational ability to incorporate various dimensions considering both financial and non-financial performance measures when assessing success. The inclusion of these soft non-financial measures challenges organisations to quantify intangible aspects of performance such as corporate identity, transforming unmeasurables into measurables. This paper explores the regulatory roles of the use of the balanced scorecard in shaping key dimensions of corporate identities in a public sector shared service provider in Australia. This case study employs qualitative interviews of senior managers and employees, secondary data and participant observation. The findings suggest that the use of the balanced scorecard has potential to support identity construction, as an organisational symbol, a communication tool of vision, and as strategy, through creating conversations that self-regulate behaviour. The development of an integrated performance measurement system, the balanced scorecard, becomes an expression of a desired corporate identity, and the performance measures and continuous process provide the resource for interpreting actual corporate identities. Through this process of understanding and mobilising the interaction, it may be possible to create a less obtrusive and more subtle way to control “what an organisation is”. This case study also suggests that the theoretical and practical fusion of the disciplinary knowledge around corporate identities and performance measurement systems could make a contribution to understanding and shaping corporate identities.

Examination of the influence of personal attributes on consumer use on m-services

The rapid uptake of mobile devices has created the capacity to provide services to consumers while they are on the move, and new mobile services (m-services) are constantly emerging. In past research, personal attributes have been found to be import ant in the adoption and use of information and communication technology. However, little research has been conducted in the area of m-services. To explore factors influencing the use of these services, this paper examines personal attributes in terms of motivational, attitudinal and demographic characteristics. Specifically, it investigates the influence of innovativeness, self- efficacy, involvement and impulsiveness, as well as age and gender on m-services use . Data were collected from a convenience sample of 250 respondents using an online survey and a modified snowball procedure. Age and gender were quite well balanced in the sample. The multiple regression model was significant and the hypotheses relating to the positive relationship between impulsiveness, involvement and gender and m-services were supported. Findings are discussed, further implications for managers are suggested and directions for future research are proposed.

Apples, oranges and fruit salad : a Delphi study of the IMC educational mix

Once, we thought that comparing advertising and public relations was a bit like comparing apples and oranges. But with integration the new flavour, many academics are trying to cut and combine and create a fruit salad that will entice their customers and satisfy their stakeholders. While this has produced some culinary triumphs, it has also produced heartburn in equal quantity. This paper seeks the perfect recipe for integrated marketing communication (IMC) education by asking a Delphi panel of IMC champions questions relating to the place of IMC in the university setting; the teaching, research and curriculum development issues and the future for IMC education. The panel draws a chaotic picture of IMC education and identifies some important obstacles to curriculum development. It also predicts a number of key challenges for the future, including turf wars; the lack of faculty experience and enthusiasm to embrace IMC and the desperate need to grow the IMC brand. But perhaps the greatest challenge is how to create a generalist education in a culture of pecialisation that exists both in the university and in the workplace.

A constructivist approach to media literacy education: The role of the library

An informed citizenry is essential to the effective functioning of democracy. In most modern liberal democracies, citizens have traditionally looked to the media as the primary source of information about socio-political matters. In our increasingly mediated world, it is critical that audiences be able to effectively and accurately use the media to meet their information needs. Media literacy, the ability to access, understand, evaluate and create media content is therefore a vital skill for a healthy democracy. The past three decades have seen the rapid expansion of the information environment, particularly through Internet technologies. It is obvious that media usage patterns have changed dramatically as a result. Blogs and websites are now popular sources of news and information, and are for some sections of the population likely to be the first, and possibly only, information source accessed when information is required. What are the implications for media literacy in such a diverse and changing information environment? The Alexandria Manifesto stresses the link between libraries, a well informed citizenry and effective governance, so how do these changes impact on libraries? This paper considers the role libraries can play in developing media literate communities, and explores the ways in which traditional media literacy training may be expanded to better equip citizens for new media technologies. Drawing on original empirical research, this paper highlights a key shortcoming of existing media literacy approaches: that of overlooking the importance of needs identification as an initial step in media selection. Self-awareness of one’s actual information need is not automatic, as can be witnessed daily at reference desks in libraries the world over. Citizens very often do not know what it is that they need when it comes to information. Without this knowledge, selecting the most appropriate information source from the vast range available becomes an uncertain, possibly even random, enterprise. Incorporating reference interview-type training into media literacy education, whereby the individual will develop the skills to interrogate themselves regarding their underlying information needs, will enhance media literacy approaches. This increased focus on the needs of the individual will also push media literacy education into a more constructivist methodology. The paper also stresses the importance of media literacy training for adults. Media literacy education received in school or even university cannot be expected to retain its relevance over time in our rapidly evolving information environment. Further, constructivist teaching approaches highlight the importance of context to the learning process, thus it may be more effective to offer media literacy education relating to news media use to adults, whilst school-based approaches focus on types of media more relevant to young people, such as entertainment media. Librarians are ideally placed to offer such community-based media literacy education for adults. They already understand, through their training and practice of the reference interview, how to identify underlying information needs. Further, libraries are placed within community contexts, where the everyday practice of media literacy occurs. The Alexandria Manifesto stresses the link between libraries, a well informed citizenry and effective governance. It is clear that libraries have a role to play in fostering media literacy within their communities.

Historical and Personal Perspectives on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989: address to 20th anniversary forums.

The story of the fall of the Berlin Wall was an aspect of the “imagination gap” that we had to wrestle with as journalists covering the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in Europe. It was scarcely possible to believe what you found yourself reporting, and that work became a two-track process. On one hand a mass social movement was dictating the pace and direction of events; on the other, the institutional business of politics as usual, to provide a framework for all the change that was happening, had to be managed – and reported on. In later analyseds we could see, that crisis in the Soviet Union led to the crisis over the Berlin Wall; and from the fall of the Wall, came Germany’s reunification, and with that also, formation of the European Union as it is today. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany convinced its neighbours that a reunited Germany, within an expanded EU, would be a very acceptable “European Germany” -- not the leader of a “German Europe”. It committed itself financially, supporting the new Euro currency. The former communist states of Eastern Europe demanded to join and expand the EU; in order to remove themselves from the Soviet Union, enjoy human rights, and share in Western prosperity. So today, following on from the events of 1989, the European Union is an amalgam of 27 member countries, with close to 500 million citizens and accounting for 30 % of world Gross National Product.

Asynchronicity and the ‘time envelope’ of online annotation : the case of the photosharing website, Flickr

This paper examines a sequence of asynchronous interaction on the photosharing website, Flickr. In responding to a call for a focus on the performative aspects of online annotation (Wolff & Neuwirth, 2001), we outline and apply an interaction order approach to identify temporal and cultural aspects of the setting that provide for commonality and sharing. In particular, we study the interaction as a feature of a synthetic situation (Knorr Cetina, 2009) focusing on the requirements of maintaining a sense of an ongoing discussion online. Our analysis suggests that the rhetorical system of the Flickr environment, its appropriation by participants as a context for bounded activities, and displays of commonality, affiliation, and shared access provide for a common sense of participation in a time envelope. This, in turn, is argued to be central to new processes of consociation (Schutz, 1967; Zhao, 2004) occurring in the life world of Web 2.0 environments.

The Evolution of the creative industries : creative clusters, creative citizens and social network markets 創意產業的演化 : 創意集群 ,創意公民, 社會網絡市場 [published in Chinese]

The creative industries are important because they are clustered at the point of attraction for a billion or more young people around the world. They're the drivers of demographic, economic and political change. They start from the individual talent of the creative artist and the individual desire and aspiration of the audience. These are the raw materials for innovation, change and emergent culture, scaled up to form new industries and coordinated into global markets based on social networks.

Content, structure and orientations of the practice-led exegesis

The emergent field of practice-led research is a unique research paradigm that situates creative practice as both a driver and outcome of the research process. The exegesis that accompanies the creative practice in higher research degrees remains open to experimentation and discussion around what content should be included, how it should be structured, and its orientations. This paper contributes to this discussion by reporting on a content analysis of a large, local sample of exegeses. We have observed a broad pattern in contents and structure within this sample. Besides the introduction and conclusion, it has three main parts: situating concepts (conceptual definitions and theories), practical contexts (precedents in related practices), and new creations (the creative process, the artifacts produced and their value as research). This model appears to combine earlier approaches to the exegesis, which oscillated between academic objectivity in providing a context for the practice and personal reflection or commentary upon the creative practice. We argue that this hybrid or connective model assumes both orientations and so allows the researcher to effectively frame the practice as a research contribution to a wider field while doing justice to its invested poetics.

Which way up? Reading and drawing maps of the blogosphere

Mapping the physical world, the arrangement of continents and oceans, cities and villages, mountains and deserts, while not without its own contentious aspects, can at least draw upon centuries of previous work in cartography and discovery. To map virtual spaces is another challenge altogether. Are cartographic conventions applicable to depictions of the blogosphere, or the internet in general? Is a more mathematical approach required to even start to make sense of the shape of the blogosphere, to understand the network created by and between blogs? With my research comparing information flows in the Australian and French political blogs, visualising the data obtained is important as it can demonstrate the spread of ideas and topics across blogs. However, how best to depict the flows, links, and the spaces between is still unclear. Is network theory and systems of hubs and nodes more relevant than mass communication theories to the research at hand, influencing the nature of any map produced? Is it even a good idea to try and apply boundaries like ‘Australian’ and ‘French’ to parts of a map that does not reflect international borders or the Mercator projection? While drawing upon some of my work-in-progress, this paper will also evaluate previous maps of the blogosphere and approaches to depicting networks of blogs. As such, the paper will provide a greater awareness of the tools available and the strengths and limitations of mapping methodologies, helping to shape the direction of my research in a field still very much under development.

The relationship between communication and team performance : testing moderators and identifying communication profiles in established work teams

Communication is one team process factor that has received considerable research attention in the team literature. This literature provides equivocal evidence regarding the role of communication in team performance and yet, does not provide any evidence for when communication becomes important for team performance. This research program sought to address this evidence gap by a) testing task complexity and team member diversity (race diversity, gender diversity and work value diversity) as moderators of the team communication — performance relationship; and b) testing a team communication — performance model using established teams across two different task types. The functional perspective was used as the theoretical framework for operationalizing team communication activity. The research program utilised a quasi-experimental research design with participants from a large multi-national information technology company whose Head Office was based in Sydney, Australia. Participants voluntarily completed two team building exercises (a decision making and production task), and completed two online questionnaires. In total, data were collected from 1039 individuals who constituted 203 work teams. Analysis of the data revealed a small number of significant moderation effects, not all in the expected direction. However, an interesting and unexpected finding also emerged from Study One. Large and significant correlations between communication activity ratings were found across tasks, but not within tasks. This finding suggested that teams were displaying very similar profiles of communication on each task, despite the tasks having different communication requirements. Given this finding, Study Two sought to a) determine the relative importance of task versus team effects in explaining variance in team communication measures for established teams; b) determine if established teams had reliable and discernable team communication profiles and if so, c) investigate whether team communication profiles related to task performance. Multi-level modeling and repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that task type did not have an effect on team communication ratings. However, teams accounted for 24% of the total variance in communication measures. Through cluster analysis, five reliable and distinct team communication profiles were identified. Consistent with the findings of the multi-level analysis and repeated measures ANOVA, teams’ profiles were virtually identical across the decision making and production tasks. A relationship between communication profile and performance was identified for the production task, although not for the decision making task. This research responds to calls in the literature for a better understanding of when communication becomes important for team performance. The moderators tested in this research were not found to have a substantive or reliable effect on the relationship between communication and performance. However, the consistency in team communication activity suggests that established teams can be characterized by their communication profiles and further, that these communication profiles may have implications for team performance. The findings of this research provide theoretical support for the functional perspective in terms of the communication – performance relationship and further support the team development literature as an explanation for the stability in team communication profiles. This research can also assist organizations to better understand the specific types of communication activity and profiles of communication that could offer teams a performance advantage.

Validation of the impact of Health Information Technology (I-HIT) scale : an international collaborative

In 2005, the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Nursing Informatics Community developed a survey to measure the impact of health information technology (HIT), the IHIT Scale, on the role of nurses and interdisciplinary communication in hospital settings. In 2007, nursing informatics colleagues from Australia, England, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and the United States formed a research collaborative to validate the IHIT across countries. All teams have completed construct and face validation in their countries. Five out of six teams have initiated reliability testing by practicing nurses. This paper reports the international collaborative’s validation of the IHIT Scale completed to date.

Practising public relations in the global community of the 21st century : a comparison of business practices and culture in three world regions

Non-Western practitioners across the globe instinctively attempt to implement Western-based public relations models and theories, often unsuccessfully, regardless of their surrounding environment. This paper reviews business practices and reveals that in Europe, company interests are a main priority, while in Asia, the line between business and personal relationships is extremely blurred. Cultural dimensions and topois were even more varied between the three regions. Implications for the adoption of Western models of public relations practice are discussed.